CHAPTER II

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: W. Clark Russell]

INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORIES

EDITED BY

WILLIAM PATTEN

A NEW COLLECTION OF

FAMOUS EXAMPLES

FROM THE LITERATURES

OF ENGLAND, FRANCE

AND AMERICA

ENGLISH

P F COLLIER & SON

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1910

BY P. F. COLLIER & SON

The use of the copyrighted stories in this collection has been

authorized in each case by their authors or by their representatives.

ENGLISH STORIES

THE TWO DROVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Sir Walter Scott

MR. DEUCEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By W. M. Thackeray

THE BROTHERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edward Bulmer Lytton

DOCTOR MANETTE'S MANUSCRIPT . . . . . . . . . . . By Charles Dickens

THE CALDRON OF OIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Wilkie Collins

THE BURIAL OF THE TITHE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Samuel Lover

THE KNIGHTSBRIDGE MYSTERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Charles Reade

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD . . . . . . . . . . . By Rudyard Kipling

THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR . . . . . . . . . . . By R. L. Stevenson

THE SECRET OF GORESTHORPE GRANGE . . . . . . . . By Sir A. Conan Doyle

A CHANGE OF TREATMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By W. W. Jacobs

THE STICKIT MINISTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By S. R. Crockett

THE LAMMAS PREACHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By S. R. Crockett

AN UNDERGRADUATE'S AUNT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By F. Anstey

THE SILHOUETTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By A. T. Quiller-Couch

MY BROTHER HENRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By J. M. Barrie

GILRAY'S FLOWER POT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By J. M. Barrie

MR. O'LEARY'S SECOND LOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Charles Lever

THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE MILLER OF HOFBAU . . . By Anthony Hope Hawkins

THE STOLEN BODY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By H. G. Wells

THE LAZARETTE OF THE "HUNTRESS" . . . . . . . . . By W. Clark Russell

THE GREAT TRIANGULAR DUEL . . . . . . . By Captain Frederick Marryat

THREE THIMBLES AND A PEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By George Borrow

THE TWO DROVERS

By SIR WALTER SCOTT

CHAPTER I

It was the day after Donne Fair when my story commences. It had been a

brisk market: several dealers had attended from the northern and

midland counties in England, and English money had flown so merrily

about as to gladden the hearts of the Highland farmers. Many large

droves were about to set off for England, under the protection of their

owners, or of the topsmen whom they employed in the tedious, laborious,

and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles,

from the market where they had been purchased to the fields or

farm-yards where they were to be fattened for the shambles.

The Highlanders in particular are masters of this difficult trade of

driving, which seems to suit them as well as the trade of war. It

affords exercise for all their habits of patient endurance and active

exertion. They are required to know perfectly the drove-roads, which

lie over the wildest tracts of the country, and to avoid as much as

possible the highways, which distress the feet of the bullocks, and the

turnpikes, which annoy the spirit of the drover; whereas on the broad

green or grey track, which leads across the pathless moor, the herd not

only move at ease and without taxation, but, if they mind their

business, may pick up a mouthful of food by the way. At night, the

drovers usually sleep along with their cattle, let the weather be what

it will; and many of these hardy men do not once rest under a roof

during a journey on foot from Lochaber to Lincolnshire. They are paid

very highly, for the trust reposed is of the last importance, as it

depends on their prudence, vigilance, and honesty whether the cattle

reach the final market in good order, and afford a profit to the

grazier. But, as they maintain themselves at their own expense, they

are especially economical in that particular. At the period we speak

of, a Highland drover was victualled for his long and toilsome journey

with a few handfuls of oatmeal and two or three onions, renewed from

time to time, and a ram's horn filled with whisky, which he used

regularly, but sparingly, every night and morning. His dirk, or

skene-dhu (i.e. black knife), so worn as to be concealed beneath the

arm, or by the folds of the plaid, was his only weapon, excepting the

cudgel with which he directed the movements of the cattle. A

Highlander was never so happy as on these occasions. There was a

variety in the whole journey which exercised the Celt's natural

curiosity and love of motion; there were the constant change of place

and scene, the petty adventures incidental to the traffic, and the

intercourse with the various farmers, graziers, and traders,

intermingled with occasional merry-makings, not the less acceptable to

Donald that they were void of expense; and there was the consciousness

of superior skill: for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a

prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the

shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home

than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the

character of their guardian.

Of the number who left Doune in the morning, and with the purpose we

have described, not a glunamie of them all cocked his bonnet more

briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more

promising spigs (legs), than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly

Robin Oig, that is, Young, or the Lesser Robin. Though small of

stature, as the epithet Oig implies, and not very strongly limbed, he

was as light and alert as one of the deer of his mountains. He had an

elasticity of step which, in the course of a long march, made many a

stout fellow envy him; and the manner in which he busked his plaid and

adjusted his bonnet argued a consciousness that so smart a John

Highlandman as himself would not pass unnoticed among the Lowland

lasses. The ruddy cheek, red lips, and white teeth set off a

countenance which had gained by exposure to the weather a healthful and

hardy rather than a rugged hue. If Robin Oig did not laugh, or even

smile, frequently, as indeed is not the practice among his countrymen,

his bright eyes usually gleamed from under his bonnet with an

expression of cheerfulness ready to be turned into mirth.

The departure of Robin Oig was an incident in the little town, in and

near which he had many friends, male and female. He was a topping

person in his way, transacted considerable business on his own behalf,

and was entrusted by the best farmers in the Highlands, in preference

to any other drover in that district. He might have increased his

business to any extent had he condescended to manage it by deputy; but,

except a lad or two, sister's sons of his own, Robin rejected the idea

of assistance, conscious, perhaps, how much his reputation depended

upon his attending in person to the practical discharge of his duty in

every instance. He remained, therefore, contented with the highest

premium given to persons of his description, and comforted himself with

the hopes that a few journeys to England might enable him to conduct

business on his own account in a manner becoming his birth. For Robin

Oig's father, Lachlan M'Combich, or "son of my friend" (his actual

clan-surname being M'Gregor), had been so called by the celebrated Rob

Roy, because of the particular friendship which had subsisted between

the grandsire of Robin and that renowned cateran. Some people even say

that Robin Oig derived his Christian name from one as renowned in the

wilds of Loch Lomond as ever was his namesake, Robin Hood, in the

precincts of merry Sherwood. "Of such ancestry," as James Boswell

says, "who would not be proud?" Robin Oig was proud accordingly; but

his frequent visits to England and to the Lowlands had given him tact

enough to know that pretensions which still gave him a little right to

distinction in his own lonely glen might be both obnoxious and

ridiculous if preferred elsewhere. The pride of birth, therefore, was

like the miser's treasure, the secret subject of his contemplation, but

never exhibited to strangers as a subject of boasting.

Many were the words of gratulation and good-luck which were bestowed on

Robin Oig. The judges commended his drove, especially Robin's own

property, which were the best of them. Some thrust out their

snuff-mulls for the parting pinch; others tendered the doch-an-darroch,

or parting-cup. All cried: "Good-luck travel out with you and come

home with you. Give you luck in the Saxon market--brave notes in the

leabhar-dhu (black pocket-book) and plenty of English fold in the

sporran" (pouch of goat-skin).

The bonny lasses made their adieus more modestly, and more than one, it

was said, would have given her best brooch to be certain that it was

upon her that his eye last rested as he turned towards the road.

Robin Oig had just given the preliminary "Hoo--hoo!" to urge forward

the loiterers of the drove, when there was a cry behind him.

"Stay, Robin--bide a blink. Here is Janet of Tomahourich--auld Janet,

your father's sister."

"Plague on her, for an auld Highland witch and spaewife," said a farmer

from the Carse of Stirling; "she'll cast some of her cantrips on the

cattle."

"She canna do that," said another sapient of the same profession:

"Robin Oig is no the lad to leave any of them without tying St Mungo's

knot on their tails, and that will put to her speed the best witch that

ever flew over Dimayet upon a broomstick."

It may not be indifferent to the reader to know that the Highland

cattle are peculiarly liable to be "taken," or infected, by spells and

witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of

peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates the animal's

tail.

But the old woman who was the object of the farmer's suspicion seemed

only busied about the drover, without paying any attention to the

drove. Robin, on the contrary, appeared rather impatient of her

presence.

"What auld-world fancy," he said "has brought you so early from the

ingle-side this morning, muhme? I am sure I bid you good-even, and had

your God-speed, last night."

"And left me more siller than the useless old woman will use till you

come back again, bird of my bosom," said the sibyl. "But it is little

I would care for the food that nourishes me, or the fire that warms me,

or for God's blessed sun itself, if aught but weal should happen to the

grandson of my father. So let me walk the deasil round you, that you

may go safe out into the far foreign land, and come safe home."

Robin Oig stopped, half-embarrassed, half-laughing, and signing to

those around that he only complied with the old woman to soothe her

humour. In the mean time, she traced around him, with wavering steps,

the propitiation, which some have thought has been derived from the

Druidical mythology. It consists, as is well known, in the person who

makes the deasil walking three times round the person who is the object

of the ceremony, taking care to move according to the course of the

sun. At once, however, she stopped short, and exclaimed, in a voice of

alarm and horror: "Grandson of my father, there is blood on your hand."

"Hush, for God's sake, aunt," said Robin Oig; "you will bring more

trouble on yourself with this taishataragh (second sight) than you will

be able to get out of for many a day."

The old woman only repeated, with a ghastly look: "There is blood on

your hand, and it is English blood. The blood of the Gael is richer

and redder. Let us see--let us----"

Ere Robin Oig could prevent her, which, indeed, could only have been by

positive violence, so hasty and peremptory were her proceedings, she

had drawn from his side the dirk which lodged in the folds of his

plaid, and held it up, exclaiming, although the weapon gleamed clear

and bright in the sun: "Blood, blood--Saxon blood again. Robin Oig

M'Combich, go not this day to England!"

"Prutt, trutt," answered Robin Oig, "that will never do neither; it

would be next thing to running the country. For shame, muhme, give me

the dirk. You cannot tell by the colour the difference betwixt the

blood of a black bullock and a white one, and you speak of knowing

Saxon from Gaelic blood. All men have their blood from Adam, muhme.

Give me my skene-dhu, and let me go on my road. I should have been

half-way to Stirling brig by this time. Give me my dirk, and let me

go."

"Never will I give it to you," said the old woman--"never will I quit

my hold on your plaid, unless you promise me not to wear that unhappy

weapon."

The women around him urged him also, saying few of his aunt's words

fell to the ground; and as the Lowland farmers continued to look

moodily on the scene, Robin Oig determined to close it at any sacrifice.

"Well, then," said the young drover, giving the scabbard of the weapon

to Hugh Morrison, "you Lowlanders care nothing for these freats. Keep

my dirk for me. I cannot give it you, because it was my father's; but

your drove follows ours, and I am content it should be in your keeping,

not in mine. Will this do, muhme?"

"It must," said the old woman--"that is, if the Lowlander is mad enough

to carry the knife."

The strong Westlandman laughed aloud.

"Goodwife," said he, "I am Hugh Morrison from Glenae, come of the Manly

Morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man

in their lives. And neither needed they: they had their broadswords,

and I have this bit supple," showing a formidable cudgel; "for dirking

ower the board, I leave that to John Highlandman. Ye needna snort,

none of you Highlanders, and you in especial, Robin. I'll keep the bit

knife, if you are feared for the auld spaewife's tale, and give it back

to you whenever you want it."

Robin was not particularly pleased with some part of Hugh Morrison's

speech; but he had learned in his travels more patience than belonged

to his Highland constitution originally, and he accepted the service of

the descendant of the Manly Morrisons, without finding fault with the

rather depreciating manner in which it was offered.

"If he had not had his morning in his head, and been but a

Dumfriesshire hog into the boot, he would have spoken more like a

gentleman. But you cannot have more of a sow than a grumph. It's

shame my father's knife should ever slash a haggis for the like of him."

Thus saying, but saying it in Gaelic, Robin drove on his cattle, and

waved farewell to all behind him. He was in the greater haste, because

he expected to join at Falkirk a comrade and brother in profession,

with whom he proposed to travel in company.

Robin Oig's chosen friend was a young Englishman, Harry Wakefield by

name, well known at every northern market, and in his way as much famed

and honoured as our Highland driver of bullocks. He was nearly six

feet high, gallantly formed to keep the rounds at Sraithfield, or

maintain the ring at a wrestling-match; and although he might have been

over-matched, perhaps, among the regular professors of the fancy, yet,

as a yokel or rustic, or a chance customer, he was able to give a

bellyful to any amateur of the pugilistic art. Doncaster races saw him

in his glory, betting his guinea, and generally successfully; nor was

there a main fought in Yorkshire, the feeders being persons of

celebrity, at which he was not to be seen, if business permitted. But

though a "sprack" lad, and fond of pleasure and its haunts, Harry

Wakefield was steady, and not the cautious Robin Oig M'Combich himself

was more attentive to the main chance. His holidays were holidays

indeed; but his days of work were dedicated to steady and persevering

labour. In countenance and temper, Wakefield was the model of Old

England's merry yeomen, whose cloth-yard shafts, in so many hundred

battles, asserted her superiority over the nations, and whose good

sabres, in our own time, are her cheapest and most assured defence.

His mirth was readily excited; for, strong in limb and constitution,

and fortunate in circumstances, he was disposed to be pleased with

everything about him; and such difficulties as he might occasionally

encounter were, to a man of his energy, rather matter of amusement than

serious annoyance. With all the merits of a sanguine temper, our young

English drover was not without his defects. He was irascible,

sometimes to the verge of being quarrelsome; and perhaps not the less

inclined to bring his disputes to a pugilistic decision, because he

found few antagonists able to stand up to him in the boxing-ring.

It is difficult to say how Harry Wakefield and Robin Oig first became

intimates; but it is certain a close acquaintance had taken place

betwixt them, although they had apparently few common subjects of

conversation or of interest, so soon as their talk ceased to be of

bullocks. Robin Oig, indeed, spoke the English language rather

imperfectly upon any other topics but stots and kyloes, and Harry

Wakefield could never bring his broad Yorkshire tongue to utter a

single word of Gaelic. It was in vain Robin spent a whole morning,

during a walk over Minch Moor, in attempting to teach his companion to

utter, with true precision, the shibboleth llhu, which is the Gaelic

for a calf. From Traquair to Murder cairn, the hill rung with the

discordant attempts of the Saxon upon the unmanageable monosyllable,

and the heartfelt laugh which followed every failure. They had,

however, better modes of awakening the echoes; for Wakefield could sing

many a ditty to the praise of Moll, Susan, and Cicely, and Robin Oig

had a particular gift at whistling interminable pibrochs through all

their involutions, and, what was more agreeable to his companion's

southern ear, knew many of the northern airs, both lively and pathetic,

to which Wakefield learned to pipe a bass. Thus, though Robin could

hardly have comprehended his companion's stories about horse-racing,

and cock-fighting, or fox-hunting, and although his own legends of

clan-fights and creaghs, varied with talk of Highland goblins and fairy

folk, would have been caviare to his companion, they contrived

nevertheless to find a degree of pleasure in each other's company,

which had for three years back induced them to join company and travel

together, when the direction of their journey permitted. Each, indeed,

found his advantage in this companionship; for where could the

Englishman have found a guide through the Western Highlands like Robin

Oig M'Combich? and when they were on what Harry called the right side

of the Border, his patronage, which was extensive, and his purse, which

was heavy, were at all times at the service of his Highland friend, and

on many occasions his liberality did him genuine yeoman's service.

CHAPTER II

Were ever two such loving friends!--

How could they disagree?

Oh, thus it was, he loved him dear.

And thought how to requite him,

And having no friend left but he,

He did resolve to fight him.

--_Duke upon Duke_

The pair of friends had traversed with their usual cordiality the

grassy wilds of Liddesdale, and crossed the opposite part of

Cumberland, emphatically called The Waste. In these solitary regions

the cattle under the charge of our drovers derived their subsistence

chiefly by picking their food as they went along the drove-road, or

sometimes by the tempting opportunity of a "start and owerloup," or

invasion of the neighbouring pasture, where an occasion presented

itself. But now the scene changed before them; they were descending

towards a fertile and inclosed country, where no such liberties could

be taken with impunity, or without a previous arrangement and bargain

with the possessors of the ground. This was more especially the case,

as a great northern fair was upon the eve of taking place, where both

the Scotch and English drover expected to dispose of a part of their

cattle, which it was desirable to produce in the market rested and in

good order. Fields were therefore difficult to be obtained, and only

upon high terms. This necessity occasioned a temporary separation

betwixt the two friends, who went to bargain, each as he could, for the

separate accommodation of his herd. Unhappily it chanced that both of

them, unknown to each other, thought of bargaining for the ground they

wanted on the property of a country gentleman of some fortune, whose

estate lay in the neighbourhood. The English drover applied to the

bailiff on the property, who was known to him. It chanced that the

Cumbrian squire, who had entertained some suspicions of his manager's

honesty, was taking occasional measures to ascertain how far they were

well founded, and had desired that any inquiries about his inclosures,

with a view to occupy them for a temporary purpose, should be referred

to himself. As, however, Mr. Ireby had gone the day before upon a

journey of some miles' distance to the northward, the bailiff chose to

consider the check upon his full powers as for the time removed, and

concluded that he should best consult his master's interest, and

perhaps his own, in making an agreement with Harry Wakefield.

Meanwhile, ignorant of what his comrade was doing, Robin Oig, on his

side, chanced to be overtaken by a good-looking, smart little man upon

a pony, most knowingly hogged and cropped, as was then the fashion, the

rider wearing tight leather breeches and long-necked bright spurs.

This cavalier asked one or two pertinent questions about markets and

the price of stock. So Robin, seeing him a well-judging, civil

gentleman, took the freedom to ask him whether he could let him know if

there was any grass-land to be let in that neighbourhood, for the

temporary accommodation of his drove. He could not have put the

question to more willing ears. The gentleman of the buckskins was the

proprietor with whose bailiff Harry Wakefield had dealt, or was in the

act of dealing.

"Thou art in good luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken

to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at

my disposal the only field within three miles that is to be let in

these parts."

"The drove can pe gang two, three, four miles very pratty weel indeed,"

said the cautious Highlander; "put what would his honour pe axing for

the peasts pe the head, if she was to tak the park for twa or three

days?"

"We won't differ, Sawney, if you let me have six stots for winterers,

in the way of reason."

"And which peasts wad your honour pe for having?"

"Why, let me see--the two black--the dun one--yon doddy--him with the

twisted horn--the brockit. How much by the head?"

"Ah," said Robin, "your honour is a shudge---a real shudge: I couldna

have set off the pest six peasts petter mysell, me that ken them as if

they were my pairns, puir things."

"Well, how much per head, Sawney," continued Mr. Ireby.

"It was high markets at Doune and Falkirk," answered Robin.

And thus the conversation proceeded, until they had agreed on the prix

juste for the bullocks, the squire throwing in the temporary

accommodation of the inclosure for the cattle into the boot, and Robin

making, as he thought, a very good bargain, provided the grass was but

tolerable. The squire walked his pony alongside of the drove, partly

to show him the way, and see him put into possession of the field, and

partly to learn the latest news of the northern markets.

They arrived at the field, and the pasture seemed excellent. But what

was their surprise when they saw the bailiff quietly inducting the

cattle of Harry Wakefield into the grassy goshen which had just been

assigned to those of Robin Oig M'Combich by the proprietor himself!

Squire Ireby set spurs to his horse, dashed up to his servant, and

learning what had passed between the parties, briefly informed the

English drover that his bailiff had let the ground without his

authority, and that he might seek grass for his cattle wherever he

would, since he was to get none there. At the same time he rebuked his

servant severely for having transgressed his commands, and ordered him

instantly to assist in ejecting the hungry and weary cattle of Harry

Wakefield, which were just beginning to enjoy a meal of unusual plenty,

and to introduce those of his comrade, whom the English drover now

began to consider as a rival.

The feelings which arose in Wakefield's mind would have induced him to

resist Mr. Ireby's decision; but every Englishman has a tolerably

accurate sense of law and justice, and John Fleecebumpkin, the bailiff,

having acknowledged that he had exceeded his commission, Wakefield saw

nothing else for it than to collect his hungry and disappointed charge,

and drive them on to seek quarters elsewhere. Robin Oig saw what had

happened with regret, and hastened to offer to his English friend to

share with him the disputed possession. But Wakefield's pride was

severely hurt, and he answered disdainfully, "Take it all, man--take it

all; never make two bites of a cherry. Thou canst talk over the

gentry, and blear a plain man's eye. Out upon you, man; I would not

kiss any man's dirty latchets for leave to bake in his oven."

Robin Oig, sorry but not surprised at his comrade's displeasure,

hastened to entreat his friend to wait but an hour till he had gone to

the squire's house to receive payment for the cattle he had sold, and

he would come back and help him to drive the cattle into some

convenient place of rest, and explain to him the whole mistake they had

both of them fallen into.

But the Englishman continued indignant. "Thou hast been selling, hast

thou? Ay--ay, thou is a cunning lad for kenning the hours of

bargaining. Go to the devil with thyself, for I will ne'er see thy

fause loon's visage again; thou should be ashamed to look me in the

face."

"I am ashamed to look no man in the face," said Robin Oig, something

moved; "and, moreover, I will look you in the face this blessed day, if

you will bide at the clachan down yonder."

"Mayhap you had as well keep away," said his comrade; and turning his

back on his former friend, he collected his unwilling associates,

assisted by the bailiff, who took some real and some affected interest

in seeing Wakefield accommodated.

After spending some time in negotiating with more than one of the

neighbouring farmers, who could not; or would not, afford the

accommodation desired, Henry Wakefield at last, and in his necessity,

accomplished his point by means of the landlord of the alehouse at

which Robin Oig and he had agreed to pass the night, when they first

separated from each other. Mine host was content to let him turn his

cattle on a piece of barren moor, at a price little less than the

bailiff had asked for the disputed inclosure; and the wretchedness of

the pasture, as well as the price paid for it, were set down as

exaggerations of the breach of faith and friendship of his Scottish

crony. This turn of Wakefield's passions was encouraged by the

bailiff, who had his own reasons for being offended against poor Robin,

as having been the unwitting cause of his falling into disgrace with

his master, as well as by the innkeeper, and two or three chance

guests, who stimulated the drover in his resentment against his quondam

associate--some from the ancient grudge against the Scots, which, when

it exists anywhere, is to be found lurking in the Border counties, and

some from the general love of mischief, which characterises mankind in

all ranks of life, to the honour of Adam's children be it spoken. Good

John Barleycorn also, who always heightens and exaggerates the

prevailing passions, be they angry or kindly, was not wanting in his

offices on this occasion; and confusion to false friends and hard

masters was pledged in more than one tankard.

In the mean while, Mr. Ireby found some amusement in detaining the

northern drover at his ancient hall. He caused a cold round of beef to

be placed before the Scot in the butler's pantry, together with a

foaming tankard of home-brewed, and took pleasure in seeing the hearty

appetite with which these unwonted edibles were discussed by Robin Oig

M'Combich. The squire himself, lighting his pipe, compounded between

his patrician dignity and his love of agricultural gossip, by walking

up and down while he conversed with his guest.

"I passed another drove," said the squire, "with one of your countrymen

behind them; they were something less beasts than your drove, doddies

most of them; a big man was with them--none of your kilts though, but a

decent pair of breeches. D'ye know who he may be?"

"Hout aye, that might, could, and would be Hughie Morrison; I didna

think he could hae peen sac weel up. He has made a day on us; but his

Argyleshires will have wearied shanks. How far was he pehind?"

"I think about six or seven miles," answered the squire, "for I passed

them at the Christenbury Crag, and I overtook you at the Hollan Bush.

If his beasts be leg-weary, he will be maybe selling bargains."

"Na--na, Hughie Morrison is no the man for pargains; ye maun come to

some Highland body like Robin Oig hersell for the like of these. Put I

maun pe wishing you goot-night, and twenty of them let alane ane, and I

maun down to the clachan to see if the lad Harry Waakfelt is out of his

humdudgeons yet."

The party at the alehouse were still in full talk, and the treachery of

Robin Oig still the theme of conversation, when the supposed culprit

entered the apartment. His arrival, as usually happens in such a case,

put an instant stop to the discussion of which he had furnished the

subject, and he was received by the company assembled with that

chilling silence which, more than a thousand exclamations, tells an

intruder that he is unwelcome. Surprised and offended, but not

appalled, by the reception which he experienced, Robin entered with an

undaunted and even a haughty air, attempted no greeting, as he saw he

was received with none, and placed himself by the side of the fire, a

little apart from a table at which Harry Wakefield, the bailiff, and

two or three other persons were seated. The ample Cumbrian kitchen

would have afforded plenty of room, even for a larger separation.

Robin, thus seated, proceeded to light his pipe and call for a pint of

twopenny.

"We have no twopence ale," answered Ralph Heskett, the landlord; "but,

as thou find'st thy own tobacco, it's like thou mayst find thy own

liquor too; it's the wont of thy country, I wot."

"Shame, goodman," said the landlady, a blythe, bustling housewife,

hastening herself to supply the guest with liquor. "Thou knowest well

enow what the strange man wants, and it's thy trade to be civil, man.

Thou shouldst know, that if the Scot likes a small pot, he pays a sure

penny."

Without taking any notice of this nuptial dialogue, the Highlander took

the flagon in his hand, and addressing the company generally, drank the

interesting toast of "Good markets," to the party assembled.

"The better that the wind blew fewer dealers from the north," said one

of the farmers, "and fewer Highland runts to eat up the English

meadows."

"Saul of my pody, put you are wrang there, my friend," answered Robin,

with composure; "it is your fat Englishmen that eat up our Scots

cattle, puir things."

"I wish there was a summat to eat up their drovers," said another; "a

plain Englishman canna make bread with a kenning of them."

"Or an honest servant keep his master's favour, but they will come

sliding in between him and the sunshine," said the bailiff.

"If these pe jokes," said Robin Oig, with the same composure, "there is

ower mony jokes upon one man."

"It is no joke, but downright earnest," said the bailiff. "Harkye, Mr.

Robin Ogg, or whatever is your name, it's right we should tell you that

we are all of one opinion, and that is, that you, Mr. Robin Ogg, have

behaved to our friend, Mr. Harry Wakefield here, like a raff and a

blackguard."

"Nae doubt--nae doubt," answered Robin, with great composure; "and you

are a set of very pretty judges, for whose prains or pehaviour I wad

not gie a pinch of sneeshing. If Mr. Harry Waakfelt kens where he is

wranged, he kens where he may be righted."

"He speaks truth," said Wakefield, who had listened to what passed,

divided between the offence which he had taken at Robin's late

behaviour and the revival of his habitual feelings of regard.

He now rose and went towards Robin, who got up from his seat as he

approached, and held out his hand.

"That's right, Harry--go it--serve him out," resounded on all

sides--"tip him the nailer--show him the mill."

"Hold your peace all of you, and be--," said Wakefield; and then

addressing his comrade, he took him by the extended hand, with

something alike of respect and defiance. "Robin," he said, "thou hast

used me ill enough this day; but if you mean, like a frank fellow, to

shake hands, and take a tussle for love on the sod, why, I'll forgive

thee, man, and we shall be better friends than ever."

"And would it no pe petter to pe cood friends without more of the

matter?" said Robin; "we will be much petter friendships with our panes

hale than proken."

Harry Wakefield dropped the hand of his friend, or rather threw it from

him.

"I did not think I had been keeping company for three years with a

coward."

"Coward pelongs to none of my name," said Robin, whose eyes began to

kindle, but keeping the command of his temper. "It was no coward's

legs or hands, Harry Waakfelt, that drew you out of the fords of Frew,

when you was drifting ower the plack rock, and every eel in the river

expected his share of you."

"And that is true enough, too," said the Englishman, struck by the

appeal.

"Adzooks!" exclaimed the bailiff; "sure Harry Wakefield, the nattiest

lad at Whitson Tryste, Wooler Fair, Carlisle Sands, or Stagshaw Bank,

is not going to show white feather? Ah, this comes of living so long

with kilts and bonnets; men forget the use of their daddies."

"I may teach you, Master Fleecebumpkin, that I have not lost the use of

mine," said Wakefield, and then went on: "This will never do, Robin.

We must have a turn-up, or we shall be the talk of the countryside.

I'll be d--d if I hurt thee. I'll put on the gloves gin thou like.

Come, stand forward like a man."

"To be peaten like a dog," said Robin; "is there any reason in that?

If you think I have done you wrong, I'll go before your shudge, though

I neither know his law nor his language."

A general cry of "No, no--no law, no lawyer! A bellyful and be

friends!" was echoed by the bystanders.

"But," continued Robin, "if I am to fight, I have no skill to fight

like a jackanapes, with hands and nails."

"How would you fight, then?" said his antagonist; "though I am thinking

it would be hard to bring you to the scratch anyhow."

"I would fight with proadswords, and sink point on the first plood

drawn, like a gentlemans."

A loud shout of laughter followed the proposal, which indeed had rather

escaped from poor Robin's swelling heart than been the dictate of his

sober judgment.

"Gentleman, quotha!" was echoed on all sides, with a shout of

unextinguishable laughter; "a very pretty gentleman, God wot. Canst

get two swords for the gentleman to fight with, Ralph Heskett?"

"No, but I can send to the armoury at Carlisle, and lend them two

forks, to be making shift with in the mean time."

"Tush, man," said another, "the bonny Scots come into the world with

the blue bonnet on their heads, and dirk and pistol at their belt."

"Best send post," said Mr. Fleecebumpkin, "to the squire of Corby

Castle, to come and stand second to the gentleman."

In the midst of this torrent of general ridicule, the Highlander

instinctively griped beneath the folds of his plaid.

"But it's better not," he said in his own language. "A hundred curses

on the swine-eaters, who know neither decency nor civility!"

"Make room, the pack of you," he said, advancing to the door.

But his former friend interposed his sturdy bulk, and opposed his

leaving the house; and when Robin Oig attempted to make his way by

force, he hit him down on the floor, with as much ease as a boy bowls

down a ninepin.

