CHAPTER I.

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WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS

AND OF SCOTLAND.

HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.

REVISED BY

ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS.

VOL. V.

LONDON:

WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE

AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

1885.

CONTENTS.

BILL STANLEY; OR, A SAILOR'S STORY, _(JOHN MACKAY WILSON)_

THE SURGEON'S TALES, _(ALEXANDER LEIGHTON_)

THE CONSCIENCE STRICKEN

RATTLING, ROARING WILLIE, _(ALEXANDER CAMPBELL)_

BILL WHYTE, _(HUGH MILLER)_

THE PROFESSOR'S TALES, _(PROFESSOR THOMAS GILLESPIE)_

THE LAST OF THE PEDLARS

DUNCAN SCHULEBRED'S VISION OF JUDGMENT, _(ALEX. LEIGHTON)_

ARCHY ARMSTRONG, _(JOHN MACKAY WILSON)_

THE DOUBLE-BEDDED ROOM, _(WALTER LOGAN)_

THE HIGHLAND BOY, _(ALEXANDER CAMPBELL)_

MAJOR WEIR'S COACH, _(JOHN HOWELL)_

THE DIVINITY STUDENT, _(DAVID M. MOIR, "DELTA")_

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.

BILL STANLEY; OR, A SAILOR'S STORY.

Reader, if thou hast never visited the Fern Isles, but intendest to

visit them, thou hast a pleasure in reserve--a positive, downright,

profitable pleasure--profitable as regards the health of the body, for a

trip upon the sea makes the blood feel ten years younger, and dance in

the veins as merrily as the waves around us; and profitable also to the

mind, by filling it with fresh objects for wonder and contemplation; and

it is a fact very generally overlooked, that the poor jaded mind stands

as much in need of new objects to work upon, as its plebeian neighbour,

the body, stands in need of rest or change of diet. It is a matter of

small consequence, whether you go in a yacht or in a steamer; in the

former you will have as much pleasure, in the latter more punctuality.

But it is a matter of much consequence what sort of company you have on

board--in a word, what materials your fellow-voyagers are made of. If

they be all your exceedingly good-natured sort of people--people bowed

down with politeness and a desire to please--you won't be half an hour

at sea till you find them dead as uncorked small beer that has stood an

hour in the sun, or insipid as milk and water. I had as lief dine upon

dried veal as be mewed up a day with such society. If you wish to

relish the company, and to see character developed, be careful to have

it sprinkled with the salt, the pepper, and the mustard of human

dispositions; as for the vinegar, even a drop of that would be too much.

Sickness might improve your health for the future, but would impair your

pleasure for the present; and, in truth, seasickness appears to be as

pale, ghostly, and uncomfortable a companion as a man may meet withal.

But, if the day be fine, and the breeze moderate, there is but little

chance of your being sick. At any rate, you will find about half a pound

of well-boiled ham, just as the vessel kisses the salt water, an

excellent preventive; and half the pleasure of a sea trip lies in the

relish, the _salt_, which it gives to the homeliest morsel.

When the Ferns are first seen, what appeared but two, or, at most, three

islands, are now found to be a cluster of sixteen or twenty--the

ocean-homes of ten thousand times ten thousand sea-fowls; which now may

be seen rising in myriads, blackening the air and covering the surface

of the islands, as if a thunder-cloud hung over them--anon their snowy

wings flash in the sunbeams, countless specks of light begem the seeming

cloud, and flickering for a moment, assume the appearance of a

magnificent rainbow instinct with motion,--and, again, as if turning

from the flashing of their own beautiful plumage, settle like darkness

on the rocks. To appreciate the striking effect of these islands, it is

necessary to sail round them, as well as to land upon them. Each appears

to be surrounded by a pier or bulwark of nature's masonry. What is

termed the Pinnacle Island, is the most impressive. We have been

informed that it bears a strong resemblance to St. Helena--the grave of

Europe's conqueror. The pinnacles are a mass of perpendicular rocks,

representing towers, battlements, and fortifications, apparently as

perfect to the eye as if formed by the hands of man, but that their

terrible strength seems to frown in mockery on his puny efforts. They,

alone, are worth visiting again and again. They make man feel his own

insignificance, and the power of the Omnipotent voice that called into

existence the mighty ocean and the wonders of its bosom. Burns, on

visiting a place in the Highlands, said it was "enough to make a

blockhead a poet;" and we say that the man who could visit the Fern

Isles without feeling the influence of poetry within him, has a head as

stupid as the sea-fowl that inhabit them, and an imagination as

impenetrable as the rocks that compose the pinnacles.

About three years ago, a mixed party left Newcastle, in a steamer, on a

pleasure excursion to the islands. Amongst the company, there was a man

of a weather-beaten but happy and intelligent countenance, whose age

seemed to be at least sixty, and whose general appearance and manners

indicated that he was an old seaman, and perhaps had been a purser or a

sailing-master in the navy, or the commander of a merchantman, who had

made enough to enable him to cast anchor ashore, in peace, quiet, and

plenty, for the remainder of his days. His shrewdness, his knowledge,

and his humour, soon rendered him a favourite with the company.

On arriving at the islands, the party went on shore; and, dividing

themselves into groups, sat down, and spread out their provisions on the

rocks; about a dozen prevailed upon the old sailor to accompany them,

and to be their messmate. After dinner, they began to sing, and the old

tar was called upon for a song.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I never could raise a single stave in my life;

but, if it's all one to you, I will spin you a sailor's yarn."

"Agreed," cried they--"all! all!"

"Well," began the old seaman, "it was a year or two before the short

peace of Amiens, that two young seamen were sitting in a public-house

in North Shields, which I shall please to speak of as the sign of the

Old Ship; and its landlord I shall call Mr. Danvers. The name of the one

sailor was William Stanley, the other Jack Jenkins. Jack was but a plain

fellow, though no lubber; but Bill was a glorious young fellow--the

admiration of everybody; though only the son of a poor laundress, who

wrought hard to bring him up, while a boy, he had contrived to get

knowledge and book-learning enough to have been made commodore of a

college. I may here tell you, too, that old Danvers had a daughter

called Mary--one of the best and prettiest girls on all Tyneside. She

was Bill's consort on all occasions; and they were true to each other as

a needle is to the Pole. Jack and he were friends and shipmates; and

being sitting together--

"'I say Bill,' said his comrade, 'as we are to sail upon a long voyage

to-morrow, what say you for a run up to Newcastle to the theatre

to-night? You shall take Polly Danvers, and I shall take my old woman.'"

For Jack was married.

"'It is of no use thinking of it,' answered he; 'I am brought up here as

though it were my last mooring.'

"'Whew! whew!' whistled the other--'with pretty Polly for a chain cable.

But I don't ask you to part company with each other. So let us make

ready and start.'

"'No,' added Stanley; 'the best play and the best actors in the world,

would be to me to-night like a land-lubber sitting smiling and piping

upon a flute on the sea-banks, while I was being dashed to pieces by the

breakers under his feet.

"'What are you drifting at, Bill?' said Jenkins; 'your upper works seem

to have hoisted a moon-raker.'

"'I am unhappy, Jack,' said he, earnestly, 'and the cause presses like

lead upon my heart. It throbs like fire within my forehead. For more

than twenty years I have been tossed about as a helmless vessel,

without compass or reckoning. It is hard, Jack, that I can't mention my

mother's name, but the blush upon my cheek must dry up the tear that

falls for her memory. Three months ago, as you know, I came home, with

the earnings of a two years' voyage in my pocket, and I found----O

shipmate! when I expected to have flung my savings into my mother's lap,

I found her dying in a miserable garret, with scarce a blanket to cover

her! She had been long ill; and the rich old rascal called Wates, (who

came to this part of the country some years ago), seized all but the

straw on which she lay, for his rent. I thought my heart had burst as I

flung myself upon the ground by her side. A mist came over my eyes. I

neither knew what I saw nor heard. I felt her cold arms clinging round

my neck. She spoke--she told me _my father's name_! Comrade! it was the

first time I had heard it! The word father pierced my heart like a

dagger, and, in my agony, I knew not what she said. I started, I

entreated her to repeat it again! But my mother was silent!--she was

dead!--the arms of a corpse were fastened round my neck! With the breath

which uttered the name she had not spoken for more than twenty years,

her spirit fled--and I--I cannot remember it.'

"'Vast there, Bill!' cried Jack, wiping a tear from his eyes; 'that is

tragedy enough without going to the play for it. But, for the sake of

Mary Danvers, the prettiest girl on Tyneside (not even excepting my old

woman), cheer up, my lad!'

"'If that should cheer me,' said he, 'I believe it is the principal

cause why I am sad to-day.'

"'Why, then,' said Jack, 'don't you take an example by me, and run your

frigate to church at once? You will find a plain gold ring is a precious

fast anchor.'

"'But what,' replied Stanley, 'if the old commodore, her father, won't

allow me to take her in tow?'

"'He won't!' cried Jenkins--that's a goodun! Old dad Danvers won't allow

you to splice with her! What's his reason? I'm sure he can't say but you

are as sober as the chief judge of the Admiralty.

"'To-night,' replied Stanley, in a tone of agitation, 'he found her in

my company, and called, or rather dragged her away: and, as they went, I

heard him upbraid her bitterly, and ask if the meanness of her spirit

would permit her to throw herself away upon----upon'----William became

more agitated, the words he had to utter seemed to stick in his throat;

and his friend Jenkins exclaimed--'Upon a better man than ever he was in

his life! But what did he say, Bill--_upon_ what was she going to throw

herself away?'

"'Upon a beggar's nameless _bastard_! he said,' groaned poor Stanley,

striking his hand upon his brow.

"'What d'ye say?'cried Jenkins, clenching his fist; 'had the old

fellow's ribs not been removed off the first letter, this hand had

shivered them! Flesh and blood, Stanley, how did ye endure it?'

"'I started to my feet,' said he; 'my teeth grated together; but I heard

her gentle voice reproving him for the word, and it fell upon my heart

like the moon upon the sea, Jack, after a storm. My hand fell by my

side. He is _her_ father, thought I; and, for the first time in his

life, Will Stanley brooked an affront.'

"Just as he was speaking, a gentle tap came to the door, 'Good night,

Jack,' added he; 'I understand the signal, the old cruiser is off the

coast, and now for the smuggling trade.'

"I may tell you that the reason why old Danvers was so averse to his

daughter keeping company with Bill Stanley was, that there was a

hypocritical middle-aged villain, called Squire Wates (the same that

Bill spoke of as having sold off his mother, and left her to die upon

straw), I hate the very name of the old rascal! Well, you see, this

same Squire Wates that I am telling you of, came from abroad somewhere,

and bought a vast deal of property about Shields. He was said to be as

rich as an Exchange Jew--and perhaps he was. He had cast an eye upon

Mary Danvers, and the grey-haired rascal sought, through the agency of

his paltry yellow dross, to accomplish the destruction of the innocent

and beautiful creature; and thinking that Will Stanley was an obstacle

to the accomplishment of his purpose, he determined to have him removed.

He also persuaded old Danvers that he wished to make his daughter his

wife. Conscience!--after half drowning such a hoary-headed knave, I

would have hung him up at a yard-arm, without judge or jury, and buried

him in a dunghill without benefit of clergy. He employed a fellow of the

name of Villars as a confederate in his base intentions--one who had

been thrice a bankrupt, without being able to show a loss that he had

sustained, or pay a shilling to his creditors. This creature he

professed to set up in business--in something connected with the West

India trade--and he prevailed on landlord Danvers to embark in the

speculation, and to risk all that he had saved in the _Old Ship_ for

five-and-twenty years. So that the firm--if such a disgraceful

transaction might be called by that appellation--went by the designation

of _Villars & Danvers_. The firm, however, was altogether an invention

of Wates, to promote his designs. There was another whom they engaged in

their scheme--a fellow who was a disgrace to the sea--the very spawn of

salt water--a Boatswain Rigby; and the frigate to which he belonged was

cruising upon the coast for the protection of the coasters. But you will

hear more about these worthies by-and-by.

"It was within a few hours of the time, when, as I told you before, Bill

Stanley and Jack Jenkins were to sail upon a twelvemonth's voyage. The

vessel to which they belonged was lying out in the harbour below

Tynemouth Castle, and sweethearts and wives were accompanying the crew

to the beach, where a boat was waiting to take them aboard.

"Mary had ventured to accompany William part of the way towards the

beach to bid him adieu; and when, through fear of her father finding

them together, she would have returned, he held her hand more firmly

within his, and said--'Fear nothing, love; it is the last time we shall

see each other for twelve months. Come down as far as the boat; and do

not let it be said, when it pulls off, that Bill Stanley was the only

soul in the ship's crew, that had not a living creature on the shore to

wave _good-by_ to--or one to drop a tear for his departure, more than if

he were a dog. If I be alone and an outcast in the world, do not let me

feel it now.'

"'Willingly,' she replied, 'would I follow you, not only there, but to

the ends of the earth. But my father will be on the beach, watching the

boat; or, if he be not, the spies of another will be there, and my

accompanying you would only make my persecution the greater during your

absence.'

"'What!' exclaimed he, 'have I then a rival for your affections, one

that I know not of, and whose addresses are backed by your father's

influence? Who is he?--or what is his name? Tell me, Mary--I conjure

you, by your plighted faith.'

"'Give not the name of a rival,' said she, 'to a hypocritical wretch,

whose heart I would not tread beneath my heel, for fear of pollution! A

rival!--William, I would not insult the meanest reptile that feeds upon

garbage, by placing it in competition with a hypocrite so base and mean!

A rival!--rather would I breathe the vapours of a ploughed charnel-house

for ever, than be blasted with his breath for a single hour! No--my

heart is yours--it is wholly yours--fear not.'

"'Mary,' said he, solemnly, 'if I am worthy of your love, I am not

unworthy of your confidence. You would not, you could not, bestow such

language on the most worthless, where personal indignity had not been

offered, or intended you. Name him, I adjure--nay, I _command_ you,' he

added wildly; 'it will yet be three hours till the vessel sail, and in

that period I will avenge the indignity that has been offered to you.'

"'Speak not of such a thing,' said she; 'whatever be his designs,

against such a persecutor she is a weak woman who cannot defend herself.

Would you raise your hand against a worm, or draw a sword against a

venomous fly? Come, think not of it--look not so; would a vessel of the

line throw a broadside into a paltry cock-boat? Punish him!--no, despise

him!'

"'It may be so,' he rejoined; 'but my heart is to yours as the eyelid is

to the eyeball, and even a moth between them causes agony. Name him,

that I may judge of his power to do evil, or the vessel which is this

day to sail--sails without me.'

"'Then, that your contempt may equal mine,' added she, 'think of the

creature _Wates_! He whose name stands first on the list of _published_

charities--and who sends the newsman abroad to trumpet his piety, while

villany lurks in his grey hairs.'

"'What!' he exclaimed wildly--_Wates_! the murderer of my mother!--who

sent his minions to sell the very bed from beneath her, and left her to

perish on the ground! Justice! where sleep thy thunderbolts! Mary, we

shall return--I go not to sea to-day!'

"'William,' said she affectionately, 'do you then fear to trust me? Did

he carry honours in his right hand, and in his left the wealth of the

world, and lay them both at my feet--I feel that within me that would

spurn them from me, as I would an insect that crawled upon me to sting

me. To you would I give my hand and beg for a subsistence, rather than

share with him the throne of an empire. What then do you fear? In your

own words, if I am unworthy of your confidence, I am unworthy of your

love.'

"'No, Mary!' he cried, 'it is not fear. Wrong not yourself, neither

wrong my bosom, that is full to bursting, by harbouring such a thought.

When darkness issues from the sunbeams, I will doubt your affection;

when a whirlwind sweeps across the sea, and the billows rise not at its

voice, I will fear your truth--not till then. But I know that to

associate the name of the most virtuous woman with that of a villain, is

to make the world suspect her. Ah, Mary! in the innocence of your own

heart you suspect not the iniquity of which some are capable. Let the

name of a libertine be attached to the character of a man, and

especially of a rich man, till his crimes are heaped up like a world of

sin upon the shoulders of their contemptible author, and the next sun

that rises, in the eyes of the world melts away their enormity, if not

their remembrance; but, if the mere shadow of such a villain's breath

pass over the character of a woman, its stains will remain fixed and

immoveable, growing in blackness and gathering misery, until life and

memory have made their last port. I will not speak of revenge, to

distress you--but I shall not undertake this voyage. I will remain on

shore, not to guard your innocence, but to protect your name from

slander.'

"'William,' she answered, 'ignorant of the world I may be; but I know

that your remaining on shore would only give rise to the calumnies which

you would wish to prevent. You would make yourself an object for the

laughter and remarks of your shipmates; and would disoblige your owners,

who, after this voyage, have promised you the command of a vessel. And

for what would you do this, but through fear of a wretch on whom I could

not waste a single thought, and on whom I regret that I have thrown

away a single word.'

"At that moment Jack Jenkins, with his wife Betty, weeping like a

mermaid under his arm, hove in sight, and the moment he beheld his

comrade, he called out--'Hollo, Bill! how did you and Polly manage to

pass the old Commodore of _the Ship_; I saw him keeping a look-out abaft

there.' But his wife sobbed while he was speaking, and, as he approached

his shipmate, he continued--'Take aback in time, Bill, and don't

marry--I ask your pardon, Polly, and yours too, Betty, my love,' kissing

his wife's cheeks; 'I don't exactly mean not to marry, either--but this

parting company breaks up one's heart, like an old fir-built craft that

is not fit for fire-wood. I wish the lubber's back had a round dozen

that invented the word--_good-by_! It always sticks in my throat, like

pushing a piece of old junk down it.'

"While he was speaking, a king's cutter shot round a point of land, with

a pack of lobsters abaft; and the black fellow, Boatswain Rigby, sat in

her bow. She was within twenty yards of where they stood.

"'Fly, William!--fly!' said Mary, wildly; 'it is you they seek--my heart

tells me it is you--oh, fly!'

"'Be not afraid, dearest,' said Stanley; 'I do not think they mean harm

to us, and, if they did, flight is impossible.'

"'Oh, run! run!' cried Betty Jenkins; 'see--the marines are handling

their muskets.'

"'Run! why, it's of no use running,' said her husband; 'the lobsters

would bring a fellow up with their pepper-boxes before he could run a

quarter of a cable's length.'

"The boat took the ground, and Rigby, with a party of sailors and

marines, sprang on shore.

"'Well, my hearties,' said the boatswain, 'will either of you volunteer

to serve his Majesty?'

"'Why, sir'----Jack Jenkins was replying, when his wife placed her hand

upon his mouth, saying--'Are you a fool, Jack?'

"'What!' said the boatswain, 'no volunteers! Well, we want but one of

you. This is our man,' and he touched Stanley on the shoulder with his

cutlass.

"'Oh!' cried Mary, addressing the boatswain, as she fell upon William's

neck; 'spare him! spare him! and with my last coin I will endeavour to

procure a substitute in his stead.'

"'It won't do, my pretty maiden,' said Rigby; 'in these times we can't

lose so promising a prize, for a woman's tears. Marines, to the boat

with him.'

"'Hold! servile slaves!' cried Stanley, as they attempted to drag him

away; 'allow me to bid adieu to my Mary and to my friends here, or I

defy the worst you can do.'

"'Quick, then,' said Rigby, 'the service cannot wait for farewells.'

"Mary still clung to William's arm. 'Good-by, Jack,' said he, with the

salt water rolling in his eyes, and his heart ready to burst--'and when

you return from the voyage, see that you keep the land-sharks off my

poor Mary, for the sake of your old messmate.'

"'Belay, Bill!' cried Jenkins; 'my heart's afloat. Heaven bless you,

lad, and be at ease respecting Polly. Should any lubber pull alongside,

my name's not Jenkins if I don force him to strike his colours, and

shove off with broken timbers. Good-by, Bill--give me your hand; and

though they were my last words, I say--I'm blowed if ever I shook the

flipper of a better fellow!'

"'Mary!' sobbed he, pressing her to his heart; 'farewell, love!--we

shall meet again!--you won't forget Bill Stanley!'

"'Stay! oh, stay!' she exclaimed. But the boatswain waved his hand

impatiently, and his crew rudely tearing them asunder, William Stanley

was dragged to the boat, and borne on board the frigate.

"Well, twelve months passed, after the impressment of William Stanley,

and Squire Wates found that his wealth offered no temptation to Mary

Danvers, to enable him to effect her ruin. He, however, had inveigled

her father into his meshes; and, through the pretended failure of the

mercantile speculation in which Villars and old Danvers had been

engaged, the former brought a claim of five hundred pounds against the

latter, who had lost his all. And the plan of the villains was, that

Villars should cast the old man into prison, and that Wates should come

forward, and professing to pay the debt, set the father at liberty, and

obtain, through the daughter's gratitude, what her virtue spurned. To

ensure success to this master-stroke of their wickedness, it was to be

attended by a mock-marriage, in which Boatswain Rigby (the frigate to

which he belonged being again lying off Tynemouth), was, for a

_consideration_, to officiate as chaplain.

"It was on the very day that this piece of iniquity was hatched, that

Jack Jenkins, having returned--and having learned from his wife, and

from Mary Danvers, of some of the attempts that had been made by Squire

Wates, during his absence, and since the impressment of his

comrade--hurried to the house of the old rascal, with a rope's end in

his hand. He found the street door open, and, without knocking, he went

to the foot of the stairs, and demanded to see Squire Wates.

"'You can't see him, fellow,' said a portly, pampered man-servant.

"'Can't see him!' roared Jack; 'he shall see me presently, and feel me

too. So, come along, Mr. Powdered-pate; shew me where he is, or I'll

capsize you head and heels.'

"The old villain, himself, hearing the uproar, came blustering out of a

room, crying--'Who are you, fellow? and how dare you, in such a manner,

break into my house? What is your business with me?'

"'Vast there with your questions, old leprous-livered knave!'

vociferated Jenkins. 'As to who I am, I am a better fellow than ever

stood in your shoes; and, as to daring to break into your house, before

I leave it, I shall dare to break your head! And as to my business with

you, I intend to make you _sensible_ of that too;' and as he uttered the

word _sensible_, he shook the piece of rope in his hand, and

continued--'Now, I have answered your questions; answer one to me. Do

you remember a lad of the name of Bill Stanley--eh?'

"The Squire shook with terror; but endeavouring to assume an air of

authority, stammered out--'No--no--fellow; I--I know no such person.

Begone, sir. Be--begone, I say.'

"'Smash me if I do!' added Jenkins. 'And belike you don't know Polly

Danvers, either? Well, perhaps this piece of old junk may sharpen your

memory!'

"Wates called upon his servants for assistance.

"'Hands off, ye beggarly swabs! or kiss the boatswain's sister!'

continued the sailor, laying lustily around him, and causing the

domestics to shrink back. 'Vast there!' he continued, laying hold of the

squire, who attempted to escape; 'not so fast--I an't quite done with

you yet. Now, you see, I'm an old friend and shipmate of Bill Stanley's;

and the day that he was pressed, and you were the cause of it, Bill says

to me--'Jack,' says he, 'when I am away, see that no land-shark comes

alongside my Polly.' 'Fear nothing, Bill,' says I, 'hang me if I

don't--there's my hand on't.' Now, I've been at sea ever since, until

the other day, and my old woman tells me that you, you cream-faced

scoundrel, not only had the impudence to pull alongside Polly Danvers,

but had the audacity to propose----shiver me if I can name it--but take

that!'

"And so saying, he began to lay the rope fiercely round the shoulders of

his victim; and, as the servants again closed upon the sailor to rescue

their master, he dashed them to the ground, to the right and to the

left, and finally rushed out of the house, crying--'Who shall say that

Jack is the lad that would break his promise?'

"I told you it was a part of the plot of Wates, that his confederate

Villars, was to cast old Danvers into prison, on account of the

pretended debt. The old landlord was sitting in the parlour of the _Old

Ship_, trembling at the horrors of a jail, and fearing every moment the

entrance of a sheriff's officer to arrest him, while his wife and

daughter endeavoured to comfort him, and he said mournfully--'Wife,

after being married thirty years as we have been, I did not expect that

we should have been parted in this way. I did not think that, after

toiling in the _Old Ship_ here for twenty years, to save a matter of

money for our daughter, I should lose all, and my hair grow white in a

prison. But it is of no use mourning about it; for I question if those

for whom we wished the money would have thanked us. I know I would not

have seen a father or mother of mine dragged to jail like a common

thief, if I by any means could have prevented it.' And, as he spoke, he

cast a look of sorrow and upbraiding upon Mary, who wept on her mother's

shoulder.

"'Don't be cruel, husband,' said his wife; 'how can you distress our

daughter? I am sure she can't help the state we are reduced to, any more

than I can. But I always said what all your jobbing and trafficking in

company with the bankrupt Villars, would end in. I know thou'rt

suffering enough, and we are all suffering; but don't be reflecting upon

our dear Mary, for a better child never parents had.'

"'I an't making reflections,' replied he, peevishly; 'only I'm saying, I

would not have stood so by my father. It is no reflection to say that

Mary might have been a lady, and then I am sure I should not have been

dragged from the parlour--where I have sat for twenty years--to a

dungeon in a jail.'

"'Father!' said Mary, 'what would you have me do? Would you have me

become an object for the virtuous to shun, for your enemies to triumph

over and despise, and for the abandoned to insult? Would you have me to

sell my purity, my peace of mind, my present and eternal happiness, to a

miscreant who carries sanctity on his brow, and morality between his

teeth, while his heart is a putrid sepulchre? Would you have me do this

to save you from a prison?--and to which you have been brought by your

own simplicity. To assist you, I will become the servant of servants--I

would brush the dust from the shoes of strangers, in this house where I

was born. But, while the tear blanches my cheeks for your misfortunes,

cause them not to burn with shame.'

"'Why, daughter,' replied he, angrily, 'I don't understand thy high

words at all. But though I don't know so much of my dictionary as thou

dost, I know those books you read have turned thy head with foolish and

high notions. I know you wont have Mr. Wates, because he is a thought

oldish, and belike doesn't make love like one of the romance sparks you

read about. But, I say, I'm neither blind nor deaf, and, for all that

you have said, I know as how it is marriage, and nought else, that Mr.

Wates intends. But, rich as he is, you won't have him, but will see your

poor old father dragged through the streets, like a thief to a prison. O

Mary! it is a sore thing to have an ungrateful child!'

"'O husband!--husband!' said Mrs. Danvers; 'they were thy high notions,

and none of our dear daughter's, that has brought us to this. But it is

not my part to add to thy sorrows, when thou art about to be torn from

my side. Alack! I never thought to be made a widow in this sort.'

"'Wife!--wife!' cried he impatiently; 'be it my blame, or whose blame it

may, we can't make a better of it now; but it is very hard to have lost

the earnings of twenty years, and to be parted from wife and child.

Don't be angry with me, daughter. Your father meant all he has said or

done for your good. Come, give your old father a kiss and forgive him.

It may be the last he will ever receive from you in his own house.'

"She threw her arms around his neck and wept; and while the father and

daughter embraced each other, a sheriff's officer entered the house.

