Plealands House stood on the bleak brow of a hill. It was not of great
antiquity, having been raised by the father of Malachi; but it occupied
the site of an ancient fortalice, the materials of which were employed
in its construction; and as no great skill of the sculptor had been
exerted to change the original form of the lintels and their ornaments,
it had an air of antiquity much greater than properly belonged to its
years.
About as much as the habitation had been altered from its primitive
character, the master too had been modernized. But, in whatever degree
he may have been supposed to have declined from the heroic bearing of
his ancestors, he still inherited, in unabated vigour, the animosity
of their spirit; and if the coercive influence of national improvement
prevented him from being distinguished in the feud and foray, the books
of sederunt, both of the Glasgow Circuit and of the Court of Session,
bore ample testimony to his constancy before them in asserting supposed
rights, and in vindicating supposed wrongs.
In his personal appearance, Malachi Hypel had but few pretensions
to the gallant air and grace of the gentlemen of that time. He was
a coarse hard-favoured fresh-coloured carl, with a few white hairs
thinly scattered over a round bald head. His eyes were small and grey,
quick in the glance, and sharp in the expression. He spoke thickly
and hurriedly, and although his words were all very cogently strung
together, there was still an unaccountable obscurity in the precise
meaning of what he said. In his usual style of dress he was rude and
careless, and he commonly wore a large flat-brimmed blue bonnet; but on
the occasion when he came to the gate to receive Claud, he had on his
Sunday suit and hat.
After the first salutations were over, he said to Claud, on seeing him
walking lamely and uneasily, ‘What’s the matter, Grippy, that ye seem
sae stiff and sair?’
‘I met wi’ a bit accident,’ was Claud’s reply: ‘Rob Wallace, the
horse-couper, gied me sic a deevil to ride as, I believe, never man
before mounted. I would na wish my sworn enemy a greater ill than a
day’s journey on that beast’s back, especially an he was as little used
to riding as me.’
The latter clause of the sentence was muttered inwardly, for the Laird
did not hear it; otherwise he would probably have indulged his humour
a little at the expense of his guest, as he had a sort of taste for
caustic jocularity, which the hirpling manner of Claud was, at the
moment, well calculated to provoke.
On reaching the brow of the rising ground where the house stood, the
leddy, as Mrs. Hypel was emphatically called by the neighbouring
cottars, with Miss Girzy, came out to be introduced to their relative.
Whether the leddy, a pale, pensive, delicate woman, had been informed
by the Laird of the object of Claud’s visit, we do not thoroughly know,
but she received him with a polite and friendly respectfulness. Miss
Girzy certainly was in total ignorance of the whole business, and was,
therefore, not embarrassed with any virgin palpitations, nor blushing
anxieties; on the contrary, she met him with the ease and freedom of an
old acquaintance.
It might here be naturally expected that we should describe the charms
of Miss Girzy’s person, and the graces of her mind; but, in whatever
degree she possessed either, she had been allowed to reach the discreet
years of a Dumbarton youth in unsolicited maidenhood; indeed, with the
aid of all the prospective interest of the inheritance around her, she
did not make quite so tender an impression on the heart of her resolved
lover as he himself could have wished. But why should we expatiate on
such particulars? Let the manners and virtues of the family speak for
themselves, while we proceed to relate what ensued.