“Pshaw! trifle not with me now. Your face has no secrets for one who has

conned its ill-favoured features so frequently as I have done. Out with

your secret! Elspeth will be with us forthwith.”

Maurice seemed for some moments undecided how he should act, but at

length, with a look of no little embarrassment, replied,—

“Sweet Lilias, you shall be obeyed. You can only laugh at me; and thanks

to your merry heart, that is a daily pastime of yours.”

“Nay, nay—say on; I will be as grave as Argyle.”

“Know then, that while I waited for you and Elspeth at the bottom of the

glen, a remarkable thing befell me. I had alighted, and while Rupert was

trying to pick a scanty meal among the bent, I flung myself on the

ground, and endeavoured to beguile the time by thinking sometimes of

you, and sometimes of King Charles.”

“How! sir cousin, I am not always the companion of your reveries, it

seems, then? Heigho! to think what a change a single day’s matrimony has

accomplished!”

“Ungenerous Lilias,” said Maurice, taking her hand, “listen to me.

Lifting my head accidentally, I was surprised to perceive a man and

woman walking away at some distance from me. The more attentively I

looked at these individuals, the more uneasy I became, until my terror

was completed by the figures slowly turning round and presenting to me

the identical features of you, dear Lilias, and myself.”

“Maurice, Maurice! you amaze me!”

“Though fully aware of the unearthly nature of these appearances, I

could not resist the desire I felt of following them. I did so, tracing

their silent steps up the glen, until I saw them enter the churchyard

without. I hastened after, but when I too entered the cemetery, the

figures had disappeared!”

The lady’s cheek grew pale as she listened to this narration, for in

those days the belief in such prognostications was universal; and the

time of day when Maurice had seen the wraiths, their retiring motion,

and the fatal spot to which he had traced them, were all indicative of

fast approaching doom. She clung around her husband’s neck for a few

moments in silence, until the deep-seated conviction of safety while

with him, which forms so striking a characteristic of feminine

affection, revived her spirits; and though the tear still hung on her

silken eyelash as she looked up in his face, there was a languid smile

on her cheek as she said,—

“Beshrew you, Maurice, for frightening me so deeply on my wedding-day!

Could you find no other time than this to see bogles?”

“Well said, love,” answered Maurice, who felt no little alarm at seeing

the effect which his story had produced on his wife: “’twas doubtless a

mere delusion.”

“Even should it prove true,” replied Lilias, “we shall at least die

together; and there is a tranquillising influence in that thought,

Maurice, which would go far to make even death agreeable.”

“Let us leave this place,” said Maurice, after the emotion which so

bewitching a confusion excited had in some measure subsided; “I fear

Elspeth will miss us.”

“What then?”

“You know that I have ever distrusted that woman. She and I are as

different from each other as day from darkness. She is a staunch

Covenanter—I a graceless Cavalier. She rails at love-locks, love-songs,

and love-passages—I adore them all. She prays for MacCallummore, and

would fain see his bonnet nod above the crown of King Charles, and the

caps of his merry men;—I would rather see his head frowning on the

Netherbow Port. While she opposed my suit to you, I only hated her; now

that she connives at it—shall I confess it to you?—I fear her.”

“Nay, now you are unjust. While in the lawful exercise of woman’s just

prerogative,—coquetry,—I seemed to balance the contending claims of Sir

Mungo Campbell and yourself for this poor hand, Elspeth doubtlessly

favoured the cause of her kinsman (all Campbell’s being of course

cousins); but our sovereign will once unequivocally declared, she became

all submission, and has not even attempted to impugn the decision which

we, somewhat foolishly perhaps, have pronounced in your favour. Besides,

Maurice,” continued Lilias, leaving off the mock-heroic tone in which

she had hitherto spoken for one more akin to natural feeling, “Elspeth

Campbell was my nurse, has a mother’s affection for me, and therefore

would not, I am confident, engage in any scheme inimical to my

happiness.”

“Still she is a Covenanter, and a Campbell,” replied Maurice, “and as

such, her dearest wish, even for your own sake, must be to see you the

wife of him who is both the one and the other.”

“Well,” rejoined Lilias, colouring highly as she spoke, “that at least

you have put out of her power: and yet I regret that I trusted her not

in that matter. It was a secret for a woman, and a nursing mother.”

“Fear not, she shall know in time. I know, I feel it is unmanly, the

dread I entertain; but I cannot quell it. I wish we had not agreed to

make this Logan House the trysting-place of my gallant friends: my

father’s dwelling had been the safer place.”

“Yes; and so have set my worthy guardian, Gillespie Grumach, and his

obsequious friend Sir Mungo, on our track. Come, come, your alarm is

unbecoming. At dawn we leave Logan House. The madcap disguise which you

have prevailed on me to adopt will prevent any recognition till you have

consigned me to my noble kinswoman of Huntly; and you—but I wrong

you—fear not for yourself.”

“Kindly spoken, my love,—would to Heaven you indeed were in Strathbogie,

and I among the gallant Grahams! But here comes Elspeth, looking as

demure as if she were afraid that the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass,

like the leprosy of old, might still stick to those time-worn walls, and

infect her godly heart. Let us go.”

Lilias looked earnestly on the countenance of her nurse as they met; for

though she had not acknowledged so much to Maurice, her heart had

misgiven her as she listened to his discourse. Whether it might proceed

from the melancholy truth, that suspicion once excited against an

individual cannot be entirely quieted by any innocence whatever, or

whether the countenance of Elspeth really afforded ground for the doubt

of her mistress, we are unable to determine, but certainly the latter

imagined at least that she could detect alarm, solicitude, and fear,

lurking amid the apparent placidity of her nurse’s features.

Nothing was said, however; and the party, remounting their horses,

shortly afterwards arrived at their destination for the night, namely,

the Peel or Tower of Logan House. This edifice, which crowns the summit

of a small knoll or brae on the northern side of Glencorse water, was

one of the many places built for the safety of the population against

any sudden but short-lived attack, and, from the walls, which are still

left, must have been of considerable strength. It was, at the time we

speak of, entire, and consisted of two storeys; the lower being devoted

to the accommodation of the servants of the house, and that of the

family bestial, while the upper was divided into the few apartments then

thought sufficient for the accommodation of the gentles.

As they rode into the courtyard, Maurice was struck by the want of

attendance which the place betrayed. At that day the laudable customs of

the “queen’s old courtier” had not entirely gone into desuetude, and

every holding, however small, was filled with a number of retainers,

that in the present day would be deemed excessive. At Logan House,

however, things were very different. A stripling—half-man,

half-boy—seemed the only representative of male vassalage, and the

woman-servants, though more numerous, did not amount to anything near

the average number which in those days divided amongst themselves, with

commendable chariness, the duties of a household.

The faggots, however, blazed cheerfully in the upper apartment, and food

and wine having been prepared in abundance, Maurice for a moment forgot

his suspicions, and Lilias regained her sprightliness. They conversed

gaily together of days gone by, and of courts and masques and pageants

which they had seen, to the evident discomfort of Elspeth, who not only

thought her presence becoming in her character of nurse, but somewhat

necessary in the existing condition, as she imagined, of the youthful

pair. Maurice soon saw her uneasiness, and wickedly resolved to make it

a means of pastime to himself and Lilias.

“Do you recollect, sweet Lily, when the good King Charles kissed your

cheek in Holyroodhouse, and vowed, on a king’s word, to find a husband

for you?”

“I do; and how a malapert page sounded in my ear that he would save his

Majesty the trouble.”

“And have I not kept my word—ha, lady mine? The great Argyle and all his

men will hardly, I think, undo the links that bind us to each other;”

and inspired, as it seemed, by the pleasant thought, the youth took the

lady’s hand in his, and pressed it warmly and frequently to his lips.

Elspeth looked on in amazement at the familiarity of intercourse in

which the lady indulged her cousin, and which was equally repugnant to

her natural and acquired feelings on the subject.

“Pshaw! you foolish man, desist!” cried Lilias, blushing and laughing at

the same time, when Maurice attempted to substitute her rosy lips for

the hand he had been so fervently kissing. “What will Elspeth think?”

“Think, Lady Lilias!” said Elspeth bitterly; “think! I cannot think; but

I can feel for the impropriety—the sinful levity—into which, for the

first time, I see my mistress fallen.”

The fair neck of Lilias crimsoned as she listened to the taunt. For a

moment a frown gathered on her brow, before which the nurse’s

countenance fell; but it died away in a moment, and, with a beseeching

smile, which lay nestled among rosy blushes, she stretched out her hand

and said,—

“Forgive me, Elspeth, we are married!”

This brief annunciation had a striking effect on the individual to whom

it was addressed. She clasped together her withered hands, and continued

for a few moments gazing wildly in the faces of the startled pair,

seemingly anxious to discover there some contradiction of what she had

just heard; and then uttering a loud long shriek, dashed her face

against the wooden board, and groaned audibly.

The terrified Lilias tried to raise the old woman’s head from the table,

but she for some time resisted the kindly effort. At length, raising her

pale and now haggard features to those of the lady, she exclaimed,—

“Unsay, child of my affection, the dreadful tidings you have told;—tell

me not that I have murdered the daughter of my mistress. Often when the

_taish_ was on me have I seen the dirk in your bosom. Little did I dream

that my own hand should guide it there. Oh! say you are not married.”

Lilias, who knew the violent temper of her nurse, and imagined her

present ravings proceeded from offended pride at not having been made

privy to the marriage, now attempted to soothe her feelings.

“Nay, my dear Elspeth, take not on so; you know Sir Maurice and I have

long loved each other; to-morrow morning he rides to join Montrose, who

has conquered for the king at Tippermuir. I tremble to be left behind,

and have therefore resolved to accompany him; in these circumstances,

was it not fitting that he should have a husband’s title to protect me?

’Twas but this morning we were wedded; and I ever meant to tell you

here.”

“Here, said you?” replied the old woman, shuddering. “But I am

guiltless. You were ordained to be the destruction of each other before

the world was. James Graham will look long and wearily for your coming,

I fear. Hush! the Campbells are about the house; and _he_ is coming to

seek you here.”

“Who?—Sir Mungo Campbell?” said Lilias and her husband, in the same

breath.

“Even he,” replied Elspeth; “he brings the warrant of the Estates to

apprehend Sir Maurice, and has orders from the Marquis of Argyle to

secure your own person.”

“Treacherous, infamous wretch!”—“Cruel, unkind Elspeth!” burst again

simultaneously from the lips of Maurice and his bride.

“Upbraid me not, Lady Lilias; alas! what must fall will fall. Oh, that

you had trusted me. I fondly hoped that Sir Mungo Campbell might yet be

your husband, and that I should see you the proud and happy mistress of

Castle Lorn; but married!—he will water this floor with our blood!”

And again the wretched old woman, overcome with remorse and terror,

shrieked aloud. Then, as if stung by some instantaneous and overpowering

feeling, she hastily quitted the apartment. The betrayed and devoted

pair gazed for a few minutes at each other in silent sadness. There was

more of grief than terror in these mournful looks; for it was for the

calamity of the other that each heart bled. At length the lady sunk,

weeping, into his arms.

“Oh, Maurice, Maurice, bitterly are our fears fulfilled! We are lost!

There is no escape from the bloodhounds who have beset us.”

“Nay, nay, my love,” replied the knight, feigning the tranquillity he

did not feel; “think not so. I must have heard the arrival of the party,

had we been yet surrounded. There still is time to escape from the net

prepared for us. Once on horseback, between the darkness of the night,

and the wild nature of these hills, we may manage to escape.”

Ere Lilias could make answer to this cheering discourse, Elspeth entered

the apartment.

“Haste!” she exclaimed in an emphatic whisper, “a moment yet is left.

Sir Mungo has not arrived. Leave, oh leave, this fearful place!” and she

wrung her hands impatiently.

The lovers lost no time in obeying this invitation. Two large

riding-cloaks were supplied by Elspeth, in order to conceal their forms,

if they should unhappily be met by Sir Mungo; while, still more to

defeat detection, it was agreed that Lilias should mount the nurse’s

pony.