"'Well-a-day!--well-a-day!' cried Mrs. Danvers, as she perceived him;

'thy errand, and the disgrace of it, will break my heart.'

"'Don't be distressed, good woman,' said the officer, 'it is no such

disgrace but that many of the best in the country must submit to it

every day. Mr. Danvers,' added he, 'I am sorry to inform you, you must

walk with me. This paper will inform you, you are my prisoner.'

"'It is very hard,' said the old man; 'I say, sir, it is very hard to be

called a prisoner in a free country, for doing nothing at all. Heaven

knows about this here debt that is brought against me, for I don't. But

I know that locking me up in a jail won't pay it.'

"'Oh, cruel law!' exclaimed Mary; 'framed by fools, and put in force by

usurers. Let justice laugh at the wise law makers, who shut up the

springs, and expect the reservoirs to be filled.'

"'Why, miss,' said the official, 'I didn't make the law; I be only the

officer of the law. So come along, Mr. Danvers, my good man, for I can't

stop all day to hear your daughter's speeches. I have other jobs of the

same sort in hand, and business must be attended to.'

"'Go, unfeeling man,' answered Mary, 'we will go with you. Bear with

misfortune, my dear father, like a man. I will accompany you--take my

arm. If I have hung upon yours with pride, upon more joyful occasions,

it shall not be said that I was ashamed for you to rest upon mine, when

they led you through the streets to a prison.' And she accompanied him

to the place of confinement.

"It was two days after old Danvers had been taken to prison, that the

frigate into which William Stanley had been impressed made towards the

land, and rode off the mouth of the Tyne, while a boat's crew were

ordered on shore. Boatswain Rigby, apprehensive that William would

request to be one of them, and that his request might be granted, had,

previous to the boat leaving the vessel, sought to quarrel with him, and

struck him; and requested of the lieutenant that, in consequence of the

insolence he had used towards him, he should not be permitted to go on

shore, but, as a punishment, placed on duty.

"Poor Stanley was walking the deck, saying unto himself--'Refused

permission to go ashore! Yes, Rigby! petty tyrant as thou art, thou

shalt rue it! Refused a privilege that would have caused a slave to

rebel, had he been denied it. But the time will come, when we shall meet

upon terms of equality; and were his cowardice equal to his

brutality--yea, were he shielded by a breast-plate hard as his own

heart--my revenge shall find a passage through both; and his blood shall

wash out the impression and the shame of the blow with which to-day he

dared to smite me as a dog. The remembrance of that blow sticks as a

dagger in my throat--its remembrance chokes me!' And, hurried on by the

agitation of his feelings, he spoke aloud as he continued. 'Not only

denied to set my foot upon the place of my nativity, but struck!--yes,

struck like a hound, by a creature I despise! O memory!' he added,

'torture me not! Here, every remembered object strikes painfully on my

eyeballs! The church and the church-yard, where my mother's body now

mingles with the dust, are now before me, and I am prohibited from

shedding a tear upon her grave. The banks of the Tyne, where I wandered

with my Mary, while it sighed affection by our side, and the blue sea,

which lay behind us, raising a song of love, are now visible--but though

they are still beautiful, they are as beautiful things that lived and

were loved, but that are now dead!'

"In the intensity of his feelings he perceived not a boat which drew

alongside; and, while he yet stood in a reverie, his old crony, Jack

Jenkins, sprang on board, and, assisted by a waterman, raised Mary

Danvers to the deck.

"'Yonder he is,' exclaimed Jack, 'leaning over the gunwale, as

melancholy as a merman making his last will and testament in the

presence of his father Neptune.'

"Stanley started round at the voice of his friend; he beheld his

betrothed wife; for you know they were the same as betrothed--they had

vowed to be true to each other, and, I believe, broken a ring betwixt

them.

"'My own Mary!' he cried, and sprang forward to meet her. The poor

things fell upon each other's neck, and wept like children.

"'Shove me your fist, my hearty,' cried Jenkins, 'as soon as you have

done there. I thought I would give you a bit of an agreeable surprise.'

"'There, Jack!--there, my honest old friend!' cried Bill, stretching out

his one hand, and with the other supporting his sweetheart. 'My head and

heart are scudding beneath a sudden tempest of joy! Speak, Mary, love!

let me again hear your voice thrilling like music through my breast! O

Jack! I am now like one who has been run down in a squall at midnight,

and ere he is aware that the waters have covered over him, finds himself

aloft, listening to the harps of the happy.'

"'I don't know what this is like, Bill,' said the other; 'but it an't

like those meetings we used to have.'

"'Why so silent, love,' said William, addressing Mary; 'in another hour

I shall be off duty, and in one day of happiness let us forget the

past.'

"'Dear William,' she replied, 'I know not what I should say, nor what I

should conceal. I have so little of joy to communicate, that I would not

embitter the pleasure of the present short hour, by a recital of the

events that have occurred during your absence.'

"'Hide nothing from me, Mary,' said he earnestly; 'but tell me, have my

forebodings, regarding the monster Wates, been but too true? Or are your

parents----You tremble love--you are pale! O Jenkins, speak!--tell me

what is the meaning of this?'

"'Drop it, Bill, my dear fellow,' said the other, 'drop it. You have got

Polly alongside of you there, with a heart as sound and true to you as

when you left her; and don't distress her with questions; she didn't

come aboard for that. I served out the old fellow Wates, as you

requested me, with a rope's end, t'other night, and that pretty smartly

too. And, with regard to father Danvers, why, poor soul, somehow or

other, misfortune has got the weather-gage of him, and the other day he

was taken to jail. So, say no more about it, Bill--we can't mend it.'

"'Why,' he exclaimed, stamping his foot as he spoke, 'why am I a slave?

And who, my beloved Mary--who now shall protect you? But I can still do

something. I have a bank bill for a hundred pounds, the savings of

former voyages. I know not why I took it out of my locker this morning.

I had it carefully placed away with the ringlet which I cut from your

brow, dearest. Here are both; I will keep the ringlet, and think it

dearer than ever; take you the note, my love; it may be of service to

your father.'

"'No, no, William,' she cried, 'I must not, I cannot! Dearest, most

generous of men, do not _pity_ me, or I shall wither in your sight. Look

on me as you were wont. But, oh! let me not stand before you as a

beggar. Keep it--as you love me, keep it--make me not ashamed to look in

your face.'

"'Then take it, Jack, take it,' said Stanley, handing him the note; 'do

with it as I desire. Say nothing more now; for here comes our Boatswain

Rigby, the curse of our ship's crew, and the disgrace of the service.'

"Mary shuddered as Rigby approached them; and boisterously said--'Who

have you got there, fellow, and you upon duty? I shall report you

instantly. Some of your old friends, and meditating an escape with them,

I see.' And, turning to Jenkins, he added--'Who, sir, gave you

permission to come on board this vessel, and to bring _a woman of that

description_ along with you? Off, instantly, or I shall detain you too.

You, girl, must remain;' and he approached her familiarly to take her by

the arm. Stanley sprang forward, exclaiming--'Hold, sir, hold! You have

insulted her by your words; but touch not, as you would remain a living

man, the hem of her garment.'

"'Begone to your duty, presumptuous slave!' cried the boatswain

fiercely; 'begone!' And as he spoke, he raised his hand, and struck him

on the breast.

"'Again!--ha!--ha!--ha!' exclaimed William, like a demon laughing

through excess of torture; 'twice you have struck me, Rigby,

to-day!--struck me in the presence of her who is dearer to me than life!

Now, heaven have mercy on thee!' And, seizing the boatswain by the

breast, he hurled him violently on the deck, and planted his foot upon

his bosom.

"'William!--dear William!' cried Mary; 'forbear!--forbear!'

"'Bill, Bill, my dear fellow!' cried Jack, 'don't lose your life for the

sake of a ruffian.'

"William continued standing with his foot upon his breast, laughing in

the same wild and fearful manner, and shouting--'struck me!' while Rigby

called for help. A number of the ship's crew sprang forward to the

rescue of the boatswain, who, rising, cried--'The irons instantly! Set a

double watch over him! He has attempted, as ye have witnessed, the life

of an officer, and his first promotion shall be the yard-arm.'

"While they were placing the irons upon him, Mary threw herself at

Rigby's feet, exclaiming--'Oh, spare him!--save the life of my

William!--by her that bore you, or that loves you, save him!--save him!'

"'Rise, Mary!' cried William, 'that our farewell glance be not one of

reproach. Pray for vengeance on my enemy! Farewell, Jack--for ever this

time! See my Mary safe!' And, as they were bearing him away, he turned

his head towards her, and cried--'Dearest, we shall meet hereafter,

where the villain and the tyrant cannot enter.'

"She fell insensible on the deck, and, in a state of unconsciousness,

was conveyed on shore by Jenkins.

"The frigate was commanded by Captain Sherbourne, and, when the officers

were assembled to hold a court-martial over poor Stanley, he said,

addressing Rigby--'There is not a man in the British navy, Boatswain

Rigby, more determined than myself to preserve order and discipline; but

while, as captain of this vessel, I am compelled to enforce the law, I

am no advocate for the inhuman and degrading lash; nor can I, with

indifference, sentence a brave fellow to be hung up for doing that which

the best feelings of his nature, and the sentiments that make a hero,

prompted him to do. I sit here as a judge, and am neither advocate for

the prisoner, nor your accuser; but, if the law must be satisfied, the

offence, wherever it is found, shall be punished, whether in the

accused or the accuser. For it has not escaped my observation, that no

officer under me has ever found a fault in the prisoner, save yourself.

Are you then resolved and prepared to prosecute your charge?'

"'I am both resolved and prepared, Captain Sherbourne,' said Rigby; 'and

I demand the satisfaction of the laws of my country and the service, not

only as an officer who has been insulted and injured, but as a British

officer and subject, whose life has been attempted.'

"'This is a serious charge, boatswain,' said Captain Sherbourne; 'let

the prisoner be brought forward.'

"The culprit was brought up, guarded, and in fetters, and, being placed

before his judges--'Prisoner,' began the captain, 'I deeply regret that

one of your appearance, and of your uniform excellent conduct and

courage, while under my command, should be brought before me under such

circumstances as those in which you now stand; and I regret the more

that, if the charges be proved, the proofs of your former character and

courage, which are known to us, will be of no avail. You are charged not

only with striking your commanding officer, which is in itself a heinous

offence, but also with attempting his life. Do you plead guilty or not

guilty?'

"'That,' replied the prisoner, 'is as your honours please to interpret

the deed. But there is no such charge reckoned against me in the

log-book aloft.'

"'You then plead not guilty,' said the captain.

"'I am guilty,' answered he, 'of having acted as it was the duty of a

man to act. I am guilty of having convinced a villain, that a proud

heart may be found beneath a plain blue jacket. I am guilty of having

proved that there are souls and feelings before the mast, as high-minded

and as keen as upon the quarter-deck. But 'the head and front of my

offending hath this extent, no more.'

"'He speaks bravely,' muttered some of those who heard him; 'the

chaplain himself couldn't have said it so well by half.'

"'Boatswain,' said the captain, in the hearing of the prisoner, 'state

the particulars of your charge against him.'

"'While it was his turn on duty,' said Rigby, 'I found him neglecting

it, and plotting his escape from the frigate, in conversation with a

suspicious-looking man, and a girl of common fame'----

"'Tis false!--despicable recreant!--'tis false!' interrupted William,

wildly; 'she is spotless as the fountains of light! Breathe again

dishonour on her name, and these chains that bind me shall hurl you,

with the falsehood blistering on your tongue, down to'----

"'Silence, young man!' interposed the captain, 'I command you. If you

have cause of complaint you will afterwards be heard. You may be

mistaken, Mr. Rigby, regarding the character of the young woman, and you

will not better your cause in our eyes, by unnecessarily blackening the

prisoner's.'

"'Captain Sherbourne,' inquired the boatswain, in an offended tone, 'do

you question my honour?'

"'I permit no such interruptions, sir,' said the captain; 'we sit here

to deal with facts, not with honour. Go on with your charge.'

"'When,' resumed Rigby, 'I overheard him plotting his escape from the

service, and commanded him to his duty, he haughtily rebelled; and, on

my ordering the strangers on shore, he sprang forward, and dashing me on

the deck, stamped his foot upon my breast, threatening and attempting to

murder me, as these witnesses will prove.'

"'Stand forward, my good fellows,' said Captain Sherbourne, addressing

two of the seamen, who had been witnesses of the assault, and assisted

in rescuing the boatswain 'Give your evidence truly. What do you know

of this affair?'

"'Why your honour,' said the first seaman, 'just that the boatswain was

lying upon the deck, and that Bill there had his foot upon his breast.'

"'Do you suppose,' inquired the Captain, 'he had a design upon his

life?'

"'Please your honour,' answered the seaman, 'I can't say; but you had

better ask himself. If he had, he won't deny it; for I'll take my Bible

oath that Bill, poor fellow, never hove the hatchet in his life--and I

don't believe he would do it to save his life. I could always be as sure

of what he said, as I am of our latitude when your honour's own hands

works it out.'

"'Well,' inquired the Captain, addressing the other sea man, 'what

evidence have you to offer?'

"'I don't know anything about evidence, your honours,' answered the

seaman. 'The boatswain was lying on the deck, and poor Bill had his foot

upon his breast sure enough, and was laughing in such a dismal way as

made me think that he had gone maddish through ill-usage or something.

For, poor fellow, he was never easily raised, and though brave as a

lion, was harmless as a lamb--all the crew will swear that of him.'

"'Prisoner,' said the Captain, 'I am sorry that the evidence of these

witnesses, who seem as sorry for your fate as I am, but too strongly

confirm, at least a part of the charges against you. If you have

anything to say in your defence, the court is inclined to hear you.'

"'I am neither insensible of, nor ungrateful for the kindness of my

commander,' answered William; 'and for the sake of her and her only, of

whom the boatswain dared to speak as one dishonoured, I do not hold life

without its value. But I disdain to purchase it by the humiliation of

vindicating myself farther from the accusations of a wretch whom I

despise. Let the law take its award. Death is preferable to being the

servant of a slave.'

"'I know not,' whispered Captain Sherbourne to his first lieutenant,

'how my lips shall pronounce sentence of death on this brave young

fellow. His heroic courage and his talents compel me to revere and love

him--and there is something, I know not what, in his features, haunts me

as a lost remembrance.' Then turning toward the prisoner he

added--'Before the sentence of the court is passed, whatever requests

you may wish to have performed, I will see them faithfully carried into

effect.'

"'Thanks! thanks!' replied William; 'I have but little to offer in

return for your goodness; but the same spirit that made me resent the

indignity of my accuser, would, were my hands free, cause me to embrace

your knees. I have but three requests to make. I wish my watch to be

given to her who is dearest to me on earth--Mary Danvers; my quadrant

and other matters to my friend Jenkins, who sails in the ship

'_Enterprise_,' now lying in the river; and my last request is, that,

with the ten guineas belonging to me, and now in the possession of the

purser, a stone may be placed upon my mother's grave--which Mary Danvers

will point out--with these words chiseled upon it--

TO THE MEMORY

OF THE

AMIABLE AND UNFORTUNATE

MATILDA STANLEY.

BY DESIRE OF HER UNFORTUNATE SON.

"'Matilda Stanley!' exclaimed Captain Sherbourne in a tone of agitation,

'was that the name of your mother?'

"'It was, your honour,' replied William, 'and there were few such

mothers.'

"'And your father!--your father!' repeated the Captain, with increased

agitation; 'what knew you of him?'

"'Alas! nothing!' exclaimed the prisoner bitterly, and the tears gushed

down his cheeks; 'but, oh, recal not to my memory in a moment like

this--recal not my mother's--No! no! my sainted mother!'

"'O conscience! conscience!' exclaimed the Captain, starting to his

feet, and gasping in eagerness as he spoke. 'One question more--and your

mother's father was a dissenting clergyman in the village

of--name!--name the place! on that depends your life, and my happiness

or misery.'

"'In the village of ---- in Westmoreland,' replied William; 'but he

survived not his daughter's broken heart. You knew them, then? Oh, did

you know my father?'

"'My son! my son! come to a father's heart,' exclaimed the Captain,

springing forward and falling on his neck; '_I am your father!_ Shade of

my wronged Matilda! look on this!'

"'My father!' exclaimed William, 'have I found him! and in such an hour!

But, if you loved my mother, wherefore'--

"'Upbraid me not, my son,' interrupted the Captain, 'mingle not gall

with my cup of joy. Your mother was my wife--my first, my only one.

Circumstances forced me to exact a promise from her, that our marriage

should be concealed until I dared to acknowledge it, and long captivity

severed me from her; until, on my return, I could obtain no trace of

either of you. How I have mourned for her, all who now stand beside me

have been the daily witnesses. My son! my son!'

"'My father! O my father!' exclaimed William; 'but at this moment you

are also my _judge_.'

"'No! no!' cried the Captain. 'Seamen, strike off the fetters from your

commander's son. Rigby, at another tribunal I will be surety for the

appearance of my son.'

"The fetters were struck off from William's hands and feet, and officers

and men burst simultaneously into three times three, loud, long, and

hearty cheers.

"The boatswain, fearing that a worse thing might come upon him, fell on

his knees before the Captain, and made a full confession of his shameful

intrigue with Squire Wates, and begged forgiveness, as his kidnapping of

William had been the means of finding the commander his son. The rascal

was forgiven, but dismissed the frigate.

"But I must return to poor Mary. She was sitting beside her father in

the prison, when he addressed her saying--'Come, come, child, thou

saidst thou wouldst sing and read to me, and is this thy

singing--nothing but sighing and tears. I'm saying, is this thy promised

singing, daughter?--but it is perhaps the fittest singing for a jail.'

"'Ah, father!' said Mary, 'you know I would not willingly add to your

sorrows. But can you forbid me to weep for him, who, from childhood, has

been to me as a brother--whom I have long regarded as a husband, and

who, _for my sake_, must in a few hours die as the vilest criminal.'

"'Why, I'm saying, daughter,' said old Danvers, 'let's have no more

about it. I'm as sorry for Bill Stanley as thou canst be for thy life.

But I say, girl, they can expect no better who fly in the face of a

father. I am sure we have distress enough of our own, if we would only

think about it, without meddling with that of other people. Is it not

bad enough that thy father is shut up here within these iron bars, and

perhaps thou and thy mother will be driven to beg upon the streets, when

thou mightest have been riding in thy carriage. I'm saying, is not this

misery enough, without thy crying about what thou hast nothing to do

with. Why, Mary, thou mayest be thankful thou an't his wife.'

"'Father! father!' she said, wringing her hands together, 'murmur not

at our lot, nor upbraid me with sympathising in misery to which yours is

mercy! What are the sufferings of want compared with what I now feel! To

save him I could smile and be happy, though doomed to beg and kiss the

foot that spurned me from them.'

"The sheriff's officer and Mrs. Danvers at this moment entered, and the

latter rushed towards her husband, exclaiming--'O husband! husband! the

worst is come at last! They have seized house and all!--and, Mary, thou

and I are left without a house to cover us! Thou hast no home now,

hinny! Your father is shut up in this filthy prison, and your mother

never knew what misery was till now!'

"'Wife! wife!' cried old Danvers, 'what dost thou say?--seized the

house, too!--and my wife and daughter driven to the street! O wife!--I

say, I wish I had never been born! Mary! Mary, love! what wilt thou do

now?'

"'Do not, my dear parents,' said Mary, 'repine at the hand of

providence. HE who clothes the lily, and feeds the fowls of the air,

will not permit us to perish in the midst of Christians.'

"'Daughter! daughter!' cried her mother, 'thou little knowest what a

hard-hearted and wicked world we live in! Humanity and honesty, and

everything that is good, have gone out of it. The world was not so when

I knew it first.'

"'Well! well!' cried old Danvers; 'if the world be as bad as you say it

is, it is one comfort that I shall not be long in it; for I cannot live

to know that my wife and child are beggars, and that I am a prisoner,

starving in a jail.'

"At this moment, Wates entered the room, and addressing Mr. Danvers,

said--'I have but this morning heard of your misfortunes, Mr. Danvers,

and have not lost a moment in hastening to offer my assistance. To your

daughter I now offer my _hand_, my fortune, and my heart; and let her

but say she will accept them, and this day ends your imprisonment.'

"'There! old woman!' exclaimed Mr. Danvers, in ecstasy, 'what dost thou

and our daughter think of that? Did I not say that Mr. Wates meant

marriage, and nothing else but marriage--and was not I right? Thou shalt

have her, sir, with a father's blessing, and I will pray for thee the

longest day I have to live. Fall on thy knees, mother Danvers--fall on

thy knees, and thank the kind, good, generous gentleman. Daughter, why

dost thou stand there and say nothing? Did I not always say thou wast

born to be a lady?'

"'For the sake of human nature, Mr. Wates,' said Mary, 'I will suppose

that your intentions are now honourable. I will believe that you mean

kindly, that you are willing to assist my parents, and rescue them from

their distress. But, could I even forget the past--could I forget that

for many months you have sought my destruction, and have striven to make

me become that which would have made me to be despised in my own eyes,

and an outcast in those of others--if, sir, I could even forget these

things, I could not give my hand to one whom my heart has been

accustomed to detest. For your offered kindness I would thank you with

tears, but I can only repay you with gratitude. If, however, your

assistance to my parents is only to be procured through my consenting to

your wishes, they must remain as they now are, until it shall please

providence to send them a more disinterested deliverer. Betwixt us there

is a gulf fixed that shall ever divide us--it is death and

aversion--therefore think not of me.'

"'Daughter!' cried the old man wrathfully, 'hast thou taken leave of thy

senses altogether?'

"'Come, Mary, love,' said her mother; 'now that poor William must be no

more, and that Mr. Wates means honourably, be not obstinate--do not

suffer your father to die in a place like this, and your mother to beg

upon the streets.'

"'Mother!' cried Mary, vehemently, 'with the last of my blood will I

toil for your support; but speak not of that man to me. Keep, sir, your

wealth for one to whom it may have attractions, and to whom you have

never offered dishonour. I despise it, and I despise you; and this

shallow and cruel artifice will avail you nothing.'

"'Consent,' said Wates, 'and to-night our hands shall be united.'

"'Wife! wife!' cried the old man, 'we will humble ourselves at her feet;

belike she won't see her father and mother weeping, on their knees

before her, and say to them--die!' And they knelt before her.

"'Rise! my parents!--rise!' she exclaimed; 'if ye would not have your

daughter's blood upon your head. Monster!' she added, turning to Wates,

'can ye talk of marriage to me, when he to whom my heart and vows are

given, if he be not already dead, must in a few hours die a death of

shame!'

"'And will you not save him,' said Wates, eagerly.

"'Save him!--how? how?' she cried.

"'Consent to be mine, and within an hour I shall procure his pardon,'

said he.

"'Villain! villain! would you deceive me with the snare of the devil?'

she exclaimed.

"'I swear it,' he answered.

"'Save him! save him!' she exclaimed wildly; but again cried

suddenly--'No, no!--wretch, ye mock me!'

"'Yes, he mocks you, Mary,' said Jack Jenkins, who had just entered. 'I

could find in my heart to kick the old murderer through those iron

gratings; for I know it is all through him that poor Bill must, before

the sun go down, lose his life.'

"While Jack was speaking, the locks of the prison doors were again

heard creaking, and in rushed William, his father, and the officers of

the frigate, and they dragged the rascal Rigby along with them.

"There was a cry of 'Mary!' 'William!' and a rush to meet each other.

But the best scene was the confusion of Wates, when his brother knave

exposed his villany; and Captain Sherbourne ordering them to begone,

Jack Jenkins rushed after them, for the pleasure of kicking them down

the prison stairs; but Bill, catching him by the arm, said--'Messmate,

let me introduce you to _my father_!

"'_Your father!_' exclaimed Mary; and it would have been hard to say

which of the two was nearest fainting. They left the prison together,

old Danvers and all; and Mary and Bill were soon spliced. They were the

happiest couple alive. He rose to be post captain; and I hope to see him

an admiral. So, gentlemen, that's an end to my yarn."

"But," inquired the company, "what became of Jack Jenkins?" "Why,

I am Jack Jenkins," answered he; "sailing-master, with half-pay of

five and sixpence a-day, besides two shillings as interest for

prize-money--thanks to my old friend Bill."

THE SURGEON'S TALES.

THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN.

At a dark period of the world, not yet so far back, in point of time, as

modern conceit would place it, many facts in philosophy constituted a

mere page of fable in the estimation of those whose belief in witchcraft

and other fanciful agencies was unbounded; but, in our enlightened

times, things are so curiously reversed, that some of the real events of

human life--the every-day workings of that wonderful organ, the human

heart--are viewed sceptically, as delusion, deception, or invention, by

those whose faith is pinned to the floating mantle of philosophy, though

it cover the wildest theory that ever set fire to enthusiasm. The facts

I have to relate in this chapter, though true, may, from their

extraordinary nature, be apt to be classed among creations of the fancy;

yet I would rather that their credibility were tested by the mind of the

plain and argute man of the world, than by that of the philosopher, who

with his head down in the well, kicks at inexplicable mysteries growing

on its brink.

It is not my object to treat metaphysically any of those powers of the

mind which, either in health or disease, exhibit, in certain states,

many extraordinary phases. The struggling energies of conscience loaded

with crime, have been witnessed by philosophers who have denied the

existence of the moral sense as an original power; but of what avail is

their scepticism, when they are bound to admit that this great sanction

of God's law is incident to all mankind--having been found as vivid and

strong in the new-found islands of Polynesia, as it ever was in the Old

World? It would be for the interest of mankind if those who call

themselves its teachers, and dignify themselves with the name of

investigators of truth, had looked more often at the workings of this

extraordinary power--witnessed and described the agonies of the heart

convulsed by its throes, heard and narrated the piercing cries and the

flaming words that are wrung from the throat of him who is under its

scorpion lash, felt and told the horrors of those sights and

sounds--instead of inquiring whether it is connate or constructed by

social and political institutions. Yet this, too, has been done, and

well done; and it is not because the effects are unknown, or have been

inadequately described, that I contribute the results of my experience

on this interesting subject, but simply because I conceive they cannot

be too well known, or too forcibly delineated, in a country where a

struggling competition of interests and a fierce ambition are exerted

hourly in attempting to still the voice of the monitor that so

indefatigably and thanklessly whispers a better life.