"A ring--a ring!" was now shouted, until the dark rafters, and the hams

that hung on them, trembled again, and the very platters on the "bink"

clattered against each other. "Well done, Harry"--"Give it him home,

Harry"--"Take care of him now, he sees his own blood!"

Such were the exclamations, while the Highlander, starting from the

ground, all his coldness and caution lost in frantic rage, sprung at

his antagonist with the fury, the activity, and the vindictive purpose

of an incensed tiger-cat. But when could rage encounter science and

temper? Robin Oig again went down in the unequal contest; and as the

blow was necessarily a severe one, he lay motionless on the floor of

the kitchen.

The landlady ran to offer some aid; but Mr. Fleecebumpkin would not

permit her to approach. "Let him alone," he said, "he will come to

within time, and come up to the scratch again. He has not got half his

broth yet."

"He has got all I mean to give him, though," said his antagonist, whose

heart began to relent towards his old associate; "and I would rather by

half give the rest to yourself, Mr. Pleecebumpkin, for you pretend to

know a thing or two, and Robin had not art enough even to peel before

setting to, but fought with his plaid dangling about him. Stand up,

Robin, my man, all friends now, and let me hear the man that will speak

a word against you, or your country, for your sake."

Robin Oig was still under the dominion of his passion, and eager to

renew the onset; but being withheld on the one side by the peacemaking

Dame Heskett, and on the other aware that Wakefield no longer meant to

renew the combat, his fury sunk into gloomy sullenness.

"Come--come, never grudge so much at it, man," said the brave-spirited

Englishman, with the placability of his country; "shake hands, and we

will be better friends than ever."

"Friends!" exclaimed Robin Oig with strong emphasis--"friends! Never.

Look to yourself, Harry Waakfelt."

"Then the curse of Cromwell on your proud Scots stomach, as the man

says in the play, and you may do your worst, and be d--d; for one man

can say nothing more to another after a tussle, than that he is sorry

for it."

On these terms the friends parted. Robin Oig drew out, in silence, a

piece of money, threw it on the table, and then left the alehouse.

But, turning at the door, he shook his hand at Wakefield, pointing with

his forefinger upwards, in a manner which might imply either a threat

or a caution. He then disappeared in the moonlight.

Some words passed after his departure between the bailiff, who piqued

himself on being a little of a bully, and Harry Wakefield, who, with

generous inconsistency, was now not indisposed to begin a new combat in

defence of Robin Oig's reputation, "although he could not use his

daddies like an Englishman, as it did not come natural to him."

But Dame Heskett prevented this second quarrel from coming to a head by

her peremptory interference. "There should be no more fighting in her

house," she said; "there had been too much already. And you, Mr.

Wakefield, may live to learn," she added, "what it is to make a deadly

enemy out of a good friend."

"Pshaw, dame! Robin Oig is an honest fellow, and will never keep

malice."

"Do not trust to that: you do not know the dour temper of the Scots,

though you have dealt with them so often. I have a right to know them,

my mother being a Scot."

"And so is well seen on her daughter," said Ralph Heskett.

This nuptial sarcasm gave the discourse another turn; fresh customers

entered the taproom or kitchen, and others left it. The conversation

turned on the expected markets, and the reports of prices from

different parts both of Scotland and England; treaties were commenced,

and Harry Wakefield was lucky enough to find a chap for a part of his

drove, and at a very considerable profit--an event of consequence more

than sufficient to blot out all remembrances of the unpleasant scuffle

in the earlier part of the day.

But there remained one party from whose mind that recollection could

not have been wiped away by the possession of every head of cattle

betwixt Esk and Eden. This was Robin Oig M'Combich. "That I should

have had no weapon," he said, "and for the first time in my life!

Blighted be the tongue that bids the Highlander part with the dirk.

The dirk hae! the English blood! My muhme's word--when did her word

fall to the ground?"

The recollection of the fatal prophecy confirmed the deadly intention

which instantly sprang up in his mind.

"Ha! Morrison cannot be many miles behind; and if it were an hundred,

what then?"

His impetuous spirit had now a fixed purpose and motive of action, and

he turned the light foot of his country towards the wilds, through

which he knew, by Mr. Ireby's report, that Morrison was advancing. His

mind was wholly engrossed by the sense of injury--injury sustained from

a friend, and by the desire of vengeance on one whom he now accounted

his most bitter enemy. The treasured ideas of self-importance and

self-opinion--of ideal birth and quality, had become more precious to

him, like the hoard to the miser, because he could only enjoy them in

secret. But that hoard was pillaged; the idols which he had secretly

worshipped had been desecrated and profane. Insulted, abused, and

beaten, he was no longer worthy, in his own opinion, of the name he

bore, or the lineage which he belonged to; nothing was left to

him--nothing but revenge; and, as the reflection added a galling spur

to every step, he determined it should be as sudden and signal as the

offence.

When Robin Oig left the door of the alehouse, seven or eight English

miles at least lay betwixt Morrison and him. The advance of the former

was slow, limited by the sluggish pace of his cattle; the last left

behind him stubble-field and hedgerow, crag and dark heath, all

glittering with frost-rime in the broad November moonlight, at the rate

of six miles an hour. And now the distant lowing of Morrison's cattle

is heard; and now they are seen creeping like moles in size and

slowness of motion on the broad face of the moor; and now he meets

them, passes them, and stops their conductor.

"May good betide us," said the Southlander. "Is this you, Robin

M'Combich, or your wraith?"

"It is Robin Oig M'Combich," answered the Highlander, "and it is not.

But never mind that, put pe giving me the skene-dhu."

"What! you are for back to the Highlands. The devil! Have yon selt

all off before the fair? This beats all for quick markets."

"I have not sold--I am not going north. May pe I will never go north

again. Give me pack my dirk, Hugh Morrison, or there will pe words

petween us."

"Indeed, Robin, I'll be better advised before I gie it back to you; it

is a wanchancy weapon in a Highlandman's hand, and I am thinking you

will be about some barns-breaking."

"Prutt, trutt! let me have my weapon," said Robin Oig, impatiently.

"Hooly and fairly," said his well-meaning friend. "I'll tell you what

will do better than these dirking doings. Ye ken Highlander, and

Lowlander, and Bordermen are a' ae man's bairns when you are over the

Scots dyke. See, the Eskdale callants, and fighting Charlie of

Liddesdale, and the Lockerby lads, and the four Dandies of Lustruther,

and a ween mair grey plaids are coming up behind; and if you are

wranged, there is the hand of a Manly Morrison, we'll see you righted,

if Carlisle and Stanwix baith took up the feud."

"To tell you the truth," said Robin Oig, desirous of eluding the

suspicions of his friend, "I have enlisted with a party of the Black

Watch, and must march off to-morrow morning."

"Enlisted! Were you mad or drunk? You must buy yourself off. I can

lend you twenty notes, and twenty to that, if the drove sell."

"I thank you--thank ye, Hughie; but I go with good-will the gate that I

am going; so the dirk--the dirk!"

"There it is for you then, since less wunna serve. But think on what I

was saying. Waes me, it will be sair news in the braes of Balquidder,

that Robin Oig M'Combich should have run an ill gate, and ta'en on."

"Ill news in Balquidder, indeed!" echoed poor Robin; "but Cot speed

you, Hughie, and send you good marcats. Ye winna meet with Robin Oig

again, either at tryste or fair."

So saying, he shook hastily the hand of his acquaintance, and set out

in the direction from which he had advanced, with the spirit of his

former pace.

"There is something wrang with the lad," muttered the Morrison to

himself; "but we will maybe see better into it the morn's morning."

But long ere the morning dawned, the catastrophe of our tale had taken

place. It was two hours after the affray had happened, and it was

totally forgotten by almost every one, when Robin Oig returned to

Heskett's inn. The place was filled at once by various sorts of men

and with noises corresponding to their character. There were the grave

low sounds of men engaged in busy traffic, with the tough, the song,

and the riotous jest of those who had nothing to do but to enjoy

themselves. Among the last was Harry Wakefield, who, amidst a grinning

group of smock-frocks, hobnailed shoes, and jolly English

physiognomies, was trolling forth the old ditty.

What though my name be Roger,

Who drives the plough and cart--"

when he was interrupted by a well-known voice saying in a high and

stern voice, marked by the sharp Highland accent, "Harry Waakfelt, if

you be a man, stand up!"

"What is the matter?--what is it?" the guests demanded of each other.

"It is only a d--d Scotsman," said Fleecebumpkin, who was by this time

very drunk, "whom Harry Wakefield helped to his broth to-day, who is

now come to have his cauld kail het again."

"Harry Waakfelt," repeated the same ominous summons, "stand up, if you

be a man."

There is something in the tone of deep and concentrated passion which

attracts attention and imposes awe, even by the very sound. The guests

shrunk back on every side, and gazed at the Highlander as he stood in

the middle of them, his brows bent, and his features rigid with

resolution.

"I will stand up with all my heart, Robin, my boy, but it shall be to

shake hands with you, and drink down all unkindness. It is not the

fault of your heart, man, that you don't know how to clench your hands."

By this time he stood opposite to his antagonist; his open and

unsuspecting look strangely contrasted with the stern purpose which

gleamed wild, dark, and vindictive in the eyes of the Highlander.

"'Tis not thy fault, man, that, not having the luck to be an

Englishman, thou canst not fight more than a school-girl."

"I can fight," answered Robin Oig, sternly but calmly, "and you shall

know it. You, Harry Waakfelt, showed me to-day how the Saxon churls

fight; I show you now how the Highland duiniè-wassel fights."

He seconded the word with the action, and plunged the dagger, which he

suddenly displayed, into the broad breast of the English yeoman, with

such fatal certainty and force that the hilt made a hollow sound

against the breast-bone, and the double-edged point split the very

heart of his victim. Harry Wakefield fell and expired with a single

groan. His assassin next seized the bailiff by the collar, and offered

the bloody poniard to his throat, whilst dread and surprise rendered

the man incapable of defence.

"It were very just to lay you beside him," he said, "but the blood of a

base pickthank shall never mix on my father's dirk with that of a brave

man."

As he spoke, he cast the man from him with so much force that he fell

on the floor, while Robin, with his other hand, threw the fatal weapon

into the blazing turf-fire.

"There," he said, "take me who likes, and let fire cleanse blood if it

can."

The cause of astonishment still continuing, Robin Oig asked for a

peace-officer, and a constable having stepped out, he surrendered

himself to his custody.

"A bloody night's work you have made of it," said the constable.

"Your own fault," said the Highlander. "Had you kept his hands off me

twa hours since, he would have been now as well and merry as he was twa

minutes since."

"It must be sorely answered," said the peace-officer.

"Never you mind that. Death pays all debts; it will pay that too."

The horror of the bystanders began now to give way to indignation; and

the sight of a favourite companion murdered in the midst of them, the

provocation being, in their opinion, so utterly inadequate to the

excess of vengeance, might have induced them to kill the perpetrator of

the deed even upon the very spot. The constable, however, did his duty

on this occasion, and, with the assistance of some of the more

reasonable persons present, procured horses to guard the prisoner to

Carlisle, to abide his doom at the next assizes. While the escort was

preparing, the prisoner neither expressed the least interest nor

attempted the slightest reply. Only, before he was carried from the

fatal apartment, he desired to look at the dead body, which, raised

from the floor, had been deposited upon the large table (at the head of

which Harry Wakefield had presided but a few minutes before, full of

life, vigour, and animation), until the surgeons should examine the

mortal wound. The face of the corpse was decently covered with a

napkin. To the surprise and horror of the bystanders, which displayed

itself in a general "Ah!" drawn through clenched teeth and half-shut

lips, Robin Oig removed the cloth, and gazed with a mournful but steady

eye on the lifeless visage, which had been so lately animated, that the

smile of good-humoured confidence in his own strength, of conciliation

at once and contempt towards his enemy, still curled his lip. While

those present expected that the wound, which had so lately flooded the

apartment with gore, would send forth fresh streams at the touch of the

homicide, Robin Oig replaced the covering with the brief exclamation,

"He was a pretty man!"

My story is nearly ended. The unfortunate Highlander stood his trial

at Carlisle. I was myself present, and as a young Scottish lawyer, or

barrister at least, and reputed a man of some quality, the politeness

of the sheriff of Cumberland offered me a place on the bench. The

facts of the case were proved in the manner I have related them; and

whatever might be at first the prejudice of the audience against a

crime so un-English as that of assassination from revenge, yet when the

rooted national prejudices of the prisoner had been explained, which

made him consider himself as stained with indelible dishonour when

subjected to personal violence, when his previous patience, moderation,

and endurance were considered, the generosity of the English audience

was inclined to regard his crime as the wayward aberration of a false

idea of honour rather than as flowing from a heart naturally savage, or

perverted by habitual vice. I shall never forget the charge of the

venerable judge to the jury, although not at that time liable to be

much affected either by that which was eloquent or pathetic.

"We have had," he said, "in the previous part of our duty (alluding to

some former trials), to discuss crimes which infer disgust and

abhorrence, while they call down the well-merited vengeance of the law.

It is now our still more melancholy task to apply its salutary though

severe enactments to a case of a very singular character, in which the

crime, for a crime it is, and a deep one, arose less out of the

malevolence of the heart than the error of the understanding--less from

any idea of committing wrong than from an unhappily perverted notion of

that which is right. Here we have two men, highly esteemed, it has

been stated, in their rank of life, and attached, it seems, to each

other as friends, one of whose lives has been already sacrificed to a

punctilio, and the other is about to prove the vengeance of the

offended laws and yet both may claim our commiseration at least, as men

acting in ignorance of each other's national prejudices, and unhappily

misguided rather than voluntarily erring from the path of right conduct.

"In the original cause of the misunderstanding, we must in justice give

the right to the prisoner at the bar. He had acquired possession of

the inclosure, which was the object of Competition, by a legal contract

with the proprietor, Mr. Ireby; and yet, when accosted with reproaches

undeserved in themselves, and galling doubtless to a temper at least

sufficiently susceptible of passion, he offered notwithstanding to

yield up half his acquisition, for the sake of peace and good

neighbourhood, and his amicable proposal was rejected with scorn. Then

follows the scene at Mr. Heskett the publican's, and you will observe

how the stranger was treated by the deceased, and, I am sorry to

observe, by those around, who seem to have urged him in a manner which

was aggravating in the highest degree. While he asked for peace and

for composition, and offered submission to a magistrate, or to a mutual

arbiter, the prisoner was insulted by a whole company, who seem on this

occasion to have forgotten the national maxim of 'fair play'; and while

attempting to escape from the place in peace, he was intercepted,

struck down, and beaten to the effusion of his blood.

"Gentlemen of the jury, it was with some impatience that I heard my

learned brother, who opened the case for the crown, give an

unfavourable turn to the prisoner's conduct on this occasion. He said

the prisoner was afraid to encounter his antagonist in fair fight, or

to submit to the laws of the ring; and that, therefore, like a cowardly

Italian, he had recourse to his fatal stiletto, to murder the man whom

he dared not meet in manly encounter. I observed the prisoner shrink

from this part of the accusation with the abhorrence natural to a brave

man; and as I would wish to make my words impressive when I point his

real crime, I must secure his opinion of my impartiality by rebutting

everything that seems to me a false accusation. There can be no doubt

that the prisoner is a man of resolution--too much resolution. I wish

to Heaven that he had less, or rather that he had had a better

education to regulate it.

"Gentlemen, as to the laws my brother talks of, they may be known in

the bull-ring, or the bear-garden, or the cockpit, but they are not

known here. Or, if they should be so far admitted as furnishing a

species of proof that no malice was intended in this sort of combat,

from which fatal accidents do sometimes arise, it can only be so

admitted when both parties are in part casu, equally acquainted with,

and equally willing to refer themselves to, that species of

arbitrament. But will it be contended that a man of superior rank and

education is to be subjected, or is obliged to subject himself, to this

coarse and brutal strife, perhaps in opposition to a younger, stronger,

or more skilful opponent? Certainly even the pugilistic code, if

founded upon the fair play of Merry Old England, as my brother alleges

it to be, can contain nothing so preposterous. And, gentlemen of the

jury, if the laws would support an English gentleman, wearing, we will

suppose, his sword, in defending himself by force against a violent

personal aggression of the nature offered to this prisoner, they will

not less protect a foreigner and a stranger, involved in the same

unpleasing circumstances. If, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, when

thus pressed by a vis major, the object of obloquy to a whole company,

and of direct violence from one at least, and, as he might reasonably

apprehend, from more, the panel had produced the weapon which his

countrymen, as we are informed, generally carry about their persons,

and the same unhappy circumstance had ensued which you have heard

detailed in evidence, I could not in my conscience have asked from you

a verdict of murder. The prisoner's personal defence might indeed,

even in that case, have gone more or less beyond the moderamen

inculpatae tutelar spoken of by lawyers, but the punishment incurred

would have been that of manslaughter, not of murder. I beg leave to

add, that I should have thought this milder species of charge was

demanded in the case supposed, notwithstanding the statute of James I.

cap. 8, which takes the case of slaughter by stabbing with a short

weapon, even without malice prepense, out of the benefit of clergy.

For this statute of stabbing, as it is termed, arose out of a temporary

cause; and as the real guilt is the same, whether the slaughter be

committed by the dagger or by sword or pistol, the benignity of the

modern law places them all on the same, or nearly the same, footing.

"But, gentlemen of the jury, the pinch of the case lies in the interval

of two hours interposed betwixt the reception of the injury and the

fatal retaliation. In the heat of affray and chaude melée, law,

compassionating the infirmities of humanity, makes allowance for the

passions which rule such a stormy moment--for the sense of present

pain, for the apprehension of further injury, for the difficulty of

ascertaining with due accuracy the precise degree of violence which is

necessary to protect the person of the individual, without annoying or

injuring the assailant more than is absolutely necessary. But the time

necessary to walk twelve miles, however speedily performed, was an

interval sufficient for the prisoner to have recollected himself; and

the violence with which he carried his purpose into effect, with so

many circumstances of deliberate determination, could neither be

induced by the passion of anger nor that of fear. It was the purpose

and the act of predetermined revenge, for which law neither can, will,

nor ought to have sympathy or allowance.

"It is true, we may repeat to ourselves, in alleviation of this poor

man's unhappy action, that his case is a very peculiar one. The

country which he inhabits was, in the days of many now alive,

inaccessible to the laws not only of England, which have not even yet

penetrated thither, but to those to which our neighbours of Scotland

are subjected, and which must be supposed to be, and no doubt actually

are, founded upon the general principles of justice and equity which

pervade every civilised country. Amongst their mountains, as among the

North American Indians, the various tribes were wont to make war upon

each other, so that each man was obliged to go armed for his own

protection. These men, from the ideas which they entertained of their

own descent and of their own consequence, regarded themselves as so

many cavaliers or men-at-arms, rather than as the peasantry of a

peaceful country. Those laws of the ring, as my brother terms them,

were unknown to the race of warlike mountaineers; that decision of

quarrels by no other weapons than those which nature has given every

man must to them have seemed as vulgar and as preposterous as to the

noblesse of France. Revenge, on the other hand, must have been as

familiar to their habits of society as to those of the Cherokees or

Mohawks. It is indeed, as described by Bacon, at bottom a kind of wild

untutored justice; for the fear of retaliation must withhold the hands

of the oppressor where there is no regular law to check daring

violence. But though all this may be granted, and though we may allow

that, such having been the case of the Highlands in the days of the

prisoner's fathers, many of the opinions and sentiments must still

continue to influence the present generation, it cannot, and ought not,

even in this most painful case, to alter the administration of the law,

either in your hands, gentlemen of the jury, or in mine. The first

object of civilisation is to place the general protection of the law,

equally administered, in the room of that wild justice which every man

cut and carved for himself, according to the length of his sword and

the strength of his arm. The law says to the subjects, with a voice

only inferior to that of the Deity, 'vengeance is mine.' The instant

that there is time for passion to cool and reason to interpose, an

injured party must become aware that the law assumes the exclusive

cognizance of the right and wrong betwixt the parties, and opposes her

inviolable buckler to every attempt of the private party to right

himself. I repeat, that this unhappy man ought personally to be the

object rather of our pity than our abhorrence, for he failed in his

ignorance and from mistaken notions of honour. But his crime is not

the less that of murder, gentlemen, and, in your high and important

office, it is your duty so to find. Englishmen have their angry

passions as well as Scots; and should this man's action remain

unpunished, you may unsheath, under various pretences, a thousand

daggers betwixt the Land's End and the Orkneys."

The venerable judge thus ended what, to judge by his apparent emotion,

and by the tears which filled his eyes, was really a painful task. The

jury, according to his instructions, brought in a verdict of Guilty;

and Robin Oig M'Combich, alias M'Gregor, was sentenced to death, and

left for execution, which took place accordingly. He met his fate with

great firmness, and acknowledged the justice of his sentence. But he

repelled indignantly the observations of those who accused him of

attacking an unarmed man. "I give a life for the life I took," he

said, "and what can I do more?"[1]

[1] See Robert Donn's Poems. Note 14.

MR. DEUCEACE

DIMOND CUT DIMOND

By W. M. THACKERAY

The name of my next master was, if posbil, still more ellygant and

youfonious than that of my fust. I now found myself boddy servant to

the Honrabble Halgernon Percy Deuceace, youngest and fith son of the

Earl of Crabs.

Halgernon was a barrystir--that is, he lived in Pump Court, Temple; a

wulgar naybrood, witch praps my readers don't no. Suffiz to say, it's

on the confines of the citty, and the choasen aboad of the lawyers of

this metrappolish.

When I say that Mr. Deuceace was a barrystir, I don't mean that he went

sesshums or surcoats (as they call 'em), but simply that he kep

chambers, lived in Pump Court, and looked out for a commitionarship, or

a revisinship, or any other place that the Wig guwyment could give him.

His father was a Wig pier (as the landriss told me), and had been a

Toary pier. The fack is, his lordship was so poar, that he would be

anythink, or nothink, to get previsions for his sons, and an inkum for

him self.

I phansy that he aloud Halgernon two hunderd a year; and it would have

been a very comforable maintenants, only he knever paid him.

Owever, the young gnlmn was a gnlmn, and no mistake: he got his

allowents of nothink a year, and spent it in the most honrabble and

fashnabble manner. He kep a kab--he went to Holmax--and Crockfud's--he

moved in the most xquizzit suckles--and trubbld the law boos very

little, I can tell you. Those fashnabble gents have ways of getten

money, witch comman pipple doant understand.

Though he only had a therd floar in Pump Cort, he lived as if he had

the welth if Cresas. The tenpun notes floo abowt as common as

haypince--clarrit and shampang was at his house as vulgar as gin; and

verry glad I was, to be sure, to be a valley to a zion of the nobillaty.

Deuceace had, in his sittin-room, a large pictur on a sheet of paper.

The names of his family was wrote on it: it was wrote in the shape of a

tree, a groin out of a man-in-armer's stomick, and the names were on

little plates among the bows. The pictur said that the Deuceaces kem

into England in the year 1066, along with William Conqueruns. My

master called it his podygree. I do bleev it was because he had this

pictur, and because he was the Honrabble Deuceace, that he mannitched

to live as he did. If he had been a common man, you'd have said he was

no better than a swinler. It's only rank and buth that can warrant

such singularities as my master showed. For it's no use disgysing

it--the Honrabble Halgernon was a Gambler. For a man of wulgar family,

it's the wust trade that can be--for a man of common feelinx of

honesty, this profession is quite imposbill; but for a real

torough-bread genlmn, it's the easiest and most prophetable line he can

take.

It may, praps, appear curous that such a fashnabble man should live in

the Temple; but it must be recklected, that its not only lawyers who

live in what's called the Ins of Cort. Many batchylers who have

nothink to do with lor, have here their loginx; and many sham

barrysters, who never put on a wig and gowned twise in their lives, kip

apartments in the Temple, instead of Bon Street, Pickledilly, or other

fashnabble places.

Frinstance, on our stairkis (so these houses are called), there was 8

sets of chamberses, and only 3 lawyers. These was, bottom floar,

Screwson, Hewson, and Jewson, attorneys; fust floor, Mr. Sergeant

Flabber--opsite, Mr. Counslor Bruffy; and secknd pair, Mr. Haggerstony,

an Irish counslor, pracktising at the Old Baly, and lickwise what they

call reporter to the Morning Post nyouspapper. Opsite him was wrote

MR. RICHARD BLEWITT;

and on the thud floar, with my master, lived one Mr. Dawkins.

This young fellow was a new comer into the Temple, and unlucky it was

for him too--he'd better have never been born; for its my firm apinion

that the Temple ruined him--that is, with the help of my master and Mr.

Dick Blewitt, as you shall hear.

Mr. Dawkins, as I was gave to understand by his young man, had jest

left the Universary of Oxford, and had a pretty little form of his

own--six thousand pound, or so--in the stox. He was jest of age, an

orfin who had lost his father and mother; and having distinkwished

hisself at collitch, where he gained seffral prices, was come to town

to push his form, and study the barryster's bisniss.

Not bein of a verry high fammly hisself--indeed, I've heard say his

father was a chismonger, or somethink of that lo sort--Dawkins was glad

to find his old Oxford friend, Mr. Blewitt, yonger son to rich Squire

Blewitt, of Listershire, and to take rooms so near him.

Now, tho' there was a considdrabble intimacy between me and Mr.

Blewitt's gentleman, there was scarcely any betwixt our masters,--mine

being too much of the aristoxy to associate with one of Mr. Blewitt's

sort. Blewitt was what they call a bettin man: he went reglar to

Tattlesall's, kep a pony, wore a white hat, a blue berd's-eye

handkercher, and a cut-away coat. In his manners he was the very

contrary of my master, who was a slim, ellygant man, as ever I see--he

had very white hands, rayther a sallow face, with sharp dark ise, and

small wiskus neatly trimmed, and as black as Warren's jet--he spoke

very low and soft--he seemed to be watchin the person with whom he was

in convysation, and always flatterd every body. As for Blewitt, he was

quite of another sort. He was always swearin, singin, and slappin

people on the back, as hearty and as familiar as posbill. He seemed a

merry, careless, honest cretur, whom one would trust with life and

soul. So thought Dawkins, at least; who, though a quiet young man,

fond of his boox, novvles, Byron's poems, floot-playing, and such like

scientafic amusemints, grew hand in glove with honest Dick Blewitt, and

soon after with my master, the Honrabble Halgernon. Poor Daw! he

thought he was makin good connexions, and real friends--he had fallen

in with a couple of the most etrocious swinlers that ever lived.

Before Mr. Dawkins's arrival in our house, Mr. Deuceace had barely

condysended to speak to Mr. Blewitt: it was only about a month after

that suckumstance that my master, all of a sudding, grew very friendly

with him. The reason was pretty clear,--Deuceace wanted him. Dawkins

had not been an hour in master's compny before he knew that he had a

pidgin to pluck.

Blewitt knew this too; and bein very fond of pidgin, intended to keep

this one entirely to himself. It was amusin to see the Honrabble

Halgernon manuvring to get this pore bird out of Blewitt's clause, who

thought he had it safe. In fact, he'd brought Dawkins to these

chambers for that very porpos, thinking to have him under his eye, and

strip him at leisure.

My master very soon found out what was Mr. Blewitt's game. Gamblers

know gamblers, if not by instink, at least by reputation; and though

Mr. Blewitt moved in a much lower spear than Mr. Deuceace, they knew

each other's dealins and caracters puffickly well.

"Charles, you scoundrel," says Deuceace to me one day (he always spoak

in that kind way), "who is this person that has taken the opsit

chambers, and plays the flute so industrusly?"

"It's Mr. Dawkins, a rich young gentleman from Oxford, and a great

friend of Mr. Blewittses, sir," says I; "they seem to live in each

other's rooms."

Master said nothink, but he grin'd--my eye, how he did grin! Not the

fowl find himself could snear more satannickly.

I knew what he meant:

Imprimish. A man who plays the floot is a simpleton.

Secknly. Mr. Blewitt is a raskle.

Thirdmo. When a raskle and a simpleton is always together, and when

the simpleton is rich, one knows pretty well what will come of it.

I was but a lad in them days, but I knew what was what as well as my

master; it's not gentlemen only that's up to snough. Law bless us!

there was four of us on this stairkes, four as nice young men as you

ever see; Mr. Bruffy's young man, Mr. Dawkinses, Mr. Blewitt's, and

me--and we knew what our masters was about as well as they did

theirselfs. Frinstance, I can say this for myself, there wasn't a

paper in Deuceace's desk or drawer, not a bill, a note, or mimerandum,

which I hadn't read as well as he: with Blewitt's it was the same--me

and his young man used to read 'em all. There wasn't a bottle of wine

that we didn't get a glas, nor a pound of sugar that we didn't have

some lumps of it. We had keys to all the cubbards--we pipped into all

the letters that kem and went--we pored over all the bill-files--we'd

the best pickens out of the dinners, the liwers of the fowls, the

force-mit balls out of the soup, the egs from the sallit. As for the

coals and candles, we left them to the landrisses. You may call this

robry--nonsince--it's only our right--a suvvant's purquizzits is as

sacred as the laws of Hengland.

Well, the long and short of it is this. Richard Blewitt, esquire, was

sityouated as follows: He'd an inkum of three hunderd a year from his

father. Out of this he had to pay one hunderd and ninety for money

borrowed by him at collidge, seventy for chambers, seventy more for his

hoss, aty for his suvvant on bord wagis, and about three hunderd and

fifty for a supprat establishmint in the Regency Park; besides this,

his pockit money, say a hunderd, his eatin, drinkin, and

wine-marchant's bill, about two hunderd moar. So that you see he laid

by a pretty handsome sum at the end of the year.

My master was diffrent: and being a more fashnabble man than Mr. B., in

course he owed a deal more money. There was fust:--

Account contray, at Crockford's . . . . . . . £3711 0 0

Bills of xchange and I.O.U.'s (but he didn't

pay these in most cases) . . . . . . . . . . 4963 0 0

21 tailor's bills, in all . . . . . . . . . . 1306 11 9

3 hossdealer's do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 0 0

2 coachbuilder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 0 0

Bills contracted at Cambritch . . . . . . . . 2193 6 8

Sundries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987 10 0

------------

£14,069 8 5

I give this as a curiosity--pipple doant know how in many cases

fashnabhle life is carried on; and to know even what a real gnlmn owes

is somethink instructif and agreeable.