“And you, Elspeth,” said the lady, with a kind-heartedness which no

personal danger could destroy, “what shall become of you?”

“Fear not for me,” replied Elspeth chokingly; “I fear nothing—fly!”

Maurice now led his lady to the open plain, and here saw, with sorrow,

that the moon, which shone dazzlingly bright, would destroy almost every

hope of escaping the recognition of Sir Mungo Campbell, should that

individual meet them; and this was, alas! too soon to happen. They had

only turned the angle of the building, with the intention of taking the

hillward path, when they saw a band of armed men, at the head of whom

stood one whom hatred and fear at once enabled both to pronounce the man

they sought to shun.

“Who comes there?” cried Sir Mungo, harshly.

“Friends to King Charles,” replied Maurice, undauntedly.

“That may well be,” replied Campbell, “and yet deep foes to Scotland.

Sir Maurice Ogilvy, I arrest thee of high treason!”

“Win me, and wear me, Roundhead!” cried the knight; and, throwing off

the cloak which cumbered him, he drew his sword with one hand, while

with the other he plucked Lilias from her seat, and placed her before

him. Then giving the rowel to his horse, he dashed among the astonished

Highlanders, who either fell before, or yielded a passage to the gallant

steed.

A wild yell arose amid the stillness of the night, as the Campbells

perceived the rapid pace at which Maurice rode, and which, if continued

for a few minutes, must soon place him beyond the chance of capture, and

matchlocks and pistols were employed in vain to interrupt his career.

But, alas! Heaven had decreed the triumph of the guilty. Urged to his

utmost speed, Rupert would soon have saved his master, and his yet more

precious load, when, his foot striking against a piece of earthfast

rock, he stumbled—made a futile effort to recover himself—and at last

fell on his side. Sir Maurice instantly sprung to his feet, but Lilias

lay apparently lifeless on the turf. He kneeled down, and raised her in

his arms, but she replied not to his eager questionings. He could feel

no pulse, to tell him of returning life; and to his despair, he

perceived the blood flowing profusely from her white brow.

“She is gone!” cried he, bitterly. “Now, Campbell, for thy heart;” and

as he spoke, he lifted his weapon from the grass. He had hardly regained

it, when he was surrounded by the Highlanders.

“Yield thee, Sir Maurice, or thou diest.”

“Never to one of thy detested clan will Maurice Ogilvy give up his

sword. Send back your murderers, Campbell, and let us settle here our

long arrear of hatred.”

“Once more I bid thee yield.”

“Again do I defy thee.”

“Thy blood be on thy head then. Smite the braggart to the dust.”

The word was barely uttered when the upraised arm of one who stood

behind the youth buried a dirk in his bosom. He reeled to the earth,

tried with dimming eye to scan the features of Lilias as she lay still

prostrate on the ground, and then casting his eyes upwards, murmured

out, “Bear witness, Heaven, I die true to love, and faithful to the

king!” A moment more, and he was silent.

Campbell next proceeded to raise the body of Lilias from the ground. It

seemed as if her deep-rooted aversion to this person was so vital as

even to govern her while in a state of insensibility; for no sooner had

his fingers touched her waist, than she started from the ground, and,

drawing her hands across her eyes, gazed wildly around. A moment

sufficed to show her the cureless ruin which had befallen her hopes and

happiness, and, bursting from the grasp of her hated suitor, and

exclaiming in a voice hoarse in agony, “Stand off, monster! I am his

wife!” she threw herself with reckless violence on the prostrate corpse.

Even the heart of Campbell was touched by her extreme misery, and some

minutes elapsed ere he could give directions for her removal. That was

now needless. In her frantic despair, poor Lilias regarded death as an

enviable blessing; the dagger of Maurice afforded her the ready means of

escaping at once from all her worldly woe, and her cruel captors only

raised her to discover that her heart’s blood was now mingling on the

same turf with that of him who had alone possessed her living love.

On the following morning, the wandering shepherds of the neighbourhood

perceived a new-made grave in the churchyard of Saint Catherine, and a

wretched being in female attire seated beside it. Hers was a grief “too

deep for tears”—a sorrow too mighty for mortal alleviation. She spoke to

no one, replied to no one, but continued, with her head resting on her

lap, to spend the livelong day by the side of the unfortunates whom her

well-meant treachery had stretched so untimely there. As the winter

advanced, she grew weaker and weaker, but still she abstained not from

her daily vigil. Even when, from debility, she was unable to walk, she

prevailed on some one to carry her to the lonely cemetery; and her dying

words to her pitying neighbours were—“Bury me at the feet of Lady

Lilias—remember, at the feet.”—_Edinburgh Literary Gazette._

TRADITIONS OF THE CELEBRATED MAJOR WEIR.

BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.

In one of the most ancient streets of Edinburgh, called the West Bow,

stood the house formerly inhabited by Major Weir, whose name is scarcely

more conspicuous in the Criminal Records of Scotland, than it is

notorious in the mouth of popular tradition. The awful tenement was

situated in a small court at the back of the main street, accessible by

a narrow entry leading off to the east, about fifty yards from the top

of the Bow. It was a sepulchral-looking fabric, with a peculiarly

dejected and dismal aspect, as if it were conscious of the bad character

which it bore among the neighbouring houses.

It is now about one hundred and fifty years since Major Weir, an old

soldier of the civil war, and the bearer of some command in the City

Guard of Edinburgh, closed a most puritanical life, by confessing

himself a sorcerer, and being burnt accordingly at the stake. The

scandal in which this involved the Calvinistic party seems to have been

met, on their part, by an endeavour to throw the whole blame upon the

shoulders of Satan; and this conclusion, which was almost justified by

the mystery and singularity of the case, has had the effect of

connecting the criminal’s name inalienably with the demonology of

Scotland.

Sundry strange reminiscences of Major Weir and his house are preserved

among the old people of Edinburgh, and especially by the venerable

gossips of the West Bow. It is said he derived that singular gift of

prayer by which he surprised all his acquaintance, and procured so

sanctimonious a reputation, from his walking-cane! This implement, it

appears, the Evil One, from whom he procured it, had endowed with the

most wonderful properties and powers. It not only inspired him with

prayer, so long as he held it in his hand, but it acted in the capacity

of a Mercury, in so far as it could go an errand, or run a message. Many

was the time it went out to the neighbouring shops for supplies of snuff

to its master! And as the fact was well known, the shopkeepers of the

Bow were not startled at the appearance of so strange a customer.

Moreover, it often “answered the door,” when people came to call upon

the Major, and it had not unfrequently been seen running along before

him, in the capacity of link-boy, as he walked down the Lawnmarket. Of

course, when the Major was burnt, his wooden lieutenant and valet was

carefully burnt with him, though it does not appear in the Justiciary

Records that it was included in the indictment, or that Lord Dirleton

subjected it, in common with its master, to the ceremony of a sentence.

It is also said that the spot on which the Major was burnt,—namely, the

south-east corner of the esplanade on the Castle-Hill,—continued ever

after scathed and incapable of vegetation. But we must beg to suggest

the possibility of this want of verdure being occasioned by the

circumstance of the esplanade being a hard gravel-walk. We are very

unwilling to find scientific reasons for last-century miracles,—to

withdraw the veil from beautiful deceptions,—or to dispel the halo which

fancy may have thrown around the incidents of a former day. But a regard

for truth obliges us to acknowledge, that the same miracle, attributed

to the burning-place of Wishart, at St Andrews, may be accounted for in

a similar way, the spot being now occupied by what the people

thereabouts denominate, in somewhat homely phrase, “a mussel midden.”

For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to be

the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His

apparition was frequently seen at night flitting, like a black and

silent shadow, about the purlieus of that singular street. His house,

though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed

at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as

of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning. It was

believed, too, that every night, when the clock of St Giles tolled

twelve, one of the windows sprung open, and the ghost of a tall woman in

white, supposed to be the Major’s equally terrible sister, came forward,

and bent her long figure thrice over the window, her face every time

touching the wall about three feet down, and then retired, closing the

window after her with an audible clang.

Some people had occasionally seen the Major issue from the low “close,”

at the same hour, mounted on a black horse without a head, and gallop

off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes the whole of the inhabitants

of the Bow together were roused from their sleep at an early hour in the

morning, by the sound as of a coach-and-six, first rattling up the

Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the Bow, stopping at the head of

the terrible “close” for a few minutes, and then rattling and thundering

back again,—being neither more nor less than Satan come in one of his

best equipages, to take home to his abode the ghosts of the Major and

his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their

terrestrial dwelling. In support of these beliefs, circumstances, of

course, were not awanting. One or two venerable men of the Bow, who had,

perhaps, on the night of the 7th September 1736, popped their

night-capped heads out of their windows, and seen Captain Porteous

hurried down their street to execution, were pointed out by children as

having actually witnessed some of the dreadful doings alluded to. One

worthy, in particular, declared he had often seen coaches parading up

and down the Bow at midnight, drawn by six black horses without heads,

and driven by a coachman of the most hideous appearance, whose flaming

eyes, placed at an immense distance from each other in his forehead, as

they gleamed through the darkness, resembled nothing so much as the

night-lamps of a modern vehicle.

About forty years ago, when the shades of superstition began universally

to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be regarded with

less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made by the proprietor

to find a person who would be bold enough to inhabit it. Such a person

was procured in William Patullo, a poor man of dissipated habits, who,

having been at one time a soldier and a traveller, had come to disregard

in a great measure the superstitions of his native country, and was now

glad to possess a house upon the low terms offered by the landlord, at

whatever risk. Upon it being known in the town that Major Weir’s house

was about to be re-inhabited, a great deal of curiosity was felt by

people of all ranks as to the result of the experiment; for there was

scarcely a native of the city who had not felt since his boyhood an

intense interest in all that concerned that awful fabric, and yet

remembered the numerous terrible stories which he had heard told

respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous undertaking,

William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort of interest—an

interest similar to that which we feel respecting a culprit under

sentence of death, a man about to be married, or a regiment on the march

to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would be the means

of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion of darkness. But

Satan soon let them know that he does not ever tamely relinquish the

outposts of his kingdom.

On the very first evening after Patullo and his spouse had taken up

their abode in the house, a circumstance took place which effectually

deterred them and all others from ever again inhabiting it. About one in

the morning, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not

unconscious of a considerable degree of fear, a dim uncertain light

proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent

around them, they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, but without

the head, come through the lower panel of the door and enter the room. A

spectre more horrible, or more spectre-like conduct, could scarcely have

been conceived. The phantom immediately came forward to the bed; and

setting its fore-feet upon the stock, looked steadfastly in all its

awful headlessness at the unfortunate pair, who were of course almost

ready to die with fright. When it had contemplated them thus for a few

minutes, to their great relief it at length took away its intolerable

person, and slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As

might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and from that

time forward, no other attempt was ever made to embank this part of the

world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.

* * * * *

In the course of our experience we have met with many houses in “Auld

Reekie” which have the credit of being haunted. There is one at this day

[1829] in Buchanan’s Court, Lawnmarket, in the same “land” in which the

celebrated editor of the _Edinburgh Review_ first saw the light. It is a

flat, and has been shut up from time immemorial. The story goes, that

one night, as preparations were making for a supper party, something

occurred which obliged the family, as well as all the assembled guests,

to retire with precipitation, and lock up the house. From that night to

this it has never once been opened, nor was any of the furniture

withdrawn;—the very goose which was undergoing the process of being

roasted at the time of the dreadful occurrence is still at the fire! No

one knows to whom the house belongs; no one ever inquires after it; no

one living ever saw the inside of it;—it is a condemned house! There is

something peculiarly dreadful about a house under these circumstances.

What sights of horror might present themselves if it were entered! Satan

is the _ultimus hæres_ of all such unclaimed property.

Besides the numberless old houses in Edinburgh that are haunted, there

are many endowed with the simple credit of having been the scenes of

murders and suicides. Some we have met with, containing rooms which had

particular names commemorative of such events, and these names, handed

down as they had been from one generation to another, usually suggested

the remembrance of some dignified Scottish families, probably the former

tenants of the houses.