About twelve o'clock on the night of the 15th of December, 18--, I was

aroused by a loud knocking at my bedroom door--a mode of calling me to

my patients different from that generally followed by my domestics; and,

upon my requesting the servant to come in, he entered hurriedly, with

some one behind him, who called out, in the dark, that Mr. T----, a

retired undertaker, whom I had been in the habit of attending, had been

shot by an assassin, but that life remained, and might eventually be

preserved, by my speedy attendance. I dressed instantly, and accompanied

the messenger--a nephew of the wounded man, called William B----, whom I

recollected to have seen in his house, and in whom he had much

confidence--to where my services were thus so urgently required. We had

about a mile to walk--the residence being beyond the town, in the midst

of a small plantation of fir trees, and too well situated for the

accomplishment of any felonious or murderous intention which the reputed

riches of the proprietor might generate in the minds of ruffians. The

night was pitch dark; our path was rendered more doubtful by a heavy

fall of snow, which, having continued all day, had ceased about two

hours before; and I was obliged to trust almost implicitly to my guide,

whose familiarity with the road rendered it an easy task for him to get

forward. As we hurried on in the darkness and silence which everywhere

reigned, my companion informed me that the shot was directed against the

victim through the window of his bedroom, while he was sitting warming

his feet at the fire, previous to retiring to rest; and that, the

individuals in the house having been roused, one had taken charge of the

wounded man, others had gone in search of the perpetrator, and he, the

narrator, had flown for me, in the hopes of yet saving the life of his

guardian and benefactor.

On arriving at the skirts of the planting, we met some domestics with

lights, and perceived that they were busy endeavouring to trace some

well-marked footsteps impressed on the snow, and which, they said, they

had been able to follow from the window where the shot was fired. I

requested them to desist for a short time, as they seemed to be

incurring the danger of defacing or so confusing the foot-prints, by the

irregular and excited manner in which they wore performing this

important duty, that they could not be identified. They agreed to remain

with the lights until I came to them, or sent some one more capable of

conducting the investigation, and, in the meantime, I hurried on to the

house, where a most appalling scene presented itself to my eyes. On the

floor, which was literally swimming in blood, lay the body of Mr. T----,

with two people--an old woman, the housekeeper, and a middle aged

person, whom I understood afterwards to be another nephew of the wounded

man, of the name of Walter T---- (the son of a brother, while my

companion, the messenger, was the son of a sister)--bending over him,

and endeavouring to stop a wound, made by a pistol bullet, near the

region of the heart. The work of the assassin was not entirely finished:

there was still a fluttering uncertain life in the body, which shewed

itself rather by its struggles against the overpowering energies of

death, than by any proper living action; a hemorrhage in the lungs,

paralysing their vitality, and filling up the air cells, fought, inch by

inch, the province of the breath, which forced, at intervals, its way,

by a horrid crepitation, through the aperture in the side, while, as the

wound was producing fresh supplies, it was not difficult to see how the

contest would terminate. In the pangs of choking, the wretched man

heaved himself about, and lifted his hands to his mouth in the vain

effort to force an entry to that element so signally the food of life.

The peculiar, and to us doctors, well-known barking noise of the

_cynanche trachialis_, (or as the name implies, the strangling of a

dog,) a few torsels of the body, and shivers extending from head to

foot, preceded a sigh as deep as the relentless following blood in the

lungs would permit; and, in a few moments, he expired.

Leaving the body to the charge of the housekeeper, I called Walter T----

to accompany me to where the individuals stood with the lights, with the

view of tracing the foot-prints in the snow to the hiding place of the

cool-murderer, who had committed apparently so gratuitous a crime. When

we arrived at the spot, several other people had collected, among whom

were some sheriff officers on their way to the scene of the murder, but

who stopped to join in, or rather superintend this investigation. The

foot-prints around the spot where the people had collected were too much

mixed and confused to be capable of being traced for some distance;

but, further on, they were again discernible and traceable, and, at one

place, the extraordinary appearance presented itself to one of the

officers, of a well defined figure of a pistol imprinted on the snow,

with the finger points of a hand applied to lifting it from the

ground--suggesting to the mind of every one present the unavoidable

conclusion that the murderer had dropped the instrument of his crime in

the hurry of his retreat, and had snatched it up again as he continued

his flight.

We proceeded onwards slowly, aided by several lights brought from the

house; and, though the darkness of the night presented many difficulties

to a successful search, we were still able to progress with certainty to

the termination of the murderer's route. Whenever two distinct marks

were traced, we felt no difficulty in identifying them, from the unusual

circumstance of one of them bearing the impress of nail heads, and the

other not, as if only one of the shoes worn by the culprit had undergone

the coarse process of repair, in which, in Scotland, short nails with

broad heads are often used. As we proceeded onwards, some one cried out

that the prints led to the dwelling of Walter T----; a remark which

seemed to be about being verified by that individual's house now

reflecting from its dark walls the glare of the lights, while the

footsteps were clearly verging towards the door. I looked round and

stared full in the face of the man, as it was darkly revealed to me by

the flickering tapers; and, though I could perceive no indications of

terror, there were clearly discernible signs of confusion, which,

however, might have been the consequence of innocence as well as of

guilt.

In a few minutes, we traced the foot-prints to the very threshold of the

door of Walter T----'s house; and, upon the instant, one of the sheriff

officers laid hold of the suspected man, who looked wildly around him,

as if he wished to escape from the grasp of justice, and at last

appealed to me if it was fair to blast the character of an individual

by an apprehension on such slender evidence as the tracing of a

foot-print among the snow from one house to another. I replied, that I

thought the evidence very inadequate to authorize a confinement, and

that, as to the mere detention, he could, by taking off his shoes, and

allowing them to be compared with the foot-print, remove the suspicion,

and be set at liberty. The man pointed significantly and triumphantly to

the foot-prints he had that instant made, and had been making during the

whole course of the investigation, and we saw at once that, although the

size of the impression was nearly the same in both, there was no

indication of nails in the prints of the shoes he wore; a fact he

verified by instantly taking off and exhibiting them to the officers;

who, after a minute inspection, admitted that the impressions we had

been tracing could not have been formed by the shoes exhibited. This

clearance was deemed sufficient by those present; but one of the

officers suggested a search of the house, in which he remarked, very

properly, the person might be secreted whose foot-prints we had been

tracing; and the party immediately entered. There was no person within,

nor could anything be seen to justify those suspicions that had been

roused by the evidence afforded by the foot-prints in the snow; and the

officers and party were about to retire, when some one pointed to a kind

of garret, formed by planks or boards laid on some cross beams that

extended between the two walls of the cottage, and quite sufficient to

have contained a man. The officer accordingly mounted by means of a

ladder; and he had scarcely got up, when he cried out, in a voice that

made us all start, that he had succeeded in his search. I had no doubt

that he had found there the concealed murderer; and the silence that

ensued for a few minutes, as the officer rendered his discovery,

whatever it was, available--coming in place, as it did, of an expected

uproar, struggle, or fight--imparted to the scene, at this moment,

great mystery, which was, however, partly removed by the descent of the

officer, holding in his hands a pistol and a pair of shoes.

The appearance of these articles, so strangely and providentially traced

by their images in the snow, produced a great sensation, for no one

doubted but that they were the very evidences we were in search of; and

so indeed they turned out to be, for the foot-prints and the shoes

completely agreed, and the impression of the pistol on the snow was upon

examination, found to be clearly that of the one discovered. It was

again referred to me whether sufficient evidence had not now been

procured to authorize the apprehension of the suspected man, who still

remained in the grasp of the officer; and I felt myself, for the first

time of my life, dragged, by the force of circumstances, into an

investigation neither suited to my feelings and habits, nor connected

with my profession, for the discharge of one of the duties of which I

had been called out of bed at that late hour of the night. Unwilling

even with the evidence before me, to pass sentence against the man, I

inquired of William B----, his cousin, who stood by me, what kind of

character he bore; and ascertained from him that he was a person of idle

habits, and had been in the practice, for many years, of living upon

what money he could extort, by threats or entreaties, from the deceased,

who had done much for him, and had never received even thanks for what

he had done; that he had known them have many quarrels, and one in

particular a short time before that night; and that the deceased had

threatened, by making a will, to deprive the ungrateful nephew (his

heir) of any part of his effects--a step now prevented by his violent

death, which would put the latter, if not guilty of this great crime, in

possession of his property, which was very considerable. These

corroborating circumstances bore heavy upon me; yet, such is force of

habit, I would have felt less pain in amputating one of the suspected

man's limbs, than I experienced (and, though it is twenty years since

that night, I have the recollection of the painful feeling still) in

giving my required sanction to a commitment that might be the first step

in a progress to the scaffold. During the few moments of deliberation

that passed, before I could bring my mind to pronounce my verdict, the

unfortunate man sought, with a fearful eye, my countenance. A shaking

terror, that chased every drop of blood from his face, and struck his

limbs with the feebleness of a child, was exposed by the lights that

flared at intervals on his person; and every one read in these

indications of fear, the evidences of his guilt. My opinion was

delivered in accordance with that of the other persons assembled. The

agitation of the culprit rose to such a degree, that he fell upon the

ground, and, grasping my limbs with the convulsive clutch of despair,

screamed for mercy, till the echoes rung through the planting, and came

back upon the ears of the relentless abettors of justice. The more eager

were his energetic appeals to feelings that were steeled against the

cries and sobs of a murderer, the more determined were the people to do

their duty to the injured laws of their country; and as he, on

relinquishing the grasp of my knees, was extended on the ground, laying

about him, and casting up the snow, which he clutched with his hands,

and even bit in his agony, he was again laid hold of by the officers,

assisted by the people, and carried struggling to the nearest place

where a cart could be procured to drive him to jail.

Next day I was examined by the law officers, and stated the facts I had

witnessed, as I have now related them from my notes. Many others were

examined, and, among the rest, William B----, and the housekeeper I had

seen hanging over the body of Mr. T----; the latter of whom, I

understood, gave testimony to the effect that she had, some days before

the murder, heard her master accuse the pannel of having stolen from him

his watch; and an officer who had searched the house, and found the

watch in a place not far from that where the shoes and pistol had been

found, produced it to the men of the law, while the housekeeper and

William B---- identified it as the deceased's property. Some days

afterwards, a great advance was made in the evidence by another

discovery, to the effect that the pannel had been in the practice of

stating, to various people to whom he owed money, that he would pay

them, with compound interest, when his old uncle (the deceased) was

dead, as he, in the character of heir-at-law, would succeed to all his

property; and, on one occasion, he had, in some drunken orgies,

proceeded so far as to propose as a toast, in presence of his cousin,

William B----, who spoke to the fact, a quick and safe passage to the

soul of his uncle over the Stygean stream, which, to him, the heir,

would become as rich in gold as Pactolus. A great number of other

corroborative facts and circumstances were spoken to by many witnesses,

which, at this distance of time, I cannot recollect: the evidence was,

on the whole, deemed by the men of the law sufficient to justify a

trial, which accordingly took place some time afterwards, and at which I

was examined as a principal witness.

The scene of that day was, in an eminent degree, heart-rending; the

facts proved seemed to strike the unfortunate man like thunderbolts,

driving him into a state of stupor from which he was no sooner roused

than he was again stricken with the same paralysing proof of his crime.

The hand of the Almighty appeared to be occupied in tracing, before the

averted eyes of the murderer, the secret purpose he had devised in the

recesses of his heart, far removed, as he thought, from mortal eye, yet

now revealed as evidence to consign him to the death he was unprepared

to meet; and, as he prayed, ejaculated, wept, and swooned by turns, the

people assembled in court, while they could not doubt his crime, or

conceal from themselves its enormity, pitied the victim of such agony of

torture as he was apparently suffering, only, too, on the very threshold

of his misery.

Having remained in court after my examination, I was called upon by the

judge, on more occasions than one, to administer what relief was in my

power to the unhappy being, as he lay apparently senseless under the

bolt of some truth that came on him from the witness-box, as if to seal

his doom in this world. I could do little for him, when he was struck by

these moral impulses, except by administering stimulants; but, on one

occasion, he lay so long under an attack of syncope, that I felt myself

called upon to have him removed, for a short time, to an ante-room,

where I took from him some ounces of blood. I have watched the eyes of

patients brought back to sensibility, life, and hope, and seen the ray

of the brightening prospect of health, success, and happiness, dawn on

the drowsy orb; but I had not before witnessed the return of sense and

intelligence to be directed, at the first glance, on a gallows, and I

shuddered as I perceived the breaking in on his clouded mind of the

consciousness of the situation in which he was placed--the terror of

again facing that court, and that damning evidence, and the recoiling

effort he made to escape--alas, how vain!--from the grasp of the

officers, as they again proceeded to carry him to the court-room. When

placed again at the bar, upheld by the officers, pale and trembling, the

relentless forms of justice proceeded; the witnesses resumed the chain

of evidence, and the unfortunate man was again subjected to the rack,

under the torture of which his weakened body recoiled with feebler

efforts, as exhausted nature denied the supply of the sensibility of

pain. But the charge of the judge, which was hollow against the

prisoner, ingenious in its reasonings and stern in its conclusions,

again revived the slumbering agonies, and the return of the verdict

"Guilty" by the jury, was the signal for the commencement of a scene

which the hardest hearted person in the court could not witness without

horror. A shrill scream ran through the court-room, and was followed by

the extraordinary sight of the prisoner clambering over the bar,

clutching the clerks' seat, and struggling, against the grasp of the

officers, to get forward to the bench, on which the judge sat adjusting

the black cap with a view to pronounce the sentence of death. The roused

judge vociferated to the officers, blaming them for their remissness;

but his voice was overcome by the ejaculations of the prisoner, who

cried for mercy, till, vanquished by the men, who held him firmly down,

and even stopped his mouth, he fell senseless within the bar, deaf to

the words of the fatal sentence, which now, in the midst of death-like

silence, rolled over the court with a solemnity never perhaps witnessed

in any place of justice before or since.

On being carried to the jail, whither I accompanied him at the request

of the judge, he was with difficulty brought back to a state of

consciousness; but it was only to be able to fill the prison with his

unavailing cries. I could do him no good; and, though used to

exhibitions of pain and misery, I was unable to witness longer this most

intensive picture of the most agonized condition of unhappy man. I left

him, but I was repeatedly called to him again, in the interval which

elapsed between this period and the day of his execution, to bring the

strength of our art to bear against the effects of a determination to

refuse all sustenance, and to resist all the confirmatory aids of

necessity, resignation, and religion. All the efforts of the jailor were

not able to get him to take food; the unabated strength of his despair

occupied every nerve, and chased from his mind all lesser pains of

hunger or bodily privations and wants; his moral apoplexy had extended

its deadening effects to his physical system; and, as he lay chained by

the leg to his stone couch, it could have been detected only from low

murmuring groans, alternated, at long intervals, with sudden yells, that

there was any real living action in his mind or body.

The ministrations of the clergymen who attended him were likely to be of

greater service to him than anything within the power of our

professional art; yet they informed me that such was the force of the

agony under which he laboured, that all their efforts had been

unavailing to introduce into his mind any one sustaining or comforting

principle or sentiment. For many days, his determination to take no food

continued as strong as at the beginning, whereby his whole system became

emaciated and deranged; and, even when the burning pangs of hunger and

thirst, the most acute of all bodily pains, rose upon him to such a

height that his moral anguish was forced, for a moment, to cede some

portion of the territory of feeling to their irresistible impulse, he

gave way to the imperative necessity like a maniac, starting up and

seizing the can of water that stood by his couch, and, after draining it

to the bottom, dashing it from him, and falling back again into the

depth of his misery.

The period of his execution was approaching; but he had become so weak

that I gave it as my opinion that he would not be able to walk to the

gallows. A fever had been induced by the inflammation which generally

results from hunger, acting on what we call the _primae viae_; and now,

when the moral pyrexia had so far weakened his brain, that the material

of suffering seemed almost to be exhausted, he was attacked on the side

of the flesh with pains and paroxysms of agony, not much less acute than

those he had suffered, and was still, to a great extent, undergoing,

from his mental and incurable causes of misery. I had a duty to perform,

and I did perform it, by applying to this man, who was already

"betrothed to death," those remedies that might enable him to walk into

the arms of his grim bridegroom; yet, I do not blush to own and

acknowledge, that I secretly sighed that God would overcome my efforts,

and, by taking the poor victim to himself, save him from the death which

awaited him at the gallows foot. Yet, how vain are the aspirations of

mortals, in those emergencies claimed by Heaven as its own vindicated

periods and purposes of divine wrath! The food he rejected, when he was

_able_ to reject it, was supplied in the form of broths, when he was no

longer sensible of the reception of that which was to sustain him for

the bearing of the agony he dreaded, of all others--a violent death

before an assembled multitude. He was saved from one death for the

purpose of suffering another, and that in very spite of himself, through

the instrumentality of the most pitiable state of man, the want of

consciousness. When he came to be informed of the manner in which his

life had been protracted and saved, for the purpose of being forcibly

dragged from him by the relentless arm of public justice, he raved like

a madman, expending the remnant of strength that had been saved to him

in imprecations against me, in unavailing screams and clanking of the

chain that still clung to his emaciated limbs.

On the day of his execution he was as feeble as a child; but the gallows

does not admit the plea of illness as an excuse for non-attendance.

Emaciated and exhausted, he swooned in the hands of the officers, as

they knocked from his limbs the chains that might as well have been

applied to the infant that has not yet essayed its first attempt to

walk; and, if the necessary time had been allowed for recovering him

entirely from these repeated fits, the period comprehended in his

sentence might have expired, and he would have been beyond the reach of

the law. The executors of justice, themselves the very slaves of form,

repudiated all ceremony, and the unfortunate being was carried to the

cart, to be roused, by its horrid wheels, from a swoon to the awful

consciousness of being in the act of being hurried to the scaffold,

which he had not strength to mount, and yet could not escape. The scene

that now presented itself was such that many individuals, whose morbid

appetite for horror was insatiable, flew from the place of execution,

unable to stand and witness the spectacle of a human being falling from

one swoon into another, incapable of keeping his feet, and lifted

_softly_, as by the hands of nurses, to receive around his neck the cord

that was to strangle him by his own weight. Yet I was forced to witness

this sight; for, by a strange contradiction of duties, I was called upon

to attend the _patient_, and, by the use of stimulants, to render him

susceptible of the pangs of death. Yet what was my art, my medicaments,

to those of the executioner of the last act of the law, whose quick and

sudden jerk ended in a moment life, disease, terror, and all the ills

coiled up in the mortal frame of miserable man!

The circumstances attending the execution of Walter T---- (though not

the condemnation, which was reckoned just), were such as to rouse

considerably the public attention, and the prints of that day were

filled with disquisitions as to the expediency of wounding the feelings

of a nation, by executing a man in a situation of mind and body

calculated to excite pity and commiseration, and to exclude the feeling

of satisfaction which ought to follow the punishment of the most heinous

of all crimes. Yet all this was plainly absurd; for, if punishments were

to wait the bodily condition of malefactors, the art of man would soon

cheat the gallows of its dues, and retribution would be the

stalking-horse of deceit. The unusual sufferings of this individual were

commemorated in a manner very different from the ephemeral columns of

daily prints; for Dr. ----, to whom his body, conform to the sentence,

was delivered for dissection, anatomized it; and two years after, I

purchased from him, for the price of fifteen guineas, the entire

skeleton, to supply a want in my museum, and facilitate the osteological

studies of my apprentices.

During the twenty years that passed after the period of his execution, I

seldom cast my eyes upon that dry crackling memorial of the unhappy man,

as it hung in grim majesty and stoical defiance of the changes of time,

and of those exacerbations of passion which, in its animated condition,

penetrated its very marrow, without a cold shivering remembrance of his

sufferings. On the patella or knee-pan of the left limb there was

written, by Dr. ----, who constructed the skeleton, the words "Walter

T----, a murderer, executed at ----, the -- day of ----." I wrote, on

the patella of the other limb--"For the extraordinary circumstances

attending his execution, see the ---- newspaper, published on the same

day;" and I retained a copy of the print in my museum, to gratify the

curiosity of those who might be interested in the fate of the being

whose bones, as they crackled to the touch, sung that peculiar and

heart-striking _memento mori_, which few people, not professionally

interested in the sight, can hear and forget. The indescribable interest

produced by a skeleton is well known, among anatomists, to produce in

young students a peculiar facility in acquiring a knowledge of the

immense number of bones, many of them bearing long Greek names, which go

to make up the aggregate of the human system; but the fate of Walter

T----, which I always communicated to my apprentices, adding the part I

myself acted in the dark drama, imparted a peculiar interest to the grim

spectacle, which no memory, however treacherous, could, even with the

assistance of years, disregard or renounce.

For a period of fifteen years after the execution of that unfortunate

man, my avocations did not lead me into any correspondence of a

professional character with the individuals who resided at the house of

Mr. T----, the murdered man; but I understood generally, though I could

not now tell how I got the intelligence, that William B----, his nephew,

having succeeded to the deceased's effects, occupied his house, had got

married, and had a large family of children. About the month of

December, in the year ----, I was, however, called again to the same

house in the fir planting, into which I had not been since that night on

which I witnessed the death-struggles of its former proprietor. The

emergency which now took me there, was the illness of William B----, who

had been seized with that disease called _tic doloureux_, perhaps the

most excruciating of all the ailments incident to the human frame. We

are entirely ignorant of its causes, whether procatartic or

proximate--all we can say of it being, that it is an affection of the

nerves of the face, and particularly of that branch of the fifth pair

which comes out at an aperture below the orbit; and that it is attended

with such pain--coming on in an instant, generally without premonitory

warning--that the devoted victim of its cruelty is often thrown on his

back on the floor, where he lies, during the existence of the attack, in

a state even beyond what can be figured of the wildest exacerbation of

fevered frenzy. I have seen a strong man, who could have stood

unappalled before a cannon mouth in the field of battle, running about

like a madman, as he felt some internal monitor (a peculiarity in his

case) telling him that an attack was coming on--holding out his hands,

crying wildly for help, or as if he had been flying from the clutches of

a hundred demons, and, in a moment after, laid on his back, in the full

grasp of the relentless tormentor, uttering the most heart-rending

screams, and requiring the power of several people to hold him down.

Under an attack of this frightful complaint, I found William B----, who,

being in the clutch of a paroxysm, was scarcely conscious of my

presence. He was extended on his back on a sofa; his fingers were

(according to the practice of these victims) pressed on that part of the

face where the pain shoots from; sharp cries, keeping pace with the

intermitting pangs, were wrung reluctantly from him, filled the house,

and might have been heard beyond it; his limbs were restless, striking

the foot and sides of the couch, and sometimes dashing them as if he

would have broken and destroyed all resisting objects; his eye glanced

fiercely around, as if he disdained the supplication of mortal aid in so

hopeless a cause. I knew the nature of the disease too well to hope to

be able to do him, at that time, any service; the patient himself, by

the pressure he was applying to the seat of the pain, was doing all that

could be done to ameliorate his sufferings; and, having told his wife

that I could be of greater use to him at a time when the pain was off

him, I left him, with the intention of calling again, to suggest the

application of the only remedy yet known for this complaint.

In a few days, accordingly, I called again, and found the patient

recovered from a new attack which had come on during the previous night.

He was greatly exhausted, looked pale and anxious, and dreaded intensely

another paroxysm, which he said he could not be able to bear. He

endeavoured to describe to me his feelings, when the disease arrived at

its greatest height, and correctly distinguished between those neuralgic

pains, and the fiercest of those that attack the viscera and muscles;

bringing out, in his unprofessional language, what I have witnessed,

that there is often a power felt by the sufferer of resisting, by some

indescribable internal process, the latter kind of pain, while, in the

former (and the _tic doloureux_ is the worst species), the victim is

conscious of no power within himself of even _bearing_--all his

energies, thoughts, and stoical resolutions being put to flight and

routed by the fierce, lancinating, burning pangs; and even despair, the

ordinary refuge of the miserable, seems to deny the tortured spirit the

grim relief of its dark haven.

As the patient proceeded in his description, he occasionally drew deep

sighs, looked despairingly, and shuddered--all symptoms of the complaint

from which he had suffered so much, and might still suffer; and, after a

pause, he asked me, with a timid look, if the disease was known to

medical men, or if I thought it _peculiar to him_. I replied that the

complaint was well known, and very far from being uncommon; but that,

unfortunately, we had not very many remedies to which we could resort or

trust for a cure. He looked as if he did not believe me, or doubted my

statement, and then asked what the best remedy was. I answered that it

was an operation, whereby we divided a part of the facial nerve; and

recommended to him the trial of that experiment, for as yet we could not

pronounce certainly of its efficacy. He did not seem to be inclined to

go into my views; and I asked him if he feared the pain of the

operation, and yet dared to face that of his disease, which was a

thousand times greater. He replied that he cared nothing for the pain of

the operation; but yet he felt that he _could not_ undergo it. I looked

at him with surprise, and requested an explanation; but he answered me

by the question--"Are we not sometimes bound to bear pain?" And, as he

uttered these words, he seemed to feel great distress. I replied that I

thought we were bound rather to get quit of pain by every means in our

power, and that all mankind acted on that principle--a circumstance to

which my profession owed its existence and success.

"But if this extraordinary, this _miraculous_ pain is not sent for some

purpose," he said, "why is it that, the moment I think of removing it,

an attack comes upon me?" I cannot explain that, I replied; and he then

went on. "The last time you were sent for, I was seized, after my wife

despatched you the message; and now," holding up his hand, "behold it

comes again, the very instant I begin to talk of a remedy! Yet I must

suffer--it is ordained that I must suffer--it is right and just that I

should suffer. Welcome, ye dreadful messenger whom I fear and tremble

at, yet love! You see, sir, he comes!"

The unhappy man spoke truth: an attack of his disease came on him at

that moment, and he fell back on the couch, screaming, and pressing,

with all his force, his hand against the seat from which the pains

lancinated through the bones and muscles of his face. His cries brought

his wife to his assistance; but it is one of the characteristics of this

disease, that assistants and comforters can only look on and weep, so

utterly does it defy and mock all human efforts. I left him in the

charge of his wife, to whom I gave some directions, rather to revive her

hope and remove from her countenance a painful anxiety that clouded it,

than with any hope of affording relief. As I proceeded through the

planting in which the house was situated, I heard his cries for some

distance; and, while I pitied the victim, called up into my mind his

sentiments, which struck me as being peculiar and mysterious. His

conviction of some connection between an attack of his complaint and his

attempt to get it removed, was clearly a fancy; yet the existence of

such an idea indicated something wrong either in his mind or

conscience--even with the admission that a pain so extraordinary might

itself suggest, to a sober-minded man, some thoughts of Divine

retribution, where there was no crime to be expiated of a deeper die

than the most of mankind are in the habit of committing.

Whatever might be the ground of the delusion under which the patient

laboured, it was necessary, at all events, to remove the notion that an

effort to cure the disease had any supposed mysterious connection with

an attack; the best way of accomplishing which was to hold forth, by

calling and applying remedial processes, the handle of an occasion to

the unseen power to make the attack, which, if not taken advantage of

(and who could suppose it would?) might expose the absurdity of his

suspicion or conviction. I accordingly called again next day, and

observed, as I entered, that the patient's eye scanned me with a look as

eloquent as words, that I had brought with me another attack of his

complaint. I ascertained that he had not had an attack since the one I

witnessed, and then told him, that, as he would not consent to allow the

nerve to be severed, I had brought a lotion which might prove

efficacious, if applied to the diseased parts in the manner I explained

to him. I held out to him the bottle, but he looked at it with fear, and

said, he _could not_, he _dared not_ take it.

