Wilson’s
Tales of the Borders
AND OF SCOTLAND.
HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE,
WITH A GLOSSARY.
REVISED BY
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
_One of the Original Editors and Contributors_.
VOL. XIX.
LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE,
AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
1884.
CONTENTS.
Page
THE DOMESTIC GRIEFS OF GUSTAVUS M’IVER, (_Alexander Leighton_), 1
THE FIRST AND SECOND MARRIAGE, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 35
THE DISSOLVED PLEDGE, (_Oliver Richardson_), 67
THE HAWICK SPATE, (_Alexander Campbell_), 99
THE AVENGER; OR, THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE, (_Alexander Leighton_), 129
THE LORD OF HERMITAGE, (_Alexander Campbell_), 155
GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT, (_Professor Thomas Gillespie_)—
XVIII. KINALDY, 165
XIX. THE TRIALS OF THE REV. SAMUEL AUSTIN, 174
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND, (_Alexander Campbell_), 196
LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, (_John M. Wilson_), 199
THE SPORTSMAN OF OUTFIELDHAUGH, (_Alexander Leighton_), 232
THE SEA FIGHT, (_Anon._), 265
WILSON’S
TALES OF THE BORDERS,
AND OF SCOTLAND.
THE DOMESTIC GRIEFS OF GUSTAVUS M’IVER.
CHAPTER I.
GUSTAVUS’S ANTECEDENTS.
In a little house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, there lived,
not very long ago, Mr Gustavus M’Iver--(for he never would allow
himself to be called Ensign M’Iver, though that was his proper
professional designation),—as good a man as ever God put breath
in, and as faithful a soldier as ever Lord Wellington commanded in
the Peninsula. That is, doubtless, no small praise to one conceived
in sin and brought forth in iniquity; and heaven knows if it were
not as true as Jove’s oath, it would never have been awarded by
us. But he was remarkable in other respects than being honest;
for he was six feet five without the aid of sock or buskin; and,
if any man were to say that he was not four feet from acromion to
acromion, he would assuredly be a big liar. But it is the head
and face of a man that we like to look at; for, after all, what
signifies (except in a warlike view, and ours is a peaceable one) a
cart-load of mere bone and muscle, bound together with thick whangs
of gristle, and yielding nothing but brute force, if it be not
surmounted by a good microcosm of a head, with a good dial-plate
to let a man know what is going on within. Do we not see every day
great clocks put on the tops of big steeples, and yet, though they
are nearer the sun than the little time-piece with the deuce a
body at all, they go like an intermitting fever, telling us at one
time that we are hurrying to the grave, and at another, that time
has nothing to do with us at all. So is it with men; and, for our
part, we could never discover any proper legitimate sympathetic
accordance between the trunk and cranium of mortals, any more than
if (like pins) they had been made in pieces and one head clapped on
a body just as the occipital condyles suited the straps to which
they are attached.
The opinion now expressed is well justified by the example of the
subject of our story; for, while the big limbs of him seemed to
set at defiance all regular laws of motion, either horizontal or
perpendicular, going, as one might say without a paradox, wherever
and however they choose, his head was as methodical as that of a
drill sergeant, and the like of him for regularity might not be
seen from Lerwick to Berwick. Nor was his face ever known to be at
fault as a faithful indicator; and verily there was no great wonder
in that, for nothing short of the pulleys he carried in his brain
could ever have moved a single hair-breadth up or down, to the
right or to the left, the big jaw-bone which he seldom condescended
to impart any living motion to, except at meal times, or when (and
that occurred very seldom) he had an idea to express sufficient in
size and importance to warrant such an excess of labour.
We have said that Gustavus M’Iver had been in the Peninsula; and we
may be believed or not, just as suits the reader’s credulity with
our credibility; but he was a luckless wight who dared to doubt
that fact in the personal presence of the hero himself; better by
far he had been at St Sebastian, for the never a one we ever heard
of, that had the temerity to express any scepticism on the point
that did not live to repent it. There can be no doubt, however,
on the subject; for Gustavus was not only in the Peninsula, but
he fought there very well; and no great thanks to him either, for
he had the entire charge of the mess—a post of honour he had
acquired from an indisputable superiority in culinary lore, and a
most indefatigable perseverance as well as an unexampled adroitness
in the art of carving both for himself and others. The praise he
got for fighting was, in so far as regarded the immense heaps of
hungry Frenchmen he hewed down with his falchion, true enough;
the bulletin writer recorded the fact just as it was reported to
him, that the great Goliath Gustavus did actually perform very
wonderful feats of sheer killing; and we cannot help thinking,
notwithstanding of the sneers of his brother officers, that it
would not have become the dignity of a despatch to have made any
allusion whatever to the manner in which he had kept up his body
and his courage.
When the war was done, he came home filled with glory; and as,
when the world speaks of a man, it is unnecessary for him to speak
of himself, he seldom (for he was a sensible man) ever thought of
speaking either of himself or any other person or thing. Conceit
is the foundation of speech; where a man is filled to the very
throat with glory, there is little occasion for him ever opening
his mouth; and therefore it was that Gustavus, in addition to his
other peculiarities, seldom deigned to hold converse with the
creatures of the earth, unless it were in his capacity of paymaster
of pensions (an office his prowess had secured to him), when he was
compelled to speak, to make others hold their tongues—an operation
in which he succeeded to a miracle, from the accumulated load of
authority he derived from his silence.