The closed house in Mary King’s Close (behind the Royal Exchange) is

believed by some to have met with that fate for a very fearful reason.

The inhabitants at a very remote period were, it is said, compelled to

abandon it by the supernatural appearance which took place in it, on the

very first night after they had made it their residence. At midnight, as

the goodman was sitting with his wife by the fire, reading his Bible,

and intending immediately to go to bed, a strange dimness which suddenly

fell upon the light caused him to raise his eyes from the book. He

looked at the candle, and saw it was burning blue. Terror took

possession of his frame. He turned away his eyes from the ghastly

object; but the cure was worse than the disease. Directly before him,

and apparently not two yards off, he saw the head as of a dead person

looking him straight in the face. There was nothing but a head, though

that seemed to occupy the precise situation in regard to the floor which

it might have done had it been supported by a body of the ordinary

stature. The man and his wife fainted with terror. On awaking, darkness

pervaded the room. Presently the door opened, and in came a hand holding

a candle. This advanced and stood—that is, the body supposed to be

attached to the hand stood—beside the table, whilst the terrified pair

saw two or three couples of feet skip along the floor, as if dancing.

The scene lasted a short time, but vanished quite away upon the man

gathering strength to invoke the protection of Heaven. The house was of

course abandoned, and remained ever afterwards shut up.

THE WINDY YULE.

BY JOHN GALT.

It was in the course of the winter after the decease of Bailie M‘Lucre,

that the great loss of lives took place, which, everybody agreed, was

one of the most calamitous things that had for many a year befallen the

town.

Three or four vessels were coming with cargoes of grain from Ireland;

another from the Baltic with Norway deals; and a third from Bristol,

where she had been on a charter for some Greenock merchants.

It happened that, for a time, there had been contrary winds, against

which no vessel could enter the port, and the ships whereof I have been

speaking were all lying together at anchor in the bay, waiting a change

of weather. These five vessels were owned among ourselves, and their

crews consisted of fathers and sons belonging to the place, so that,

both by reason of interest and affection, a more than ordinary concern

was felt for them; for the sea was so rough, that no boat could live in

it to go near them, and we had our fears that the men on board would be

very ill off. Nothing, however, occurred but this natural anxiety, till

the Saturday, which was Yule. In the morning the weather was blasty and

sleety, waxing more and more tempestuous till about midday, when the

wind checked suddenly round from the nor’-east to the sou’-west, and

blew a gale as if the prince of the powers of the air was doing his

utmost to work mischief. The rain blattered, the windows clattered, the

shop-shutters flapped, pigs from the lum-heads came rattling down like

thunder claps, and the skies were dismal both with cloud and carry. Yet,

for all that, there was in the streets a stir and a busy visitation

between neighbours, and every one went to their high windows, to look at

the five poor barks that were warsling against the strong arm of the

elements of the storm and the ocean.

Still the lift gloomed, and the wind roared, and it was as doleful a

sight as ever was seen in any town afflicted with calamity to see the

sailors’ wives, with their red cloaks about their heads, followed by

their hirpling and disconsolate bairns, going one after another to the

kirkyard, to look at the vessels where their helpless bread-winners were

battling with the tempest. My heart was really sorrowful, and full of a

sore anxiety to think of what might happen to the town, whereof so many

were in peril, and to whom no human magistracy could extend the arm of

protection. Seeing no abatement of the wrath of heaven, that howled and

roared around us, I put on my big-coat, and taking my staff in my hand,

having tied down my hat with a silk handkerchief, towards gloaming I

walked likewise to the kirkyard, where I beheld such an assemblage of

sorrow, as few men in a public situation have ever been put to the trial

to witness.

In the lee of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together;

but there was no discourse among them. The major part were sailors’

wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob arose, and

the mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the

visible hand of a foe raised to smite them. Apart from the multitude, I

observed three or four young lasses standing behind the Whinnyhill

family’s tomb, and I jaloused that they had joes in the ships; for they

often looked to the bay, with long necks and sad faces, from behind the

monument. A widow woman, one old Mary Weery, that was a lameter, and

dependent on her son, who was on board the _Louping Meg_ (as the Lovely

Peggy was nicknamed at the shore), stood by herself, and every now and

then wrung her hands, crying, with a woeful voice, “The Lord giveth, and

the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord;”—but it was

manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the

piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my

thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate

of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had

been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith

nor kin; and his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of

whom the eldest was but nine or so, were friendless enough, though both

my gudewife, and other well-disposed ladies, paid them all manner of

attention till their father would come home. The three poor little

things, knowing that he was in one of the ships, had been often out and

anxious, and they were then sitting under the lee of a headstone, near

their mother’s grave, chittering and creeping closer and closer at every

squall. Never was such an orphan-like sight seen.

When it began to be so dark that the vessels could no longer be

discerned from the churchyard, many went down to the shore, and I took

the three babies home with me, and Mrs Pawkie made tea for them, and

they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blithe

forgetfulness of the storm. Every now and then, however, the eldest of

them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in

his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was

daunted and dismayed by something he knew not what.

Many a one that night walked the sounding shore in sorrow, and fires

were lighted along it to a great extent; but the darkness and the noise

of the raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermitted till about

midnight: at which time a message was brought to me, that it might be

needful to send a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken masts

and tackle had come in, and that surely some of the barks had perished.

I lost no time in obeying this suggestion, which was made to me by one

of the owners of the _Louping Meg_; and to show that I sincerely

sympathised with all those in affliction, I rose and dressed myself, and

went down to the shore, where I directed several old boats to be drawn

up by the fires, and blankets to be brought, and cordials to be

prepared, for them that might be spared with life to reach the land; and

I walked the beach with the mourners till daylight.

As the day dawned, the wind began to abate in its violence, and to wear

away from the sou’-west into the norit, but it was soon discovered that

some of the vessels with the corn had perished; for the first thing seen

was a long fringe of tangle and grain along the line of the high-water

mark, and every one strained with greedy and grieved eyes, as the

daylight brightened, to discover which had suffered. But I can proceed

no further with the dismal recital of that doleful morning. Let it

suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, we at last saw three

of the vessels lying on their beam-ends with their masts broken, and the

waves riding like the furious horses of destruction over them. What had

become of the other two was never known; but it was supposed that they

had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished.

The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, everybody in a

manner was down on the beach, to help and mourn as the bodies, one after

another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! few were the better of my

provident preparation, and it was a thing not to be described to see,

for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless

bairns, mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved.

Seventeen bodies were, before ten o’clock, carried to the desolated

dwellings of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betheral,

went to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow

of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to

stop him, crying, in the voice of pardonable desperation, “Wha, in sic a

time, can praise the Lord?”

GRIZEL COCHRANE.

CHAPTER I.

The age which this noble woman adorned with her life and heroic actions

was that gloomy one extending between the Restoration and Revolution

(from 1660 to 1688), when the Scottish nation suffered under a cruel

oppression, on account of their conscientious scruples respecting the

existing forms of Church and State. Three insurrections, more bold than

wise, marked the impatience of the Scots under this bloody rule; but it

was with the last solely that Grizel Cochrane was connected.

Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, the father of our heroine, was the

second son of the first Earl of Dundonald, and the ancestor of the

present line of that noble and ingenious family. He was a distinguished

friend of Sidney, Russell, and other illustrious men, who signalised

themselves in England by their opposition to the court; and he had so

long endeavoured in vain to procure some improvement in the national

affairs, that he at length began to despair of his country altogether,

and formed the design of emigrating to America. Having gone to London in

1683, with a view to a colonising expedition to South Carolina, he

became involved in the deliberations of the Whig party, which at that

time tended towards a general insurrection in England and Scotland, for

the purpose of forcing an alteration of the royal councils, and the

exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne. In furtherance of this

plan, Sir John pledged himself to assist the Earl of Argyle in raising

the malcontents in Scotland. This earl was, if not the acknowledged head

of the party in that kingdom, at least the man of highest rank who

espoused its interests.

By the treachery of some of his subordinate agents, this design was

detected prematurely; and while some were unfortunately taken and

executed, among whom were Sidney and Lord Russell, the rest fled from

the kingdom. Of the latter number were the Earl of Argyle, Sir John

Cochrane, and Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth,—the last a patriot rivalling

Cochrane in talent and purity of motives, and also, like him, destined

to experience the devotedness of a daughter’s love. The fugitives found

safety in Holland, where they remained in peace till the death of

Charles the Second, in February 1685, when the Duke of York, the object

politically of their greatest detestation, became king. It was then

determined to invade Scotland with a small force, to embody the Highland

adherents of Argyle with the west country Presbyterians, and, marching

into England, to raise the people as they moved along, and not rest till

they had produced the desired melioration of the State.

The expedition sailed in May, but the Government was enabled to take

such precautions as, from the very first, proved a complete frustration

to their designs. Argyle lingered timidly in his own country, and

finally, against the advice of Cochrane and Hume, who were his chief

officers, made some unfortunate movements, which ended in the entire

dissolution of his army, and his own capture and death. While this

well-meaning but weak nobleman committed himself to a low disguise, in

the vain hope of effecting his escape, Sir John Cochrane and Sir Patrick

Hume headed a body of 200 men, formed out of the relics of the army, and

bravely resolved, even with that small force, to attempt the

accomplishment of their original intention—namely, a march into England.

They accordingly crossed the Clyde into Renfrewshire, where they

calculated on obtaining some reinforcement. The boats on this occasion

being insufficient to transport the whole at once, the first party,

headed by the two patriots, was obliged to contend, on the opposite bank

of the river, with a large squadron of militia, while the boats returned

for the remainder; after which the united force caused their opponents

to retreat. The militia returned, however, in greater force, and renewed

the assault at a place called Muirdykes, in the parish of Lochwinnoch.

They were now commanded by Lord Ross and a Captain Clellan, and amounted

to two troops, while Sir John Cochrane’s men had decreased to seventy in

number.

In this predicament they were called on by the royal troops to lay down

their arms, and surrender themselves prisoners. But preferring the risk

of death on the field to the tender mercies of a vindictive foe, they

rejected the terms with disdain, and, entering a sheepfold, used its

frail sod walls as a defence against the furious attack of the enemy,

whom, after a keen conflict, in which every man fought hand to hand with

his opponents, they at length succeeded in beating off, with the loss of

their captain and some other men, while Lord Ross was wounded. Cochrane,

however, soon after learned that the enemy was returning with a great

reinforcement, and fearing that he could not much longer defend himself

on the field, retired with his troops to a neighbouring wilderness or

morass, where he dismissed them, with the request that each man would

provide the best way he could for his own safety. For himself, having

received two severe contusions in the body during the engagement, and

being worn out with fatigue, he sought refuge in the house of his uncle,

Mr Gavin Cochrane of Craigmuir, who lived at no great distance from the

place of encounter. This gentleman, however, as it unfortunately

happened, had married a sister of the Captain Clellan killed in the late

battle, and, filled with revenge for the death of her brother, this lady

secretly informed against her guest, who was immediately seized and

removed to Edinburgh, where, after being paraded through the streets,

bound and bareheaded, and conducted by the common hangman, he was lodged

in the Tolbooth on the 3d of July 1685, there to await his trial as a

traitor. The day of trial came, and he was condemned to death, in spite

of the most strenuous exertions of his aged father, the Earl of

Dundonald, who, having received his title from the hands of Charles the

Second, had, from motives of honour, never conspired against him.

Where is the tongue that can express all the secret and varied anguish

that penetrates the yearning heart, when about to leave for ever the

warm precincts of mortality, to quit the loving charities of life, and

to have all the cords which bound it to existence suddenly torn asunder?

Natural strength of mind may suffice to conceal much of this mortal

conflict, or even to hide it altogether from the eye of the careless

observer, but still it is at work within, and grapples in deadly

struggle with the spirit.

Such was the state of Cochrane’s mind on the night of his condemnation,

when left once more to the gloomy solitude of his prison. It was not the

parting stroke of death he feared, however sharp. He was a father,

loving and beloved; and the thoughts of the sorrow his children were

doomed to suffer on his account, wrung his heart, and burning tears,

which his own fate could not have called forth, were shed for them. No

friend or relative had been permitted to see him from the time of his

apprehension; but it was now signified to him, that any of his family

that he desired to communicate with might be allowed to visit him.