"Doctor," said he, "this disease must take its course. It never was

designed for ordinary mortals, and I cannot believe that you or any

medical man ever witnessed in another these excruciating tortures. There

is nothing human about this visitation." "Nonsense," said I, "I know

nothing of miraculous diseases." "Like the forked lightning," he

proceeded, "it leaves no trace of its progress. There is no wound, no

inflammation, no fever, not a spot in the skin, to tell that, under it,

and, as it were, touching it, there exists agonies, in comparison of

which the pain of red-hot irons applied to the skinless flesh (under

which nature would claim the relief of sinking) is as nothing; for I

cannot faint--I cannot get refuge in insensibility--I cannot die."

"Still, all natural," said I. "No," he went on, "speak no more of

remedies against Heaven's visitations; but let me suffer, that, by

suffering, I may expiate. I shall immediately have another visit from my

messenger. Oh, sir, who shall help him that is accursed of Heaven."

He turned his body from me, to hide his face, and I could perceive that

he shook as if from a spasm of the heart. I told him that he talked like

one under the dark veil of religious melancholy, or rather like one who

had something on his conscience different from the ordinary burden of

human frailty, making him attribute to retribution what was only a

disease incident to mankind; that Heaven was not against the cure of any

mortal; and that he would, for certainty, have no attack that day, nor,

perhaps, for several days, especially if he used the lotion I

recommended to him. He heard me in silence, shaking, at intervals, his

head, solemnly and incredulously, turning his eyes to heaven, and

clasping his hands as if in mental adjuration. "It will not do," he

cried. "I have more faith in the language of this monitor than in that

of frail man. I will have another attack instantly. Leave me! Why will

you force me thus to brave heaven, between, whose dread powers and me

there is a secret compact recorded here--here?"--striking his chest.

"This disease I fear and tremble at; but it is _not_ hell, and, by

bearing the one, I may avoid the other. So do I claim these pangs,

sharper than scorpions' tongues, as my right, my due, my redemption. Oh

God! what a price do I pay for relief from eternal fire!"

He sat down as he concluded these mysterious words, in an attitude of

expectation of the coming paroxysm, and I conceived that my best reply

to his wild and incoherent ideas would be, the refuting fact of the

absence of any attack at that time. I, therefore, left him; and, as I

passed along the passage to the door, was met by his anxious wife, who

inquired of me, with tears in her eyes, if I knew what this malady was,

which, leaving no trace of its presence, yet produced such a pain as she

never thought mortal was doomed to suffer; and, above all, she was

solicitous to know if I had got any insight into her husband's mind,

which was loaded with some awful burden in some degree connected with

this calamity; for, since ever the first attack, she had got no rest at

night, and no peace during day--his haunted vigils, his sleep-walking,

his dreaming, his agonies, and prayers, being unremitting and

heart-rending, as well to him as to her. She wept bitterly as she

concluded this account of her sufferings.

I could give her little satisfaction beyond assuring her that the

disease had nothing supernatural about it, as her husband thought, and

giving it as my opinion that the unusual character of the complaint

might, in a serious, contemplative-minded man, have given rise to the

delusion that it came direct from heaven as a punishment of errors

incident to fallen humanity. I informed her, also, of my expectation of

removing this delusion, partly by impressing him with the disappointment

he would likely feel that day in experiencing no attack consequent upon

my remedial endeavours; and, in a short time, I might prevail upon him

to allow me to perform the operation I had recommended.

I left the poor woman praying fervently that I might succeed; for, until

some change was effected on her husband's mind, she could expect little

peace, far less happiness, on earth. As I proceeded homewards, I had

great misgivings as to my having exhausted the secret of this man's

misery; yet my efforts at fathoming the true mystery of this unusual

imputation of a disease to the avenging retribution of an offended God

were unavailing, and I left to time to discover what was beyond my

power.

As I expected, I found, on my next call, that no attack had followed my

last visit. The patient was somewhat easier; yet his mind was apparently

still greatly troubled. I impressed him with the vanity of the delusion

under which he laboured, and prevailed upon him to consent to the

application of the stimulating lotion to the scat of the disease. In

yielding this consent, he underwent a great struggle; I noticed him

several times in the attitude of silent prayer, and, as I was about to

begin the application of the medicine, he recoiled from my grasp,

turning up his eyes, muttering indistinct words, and trembling like one

about to undergo a severe punishment. All this had nothing to do with

the character of the simple stimulant I was about to apply, but was

clearly the working of his terror at the application of a remedial

process of any kind to a heaven-sent disease; and I was latterly obliged

to use a degree of force, assisted by the energies of his wife, before I

succeeded in my endeavours to get the medicine applied. His fears and

tremors, silent prayers and murmurings, continued during the whole time

I was occupied in rubbing in the liniment; and, when I had finished, he

fell on his knees and prayed silently for several minutes, and then

threw himself down exhausted on the couch.

Two days afterwards, I called again, and found that there had still been

no new attack of the disease--a fact communicated to me, on my entrance,

by Mrs. B----, who was auguring from it the happiest results. On the day

following, however, he had a most violent onset immediately before I

called; and I ascertained that, for two days previous, the liniment had

been discontinued, in consequence of a return of the patient's

conscientious scruples; so that I could now reverse upon him his own

argument, which I did not fail to do, pointing out to him and impressing

upon him that, in place of Heaven being offended at his using remedial

measures, he had now experienced its displeasure at not adopting those

means which Providence points out to man for arresting the progress of

disease. I therefore urged him, with all the force of my reasoning and

power of persuasion, to consent to undergoing the operation I had

proposed, the dividing of the nerve--backing my arguments with the

stated conviction that, if he did not consent, he might be a martyr for

many years to the most painful of diseases, and be deprived of all

comfort in this world. He heard me in vain; for his conscientious

scruples had leagued with his former terror, and he rejected my advice;

but he did it as one compelled by a secret power, which overawed him by

its stern decrees, and scattered his opposing resolutions with the

breath of its whisper.

Justice to myself and my profession required that I should not visit

again a man who rejected my advice, and whose case seemed fitted rather

for the ministrations of a servant of Christ than a disciple of

AEsculapius. Several days passed without my hearing anything of the

condition of the unhappy patient; but I had no hopes of his having got

quit of his neuralgia, which too often adheres to its victim like a

double-tongued adder.

One evening I was in my study, reading an old copy of Celsus, over a

fire nearly exhausted, and by the light of a candle, whose long black

wick indicated the attention I was devoting to the old physician. The

night was dark and windy, and I was assured that, if no emergency

demanded my presence out of doors (which I fervently wished), I stood

little risk of being disturbed by any _walking_ patients, generally

deemed by us the most troublesome of all our employers. At my side hung

my skeletons; and, among the rest, that of Walter T----; around were

other monuments of the frailty and the agonies of human life, all too

familiar to me to take off my attention from the old chronicler of

diseases, their causes, symptoms, and cures.

While thus occupied, my bell rang with great violence and I started up

from the study into which I had fallen. In an instant, my door was flung

open. William B---- stood before me, the picture of a man who had broken

out of bedlam: his eyes flashed the fire of an excruciating agony; his

right hand was pressed convulsively on his cheek; his left made wild

signs, intended to supply the want of words which his tongue could not

utter; every symptom indicated that he was under the full grasp of his

implacable enemy. Recovering his breath, he cried out, "I cannot bear

this any longer." "Patience," said I. "No!" he proceeded, "the extent of

human powers of suffering may be overrated by superior avengers. I must

brave Heaven, or die under its exaction of the last pang of an

overstrained retribution; death will not come to my prayer, and I am

stung to rebellion. Will you, sir, use your operating knife against the

wrath of Heaven? I am resolved. Though conscience cannot be amputated,

this hell-scorched nerve may be severed. Come next what will, this must

be ended. I am at last prepared."

This frenzied burst, wrung from a mind labouring under some terrible

burden, startled and alarmed me; and it was some moments before I could

perceive the meaning which was veiled under his strange words and

manner. He had been seized with an attack of his complaint, and, unable

to bear it, had run out of the house to seek some relief at my hands. I

requested him to be seated; and, though I had to struggle with the

disadvantage of candle light, and the want of one of my assistants, I

resolved upon performing the operation before the agony had abated.

I accordingly rung for my oldest apprentice, and made preparations for

the work, which, though simple, requires skill and care. The patient was

seated on a chair, formed for receiving the back of the head on a soft

cushion, and used by me for operations on the upper extremities.

Everything was ready; my apprentice came in, and, as he passed quickly

forward, struck his head against the skeleton of Walter T----, that hung

at the side, and a little to the back of the operating chair on which

the patient was seated. That _perterricrepus_ of dry bones crackled as

the body swung from side to side, and attracted the attention of the

man, whose eye, tortured as he was, sought fearfully the cause of the

strange noise.

I saw that his attention was in an instant rivetted on the figure, and

perceived that his look was directed to the words (written in large

letters) on the knee pan. The knife was in my hand, and my apprentice

was about to lay hold of his head. The attitude of the man arrested my

eye, and I witnessed, what I have often heard of, but never saw before,

that extraordinary erection of the hair of the head, produced by extreme

fear, and known by the name of horripilation.

I now thought he was afraid of the knife--but I was soon undeceived.

With a loud yell he started up suddenly and violently--his hair seemed

to move with horror--his body was in the attitude of flying from the

figure, yet his limbs obeyed not his fear; he stood rivetted to the

spot, with his eyes chained on the skeleton, his lips wide open, and his

hands extended. In this position he remained for several seconds, while

my apprentice and I gazed on in wonder on the horror-stricken victim.

"I said I would brave Heaven," he exclaimed in wild accents, "by curing

a heaven-sent disease; but is Heaven to be braved by man? How came that

figure there?"

"That is easily explained," said I.

"It is"--he continued--"my cousin, Walter T----, who died for me? Is he

not heaven-sent also? See, he moves and nods his grim head at me, and

says, 'You shall not escape the vengeance of the Almighty. The nerve

shall _not_ be cut, and your agonies must continue to the last moment of

your existence.' And who has a better right to speak these flaming

words, than he whose cause is vindicated by the powers above--he whose

agonies, produced by me--me, wretched, miserable man!--were ended by an

unjust death on the scaffold, where I should have expiated the crime for

which he suffered. Guard me from that grim spectre! I cannot stand that

sight!" And, with a loud crash, he fell on the floor.

In the midst of the confusion produced in my mind by what I had seen and

heard, the glare of a revealed mystery flashed upon me; and I shuddered

even to think of what might turn out to be true. Could it it be possible

that that wretched man whose bones hung before me--whose sufferings at

his trial, in the jail, on the scaffold, were unprecedented, and such as

no man ever endured--was innocent of the crime for which he was hanged?

Even the suspicion was too painful to me; and I recoiled from the

skeleton, as my eye, led by my thoughts, rested on the grim memorial.

The agitation into which I was thrown rendered me incapable of thought.

"Get him home! get him home!" I cried to my apprentice, and sought, in

the retirement of another room, some refuge from these sights, and an

opportunity of calmly contemplating all the bearings of this apparently

dreadful discovery.

My apprentice, with difficulty, got the unhappy man into my coach, and

took him home. Next day, I was called, early in the forenoon, by an

express from his wife. I found him in bed, in the very room where Mr.

T---- was murdered. An attack of his disease was upon him, and his

conscience had roused him to a degree bordering on madness.

Vain, indeed, would be my effort to describe what I now saw and heard;

the powers of the physical and moral demons that externally and

internally, at the same moment, wrung his nerves and fired his brain,

seemed to vie with each other in the degree of torture to which they

were capable of elevating his sufferings. His broken exclamations shewed

that he was more and more convinced that the pain he endured was a part

of the punishment of the crime that lay on his conscience; and, being

only a foretaste of that he was doomed to suffer in another world, his

imagination was haunted by the shadows of coming ills, a thousand times

more terrible than were those he was struggling with, dreadful as those

were. Screams, prayers, and ejaculations, succeeded each other

unremittingly. As Despair threw over him her dark mantle, he raised

himself in the bed, and, grasping the bedclothes, wrung them between his

hands, and twisted them in intricate torsels round his arms, beating his

head against the posts, and gnashing his teeth with the fury of a

maniac.

I waited until the paroxysm should pass over, in order to get from him

the dreadful truth. His wife looked on him with eyes where no tear

softened the fiery glance of horror and despair, and I conjectured, from

her changed appearance, that she had heard some part of his confession.

All at once he became calm, and I perceived he fixed his look upon me. I

returned steadily his glance. Holding out his arms, he said, with an

effort to resist an impulse to fury--

"Doctor, it must out. Heaven knows it, and what avails it that it is

concealed from earth? Dear wife! once the beloved of my soul, know ye

that, for ten years, you have nightly taken to your soft confiding

bosom, a----." Here he stopped, as if the word were a physical thing

sticking in his throat.

"A kind husband," said his wife.

"A murderer!" he said--"ay, the murderer, first of an uncle, and then of

a cousin! Turn from me your eyes, and I will confess all--for now my

relief is in confession; and that will not be satisfied till I throw

myself at the back of the prison door, and cry through the gratings to

let me in for mercy's sake. I lived with my uncle, but I was not his

heir; and the death that seemed long a-coming, could, at any rate, only

benefit my cousin, Walter T----, whose apparition I saw yesterday, and

see now--dreadful sight! My bad habits generated a morbid desire for

money, which I could not want. I stole my uncle's watch, and heard him

blame my cousin. My fancy took the hint, and I formed, with a care

worthy of a better cause, a deep scheme, whereby I might, by one spring,

jump into the possession and enjoyment of wealth. I waited the first

fall of snow, and, with my cousin's stolen shoes, walked from that

window to his house, where I deposited the originals of the foot-prints,

together with a pistol and the stolen watch, by introducing them through

a small skylight on the top of his house. I then returned to my uncle's

house by another path, entered his bedroom, where he was sleeping at the

fire, pretended that some one was at the window, drew it up so that the

servants might hear it, turned round, shot (with another pistol) my

uncle through the chest, and cried out at the window to stop the

murderer. An alarm was raised; some one ran for my cousin, who was found

in his own house; while I hastened for you, who became a tool in my

hands. Why need I proceed? What follows is known. What preceded my

crime, I have no patience to tell: how I seduced my cousin, in moments

of intoxication, to engage in conversations afterwards proved against

him; how I got my uncle to blame him for stealing the watch, in presence

of the housekeeper; and many other ingenious treacherous schemes. By

getting my cousin convicted, I removed out of the way the only

impediment between me and my uncle's property. He was hanged, and I took

his place as my uncle's heir. Thus was I guilty of a double murder. How,

O God! have I been brought to tell what I have for fifteen years

shuddered to think of? But it has been wrung from me by a heaven-sent

calamity, which has, for these few moments, intermitted, by Heaven's

decree, to allow me breath and power to make this confession; and now,

being done, my pain comes again, and these crackling bones of Walter

T---- rattle in my ears and dance before my eyes. Whither shall I fly

for refuge? Heaven, earth, and hell are against me--my own flesh wars

with my soul, and my soul with my flesh!"

And he again twisted the clothes round his arms, and wrestled with the

opposing energies of his own muscles. On the other side of me was a

scene not less affecting. His wife, struck to the heart by the horrible

confession, had fallen on the floor in a swoon. Shall I confess it? The

instant I saw in her signs of recovery, I hurried out of the house. What

I heard and saw; what I cogitated of the part I took in the death of

that poor innocent man, Walter T----; what my fancy conjured up of his

agonies, contrasted with his innocence, and the injustice that was done

to him, by the misdirected laws of his country--was too much for me, and

I flew for relief to the duties of my profession.

I afterwards requested my assistant to attend the unhappy patient in my

place. He reported to me that, when he called next day, William B----

was in a condition, if possible, worse than that in which I had

witnessed him. He had contracted an irresistible desire to throw himself

into the hands of justice; and, in order to get his wish effected, had

leaped from the window in his shirt, and had got a considerable way

through the planting, on his way to the house of the procurator-fiscal.

He was overtaken and seized; but he fought long with the people who had

caught him--making the wood ring with his screams, and crying that, as

the murderer of his uncle and cousin, it was necessary, ordained by

heaven, and conform to justice, that he should be hanged.

My assistant had been able to yield him no relief; and I was called upon

by Mrs. B----, who entreated me, with tears in her eyes, to try and

devise some means of putting an end to the terrible state of suffering

in which she was placed. She attempted to make me believe that her

husband was deranged in his mind, and had merely _conceived_ the

circumstances of the confession he had made in my presence. I did not

endeavour to undeceive the poor woman; but the conclusion I had come to

was almost exclusive of any doubt of the truth of what had been wrung

from the patient; and I contented myself with stating that, if there was

any delirium about him, it might be relieved by the cessation of the

painful disease which, in all likelihood, produced it. She then inquired

if it were not possible, by any means, however violent, to attempt a

cure of the disease, in spite of the opposing efforts of her husband;

and I replied, that the remedy formerly proposed might be resorted to if

the patient were bound down, or held by the energies of strong men,

while the operation was in the act of being performed; but that such a

step could only be justified by derangement or madness, and the

uncertain nature of the remedy was, besides, a strong reason against its

being so applied. Glad to grasp at any hope of reducing the amount of

her misery, she was not inclined to hesitate, for an instant, about the

propriety or possibility of the scheme of relief I had hinted at, and

said she would have individuals present in the house to apply the

necessary restraining force, at any time I chose to fix for carrying the

purpose into execution. For the sake of the poor woman and her

distressed family, I felt disposed to make one other attempt at

ameliorating a grief which, however, I feared, had its cause much beyond

the reach of a surgeon's knife, and fixed an hour next day for attending

at the house, with a view to ascertain if any consent could be wrung

from the unhappy man to allow something to be done at least for his

body.

I accordingly kept my appointment; but found that matters had, in the

meantime, assumed a different and more serious aspect. The patient was

now bound down by strong ropes, and two stout men sat beside him, ready

to resist his efforts to escape, or to commit any act of violence. He

had that morning jumped from his bedroom window, and flown, in a state

approaching to nakedness, to the prison, situated about two miles

distant, at the door of which he knelt down, and beseeched the jailor,

in tones of piteous supplication, to receive him into what he called his

_sanctuary_. The jailor, seeing a naked man supplicating to get _in_ to

a place so generally feared and shunned, concluded he was mad, and paid

little attention to his asseverations--made, as he said, before God,

that he was guilty of murder, and wished to be hanged, with a view to an

expiation of his crime. Having got his name, the jailor sent to his

wife, and, assistance having been brought, he was carried home, crying

bitterly all the way that no one would take vengeance on him, and ease

the burning pangs of his mind, by punishing him according to the extent

of his crime.

The moment I entered, I saw, by the peculiar light and motion of his

eye, that he was on the point of madness, which would likely exhibit

itself in the form of a brain fever. He looked wildly at me, and,

tugging at the ropes, attempted to release himself. I remember many of

his expressions, which, however affecting through the ear, would appear

only as rant to a reader.

The supernatural strength of an access of brain fever enabled him to

burst the cords; and the attendants were obliged to apply their hands to

keep him down, until they could again bind him. Phrenitis, with all its

horrors, had commenced. The history of a brain fever is the history of a

man when he has ceased, from the very extremity of his agony, to

interest feelings, which seek in vain for traces of humanity in the

raving maniac; and why should I try to describe what never has been, and

never will be described with any approach to the terrible truth? Heaven

was at last merciful, and closed his sufferings with the seal of death.

RATTLING, ROARING WILLIE.

Rattling, Roaring Willie, an ancient Border minstrel, was a well-known

character, in the south of Scotland, in the time of James V. His title,

Sir Walter Scott supposes, was derived from his bullying disposition;

but this, we humbly think, is not precisely the term which the great

novelist ought to have employed on the occasion. It rather does Willie

an injustice; for, although, according to Johnson, bully means no more

than a noisy, quarrelsome person, yet usage has associated with it a

certain degree of cowardice; and we are apt to look on a bully as a

vainglorious fellow, who is much more ready with his tongue than his

hands. Now, this was by no means the case with Willie. He certainly was

a rattling, roaring boy, as described by his soubriquet; but he was no

craven; he could drink and fight with any man that ever handled cup or

cudgel; was at all times as ready to bite as to bark; and, indeed, it

was his pugnacious disposition that ultimately caused his

destruction.[1]

[Footnote 1: This sturdy beggar of whom Sir Walter Scott makes mention,

was hanged at Jedburgh for having killed in a duel, fought with swords,

one of his own profession. If the combatants had been knights, the

survivor would have stood a better chance for a title than for a

halter.--ED.]

Our intention at present, however, is, not to enter into a defence of

Willie's character, which we suspect must now be left to shift for

itself, but to relate an adventure of his which is not very generally

known; and therefore, we go on to say, that our "jovial harper" once

took it into his head to treat himself to a tramp through Fife, to see

what kind of ale they brewed on the other side of the Frith, and

generally, to see what sort of living he might pick up there. Having

come to this resolution, Willie slung his harp on his back, took a stout

cudgel in his fist, and, after partaking of a Hawick gill with a crony

in the ancient little town from which the celebrated measure just spoken

of takes its name, he started, and drank, and fought, and roared, and

played his way through the country, till he arrived at the shore of

Leith, where he intended ferrying over to Kinghorn. The ferry boat had

just put off, when Willie reached the quay, all breathless and

exhausted--for he had run every step of the way from Edinburgh, where he

had stopped to refresh his inward man; and where he would have tarried

much longer in the discharge of this important duty, had he not been

told that, if he did not make haste, he would certainly lose the boat.

On perceiving the latter pulling away from the shore--"Haud there!

haud!" roared out Willie. "Back, ye villains! and tak me owre; and I'll

gie ye a stoup o' the best in Kinghorn."

Obedient to Willie's summons--the more so, perhaps, on account of the

promise that was associated with it--the boatman put about, and the

minstrel was taken on board, and in due time safely deposited on the

opposite shore; where, having redeemed his pledge to the seamen, he

started for the interior of the country; and, after a walk of some

fifteen or twenty miles, which he had traversed with various success, he

made up to a respectable looking house at a little distance from the

road, where he proposed to seek quarters for the night.

The house alluded to was the residence of the laird of Whinnyhill, or

Winnel, as he was more shortly called.

Being a total stranger in the place, Willie assumed a modesty of manner

and quietness of demeanour which, it must be confessed, were not amongst

the number of his natural failings; but he felt that he could not, with

propriety, use the same freedom here that he did in his own part of the

country, where he was well known to everybody. It was, therefore, with

this sort of mock-modesty, that Willie appeared at the laird of

Whinnyhill's gate, and sought a night's quarters from a person who

happened to be standing at the said gate when he approached. This person

was the laird himself.

"A night's quarters!" said the latter, in reply to Willie's request,

and, at the same time, eyeing him archly, and exhibiting a degree of

respect in his manner which Willie was grievously at a loss to

understand--"that ye shall hae, sir--a score o' them an' ye choose, and

the best that my puir hoose can afford, to the bargain." And, after

bestowing on his visitor another look of intelligence, which intimated a

vast deal more than the latter could comprehend, the laird conducted him

into the house. On entering, Willie made directly, and of his own

accord, for his usual quarters in such cases--the kitchen; but this he

did in direct opposition to the laird, who was conducting him towards

his best apartment. On observing, however, that Willie insisted on

taking the former course--

"Weel, weel, sir," he said, laughing, "ye will hae yer joke oot, I see;

but ye'll do me the honour" (this he said in a whisper) "to join me ben

the hoose when ye tire o' yer amusement?"

To this proposal, Willie, though perfectly at a loss to comprehend the

meaning of all this extraordinary kindness, readily assented; but, in

the meantime, proceeded to the destination which he had originally

proposed to himself. Here he found assembled the domestic servants of

the family--lads and lassies, to the number of eight or nine. This was

just what Willie wanted--an auditory; and he lost no time in giving them

a taste of his calling. In ten minutes, he had the kitchen in an uproar

with noise and laughter. He sang, danced, played, and pulled the girls

about, till one and all declared they had never seen such a harumscarum

chiel in all their lives. To all these various sources of entertainment,

he added some of his best stories, which, as much from the sly and

_pawky_ manner in which they were told, as from their inherent humour,

were found to be irresistible; and the consequence was, that there was

not one within hearing of them capable of doing anything else than

laughing or listening to the sly narrator.

Willie, in short, as he always was, was triumphant. Amongst the merry

minstrel's auditory on this occasion, was the laird himself; and none

seemed more to enjoy the fun than he did, although there was all along

in his manner that most unaccountable degree of respect for his guest,

which had already marked his conduct towards him, and which the object

of it had such difficulty in comprehending. If this circumstance,

however, puzzled Willie, how much more was he confounded, when the laird

whispered to him, that, "as they had now had plenty o' daffin, he would

be glad of his company ben the hoose, where the guidwife had prepared a

bit comfortable supper for them!" It was in vain that Willie said, he

"wad just remain where he was, and tak a mouthfu' alang wi' the

servants--that he was not in the habit of sitting at gentlefolks'

tables," &c. No excuses of this or any other kind would avail with the

laird, who again bestowed on Willie one of those mysterious looks of

intelligence which have been already alluded to, and insisted upon his

accompanying him "ben the hoose." Finding that his host would take no

denial, and perceiving, moreover, that it was at least all well meant,

Willie at length followed the laird, and soon found himself seated at a

plentiful board, with the "guidwife" dressed in her best at the head.

Much, however, as all this surprised the jovial harper, it did not in

the least disconcert him, or deprive him, in any degree, of the

presence of mind and ready wit--shall we add impudence?--that was

natural to him. Diffidence, as has been already hinted, was no part of

his character; and he, therefore, very soon found himself perfectly at

ease in his unwonted situation, and joked away with the laird and his

wife till the roof rang again with the laughter of a joyous party; but

it was not till the bottle had been introduced, and had made several

rounds, that Willie began to shine forth in meridian splendour. The

stimulating liquor had no sooner begun to operate, than he broke out

into the wild and obstreperous glee which so signally characterised him

in his cups; and renewing (but now with double effect, in consequence of

the drink he had swallowed, and the generally comfortable state in which

he found himself after an excellent supper) the part he had acted in the

kitchen, he roared, and shouted, and sang, till the very rafters

shook--slapped the goodwife on the shoulders, and gripped the hand of

the husband till he nearly squeezed the blood out of his finger ends.

Both the laird and his lady were delighted with their guest; and it is

certain that he was no less pleased with them. As it got late, however,

the latter retired from the apartment, and left her husband and Willie

to finish the night and the bottle by themselves--a task which they

instantly set about with great zeal and good will. Cup followed cup with

marvellous celerity, and with each the bonds of friendship between the

revellers were drawn closer and closer. They grasped each other's hands

in the fulness of their hearts, and joined together in the choruses of

the bacchanalian ditties, with which Willie, from time to time, at once

varied and enlivened the festivity of the evening. It must be remarked,

however, that, during the night, the laird had more than once hinted to

his guest that he knew more of him than he was perhaps aware of.

"However, let that flee stick to the wa'," he would add. "I'm no ane to

spoil onybody's sport, much less yours. Only tak my advice, sir, and tak

care o' yoursel, if ye be gaun through the Middlemass wood; for there's

been twa or three loose-looking chiels seen dodgin aboot there since

yesterday morning."

