CHAPTER I

GUY MANNERING

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOLUME I.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE GYPSIES----Drawn by Clark Stanton, Etched by C. de

Billy

ELLANGOWAN CASTLE----Drawn by John MacWhirter, Etched by Alex. Ansted

CARLAVEROCK CASTLE----Photo-Etching by John Andrew and Son

“PRODIGIOUS!”---Original Etching by George Cruikshank

THE CURE OF MEG MERRILIES----Drawn and Etched by C. O. Murray

DOMINIE SAMPSON IN THE LIBRARY----Drawn and Etched by C. O. Murray

DANDIE DINMONT AT HOME----Drawn by Steel Gourlay, Etched by H. Macbeth

Raeburn

VOLUME II.

THE PARTY AT COLONEL MANNERING’S---Drawn by Herdman, Etched by H. Manesse

THE ATTACK OF THE SMUGGLERS---Drawn and Etched by H. Moyer Smith

PLEYDELL AS KING----Original Etching by R. W. Macbeth

ON THE SOLWAY FRITH----Original Etching by F. S. Walker

“GAPE, SINNER, AND SWALLOW!”---Original Etching by George Cruikshank

MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE----Etched by C. O. Murray

THE CAPTURE OF DIRK HATTERAICK---Drawn by MacDonald, Etched by Courtry

VOLUME I

‘Tis said that words and signs have power

O’er sprites in planetary hour;

But scarce I praise their venturous part

Who tamper with such dangerous art.

Lay of the Last Minstrel.

INTRODUCTION

The Novel or Romance of Waverley made its way to the public slowly, of

course, at first, but afterwards with such accumulating popularity as to

encourage the Author to a second attempt. He looked about for a name and

a subject; and the manner in which the novels were composed cannot be

better illustrated than by reciting the simple narrative on which Guy

Mannering was originally founded; but to which, in the progress of the

work, the production ceased to bear any, even the most distant

resemblance. The tale was originally told me by an old servant of my

father’s, an excellent old Highlander, without a fault, unless a

preference to mountain dew over less potent liquors be accounted one.

He believed as firmly in the story as in any part of his creed.

A grave and elderly person, according to old John MacKinlay’s account,

while travelling in the wilder parts of Galloway, was benighted. With

difficulty he found his way to a country seat, where, with the

hospitality of the time and country, he was readily admitted. The owner

of the house, a gentleman of good fortune, was much struck by the

reverend appearance of his guest, and apologised to him for a certain

degree of confusion which must unavoidably attend his reception, and

could not escape his eye. The lady of the house was, he said, confined to

her apartment, and on the point of making her husband a father for the

first time, though they had been ten years married. At such an emergency,

the laird said, he feared his guest might meet with some apparent

neglect.

‘Not so, sir,’ said the stranger; ‘my wants are few, and easily supplied,

and I trust the present circumstances may even afford an opportunity of

showing my gratitude for your hospitality. Let me only request that I may

be informed of the exact minute of the birth; and I hope to be able to

put you in possession of some particulars which may influence in an

important manner the future prospects of the child now about to come into

this busy and changeful world. I will not conceal from you that I am

skilful in understanding and interpreting the movements of those

planetary bodies which exert their influences on the destiny of mortals.

It is a science which I do not practise, like others who call themselves

astrologers, for hire or reward; for I have a competent estate, and only

use the knowledge I possess for the benefit of those in whom I feel an

interest.’ The laird bowed in respect and gratitude, and the stranger was

accommodated with an apartment which commanded an ample view of the

astral regions.

The guest spent a part of the night in ascertaining the position of the

heavenly bodies, and calculating their probable influence; until at

length the result of his observations induced him to send for the father

and conjure him in the most solemn manner to cause the assistants to

retard the birth if practicable, were it but for five minutes. The answer

declared this to be impossible; and almost in the instant that the

message was returned the father and his guest were made acquainted with

the birth of a boy.

The Astrologer on the morrow met the party who gathered around the

breakfast table with looks so grave and ominous as to alarm the fears of

the father, who had hitherto exulted in the prospects held out by the

birth of an heir to his ancient property, failing which event it must

have passed to a distant branch of the family. He hastened to draw the

stranger into a private room.

‘I fear from your looks,’ said the father, ‘that you have bad tidings to

tell me of my young stranger; perhaps God will resume the blessing He has

bestowed ere he attains the age of manhood, or perhaps he is destined to

be unworthy of the affection which we are naturally disposed to devote to

our offspring?’

‘Neither the one nor the other,’ answered the stranger; ‘unless my

judgment greatly err, the infant will survive the years of minority, and

in temper and disposition will prove all that his parents can wish. But

with much in his horoscope which promises many blessings, there is one

evil influence strongly predominant, which threatens to subject him to an

unhallowed and unhappy temptation about the time when he shall attain the

age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will be the

crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what peculiar urgency, this

temptation may beset him, my art cannot discover.’

‘Your knowledge, then, can afford us no defence,’ said the anxious

father, ‘against the threatened evil?’

‘Pardon me,’ answered the stranger, ‘it can. The influence of the

constellations is powerful; but He who made the heavens is more powerful

than all, if His aid be invoked in sincerity and truth. You ought to

dedicate this boy to the immediate service of his Maker, with as much

sincerity as Samuel was devoted to the worship in the Temple by his

parents. You must regard him as a being separated from the rest of the

world. In childhood, in boyhood, you must surround him with the pious and

virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from the sight or

hearing of any crime, in word or action. He must be educated in religious

and moral principles of the strictest description. Let him not enter the

world, lest he learn to partake of its follies, or perhaps of its vices.

In short, preserve him as far as possible from all sin, save that of

which too great a portion belongs to all the fallen race of Adam. With

the approach of his twenty-first birthday comes the crisis of his fate.

If he survive it, he will be happy and prosperous on earth, and a chosen

vessel among those elected for heaven. But if it be otherwise--’ The

Astrologer stopped, and sighed deeply.

‘Sir,’ replied the parent, still more alarmed than before, ‘your words

are so kind, your advice so serious, that I will pay the deepest

attention to your behests; but can you not aid me farther in this most

important concern? Believe me, I will not be ungrateful.’

‘I require and deserve no gratitude for doing a good action,’ said the

stranger, ‘in especial for contributing all that lies in my power to save

from an abhorred fate the harmless infant to whom, under a singular

conjunction of planets, last night gave life. There is my address; you

may write to me from time to time concerning the progress of the boy in

religious knowledge. If he be bred up as I advise, I think it will be

best that he come to my house at the time when the fatal and decisive

period approaches, that is, before he has attained his twenty-first year

complete. If you send him such as I desire, I humbly trust that God will

protect His own through whatever strong temptation his fate may subject

him to.’ He then gave his host his address, which was a country seat near

a post town in the south of England, and bid him an affectionate

farewell.

The mysterious stranger departed, but his words remained impressed upon

the mind of the anxious parent. He lost his lady while his boy was still

in infancy. This calamity, I think, had been predicted by the Astrologer;

and thus his confidence, which, like most people of the period, he had

freely given to the science, was riveted and confirmed. The utmost care,

therefore, was taken to carry into effect the severe and almost ascetic

plan of education which the sage had enjoined. A tutor of the strictest

principles was employed to superintend the youth’s education; he was

surrounded by domestics of the most established character, and closely

watched and looked after by the anxious father himself.

The years of infancy, childhood, and boyhood passed as the father could

have wished. A young Nazarene could not have been bred up with more

rigour. All that was evil was withheld from his observation: he only

heard what was pure in precept, he only witnessed what was worthy in

practice.

But when the boy began to be lost in the youth, the attentive father saw

cause for alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed a darker

character, began to over-cloud the young man’s temper. Tears, which

seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a melancholy

for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at once his

bodily health and the stability of his mind. The Astrologer was consulted

by letter, and returned for answer that this fitful state of mind was but

the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth must undergo more

and more desperate struggles with the evil that assailed him. There was

no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness of mind in the study of

the Scriptures. ‘He suffers, continued the letter of the sage,’ from the

awakening of those harpies the passions, which have slept with him, as

with others, till the period of life which he has now attained. Better,

far better, that they torment him by ungrateful cravings than that he

should have to repent having satiated them by criminal indulgence.’

The dispositions of the young man were so excellent that he combated, by

reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times overcast his mind,

and it was not till he attained the commencement of his twenty-first year

that they assumed a character which made his father tremble for the

consequences. It seemed as if the gloomiest and most hideous of mental

maladies was taking the form of religious despair. Still the youth was

gentle, courteous, affectionate, and submissive to his father’s will, and

resisted with all his power the dark suggestions which were breathed into

his mind, as it seemed by some emanation of the Evil Principle, exhorting

him, like the wicked wife of Job, to curse God and die.

The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then thought a

long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend

who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of

interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more than he himself

thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his

destination till noon on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if

he had been carried away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation,

so as to forget in some degree what his father had communicated

concerning the purpose of his journey. He halted at length before a

respectable but solitary old mansion, to which he was directed as the

abode of his father’s friend.

The servants who came to take his horse told him he had been expected for

two days. He was led into a study, where the stranger, now a venerable

old man, who had been his father’s guest, met him with a shade of

displeasure, as well as gravity, on his brow. ‘Young man,’ he said,

‘wherefore so slow on a journey of such importance?’ ‘I thought,’ replied

the guest, blushing and looking downward,’ that there was no harm in

travelling slowly and satisfying my curiosity, providing I could reach

your residence by this day; for such was my father’s charge.’ ‘You were

to blame,’ replied the sage, ‘in lingering, considering that the avenger

of blood was pressing on your footsteps. But you are come at last, and we

will hope for the best, though the conflict in which you are to be

engaged will be found more dreadful the longer it is postponed. But first

accept of such refreshments as nature requires to satisfy, but not to

pamper, the appetite.’

The old man led the way into a summer parlour, where a frugal meal was

placed on the table. As they sat down to the board they were joined by a

young lady about eighteen years of age, and so lovely that the sight of

her carried off the feelings of the young stranger from the peculiarity

and mystery of his own lot, and riveted his attention to everything she

did or said. She spoke little and it was on the most serious subjects.

She played on the harpsichord at her father’s command, but it was hymns

with which she accompanied the instrument. At length, on a sign from the

sage, she left the room, turning on the young stranger as she departed a

look of inexpressible anxiety and interest.

The old man then conducted the youth to his study, and conversed with him

upon the most important points of religion, to satisfy himself that he

could render a reason for the faith that was in him. During the

examination the youth, in spite of himself, felt his mind occasionally

wander, and his recollections go in quest of the beautiful vision who had

shared their meal at noon. On such occasions the Astrologer looked grave,

and shook his head at this relaxation of attention; yet, on the whole, he

was pleased with the youth’s replies.

At sunset the young man was made to take the bath; and, having done so,

he was directed to attire himself in a robe somewhat like that worn by

Armenians, having his long hair combed down on his shoulders, and his

neck, hands, and feet bare. In this guise he was conducted into a remote

chamber totally devoid of furniture, excepting a lamp, a chair, and a

table, on which lay a Bible. ‘Here,’ said the Astrologer, ‘I must leave

you alone to pass the most critical period of your life. If you can, by

recollection of the great truths of which we have spoken, repel the

attacks which will be made on your courage and your principles, you have

nothing to apprehend. But the trial will be severe and arduous.’ His

features then assumed a pathetic solemnity, the tears stood in his eyes,

and his voice faltered with emotion as he said, ‘Dear child, at whose

coming into the world I foresaw this fatal trial, may God give thee grace

to support it with firmness!’

The young man was left alone; and hardly did he find himself so, when,

like a swarm of demons, the recollection of all his sins of omission and

commission, rendered even more terrible by the scrupulousness with which

he had been educated, rushed on his mind, and, like furies armed with

fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As he combated

these horrible recollections with distracted feelings, but with a

resolved mind, he became aware that his arguments were answered by the

sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer confined to his

own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in

bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was

impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as

the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. Amid his errors,

the pleasure he had taken in prolonging his journey unnecessarily, and

the attention which he had bestowed on the beauty of the fair female when

his thoughts ought to have been dedicated to the religious discourse of

her father, were set before him in the darkest colours; and he was

treated as one who, having sinned against light, was therefore deservedly

left a prey to the Prince of Darkness.

As the fated and influential hour rolled on, the terrors of the hateful

Presence grew more confounding to the mortal senses of the victim, and

the knot of the accursed sophistry became more inextricable in

appearance, at least to the prey whom its meshes surrounded. He had not

power to explain the assurance of pardon which he continued to assert, or

to name the victorious name in which he trusted. But his faith did not

abandon him, though he lacked for a time the power of expressing it. ‘Say

what you will,’ was his answer to the Tempter; ‘I know there is as much

betwixt the two boards of this Book as can ensure me forgiveness for my

transgressions and safety for my soul.’ As he spoke, the clock, which

announced the lapse of the fatal hour, was heard to strike. The speech

and intellectual powers of the youth were instantly and fully restored;

he burst forth into prayer, and expressed in the most glowing terms his

reliance on the truth and on the Author of the Gospel. The Demon retired,

yelling and discomfited, and the old man, entering the apartment, with

tears congratulated his guest on his victory in the fated struggle.

The young man was afterwards married to the beautiful maiden, the first

sight of whom had made such an impression on him, and they were consigned

over at the close of the story to domestic happiness. So ended John

MacKinlay’s legend.

The Author of Waverley had imagined a possibility of framing an

interesting, and perhaps not an unedifying, tale out of the incidents of

the life of a doomed individual, whose efforts at good and virtuous

conduct were to be for ever disappointed by the intervention, as it were,

of some malevolent being, and who was at last to come off victorious from

the fearful struggle. In short, something was meditated upon a plan

resembling the imaginative tale of Sintram and his Companions, by Mons.

le Baron de la Motte Fouque, although, if it then existed, the author had

not seen it.

The scheme projected may be traced in the three or four first chapters of

the work; but farther consideration induced the author to lay his purpose

aside. It appeared, on mature consideration, that astrology, though its

influence was once received and admitted by Bacon himself, does not now

retain influence over the general mind sufficient even to constitute the

mainspring of a romance. Besides, it occurred that to do justice to such

a subject would have required not only more talent than the Author could

be conscious of possessing, but also involved doctrines and discussions

of a nature too serious for his purpose and for the character of the

narrative. In changing his plan, however, which was done in the course of

printing, the early sheets retained the vestiges of the original tenor of

the story, although they now hang upon it as an unnecessary and unnatural

incumbrance. The cause of such vestiges occurring is now explained and

apologised for.

It is here worthy of observation that, while the astrological doctrines

have fallen into general contempt, and been supplanted by superstitions

of a more gross and far less beautiful character, they have, even in

modern days, retained some votaries.

One of the most remarkable believers in that forgotten and despised

science was a late eminent professor of the art of legerdemain. One would

have thought that a person of this description ought, from his knowledge

of the thousand ways in which human eyes could be deceived, to have been

less than others subject to the fantasies of superstition. Perhaps the

habitual use of those abstruse calculations by which, in a manner

surprising to the artist himself, many tricks upon cards, etc., are

performed, induced this gentleman to study the combination of the stars

and planets, with the expectation of obtaining prophetic communications.

He constructed a scheme of his own nativity, calculated according to such

rules of art as he could collect from the best astrological authors. The

result of the past he found agreeable to what had hitherto befallen him,

but in the important prospect of the future a singular difficulty

occurred. There were two years during the course of which he could by no

means obtain any exact knowledge whether the subject of the scheme would

be dead or alive. Anxious concerning so remarkable a circumstance, he

gave the scheme to a brother astrologer, who was also baffled in the same

manner. At one period he found the native, or subject, was certainly

alive; at another that he was unquestionably dead; but a space of two

years extended between these two terms, during which he could find no

certainty as to his death or existence.

The astrologer marked the remarkable circumstance in his diary, and

continued his exhibitions in various parts of the empire until the period

was about to expire during which his existence had been warranted as

actually ascertained. At last, while he was exhibiting to a numerous

audience his usual tricks of legerdemain, the hands whose activity had so

often baffled the closest observer suddenly lost their power, the cards

dropped from them, and he sunk down a disabled paralytic. In this state

the artist languished for two years, when he was at length removed by

death. It is said that the diary of this modern astrologer will soon be

given to the public.

The fact, if truly reported, is one of those singular coincidences which

occasionally appear, differing so widely from ordinary calculation, yet

without which irregularities human life would not present to mortals,

looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable darkness which it is the

pleasure of the Creator it should offer to them. Were everything to

happen in the ordinary train of events, the future would be subject to

the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary

events and wonderful runs of luck defy the calculations of mankind and

throw impenetrable darkness on future contingencies.

To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here added. The

author was lately honoured with a letter from a gentleman deeply skilled

in these mysteries, who kindly undertook to calculate the nativity of the

writer of Guy Mannering, who might be supposed to be friendly to the

divine art which he professed. But it was impossible to supply data for

the construction of a horoscope, had the native been otherwise desirous

of it, since all those who could supply the minutiae of day, hour, and

minute have been long removed from the mortal sphere.

Having thus given some account of the first idea, or rude sketch, of the

story, which was soon departed from, the Author, in following out the

plan of the present edition, has to mention the prototypes of the

principal characters in Guy Mannering.

Some circumstances of local situation gave the Author in his youth an

opportunity of seeing a little, and hearing a great deal, about that

degraded class who are called gipsies; who are in most cases a mixed race

between the ancient Egyptians who arrived in Europe about the beginning

of the fifteenth century and vagrants of European descent.

The individual gipsy upon whom the character of Meg Merrilies was founded

was well known about the middle of the last century by the name of Jean

Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm, in the Cheviot

Hills, adjoining to the English Border. The Author gave the public some

account of this remarkable person in one of the early numbers of

Blackwood’s Magazine, to the following purpose:--

‘My father remembered old Jean Gordon of Yetholm, who had great sway

among her tribe. She was quite a Meg Merrilies, and possessed the savage

virtue of fidelity in the same perfection. Having been often hospitably

received at the farmhouse of Lochside, near Yetholm, she had carefully

abstained from committing any depredations on the farmer’s property. But

her sons (nine in number) had not, it seems, the same delicacy, and stole

a brood-sow from their kind entertainer. Jean was mortified at this

ungrateful conduct, and so much ashamed of it that she absented herself

from Lochside for several years.

‘It happened in course of time that, in consequence of some temporary

pecuniary necessity, the goodman of Lochside was obliged to go to

Newcastle to raise some money to pay his rent. He succeeded in his

purpose, but, returning through the mountains of Cheviot, he was

benighted and lost his way.

‘A light glimmering through the window of a large waste barn, which had

survived the farm-house to which it had once belonged, guided him to a

place of shelter; and when he knocked at the door it was opened by Jean

Gordon. Her very remarkable figure, for she was nearly six feet high, and

her equally remarkable features and dress, rendered it impossible to

mistake her for a moment, though he had not seen her for years; and to

meet with such a character in so solitary a place, and probably at no

great distance from her clan, was a grievous surprise to the poor man,

whose rent (to lose which would have been ruin) was about his person.

‘Jean set up a loud shout of joyful recognition--

“Eh, sirs! the winsome gudeman of Lochside! Light down, light down; for

ye maunna gang farther the night, and a friend’s house sae near.” The

farmer was obliged to dismount and accept of the gipsy’s offer of supper

and a bed. There was plenty of meat in the barn, however it might be come

by, and preparations were going on for a plentiful repast, which the

farmer, to the great increase of his anxiety, observed was calculated for

ten or twelve guests, of the same description, probably, with his

landlady.

‘Jean left him in no doubt on the subject. She brought to his

recollection the story of the stolen sow, and mentioned how much pain and

vexation it had given her. Like other philosophers, she remarked that the

world grew worse daily; and, like other parents, that the bairns got out

of her guiding, and neglected the old gipsy regulations, which commanded

them to respect in their depredations the property of their benefactors.

The end of all this was an inquiry what money the farmer had about him;

and an urgent request, or command, that he would make her his

purse-keeper, since the bairns, as she called her sons, would be soon

home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told his story, and

surrendered his gold to Jean’s custody. She made him put a few shillings

in his pocket, observing, it would excite suspicion should he be found

travelling altogether penniless.

‘This arrangement being made, the farmer lay down on a sort of

shake-down, as the Scotch call it, or bed-clothes disposed upon some

straw, but, as will easily be believed, slept not.

‘About midnight the gang returned, with various articles of plunder, and

talked over their exploits in language which made the farmer tremble.

They were not long in discovering they had a guest, and demanded of Jean

whom she had got there.

‘“E’en the winsome gudeman of Lochside, poor body,” replied Jean; “he’s

been at Newcastle seeking for siller to pay his rent, honest man, but

deil-be-lickit he’s been able to gather in, and sae he’s gaun e’en hame

wi’ a toom purse and a sair heart.”

“‘That may be, Jean,” replied one of the banditti, “but we maun ripe his

pouches a bit, and see if the tale be true or no.” Jean set up her throat

in exclamations against this breach of hospitality, but without producing

any change in their determination. The farmer soon heard their stifled

whispers and light steps by his bedside, and understood they were

rummaging his clothes. When they found the money which the providence of

Jean Gordon had made him retain, they held a consultation if they should

take it or no; but the smallness of the booty, and the vehemence of

Jean’s remonstrances, determined them in the negative. They caroused and

went to rest. As soon as day dawned Jean roused her guest, produced his

horse, which she had accommodated behind the hallan, and guided him for

some miles, till he was on the highroad to Lochside. She then restored

his whole property; nor could his earnest entreaties prevail on her to

accept so much as a single guinea.

‘I have heard the old people at Jedburgh say, that all Jean’s sons were

condemned to die there on the same day. It is said the jury were equally

divided, but that a friend to justice, who had slept during the whole

discussion, waked suddenly and gave his vote for condemnation in the

emphatic words, “Hang them a’!” Unanimity is not required in a Scottish

jury, so the verdict of guilty was returned. Jean was present, and only

said, “The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!” Her own death was

accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which poor Jean was

in many respects wholly undeserving. She had, among other demerits, or

merits, as the reader may choose to rank it, that of being a stanch

Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or market-day, soon

after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to

the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous in their

loyalty when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with

which they had surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, the mob inflicted

upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to

death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time, for Jean was a stout

woman, and, struggling with her murderers, often got her head above

water; and, while she had voice left, continued to exclaim at such

intervals, “Charlie yet! Charlie yet!” When a child, and among the scenes

which she frequented, I have often heard these stories, and cried

piteously for poor Jean Gordon.

‘Before quitting the Border gipsies, I may mention that my grandfather,

while riding over Charterhouse Moor, then a very extensive common, fell

suddenly among a large band of them, who were carousing in a hollow of

the moor, surrounded by bushes. They instantly seized on his horse’s

bridle with many shouts of welcome, exclaiming (for he was well known to

most of them) that they had often dined at his expense, and he must now

stay and share their good cheer. My ancestor was, a little alarmed, for,

like the goodman of Lochside, he had more money about his person than he

cared to risk in such society. However, being naturally a bold,

lively-spirited man, he entered into the humour of the thing and sate

down to the feast, which consisted of all the varieties of game, poultry,

pigs, and so forth that could be collected by a wide and indiscriminate

system of plunder. The dinner was a very merry one; but my relative got a

hint from some of the older gipsies to retire just when--

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious,

and, mounting his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his

entertainers, but without experiencing the least breach of hospitality. I

believe Jean Gordon was at this festival.’[Footnote: Blackwood’s

Magazine, vol. I, p. 54]

Notwithstanding the failure of Jean’s issue, for which

Weary fa’ the waefu’ wuddie,

a granddaughter survived her, whom I remember to have seen. That is, as

Dr. Johnson had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne as a stately lady in

black, adorned with diamonds, so my memory is haunted by a solemn

remembrance of a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red

cloak, who commenced acquaintance by giving me an apple, but whom,

nevertheless, I looked on with as much awe as the future Doctor, High

Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen. I

conceive this woman to have been Madge Gordon, of whom an impressive

account is given in the same article in which her mother Jean is

mentioned, but not by the present writer:--

‘The late Madge Gordon was at this time accounted the Queen of the

Yetholm clans. She was, we believe, a granddaughter of the celebrated

Jean Gordon, and was said to have much resembled her in appearance. The

following account of her is extracted from the letter of a friend, who

for many years enjoyed frequent and favourable opportunities of observing

the characteristic peculiarities of the Yetholm tribes:--“Madge Gordon

was descended from the Faas by the mother’s side, and was married to a

Young. She was a remarkable personage--of a very commanding presence and

high stature, being nearly six feet high. She had a large aquiline nose,

penetrating eyes, even in her old age, bushy hair, that hung around her

shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet of straw, a short cloak of a

peculiar fashion, and a long staff nearly as tall as herself. I remember

her well; every week she paid my father a visit for her awmous when I was

a little boy, and I looked upon Madge with no common degree of awe and

terror. When she spoke vehemently (for she made loud complaints) she used

to strike her staff upon the floor and throw herself into an attitude

which it was impossible to regard with indifference. She used to say that

she could bring from the remotest parts of the island friends to revenge

her quarrel while she sat motionless in her cottage; and she frequently

boasted that there was a time when she was of still more considerable

importance, for there were at her wedding fifty saddled asses, and

unsaddled asses without number. If Jean Gordon was the prototype of the

CHARACTER of Meg Merrilies, I imagine Madge must have sat to the unknown

author as the representative of her PERSON.”’ [Footnote: Blackwood’s

Magazine, vol. I, p. 56.]

How far Blackwood’s ingenious correspondent was right, how far mistaken,

in his conjecture the reader has been informed.

To pass to a character of a very different description, Dominie

Sampson,--the reader may easily suppose that a poor modest humble scholar

who has won his way through the classics, yet has fallen to leeward in

the voyage of life, is no uncommon personage in a country where a certain

portion of learning is easily attained by those who are willing to suffer

hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and Latin. But there is

a far more exact prototype of the worthy Dominie, upon which is founded

the part which he performs in the romance, and which, for certain

particular reasons, must be expressed very generally.

Such a preceptor as Mr. Sampson is supposed to have been was actually

tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property. The young

lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world, but the tutor

continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland

in former days, where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble

friends and dependents. The laird’s predecessors had been imprudent, he

himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose

success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity.

Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was

sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of his fathers

to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece of furniture, which,

left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together for a long while, but

breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell down on his own

threshold under a paralytic affection.

The tutor awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that his

patron’s only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither graceful nor

beautiful, if she ever had been either the one or the other, had by this

calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He addressed her nearly

in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to Miss Bertram, and professed

his determination not to leave her. Accordingly, roused to the exercise

of talents which had long slumbered, he opened a little school and

supported his patron’s child for the rest of her life, treating her with

the same humble observance and devoted attention which he had used

towards her in the days of her prosperity.

Such is the outline of Dominie Sampson’s real story, in which there is

neither romantic incident nor sentimental passion; but which, perhaps,

from the rectitude and simplicity of character which it displays, may

interest the heart and fill the eye of the reader as irresistibly as if

it respected distresses of a more dignified or refined character.

These preliminary notices concerning the tale of Guy Mannering and some

of the characters introduced may save the author and reader in the

present instance the trouble of writing and perusing a long string of

detached notes.

ABBOTSFORD, January, 1829.

ADDENDUM: I may add that the motto of this novel was taken from the Lay

of the Last Minstrel, to evade the conclusions of those who began to

think that, as the author of Waverley never quoted the works of Sir

Walter Scott, he must have reason for doing so, and that the

circumstances might argue an identity between them.

ABBOTSFORD, August 1, 1829.

ADDITIONAL NOTE

GALWEGIAN LOCALITIES AND PERSONAGES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUPPOSED TO BE

ALLUDED TO IN THE NOVEL

An old English proverb says, that more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows;

and the influence of the adage seems to extend to works composed under

the influence of an idle or foolish planet. Many corresponding

circumstances are detected by readers of which the Author did not suspect

the existence. He must, however, regard it as a great compliment that, in

detailing incidents purely imaginary, he has been so fortunate in

approximating reality as to remind his readers of actual occurrences. It

is therefore with pleasure he notices some pieces of local history and

tradition which have been supposed to coincide with the fictitious

persons, incidents, and scenery of Guy Mannering.

The prototype of Dirk Hatteraick is considered as having been a Dutch

skipper called Yawkins. This man was well known on the coast of Galloway

and Dumfriesshire, as sole proprietor and master of a buckkar, or

smuggling lugger, called the ‘Black Prince.’ Being distinguished by his

nautical skill and intrepidity, his vessel was frequently freighted, and

his own services employed, by French, Dutch, Manx, and Scottish smuggling

companies.