Anxious, however, to deprive his enemies of an opportunity of an

accusation against his sons, he immediately conveyed to them his earnest

entreaties, and indeed commands, that they should refrain from availing

themselves of this leave till the night before his execution. This was a

sacrifice which it required his utmost fortitude to make; and it had

left him to a sense of the most desolate loneliness, insomuch that when,

late in the evening, he heard his prison door unlocked, he lifted not

his eyes towards it, imagining that the person who entered could only be

the jailer, who was particularly repulsive in his countenance and

manner. What, then, was his surprise and momentary delight, when he

beheld before him his only daughter, and felt her arms entwining his

neck! Yet, when he looked on her face, and saw the expression it bore of

mute despairing agony, more fearful than the most frantic manifestations

of misery, and marked her pale cheeks, which no longer bloomed with the

tints of health and happiness, and felt the cold dampness of her brow,

he thought himself wrong for having given way for an instant to the joy

her presence had created, and every other sensation fled before the fear

of what might be the consequence to her of this interview. He had no

sooner, however, expressed his feelings on this subject, than she became

sensible that, in order to palliate his misery, she must put a strong

curb upon her own, and in a short time was calm enough to enter into

conversation with her father upon the dismal subject of his present

situation, and to deliver a message from the old earl, her grandfather,

by which he was informed that an appeal had been made from him to the

king, and means taken to propitiate Father Peters, his Majesty’s

confessor, who, it was well known, often dictated to him in matters of

State. It appeared evident, however, by the turn which their discourse

presently took, that neither father nor daughter was at all sanguine in

their hopes from this negotiation. The Earl of Argyle had been executed

but a few days before, as had also several of his principal adherents,

though men of less consequence than Sir John Cochrane; and it was

therefore improbable that he, who had been so conspicuously active in

the insurrection, should be allowed to escape the punishment which it

was now in their power to inflict. Besides all this, the treaty to be

entered into with Father Peters would require some time to adjust, and

meanwhile the arrival of the warrant for execution must every day be

looked for.

Under these circumstances, several days passed, each of which found Miss

Grizel Cochrane an inmate of her father’s prison for as many hours as

she was permitted. During these interviews of the father and daughter,

while heart clung unto heart, they reaped all the consolation which an

undisguised knowledge of the piety and courage of each could bestow.

Still, after such intercourse, the parting scene which they anticipated

seemed more and more dreadful to think of; and, as the daughter looked

on the pale and dejected countenance of her parent, her bosom was

penetrated with the sharpest pangs. The love of her father might be

termed a component part of her nature. She had cherished this filial

love ever since she possessed a consciousness of thought, and it was now

strong and absorbing, in proportion to the danger in which he stood.

Grizel Cochrane was only at that period eighteen years old; but it is

the effect of such perilous times as those in which she lived to sober

the reckless spirit of youth, and make men and women of children. She

had, however, a natural strength of character, that would, on all

extraordinary occasions, have displayed itself without such a tuition,

and which, being now joined with what she conceived the necessity of the

case, rendered her capable of a deed which has caused her history to vie

with that of the most distinguished of heroines.

Ever since her father’s condemnation, her daily and nightly thoughts had

dwelt on the fear of her grandfather’s communication with the king’s

confessor being rendered unavailable, for want of the time necessary for

enabling the friends in London, to whom it was trusted, to make their

application, and she boldly determined to execute a plan, whereby the

arrival of the death warrant would be retarded. A short time, therefore,

before it was expected by the council in Edinburgh, she thought it

necessary, in her visit to her father, to mention that some urgent

affair would prevent her from seeing him again for a few days. Alarmed

at this, and penetrating her design of effecting somewhat in his favour,

he warned her against attempting impossibilities.

“Nothing is impossible to a determined mind,” said she; “and fear

nothing for me.”

“But the inexperience of youth, my child,” he replied, “may involve you

in danger and in blame; and did you but know the characters of those you

must encounter, while vainly pleading for your father’s life, you would

fear, as I do, the sullying of your fair fame.”

“I am a Cochrane, my father!” said the heroic girl—an answer how brief,

but to him how expressive! He could say no more; he beheld in his child,

so young, so beautiful, and so self-devoted, all the virtues of her race

combined, and he felt for the moment that the courage she had prayed for

would be granted to carry her through the undertaking she meditated,

whatever that might be. She felt grateful to her father that he did not

urge her further; but she trembled as she turned, at her departure, to

catch another look of those loved and venerated features; for his eye

appeared to be following her with a parting expression, which seemed to

say it was the last fond look.

CHAPTER II.

At that time horses were used as a mode of conveyance so much more than

carriages, that almost every gentlewoman had her own steed, and Miss

Cochrane, being a skilful rider, was possessed of a well-managed

palfrey, on whose speed and other qualities she had been accustomed to

depend. On the morning after she had bid her father farewell, long ere

the inhabitants of Edinburgh were astir, she found herself many miles on

the road to the Borders. She had taken care to attire herself in a

manner which corresponded with the design of passing herself off for a

young serving-woman journeying on a borrowed horse to the house of her

mother in a distant part of the country; and by only resting at solitary

cottages, where she generally found the family out at work, save perhaps

an old woman or some children, she had the good fortune, on the second

day after leaving Edinburgh, to reach in safety the abode of her old

nurse, who lived on the English side of the Tweed, four miles beyond the

town of Berwick. In this woman she knew she could place implicit

confidence, and to her, therefore, revealed her secret. She was

resolved, she said, to make an attempt to save her father’s life, by

stopping the postman, an equestrian like herself, and forcing him to

deliver up his bags, in which she expected to find the fatal warrant.

Singular as such a determination may appear in a delicate young woman,

especially if we consider that she was aware of the arms always carried

by the man to whose charge the mail was committed, it is nevertheless an

undoubted fact that such was her resolve. In pursuance of this design,

she had brought with her a brace of small pistols, together with a

horseman’s cloak tied up in a bundle, and hung on the crutch of her

saddle; and now borrowed from her nurse the attire of her

foster-brother, which, as he was a slight-made lad, fitted her

reasonably well.

At that period, all those appliances which at this day accelerate the

progress of the traveller were unknown, and the mail from London, which

now arrives in about ten hours, took eight days in reaching the Scottish

capital. Miss Cochrane thus calculated on a delay of sixteen or

seventeen days in the execution of her father’s sentence—a space of time

which she deemed amply sufficient to give a fair trial to the treaty set

on foot for his liberation. She had, by means which it is unnecessary

here to detail, possessed herself of the most minute information with

regard to the places at which the postmen rested on their journey, one

of which was a small public-house, kept by a widow woman, on the

outskirts of the little town of Belford. There the man who received the

bag at Durham was accustomed to arrive about six o’clock in the morning,

and take a few hours’ repose before proceeding farther on his

journey.[19] In pursuance of the plan laid down by Miss Cochrane, she

arrived at this inn about an hour after the man had composed himself to

sleep, in the hope of being able, by the exercise of her wit and

dexterity, to ease him of his charge.

Footnote 19:

Lest it should appear at issue with probability that the postman

should thus “take his ease at his inn,” it may be mentioned, as a fact

defying all question, that this official, at a period much later, used

sometimes to dismount on a muir, near the place here mentioned, and

partake of a game at quoits, or other sports which might be proceeding

by the wayside.

Having put her horse into the stable, which was a duty that devolved on

the guests at this little change-house, from its mistress having no

ostler, she entered the only apartment which the house afforded, and

demanded refreshment.

“Sit down at the end of that table,” said the old woman, “for the best I

have to give you is there already; and be pleased, my bonnie man, to

make as little noise as ye can, for there’s ane asleep in that bed that

I like ill to disturb.”

Miss Cochrane promised fairly; and after attempting to eat some of the

viands, which were the remains of the sleeping man’s meal, she asked for

some cold water.

“What!” said the old dame, as she handed it to her; “ye are a

water-drinker, are ye? It’s but an ill custom for a change-house.”

“I am aware of that,” replied her guest; “and therefore, when in a

public-house, I always pay for it the price of the stronger potation,

which I cannot take.”

“Indeed!—well, that is but just,” said the landlady; “and I think the

more of you for such reasonable conduct.”

“Is the well where you get this water near at hand?” said the young

lady; “for if you will take the trouble to bring me some from it, as

this is rather warm, it shall be considered in the lawing.”

“It is a good bit off,” responded the landlady; “but I cannot refuse to

fetch some for such a civil, discreet lad, and will be as quick as I

can; but, for any sake, take care and don’t meddle with these pistols,”

she continued, pointing to a pair of pistols on the table, “for they are

loaded, and I am always terrified for them.”

Saying this, she disappeared; and Miss Cochrane, who would have

contrived some other errand for her, had the well been near, no sooner

saw the door shut, than she passed, with trembling eagerness, and a

cautious but rapid step, to the place where the man lay soundly

sleeping, in one of those close wooden bedsteads common in the houses of

the poor, the door of which was left half open to admit the air, and

which she opened still wider, in the hope of seeing the mail-bag, and

being able to seize upon it. But what was her dismay when she beheld

only a part of the integument which contained what she would have

sacrificed her life a thousand times to obtain, just peeping out from

below the shaggy head and brawny shoulders of its keeper, who lay in

such a position upon it as to give not the smallest hope of its

extraction without his being aroused from his nap.

A few bitter moments of observation served to convince her that

possession of this treasure must be obtained in some other way; and,

again closing the door of the bed, she approached the pistols, and

having taken them from the holsters, she as quickly as possible drew the

loading, which having secreted, she then returned them to their cases,

and resumed her seat at the foot of the table. She had barely time to

recover from the agitation into which the fear of the man’s awakening

during her recent occupation had thrown her, when the old woman returned

with the water; and having taken a draught, of which she stood much in

need, she settled her account much to her landlady’s content, by paying

for the water the price of a pot of beer. Having then carelessly asked

and ascertained how much longer the other guest was likely to continue

his sleep, she left the house, and mounting her horse, set off at a

trot, in a different direction from that in which she had arrived.

Making a compass of two or three miles, she once more fell into the high

road between Belford and Berwick, where she walked her horse gently on,

awaiting the coming up of the postman. Though all her faculties were now

absorbed in one aim, and the thought of her father’s deliverance still

reigned supreme in her mind, yet she could not help occasionally

figuring to herself the possibility of her tampering with the pistols

being discovered, and their loading replaced, in which case it was more

than likely that her life would be the forfeit of the act she meditated.

A woman’s fears would still intrude, notwithstanding all her heroism,

and the glorious issue which promised to attend the success of her

enterprise. When she at length saw and heard the postman advancing

behind her, the strong necessity of the case gave her renewed courage;

and it was with perfect coolness that, on his coming close up, she

civilly saluted him, put her horse into the same pace with his, and rode

on for some way in his company. He was a strong, thick-set fellow, with

a good-humoured countenance, which did not seem to Miss Cochrane, as she

looked anxiously upon it, to savour much of hardy daring. He rode with

the mail-bags (for there were two—one containing the letters direct from

London, and the other those taken up at the different post-offices on

the road) strapped firmly to his saddle in front, close to the holsters.

After riding a short distance together, Miss Cochrane deemed it time, as

they were nearly half-way between Belford and Berwick, to commence her

operations. She therefore rode nearly close to her companion, and said,

in a tone of determination,—

“Friend, I have taken a fancy for those mail-bags of yours, and I must

have them; therefore, take my advice, and deliver them up quietly, for I

am provided for all hazards. I am mounted, as you see, on a fleet steed;

I carry firearms; and, moreover, am allied with those who are stronger,

though not bolder than myself. You see yonder wood,” she continued,

pointing to one at the distance of about a mile, with an accent and air

which was meant to carry intimidation with it; “again, I say, take my

advice; give me the bags, and speed back the road you came for the

present, nor dare to approach that wood for at least two or three hours

to come.”

There was in such language from a stripling something so surprising that

the man looked on Miss Cochrane for an instant in silent and unfeigned

amazement.