"Ye ken mair o' me than I'm aware o', my honest friend," said Willie, on

the occasion alluded to, in reply to his host's hints and insinuations,

and at the same time slapping him on the shoulder. "I weel believe that,

for I'm weel kent in the south country; but, bating the drap drink, and

a sough about my being rather fond o' the lassies, ye could hear nae ill

o' me, I think."

"Oh, no, sir--the ne'er a bit," replied his host; "nae ill ava. Thae twa

things just comprehend the very warst I ever heard o' ye."

"And as to the chiels in the Middlemass wood, laird," continued Willie,

"I'll tak my chance o' them. An' I should forgather wi' them, I hae a

bit airn here" (and he clapped his hand on his sword) "that has stood me

in guid stead mony a time before, and I'm willin to trust a guid deal

till't yet. I can either tak or gie a clour, when such things are gaun."

"'Od, sir, but ye play yer character to the life!" shouted out the

delighted laird. "I've seen twa or three maskins and mummins in my day,

but confound me if ever I saw ane come up to ye! Ye haena said or dune a

thing the nicht oot o' joint--a' clean and richt, as if ye had been at

the trade a' yer life."

"The deil's in the man!" replied Willie, in amazement at the singularity

of the laird's remarks, "and havena I been at it a' my life--ay, sin' I

was nae bigger than a pint stoup."

"Ah! ha! ha! very guid, very guid," roared out Whinnyhill. "There's nae

drivin ye into a corner, I see, sir. Here's to ye again, sir, and lang

may ye be spared to amuse yersel and ither folk too!" Saying this, the

laird, who was already within a trifle of being floored, turned over

such another quantity of liquor as threatened to consummate the

catastrophe.

His example was immediately followed by Willie, who, though far from

being in a perfectly sound condition, was yet, from long practice,

better able to stand his drink than his host. Still both were in such a

state that it was impossible their carouse could go on much longer; and

accordingly, by common consent, it soon after came to a close, but not,

it must be observed, before they had finished every drop of drinkable

liquor that stood before them. This accomplished, the laird, though his

way was but a devious one, conducted the minstrel to his sleeping

apartment, where he left him for the night; and here again the latter's

surprise was excited, by finding that he had been shown into what was

evidently the best bedroom in the house. The sheets were as white as a

wreath of snow, while the bed itself was of the softest down, presenting

to Willie a very striking contrast to the bundles of straw and coarse

ragged mats which formed his usual couch during his peregrinations.

On observing this climax to the singularly kind treatment which he had

met with in his present quarters, Willie flung himself down into a

chair, and endeavoured to think as well as he could over the events of

the night, and to see if he could hit upon any plausible conjecture

regarding the cause of the extraordinary hospitality that had been shown

him; and, with a look of drunken gravity, he began thus to cogitate

within himself.

"The deil hae me, but this beats a'! I've often heard the folk o' Fife

were queer folk, and, by my faith, I find it true. But it's a' on the

richt side. I wish I could find such queer folk everywhar I gaed to. Nae

queer folk o' this kind in our part o' the country. Faith, Willie, lad,

ye fell on yer feet whan ye cam here. The best in the hoose! Naething

less, as I'm a sinner; and as much drink as"--here Willie hiccupped

violently--"as ony decent man wad wish to hae under his belt--that's, no

to be the waur o't; and, to crown a', a bed that micht ser' the King

himsel. This _is_ what I ca' treatin a man weel. And such a canty hearty

cock o' a landlord, too! I haena seen his match this mony a day, and I'm

fear'd they're owre thin sawn for me to see't for mony a day to come."

And here Willie paused for a considerable time, to indulge in fancies

which were either too profound or came too thick for utterance. At

length, however, starting up from his reverie, having been unable,

evidently, to make anything of his conjecture, "I'm much obliged to him,

at ony rate," he muttered, "and that's a' I can say about it." And,

immediately after, he tumbled into bed. Willie, however, had not lain

here more than a minute, when his attention was attracted by a low

murmuring, as if of two persons in conversation in the adjoining

apartment.

The partition, which was close by his ear, was of wood; and he found

that, by listening attentively, he could gather pretty fully all that

passed; and to this employment, therefore, he immediately betook

himself, when he discovered that the laird and his wife were the

speakers. The result of Willie's application on this occasion was his

overhearing the following conversation. His own share of it, as it was

of course interjectional and inaudible to the parties, we put within

parentheses.

"But are ye sure it's him, John, after a'?" said the laird's better

half.

("Him!--wha?" muttered Willie.)

"Sure that it's him, guidwife!" replied the laird, hiccupping at

intervals as he spoke. "Deil a doot's o' that! Did ye ever ken me

mistaen in my life, when I said I was sure o' a' thing? I kent him the

moment I clapped my ee upon him, although I never saw him in my life

before."

("Did ye, faith?" here again interjected Willie, who had no doubt that

he himself was the subject of the conversation to which he was

listening. "My word, then, but ye're a gleg chiel.")

"There's that about him that canna be mistaen by ony thing o' a quick

ee, however he may disguise himsel."

("Disguise himsel! What does the body mean by that? Whan did I disguise

mysel, unless it war wi' liquor? Maybe he means that though.")

"And, besides," continued the unconscious speaker, "hadna I certain

information, frae a quarter that I couldna doot, that he had set oot on

ane o' his vagaries, and that there was every reason to believe that he

had come oor way. And it's the very dress, too, that was described to

me."

("By my troth, then, but that's queer aneuch!" here quoth Willie. "Wha

the deil could hae tellt you that I was on the tramp, and that I was

coming this way? My very dress described, too--'od, that's

unaccountable.")

"It's a queer notion that o' the man's wanderin aboot the country this

way," here interposed the laird's wife. "I'm sure he maun meet wi' mony

odd adventures whan he's on thae tramps."

("Deil a doot's o't--mony a ane; and that I hae met wi' the nicht's ane

o' them. But what's strange in the notion o' me gaun aboot the country?

How else could I mak a leevin o't?")

"His faither had the same trick before him," replied the laird to his

wife's remarks.

("That's a curst lie--my faither, honest man, was a douce, decent,

sober-livin weaver.")

"I reckon't, guidwife, a lucky thing that he has come oor way."

("Do ye, indeed!--then, feth, say do I.")

"He'll no forget oor kindness, I dare say."

("The ne'er a bit o' that I'll do.")

"And maybe he'll help us to oor ain again, frae the laird o'

Haudthegrip."

("Wi' great pleasure. But hoo do you expect such a service as that frae

the like o' me?")

"I've heard o' his doin the like afore. But I say, guidwife, mind we

maunna just let on barefacedly that we ken wha he is; for I can see,

frae the way he took my hints the nicht, that he doesna like it. A' that

I could do, I could na drive him into a corner on that subject. He aye

shyed the question. Sae we maun tak nae mair notice o't; for ye ken

kings are kittle cattle to deal wi'."

("Kings! Whar the deevil are ye noo, laird? What's a' this aboot?")

"So they're said to be, John," replied the laird's better half; "and I

think the less we hae to do wi' them the better."

("My feth, ye're richt there, guidwife, as I ken to my cost. I was ance

very near hanged by the king by mistake, amang a wheen Border rievers

that he strung up. The rope was aboot my neck before he wad listen to my

story, or be convinced that I wasna ane o' the gang.")

"This is the first night," continued the laird's wife, "ever a king was

under my roof, and I hope it'll be the last."

Here we must interrupt the dialogue for a moment to say that it would

have done any man's heart good to have seen the expression of Willie's

countenance when this last sentence reached his ear. The painter's art

alone could convey a correct idea of the look of perplexity and

amazement which it exhibited. A glimmering of the facts of that singular

case which will shortly be made to appear plain enough, began to break

in upon him. But, as he could not yet entirely trust to its feeble

light--in other words, could not believe what he heard, or rather could

not believe that it applied to him--he lay as still as death, scarcely

daring to breathe till he should gather something more regarding the

strange insinuation that had just reached him; and for this he had not

long to wait.

"Speak laigh, Jenny--speak laigh, woman," said the laird, in reply to

his wife's disloyal remark. "He's maybe no sleepin; and I wadna for the

best cow in my byre that he heard ye say what ye hae said. I assure you,

for my part, guidwife, I'm very proud o' the honour. He's just as guid a

fellow as ever I spent a nicht wi'. My faith, he tooms his bicker like a

man, as your greybeard 'ill witness in the mornin, guidwife."

Here a loud and long-drawn whee-o-ou from Willie announced that he was

now fully enlightened on the mysterious subject of the extraordinary

attention, kindness, and hospitality of the Laird of Whinnyhill, and his

wife.

There was, in short, he felt, no longer any doubt of the fact, that he

had been mistaken by them for no less a personage than the king, James

V., who as all our readers know was in the habit of going about the

country frequently in disguise; and it was true, as the laird had said,

he had heard that he was at this moment abroad on one of those whimsical

perambulations; and it was farther true, that he was in the

neighbourhood of Whinnyhill.

Here, then, was rather an odd predicament for the south-land harper. And

he felt it to be so.

"Ta'en for the king, as I'm a sinner!" said Willie--thus following up

the whistle of amazement with which he had hailed the disclosure of the

astounding fact. "'Od, this cowes the gowan! I've met wi' mony a queer

thing in my life, but this beats a' oot and oot, as the weaver's wife

said when she couldna find an end to the puddin." And Willie forthwith

proceeded to ruminate internally on the singular situation in which he

now found himself; and it was while thus ruminating that he was struck

with the bright idea which forms the leading feature in the sequel of

our tale. This idea was, to maintain the character which had been thrust

upon him, and to continue to enjoy the good living which, judging from

what he had already met with, was likely to accrue from the deception.

He determined, therefore, to try and throw a little more dignity into

his manner, and to be a little more guarded in his language--a good deal

of which he felt would scarcely be becoming in a king, whatever

character he might choose to personify; and, in conclusion, he resolved,

in all cases where he should perceive that he was not mistaken for a

prince in disguise--which he was conscious would, after all, be but

seldom--to give such hints as should induce the desired belief; and,

where it should appear to exist, to confirm it by the same means.

Having chalked out this line of conduct for himself, and having indulged

in a few more speculations on the subject, Willie resigned himself to

sleep, and, in the morning, awoke--a king in disguise.

True to the resolutions he had formed overnight, and not without ability

to act up to them, Willie, on the laird's entrance into the apartment in

the morning, to inquire how he had slept, looked as majestic as he

could; and, in a familiar, but somewhat condescending manner, saluted

him with--

"Ha, laird! how dost? None the worse for thy potations last night? On my

royal--ah! on my word, I mean--thou hast been nearer regicide than thou

wotest of. Another such night and I would be a dead man!"

"The deil a fear o' ye, sir!" said the laird, now fully confirmed in his

belief that it was James that stood before him. "It's no a drap guid

soun' liquor that'll kill ye, I warrant; and it was nane o' the warst ye

had last nicht, I assure ye. It wad hae been ill my pairt if it had.

And noo, sir," he continued, producing at the same time a huge bottle of

brandy which he had hitherto concealed behind his back--"Ye'll just tak

a hair o' the dog that bit ye. A toothfu' o' this," filling up a large

cup, "'ll keep the cauld morning air aff yer stomach; for, nae doot,

sir, yours, after a', is just like other folks."

"Richt soond advice, laird, as I'm a--a sinner. I'll pledge thee most

cheerfully," said Willie, stretching out his hand to take the proffered

cup, and, thereafter, draining it to the bottom with an eagerness and

relish that amazed even the laird, who certainly thought it rather odd

in a king.

"Anither, sir?" said the latter, encouraged by the rapidity of his

guest's execution, and looking at him slily as he spoke.

"Why, laird, I don't mind if I do," replied Willie. "It warms me like a

yard o' Welsh flannel. If my mother's milk had been like that, laird, I

would have been sucking still!" Saying this, he turned over another cup

with undiminished gusto. Here, in truth, was a weak point in Willie's

character. He could not resist liquor; and had the laird persevered in

giving him more drink, he would very soon have unhinged him; for there

is little doubt that he would have forgotten his assumed dignity, and

have swallowed much more than became a king at that unseasonable hour.

Luckily for his guest, however, the laird desisted from pressing the

bottle farther, and this danger was avoided.

Willie, again conducted by his host, now proceeded to an apartment,

where he found a sumptuous breakfast prepared for him, of which he

partook with an appetite that impressed his host with a very high and

satisfactory opinion of the state of his sovereign's health; and, being

a loyal subject, the circumstance filled him with unfeigned joy.

On the conclusion of the repast--"Weel, sir," said Willie's host, "what

direction do ye propose takin noo? I hear there's to be a gran' hanlin

at Braehead the nicht. Ye might get some rare fun there, sir, an' ye

gaed--just o' the kind ye like."

"Why, thank ye, Whinnyhill--thank ye for the hint! I'll just e'en go

there, then. But what's the occasion, laird?"

"A very guid ane, sir--a hoose-heatin. The laird o' Tumlinwa's takin

possession o' his new hoose, and he's no ane to stint his freens o'

either meat or drink when he brings them thegither. Ye'll want for

naething, I'se warrant ye."

"Why, faith, mine honest friend, and these are just the quarters I

like," replied Willie, very well pleased to have got such a useful hint

as to the direction he ought next to take.

"But," continued the laird, "mind the Middlemass wood, sir, and keep a

gleg ee about ye when ye're passin through't; for, as I was sayin

before, there's some gay unchancy chiels thereabouts enow."

"Never fear me, laird," replied Willie; "I'll gie as guid's I get ony

day--let who likes try't."

Willie being now ready to resume his journey, and having expressed a

wish to do so without farther delay--for, in truth, he was not sure how

long he might escape detection--the laird accompanied him a little way,

to see him, as he said, fairly on his way.

At parting, Willie took his host by the hand, and said, with all the

dignity he could muster, and with a look which was intended to convey a

great deal more than it would have been perfectly proper to express--

"Fare-ye-well, laird, and many thanks for your hospitality. Depend upon

it, I will not soon forget it. It may stand thee in good stead some

day." And with this he walked off with as much majesty as he could

conveniently assume, leaving the laird of Whinnyhill highly delighted

with his good fortune in having had an opportunity of making the

personal acquaintance and friendship of his sovereign.

Willie, in the meantime, pursued his way; and, after two or three hours'

smart walking, found himself entering the wood about which he had been

cautioned by his late host; and, although as indifferent to danger of

the kind here threatened as most men, he thought there would be no harm

in keeping the sharp look-out recommended to him.

He now accordingly proceeded with a more wary step, and kept peering

around him as he advanced, to prevent his being taken by surprise. And

it was not long ere he found that neither his own caution nor the hints

which his late host had given him were unnecessary. When he had got

about half way through the wood, he perceived three or four

suspicious-looking fellows skulking amongst the trees a little in

advance of him, and directly in the route he was pursuing.

"By St. Andrew, there they are!" said Willie, on observing the persons

alluded to--"the very chiels the laird spoke aboot, or I'm greatly

mistaen." And he began to free his sword hilt from those parts of his

garment which were likely to interfere with its ready use. Although

somewhat alarmed at the appalling odds against him, Willie resolutely

held on his course till he arrived within a few paces of the foremost,

who stood directly in his way with a drawn sword in his hand, and who he

now perceived was masked and muffled to the eyes in a cloak, as were

also all his companions.

On perceiving the hostile attitude of the fellow, Willie also drew,

stopped short, and demanded the reason of his being thus interrupted in

his peaceful progress. To this inquiry no immediate reply was made. The

ruffians seemed doubtful of their object--indeed, Willie overheard them

say as much; and they appeared, besides, rather disconcerted by his

resolute bearing and by the circumstance of his being armed. This he

also overheard. Observing their hesitation, and thinking his assumed

dignity, if announced, might terrify the fellows, and save him from the

perils of an unequal encounter, Willie called out to them--"What, ye

knaves! would ye kill your King?" Never were expressions more unluckily

chosen--never imposition worse timed.

"It is him! it is him!" shouted out the ruffians in reply. "Down with

the tyrant!--down with the spoiler! Strike, Geordie, strike, for a

thousand merks." And the whole rushed upon Willie at once, repeating

their cries of "Down with the tyrant! the spoiler!" &c. But this was

much easier said than done. Willie instantly retreated before his

enemies. But it was by no means from fear. He was practising a very

ingenious _ruse_; and it was one that he brought to a very successful

issue. He retired from his assailants in order to separate them; and,

having succeeded in this, he suddenly turned round, and, before the man

who was nearest him was aware of his intention, ran him through the

body. Having accomplished this dexterous feat, which he did quick as

thought, he continued his flight until another had got considerably in

advance of his companions, when he repeated the experiment, but this

time by striking a desperate back blow with his sword, which, taking

full effect on the face of his pursuer, inflicted a hideous wound that

instantly disabled him from all further exertion. The other two, seeing

the fate of their associates, and horror-struck with the ghastly

appearance of him that was just wounded, lost heart, and fled. But, for

one of them at least, this attempt was vain. Willie's blood was now up;

and, not content with what he had already done, he gave chase, shouting

out, as he pursued, "Down wi' the tyrant, ye villains! By St. Andrew,

we'll see wha'll be doun first! If I dinna gie ye yer kail through the

reek, may I never chew cheese again!" And with this--for Willie was as

supple of limb, as dexterous and ready of hand--having overtaken the

hindmost of the fugitives, he ran the flying ruffian through the back,

who instantly fell forward on his face, a dead man. Thinking he had now

done enough, and not a little exhausted with the exertions he had made,

Willie, allowing the last of his assailants to escape, flung himself on

the ground, to recover breath, exclaiming, as he did so, after a long

drawn respiration, "Hech, but this has been a deevil o' a teuch job!

This kingcraft 'ill never do. Here have I been as near murdered on

account o't as ony decent man wad wish to be. I've nae notion o' the

tred ava, whar ye're cuttled up ae nicht like a sick wife, wi' the best

to eat and drink, and the next to hae yer throat cut. It's no the thing,

by ony means."

Such were the reflections in which Willie indulged on this occasion--an

occasion which had shown him that the life of a king, as kings and

subjects were in Scotland in his time, whatever respect it might procure

him, in some instances was one of no small peril. Although, however, he

had determined, from the experience which he had just had of the dangers

of royalty, to resign the character, and disavow all claims to its

dignities very shortly, he yet resolved on going through with it for one

day longer--that is, until he had tried what sort of treatment it would

procure him at Braehead, whither, the reader will recollect, he was now

proceeding on the recommendation of the laird of Whinnyhill.

In this resolution, therefore, he in a few minutes started once more to

his feet, and resumed his journey, leaving the dead bodies of the slain

where they had fallen; but not, it must be observed, before he had

carefully searched them, to see whether or not there was anything about

them to reward him for the trouble of killing them. But in this he was

disappointed. On none of them was there anything of the smallest value.

"'Od, ye've been as puir's mysel," he said, on completing his fruitless

scrutiny into the pockets of the deceased. "Deil a bodle! No as muckle

as wad supper a midge."

Having said this, he rose from the kneeling posture to which his

employment had reduced him, and, as we have already said, resumed his

march through the Middlemas wood.

Leaving Willie to prosecute his journey, we request the reader to return

with us to Whinnyhill, where we shall find a circumstance occurring

which is intimately connected with the denouement of our tale.

Shortly after the former's departure from the place just named, another

stout carle of a mendicant appeared at the laird's gate. It was the

dinner hour, and, as was then customary in the country, and is so still,

we believe, in some places, the doors were all carefully secured, and no

egress or ingress permitted, till the conclusion of the meal. To this

exclusion, however, the person now seeking admission to the laird's did

not seem willing to submit; for he began to thunder at the gate with an

impetuosity and vehemence that scarcely beseemed his very humble

calling; and, as if this was not enough, he shouted out at the top of

his voice to the inmates to open the gate to him.

Yet, however unbecoming his conduct, or however insolent it may be

thought, it had the desired effect of procuring him the service he

wanted.

The laird himself answered the call, though certainly more for the

purpose of letting out his wrath on the noisy intruder, than to let him

in.

"My feth, friend," he said, his anger greatly increased when, on

opening the gate, he found that it was a common vagrant who sought

admittance, "but ye're no blate to rap at folk's doors this gaet. An' ye

had been the best man in the land, ye couldna hae been baulder. My

certy, it's come to a pretty pass, when beggars bang at yer door like

lords!"

"The devil's in the old churl!" replied the undaunted beggar. "Dost not

see that I'm knocked up with fatigue, man, and didst think I was to

stand here starving of hunger, if a few knocks at your gate was to bring

me a little nearer to some refreshment? Come, Whinnyhill," continued the

free and easy beggar, at the same time slapping the former familiarly on

the shoulder, "I know ye, man, I know ye to be a good honest fellow, and

one who grudges nobody either bite or sup. So, let's have something to

eat directly." And he bestowed another hearty smack on the laird's

shoulder.

"By my feth, sirrah?" replied the latter, amazed and irritated at the

singular ease and impudence of the mendicant, and above all at his

presumptuous familiarity, "but that's a new way to seek awmous. 'Od,

freen, an' ye lack onything, it 'ill no be for want o' askin't."

"Why, Whinnyhill, how should I get, if I didn't ask?" said the

mendicant. "Take my word for't, Whinny, when you want a thing there's

nothing like asking. Your modest fool always comes off with an empty

hand, and maybe an empty stomach too. Why, man, dost think people will

run after one offering one what one wants without solicitation? No, no;

and, besides, a thing that's worth having is always worth asking."

"Ye're maybe no far wrang there, freend," said the laird; "but ye'll

allow me to say that ye're ane o' the bauldest, no to say ane o' the

impudentest beggars, I hae seen for a while. Nevertheless, ye may step

into the kitchen there, and get a mouthfu' o' what's gaun; but mind ye,

dinna kick up such a stramash at my yett again, when ye come seekin an

awmous, or I'll maybe let ye cool your heels awhile or ye win in, and

thankfu' if I dinna set the dog on ye."

"The beggar man he thumped at the yett

Till bolt and bar did flee, O,

And aye he swore, as he thumped again,

That denied he wadna be, O.

Fal de ral, al al al, reedle al de ral,

Fal de ral, al al al, de reedle ee di.

"The beggar man he thumped at the yett

Till bolt and bar did flee, O,

When wha should come out but the laird himsel,

And an angry man was he, O.

Fal de ral," &c.

Such was the reply, chaunted with great vociferation and glee, which the

sturdy beggar vouchsafed to the laird's more candid than courteous

remarks; and it would have been much longer, to the extent probably of a

score of verses, had not Whinnyhill impatiently broken in with--

"Wow, man, but ye're an ill-mannered graceless loon as ever I saw atween

the twa een. The greatest person in the land, man, is mair humble and

respectfu' than you, when he's gaun about the country as ye're doin, and

micht weel be an example to you and the like o' you."

"What mean ye, laird?--of whom do ye speak?" said the sturdy beggar,

evidently somewhat disconcerted by the former's remark.

"Mean!" replied the laird, sharply--"I mean, sirrah, that the king

himsel, when he ca's at ony decent man's house for a nicht's quarters,

in his rambles through the country, is far mair civil and discreet than

ye are."

"Indeed," said the mendicant. "Dost know the king personally, Whinny?

Didst ever see him in the guise thou allud'st to?"

"Wad ye be the better if ye kent?" replied the laird, angrily; then

adding, in better humour, as if recollecting it was something to boast

of--"To be sure I do, sirrah! and weel I may, seein that he sleepit here

a' last nicht, and's no three hours awa yet."

"What, Whinny!--the king! The king here last night!" exclaimed the

mendicant, now exhibiting in his turn, symptoms of surprise and

amazement. "Surely you are jesting, laird?"

"Jestin, sir! I'm jestin nane," said Whinnyhill, angrily. "The king

_was_ here last nicht, sirrah!"

"Impossible, Whinny!"

"Confound ye, sir!--wad ye make me a leear to my face?"

"Oh, no, no, laird," replied the former, laughing; "but you may be

mistaken in your man. At any rate, if it is not impossible, it is

certainly odd, Whinny."

"Odd, sir. What's odd about it? Do ye think the king wad think himsel

demeaned by takin a nicht's quarters frae me?"

"Nay, nay; not at all--by no means, laird," replied the mendicant

eagerly, as if anxious to do away the offensive impression--"by no

means. The man would be unworthy of being a king who should think there

was any degradation in sitting beneath the roof-tree, and partaking of

the hospitality, of an honest and respectable man like you, Whinny. My

surprise, laird, was at finding that the king had been here; for I was

informed that he was in an entirely different part of the country. Pray,

Whinny, what like a fellow was this king you speak of?"

"What like a _fellow_, sir!" replied the laird, in extreme wrath. "My

feth, ye're no blate to speak o' yer sovereign in thae disrespectfu'

terms. Fellow, in troth! Repeat that word again, sir, in the same breath

wi' the king's name, and if I dinna teach ye better manners, blame me!

Ye've muckle need o' a lesson, at ony rate."

"Very good, Whinny--very good," said the sturdy beggar, laughing

heartily at the angry earnestness of the laird. "I meant no offence,

man--none whatever. I've as great a respect for the king as you can

possibly have."

"It doesna look like it," interrupted the laird.

"But it is so, nevertheless, I assure you," replied the former; "and I

like you all the better, believe me, for your loyalty."

"Ye like me a' the better!" said the laird. "And wha the deil cares

whether ye like me or no? By my troth, but ye're very condescendin!"

"Well, well, Whinny," replied the mendicant, again laughing. "But tell

me, how did you know the king in his disguise? Are ye sure it was him,

after all?"

"Sure enough," said the laird gruffly; "he mair than half confessed it

himsel."

"Oh, he did!--then, there can be no doubt of it--none. I should like to

see his Majesty, laird. Pray, can you tell me which way he has gone?"

"Ye're very inquisitive, freen," replied the latter; "and to be plain

wi' ye, I like neither that nor your familiarity. The king's awa to

Braehead--and that's the last ye'll hae frae me; sae step into the

kitchen and get a mouthfu', and then tak yersel aff as sune's ye like."

And with this the laird was about to walk off, when the mendicant, who

continued to stand still where he was, called him back and said--

"Laird, harkee--canst keep a secret?"

"If it's worth keepin, maybe I can."

"Well, then," rejoined the former, "although not very nice in these

matters, I'm not altogether reconciled to taking my refection in your

kitchen, though, I confess it, most particularly hungry; and therefore

ask you what would you think now, if I was the king, and that person,

whoever he is, whom you took to be the king, was an impostor?"

"Wow, man, but that's a clumsy trick," replied the laird, chuckling at

his own ready sagacity and penetration. "I'm owre far north, lad, to be

come owre that way."

"Well, laird," said the mendicant (who--we need conceal the fact no

longer from the reader--was indeed no other than James himself), "well,

laird," he said, smiling, "I assure you your penetration is at fault

this time; for I tell you I am the king, Whinny!"

"And I tell you," replied the laird, "that I dinna believe a word o't;

and mair, for your impudence in attempting to impose upon me, ye shanna

get bite or sup here this da Tak my word for that."