A person well known by the name of Buckkar-tea, from having been a noted

smuggler of that article, and also by that of Bogle Bush, the place of

his residence, assured my kind informant Mr. Train, that he had

frequently seen upwards of two hundred Lingtow men assemble at one time,

and go off into the interior of the country, fully laden with contraband

goods.

In those halcyon days of the free trade, the fixed price for carrying a

box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway to Edinburgh was

fifteen shillings, and a man with two horses carried four such packages.

The trade was entirely destroyed by Mr. Pitt’s celebrated commutation

law, which, by reducing the duties upon excisable articles, enabled the

lawful dealer to compete with the smuggler. The statute was called in

Galloway and Dumfries-shire, by those who had thriven upon the contraband

trade, ‘the burning and starving act.’

Sure of such active assistance on shore, Yawkins demeaned himself so

boldly that his mere name was a terror to the officers of the revenue. He

availed himself of the fears which his presence inspired on one

particular night, when, happening to be ashore with a considerable

quantity of goods in his sole custody, a strong party of excisemen came

down on him. Far from shunning the attack, Yawkins sprung forward,

shouting, ‘Come on, my lads; Yawkins is before you.’ The revenue officers

were intimidated and relinquished their prize, though defended only by

the courage and address of a single man. On his proper element Yawkins

was equally successful. On one occasion he was landing his cargo at the

Manxman’s Lake near Kirkcudbright, when two revenue cutters (the ‘Pigmy’

and the ‘Dwarf’) hove in sight at once on different tacks, the one coming

round by the Isles of Fleet, the other between the point of Rueberry and

the Muckle Ron. The dauntless freetrader instantly weighed anchor and

bore down right between the luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on

the deck of the one and his wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to

his maintop, to show his occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary

pressure of canvass, without receiving injury. To account for these and

other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition alleged that Yawkins

insured his celebrated buckkar by compounding with the devil for

one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of

the stock and tithes is left to our conjecture. The buckkar was perhaps

called the ‘Black Prince’ in honour of the formidable insurer.

The ‘Black Prince’ used to discharge her cargo at Luce, Balcarry, and

elsewhere on the coast; but her owner’s favourite landing-places were at

the entrance of the Dee and the Cree, near the old Castle of Rueberry,

about six miles below Kirkcudbright. There is a cave of large dimensions

in the vicinity of Rueberry, which, from its being frequently used by

Yawkins and his supposed connexion with the smugglers on the shore, is

now called Dirk Hatteraick’s Cave. Strangers who visit this place, the

scenery of which is highly romantic, are also shown, under the name of

the Gauger’s Loup, a tremendous precipice, being the same, it is

asserted, from which Kennedy was precipitated.

Meg Merrilies is in Galloway considered as having had her origin in the

traditions concerning the celebrated Flora Marshal, one of the royal

consorts of Willie Marshal, more commonly called the Caird of Barullion,

King of the Gipsies of the Western Lowlands. That potentate was himself

deserving of notice from the following peculiarities:--He was born in the

parish of Kirkmichael about the year 1671; and, as he died at

Kirkcudbright 23d November 1792, he must then have been in the one

hundred and twentieth year of his age. It cannot be said that this

unusually long lease of existence was noted by any peculiar excellence of

conduct or habits of life. Willie had been pressed or enlisted in the

army seven times, and had deserted as often; besides three times running

away from the naval service. He had been seventeen times lawfully

married; and, besides, such a reasonably large share of matrimonial

comforts, was, after his hundredth year, the avowed father of four

children by less legitimate affections. He subsisted in his extreme old

age by a pension from the present Earl of Selkirk’s grandfather. Will

Marshal is buried in Kirkcudbright church, where his monument is still

shown, decorated with a scutcheon suitably blazoned with two tups’ horns

and two cutty spoons.

In his youth he occasionally took an evening walk on the highway, with

the purpose of assisting travellers by relieving them of the weight of

their purses. On one occasion the Caird of Barullion robbed the Laird of

Bargally at a place between Carsphairn and Dalmellington. His purpose was

not achieved without a severe struggle, in which the gipsy lost his

bonnet, and was obliged to escape, leaving it on the road. A respectable

farmer happened to be the next passenger, and, seeing the bonnet,

alighted, took it up, and rather imprudently put it on his own head. At

this instant Bargally came up with some assistants, and, recognising the

bonnet, charged the farmer of Bantoberick with having robbed him, and

took him into custody. There being some likeness between the parties,

Bargally persisted in his charge, and, though the respectability of the

farmer’s character was proved or admitted, his trial before the Circuit

Court came on accordingly. The fatal bonnet lay on the table of the

court. Bargally swore that it was the identical article worn by the man

who robbed him; and he and others likewise deponed that they had found

the accused on the spot where the crime was committed, with the bonnet on

his head. The case looked gloomily for the prisoner, and the opinion of

the judge seemed unfavourable. But there was a person in court who knew

well both who did and who did not commit the crime. This was the Caird of

Barullion, who, thrusting himself up to the bar near the place where

Bargally was standing, suddenly seized on the bonnet, put it on his head,

and, looking the Laird full in the face, asked him, with a voice which

attracted the attention of the court and crowded audience--‘Look at me,

sir, and tell me, by the oath you have sworn--Am not _I_ the man who

robbed you between Carsphairn and Dalmellington?’ Bargally replied, in

great astonishment, ‘By Heaven! you are the very man.’ ‘You see what sort

of memory this gentleman has,’ said the volunteer pleader; ‘he swears to

the bonnet whatever features are under it. If you yourself, my Lord, will

put it on your head, he will be willing to swear that your Lordship was

the party who robbed him between Carsphairn and Dalmellington.’ The

tenant of Bantoberick was unanimously acquitted; and thus Willie Marshal

ingeniously contrived to save an innocent man from danger, without

incurring any himself, since Bargally’s evidence must have seemed to

every one too fluctuating to be relied upon.

While the King of the Gipsies was thus laudably occupied, his royal

consort, Flora, contrived, it is said, to steal the hood from the judge’s

gown; for which offence, combined with her presumptive guilt as a gipsy,

she was banished to New England, whence she never returned.

Now, I cannot grant that the idea of Meg Merrilies was, in the first

concoction of the character, derived from Flora Marshal, seeing I have

already said she was identified with Jean Gordon, and as I have not the

Laird of Bargally’s apology for charging the same fact on two several

individuals. Yet I am quite content that Meg should be considered as a

representative of her sect and class in general, Flora as well as others.

The other instances in which my Gallovidian readers have obliged me by

assigning to

Airy nothing

A local habitation and a name,

shall also be sanctioned so far as the Author may be entitled to do so. I

think the facetious Joe Miller records a case pretty much in point; where

the keeper of a museum, while showing, as he said, the very sword with

which Balaam was about to kill his ass, was interrupted by one of the

visitors, who reminded him that Balaam was not possessed of a sword, but

only wished for one. ‘True, sir,’ replied the ready-witted cicerone; ‘but

this is the very sword he wished for.’ The Author, in application of this

story, has only to add that, though ignorant of the coincidence between

the fictions of the tale and some real circumstances, he is contented to

believe he must unconsciously have thought or dreamed of the last while

engaged in the composition of Guy Mannering.

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

TO

GUY MANNERING.

The second essay in fiction of an author who has triumphed in his first

romance is a doubtful and perilous adventure. The writer is apt to become

self-conscious, to remember the advice of his critics,--a fatal

error,--and to tremble before the shadow of his own success. He knows

that he will have many enemies, that hundreds of people will be ready to

find fault and to vow that he is “written out.” Scott was not

unacquainted with these apprehensions. After publishing “Marmion” he

wrote thus to Lady Abercorn:--

“No one acquires a certain degree of popularity without exciting an equal

degree of malevolence among those who, either from rivalship or from the

mere wish to pull down what others have set up, are always ready to catch

the first occasion to lower the favoured individual to what they call his

‘real standard.’ Of this I have enough of experience, and my political

interferences, however useless to my friends, have not failed to make me

more than the usual number of enemies. I am therefore bound, in justice

to myself and to those whose good opinion has hitherto protected me, not

to peril myself too frequently. The naturalists tell us that if you

destroy the web which the spider has just made, the insect must spend

many days in inactivity till he has assembled within his person the

materials necessary to weave another. Now, after writing a work of

imagination one feels in nearly the same exhausted state as the spider. I

believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do (no great

recommendation); but I never think of making verses till I have a

sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them,--I would as soon join

the Israelites in Egypt in their heavy task of making bricks without

clay. Besides, I know, as a small farmer, that good husbandry consists in

not taking the same crop too frequently from the same soil; and as

turnips come after wheat, according to the best rules of agriculture, I

take it that an edition of Swift will do well after such a scourging crop

as ‘Marmiou.’”

[March 13, 1808. Copied from the Collection of Lady Napier and Ettrick.]

These fears of the brave, then, were not unfamiliar to Scott; but he

audaciously disregarded all of them in the composition of “Guy

Mannering.” He had just spun his web, like the spider of his simile, he

had just taken off his intellectual fields the “scourging crop” of “The

Lord of the Isles,” he had just received the discouraging news of its

comparative failure, when he “buckled to,” achieved “Guy Mannering” in

six weeks, and published it. Moliere tells us that he wrote “Les Facheux”

in a fortnight; and a French critic adds that it reads indeed as if it

had been written in, a fortnight. Perhaps a self-confident censor might

venture a similar opinion about “Guy Mannering.” It assuredly shows

traces of haste; the plot wanders at its own will; and we may believe

that the Author often--did not see his own way out of the wood. But there

is little harm in that. “If I do not know what is coming next,” a modern

novelist has remarked, “how can the public know?” Curiosity, at least, is

likely to be excited by this happy-go-lucky manner of Scott’s. “The worst

of it is;” as he wrote to Lady Abercorn about his poems (June 9,1808),

“that I am not very good or patient in slow and careful composition; and

sometimes I remind myself of the drunken man, who could run long after he

could not walk.” Scott could certainly run very well, though averse to a

plodding motion.

[He was probably thinking of a famous Edinburgh character, “Singing Jamie

Balfour.” Jamie was found very drunk and adhering to the pavement one

night. He could not raise himself; but when helped to his feet, ran his

preserver a race to the tavern, and won!]

The account of the year’s work which preceded “Guy Mannering” is given by

Lockhart, and is astounding. In 1814 Scott had written, Lockhart

believes, the greater part of the “Life of Swift,” most of “Waverley” and

the “Lord of the Isles;” he had furnished essays to the “Encyclopaedia,”

and had edited “The Memorie of the Somervilles.” The spider might well

seem spun out, the tilth exhausted. But Scott had a fertility, a

spontaneity, of fancy equalled only, if equalled at all, by Alexandre

Dumas.

On November 7 of this laborious year, 1814, Scott was writing to Mr.

Joseph Train, thanking him for a parcel of legendary lore, including the

Galloway tale of the wandering astrologer and a budget of gypsy

traditions. Falling in the rich soil of Scott’s imagination, the tale of

the astrologer yielded a name and an opening to “Guy Mannering,” while

the gypsy lore blossomed into the legend of Meg Merrilies. The seed of

the novel was now sown. But between November 11 and December 25 Scott was

writing the three last cantos of the “Lord of the Isles.” Yet before the

“Lord of the Isles” was published (Jan. 18, 1815), two volumes of “Guy

Mannering” were in print (Letter to Morritt, Jan. 17, 1815.) The novel

was issued on Feb. 14, 1815. Scott, as he says somewhere, was like the

turnspit dog, into whose wheel a hot cinder is dropped to encourage his

activity. Scott needed hot cinders in the shape of proof-sheets fresh

from the press, and he worked most busily when the printer’s devil was

waiting. In this case, not only the printer’s devil, but the wolf was at

the door. The affairs of the Ballantynes clamoured for moneys In their

necessity and his own, Scott wrote at the rate of a volume in ten days,

and for some financial reason published “Guy Mannering” with Messrs.

Longmans, not with Constable. Scott was at this moment facing creditors

and difficulties as Napoleon faced the armies of the Allies,--present

everywhere, everywhere daring and successful. True, his “Lord of the

Isles” was a disappointment, as James Ballantyne informed him. “‘Well,

James, so be it; but you know we must not droop, for we cannot afford to

give over. Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something

else.’ And so he dismissed me, and resumed his novel.”

In these circumstances, far from inspiring, was “Guy Mannering” written

and hurried through the press. The story has its own history: one can

watch the various reminiscences and experiences of life that crystallized

together in Scott’s mind, and grouped themselves fantastically into his

unpremeditated plot. Sir Walter gives, in the preface of 1829, the legend

which he heard from John MacKinlay, his father’s Highland servant, and on

which he meant to found a tale more in Hawthorn’s manner than in his own.

That plan he changed in the course of printing, “leaving only just enough

of astrology to annoy pedantic reviewers and foolish Puritans.” Whence

came the rest of the plot,--the tale of the long-lost heir, and so on?

The true heir, “kept out of his own,” and returning in disguise, has been

a favourite character ever since Homer sang of Odysseus, and probably

long before that. But it is just possible that Scott had a certain modern

instance in his mind. In turning over the old manuscript diary at

Branxholme Park (mentioned in a note to “Waverley”), the Editor lighted

on a singular tale, which, in the diarist’s opinion, might have suggested

“Guy Mannering” to Sir Walter. The resemblance between the story of

Vanbeest Brown and the hero of the diarist was scanty; but in a long

letter of Scott’s to Lady Abercorn (May 21, 1813), a the Editor finds Sir

Walter telling his correspondent the very narrative recorded in the

Branxholme Park diary. Singular things happen, Sir Walter says; and he

goes on to describe a case just heard in the court where he is sitting as

Clerk of Sessions. Briefly, the anecdote is this: A certain Mr.

Carruthers of Dormont had reason to suspect his wife’s fidelity. While

proceedings for a divorce were pending, Mrs. Carruthers bore a daughter,

of whom her husband, of course, was legally the father. But he did not

believe in the relationship, and sent the infant girl to be brought up,

in ignorance of her origin and in seclusion, among the Cheviot Hills.

Here she somehow learned the facts of her own story. She married a Mr.

Routledge, the son of a yeoman, and “compounded” her rights (but not

those of her issue) for a small sung of ready money, paid by old Dormont.

She bears a boy; then she and her husband died in poverty. Their son was

sent by a friend to the East Indies, and was presented with a packet of

papers, which he left unopened at a lawyer’s. The young man made a

fortune in India, returned to Scotland, and took a shooting in

Dumfriesshire, near bormont, his ancestral home. He lodged at a small inn

hard by, and the landlady, struck by his name, began to gossip with him

about his family history. He knew nothing of the facts which the landlady

disclosed, but, impressed by her story, sent for and examined his

neglected packet of papers. Then he sought legal opinion, and was

advised, by President Blair, that he had a claim worth presenting on the

estate of Dormont. “The first decision of the cause,” writes Scott, “was

favourable.” The true heir celebrated his legal victory by a

dinner-party, and his friends saluted him as “Dormont.” Next morning he

was found dead. Such is the true tale. As it occupied Scott’s mind in

1813, and as he wrote “Guy Mannering” in 1814-15, it is not impossible

that he may have borrowed his wandering heir, who returns by pure

accident to his paternal domains, and there learns his origin at a

woman’s lips, from the Dormont case. The resemblance of the stories, at

least, was close enough to strike a shrewd observer some seventy years

ago.

Another possible source of the plot--a more romantic origin,

certainly--is suggested by Mr. Robert Chambers in “Illustrations of the

Author of ‘Waverley.’” A Maxwell of Glenormiston, “a religious and

bigoted recluse,” sent his only son and heir to a Jesuit College in

Flanders, left his estate in his brother’s management, and died. The

wicked uncle alleged that the heir was also dead. The child, ignorant of

his birth, grew up, ran away from the Jesuits at the age of sixteen,

enlisted in the French army, fought at Fontenoy, got his colours, and,

later, landed in the Moray Firth as a French officer in 1745. He went

through the campaign, was in hiding in Lochaber after Drumossie, and in

making for a Galloway port, was seized, and imprisoned in Dumfries. Here

an old woman of his father’s household recognized him by “a mark which

she remembered on his body.” His cause was taken up by friends; but the

usurping uncle died, and Sir Robert Maxwell recovered his estates without

a lawsuit. This anecdote is quoted from the “New Monthly Magazine,” June,

1819. There is nothing to prove that Scott was acquainted with this

adventure. Scott’s own experience, as usual, supplied him with hints for

his characters. The phrase of Dominie Sampson’s father, “Please God, my

bairn may live to wag his pow in a pulpit,” was uttered in his own

hearing. There was a Bluegown, or Bedesman, like Edie Ochiltree, who had

a son at Edinburgh College. Scott was kind to the son, the Bluegown asked

him to dinner, and at this meal the old man made the remark about the

pulpit and the pow.’ A similar tale is told by Scott in the Introduction

to “The Antiquary” (1830). As for the good Dominie, Scott remarks that,

for “certain particular reasons,” he must say what he has to say about

his prototype “very generally.” Mr. Chambers’ finds the prototype in a

Mr. James Sanson, tutor in the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, Sir Walter’s

uncle. It seems very unlike Sir Walter to mention this excellent man

almost by his name, and the tale about his devotion to his patron’s

daughter cannot, apparently, be true of Mr. James Sanson. The prototype

of Pleydell, according to Sir Walter himself (Journal, June 19, 1830),

was “my old friend Adam Rolland, Esq., in external circumstances, but not

in frolic or fancy.” Mr. Chambers, however, finds the original in Mr.

Andrew Crosbie, an advocate of great talents, who frolicked to ruin, and

died in 1785. Scott may have heard tales of this patron of “High Jinks,”

but cannot have known him much personally. Dandie Dinmont is simply the

typical Border farmer. Mr. Shortreed, Scott’s companion in his Liddesdale

raids, thought that Willie Elliot, in Millburnholm, was the great

original. Scott did not meet Mr. James Davidson in Hindlee, owner of all

the Mustards and Peppers, till some years after the novel was written.

“Guy Mannering,” when read to him, sent Mr. Davidson to sleep. “The kind

and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and delicious one of his wife,”

and the circumstances of their home, were suggested, Lockhart thinks, by

Scott’s friend, steward, and amanuensis, Mr. William Laidlaw, by Mrs.

Laidlaw, and by their farm among the braes of Yarrow. In truth, the

Border was peopled then by Dandies and Ailies: nor is the race even now

extinct in Liddesdale and Teviotdale, in Ettrick and Yarrow. As for

Mustard and Pepper, their offspring too is powerful in the land, and is

the deadly foe of vermin. The curious may consult Mr. Cook’s work on “The

Dandie Dinmont Terrier.” The Duke of Buccleugh’s breed still resembles

the fine example painted by Gainsborough in his portrait of the duke (of

Scott’s time). “Tod Gabbie,” again, as Lockhart says, was studied from

Tod Willie, the huntsman of the hills above Loch Skene. As for the

Galloway scenery, Scott did not know it well, having only visited “the

Kingdom” in 1793, when he was defending the too frolicsome Mr. McNaught,

Minister of Girthon. The beautiful and lonely wilds of the Glenkens, in

central Galloway, where traditions yet linger, were, unluckily, terra

incognita to Scott. A Galloway story of a murder and its detection by the

prints of the assassin’s boots inspired the scene where Dirk Hatteraick

is traced by similar means. In Colonel Mannering, by the way, the Ettrick

Shepherd recognized “Walter Scott, painted by himself.”

The reception of “Guy Mannering” was all that could be wished. William

Erskine and Ballantyne were “of opinion that it is much more interesting

than ‘Waverley.’” Mr. Morritt (March, 1815) pronounced himself

to be “quite charmed with Dandie, Meg Merrilies, and Dirk

Hatteraick,--characters as original as true to nature, and as forcibly

conceived as, I had almost said, could have been drawn by Shakspeare

himself.” The public were not less appreciative. Two thousand copies, at

a guinea, were sold the day after publication, and three thousand more

were disposed of in three months. The professional critics acted just as

Scott, speaking in general terms, had prophesied that they would. Let us

quote the “British Critic” (1815).

“There are few spectacles in the literary world more lamentable than to

view a successful author, in his second appearance before the public,

limping lamely after himself, and treading tediously and awkwardly in the

very same round, which, in his first effort, he had traced with vivacity

and applause. We would not be harsh enough to say that the Author of

‘Waverley’ is in this predicament, but we are most unwillingly compelled

to assert that the second effort falls far below the standard of the

first. In ‘Waverley’ there was brilliancy of genius.... In ‘Guy

Mannering’ there is little else beyond the wild sallies of an original

genius, the bold and irregular efforts of a powerful but an exhausted

mind. Time enough has not been allowed him to recruit his resources, both

of anecdote and wit; but, encouraged by the credit so justly, bestowed

upon one of then most finished portraits ever presented to the world, he

has followed up the exhibition with a careless and hurried sketch, which

betrays at once the weakness and the strength of its author.

“The character of Dirk Hatteraick is a faithful copy from nature,--it is

one of those moral monsters which make us almost ashamed of our kind.

Still, amidst the ruffian and murderous brutality of the smuggler, some

few feelings of our common nature are thrown in with no less ingenuity

than truth. . . . The remainder of the personages are very little above

the cast of a common lively novel. . . . The Edinburgh lawyer is perhaps

the most original portrait; nor are the saturnalia of the Saturday

evenings described without humour. The Dominie is overdrawn and

inconsistent; while the young ladies present nothing above par. . . .

“There are parts of this novel which none but one endowed with the

sublimity of genius could have dictated; there are others which any

ordinary character cobbler might as easily have stitched together. There

are sparks both of pathos and of humour, even in the dullest parts, which

could be elicited from none but the Author of ‘Waverley.’ . . . If,

indeed, we have spoken in a manner derogatory to this, his later effort,

our censure arises only from its comparison with the former. . .

“We cannot, however, conclude this article without remarking the absurd

influence which our Author unquestionably attributes to the calculations

of judicial astrology. No power of chance alone could have fulfilled the

joint predictions both of Guy Mannering and Meg Merrilies; we cannot

suppose that the Author can be endowed with sufficient folly to believe

in the influence of planetary conjunctions himself, nor to have so

miserable an idea of the understanding of his readers as to suppose them

capable of a similar belief. We must also remember that the time of this

novel is not in the dark ages, but scarcely forty years since; no aid,

therefore, can be derived from the general tendency of popular

superstition. What the clew may be to this apparent absurdity, we cannot

imagine; whether the Author be in jest or earnest we do not know, and we

are willing to suppose in this dilemma that he does not know himself.”

The “Monthly Review” sorrowed, like the “British,” over the encouragement

given to the follies of astrology. The “Critical Review” “must lament

that ‘Guy Mannering’ is too often written in language unintelligible to

all except the Scotch.” The “Critical Monthly” also had scruples about

morality. The novel “advocates duelling, encourages a taste for peeping

into the future,--a taste by far too prevalent,--and it is not over nice

on religious subjects!”

The “Quarterly Review” distinguished itself by stupidity, if not by

spite. “The language of ‘Guy Mannering,’ though characteristic, is mean;

the state of society, though peculiar, is vulgar. Meg Merrilies is

swelled into a very unnatural importance.” The speech of Meg Merrilies to

Ellangowan is “one of the few which affords an intelligible extract.” The

Author “does not even scruple to overturn the laws of Nature”--because

Colonel Mannering resides in the neighbourhood of Ellangowan! “The Author

either gravely believes what no other man alive believes, or he has, of

malice prepense, committed so great an offence against good taste as to

build his story on what he must know to be a contemptible absurdity. . . .

The greater part of the characters, their manners and dialect, are at

once barbarous and vulgar, extravagant and mean. . . . The work would be,

on the whole, improved by being translated into English. Though we

cannot, on the whole, speak of the novel with approbation, we will not

affect to deny that we read it with interest, and that it repaid us with

amusement.”

It is in reviewing “The Antiquary” that the immortal idiot of the

“Quarterly” complains about “the dark dialect of Anglified Erse.”

Published criticism never greatly affected Scott’s spirits,--probably, he

very seldom read it. He knew that the public, like Constable’s friend

Mrs. Stewart, were “reading ‘Guy Mannering’ all day, and dreaming of it

all night.”

Indeed, it is much better to read “Guy Mannering” than to criticise it. A

book written in six weeks, a book whose whole plot and conception was

changed “in the printing,” must have its faults of construction. Thus, we

meet Mannering first as “a youthful lover,” a wanderer at adventure, an

amateur astrologer, and suddenly we lose sight of him, and only recover

him as a disappointed, “disilluded,” and weary, though still vigorous,

veteran. This is the inevitable result of a novel based on a prediction.

Either you have to leap some twenty years just when you are becoming

familiar with the persons, or you have to begin in the midst of the

events foreseen, and then make a tedious return to explain the prophecy.

Again, it was necessary for Scott to sacrifice Frank Kennedy, who is

rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in “Old Mortality.” Readers

regret the necessity which kills Kennedy. The whole fortunes of Vanbeest

Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the

nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case

and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur.

A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown’s flageolet. It is a

modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,--a lute, a concertina, a

barrel-organ?

The characters of the young ladies have not always been applauded. Taste,

in the matter of heroines, varies greatly; Sir Walter had no high opinion

of his own skill in delineating them. But Julia Mannering is probably a

masterly picture of a girl of that age,--a girl with some silliness and

more gaiety, with wit, love of banter, and, in the last resort, sense and

good feeling. She is particularly good when, in fear and trembling, she

teases her imposing father.

“I expect,” says Colonel Mannering, “that you will pay to this young lady

that attention which is due to misfortune and virtue.” “Certainly, sir.

Is my future friend red-haired?” Miss Mannering is very capable of

listening to Brown’s flageolet from the balcony, but not of accompanying

Brown, should he desire it, in the boat. As for Brown himself, he is one

of Sir Walter’s usual young men,--“brave, handsome, not too clever,”--the

despair of their humorous creator. “Once you come to forty year,” as

Thackeray sings, “then you’ll know that a lad is an ass;” and Scott had

come to that age, and perhaps entertained that theory of a jeune premier

when he wrote “Guy Mannering.” In that novel, as always, he was most

himself when dealing either with homely Scottish characters of everyday

life, with exaggerated types of humorous absurdity, and with wildly

adventurous banditti, who appealed to the old strain of the Border reiver

in his blood. The wandering plot of “Guy Mannering” enabled him to

introduce examples of all these sorts. The good-humoured, dull, dawdling

Ellangowan, a laird half dwindled to a yeoman, is a sketch absolutely

accurate, and wonderfully touched with pathos. The landladies, Mrs.

MacCandlish and Tib Mumps, are little masterpieces; so is Mac-Morlan, the

foil to Glossin; and so is Pleydell, allowing for the manner of the age.

Glossin himself is best when least villanous. Sir Robert Hazlewood is

hardly a success. But as to Jock Jabos, a Southern Scot may say that he

knows Jock Jabos in the flesh, so persistent is the type of that

charioteer. It is partly Scott’s good fortune, partly it is his evil

luck, to be so inimitably and intimately true in his pictures of Scottish

character. This wins the heart of his countrymen, indeed; but the

stranger can never know how good Scott really is, any more than a

Frenchman can appreciate Falstaff. Thus the alien may be vexed by what he

thinks the mere clannish enthusiasm of praise, in Scott’s countrymen.

Every little sketch of a passing face is exquisite in Scott’s work, when

he is at his best. For example, Dandie Dinmont’s children are only

indicated “with a dusty roll of the brush;” but we recognize at once the

large, shy, kindly families of the Border. Dandie himself, as the

“Edinburgh Review” said (1817), “is beyond all question the best rustic

portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public,--the most

honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart as well as to

the genius of the Author, the truest to nature, the most complete in all

its lineaments.” Dandie is always delightful,--whether at Mumps’s Hall,

or on the lonely moor, or at home in Charlieshope, or hunting, or

leistering fish, or entering terriers at vermin, or fighting, or going to

law, or listening to the reading of a disappointing will, or entertaining

the orphan whom others neglect; always delightful he is, always generous,

always true, always the Border farmer. There is no better stock of men,

none less devastated by “the modern spirit.” His wife is worthy of him,

and has that singular gentleness, kindliness, and dignity which prevail

on the Border, even in households far less prosperous than that of Dandie

Dinmont.--[Dr. John Brown’s Ailie, in “Rab and his Friends,” will

naturally occur to the mind of every reader.]

Among Scott’s “character parts,” or types broadly humorous, few have been

more popular than Dominie Sampson. His ungainly goodness, unwieldy

strength, and inaccessible learning have made great sport, especially

when “Guy Mannering” was “Terryfied” for the stage.