“If you mean, my young master,” said he, as soon as he found his tongue,

“to make yourself merry at my expense, you are welcome. I am no sour

churl to take offence at the idle words of a foolish boy. But if,” he

said, taking one of the pistols from the holster, and turning its muzzle

towards her, “ye are mad enough to harbour one serious thought of such a

matter, I am ready for you. But, methinks, my lad, you seem at an age

when robbing a garden or an old woman’s fruit-stall would befit you

better, if you must turn thief, than taking his Majesty’s mails upon his

own highway, from such a stout man as I am. Be thankful, however, that

you have met with one who will not shed blood if he can help it, and

sheer off before you provoke me to fire.”

“Nay,” said his young antagonist, “I am not fonder of bloodshed than you

are; but if you will not be persuaded, what can I do? for I have told

you a truth, _that mail I must and will have_. So now choose,” she

continued, as she drew one of the small pistols from under her cloak,

and deliberately cocking it, presented it in his face.

“Then your blood be upon your own head,” said the fellow, as he raised

his hand, and fired his pistol, which, however, only flashed in the pan.

Dashing this weapon to the ground, he lost not a moment in pulling out

the other, which he also aimed at his assailant, and fired with the same

result. In a transport of rage and disappointment, the man sprung from

his horse, and made an attempt to seize her; but by an adroit use of her

spurs she eluded his grasp, and placed herself out of his reach.

Meanwhile his horse had moved forward some yards, and to see and seize

the advantage presented by this circumstance was one and the same to the

heroic girl, who, darting towards it, caught the bridle, and having led

her prize off about a hundred yards, stopped while she called to the

thunderstruck postman to remind him of her advice about the wood. She

then put both horses to their speed, and on turning to look at the man

she had robbed, had the pleasure of perceiving that her mysterious

threat had taken effect, and he was now pursuing his way back to

Belford.

Miss Cochrane speedily entered the wood to which she had alluded, and

tying the strange horse to a tree, out of all observation from the road,

proceeded to unfasten the straps of the mail. By means of a sharp

penknife, which set at defiance the appended locks, she was soon

mistress of the contents, and with an eager hand broke open the

Government dispatches, which were unerringly pointed out to her by their

address to the council in Edinburgh, and their imposing weight and broad

seals of office. Here she found not only the warrant for her father’s

death, but also many other sentences inflicting different degrees of

punishment on various delinquents. These, however, it may be readily

supposed, she did not then stop to examine; she contented herself with

tearing them into small fragments, and placing them carefully in her

bosom.

The intrepid girl now mounted her steed, and rode off, leaving all the

private papers as she had found them, imagining—what eventually proved

the case—that they would be discovered ere long, from the hints she had

thrown out about the wood, and thus reach their proper places of

destination. She now made all haste to reach the cottage of her nurse,

where, having not only committed to the flames the fragments of the

dreaded warrant, but also the other obnoxious papers, she quickly

resumed her female garments, and was again, after this manly and daring

action, the simple and unassuming Miss Grizel Cochrane. Leaving the

cloak and pistols behind her, to be concealed by her nurse, she again

mounted her horse, and directed her flight towards Edinburgh, and by

avoiding as much as possible the high road, and resting at sequestered

cottages, as she had done before (and that only twice for a couple of

hours each time), she reached town early in the morning of the next day.

It must now suffice to say that the time gained by the heroic act above

related was productive of the end for which it was undertaken, and that

Sir John Cochrane was pardoned, at the instigation of the king’s

favourite counsellor, who interceded for him in consequence of receiving

a bribe of five thousand pounds from the Earl of Dundonald. Of the

feelings which on this occasion filled the heart of his courageous and

devoted daughter, we cannot speak in adequate terms; and it is perhaps

best at any rate to leave them to the imagination of the reader. The

state of the times was not such for several years as to make it prudent

that her adventure should be publicly known; but after the Revolution,

when the country was at length relieved from persecution and danger, and

every man was at liberty to speak of the trials he had undergone, and

the expedients by which he had mastered them, her heroism was neither

unknown nor unapproved. Miss Cochrane afterwards married Mr Ker of

Moriston, in the county of Berwick; and there can be little doubt that

she proved equally affectionate and amiable as a wife, as she had

already been dutiful and devoted as a daughter.—_Chambers’s Edinburgh

Journal._

THE FATAL PRAYER.

The village of Gourock is situated on the shore of a fine bay, about two

miles from the town of Greenock. I was taken with the pleasantness of

its situation, when one day viewing it at a little distance on the

Greenock road, and sat down on the dyke by the roadside to enjoy the

prospect at my leisure.

Presently an elderly man, of a grave aspect and a maritime appearance,

passing slowly along the road, came and sat down near the same place. I

guessed him to be one of the better class of fishermen, who had

purchased, with the toil of his youth and his manhood, a little

breathing-time to look about him in the evening of his days, ere the

coming of night. After the usual salutations, we fell into discourse

together, and I found him to be a man who had looked well about him in

his pilgrimage, and reasoned on things and feelings—not living as the

brutes that perish. After a pause in the conversation, he remarked, to

my thinking, in a disjointed manner—

“Is it not strange, sir, that the thoughts that sometimes come into the

brain of a man sleeping or waking—like a wind that blows across his

bosom, coming he knows not whence, and going he knows not whither—leave

behind them an impression and a feeling, and become the springs of human

action, and mingle in the thread of human destiny?”

“Strange, indeed,” said I. “What you say has more than once occurred to

me; but being unable to reason satisfactorily on the subject, I set down

altogether such ideas as having no better foundation than the fears and

superstitions of the ignorant. But it seems to me that your remark,

though of a general nature, must have been made in mental reference to

some particular thing; and I would fain crave to know what it is.”

“You are right,” said he; “I was thinking at the moment of something

which has sat, for some days past, like a millstone on my mind: and I

will tell it to you with pleasure.”

So I edged myself closer to him on the stones, that I might hear the

better; and without more ado he began to discourse as follows:

“About six months ago, a wedding took place in the village, and a more

comely and amiable couple never came together. Mr Douglas, though the

son of a poor man, had been an officer in the army,—an ensign, I

believe,—and when his regiment was disbanded, he came to live here on

his half-pay, and whatever little else he might have. Jeanie Stuart at

the time was staying with an uncle, one of our own folk, her parents

having both been taken away from her; and she made up, as far as she

could, for her board, by going in the summer season to sew in the

families that come from the great towns for the sea-bathing. So gentle

she was, and so calm in her deportment, and so fair to look on withal,

that even these nobility of the loom and the sugar-hogshead thought it

no dishonour to have her among them; and unconsciously, as it were, they

treated her just as if she had been of the same human mould with

themselves.

“Well, they soon got acquainted,—our Jeanie and Mr Douglas,—and drew

kindly together; and the end of it was they were married. They lived in

a house there, just beyond the point that you may see forms the opposite

angle of the bay, not far from a place called Kempock; and Mr Douglas

just employed himself, like any of us, in fishing and daundering about,

and mending his nets, and such like. Jeanie was the happy woman now, for

she had aye a mind above the commonality; and, I am bold to say, thought

her stay long enough among these would-be gentry, where she sat many a

wearisome day for no use, and would fain have retired from their

foolishness into the strength and greenness of her own soul. But now she

had a companion and an equal, and indeed a superior; for Mr Douglas had

seen the world, and had read both books and men, and could wile away the

time in discoursing of what he had seen and heard tell of in foreign

lands, among strange people and unknown tongues. And Jeanie listened,

and listened, and thought her husband the first of mankind. She clung to

him as the honeysuckle clings to the tree: his pleasure was her

pleasure—his sorrow was her sorrow—his bare word was her law.

“One day, about two weeks ago, she appeared dull and dispirited, and

complained of a slight headache; on which Mr Douglas advised her to go

to bed and rest herself awhile; which she said she would do; and having

some business in the village he went out. On coming back, however, in

the forenoon, he found her just in the same spot, leaning her head on

her hand; but she told him she was better, and that it was nothing at

all. He then began to get his nets ready, saying he was going out with

some lads of the village to the deep-sea fishing, and would be back the

next day. She looked at him, but said nothing; long and strangely she

looked, as if wondering what he was doing, and not understanding

anything that was going on. But finally when he came to kiss her and bid

her good-bye, she threw her arms round him, and when he would have gone

she held him fast, and her bosom heaved as if her heart would break; but

still she said nothing.

“‘What can be the matter with you, Jeanie?’ said Mr Douglas.

“‘Stay with me to-day,’ said she at last; ‘depart not this night, just

this one night—it is not much to ask—to-morrow you may go where you

please, and I will not be your hindrance a moment.’

“But Mr Douglas was vexed at such folly, and she could answer nothing to

his questions, except that a thought had come into her head, and she

could not help it. So he was resolved to go, and kissing her fondly, he

threw his nets on his shoulders and went away.

“For some minutes after his departure Jeanie did not move from the spot,

but stood looking at the door whence he had gone out, and then began to

tremble all over like the leaf of a tree. At length, coming to herself

with a start, she knelt down, and throwing back her hair from her

forehead, turned her face up towards heaven, and prayed with a loud

voice to the Almighty, that she ‘might have her husband in her arms that

night.’ For some moments she remained motionless and silent in the same

attitude, till at length a sort of brightness, resembling a calm smile,

passed over her countenance like a gleam of sunshine on the smooth sea,

and bending her head low and reverently, she rose up. She then went as

usual about her household affairs, and appeared not anything

discomposed, but as tranquil and happy as if nothing had happened.

“Now the weather was fine and calm in the morning, but towards the

afternoon it came on to blow; and indeed the air had been so sultry all

day, that the seafarers might easily tell there would be a racket of the

elements before long. As the wind, however, had been rather contrary, it

was supposed that the boats could not have got far enough out to be in

the mischief, but would put back when they saw the signs in the sky. But

in the meantime the wind increased, till towards night it blew as hard a

gale as we have seen in these parts for a long time. The ships out

there, at the Tail of the Bank, were driven from their moorings, and two

of them stranded on their beam ends on the other side; every stick and

stitch on the sea made for any port they could find; and as the night

came on in darkness and thunder, it was a scene that might cow even

hearts that had been brought up on the water as if it was their proper

element, and been familiar with the voice of the tempest from their

young days. There was a sad lamenting and murmuring then, among the

women folk especially—them that were kith or kin to the lads on the sea;

and they went to one another’s houses in the midst of the storm and the

rain, and put in their pale faces through the darkness, as if searching

for hope and comfort, and drawing close to one another like a flock of

frightened sheep in their fellowship of grief and fear. But there was

one who stirred not from her house, and who felt no terror at the

shrieking of the night-storm, and sought for no comfort in the

countenance of man—and that was the wife of Mr Douglas. She sometimes,

indeed, listened to the howling of the sea that came by fits on her ear

like the voice of the water-kelpie, and starting would lay down her work

for a moment; but then she remembered the prayer she had prayed to Him

who holds the reins of the tempest in His hands, and who says to the

roaring waters, ‘Be still,’ and they are still—and the glorious balm she

had felt to sink into her heart at that moment of high and holy

communion, even like the dew of heaven on a parched land. So her soul

was comforted, and she said to herself, ‘God is not a man that He can

lie;’ and she rested on His assurance as on a rock, and laughed to scorn

the tremblings of her woman’s bosom. For why? The anchor of her hope was

in heaven, and what earthly storm was so mighty as to remove it? Then

she got up, and put the room in order, and placed her husband’s slippers

to air at the fireside; and stirred up the fuel, and drew in the

arm-chair for her weary and storm-beaten mariner. Then would she listen

at the door, and look out into the night for his coming; but she could

hear no sound save the voice of the waters, and the roar of the tempest,

as it rushed along the deep. She re-entered the house, and walked to and

fro in the room with a restless step, but an unblenched cheek.