But to my tail. The very day after my master had made the inquiries

concerning Mr. Dawkins, witch I have mentioned already, he met Mr.

Blewitt on the stairs; and byoutiffle it was to see how this gnlman,

who had before been almost cut by my master, was now received by him.

One of the sweatest smiles I ever saw was now vizzable on Mr.

Deuceace's countenance. He held out his hand, covered with a white kid

glove, and said, in the most frenly tone of vice posbill, "What? Mr.

Blewitt! It is an age since we met. What a shame that such near

naybors should see each other so seldom!"

Mr. Blewitt, who was standing at his door, in a pe-green dressing-gown,

smoakin a segar, and singing a hunting coarus, looked surprised,

flattered, and then suspicius.

"Why, yes," says he, "it is, Mr. Deuceace, a long time."

"Not, I think, since we dined at Sir George Hockey's. By the by, what

an evening that was--hay, Mr. Blewitt? What wine! what capital songs!

I recollect your 'May-day in the morning'--cuss me, the best comick

song I ever heard. I was speaking to the Duke of Doncaster about it

only yesterday. You know the duke, I think?"

Mr. Blewitt said, quite surly, "No, I don't."

"Not know him!" cries master; "why, hang it, Blewitt! he knows you; as

every sporting man in England does, I should think. Why, man, your

good things are in everybody's mouth at Newmarket."

And so master went on chaffin Mr. Blewitt. That genlmn at fust

answered him quite short and angry; but, after a little more flumery,

he grew as pleased as posbill, took in all Deuceace's flatry, and

bleeved all his lies. At last the door shut, and they both went into

Mr. Blewitt's chambers togither.

Of course I can't say what past there; but in an hour master kem up to

his own room as yaller as mustard, and smellin sadly of backo smoke. I

never see any genlmn more than he was; he'd been smoakin seagars along

with Blewitt. I said nothink, in course, tho' I'd often heard him

xpress his horrow of backo, and knew very well he would as soon swallow

pizon as smoke. But he wasn't a chap to do a thing without a reason:

if he'd been smoakin, I warrant he had smoked to some porpus.

I didn't hear the convysation between 'em; but Mr. Blewitt's man did:

it was,--"Well, Mr. Blewitt, what capital seagars! Have you one for a

friend to smoak?" (The old fox, it wasn't only the seagars he was a

smoakin!) "Walk in," says Mr. Blewitt; and then they began a chaffin

together; master very ankshous about the young gintleman who had come

to live in our chambers, Mr. Dawkins, and always coming back to that

subject,--sayin that people on the same stairkis ot to be frenly; how

glad he'd be, for his part, to know Mr. Dick Blewitt, and any friend of

his, and so on. Mr. Dick, howsever, seamed quite aware of the trap

laid for him. "I really don't know this Dawkins," says he: "he's a

chismonger's son, I hear; and tho I've exchanged visits with him, I

doant intend to continyou the acquaintance,--not wishin to assoshate

with that kind of pipple." So they went on, master fishin, and Mr.

Blewitt not wishin to take the hook at no price.

"Confound the vulgar thief!" muttard my master, as he was laying on his

sophy, after being so very ill; "I've poisoned myself with his infernal

tobacco, and he has foiled me. The cursed swindling boor! he thinks

he'll ruin this poor cheesemonger, does he? I'll step in, and warn

him."

I thought I should bust a laffin, when he talked in this style. I knew

very well what his "warning" meant,--lockin the stable-door, but

stealin the boss fust.

Next day, his strattygam for becoming acquainted with Mr. Dawkins he

exicuted, and very pritty it was.

Besides potry and the floot, Mr. Dawkins, I must tell you, had some

other parsballities--wiz., he was very fond of good eatin and drinkin.

After doddling over his music and boox all day, this young genlmn used

to sally out of evenings, dine sumptiously at a tavern, drinkin all

sots of wine along with his friend Mr. Blewitt. He was a quiet young

fellow enough at fust; but it was Mr. B. who (for his own porpuses, no

doubt) had got him into this kind of life. Well, I needn't say that he

who eats a fine dinner, and drinks too much overnight, wants a bottle

of soda-water, and a gril, praps, in the mornink. Such was Mr.

Dawkinses case; and reglar almost as twelve o'clock came, the waiter

from Dix Coffy-House was to be seen on our stairkis, bringin up Mr.

D.'s hot breakfast.

No man would have thought there was anythink in such a trifling

circkumstance; master did, though, and pounced upon it like a cock on a

barlycorn.

He sent me out to Mr. Morell's, in Pickledilly, for wot's called a

Strasbug-pie--in French, a "patty defaw graw." He takes a card, and

nails it on the outside case (patty defaw graws come generally in a

round wooden box, like a drumb); and what do you think he writes on it?

why, as follos:--"For the Honourable Algernon Percy Deuceace, etc. etc.

etc. With Prince Talleyrand's compliments."

Prince Tallyram's complimints, indeed! I laff when I think of it

still, the old surpint! He was a surpint, that Deuceace, and no

mistake.

Well, by a most extrornary piece of ill-luck, the next day punctially

as Mr. Dawkinses brexfas was coming up the stairs, Mr. Halgernon Percy

Deuceace was going down. He was as gay as a lark, humming an Oppra

tune, and twizzting round his head his hevy gold-headed cane. Down he

went very fast, and by a most unlucky axdent struck his cane against

the waiter's tray, and away went Mr. Dawkinses gril, kayann, kitchup,

soda-water, and all! I can't think how my master should have choas

such an exact time; to be sure, his windo looked upon the cort, and he

could see every one who came into our door.

As soon as the axdent had took place, master was in such a rage as, to

be sure, no man ever was in befor; he swoar at the waiter in the most

dreddfle way; he threatened him with his stick, and it was only when he

see that the waiter was rayther a bigger man than his self that he was

in the least pazzyfied. He returned to his own chambres; and John the

waiter, went off for more grill to Dixes Coffey-House.

"This is a most unlucky axdent, to be sure, Charles," says master to

me, after a few minnits paws, during which he had been and wrote a

note, put it into an anvelope, and sealed it with his bigg seal of

arms. "But stay--a thought strikes me--take this note to Mr. Dawkins,

and that pye you brought yesterday; and hearkye, you scoundrel, if you

say where you got it I will break every bone in your skin!"

These kind of prommises were among the few which I knew him to keep;

and as I loved boath my skinn and my boans, I carried the noat, and, of

core, said nothink. Waiting in Mr. Dawkinses chambus for a few

minnits, I returned to my master with an anser. I may as well give

both of these documence, of which I happen to have taken coppies.

I

The Hon. A. P. Deuceace to T. S. Dawkins, Esq.

"Temple, Tuesday.

"Mr. Deuceace presents his compliments to Mr. Dawkins, and begs at the

same time to offer his most sincere apologies and regrets for the

accident which has just taken place.

"May Mr. Deuceace be allowed to take a neighbour's privilege, and to

remedy the evil he has occasioned to the best of his power? If Mr.

Dawkins will do him the favour to partake of the contents of the

accompanying case (from Strasburg direct, and the gift of a friend, on

whose taste as a gourmand Mr. Dawkins may rely), perhaps he will find

that it is not a bad substitute for the plat which Mr. Deuceace's

awkwardness destroyed.

"It will, also, Mr. Deuceace is sure, be no small gratification to the

original donor of the pate, when he learns that it has fallen into the

hands of so celebrated a bon vivant as Mr. Dawkins.

"T. S. Dawkins, Esq., etc. etc. etc."

II

From T. S. Dawkins, Esq., to the Hon. A. P. Deuceace.

"Mr. Thomas Smith Dawkins presents his grateful compliments to the Hon.

Mr. Deuceace, and accepts with the greatest pleasure Mr. Deuceace's

generous proffer.

"It would be one of the happiest moments of Mr. Smith Dawkins's life,

if the Hon. Mr. Deuceace would extend his generosity still further, and

condescend to partake of the repast which his munificent politeness has

furnished.

"Temple, Tuesday."

Many and many a time, I say, have I grind over these letters, which I

had wrote from the original by Mr. Bruffy's copyin clark. Deuceace

flam about Prince Tallyram was puffickly successful. I saw young

Dawkins blush with delite as he red the note; he toar up for or five

sheets before he composed the anser to it, which was as you red abuff,

and roat in a hand quite trembling with pleasyer. If you could but

have seen the look of triumph in Deuceace's wicked black eyes, when he

read the noat! I never see a deamin yet, but I can phansy 1, a holding

a writhing soal on his pitchfrock, and smilin like Deuceace. He

dressed himself in his very best clothes, and in he went, after sending

me over to say that he would xcept with pleasyour Mr. Dawkins's invite.

The pie was cut up, and a most frenly conversation begun betwixt the

two genlmin. Deuceace was quite captivating. He spoke to Mr. Dawkins

in the most respeckful and flatrin manner,--agread in every think he

said,--prazed his taste, his furniter, his coat, his classick nolledge,

and his playin on the floot; you'd have thought, to hear him, that such

a polygon of exlens as Dawkins did not breath,--that such a modest,

sinsear, honrabble genlmn as Deuceace was to be seen no where xcept in

Pump Cort. Poor Daw was complitly taken in. My master said he'd

introduce him to the Duke of Doncaster, and Heaven knows how many nobs

more, till Dawkins was quite intawsicated with pleasyour. I know as a

fac (and it pretty well shows the young genlmn's carryter), that he

went that very day and ordered 2 new coats, on propos to be introjuiced

to the lords in.

But the best joak of all was at last. Singin, swagrin, and swarink--up

stares came Mr. Dick Blewitt. He flung open Mr. Dawkins's door,

shouting out, "Daw, my old buck, how are you?" when, all of a sudden,

he sees Mr. Deuceace: his jor dropt, he turned chocky white, and then

burnin red, and iooked as if a stror would knock him down. "My dear

Mr. Blewitt," says my master, smilin, and offring his hand, "how glad I

am to see you! Mr. Dawkins and I were just talking about your pony!

Pray sit down."

Blewitt did; and now was the question, who should sit the other out;

but, law bless you! Mr. Blewitt was no match for my master; all the

time he was fidgetty, silent, and sulky; on the contry, master was

charmin. I never herd such a flow of conversatin, or so many

wittacisms as he uttered. At last, completely beat, Mr. Blewitt took

his leaf; that instant master followed him; and passin his arm through

that of Mr. Dick, let him into our chambers, and began talkin to him in

the most affable and affeckshnat manner.

But Dick was too angry to listen; at last when master was telling him

some long stoary about the Duke of Doncaster, Blewitt bust out--

"A plague on the Duke of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't

you be running your rigs upon me; I an't the man to be bamboozl'd by

long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know

you; every man knows you, and your line of country. Yes, you're after

young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him; but you shan't,--no, by

---- you shan't." (The reader must recklect that the oaths which

interspussed Mr. B.'s convysation I have lift out.) Well, after he'd

fired a wolley of 'em, Mr. Deuceace spoke as cool and slow as possbill.

"Heark ye, Blewitt. I know you to be one of the most infernal thieves

and scoundrels unhung. If you attempt to hector with me, I will cane

you; if you want more, I'll shoot you; if you meddle between me and

Dawkins, I will do both. I know your whole life, you miserable

swindler and coward. I know you have already won two hundred pounds of

this lad, and want all. I will have half, or you never shall have a

penny." It's quite true that master knew things; but how was the

wonder.

I couldn't see Mr. B.'s face during this dialogue, bein on the wrong

side of the door; but there was a considdrabble paws after thuse

complymints had passed between the two genlmn,--one walkin quickly up

and down the room--tother, angry and stupid, sittin down, and stampin

with his foot.

"Now listen to this, Mr. Blewitt," continues master at last; "if you're

quiet, you shall have half this fellow's money: but venture to win a

shilling from him in my absence, or without my consent, and you do it

at your peril."

"Well, well, Mr. Deuceace," cries Dick, "it's very hard, and, I must

say, not fair: the game was of my starting, and you've no right to

interfere with my friend."

"Mr. Blewitt, you are a fool! You professed yesterday not to know this

man, and I was obliged to find him out for myself. I should like to

know by what law of honour I am bound to give him up to you?"

It was charmin to hear this pair of raskles talkin about honour. I

declare I could have found it in my heart to warn young Dawkins of the

precious way in which these chaps were going to serve him. But if they

didn't know what honour was, I did; and never, never did I tell tails

about my masters when in their sarvice--out, in cors, the hobligation

is no longer binding.

Well, the nex day there was a gran dinner at our chambers. White soop,

turbit, and lobster sos; saddil of Scoch muttn, grous, and M'Arony;

wines, shampang, hock, madeiria, a bottle of poart, and ever so many of

clarrit. The compny presint was three; wiz., the Honrabble A. P.

Deuceace, R. Blewitt, and Mr. Dawkins, Exquires. My i, how we genlmn

in the kitchin did enjy it! Mr. Blewittes man eat so much grous (when

it was brot out of the parlor), that I reely thought he would be sik;

Mr. Dawkinses genlmn (who was only abowt 13 years of age) grew so il

with M'Arony and plumb-puddn, so to be obleeged to take sefral of Mr.

D.'s pils, which one-half kild him. But this is all promiscuous: I

an't talkin of the survants now, but the masters.

Would you bleeve it? After dinner (and praps 8 bottles of wine betwin

the 3) the genlmn sat down to éarty. It's a game where only 2 plays,

and where, in coarse, when there's ony 3, one looks on.

Fust, they playd crown pints, and a pound the bett. At this game they

were wonderful equill; and about suppertime (when grilled am, more

shampang, devld biskits, and other things, was brot in) the play stood

thus: Mr. Dawkins had won 2 pounds; Mr. Blewitt, 30 shillings; the

Honrabble Mr. Deuceace having lost £3.10s. After the dewle and the

shampang the play was a little higher. Now it was pound pints, and

five pound the bet. I thought, to be sure, after hearing the

complyments between Blewitt and master in the morning, that now pore

Dawkins's time was come.

Not so: Dawkins won always, Mr. B. betting on his play, and giving him

the very best of advice. At the end of the evening (which was abowt

five o'clock the nex morning) they stopt. Master was counting up the

skore on a card.

"Blewitt," says he, "I've been unlucky. I owe you--let me see--yes,

five-and-forty pounds?"

"Five-and-forty," says Blewitt, "and no mistake!"

"I will give you a cheque," says the honrabble genlmn.

"Oh! don't mention it, my dear sir!" But master got a grate sheet of

paper, and drew him a check on Messeers. Pump, Algit, and Co., his

bankers.

"Now," says master, "I've got to settle with you, my dear Mr. Dawkins.

If you had backd your luck, I should have owed you a very handsome sum

of money. Voyons: thirteen points, at a pound--it is easy to

calculate;" and, drawin out his puss, he clinked over the table 13

goolden suverings, which shon till they made my eyes wink.

So did pore Dawkinses, as he put out his hand, all trembling, and drew

them in.

"Let me say," added master, "let me say (and I've had some little

experience), that you are the very best écarté player with whom I ever

sat down."

Dawkinses eyes glissened as he put the money up, and said, "Law,

Deuceace, you flatter me."

Flatter him! I should think he did. It was the very thing which

master ment.

"But mind you, Dawkins," continyoud he, "I must have my revenge; for

I'm ruined--positively ruined--by your luck."

"Well, well," says Mr. Thomas Smith Dawkins, as pleased as if he had

gained a millium, "shall it be to-morrow? Blewitt, what say you!"

Mr. Blewitt agread, in course. My master, after a little demurring,

consented too. "We'll meet," says he, "at your chambers. But mind, my

dear fello, not too much wine: I can't stand it at any time, especially

when I have to play écarté with you."

Pore Dawkins left our rooms as happy as a prins. "Here, Charles," says

he, and flung me a sovring. Pore fellow! pore fellow! I know what was

a comin!

* * * * *

But the best of it was, that these 13 sovrings which Dawkins won,

master had borrowed them from Mr. Blewitt! I brought 'em, with 7 more,

from that young genlmn's chambers that very morning: for, since his

interview with master, Blewitt had nothing to refuse him.

* * * * *

Well, shall I continue the tail? If Mr. Dawkins had been the least bit

wiser, it would have taken him six months befoar he lost his money; as

it was, he was such a confounded ninny, that it took him a very short

time to part with it.

Nex day (it was Thursday, and master's acquaintance with Mr. Dawkins

had only commenced on Tuesday), Mr. Dawkins, as I said, gev his

party,--dinner at 7. Mr. Blewitt and the two Mr. D.'s as befoar. Play

begins at 11. This time I knew the bisniss was pretty serious, for we

suvvants was packed off to bed at 2 o'clock. On Friday, I went to

chambers--no master--he kem in for 5 minutes at about 12, made a little

toilit, ordered more dewles and soda-water, and back again he went to

Mr. Dawkins's.

They had dinner there at 7 again, but nobody seamed to eat, for all the

vittles came out to us genlmn: they had in more wine though, and must

have drunk at least two dozen in the 36 hours.

At ten o'clock, however, on Friday night, back my master came to his

chambers. I saw him as I never saw him before, namly, reglar drunk.

He staggered about the room, he danced, he hickipd, he swoar, he flung

me a heap of silver, and, finely, he sunk down exosted on his bed; I

pullin off his boots and close, and making him comfrabble.

When I had removed his garmints, I did what it's the doty of every

servant to do--I emtied his pockits, and looked at his pockit-book and

all his letters: a number of axdents have been prevented that way.

I found there, among a heap of things, the following pretty dockyment:

+-------------------------------------------+

| I. O. U. |

| £4700 |

| THOMAS SMITH DAWKINS |

| |

| _Friday,_ |

| _16th January_ |

+-------------------------------------------+

There was another bit of paper of the same kind--"I.O.U. four hundred

pounds, Richard Blewitt:" but this, in cors, ment nothink.

* * * * *

Nex mornin, at nine, master was up, and as sober as a judg. He drest,

and was off to Mr. Dawkins. At 10 he ordered a cab, and the two genlm

went together.

"Where shall he drive, sir?" says I.

"Oh, tell him to drive to the Bank."

Pore Dawkins! his eyes red with remors and sleepliss drankenniss, gave

a shudder and a sob, as he sunk back in the wehicle; and they drove on.

That day he sold out every hapny he was worth, xcept five hundred

pounds.

* * * * *

Abowt 12 master had returned, and Mr. Dick Blewitt came stridin up the

stairs with a sollum and important hair.

"Is your master at home?" says he.

"Yes, sir," says I; and in he walks. I, in coars, with my ear to the

keyhole, listening with all my mite.

"Well," says Blewitt, "we maid a pretty good night of it, Mr. Deuceace.

You've settled, I see, with Dawkins."

"Settled!" says master. "Oh yes--yes--I've settled with him."

"Four thousand seven hundred, I think?"

"About that--yes."

"That makes my share--let me see--two thousand three hundred and fifty;

which I'll thank you to fork out."

"Upon my word--why--Mr. Blewitt," says my master, "I don't really

understand what you mean."

"You don't know what I mean!" says Blewitt, in an axent such as I never

before heard. "You don't know what I mean! Did you not promise me

that we were to go shares? Didn't I lend you twenty sovereigns the

other night to pay our losings to Dawkins? Didn't you swear, on your

honour as a gentleman, to give me half of all that might be won in this

affair?"

"Agreed, sir," says Deuceace; "agreed."

"Well, sir, and now what have you to say?"

"Why, that I don't intend to keep my promise! You infernal fool and

ninny! do you suppose I was labouring for you? Do you fancy I was

going to the expense of giving a dinner to that jackass yonder, that

you should profit by it? Get away, sir! Leave the room, sir! Or,

stop--here--I will give you four hundred pounds--your own note of hand,

sir, for that sum, if you will consent to forget all that has passed

between us, and that you have never known Mr. Algernon Deuceace."

I've sean pipple angery before now, but never any like Blewitt. He

stormed, groaned, belloed, swoar! At last, he fairly began blubbring;

now cussing and nashing his teeth, now praying dear Mr. Deuceace to

grant him mercy.

At last, master flung open the door (Heavn bless us! it's well I didn't

tumble hed over eels, into the room!) and said, "Charles, show the

gentleman down stairs!" My master looked at him quite steddy. Blewitt

slunk down, as miserabble as any man I ever see. As for Dawkins,

Heaven knows where he was!

* * * * *

"Charles," says my master to me, about an hour afterwards, "I am going

to Paris; you may come, too, if you please."

THE BROTHERS

A TALE[1]

By EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

[1] This tale is, in reality, founded on the beautiful tradition which

belong to Liebenstein and Sternfels.

You must imagine, then, dear Gertrude (said Trevylyan), a beautiful

summer day, and by the same faculty that none possess so richly as

yourself, for it is you who can kindle something of that divine spark

even in me, you must rebuild those shattered towers in the pomp of old;

raise the gallery and the hall; man the battlements with warders, and

give the proud banners of ancestral chivalry to wave upon the walls.

But above, sloping half down the rock, you must fancy the hanging

gardens of Liebenstein, fragrant with flowers, and basking in the

noonday sun.

On the greenest turf, underneath an oak, there sat three persons, in

the bloom of youth. Two of the three were brothers; the third was an

orphan girl, whom the lord of the opposite tower of Sternfels had

bequeathed to the protection of his brother, the chief of Liebenstein.

The castle itself and the demesne that belonged to it passed away from

the female line, and became the heritage of Otho the orphan's cousin,

and the younger of the two brothers now seated on the turf.

"And oh," said the elder, whose name was Warbeck, "you have twined a

chaplet for my brother; have you not, dearest Leoline, a simple flower

for me?"

The beautiful orphan--(for beautiful she was, Gertrude, as the heroine

of the tale you bid me tell ought to be,--should she not have to the

dreams of my fancy your lustrous hair, and your sweet smile, and your

eyes of blue, that are never, never silent? Ah, pardon me that in a

former tale I denied the heroine the beauty of your face, and remember

that, to atone for it, I endowed her with the beauty of your mind)--the

beautiful orphan blushed to her temples, and culling from the flowers

in her lap the freshest of the roses, began weaving them into a wreath

for Warbeck.

"It would be better," said the gay Otho, "to make my sober brother a

chaplet of the rue and cypress; the rose is much too bright a flower

for so serious a knight."

Leoline held up her hand reprovingly.

"Let him laugh, dearest cousin," said Warbeck, gazing passionately on

her changing cheek: "and thou, Leoline, believe that the silent stream

runs the deepest."

At this moment, they heard the voice of the old chief, their father,

calling aloud for Leoline; for ever, when he returned from the chase,

he wanted her gentle presence; and the hall was solitary to him if the

light sound of her step, and the music of her voice, were not heard in

welcome.

Leoline hastened to her guardian, and the brothers were left alone.

Nothing could be more dissimilar than the features and the respective

characters of Otho and Warbeck. Otho's countenance was flushed with

the brown hues of health; his eyes were of the brightest hazel: his

dark hair wreathed in short curls round his open and fearless brow; the

jest ever echoed on his lips, and his step was bounding as the foot of

the hunter of the Alps. Bold and light was his spirit; if at times he

betrayed the haughty insolence of youth, he felt generously, and though

not ever ready to confess sorrow for a fault, he was at least ready to

brave peril for a friend.

But Warbeck's frame, though of equal strength, was more slender in its

proportions than that of his brother; the fair long hair that

characterised his northern race hung on either side of a countenance

calm and pale, and deeply impressed with thought, even to sadness. His

features, more majestic and regular than Otho's, rarely varied in their

expression. More resolute even than Otho, he was less impetuous; more

impassioned, he was also less capricious.

The brothers remained silent after Leoline had left them. Otho

carelessly braced on his sword, that he had laid aside on the grass;

but Warbeck gathered up the flowers that had been touched by the soft

hand of Leoline, and placed them in his bosom.

The action disturbed Otho; he bit his lip, and changed colour; at

length he said, with a forced laugh:

"It must be confessed, brother, that you carry your affection for our

fair cousin to a degree that even relationship seems scarcely to

warrant."

"It is true," said Warbeck, calmly: "I love her with a love surpassing

that of blood."

"How!" said Otho, fiercely: "do you dare to think of Leoline as a

bride?"

"Dare!" repeated Warbeck, turning yet paler than his wonted hue.

"Yes, I have said the word! Know, Warbeck, that I, too, love Leoline;

I, too, claim her as my bride; and never, while I can wield a

sword--never, while I wear the spurs of knighthood, will I render my

claim to a living rival. Even," he added (sinking his voice), "though

that rival be my brother!"

Warbeck answered not; his very soul seemed stunned; he gazed long and

wistfully on his brother, and then, turning his face away, ascended the

rock without uttering a single word.

This silence startled Otho. Accustomed to vent every emotion of his

own, he could not comprehend the forbearance of his brother; he knew

his high and brave nature too well to imagine that it arose from fear.

Might it not be contempt, or might he not, at this moment, intend to

seek their father; and, the first to proclaim his love for the orphan,

advance, also, the privilege of the elder born? As these suspicions

flashed across him, the haughty Otho strode to his brother's side, and

laying his hand on his arm, said: "Whither goes thou? and dost thou

consent to surrender Leoline?"

"Does she love thee, Otho?" answered Warbeck, breaking silence at last;

and his voice spoke so deep an anguish, that it arrested the passions

of Otho even at their height.

"It is thou who art now silent," continued Warbeck; "speak, doth she

love thee, and has her lip confessed it?"

"I have believed that she loved me," faltered Otho; "but she is of

maiden bearing, and her lip, at least, has never told it."

"Enough," said Warbeck; "release your hold."

"Stay," said Otho, his suspicions returning; "stay--yet one word; dost

thou seek my father? He ever honoured thee more than me: wilt thou own

to him thy love, and insist on thy right of birth? By my soul and my

hope of heaven, do it, and one of us two must fall!"

"Poor boy!" answered Warbeck, bitterly; "how little thou canst read the

heart of one who loves truly! Thinkest thou I would wed her if she

loved thee? Thinkest thou I could, even to be blessed myself, give her

one moment's pain? Out on the thought--away!"

"Then wilt not thou seek our father?" said Otho, abashed.

"Our father!--has our father the keeping of Leoline's affection?"

answered Warbeck; and shaking off his brother's grasp, he sought the

way to the castle.

As he entered the hall he heard the voice of Leoline; she was singing

to the old chief one of the simple ballads of the time, that the

warrior and the hunter loved to hear. He paused lest he should break

the spell (a spell stronger than a sorcerer's to him), and gazing upon

Leoline's beautiful form, his heart sank within him. His brother and

himself had each that day, as they sat in the gardens, given her a

flower; his flower was the fresher and the rarer; his he saw not, but

she wore his brother's in her bosom!

The chief, lulled by the music and wearied with the toils of the chase,

sank into sleep as the song ended, and Warbeck, coming forward,

motioned to Leoline to follow him. He passed into a retired and

solitary walk, and when they were a little distance from the castle,

Warbeck turned round, and taking Leoline's hand, gently said:

"Let us rest here for one moment, dearest cousin; I have much on my

heart to say to thee."

"And what is there," answered Leoline, as they sat on a mossy bank,

with the broad Rhine glancing below, "what is there that my kind

Warbeck would ask of me? Ah! would it might be some favour, something

in poor Leoline's power to grant; for ever from my birth you have been

to me most tender, most kind. Yon, I have often heard them say, taught

my first steps to walk; you formed my infant lips into language, and,

in after years, when my wild cousin was far away in the forests at the

chase, you would brave his gay jest and remain at home, lest Leoline

should be weary in the solitude. Ah, would I could repay you!"

Warbeck turned away his cheek; his heart was very full, and it was some

moments before he summoned courage to reply.

"My fair cousin," said he, "those were happy days; but they were the

days of childhood. New cares and new thoughts have now come on us.

But I am still thy friend, Leoline, and still thou wilt confide in me

thy young sorrows and thy young hopes as thou ever didst. Wilt thou

not, Leoline?"

"Canst thou ask me?" said Leoline; and Warbeck, gazing on her face, saw

that though her eyes were full of tears, they yet looked steadily upon

his; and he knew that she loved him only as a sister.

He sighed, and paused again ere he resumed. "Enough," said he; "now to

my task. Once on a time, dear cousin, there lived among these

mountains a certain chief who had two sons, and an orphan like thyself

dwelt also in his halls. And the elder son--but no matter, let us not

waste words on him!--the younger son, then, loved the orphan

dearly--more dearly than cousins love; and fearful of refusal, he

prayed the elder one to urge his suit to the orphan. Leoline, my tale

is done. Canst thou not love Otho as he loves thee?"

And now lifting his eyes to Leoline, he saw that she trembled

violently, and her cheek was covered with blushes.

"Say," continued he, mastering himself; "is not that flower (his

present) a token that he is chiefly in thy thoughts?"

"Ah, Warbeck! do not deem me ungrateful that I wear not yours also:

but--"

"Hush;" said Warbeck, hastily; "I am but as thy brother; is not Otho

more? He is young, brave, and beautiful. God grant that he may

deserve thee, if thou givest him so rich a gift as thy affections."

"I saw less of Otho in my childhood," said Leoline, evasively;

"therefore, his kindness of late years seemed stranger to me than

thine."

"And thou wilt not then reject him? Thou wilt be his bride?"

"And thy sister," answered Leoline.

"Bless thee, mine own dear cousin! one brother's kiss then, and

farewell! Otho shall thank thee for himself."

He kissed her forehead calmly, and, turning away, plunged into the

thicket; then, nor till then, he gave vent to such emotions as, had

Leoline seen them, Otho's suit had been lost for ever; for

passionately, deeply as in her fond and innocent heart she loved Otho,

the happiness of Warbeck was not less dear to her.

When the young knight had recovered his self-possession he went in

search of Otho. He found him alone in the wood, leaning with folded

arms against a tree, and gazing moodily on the ground. Warbeck's noble

heart was touched at his brother's dejection.