As Miss Bertram remarks in that singular piece,--where even Jock Jabos

“wins till his English,” like Elspeth in the Antiquary,--the Dominie

“rather forces a tear from the eye of sentiment than a laugh from the

lungs of ribaldry.” In the play, however, he sits down to read a folio on

some bandboxes, which, very naturally, “give way under him.” As he has

just asked Mrs. Mac-Candlish after the health of both her husbands, who

are both dead, the lungs of ribaldry are more exercised than the fine eye

of sentiment. We scarcely care to see our Dominie treated thus. His

creator had the very lowest opinion of the modern playwright’s craft, and

probably held that stage humour could not be too palpable and practical.

Lockhart writes (v. 130): “What share the novelist himself had in this

first specimen of what he used to call ‘the art of Terryfying’ I cannot

exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the pretty song of the

‘Lullaby’ was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that he had

taken the trouble to modify the plot and rearrange for stage purposes a

considerable part of the original dialogue.” Friends of the Dominie may

be glad to know, perhaps on Scott’s own testimony, that he was an alumnus

of St. Andrews. “I was boarded for twenty pence a week at Luckie

Sour-kail’s, in the High Street of St. Andrews.” He was also fortunate

enough to hold a bursary in St. Leonard’s College, which, however, is a

blunder. St. Leonard’s and St. Salvator’s had already been merged in the

United College (1747). All this is in direct contradiction to the

evidence in the novel, which makes the Dominie a Glasgow man. Yet the

change seems to be due to Scott rather than to Terry. It is certain that

Colonel Mannering would not have approved of the treatment which the

Dominie undergoes, in a play whereof the plot and conduct fall little

short of the unintelligible.

Against the character of Pleydell “a few murmurs of pedantic criticism,”

as Lockhart says, were uttered, and it was natural that Pleydell should

seem an incredible character to English readers. But there is plenty of

evidence that his “High Jinks” were not exaggerated.

There remains the heroine of the novel, as Mr. Ruskin not incorrectly

calls her, Meg Merrilies, the sybil who so captivated the imagination of

Keats. Among Scott’s many weird women, she is the most romantic, with her

loyal heart and that fiery natural eloquence which, as Scott truly

observed, does exist ready for moments of passion, even among the

reticent Lowlanders. The child of a mysterious wandering race, Meg has a

double claim to utter such speeches as she addresses to Ellangowan after

the eviction of her tribe. Her death, as Mr. Ruskin says, is

“self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and happy.” The devotion of Meg

Merrilies, the grandeur of her figure, the music of her songs, more than

redeem the character of Dirk Hatteraick, even if we hold, with the

“Edinburgh” reviewer, that he is “a vulgar bandit of the German school,”

just as the insipidity and flageolet of the hero are redeemed by the

ballad sung in the moment of recognition.

“Are these the Links of Forth, she said,

Or are they the crooks of Dee,

Or the bonnie woods of Warroch Head,

That I so fain would see?”

“Guy Mannering,” according to Lockhart, was “pronounced by acclamation

fully worthy to share the honours of ‘Waverley.’” One star differeth from

another in glory, and “Guy Mannering” has neither that vivid picture of

clannish manners nor that noble melancholy of a gallant and forlorn

endeavour of the Lost Cause,

“When all was done that man may do,

And all was done in vain,”

which give dignity to “Waverley.” Yet, with Lockhart, we may admire, in

“Guy Mannering,” “the rapid, ever-heightening interest of the narrative,

the unaffected kindliness of feeling, the manly purity of thought,

everywhere mingled with a gentle humour and homely sagacity, but, above

all, the rich variety and skilful contrast of character and manners, at

once fresh in fiction and stamped with the unforgeable seal of truth and

nature.”

ANDREW LANG.

GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER

CHAPTER I

He could not deny that, looking round upon the dreary region,

and seeing nothing but bleak fields and naked trees, hills

obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inundations, he did

for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and

wished himself again safe at home.

--‘Travels of Will. Marvel,’ IDLER, No. 49.

It was in the beginning of the month of November 17--when a young English

gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the

liberty afforded him to visit some parts of the north of England; and

curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister

country. He had visited, on the day that opens our history, some monastic

ruins in the county of Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making

drawings of them from different points, so that, on mounting his horse to

resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had

already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract of black moss,

extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences arose

like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches of corn,

which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut or farm-house,

shaded by a willow or two and surrounded by large elder-bushes. These

insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages

through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The

public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the

prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is

uncomfortable to travel alone and in the dark through an unknown country;

and there are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy frets herself so

much as in a situation like that of Mannering.

As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared blacker

and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each chance passenger

on his distance from the village of Kippletringan, where he proposed to

quarter for the night. His queries were usually answered by a

counter-challenge respecting the place from whence he came. While

sufficient daylight remained to show the dress and appearance of a

gentleman, these cross interrogatories were usually put in the form of a

case supposed, as, ‘Ye’ll hae been at the auld abbey o’ Halycross, sir?

there’s mony English gentlemen gang to see that.’--Or, ‘Your honour will

become frae the house o’ Pouderloupat?’ But when the voice of the querist

alone was distinguishable, the response usually was, ‘Where are ye coming

frae at sic a time o’ night as the like o’ this?’--or, ‘Ye’ll no be o’

this country, freend?’ The answers, when obtained, were neither very

reconcilable to each other nor accurate in the information which they

afforded. Kippletringan was distant at first ‘a gey bit’; then the ‘gey

bit’ was more accurately described as ‘ablins three mile’; then the

‘three mile’ diminished into ‘like a mile and a bittock’; then extended

themselves into ‘four mile or thereawa’; and, lastly, a female voice,

having hushed a wailing infant which the spokeswoman carried in her arms,

assured Guy Mannering, ‘It was a weary lang gate yet to Kippletringan,

and unco heavy road for foot passengers.’ The poor hack upon which

Mannering was mounted was probably of opinion that it suited him as ill

as the female respondent; for he began to flag very much, answered each

application of the spur with a groan, and stumbled at every stone (and

they were not few) which lay in his road.

Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a

deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near by the apparition of

a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to find

that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which

occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At length, to

complete his perplexity, he arrived at a place where the road divided

into two. If there had been light to consult the relics of a finger-post

which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as, according to

the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced

shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like

a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse, which,

without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to proceed at a

somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a hope that he knew

he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening. This hope, however,

was not speedily accomplished, and Mannering, whose impatience made every

furlong seem three, began to think that Kippletringan was actually

retreating before him in proportion to his advance.

It was now very cloudy, although the stars from time to time shed a

twinkling and uncertain light. Hitherto nothing had broken the silence

around him but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-of-the-bog, a

large species of bittern, and the sighs of the wind as it passed along

the dreary morass. To these was now joined the distant roar of the ocean,

towards which the traveller seemed to be fast approaching. This was no

circumstance to make his mind easy. Many of the roads in that country lay

along the sea-beach, and were liable to be flooded by the tides, which

rise with great height, and advance with extreme rapidity. Others were

intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass

at particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance would have suited a

dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of his road.

Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to halt for the night at the

first inhabited place, however poor, he might chance to reach, unless he

could procure a guide to this unlucky village of Kippletringan.

A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose. He found

out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time knocked without

producing any other answer than a duet between a female and a cur-dog,

the latter yelping as if he would have barked his heart out, the other

screaming in chorus. By degrees the human tones predominated; but the

angry bark of the cur being at the instant changed into a howl, it is

probable something more than fair strength of lungs had contributed to

the ascendency.

‘Sorrow be in your thrapple then!’ these were the first articulate words,

‘will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi’ your yaffing?’

‘Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?’

‘Frae Kippletringan!!!’ in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but

faintly express by three points of admiration. ‘Ow, man! ye should hae

hadden eassel to Kippletringan; ye maun gae back as far as the whaap, and

baud the whaap till ye come to Ballenloan, and then--’

‘This will never do, good dame! my horse is almost quite knocked up; can

you not give me a night’s lodgings?’

‘Troth can I no; I am a lone woman, for James he’s awa to Drumshourloch

Fair with the year-aulds, and I daurna for my life open the door to ony

o’ your gang-there-out sort o’ bodies.’

‘But what must I do then, good dame? for I can’t sleep here upon the road

all night.’

‘Troth, I kenna, unless ye like to gae down and speer for quarters at the

Place. I’se warrant they’ll tak ye in, whether ye be gentle or semple.’

‘Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night,’ thought

Mannering, who was ignorant of the meaning of the phrase; ‘but how shall

I get to the PLACE, as you call it?’

‘Ye maun baud wessel by the end o’ the loan, and take tent o’ the

jaw-hole.’

‘O, if ye get to eassel and wessel again, I am undone! Is there nobody

that could guide me to this Place? I will pay him handsomely.’

The word pay operated like magic. ‘Jock, ye villain,’ exclaimed the voice

from the interior, ‘are ye lying routing there, and a young gentleman

seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, and show him the way

down the muckle loaning. He’ll show you the way, sir, and I’se warrant

ye’ll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and

ye ‘ll be come in the canny moment, I’m thinking, for the laird’s

servant--that’s no to say his body-servant, but the helper like--rade

express by this e’en to fetch the houdie, and he just staid the drinking

o’ twa pints o’ tippenny to tell us how my leddy was ta’en wi’ her

pains.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mannering, ‘at such a time a stranger’s arrival might be

inconvenient?’

‘Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle eneugh,

and decking time’s aye canty time.’

By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a

tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied forth, a

great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve years old, so

exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his half-naked mother held

in such a manner as to get a peep at the stranger without greatly

exposing herself to view in return. Jock moved on westward by the end of

the house, leading Mannering’s horse by the bridle, and piloting with

some dexterity along the little path which bordered the formidable

jaw-hole, whose vicinity the stranger was made sensible of by means of

more organs than one. His guide then dragged the weary hack along a

broken and stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke down

a slap, as he called it, in a drystone fence, and lugged the unresisting

animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple masonry giving way

in the splutter with which he passed. Finally, he led the way through a

wicket into something which had still the air of an avenue, though many

of the trees were felled. The roar of the ocean was now near and full,

and the moon, which began to make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted

and apparently a ruined mansion of considerable extent. Mannering fixed

his eyes upon it with a disconsolate sensation.

‘Why, my little fellow,’ he said, ‘this is a ruin, not a house?’

‘Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that’s Ellangowan Auld Place.

There’s a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared, I never saw

ony mysell, and we’re just at the door o’ the New Place.’

Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought the

traveller in front of a modern house of moderate size, at which his guide

rapped with great importance. Mannering told his circumstances to the

servant; and the gentleman of the house, who heard his tale from the

parlour, stepped forward and welcomed the stranger hospitably to

Ellangowan. The boy, made happy with half-a-crown, was dismissed to his

cottage, the weary horse was conducted to a stall, and Mannering found

himself in a few minutes seated by a comfortable supper, for which his

cold ride gave him a hearty appetite.

CHAPTER II

Comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land

A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out

Henry IV, Part 1.

The company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird and a

sort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps the

minister’s assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate the

minister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.

The Laird himself was one of those second-rate sort of persons that are

to be found frequently in rural situations. Fielding has described one

class as feras consumere nati; but the love of field-sports indicates a

certain activity of mind, which had forsaken Mr. Bertram, if ever he

possessed it. A good-humoured listlessness of countenance formed the only

remarkable expression of his features, although they were rather handsome

than otherwise. In fact, his physiognomy indicated the inanity of

character which pervaded his life. I will give the reader some insight

into his state and conversation before he has finished a long lecture to

Mannering upon the propriety and comfort of wrapping his stirrup-irons

round with a wisp of straw when he had occasion to ride in a chill

evening.

Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan succeeded to a long pedigree and a short

rent-roll, like many lairds of that period. His list of forefathers

ascended so high that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian

independence, so that his genealogical tree, besides the Christian and

crusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts, and Dennises, and Rolands

without end, bore heathen fruit of yet darker ages--Arths, and Knarths,

and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly the stormy

chiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and the heads of a numerous

tribe called Mac-Dingawaie, though they afterwards adopted the Norman

surname of Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, been defeated,

beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, for many

centuries. But they had gradually lost ground in the world, and, from

being themselves the heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies, the

Bertrams, or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan had sunk into subordinate

accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacity took place in

the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit

of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with the

ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the celebrated Vicar of Bray,

and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side as that worthy divine to

the stronger. And truly, like him, they had their reward.

Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was,

says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (see the

title ‘Ellangowan’), ‘a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for the cause

of His Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis of

Montrose and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, and sustained

great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthood conferred

upon him by His Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as a malignant

by the parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner in the year

1648.’ These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and resolutioner

cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His son Dennis Bertram

married a daughter of an eminent fanatic who had a seat in the council of

state, and saved by that union the remainder of the family property. But,

as ill chance would have it, he became enamoured of the lady’s principles

as well as of her charms, and my author gives him this character: ‘He was

a man of eminent parts and resolution, for which reason he was chosen by

the western counties one of the committee of noblemen and gentlemen to

report their griefs to the privy council of Charles II. anent the coming

in of the Highland host in 1678.’ For undertaking this patriotic task he

underwent a fine, to pay which he was obliged to mortgage half of the

remaining moiety of his paternal property. This loss he might have

recovered by dint of severe economy, but on the breaking out of Argyle’s

rebellion Dennis Bertram was again suspected by government, apprehended,

sent to Dunnotar Castle on the coast of the Mearns, and there broke his

neck in an attempt to escape from a subterranean habitation called the

Whigs’ Vault, in which he was confined with some eighty of the same

persuasion. The apprizer therefore (as the holder of a mortgage was then

called) entered upon possession, and, in the language of Hotspur, ‘came

me cranking in,’ and cut the family out of another monstrous cantle of

their remaining property.

Donohoe Bertram, with somewhat of an Irish name and somewhat of an Irish

temper, succeeded to the diminished property of Ellangowan. He turned out

of doors the Reverend Aaron Macbriar, his mother’s chaplain (it is said

they quarrelled about the good graces of a milkmaid); drank himself daily

drunk with brimming healths to the king, council, and bishops; held

orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, and Sir James

Turner; and lastly, took his grey gelding and joined Clavers at

Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead by a

Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof from the

Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still called the

Wicked Laird’s Lair.

His son Lewis had more prudence than seems usually to have belonged to

the family. He nursed what property was yet left to him; for Donohoe’s

excesses, as well as fines and forfeitures, had made another inroad upon

the estate. And although even he did not escape the fatality which

induced the Lairds of Ellangowan to interfere with politics, he had yet

the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore in 1715, to convey his

estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties in case the

Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla and

Charybdis--a word to the wise--he only saved his estate at expense of a

lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was, however, a

man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the old cattle,

where the family lived in their decadence as a mouse (said an old farmer)

lives under a firlot. Pulling down part of these venerable ruins, he

built with the stones a narrow house of three stories high, with a front

like a grenadier’s cap, having in the very centre a round window like the

single eye of a Cyclops, two windows on each side, and a door in the

middle, leading to a parlour and withdrawing-room full of all manner of

cross lights.

This was the New Place of Ellangowan, in which we left our hero, better

amused perhaps than our readers, and to this Lewis Bertram retreated,

full of projects for re-establishing the prosperity of his family. He

took some land into his own hand, rented some from neighbouring

proprietors, bought and sold Highland cattle and Cheviot sheep, rode to

fairs and trysts, fought hard bargains, and held necessity at the staff’s

end as well as he might. But what he gained in purse he lost in honour,

for such agricultural and commercial negotiations were very ill looked

upon by his brother lairds, who minded nothing but cock-fighting,

hunting, coursing, and horse-racing, with now and then the alternative of

a desperate duel. The occupations which he followed encroached, in their

opinion, upon the article of Ellangowan’s gentry, and he found it

necessary gradually to estrange himself from their society, and sink into

what was then a very ambiguous character, a gentleman farmer. In the

midst of his schemes death claimed his tribute, and the scanty remains of

a large property descended upon Godfrey Bertram, the present possessor,

his only son.

The danger of the father’s speculations was soon seen. Deprived of Laird

Lewis’s personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings

miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single

spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his faith

in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters nor hounds, nor any

other southern preliminaries to ruin; but, as has been observed of his

countrymen, he kept a man of business, who answered the purpose equally

well. Under this gentleman’s supervision small debts grew into large,

interests were accumulated upon capitals, movable bonds became heritable,

and law charges were heaped upon all; though Ellangowan possessed so

little the spirit of a litigant that he was on two occasions charged to

make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit, although he had never

before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours

predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity,

accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing

nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more

compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the

division of a common, or the holding of a black-fishing or poaching

court, or any similar occasion when they conceived themselves oppressed

by the gentry, they were in the habit of saying to each other, ‘Ah, if

Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain that his forbears had afore him, he

wadna see the puir folk trodden down this gait.’ Meanwhile, this general

good opinion never prevented their taking advantage of him on all

possible occasions, turning their cattle into his parks, stealing his

wood, shooting his game, and so forth, ‘for the Laird, honest man, he’ll

never find it; he never minds what a puir body does.’ Pedlars, gipsies,

tinkers, vagrants of all descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or

harboured in his kitchen; and the Laird, who was ‘nae nice body,’ but a

thorough gossip, like most weak men, found recompense for his hospitality

in the pleasure of questioning them on the news of the country side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan’s progress on the highroad to ruin.

This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about four

thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why she

married him and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had a

tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, and the

most perfect good-humour. It might be some additional consideration, that

she was herself at the reflecting age of twenty-eight, and had no near

relations to control her actions or choice.

It was in this lady’s behalf (confined for the first time after her

marriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the old dame

of the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on the night of

Mannering’s arrival.

Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains that

we make the reader in some degree acquainted with his companion. This was

Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue,

Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from his

cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were

encouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, ‘might wag his

pow in a pulpit yet.’ With an ambitious view to such a consummation, they

pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, ate dry bread and drank

cold water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall,

ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some grotesque

habits of swinging his limbs and screwing his visage while reciting his

task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his school-companions. The

same qualities secured him at Glasgow College a plentiful share of the

same sort of notice. Half the youthful mob of ‘the yards’ used to

assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson (for he had already attained

that honourable title) descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his

lexicon under his arm, his long misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and

keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder-blades, as they

raised and depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which was his

constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the professor

(professor of divinity though he was) were totally inadequate to restrain

the inextinguishable laughter of the students, and sometimes even to

repress his own. The long, sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge

under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but

to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within

the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes

to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more

distinctly,--all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and

shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery

against the poor scholar from Juvenal’s time downward. It was never known

that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the

least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the

most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his

miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the

benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour,

permission to study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages,

he obtained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and some

acquaintance with the sciences.

In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was admitted

to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from his own

bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to

risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, he

became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse, gasped,

grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation thought them

flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs,

trampling upon the old women who generally take their station there, and

was ever after designated as a ‘stickit minister.’ And thus he wandered

back to his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the

poverty of his parents. As he had neither friend nor confidant, hardly

even an acquaintance, no one had the means of observing closely how

Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied the whole town with

a week’s sport. It would be endless even to mention the numerous jokes to

which it gave birth, from a ballad called ‘Sampson’s Riddle,’ written

upon the subject by a smart young student of humanity, to the sly hope of

the Principal that the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty

namesake, taken the college gates along with him in his retreat.

To all appearance, the equanimity of Sampson was unshaken. He sought to

assist his parents by teaching a school, and soon had plenty of scholars,

but very few fees. In fact, he taught the sons of farmers for what they

chose to give him, and the poor for nothing; and, to the shame of the

former be it spoken, the pedagogue’s gains never equalled those of a

skilful ploughman. He wrote, however, a good hand, and added something to

his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters for Ellangowan. By

degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general society, became

partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it is true, was out of

the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, and stirred the fire

with some address. He attempted even to snuff the candles, but was

unsuccessful, and relinquished that ambitious post of courtesy after

having twice reduced the parlour to total darkness. So his civilities,

thereafter, were confined to taking off his glass of ale in exactly the

same time and measure with the Laird, and in uttering certain indistinct

murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion of the long and winding stories

of Ellangowan.

On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Mannering

his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of

black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy,

scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in grey breeches, dark-blue

stockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles.

Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two persons in

whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably seated.

CHAPTER III

Do not the hist’ries of all ages

Relate miraculous presages

Of strange turns in the world’s affairs,

Foreseen by astrologers, soothsayers,

Chaldeans, learned genethliacs,

And some that have writ almanacks?

Hudibras.

The circumstances of the landlady were pleaded to Mannering, first, as an

apology for her not appearing to welcome her guest, and for those

deficiencies in his entertainment which her attention might have

supplied, and then as an excuse for pressing an extra bottle of good

wine. ‘I cannot weel sleep,’ said the Laird, with the anxious feelings of

a father in such a predicament, ‘till I hear she’s gotten ower with it;

and if you, sir, are not very sleepery, and would do me and the Dominie

the honour to sit up wi’ us, I am sure we shall not detain you very late.

Luckie Howatson is very expeditious. There was ance a lass that was in

that way; she did not live far from hereabouts--ye needna shake your head

and groan, Dominie; I am sure the kirk dues were a’ weel paid, and what

can man do mair?--it was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head;

and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for

the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shoreside at Annan, and

a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish

to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little curlie Godfrey--that’s the

eldest, the come o’ will, as I may say--he’s on board an excise yacht. I

hae a cousin at the board of excise; that’s Commissioner Bertram; he got

his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must

have heard of, for it was appealed to the House of Commons. Now I should

have voted there for the Laird of Balruddery; but ye see my father was a

Jacobite, and out with Kenmore, so he never took the oaths; and I ken not

weel how it was, but all that I could do and say, they keepit me off the

roll, though my agent, that had a vote upon my estate, ranked as a good

vote for auld Sir Thomas Kittlecourt. But, to return to what I was

saying, Luckie Howatson is very expeditious, for this lass--’

Here the desultory and long-winded narrative of the Laird was interrupted

by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the kitchen story, and

singing at full pitch of voice. The high notes were too shrill for a man,

the low seemed too deep for a woman. The words, as far as Mannering could

distinguish them, seemed to run thus:--

Canny moment, lucky fit!

Is the lady lighter yet?

Be it lad, or be it lass,

Sign wi’ cross and sain wi’ mass.

‘It’s Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, as sure as I am a sinner,’ said Mr.

Bertram. The Dominie groaned deeply, uncrossed his legs, drew in the huge

splay foot which his former posture had extended, placed it

perpendicularly, and stretched the other limb over it instead, puffing

out between whiles huge volumes of tobacco smoke. ‘What needs ye groan,

Dominie? I am sure Meg’s sangs do nae ill.’

‘Nor good neither,’ answered Dominie Sampson, in a voice whose untuneable

harshness corresponded with the awkwardness of his figure. They were the

first words which Mannering had heard him speak; and as he had been

watching with some curiosity when this eating, drinking, moving, and

smoking automaton would perform the part of speaking, he was a good deal

diverted with the harsh timber tones which issued from him. But at this

moment the door opened, and Meg Merrilies entered.

Her appearance made Mannering start. She was full six feet high, wore a

man’s great-coat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly

sloethorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats,

seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks shot out like

the snakes of the gorgon between an old-fashioned bonnet called a

bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and

weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had a

wild roll that indicated something like real or affected insanity.

‘Aweel, Ellangowan,’ she said, ‘wad it no hae been a bonnie thing, an the

leddy had been brought to bed, and me at the fair o’ Drumshourloch, no

kenning, nor dreaming a word about it? Wha was to hae keepit awa the

worriecows, I trow? Ay, and the elves and gyre-carlings frae the bonnie

bairn, grace be wi’ it? Ay, or said Saint Colme’s charm for its sake, the

dear?’ And without waiting an answer she began to sing--

Trefoil, vervain, John’s-wort, dill,

Hinders witches of their

will, Weel is them, that weel may

Fast upon Saint Andrew’s day.

Saint Bride and her brat,

Saint Colme and his cat,

Saint Michael and his spear,

Keep the house frae reif and wear.

This charm she sung to a wild tune, in a high and shrill voice, and,

cutting three capers with such strength and agility as almost to touch

the roof of the room, concluded, ‘And now, Laird, will ye no order me a

tass o’ brandy?’

‘That you shall have, Meg. Sit down yont there at the door and tell us

what news ye have heard at the fair o’ Drumshourloch.’

‘Troth, Laird, and there was muckle want o’ you, and the like o’ you; for

there was a whin bonnie lasses there, forbye mysell, and deil ane to gie

them hansels.’

‘Weel, Meg, and how mony gipsies were sent to the tolbooth?’

‘Troth, but three, Laird, for there were nae mair in the fair, bye

mysell, as I said before, and I e’en gae them leg-bail, for there’s nae

ease in dealing wi’ quarrelsome fowk. And there’s Dunbog has warned the

Red Rotten and John Young aff his grunds--black be his cast! he’s nae

gentleman, nor drap’s bluid o’ gentleman, wad grudge twa gangrel puir

bodies the shelter o’ a waste house, and the thristles by the roadside

for a bit cuddy, and the bits o’ rotten birk to boil their drap parritch

wi’. Weel, there’s Ane abune a’; but we’ll see if the red cock craw not

in his bonnie barn-yard ae morning before day-dawing.’

‘Hush! Meg, hush! hush! that’s not safe talk.’

‘What does she mean?’ said Mannering to Sampson, in an undertone.

‘Fire-raising,’ answered the laconic Dominie.

‘Who, or what is she, in the name of wonder?’

‘Harlot, thief, witch, and gipsy,’ answered Sampson again.

‘O troth, Laird,’ continued Meg, during this by-talk, ‘it’s but to the

like o’ you ane can open their heart; ye see, they say Dunbog is nae mair

a gentleman than the blunker that’s biggit the bonnie house down in the

howm. But the like o’ you, Laird, that’s a real gentleman for sae mony

hundred years, and never hunds puir fowk aff your grund as if they were

mad tykes, nane o’ our fowk wad stir your gear if ye had as mony capons

as there’s leaves on the trysting-tree. And now some o’ ye maun lay down

your watch, and tell me the very minute o’ the hour the wean’s born, an

I’ll spae its fortune.’

‘Ay, but, Meg, we shall not want your assistance, for here’s a student

from Oxford that kens much better than you how to spae its fortune; he

does it by the stars.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Mannering, entering into the simple humour of his

landlord, ‘I will calculate his nativity according to the rule of the

“triplicities,” as recommended by Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Diocles, and

Avicenna. Or I will begin ab hora questionis, as Haly, Messahala,

Ganwehis, and Guido Bonatus have recommended.’

One of Sampson’s great recommendations to the favour of Mr. Bertram was,

that he never detected the most gross attempt at imposition, so that the

Laird, whose humble efforts at jocularity were chiefly confined to what

were then called bites and bams, since denominated hoaxes and quizzes,

had the fairest possible subject of wit in the unsuspecting Dominie. It

is true, he never laughed, or joined in the laugh which his own

simplicity afforded--nay, it is said, he never laughed but once in his

life, and on that memorable occasion his landlady miscarried, partly

through surprise at the event itself, and partly from terror at the

hideous grimaces which attended this unusual cachinnation. The only

effect which the discovery of such impositions produced upon this

saturnine personage was, to extort an ejaculation of ‘Prodigious!’ or

‘Very facetious!’ pronounced syllabically, but without moving a muscle of

his own countenance.

On the present occasion, he turned a gaunt and ghastly stare upon the

youthful astrologer, and seemed to doubt if he had rightly understood his

answer to his patron.

‘I am afraid, sir,’ said Mannering, turning towards him, ‘you may be one

of those unhappy persons who, their dim eyes being unable to penetrate

the starry spheres, and to discern therein the decrees of heaven at a

distance, have their hearts barred against conviction by prejudice and

misprision.’

‘Truly,’ said Sampson, ‘I opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and

umwhile master of his Majesty’s mint, that the (pretended) science of

astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory.’ And here he

reposed his oracular jaws.

‘Really,’ resumed the traveller, ‘I am sorry to see a gentleman of your

learning and gravity labouring under such strange blindness and delusion.

Will you place the brief, the modern, and, as I may say, the vernacular

name of Isaac Newton in opposition to the grave and sonorous authorities

of Dariot, Bonatus, Ptolemy, Haly, Eztler, Dieterick, Naibob, Harfurt,

Zael, Taustettor, Agrippa, Duretus, Maginus, Origen, and Argol? Do not

Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and poets and

philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?’

‘Communis error--it is a general mistake,’ answered the inflexible

Dominie Sampson.

‘Not so,’ replied the young Englishman; ‘it is a general and

well-grounded belief.’

‘It is the resource of cheaters, knaves, and cozeners,’ said Sampson.