“At last the neighbours came to her house, knowing that her husband was

one of those who had gone out that day, and told her that they were

going to walk down towards the Clough, even in the mirk hour, to try if

they could not hear some news of the boats. So she went with them, and

we all walked together along the road—women and men, it might be, some

twenty or thirty of us. But it was remarked, that though she came not

hurriedly nor in fear, yet she had not even thrown her cloak on her

shoulders, to defend her from the night air, but came forth with her

head uncovered, and in her usual raiment of white, like a bride to the

altar. As we passed along, it must have been a strange sight to see so

many pale faces by the red glare of the torches they carried, and to

hear so many human wailings filling up the pauses of the storm; but at

the head of our melancholy procession there was a calm heart and a firm

step, and they were Jeanie’s. Sometimes, indeed, she would look back, as

some cry of womanish foreboding from behind would smite on her ear, and

strange thoughts would crowd into her mind; and once she was heard to

mutter—if her prayer had but saved her husband to bind some other

innocent victim to the mysterious altar of wrath! And she stopped for a

moment, as if in anguish at the wild imagination.

“But now as we drew nearer the rocks where the lighthouse is built,

sounds were heard distinctly on the shore, and we waved the torches in

the air, and gave a great shout, which was answered by known voices—for

they were some of our own people—and our journey was at an end. A number

of us then went on before, and groped our way among the rocks as well as

we could in the darkness; but a woful tale met our ear; for one of the

boats had been shattered to pieces while endeavouring to land there, and

when he went down they were just dragging the body of a comrade, stiff

and stark, from the sea. When the women behind heard of this, there was

a terrible cry of dismay, for no one knew but it might be her own

husband, son, or brother; and some who carried lights dropped them from

fear, and others held them trembling to have the terrors of their hearts

confirmed.

“There was one, however, who stood calm and unmoved by the side of the

dead body. She spoke some words of holy comfort to the women, and they

were silent at her voice. She then stepped lightly forward, and took a

torch from the trembling hand that held it, and bent down with it beside

the corpse. As the light fell one moment on her own fair face, it showed

no signs of womanish feeling at the sight and touch of mortality; a

bright and lovely bloom glowed on her cheek, and a heavenly lustre

beamed in her eye; and as she knelt there, her white garments and long

dark hair floating far on the storm, there was that in her look which

drew the gaze even of that terrified group from the object of their

doubt and dread. The next moment the light fell on the face of the

dead—the torch dropped from her hand, and she fell upon the body of her

husband! _Her prayer was granted._ She held her husband in her arms that

night, and although no struggles of parting life were heard or seen, she

died on his breast.”

When the fisherman had concluded his story—and after some observations

were made by us both, touching the mysterious warning, joined with a

grateful acknowledgment that the stroke of death might be as often dealt

in mercy as in wrath—we shook hands; and asking one another’s names, as

it might so fortune that we should once more, in the course of our

earthly pilgrimage, be within call of one another, the old man and I

parted, going each his several way.—_Literary Melange._

GLENMANNOW, THE STRONG HERDSMAN.

BY WILLIAM BENNET.

Duke James of Queensberry, like others of our nobility and gentry,

resided during a part of the year in London; and on one of his visits to

the metropolis, he and a party of friends happened to have a match at

discus, or, as it is more commonly called, “putting the stone.” Several

adepts happened to be of the party, who boasted much of their superior

strength and adroitness, and after making one of their best throws,

offered to stake a large sum that not one of their companions knew of or

could find a person to match it.

“The throw is certainly a good one,” said the Duke of Queensberry; “yet

I think it were easy to find many champions of sufficient muscle to show

us a much better. I myself have a homely unpractised herdsman in

Scotland, on whose head I will stake the sum you mention, that he shall

throw the quoit fully two yards over the best of you.”

“Done! produce your man!” was the reply of all; and the duke accordingly

lost no time in dispatching a letter to one of his servants at

Drumlanrig, ordering him to set out immediately on its receipt for

Glenmannow, and to come with honest John M‘Call to London without delay.

The duke’s letter with Glenmannow was not less absolute than the order

of an emperor. He wondered, but never thought of demurring; and without

any further preparation than clothing himself in his Sunday’s suit, and

giving Mally his wife a few charges about looking to the hill in his

absence, he assumed his large staff, and departed with the servant for

“Lunnun.”

On his arrival, the duke informed him of the purpose for which he had

been sent, and desired that on the day, and at the hour appointed, he

should make his appearance along with one of his servants, who knew

perfectly the back streets and by-lanes of London, and who, after he

should have decided the bet, would conduct him immediately in safety

from the ground, as it was not improbable that his appearance and

performance might attract a crowd and lead to unpleasant consequences.

When the day arrived, the party assembled and proceeded to the ground,

where, to the duke’s surprise, though not to his terror, his crafty

opponents chose a spot directly in front of a high wall, and at such a

distance that the best of their party should pitch the quoit exactly to

the foot of it; so that their antagonist, to make good the duke’s boast

of “two yards over them,” should be obliged to exceed them those two

yards in height, instead of straight forward distance. This implied such

an effort as amounted in their minds to a physical impossibility; and as

the duke, from having neglected to specify the particular nature of the

ground, could not legally object to this advantage, they looked upon the

victory as already their own.

The quoit chosen was a large ball of lead, and already had the champion

of the party tossed it to the wall, and demanded of the duke to produce

the man appointed to take it up. His grace’s servant, who fully

comprehended the instructions given to him, entered at this crisis with

the ‘buirdly’ and, to them, uncouth Glenmannow. His appearance attracted

no small notice, and even merriment; but the imperturbable object of it

regarded the whole scene with the indifference peculiar to his

character; and, with his mind fixed only upon the great end for which he

was there, requested to be shown the quoit, and the spots from which and

to where it had been thrown. This demand was soon complied with, and

while he assumed his station, with the quoit in his hand, the duke

whispered in his ear the deception which had been practised, and urged

him to exert his whole force in order to render it unavailing.

“Will you throw off your coat? It will give you more freedom,” said his

Grace in conclusion.

“My coat! Na, na; nae coats aff wi’ me for this silly affair,” replied

he. “I thocht it had been some terrible I throw or ither that thae chaps

had made, when I was ca’ed for a’ the way to Lunnun to see to gang ayont

them; but if this be a’, I wadna hae meaned ye to hae done’t yoursel.”

Then poising the ball for a little in his hand, and viewing it with an

air of contempt, “There!” said he, tossing it carelessly from him into

the air, “he that likes may gang and fetch it back.”

The ball, as if shot from the mouth of a cannon, flew on in a straight

line completely over the wall, and alighted on the roof of a house at

some distance beyond it. Its weight and velocity forced it through the

tiles, and with a crash which immediately caused the house to be

evacuated by its inmates, it penetrated also the garret floor, and

rolled upon that of the next storey. An instantaneous hubbub ensued,—the

party staring at each other in silence, and the crowd swearing it was

the devil! but the servant knew his duty, and in a twinkling Glenmannow

was no longer amongst them.

His Grace, after paying for the damage done to the house, conducted the

whole party to his residence, there to discharge their forfeit, and to

gaze upon the prodigy by whom they were vanquished. Glenmannow was well

rewarded for his trouble and loss of time in journeying to London; and,

over and above the immediate bounty of his Grace, he returned to his

honest Mally with a discharge for one year’s rent of the farm in his

pocket.

One summer, during his Grace’s residence at Drumlanrig, his friend the

Duke of Buccleuch, who was at that time colonel of a regiment of

fencibles, happened to be passing between Dumfries and Sanquhar with a

company of his grenadiers; and having made Thornhill a station for the

night, he went and billeted himself upon his Grace of Queensberry, by

whom he was received with a hearty welcome. The two friends deeming one

night’s intercourse too short, and Buccleuch’s marching orders not being

peremptory in regard to time, it was agreed between them that they

should spend the two succeeding days together, and that the soldiers,

during that period, should be distributed among the tenantry around the

castle.

Buccleuch, though a personal stranger to Glenmannow, was no stranger to

his fame; and it was contrived between them, that a few of the

grenadiers should be dispatched to beat up his quarters, and endeavour

to force themselves upon him as his guests. Six of the stoutest were

accordingly selected for this purpose, and after being told the

character of the person to whom they were sent, and the joke which was

intended to follow it, they received a formal billet, and set out for

their destination. Their orders were to enter the house in a seemingly

rough manner, to find fault with everything, to quarrel with Glenmannow,

and endeavour, if possible, to overpower and bind him; but not on any

account to injure either his person or effects in even the slightest

degree. The soldiers, their commander knew, were arch fellows, and would

acquit themselves in the true spirit of their instructions.

In those days few roads, excepting footpaths,—and those frequently too

indistinctly marked to be traced by a stranger,—existed in the interior

parts of the country. The soldiers, therefore, experienced no small

difficulty in marshalling their way around the slope of the huge

Cairnkinnow, in evading bogs and brakes, leaping burns and march dykes,

and in traversing all the heights and hollows which lay between them and

their secluded bourne. But the toils of their journey were more than

compensated by the pleasures of it, for the pilgrim must possess little

of either fancy or feeling, who could wander without delight amid the

wild scenery of that mountainous district. When the top of Glenquhargen

is reached, and the bottom of the Glen of Scaur is beheld far, far

beneath your feet; when the little river, which gives to the glen its

name, is seen, descending from the hills, like an infant commencing the

journey of life, into the long level holm which spreads its bosom to

receive it; when, after descending, the eyes are cast around on its

amphitheatre of Alpine hills, arrayed in “the brightness of green,” and

on the clouds that slumber, or the mists that curl along their summits;

and when the head is thrown backward to contemplate the rocky peak of

Glenquhargen, with the hawk, the gled, and the raven whirling,

screaming, and croaking around it, that individual were dull and

despicable indeed whose spirit would not fly forth and mingle, and

identify itself, as it were, with the grand and the beautiful around

him.

In a truly picturesque situation, on the side of one of the most

northern of those hills, the soldiers beheld the house of Glenmannow. It

was a low, thatchroofed building, with a peat-stack leaning against one

gable, and what might well be denominated a hut, which served for barn,

byre, and stable, attached to the other; while a short way farther up

the hill stood a round bucht, in which, upon occasion, the sturdy tenant

was in the habit of penning his flock. A more modern structure has now

been reared in the immediate vicinity of Glenmannow’s domicile; yet in

the beginning of the present century some vestiges of the ancient one

were still remaining.

It was nearly noon when the party arrived in the “door-step;” yet at

that late hour they found Mally busied in making a quantity of milk

porridge for her own and her husband’s breakfast, who had not yet

returned from his morning visit to the hill. The appearance of soldiers

in so sequestered a spot was to her a matter of scarcely less surprise

than was that of the Spaniards to the simple Indians, on their first

landing upon the shores of the New World. Soldiers, too, are generally

objects of terror in such places, where their names are associated in

the minds of the peasantry only with ideas of oppression and of

slaughter; and at the period referred to, this feeling was in much

greater force than at present. Poor Mally endeavoured as much as

possible to conceal her fears and embarrassment, and with all the

politeness she was mistress of, desired the party to be seated. Her

artifice, however, was far from equalling their penetration: they soon

remarked her timorous side—glances and hesitating manner, as she walked

backward and forward through the house; and they therefore resolved to

divert themselves a little by working upon her prejudices.

“That bayonet of mine,” said one of the fellows, “will never be as clear

again, I am afraid. The blood of that old herd, whom we did away with as

we came, sticks confoundedly to it.”

Mally was at this moment dishing the porridge in two _goans_, one for

herself and another for John, and on hearing this horrible annunciation,

she made a dead pause, and letting go the foot of the pot, suffered it

to fall to its perpendicular with a bang which forced the cleps out of

her hand, and precipitated the whole, with a large quantity of undished

porridge, to the floor.

“If we do any more such tricks to-day,” continued another wag, “I shall

wipe mine well before the blood dries upon it, and then it will not rust

as yours has done.”

Mally, regardless of the porridge she had spilt, now stepped with

cautious, but quick and trembling steps to the door. Before she had

reached the threshold—

“Come,” cried the soldier who had thus spoken, “let us taste this food

which the mistress has been preparing. Good woman, return and give us

spoons. No flinching! We won’t harm you, unless you provoke us to it.

Why do you hesitate? Are you unwilling to part with your victuals? By my

faith! the walk we have had this morning has given us such appetites,

that if you are not active, we shall have a slice off yourself!”