"Cheer thee, Otho," said he; "I bring thee no bad tidings; I have seen

Leoline--I have conversed with her--nay, start not--she loves thee! she

is thine!"

"Generous--generous Warbeck!" exclaimed Otho, and he threw himself on

his brother's neck. "No, no," said he, "this must not be; thou hast

the elder claim--I resign her to thee. Forgive me my waywardness,

brother, forgive me!"

"Think of the past no more," said Warbeck; "the love of Leoline is an

excuse for greater offences than thine. And now, be kind to her; her

nature is soft and keen. I know her well; for I have studied her

faintest wish. Thou art hasty and quick of ire; but remember that a

word wounds where love is deep. For my sake, as for hers, think more

of her happiness than thine own; now seek her--she waits to hear from

thy lips the tale that sounded cold upon mine."

With that he left his brother, and, once more re-entering the castle,

he went into the hall of his ancestors. His father still slept; he put

his hand on his grey hair, and blessed him; then stealing up to his

chamber, he braced on his helm and armour, and thrice kissing the hilt

of fate sword, said, with a flushed check:

"Henceforth be thou my bride!" Then passing from the castle, he sped

by the most solitary paths down the rock, gained the Rhine, and hailing

one of the numerous fishermen of the river, won the opposite shore; and

alone, but not sad, for his high heart supported him, and Leoline at

least was happy, he hastened to Frankfort.

The town was all gaiety and life, arms clanged at every corner, the

sounds of martial music, the wave of banners, the glittering of plumed

casques, the neighing of war-steeds, all united to stir the blood and

inflame the sense. St. Bertrand had lifted the sacred cross along the

shores of the Rhine, and the streets of Frankfort witnessed with what

success!

On that same day Warbeck assumed the sacred badge, and was enlisted

among the knights of the Emperor Conrad.

We must suppose some time to have elapsed, and Otho and Leoline were

not yet wedded; for, in the first fervour of his gratitude to his

brother, Otho had proclaimed to his father and to Leoline the conquest

Warbeck had obtained over himself; and Leoline, touched to the heart,

would not consent that the wedding should take place immediately. "Let

him, at least," said she, "not be insulted by a premature festivity;

and give him time, amongst the lofty beauties he will gaze upon in a

far country, to forget, Otho, that he once loved her who is the beloved

of thee."

The old chief applauded this delicacy; and even Otho, in the first

flush of his feelings towards his brother, did not venture to oppose

it. They settled, then, that the marriage should take place at the end

of a year.

Months rolled away, and an absent and moody gloom settled upon Otho's

brow. In his excursions with his gay companions among the neighbouring

towns he heard of nothing but the glory of the Crusaders, of the homage

paid to the heroes of the Cross at the courts they visited, of the

adventures of their life, and the exciting spirit that animated their

war. In fact, neither minstrel nor priest suffered the theme to grow

cold; and the fame of those who had gone forth to the holy strife gave

at once emulation and discontent to the youths who remained behind.

"And my brother enjoys this ardent and glorious life," said the

impatient Otho; "while I, whose arm is as strong, and whose heart is as

bold, languish here listening to the dull tales of a hoary sire and the

silly songs of an orphan girl." His heart smote him at the last

sentence, but he had already begun to weary of the gentle love of

Leoline. Perhaps when he had no longer to gain a triumph over a rival

the excitement palled; or perhaps his proud spirit secretly chafed at

being conquered by his brother in generosity, even when outshining him

in the success of love.

But poor Leoline, once taught that she was to consider Otho her

betrothed, surrendered her heart entirely to his control. His wild

spirit, his dark beauty, his daring valour, won while they awed her;

and in the fitfulness of his nature were those perpetual springs of

hope and fear that are the fountains of ever-agitated love. She saw

with increasing grief the change that was growing over Otho's mind; nor

did she divine the cause. "Surely I have not offended him?" thought

she.

Among the companions of Otho was one who possessed a singular sway over

him. He was a knight of that mysterious order of the Temple, which

exercised at one time so great a command over the minds of men.

A severe and dangerous wound in a brawl with an English knight had

confined the Templar at Frankfort, and prevented his joining the

Crusade. During his slow recovery he had formed an intimacy with Otho,

and, taking up his residence at the castle of Liebenstein, had been

struck with the beauty of Leoline. Prevented by his oath from

marriage, he allowed himself a double license in love, and doubted not,

could he disengage the young knight from his betrothed, that she would

add a new conquest to the many he had already achieved. Artfully

therefore he painted to Otho the various attractions of the Holy Cause;

and, above all, he failed not to describe, with glowing colours, the

beauties who, in the gorgeous East, distinguished with a prodigal

favour the warriors of the Cross. Dowries, unknown in the more sterile

mountains of the Rhine, accompanied the hand of these beauteous

maidens; and even a prince's daughter was not deemed, he said, too

lofty a marriage for the heroes who might win kingdoms for themselves.

"To me," said the Templar, "such hopes are eternally denied. But you,

were you not already betrothed, what fortunes might await you!"

By such discourses the ambition of Otho was perpetually aroused; they

served to deepen his discontent at his present obscurity, and to

convert to distaste the only solace it afforded in the innocence and

affection of Leoline.

One night, a minstrel sought shelter from the storm in the halls of

Liebenstein. His visit was welcomed by the chief, and he repaid the

hospitality he had received by the exercise of his art. He sang of the

chase, and the gaunt hound started from the hearth. He sang of love,

and Otho, forgetting his restless dreams, approached to Leoline, and

laid himself at her feet. Louder then and louder rose the strain. The

minstrel sang of war; he painted the feats of the Crusaders; he plunged

into the thickest of the battle; the steed neighed; the trump sounded;

and you might have heard the ringing of the steel. But when he came to

signalise the names of the boldest knights, high among the loftiest

sounded the name of Sir Warbeck of Liebenstein. Thrice had he saved

the imperial banner; two chargers slain beneath him, he had covered

their bodies with the fiercest of the foe. Gentle in the tent and

terrible in the fray, the minstrel should forget his craft ere the

Rhine should forget its hero. The chief started from his seat.

Leoline clasped the minstrel's hand.

"Speak,--you have seen him--he lives--he is honoured?"

"I myself am but just from Palestine, brave chief and noble maiden. I

saw the gallant knight of Liebenstein at the right hand of the imperial

Conrad. And he, ladye, was the only knight whom admiration shone upon

without envy, its shadow. Who then" (continued the minstrel, once more

striking his harp), "who then would remain inglorious in the hall?

Shall not the banners of his sires reproach him as they wave? and shall

not every voice from Palestine strike shame into his soul?"

"Right," cried Otho, suddenly, and flinging himself at the feet of his

father. "Thou hearest what my brother has done, and thine aged eyes

weep tears of joy. Shall I only dishonour thine old age with a rusted

sword? No! grant me, like my brother, to go forth with the heroes of

the Cross!"

"Noble youth," cried the harper, "therein speaks the soul of Sir

Warbeck; hear him, sir knight,--hear the noble youth."

"Heaven cries aloud in his voice," said the Templar, solemnly.

"My son, I cannot chide thine ardour," said the old chief, raising him

with trembling hands; "but Leoline, thy betrothed?"

Pale as a statue, with ears that doubted their sense as they drank in

the cruel words of her lover, stood the orphan. She did not speak, she

scarcely breathed; she sank into her seat, and gazed upon the ground,

till, at the speech of the chief, both maiden pride and maiden

tenderness restored her consciousness, and she said:

"I, uncle!--Shall I bid Otho stay when his wishes bid him depart?"

"He will return to thee, noble ladye, covered with glory," said the

harper: but Otho said no more. The touching voice of Leoline went to

his soul; he resumed his seat in silence; and Leoline, going up to him,

whispered gently, "Act as though I were not;" and left the hall to

commune with her heart and to weep alone.

"I can wed her before I go," said Otho, suddenly, as he sat that night

in the Templar's chamber.

"Why, that is true! and leave thy bride in the first week--a hard

trial!"

"Better than incur the chance of never calling her mine. Dear, kind,

beloved Leoline!"

"Assuredly, she deserves all from thee; and, indeed, it is no small

sacrifice, at thy years and with thy mien, to renounce for ever all

interest among the noble maidens thou wilt visit. Ah, from the

galleries of Constantinople what eyes will look down on thee, and what

ears, learning that thou art Otho the bridegroom, will turn away,

caring for thee no more! A bridegroom without a bride! Nay, man, much

as the Cross wants warriors, I am enough thy friend to tell thee, if

thou weddest, to stay peaceably at home, and forget in the chase the

labours of war, from which thou wouldst strip the ambition of love."

"I would I knew what were best," said Otho, irresolutely. "My

brother--ha, shall he for ever excel me?--But Leoline, how will she

grieve--she who left him for me!"

"Was that thy fault?" said the Templar, gaily. "It may many times

chance to thee again to be preferred to another. Troth, it is a sin

under which the conscience may walk lightly enough. But sleep on it,

Otho; my eyes grow heavy."

The next day Otho sought Leoline, and proposed to her that their

wedding should precede his parting; but so embarrassed was he, so

divided between two wishes, that Leoline, offended, hurt, stung by his

coldness, refused the proposal at once. She left him lest he should

see her weep, and then--then she repented even of her just pride.

But Otho, striving to appease his conscience with the belief that hers

now was the sole fault, busied himself in preparations for his

departure. Anxious to outshine his brother, he departed not as

Warbeck, alone and unattended, but levying all the horse, men, and

money that his domain of Sternfels--which he had not yet

tenanted--would afford, he repaired to Frankfort at the head of a

glittering troop.

The Templar, affecting a relapse, tarried behind, and promised to join

him at that Constantinople of which he had so loudly boasted.

Meanwhile he devoted his whole powers of pleasing to console the

unhappy orphan. The force of her simple love was, however, stronger

than all his arts. In vain he insinuated doubts of Otho; she refused

to hear them: in vain he poured with the softest accents into her ear

the witchery of flattery and song: she turned heedlessly away; and only

pained by the courtesies that had so little resemblance to Otho, she

shut herself up in her chamber, and pined in solitude for her forsaken.

The Templar now resolved to attempt darker arts to obtain power over

her, when, fortunately, he was summoned suddenly away by a mission from

the Grand Master, of so high import that it could not be resisted by a

passion stronger in his breast than love--the passion of ambition. He

left the castle to its solitude; and Otho peopling it no more with his

gay companions, no solitude could be more unfrequently disturbed.

Meanwhile, though, ever and anon, the fame of Warbeck reached their

ears, it came unaccompanied with that of Otho,--of him they had no

tidings: and thus the love of the tender orphan was kept alive by the

perpetual restlessness of fear. At length the old chief died, and

Leoline was left utterly alone.

One evening as she sat with her maidens in the hall, the ringing of a

steed's hoofs was heard in the outer court; a horn sounded, the heavy

gates were unbarred, and a knight of a stately mien and covered with

the mantle of the Cross entered the hall; he stopped for one moment at

the entrance, as if overpowered by his emotion; in the next he had

clasped Leoline to his breast.

"Dost thou not recognize thy cousin Warbeck?" He doffed his casque,

and she saw that majestic brow which, unlike Otho's, had never changed

or been clouded in its aspect to her.

"The war is suspended for the present," said he. "I learned my

father's death, and I have returned home to hang up my banner in the

hall and spend my days in peace."

Time and the life of camps had worked their change upon Warbeck's face;

the fair hair, deepened in its shade, was worn from the temples, and

disclosed one scar that rather aided the beauty of a countenance that

had always something high and martial in its character: but the calm it

had once worn had settled down into sadness; he conversed more rarely

than before, and though he smiled not less often, nor less kindly, the

smile had more of thought, and the kindness had forgot its passion. He

had apparently conquered a love that was so early crossed, but not that

fidelity of remembrance which made Leoline dearer to him than all

others, and forbade him to replace the images he had graven upon his

soul.

The orphan's lips trembled with the name of Otho, but a certain

recollection stifled even her anxiety. Warbeck hastened to forestall

her questions.

"Otho was well," he said, "and sojourning at Constantinople; he had

lingered there so long that the crusade had terminated without his aid:

doubtless now he would speedily return;--a month, a week, nay, a day

might restore him to her side."

Leoline was inexpressibly consoled, yet something remained untold.

Why, so eager for the strife of the sacred tomb had he thus tarried at

Constantinople? She wondered, she wearied conjecture, but she did not

dare to search farther.

The generous Warbeck concealed from her that Otho led a life of the

most reckless and indolent dissipations wasting his wealth in the

pleasures of the Greek court, and only occupying his ambition with the

wild schemes of founding a principality in those foreign climes, which

the enterprises of the Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to

the knightly bandits of the age.

The cousins resumed their old friendship, and Warbeck believed that it

was friendship alone. They walked again among the gardens in which

their childhood had strayed; they sat again on the green turf whereon

they had woven flowers; they looked down on the eternal mirror of the

Rhine;--ah! could it have reflected the same unawakened freshness of

their life's early spring!

The grave and contemplative mind of Warbeck had not been so contented

with the honours of war, but that it had sought also those calmer

sources of emotion which were yet found amongst the sages of the East.

He had drunk at the fountain of the wisdom of those distant climes, and

had acquired the habits of meditation which were indulged by those

wiser tribes from which the Crusaders brought back to the North the

knowledge that was destined to enlighten their posterity. Warbeck,

therefore, had little in common with the ruder chiefs around: he did

not summon them to his board, nor attend at their noisy wassails.

Often late at night, in yon shattered tower, his lonely lamp shone

still over the mighty stream, and his only relief to loneliness was in

the presence and the song of his soft cousin.

Months rolled on, when suddenly a vague and fearful rumour reached the

castle of Liebenstein. Otho was returning home to the neighbouring

tower of Sternfels; but not alone. He brought back with him a Greek

bride of surprising beauty, and dowered with almost regal wealth.

Leoline was the first to discredit the rumour; Leoline was soon the

only one who disbelieved.

Bright in the summer noon flashed the array of horsemen; far up the

steep ascent wound the gorgeous cavalcade; the lonely towers of

Liebenstein heard the echo of many a laugh and peal of merriment. Otho

bore home his bride to the hall of Sternfels.

That night there was a great banquet in Otho's castle; the lights shown

from every casement, and music swelled loud and ceaselessly within.

By the side of Otho, glittering with the prodigal jewels of the East,

sat the Greek. Her dark locks, her flashing eye, the false colours of

her complexion, dazzled the eyes of her guests. On her left hand sat

the Templar.

"By the holy rood," quoth the Templar, gaily, though he crossed himself

as he spoke, "we shall scare the owls to-night on those grim towers of

Liebenstein. Thy grave brother, Sir Otho, will have much to do to

comfort his cousin when she sees what a gallant life she would have led

with thee."

"Poor damsel," said the Greek, with affected pity, "doubtless she will

now be reconciled to the rejected one. I hear he is a knight of a

comely mien."

"Peace!" said Otho, sternly, and quaffing a large goblet of wine.

The Greek bit her lip, and glanced meaningly at the Templar, who

returned the glance.

"Nought but a beauty such as thine can win my pardon," said Otho,

turning to his bride, and gazing passionately in her face.

The Greek smiled.

Well sped the feast, the laugh deepened, the wine circled, when Otho's

eye rested on a guest at the bottom of the board, whose figure was

mantled from head to foot, and whose face was covered by a dark veil.

"Beshrew me!" said he, aloud, "but this is scarce courteous at our

revel: will the stranger vouchsafe to unmask?"

These words turned all eyes to the figure, and they who sat next it

perceived that it trembled violently; at length it rose, and walking

slowly, but with grace, to the fair Greek, it laid beside her a wreath

of flowers.

"It is a simple gift, ladye," said the stranger, in a voice of such

sweetness that the rudest guest was touched by it. "But it is all I

can offer, and the bride of Otho should not be without a gift at my

hands. May ye both be happy!"

With these words, the stranger turned and passed from the hall silent

as a shadow.

"Bring back the stranger!" cried the Greek, recovering her surprise.

Twenty guests sprang up to obey her mandate.

"No, no!" said Otho, waving his hand impatiently. "Touch her not, heed

her not, at your peril."

The Greek bent over the flowers to conceal her anger, and from amongst

them dropped the broken half of a ring. Otho recognised it at once; it

was the broken half of that ring which he had broken with his

betrothed. Alas, he required not such a sign to convince him that that

figure, so full of ineffable grace, that touching voice, that simple

action so tender in its sentiment, that gift, that blessing, came only

from the forsaken and forgiving Leoline.

But Warbeck, alone in his solitary tower, paced to and fro with

agitated steps. Deep, undying wrath at his brother's falsehood mingled

with one burning, one delicious hope. He confessed now that he had

deceived himself when he thought his passion was no more; was there any

longer a bar to his union with Leoline?

In that delicacy which was breathed into him by his love, he had

forborne to seek, or to offer her the insult of consolation. He felt

that the shock should be borne alone, and yet he pined, he thirsted, to

throw himself at her feet.

Nursing these contending thoughts, he was aroused by a knock at his

door: he opened it--the passage was thronged by Leoline's maidens;

pale, anxious, weeping. Leoline had left the castle with but one

female attendant; none knew whither;--they knew too soon. From the

hall of Sternfels she had passed over in the dark and inclement night

to the valley in which the convent of Bornhofen offered to the weary of

spirit and the broken of heart a refuge at the shrine of God.

At daybreak the next morning, Warbeck was at the convent's gate. He

saw Leoline: what a change one night of suffering had made in that

face, which was the fountain of all loveliness to him! He clasped her

in his arms; he wept; he urged all that love could urge: he besought

her to accept that heart which had never wronged her memory by a

thought. "Oh, Leoline! didst thou not say once that these arms nursed

thy childhood; that this voice soothed thine early sorrows? Ah, trust

to them again and for ever. From a love that forsook thee turn to the

love that never swerved."

"No," said Leoline; "no. What would the chivalry of which thou art the

boast--what would they say of thee, wert thou to wed one affianced and

deserted, who tarried years for another, and brought to thine arms only

that heart which he had abandoned? No; and even if thou, as I know

thou wouldst be, wert callous to such wrong of thy high name, shall I

bring to thee a broken heart and bruised spirit? shalt thou wed sorrow

and not joy? and shall sighs that will not cease, and tears that may

not be dried, be the only dowry of thy bride? Thou, too, for whom all

blessings should be ordained? No, forget me; forget thy poor Leoline!

She hath nothing but prayers for thee."

In vain Warbeck pleaded; in vain he urged all that passion and truth

could urge; the springs of earthly love were for ever dried up in the

orphan's heart, and her resolution was immovable--she tore herself from

his arms, and the gate of the convent creaked harshly on his ear.

A new and stern emotion now wholly possessed him; though naturally mild

and gentle, he cherished anger, when once it was aroused, with the

strength of a calm mind. Leoline's tears, her sufferings, her wrongs,

her uncomplaining spirit, the change already stamped upon her face, all

cried aloud to him for vengeance. "She is an orphan," said he,

bitterly; "she hath none to protect, to redress her, save me alone. My

father's charge over her forlorn youth descends of right to me. What

matters it whether her forsaker be my brother? He is her foe. Hath he

not crushed her heart? Hath he not consigned her to sorrow till the

grave? And with what insult! no warning, no excuse; with lewd

wassailers keeping revel for his new bridals in the hearing--before the

sight--of his betrothed! Enough! the time hath come when, to use his

own words, 'One of us two must fall!" He half drew his sword as he

spoke, and thrusting it back violently into the sheath, strode home to

his solitary castle. The sound of steeds and of the hunting-horn met

him at his portal; the bridal train of Sternfels, all mirth and

gladness, were parting for the chase.

That evening a knight in complete armour entered the banquet-hall of

Sternfels, and defied Otho, on the part of Warbeck of Liebenstein, to

mortal combat.

Even the Templar was startled by so unnatural a challenge; but Otho,

reddening, took up the gage, and the day and spot were fixed.

Discontented, wroth with himself, a savage gladness seised him;--he

longed to wreak his desperate feelings even on his brother. Nor had he

ever in his jealous heart forgiven that brother his virtues and his

renown.

At the appointed hour the brothers met as foes. Warbeck's vizor was

up, and all the settled sternness of his soul was stamped upon his

brow. But Otho, more willing to brave the arm than to face the front

of his brother, kept his vizor down; the Templar stood by him with

folded arms. It was a study in human passions to his mocking mind.

Scarce had the first trump sounded to this dread conflict, when a new

actor entered on the scene. The rumour of so unprecedented an event

had not failed to reach the convent of Bornhofen;--and now, two by two,

came the sisters of the holy shrine, and the armed men made way, as

with trailing garments and veiled faces they swept along into the very

lists. At that moment one from amongst them left her sisters with a

slow majestic pace, and paused not till she stood right between the

brother foes.

"Warbeck," she said in a hollow voice, that curdled up his dark spirit

as it spoke, "Is it thus thou wouldst prove thy love, and maintain thy

trust over the fatherless orphan whom thy sire bequeathed to thy care?

Shall I have murder on my soul?" At that question she paused, and

those who heard it were struck dumb and shuddered. "The murder of one

man by the hand of his own brother! Away, Warbeck! I command."

"Shall I forget thy wrongs, Leoline?" said Warbeck.

"Wrongs! they united me to God! they are forgiven, they are no more.

Earth has deserted me, but Heaven hath taken me to its arms;--shall I

murmur at the change? And thou, Otho"--here her voice faltered--"thou,

does thy conscience smite thee not?--wouldst thou atone for robbing me

of hope by barring against me the future? Wretch that I should be,

could I dream of mercy--could I dream of comfort, if thy brother fell

by thy sword in my cause? Otho, I have pardoned thee, and blessed thee

and thine. Once, perhaps, thou didst love me; remember how I loved

thee--cast down thine arms."

Otho gazed at the veiled form before him. Where had the soft Leoline

learned to command? He turned to his brother; he felt all that he had

inflicted upon both; and casting his sword upon the ground, he knelt at

the feet of Leoline and kissed her garment with a devotion that votary

never lavished on a holier saint.

The spell that lay over the warriors around was broken; there was one

loud cry of congratulation and joy. "And thou, Warbeck!" said Leoline,

turning to the spot where, still motionless and haughty, Warbeck stood.

"Have I ever rebelled against thy will?" said he, softly; and buried

the point of his sword in the earth. "Yet, Leoline, yet," added he,

looking at his kneeling brother, "yet art thou already better avenged

than by this steel!"

"Thou art! thou art!" cried Otho, smiting his breast; and slowly, and

scarce noting the crowd that fell back from his path, Warbeck left the

lists.

Leoline said no more; her divine errand was fulfilled. She looked long

and wistfully after the stately form of the knight of Liebenstein, and

then, with a slight sigh, she turned to Otho, "This is the last time we

shall meet on earth. Peace be with us all!"

She then, with the same majestic and collected bearing, passed on

towards the sisterhood; and as, in the same solemn procession, they

glided back towards the convent, there was not a man present--no, not

even the hardened Templar--who would not, like Otho, have bent his knee

to Leoline.

Once more Otho plunged into the wild revelry of the age; his castle was

thronged with guests, and night after night the lighted halls shone

down thwart the tranquil Rhine. The beauty of the Greek, the wealth of

Otho, the fame of the Templar, attracted all the chivalry from far and

near. Never had the banks of the Rhine known so hospitable a lord as

the knight of Sternfels. Yet gloom seized him in the midst of

gladness, and the revel was welcome only as the escape from remorse.

The voice of scandal, however, soon began to mingle with that of envy

at the pomp of Otho. The fair Greek, it was said, weary of her lord,

lavished her smiles on others: the young and the fair were always most

acceptable at the castle; and, above all, her guilty love for the

Templar scarcely affected disguise. Otho alone appeared unconscious of

the rumour, and though he had begun to neglect his bride, he relaxed

not in his intimacy with the Templar.

It was noon, and the Greek was sitting in her bower alone with her

suspected lover; the rich perfumes of the East mingled with the

fragrance of flowers, and various luxuries, unknown till then in those

northern shores, gave a soft and effeminate character to the room.

"I tell thee," said the Greek, petulantly, "that he begins to suspect;

that I have seen him watch thee, and mutter as he watched, and play

with the hilt of his dagger. Better let us fly ere it is too late, for

his vengeance would be terrible were it once aroused against us. Ah,

why did I ever forsake my own sweet land for these barbarous shores!

There, love is not considered eternal, nor inconstancy a crime worthy

death."

"Peace, pretty one!" said the Templar, carelessly; "thou knowest not

the laws of our foolish chivalry. Thinkest thou I could fly from a

knight's halls like a thief in the night? Why, verily, even the red

cross would not cover such dishonour. If thou fearest that thy dull

lord suspects, let us part. The emperor hath sent to me from

Frankfort. Ere evening I might be on my way thither."

"And I left to brave the barbarian's revenge alone? Is this thy

chivalry?"

"Nay, prate not so wildly," answered the Templar. "Surely, when the

object of his suspicion is gone, thy woman's art and thy Greek wiles

can easily allay the jealous fiend. Do I not know thee, Glycera? Why,

thou wouldst fool all men--save a Templar."

"And thou, cruel, wouldst thou leave me?" said the Greek, weeping.

"How shall I live without thee?"

The Templar laughed slightly. "Can such eyes ever weep without a

comforter? But farewell; I must not be found with thee. To-morrow I

depart for Frankfort; we shall meet again."

As soon as the door closed on the Templar, the Greek rose, and pacing

the room, said, "Selfish, selfish! how could I ever trust him? Yet I

dare not brave Otho alone. Surely it was his step that disturbed us in

our yesterday's interview? Nay, I will fly. I can never want a

companion."

She clapped her hands; a young page appeared; she threw herself on her

seat and wept bitterly.

The page approached, and love was mingled with his compassion.

"Why weepest thou, dearest lady?" said he; "is there aught in which

Conrad's services--services!--ah thou hast read his heart--his devotion

may avail?"

Otho had wandered out the whole day alone; his vassals had observed

that his brow was more gloomy than its wont, for he usually concealed

whatever might prey within. Some of the most confidential of his

servitors he had conferred with, and the conference had deepened the

shadow of his countenance. He returned at twilight; the Greek did not

honour the repast with her presence. She was unwell, and not to be

disturbed. The gay Templar was the life of the board.

"Thou carriest a sad brow to-day, Sir Otho," said he; "good faith, thou

hast caught it from the air of Liebenstein."

"I have something troubles me," answered Otho, forcing a smile, "which

I would fain impart to thy friendly bosom. The night is clear and the

moon is up, let us forth alone into the garden."

The Templar rose, and he forgot not to gird on his sword as he followed

the knight.

Otho led the way to one of the most distant terraces that overhung the

Rhine.

"Sir Templar," said he, pausing, "answer me one question on thy

knightly honour. Was it thy step that left my lady's bower yester-eve

at vesper?"

Startled by so sudden a query, the wily Templar faltered in his reply.

The red blood mounted to Otho's brow. "Nay, lie not, sir knight; these

eyes, thanks to God! have not witnessed, but these ears have heard from

others of my dishonour."

As Otho spoke, the Templar's eye resting on the water, perceived a boat

rowing fast over the Rhine; the distance forbade him to see more than

the outline of two figures within it. "She was right," thought he;

"perhaps that boat already bears her from the danger."

Drawing himself up to the full height of his tall stature, the Templar

replied haughtily:

"Sir Otho of Sternfels, if thou hast deigned to question thy vassals,

obtain from them only an answer. It is not to contradict such minions

that the knights of the Temple pledge their word!"

"Enough," cried Otho, losing patience, and striking the Templar with

his clenched hand. "Draw, traitor, draw!"

Alone in his lofty tower Warbeck watched the night deepen over the

heavens, and communed mournfully with himself. "To what end," thought

he, "have these strong affections, these capacities of love, this

yearning after sympathy, been given me? Unloved and unknown I walk to

my grave, and all the nobler mysteries of my heart are for ever to be

untold."

Thus musing, he heard not the challenge of the warder on the wall, or

the unbarring of the gate below, or the tread of footsteps along the

winding stair; the door was thrown suddenly open, and Otho stood before

him. "Come," he said, in a low voice trembling with passion; "come, I

will show thee that which shall glad thine heart. Twofold is Leoline

avenged."

Warbeck looked in amazement on a brother he had not met since they

stood in arms each against the other's life, and he now saw that the

arm that Otho extended to him dripped with blood, trickling drop by

drop upon the floor.

"Come," said Otho, "follow me; it is my last prayer. Come, for

Leoline's sake, come."

At that name Warbeck hesitated no longer; he girded on his sword, and

followed his brother down the stairs and through the castle gate. The

porter scarcely believed his eyes when he saw the two brothers, so long

divided, go forth at that hour alone, and seemingly in friendship.

Warbeck, arrived at that epoch in the feelings when nothing stuns,

followed with silent steps the rapid strides of his brother. The two

castles, as you are aware, are scarce a stone's throw from each other.

In a few minutes Otho paused at an open space in one of the terraces of

Sternfels, on which the moon shone bright and steady. "Behold!" he

said, in a ghastly voice, "behold!" and Warbeck saw on the sward the

corpse of the Templar, bathed with the blood that even still poured

fast and warm from his heart.

"Hark!" said Otho. "He it was who first made me waver in my vows to

Leoline; he persuaded me to wed yon whited falsehood. Hark! he, who

had thus wronged my real love, dishonoured me with my faithless bride,

and thus--thus--thus"--as, grinding his teeth, he spurned again and

again the dead body of the Templar--"thus Leoline and myself are

avenged!"

"And thy wife?" said Warbeck, pityingly.

"Fled--fled with a hireling page. It is well! she was not worth the

sword that was once belted on--by Leoline."