‘Abusus non tollit usum.--The abuse of anything doth not abrogate the

lawful use thereof.’

During this discussion Ellangowan was somewhat like a woodcock caught in

his own springe. He turned his face alternately from the one spokesman to

the other, and began, from the gravity with which Mannering plied his

adversary, and the learning which he displayed in the controversy, to

give him credit for being half serious. As for Meg, she fixed her

bewildered eyes upon the astrologer, overpowered by a jargon more

mysterious than her own.

Mannering pressed his advantage, and ran over all the hard terms of art

which a tenacious memory supplied, and which, from circumstances

hereafter to be noticed, had been familiar to him in early youth.

Signs and planets, in aspects sextile, quartile, trine, conjoined, or

opposite; houses of heaven, with their cusps, hours, and minutes;

almuten, almochoden, anabibazon, catabibazon; a thousand terms of equal

sound and significance, poured thick and threefold upon the unshrinking

Dominie, whose stubborn incredulity bore him out against the pelting of

this pitiless storm.

At length the joyful annunciation that the lady had presented her husband

with a fine boy, and was (of course) as well as could be expected, broke

off this intercourse. Mr. Bertram hastened to the lady’s apartment, Meg

Merrilies descended to the kitchen to secure her share of the groaning

malt and the ‘ken-no,’ [Footnote: See Note i.] and Mannering, after

looking at his watch, and noting with great exactness the hour and minute

of the birth, requested, with becoming gravity, that the Dominie would

conduct him to some place where he might have a view of the heavenly

bodies.

The schoolmaster, without further answer, rose and threw open a door half

sashed with glass, which led to an old-fashioned terrace-walk behind the

modern house, communicating with the platform on which the ruins of the

ancient castle were situated. The wind had arisen, and swept before it

the clouds which had formerly obscured the sky. The moon was high, and at

the full, and all the lesser satellites of heaven shone forth in

cloudless effulgence. The scene which their light presented to Mannering

was in the highest degree unexpected and striking.

We have observed, that in the latter part of his journey our traveller

approached the sea-shore, without being aware how nearly. He now

perceived that the ruins of Ellangowan Castle were situated upon a

promontory, or projection of rock, which formed one side of a small and

placid bay on the sea-shore. The modern mansion was placed lower, though

closely adjoining, and the ground behind it descended to the sea by a

small swelling green bank, divided into levels by natural terraces, on

which grew some old trees, and terminating upon the white sand. The other

side of the bay, opposite to the old castle, was a sloping and varied

promontory, covered chiefly with copsewood, which on that favoured coast

grows almost within water-mark. A fisherman’s cottage peeped from among

the trees. Even at this dead hour of night there were lights moving upon

the shore, probably occasioned by the unloading a smuggling lugger from

the Isle of Man which was lying in the bay. On the light from the sashed

door of the house being observed, a halloo from the vessel of ‘Ware hawk!

Douse the glim!’ alarmed those who were on shore, and the lights

instantly disappeared.

It was one hour after midnight, and the prospect around was lovely. The

grey old towers of the ruin, partly entire, partly broken, here bearing

the rusty weather-stains of ages, and there partially mantled with ivy,

stretched along the verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering’s

right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping

and sparkling to the moonbeams, rolled successively along its surface,

and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. To

the left the woods advanced far into the ocean, waving in the moonlight

along ground of an undulating and varied form, and presenting those

varieties of light and shade, and that interesting combination of glade

and thicket, upon which the eye delights to rest, charmed with what it

sees, yet curious to pierce still deeper into the intricacies of the

woodland scenery. Above rolled the planets, each, by its own liquid orbit

of light, distinguished from the inferior or more distant stars. So

strangely can imagination deceive even those by whose volition it has

been excited, that Mannering, while gazing upon these brilliant bodies,

was half inclined to believe in the influence ascribed to them by

superstition over human events. But Mannering was a youthful lover, and

might perhaps be influenced by the feelings so exquisitely expressed by a

modern poet:--

For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birthplace:

Delightedly dwells he ‘mong fays, and talismans,

And spirits, and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The power,the beauty, and the majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,

Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and wat’ry depths--all these have vanish’d;

They live no longer in the faith of reason!

But still the heart doth need a language, still

Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.

And to yon starry world they now are gone,

Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth

With man as with their friend, and to the lover

Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky

Shoot influence down; and even at this day

‘T is Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,

And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.

Such musings soon gave way to others. ‘Alas!’ he muttered, ‘my good old

tutor, who used to enter so deep into the controversy between Heydon and

Chambers on the subject of astrology, he would have looked upon the scene

with other eyes, and would have seriously endeavoured to discover from

the respective positions of these luminaries their probable effects on

the destiny of the new-born infant, as if the courses or emanations of

the stars superseded, or at least were co-ordinate with, Divine

Providence. Well, rest be with him! he instilled into me enough of

knowledge for erecting a scheme of nativity, and therefore will I

presently go about it.’ So saying, and having noted the position of the

principal planetary bodies, Guy Mannering returned to the house. The

Laird met him in the parlour, and, acquainting him with great glee that

the boy was a fine healthy little fellow, seemed rather disposed to press

further conviviality. He admitted, however, Mannering’s plea of

weariness, and, conducting him to his sleeping apartment, left him to

repose for the evening.

CHAPTER IV

Come and see’ trust thine own eyes

A fearful sign stands in the house of life,

An enemy a fiend lurks close behind

The radiance of thy planet O be warned!

COLERIDGE, from SCHILLER

The belief in astrology was almost universal in the middle of the

seventeenth century; it began to waver and become doubtful towards the

close of that period, and in the beginning of the eighteenth the art fell

into general disrepute, and even under general ridicule. Yet it still

retained many partizans even in the seats of learning. Grave and studious

men were loath to relinquish the calculations which had early become the

principal objects of their studies, and felt reluctant to descend from

the predominating height to which a supposed insight into futurity, by

the power of consulting abstract influences and conjunctions, had exalted

them over the rest of mankind.

Among those who cherished this imaginary privilege with undoubting faith

was an old clergyman with whom Mannering was placed during his youth. He

wasted his eyes in observing the stars, and his brains in calculations

upon their various combinations. His pupil, in early youth, naturally

caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and laboured for a time to make

himself master of the technical process of astrological research; so

that, before he became convinced of its absurdity, William Lilly himself

would have allowed him ‘a curious fancy and piercing judgment in

resolving a question of nativity.’

On the present occasion he arose as early in the morning as the shortness

of the day permitted, and proceeded to calculate the nativity of the

young heir of Ellangowan. He undertook the task secundum artem, as well

to keep up appearances as from a sort of curiosity to know whether he yet

remembered, and could practise, the imaginary science. He accordingly

erected his scheme, or figure of heaven, divided into its twelve houses,

placed the planets therein according to the ephemeris, and rectified

their position to the hour and moment of the nativity. Without troubling

our readers with the general prognostications which judicial astrology

would have inferred from these circumstances, in this diagram there was

one significator which pressed remarkably upon our astrologer’s

attention. Mars, having dignity in the cusp of the twelfth house,

threatened captivity or sudden and violent death to the native; and

Mannering, having recourse to those further rules by which diviners

pretend to ascertain the vehemency of this evil direction, observed from

the result that three periods would be particularly hazardous--his fifth,

his tenth, his twenty-first year.

It was somewhat remarkable that Mannering had once before tried a similar

piece of foolery at the instance of Sophia Wellwood, the young lady to

whom he was attached, and that a similar conjunction of planetary

influence threatened her with death or imprisonment in her thirty-ninth

year. She was at this time eighteen; so that, according to the result of

the scheme in both cases, the same year threatened her with the same

misfortune that was presaged to the native or infant whom that night had

introduced into the world. Struck with this coincidence, Mannering

repeated his calculations; and the result approximated the events

predicted, until at length the same month, and day of the month, seemed

assigned as the period of peril to both.

It will be readily believed that, in mentioning this circumstance, we lay

no weight whatever upon the pretended information thus conveyed. But it

often happens, such is our natural love for the marvellous, that we

willingly contribute our own efforts to beguile our better judgments.

Whether the coincidence which I have mentioned was really one of those

singular chances which sometimes happen against all ordinary

calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the arithmetical

labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had insensibly twice

followed the same clue to guide him out of the maze; or whether his

imagination, seduced by some point of apparent resemblance, lent its aid

to make the similitude between the two operations more exactly accurate

than it might otherwise have been, it is impossible to guess; but the

impression upon his mind that the results exactly corresponded was

vividly and indelibly strong.

He could not help feeling surprise at a coincidence so singular and

unexpected. ‘Does the devil mingle in the dance, to avenge himself for

our trifling with an art said to be of magical origin? Or is it possible,

as Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne admit, that there is some truth in a sober

and regulated astrology, and that the influence of the stars is not to be

denied, though the due application of it by the knaves who pretend to

practise the art is greatly to be suspected?’ A moment’s consideration of

the subject induced him to dismiss this opinion as fantastical, and only

sanctioned by those learned men either because they durst not at once

shock the universal prejudices of their age, or because they themselves

were not altogether freed from the contagious influence of a prevailing

superstition. Yet the result of his calculations in these two instances

left so unpleasing an impression on his mind that, like Prospero, he

mentally relinquished his art, and resolved, neither in jest nor earnest,

ever again to practise judicial astrology.

He hesitated a good deal what he should say to the Laird of Ellangowan

concerning the horoscope of his first-born; and at length resolved

plainly to tell him the judgment which he had formed, at the same time

acquainting him with the futility of the rules of art on which he had

proceeded. With this resolution he walked out upon the terrace.

If the view of the scene around Ellangowan had been pleasing by

moonlight, it lost none of its beauty by the light of the morning sun.

The land, even in the month of November, smiled under its influence. A

steep but regular ascent led from the terrace to the neighbouring

eminence, and conducted Mannering to the front of the old castle. It

consisted of two massive round towers projecting deeply and darkly at the

extreme angles of a curtain, or flat wall, which united them, and thus

protecting the main entrance, that opened through a lofty arch in the

centre of the curtain into the inner court of the castle. The arms of the

family, carved in freestone, frowned over the gateway, and the portal

showed the spaces arranged by the architect for lowering the portcullis

and raising the drawbridge. A rude farm-gate, made of young fir-trees

nailed together, now formed the only safeguard of this once formidable

entrance. The esplanade in front of the castle commanded a noble

prospect.

The dreary scene of desolation through which Mannering’s road had lain on

the preceding evening was excluded from the view by some rising ground,

and the landscape showed a pleasing alternation of hill and dale,

intersected by a river, which was in some places visible, and hidden in

others, where it rolled betwixt deep and wooded banks. The spire of a

church and the appearance of some houses indicated the situation of a

village at the place where the stream had its junction with the ocean.

The vales seemed well cultivated, the little inclosures into which they

were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying

their lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up the ascent. Above

these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle,

then the staple commodity of the country, whose distant low gave no

unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter hills were of a

sterner character, and, at still greater distance, swelled into mountains

of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a screen which gave a defined

and limited boundary to the cultivated country, and added at the same

time the pleasing idea that it was sequestered and solitary. The

sea-coast, which Mannering now saw in its extent, corresponded in variety

and beauty with the inland view. In some places it rose into tall rocks,

frequently crowned with the ruins of old buildings, towers, or beacons,

which, according to tradition, were placed within sight of each other,

that, in times of invasion or civil war, they might communicate by signal

for mutual defence and protection. Ellangowan Castle was by far the most

extensive and important of these ruins, and asserted from size and

situation the superiority which its founders were said once to have

possessed among the chiefs and nobles of the district. In other places

the shore was of a more gentle description, indented with small bays,

where the land sloped smoothly down, or sent into the sea promontories

covered with wood.

A scene so different from what last night’s journey had presaged produced

a proportional effect upon Mannering. Beneath his eye lay the modern

house--an awkward mansion, indeed, in point of architecture, but well

situated, and with a warm, pleasant exposure. ‘How happily,’ thought our

hero, ‘would life glide on in such a retirement! On the one hand, the

striking remnants of ancient grandeur, with the secret consciousness of

family pride which they inspire; on the other, enough of modern elegance

and comfort to satisfy every moderate wish. Here then, and with thee,

Sophia!’

We shall not pursue a lover’s day-dream any farther. Mannering stood a

minute with his arms folded, and then turned to the ruined castle.

On entering the gateway, he found that the rude magnificence of the inner

court amply corresponded with the grandeur of the exterior. On the one

side ran a range of windows lofty and large, divided by carved mullions

of stone, which had once lighted the great hall of the castle; on the

other were various buildings of different heights and dates, yet so

united as to present to the eye a certain general effect of uniformity of

front. The doors and windows were ornamented with projections exhibiting

rude specimens of sculpture and tracery, partly entire and partly broken

down, partly covered by ivy and trailing plants, which grew luxuriantly

among the ruins. That end of the court which faced the entrance had also

been formerly closed by a range of buildings; but owing, it was said, to

its having been battered by the ships of the Parliament under Deane,

during the long civil war, this part of the castle was much more ruinous

than the rest, and exhibited a great chasm, through which Mannering could

observe the sea, and the little vessel (an armed lugger), which retained

her station in the centre of the bay. [Footnote: The outline of the above

description, as far as the supposed ruins are concerned, will be found

somewhat to resemble the noble remains of Carlaverock Castle, six or

seven miles from Dumfries, and near to Lochar Moss.] While Mannering was

gazing round the ruins, he heard from the interior of an apartment on the

left hand the voice of the gipsy he had seen on the preceding evening. He

soon found an aperture through which he could observe her without being

himself visible; and could not help feeling that her figure, her

employment, and her situation conveyed the exact impression of an ancient

sibyl.

She sate upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment,

part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the

evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam through a lofty and narrow

window fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for

her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a

habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with

something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread drawn from wool of

three different colours, black, white, and grey, by assistance of those

ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the

distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm.

Mannering, after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact

words of her song, afterwards attempted the following paraphrase of what,

from a few intelligible phrases, he concluded to be its purport:--

Twist ye, twine ye! even so

Mingle shades of joy and woe,

Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,

In the thread of human life.

While the mystic twist is spinning,

And the infant’s life beginning,

Dimly seen through twilight bending,

Lo, what varied shapes attending!

Passions wild, and Follies vain,

Pleasures soon exchanged for pain,

Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear

In the magic dance appear.

Now they wax, and now they dwindle,

Whirling with the whirling spindle.

Twist ye, twine ye! even so

Mingle human bliss and woe.

Ere our translator, or rather our free imitator, had arranged these

stanzas in his head, and while he was yet hammering out a rhyme for

DWINDLE, the task of the sibyl was accomplished, or her wool was

expended. She took the spindle, now charged with her labours, and,

undoing the thread gradually, measured it by casting it over her elbow

and bringing each loop round between her forefinger and thumb. When she

had measured it out, she muttered to herself--‘A hank, but not a haill

ane--the full years o’ three score and ten, but thrice broken, and thrice

to OOP (i.e. to unite); he’ll be a lucky lad an he win through wi’t.’

Our hero was about to speak to the prophetess, when a voice, hoarse as

the waves with which it mingled, hallooed twice, and with increasing

impatience--‘Meg, Meg Merrilies! Gipsy--hag--tausend deyvils!’

‘I am coming, I am coming, Captain,’ answered Meg; and in a moment or two

the impatient commander whom she addressed made his appearance from the

broken part of the ruins.

He was apparently a seafaring man, rather under the middle size, and with

a countenance bronzed by a thousand conflicts with the north-east wind.

His frame was prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set; so that it

seemed as if a man of much greater height would have been an inadequate

match in any close personal conflict. He was hard-favoured, and, which

was worse, his face bore nothing of the insouciance, the careless,

frolicsome jollity and vacant curiosity, of a sailor on shore. These

qualities, perhaps, as much as any others, contribute to the high

popularity of our seamen, and the general good inclination which our

society expresses towards them. Their gallantry, courage, and hardihood

are qualities which excite reverence, and perhaps rather humble pacific

landsmen in their presence; and neither respect nor a sense of

humiliation are feelings easily combined with a familiar fondness towards

those who inspire them. But the boyish frolics, the exulting high

spirits, the unreflecting mirth of a sailor when enjoying himself on

shore, temper the more formidable points of his character. There was

nothing like these in this man’s face; on the contrary, a surly and even

savage scowl appeared to darken features which would have been harsh and

unpleasant under any expression or modification. ‘Where are you, Mother

Deyvilson?’ he said, with somewhat of a foreign accent, though speaking

perfectly good English. ‘Donner and blitzen! we have been staying this

half-hour. Come, bless the good ship and the voyage, and be cursed to ye

for a hag of Satan!’

At this moment he noticed Mannering, who, from the position which he had

taken to watch Meg Merrilies’s incantations, had the appearance of some

one who was concealing himself, being half hidden by the buttress behind

which he stood. The Captain, for such he styled himself, made a sudden

and startled pause, and thrust his right hand into his bosom between his

jacket and waistcoat as if to draw some weapon. ‘What cheer, brother? you

seem on the outlook, eh?’ Ere Mannering, somewhat struck by the man’s

gesture and insolent tone of voice, had made any answer, the gipsy

emerged from her vault and joined the stranger. He questioned her in an

undertone, looking at Mannering--‘A shark alongside, eh?’

She answered in the same tone of under-dialogue, using the cant language

of her tribe--‘Cut ben whids, and stow them; a gentry cove of the ken.’

[Footnote: Meaning--Stop your uncivil language; that is a gentleman from

the house below.]

The fellow’s cloudy visage cleared up. ‘The top of the morning to you,

sir; I find you are a visitor of my friend Mr. Bertram. I beg pardon, but

I took you for another sort of a person.’

Mannering replied, ‘And you, sir, I presume, are the master of that

vessel in the bay?’

‘Ay, ay, sir; I am Captain Dirk Hatteraick, of the Yungfrauw

Hagenslaapen, well known on this coast; I am not ashamed of my name, nor

of my vessel--no, nor of my cargo neither for that matter.’

‘I daresay you have no reason, sir.’

‘Tausend donner, no; I’m all in the way of fair trade. Just loaded yonder

at Douglas, in the Isle of Man--neat cogniac--real hyson and

souchong--Mechlin lace, if you want any--right cogniac--we bumped ashore

a hundred kegs last night.’

‘Really, sir, I am only a traveller, and have no sort of occasion for

anything of the kind at present.’

‘Why, then, good-morning to you, for business must be minded--unless

ye’ll go aboard and take schnaps; you shall have a pouch-full of tea

ashore. Dirk Hatteraick knows how to be civil.’

There was a mixture of impudence, hardihood, and suspicious fear about

this man which was inexpressibly disgusting. His manners were those of a

ruffian, conscious of the suspicion attending his character, yet aiming

to bear it down by the affectation of a careless and hardy familiarity.

Mannering briefly rejected his proffered civilities; and, after a surly

good-morning, Hatteraick retired with the gipsy to that part of the ruins

from which he had first made his appearance. A very narrow staircase here

went down to the beach, intended probably for the convenience of the

garrison during a siege. By this stair the couple, equally amiable in

appearance and respectable by profession, descended to the sea-side. The

soi-disant captain embarked in a small boat with two men, who appeared to

wait for him, and the gipsy remained on the shore, reciting or singing,

and gesticulating with great vehemence.

CHAPTER V

You have fed upon my seignories,

Dispark’d my parks, and fell’d my forest woods,

From mine own windows torn my household coat,

Razed out my impress, leaving me no sign,

Save men’s opinions and my living blood,

To show the world I am a gentleman.

Richard II.

When the boat which carried the worthy captain on board his vessel had

accomplished that task, the sails began to ascend, and the ship was got

under way. She fired three guns as a salute to the house of Ellangowan,

and then shot away rapidly before the wind, which blew off shore, under

all the sail she could crowd.

‘Ay, ay,’ said the Laird, who had sought Mannering for some time, and now

joined him, ‘there they go--there go the free-traders--there go Captain

Dirk Hatteraick and the Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen, half Manks, half

Dutchman, half devil! run out the boltsprit, up mainsail, top and

top-gallant sails, royals, and skyscrapers, and away--follow who can!

That fellow, Mr. Mannering, is the terror of all the excise and

custom-house cruisers; they can make nothing of him; he drubs them, or he

distances them;--and, speaking of excise, I come to bring you to

breakfast; and you shall have some tea, that--’

Mannering by this time was aware that one thought linked strangely on to

another in the concatenation of worthy Mr. Bertram’s ideas,

Like orient pearls at random strung;

and therefore, before the current of his associations had drifted farther

from the point he had left, he brought him back by some inquiry about

Dirk Hatteraick.

‘O he’s a--a--gude sort of blackguard fellow eneugh; naebody cares to

trouble him--smuggler, when his guns are in ballast--privateer, or

pirate, faith, when he gets them mounted. He has done more mischief to

the revenue folk than ony rogue that ever came out of Ramsay.’

‘But, my good sir, such being his character, I wonder he has any

protection and encouragement on this coast.’

‘Why, Mr. Mannering, people must have brandy and tea, and there’s none in

the country but what comes this way; and then there’s short accounts, and

maybe a keg or two, or a dozen pounds, left at your stable-door, instead

of a d--d lang account at Christmas from Duncan Robb, the grocer at

Kippletringan, who has aye a sum to make up, and either wants ready money

or a short-dated bill. Now, Hatteraick will take wood, or he’ll take

bark, or he’ll take barley, or he’ll take just what’s convenient at the

time. I’ll tell you a gude story about that. There was ance a

laird--that’s Macfie of Gudgeonford,--he had a great number of kain

hens--that’s hens that the tenant pays to the landlord, like a sort of

rent in kind. They aye feed mine very ill; Luckie Finniston sent up three

that were a shame to be seen only last week, and yet she has twelve bows

sowing of victual; indeed her goodman, Duncan Finniston--that’s him

that’s gone--(we must all die, Mr. Mannering, that’s ower true)--and,

speaking of that, let us live in the meanwhile, for here’s breakfast on

the table, and the Dominie ready to say the grace.’

The Dominie did accordingly pronounce a benediction, that exceeded in

length any speech which Mannering had yet heard him utter. The tea, which

of course belonged to the noble Captain Hatteraick’s trade, was

pronounced excellent. Still Mannering hinted, though with due delicacy,

at the risk of encouraging such desperate characters. ‘Were it but in

justice to the revenue, I should have supposed--’

‘Ah, the revenue lads’--for Mr. Bertram never embraced a general or

abstract idea, and his notion of the revenue was personified in the

commissioners, surveyors, comptrollers, and riding officers whom he

happened to know--‘the revenue lads can look sharp eneugh out for

themselves, no ane needs to help them; and they have a’ the soldiers to

assist them besides; and as to justice--you ‘ll be surprised to hear it,

Mr. Mannering, but I am not a justice of peace!’

Mannering assumed the expected look of surprise, but thought within

himself that the worshipful bench suffered no great deprivation from

wanting the assistance of his good-humoured landlord. Mr. Bertram had now

hit upon one of the few subjects on which he felt sore, and went on with

some energy.

‘No, sir, the name of Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan is not in the last

commission, though there’s scarce a carle in the country that has a

plough-gate of land, but what he must ride to quarter-sessions and write

J.P. after his name. I ken fu’ weel whom I am obliged to--Sir Thomas

Kittlecourt as good as tell’d me he would sit in my skirts if he had not

my interest at the last election; and because I chose to go with my own

blood and third cousin, the Laird of Balruddery, they keepit me off the

roll of freeholders; and now there comes a new nomination of justices,

and I am left out! And whereas they pretend it was because I let David

Mac-Guffog, the constable, draw the warrants, and manage the business his

ain gate, as if I had been a nose o’ wax, it’s a main untruth; for I

granted but seven warrants in my life, and the Dominie wrote every one of

them--and if it had not been that unlucky business of Sandy

Mac-Gruthar’s, that the constables should have keepit twa or three days

up yonder at the auld castle, just till they could get conveniency to

send him to the county jail--and that cost me eneugh o’ siller. But I ken

what Sir Thomas wants very weel--it was just sic and siclike about the

seat in the kirk o’ Kilmagirdle--was I not entitled to have the front

gallery facing the minister, rather than Mac-Crosskie of Creochstone, the

son of Deacon Mac-Crosskie, the Dumfries weaver?’

Mannering expressed his acquiescence in the justice of these various

complaints.

‘And then, Mr. Mannering, there was the story about the road and the

fauld-dike. I ken Sir Thomas was behind there, and I said plainly to the

clerk to the trustees that I saw the cloven foot, let them take that as

they like. Would any gentleman, or set of gentlemen, go and drive a road

right through the corner of a fauld-dike and take away, as my agent

observed to them, like twa roods of gude moorland pasture? And there was

the story about choosing the collector of the cess--’

‘Certainly, sir, it is hard you should meet with any neglect in a country

where, to judge from the extent of their residence, your ancestors must

have made a very important figure.’

‘Very true, Mr. Mannering; I am a plain man and do not dwell on these

things, and I must needs say I have little memory for them; but I wish ye

could have heard my father’s stories about the auld fights of the

Mac-Dingawaies--that’s the Bertrams that now is--wi’ the Irish and wi’

the Highlanders that came here in their berlings from Ilay and Cantire;

and how they went to the Holy Land--that is, to Jerusalem and Jericho,

wi’ a’ their clan at their heels--they had better have gaen to Jamaica,

like Sir Thomas Kittlecourt’s uncle--and how they brought hame relics

like those that Catholics have, and a flag that’s up yonder in the

garret. If they had been casks of muscavado and puncheons of rum it would

have been better for the estate at this day; but there’s little

comparison between the auld keep at Kittlecourt and the castle o’

Ellangowan; I doubt if the keep’s forty feet of front. But ye make no

breakfast, Mr. Mannering; ye’re no eating your meat; allow me to

recommend some of the kipper. It was John Hay that catcht it, Saturday

was three weeks, down at the stream below Hempseed ford,’ etc. etc. etc.

The Laird, whose indignation had for some time kept him pretty steady to

one topic, now launched forth into his usual roving style of

conversation, which gave Mannering ample time to reflect upon the

disadvantages attending the situation which an hour before he had thought

worthy of so much envy. Here was a country gentleman, whose most

estimable quality seemed his perfect good-nature, secretly fretting

himself and murmuring against others for causes which, compared with any

real evil in life, must weigh like dust in the balance. But such is the

equal distribution of Providence. To those who lie out of the road of

great afflictions are assigned petty vexations which answer all the

purpose of disturbing their serenity; and every reader must have observed

that neither natural apathy nor acquired philosophy can render country

gentlemen insensible to the grievances which occur at elections,

quarter-sessions, and meetings of trustees.

Curious to investigate the manners of the country, Mannering took the

advantage of a pause in good Mr. Bertram’s string of stories to inquire

what Captain Hatteraick so earnestly wanted with the gipsy woman.

‘O, to bless his ship, I suppose. You must know, Mr. Mannering, that

these free-traders, whom the law calls smugglers, having no religion,

make it all up in superstition; and they have as many spells and charms

and nonsense--’

‘Vanity and waur!’ said the Dominie;’ it is a trafficking with the Evil

One. Spells, periapts, and charms are of his device--choice arrows out of

Apollyon’s quiver.’

‘Hold your peace, Dominie; ye’re speaking for ever’--by the way, they

were the first words the poor man had uttered that morning, excepting

that he said grace and returned thanks--‘Mr. Mannering cannot get in a

word for ye! And so, Mr. Mannering, talking of astronomy and spells and

these matters, have ye been so kind as to consider what we were speaking

about last night?’

‘I begin to think, Mr. Bertram, with your worthy friend here, that I have

been rather jesting with edge-tools; and although neither you nor I, nor

any sensible man, can put faith in the predictions of astrology, yet, as

it has sometimes happened that inquiries into futurity, undertaken in

jest, have in their results produced serious and unpleasant effects both

upon actions and characters, I really wish you would dispense with my

replying to your question.’

It was easy to see that this evasive answer only rendered the Laird’s

curiosity more uncontrollable. Mannering, however, was determined in his

own mind not to expose the infant to the inconveniences which might have

arisen from his being supposed the object of evil prediction. He

therefore delivered the paper into Mr. Bertram’s hand, and requested him

to keep it for five years with the seal unbroken, until the month of

November was expired. After that date had intervened he left him at

liberty to examine the writing, trusting that, the first fatal period

being then safely overpassed, no credit would be paid to its farther

contents. This Mr. Bertram was content to promise, and Mannering, to

ensure his fidelity, hinted at misfortunes which would certainly take

place if his injunctions were neglected. The rest of the day, which

Mannering, by Mr. Bertram’s invitation, spent at Ellangowan, passed over

without anything remarkable; and on the morning of that which followed

the traveller mounted his palfrey, bade a courteous adieu to his

hospitable landlord and to his clerical attendant, repeated his good

wishes for the prosperity of the family, and then, turning his horse’s

head towards England, disappeared from the sight of the inmates of

Ellangowan. He must also disappear from that of our readers, for it is to

another and later period of his life that the present narrative relates.