Dropping here the dialogue, we relate the sequel in simple narrative. It

was in vain that James endeavoured to pacify the irritated laird, and to

prevail upon him to believe that he really was the king, or to induce

him to let him have the refreshment of which he stood so much in need.

Obstinate at all times, Whinnyhill was particularly so on this occasion;

and not all that the good-humoured monarch could say could move him from

his purpose of denying him admittance to his house, or affording him the

slightest hospitality.

Finding his efforts in vain, James at length gave up the task as

hopeless; but, though not a little disappointed--for he felt both

fatigued and hungry--he saw that he could not be displeased, since his

churlish treatment by the laird, singularly enough, proceeded from his

love and respect for himself. It greatly puzzled James, however, to

conceive who it could possibly be that had taken up his incognito (for

that some one had done so he felt assured), and seemed so successful in

the use of it. The trick was a new one to him, and he could not help

being tickled with the ingenuity of the impostor in hitting on so novel

an idea. His curiosity, too, to see his rival, was great; so great that,

on finding he could make nothing of the laird of Whinnyhill, he

determined on setting out immediately for Braehead, a distance of about

six or seven miles, whither he had been told his counterpart had gone;

and, acting on this resolution, he started directly for that

destination.

On passing through the Middlemass wood, which was the direct and

shortest route to the place he was going to, the king's attention was

arrested by the dead bodies which Willie had left behind him, and which

were still lying as they had fallen.

"Ha!" exclaimed James, suddenly stopping on perceiving them, "what's

this? Here has been some lawless work, which I must inquire into when I

return to Falkland." A hollow groan at this moment fell on the king's

ear, and directed him to the spot, at a little distance, where lay the

man who had been so severely wounded on the face by the back stroke of

Willie's rapier. King James stooped over the dying man, and inquired who

he was, and what was the meaning of the horrid scene around him. The

mutilated wretch fixed his glassy and almost sightless eyes on the face

of the king, and said, speaking at long intervals, and as distinctly as

his little remaining strength would permit.

"I am a dying man, stranger; but I deserve my fate."

"Indeed!" said James--"then thy iniquities must have been great, for

thou'rt in very bad case. What hand dealt thee that cruel blow, man?"

"The king's," replied the wounded man.

"The king's!" said James, in astonishment--"what mean ye?"

"I mean," said the dying man, "that it was the king's sword that left me

as you now see me. We waylaid him in this wood, expecting he would come

this way--and he did, in disguise; but he was too many for us, being

armed, which we did not look for."

"And what motive, miserable man," said James, "had you for attacking the

king? I'm sure to you, and such as you, he has ever been a gracious

prince. To none but his insolent and tyrannical nobles, who would make

slaves of you and a puppet of him, has he ever been accused of

severity."

"I acknowledge it," said the dying man. "But we were hired to do the

bloody work."

"Ha! hired!" exclaimed James, in alarm! "who hired you? Speak, speak,

man--who hired you?"

"That I will not tell," replied the man; "for I've been under

obligations to him. But stranger," he continued, "as you would have the

blessings of a dying man upon your head, you will--you will----"

Here the speaker seemed on the point of expiring; and the king,

perceiving this, and dreading that that event would take place before

the dying man could make any further disclosures--

"I will what? I will what?" he said, eagerly and impatiently.

"You will," resumed the wounded man, after a short interval, "repair to

Falkland, and tell the king--the king--to beware of--of----"

"Whom, whom, man?" again interrupted James, breathless with the feeling

of intense interest that now possessed him--"whom, man, for a thousand

pounds!" he exclaimed, forgetting, in his impatience and eager

curiosity, his assumed character.

Apparently heedless, however, or unobservant of the questioner's

emotion, the dying man at length slowly added, "Of the Earl of

Bothwell"--and expired.

"Ha! Bothwell! Bothwell!" repeated James, now falling into a profound

reverie; "ay, is he at these pranks? He shall be cared for, however. I

warrant he plays no more of them. But it would seem," continued the

king, musing, "that this impudent varlet, my counterpart, has stood me

in good stead here, and, by mine honour, done me good service too. Had

it not been for him, however unwittingly he may have thus come between

me and danger, I must have been slain by these ruffians. I'll forgive

the dog his impudence, after all. Nay, he deserves a reward, and he

shall have it too." Having said this, or rather thought it, James

resumed his journey; and we shall avail ourselves of the opportunity

which this circumstance affords, to throw in a word or two, explanatory

of the discontented spirit which had led to the attempt on the king's

life above spoken of.

James V., it is well known, though an amiable and generous prince, and

possessed of many excellent qualities besides, was particularly

obnoxious to his nobles, on account of his persevering and successful

efforts to restrain and limit the exorbitant power which they had

acquired during his minority, and which they showed no disposition to

relinquish on his assuming the reins of government.

With this political hostility, as it may be called, to his nobles,

James, recollecting what he had suffered from them in his youth, mingled

a feeling of bitter personal dislike; and the consequence was, an

unrelenting and unremitting course of persecution on the one hand, and

of impatient endurance on the other; and the attempt on the king's life,

whose consequences our hero, Willie, had so opportunely averted, was one

of the ebullitions of that treasonable spirit which this state of

matters had engendered.

To return to our tale. Little more than an hour's walking having brought

James to Braehead, he entered the house, which was one scene of mirth

and festivity from one end to the other; and, uninvited, and, we may

add, unopposed too, walked into the kitchen, where a number of country

girls and their sweethearts were assembled, to share in the good cheer

and jollity of the evening.

On entering the apartment, the king's attention was instantly attracted

by a conspicuous figure seated at the farther end, and very enviably

placed between two uncommonly pretty girls, whom he was entertaining

with a volubility of tongue and noisy glee that seemed to afford them

great delight, and to have carried him far into their good graces. But

the influence of the exuberant spirits of this joyous but somewhat

obstreperous person, was by no means confined to his two fair

supporters. He had, by the time James entered, evidently secured that

pre-eminence which belongs to the character usually known by the title

of the cock of the company. He was, in short, obviously in undisputed

possession of the popular voice; and there was no doubt was considered

by every one there as first fiddle of the evening.

This jovial person, we need hardly say, was no other than our friend

Willie; and James, as he eyed him, at once guessed that he was the

person who had done him the honour of representing him at Whinnyhill.

Satisfied of this, the disguised monarch stole quietly round to where

Willie was seated, and whispered in his ear this courteous inquiry--

"I say, friend, who the devil are you?"

"And, I say," exclaimed Willie, looking hard at the querist, and by no

means making any secret of his inquiry--"Wha the deevil are ye?"

"Just what you see me," replied James--"going about the country seeking

a living wherever I think it likely I may pick it up."

"Nae harm in that ava, freen," said Willie. "Puir bodies maun leeve some

way or anither. They're no gaun to die at a dike side if they can get a

mouthfu' for the askin."

"Surely not, surely not, friend," replied James. "But, I say," he

added--and now drawing Willie close to him, in order that the

communication he was about to make might be inaudible to those beside

him--"do you think I don't know you, sir, notwithstanding your

disguise? If you do, you are mistaken. I know you well, sir. You are the

king!"

"And what though I be, sir?" said Willie, boldly, but secretly surprised

to find royalty thus again thrust upon him. "What's that to you? But, I

say," he added, and now whispering in his turn, "as ye value yer head,

mum's the word aboot that 'enow; for I'm in very guid quarters whar I

am, and hae nae wish to gang amang the gentry. Sae keep a calm sough

aboot it, or ye may fare the waur."

"Nay, nay, now," replied James; "I really cannot endure to see my

sovereign in such an humble situation as this--a situation so unworthy

of his dignity. It is unseemly and painful to behold. I will not endure

it!"

"But it is my pleasure, sirrah," said Willie, angrily and

impatiently--"and that's aneuch. Sae, mak nor meddle nae mair wi't, or

ye'll maybe rue't. Do ye think I want to mak a spectacle o' mysel?"

"Excuse me; but positively, sir, I must insist on your being treated

with more respect. I must inform the laird of your being here." And,

without waiting for any farther remonstrances on the subject from

Willie, or paying any attention to his anxious calls to him to return,

the disguised monarch hurried out of the apartment, and desired one of

the servants of the house to inform his master that a person wished to

speak to him on important business, and that he would find him in front

of the house.

Having dispatched this business, James walked out, and, at a little

distance, awaited the laird's appearance. On his approach--"Well,

laird," said the King, "dost know me? I think thou should'st. We have

seen each other before."

The person thus addressed looked silently and earnestly for some time at

the disguised monarch, as if perplexed by the question; but at length

eagerly and joyously exclaimed, at the same time doffing his cap or

bonnet "with the most profound respect--

"I do, sir--I do. You are the king!"

"Hush, hush," said James. "Not a word of that just now. My crown's in

danger, laird. There's a rival near my throne. Dost know, laird, that

there's another king in your kitchen at this moment?"

"You are pleased to be merry, sire. Pray, what does your Majesty mean?"

replied the laird, smiling, yet evidently at a loss to comprehend the

joke.

"Why, I mean precisely what I have said, laird. There is, I repeat it,

another king in your kitchen just now; and a rattling, stalwarth looking

fellow he is, with a couple of very pretty girls, one on each side of

him. But here is the truth of the matter, laird," continued the king,

compassionating the former's perplexity--"here's a fellow, at this

moment, in your kitchen, who has taken it upon him to assume my

incognito, and has, in this character, already imposed upon Whinnyhill."

"The knave!" exclaimed the laird. "We must have him instantly hanged."

"Nay, nay--not so fast, laird. The fellow deserves a fright, and he

shall have it; but he has done me good service, though unwittingly, and

I must forgive him." And James here proceeded to relate the adventure in

the Middlemass wood, which is already before the reader.

When he had done. "Now, laird," he said, "we shall have some amusement

with the rogue. You shall wait on him; and, professing to take him for

what he represents himself to be, respectfully invite him, nay, insist

on him joining you and your friends at your own table; for I rather

think he'll flinch it if he can; and I shall, by-and-by, send in a

messenger to announce my arrival, and to seek admittance; and we shall

then see how the rogue looks."

The laird, who was himself a bit of a humourist, readily entered into

the spirit of the jest, and immediately set about its execution.

Proceeding to the kitchen, he walked up, hat in hand, to where Willie

was seated between his two doxies; and standing respectfully before him,

informed him that, from some intelligence he had just received from

Whinnyhill, he had come to solicit his illustrious guest to accompany

him to a place more befitting his dignity, though still far from being

worthy of it.

"Why, laird," replied Willie, after his best manner, "I thank ye; but,

to tell you a truth, I'd rather remain where I am. I'm amazingly well

here, and cannot think of leaving these twa bonny lasses." And here the

gallant harper chucked the girls under the chin.

"Nay, excuse me," said the laird, bowing low; "but I must insist on your

accompanying me. I will explain myself farther when we get to a more

fitting place."

"Why, if you do insist, laird," said Willie, "I really do not see that I

can refuse you." And with this he arose, though with evident reluctance,

from his seat; and, after comforting his fair companions with an

assurance that he would rejoin them as soon as he could, followed the

guidance of his host. This conducted him into an apartment where were a

number of people assembled round a well-stored table, in the full career

of social enjoyment. Willie by no means relished this display of

company, as it greatly increased the chances of detection; but he

resolved to brave it out the best way he could.

On his entrance, the party, to all of whom the hint had been given of

what was going forward, rose to their feet, and stood respectfully till

Willie was fairly planted in a large arm-chair at the head of the table,

when they resumed their seats. Every degree of respect and attention was

now shown to the mock king which could have been bestowed upon the real

one--with this exception, that he was plied with fully more liquor than

it would have been altogether becoming to have pressed upon an anointed

sovereign. In this, however, Willie himself saw nothing derogatory, and

therefore continued to swallow all that was offered him, till he got, as

was usual to him in such cases, into most exuberant spirits, when he

began to entertain the company with some of his choicest songs and

stories, and with the usual effect of "setting the table in a roar."

Willie was, in short, in a fair way of becoming, if not king of

Scotland, at least king of the company; and had attained about mid

career in his bright track of jollification, when a messenger entered,

and informed the master of the house that a person desired to see him on

business of importance. The laird, instantly obeying the summons,

withdrew. In a few minutes, however, he returned; and, with an air of

surprise and perplexity, said, addressing the company, but more

particularly Willie--"Gentlemen, here is a very strange matter. Here has

a person arrived at my house, who insists on it that he is the king, and

demands admittance."

"Admittance!" roared out Willie, evidently a good deal discomposed by

the communication--"on no account admit him, laird. Tie the impostor

neck and heel, and throw him into the nearest burn! Pack him off

instantly."

"Nay, nay, sir," replied the laird; "I think we had better admit him,

and leave it to you and him to decide which of you has the best claim to

the dignity." And before Willie could make any farther objection, James

himself was ushered into the apartment.

On his entrance--

"Where," he exclaimed, with a fierce frown--"where is the impudent

varlet that has been imposing on the credulity of my subjects, by

assuming my incognito? Art thou the knave?" he immediately added; and

now addressing Willie, who, completely crestfallen, was looking at him

with the most rueful expression of countenance imaginable.

"And if I am, man," said Willie, in a piteous tone, in reply to this

home charge, "ye needna mak sic a stramash aboot it, nor look sae dooms

angry either. I'm sure yer royalty's no a whit the waur o' me haen't on

for a wee bit; and, guid kens, ye're welcome till't back again, for it

doesna fit me. Sae tak it, sir, and muckle guid may't do ye!"

Here James could contain his gravity no longer, but burst into a loud

laugh. "And what, you knave," he said, "put it into your head to

practise this imposition? You have fairly deceived Whinnyhill."

"The ne'er a bit o' me did that, sir," said Willie, now somewhat

relieved of his fears, by the king's good humour. "He deceived himsel,"

And here Willie related, to the great amusement of James, the

conversation which he had overheard between the laird of Whinnyhill and

his wife; and concluded with, "So ye see, sir, he made me a king whether

I wad or no; and, as he put on the coat, I just wore't, although it was

like to cost me dear aneuch in the Middlemass wood."

"I've heard of that too, sirrah," replied the king, again laughing; "and

it is for the good service thou didst me there, that I now feel disposed

not to hang you."

"That's an ugly word, sir."

"Go to, go to, you knave!" said the good-humoured monarch, smiling; and,

at the same time, drawing forth a well-filled purse from beneath his

outer garment, and thereafter throwing it towards Willie--"There,

sirrah, take that, and get thee gone; but mark me, my royal brother, see

thou dost not try this prank again, else your quarrel and mine may be a

more serious one than it has been on this occasion."

Glad to get off on such favourable terms, Willie sneaked out of the

apartment without making any further remarks and next day set out on his

return to his native district, forswearing kingcraft and the kingdom of

Fife for ever.

BILL WHYTE.

I had occasion, about three years ago, to visit the ancient burgh of

Fortrose. It was early in winter, the days were brief though pleasant,

and the nights long and dark; and, as there is much in Fortrose which

the curious traveller deems interesting, I had lingered amid its

burying-grounds and its broken and mouldering tenements, till the

twilight had fairly set in. I had explored the dilapidated ruins of the

Chanonry of Ross; seen the tomb of old Abbot Boniface, and the bell

blessed by the pope; run over the complicated tracery of the Runic

obelisk which had been dug up, about sixteen years before, from under

the foundations of the old parish church; and visited the low, long

house, with its upper windows buried in the thatch, in which the

far-famed Sir James Mackintosh had received the first rudiments of his

education. And, in all this, I had been accompanied by a benevolent old

man of the place, a mighty chronicler of the past, who, when a boy, had

sat on the same form with Sir James, and who, on this occasion, had

seemed quite as delighted in meeting with a patient and interested

listener, as I had been in finding so intelligent and enthusiastic a

storiest. There was little wonder, then, that twilight should have

overtaken me in such a place, and in such company.

There are two roads which run between Cromarty and Fortrose; the one,

the king's highway; the other, a narrow footpath that goes winding for

several miles under the immense wall of cliffs which overhangs the

northern shores of the Moray Frith, and then ascends to the top, by

narrow and doubtful traverses along the face of an immense precipice,

termed the Scarf's Crag. The latter route is by far the more direct and

more pleasant of the two to the day traveller; but the man should think

twice who proposes taking it by night. The Scarf's Crag has been a scene

of frightful accidents for the last two centuries. It is not yet more

than twelve years since a young and very active man was precipitated

from one of its higher ledges to the very beach--a sheer descent of

nearly two hundred feet; and a multitude of little cairns which mottle

the sandy platform below, bear witness to the no unfrequent occurrence

of such casualties in the remote past. With the knowledge of all this,

however, I had determined on taking the more perilous road: it is fully

two miles shorter than the other; and besides, in a life of undisturbed

security, a slight admixture of that feeling which the sense of danger

awakens, is a luxury which I have always deemed worth one's while

running some little risk to procure. The night fell thick and dark while

I was yet hurrying along the footway which leads under the cliffs, and,

on reaching the Scarf's Crag, I could no longer distinguish the path,

nor even catch the huge outline of the precipice between me and the sky.

I knew that the moon rose a little after nine; but it was still early in

the evening, and, deeming it too long to wait its rising, I set myself

to grope for the path, when, on turning an abrupt angle, I was dazzled

by a sudden blaze of light from an opening in the rock. A large fire of

furze and brushwood blazed merrily from the interior of a low-browed but

spacious cave, bronzing with dusky yellow the huge volume of smoke,

which went rolling outwards along the roof, and falling red and strong

on the face and hands of a thickset, determined-looking man, well nigh

in his sixtieth year, who was seated before it on a block of stone. I

knew him at once, as an intelligent, and, in the main, rather

respectable gipsy, whom I had once met with, about ten years before, and

who had seen some service as a soldier, it was said, in the first

British expedition to Egypt. The sight of his fire determined me at

once. I resolved on passing the evening with him till the rising of the

moon; and, after a brief explanation, and a blunt, though by no means

unkind invitation to a place beside his fire, I took my seat, fronting

him, on a block of granite, which had been rolled from the neighbouring

beach. In less than half-an-hour, we were on as easy terms as if we had

been comrades for years, and, after beating over fifty different topics,

he told me the story of his life, and found an attentive and interested

auditor.

Who of all my readers is unacquainted with Goldsmith's admirable stories

of the sailor with the wooden leg, and the poor half-starved

Merry-Andrew! Independently of the exquisite humour of the writer, they

are suited to interest us from the sort of cross vistas which they open

into scenes of life, where every thought, and aim, and incident, has at

once all the freshness of novelty and all the truth of nature to

recommend it. And I felt nearly the same kind of interest in listening

to the narrative of the gipsy. It was much longer than either of

Goldsmith's stories, and perhaps less characteristic; but it presented a

rather curious picture of a superior nature rising to its proper level

through circumstances the most adverse; and, in the main, pleased me so

well, that I think I cannot do better than present it to the reader.

"I was born, master," said the gipsy, "in this very cave, some sixty

years ago, and so am a Scotchman like yourself. My mother, however,

belonged to the Debatable-land, my father was an Englishman, and of my

five sisters, one first saw the light in Jersey, another in Guernsey, a

third in Wales, a fourth in Ireland, and the fifth in the Isle of Man.

But this is a trifle, master, to what occurs in some families. It can't

be now much less than fifty years since my mother left us, one bright

sunny day, on the English side of Kelso and staid away about a week. We

thought we had lost her altogether; but back she came at last, and, when

she did come, she brought with her a small sprig of a lad, of about

three summers or thereby. Father grumbled a little--we had got small fry

enough already, he said, and bare enough and hungry enough they were at

times; but mother shewed him a pouch of yellow pieces, and there was no

more grumbling. And so we called the little fellow, Bill Whyte, as if he

had been one of ourselves, and he grew up among us, as pretty a fellow

as e'er the sun looked upon. I was a few years his senior; but he soon

contrived to get half a foot a-head of me; and, when we quarrelled, as

boys will at times, master, I always came off second best. I never knew

a fellow of a higher spirit; he would rather starve than beg, a hundred

times over, and never stole in his life; but then for gin-setting, and

deer-stalking, and black-fishing, not a poacher in the country got

beyond him; and when there was a smuggler in the Solway, who more active

than Bill? He was barely nineteen, poor fellow, when he made the country

too hot to hold him. I remember the night as well as if it were

yesterday. The Catmaran lugger was in the Frith, d'ye see, a little

below Carlaverock; and father and Bill, and some half dozen more of our

men, were busy in bumping the kegs ashore, and hiding them in the sand.

It was a thick smuggy night; we could hardly see fifty yards round us;

and, on our last trip, master, when we were down in the water to the

gunwale, who should come upon us, in the turning of a handspike, but the

revenue lads from Kirkcudbright! They hailed us to strike in the devil's

name. Bill swore he wouldn't. Flash went a musket, and the ball whistled

through his bonnet. Well, he called on them to row up, and up they came;

but no sooner were they within half-oar's length, than taking up a keg,

and raising it just as he used to do the putting-stone, he made it spin

through their bottom, as if the planks were of window glass; and down

went their cutter in half a jiffy. They had wet powder that night, and

fired no more bullets. Well, when they were gathering themselves up as

they best could--and, goodness be praised! there were no drownings

amongst them--we bumped our kegs ashore, hiding them with the others,

and then fled up the country. We knew there would be news of our night's

work; and so there was; for, before next evening, there were

advertisements on every post for the apprehension of Bill, with an

offered reward of twenty pounds. Bill was a bit of a scholar--so am I for

that matter--and the papers stared him on every side.

"Jack," he said to me, "Jack Whyte, this will never do, the law's too

strong for us now; and, if I dont make away with myself, they'll either

have me tucked up, or sent over seas to slave for life. I'll tell you

what I'll do. I stand six feet ion my stocking soles, and good men were

never more wanted than at present. I'll cross the country this very

night, and away to Edinburgh, where there are troops raising for foreign

service. Better a musket than the gallows!"

"Well, Bill," I said, "I dont care though I go with you. I'm a good

enough man for my inches, though I aint so tall as you, and I'm woundily

tired of spoon-making."

And so off we set across the country that very minute, travelling by

night only, and passing our days in any hiding hole we could find, till

we reached Edinburgh, and there took the bounty. Bill made as pretty a

soldier as one could have seen in a regiment; and, men being scarce, I

wasn't rejected neither; and, after just three weeks' drilling--and

plaguy weeks they were--we were shipped off, fully finished, for the

south. Bonaparty had gone to Egypt, and we were sent after him to ferret

him out; though we weren't told so at the time. And it was our good

luck, master, to be put aboard of the same transport.

Nothing like seeing the world for making a man smart. We had all sort of

people in our regiment--from the broken-down gentleman to the

broken-down lamp lighter; and Bill was catching, from the best of them

all he could. He knew he wasn't a gipsy, and had always an eye to

getting on in the world; and, as the voyage was a woundy long one, and

we had the regimental schoolmaster aboard, Bill was a smarter fellow at

the end of it than he had been at the beginning. Well, we reached

Aboukir Bay at last. You have never been in Egypt, master; but, just

look across the Moray Frith here, on a sunshiny day, and you will see a

picture of it, if you but strike off the blue Highland hills that rise

behind, from the long range of low sandy hillocks that stretches away

along the coast, between Findhorn and Nairn. I don't think it was worth

all the trouble it cost us; but the king surely knew best. Bill and I

were in the first detachment, and we had to clear the way for the rest.

The French were drawn up on the shore, as thick as flies on a dead

snake, and the bullets rattled round us like a shower of May-hail. It

was a glorious sight, master, for a bold heart! The entire line of sandy

coast seemed one unbroken streak of fire and smoke; and we could see the

old tower of Aboukir, rising like a fiery dragon at the one end, and the

straggling village of Rosetta, half cloud, half flame, stretching away

on the other. There was a line of launches and gun-boats behind us, that

kept up an incessant fire on the enemy, and shot and shell went booming

over our heads. We rowed shorewards, under a canopy of smoke and flame;

the water was broken by ten thousand oars; and, never, master, have you

heard such cheering; it drowned the roar of the very cannon. Bill and I

pulled at the same oar; but he bade me cheer, and leave the pulling to

him.

"Cheer, Jack," he said, "Cheer!--I am strong enough to pull ten oars,

and your cheering does my heart good."

I could see, in the smoke and the confusion, that there was a boat stove

by a shell just beside us, and the man immediately behind me was shot

through the head. But we just cheered and pulled all the harder; and the

moment our keel touched the shore, we leaped out into the water, middle

deep, and, after one well directed volley, charged up the beach with our

bayonets fixed. I missed footing in the hurry, just as we closed, and a

big whiskered fellow in blue, would have pinned me to the sand, had not

Bill struck him through the wind-pipe, and down he fell above me; but

when I strove to rise from under him, he grappled with me in his death

agony, and the blood and breath came rushing through his wound in my

face. Ere I had thrown him off, my comrades had broken the enemy, and

were charging up the side of a sand hill, where there were two

field-pieces stationed that had sadly annoyed us in the landing. There

came a shower of grape shot, whistling round me, that carried away my

canteen, and turned me half round; and when I looked up, I saw, through

the smoke, that half my comrades were swept away by the discharge, and

that the survivors were fighting desperately over the two guns, hand to

hand with the enemy. Ere I got up to them, however--and trust me,

master, I did'nt linger--the guns were our own. Bill stood beside one of

them, all grim and bloody, with his bayonet dripping like an eaves-spout

in a shower. He had struck down five of the French, besides the one he

had levelled over me; and now, all of his own accord--for our sergeant

had been killed--he had shotted the two pieces, and turned them on the

enemy. They all scampered down the hill, master, on the first

discharge--all save one brave, obstinate fellow, who stood firing upon

us, not fifty yards away, half under cover of a sandbank. I saw him load

thrice ere I could hit him, and one of his balls whisked through my hat;

but I catched him at last, and down he fell--my bullet went right

through his forehead. We had no more fighting that day. The French fell

back on Alexandria, and our troops advanced about three miles into the

country, over a dreary waste of sand, and then lay for the night on

their arms.

In the morning, when we were engaged in cooking our breakfasts, master,

making what fires we could with the withered leaves of the date-tree,

our colonel and two officers came up to us. The colonel was an

Englishman--as brave a gentleman as ever lived--ay, and as kind an

officer, too. He was a fine-looking old man, as tall as Bill, and as

well built, too; but his health was much broken; it was said he had

entered the army out of break-heart on losing his wife. Well, he came up

to us, and shook Bill by the hand, as cordially as if he had been a

colonel like himself. He was a brave, good soldier, he said, and, to

show him how much he valued good men, he had come to make him a

sergeant, in room of the one we had lost. He had heard he was a scholar,

he said, and he trusted his conduct would not disgrace the halberd.

Bill, you may be sure, thanked the colonel, and thanked him, master,

very like a gentleman; and, that very day, he swaggered scarlet and a

sword, as pretty a sergeant as the army could boast of--ay, and for that

matter, though his experience was little, as fit for his place.

For the first fortnight, we didn't eat the king's biscuit for nothing.