The tradition, dear Gertrude, proceeds to tell us that Otho, though

often menaced by the rude justice of the day for the death of the

Templar, defied and escaped the menace. On the very night of his

revenge a long and delirious illness seized him; the generous Warbeck

forgave, forgot all, save that he had been once consecrated by

Leoline's love. He tended him through his sickness, and when he

recovered, Otho was an altered man. He forswore the comrades he had

once courted, the revels he had once led. The halls of Sternfels were

desolate as those of Liebenstein. The only companion Otho sought was

Warbeck, and Warbeck bore with him. They had no topic in common, for

one subject Warbeck at least felt too deeply ever to trust himself to

speak; yet did a strange and secret sympathy re-unite them. They had

at least a common sorrow; often they were seen wandering together by

the solitary banks of the river, or amidst the woods, without

apparently interchanging word or sign. Otho died first, and still in

the prime of youth; and Warbeck was now left companionless. In vain

the imperial court wooed him to its pleasures; in vain the camp

proffered him the oblivion of renown. Ah! could he tear himself from a

spot where morning and night he could see afar, amidst the valley, the

roof that sheltered Leoline, and on which every copse, every turf,

reminded him of former days? His solitary life, his midnight vigils,

strange scrolls about his chamber, obtained him by degrees the repute

of cultivating the darker arts; and shunning, he became shunned by all.

But still it was sweet to hear from time to time of the increasing

sanctity of her in whom he had treasured up his last thoughts of earth.

She it was who healed the sick; she it was who relieved the poor, and

the superstition of that age brought pilgrims from afar to the altars

that she served. Many years afterwards, a band of lawless robbers, who

ever and anon broke from their mountain fastnesses to pillage and to

desolate the valleys of the Rhine,--who spared neither sex nor age;

neither tower nor hut; nor even the houses of God Himself,--laid waste

the territories round Bornhofen, and demanded treasure from the

convent. The abbess, of the bold lineage of Rudesheim, refused the

sacrilegious demand; the convent was stormed; its vassals resisted; the

robbers, inured to slaughter, won the day; already the gates were

forced, when a knight, at the head of a small but hardy troop, rushed

down from the mountain side and turned the tide of the fray. Wherever

his sword flashed fell a foe. Wherever his war-cry sounded was a space

of dead men in the thick of the battle. The fight was won; the convent

saved; the abbess and the sisterhood came forth to bless their

deliverer. Laid under an aged oak, he was bleeding fast to death; his

head was bare and his locks were grey, but scarcely yet with years.

One only of the sisterhood recognized that majestic face; one bathed

his parched lips; one held his dying hand; and in Leoline's presence

passed away the faithful spirit of the last lord of Liebenstein!

"Oh!" said Gertrude, through her tears; "surely you must have altered

the facts,--surely--surely--it must have been impossible for Leoline,

with a woman's heart, to have loved Otho more than Warbeck?"

"My child," said Vane, "so think women when they read a tale of love,

and see the whole heart bared before them; but not so act they in real

life--when they see only the surface of character, and pierce not its

depths--until it is too late!"

"DR. MANETTE'S MANUSCRIPT"

By CHARLES DICKENS

I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and

afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful

cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write

it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it

in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a

place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when

I and my sorrows are dust.

"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with

difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed

with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope

has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I

have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired,

but I solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my

right mind--that my memory is exact and circumstantial--and that I

write the truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words,

whether they be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.

"One cloudy moonlight night in the third week of December (I think the

twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a

retired part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty

air, at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the Street of

the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driven

very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive

that it might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the window,

and a voice called to the driver to stop.

"The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,

and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The carriage

was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open

the door and alight before I came up with it I observed that they were

both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal themselves. As they

stood side by side near the carriage door, I also observed that they

both looked of about my own age, or rather younger, and that they were

greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice, and (as far as I could see)

face too.

"'You are Doctor Manette?' said one.

"'I am."

"'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young

physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or

two has made a rising reputation in Paris?'

"'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak

so graciously.'

"'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being so

fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were

probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of

overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?'

"The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words

were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage

door. They were armed. I was not.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me the

honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to

which I am summoned.'

"The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. 'Doctor,

your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case,

our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for

yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to

enter the carriage?'

"I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both

entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the steps.

The carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.

"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt

that it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as

it took place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where

I make the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and

put my paper in its hiding-place....

"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and

emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the

Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards

when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently

stopped at a solitary house. We all three alighted, and walked, by a

damp soft footpath, in a garden where a neglected fountain had

overflowed to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in

answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck

the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.

"There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,

for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But the

other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner

with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly

alike that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers.

"From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found

locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had

relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was

conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we

ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the

brain, lying on a bed.

"The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much

past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to

her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds

were all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a

fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a

Noble, and the letter E.

"I saw this within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient;

for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the

edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was

in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to

relieve her breathing; and, in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery

in the corner caught my sight.

"I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her

and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and

wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the

words, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and then counted up to

twelve, and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more, she would pause

to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again and she

would repeat the cry 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and would

count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There was no variation in the

order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment's

pause, in the utterance of these sounds.

"'How long,' I asked, 'Has this lasted?'

"To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the

younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It

was the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'

"'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'

"'A brother.'

"'I do not address her brother?'

"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'

"'She has some recent association with the number twelve?'

"The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock?'

"'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, 'how

useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was coming

to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be lost.

There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'

"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There is

a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put it on

the table. * * * *

"I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my

lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that

were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.

"'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.

"'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no

more.

"I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many

efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it

after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then

sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed

woman in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated

into a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently

furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some

thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the

sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular

succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' the

counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I

had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but I had looked

to them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of

encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast

had this much soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it

tranquillised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pendulum

could be more regular.

"For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by

the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on,

before the elder said:

"'There is another patient.'

"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'

"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light. *

* * *

"The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which

was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling

to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and

there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of

the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to

pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is

circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see

them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth

year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.

"On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his heady lay a

handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most. He

lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his

breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see

where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could

see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.

"'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me examine it.'

"'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'

"It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.

The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours

before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to

without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the

elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life

was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not

at all as if he were a fellow-creature.

"'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.

"'A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon

him, and has fallen by my brother's sword--like a gentleman.'

"There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this

answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to

have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would

have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his

vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about

the boy, or about his fate.

"The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now

slowly moved to me.

"'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are

proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us;

but we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her,

Doctor?'

"The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the

distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.

"I said, 'I have seen her.'

"'She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights, these

Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we

have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say

so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too:

a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that man's who stands

there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.'

"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force

to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs

are by those superior Beings--taxed by him without mercy, obliged to

work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill,

obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and

forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged

and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of

meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed,

that his people should not see it and take it from us--I say, we were

so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us

it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what

we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our

miserable race die out!'

"I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth

like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people

somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the

dying boy.

"'Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that time,

poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort

him in our cottage--our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had

not been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and

admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him--for what are

husbands among us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and

virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What

did the two then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with

her, to make her willing?'

"The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the

looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The

two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in

this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the

peasant's, all trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.

"'You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to

harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him

and drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in

their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble

sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists

at night, and ordered him back into harness in the day. But he was not

persuaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed--if he

could find food--he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the

bell, and died on her bosom.'

"Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to

tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as

he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his

wound.

"'Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his brother

took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his

brother--and what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if

it is now--his brother took her away--for his pleasure and diversion,

for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the

tidings home, our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the words

that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place

beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be

his vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed

in--a common dog, but sword in hand.--Where is the loft window? It was

somewhere here?'

"The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around

him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled

over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.

"'She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was

dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck

at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to

make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword

that he stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself--thrust

at me with all his skill for his life.'

"My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of a

broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In

another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.

"'Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?'

"'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he

referred to the brother.

"'He! Proud as these Nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the

man who was here? Turn my face to him.'

"I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested for

the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely:

obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.

"'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and

his right hand raised, 'in the days when all these things are to be

answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to

answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I

do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I

summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them

separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him; as a sign that I do

it.'

"Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his

forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the

finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid

him down dead. * * * *

"When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving

in precisely the same order of continuity. I knew that this might last

for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the

grave.

"I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of the

bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing

quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order

of her words. They were always 'My husband, my father, and my brother!

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,

twelve. Hush!'

"This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I

had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began

to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity,

and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.

"It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and

fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me

to compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I

knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of

being a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope

I had had of her.

"'Is she dead?' asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the

elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.--'Not dead,'

said I; 'but like to die.'

"'What strength there is in these common bodies!' he said, looking down

at her with some curiosity.

"'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in sorrow and

despair.'

"He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a

chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a

subdued voice,

"'Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I

recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high,

and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful

of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen,

and not spoken of.'

"I listened to the patient's breathing; and avoided answering.--'Do you

honour me with your attention, Doctor?'

"'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of patients

are always received in confidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I

was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.

"Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the

pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I

resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me. * * * *

"I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so

fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and

total darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no

confusion of failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail,

every word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers.

"She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some

few syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips.

She asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her.

It was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook

her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.

"I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the

brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until

then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the

woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind

the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came

to that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her;

as if--the thought passed through my mind--I were dying too.

"I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger

brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and

that peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the

mind of either of them was the consideration that this was highly

degrading to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the

younger brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked

me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and

more polite to me than the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I

was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder, too.

"My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch,

answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone

with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and

all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.

"The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride

away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots

with their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.

"'At last she's dead?' said the elder, when I went in.

"'She is dead,' said I.

"'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round.

"He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now

gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the

table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept

nothing.

"'Pray excuse me,' said I. 'Under the circumstances, no.'

"They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to

them, and we parted without another word on either side. * * * *

"I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I

have written with this gaunt hand.

"Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a

little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had

anxiously considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write

privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which

I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect,

stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and

what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter

would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had

kept the matter a profound secret even from my wife; and this, too, I

resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my

real danger; but I was conscious that there might be danger for others,

if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.

"I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that

night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it. It

was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just

completed when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me. *

* * *

"I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It

is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me

is so dreadful.

"The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long

life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the

wife of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. I connected the title by which the

boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter

embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the

conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.

"My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our

conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and

I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected,

and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her

husband's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that

the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to

show her, in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had been to avert

the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the

suffering many. She had reasons for believing that there was a young

sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I

could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I

knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence,

had been the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode.

Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both. * * * *

"These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning,

yesterday. I must finish my record to-day. She was a good,

compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be!

The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all

opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband

too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty

boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.

"'For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him in tears, 'I would

do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in

his inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other

innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of

him. What I have left to call my own--it is little beyond the worth of

a few jewels--I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow,'

with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured

family, if the sister can be discovered.' She kissed the boy, and

said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be

faithful, little Charles?' The child answered her bravely, 'Yes!' I

kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing

him. I never saw her more. As she had mentioned her husband's name in

the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I

sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered

it myself that day.

"That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in

a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed

my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came

into the room where I sat with my wife--O my wife, beloved of my heart!

My fair young English wife!--we saw the man, who was supposed to be at

the gate, standing silent behind him.

"'An urgent case in the Rue St. Honoré,' he said. It would not detain

me, he had a coach in waiting.

"It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of

the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind,

and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a

dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took

from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the

light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his

foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my

living grave.

"If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the

brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my

dearest wife--so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or

dead--I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But,

now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that

they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to

the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this

last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the

times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to

Heaven and to earth."

THE CALDRON OF OIL

By WILKIE COLLINS

About one French league distant from the city of Toulouse there is a

village called Croix-Daurade. In the military history of England, this

place is associated with a famous charge of the Eighteenth Hussars,

which united two separated columns of the British army on the day

before the Duke of Wellington fought the battle of Toulouse. In the

criminal history of France, the village is memorable as the scene of a

daring crime, which was discovered and punished under circumstances

sufficiently remarkable to merit preservation in the form of a plain

narrative.

I. THE PERSONS OF THE DRAMA

In the year seventeen hundred, the resident priest of the village of

Croix-Daurade was Monsieur Pierre-Célestin Chaubard. He was a man of

no extraordinary energy or capacity, simple in his habits, and sociable

in his disposition. His character was irreproachable; he was strictly

conscientious in the performance of his duties; and he was universally

respected and beloved by all his parishioners.

Among the members of his flock there was a family named Siadoux. The

head of the household, Saturnin Siadoux, had been long established in

business at Croix-Daurade as an oil manufacturer. At the period of the

events now to be narrated, he had attained the age of sixty, and was a

widower. His family consisted of five children--three young men, who

helped him in the business, and two daughters. His nearest living

relative was his sister, the widow Mirailhe.

The widow resided principally at Toulouse. Her time in that city was

mainly occupied in winding up the business affairs of her deceased

husband, which had remained unsettled for a considerable period after

his death, through delays in realizing certain sums of money owing to

his representative. The widow had been left very well provided

for--she was still a comely, attractive woman--and more than one

substantial citizen of Toulouse had shown himself anxious to persuade

her into marrying for the second time. But the widow Mirailhe lived on

terms of great intimacy and affection with her brother Siadoux and his

family; she was sincerely attached to them, and sincerely unwilling, at

her age, to deprive her nephews and nieces, by a second marriage, of

the inheritance, or even of a portion of the inheritance, which would

otherwise fall to them on her death. Animated by these motives, she

closed her doors resolutely on all suitors who attempted to pay their

court to her, with the one exception of a master-butcher of Toulouse,

whose name was Cantegrel.

This man was a neighbour of the widow's and had made himself useful by

assisting her in the business complications which still hung about the

realization of her late husband's estate. The preference which she

showed for the master-butcher was thus far of the purely negative kind.

She gave him no absolute encouragement; she would not for a moment

admit that there was the slightest prospect of her ever marrying him;

but, at the same time, she continued to receive his visits, and she

showed no disposition to restrict the neighborly intercourse between

them, for the future, within purely formal bounds. Under these

circumstances, Saturnin Siadoux began to be alarmed, and to think it

time to bestir himself. He had no personal acquaintance with

Cantegrel, who never visited the village; and Monsieur Chaubard to whom

he might otherwise have applied for advice, was not in a position to

give an opinion; the priest and the master-butcher did not even know

each other by sight. In this difficulty, Siadoux bethought himself of

inquiring privately at Toulouse, in the hope of discovering some

scandalous passages in Cantegrel's early life which might fatally

degrade him in the estimation of the widow Mirailhe. The

investigation, as usual in such cases, produced rumors and reports in

plenty, the greater part of which dated back to a period of the

butcher's life when he had resided in the ancient town of Narbonne.

One of these rumors, especially, was of so serious a nature that

Siadoux determined to test the truth or falsehood of it personally by

traveling to Narbonne. He kept his intention a secret not only from

his sister and his daughters, but also from his sons; they were young

men, not overpatient in their tempers, and he doubted their discretion.

Thus, nobody knew his real purpose but himself when he left home.

His safe arrival at Narbonne was notified in a letter to his family.

The letter entered into no particulars relating to his secret errand:

it merely informed his children of the day when they might expect him

back, and of certain social arrangements which he wished to be made to

welcome him on his return. He proposed, on his way home, to stay two

days at Castelnaudry, for the purpose of paying a visit to an old

friend who was settled there. According to this plan, his return to

Croix-Daurade would be deferred until Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of

April, when his family might expect to see him about sunset, in good

time for supper. He further desired that a little party of friends

might be invited to the meal, to celebrate the twenty-sixth of April

(which was a feast-day in the village), as well as to celebrate his

return. The guests whom he wished to be invited were, first, his

sister; secondly, Monsieur Chaubard, whose pleasant disposition made

him a welcome guest at all the village festivals; thirdly and fourthly,

two neighbors, business men like himself, with whom he lived on terms

of the friendliest intimacy. That was the party; and the family of

Siadoux took especial pains, as the time approached, to provide a

supper worthy of the guests, who had all shown the heartiest readiness

in accepting their invitations.

This was the domestic position, these were the family prospects, on the

morning of the twenty-sixth of April--a memorable day, for years

afterward, in the village of Croix-Daurade.

II. THE EVENTS OF THE DAY

Besides the curacy of the village church, good Monsieur Chaubard held

some ecclesiastical preferment in the cathedral church of St. Stephen

at Toulouse. Early in the forenoon of the twenty-sixth, certain

matters connected with this preferment took him from his village curacy

to the city--a distance which has been already described as not greater

than one French league, or between two and three English miles.

After transacting his business, Monsieur Chaubard parted with his

clerical brethren, who left him by himself in the sacristy (or vestry)

of the church. Before he had quitted the room, in his turn, the beadle

entered it, and inquired for the Abbé de Mariotte, one of the

officiating priests attached to the cathedral.

"The Abbé has just gone out," replied Monsieur Chaubard. "Who wants

him?"

"A respectable-looking man," said the beadle. "I thought he seemed to

be in some distress of mind when he spoke to me."

"Did he mention his business with the Abbé?"

"Yes, sir; he expressed himself as anxious to make his confession

immediately."

"In that case," said Monsieur Chaubard, "I may be of use to him in the

Abbé's absence, for I have authority to act here as confessor. Let us

go into the church and see if this person feels disposed to accept my

services."

When they went into the church, they found the man walking backward and

forward in a restless, disordered manner. His looks were so strikingly

suggestive of some serious mental perturbation, that Monsieur Chaubard

found it no easy matter to preserve his composure when he first

addressed himself to the stranger.

"I am sorry," he began, "that the Abbé de Mariotte is not here to offer

you his services--"

"I want to make my confession," said the man, looking about him

vacantly, as if the priest's words had not attracted his attention.

"You can do so at once, if you please," said Monsieur Chaubard. "I am

attached to this church, and I possess the necessary authority to

receive confessions in it. Perhaps, however, you are personally

acquainted with the Abbé de Mariotte? Perhaps you would prefer

waiting--"

"No!" said the man, roughly. "I would as soon, or sooner, confess to a

stranger."

"In that case," replied Monsieur Chaubard, "be so good as to follow me."

He led the way to the confessional. The beadle, whose curiosity was

excited, waited a little, and looked after them. In a few minutes he

saw the curtains, which were sometimes used to conceal the face of the

officiating priest, suddenly drawn. The penitent knelt with his back

turned to the church. There was literally nothing to see; but the

beadle waited, nevertheless, in expectation of the end.

After a long lapse of time the curtain was withdrawn, and priest and

penitent left the confessional.

The change which the interval had worked in Monsieur Chaubard was so

extraordinary, that the beadle's attention was altogether withdrawn, in

the interest of observing it, from the man who had made the confession.

He did not remark by which door the stranger left the church--his eyes

were fixed on Monsieur Chaubard. The priest's naturally ruddy face was

as white as if he had just risen from a long sickness; he looked

straight before him, with a stare of terror, and he left the church as

hurriedly as if he had been a man escaping from prison; left it without

a parting word, or a farewell look, although he was noted for his

courtesy to his inferiors on all ordinary occasions.

"Good Monsieur Chaubard has heard more than he bargained for," said the

beadle, wandering back to the empty confessional with an interest which

he had never felt in it till that moment.

The day wore on as quietly as usual in the village of Croix-Daurade.

At the appointed time the supper-table was laid for the guests in the

house of Saturnin Siadoux. The widow Mirailhe and the two neighbors

arrived a little before sunset. Monsieur Chaubard, who was usually

punctual, did not make his appearance with them; and when the daughters

of Saturnin Siadoux looked out from the upper windows, they saw no

signs on the high-road of their father's return.

Sunset came, and still neither Siadoux nor the priest appeared. The

little party sat waiting round the table, and waited in vain. Before

long a message was sent up from the kitchen, representing that the

supper must be eaten forthwith, or be spoiled; and the company began to

debate the two alternatives--of waiting, or not waiting, any longer.

"It is my belief," said the widow Mirailhe, "that my brother is not

coming home to-night. When Monsieur Chaubard joins us, we had better

sit down to supper."

"Can any accident have happened to my father?" asked one of the two

daughters, anxiously.

"God forbid!" said the widow.

"God forbid!" repeated the two neighbors, looking expectantly at the

empty supper-table.

"It has been a wretched day for traveling;" said Louis, the eldest son.

"It rained in torrents all yesterday," added Thomas; the second son.

"And your father's rheumatism makes him averse to traveling in wet

weather," suggested the widow, thoughtfully.

"Very true," said the first of the two neighbors, shaking his head

piteously at his passive knife and fork.

Another message came up from the kitchen, and peremptorily forbade the

company to wait any longer.

"But where is Monsieur Chaubard?" said the widow. "Has he been taking

a journey too? Why is he absent? Has any body seen him to-day?"

"I have seen him to-day," said the youngest son, who had not spoken

yet. This young man's name was Jean; he was little given to talking,

but he had proved himself, on various domestic occasions, to be the

quickest and most observant member of the family.

"Where did you see him?" asked the widow.

"I met him this morning, on his way into Toulouse."

"He has not fallen ill, I hope? Did he look out of sorts when you met

him?"

"He was in excellent health and spirits," said Jean. "I never saw him

look better--"

"And I never saw him look worse," said the second of the neighbors,

striking into the conversation with the aggressive fretfulness of a

hungry man.

"What! this morning?" cried Jean, in astonishment.

"No; this afternoon," said the neighbor "I saw him going into our

church here. He was as white as our plates will be--when they come up.

And what is almost as extraordinary, he passed without taking the

slightest notice of me."

Jean relapsed into his customary silence. It was getting dark; the

clouds had gathered while the company had been talking; and, at the

first pause in the conversation, the rain, falling again in torrents,

made itself drearily audible.

"Dear, dear me!" said the widow. "If it was not raining so hard, we

might send somebody to inquire after good Monsieur Chaubard."

"I'll go and inquire," said Thomas Siadoux. "It's not five minutes'

walk. Have up the supper; I'll take a cloak with me; and if our

excellent Monsieur Chaubard is out of his bed, I'll bring him back, to

answer for himself."

With those words he left the room. The supper was put on the table

forthwith. The hungry neighbor disputed with nobody from that moment,

and the melancholy neighbor recovered his spirits.

On reaching the priest's house, Thomas Siadoux found him sitting alone

in his study. He started to his feet, with every appearance of the

most violent alarm, when the young man entered the room.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Thomas; "I am afraid I have startled

you."

"What do you want?" asked Monsieur Chaubard, in a singularly abrupt,

bewildered manner.

"Have you forgotten, sir, that this is the night of our supper?"

remonstrated Thomas. "My father has not come back, and we can only

suppose--"

At those words the priest dropped into his chair again, and trembled

from head to foot. Amazed to the last degree by this extraordinary

reception of his remonstrance, Thomas Siadoux remembered, at the same

time, that he had engaged to bring Monsieur Chaubard back with him; and

he determined to finish his civil speech as if nothing had happened.

"We are all of opinion," he resumed, "that the weather has kept my

father on the road. But that is no reason, sir, why the supper should

be wasted, or why you should not make one of us, as you promised. Here

is a good warm cloak--"

"I can't come," said the priest "I'm ill; I'm in bad spirits; I'm not

fit to go out." He sighed bitterly, and hid his face in his hands.

"Don't say that, sir," persisted Thomas. "If you are out of spirits,

let us try to cheer you. And you, in your turn, will enliven us. They

are all waiting for you at home. Don't refuse, sir," pleaded the young

man, "or we shall think we have offended you in some way. You have

always been a good friend to our family--"

Monsieur Chaubard again rose from his chair, with a second change of

manner, as extraordinary and as perplexing as the first. His eyes

moistened as if the tears were rising in them; he took the hand of

Thomas Siadoux, and pressed it long and warmly in his own. There was a

curious mixed expression of pity and fear in the look which he now

fixed on the young man.

"Of all the days in the year," he said, very earnestly, "don't doubt my

friendship to-day. Ill as I am, I will make one of the supper party,

for your sake--"

"And for my father's sake?" added Thomas, persuasively.

"Let us go to the supper," said the priest.

Thomas Siadoux wrapped the cloak round him, and they left the house.

Every one at the table noticed the change in Monsieur Chaubard. He

accounted for it by declaring, confusedly, that he was suffering from

nervous illness; and then added that he would do his best,

notwithstanding, to promote the social enjoyment of the evening. His

talk was fragmentary, and his cheerfulness was sadly forced; but he

contrived, with these drawbacks, to take his part in the

conversation--except in the case when it happened to turn on the absent

master of the house. Whenever the name of Saturnin Siadoux was

mentioned---either by the neighbors, who politely regretted that he was

not present, or by the family, who naturally talked about the

resting-place which he might have chosen for the night--Monsieur

Chaubard either relapsed into blank silence, or abruptly changed the

topic. Under these circumstances, the company, by whom he was

respected and beloved, made the necessary allowances for his state of

health; the only person among them who showed no desire to cheer the

priest's spirits, and to humor him in his temporary fretfulness, being

the silent younger son of Saturnin Siadoux.

Both Louis and Thomas noticed that, from the moment when Monsieur

Chaubard's manner first betrayed his singular unwillingness to touch on

the subject of their father's absence, Jean fixed his eyes on the

priest with an expression of suspicious attention, and never looked

away from him for the rest of the evening. The young man's absolute

silence at table did not surprise his brothers, for they were

accustomed to his taciturn habits. But the sullen distrust betrayed in

his close observation of the honored guest and friend of the family

surprised and angered them. The priest himself seemed once or twice to

be aware of the scrutiny to which he was subjected, and to feel uneasy

and offended, as he naturally might. He abstained, however, from

openly noticing Jean's strange behavior; and Louis and Thomas were

bound, therefore, in common politeness, to abstain from noticing it

also.

The inhabitants of Croix-Daurade kept early hours. Toward eleven

o'clock, the company rose and separated for the night. Except the two

neighbors, nobody had enjoyed the supper, and even the two neighbors,

having eaten their fill, were as glad to get home as the rest. In the

little confusion of parting, Monsieur Chaubard completed the

astonishment of the guests at the extraordinary change in him, by

slipping away alone, without waiting to bid any body good-night.

The widow Mirailhe and her nieces withdrew to their bedrooms, and left

the three brothers by themselves in the parlor.

"Jean," said Thomas Siadoux, "I have a word to say to you. You stared

at our good Monsieur Chaubard in a very offensive manner all through

the evening. What did you mean by it?"

"Wait till to-morrow," said Jean, "and perhaps I may tell you."

He lit his candle, and left them. Both the brothers observed that his

hand trembled, and that his manner--never very winning--was on that

night more serious and more unsociable than usual.

III. THE YOUNGER BROTHER

When post-time came on the morning of the twenty-seventh, no letter

arrived from Saturnin Siadoux. On consideration, the family

interpreted this circumstance in a favorable light. If the master of

the house had not written to them, it followed, surely, that he meant

to make writing unnecessary by returning on that day.

As the hours passed, the widow and her nieces looked out, from time to

time, for the absent man. Toward noon they observed a little assembly

of people approaching the village. Ere long, on a nearer view, they

recognized at the head of the assembly the chief magistrate of

Toulouse, in his official dress. He was accompanied by his assessor

(also in official dress), by an escort of archers, and by certain

subordinates attached to the town-hall. These last appeared to be

carrying some burden, which was hidden from view by the escort of

archers. The procession stopped at the house of Saturnin Siadoux; and

the two daughters, hastening to the door to discover what had happened,

met the burden which the men were carrying, and saw, stretched on a

litter, the dead body of their father.

The corpse had been found that morning on the banks of the river Lers.

It was stabbed in eleven places with knife or dagger wounds. None of

the valuables about the dead man's person had been touched; his watch

and his money were still in his pockets. Whoever had murdered him, had

murdered him for vengeance, not for gain.

Some time elapsed before even the male members of the family were

sufficiently composed to hear what the officers of justice had to say

to them. When this result had been at length achieved, and when the

necessary inquiries had been made, no information of any kind was

obtained which pointed to the murderer, in the eye of the law. After

expressing his sympathy, and promising that every available means

should be tried to effect the discovery of the criminal, the chief

magistrate gave his orders to his escort, and withdrew.

When night came, the sister and the daughters of the murdered man

retired to the upper part of the house, exhausted by the violence of

their grief. The three brothers were left once more alone in the

parlor, to speak together of the awful calamity which had befallen

them. They were of hot Southern blood, and they looked on one another

with a Southern thirst for vengeance in their tearless eyes.

The silent younger son was now the first to open his lips.

"You charged me yesterday," he said to his brother Thomas, "with

looking strangely at Monsieur Chaubard all the evening; and I answered,

that I might tell you why I looked at him when to-morrow came.

To-morrow has come, and I am ready to tell you."

He waited a little, and lowered his voice to a whisper when he spoke

again.

"When Monsieur Chaubard was at our supper-table last night," he said,

"I had it in my mind that something had happened to our father, and

that the priest knew it."

The two elder brothers looked at him in speechless astonishment.

"Our father has been brought back to us a murdered man!" Jean went on,

still in a whisper. "I tell you, Louis--and you, Thomas--that the

priest knows who murdered him."

Louis and Thomas shrank from their younger brother as if he had spoken

blasphemy.

"Listen," said Jean. "No clue has been found to the secret of the

murder. The magistrate has promised us to do his best; but I saw in

his face that he had little hope. We must make the discovery

ourselves, or our father's blood will have cried to us for vengeance,

and cried in vain. Remember that, and mark my next words. You heard

me say yesterday evening that I had met Monsieur Chaubard on his way to

Toulouse, in excellent health and spirits. You heard our old friend

and neighbor contradict me at the supper-table, and declare that he had

seen the priest, some hours later, go into our church here with the

face of a panic-stricken man. You saw, Thomas, how he behaved when you

went to fetch him to our house. You saw, Louis, what his looks were

like when he came in. The change was noticed by every body--what was

the cause of it? I saw the cause in the priest's own face when our

father's name turned up in the talk round the supper-table. Did

Monsieur Chaubard join in that talk? He was the only person present

who never joined in it once. Did he change it on a sudden whenever it

came his way? It came his way four times; and four times he changed

it--trembling, stammering, turning whiter and whiter, but still, as

true as the heaven above us, shifting the talk off himself every time!

Are you men? Have you brains in your heads? Don't you see, as I see,

what this leads to? On my salvation I swear it--the priest knows the

hand that killed our father!"

The faces of the two elder brothers darkened vindictively, as the

conviction of the truth fastened itself on their minds.

"How could he know it?" they inquired, eagerly.

"He must tell us himself," said Jean.

"And if he hesitates--if he refuses to open his lips?"

"We must open them by main force."

They drew their chairs together after that last answer, and consulted

for some time in whispers.