CHAPTER VI

Next, the Justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances--

And so he plays his part

--As You Like It

When Mrs. Bertram of Ellangowan was able to hear the news of what had

passed during her confinement, her apartment rung with all manner of

gossiping respecting the handsome young student from Oxford who had told

such a fortune by the stars to the young Laird, ‘blessings on his dainty

face.’ The form, accent, and manners of the stranger were expatiated

upon. His horse, bridle, saddle, and stirrups did not remain unnoticed.

All this made a great impression upon the mind of Mrs. Bertram, for the

good lady had no small store of superstition.

Her first employment, when she became capable of a little work, was to

make a small velvet bag for the scheme of nativity which she had obtained

from her husband. Her fingers itched to break the seal, but credulity

proved stronger than curiosity; and she had the firmness to inclose it,

in all its integrity, within two slips of parchment, which she sewed

round it to prevent its being chafed. The whole was then put into the

velvet bag aforesaid, and hung as a charm round the neck of the infant,

where his mother resolved it should remain until the period for the

legitimate satisfaction of her curiosity should arrive.

The father also resolved to do his part by the child in securing him a

good education; and, with the view that it should commence with the first

dawnings of reason, Dominie Sampson was easily induced to renounce his

public profession of parish schoolmaster, make his constant residence at

the Place, and, in consideration of a sum not quite equal to the wages of

a footman even at that time, to undertake to communicate to the future

Laird of Ellangowan all the erudition which he had, and all the graces

and accomplishments which--he had not indeed, but which he had never

discovered that he wanted. In this arrangement the Laird found also his

private advantage, securing the constant benefit of a patient auditor, to

whom he told his stories when they were alone, and at whose expense he

could break a sly jest when he had company.

About four years after this time a great commotion took place in the

county where Ellangowan is situated.

Those who watched the signs of the times had long been of opinion that a

change of ministry was about to take place; and at length, after a due

proportion of hopes, fears, and delays, rumours from good authority and

bad authority, and no authority at all; after some clubs had drank Up

with this statesman and others Down with him; after riding, and running,

and posting, and addressing, and counter-addressing, and proffers of

lives and fortunes, the blow was at length struck, the administration of

the day was dissolved, and parliament, as a natural consequence, was

dissolved also.

Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, like other members in the same situation, posted

down to his county, and met but an indifferent reception. He was a

partizan of the old administration; and the friends of the new had

already set about an active canvass in behalf of John Featherhead, Esq.,

who kept the best hounds and hunters in the shire. Among others who

joined the standard of revolt was Gilbert Glossin, writer in--, agent for

the Laird of Ellangowan. This honest gentleman had either been refused

some favour by the old member, or, what is as probable, he had got all

that he had the most distant pretension to ask, and could only look to

the other side for fresh advancement. Mr. Glossin had a vote upon

Ellangowan’s property; and he was now determined that his patron should

have one also, there being no doubt which side Mr. Bertram would embrace

in the contest. He easily persuaded Ellangowan that it would be

creditable to him to take the field at the head of as strong a party as

possible; and immediately went to work, making votes, as every Scotch

lawyer knows how, by splitting and subdividing the superiorities upon

this ancient and once powerful barony. These were so extensive that, by

dint of clipping and paring here, adding and eking there, and creating

over-lords upon all the estate which Bertram held of the crown, they

advanced at the day of contest at the head of ten as good men of

parchment as ever took the oath of trust and possession. This strong

reinforcement turned the dubious day of battle. The principal and his

agent divided the honour; the reward fell to the latter exclusively. Mr.

Gilbert Glossin was made clerk of the peace, and Godfrey Bertram had his

name inserted in a new commission of justices, issued immediately upon

the sitting of the parliament.

This had been the summit of Mr. Bertram’s ambition; not that he liked

either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but he thought it

was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that it had been

withheld from him by malice prepense. But there is an old and true Scotch

proverb, ‘Fools should not have chapping sticks’; that is, weapons of

offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner possessed of the judicial authority

which he had so much longed for than he began to exercise it with more

severity than mercy, and totally belied all the opinions which had

hitherto been formed of his inert good-nature. We have read somewhere of

a justice of peace who, on being nominated in the commission, wrote a

letter to a bookseller for the statutes respecting his official duty in

the following orthography--‘Please send the ax relating to a gustus

pease.’ No doubt, when this learned gentleman had possessed himself of

the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some purpose. Mr. Bertram was not

quite so ignorant of English grammar as his worshipful predecessor; but

Augustus Pease himself could not have used more indiscriminately the

weapon unwarily put into his hand.

In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had been

entrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign; forgetting

that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a privilege, or

honour, common to those of his rank was the result of mere party cabal.

He commanded his trusty aid-de-camp, Dominie Sampson, to read aloud the

commission; and at the first words, ‘The King has been pleased to

appoint’--‘Pleased!’ he exclaimed in a transport of gratitude; ‘honest

gentleman! I’m sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.’

Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings or

verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal of office,

and endeavoured to express his sense of the honour conferred upon him by

an unmitigated activity in the discharge of his duty. New brooms, it is

said, sweep clean; and I myself can bear witness that, on the arrival of

a new housemaid, the ancient, hereditary, and domestic spiders who have

spun their webs over the lower division of my bookshelves (consisting

chiefly of law and divinity) during the peaceful reign of her

predecessor, fly at full speed before the probationary inroads of the new

mercenary. Even so the Laird of Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his

magisterial reform, at the expense of various established and

superannuated pickers and stealers who had been his neighbours for half a

century. He wrought his miracles like a second Duke Humphrey; and by the

influence of the beadle’s rod caused the lame to walk, the blind to see,

and the palsied to labour. He detected poachers, black-fishers,

orchard-breakers, and pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the bench for

his reward, and the public credit of an active magistrate.

All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted

nuisance of ancient standing should not be abated without some caution.

The zeal of our worthy friend now involved in great distress sundry

personages whose idle and mendicant habits his own lachesse had

contributed to foster, until these habits had become irreclaimable, or

whose real incapacity for exertion rendered them fit objects, in their

own phrase, for the charity of all well-disposed Christians. The

‘long-remembered beggar,’ who for twenty years had made his regular

rounds within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend than

as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse. The

decrepit dame, who travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow,

circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is

in haste to pass to his neighbour,--she, who used to call for her bearers

as loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses,--even she

shared the same disastrous fate. The ‘daft Jock,’ who, half knave, half

idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village children for

a good part of a century, was remitted to the county bridewell, where,

secluded from free air and sunshine, the only advantages he was capable

of enjoying, he pined and died in the course of six months. The old

sailor, who had so long rejoiced the smoky rafters of every kitchen in

the country by singing ‘Captain Ward’ and ‘Bold Admiral Benbow,’ was

banished from the county for no better reason than that he was supposed

to speak with a strong Irish accent. Even the annual rounds of the pedlar

were abolished by the Justice, in his hasty zeal for the administration

of rural police.

These things did not pass without notice and censure. We are not made of

wood or stone, and the things which connect themselves with our hearts

and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away without our missing

them. The farmer’s dame lacked her usual share of intelligence, perhaps

also the self-applause which she had felt while distributing the awmous

(alms), in shape of a gowpen (handful) of oatmeal, to the mendicant who

brought the news. The cottage felt inconvenience from interruption of the

petty trade carried on by the itinerant dealers. The children lacked

their supply of sugarplums and toys; the young women wanted pins,

ribbons, combs, and ballads; and the old could no longer barter their

eggs for salt, snuff, and tobacco. All these circumstances brought the

busy Laird of Ellangowan into discredit, which was the more general on

account of his former popularity. Even his lineage was brought up in

judgment against him. They thought ‘naething of what the like of

Greenside, or Burnville, or Viewforth might do, that were strangers in

the country; but Ellangowan! that had been a name amang them since the

Mirk Monanday, and lang before--HIM to be grinding the puir at that rate!

They ca’d his grandfather the Wicked Laird; but, though he was whiles

fractious aneuch, when he got into roving company and had ta’en the drap

drink, he would have scorned to gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle

chumlay in the Auld Place reeked like a killogie in his time, and there

were as mony puir folk riving at the banes in the court, and about the

door, as there were gentles in the ha’. And the leddy, on ilka Christmas

night as it came round, gae twelve siller pennies to ilka puir body

about, in honour of the twelve apostles like. They were fond to ca’ it

papistrie; but I think our great folk might take a lesson frae the

papists whiles. They gie another sort o’ help to puir folk than just

dinging down a saxpence in the brod on the Sabbath, and kilting, and

scourging, and drumming them a’ the sax days o’ the week besides.’

Such was the gossip over the good twopenny in every ale-house within

three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of the

orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J. P., must be

considered as the principal luminary. Still greater scope was given to

evil tongues by the removal of a colony of gipsies, with one of whom our

reader is somewhat acquainted, and who had for a great many years enjoyed

their chief settlement upon the estate of Ellangowan.

CHAPTER VII

Come, princes of the ragged regiment,

You of the blood! PRIGS, my most upright lord,

And these, what name or title e’er they bear,

JARKMAN, or PATRICO, CRANKE or CLAPPER-DUDGEON,

PRATER or ABRAM-MAN--I speak of all.

Beggar’s Bush.

Although the character of those gipsy tribes which formerly inundated

most of the nations of Europe, and which in some degree still subsist

among them as a distinct people, is generally understood, the reader will

pardon my saying a few words respecting their situation in Scotland.

It is well known that the gipsies were at an early period acknowledged as

a separate and independent race by one of the Scottish monarchs, and that

they were less favourably distinguished by a subsequent law, which

rendered the character of gipsy equal in the judicial balance to that of

common and habitual thief, and prescribed his punishment accordingly.

Notwithstanding the severity of this and other statutes, the fraternity

prospered amid the distresses of the country, and received large

accessions from among those whom famine, oppression, or the sword of war

had deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence. They lost in a great

measure by this intermixture the national character of Egyptians, and

became a mingled race, having all the idleness and predatory habits of

their Eastern ancestors, with a ferocity which they probably borrowed

from the men of the north who joined their society. They travelled in

different bands, and had rules among themselves, by which each tribe was

confined to its own district. The slightest invasion of the precincts

which had been assigned to another tribe produced desperate skirmishes,

in which there was often much blood shed.

The patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun drew a picture of these banditti about

a century ago, which my readers will peruse with astonishment:--

‘There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families

very meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others who, by living

on bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people

begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a

very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them

be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present

great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred

thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or

subjection either to the laws of the land or even those of God and nature

. . . No magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way one in

a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many

murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most

unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread or

some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are

sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in

houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands

of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for

many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like

public occasions, they are to be seen, both man and woman, perpetually

drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.’

Notwithstanding the deplorable picture presented in this extract, and

which Fletcher himself, though the energetic and eloquent friend of

freedom, saw no better mode of correcting than by introducing a system of

domestic slavery, the progress of time, and increase both of the means of

life and of the power of the laws, gradually reduced this dreadful evil

within more narrow bounds. The tribes of gipsies, jockies, or cairds--for

by all these denominations such banditti were known--became few in

number, and many were entirely rooted out. Still, however, a sufficient

number remained to give, occasional alarm and constant vexation. Some

rude handicrafts were entirely resigned to these itinerants, particularly

the art of trencher-making, of manufacturing horn-spoons, and the whole

mystery of the tinker. To these they added a petty trade in the coarse

sorts of earthenware. Such were their ostensible means of livelihood.

Each tribe had usually some fixed place of rendezvous, which they

occasionally occupied and considered as their standing camp, and in the

vicinity of which they generally abstained from depredation. They had

even talents and accomplishments, which made them occasionally useful and

entertaining. Many cultivated music with success; and the favourite

fiddler or piper of a district was often to be found in a gipsy town.

They understood all out-of-door sports, especially otter-hunting,

fishing, or finding game. They bred the best and boldest terriers, and

sometimes had good pointers for sale. In winter the women told fortunes,

the men showed tricks of legerdemain; and these accomplishments often

helped to while away a weary or stormy evening in the circle of the

‘farmer’s ha’.’ The wildness of their character, and the indomitable

pride with which they despised all regular labour, commanded a certain

awe, which was not diminished by the consideration that these strollers

were a vindictive race, and were restrained by no check, either of fear

or conscience, from taking desperate vengeance upon those who had

offended them. These tribes were, in short, the pariahs of Scotland,

living like wild Indians among European settlers, and, like them, judged

of rather by their own customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had

been members of the civilised part of the community. Some hordes of them

yet remain, chiefly in such situations as afford a ready escape either

into a waste country or into another Jurisdiction. Nor are the features

of their character much softened. Their numbers, however, are so greatly

diminished that, instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by

Fletcher, it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five

hundred throughout all Scotland.

A tribe of these itinerants, to whom Meg Merrilies appertained, had long

been as stationary as their habits permitted in a glen upon the estate of

Ellangowan. They had there erected a few huts, which they denominated

their ‘city of refuge,’ and where, when not absent on excursions, they

harboured unmolested, as the crows that roosted in the old ash-trees

around them. They had been such long occupants that they were considered

in some degree as proprietors of the wretched shealings which they

inhabited. This protection they were said anciently to have repaid by

service to the Laird in war, or more frequently, by infesting or

plundering the lands of those neighbouring barons with whom he chanced to

be at feud. Latterly their services were of a more pacific nature. The

women spun mittens for the lady, and knitted boot-hose for the Laird,

which were annually presented at Christmas with great form. The aged

sibyls blessed the bridal bed of the Laird when he married, and the

cradle of the heir when born. The men repaired her ladyship’s cracked

china, and assisted the Laird in his sporting parties, wormed his dogs,

and cut the ears of his terrier puppies. The children gathered nuts in

the woods, and cranberries in the moss, and mushrooms on the pastures,

for tribute to the Place. These acts of voluntary service, and

acknowledgments of dependence, were rewarded by protection on some

occasions, connivance on others, and broken victuals, ale, and brandy

when circumstances called for a display of generosity; and this mutual

intercourse of good offices, which had been carried on for at least two

centuries, rendered the inhabitants of Derncleugh a kind of privileged

retainers upon the estate of Ellangowan. ‘The knaves’ were the Laird’s

‘exceeding good friends’; and he would have deemed himself very ill used

if his countenance could not now and then have borne them out against the

law of the country and the local magistrate. But this friendly union was

soon to be dissolved.

The community of Derncleugh, who cared for no rogues but their own, were

wholly without alarm at the severity of the Justice’s proceedings towards

other itinerants. They had no doubt that he determined to suffer no

mendicants or strollers in the country but what resided on his own

property, and practised their trade by his immediate permission, implied

or expressed. Nor was Mr. Bertram in a hurry to exert his newly-acquired

authority at the expense of these old settlers. But he was driven on by

circumstances.

At the quarter-sessions our new Justice was publicly upbraided by a

gentleman of the opposite party in county politics, that, while he

affected a great zeal for the public police, and seemed ambitious of the

fame of an active magistrate, he fostered a tribe of the greatest rogues

in the country, and permitted them to harbour within a mile of the house

of Ellangowan. To this there was no reply, for the fact was too evident

and well known. The Laird digested the taunt as he best could, and in his

way home amused himself with speculations on the easiest method of

ridding himself of these vagrants, who brought a stain upon his fair fame

as a magistrate. Just as he had resolved to take the first opportunity of

quarrelling with the pariahs of Derncleugh, a cause of provocation

presented itself.

Since our friend’s advancement to be a conservator of the peace, he had

caused the gate at the head of his avenue, which formerly, having only

one hinge, remained at all times hospitably open--he had caused this

gate, I say, to be newly hung and handsomely painted. He had also shut up

with paling, curiously twisted with furze, certain holes in the fences

adjoining, through which the gipsy boys used to scramble into the

plantations to gather birds’ nests, the seniors of the village to make a

short cut from one point to another, and the lads and lasses for evening

rendezvous--all without offence taken or leave asked. But these halcyon

days were now to have an end, and a minatory inscription on one side of

the gate intimated ‘prosecution according to law’ (the painter had spelt

it ‘persecution’--l’un vaut bien l’autre) to all who should be found

trespassing on these inclosures. On the other side, for uniformity’s

sake, was a precautionary annunciation of spring-guns and man-traps of

such formidable powers that, said the rubrick, with an emphatic nota

bene--‘if a man goes in they will break a horse’s leg.’

In defiance of these threats, six well-grown gipsy boys and girls were

riding cock-horse upon the new gate, and plaiting may-flowers, which it

was but too evident had been gathered within the forbidden precincts.

With as much anger as he was capable of feeling, or perhaps of assuming,

the Laird commanded them to descend;--they paid no attention to his

mandate: he then began to pull them down one after another;--they

resisted, passively at least, each sturdy bronzed varlet making himself

as heavy as he could, or climbing up as fast as he was dismounted.

The Laird then called in the assistance of his servant, a surly fellow,

who had immediate recourse to his horsewhip. A few lashes sent the party

a-scampering; and thus commenced the first breach of the peace between

the house of Ellangowan and the gipsies of Derncleugh.

The latter could not for some time imagine that the war was real; until

they found that their children were horsewhipped by the grieve when found

trespassing; that their asses were poinded by the ground-officer when

left in the plantations, or even when turned to graze by the roadside,

against the provision of the turnpike acts; that the constable began to

make curious inquiries into their mode of gaining a livelihood, and

expressed his surprise that the men should sleep in the hovels all day,

and be abroad the greater part of the night.

When matters came to this point, the gipsies, without scruple, entered

upon measures of retaliation. Ellangowan’s hen-roosts were plundered, his

linen stolen from the lines or bleaching-ground, his fishings poached,

his dogs kidnapped, his growing trees cut or barked. Much petty mischief

was done, and some evidently for the mischief’s sake. On the other hand,

warrants went forth, without mercy, to pursue, search for, take, and

apprehend; and, notwithstanding their dexterity, one or two of the

depredators were unable to avoid conviction. One, a stout young fellow,

who sometimes had gone to sea a-fishing, was handed over to the captain

of the impress service at D--; two children were soundly flogged, and one

Egyptian matron sent to the house of correction.

Still, however, the gipsies made no motion to leave the spot which they

had so long inhabited, and Mr. Bertram felt an unwillingness to deprive

them of their ancient ‘city of refuge’; so that the petty warfare we have

noticed continued for several months, without increase or abatement of

hostilities on either side.

CHAPTER VIII

So the red Indian, by Ontario’s side,

Nursed hardy on the brindled panther’s hide,

As fades his swarthy race, with anguish sees

The white man’s cottage rise beneath the trees;

He leaves the shelter of his native wood,

He leaves the murmur of Ohio’s flood,

And forward rushing in indignant grief,

Where never foot has trod the fallen leaf,

He bends his course where twilight reigns sublime.

O’er forests silent since the birth of time.

SCENES OF INFANCY.

In tracing the rise and progress of the Scottish Maroon war, we must not

omit to mention that years had rolled on, and that little Harry Bertram,

one of the hardiest and most lively children that ever made a sword and

grenadier’s cap of rushes, now approached his fifth revolving birthday. A

hardihood of disposition, which early developed itself, made him already

a little wanderer; he was well acquainted with every patch of lea ground

and dingle around Ellangowan, and could tell in his broken language upon

what baulks grew the bonniest flowers, and what copse had the ripest

nuts. He repeatedly terrified his attendants by clambering about the

ruins of the old castle, and had more than once made a stolen excursion

as far as the gipsy hamlet.

On these occasions he was generally brought back by Meg Merrilies, who,

though she could not be prevailed upon to enter the Place of Ellangowan

after her nephew had been given up to the press-gang, did not apparently

extend her resentment to the child. On the contrary, she often contrived

to waylay him in his walks, sing him a gipsy song, give him a ride upon

her jackass, and thrust into his pocket a piece of gingerbread or a

red-cheeked apple. This woman’s ancient attachment to the family,

repelled and checked in every other direction, seemed to rejoice in

having some object on which it could yet repose and expand itself. She

prophesied a hundred times, ‘that young Mr. Harry would be the pride o’

the family, and there hadna been sic a sprout frae the auld aik since the

death of Arthur Mac-Dingawaie, that was killed in the battle o’ the

Bloody Bay; as for the present stick, it was good for nothing but

fire-wood.’ On one occasion, when the child was ill, she lay all night

below the window, chanting a rhyme which she believed sovereign as a

febrifuge, and could neither be prevailed upon to enter the house nor to

leave the station she had chosen till she was informed that the crisis

was over.

The affection of this woman became matter of suspicion, not indeed to the

Laird, who was never hasty in suspecting evil, but to his wife, who had

indifferent health and poor spirits. She was now far advanced in a second

pregnancy, and, as she could not walk abroad herself, and the woman who

attended upon Harry was young and thoughtless, she prayed Dominie Sampson

to undertake the task of watching the boy in his rambles, when he should

not be otherwise accompanied. The Dominie loved his young charge, and was

enraptured with his own success in having already brought him so far in

his learning as to spell words of three syllables. The idea of this early

prodigy of erudition being carried off by the gipsies, like a second Adam

Smith,[Footnote: The father of Economical Philosophy was, when a child,

actually carried off by gipsies, and remained some hours in their

possession.] was not to be tolerated; and accordingly, though the charge

was contrary to all his habits of life, he readily undertook it, and

might be seen stalking about with a mathematical problem in his head, and

his eye upon a child of five years old, whose rambles led him into a

hundred awkward situations. Twice was the Dominie chased by a

cross-grained cow, once he fell into the brook crossing at the

stepping-stones, and another time was bogged up to the middle in the

slough of Lochend, in attempting to gather a water-lily for the young

Laird. It was the opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on

the latter occasion, ‘that the Laird might as weel trust the care o’ his

bairn to a potatoe bogle’; but the good Dominie bore all his disasters

with gravity and serenity equally imperturbable. ‘Pro-di-gi-ous!’ was the

only ejaculation they ever extorted from the much-enduring man.

The Laird had by this time determined to make root-and-branch work with

the Maroons of Derncleugh. The old servants shook their heads at his

proposal, and even Dominie Sampson ventured upon an indirect

remonstrance. As, however, it was couched in the oracular phrase, ‘Ne

moveas Camerinam,’ neither the allusion, nor the language in which it was

expressed, were calculated for Mr. Bertram’s edification, and matters

proceeded against the gipsies in form of law. Every door in the hamlet

was chalked by the ground-officer, in token of a formal warning to remove

at next term. Still, however, they showed no symptoms either of

submission or of compliance. At length the term-day, the fatal Martinmas,

arrived, and violent measures of ejection were resorted to. A strong

posse of peace-officers, sufficient to render all resistance vain,

charged the inhabitants to depart by noon; and, as they did not obey, the

officers, in terms of their warrant, proceeded to unroof the cottages,

and pull down the wretched doors and windows--a summary and effectual

mode of ejection still practised in some remote parts of Scotland when a

tenant proves refractory. The gipsies for a time beheld the work of

destruction in sullen silence and inactivity; then set about saddling and

loading their asses, and making preparations for their departure. These

were soon accomplished, where all had the habits of wandering Tartars;

and they set forth on their journey to seek new settlements, where their

patrons should neither be of the quorum nor custos rotulorum.

Certain qualms of feeling had deterred Ellangowan from attending in

person to see his tenants expelled. He left the executive part of the

business to the officers of the law, under the immediate direction of

Frank Kennedy, a supervisor, or riding-officer, belonging to the excise,

who had of late become intimate at the Place, and of whom we shall have

more to say in the next chapter. Mr. Bertram himself chose that day to

make a visit to a friend at some distance. But it so happened,

notwithstanding his precautions, that he could not avoid meeting his late

tenants during their retreat from his property.

It was in a hollow way, near the top of a steep ascent, upon the verge of

the Ellangowan estate, that Mr. Bertram met the gipsy procession. Four or

five men formed the advanced guard, wrapped in long loose great-coats

that hid their tall slender figures, as the large slouched hats, drawn

over their brows, concealed their wild features, dark eyes, and swarthy

faces. Two of them carried long fowling-pieces, one wore a broadsword

without a sheath, and all had the Highland dirk, though they did not wear

that weapon openly or ostentatiously. Behind them followed the train of

laden asses, and small carts or TUMBLERS, as they were called in that

country, on which were laid the decrepit and the helpless, the aged and

infant part of the exiled community. The women in their red cloaks and

straw hats, the elder children with bare heads and bare feet, and almost

naked bodies, had the immediate care of the little caravan. The road was

narrow, running between two broken banks of sand, and Mr. Bertram’s

servant rode forward, smacking his whip with an air of authority, and

motioning to the drivers to allow free passage to their betters. His

signal was unattended to. He then called to the men who lounged idly on

before, ‘Stand to your beasts’ heads, and make room for the Laird to

pass.’

‘He shall have his share of the road,’ answered a male gipsy from under

his slouched and large-brimmed hat, and without raising his face, ‘and he

shall have nae mair; the highway is as free to our cuddies as to his

gelding.’

The tone of the man being sulky, and even menacing, Mr. Bertram thought

it best to put his dignity in his pocket, and pass by the procession

quietly, on such space as they chose to leave for his accommodation,

which was narrow enough. To cover with an appearance of indifference his

feeling of the want of respect with which he was treated, he addressed

one of the men, as he passed him without any show of greeting, salute, or

recognition--‘Giles Baillie,’ he said, ‘have you heard that your son

Gabriel is well?’ (The question respected the young man who had been

pressed.)

‘If I had heard otherwise,’ said the old man, looking up with a stern and

menacing countenance, ‘you should have heard of it too.’ And he plodded

on his way, tarrying no further question. [Footnote: This anecdote is a

literal fact.] When the Laird had pressed on with difficulty among a

crowd of familiar faces, which had on all former occasions marked his

approach with the reverence due to that of a superior being, but in which

he now only read hatred and contempt, and had got clear of the throng, he

could not help turning his horse, and looking back to mark the progress

of their march. The group would have been an excellent subject for the

pencil of Calotte. The van had already reached a small and stunted

thicket, which was at the bottom of the hill, and which gradually hid the

line of march until the last stragglers disappeared.

His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, which he had

thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place of refuge, was idle and

vicious; but had he endeavoured to render them otherwise? They were not

more irregular characters now than they had been while they were admitted

to consider themselves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family;

and ought the mere circumstance of his becoming a magistrate to have made

at once such a change in his conduct towards them? Some means of

reformation ought at least to have been tried before sending seven

families at once upon the wide world, and depriving them of a degree of

countenance which withheld them at least from atrocious guilt. There was

also a natural yearning of heart on parting with so many known and

familiar faces; and to this feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly

accessible, from the limited qualities of his mind, which sought its

principal amusements among the petty objects around him. As he was about

to turn his horse’s head to pursue his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had

lagged behind the troop, unexpectedly presented herself.

She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks which, as we

before noticed, overhung the road, so that she was placed considerably

higher than Ellangowan, even though he was on horseback; and her tall

figure, relieved against the clear blue sky, seemed almost of

supernatural stature. We have noticed that there was in her general

attire, or rather in her mode of adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign

costume, artfully adopted perhaps for the purpose of adding to the effect

of her spells and predictions, or perhaps from some traditional notions

respecting the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had a large

piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of a turban,

from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon lustre. Her long

and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the folds of this singular

head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl in frenzy, and she stretched

out in her right hand a sapling bough which seemed just pulled.

‘I’ll be d--d,’ said the groom, ‘if she has not been cutting the young

ashes in the dukit park!’ The Laird made no answer, but continued to look

at the figure which was thus perched above his path.

‘Ride your ways,’ said the gipsy, ‘ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan;

ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day have ye quenched seven smoking

hearths; see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the blyther for that.

Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ain

roof-tree stand the faster. Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings at

Derncleugh; see that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at

Ellangowan. Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram; what do ye glower after our

folk for? There’s thirty hearts there that wad hae wanted bread ere ye

had wanted sunkets, and spent their life-blood ere ye had scratched your

finger. Yes; there’s thirty yonder, from the auld wife of an hundred to

the babe that was born last week, that ye have turned out o’ their bits

o’ bields, to sleep with the tod and the blackcock in the muirs! Ride

your ways, Ellangowan. Our bairns are hinging at our weary backs; look

that your braw cradle at hame be the fairer spread up; not that I am

wishing ill to little Harry, or to the babe that’s yet to be born--God

forbid--and make them kind to the poor, and better folk than their

father! And now, ride e’en your ways; for these are the last words ye’ll

ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last reise that I’ll ever

cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.’