We had terrible hard fighting on the 13th; and, had not our ammunition

failed us, we would have beaten the enemy all to rags; but, for the last

two hours, we hadn't a shot, and stood just like so many targets set up

to be fired at. I was never more vexed in my life, than when I saw my

comrades falling round me; and all for nothing. Not only could I see

them falling; but in the absence of every other noise--for we had ceased

to cheer, and stood as silent and as hard as foxes--I could hear the

dull, hollow sound of the shot, as it pierced them through. Sometimes

the bullets struck the sand, and then rose and went rolling over the

level, raising clouds of dust at every skip. At times, we could see them

coming through the air like little clouds, and singing all the way as

they came. But it was the frightful smoking shot that annoyed us most;

these horrid shells. Sometimes, they broke over our heads in the air, as

if a cannon charged with grape had been fired at us from out the clouds;

at times, they sank into the sand at our feet, and then burst up like so

many Vesuviuses, giving at once death and burial to hundreds. But we

stood our ground, and the day passed. I remember we got, towards

evening, into a snug hollow between two sandhills, where the shot

skimmed over us, not two feet above our heads; but two feet is just as

good as twenty, master; and I began to think, for the first time, that I

hadn't got a smoke all day. I snapped my musket, and lighted my pipe,

and Bill, whom I hadn't seen since the day after the landing, came up to

share with me.

"Bad day's work, Jack," he said; "But we have at least taught the enemy

what British soldiers can endure, and, ere long, we shall teach them

something more. But here comes a shell! Nay, do not move," he said; "it

will fall just ten yards short." And down it came, roaring like a

tempest, sure enough, about ten yards away, and sank into the sand.

"There now, fairly lodged," said Bill; "lie down, lads, lie down." We

threw ourselves flat on our faces--the earth heaved under us, like a

wave of the sea, and in a moment, Bill and I were covered with half a

ton of sand. But the pieces whizzed over us; and, save that the man who

was across me had an ammunition bag carried away, not one of us more

than heard them. On getting ourselves disinterred, and our pipes

relighted, Bill, with a twitch on the elbow--so--said he wished to speak

with me apart; and we went out together, into a hollow, in front.

"You will think it strange, Jack," he said, "that, all this day, when

the enemy's bullets were hopping around us like hail, there was but just

one idea that filled my mind, and I could find room for no other. Ever

since I saw Colonel Westhope it has been forced upon me, through a

newly-awakened dream-like recollection, that he is the gentleman with

whom I lived ere I was taken away by your people; for, taken away I must

have been. Your mother used to tell me, that my father was a Cumberland

gipsy, who met with some bad accident from the law; but I am now

convinced she must have deceived me, and that my father was no such sort

of man. You will think it strange; but, when putting on my coat this

morning, my eye caught the silver bar on the sleeve, and there leaped

into my mind a vivid recollection of having worn a scarlet dress

before--scarlet bound with silver; and that it was in the house of a

gentleman and lady, whom I had just learned to call papa and mamma. And

every time I see the colonel, as I say, I am reminded of the gentleman.

Now, for heaven's sake, Jack, tell me all you know about me. You are a

few years my senior, and must remember better than I can myself, under

what circumstances I joined your tribe."

"Why Bill," I said, "I know little of the matter, and, 'twere no great

wonder though these bullets should confuse me somewhat in recalling what

I do know. Most certainly we never thought you a gipsy like ourselves;

but then I am sure mother never stole you; she had family enough of her

own, and, besides, she brought with her, for your board, she said, a

purse with more gold in it than I have seen at one time, either before

or since. I remember it kept us all comfortably in the _creature_ for a

whole twelvemonth; and it wasn't a trifle, Bill, that could do that. You

were at first like to die among us. You hadn't been accustomed to

sleeping out, or to food such as ours. And, dear me! how the rags you

were dressed in used to annoy you; but you soon got over all, Bill, and

became the hardiest little fellow among us. I once heard my mother say

that you were a _love-begot_, and that your father, who was an English

gentleman, had to part from both you and your mother on taking a wife.

And no more can I tell you, Bill, for the life of me."

We slept that night on the sand, master, and found, in the morning, that

the enemy had fallen back some miles nearer Alexandria. Next evening

there was a party of us dispatched on some secret service across the

desert. Bill was with us; but the officer under whose special charge we

were placed was a Captain Turpic, a nephew of Colonel Westhope, and his

heir. But he heired few of his good qualities. He was the son of a

pettifogging lawyer, and was as heartily hated by the soldiers as the

colonel was beloved. Towards sunset, the party reached a hollow valley

in the waste, and there rested, preparatory, as we all intended, for

passing the night. Some of us were engaged in erecting temporary huts of

branches, some in providing the necessary materials, and we had just

formed a snug little camp, and were preparing to light our fires for

supper, when we heard a shot not two furlongs away. Bill, who was by far

the most active among us, sprung up one of the tallest date-trees, to

reconnoitre. But he soon came down again.

"We have lost our pains this time," he said; "there is a party of

French, of fully five times our number, not half a mile away." The

captain on the news, wasn't slow, as you may think, in ordering us off;

and, hastily gathering up our blankets, and the contents of our

knapsacks, we struck across the sand just as the sun was setting. There

is scarce any twilight in Egypt, master; it is pitch dark twenty minutes

after sunset. The first part of the evening, too, is infinitely

disagreeable. The days are burning hot, and not a cloud can be seen in

the sky; but no sooner has the sun gone down, than there comes on a

thick white fog, that covers the whole country, so that one can't see

fifty yards around; and so icy cold is it, that it strikes a chill to

the very heart. It is with these fogs that the dews descend; and deadly

things they are. Well, the mist and the darkness came upon us at once;

we lost all reckoning; and, after floundering on for an hour or so,

among the sandhills, our captain called a halt, and bade us burrow as we

best might among the hollows. Hungry as we were, we were fain to leave

our supper, to begin the morning with, and huddled all together into

what seemed a deep, dry, ditch. We were at first surprised, master, to

find an immense heap of stone under us; we couldn't have lain harder had

we lain on a Scotch cairn; and that, d'ye see, is unusual in Egypt,

where all the sand has been blown by the hot winds from the desert,

hundreds of miles away, and where, in the course of a few days' journey,

one mayn't see a pebble larger than a pigeon's egg. There were hard,

round, bullet-like masses under us, and others of a more oblong shape,

like pieces of wood that had been cut for fuel; and, tired as we were,

their sharp points, protruding through the sand, kept most of us from

sleep. But that was little, master, to what we felt afterwards. As we

began to take heat together, there broke out among us a most

disagreeable stench; bad, at first, and unlike anything I had ever felt

before, but at last altogether overpowering. Some of us became dead

sick, and some, to show how much bolder they were than the rest, began

to sing. One half the party stole away one by one, and lay down outside;

for my own part, master, I thought it was the plague that was breaking

out upon us from below, and lay still, in despair of escaping it. I was

wretchedly tired, too, and, despite of my fears and the stench, I fell

asleep, and slept till daylight. But never before, master, did I see

such a sight as when I awoke. We had been sleeping on the carcases of

ten thousand Turks, whom Bonaparty had massacred about a twelvemonth

before. There were eyeless skulls grinning at us by hundreds from the

side of the ditch, and black, withered hands and feet sticking out, with

the white bones glittering between the shrunken sinews. The very sand,

for roods around, had a brown iron-like tinge, and seemed baked into a

half-solid mass, resembling clay. It was no place to loiter in; and you

may trust me, master, we breakfasted elsewhere. Bill kept close to our

captain all that morning; he didn't much like him, even so early in

their acquaintance as this--no one did, in fact; but he was anxious to

learn from him all he could regarding the colonel. He told him, too,

something about his own early recollections; but he would better have

kept them to himself. From that hour, master, Captain Turpic never gave

him a pleasant look, and sought every means to ruin him.

We joined the army again on the evening of the 20th March. You know,

master, what awaited us next morning. I had been marching, on the day of

our arrival, for twelve hours, under a very hot sun, and was fatigued

enough to sleep soundly. But the dead might have awakened next morning.

The enemy broke in upon us about three o'clock. It was pitch dark. I had

been dreaming, at the moment, that I was busily engaged in the landing,

fighting in the front rank beside Bill, and I awoke to hear the enemy,

outside the tent, struggling in fierce conflict with such of my comrades

as, half-naked and half-armed, had been roused by the first alarm, and

had rushed out to oppose them. You will not think I was long in joining

them, master, when I tell you that Bill himself was hardly two steps

a-head of me. Colonel Westhope was everywhere at once that morning,

bringing his men in the darkness and the confusion, into something like

order; threatening, encouraging, applauding, issuing orders--all in a

breath. Just as we got out, the French broke through, beside our tent,

and we saw him struck down in the throng. Bill gave a tremendous cry of

'Our colonel! our colonel!' and struck his pike up to the cross into the

breast of the fellow who had given the blow. And, hardly had that one

fallen, than he sent it crashing through the face of the next foremost,

till it lay buried in the brain. The enemy gave back for a moment; and,

as he was striking down a third, the colonel got up, badly wounded in

the shoulder; but he kept the field all day. He knew Bill the moment he

rose, and leant on him till he had somewhat recovered. 'I shall not

forget, Bill,' he said, 'that you have saved your colonel's life.' We

had a fierce struggle, master, ere we beat out the French; but, broken

and half-naked as we were, we did beat them out, and the battle became

general.

At first, the flare of the artillery, as the batteries blazed out in the

darkness, dazzled and blinded me; but I loaded and fired incessantly;

and the thicker the bullets went whistling past me, the faster I loaded

and fired. A spent shot, that had struck through a sandbank, came

rolling on like a bowl, and, leaping up from a hillock in front, struck

me on the breast. It was such a blow, master, as a man might have given

with his fist; but it knocked me down; and, ere I got up, the company

was a few paces in advance. The bonnet of the soldier who had taken my

place, came rolling to my feet ere I could join them. But, alas! it was

full of blood and brains; and I found that the spent shot had come just

in time to save my life. Meanwhile, the battle raged with redoubled fury

on the left, and we in the centre had a short respite. And some of us

needed it. For my own part, I had fired about a hundred rounds; and my

right shoulder was as blue as your waistcoat.

You will wonder, master, how I should notice such a thing in the heat of

an engagement; but I remember nothing better than that there was a flock

of little birds shrieking and fluttering over our heads for the greater

part of the morning. The poor little things seemed as if robbed of their

very instinct by the incessant discharges on every side of them; and,

instead of pursuing a direct course, which would soon have carried them

clear of us, they kept fluttering in helpless terror in one little spot.

About mid-day an _aide-de-camp_ went riding by us to the right.

'How goes it? how goes it?' asked one of our officers.

'It is just _who will_,' replied the _aide-de-camp_, and passed by like

lightning. Another followed hard after him.

'How goes it now?' inquired the officer.

'Never better, boy!' said the second rider. 'The Forty-Second have cut

Bonaparty's Invincibles to pieces, and all the rest of the enemy are

falling back!'

We came more into action a little after. The enemy opened a heavy fire

on us, and seemed advancing to the charge. I had felt so fatigued,

master, during the previous pause, that I could scarcely raise my hand

to my head; but, now that we were to be engaged again, all my fatigue

left me, and I found myself grown fresh as ever. There were two

field-pieces to our left that had done noble execution during the day;

and Captain Turpic's company, including Bill and me, were ordered to

stand by them in the expected charge. They were wrought mostly by seamen

from the vessels--brave, tight fellows, who, like Nelson, never saw

fear; but they had been so busy that they had shot away most of their

ammunition; and, as we came up to them, they were about despatching a

party to the rear for more.

'Right,' said Captain Turpic; 'I don't care though I lend you a hand,

and go with you.'

'On your peril, sir!' said Bill Whyte, 'What! leave your company in the

moment of the expected charge? I shall assuredly report you for

cowardice and desertion of quarters, if you do.'

'And I shall have you broke for mutiny,' said the captain. 'How can

these fellows know how to choose their ammunition without some one to

direct them?'

And so off he went to the rear, with the sailors; but, though they

returned, poor fellows! in ten minutes or so, we saw no more of the

captain till evening. On came the French in their last charge. Ere they

could close with us, the sailors had fired their field-pieces thrice;

and we could see wide avenues opened among them with each discharge. But

on they came. Our bayonets crossed and clashed with theirs for one half

minute; and, in the next, they were hurled headlong down the declivity,

and we were fighting among them pell-mell. There are few troops superior

to the French, master, in a first attack; but they want the bottom of

the British; and, now that we had broken them in the moment of their

onset, they had no chance with us, and we pitched our bayonets into them

as if they were so many sheaves in harvest. They lay in some places

three and four tier deep--for our blood was up, master,--just as they

advanced on us, we had heard of the death of our general; and they

neither asked for quarter nor got it. Ah, the good and gallant Sir

Ralph! We all felt as if we had lost a father; but he died as the brave

best love to die. The field was all our own; and not a Frenchman

remained who was not dead or dying. That action, master, fairly broke

the neck of their power in Egypt.

Our colonel was severely wounded, as I have told you, early in the

morning; but, though often enough urged to retire, he had held out all

day, and had issued his orders with all the coolness and decision for

which he was so remarkable; but, now that the excitement of the fight

was over, his strength failed him at once, and he had to be carried to

his tent. He called for Bill, to assist in bearing him off. I believe it

was merely that he might have an opportunity of speaking to him. He

told him that, whether he died or lived, he would take care that he

should be provided for. He gave Captain Turpic charge, too, that he

should keep a warm side to Bill. I overheard our major say to the

captain, as we left the tent--'Good heavens! did you ever see two men

liker one another than the colonel and our new sergeant?' But the

captain carelessly remarked, that the resemblance didn't strike him.

We met, outside, with a comrade. He had had a cousin in the

Forty-Second, he said, who had been killed that morning, and he was

anxious to see the body decently burried, and wished us to go along with

him. And so we both went. It is nothing, master, to see men struck down

in warm blood, and when one's own blood is up; but oh, 'tis a grievous

thing, after one has cooled down to one's ordinary mood, to go out among

the dead and the dying. We passed through what had been the thick of the

battle. The slain lay in hundreds and thousands--like the ware and

tangle on the shore below us--horribly broken, some of them, by the

shot; and blood and brains lay spattered on the sand. But it was a worse

sight to see, when some poor wretch, who had no chance of living an hour

longer, opened his eyes as we passed, and cried out for water. We soon

emptied our canteens, and then had to pass on. In no place did the dead

lie thicker than where the Forty-Second had engaged the Invincibles, and

never were there finer fellows. They lay piled in heaps--the best men of

Scotland over the best men of France--and their wounds, and their

number, and the postures in which they lay, showed how tremendous the

struggle had been. I saw one gigantic corpse, with the head and neck

cloven through the steel cab to the very brisket. It was that of a

Frenchman; but the hand that had drawn the blow, lay cold and stiff, not

a yard away, with the broadsword still firm in its grasp. A little

farther on, we found the body we sought. It was that of a fair young

man; the features were as composed as if he were asleep; there was even

a smile on the lips; but a cruel cannon shot had torn the very heart out

of the breast. Evening was falling. There was a little dog whining and

whimpering over the body, aware, it would seem, that some great ill had

befallen its master; but yet tugging, from time to time, at his clothes,

that he might rise and come away.

'Ochon, ochon! poor Evan M'Donald!' exclaimed our comrade; 'what would

Christy Ross, or your good old mother, say to see you lying here!'

Bill burst out a-crying, as if he had been a child; and I couldn't keep

dry-eyed neither, master. But grief and pity are weaknesses of the

bravest natures. We scooped out a hole in the sand with our bayonets and

our hands, and, burying the body, came away.

The battle of the 21st broke, as I have said, the strength of the French

in Egypt; for, though they didn't surrender to us until about five

months after, they kept snug behind their walls, and we saw little more

of them. Our colonel had gone aboard of the frigate, desperately ill of

his wounds--so ill that it was several times reported he was dead; and

most of our men were suffering sadly from sore eyes ashore. But such of

us as escaped, had little to do, and we contrived to wile away the time

agreeably enough. Strange country, Egypt, master. You know, our people

have come from there; but, trust me, I could find none of my cousins

among either the Turks or the Arabs. The Arabs, master, are quite the

gipsies of Egypt: and Bill and I--but he paid dearly for them

afterwards, poor fellow--used frequently to visit such of their

straggling tribes as came to the neighbourhood of our camp. You, and the

like of you, master, are curious to see _our_ people, and how we get

on--and no wonder; and we were just as curious to see the Arabs. Toward

evening, they used to come in from the shore or the desert, in parties

of ten or twelve; and wild-looking fellows they were; tall, but not very

tall; thin, and skinny, and dark; and an amazing proportion of them

blind of an eye--an effect, I suppose, of the disease from which our

comrades were suffering so much. In a party of ten or twelve--and their

parties rarely exceeded a dozen--we found that every one of them had

some special office to perform. One carried a fishing net, like a

herring have; one, perhaps, a basket of fish, newly caught; one a sheaf

of wheat; one, a large copper basin, or rather platter; one, a bundle of

the dead boughs and leaves of the date tree; one, the implements for

lighting a fire; and so on. The first thing they always did, after

squatting down in a circle, was to strike a light; the next, to dig a

round pot-like hole in the sand, in which they kindle their fire. When

the sand has become sufficiently hot, they throw out the embers, and,

placing the fish, just as they had caught them, in the bottom of the

hole, heaped the hot sand over them, and the fire over that. The sheaf

of wheat was next untied, and each taking a handful, held it over the

flame till it was sufficiently scorched, and then rubbed out the grain

between their hands, into the copper plate. The fire was then drawn off

a second time, and the fish dug out, and, after rubbing off the sand,

and taking out the bowels, they sat down to supper. And such, master,

was the ordinary economy of the poorer tribes, that seemed drawn to the

camp merely by curiosity. Some of the others brought fruit and

vegetables to our market, and were much encouraged by our officers; but

a set of greater rascals never breathed. At first, several of our men

got flogged through them. They had a trick of raising a hideous outcry

in the market place for every trifle--certain, d'ye see, of attracting

the notice of some of our officers, who were all sure to take part with

them. The market, master, had to be encouraged, at all events; and it

was some time ere the tricks of the rascals were understood in the

proper quarter. But, to make short, Bill and I went out one morning to

our walk. We had just heard--and heavy news it was to the whole

regiment--that our colonel was despaired of, and had no chance of seeing

out the day. Bill was in miserably low spirits. Captain Turpic had

insulted him most grossly that morning. So long as the colonel had been

expected to recover, he had shown him some degree of civility; but he

now took every opportunity of picking a quarrel with him. There was no

comparison in battle, master, between Bill and the captain; for the

captain, I suspect, was little better than a coward; but, then, there

was just as little on parade the other way; for Bill, you know, couldn't

know a great deal, and the captain was a perfect martinet. He had called

him vagrant and beggar, master, for omitting some little piece of duty;

now, he couldn't help having been with _us_, you know; and, as for

beggary, he had never begged in his life. Well, we had walked out

towards the market, as I say.

'It's all nonsense, Jack,' says he, 'to be so dull on the matter; I'll

e'en treat you to some fruit. I have a Sicilian dollar here. See that

lazy fellow with the spade lying in front, and the burning mountain

smoking behind him; we must see if he can't dig out for us a few

_prans'_ worth of dates.

Well, master, up he went to a tall, thin, rascally-looking Arab, with

one eye, and bought as much fruit from him as might come to one-tenth of

the dollar which he gave him, and then held out his hand for the change.

But there was no change forthcoming. Bill wasn't a man to be done out of

his cash in that silly way, and so he stormed at the rascal; but he, in

turn, stormed as furiously, in his own lingo, at him, till at last

Bill's blood got up, and, seizing him by the breast, he twisted him over

his knee, as one might a boy of ten years or so. The fellow raised a

hideous outcry, as if Bill were robbing and murdering him. Two officers,

who chanced to be in the market at the time, came running up at the

noise; one of them was the scoundrel Turpic; and Bill was laid hold of,

and sent off under guard to the camp. Poor fellow! he got scant justice

there. Turpic had procured a man-of-war's man, who swore, as he well

might, indeed, that Bill was the smuggler who had swamped the

Kirkcudbright custom-house boat. There was another brought forward, who

swore that both of us were gipsies, and told a blasted rigmarole story,

without one word of truth in it, about the stealing of a silver spoon.

The Arab had his story, too, in his own lingo; and they received every

word of it; for my evidence went for nothing. I was of a race who never

spoke the truth, they said--as if I weren't as good as a Mahommedan

Arab. To crown all, in came Turpic's story, about what he called Bill's

mutinous spirit in the action of the 21st. You may guess the rest,

master. The poor fellow was broke that morning, and told that, were it

not in consideration of his bravery, he would have got a flogging into

the bargain.

I spent the evening of that day with Bill, outside the camp, and we ate

the dates together, that in the morning had cost him so dear. The report

had gone abroad--luckily a false one--that our colonel was dead; and

that put an end to all hope, with the poor fellow, of having his case

righted. We spoke together for, I am sure, two hours--spoke of Bill's

early recollections, and of the hardship of his fate all along. And it

was now worse with him, he said, than it had ever been before. He spoke

of the strange, unaccountable hostility of Turpic; and I saw his brow

grow dark, and the veins of his neck swell almost to bursting. He

trusted they might yet meet, he said, where there would be none to note

who was the officer and who the private soldier. I did my best, master,

to console the poor fellow, and we parted. The first thing I saw as I

opened the tent door next morning, was Captain Turpic, brought into the

camp by the soldier whose cousin Bill and I had assisted to bury. The

captain was leaning on his shoulder, somewhat less than half alive, as

it seemed, with four of his front teeth struck out, and a stream of

blood all along his vest and small clothes. He had been met with by

Bill, who had attacked him, he said, and, after breaking his sword,

would have killed him, had not the soldier come up and interfered. But

that, master, was the captain's story. The soldier told me, afterwards,

that he saw the captain draw his sword ere Bill lifted hand at all; and

that, when the poor fellow did strike, he gave him only one knock-down

blow on the mouth, that laid him insensible at his feet; and that, when

down, though he might have killed him twenty times over, he didn't so

much as crook a finger on him. Nay, more; Bill offered to deliver

himself up to the soldier, had not the latter assured him that he would

to a certainty be shot, and advised him to make off. There was a party

dispatched in quest of him, master, the moment Turpic had told his

story; but he was lucky enough, poor fellow, to elude them; and they

returned in the evening, just as they had gone out. And I saw no more of

Bill in Egypt, master.

Never had troops less to do than we had, for the six months or so we

afterwards remained in the country; and time hung wretchedly on the

hands of some of us. Now that Bill was gone, I had no comrade with whom

I cared to associate; and, as you may think, I often didn't know what to

do with myself. After all our fears and regrets, master, our colonel

recovered, and, one morning, about four months after the action, came

ashore to see us. We were sadly pestered with flies, master. I have

seen, I am sure, a bushel of them on the top of our tent at once. They

buzzed all night by millions round our noses, and many a plan did we

think of to get rid of them; but, after destroying hosts on hosts they

still seemed as thick as before. I had fallen on a new scheme this

morning. I placed some sugar on a board, and surrounded it with

gunpowder; and, when the flies had settled by thousands on the sugar, I

fired the powder by means of a train, and the whole fell dead on the

floor of the tent. I had just got a capital shot, when up came the

colonel, and sat down beside me.

'I wish to know,' he said, 'all you can tell me about Bill Whyte; you

were his chief friend and companion, I have heard, and are acquainted

with his early history. Can you tell me ought of his parentage.'

'Nothing of that, colonel,' I said; 'and yet I have known Bill almost

ever since he knew himself.'

And so, master, I told him all that I knew; how Bill had been first

taken to us by my mother; of the purse of gold she had brought with her,

which had kept us all so merry; and of the noble spirit he had shown

among us when he grew up. I told him, too, of some of Bill's early

recollections; of the scarlet dress trimmed with silver, which had been

brought to his mind by the sergeant's coat the first day he wore it; of

the gentleman and lady, too, whom he remembered to have lived with; and

of the supposed resemblance he had found between the former and the

colonel. The colonel, as I went on, was strangely agitated, master. He

held an open letter in his hand, and seemed, every now and then, to be

comparing particulars; and, when I mentioned Bill's supposed recognition

of him, he actually started from off his seat.

'Good Heavens!' he exclaimed, 'why was I not brought acquainted with

this before!'

I explained the why, master, and told him all about Captain Turpic; and

he left me with, you may be sure, no very favourable opinion of the

captain. But I must now tell you, master, a part of my story which I had

but from hearsay.

The colonel had been getting over the worse effects of his wound, when

he received a letter from a friend in England, informing him that his

brother-in-law, the father of Captain Turpic, had died suddenly, and

that his sister, who, to all appearance was fast following, had been

making strange discoveries regarding an only son of the colonel's, who

was supposed to have been drowned about seventeen years before. The

colonel had lost both his lady and child by a frightful accident. His

estate lay near Olney, on the banks of the Ouse; and the lady, one day,

during the absence of the colonel, who was in London, was taking an

airing in the carriage with her son, a boy of three years or so, when

the horses took fright, and, throwing the coachman, who was killed on

the spot, rushed into the river. The Ouse is a deep, sluggish stream,

dark and muddy in some of the more dangerous pools, and mantled over

with weeds. It was into one of these the carriage was overturned;

assistance came too late, and the unfortunate lady was brought out, a

corpse; but the body of the child was nowhere to be found. It now came

out, however, from the letter, that the child had been picked up,

unhurt, by the colonel's brother-in-law, who, after concealing it for

nearly a week, during the very frenzy of the colonel's distress, had

then given it to a gipsy. The rascal's only motive--he was a lawyer,

master--was that his own son, the captain, who was then a boy of twelve

years or so, and not wholly ignorant of the circumstance, might succeed

to the colonel's estate. The writer of the letter added that, on coming

to the knowledge of the singular confession, he had made instant search

after the gipsy to whom the child had been given, and had been

fortunate enough to find her, after tracing her over half the kingdom,

in a cave, near Fortrose, in the north of Scotland. She had confessed

all; stating, however, that the lad, who had borne among the tribe the

name of Bill Whyte, and had turned out a fine fellow, had been outlawed,

for some smuggling feat, about eighteen months before, and had enlisted,

with a young man, her son, into a regiment bound for Egypt. You see,

master, there couldn't be a shadow of doubt that my comrade, Bill Whyte,

was just Henry Westhope, the colonel's son and heir. But the grand

matter was where to find him. Search as we might, all search was in

vain; we could trace him no further than outside the camp, to where he

had met with Captain Turpic. I should tell you, by the way, that the

captain was now sent to Coventry, by every one, and that not an officer

in the regiment would return his salute.

Well, master, the months passed, and at length the French surrendered;

and, having no more to do in Egypt, we all re-embarked, and sailed for

England. The short peace had been ratified before our arrival; and I,

who had become heartily tired of the life of a soldier, now that I had

no one to associate with, was fortunate enough to obtain my discharge.