When the consultation was over, the brothers rose and went into the

room where the dead body of their father was laid out. The three

kissed him, in turn, on the forehead--then took hands together, and

looked meaningly in each other's faces--then separated. Louis and

Thomas put on their hats, and went at once to the priest's residence;

while Jean withdrew by himself to the great room at the back of the

house, which was used for the purposes of the oil factory.

Only one of the workmen was left in the place. He was watching an

immense caldron of boiling linseed-oil.

"You can go home," said Jean, patting the man kindly on the shoulder.

"There is no hope of a night's rest for me, after the affliction that

has befallen us; I will take your place at the caldron. Go home, my

good fellow--go home."

The man thanked him, and withdrew. Jean followed, and satisfied

himself that the workman had really left the house. He then returned,

and sat down by the boiling caldron.

Meanwhile Louis and Thomas presented themselves at the priest's house.

He had not yet retired to bed, and he received them kindly, but with

the same extraordinary agitation in his face and manner which had

surprised all who saw him on the previous day. The brothers were

prepared beforehand with an answer when he inquired what they wanted of

him. They replied immediately that the shock of their father's

horrible death had so seriously affected their aunt and their eldest

sister, that it was feared the minds of both might give way, unless

spiritual consolation and assistance were afforded to them that night.

The unhappy priest--always faithful and self-sacrificing where the

duties of his ministry were in question--at once rose to accompany the

young men back to the house. He even put on his surplice, and took the

crucifix with him, to impress his words of comfort all the more

solemnly on the afflicted women whom he was called on to succor.

Thus innocent of all suspicion of the conspiracy to which he had fallen

a victim, he was taken into the room where Jean sat waiting by the

caldron of oil, and the door was locked behind him.

Before he could speak, Thomas Siadoux openly avowed the truth.

"It is we three who want you," he said; "not our aunt, and not our

sister. If you answer our questions truly, you have nothing to fear.

If you refuse--" He stopped, and looked toward Jean and the boiling

caldron.

Never, at the best of times, a resolute man; deprived, since the day

before, of such resources of energy as he possessed, by the mental

suffering which he had undergone in secret, the unfortunate priest

trembled from head to foot as the three brothers closed round him.

Louis took the crucifix from him, and held it; Thomas forced him to

place his right hand on it; Jean stood in front of him and put the

questions.

"Our father has been brought home a murdered man," he said. "Do you

know who killed him?"

The priest hesitated, and the two elder brothers moved him nearer to

the caldron.

"Answer us, on peril of your life," said Jean. "Say, with your hand on

the blessed crucifix, do you know the man who killed our father?"

"I do know him."

"When did you make the discovery?"

"Yesterday."

"Where?"

"At Toulouse."

"Name the murderer."

At those words the priest closed his hand fast on the crucifix, and

rallied his sinking courage.

"Never!" he said, firmly. "The knowledge I possess was obtained in the

confessional. The secrets of the confessional are sacred. If I betray

them, I commit sacrilege. I will die first!"

"Think!" said Jean. "If you keep silence, you screen the murderer. If

you keep silence, you are the murderer's accomplice. We have sworn

over our father's dead body to avenge him; if you refuse to speak, we

will avenge him on you. I charge you again, name the man who killed

him."

"I will die first," the priest reiterated, as firmly as before.

"Die, then!" said Jean. "Die in that caldron of boiling oil."

"Give him time," cried Louis and Thomas, earnestly pleading together.

"We will give him time," said the younger brother.

"There is the clock yonder, against the wall. We will count five

minutes by it. In those five minutes, let him make his peace with God,

or make up his mind to speak."

They waited, watching the clock. In that dreadful interval, the priest

dropped on his knees and hid his face. The time passed in dead silence.

"Speak! for your own sake, for our sakes, speak!" said Thomas Siadoux,

as the minute-hand reached the point at which the five minutes expired.

The priest looked up; his voice died away on his lips; the mortal agony

broke out on his face in great drops of sweat; his head sank forward on

his breast.

"Lift him!" cried Jean, seizing the priest on one side. "Lift him, and

throw him in!"

The two elder brothers advanced a step, and hesitated.

"Lift him, on your oath over our father's body!"

The two brothers seized him on the other side. As they lifted him to a

level with the caldron, the horror of the death that threatened him

burst from the lips of the miserable man in a scream of terror. The

brothers held him firm at the caldron's edge. "Name the man!" they

said for the last time.

The priest's teeth chattered--he was speechless. But he made a sign

with his head--a sign in the affirmative. They placed him in a chair,

and waited patiently until he was able to speak.

His first words were words of entreaty. He begged Thomas Siadoux to

give him back the crucifix. When it was placed in his possession, he

kissed it, and said, faintly, "I ask pardon of God for the sin that I

am about to commit." He paused, and then looked up at the younger

brother, who still stood in front of him. "I am ready," he said.

"Question me, and I will answer."

Jean repeated the questions which he had put when the priest was first

brought into the room.

"You know the murderer of our father?"

"I know him."

"Since when?"

"Since he made his confession to me yesterday in the Cathedral of

Toulouse."

"Name him."

"His name is Cantegrel."

"The man who wanted to marry our aunt?"

"The same."

"What brought him to the confessional?"

"His own remorse."

"What were the motives for his crime?"

"There were reports against his character, and he discovered that your

father had gone privately to Narbonne to make sure they were true."

"Did our father make sure of their truth?"

"He did."

"Would those discoveries have separated our aunt from Cantegrel if our

father had lived to tell her of them?"

"They would. If your father had lived, he would have told your aunt

that Cantegrel was married already; that he had deserted his wife at

Narbonne; that she was living there with another man, under another

name; and that she had herself confessed it in your father's presence."

"Where was the murder committed?"

"Between Villefranche and this village. Cantegrel had followed your

father to Narbonne, and had followed him back again to Villefranche.

As far as that place, he traveled in company with others, both going

and returning. Beyond Villefranche, he was left alone at the ford over

the river. There Cantegrel drew the knife to kill him before he

reached home and told his news to your aunt."

"How was the murder committed?"

"It was committed while your father was watering his pony by the bank

of the stream. Cantegrel stole on him from behind, and struck him as

he was stooping over the saddle-bow."

"This is the truth, on your oath?"

"On my oath, it is the truth."

"You may leave us."

The priest rose from his chair without assistance. From the time when

the terror of death had forced him to reveal the murderer's name a

great change had passed over him. He had given his answers with the

immovable calmness of a man on whose mind all human interests had lost

their hold. He now left the room, strangely absorbed in himself;

moving with the mechanical regularity of a sleep-walker; lost to all

perception of things and persons about him. At the door he

stopped--woke, as it seemed, from the trance that possessed him--and

looked at the three brothers with a steady, changeless sorrow, which

they had never seen in him before, which they never afterward forgot.

"I forgive you," he said, quietly and solemnly. "Pray for me when my

time comes."

With those last words, he left them.

IV. THE END

The night was far advanced; but the three brothers determined to set

forth instantly for Toulouse, and to place their information in the

magistrate's hands before the morning dawned.

Thus far no suspicion had occurred to them of the terrible consequences

which were to follow their night-interview with the priest. They were

absolutely ignorant of the punishment to which a man in holy orders

exposed himself, if he revealed the secrets of the confessional. No

infliction of that punishment had been known in their neighborhood; for

at that time, as at this, the rarest of all priestly offenses was a

violation of the sacred trust confided to the confessor by the Roman

Church. Conscious that they had forced the priest into the commission

of a clerical offense, the brothers sincerely believed that the loss of

his curacy would be the heaviest penalty which the law could exact from

him. They entered Toulouse that night, discussing the atonement which

they might offer to Monsieur Chaubard, and the means which they might

best employ to make his future easy to him.

The first disclosure of the consequences which would certainly follow

the outrage they had committed, was revealed to them when they made

their deposition before the officer of justice. The magistrate

listened to their narrative with horror vividly expressed in his face

and manner.

"Better you had never been born," he said, "than have avenged your

father's death as you three have avenged it. Your own act has doomed

the guilty and the innocent to suffer alike."

Those words proved prophetic of the truth. The end came quickly, as

the priest had foreseen it, when he spoke his parting words.

The arrest of Cantegrel was accomplished without difficulty the next

morning. In the absence of any other evidence on which to justify this

proceeding, the private disclosure to the authorities of the secret

which the priest had violated became inevitable. The Parliament of

Languedoc was, under these circumstances, the tribunal appealed to; and

the decision of that assembly immediately ordered the priest and the

three brothers to be placed in confinement, as well as the murderer

Cantegrel. Evidence was then immediately sought for, which might

convict this last criminal without any reference to the revelation that

had been forced from the priest--and evidence enough was found to

satisfy judges whose minds already possessed the foregone certainty of

the prisoner's guilt. He was put on his trial, was convicted of the

murder, and was condemned to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was

rigidly executed, with as little delay as the law would permit.

The cases of Monsieur Chaubard, and of the three sons of Siadoux, next

occupied the judges. The three brothers were found guilty of having

forced the secret of a confession from a man in holy orders, and were

sentenced to death by hanging. A far more terrible expiation of his

offense awaited the unfortunate priest. He was condemned to have his

limbs broken on the wheel, and to be afterward, while still living,

bound to the stake and destroyed by fire.

Barbarous as the punishments of that period were, accustomed as the

population was to hear of their infliction, and even to witness it, the

sentences pronounced in these two cases dismayed the public mind; and

the authorities were surprised by receiving petitions for mercy from

Toulouse, and from all the surrounding neighborhood. But the priest's

doom had been sealed. All that could be obtained, by the intercession

of persons of the highest distinction, was, that the executioner should

grant him the mercy of death before his body was committed to the

flames. With this one modification, the sentence was executed, as the

sentence had been pronounced, on the curate of Croix-Daurade.

The punishment of the three sons of Siadoux remained to be inflicted.

But the people, roused by the death of the ill-fated priest, rose

against this third execution with a resolution before which the local

government gave way. The cause of the young men was taken up by the

hot-blooded populace, as the cause of all fathers and all sons; their

filial piety was exalted to the skies; their youth was pleaded in their

behalf; their ignorance of the terrible responsibility which they had

confronted in forcing the secret from the priest was loudly alleged in

their favor. More than this, the authorities were actually warned that

the appearance of the prisoners on the scaffold would be the signal for

an organized revolt and rescue. Under this serious pressure, the

execution was deferred, and the prisoners were kept in confinement

until the popular ferment had subsided.

The delay not only saved their lives, it gave them back their liberty

as well. The infection of the popular sympathy had penetrated through

the prison doors. All three brothers were handsome, well-grown young

men. The gentlest of the three in disposition--Thomas Siadoux--aroused

the interest and won the affection of the head-jailer's daughter. Her

father was prevailed on at her intercession to relax a little in his

customary vigilance; and the rest was accomplished by the girl herself.

One morning, the population of Toulouse heard, with every testimony of

the most extravagant rejoicing, that the three brothers had escaped,

accompanied by the jailer's daughter. As a necessary legal formality,

they were pursued, but no extraordinary efforts were used to overtake

them; and they succeeded, accordingly, in crossing the nearest frontier.

Twenty days later, orders were received from the capital to execute

their sentence in effigy. They were then permitted to return to

France, on condition that they never again appeared in their native

place, or in any other part of the province of Languedoc. With this

reservation they were left free to live where they pleased, and to

repent the fatal act which had avenged them on the murderer of their

father at the cost of the priest's life.

Beyond this point the official documents do not enable us to follow

their career. All that is now known has been now told of the village

tragedy at Croix-Daurade.

THE BURIAL OF THE TITHE

By SAMUEL LOVER

With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover--_Shakespeare_

It was a fine morning in the autumn of 1832, and the sun had not yet

robbed the grass of its dew, as a stout-built peasant was moving

briskly along a small by-road in the county of Tipperary. The

elasticity of his step bespoke the lightness of his heart, and the

rapidity of his walk did not seem sufficient, even, for the exuberance

of his glee, for every now and then the walk was exchanged for a sort

of dancing shuffle, which terminated with a short capering kick that

threw up the dust about him, and all the while he whistled one of those

whimsical jig tunes with which Ireland abounds, and twirled his stick

over his head in a triumphal flourish. Then off he started again in

his original pace, and hummed a rollicking song, and occasionally broke

out into soliloquy--"Why then, an' isn't it the grate day intirely for

Ireland, that is in it this blessed day. Whoo! your sowl to glory but

well do the job complate"--and here he cut a caper.--"Divil a more

they'll ever get, and it's only a pity they ever got any--but there's

an ind o' them now--they're cut down from this out," and here he made

an appropriate down stroke of his shillelah through a bunch of thistles

that skirted the road. "Where will be their grand doin's

now?--eh?--I'd like to know that. Where'll be their lazy livery

sarvants?--ow! ow!!"--and he sprang lightly over a stile. "And what

will they do for their coaches and four?" Here, a lark sprang up at

his feet and darted into the air with its thrilling rush of exquisite

melody.--"Faith, you've given me my answer sure enough, my purty

lark--that's as much as to say, they may go whistle for them--oh, my

poor fellows, how I pity yiz;"--and here he broke into a "too ra lal

loo" and danced along the path:--then suddenly dropping into silence he

resumed his walk, and applying his hand behind his head, cocked up his

caubeen[1] and began to rub behind his ear, according to the most

approved peasant practice of assisting the powers of reflection.--"Faix

an' it's mysef that's puzzled to know what'll the procthors, and the

process sarvers, and 'praisers[2] do at all. By gorra they must go rob

an the road, since they won't be let to rob any more in the fields;

robbin' is all that is left for them, for sure they couldn't turn to

any honest thrade afther the coorses they have been used to. Oh what a

power o' miscrayants will be out of bread for the want of their owld

thrade of false swearin'. Why the vagabones will be lost, barrin'

they're sent to Bot[3]--and indeed if a bridge could be built of false

oaths, by my sowkins, they could sware themselves there without wettin'

their feet."--Here he overtook another peasant, whom he accosted with

the universal salutation of "God save you!"--"God save you kindly," was

returned for answer.--"And is it yourself that's there Mikee Noonan?"

said the one first introduced to the reader.

"Indeed it's mysef and nobody else," said Noonan; "an' where is it

you're goin' this fine mornin'?"

"An' is it yoursef that's axin' that same, Mikee?--why where is it I

would be goin' but to the berrin'?"

"I thought so in throth. It's yoursef that is always ripe and ready

for fun."

"And small blame to me."

"Why then it was a mighty complate thing, whoever it was that thought

of makin' a berrin', out of it."

"And don't you know?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Why then who 'ud you think now laid it all out?"

"Faix I dunna--maybe 't was Pether Conolly."

"No it wasn't, though Pether's a cute chap--guess again."

"Well, was it Phil Mulligan?"

"No it wasn't, though you made a good offer at it sure enough, for if

it wasn't Phil, it was his sisther--"

"'Tare alive, is it Biddy, it was?"

"'Scure to the one else.--Oh she's the quarest craythur in

life.--There's not a thrick out, that one's not up to, and more

besides. By the powdhers o' war, she'd bate a field full o' lawyers at

schkamin'--she's the Divil's Biddy."

"Why thin but it was a grate iday intirely."

"You may say that in throth--maybe it's we won't have the fun--but see

who's before us there. Isn't it that owld Coogan?"

"Sure enough by dad."

"Why thin isn't he the rale fine ould cock to come so far to see the

rights o' the thing?"

"Faix he was always the right sort--sure in Nointy-eight, as I hear, he

was malthrated a power, and his place rummaged, and himself a'most

kilt, bekase he wouldn't inform an his neighbours."

"God's blessin' be an him and the likes av him that wouldn't prove

thraitor to a friend in disthress."

Here they came up with the old man to whom they alluded--he was the

remains of a stately figure, and his white hair hung at some length

round the back of his head and his temples, while a black and well

marked eyebrow overshadowed his keen grey eye--the contrast of the dark

eyebrow to the white hair rendered the intelligent cast of his features

more striking, and he was, altogether, a figure that one would not be

likely to pass without notice. He was riding a small horse at an easy

pace, and he answered the rather respectful salutation of the two foot

passengers with kindness and freedom. They addressed him as "Mr.

Coogan," while to them he returned the familiar term "boys."

"And av coorse it's goin' to the berrin, you are, Mr. Coogan, and long

life to you."

"Aye, boys.--It's hard for an owld horse to leave off his thricks."

"Owld is it?--faix and it's yourself that has more heart in you this

blessed mornin' than many a man that's not half your age."

"By dad I'm not a cowlt, boys, though I kick up my heels sometimes."

"Well, you'll never do it younger, sir,--but sure why wouldn't you be

there when all the counthry is goin' I hear, and no wondher sure.--By

the hole in my hat it's enough, so it is, to make a sick man lave his

bed to see the fun that'll be in it, and sure it's right and proper,

and shows the sperit that's in the counthry, when a man like yourself,

Mr. Coogan, joins the poor people in doin' it."

"I like to stand up for the right," answered the old man.

"And always was a good warrant to do that same," said Larry, in his

most laudatory tone.

"Will you tell us who's that forninst us an the road there?" asked the

old man, as he pointed to a person that seemed to make his way with

some difficulty, for he laboured under an infirmity of limb that caused

a grotesque jerking action in his walk, if walk it might be called.

"Why, thin, don't you know him, Mr. Coogan? by dad I thought there

wasn't a parish in the country that didn't know poor Hoppy Houligan."

It has been often observed before, the love of soubriquet that the

Irish possess; but let it not be supposed that their nicknames are

given in a spirit of unkindness--far from it. A sense of the

ridiculous is so closely interwoven in an Irishman's nature, that he

will even jest upon his own misfortunes; and while he indulges in a

joke (one of the few indulgences he can command), the person that

excites it may as frequently be the object of his openheartedness as

his mirth.

"And is that Hoppy Houligan?" said old Coogan, "I often heerd of him,

to be sure, but I never seen him before."

"Oh, then, you may see him before and behind now," said Larry; "and,

indeed, if he had a match for that odd skirt of his coat, he wouldn't

be the worse iv it; and in throth the cordheroys themselves aren't a

bit too good, and there's the laste taste in life of his--"

"Whisht," said the old man, "he is looking back, and maybe he hears

you."

"Not he in throth. Sure he's partly bothered."

"How can he play the fiddle then, and be bothered?" said Coogan.

"Faix an' that's the very raison he is bothered; sure he moidhers the

ears off of him intirely with the noise of his own fiddle. Oh he's a

powerful fiddler."

"So I often heerd, indeed," said the old man.

"He bangs all the fiddlers in the counthry."

"And is in the greatest request," added Noonan.

"Yet he looks tatthered enough," said old Coogan.

"Sure you never seen a well dhrest fiddler yet," said Larry.

"Indeed, and now you remind me, I believe not," said the old man. "I

suppose they all get more kicks than ha'pence, as the saying is."

"Divil a many kicks Houligan gets; he's a great favorite intirely."

"Why is he in such distress then?" asked Coogan.

"Faith he's not in disthress at all; he's welkim everywhere he goes,

and has the best of atin' and dhrinkin' the place affords, wherever he

is, and picks up the coppers fast at the fairs, and is no way

necessiated in life; though indeed it can't be denied, as he limps

along there, that he has a great many ups and downs in the world."

This person, of whom the preceding dialogue treats, was a celebrated

fiddler in "these parts," and his familiar name of Hoppy Houligan was

acquired, as the reader may already have perceived, from his limping

gait. This limp was the consequence of a broken leg, which was one of

the consequences of an affray, which is the certain consequence of a

fair in Tipperary. Houligan was a highly characteristic specimen of an

Irish fiddler. As Larry Lanigan said, "You never seen a well dhrest

fiddler yet;" but Houligan was a particularly ill fledged bird of the

musical tribe. His corduroys have already been hinted at by Larry, as

well as his coat, which had lost half the skirt, thereby partially

revealing the aforesaid corduroys; or if one might be permitted to

indulge in an image, the half skirt that remained served to produce a

partial eclipse of the disc of corduroy. This was what we painters

call picturesque. By the way, the vulgar are always amazed that some

tattered remains of anything is more prized by the painter than the

freshest production in all its gloss of novelty. The fiddler's

stockings, too, in the neglected falling of their folds round his leg,

and the whisp of straw that fringed the opening of his gaping brogues,

were valuable additions to the picture; and his hat--But stop,--let me

not presume;--his hat it would be a vain attempt to describe. There

are two things not to be described, which, to know what they are, you

must see.

These two things are Taglioni's dancing and an Irish fiddler's hat.

The one is a wonder in action;--the other, an enigma in form.

Houligan's fiddle was as great a curiosity as himself, and, like its

master, somewhat the worse for wear. It had been broken some score of

times, and yet, by dint of glue, was continued in what an antiquary

would call "a fine state of preservation;" that is to say, there was

rather more of glue than wood in the article. The stringing of the

instrument was as great a piece of patchwork as itself, and exhibited

great ingenuity on the part of its owner. Many was the knot above the

finger-board and below the bridge; that is, when the fiddle was in the

best order; for in case of fractures on the field of action, that is to

say, at wake, patron, or fair, where the fiddler, unlike the girl he

was playing for, had not two strings to his bow; in such case, I say,

the old string should be knotted, wherever it might require to be, and

I have heard it insinuated that the music was not a bit the worse of

it. Indeed, the only economy that poor Houligan ever practised was in

the strings of his fiddle, and those were an admirable exemplification

of the proverb of "making both ends meet." Houligan's waistcoat, too,

was a curiosity, or rather, a cabinet of curiosities; for he

appropriated its pockets to various purposes;--snuff, resin, tobacco, a

clasp-knife with half a blade, a piece of flint, a doodeen,[4] and some

bits of twine and ends of fiddle-strings were all huddled together

promiscuously. Houligan himself called his waistcoat Noah's ark; for,

as he said himself, there was a little of everything in it, barring[5]

money, and that would never stay in his company. His fiddle, partly

enfolded in a scanty bit of old baize, was tucked under his left arm,

and his right was employed in helping him to hobble along by means of a

black-thorn stick, when he was overtaken by the three travellers

already named, and saluted by all, with the addition of a query, as to

where he was going.

"An' where would I be goin' but to the berrin'?" said Houligan.

"Throth it's the same answer I expected," said Lanigan. "It would be

nothing at all without you."

"I've played at many a weddin'," said Hooligan, "but I'm thinkin' there

will be more fun at this berrin' than any ten weddin's."

"Indeed you may say that, Hoppy, aghra," said Noonan.

"Why thin, Hoppy jewel," said Lanigan, "what did the skirt o' your coat

do to you that you left it behind you, and wouldn't let it see the fun?"

"'Deed then I'll tell you, Larry, my boy. I was goin' last night by

the by-road that runs up at the back o' the owld house, nigh hand the

Widdy Casey's, and I heerd that people was livin' in it since I

thravelled the road last, and so I opened the owld iron gate that was

as stiff in the hinge as a miser's fist, and the road ladin' up to the

house lookin' as lonely as a churchyard, and the grass growin' out

through it, and says I to myself, I'm thinkin' it's few darkens your

doors, says I; God be with the time the owld squire was here, that

staid at home and didn't go abroad out of his own counthry, lettin' the

fine stately owld place go to rack and ruin; and faix I was turnin'

back, and I wish I did, whin I seen a man comin' down the road, and so

I waited till he kem up to me, and I axed if any one was up at the

house; Yis, says he; and with that I heerd terrible barkin' intirely,

and a great big lump of a dog turned the corner of the house and stud

growlin' at me; I'm afeard there's dogs in it, says I to the man; Yis,

says he, but they're quite (quiet); so, with that I wint my way, and he

wint his way; but my jew'l, the minit I got into the yard, nine great

vagabones of dogs fell an me, and I thought they'd ate me alive; and so

they would I blieve, only I had a cowld bones o' mate and some praties

that Mrs. Magrane, God bless her, made me put in my pocket when I was

goin' the road as I was lavin' her house that mornin' afther the

christenin' that was in it, and sure enough lashings and lavings was

there; O that's the woman has a heart as big as a king's, and her

husband too, in throth; he's a dacent man and keeps mighty fine dhrink

in his house. Well, as I was sayin', the cowld mate and praties was in

my pocket, and by gor the thievin' morodin' villains o' dogs made a

dart at the pocket and dragged it clan aff; and thin, my dear, with

fightin' among themselves, sthrivin' to come at the mate, the skirt o'

my coat was in smidhereens in one minit--divil a lie in it--not a

tatther iv it was left together; and it's only a wondher I came off

with my life."

"Faith I think so," said Lanigan; "and wasn't it mighty providintial

they didn't come at the fiddle; sure what would the counthry do then?"

"Sure enough you may say that," said Houligan; "and then my bread would

be gone as well as my mate. But think o' the unnatharal vagabone that

towld me the dogs was quite; sure he came back while I was there, and I

ups and I towld him what a shame it was to tell me the dogs was quite.

So they are quite, says he; sure there's nine o' them, and only seven

o' them bites. Thank you, says I."

There was something irresistibly comic in the quiet manner that

Houligan said, "Thank you, says I;" and the account of his canine

adventure altogether excited much mirth amongst his auditors. As they

pursued their journey many a joke was passed and repartee returned, and

the laugh rang loudly and often from the merry little group as they

trudged along. In the course of the next mile's march their numbers

were increased by some half dozen, that, one by one, suddenly appeared,

by leaping over the hedge on the road, or crossing a stile from some

neighbouring path. All these new comers pursued the same route, and

each gave the same answer when asked where he was going. It was

universally this--

"Why, then, where would I be goin' but to the berrin'?"

At a neighbouring confluence of roads straggling parties of from four

to five were seen in advance, and approaching in the rear, and the

highway soon began to wear the appearance it is wont to do on the

occasion of a patron, a fair, or a market day. Larry Lanigan was in

evident enjoyment at this increase of numbers; and as the crowd

thickened his exultation increased, and he often repeated his

ejaculation, aiready noticed in Larry's opening soliloquy, "Why, then,

an' isn't it a grate day intirely for Ireland!!!"

And now, horsemen were more frequently appearing, and their numbers

soon amounted to almost a cavalcade; and sometimes a car, that is to

say, the car, common to the country for agricultural purposes, might be

seen, bearing a cargo of women; videlicet, "the good woman" herself,

and her rosy-cheeked daughters, and maybe a cousin or two, with an aide

de camp aunt to assist in looking after the young ladies. The

roughness of the motion of this primitive vehicle was rendered as

accommodating as possible to the gentler sex, by a plentiful shake down

of clean straw on the car, over which a feather bed was laid, and the

best quilt in the house over that, to make all smart, possibly a piece

of hexagon patchwork of "the misthriss" herself, in which the tawdriest

calico patterns served to display the taste of the rural sempstress,

and stimulated the rising generation to feats of needlework. The car

was always provided with a driver, who took such care upon himself "for

a rayson he had:" he was almost universally what is called in Ireland

"a clane boy," that is to say, a well made, good-looking young fellow,

whose eyes were not put into his head for nothing; and these same eyes

might be seen wandering backwards occasionally from his immediate

charge, the dumb baste, to "take a squint" at some, or maybe one, of

his passengers. This explains "the rayson he had" for becoming driver.

Sometimes he sat on the crupper of the horse, resting his feet on the

shafts of the car, and bending down his head to say something tindher

to the colleen that sat next him, totally negligent of his duty as

guide. Sometimes when the girl he wanted to be sweet on was seated at

the back of the car, this relieved the horse from the additional

burthen of his driver, and the clane boy would leave the horse's head

and fall in the rear to deludher the craythur, depending on the

occasional "hup" or "wo" for the guidance of the baste, when a too near

proximity to the dyke by the road side warned him of the necessity of

his interference. Sometimes he was called to his duty by the open

remonstrance of either the mother or the aunt, or maybe a mischievous

cousin, as thus: "Why then, Dinny, what are you about at all at all?

God betune me and harm, if you warn't within an inch o' puttin' us all

in the gripe o' the ditch;--arrah, lave off your gostherin there, and

mind the horse, will you; a purty thing it 'ud be if my bones was bruk;

what are you doin, there at all at the back o' the car, when it's at

the baste's head you ought to be?"

"Arrah sure, the baste knows the way herself."

"Faix, I b'lieve so, for it's little behowlden to you she is for

showin' her. Augh!!--murther!!!--there we are in the gripe a'most."

"Lave off your screeching, can't you, and be quite. Sure the poor

craythur only just wint over to get a mouthful o' the grass by the side

o' the ditch."

"What business has she to be atin' now?"

"Bekase she's hungry, I suppose;--and why isn't she fed betther?"

"Bekase rogues stales her oats, Dinny. I seen you in the stable by the

same token yistherday."

"Sure enough, ma'am, for I wint there to look for my cowlt that was

missin'."

"I thought it was the filly you wor afther, Dinny," said a cousin with

a wink; and Dinny grinned, and his sweetheart blushed, while the rest

of the girls tittered, the mother pretending not to hear the joke, and

bidding Dinny go mind his business by attending to the horse.

But lest I should tire my reader by keeping him so long on the road, I

will let him find the rest of his way as well as he can to a certain

romantic little valley, where a comfortable farm-house was situated

beside a small mountain stream that tumbled along noisily over its

rocky bed, and in which some ducks, noisier than the stream, were

enjoying their morning bath. The geese were indulging in dignified

rest and silence upon the bank; a cock was crowing and strutting with

his usual swagger amongst his hens; a pig was endeavouring to save his

ears, not from this rural tumult, but from the teeth of a half-terrier

dog, who was chasing him away from an iron pot full of potatoes which

the pig had dared to attempt some impertinent liberties with; and a

girl was bearing into the house a pail of milk which she had just taken

from the cow that stood placidly looking on, an admirable contrast to

the general bustle of the scene.