So saying, she broke the sapling she held in her hand, and flung it into

the road. Margaret of Anjou, bestowing on her triumphant foes her

keen-edged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesture

more proudly contemptuous. The Laird was clearing his voice to speak, and

thrusting his hand in his pocket to find a half-crown; the gipsy waited

neither for his reply nor his donation, but strode down the hill to

overtake the caravan.

Ellangowan rode pensively home; and it was remarkable that he did not

mention this interview to any of his family. The groom was not so

reserved; he told the story at great length to a full audience in the

kitchen, and concluded by swearing, that ‘if ever the devil spoke by the

mouth of a woman, he had spoken by that of Meg Merrilies that blessed

day.’

CHAPTER IX

Paint Scotland greeting ower her thrissle,

Her mutchkin stoup as toom’s a whistle,

And d--n’d excisemen in a bustle,

Seizing a stell,

Triumphant crushin’t like a mussel,

Or lampit shell

BURNS.

During the period of Mr. Bertram’s active magistracy, he did not forget

the affairs of the revenue. Smuggling, for which the Isle of Man then

afforded peculiar facilities, was general, or rather universal, all along

the southwestern coast of Scotland. Almost all the common people were

engaged in these practices; the gentry connived at them, and the officers

of the revenue were frequently discountenanced in the exercise of their

duty by those who should have protected them.

There was at this period, employed as a riding-officer or supervisor, in

that part of the country a certain Francis Kennedy, already named in our

narrative--a stout, resolute, and active man, who had made seizures to a

great amount, and was proportionally hated by those who had an interest

in the fair trade, as they called the pursuit of these contraband

adventurers. This person was natural son to a gentleman of good family,

owing to which circumstance, and to his being of a jolly, convivial

disposition, and singing a good song, he was admitted to the occasional

society of the gentlemen of the country, and was a member of several of

their clubs for practising athletic games, at which he was particularly

expert.

At Ellangowan Kennedy was a frequent and always an acceptable guest. His

vivacity relieved Mr. Bertram of the trouble of thought, and the labour

which it cost him to support a detailed communication of ideas; while the

daring and dangerous exploits which he had undertaken in the discharge of

his office formed excellent conversation. To all these revenue adventures

did the Laird of Ellangowan seriously incline, and the amusement which he

derived from Kennedy’s society formed an excellent reason for

countenancing and assisting the narrator in the execution of his

invidious and hazardous duty.

‘Frank Kennedy,’ he said, ‘was a gentleman, though on the wrang side of

the blanket; he was connected with the family of Ellangowan through the

house of Glengubble. The last Laird of Glengubble would have brought the

estate into the Ellangowan line; but, happening to go to Harrigate, he

there met with Miss Jean Hadaway--by the by, the Green Dragon at

Harrigate is the best house of the twa--but for Frank Kennedy, he’s in

one sense a gentleman born, and it’s a shame not to support him against

these blackguard smugglers.’

After this league had taken place between judgment and execution, it

chanced that Captain Dirk Hatteraick had landed a cargo of spirits and

other contraband goods upon the beach not far from Ellangowan, and,

confiding in the indifference with which the Laird had formerly regarded

similar infractions of the law, he was neither very anxious to conceal

nor to expedite the transaction. The consequence was that Mr. Frank

Kennedy, armed with a warrant from Ellangowan, and supported by some of

the Laird’s people who knew the country, and by a party of military,

poured down upon the kegs, bales, and bags, and after a desperate affray,

in which severe wounds were given and received, succeeded in clapping the

broad arrow upon the articles, and bearing them off in triumph to the

next custom-house. Dirk Hatteraick vowed, in Dutch, German, and English,

a deep and full revenge, both against the gauger and his abettors; and

all who knew him thought it likely he would keep his word.

A few days after the departure of the gipsy tribe, Mr. Bertram asked his

lady one morning at breakfast whether this was not little Harry’s

birthday.

‘Five years auld exactly, this blessed day,’ answered the lady; ‘so we

may look into the English gentleman’s paper.’

Mr. Bertram liked to show his authority in trifles. ‘No, my dear, not

till to-morrow. The last time I was at quarter-sessions the sheriff told

us that DIES--that dies inceptus--in short, you don’t understand Latin,

but it means that a term-day is not begun till it’s ended.’

‘That sounds like nonsense, my dear.’

‘May be so, my dear; but it may be very good law for all that. I am sure,

speaking of term-days, I wish, as Frank Kennedy says, that Whitsunday

would kill Martinmas and be hanged for the murder; for there I have got a

letter about that interest of Jenny Cairns’s, and deil a tenant’s been at

the Place yet wi’ a boddle of rent, nor will not till Candlemas. But,

speaking of Frank Kennedy, I daresay he’ll be here the day, for he was

away round to Wigton to warn a king’s ship that’s lying in the bay about

Dirk Hatteraick’s lugger being on the coast again, and he’ll be back this

day; so we’ll have a bottle of claret and drink little Harry’s health.’

‘I wish,’ replied the lady, ‘Frank Kennedy would let Dirk Hatteraick

alane. What needs he make himself mair busy than other folk? Cannot he

sing his sang, and take his drink, and draw his salary, like Collector

Snail, honest man, that never fashes ony body? And I wonder at you,

Laird, for meddling and making. Did we ever want to send for tea or

brandy frae the borough-town when Dirk Hatteraick used to come quietly

into the bay?’

‘Mrs. Bertram, you know nothing of these matters. Do you think it becomes

a magistrate to let his own house be made a receptacle for smuggled

goods? Frank Kennedy will show you the penalties in the act, and ye ken

yoursell they used to put their run goods into the Auld Place of

Ellangowan up by there.’

‘Oh dear, Mr. Bertram, and what the waur were the wa’s and the vault o’

the auld castle for having a whin kegs o’ brandy in them at an orra time?

I am sure ye were not obliged to ken ony thing about it; and what the

waur was the King that the lairds here got a soup o’ drink and the ladies

their drap o’ tea at a reasonable rate?--it’s a shame to them to pit such

taxes on them!--and was na I much the better of these Flanders head and

pinners that Dirk Hatteraick sent me a’ the way from Antwerp? It will be

lang or the King sends me ony thing, or Frank Kennedy either. And then ye

would quarrel with these gipsies too! I expect every day to hear the

barnyard’s in a low.’

‘I tell you once more, my dear, you don’t understand these things--and

there’s Frank Kennedy coming galloping up the avenue.’

‘Aweel! aweel! Ellangowan,’ said the lady, raising her voice as the Laird

left the room, ‘I wish ye may understand them yoursell, that’s a’!’

From this nuptial dialogue the Laird joyfully escaped to meet his

faithful friend, Mr. Kennedy, who arrived in high spirits. ‘For the love

of life, Ellangowan,’ he said, ‘get up to the castle! you’ll see that old

fox Dirk Hatteraick, and his Majesty’s hounds in full cry after him.’ So

saying, he flung his horse’s bridle to a boy, and ran up the ascent to

the old castle, followed by the Laird, and indeed by several others of

the family, alarmed by the sound of guns from the sea, now distinctly

heard.

On gaining that part of the ruins which commanded the most extensive

outlook, they saw a lugger, with all her canvass crowded, standing across

the bay, closely pursued by a sloop of war, that kept firing upon the

chase from her bows, which the lugger returned with her stern-chasers.

‘They’re but at long bowls yet,’ cried Kennedy, in great exultation, ‘but

they will be closer by and by. D--n him, he’s starting his cargo! I see

the good Nantz pitching overboard, keg after keg! That’s a d--d ungenteel

thing of Mr. Hatteraick, as I shall let him know by and by. Now, now!

they’ve got the wind of him! that’s it, that’s it! Hark to him! hark to

him! Now, my dogs! now, my dogs! Hark to Ranger, hark!’

‘I think,’ said the old gardener to one of the maids, ‘the ganger’s fie,’

by which word the common people express those violent spirits which they

think a presage of death.

Meantime the chase continued. The lugger, being piloted with great

ability, and using every nautical shift to make her escape, had now

reached, and was about to double, the headland which formed the extreme

point of land on the left side of the bay, when a ball having hit the

yard in the slings, the mainsail fell upon the deck. The consequence of

this accident appeared inevitable, but could not be seen by the

spectators; for the vessel, which had just doubled the headland, lost

steerage, and fell out of their sight behind the promontory. The sloop of

war crowded all sail to pursue, but she had stood too close upon the

cape, so that they were obliged to wear the vessel for fear of going

ashore, and to make a large tack back into the bay, in order to recover

sea-room enough to double the headland.

‘They ‘ll lose her, by--, cargo and lugger, one or both,’ said Kennedy;

‘I must gallop away to the Point of Warroch (this was the headland so

often mentioned), and make them a signal where she has drifted to on the

other side. Good-bye for an hour, Ellangowan; get out the gallon

punch-bowl and plenty of lemons. I’ll stand for the French article by the

time I come back, and we’ll drink the young Laird’s health in a bowl that

would swim the collector’s yawl.’ So saying, he mounted his horse and

galloped off.

About a mile from the house, and upon the verge of the woods, which, as

we have said, covered a promontory terminating in the cape called the

Point of Warroch, Kennedy met young Harry Bertram, attended by his tutor,

Dominie Sampson. He had often promised the child a ride upon his

galloway; and, from singing, dancing, and playing Punch for his

amusement, was a particular favourite. He no sooner came scampering up

the path, than the boy loudly claimed his promise; and Kennedy, who saw

no risk, in indulging him, and wished to tease the Dominie, in whose

visage he read a remonstrance, caught up Harry from the ground, placed

him before him, and continued his route; Sampson’s ‘Peradventure, Master

Kennedy-’ being lost in the clatter of his horse’s feet. The pedagogue

hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but Kennedy being a

person in full confidence of the family, and with whom he himself had no

delight in associating, ‘being that he was addicted unto profane and

scurrilous jests,’ he continued his own walk at his own pace, till he

reached the Place of Ellangowan.

The spectators from the ruined walls of the castle were still watching

the sloop of war, which at length, but not without the loss of

considerable time, recovered sea-room enough to weather the Point of

Warroch, and was lost to their sight behind that wooded promontory. Some

time afterwards the discharges of several cannon were heard at a

distance, and, after an interval, a still louder explosion, as of a

vessel blown up, and a cloud of smoke rose above the trees and mingled

with the blue sky. All then separated on their different occasions,

auguring variously upon the fate of the smuggler, but the majority

insisting that her capture was inevitable, if she had not already gone to

the bottom.

‘It is near our dinner-time, my dear,’ said Mrs. Bertram to her husband;

‘will it be lang before Mr. Kennedy comes back?’

‘I expect him every moment, my dear,’ said the Laird; ‘perhaps he is

bringing some of the officers of the sloop with him.’

‘My stars, Mr. Bertram! why did not ye tell me this before, that we might

have had the large round table? And then, they’re a’ tired o’ saut meat,

and, to tell you the plain truth, a rump o’ beef is the best part of your

dinner. And then I wad have put on another gown, and ye wadna have been

the waur o’ a clean neck-cloth yoursell. But ye delight in surprising and

hurrying one. I am sure I am no to baud out for ever against this sort of

going on; but when folk’s missed, then they are moaned.’

‘Pshaw, pshaw! deuce take the beef, and the gown, and table, and the

neck-cloth! we shall do all very well. Where’s the Dominie, John? (to a

servant who was busy about the table) where’s the Dominie and little

Harry?’

‘Mr. Sampson’s been at hame these twa hours and mair, but I dinna think

Mr. Harry cam hame wi’ him.’

‘Not come hame wi’ him?’ said the lady; ‘desire Mr. Sampson to step this

way directly.’

‘Mr. Sampson,’ said she, upon his entrance, ‘is it not the most

extraordinary thing in this world wide, that you, that have free

up-putting--bed, board, and washing--and twelve pounds sterling a year,

just to look after that boy, should let him out of your sight for twa or

three hours?’

Sampson made a bow of humble acknowledgment at each pause which the angry

lady made in her enumeration of the advantages of his situation, in order

to give more weight to her remonstrance, and then, in words which we will

not do him the injustice to imitate, told how Mr. Francis Kennedy ‘had

assumed spontaneously the charge of Master Harry, in despite of his

remonstrances in the contrary.’

‘I am very little obliged to Mr. Francis Kennedy for his pains,’ said the

lady, peevishly; ‘suppose he lets the boy drop from his horse, and lames

him? or suppose one of the cannons comes ashore and kills him? or

suppose--’

‘Or suppose, my dear,’ said Ellangowan, ‘what is much more likely than

anything else, that they have gone aboard the sloop or the prize, and are

to come round the Point with the tide?’

‘And then they may be drowned,’ said the lady.

‘Verily,’ said Sampson, ‘I thought Mr. Kennedy had returned an hour

since. Of a surety I deemed I heard his horse’s feet.’

‘That,’ said John, with a broad grin, ‘was Grizzel chasing the humble-cow

out of the close.’

Sampson coloured up to the eyes, not at the implied taunt, which he would

never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea which

crossed his own mind. ‘I have been in an error,’ he said; ‘of a surety I

should have tarried for the babe.’ So saying, he snatched his bone-headed

cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood faster than he was

ever known to walk before or after.

The Laird lingered some time, debating the point with the lady. At length

he saw the sloop of war again make her appearance; but, without

approaching the shore, she stood away to the westward with all her sails

set, and was soon out of sight. The lady’s state of timorous and fretful

apprehension was so habitual that her fears went for nothing with her

lord and master; but an appearance of disturbance and anxiety among the

servants now excited his alarm, especially when he was called out of the

room, and told in private that Mr. Kennedy’s horse had come to the stable

door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly and the reins of

the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them in passing that

there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on the other side of

the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come through the wood, he

had seen or heard nothing of Kennedy or the young Laird, ‘only there was

Dominie Sampson gaun rampauging about like mad, seeking for them.’

All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and

female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in the

neighbourhood lent their assistance, partly out of zeal, partly from

curiosity. Boats were manned to search the sea-shore, which, on the other

side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks. A vague suspicion

was entertained, though too horrible to be expressed, that the child

might have fallen from one of these cliffs.

The evening had begun to close when the parties entered the wood, and

dispersed different ways in quest of the boy and his companion. The

darkening of the atmosphere, and the hoarse sighs of the November wind

through the naked trees, the rustling of the withered leaves which

strewed the glades, the repeated halloos of the different parties, which

often drew them together in expectation of meeting the objects of their

search, gave a cast of dismal sublimity to the scene.

At length, after a minute and fruitless investigation through the wood,

the searchers began to draw together into one body, and to compare notes.

The agony of the father grew beyond concealment, yet it scarcely equalled

the anguish of the tutor. ‘Would to God I had died for him!’ the

affectionate creature repeated, in notes of the deepest distress. Those

who were less interested rushed into a tumultuary discussion of chances

and possibilities. Each gave his opinion, and each was alternately swayed

by that of the others. Some thought the objects of their search had gone

aboard the sloop; some that they had gone to a village at three miles’

distance; some whispered they might have been on board the lugger, a few

planks and beams of which the tide now drifted ashore.

At this instant a shout was heard from the beach, so loud, so shrill, so

piercing, so different from every sound which the woods that day had rung

to, that nobody hesitated a moment to believe that it conveyed tidings,

and tidings of dreadful import. All hurried to the place, and, venturing

without scruple upon paths which at another time they would have

shuddered to look at, descended towards a cleft of the rock, where one

boat’s crew was already landed. ‘Here, sirs, here! this way, for God’s

sake! this way! this way!’ was the reiterated cry. Ellangowan broke

through the throng which had already assembled at the fatal spot, and

beheld the object of their terror. It was the dead body of Kennedy. At

first sight he seemed to have perished by a fall from the rocks, which

rose above the spot on which he lay in a perpendicular precipice of a

hundred feet above the beach. The corpse was lying half in, half out of

the water; the advancing tide, raising the arm and stirring the clothes,

had given it at some distance the appearance of motion, so that those who

first discovered the body thought that life remained. But every spark had

been long extinguished.

‘My bairn! my bairn!’ cried the distracted father, ‘where can he be?’ A

dozen mouths were opened to communicate hopes which no one felt. Some one

at length mentioned--the gipsies! In a moment Ellangowan had reascended

the cliffs, flung himself upon the first horse he met, and rode furiously

to the huts at Derncleugh. All was there dark and desolate; and, as he

dismounted to make more minute search, he stumbled over fragments of

furniture which had been thrown out of the cottages, and the broken wood

and thatch which had been pulled down by his orders. At that moment the

prophecy, or anathema, of Meg Merrilies fell heavy on his mind. ‘You have

stripped the thatch from seven cottages; see that the roof-tree of your

own house stand the surer!’

‘Restore,’ he cried, ‘restore my bairn! bring me back my son, and all

shall be forgot and forgiven!’ As he uttered these words in a sort of

frenzy, his eye caught a glimmering of light in one of the dismantled

cottages; it was that in which Meg Merrilies formerly resided. The light,

which seemed to proceed from fire, glimmered not only through the window,

but also through the rafters of the hut where the roofing had been torn

off.

He flew to the place; the entrance was bolted. Despair gave the miserable

father the strength of ten men; he rushed against the door with such

violence that it gave way before the momentum of his weight and force.

The cottage was empty, but bore marks of recent habitation: there was

fire on the hearth, a kettle, and some preparation for food. As he

eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope that his

child yet lived, although in the power of those strange people, a man

entered the hut.

It was his old gardener. ‘O sir!’ said the old man, ‘such a night as this

I trusted never to live to see! ye maun come to the Place directly!’

‘Is my boy found? is he alive? have ye found Harry Bertram? Andrew, have

ye found Harry Bertram?’

‘No, sir; but-’

‘Then he is kidnapped! I am sure of it, Andrew! as sure as that I tread

upon earth! She has stolen him; and I will never stir from this place

till I have tidings of my bairn!’

‘O, but ye maun come hame, sir! ye maun come hame! We have sent for the

Sheriff, and we’ll seta watch here a’ night, in case the gipsies return;

but YOU--ye maun come hame, sir, for my lady’s in the dead-thraw.’

Bertram turned a stupefied and unmeaning eye on the messenger who uttered

this calamitous news; and, repeating the words ‘in the dead-thraw!’ as if

he could not comprehend their meaning, suffered the old man to drag him

towards his horse. During the ride home he only said, ‘Wife and bairn

baith--mother and son baith,--sair, sair to abide!’

It is needless to dwell upon the new scene of agony which awaited him.

The news of Kennedy’s fate had been eagerly and incautiously communicated

at Ellangowan, with the gratuitous addition, that, doubtless, ‘he had

drawn the young Laird over the craig with him, though the tide had swept

away the child’s body; he was light, puir thing, and would flee farther

into the surf.’

Mrs. Bertram heard the tidings; she was far advanced in her pregnancy;

she fell into the pains of premature labour, and, ere Ellangowan had

recovered his agitated faculties, so as to comprehend the full distress

of his situation, he was the father of a female infant, and a widower.

CHAPTER X

But see, his face is black and full of blood;

His eye-balls farther out than when he lived,

Staring full ghastly like a strangled man,

His hair uprear’d, his nostrils stretch d with struggling,

His hands abroad display’d, as one that grasp’d

And tugg’d for life, and was by strength subdued

Henry VI, Part II

The Sheriff-depute of the county arrived at Ellangowan next morning by

daybreak. To this provincial magistrate the law of Scotland assigns

judicial powers of considerable extent, and the task of inquiring into

all crimes committed within his jurisdiction, the apprehension and

commitment of suspected persons, and so forth. [Footnote: The Scottish

sheriff discharges, on such occasions as that now mentioned, pretty much

the same duty as a coroner.]

The gentleman who held the office in the shire of---at the time of this

catastrophe was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat

pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an

active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine

all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this mysterious

event, and make up the written report, proces verbal, or precognition, as

it is technically called, which the practice of Scotland has substituted

for a coroner’s inquest. Under the Sheriff’s minute and skilful inquiry,

many circumstances appeared which seemed incompatible with the original

opinion that Kennedy had accidentally fallen from the cliffs. We shall

briefly detail some of these.

The body had been deposited in a neighbouring fisher-hut, but without

altering the condition in which it was found. This was the first object

of the Sheriff’s examination. Though fearfully crushed and mangled by the

fall from such a height, the corpse was found to exhibit a deep cut in

the head, which, in the opinion of a skilful surgeon, must have been

inflicted by a broadsword or cutlass. The experience of this gentleman

discovered other suspicious indications. The face was much blackened, the

eyes distorted, and the veins of the neck swelled. A coloured

handkerchief, which the unfortunate man had worn round his neck, did not

present the usual appearance, but was much loosened, and the knot

displaced and dragged extremely tight; the folds were also compressed, as

if it had been used as a means of grappling the deceased, and dragging

him perhaps to the precipice.

On the other hand, poor Kennedy’s purse was found untouched; and, what

seemed yet more extraordinary, the pistols which he usually carried when

about to encounter any hazardous adventure were found in his pockets

loaded. This appeared particularly strange, for he was known and dreaded

by the contraband traders as a man equally fearless and dexterous in the

use of his weapons, of which he had given many signal proofs. The Sheriff

inquired whether Kennedy was not in the practice of carrying any other

arms? Most of Mr. Bertram’s servants recollected that he generally had a

couteau de chasse, or short hanger, but none such was found upon the dead

body; nor could those who had seen him on the morning of the fatal day

take it upon them to assert whether he then carried that weapon or not.

The corpse afforded no other indicia respecting the fate of Kennedy; for,

though the clothes were much displaced and the limbs dreadfully

fractured, the one seemed the probable, the other the certain,

consequences of such a fall. The hands of the deceased were clenched

fast, and full of turf and earth; but this also seemed equivocal.

The magistrate then proceeded to the place where the corpse was first

discovered, and made those who had found it give, upon the spot, a

particular and detailed account of the manner in which it was lying. A

large fragment of the rock appeared to have accompanied, or followed, the

fall of the victim from the cliff above. It was of so solid and compact a

substance that it had fallen without any great diminution by splintering;

so that the Sheriff was enabled, first, to estimate the weight by

measurement, and then to calculate, from the appearance of the fragment,

what portion of it had been bedded into the cliff from which it had

descended. This was easily detected by the raw appearance of the stone

where it had not been exposed to the atmosphere. They then ascended the

cliff, and surveyed the place from whence the stony fragment had fallen.

It seemed plain, from the appearance of the bed, that the mere weight of

one man standing upon the projecting part of the fragment, supposing it

in its original situation, could not have destroyed its balance and

precipitated it, with himself, from the cliff. At the same time, it

appeared to have lain so loose that the use of a lever, or the combined

strength of three or four men, might easily have hurled it from its

position. The short turf about the brink of the precipice was much

trampled, as if stamped by the heels of men in a mortal struggle, or in

the act of some violent exertion. Traces of the same kind, less visibly

marked, guided the sagacious investigator to the verge of the copsewood,

which in that place crept high up the bank towards the top of the

precipice.

With patience and perseverance they traced these marks into the thickest

part of the copse, a route which no person would have voluntarily

adopted, unless for the purpose of concealment. Here they found plain

vestiges of violence and struggling, from space to space. Small boughs

were torn down, as if grasped by some resisting wretch who was dragged

forcibly along; the ground, where in the least degree soft or marshy,

showed the print of many feet; there were vestiges also which might be

those of human blood. At any rate it was certain that several persons

must have forced their passage among the oaks, hazels, and underwood with

which they were mingled; and in some places appeared traces as if a sack

full of grain, a dead body, or something of that heavy and solid

description, had been dragged along the ground. In one part of the

thicket there was a small swamp, the clay of which was whitish, being

probably mixed with marl. The back of Kennedy’s coat appeared besmeared

with stains of the same colour.

At length, about a quarter of a mile from the brink of the fatal

precipice, the traces conducted them to a small open space of ground,

very much trampled, and plainly stained with blood, although withered

leaves had been strewed upon the spot, and other means hastily taken to

efface the marks, which seemed obviously to have been derived from a

desperate affray. On one side of this patch of open ground was found the

sufferer’s naked hanger, which seemed to have been thrown into the

thicket; on the other, the belt and sheath, which appeared to have been

hidden with more leisurely care and precaution.

The magistrate caused the footprints which marked this spot to be

carefully measured and examined. Some corresponded to the foot of the

unhappy victim; some were larger, some less; indicating that at least

four or five men had been busy around him. Above all, here, and here

only, were observed the vestiges of a child’s foot; and as it could be

seen nowhere else, and the hard horse-track which traversed the wood of

Warroch was contiguous to the spot, it was natural to think that the boy

might have escaped in that direction during the confusion. But, as he was

never heard of, the Sheriff, who made a careful entry of all these

memoranda, did not suppress his opinion, that the deceased had met with

foul play, and that the murderers, whoever they were, had possessed

themselves of the person of the child Harry Bertram.

Every exertion was now made to discover the criminals. Suspicion

hesitated between the smugglers and the gipsies. The fate of Dirk

Hatteraick’s vessel was certain. Two men from the opposite side of

Warroch Bay (so the inlet on the southern side of the Point of Warroch is

called) had seen, though at a great distance, the lugger drive eastward,

after doubling the headland, and, as they judged from her manoeuvres, in

a disabled state. Shortly after, they perceived that she grounded,

smoked, and finally took fire. She was, as one of them expressed himself,

‘in a light low’ (bright flame) when they observed a king’s ship, with

her colours up, heave in sight from behind the cape. The guns of the

burning vessel discharged themselves as the fire reached them; and they

saw her at length blow up with a great explosion. The sloop of war kept

aloof for her own safety; and, after hovering till the other exploded,

stood away southward under a press of sail. The Sheriff anxiously

interrogated these men whether any boats had left the vessel. They could

not say, they had seen none; but they might have put off in such a

direction as placed the burning vessel, and the thick smoke which floated

landward from it, between their course and the witnesses’ observation.

That the ship destroyed was Dirk Hatteraick’s no one doubted. His lugger

was well known on the coast, and had been expected just at this time. A

letter from the commander of the king’s sloop, to whom the Sheriff made

application, put the matter beyond doubt; he sent also an extract from

his log-book of the transactions of the day, which intimated their being

on the outlook for a smuggling lugger, Dirk Hatteraick master, upon the

information and requisition of Francis Kennedy, of his Majesty’s excise

service; and that Kennedy was to be upon the outlook on the shore, in

case Hatteraick, who was known to be a desperate fellow, and had been

repeatedly outlawed, should attempt to run his sloop aground. About nine

o’clock A.M. they discovered a sail which answered the description of

Hatteraick’s vessel, chased her, and, after repeated signals to her to

show colours and bring-to, fired upon her. The chase then showed Hamburgh

colours and returned the fire; and a running fight was maintained for

three hours, when, just as the lugger was doubling the Point of Warroch,

they observed that the main-yard was shot in the slings, and that the

vessel was disabled. It was not in the power of the man-of-war’s men for

some time to profit by this circumstance, owing to their having kept too

much in shore for doubling the headland. After two tacks, they

accomplished this, and observed the chase on fire and apparently

deserted. The fire having reached some casks of spirits, which were

placed on the deck, with other combustibles, probably on purpose, burnt

with such fury that no boats durst approach the vessel, especially as her

shotted guns were discharging one after another by the heat. The captain

had no doubt whatever that the crew had set the vessel on fire and

escaped in their boats. After watching the conflagration till the ship

blew up, his Majesty’s sloop, the Shark, stood towards the Isle of Man,

with the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the smugglers, who,

though they might conceal themselves in the woods for a day or two, would

probably take the first opportunity of endeavouring to make for this

asylum. But they never saw more of them than is above narrated.

Such was the account given by William Pritchard, master and commander of

his Majesty’s sloop of war, Shark, who concluded by regretting deeply

that he had not had the happiness to fall in with the scoundrels who had

had the impudence to fire on his Majesty’s flag, and with an assurance

that, should he meet Mr. Dirk Hatteraick in any future cruise, he would

not fail to bring him into port under his stern, to answer whatever might

be alleged against him.

As, therefore, it seemed tolerably certain that the men on board the

lugger had escaped, the death of Kennedy, if he fell in with them in the

woods, when irritated by the loss of their vessel and by the share he had

in it, was easily to be accounted for. And it was not improbable that to

such brutal tempers, rendered desperate by their own circumstances, even

the murder of the child, against whose father, as having become suddenly

active in the prosecution of smugglers, Hatteraick was known to have

uttered deep threats, would not appear a very heinous crime.