“O mercy!” cried Mally, staring wildly, “hae patience a wee, an I’se gie

ye ocht that’s in the house; but dinna meddle wi’ that goanfu’ o’

porridge, I beseech ye. They’re our John’s; and if he comes frae the

hill, and finds them suppet, he’ll brain some o’ ye, as sure as I’m

livin’.”

She then made for the cupboard, and began to draw from thence bread,

butter, and cheese; but the rogues, on hearing that John was so partial

to his porridge, deemed this opportunity of arousing his ire too

favourable to be lost, and they therefore insisted on being accommodated

with spoons in order to “scart the coggie.” Mally was obliged

reluctantly to hand each a spoon from the wicker-creel which hung in the

corner, and the six fellows were just in the act of devouring the

contents of the goan, when honest Glenmannow made his appearance.

“What’s a’ this?” were his first words, on entering and perceiving such

a bevy of red-coats.

“Why, honest man, we have got a billet upon you,” said one of them.

“A billet! Wha frae?”

“From the Duke of Queensberry, with whom our colonel, the Duke of

Buccleuch, is stopping at present. We are just arrived; it was a deuced

long walk; we were very hungry, and are just making free with your

breakfast, until something better be prepared for us.”

“Ye’re makin’ mair free than welcome, I doubt, my lads. I hae nae

objection, since our juke has sent ye, to gie ye a nicht’s quarters, an’

to let ye live on the best we can afford; but I think ye micht hae haen

mair mense than to fa’ on my parritch that way, like a wheen collies.”

“Like what? Hold your peace, sir,” thundered the whole at once. “We are

upon the king’s service, and have a right to what we please, wherever we

are billeted.”

“For a’ sakes, John, let them alane!” cried Mally, who saw the tempest

that was gathering on her husband’s brow. “We hae plenty o’ meal in the

house, and canna be mickle the waur o’ what they’ll tak for ae day an’

nicht. Ye’se get something else to your breakfast directly.” Then she

went close to his side, and whispered into his ear the fearful

conversation she had heard. Glenmannow, though he never knew what it was

to fear, was of a disposition too quiet and mild not to be easily

pacified, and the soldiers saw with regret his looks beginning to

brighten under the influence of Mally’s eloquence.

“Egad! there’s a fine calf before the window,” cried one of them, whom a

new thought had opportunely struck; “Tom, go out and put a ball through

it. We shall have a fine roast of veal, if this old lady knows how to

manage it.”

“Ye’ll hae a fine roast deevil!” roared Glenmannow, now provoked beyond

sufferance; “I’ll gie ye” ——

“Down, down with him!” cried the whole party at once, springing up, and

endeavouring to surround him. But in this they resembled a posse of

mastiffs attacking some lordly bull, which the enraged animal shakes

from his sides and tramples in the dust. In one instant Glenmannow’s

plaid was flung from him upon the bed; his staff also, which was too

long for use at such close quarters, was relinquished, and seizing by

the collar and thigh the first of the fellows who attacked him, he used

him against the others, both as a weapon and shield, with such fury and

effect, that they were all glad to provide for their safety by an

instant retreat. Fortunately for them, the door chanced to be open, so

that they reached the bent with comparatively little injury. But the

poor fellow who was trussed in Glenmannow’s grasp, and dashed against

this and the other of them with such violence, had his body beaten

almost to a mummy, and kept howling and calling for mercy in a most

lamentable manner. By Glenmannow, however, he was totally unheard,

until, on rushing to the door, his eye chanced to fall upon one of his

own cars placed on end, and leaning against the side of the house.

Tossing the soldier from him upon the grass, he immediately seized this

rude vehicle, and, wrenching from it a limb, cast the huge weapon upon

his shoulder, and bounded off in pursuit of his enemies.

By this time the soldiers had gained a hundred yards in advance, and

were stretching away like greyhounds toward the summit of Glenquhargen.

They were all nimble-footed, and the panic with which they were now

actually seized gave wings to their speed, and rendered a matter of no

regard the rocks and other impediments over which they were flying.

Their pursuer was not more speedy, but much longer winded, and the rage

which then impelled him was not less potent than their terror. He

possessed a fund of physical ability which was almost inexhaustible, and

he had sworn not to drop the pursuit till he had “smashed the hale set,”

so that from the length of the race the poor wights had but a small

chance of safety. At length the top of Glenquhargen, then Cairnkinnow,

and next Gowkthorn, were reached, without any loss or advantage to

either party. From the latter of these places, the ground declines

nearly the whole way to Drumlanrig, and the soldiers, with the start in

their favour, flew on with a glimmering of hope that now they could

scarcely be overtaken. Their hope was realised, but not without such

overstraining as had nearly proved equally fatal with the vengeance from

which they fled. Leaning forward almost to the ground, and staggering

like drunkards from excess of fatigue, they at last reached the western

staircase which leads into the court of the castle. Behind them

Glenmannow rushed on also with abated speed, but with indignation as hot

as ever. He still bore upon his shoulder the ponderous car limb; his

face was literally bathed in perspiration; and the wild expression of

his eyes, and the foam which was beginning to appear at each corner of

his mouth, rendered him a true personification of Giant Madness broken

from his chains.

The two dukes, who had been informed of their approach by some servants

who observed them descending the opposite heights, were waiting to

receive them within the balustrade which runs along that side of the

castle; but on marking the fury of Glenmannow, Duke James deemed it

prudent to retire with the exhausted soldiers until the storm should be

passed; for while his tenant remained in that mood of mind, he dared

not, absolute as was his authority, to come into his presence. His

brother of Buccleuch was therefore left to bear the first brunt of the

salutation, who, on Glenmannow’s approach, called out, “What is the

matter? What is to do?” Glenmannow, without regarding this interrogatory

further than by darting upon him a wild and fierce look, sprang up

stairs, and rushed past him into the court of the castle. But here his

progress was stopped; for among the several doors which lead from thence

to every part of the castle, he knew not by which his enemies had

entered. One, however, was known to him, and along that passage he

rapidly hastened, until he at length arrived in the kitchen. There he

was equally at fault, and there his pursuit was ended; for the smiles of

the sonsy cook, and the fondlements of the various servants who thronged

around him, succeeded in restoring his mind to a degree of calmness and

repose. The cook eased his shoulder of the car limb, with the intention

of repaying herself for the trouble by using it as fuel; others divested

him of his bonnet; and all, with many words, prevailed upon him at last

to assume a chair. After a moment’s silence, in which he seemed to be

lost in reflection, “Ay, ay,” said he, “I see through a’ this noo. It

has been a trick o’ the juke’s makin’ up.” Then, with a serious air, he

added, “But it was dangerous though; for if I had gotten a haud o’ thae

chaps, wha kens what I might hae done!”

The duke, on being informed of this change wrought upon his tenant, and

having learnt from the soldiers the way in which he had been deprived of

his breakfast, ordered him a plentiful refreshment, and afterwards sent

for him into the presence of himself and of Buccleuch. The breach

between them was speedily healed; and Glenmannow, nothing poorer for his

race, returned shortly afterwards with a servant on horseback, who was

dispatched to convey to headquarters the poor grenadier who had been so

roughly handled in the affray.

Mally, with a humanity and forgiveness which the soldier had little

right to expect, had succeeded in removing him from the spot where he

was cast down, into the house, and having there laid him upon a bed,

tended him with such kindness and care, that, by the time of

Glenmannow’s return, he was so far recovered as to be able to sit upon

the horse sent to remove him. Glenmannow, after Mally had wrapped round

him a pair of blankets, bore him out in his arms, and placed him behind

the servant, who in this manner conducted him in safety to Drumlanrig.

This is the last exploit of a remarkable kind which I have been able to

glean respecting Glenmannow. He lived to a pretty long age, yet his life

was abridged within its natural period by imprudently taxing his great

strength beyond its actual capability. A high dyke was in the course of

being built, from the heights on the left of the Nith into the channel

of the river, about four miles above Drumlanrig, on the way to Sanquhar,

and in order to resist the force of the current, the largest stones that

could be moved were built into the dyke at its termination. One in

particular, which lay near the place, was deemed excellently fitted for

that purpose, but its weight rendered it unmanageable. Glenmannow

undertook to lift it into its place, and in reality did so; but in the

effort he injured his breast and spine, and brought on a lingering

disorder, of which he died in less than a twelvemonth afterwards, in the

year 1705. I am not aware of his having left any descendants to

perpetuate and spread his name; one thing at least is certain, that in

the present day none such are to be found in that district which was the

principal scene of his exploits, and where still is cherished to such a

degree his singular yet honest renown.—_Traits of Scottish Life, and

Pictures of Scenes and Character._

MY GRANDMOTHER’S PORTRAIT.

BY DANIEL GORRIE.

In picture galleries, or in private apartments, portraits seldom receive

much attention from visitors, unless they happen to have known the

originals, or to be aware that the pictures are the productions of

distinguished artists. And yet, whether we have known the originals or

not, and apart altogether from the general artistic merit of the works,

there are many portraits which have a wonderful effect in giving the

mind a reflective and inquisitive turn. Portraits of this description

may occasionally be seen in retired country houses of modest dimensions,

where one need scarcely expect to find specimens of the highest class of

art. Faces we may there observe, silently depending from the walls, on

which strongly-pronounced character is depicted in spite of every

artistic defect, and through the deep lines of which the record of a

stirring or painful life seems to struggle earnestly for utterance.

People are too much in the habit of regarding every person as

commonplace and uninteresting who has not managed somehow to make a

noise in the world; but in these “counterfeit presentments” of men and

women who have died in comparative obscurity, known only to their own

circle of friends, we may see much that strangely moves our hearts, and

makes us long to learn what their history has been.

Let the reader look in fancy on that old portrait hanging before me

there on the wall. To me it is no dead picture, but rather does it seem

the living embodiment of a maternal grandmother—a heroic old dame, who

never lost heart whatever might betide, and of whom that image is now

almost the sole remaining relic. Even a stranger could scarcely fail to

note with curious interest that small round face with nose and chin

attenuated by years—those peering eyes, where a twinkle of youth yet

breaks through the dim of eld—that wrinkled brow, shaded with a brown

frontage-braid of borrowed hair—and that compact little head, encased in

a snow-white cap with its broad band of black ribbon. The least skilful

artist could hardly have failed in depicting the features; but the old

familiar expression is also there, preserved as in amber, and the aged

face is pleasantly blended in my mind with memories of early days.

Detached incidents in her life, which she was fond of frequently

relating to her grandchildren, who eagerly clustered around her,

listening to the oft-told tale, recur to me with considerable freshness

after the lapse of many years.

At the time when that portrait was taken, Mrs Moffat—as I shall name

her—was well-nigh eighty years of age. For about the half of that period

she had led a widowed life. Her husband, who witnessed many stirring

scenes on sea and shore, had been a surgeon in the Royal Navy, and she

was left “passing rich with forty pounds a year” of government pension.

There was one remarkable incident in his history to which she frequently

recurred. Samuel Moffat obtained an appointment as surgeon on board the

ill-fated _Royal George_; but before the time set apart for her leaving

port, he found that the smell of the fresh paint of the new vessel

created a feeling of nausea, which would have rendered him unfit for

duty; and by his good fortune in getting transferred, on this account,

to another man-of-war, he escaped the sad fate that befell so many

hapless victims—

When Kempenfelt went down

With twice four hundred men.

A striking incident of this kind naturally made a deep impression on his

own mind, and it also formed a prominent reminiscence in the memory of

his faithful partner during the long remainder of her life.