Everything about the cottage gave evidence of comfort on the part of

its owner, and, to judge from the numbers without and within the house,

you would say he did not want for friends; for all, as they arrived at

its door, greeted Phelim O'Hara kindly, and Phelim welcomed each new

comer with a heartiness that did honour to his grey hairs. Frequently

passing to and fro, busily engaged in arranging an ample breakfast in

the barn, appeared his daughter, a pretty round-faced girl, with black

hair and the long and silky-lashed dark grey eyes of her country, where

merriment loves to dwell, and a rosy mouth whose smiles served at once

to display her good temper and her fine teeth; her colour gets fresher

for a moment, and a look of affectionate recognition brightens her eye,

as a lithe young fellow springs briskly over the stepping stones that

lead across the stream, and trips lightly up to the girl, who offers

her hand in welcome. Who is the happy dog that is so well received by

Honor O'Hara, the prettiest girl in that parish or the next, and the

daughter of a "snug man" into the bargain?--It is the reader's old

acquaintance, Larry Lanigan;--and maybe Larry did not give a squeeze

extraordinary to the hand that was presented to him. The father

received him well also; indeed, for that matter, the difficulty would

have been to find a house in the whole district that Larry would not

have been welcome in.

"So here you are at last, Larry," said old O'Hara; "I was wondering you

were not here long ago."

"An' so I would, I thank you kindly," said Larry, "only I overtook owld

Hoppy here, on the road, and sure I thought I might as well take my

time, and wait for poor Hoppy, and bring my welkim along with me;" and

here he shoved the fiddler into the house before him.

"The girls will be glad to see the pair o' yiz," said the old man,

following.

The interior of the house was crowded with guests, and the usual

laughing and courting so often described, as common to such

assemblages, were going forward amongst the young people. At the

farther end of the largest room in the cottage, a knot of the older men

of the party was engaged in the discussion of some subject that seemed

to carry deep interest along with it, and at the opposite extremity of

the same room, a coffin of very rude construction lay on a small table;

and around this coffin stood all the junior part of the company, male

and female, and the wildness of their mirth, and the fertility of their

jests, over this tenement of mortality and its contents, might have

well startled a stranger for a moment, until he saw the nature of the

deposit the coffin contained. Enshrouded in a sheaf of wheat lay a

pig, between whose open jaws a large potato was placed, and the coffin

was otherwise grotesquely decorated.

The reader will wonder, no doubt, at such an exhibition, for certainly

never was coffin so applied before; and it is therefore necessary to

explain the meaning of all this, and I believe Ireland is the only

country in the world where the facts I am about to relate could have

occurred.

It may be remembered that some time previously to the date at which my

story commences, his majesty's ministers declared that there should be

a "total extinction of tithes."

This declaration was received in Ireland by the great mass of the

people with the utmost delight, as they fancied they should never have

tithes to pay again. The peasantry in the neighbourhood of Templemore

formed the very original idea of burying the tithe. It is only amongst

an imaginative people that such a notion could have originated; and

indeed there is something highly poetical in the conception. The

tithe--that which the poor felt the keenest; that which they considered

a tax on their industry; that which they looked upon as an hereditary

oppression; that hateful thing, they were told, was to be extinct, and,

in joyous anticipation of the blessing, they determined to enact an

emblematic interment of this terrible enemy.--I think it is not too

much to call this idea a fine one; and yet, in the execution of it,

they invested it with the broadest marking of the grotesque. Such is

the strange compound of an Irish peasant, whose anger is often vented

in a jest, and whose mirth is sometimes terrible.

I must here pause for a moment, and request it to be distinctly

understood, that, in relating this story, in giving the facts connected

with it, and in stating what the Irish peasant's feelings are

respecting tithe, I have not the most distant notion of putting forward

any opinions of my own on the subject. In the pursuit of my own quiet

art, I am happily far removed from the fierce encounter of politics,

and I do not wish to offend against the feelings or opinions of any one

in my little volume; and I trust, therefore, that I may be permitted to

give a sketch of a characteristic incident, as it came to my knowledge,

without being mistaken for a partisan.

"I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."

I have said a group of seniors was collected at one end of the room,

and, as it is meet to give precedence to age, I will endeavour to give

some idea of what was going forward amongst them.

There was one old man of the party whose furrowed forehead, compressed

eyebrows, piqued nose, and mouth depressed at the corners, at once

indicated to a physiognomist a querulous temper. He was one of your

doubters upon all occasions, one of the unfailing elements of an

argument;--as he said himself, he was "dubersome" about everything, and

he had hence earned the name of Daddy Dubersome amongst his neighbours.

Well, Daddy began to doubt the probability that any such boon as the

extinction of tithes was to take place, and said, he was "sartin sure

'twas too good news to be thrue."

"Tare anounty," said another, who was the very antithesis of Daddy in

his credulous nature, "sure, didn't I see it myself in prent."

"I was towld often that things was in prent," returned Daddy, drily,

"that come out lies afther, to my own knowledge."

"But sure," added a third, "sure, didn't the Prime Ear himself lay it

all out before the Parley mint?"

"What Prime Ear are you talking about, man dear?" said Daddy, rather

testily.

"Why, the Prime Ear of his Majesty, and no less. Is that satisfaction

for you, eh?"

"Well, and who is the Prime Ear?"

"Why, the Prime Ear of his Majesty, I towld you before. You see, he is

the one that hears of everything that is to be done for the whole

impire in particular; and bekase he hears of everything, that's the

rayson he is called the Prime Ear--and a good rayson it is."

"Well, but what has that to do with the tithes? I ask you again," said

Daddy with his usual pertinacity.

Here he was about to be answered by the former speaker, whose

definition of "The Premier," had won him golden opinions amongst the

by-standers,--when he was prevented by a fourth orator, who rushed into

the debate with this very elegant opening--

"Arrah! tare-an-ouns, yiz are settin' me mad, so yiz are. Why, I

wondher any one 'id be sitch a fool as to go arguefy with that crooked

owld disciple there."

"Meanin' me?" said Daddy.

"I'd be sorry to conthcradict you, sir," said the other with an

admirable mockery of politeness.

"Thank you, sir," said Daddy, with a dignity more comical than the

other's buffoonery.

"You're kindly welkim, Daddy," returned the aggressor. "Sure, you

never blieved anything yit; and I wondher any one would throw away

their time sthrivin' to rightify you."

"Come, boys," said O'Hara, interrupting the discourse, with a view to

prevent further bickering, "there's no use talking about the thing now,

for whatever way it is, sure we are met to bury the Tithe, and it's

proud I am to see you all here to make merry upon the stringth of it,

and I think I heerd Honor say this minit that everything is ready in

the barn without, so you'll have no difference of opinion about

tackling to the breakfast, or I'm mistaken. Come, my hearties, the

mate and the praties is crying, 'Who'll ate me?'--away wid you, that's

your sort;"--and he enforced his summons to the feast by pushing his

guests before him towards the scene of action.

This was an ample barn, where tables of all sorts and sizes were

spread, loaded with viands of the most substantial character: wooden

forms, three-legged stools, broken-backed chairs, etc. etc. were in

requisition for the accommodation of the female portion of the company,

and the men attended first to their wants with a politeness which,

though deficient in the external graces of polished life, did credit to

their natures. The eating part of the business was accompanied with

all the clatter that might be expected to attend such an affair; and

when the eatables had been tolerably well demolished, O'Hara stood up

in the midst of his guests and said he should propose to them a toast,

which he knew all the boys would fill their glasses for, and that was,

to drink the health of the King, and long life to him, for seeing into

the rights of the thing, and doing "such a power" for them, and "more

power to his elbow."--This toast was prefaced by a speech to his

friends and neighbours upon the hardships of tithe in particular,

spiced with the laste taste in life of politics in general; wherein the

Repeal of the Union and Daniel O'Connell cut no inconsiderable figure;

yet in the midst of the rambling address, certain glimpses of good

sense and shrewd observation might be caught; and the many and powerful

objections he advanced against the impost that was to be "extinct" so

soon, were put forward with a force and distinctness that were worthy

of a better speaker, and might have been found difficult to reply to by

a more accustomed hand. He protested that he thought he had lived long

enough when he had witnessed in his own life-time two such national

benefits as the Catholic Emancipation Bill and the Abolition of Tithes.

O'Hara further declared, he was the happiest man alive that day only in

the regard "of one thing, and that was, that his reverence, Father Hely

(the priest) was not there amongst them;" and, certainly, the absence

of the pastor on an occasion of festivity in the house of a snug

farmer, is of rare occurrence in Ireland. "But you see," said O'Hara,

"whin his rivirince heerd what it was we wor goin' to do, he thought it

would be purtier on his part for to have nothin' whatsomivir to do with

it, in hand, act, or part; and, indeed, boys, that shews a great deal

of good breedin' in Father Hely."

This was quite agreed to by the company; and, after many cheers for

O'Hara's speech, and some other toasts pertinent to the occasion, the

health of O'Hara, as founder of the feast, with the usual addenda of

long life, prosperity, etc. to him and his, was drunk, and then

preparations were entered Into for proceeding with the ceremony of the

funeral.

"I believe we have nothing to wait for now," said O'Hara, "since you

won't have any more to drink, boys; so let us set about it at once, and

make a clane day's work of it."

"Oh, we're not quite ready yit," said Larry Lanigan, who seemed to be a

sort of master of the ceremonies on the occasion.

"What's the delay?" asked O'Hara.

"Why, the chief murners is not arrived yit."

"What murners are you talkin' about, man?" said the other.

"Why, you know, at a grand berrin' they have always thief murners, and

there's a pair that I ordhered to be brought here for that same."

"Myself doesn't know anything about murners," said O'Hara, "for I never

seen anything finer than the keeners[6] at a berrin'; but Larry's up to

the ways of the quolity, as well as of his own sort."

"But you wouldn't have keeners for the Tithe, would you? Sure, the

keeners is to say all the good they can of the departed, and more if

they can invint it; but, sure, the divil a good thing at all they could

say of the Tithe, barrin' it was lies they wor tellin', and so it would

only be throwin' away throuble."

"Thrue for you, Lanigan."

"Besides, it is like a grand berrin' belongin' to the quol'ty to have

chief murners, and you know the Tithe was aiqual to a lord or a king

a'most for power."

In a short time the "murners," as Larry called them, arrived in custody

of half a dozen of Larry's chosen companions, to whom he had entrusted

the execution of the mission. These chief mourners were two tithe

proctors, who had been taken forcibly from their homes by the Lanigan

party, and threatened with death unless they attended the summons of

Larry to be present at "The Berrin'."

Their presence was hailed with a great shout, and the poor devils

looked excessively frightened; but they were assured by O'Hara they had

nothing to fear.

"I depend an you, Mr. O'Hara, for seeing us safe out of their hands,"

said one of them, for the other was dumb from terror.

"So you may," was the answer O'Hara returned. "Hurt nor harm shall not

be put an you; I give you my word o' that."

"Divil a harm," said Larry. "We'll only put you into a shoot o'

clothes that is ready for you, and you may look as melancholy as you

plaze, for it is murners you are to be. Well, Honor," said he,

addressing O'Hara's daughter, "have you got the mithres and vestments

ready, as I towld you?"

"Yes," said Honor; "here comes Biddy Mulligan with them from the house,

for Biddy herself helped me to make them."

"And who had a betther right?" said Larry, "when it was herself that

laid it all out complate, the whole thing from the beginnin', and sure

enough but it was a bright thought of her. Faix, he'll be the looky

man that gets Biddy, yet."

"You had betther have her yourself, I think," said Honor, with an arch

look at Larry, full of meaning.

"An' it's that same I've been thinking of for some time," said Larry,

laughing, and returning Honor's look with one that repaid it with

interest "But where is she at all? Oh, here she comes with the duds,

and Mike Noonan afther her; throth, he's following her about all this

mornin' like a sucking calf. I'm afeard Mikee is going to sarcumvint

me wid Biddy; but he'd betther mind what he's at."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the advance of Biddy Mulligan,

"and Mikee Noonan afther her," bearing some grotesque imitation of

clerical vestments made of coarse sacking, and two enormous

head-dresses made of straw, in the fashion of mitres; these were

decorated with black rags hung fantastically about them, while the

vestments were smeared over with black stripes in no very regular order.

"Come here," said Larry to the tithe proctors; "come here, antil we put

you into your regimentals."

"What are you goin' to do with us, Mr. Lanigan?" said the frightened

poor wretch, while his knees knocked together with terror.

"We are just goin' to make a pair o' bishops of you," said Lanigan;

"and sure that's promotion for you."

"Oh, Mr. O'Hara," said the proctor, "sure you won't let them tie us up

in them sacks."

"Do you hear what he calls the iligant vestments we made a' purpose for

him? They are sackcloth, to be sure, and why not--seeing as how that

you are to be the chief murners? and sackcloth and ashes is what you

must be dhressed in, accordin' to rayson. Here, my buck," said the

rollicking Larry, "I'll be your vally de sham myself," and he proceeded

to put the dress on the terrified tithe proctor.

"Oh, Mr. Lanigan dear!" said he, "don't murther me, if you plaze."

"Murther you!--arrah, who's going to murther you? Do you think I'd

dirty my hands wid killin' a snakin' tithe procthor?"

"Indeed, that's thrue, Mr. Lanigan; it would not be worth your while."

"Here now," said Larry, "howld your head till I put the mithre an you,

and make you a bishop complate. But wait a bit; throth, I was nigh

forgettin' the ashes, and that would have been a great loss to both o'

you, bekase you wouldn't be right murners at all without them, and the

people would think you wor only purtendin'." This last bit of Larry's

waggery produced great merriment amongst the by-standers, for the

unfortunate tithe proctors were looking at that moment most doleful

examples of wretchedness. A large shovelful of turf ashes was now

shaken over their heads, and then they were decorated with their

mitres. "Tut, man," said Larry to one of them, "don't thrimble like a

dog in a wet sack. Oh, thin, look at him how pale he's turned, the

dirty coward that he is. I tell you, we're not goin' to do you any

hurt, so you needn't be lookin' in sitch mortial dhread. By gor,

you're as white as pen'orth o' curds in a sweep's fist."

With many such jokes at the expense of the tithe proctors, they were

attired in their caricature robes and mitres, and presented with a pair

of pitchforks, by way of crosiers, and were recommended at the same

time to make hay while the sun shone, "bekase the fine weather would be

lavin' them soon;" with many other bitter sarcasms, conveyed in the

language of ridicule.

The procession was now soon arranged, and, as they had their chief

mourners, it was thought a good point of contrast to have their chief

rejoicers as well. To this end, in a large cart they put a sow and her

litter of pigs, decorated with ribands, a sheaf of wheat standing

proudly erect, a bowl of large potatoes, which, at Honor O'Hara's

suggestion, were boiled, that they might be laughing on the occasion,

and over these was hung a rude banner, on which was written, "We may

stay at home now."

In this cart, Hoppy Houligan, the fiddler, with a piper as a coadjutor,

rasped and squeaked their best to the tune of "Go to the devil and

shake yourself," which was meant to convey a delicate hint to the

tithes for the future.

The whole assemblage of people, and it was immense, then proceeded to

the spot where it was decided the tithe was to be interred, as the most

fitting place to receive such a deposit, and this place was called by

what they considered the very appropriate name of "The Devil's Bit."[7]

In a range of hills, in the neighbourhood where this singular

occurrence took place, there is a sudden gap occurs in the outline of

the ridge, which is stated to have been formed by his sable majesty

taking a bite out of the mountain; whether it was spite or hunger that

had made him do so, is not ascertained, but he evidently did not

consider it a very savoury morsel; for it is said, he spat it out

again, and the rejected morceau forms the rock of Cashel. Such is the

wild legend of this wild spot; and here was the interment of the tithe

to be achieved, as an appropriate addition to the "Devil's Bit."

The procession now moved onward, and, as it proceeded, its numbers were

considerably augmented. Its approach was looked for by a scout on

every successive hill it came within sight of, and a wild halloo, or

the winding of a cow's horn immediately succeeded, which called forth

scores of fresh attendants upon "the berrin." Thus, their numbers were

increased every quarter of a mile they went, until, on their arriving

at the foot of the hill which they were to ascend, to reach their final

destination, the multitude assembled presented a most imposing

appearance. In the course of their march, the great point of

attraction for the young men and women was the cart that bore the piper

and fiddler, and the road was rather danced than walked over in this

quarter. The other distinguished portion of the train was where the

two tithe proctors played their parts of chief mourners. They were the

delight of all the little ragged urchins in the country; the half-naked

young vagabonds hung on their flanks, plucked at their vestments, made

wry faces at them, called them by many ridiculous names, and an

occasional lump of clay was slily flung at their mitres, which were too

tempting a "cock shot" to be resisted. The multitude now wound up the

hill, and the mingling of laughter, of singing, and shouting, produced

a wild compound of sound, that rang far and wide. As they doubled an

angle in the road, which opened the Devil's Bit full upon their view,

they saw another crowd assembled there, which consisted of persons from

the other side of the hills, who could not be present at the breakfast,

nor join the procession, but who attended upon the spot where the

interment was to take place. As soon as the approach of the funeral

train was perceived from the top of the hill, the mass of people there

sent forth a shout of welcome, which was returned by those from below.

Short space now served to bring both parties together, and the digging

of a grave did not take long with such a plenty of able hands for the

purpose. "Come, boys," said Larry Lanigan to two or three of his

companions, "while they are digging the grave here, we'll go cut some

sods to put over it when the thievin' tithe is buried; not for any

respect I have for it in particlar, but that we may have the place

smooth and clane to dance over aftherwards; and may I never shuffle the

brogue again, if myself and Honor O'Hara won't be the first pair

that'll set you a patthern."

All was soon ready for the interment; the tithe coffin was lowered into

the pit, and the shouting that rent the air was terrific.

As they were about to fill up the grave with earth their wild hurra,

that had rung out so loudly, was answered by a fierce shout at some

distance, and all eyes were turned towards the quarter whence it arose,

to see from whom it proceeded, for it was, evidently, a solitary voice

that had thus arrested their attention.

Toiling up the hill, supporting himself with a staff, and bearing a

heavy load in a wallet slung over his shoulders, appeared an elderly

man whose dress proclaimed him at once to be a person who depended on

eleemosynary contributions for his subsistence: and many, when they

caught the first glimpse of him, proclaimed, at once, that it was

"Tatther the Road" was coming.

"Tatther the Road" wae the very descriptive name that had been applied

to this poor creature, for he was always travelling about the highways;

he never rested even at nights in any of the houses of the peasants,

who would have afforded him shelter, but seemed to be possessed by a

restless spirit, that urged him to constant motion. Of course the poor

creature sometimes slept, but it must have been under such shelter as a

hedge, or cave, or gravel pit might afford, for in the habitation of

man he was never seen to sleep; and, indeed, I never knew any one who

bad seen this strange being in the act of sleep. This fact attached a

sort of mysterious character to the wanderer, and many would tell you

that "he wasn't right," and firmly believed that he never slept at all.

His mind was unsettled, and though he never became offensive in any

degree from his mental aberration, yet the nature of his distemper

often induced him to do very extraordinary things, and whenever the

gift of speech was upon him, (for he was habitually taciturn), he would

make an outpouring of some rhapsody, in which occasional bursts of very

powerful language and striking imagery would occur. Indeed the

peasants said that "sometimes 't would make hair stand on end to hear

Tatther the Road make a noration."

This poor man's history, as far as I could learn, was a very melancholy

one. In the rebellion of '98 his cabin had been burned over his head

by the yeomanry, after every violation that could disgrace his hearth

had been committed. He and his son, then little more than a boy, had

attempted to defend their hut, and they were both left for dead. His

wife and his daughter, a girl of sixteen, were also murdered. The

wretched father, unfortunately, recovered his life, but his reason was

gone for ever. Even in the midst of his poverty and madness, there was

a sort of respect attached to this singular man. Though depending on

charity for his meat and drink, he could not well be called a beggar,

for he never asked for any thing--even on the road, when some

passenger, ignorant of his wild history, saw the poor wanderer, a piece

of money was often bestowed to the silent appeal of his rags, his

haggard features, and his grizly hair and beard.

Thus eternally up and down the country was he moving about, and hence

his name of "Tatther the Road."

It was not long until the old man gained the summit of the hill, but

while he was approaching, many were the "wonders" what in the name of

fortune could have brought Tatther the Road there.--"And by dad," said

one, "he's pullin' fut[8] at a great rate, and it's wondherful how an

owld cock like him can clamber up the hill so fast."

"Aye," said another, "and with the weight he's carrying too."

"Sure enough," said a third. "Faix he's got a fine lob in his wallet

to-day."

"Whisht!" said O'Hara.--"Here he comes, and his ears are as sharp as

needles."

"And his eyes too," said a woman. "Lord be good to me, did you ever

see poor Tatther's eyes look so terrible bright afore?"

And indeed this remark was not uncalled for, for the eyes of the old

man almost gleamed from under the shaggy brows that were darkly bent

over them, as, with long strides, he approached the crowd which opened

before him, and he stalked up to the side of the grave and threw down

the ponderous wallet, which fell to the ground with a heavy crash.

"You were going to close the grave too soon," were the first words he

uttered.

"Sure when the tithe is wanst buried, what more have we to do?" said

one of the by-standers.

"Aye, you have put the tithe in the grave--but will it stay there?"

"Why indeed," said Larry Lanigan, "I think he'd be a bowld resurrection

man that would come to rise it."

"I have brought you something here to lie heavy on it, and 't will

never rise more," said the maniac, striking forth his arm fiercely, and

clenching his hand firmly.

"And what have you brought us, Agrah?" said O'Hara kindly to him.

"Look here," said the other, unfolding his wallet and displaying five

or six large stones.

Some were tempted to laugh, but a mysterious dread of the wild being

before them, prevented any outbreak of mirth.

"God help the craythur!" said a woman, so loud as to be heard. "He has

brought a bag full o' stones to throw a top o' the tithes to keep them

down--O wisha! wisha! poor craythur!"

"Aye--stones!"--said the maniac; "but do you know; what stones these

are? Look woman--" and his manner became intensely impressive from the

excitement even of madness, under which he was acting.--"Look, I

say--there's not a stone there that's not a curse--aye a curse so heavy

that nothing can ever rise that falls under it."

"Oh I don't want to say aginst it, dear," said the woman.

The maniac did not seem to notice her submissive answer, but pursuing

his train of madness, continued his address in his native tongue, whose

figurative and poetical construction was heightened in its effect, by a

manner and action almost theatrically descriptive.

"You all remember the Widow Dempsy. The first choice of her bosom was

long gone, but the son she loved was left to her, and her heart was not

quite lonely. And at the widow's hearth there was still a welcome for

the stranger--and the son of her heart made his choice, like the father

before him, and the joy of the widow's house was increased, for the son

of her heart was happy.--And in due time the widow welcomed the

fair-haired child of her son to the world, and a dream of her youth

came over her, as she saw the joy of her son and her daughter, when

they kissed the fair-haired child--But the hand of God was heavy in the

land, and the fever fell hard upon the poor--and the widow was again

bereft,--for the son of her heart was taken, and the wife of his bosom

also--and the fair-haired child was left an orphan. And the widow

would have laid down her bones and died, but for the fair-haired child

that had none to look to but her. And the widow blessed God's name and

bent her head to the blow--and the orphan that was left to her was the

pulse of her heart, and often she looked on his pale face with a

fearful eye, for health was not on the cheek of the boy--but she

cherished him tenderly.

"But the ways of the world grew crooked to the lone woman, when the

son, that was the staff of her age, was gone, and one trouble followed

another, but still the widow was not quite destitute.--And what was it

brought the heavy stroke of distress and disgrace to the widow's

door?--The tithe! The widow's cow was driven and sold to pay a few

shillings; the drop of milk was no longer in the widow's house, and the

tender child that needed the nourishment, wasted away before the

widow's eyes, like snow from the ditch, and died: and fast the widow

followed the son of her heart and his fair-haired boy.

"And now, the home of an honest race is a heap of rubbish; and the

bleak wind whistles over the hearth where the warm welcome was ever

found; and the cold frog crouches under the ruins.

"These stones are from that desolate place, and the curse of God that

follows oppression is on them.--And let them be cast into the grave,

and they will lie with the weight of a mountain on the monster that is

buried for ever."

So saying, he lifted stone after stone, and flung them fiercely into

the pits then, after a moment's pause upon its verge, he suddenly

strode away with the same noiseless step that he had approached, and

left the scene in silence.

[1] The _cabhien_ was an ancient head-dress of gorgeous material, and

the name is applied in derision to a shabby hat.

[2] The crop being often valued in a _green state_ in Ireland, the

appraiser becomes a very obnoxious person.

[3] Botany Bay.

[4] The stump of pipe.

[5] Excepting.

[6] Keeners are persons who sing the Ulican, or death wail, round the

coffin of the deceased, and repeat the good deeds of the departed.

[7] I think Ware mentions an ancient crown being dug up at the "The

Devil's Bit."

[8] _Pull foot_ is a figurative expression to express making haste.

THE KNIGHTSBRIDGE MYSTERY

By CHARLES READE

I

In Charles the Second's day the "Swan" was denounced by the dramatists

as a house where unfaithful wives and mistresses met their gallants.

But in the next century, when John Clarke was the Freeholder, no

special imputation of that sort rested on it: it was a country inn with

large stables, horsed the Brentford coach, and entertained man and

beast on journeys long or short. It had also permanent visitors,

especially in summer; for it was near London, and yet a rural retreat;

meadows on each side, Hyde Park at back, Knightsbridge Green in front.

Amongst the permanent lodgers was Mr. Gardiner, a substantial man; and

Captain Cowen, a retired officer of moderate means, had lately taken

two rooms for himself and his son. Mr. Gardiner often joined the

company in the public room, but the Cowens kept to themselves up-stairs.

This was soon noticed and resented, in that age of few books and free

converse. Some said, "Oh, we are not good enough for him!", others

inquired what a half-pay captain had to give himself airs about.

Candor interposed and supplied the climax, "Nay, my masters, the

Captain may be in hiding from duns, or from the runners: now I think

on't, the York mail was robbed scarce a se'nnight before his worship

came a-hiding here."

But the landlady's tongue ran the other way. Her weight was sixteen

stone, her sentiments were her interests, and her tongue her tomahawk.

"'Tis pity," said she, one day, "some folk can't keep their tongues

from blackening of their betters. The Captain is a civil-spoken

gentleman--Lord send there were more of them in these parts!--as takes

his hat off to me whenever he meets me, and pays his reckoning weekly.

If he has a mind to be private, what business is that of yours, or

ours? But curs must bark at their betters."

Detraction, thus roughly quelled for certain seconds, revived at

intervals whenever Dame Gust's broad back was turned. It was mildly

encountered one evening by Gardiner, "Nay, good sirs," said he, "you

mistake the worthy Captain. To have fought at Blenheim and Malplaquet,

no man has less vanity. 'Tis for his son he holds aloof. He guards

the youth like a mother, and will not have him to hear our tap-room

jests. He worships the boy--a sullen lout, sirs; but paternal love is

blind. He told me once he had loved his wife dearly, and lost her

young, and this was all he had of her. 'And,' said he, 'I'd spill

blood like water for him, my own the first.'--'Then, sir,' says I, 'I

fear he will give you a sore heart one day.'--'And welcome,' says my

Captain, and his face like iron."

Somebody remarked that no man keeps out of company who is good company;

but Mr. Gardiner parried that dogma. "When young master is abed, my

neighbor does sometimes invite me to share a bottle; and a sprightlier

companion I would not desire. Such stories of battles, and duels, and

love intrigues!"

"Now there's an old fox for you," said one, approvingly, It reconciled

him to the Captain's decency to find that it was only hypocrisy.

"I like not--a man--who wears--a mask," hiccoughed a hitherto silent

personage, revealing his clandestine drunkenness and unsuspected wisdom

at one blow.

These various theories were still fermenting in the bosom of the

"Swan," when one day there rode up to the door a gorgeous officer, hot

from the minister's levee, in scarlet and gold, with an order like a

star-fish glittering on his breast. His servant, a private soldier,

rode behind him, and, slipping hastily from his saddle, held his

master's horse while he dismounted. Just then Captain Cowen came out

for his afternoon walk. He started, and cried out, "Colonel

Barrington!"

"Ay, brother," cried the other, and instantly the two officers

embraced, and even kissed each other, for that feminine custom had not

yet retired across the Channel; and these were soldiers who had fought

and bled side by side, and nursed each other in turn; and your true

soldier does not nurse by halves: his vigilance and tenderness are an

example to women, and he rustleth not.

Captain Cowen invited Colonel Barrington to his room, and that warrior

marched down the passage after him, single file, with long brass spurs

and sabre clinking at his heels; and the establishment ducked and

smiled, and respected Captain Cowen for the reason we admire the moon.

Seated in Cowen's room, the new-comer said, heartily, "Well, Ned, I

come not empty-handed. Here is thy pension at last;" and handed him a

parchment with a seal like a poached egg.

Cowen changed color, and thanked him with an emotion he rarely

betrayed, and gloated over the precious document. His cast-iron

features relaxed, and he said, "It comes in the nick of time, for now I

can send my dear Jack to college."

This led somehow to an exposure of his affairs. He had just £110 a

year, derived from the sale of his commission, which he had invested,

at fifteen per cent, with a well-known mercantile house in the City.

"So now," said he, "I shall divide it all in three; Jack will want two

parts to live at Oxford, and I can do well enough here on one." The

rest of the conversation does not matter, so I dismiss it and Colonel

Barrington for the time. A few days afterward Jack went to college,

and Captain Cowen reduced his expenses, and dined at the shilling

ordinary, and, indeed, took all his moderate repasts in public.

Instead of the severe and reserved character he had worn while his son

was with him, he now shone out a boon companion, and sometimes kept the

table in a roar with his marvellous mimicries of all the characters,

male or female, that lived in the inn or frequented it, and sometimes

held them breathless with adventures, dangers, intrigues, in which a

leading part had been played by himself or his friends.

He became quite a popular character, except with one or two envious

bodies, whom he eclipsed; they revenged themselves by saying it was all

braggadocio: his battles had been fought over a bottle, and by the

fireside.

The district east and west of Knightsbridge had long been infested with

foot-pads; they robbed passengers in the country lanes, which then

abounded, and sometimes on the King's highway, from which those lanes

offered an easy escape.

One moonlight night Captain Cowen was returning home alone from an

entertainment at Fulham, when suddenly the air seemed to fill with a

woman's screams and cries. They issued from a lane on his right hand.