Against this hypothesis it was urged that a crew of fifteen or twenty men

could not have lain hidden upon the coast, when so close a search took

place immediately after the destruction of their vessel; or, at least,

that if they had hid themselves in the woods, their boats must have been

seen on the beach; that in such precarious circumstances, and when all

retreat must have seemed difficult if not impossible, it was not to be

thought that they would have all united to commit a useless murder for

the mere sake of revenge. Those who held this opinion supposed either

that the boats of the lugger had stood out to sea without being observed

by those who were intent upon gazing at the burning vessel, and so gained

safe distance before the sloop got round the headland; or else that, the

boats being staved or destroyed by the fire of the Shark during the

chase, the crew had obstinately determined to perish with the vessel.

What gave some countenance to this supposed act of desperation was, that

neither Dirk Hatteraick nor any of his sailors, all well-known men in the

fair trade, were again seen upon that coast, or heard of in the Isle of

Man, where strict inquiry was made. On the other hand, only one dead

body, apparently that of a seaman killed by a cannon-shot, drifted

ashore. So all that could be done was to register the names, description,

and appearance of the individuals belonging to the ship’s company, and

offer a reward for the apprehension of them, or any one of them,

extending also to any person, not the actual murderer, who should give

evidence tending to convict those who had murdered Francis Kennedy.

Another opinion, which was also plausibly supported, went to charge this

horrid crime upon the late tenants of Derncleugh. They were known to have

resented highly the conduct of the Laird of Ellangowan towards them, and

to have used threatening expressions, which every one supposed them

capable of carrying into effect. The kidnapping the child was a crime

much more consistent with their habits than with those of smugglers, and

his temporary guardian might have fallen in an attempt to protect him.

Besides, it was remembered that Kennedy had been an active agent, two or

three days before, in the forcible expulsion of these people from

Derncleugh, and that harsh and menacing language had been exchanged

between him and some of the Egyptian patriarchs on that memorable

occasion.

The Sheriff received also the depositions of the unfortunate father and

his servant, concerning what had passed at their meeting the caravan of

gipsies as they left the estate of Ellangowan. The speech of Meg

Merrilies seemed particularly suspicious. There was, as the magistrate

observed in his law language, damnum minatum--a damage, or evil turn,

threatened--and malum secutum--an evil of the very kind predicted shortly

afterwards following. A young woman, who had been gathering nuts in

Warroch wood upon the fatal day, was also strongly of opinion, though she

declined to make positive oath, that she had seen Meg Merrilies--at least

a woman of her remarkable size and appearance--start suddenly out of a

thicket; she said she had called to her by name, but, as the figure

turned from her and made no answer, she was uncertain if it were the

gipsy or her wraith, and was afraid to go nearer to one who was always

reckoned, in the vulgar phrase, ‘no canny.’ This vague story received

some corroboration from the circumstance of a fire being that evening

found in the gipsy’s deserted cottage. To this fact Ellangowan and his

gardener bore evidence. Yet it seemed extravagant to suppose that, had

this woman been accessory to such a dreadful crime, she would have

returned, that very evening on which it was committed, to the place of

all others where she was most likely to be sought after.

Meg Merrilies was, however, apprehended and examined. She denied strongly

having been either at Derncleugh or in the wood of Warroch upon the day

of Kennedy’s death; and several of her tribe made oath in her behalf,

that she had never quitted their encampment, which was in a glen about

ten miles distant from Ellangowan. Their oaths were indeed little to be

trusted to; but what other evidence could be had in the circumstances?

There was one remarkable fact, and only one, which arose from her

examination. Her arm appeared to be slightly wounded by the cut of a

sharp weapon, and was tied up with a handkerchief of Harry Bertram’s. But

the chief of the horde acknowledged he had ‘corrected her’ that day with

his whinger; she herself, and others, gave the same account of her hurt;

and for the handkerchief, the quantity of linen stolen from Ellangowan

during the last months of their residence on the estate easily accounted

for it, without charging Meg with a more heinous crime.

It was observed upon her examination that she treated the questions

respecting the death of Kennedy, or ‘the gauger,’ as she called him, with

indifference; but expressed great and emphatic scorn and indignation at

being supposed capable of injuring little Harry Bertram. She was long

confined in jail, under the hope that something might yet be discovered

to throw light upon this dark and bloody transaction. Nothing, however,

occurred; and Meg was at length liberated, but under sentence of

banishment from the county as a vagrant, common thief, and disorderly

person. No traces of the boy could ever be discovered; and at length the

story, after making much noise, was gradually given up as altogether

inexplicable, and only perpetuated by the name of ‘The Gauger’s Loup,’

which was generally bestowed on the cliff from which the unfortunate man

had fallen or been precipitated.

CHAPTER XI

ENTER TIME, AS CHORUS

I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror

Of good and bad; that make and unfold error,

Now take upon me, in the name of Time,

To use my wings Impute it not a crime

To me, or my swift passage, that I slide

O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried

Of that wide gap.

Winter’s Tale.

Our narration is now about to make a large stride, and omit a space of

nearly seventeen years; during which nothing occurred of any particular

consequence with respect to the story we have undertaken to tell. The gap

is a wide one; yet if the reader’s experience in life enables him to look

back on so many years, the space will scarce appear longer in his

recollection than the time consumed in turning these pages.

It was, then, in the month of November, about seventeen years after the

catastrophe related in the last chapter, that, during a cold and stormy

night, a social group had closed around the kitchen-fire of the Gordon

Arms at Kippletringan, a small but comfortable inn kept by Mrs.

Mac-Candlish in that village. The conversation which passed among them

will save me the trouble of telling the few events occurring during this

chasm in our history, with which it is necessary that the reader should

be acquainted.

Mrs. Mac-Candlish, throned in a comfortable easychair lined with black

leather, was regaling herself and a neighbouring gossip or two with a cup

of genuine tea, and at the same time keeping a sharp eye upon her

domestics, as they went and came in prosecution of their various duties

and commissions. The clerk and precentor of the parish enjoyed at a

little distance his Saturday night’s pipe, and aided its bland fumigation

by an occasional sip of brandy and water. Deacon Bearcliff, a man of

great importance in the village, combined the indulgence of both parties:

he had his pipe and his tea-cup, the latter being laced with a little

spirits. One or two clowns sat at some distance, drinking their twopenny

ale.

‘Are ye sure the parlour’s ready for them, and the fire burning clear,

and the chimney no smoking?’ said the hostess to a chambermaid.

She was answered in the affirmative. ‘Ane wadna be uncivil to them,

especially in their distress,’ said she, turning to the Deacon.

‘Assuredly not, Mrs. Mac-Candlish; assuredly not. I am sure ony sma’

thing they might want frae my shop, under seven, or eight, or ten pounds,

I would book them as readily for it as the first in the country. Do they

come in the auld chaise?’

‘I daresay no,’ said the precentor; ‘for Miss Bertram comes on the white

powny ilka day to the kirk--and a constant kirk-keeper she is--and it’s a

pleasure to hear her singing the psalms, winsome young thing.’

‘Ay, and the young Laird of Hazlewood rides hame half the road wi’ her

after sermon,’ said one of the gossips in company. ‘I wonder how auld

Hazlewood likes that.’

‘I kenna how he may like it now,’ answered another of the tea-drinkers;

‘but the day has been when Ellangowan wad hae liked as little to see his

daughter taking up with their son.’

‘Ay, has been,’ answered the first, with somewhat of emphasis.

‘I am sure, neighbour Ovens,’ said the hostess, ‘the Hazlewoods of

Hazlewood, though they are a very gude auld family in the county, never

thought, till within these twa score o’ years, of evening themselves till

the Ellangowans. Wow, woman, the Bertrams of Ellangowan are the auld

Dingawaies lang syne. There is a sang about ane o’ them marrying a

daughter of the King of Man; it begins--

Blythe Bertram’s ta’en him ower the faem,

To wed a wife, and bring her hame--

I daur say Mr. Skreigh can sing us the ballant.’

‘Gudewife,’ said Skreigh, gathering up his mouth, and sipping his tiff of

brandy punch with great solemnity, ‘our talents were gien us to other use

than to sing daft auld sangs sae near the Sabbath day.’

‘Hout fie, Mr. Skreigh; I’se warrant I hae heard you sing a blythe sang

on Saturday at e’en before now. But as for the chaise, Deacon, it hasna

been out of the coach-house since Mrs. Bertram died, that’s sixteen or

seventeen years sin syne. Jock Jabos is away wi’ a chaise of mine for

them; I wonder he’s no come back. It’s pit mirk; but there’s no an ill

turn on the road but twa, and the brigg ower Warroch burn is safe eneugh,

if he haud to the right side. But then there’s Heavieside Brae, that’s

just a murder for post-cattle; but Jock kens the road brawly.’

A loud rapping was heard at the door.

‘That’s no them. I dinna hear the wheels. Grizzel, ye limmer, gang to the

door.’

‘It’s a single gentleman,’ whined out Grizzel; ‘maun I take him into the

parlour?’

‘Foul be in your feet, then; it’ll be some English rider. Coming without

a servant at this time o’ night! Has the hostler ta’en the horse? Ye may

light a spunk o’ fire in the red room.’

‘I wish, ma’am,’ said the traveller, entering the kitchen, ‘you would

give me leave to warm myself here, for the night is very cold.’

His appearance, voice, and manner produced an instantaneous effect in his

favour. He was a handsome, tall, thin figure, dressed in black, as

appeared when he laid aside his riding-coat; his age might be between

forty and fifty; his cast of features grave and interesting, and his air

somewhat military. Every point of his appearance and address bespoke the

gentleman. Long habit had given Mrs. Mac-Candlish an acute tact in

ascertaining the quality of her visitors, and proportioning her reception

accordingly:--

To every guest the appropriate speech was made,

And every duty with distinction paid;

Respectful, easy, pleasant, or polite--

‘Your honour’s servant!’ ‘Mister Smith, good-night.’

On the present occasion she was low in her courtesy and profuse in her

apologies. The stranger begged his horse might be attended to: she went

out herself to school the hostler.

‘There was never a prettier bit o’ horse-flesh in the stable o’ the

Gordon Arms,’ said the man, which information increased the landlady’s

respect for the rider. Finding, on her return, that the stranger declined

to go into another apartment (which, indeed, she allowed, would be but

cold and smoky till the fire bleezed up), she installed her guest

hospitably by the fireside, and offered what refreshment her house

afforded.

‘A cup of your tea, ma’am, if you will favour me.’

Mrs. Mac-Candlish bustled about, reinforced her teapot with hyson, and

proceeded in her duties with her best grace. ‘We have a very nice

parlour, sir, and everything very agreeable for gentlefolks; but it’s

bespoke the night for a gentleman and his daughter that are going to

leave this part of the country; ane of my chaises is gane for them, and

will be back forthwith. They’re no sae weel in the warld as they have

been; but we’re a’ subject to ups and downs in this life, as your honour

must needs ken,--but is not the tobacco-reek disagreeable to your

honour?’

‘By no means, ma’am; I am an old campaigner, and perfectly used to it.

Will you permit me to make some inquiries about a family in this

neighbourhood?’

The sound of wheels was now heard, and the landlady hurried to the door

to receive her expected guests; but returned in an instant, followed by

the postilion. ‘No, they canna come at no rate, the Laird’s sae ill.’

‘But God help them,’ said the landlady, ‘the morn’s the term, the very

last day they can bide in the house; a’ thing’s to be roupit.’

‘Weel, but they can come at no rate, I tell ye; Mr. Bertram canna be

moved.’

‘What Mr. Bertram?’ said the stranger; ‘not Mr. Bertram of Ellangowan, I

hope?’

‘Just e’en that same, sir; and if ye be a friend o’ his, ye have come at

a time when he’s sair bested.’

‘I have been abroad for many years,--is his health so much deranged?’

‘Ay, and his affairs an’ a’,’ said the Deacon; ‘the creditors have

entered into possession o’ the estate, and it’s for sale; and some that

made the maist by him--I name nae names, but Mrs. Mac-Candlish kens wha I

mean (the landlady shook her head significantly)--they’re sairest on him

e’en now. I have a sma’ matter due myself, but I would rather have lost

it than gane to turn the auld man out of his house, and him just dying.’

‘Ay, but,’ said the parish clerk, ‘Factor Glossin wants to get rid of the

auld Laird, and drive on the sale, for fear the heir-male should cast up

upon them; for I have heard say, if there was an heir-male they couldna

sell the estate for auld Ellangowan’s debt.’

‘He had a son born a good many years ago,’ said the stranger; ‘he is

dead, I suppose?’

‘Nae man can say for that,’ answered the clerk mysteriously.

‘Dead!’ said the Deacon, ‘I’se warrant him dead lang syne; he hasna been

heard o’ these twenty years or thereby.’

‘I wot weel it’s no twenty years,’ said the landlady; ‘it’s no abune

seventeen at the outside in this very month. It made an unco noise ower

a’ this country; the bairn disappeared the very day that Supervisor

Kennedy cam by his end. If ye kenn’d this country lang syne, your honour

wad maybe ken Frank Kennedy the Supervisor. He was a heartsome pleasant

man, and company for the best gentlemen in the county, and muckle mirth

he’s made in this house. I was young then, sir, and newly married to

Bailie Mac-Candlish, that’s dead and gone (a sigh); and muckle fun I’ve

had wi’ the Supervisor. He was a daft dog. O, an he could hae hauden aff

the smugglers a bit! but he was aye venturesome. And so ye see, sir,

there was a king’s sloop down in Wigton Bay, and Frank Kennedy, he

behoved to have her up to chase Dirk Hatteraick’s lugger--ye’ll mind Dirk

Hatteraick, Deacon? I daresay ye may have dealt wi’ him--(the Deacon gave

a sort of acquiescent nod and humph). He was a daring chield, and he

fought his ship till she blew up like peelings of ingans; and Frank

Kennedy, he had been the first man to board, and he was flung like a

quarter of a mile off, and fell into the water below the rock at Warroch

Point, that they ca’ the Gauger’s Loup to this day.’

‘And Mr. Bertram’s child,’ said the stranger, ‘what is all this to him?’

‘Ou, sir, the bairn aye held an unco wark wi’ the Supervisor; and it was

generally thought he went on board the vessel alang wi’ him, as bairns

are aye forward to be in mischief.’

‘No, no,’ said the Deacon, ‘ye’re clean out there, Luckie; for the young

Laird was stown away by a randy gipsy woman they ca’d Meg Merrilies--I

mind her looks weel--in revenge for Ellangowan having gar’d her be

drumm’d through Kippletringan for stealing a silver spoon.’

‘If ye’ll forgieme, Deacon,’ said the precentor, ‘ye’re e’en as far wrang

as the gudewife.’

‘And what is your edition of the story, sir?’ said the stranger, turning

to him with interest.

‘That’s maybe no sae canny to tell,’ said the precentor, with solemnity.

Upon being urged, however, to speak out, he preluded with two or three

large puffs of tobacco-smoke, and out of the cloudy sanctuary which these

whiffs formed around him delivered the following legend, having cleared

his voice with one or two hems, and imitating, as near as he could, the

eloquence which weekly thundered over his head from the pulpit.

‘What we are now to deliver, my brethren,--hem--hem,--I mean, my good

friends,--was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to

witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds. Ye must know

that the worshipful Laird of Ellangowan was not so preceese as he might

have been in clearing his land of witches (concerning whom it is said,

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”), nor of those who had familiar

spirits, and consulted with divination, and sorcery, and lots, which is

the fashion with the Egyptians, as they ca’ themsells, and other unhappy

bodies, in this our country. And the Laird was three years married

without having a family; and he was sae left to himsell, that it was

thought he held ower muckle troking and communing wi’ that Meg Merrilies,

wha was the maist notorious witch in a’ Galloway and Dumfries-shire

baith.’

‘Aweel, I wot there’s something in that,’ said Mrs. Mac-Candlish; ‘I’ve

kenn’d him order her twa glasses o’ brandy in this very house.’

‘Aweel, gudewife, then the less I lee. Sae the lady was wi’ bairn at

last, and in the night when she should have been delivered there comes to

the door of the ha’ house--the Place of Ellangowan as they ca’d--an

ancient man, strangely habited, and asked for quarters. His head, and his

legs, and his arms were bare, although it was winter time o’ the year,

and he had a grey beard three-quarters lang. Weel, he was admitted; and

when the lady was delivered, he craved to know the very moment of the

hour of the birth, and he went out and consulted the stars. And when he

came back he tell’d the Laird that the Evil One wad have power over the

knave-bairn that was that night born, and he charged him that the babe

should be bred up in the ways of piety, and that he should aye hae a

godly minister at his elbow to pray WI’ the bairn and FOR him. And the

aged man vanished away, and no man of this country ever saw mair o’ him.’

‘Now, that will not pass,’ said the postilion, who, at a respectful

distance, was listening to the conversation, ‘begging Mr. Skreigh’s and

the company’s pardon; there was no sae mony hairs on the warlock’s face

as there’s on Letter-Gae’s [Footnote: The precentor is called by Allan

Ramsay, The letter-gae of haly rhyme.] ain at this moment, and he had as

gude a pair o’ boots as a man need streik on his legs, and gloves too;

and I should understand boots by this time, I think.’

‘Whisht, Jock,’ said the landlady.

‘Ay? and what do YE ken o’ the matter, friend Jabos?’ said the precentor,

contemptuously.

‘No muckle, to be sure, Mr. Skreigh, only that I lived within a

penny-stane cast o’ the head o’ the avenue at Ellangowan, when a man cam

jingling to our door that night the young Laird was born, and my mother

sent me, that was a hafflin callant, to show the stranger the gate to the

Place, which, if he had been sic a warlock, he might hae kenn’d himsell,

ane wad think; and he was a young, weel-faured, weel-dressed lad, like an

Englishman. And I tell ye he had as gude a hat, and boots, and gloves, as

ony gentleman need to have. To be sure he DID gie an awesome glance up at

the auld castle, and there WAS some spae-wark gaed on, I aye heard that;

but as for his vanishing, I held the stirrup mysell when he gaed away,

and he gied me a round half-crown. He was riding on a haick they ca’d

Souple Sam, it belanged to the George at Dumfries; it was a blood-bay

beast, very ill o’ the spavin; I hae seen the beast baith before and

since.’

‘Aweel, aweel, Jock,’ answered Mr. Skreigh, with a tone of mild

solemnity, ‘our accounts differ in no material particulars; but I had no

knowledge that ye had seen the man. So ye see, my friends, that this

soothsayer having prognosticated evil to the boy, his father engaged a

godly minister to be with him morn and night.’

‘Ay, that was him they ca’d Dominie Sampson,’ said the postilion.

‘He’s but a dumb dog that,’ observed the Deacon; ‘I have heard that he

never could preach five words of a sermon endlang, for as lang as he has

been licensed.’

‘Weel, but,’ said the precentor, waving his hand, as if eager to retrieve

the command of the discourse, ‘he waited on the young Laird by night and

day. Now it chanced, when the bairn was near five years auld, that the

Laird had a sight of his errors, and determined to put these Egyptians

aff his ground, and he caused them to remove; and that Frank Kennedy,

that was a rough, swearing fellow, he was sent to turn them off. And he

cursed and damned at them, and they swure at him; and that Meg Merrilies,

that was the maist powerfu’ with the Enemy of Mankind, she as gude as

said she would have him, body and soul, before three days were ower his

head. And I have it from a sure hand, and that’s ane wha saw it, and

that’s John Wilson, that was the Laird’s groom, that Meg appeared to the

Laird as he was riding hame from Singleside, over Gibbie’s know, and

threatened him wi’ what she wad do to his family; but whether it was Meg,

or something waur in her likeness, for it seemed bigger than ony mortal

creature, John could not say.’

‘Aweel,’ said the postilion, ‘it might be sae, I canna say against it,

for I was not in the country at the time; but John Wilson was a

blustering kind of chield, without the heart of a sprug.’

‘And what was the end of all this?’ said the stranger, with some

impatience.

‘Ou, the event and upshot of it was, sir,’ said the precentor, ‘that

while they were all looking on, beholding a king’s ship chase a smuggler,

this Kennedy suddenly brake away frae them without ony reason that could

be descried--ropes nor tows wad not hae held him--and made for the wood

of Warroch as fast as his beast could carry him; and by the way he met

the young Laird and his governor, and he snatched up the bairn, and

swure, if HE was bewitched, the bairn should have the same luck as him;

and the minister followed as fast as he could, and almaist as fast as

them, for he was wonderfully swift of foot, and he saw Meg the witch, or

her master in her similitude, rise suddenly out of the ground, and

claught the bairn suddenly out of the ganger’s arms; and then he

rampauged and drew his sword, for ye ken a fie man and a cusser fearsna

the deil.’

‘I believe that’s very true,’ said the postilion.

‘So, sir, she grippit him, and clodded him like a stane from the sling

ower the craigs of Warroch Head, where he was found that evening; but

what became of the babe, frankly I cannot say. But he that was minister

here then, that’s now in a better place, had an opinion that the bairn

was only conveyed to fairy-land for a season.’

The stranger had smiled slightly at some parts of this recital, but ere

he could answer the clatter of a horse’s hoofs was heard, and a smart

servant, handsomely dressed, with a cockade in his hat, bustled into the

kitchen, with ‘Make a little room, good people’; when, observing the

stranger, he descended at once into the modest and civil domestic, his

hat sunk down by his side, and he put a letter into his master’s hands.

‘The family at Ellangowan, sir, are in great distress, and unable to

receive any visits.’

‘I know it,’ replied his master. ‘And now, madam, if you will have the

goodness to allow me to occupy the parlour you mentioned, as you are

disappointed of your guests--’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Mrs. Mac-Candlish, and hastened to light the way

with all the imperative bustle which an active landlady loves to display

on such occasions.

‘Young man,’ said the Deacon to the servant, filling a glass, ‘ye’ll no

be the waur o’ this, after your ride.’

‘Not a feather, sir; thank ye, your very good health, sir.’

‘And wha may your master be, friend?’

‘What, the gentleman that was here? that’s the famous Colonel Mannering,

sir, from the East Indies.’

‘What, him we read of in the newspapers?’

‘Ay, ay, just the same. It was he relieved Cuddieburn, and defended

Chingalore, and defeated the great Mahratta chief, Ram Jolli Bundleman. I

was with him in most of his campaigns.’

‘Lord safe us,’ said the landlady; ‘I must go see what he would have for

supper; that I should set him down here!’

‘O, he likes that all the better, mother. You never saw a plainer

creature in your life than our old Colonel; and yet he has a spice of the

devil in him too.’

The rest of the evening’s conversation below stairs tending little to

edification, we shall, with the reader’s leave, step up to the parlour.

CHAPTER XII

Reputation! that’s man’s idol

Set up against God, the Maker of all laws,

Who hath commanded us we should not kill,

And yet we say we must, for Reputation!

What honest man can either fear his own,

Or else will hurt another’s reputation?

Fear to do base unworthy things is valour;

If they be done to us, to suffer them

Is valour too.

BEN JONSON.

The Colonel was walking pensively up and down the parlour when the

officious landlady reentered to take his commands. Having given them in

the manner he thought would be most acceptable ‘for the good of the

house,’ he begged to detain her a moment.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘madam, if I understood the good people right, Mr.

Bertram lost his son in his fifth year?’

‘O ay, sir, there’s nae doubt o’ that, though there are mony idle clashes

about the way and manner, for it’s an auld story now, and everybody tells

it, as we were doing, their ain way by the ingleside. But lost the bairn

was in his fifth year, as your honour says, Colonel; and the news being

rashly tell’d to the leddy, then great with child, cost her her life that

samyn night; and the Laird never throve after that day, but was just

careless of everything, though, when his daughter Miss Lucy grew up, she

tried to keep order within doors; but what could she do, poor thing? So

now they’re out of house and hauld.’

‘Can you recollect, madam, about what time of the year the child was

lost?’ The landlady, after a pause and some recollection, answered, ‘she

was positive it was about this season’; and added some local

recollections that fixed the date in her memory as occurring about the

beginning of November 17--.

The stranger took two or three turns round the room in silence, but

signed to Mrs. Mac-Candlish not to leave it.

‘Did I rightly apprehend,’ he said, ‘that the estate of Ellangowan is in

the market?’

‘In the market? It will be sell’d the morn to the highest bidder--that’s

no the morn, Lord help me! which is the Sabbath, but on Monday, the first

free day; and the furniture and stocking is to be roupit at the same time

on the ground. It’s the opinion of the haill country that the sale has

been shamefully forced on at this time, when there’s sae little money

stirring in Scotland wi’ this weary American war, that somebody may get

the land a bargain. Deil be in them, that I should say sae!’--the good

lady’s wrath rising at the supposed injustice.

‘And where will the sale take place?’

‘On the premises, as the advertisement says; that’s at the house of

Ellangowan, your honour, as I understand it.’

‘And who exhibits the title-deeds, rent-roll, and plan?’

‘A very decent man, sir; the sheriff-substitute of the county, who has

authority from the Court of Session. He’s in the town just now, if your

honour would like to see him; and he can tell you mair about the loss of

the bairn than ony body, for the sheriff-depute (that’s his principal,

like) took much pains to come at the truth o’ that matter, as I have

heard.’

‘And this gentleman’s name is--’

‘Mac-Morlan, sir; he’s a man o’ character, and weel spoken o’.’

‘Send my compliments--Colonel Mannering’s compliments to him, and I would

be glad he would do me the pleasure of supping with me, and bring these

papers with him; and I beg, good madam, you will say nothing of this to

any one else.’

‘Me, sir? ne’er a word shall I say. I wish your honour (a courtesy), or

ony honourable gentleman that’s fought for his country (another

courtesy), had the land, since the auld family maun quit (a sigh), rather

than that wily scoundrel Glossin, that’s risen on the ruin of the best

friend he ever had. And now I think on’t, I’ll slip on my hood and

pattens, and gang to Mr. Mac-Morlan mysell, he’s at hame e’en now; it’s

hardly a step.’

‘Do so, my good landlady, and many thanks; and bid my servant step here

with my portfolio in the meantime.’

In a minute or two Colonel Mannering was quietly seated with his writing

materials before him. We have the privilege of looking over his shoulder

as he writes, and we willingly communicate its substance to our readers.

The letter was addressed to Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of Mervyn Hall,

Llanbraithwaite, Westmoreland. It contained some account of the writer’s

previous journey since parting with him, and then proceeded as follows:--

‘And now, why will you still upbraid me with my melancholy, Mervyn? Do

you think, after the lapse of twenty-five years, battles, wounds,

imprisonment, misfortunes of every description, I can be still the same

lively, unbroken Guy Mannering who climbed Skiddaw with you, or shot

grouse upon Crossfell? That you, who have remained in the bosom of

domestic happiness, experience little change, that your step is as light

and your fancy as full of sunshine, is a blessed effect of health and

temperament, cooperating with content and a smooth current down the

course of life. But MY career has been one of difficulties and doubts and

errors. From my infancy I have been the sport of accident, and, though

the wind has often borne me into harbour, it has seldom been into that

which the pilot destined. Let me recall to you--but the task must be

brief--the odd and wayward fates of my youth, and the misfortunes of my

manhood.

‘The former, you will say, had nothing very appalling. All was not for

the best; but all was tolerable. My father, the eldest son of an ancient

but reduced family, left me with little, save the name of the head of the

house, to the protection of his more fortunate brothers. They were so

fond of me that they almost quarrelled about me. My uncle, the bishop,

would have had me in orders, and offered me a living; my uncle, the

merchant, would have put me into a counting-house, and proposed to give

me a share in the thriving concern of Mannering and Marshall, in Lombard

Street. So, between these two stools, or rather these two soft, easy,

well-stuffed chairs of divinity and commerce, my unfortunate person

slipped down, and pitched upon a dragoon saddle. Again, the bishop wished

me to marry the niece and heiress of the Dean of Lincoln; and my uncle,

the alderman, proposed to me the only daughter of old Sloethorn, the

great wine-merchant, rich enough to play at span-counter with moidores

and make thread-papers of bank-notes; and somehow I slipped my neck out

of both nooses, and married--poor, poor Sophia Wellwood.

‘You will say, my military career in India, when I followed my regiment

there, should have given me some satisfaction; and so it assuredly has.

You will remind me also, that if I disappointed the hopes of my

guardians, I did not incur their displeasure; that the bishop, at his

death, bequeathed me his blessing, his manuscript sermons, and a curious

portfolio containing the heads of eminent divines of the church of

England; and that my uncle, Sir Paul Mannering, left me sole heir and

executor to his large fortune. Yet this availeth me nothing; I told you I

had that upon my mind which I should carry to my grave with me, a

perpetual aloes in the draught of existence. I will tell you the cause

more in detail than I had the heart to do while under your hospitable

roof. You will often hear it mentioned, and perhaps with different and

unfounded circumstances. I will therefore speak it out; and then let the

event itself, and the sentiments of melancholy with which it has

impressed me, never again be subject of discussion between us.