The colonel retired from the service at the same time. He was as kind to

me as if he had been my father, and offered to make me his forester, if

I would but come and live beside him; but I was too fond of a wandering

life for that. He was corresponding, he told me, with every British

consul within fifteen hundred miles of the Nile; but he had heard

nothing of Bill, master. Well, after seeing the colonel's estate, I

parted from him, and came north, to find out my people, which I soon

did; and, for a year or so, I lived with them just as I have been doing

since. I was led, in the course of my wanderings, to Leith, and was

standing, one morning, on the pier among a crowd of people, who had

gathered round to see a fine vessel from the Levant, that was coming in

at the time, when my eye caught among the sailors a man exceedingly like

Bill. He was as tall, and even more robust, and he wrought with all

Bill's activity; but, for some time I could not catch a glimpse of his

face. At length, however, he turned round, and there, sure enough, was

Bill himself. I was afraid to hail him, master, not knowing who among

the crowd might also know him, and know him also as a deserter or an

outlaw; but you may be sure I wasn't long in leaping aboard and making

up to him. And we were soon as happy, master, in one of the cellars of

the Coal-hill, as we had been in all our lives before.

Bill told me his history since our parting. He had left the captain

lying at his feet, and struck across the sand, in the direction of the

Nile, one of the mouths of which he reached next day. He there found

some Greek sailors, who were employed in watering; and, assisting them

in their work, he was brought aboard their vessel, and engaged as a

seaman by the master, who had lost some of his crew by the plague. As

you may think, master, he soon became a prime sailor, and continued with

the Greeks, trading among the islands of the Archipelago, for about

eighteen months, when, growing tired of the service, and meeting with an

English vessel, he had taken a passage home. I told him how much ado we

had all had about him after he had left us, and how we were to call him

Bill Whyte no longer. And so, in short, master, we set out together for

Colonel Westhope's.

In our journey, we met with some of our people on a wild moor of

Cumberland, and were invited to pass the night with them. They were of

the Curlit family; but you will hardly know them as that. Two of them

had been with us when Bill swamped the custom-house boat. They were

fierce, desperate fellows, and not much to be trusted by their friends

even; and I was afraid that they might have somehow come to guess that

Bill had brought some clinkers home with him. And so, master, I would

fain have dissuaded him from making any stay with them in the night

time; for I did not know, you see, in what case we might find our

_weasands_ in the morning; but Bill had no fears of any kind, and was,

besides, desirous to spend one last night with the gipsies; and so he

stayed. The party had taken up their quarters in a waste house on the

moor, with no other human dwelling within four miles of it. There was a

low, stunted wood on the one side, master, and a rough, sweeping stream

on the other: the night, too, was wild and boisterous; and, what between

suspicion and discomfort, I felt well nigh as drearily as I did when

lying among the dead men in Egypt. We were nobly treated, however, and

the whisky flowed like water, but we drank no more than was good for us.

Indeed, Bill was never a great drinker; and I kept on my guard, and

refused the liquor, on the plea of a bad head. I should have told you

that there were but three of the Curlits--all of them raw-boned fellows,

however, and all of them of such stamp that the three have since been

hung. I saw they were sounding Bill; but he seemed aware of them.

'Ay, ay,' said he, 'I have made something by my voyaging, lads, though,

mayhap, not a great deal. What think you of that there now, for

instance?'--drawing, as he spoke, a silver-mounted pistol out of each

pocket--'these are pretty pops, and as good as they are pretty; the

worst of them sends a bullet through an inch board at twenty yards.'

'Are they loaded, Bill?' asked Tom Curlit.

'To be sure,' said Bill, returning them again, each to its own pouch.

'What is the use of an empty pistol?'

'Ah,' replied Tom, 'I smell a rat, Bill. You have given over making war

on the king's account, and have taken the road to make war on your own.

Bold enough, to be sure.'

From the moment, they saw the pistols, the brothers seemed to have

changed their plan regarding us--for some plan I am certain they had.

They would now fain have taken us into partnership with them; but their

trade was a woundy bad one, master, with a world more of risk than

profit.

'Why lads,' said Tom Curlit to Bill and me, 'hadn't you better stay with

us altogether? The road won't do in these days at all. No, no, the law

is a vast deal over strong for that; and you will be tucked up like dogs

for your very first affair. But, if you stay with us, you will get on in

a much quieter way on this wild moor here. Plenty of game, Bill; and,

sometimes, when the nights are long, we contrive to take a purse with as

little trouble as may be. We had an old pedlar, only three weeks ago,

that brought us sixty good pounds.--By the way, brothers, we must throw

a few more sods over him, for I nosed him this morning as I went

by.--And, lads, we have something in hand just now that, with to be sure

a little more risk, will pay better still. Two hundred yellow boys in

hand, and five hundred more when our work is done. Better that, Bill,

than standing to be shot at, for a shilling per day.'

'Two hundred in hand, and five hundred more when you have done your

work!' exclaimed Bill. 'Why, that is sure enough princely pay, unless

the work be very bad indeed. But, come, tell us what you propose. You

can't expect us to make it a leap in the dark matter.'

'The work is certainly a little dangerous,' said Tom, 'and we of

ourselves are rather few; but, if you both join with us, there would be

a vast deal less of danger indeed. The matter is just this. A young

fellow, like ourselves, has a rich old uncle, who has made his will in

his favour; but then he threatens to make another will that won't be so

favourable to him by half; and you see the drawing across of a

knife--so--would keep the first one in force. And that is all we have to

do before pocketing the blunt. But, then, the old fellow is as brave as

a lion; and there are two servants with him, worn-out soldiers like

himself, that would, I am sure, be rough customers. With your help,

however, we shall get on primely. The old boy's house stands much alone;

and we shall be five to three.'

'Well, well,' said Bill, 'we shall give your proposal a night's thought,

and tell you what we think of it in the morning. But, remember, no

tricks, Tom! If we engage in the work, we must go share and share alike

in the booty.'

'To be sure,' said Tom; and so the conversation closed.

About eight o'clock, or so, master, I stepped out to the door. The night

was dark and boisterous as ever, and there had come on a heavy rain. But

I could see that, dark and boisterous as it was, some one was

approaching the house with a dark lanthern. I lost no time in telling

the Curlits so.

'It must be the captain,' said they; 'though it seems strange that he

should come here to-night. You must away, Jack and Bill, to the loft,

for it mayn't do for the captain to find you here; but you can lend us a

hand afterwards, should need require it.'

There was no time for asking explanations, master; and so up we climbed

to the loft, and had got snugly concealed among some old hay, when in

came the captain. But what captain, think you? Why, just our old

acquaintance, Captain Turpic!

'Lads,' he said to the Curlits, 'make yourselves ready; get your

pistols. Our old scheme is blown; for the colonel has left his house at

Olney, on a journey to Scotland; but he passes here to-night, and you

must find means to stop him--now or never!'

'What force and what arms has he with him, captain?' asked Tom.

'The coachman, his body servant, and himself,' said the captain; 'but

only the servant and himself are armed. The stream outside is high

to-night; you must take them just as they are crossing it, and thinking

of only the water; and, whatever else you may mind, make sure of the

colonel.'

'Sure as I live,' said Bill to me, in a low whisper, ''tis a plan to

murder Colonel Westhope! And, good Heavens!' he continued, pointing

through an opening in the gable, 'yonder is his carriage, not a mile

away. You may see the lantherns, like two fiery eyes, coming sweeping

along the moor. We have no time to lose; let us slide down through the

opening, and meet with it.'

As soon done as said, master; we slid down along the turf gable, crossed

the stream, which had risen high on its banks, by a plank bridge for

foot passengers, and then dashed along the broken road in the direction

of the carriage. We came up to it, as it was slowly crossing an open

drain.

'Colonel Westhope!' I cried, 'Colonel Westhope!--stop! stop!--turn back!

You are waylaid by a party of ruffians, who will murder you if you go

on.'

The door opened and the colonel stepped out, with his sword under his

left arm, and a cocked pistol in his hand.

'Is not that Jack Whyte?' he asked.

'The same, noble colonel,' I said; 'and here is Henry, your son.'

It was no place or time, master, for long explanations; there was one

hearty congratulation, and one hurried embrace; and the colonel, after

learning from Bill the number of the assailants, and the plan of the

attack, ordered the carriage to drive on slowly before, and followed,

with us and his servant, on foot, behind.

'The rascals,' he said, 'will be so dazzled with the flare of the

lantherns in front, that we will escape notice till they have fired, and

then we shall have them for the picking down.'

And so it was, master. Just as the carriage was entering the stream, the

coachman was pulled down by Tom Curlit; at the same instant, three

bullets went whizzing through the glasses, and two fellows came leaping

out from behind some furze to the carriage door. A third, whom I knew to

be the captain, lagged behind. I marked him, however; and when the

colonel and Bill were disposing of the other two--and they took them so

sadly by surprise, master, that they had but little difficulty in

throwing them down, and binding them--I was lucky enough to send a piece

of lead through the captain. He ran about twenty yards, and then dropped

down, stone dead. Tom escaped us; but he cut a throat some months after,

and suffered for it at Carlisle. And his two brothers, after making a

clean breast, and confessing all, were transported for life. But they

found means to return in a few years after, and were both hung on the

gallows on which Tom had suffered before them.

I have not a great deal more to tell you, master. The colonel has been

dead for the last twelve years, and his son has succeeded him in his

estate. There is not a completer gentleman in England than Henry

Westhope, master, nor a finer fellow. I call on him every time I go

round, and never miss a hearty welcome; though, by the by, I am quite as

sure of a hearty scold. He still keeps a snug little house empty for me,

and offers to settle on me fifty pounds a-year, whenever I choose to

give up my wandering life, and go and live with him. But what's bred in

the bone won't come out of the flesh, master, and I have not yet closed

with his offer. And, really, to tell you my mind, I don't think it quite

respectable. Here I am, at present, a free, independent tinker--no man

more respectable than a tinker, master--all allow that; whereas, if I go

and live with Bill, on an unwrought-for fifty pounds a-year, I will be

hardly better than a mere master tailor or shoemaker. No, no, that would

never do! Nothing like respectability, master, let a man fare as hard as

he may.

I thanked the gipsy for his story, and told him I thought it almost

worth while putting it in print. He thanked me, in turn, for liking it

so well, and assured me I was quite at liberty to put it in print as

soon as I choose. And so I took him at his word.

"But yonder," said he, "is the moon rising, red and huge over the three

tops of Belrinnes, and throwing, as it brightens, its long strip of fire

across the Frith. Take care of your footing, just as you reach the top

of the crag; there is an awkward gap there on the rock edge that reminds

me of an Indian trap; but, as for the rest of the path, you will find it

quite as safe as by day. Good-by!"

I left him, and made the best of my way home; where, while the facts

were fresh in my mind, I committed to paper (for the express purpose of

having it inserted among the Border Tales) the gipsy's story.

THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.

THE LAST OF THE PEDLARS.

"Atlas was so exceeding strong,

He bore the skies upon his back,

Just as a pedlar does his pack."--SWIFT.

The whole framework of society has been so much altered within these

last sixty years, that a person who has been born within that period,

unless from tradition, must remain entirely ignorant of the manners and

habits of his immediate predecessors. _Now_, highroads, carriages by

land and water, with all manner of facilities of intercourse, have

brought every part of the country, even the most remote corners, into

contact, as it were, with every other part. Any great or engrossing fact

or feeling flies immediately, on wings of paper, and in characters of

ink, from land's-end to land's-end. But, formerly, this was very far

from being the case. The press, as a vehicle of public news, was

altogether in its infancy. Roads _were_ not, or they were all _but_

impassable; and the one end of the island might be sunk into the sea,

without the other extremity having any immediate perception of the loss.

But we must not conclude, on this account, that our forefathers were

without curiosity, or without the means of gratifying that passion for

news which is deeply seated in our nature. Not at all; the very

inconveniences of their position produced, in a great measure, the means

of reciprocal intelligence.

There were the tailor and the trogger, but, above and beyond all, the

pedlar, the most respected and interesting of all walking and migrating

gazettes, who, in the non-existence of woollen-drapers and haberdashers,

nailed, like bad silver, to a locality, wandered from Dan to

Beersheba--in other words, from Glasgow to Manchester, and _vice

versa_--carrying all manner of fashionable clothing on their backs, and

a vast assortment of fore-night gabble in their heads. As these

itinerant merchants behoved to be young and strong, so they were

generally unmarried, and kept up a kind of running fire with the lasses.

Their opportunities of observing the characteristics of the farmer's

fireside were unbounded, as they not unfrequently remained stationary

for two or three days in one place. After several years of laborious

travel, and enormous profits, at little or no expense in point of diet,

such individuals generally purchased a stout horse, to carry the

increased load of goods. The horse, again, was ultimately attached to a

waggon, and the waggon, at last, stuck in the midst of some flourishing

village or town, and became a regular haberdashery shop. Thus, through

industry, all but dishonest parsimony, prudence, and perseverance, a

comfortable independence often crowned the old age of the packman; and

he was not unfrequently found with a fishing-rod by the mountain-stream,

or with a book in the corner of his snug little garden, towards the

close of his varied and eventful history. It was but the other day that

we attended the sale of an old bachelor of this description--the last,

we believe, of the race--and that, amidst a parcel of old books and

papers, which we purchased _en masse_, we discovered a well written and

somewhat extended manuscript, from which we intend to cull a few

chapters for the amusement of our readers.

CHAPTER I.

It is now upwards of sixty years (says the packman) since I first took

yard-wand in hand, and pack on back, addicting myself to much pedestrian

travel, with the view of supplying dames with needles and shears,

maidens with shawls and Bibles, and servant lads with watch-chains and

waistcoat pieces. Having, at last, and after many wanderings and much

converse with men, women, and children--not to mention dogs, which, in

the hill-country, are numerous and noisy--having, I say, at last

reached, as it were, a port or haven of rest, I sit here in my arm

chair, with old Ponto on one side, and my not less faithful friend, the

schoolmaster, on the other, keeping a calm look out over the ocean upon

which I have been tossed, and recalling, as well as endeavouring in the

best way I can to narrate, the somewhat varied incidents of my past

life.

It is quite true that I was never properly bred for any profession, but

was simply educated in the reading of English, and in the keeping of

accounts, and may, therefore, be supposed to be very unfit for anything

like grand composition, or style of language; but in case this narrative

should, by any accident, as they say, _see the light_, I must premise

that I am possessed of advantages of which the reader, till I inform

him, cannot possibly be apprised. I have the benefit of my friend the

schoolmaster's strictures; of which, however, I shall only avail myself,

in regard to the language, and that merely when I am fairly convinced

that he is right and that I am wrong. With the wording of this very last

sentence, Dominie Tawse finds fault, and insists upon it, that there is,

I think he calls it, a "pleonasm" in it; but of this he has failed to

convince me, and I therefore suffer the sentence to stand as it was

originally written. In fact, I have a great respect for my good friend,

the Dominie's opinions, in most occasions, but really, in regard to

composition, his taste has been perverted by certain rules and

regulations, to which he gives very hard names, and to which, in my

opinion, he sacrifices both ease and sense.

I pass over the history of my early days. Were I to enter upon them, I

should write a volume, and still have volumes to write; for I was born

in a mountain glen, beside a mountain stream--my father being a

shepherd--and where I grew insensibly into an affectionate friendship

for everything around me; for my dear and indulgent mother; for my douce

and sagacious father; for our two dogs, Help and Watch; for the old grey

cat; for all manner of wooden trenchers, spoons, and ladles; for the

stream that winded past the byre-end; for every fin that shoot across

the pool; for the sheep bleating upon the brae and glen; for the glen

and brae themselves; for the mist, the clouds, the sky, the sun, the

moon, the stars--which all seemed made for and subservient to us, and us

alone. I pass over the killing of my first trout, with a crooked pin, my

noviciate in fishing, and my amazing progress and success in after

years; but I cannot pass over a song, which, in these my days of

youthful glee, I laboured into something like the tune, I think, of

"Blue Bonnets over the Border:"--

"Oh, would you wish to gang to the fishing, lad--

Ye maun get up in the morning sae early,

Wi' step like the roe-deer, and blythe heart and glad,

And tackle in order, to start to it fairly.

Away! while the sleepers around you are dreaming,

Away! while the grey eye of morning is beaming,

Ere the mist leaves the mountain,

The wild duck the fountain,

Or the pure light of day o'er the world is streaming.

"Gang down by the glen where the burnie rows gently,

When the light western breeze the stream ripples over;

By the deep eddied pools, where, silent and tently,

The trout keep his watch, 'neath the willowed bank's cover

And there, with the fly, where the water winds slowly,

Neatly and clean throw it out just below you;

Watch for him steadily,

Strike at him readily.

And run him till, faint, on the sward he lies lowly.

With the well-seasoned bait in the streams that are fleetest,

Fish the large yellow fellows, two pounders or more;

You are sure of a tune to the fisher's ear sweetest,

For the sound of the pirn is all music before.

He comes with a boil, like a deep caldron gasping,

So sudden and keenly the tempting bait grasping--

Hark to him dashing!

See to him splashing!

Now he pants on the green, and your hand cannot clasp him."

I pass over, likewise, the mournful recollection of my worthy father's

death. He was swept away in an avalanche, which, on the melting of the

snow, detached itself from the mountain's brow. He and Help perished

together. Oh, I remember, as it were but yesterday, Watch's look when he

entered the house, and all but told us in words what had happened. But

what avail such recollections? My father was dead, and, in a few hours,

my mother followed him; she was seized prematurely with her pains, and,

ere assistance could be procured, there was a dead mother and a

still-born child. I wonder yet that I kept my senses; but I was

stupified. My uncle, a gruff and worldly-minded, but shrewd carle,

arranged and managed everything, and took me home with him, the day

after the double funeral.

My mother's brother--with whom I now lived, and by whom I was educated,

in the town of Moffat, Dumfriesshire--had made a respectable

independence as a packman; and having only one son, and being a widower,

he found no great inconvenience in accommodating me. His son was grown

up; and, having a natural taste for a sea-faring life, he was, soon

after my arrival, placed as middy on board of an East Indiaman; so my

uncle and I had the whole house to ourselves. But my uncle's temper was

bad; and there was that in his manner to me which seemed ever and anon

to say--You are devilishly in my road, I wish I were quit of you.

Accordingly, being now a pretty well-educated lad of seventeen, I cast

about in my own mind for a profession, or some way or other of

supporting myself, independent of my snarling relative. Jamaica, I

remember, was thought of, and I even had some pairs of shoes made for

the voyage; but the person died on whose patronage my uncle relied, and

the scheme luckily blew up. I wrote a good hand, and was quite master of

book-keeping, both by single and double entry; so I was put to a

writer's desk in Dumfries, with many admonitions, and much wise

instruction. But I had been accustomed to the hills and streams, and

fishing, and all the varieties of an active life; and so, one fine

evening, I went out to walk on the banks of the Nith, but forgot to

return to my desk next morning. In fact, I had returned to Moffat,

telling my uncle that I was tired of sitting, and would rather, like

himself, carry a pack. At this he seemed at first somewhat startled;

but, finding me resolute, he at last consented, and agreed to furnish me

with credit to the amount of L20 sterling. A suitable box was

accordingly purchased, and a somewhat limited assortment of penknives,

watch-seals, scissors, thimbles, needles, pins, brooches, Bibles, and

Psalm-books, with a small assortment of shawls, waistcoat pieces, and

Kilmarnock night-caps, &c., were selected and packed up; and the

following morning was fixed upon for my departure, when my uncle

requested my company for a little in his own small sitting room, off the

kitchen.

"You are about," said my uncle, "to enter upon a profession, the profits

of which, if rated according to shop regulations, would be altogether

inadequate to the recompense of your risk and trouble; you must,

therefore, effect an 'assurance,' as it were, by disposing of every

article at the highest price you can possibly obtain. Ask, if you mean

to secure a reasonable and a remunerating profit, at least double the

prime or original cost; and thus you can afford to be prigged, or beat

down from penny to penny, till you all but swear that the purchaser has

the article below prime cost. In all your travels, never lodge at an inn

or public house. One single instance of this, well authenticated, would

ruin your trade for ever; for every lad and lass, every guidman and

guidwife, would infallibly conclude, that, if you could afford such

expensive accommodation, it must undoubtedly be at their cost--it must

be exacted from the ribbons, shawls, gown and waistcoat pieces, with

which you supply them. You must, therefore, fix, as soon as may be, upon

your points or stations of regulated half-yearly or yearly calls; and

this is undoubtedly one of the nicest and most delicate points of your

profession, and must be managed, not so much on any general principle,

as by a reference to character and circumstance. There are, undoubtedly,

many farm-houses, from which the sooner that you depart, and relieve the

dogs of their clamour, the better. But this is not their universal or

even general character. Whenever you find the guidwife couthy and

heartsome, the guidman gruff, and frank, and honest, and the daughters

young and buxom, there deposit your pack on Saturday night, and if

greatly pressed, do not lift it again till Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

Monday or Tuesday, if you are up to your trade, can be advantageously

employed in exhibiting, bit by bit, and at intervals, the wonders of the

pack; in retailing, with a corresponding parsimony, your country and

city news; and in disposing of as many articles on trust (for you must

never deal for ready money only), as may entitle you to announce your

return with new patterns and fashions that day six or twelve months. To

the sheep or stock-farmer in particular, your periodical visits will be

the welcomest: for, as he lies at a distance from shops or cities, his

wants will be numerous, and his knowledge of the market price imperfect

in proportion. To him, too, you can render yourself useful on various

occasions. At speaning and smearing time, in particular, you can lend

him a lift; for you must never grudge a little labour of this sort, to

secure you a good market, and a welcome back again. There is a way, too,

of gratifying your customers, and of benefiting at the same time

yourself, which you would do well to observe: Whenever occasion may

offer, your maxim is to please them on the spot, and without delay; for

delays in purchasers, like those in other matters, are dangerous. Your

pack is exposed, and every eye is turned intently upon its many

attractions. The farmer's daughter is mightily pleased with a particular

pattern, but wishes it more of a superior quality. The only test,

however, which your inexperienced customer has of quality, is _price_.

You have asked, I shall suppose, five shillings, which may be about

double its value, for this pattern; but it will not do--a finer article

is wanted. You immediately recollect that you actually have such an

article somewhere else, and bustle over your goods in great seeming

confusion. At last, up the pattern turns; but the price is high--in

fact, you did not mean to part with it, as it was in a manner bespoke by

an old customer. Thus, the _very identical_ shawl is disposed of at

double the price, and your customer is obliged at the same time. The

neat performance of this allowable imposition, requires, however, some

previous practice, so that no suspicion may, in any case, attach to you.

"Never," continued my uncle, after inhaling his usual large allowance of

snuff--"never neglect golden opportunities, or favourable occasions. A

death is one of those most propitious occurrences; and, if it take place

suddenly, and in one of your 'starting families,' so much the better.

Hasten forward, or backward, (as may suit your purpose, on such

occasions), with all possible dispatch. Night and day you must continue

your travel towards the house of mourning, and, after suitable inquiries

and condolences, which must never be overtasked, you may, as it were

incidentally, mention that, by the most strange coincidence, your

present stock of mourning articles is full and good. A whole black suit

for the guidman, or a gown, at least, and ribbons for the mistress, will

yield a profit more than equal to console your grief, and reconcile you

to the behests of Providence.

"The lassie, again, who is thinking of marriage, will easily be

recognised by her bashful look and embarrassed manner. You will soon

learn to observe the great approaching event, in a laughing eye and an

excited demeanour--

"Coming events cast their shadows before;"

and, under the advanced shadow of this coming event, you will be able to

spread out your pack to some purpose. Whatever of head-gear, ribbon, or

lace, flutters in the wind, adorns the countenance, or borders a dress

gown, you will be ready to afford, at prices greatly reduced since last

season. Bridegrooms, too, make presents; and for this purpose you must

have neat-bound Bibles, gilt Psalm-books, and Boston's "Fourfold State."

Marriages have a natural tendency towards, and connexion with

christenings; and you will be a lame calculator if you cannot make it

your business to be present on these occasions, with such dresses as

infancy, thus circumstanced, is known to require.

"Fairs, too, and markets, are never beneath your notice; not that I

would advise you to attend indiscriminately such public resorts. There

is danger in this; for if, whilst selling, as you would be compelled to

do, your goods at a fair market price, some of your muirland customers

should observe it, your private and more lucrative trade would be

endangered; but, in markets sufficiently remote from your ordinary

route, no such consequences are to be apprehended, and there you may

occasionally get rid of some old and rather unsaleable stock.

"One of the most important secrets of the trade is, the recovery of bad

debts; for, however delighted your customers may be with their fine new

fashionable articles when they are purchased, the day of payment is

always an unwelcome day.

"So comes the reckoning, when the banquet's o'er,

The awful reckoning, and men smile no more."

"Servants, too, frequently change their service, and you will often have

great difficulty in tracing them out. In every instance, almost, some

particular procedure must be resorted to. In one case, you may succeed

by threats, and by pretending to read a warrant of apprehension; in

another, a little flattery may not be amiss, particularly with the fair

sex. 'It is, indeed, a pity that the price is not forthcoming: for you

never saw _her_ look so handsome as she did in the still unpaid article.

Could she only manage the one-half now, you would take her

acknowledgment for the other half, next time you came about,' &c. &c. In

desperate cases, desperate measures must be resorted to. For example,"

continued my knowing instructor, "I'll tell you how I once recovered

thirty shillings, which I had fully given up as lost.

"There was a servant lass, in the parish of Penpont, who had the

hardihood not only to refuse me payment, but actually to aver that she

owed me not a farthing, that she had already paid me, and would not pay

me twice over. True, she had no receipt for the money; but then I was in

the habit of receiving money without giving or being asked for any

receipt whatever. What was to be done? There had been no witnesses of

the transaction. Was I to sit quietly down, not only under the loss, but

under the suspicion that I was capable of charging twice for the same

purchase? I, at last, after much meditation, devised and carried into

effect the following method of recovery. I shut myself up in a room, in

the village of Penpont, for a day or two, and took care to have it

noised abroad, by means of a boy whom I had bribed into the secret,

first, that I had been taken suddenly and extremely ill, and lastly,

that I had died. This report I took particular care to have conveyed to

the ears of my fair debtor. She resided about two miles from the

village. In a day or two, my messenger repaired to the lady, averring

that I had left him, being a near relative, my heir, and that he had

found a debt due by her in my books, which debt he requested her to

liquidate incontinent. To this proposal Tibby opposed words and actions

of the most disdainful and reproachful character, calling my agent many

bad names, and at last setting him to the door by actual violence. In

the meantime, knowing what was likely to occur, I hove in sight, at the

further extremity of a grass field, in full uniform, with my well-known

pack on my back, and my yard-wand in my hand.

"'Aweel,' says Sandy, 'if ye winna pay, I canna help it; but there

_he's_ coming to speak to you _himsel_. So ye can e'en settle the

business atwixt ye.'

"'The Lord forbid!' exclaimed Tibby, looking towards my approach, with

staring eyes, and limbs trembling like an aspen leaf--'The Lord Almighty

forbid, Sandy! Come here! come here! Wait a moment till I get the key of

my trunk! Here, here! there's the money, every shilling, and see ye

letna the awfu' dead creature come ony nearer us.'

"And thus I recovered my just debt, and afforded a source of much

good-humoured merriment to the neighbourhood for many days afterwards."