He whipped out his sword and dashed down the lane. It took a sudden

turn, and in a moment he came upon three foot-pads, robbing and

maltreating an old gentleman and his wife. The old man's sword lay at

a distance, struck from his feeble hand; the woman's tongue proved the

better weapon, for, at least, it brought an ally.

The nearest robber, seeing the Captain come at him with his drawn sword

glittering in the moonshine, fired hastily, and grazed his cheek, and

was skewered like a frog the next moment; his cry of agony mingled with

two shouts of dismay, and the other foot-pads fled; but, even as they

turned, Captain Cowen's nimble blade entered the shoulder of one, and

pierced the fleshy part. He escaped, however, but howling and bleeding.

Captain Cowen handed over the lady and gentleman to the people who

flocked to the place, now the work was done, and the disabled robber to

the guardians of the public peace, who arrived last of all. He himself

withdrew apart and wiped his sword very carefully and minutely with a

white pocket-handkerchief, and then retired.

He was so far from parading his exploit that he went round by the park

and let himself into the "Swan" with his private key, and was going

quietly to bed, when the chambermaid met him, and up flew her arms,

with cries of dismay. "Oh, Captain! Captain! Look at you--smothered

in blood! I shall faint."

"Tush! Silly wench!" said Captain Cowen. "I am not hurt."

"Not hurt, sir? And bleeding like a pig! Your cheek--your poor cheek!"

Captain Cowen put up his hand, and found that blood was really welling

from his cheek and ear.

He looked grave for a moment, then assured her it was but a scratch,

and offered to convince her of that. "Bring me some luke-warm water,

and thou shalt be my doctor. But, Barbara, prithee publish it not."

Next morning an officer of justice inquired after him at the "Swan,"

and demanded his attendance at Bow Street, at two that afternoon, to

give evidence against the footpads. This was the very thing he wished

to avoid; but there was no evading the summons.

The officer was invited into the bar by the landlady, and sang the

gallant Captain's exploit, with his own variations. The inn began to

ring with Cowen's praises. Indeed, there was now but one detractor

left--the hostler, Daniel Cox, a drunken fellow of sinister aspect, who

had for some time stared and lowered at Captain Cowen, and muttered

mysterious things, doubts as to his being a real captain, etc. Which

incoherent murmurs of a muddle-headed drunkard were not treated as

oracular by any human creature, though the stable-boy once went so far

as to say, "I sometimes almost thinks as how our Dan do know summut;

only he don't rightly know what 'tis, along o' being always muddled in

liquor."

Cowen, who seemed to notice little, but noticed everything, had

observed the lowering looks of this fellow, and felt he had an enemy:

it even made him a little uneasy, though he was too proud and

self-possessed to show it.

With this exception, then, everybody greeted him with hearty

compliments, and he was cheered out of the inn, marching to Bow Street.

Daniel Cox, who--as accidents will happen--was sober that morning, saw

him out, and then put on his own coat.

"Take thou charge of the stable, Sam," said he.

"Why, where be'st going, at this time o' day?"

"I be going to Bow Street," said Daniel doggedly.

At Bow Street Captain Cowen was received with great respect, and a seat

given him by the sitting magistrate while some minor cases were

disposed of.

In due course the highway robbery was called and proved by the parties

who, unluckily for the accused, had been actually robbed before Cowen

interfered.

Then the oath was tendered to Cowen: he stood up by the magistrate's

side and deposed, with military brevity and exactness, to the facts I

have related, but refused to swear to the identity of the individual

culprit who stood pale and trembling at the dock.

The attorney for the Crown, after pressing in vain, said, "Quite right,

Captain Cowen; a witness cannot be too scrupulous."

He then called an officer, who had found the robber leaning against a

railing fainting from loss of blood, scarce a furlong from the scene of

the robbery, and wounded in the shoulder. That let in Captain Cowen's

evidence, and the culprit was committed for trial, and soon after

peached upon his only comrade at large. The other lay in the hospital

at Newgate.

The magistrate complimented Captain Cowen on his conduct and his

evidence, and he went away universally admired. Yet he was not elated,

nor indeed content. Sitting by the magistrate's side, after he had

given his evidence, he happened to look all round the Court, and in a

distant corner he saw the enormous mottled nose and sinister eyes of

Daniel Cox glaring at him with a strange but puzzled expression.

Cowen had learned to read faces, and he said to himself: "What is there

in that ruffian's mind about me? Did he know me years ago? I cannot

remember him. Curse the beast--one would almost--think--he is

cudgelling his drunken memory. I'll keep an eye on you."

He went home thoughtful and discomposed, because this drunkard glowered

at him so. The reception he met with at the "Swan" effaced the

impression. He was received with acclamations, and now that publicity

was forced on him, he accepted it, and revelled in popularity.

About this time he received a letter from his son, enclosing a notice

from the college tutor, speaking highly of his ability, good conduct,

devotion to study.

This made the father swell with loving pride.

Jack hinted modestly that there were unavoidable expenses, and his

funds were dwindling. He enclosed an account that showed how the money

went.

The father wrote back and bade him be easy; he should have every

farthing required, and speedily. "For," said he, "my half-year's

interest is due now."

Two days after he had a letter from his man of business, begging him to

call. He went with alacrity, making sure his money was waiting for him

as usual.

His lawyer received him very gravely, and begged him to be seated. He

then broke to him some appalling news, The great house of Brown,

Molyneux and Co. had suspended payments at noon the day before, and

were not expected to pay a shilling in the pound. Captain Cowen's

little fortune was gone--all but his pension of eighty pounds a year.

He sat like a man turned to stone; then he clasped his hands with

agony, and uttered two words--no more--"My son!"

He rose and left the place like one in a dream. He got down to

Knightsbridge, he hardly knew how. At the very door of the inn he fell

down in a fit. The people of the inn were round him in a moment, and

restoratives freely supplied. His sturdy nature soon revived; but,

with the moral and physical shock, his lips were slightly distorted

over his clenched teeth. His face, too, was ashy pale.

When he came to himself, the first face he noticed was that of Daniel

Cox, eying him, not with pity, but with puzzled curiosity. Cowen

shuddered and closed his own eyes to avoid this blighting glare. Then,

without opening them, he muttered, "What has befallen me? I feel no

wound."

"Laws forbid, sir!" said the landlady, leaning over him. "Your honor

did but swoon for once, to show you was born of a woman, and not made

of nought but steel. Here, you gaping loons and sluts, help the

Captain to his room amongst ye, and then go about your business."

This order was promptly executed, so far as assisting Captain Cowen to

rise; but he was no sooner on his feet than he waved them all from him

haughtily, and said, "Let me be. It is the mind--it is the mind;" and

he smote his forehead in despair, for now it all came back on him.

Then he rushed into the inn, and locked himself into his room. Female

curiosity buzzed about the doors, but was not admitted until he had

recovered his fortitude, and formed a bitter resolution to defend

himself and his son against all mankind.

At last there came a timid tap, and a mellow voice said, "It is only

me, Captain. Prithee let me in."

He opened to her, and there was Barbara with a large tray and a

snow-white cloth. She spread a table deftly, and uncovered a roast

capon, and uncorked a bottle of white port, talking all the time. "The

mistress says you must eat a bit, and drink this good wine, for her

sake. Indeed, sir, 'twill do you good after your swoon." With many

such encouraging words she got him to sit down and eat, and then filled

his glass and put it to his lips. He could not eat much, but he drank

the white port--a wine much prized, and purer than the purple vintage

of our day.

At last came Barbara's post-diet. "But alack! to think of your

fainting dead away! O Captain, what is the trouble?"

The tear was in Barbara's eye, though she was the emissary of Dame

Cust's curiosity, and all curiosity herself.

Captain Cowen, who had been expecting this question for some time,

replied, doggedly, "I have lost the best friend I had in the world."

"Dear heart!" said Barbara, and a big tear of sympathy, that had been

gathering ever since she entered the room, rolled down her cheeks.

She put up a corner of her apron to her eyes. "Alas, poor soul!" said

she. "Ay, I do know how hard it is to love and lose; but bethink you,

sir, 'tis the lot of man. Our own turn must come. And you have your

son left to thank God for, and a warm friend or two in this place, tho'

they be but humble."

"Ay, good wench," said the soldier, his iron nature touched for a

moment by her goodness and simplicity, "and none I value more than

thee. But leave me awhile."

The young woman's honest cheeks reddened at the praise of such a man.

"Your will's my pleasure, sir," said she, and retired, leaving the

capon and the wine.

Any little compunction he might have at refusing his confidence to this

humble friend did not trouble him long. He looked on women as leaky

vessels; and he had firmly resolved not to make his situation worse by

telling the base world that he was poor. Many a hard rub had put a

fine point on this man of steel.

He glozed the matter, too, in his own mind. "I told her no lie. I

have lost my best friend, for I've lost my money."

From that day Captain Cowen visited the tap-room no more, and indeed

seldom went out by daylight. He was all alone now, for Mr. Gardiner

was gone to Wiltshire to collect his rents. In his solitary chamber

Cowen ruminated his loss and the villany of mankind, and his busy brain

revolved scheme after scheme to repair the impending ruin of his son's

prospects. It was there the iron entered his soul. The example of the

very footpads he had baffled occurred to him in his more desperate

moments, but he fought the temptation down: and in due course one of

them was transported, and one hung; the other languished in Newgate.

By and by he began to be mysteriously busy, and the door always locked.

No clew was ever found to his labors but bits of melted wax in the

fender and a tuft or two of gray hair, and it was never discovered in

Knightsbridge that he often begged in the City at dusk, in a disguise

so perfect that a frequenter of the "Swan" once gave him a groat. Thus

did he levy his tax upon the stony place that had undone him.

Instead of taking his afternoon walk as heretofore, he would sit

disconsolate on the seat of a staircase window that looked into the

yard, and so take the air and sun: and it was owing to this new habit

he overheard, one day, a dialogue, in which the foggy voice of the

hostler predominated at first. He was running down Captain Cowen to a

pot-boy. The pot-boy stood up for him. That annoyed Cox. He spoke

louder and louder the more he was opposed, till at last he bawled out,

"I tell ye I've seen him a-sitting by the judge, and I've seen him in

the dock."

At these words Captain Cowen recoiled, though he was already out of

sight, and his eye glittered like a basilisk's.

But immediately a new voice broke upon the scene, a woman's. "Thou

foul-mouthed knave! Is it for thee to slander men of worship, and give

the inn a bad name? Remember I have but to lift my finger to hang

thee, so drive me not to't. Begone to thy horses this moment; thou art

not fit to be among Christians. Begone, I say, or it shall be the

worse for thee;" and she drove him across the yard, and followed him up

with a current of invectives, eloquent even at a distance though the

words were no longer distinct: and who should this be but the

housemaid, Barbara Lamb, so gentle, mellow, and melodious before the

gentlefolk, and especially her hero, Captain Cowen!

As for Daniel Cox, he cowered, writhed, and wriggled away before her,

and slipped into the stable.

Captain Cowen was now soured by trouble, and this persistent enmity of

that fellow roused at last a fixed and deadly hatred in his mind, all

the more intense that fear mingled with it.

He sounded Barbara; asked her what nonsense that ruffian had been

talking, and what he had done that she could hang him for. But Barbara

would not say a malicious word against a fellow-servant in cold blood.

"I can keep a secret," said she. "If he keeps his tongue off you, I'll

keep mine."

"So be it," said Cowen. "Then I warn you I am sick of his insolence;

and drunkards must be taught not to make enemies of sober men nor fools

of wise men." He said this so bitterly that, to soothe him, she begged

him not to trouble about the ravings of a sot. "Dear heart," said she,

"nobody heeds Dan Cox."

Some days afterward she told him that Dan had been drinking harder than

ever, and wouldn't trouble honest folk long, for he had the delusions

that go before a drunkard's end; why, he had told the stable-boy he had

seen a vision of himself climb over the garden wall, and enter the

house by the back door. "The poor wretch says he knew himself by his

bottle nose and his cowskin waistcoat; and, to be sure, there is no

such nose in the parish--thank Heaven for't!--and not many such

waistcoats." She laughed heartily, but Cowen's lip curled in a

venomous sneer. He said: "More likely 'twas the knave himself. Look

to your spoons, if such a face as that walks by night." Barbara turned

grave directly; he eyed her askant, and saw the random shot had gone

home.

Captain Cowen now often slept in the City, alleging business.

Mr. Gardiner wrote from Salisbury, ordering his room to be ready and

his sheets well aired.

One afternoon he returned with a bag and a small valise, prodigiously

heavy. He had a fire lighted, though it was fine autumn, for he was

chilled with his journey, and invited Captain Cowen to sup with him.

The latter consented, but begged it might be an early supper, as he

must sleep in the City.

"I am sorry for that," said Gardiner. "I have a hundred and eighty

guineas there in that bag, and a man could get into my room from yours."

"Not if you lock the middle door," said Cowen. "But I can leave you

the key of my outer door, for that matter."

This offer was accepted; but still Mr. Gardiner felt uneasy. There had

been several robberies at inns, and it was a rainy, gusty night. He

was depressed and ill at ease. Then Captain Cowen offered him his

pistols, and helped him load them--two bullets in each. He also went

and fetched him a bottle of the best port, and after drinking one glass

with him, hurried away, and left his key with him for further security.

Mr. Gardiner, left to himself, made up a great fire and took a glass or

two of the wine; it seemed remarkably heady and raised his spirits.

After all, it was only for one night; to-morrow he would deposit his

gold in the bank. He began to unpack his things and put his nightdress

to the fire; but by and by he felt so drowsy that he did but take his

coat off, put his pistols under the pillow, and lay down on the bed and

fell fast asleep.

That night Barbara Lamb awoke twice, thinking each time she heard doors

open and shut on the floor below her.

But it was a gusty night, and she concluded it was most likely the

wind. Still a residue of uneasiness made her rise at five instead of

six, and she lighted her tinder and came down with a rushlight. She

found Captain Cowen's door wide open; it had been locked when she went

to bed. That alarmed her greatly. She looked in. A glance was

enough. She cried, "Thieves! thieves!" and in a moment uttered scream

upon scream.

In an incredibly short time pale and eager faces of men and women

filled the passage.

Cowen's room, being open, was entered first. On the floor lay what

Barbara had seen at a glance--his portmanteau rifled and the clothes

scattered about. The door of communication was ajar; they opened it,

and an appalling sight met their eyes: Mr. Gardiner was lying in a pool

of blood and moaning feebly. There was little hope of saving him; no

human body could long survive such a loss of the vital fluid. But it

so happened there was a country surgeon in the house. He stanched the

wounds--there were three--and somebody or other had the sense to beg

the victim to make a statement. He was unable at first; but, under

powerful stimulants, revived at last, and showed a strong wish to aid

justice in avenging him. By this time they had got a magistrate to

attend, and he put his ear to the dying man's lips; but others heard,

so hushed was the room and so keen the awe and curiosity of each

panting heart.

"I had gold in my portmanteau, and was afraid. I drank a bottle of

wine with Captain Cowen, and he left me. He lent me his key and his

pistols. I locked both doors. I felt very sleepy, and lay down. When

I woke, a man was leaning over my portmanteau. His back was toward me.

I took a pistol, and aimed steadily. It missed fire. The man turned

and sprang on me. I had caught up a knife, one we had for supper. I

stabbed him with all my force. He wrested it from me, and I felt

piercing blows. I am slain. Ay, I am slain."

"But the man, sir. Did you not see his face at all?"

"Not till he fell on me. But then, very plainly. The moon shone."

"Pray describe him."

"Broken hat."

"Yes."

"Hairy waistcoat."

"Yes."

"Enormous nose."

"Do you know him?"

"Ay. The hostler, Cox."

There was a groan of horror and a cry for vengeance.

"Silence," said the magistrate. "Mr. Gardiner, you are a dying man.

Words may kill. Be careful. Have you any doubts?"

"About what?"

"That the villain was Daniel Cox."

"None whatever."

At these words the men and women, who were glaring with pale faces and

all their senses strained at the dying man and his faint yet terrible

denunciation, broke into two bands; some remained rooted to the place,

the rest hurried, with cries of vengeance, in search of Daniel Cox.

They were met in the yard by two constables, and rushed first to the

stables, not that they hoped to find him there. Of course he had

absconded with his booty.

The stable door was ajar. They tore it open.

The gray dawn revealed Cox fast asleep on the straw in the first empty

stall, and his bottle in the manger. His clothes were bloody, and the

man was drunk. They pulled him, cursed him, struck him, and would have

torn him in pieces, but the constables interfered, set him up against

the rail, like timber, and searched his bosom, and found--a wound; then

turned all his pockets inside out, amidst great expectation, and

found--three halfpence and the key of the stable door.

CHAPTER II

They ransacked the straw, and all the premises, and found--nothing.

Then, to make him sober and get something out of him, they pumped upon

his head till he was very nearly choked. However, it told on him. He

gasped for breath awhile, and rolled his eyes, and then coolly asked

them had they found the villain.

They shook their fists at him. "Ay, we have found the villain,

red-handed."

"I mean him as prowls about these parts in my waistcoat, and drove his

knife into me last night--wonder a didn't kill me out of hand. Have ye

found him amongst ye?"

This question met with a volley of jeers and execrations and the

constables pinioned him, and bundled him off in a cart to Bow Street,

to wait examination.

Meantime two Bow Street runners came down with a warrant, and made a

careful examination of the premises. The two keys were on the table.

Mr. Gardiner's outer door was locked. There was no money either in his

portmanteau of Captain Cowen's. Both pistols were found loaded, but no

priming in the pan of the one that lay on the bed; the other was

primed, but the bullets were above the powder.

Bradbury, one of the runners, took particular notice of all.

Outside, blood was traced from the stable to the garden wall, and under

this wall, in the grass, a bloody knife was found belonging to the

"Swan" Inn. There was one knife less in Mr. Gardiner's room than had

been carried up to his supper.

Mr. Gardiner lingered till noon, but never spoke again.

The news spread swiftly, and Captain Cowen came home in the afternoon,

very pale and shocked.

He had heard of a robbery and murder at the "Swan," and came to know

more. The landlady told him all that had transpired, and that the

villain Cox was in prison.

Cowan listened thoughtfully, and said "Cox! No doubt he is a knave:

but murder!--I should never have suspected him of that."

The landlady pooh-poohed his doubts. "Why, sir, the poor gentleman

knew him, and wounded him in self-defence, and the rogue was found

a-bleeding from that very wound, and my knife, as done the murder, not

a stone's throw from him as done it, which it was that Dan Cox, and

he'll swing for't, please God." Then, changing her tone, she said,

solemnly, "You'll come and see him, sir?"

"Yes," said Cowen, resolutely, with scarce a moment's hesitation.

The landlady led the way, and took the keys out of her pocket, and

opened Cowen's door. "We keep all locked," said she, half

apologetically; "the magistrate bade us; and everything as we found

it--God help us! There--look at your portmanteau. I wish you may not

have been robbed as well."

"No matter," said he.

"But it matters to me," said she, "for the credit of the house." Then

she gave him the key of the inner door, and waved her hand toward it,

and sat down and began to cry.

Cowen went in and saw the appalling sight. He returned quickly,

looking like a ghost, and muttered, "This is a terrible business."

"It is a bad business for me and all," said she. "He have robbed you

too, I'll go bail."

Captain Cowen examined his trunk carefully. "Nothing to speak of,"

said he. "I've lost eight guineas and my gold watch."

"There!--there!--there!" cried the landlady.

"What does that matter, dame? He has lost his life."

"Ay, poor soul. But 'twont bring him back, you being robbed and all.

Was ever such an unfortunate woman? Murder and robbery in my house!

Travellers will shun it like a pest-house. And the new landlord he

only wanted a good excuse to take it down altogether."

This was followed by more sobbing and crying. Cowen took her

down-stairs into the bar, and comforted her. They had a glass of

spirits together, and he encouraged the flow of her egotism, till at

last she fully persuaded herself it was her calamity that one man was

robbed and another murdered in her house.

Cowen, always a favorite, quite won her heart by falling into this view

of the matter, and when he told her he must go back to the City again,

for he had important business, and besides had no money left, either in

his pockets or his rifled valise, she encouraged him to go, and said,

kindly, indeed it was no place for him now; it was very good of him to

come back at all: but both apartments should be scoured and made decent

in a very few days; and a new Carpet down in Mr. Gardiner's room.

So Cowen went back to the City, and left this notable woman to mop up

her murder.

At Bow Street next morning, in answer to the evidence of his guilt, Cox

told a tale which the magistrate said was even more ridiculous than

most of the stories uneducated criminals get up on such occasions; with

this single comment he committed Cox for trial.

Everybody was of the magistrate's opinion, except a single Bow Street

runner, the same who had already examined the premises. This man

suspected Cox, but had one qualm of doubt founded on the place where he

had discovered the knife, and the circumstance of the blood being

traced from that place to the stable, and not from the inn to the

stable, and on a remark Cox had made to him in the cart. "I don't

belong to the house. I haan't got no keys to go in and out o' nights.

And if I took a hatful of gold, I'd be off with it into another

country--wouldn't you? Him as took the gentleman's money, he knew

where 'twas, and he have got it: I didn't and I haan't."

Bradbury came down to the "Swan," and asked the landlady a question or

two. She gave him short answers. He then told her that he wished to

examine the wine that had come down from Mr. Gardiner's room.

The landlady looked him in the face, and said it had been drunk by the

servants or thrown away long ago.

"I have my doubts of that," said he.

"And welcome," said she.

Then he wished to examine the keyholes.

"No," said she; "there has been prying enough into my house."

Said he angrily, "You are obstructing justice. It is very suspicious."

"It is you that is suspicious, and a mischief-maker into the bargain,"

said she. "How do I know what you might put into my wine and my

keyholes, and say you found it? You are well known, you Bow Street

runners, for your hanky-panky tricks. Have you got a search-warrant,

to throw more discredit upon my house? No? Then pack! and learn the

law before you teach it me."

Bradbury retired, bitterly indignant, and his indignation strengthened

his faint doubt of Cox's guilt.

He set a friend to watch the "Swan," and he himself gave his mind to

the whole case, and visited Cox in Newgate three times before his trial.

The next novelty was that legal assistance was provided for Cox by a

person who expressed compassion for his poverty and inability to defend

himself, guilty or not guilty; and that benevolent person was--Captain

Cowen.

In due course Daniel Cox was arraigned at the bar of the Old Bailey for

robbery and murder.

The deposition of the murdered man was put in by the Crown, and the

witnesses sworn who heard it, and Captain Cowen was called to support a

portion of it. He swore that he supped with the deceased and loaded

one pistol for him while Mr. Gardiner loaded the other; lent him the

key of his own door for further security, and himself slept in the City.

The judge asked him where, and he said, "13 Farringdon Street."

It was elicited from him that he had provided counsel for the prisoner.

His evidence was very short and to the point. It did not directly

touch the accused, and the defendant's counsel--in spite of his

client's eager desire--declined to cross-examine Captain Cowen. He

thought a hostile examination of so respectable a witness, who brought

nothing home to the accused, would only raise more indignation against

his client.

The prosecution was strengthened by the reluctant evidence of Barbara

Lamb. She deposed that three years ago Cox had been detected by her

stealing money from a gentleman's table in the "Swan" Inn, and she gave

the details.

The judge asked her whether this was at night

"No, my lord; at about four of the clock. He is never in the house at

night; the mistress can't abide him."

"Has he any key of the house?"

"Oh, dear, no, my lord."

The rest of the evidence for the Crown is virtually before the reader.

For the defence it was proved that the man was found drunk, with no

money nor keys upon him, and that the knife was found under the wall,

and the blood was traceable from the wall to the stable. Bradbury, who

proved this, tried to get in about the wine; but this was stopped as

irrelevant. "There is only one person under suspicion," said the

Judge, rather sternly.

As counsel were not allowed in that day to make speeches to the jury,

but only to examine and cross-examine and discuss points of law, Daniel

Cox had to speak in his own defence.

"My lord," said he, "it was my double done it."

"Your what?" asked my lord, a little peevishly.

"My double. There's a rogue prowls about the 'Swan' at nights, which

you couldn't tell him from me. (Laughter.) You needn't to laugh me to

the gallows. I tell ye he have got a nose like mine." (Laughter.)

Clerk of Arraigns. Keep silence in the court, on pain of imprisonment.

"And he have got a waistcoat the very spit of mine, and a tumble-down

hat such as I do wear. I saw him go by and let hisself into the 'Swan'

with a key, and I told Sam Pott next morning."

Judge. Who is Sam Pott?

Culprit. Why, my stable-boy, to be sure.

Judge. Is he in court?

Culprit. I don't know. Ay, there he is,

Judge. Then you'd better call him.

Culprit (shouting). Hy! Sam!

Sam. Here be I. (Loud laughter.)

The judge explained, calmly, that to call a witness meant to put him in

the box and swear him, and that although it was irregular, yet he

should allow Pott to be sworn, if it would do the prisoner any good.

Prisoner's counsel said he had no wish to swear Mr. Pott.

"Well, Mr. Gurney," said the judge, "I don't think he can do you any

harm." Meaning in so desperate a case.

Thereupon Sam Pott was sworn, and deposed that Cox had told him about

this double.

"When?"

"Often and often."

"Before the murder?"

"Long afore that."

Counsel for the Crown. Did you ever see this double?

"Not I."

Counsel. I thought not.

Daniel Cox went on to say that on the night of the murder he was up

with a sick horse, and he saw his double let himself out of the inn the

back way, and then turn round and close the door softly; so he slipped

out to meet him. But the double saw him, and made for the garden wall.

He ran up and caught him with one leg over the wall, and seized a black

bag he was carrying off; the figure dropped it, and he heard a lot Of

money chink: that thereupon he cried "Thieves!" and seized the man; but

immediately received a blow, and lost his senses for a time. When he

came to, the man and the bags were both gone, and he felt so sick that

he staggered to the stable and drank a pint of neat brandy, and he

remembered no more till they pumped on him, and told him he had robbed

and murdered a gentleman inside the "Swan" Inn. "What they can't tell

me," said Daniel, beginning to shout, "is how I could know who has got

money, and who hasn't, inside the 'Swan' Inn. I keeps the stables, not

the inn: and where be my keys to open and shut the 'Swan'? I never had

none. And where's the gentleman's money? 'Twas somebody in the inn as

done it, for to have the money, and when you find the money, you'll

find the man."

The prosecuting counsel ridiculed this defence, and inter alia asked

the jury whether they thought it was a double the witness Lamb had

caught robbing in the inn three years ago.

The judge summed up very closely, giving the evidence of every witness.

What follows is a mere synopsis of his charge.

He showed it was beyond doubt that Mr. Gardiner returned to the inn

with money, having collected his rents in Wiltshire; and this was known

in the inn, and proved by several, and might have transpired in the

yard or the taproom. The unfortunate gentleman took Captain Cowen, a

respectable person, his neighbor in the inn, into his confidence, and

revealed his uneasiness. Captain Cowen swore that he supped with him,

but could not stay all night, most unfortunately. But he encouraged

him, left him his pistols, and helped him load them.

Then his lordship read the dying man's deposition. The person thus

solemnly denounced was found in the stable, bleeding from a recent

wound, which seems to connect him at once with the deed as described by

the dying man.

"But here," said my lord, "the chain is no longer perfect. A knife,

taken from the 'Swan,' was found under the garden wall, and the first

traces of blood commenced there, and continued to the stable, and were

abundant on the straw and on the person of the accused. This was

proved by the constable and others. No money was found on him, and no

keys that could have opened any outer doors of the 'Swan' Inn. The

accused had, however, three years before been guilty of a theft from a

gentleman in the inn, which negatives his pretence that he always

confined himself to the stables. It did not, however, appear that on

the occasion of the theft he had unlocked any doors, or possessed the

means. The witness for the Crown, Barbara Lamb, was clear on that.

"The prisoner's own solution of the mystery was not very credible. He

said he had a double--or a person wearing his clothes and appearance;

and he had seen this person prowling about long before the murder, and

had spoken of the double to one Pott. Pott deposed that Cox had spoken

of this double more than once; but admitted he never saw the double

with his own eyes.

"This double, says the accused, on the fatal night let himself out of

the 'Swan' Inn and escaped to the garden wall. There he (Cox) came up

with this mysterious person, and a scuffle ensued in which a bag was

dropped and gave the sound of coin; and then Cox held the man and cried

'Thieves!' but presently received a wound and fainted, and on

recovering himself, staggered to the stables and drank a pint of brandy.

"The story sounds ridiculous, and there is no direct evidence to back

it; but there is a circumstance that lends some color to it. There was

one blood-stained instrument, and no more, found on the premises, and

that knife answers to the description given by the dying man, and,

indeed, may be taken to be the very knife missing from his room; and

this knife was found under the garden wall, and there the blood

commenced and was traced to the stable.

"Here," said my lord, "to my mind, lies the defence. Look at the case

on all sides, gentlemen: an undoubted murder done by hands; no

suspicion resting on any known person but the prisoner--a man who had

already robbed in the inn; a confident recognition by one whose

deposition is legal evidence, but evidence we cannot cross-examine; and

a recognition by moonlight only and in the heat of a struggle.

"If on this evidence, weakened not a little by the position of the

knife and the traces of blood, and met by the prisoner's declaration,

which accords with that single branch of the evidence, you have a

doubt, it is your duty to give the prisoner the full benefit of that

doubt, as I have endeavored to do; and if you have no doubt, why then

you have only to support the law and protect the lives of peaceful

citizens. Whoever has committed this crime, it certainly is an

alarming circumstance that, in a public inn, surrounded by honest

people, guarded by locked doors, and armed with pistols, a peaceful

citizen can be robbed like this of his money and his life."

The jury saw a murder at an inn; an accused, who had already robbed in

that inn, and was denounced as his murderer by the victim. The verdict

seemed to them to be Cox, of impunity. They all slept at inns; a

double they had never seen; undetected accomplices they had all heard

of. They waited twenty minutes, and brought in their verdict--Guilty.

The judge put on his black cap, and condemned Daniel Cox to be hanged

by the neck till he was dead.