The earlier period of Mrs Moffat’s widowhood was passed in Edinburgh;

but when death and marriage had scattered her family, she followed one

of her married daughters to the country, and took up her abode in a neat

poplar-shaded cottage on the outskirts of a quiet village, situated in a

fertile and beautiful valley of the county that lies cradled in the

twining arms of the Forth and the Tay. That cottage, with its garden

behind, and pretty flower-borders in front, and with its row of poplar

and rowan-trees, through which the summer breeze murmured so pleasantly,

comes up vividly before my mind’s eye at this moment. Beautiful as of

yore the valley smiles around, with its girdling ridges belted with

woods, and dotted with pleasant dwellings; and away to westward,

shutting in the peaceful scene from the tumult of the great world, rise

the twin Lomond hills, glorious at morn and eve, when bathed in the

beams of the rising and setting sun. The good old lady, who had spent a

large portion of her life in “Auld Reekie,” when narrow Bristo Street

and Potterrow and the adjoining courts were inhabited by the better

class of citizens, took kindly to the country cottage, and she was fond

of the garden and flowers. With a basket on her arm, she trotted about

the garden, apparently very busy, but doing little after all. In autumn,

after a gusty night, one of her first morning occupations was to gather

up the fallen ruddy apples, which she preserved for the special

gratification of her grandchildren. Many a time and oft were they

debarred from touching the red berries of the rowan-trees, which look as

tempting in children’s eyes as did the forbidden fruit in those of

Mother Eve. The girls were even enjoined not to make necklaces of these

clustering red deceivers.

In that retired village there were, in those days, a good many

well-to-do people, who had not found it very difficult to make money out

of a generous soil. The different families lived on very sociable terms,

and during the winter season there were rounds of tea-parties, winding

up with cold suppers and hot toddy. Teetotalism was a thing unknown in

that district and in those days, though I shall do the good folks the

justice of saying that they knew the virtues of moderation. To all those

winter gatherings of the local gentry, Mrs Moffat invariably received an

invitation. They could not do without her, relishing as they did her

ready wit and hearty good-humour. She was, in sooth, the life of every

party. On such occasions she displayed all the artless buoyancy of

youth, as if she had never endured the agonies of bereavement, or borne

the burdens of life. She was then the very image of “Old Delight,” and

her aged face renewed its youth in the sunshine of joy. Some of the

knowing lairds tried by bantering and otherwise to draw her out, and her

quick cutting repartees were followed by explosions of mirth. It seemed

marvellous that such a well of sunny mirth should be encased in that

tiny frame. Indeed, it was nothing unusual for the hearty old lady to

treat the company to a “canty” song at these village parties, and

touches of melody still lingered about the cracks of her voice. When

bothered overmuch to sing another song after she had already done

enough, she generally met the request with a solitary stanza to this

effect:—

There was a wee mannie an’ a wee wifie,

And they lived in a vinegar bottle;

“And O,” says the wee mannie to the wee wifie,

“Wow, but oor warld is little, is little!

Wow, but oor warld is little!”

Rare encounters of wit and amusing banter occasionally took place

between her and a strange eccentric humorist of a lawyer of the old

school, who frequently visited the village from a neighbouring country

town. Old Bonthron was the name by which he was familiarly known.

It may readily be imagined that, when old Mr Bonthron and Mrs Moffat met

in the same company, the fun would grow “fast and furious,” and such

certainly was the case. I have seen the hearty old humorist take the

equally hearty old lady on his knee, and dandle her there like a child,

greatly to their own delight and to the infinite amusement of the

company. There will be less genial and boisterous mirth now-a-days, I

should imagine, in that sequestered village.

Such was Mrs Moffat in her lightsome hours, when friends met friends;

but her grandchildren were as much delighted with her when, in graver

mood, she recalled early recollections, told them pleasant little

stories, and narrated graphically what to her were eventful incidents in

her life.

I can still remember some of the pleasant pictures she gave us of her

early days. She was born in the town of Dalkeith, which is beautiful for

situation, being planted in the midst of the richest woodland scenery,

and she imprinted in our hearts vivid impressions of the delighted

feelings with which, in the days of her girlhood, she looked through the

gate of the Duke’s great park, and saw the long winding avenue and the

greensward traversed by nibbling sheep, and the magnificent trees whose

“shadowing shroud” might cover a goodly company at their rural feast in

the noontide of a summer’s day. She described the rustic seats and

summer-houses on the banks of a brook, that wandered at its own sweet

will through the wooded grounds—regions and resorts of joyance, where

the children of the town, through the kindness of the then reigning Duke

of Buccleuch, were permitted to spend the livelong summer’s day, thus

enabling them to store their memories with pleasing recollections, which

might come back upon them in their declining days, like visions of

beauty from lands of old romance. There was a pathetic story about a

family of larks that had their nest in the Duke’s Park, which she

recited to us over and over again, by way of inculcating the virtue of

treating kindly all the creatures of God. Her story was, that some of

the young rascals of Dalkeith had caught the mother-bird in the nest,

and had carried off her and the whole family of young ones at one fell

swoop. The male bird, thus deprived at once of mate and family, took up

his melancholy station near the nest, and mourned his loss with

plaintive pipe for two days, at the end of which time the broken-hearted

warbler died. This affecting incident, told with much seriousness and

feeling, was not unproductive of good effect upon the young listeners.

Cities and towns being still to us mysteries of which we had only a

vague conception, it pleased us much to hear her tell how the bells of

Dalkeith tolled children to bed, and how little boys walked through the

streets at night, calling “Hot pies for supper!” It struck us that at

whatever hour the bell tolled, we should have liked to remain out of bed

till the pies went round.

On winter evenings, beside the good old lady’s cottage fire, she was

often constrained to recount her famous voyage to London, in which she

wellnigh suffered shipwreck. The war-vessel on board of which her

husband acted as surgeon had arrived in the Thames. He could not then

obtain leave of absence, and as they had not met for many long months,

she determined—protracted as the passage then was from Leith to

London—to make an effort to see her husband, and to visit the great

metropolis. Steamers had not, at that period, come into existence, and

the clipper-smacks that traded between Leith and London, and took a few

venturesome passengers on their trips, dodged along the Scotch and

English coasts for days and weeks, thus making a lengthened voyage of

what is now a brief and pleasant sail. It was considered a bold and

hazardous undertaking, in those days, for any lady to proceed alone on

such a voyage. This, however, she did, as she was gifted with a

wonderful amount of pluck, leaving her family in the charge of some

friends till she returned.

The vessel had scarcely left the Firth of Forth, and got out into the

open sea, when the weather underwent a bad turn, and soon they had to

encounter all the fury of a severe storm, which caused many shipwrecks

along the whole eastern seaboard. With a kind of placid contentment—nay,

even with occasional glee—would she describe the protracted miseries and

hardships they endured, having run short of supplies, and every hour

expecting the vessel to founder. It was three weeks after leaving Leith

until the smack was, as she described it, towed up the Thames like a

dead dog, without either mast or bowsprit—a hapless and helpless hulk.

However, she managed to see her husband, and the happiness of the

meeting would be considered a good equivalent for the mishaps of the

voyage. She saw, in the great metropolis, the then Prince of Wales—the

“First Gentleman in Europe,” and used to relate, with considerable gusto

(old ladies being more rough-and-ready then than now), how the Prince,

as he was riding in St James’s Park, overheard a hussar in the crowd

exclaiming, “He’s a d——d handsome fellow!” and immediately lifting his

hat, his Royal Highness replied, “Thank you, my lad; but you put too

much spice in your compliments!” That London expedition was a red-letter

leaf in Mrs Moffat’s biography, and it was well thumbed by us juveniles.

Her return voyage was comparatively comfortable, and much more rapid;

but she never saw her husband again, as he died at sea, and was

consigned to the deep.

Even more interesting than the London trip were all the stories and

incidents connected with her only son—our uncle who _ought_ to have

been, but who was dead before any of us were born. Through the kindness

and influence of Admiral Greig of the Russian navy, he obtained a

commission in the Russian service at an unusually early age—Russia and

Britain being at that time in close alliance. Neither the Russian navy

nor army was in the best condition, and the Emperor was very desirous to

obtain the services of British officers, Scotsmen being preferred. Mrs

Moffat loved her son with all the warmth of her kindly nature, and when

he had been about a year or two in the Russian service, the news spread

through Edinburgh one day, that a Russian man-of-war was coming up the

Firth to Leith roads. I have heard the good lady relate the eventful

incidents of that day with glistening eyes and tremulous voice.

The tidings were conveyed to her by friends who knew that she had some

reason to be interested in the news. She had received no communication

from her son for some time, as the mails were then very irregular, and

letters often went amissing; and, filled with the hope that he might be

on board the Russian vessel that was approaching the roads, she

immediately hurried off for Leith, whither crowds of people were already

repairing, as a Russian war-vessel in the Forth was as great a rarity

then as it is now. Before she arrived at the pier, the vessel had

anchored in the roads, and the pier, neither so long nor so commodious

as it is now, was thronged with people pressing onwards to get a sight

of the stranger ship. Nothing daunted by the crowd, Mrs Moffat squeezed

herself forward, at the imminent risk of being seriously crushed. A

gentleman who occupied a “coigne of vantage,” out of the stream of the

crowd, observed this slight-looking lady pressing forward with great

eagerness. He immediately hailed her, and asked, as she appeared very

much interested, if she expected any one, or had any friends on board.

She replied that she half expected her son to be with the vessel. The

gentleman, who was to her a total stranger, but who must have been a

gentleman every inch, immediately took her under his protection, and

having a telescope in his hand, he made observations, and reported

progress.

One of the ship’s boats had been let down, and he told her that he

observed officers in white uniform rapidly descending. Mrs Moffat’s

eagerness and anxiety were now on the increase. The boat put off from

the ship, propelled by sturdy and regular strokes, cutting the water

into foam, which sparkled in the sunshine. When the boat had approached

midway between the ship and the shore, Mrs Moffat asked her protector if

he could distinguish one officer apparently younger than the others.

“Yes,” he replied; “there is one who seems scarcely to have passed from

boyhood to manhood.”

Her eager impatience, with hope and fear alternating in her heart,

seemed now to agitate her whole frame, and the bystanders, seeing her

anxiety, appeared also to share in her interest.

At last the boat, well filled with officers, shot alongside the pier,

the crowd rushing and cheering, as it sped onward to the upper

landing-place. It was with great difficulty that the gentleman could

restrain the anxious mother from dashing into the rushing stream of

people. When the crowd had thinned off a little, they made their way up

the pier, and found that the officers had all left the boat and gone

into the Old Ship Inn—probably because they had no desire of being

mobbed. Mrs Moffat immediately went to the inn, and requested an

attendant to ask if one of the officers belonged to Scotland, and if so,

to be good enough to mention his name.

“Yes—Moffat!” was the cheery response, and in a short time mother and

son were locked in each other’s arms in the doorway of the Old Ship.

With a glee, not unmingled with tender regrets, she used to tell how,

when she and the spruce young officer were proceeding up Leith Walk

together to Edinburgh, an old woman stopped them, and, clapping him

kindly on the shoulder, said—“Ay, my mannie, ye’ll be a captain yet!”

This prophecy of the old woman certainly met its fulfilment.

After staying a few days in the old home near the Meadows, young Moffat

again took his departure, never more to see his affectionate mother, or

the bald crown of Arthur Seat rising by the side of the familiar Firth.

He joined the army (changes of officers from the navy to the army being

then frequent in the Russian service), and reenacted his part honourably

in many memorable scenes. Still do I remember the tender and tearful

care with which his old mother opened up the yellow letters, with their

faded ink-tracings, which contained descriptions of the part he played

in harassing the French, during their disastrous retreat after the

burning of Moscow. One of these letters, I recollect, commenced

thus—“Here we are, driving the French before us like a flock of sheep;”

and in others he gave painful descriptions of their coming up to small

parties of French soldiers who were literally glued by the extreme frost

to the ground—quite stiff and dead, but still in a standing attitude,

and leaning on their muskets. Poor wretches! that was their sole reward

for helping to whet the appetite of an insatiable ambition. In those

warlike times, young Moffat grew into favour, and gained promotion. He

received a gold-hilted sword from the Emperor for distinguished service,

but he succumbed to fatigue, and died on foreign soil. The gold-headed

sword and his epaulets, which he had bequeathed to a favourite sister,

fell into the hands of harpies in London, and to this day have never

reached Scotland.

In the quiet village Mrs Moffat spent her declining days in peace and

sweet content, and she now sleeps in the village churchyard, till the

last spring that visits the world shall waken inanimate dust to immortal

life.

THE BAPTISM.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.