‘Sophia, as you well know, followed me to India. She was as innocent as

gay; but, unfortunately for us both, as gay as innocent. My own manners

were partly formed by studies I had forsaken, and habits of seclusion not

quite consistent with my situation as commandant of a regiment in a

country where universal hospitality is offered and expected by every

settler claiming the rank of a gentleman. In a moment of peculiar

pressure (you know how hard we were sometimes run to obtain white faces

to countenance our line-of-battle), a young man named Brown joined our

regiment as a volunteer, and, finding the military duty more to his fancy

than commerce, in which he had been engaged, remained with us as a cadet.

Let me do my unhappy victim justice: he behaved with such gallantry on

every occasion that offered that the first vacant commission was

considered as his due. I was absent for some weeks upon a distant

expedition; when I returned I found this young fellow established quite

as the friend of the house, and habitual attendant of my wife and

daughter. It was an arrangement which displeased me in many particulars,

though no objection could be made to his manners or character. Yet I

might have been reconciled to his familiarity in my family, but for the

suggestions of another. If you read over--what I never dare open--the

play of “Othello,” you will have some idea of what followed--I mean of my

motives; my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was

another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention

to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man.

Sophia was virtuous, but proud of her virtue; and, irritated by my

jealousy, she was so imprudent as to press and encourage an intimacy

which she saw I disapproved and regarded with suspicion. Between Brown

and me there existed a sort of internal dislike. He made an effort or two

to overcome my prejudice; but, prepossessed as I was, I placed them to a

wrong motive. Feeling himself repulsed, and with scorn, he desisted; and

as he was without family and friends, he was naturally more watchful of

the deportment of one who had both.

‘It is odd with what torture I write this letter. I feel inclined,

nevertheless, to protract the operation, just as if my doing so could put

off the catastrophe which has so long embittered my life. But--it must be

told, and it shall be told briefly.

‘My wife, though no longer young, was still eminently handsome, and--let

me say thus far in my own justification-she was fond of being thought

so--I am repeating what I said before. In a word, of her virtue I never

entertained a doubt; but, pushed by the artful suggestions of Archer, I

thought she cared little for my peace of mind, and that the young fellow

Brown paid his attentions in my despite, and in defiance of me. He

perhaps considered me, on his part, as an oppressive aristocratic man,

who made my rank in society and in the army the means of galling those

whom circumstances placed beneath me. And if he discovered my silly

jealousy, he probably considered the fretting me in that sore point of my

character as one means of avenging the petty indignities to which I had

it in my power to subject him. Yet an acute friend of mine gave a more

harmless, or at least a less offensive, construction to his attentions,

which he conceived to be meant for my daughter Julia, though immediately

addressed to propitiate the influence of her mother. This could have been

no very flattering or pleasing enterprise on the part of an obscure and

nameless young man; but I should not have been offended at this folly as

I was at the higher degree of presumption I suspected. Offended, however,

I was, and in a mortal degree.

‘A very slight spark will kindle a flame where everything lies open to

catch it. I have absolutely forgot the proximate cause of quarrel, but it

was some trifle which occurred at the card-table which occasioned high

words and a challenge. We met in the morning beyond the walls and

esplanade of the fortress which I then commanded, on the frontiers of the

settlement. This was arranged for Brown’s safety, had he escaped. I

almost wish he had, though at my own expense; but he fell by the first

fire. We strove to assist him; but some of these looties, a species of

native banditti who were always on the watch for prey, poured in upon us.

Archer and I gained our horses with difficulty, and cut our way through

them after a hard conflict, in the course of which he received some

desperate wounds. To complete the misfortunes of this miserable day, my

wife, who suspected the design with which I left the fortress, had

ordered her palanquin to follow me, and was alarmed and almost made

prisoner by another troop of these plunderers. She was quickly released

by a party of our cavalry; but I cannot disguise from myself that the

incidents of this fatal morning gave a severe shock to health already

delicate. The confession of Archer, who thought himself dying, that he

had invented some circumstances, and for his purposes put the worst

construction upon others, and the full explanation and exchange of

forgiveness with me which this produced, could not check the progress of

her disorder. She died within about eight months after this incident,

bequeathing me only the girl of whom Mrs. Mervyn is so good as to

undertake the temporary charge. Julia was also extremely ill; so much so

that I was induced to throw up my command and return to Europe, where her

native air, time, and the novelty of the scenes around her have

contributed to dissipate her dejection and restore her health.

‘Now that you know my story, you will no longer ask me the reason of my

melancholy, but permit me to brood upon it as I may. There is, surely, in

the above narrative enough to embitter, though not to poison, the

chalice which the fortune and fame you so often mention had prepared to

regale my years of retirement.

‘I could add circumstances which our old tutor would have quoted as

instances of DAY FATALITY,--you would laugh were I to mention such

particulars, especially as you know I put no faith in them. Yet, since I

have come to the very house from which I now write, I have learned a

singular coincidence, which, if I find it truly established by tolerable

evidence, will serve as hereafter for subject of curious discussion. But

I will spare you at present, as I expect a person to speak about a

purchase of property now open in this part of the country. It is a place

to which I have a foolish partiality, and I hope my purchasing may be

convenient to those who are parting with it, as there is a plan for

buying it under the value. My respectful compliments to Mrs. Mervyn, and

I will trust you, though you boast to be so lively a young gentleman, to

kiss Julia for me. Adieu, dear Mervyn.--Thine ever, GUY MANNERING.’

Mr. Mac-Morlan now entered the room. The well-known character of Colonel

Mannering at once disposed this gentleman, who was a man of intelligence

and probity, to be open and confidential. He explained the advantages and

disadvantages of the property. ‘It was settled,’ he said, ‘the greater

part of it at least, upon heirs-male, and the purchaser would have the

privilege of retaining in his hands a large proportion of the price, in

case of the reappearance, within a certain limited term, of the child who

had disappeared.’

‘To what purpose, then, force forward a sale?’ said Mannering. Mac-Morlan

smiled. ‘Ostensibly,’ he answered, ‘to substitute the interest of money

instead of the ill-paid and precarious rents of an unimproved estate; but

chiefly it was believed, to suit the wishes and views of a certain

intended purchaser, who had become a principal creditor, and forced

himself into the management of the affairs by means best known to

himself, and who, it was thought, would find it very convenient to

purchase the estate without paying down the price.’

Mannering consulted with Mr. Mac-Morlan upon the steps for thwarting this

unprincipled attempt. They then conversed long on the singular

disappearance of Harry Bertram upon his fifth birthday, verifying thus

the random prediction of Mannering, of which, however, it will readily be

supposed he made no boast. Mr. Mac-Morlan was not himself in office when

that incident took place; but he was well acquainted with all the

circumstances, and promised that our hero should have them detailed by

the sheriff-depute himself, if, as he proposed, he should become a

settler in that part of Scotland. With this assurance they parted, well

satisfied with each other and with the evening’s conference.

On the Sunday following, Colonel Mannering attended the parish church

with great decorum. None of the Ellangowan family were present; and it

was understood that the old Laird was rather worse than better. Jock

Jabos, once more despatched for him, returned once more without his

errand; but on the following day Miss Bertram hoped he might be removed.

CHAPTER XIII

They told me, by the sentence of the law,

They had commission to seize all thy fortune.

Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face,

Lording it o’er a pile of massy plate,

Tumbled into a heap for public sale;

There was another, making villainous jests

At thy undoing; he had ta’en possession

Of all thy ancient most domestic ornaments.

OTWAY.

Early next morning Mannering mounted his horse and, accompanied by his

servant, took the road to Ellangowan. He had no need to inquire the way.

A sale in the country is a place of public resort and amusement, and

people of various descriptions streamed to it from all quarters.

After a pleasant ride of about an hour, the old towers of the ruin

presented themselves in the landscape. The thoughts, with what different

feelings he had lost sight of them so many years before, thronged upon

the mind of the traveller. The landscape was the same; but how changed

the feelings, hopes, and views of the spectator! Then life and love were

new, and all the prospect was gilded by their rays. And now, disappointed

in affection, sated with fame and what the world calls success, his mind,

goaded by bitter and repentant recollection, his best hope was to find a

retirement in which he might nurse the melancholy that was to accompany

him to his grave. ‘Yet why should an individual mourn over the

instability of his hopes and the vanity of his prospects? The ancient

chiefs who erected these enormous and massive towers to be the fortress

of their race and the seat of their power,--could they have dreamed the

day was to come when the last of their descendants should be expelled, a

ruined wanderer, from his possessions! But Nature’s bounties are

unaltered. The sun will shine as fair on these ruins, whether the

property of a stranger or of a sordid and obscure trickster of the abused

law, as when the banners of the founder first waved upon their

battlements.’

These reflections brought Mannering to the door of the house, which was

that day open to all. He entered among others, who traversed the

apartments, some to select articles for purchase, others to gratify their

curiosity. There is something melancholy in such a scene, even under the

most favourable circumstances. The confused state of the furniture,

displaced for the convenience of being easily viewed and carried off by

the purchasers, is disagreeable to the eye. Those articles which,

properly and decently arranged, look creditable and handsome, have then a

paltry and wretched appearance; and the apartments, stripped of all that

render them commodious and comfortable, have an aspect of ruin and

dilapidation. It is disgusting also to see the scenes of domestic society

and seclusion thrown open to the gaze of the curious and the vulgar, to

hear their coarse speculations and brutal jests upon the fashions and

furniture to which they are unaccustomed,--a frolicsome humour much

cherished by the whisky which in Scotland is always put in circulation on

such occasions. All these are ordinary effects of such a scene as

Ellangowan now presented; but the moral feeling, that in this case they

indicated the total ruin of an ancient and honourable family, gave them

treble weight and poignancy.

It was some time before Colonel Mannering could find any one disposed to

answer his reiterated questions concerning Ellangowan himself. At length

an old maidservant, who held her apron to her eyes as she spoke, told him

‘the Laird was something better, and they hoped he would be able to leave

the house that day. Miss Lucy expected the chaise every moment, and, as

the day was fine for the time o’year, they had carried him in his

easychair up to the green before the auld castle, to be out of the way of

this unco spectacle.’ Thither Colonel Mannering went in quest of him, and

soon came in sight of the little group, which consisted of four persons.

The ascent was steep, so that he had time to reconnoitre them as he

advanced, and to consider in what mode he should make his address.

Mr. Bertram, paralytic and almost incapable of moving, occupied his

easy-chair, attired in his nightcap and a loose camlet coat, his feet

wrapped in blankets. Behind him, with his hands crossed on the cane upon

which he rested, stood Dominie Sampson, whom Mannering recognised at

once. Time had made no change upon him, unless that his black coat seemed

more brown, and his gaunt cheeks more lank, than when Mannering last saw

him. On one side of the old man was a sylph-like form--a young woman of

about seventeen, whom the Colonel accounted to be his daughter. She was

looking from time to time anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting

the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting the

blankets so as to protect her father from the cold, and in answering

inquiries, which he seemed to make with a captious and querulous manner.

She did not trust herself to look towards the Place, although the hum of

the assembled crowd must have drawn her attention in that direction. The

fourth person of the group was a handsome and genteel young man, who

seemed to share Miss Bertram’s anxiety, and her solicitude to soothe and

accommodate her parent.

This young man was the first who observed Colonel Mannering, and

immediately stepped forward to meet him, as if politely to prevent his

drawing nearer to the distressed group. Mannering instantly paused and

explained. ‘He was,’ he said, ‘a stranger to whom Mr. Bertram had

formerly shown kindness and hospitality; he would not have intruded

himself upon him at a period of distress, did it not seem to be in some

degree a moment also of desertion; he wished merely to offer such

services as might be in his power to Mr. Bertram and the young lady.’

He then paused at a little distance from the chair. His old acquaintance

gazed at him with lack-lustre eye, that intimated no tokens of

recognition; the Dominie seemed too deeply sunk in distress even to

observe his presence. The young man spoke aside with Miss Bertram, who

advanced timidly, and thanked Colonel Mannering for his goodness; ‘but,’

she said, the tears gushing fast into her eyes, ‘her father, she feared,

was not so much himself as to be able to remember him.’

She then retreated towards the chair, accompanied by the Colonel.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘this is Mr. Mannering, an old friend, come to

inquire after you.’

‘He’s very heartily welcome,’ said the old man, raising himself in his

chair, and attempting a gesture of courtesy, while a gleam of hospitable

satisfaction seemed to pass over his faded features; ‘but, Lucy, my dear,

let us go down to the house; you should not keep the gentleman here in

the cold. Dominie, take the key of the wine-cooler. Mr. a--a--the

gentleman will surely take something after his ride.’

Mannering was unspeakably affected by the contrast which his recollection

made between this reception and that with which he had been greeted by

the same individual when they last met. He could not restrain his tears,

and his evident emotion at once attained him the confidence of the

friendless young lady.

‘Alas!’ she said, ‘this is distressing even to a stranger; but it may be

better for my poor father to be in this way than if he knew and could

feel all.’

A servant in livery now came up the path, and spoke in an undertone to

the young gentleman--‘Mr. Charles, my lady’s wanting you yonder sadly, to

bid for her for the black ebony cabinet; and Lady Jean Devorgoil is wi’

her an’ a’; ye maun come away directly.’

‘Tell them you could not find me, Tom, or, stay,--say I am looking at the

horses.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Lucy Bertram, earnestly; ‘if you would not add to the

misery of this miserable moment, go to the company directly. This

gentleman, I am sure, will see us to the carriage.’

‘Unquestionably, madam,’ said Mannering, ‘your young friend may rely on

my attention.’

‘Farewell, then,’ said young Hazlewood, and whispered a word in her ear;

then ran down the steep hastily, as if not trusting his resolution at a

slower pace.

‘Where’s Charles Hazlewood running?’ said the invalid, who apparently was

accustomed to his presence and attentions; ‘where’s Charles Hazlewood

running? what takes him away now?’

‘He’ll return in a little while,’ said Lucy, gently.

The sound of voices was now heard from the ruins. The reader may remember

there was a communication between the castle and the beach, up which the

speakers had ascended.

‘Yes, there’s a plenty of shells and seaware for manure, as you observe;

and if one inclined to build a new house, which might indeed be

necessary, there’s a great deal of good hewn stone about this old

dungeon, for the devil here--’

‘Good God!’ said Miss Bertram hastily to Sampson, ‘‘t is that wretch

Glossin’s voice! If my father sees him, it will kill him outright!’

Sampson wheeled perpendicularly round, and moved with long strides to

confront the attorney as he issued from beneath the portal arch of the

ruin. ‘Avoid ye!’ he said, ‘avoid ye! wouldst thou kill and take

possession?’

‘Come, come, Master Dominie Sampson,’ answered Glossin insolently, ‘if ye

cannot preach in the pulpit, we’ll have no preaching here. We go by the

law, my good friend; we leave the gospel to you.’

The very mention of this man’s name had been of late a subject of the

most violent irritation to the unfortunate patient. The sound of his

voice now produced an instantaneous effect. Mr. Bertram started up

without assistance and turned round towards him; the ghastliness of his

features forming a strange contrast with the violence of his

exclamations.--‘Out of my sight, ye viper! ye frozen viper, that I

warmed, till ye stung me! Art thou not afraid that the walls of my

father’s dwelling should fall and crush thee limb and bone? Are ye not

afraid the very lintels of the door of Ellangowan Castle should break

open and swallow you up? Were ye not friendless, houseless, penniless,

when I took ye by the hand; and are ye not expelling me--me and that

innocent girl--friendless, houseless, and penniless, from the house that

has sheltered us and ours for a thousand years?’

Had Glossin been alone, he would probably have slunk off; but the

consciousness that a stranger was present, besides the person who came

with him (a sort of land-surveyor), determined him to resort to

impudence. The task, however, was almost too hard even for his

effrontery--‘Sir--sir--Mr. Bertram, sir, you should not blame me, but

your own imprudence, sir--’

The indignation of Mannering was mounting very high. ‘Sir,’ he said to

Glossin, ‘without entering into the merits of this controversy, I must

inform you that you have chosen a very improper place, time, and presence

for it. And you will oblige me by withdrawing without more words.’

Glossin, being a tall, strong, muscular man, was not unwilling rather to

turn upon the stranger, whom he hoped to bully, than maintain his

wretched cause against his injured patron.--‘I do not know who you are,

sir,’ he said, ‘and I shall permit no man to use such d--d freedom with

me.’

Mannering was naturally hot-tempered: his eyes flashed a dark light; he

compressed his nether lip so closely that the blood sprung, and

approaching Glossin--‘Look you, sir,’ he said,’ that you do not know me

is of little consequence. _I_ KNOW YOU; and if you do not instantly

descend that bank, without uttering a single syllable, by the Heaven that

is above us you shall make but one step from the top to the bottom!’

The commanding tone of rightful anger silenced at once the ferocity of

the bully. He hesitated, turned on his heel, and, muttering something

between his teeth about unwillingness to alarm the lady, relieved them of

his hateful company.

Mrs. Mac-Candlish’s postilion, who had come up in time to hear what

passed, said aloud, ‘If he had stuck by the way, I would have lent him a

heezie, the dirty scoundrel, as willingly as ever I pitched a boddle.’

He then stepped forward to announce that his horses were in readiness for

the invalid and his daughter. But they were no longer necessary. The

debilitated frame of Mr. Bertram was exhausted by this last effort of

indignant anger, and when he sunk again upon his chair, he expired almost

without a struggle or groan. So little alteration did the extinction of

the vital spark make upon his external appearance that the screams of his

daughter, when she saw his eye fix and felt his pulse stop, first

announced his death to the spectators.

CHAPTER XIV

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time

But from its loss. To give it then a tongue

Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound.

YOUNG.

The moral which the poet has rather quaintly deduced from the necessary

mode of measuring time may be well applied to our feelings respecting

that portion of it which constitutes human life. We observe the aged, the

infirm, and those engaged in occupations of immediate hazard, trembling

as it were upon the very brink of non-existence, but we derive no lesson

from the precariousness of their tenure until it has altogether failed.

Then, for a moment at least--

Our hopes and fears Start up alarm’d, and o’er life’s narrow verge Look

down--on what? a fathomless abyss, A dark eternity, how surely ours!

The crowd of assembled gazers and idlers at Ellangowan had followed the

views of amusement, or what they called business, which brought them

there, with little regard to the feelings of those who were suffering

upon that occasion. Few, indeed, knew anything of the family. The father,

betwixt seclusion, misfortune, and imbecility, had drifted, as it were,

for many years out of the notice of his contemporaries; the daughter had

never been known to them. But when the general murmur announced that the

unfortunate Mr. Bertram had broken his heart in the effort to leave the

mansion of his forefathers, there poured forth a torrent of sympathy like

the waters from the rock when stricken by the wand of the prophet. The

ancient descent and unblemished integrity of the family were respectfully

remembered; above all, the sacred veneration due to misfortune, which in

Scotland seldom demands its tribute in vain, then claimed and received

it.

Mr. Mac-Morlan hastily announced that he would suspend all farther

proceedings in the sale of the estate and other property, and relinquish

the possession of the premises to the young lady, until she could consult

with her friends and provide for the burial of her father.

Glossin had cowered for a few minutes under the general expression of

sympathy, till, hardened by observing that no appearance of popular

indignation was directed his way, he had the audacity to require that the

sale should proceed.

‘I will take it upon my own authority to adjourn it,’ said the

Sheriff-substitute, ‘and will be responsible for the consequences. I will

also give due notice when it is again to go forward. It is for the

benefit of all concerned that the lands should bring the highest price

the state of the market will admit, and this is surely no time to expect

it. I will take the responsibility upon myself.’

Glossin left the room and the house too with secrecy and despatch; and it

was probably well for him that he did so, since our friend Jock Jabos was

already haranguing a numerous tribe of bare-legged boys on the propriety

of pelting him off the estate.

Some of the rooms were hastily put in order for the reception of the

young lady, and of her father’s dead body. Mannering now found his

farther interference would be unnecessary, and might be misconstrued. He

observed, too, that several families connected with that of Ellangowan,

and who indeed derived their principal claim of gentility from the

alliance, were now disposed to pay to their trees of genealogy a tribute

which the adversity of their supposed relatives had been inadequate to

call forth; and that the honour of superintending the funeral rites of

the dead Godfrey Bertram (as in the memorable case of Homer’s birthplace)

was likely to be debated by seven gentlemen of rank and fortune, none of

whom had offered him an asylum while living. He therefore resolved, as

his presence was altogether useless, to make a short tour of a fortnight,

at the end of which period the adjourned sale of the estate of Ellangowan

was to proceed.

But before he departed he solicited an interview with the Dominie. The

poor man appeared, on being informed a gentleman wanted to speak to him,

with some expression of surprise in his gaunt features, to which recent

sorrow had given an expression yet more grisly. He made two or three

profound reverences to Mannering, and then, standing erect, patiently

waited an explanation of his commands.

‘You are probably at a loss to guess, Mr. Sampson,’ said Mannering, ‘what

a stranger may have to say to you?’

‘Unless it were to request that I would undertake to train up some youth

in polite letters and humane learning; but I cannot--I cannot; I have yet

a task to perform.’

‘No, Mr. Sampson, my wishes are not so ambitious. I have no son, and my

only daughter, I presume, you would not consider as a fit pupil.’

‘Of a surety no,’ replied the simple-minded Sampson. ‘Nathless, it was I

who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning, albeit it was the

housekeeper who did teach her those unprofitable exercises of hemming and

shaping.’

‘Well, sir,’ replied Mannering, ‘it is of Miss Lucy I meant to speak. You

have, I presume, no recollection of me?’

Sampson, always sufficiently absent in mind, neither remembered the

astrologer of past years, nor even the stranger who had taken his

patron’s part against Glossin, so much had his friend’s sudden death

embroiled his ideas.

‘Well, that does not signify,’ pursued the Colonel; ‘I am an old

acquaintance of the late Mr. Bertram, able and willing to assist his

daughter in her present circumstances. Besides, I have thoughts of making

this purchase, and I should wish things kept in order about the place;

will you have the goodness to apply this small sum in the usual family

expenses?’ He put into the Dominie’s hand a purse containing some gold.

‘Pro-di-gi-ous!’ exclaimed Dominie Sampson. ‘But if your honour would

tarry--’

‘Impossible, sir, impossible,’ said Mannering, making his escape from

him.

‘Pro-di-gi-ous!’ again exclaimed Sampson, following to the head of the

stairs, still holding out the purse. ‘But as touching this coined

money--’

Mannering escaped downstairs as fast as possible.

‘Pro-di-gi-ous!’ exclaimed Dominie Sampson, yet the third time, now

standing at the front door. ‘But as touching this specie--’

But Mannering was now on horseback, and out of hearing. The Dominie, who

had never, either in his own right or as trustee for another, been

possessed of a quarter part of this sum, though it was not above twenty

guineas, ‘took counsel,’ as he expressed himself, ‘how he should demean

himself with respect unto the fine gold’ thus left in his charge.

Fortunately he found a disinterested adviser in Mac-Morlan, who pointed

out the most proper means of disposing of it for contributing to Miss

Bertram’s convenience, being no doubt the purpose to which it was

destined by the bestower.

Many of the neighbouring gentry were now sincerely eager in pressing

offers of hospitality and kindness upon Miss Bertram. But she felt a

natural reluctance to enter any family for the first time as an object

rather of benevolence than hospitality, and determined to wait the

opinion and advice of her father’s nearest female relation, Mrs. Margaret

Bertram of Singleside, an old unmarried lady, to whom she wrote an

account of her present distressful situation.

The funeral of the late Mr. Bertram was performed with decent privacy,

and the unfortunate young lady was now to consider herself as but the

temporary tenant of the house in which she had been born, and where her

patience and soothing attentions had so long ‘rocked the cradle of

declining age.’ Her communication with Mr. Mac-Morlan encouraged her to

hope that she would not be suddenly or unkindly deprived of this asylum;

but fortune had ordered otherwise.

For two days before the appointed day for the sale of the lands and

estate of Ellangowan, Mac-Morlan daily expected the appearance of Colonel

Mannering, or at least a letter containing powers to act for him. But

none such arrived. Mr. Mac-Morlan waked early in the morning, walked over

to the Post-office,--there were no letters for him. He endeavoured to

persuade himself that he should see Colonel Mannering to breakfast, and

ordered his wife to place her best china and prepare herself accordingly.

But the preparations were in vain. ‘Could I have foreseen this,’ he said,

‘I would have travelled Scotland over, but I would have found some one to

bid against Glossin.’ Alas! such reflections were all too late. The

appointed hour arrived; and the parties met in the Masons’ Lodge at

Kippletringan, being the place fixed for the adjourned sale. Mac-Morlan

spent as much time in preliminaries as decency would permit, and read

over the articles of sale as slowly as if he had been reading his own

death-warrant. He turned his eye every time the door of the room opened,

with hopes which grew fainter and fainter. He listened to every noise in

the street of the village, and endeavoured to distinguish in it the sound

of hoofs or wheels. It was all in vain. A bright idea then occurred, that

Colonel Mannering might have employed some other person in the

transaction; he would not have wasted a moment’s thought upon the want of

confidence in himself which such a manoeuvre would have evinced. But this

hope also was groundless. After a solemn pause, Mr. Glossin offered the

upset price for the lands and barony of Ellangowan. No reply was made,

and no competitor appeared; so, after a lapse of the usual interval by

the running of a sand-glass, upon the intended purchaser entering the

proper sureties, Mr. Mac-Morlan was obliged, in technical terms, to ‘find

and declare the sale lawfully completed, and to prefer the said Gilbert

Glossin as the purchaser of the said lands and estate.’ The honest writer

refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert

Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and

returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints

against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew

what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously

determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even this vent of

Mac-Morlan’s resentment.

An express arrived about six o’clock at night, ‘very particularly drunk,’

the maid-servant said, with a packet from Colonel Mannering, dated four

days back, at a town about a hundred miles’ distance from Kippletringan,

containing full powers to Mr. Mac-Morlan, or any one whom he might

employ, to make the intended purchase, and stating that some family

business of consequence called the Colonel himself to Westmoreland, where

a letter would find him, addressed to the care of Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of

Mervyn Hall.

Mac-Morlan, in the transports of his wrath, flung the power of attorney

at the head of the innocent maidservant, and was only forcibly withheld

from horse-whipping the rascally messenger by whose sloth and drunkenness

the disappointment had taken place.

CHAPTER XV

My gold is gone, my money is spent,

My land now take it unto thee.

Give me thy gold, good John o’ the Scales,

And thine for aye my land shall be.

Then John he did him to record draw.

And John he caste him a gods-pennie;

But for every pounde that John agreed,

The land, I wis, was well worth three.

HEIR OF LINNE.

The Galwegian John o’ the Scales was a more clever fellow than his

prototype. He contrived to make himself heir of Linne without the

disagreeable ceremony of ‘telling down the good red gold.’ Miss Bertram

no sooner heard this painful, and of late unexpected, intelligence than

she proceeded in the preparations she had already made for leaving the

mansion-house immediately. Mr. Mac-Morlan assisted her in these

arrangements, and pressed upon her so kindly the hospitality and

protection of his roof, until she should receive an answer from her

cousin, or be enabled to adopt some settled plan of life, that she felt

there would be unkindness in refusing an invitation urged with such

earnestness. Mrs. Mac-Morlan was a ladylike person, and well qualified by

birth and manners to receive the visit, and to make her house agreeable

to Miss Bertram. A home, therefore, and an hospitable reception were

secured to her, and she went on with better heart to pay the wages and

receive the adieus of the few domestics of her father’s family.

Where there are estimable qualities on either side, this task is always

affecting; the present circumstances rendered it doubly so. All received

their due, and even a trifle more, and with thanks and good wishes, to

which some added tears, took farewell of their young mistress. There

remained in the parlour only Mr. Mac-Morlan, who came to attend his guest

to his house, Dominie Sampson, and Miss Bertram. ‘And now,’ said the poor

girl, ‘I must bid farewell to one of my oldest and kindest friends. God

bless you, Mr. Sampson, and requite to you all the kindness of your

instructions to your poor pupil, and your friendship to him that is gone.

I hope I shall often hear from you.’ She slid into his hand a paper

containing some pieces of gold, and rose, as if to leave the room.

Dominie Sampson also rose; but it was to stand aghast with utter

astonishment. The idea of parting from Miss Lucy, go where she might, had

never once occurred to the simplicity of his understanding. He laid the

money on the table. ‘It is certainly inadequate,’ said Mac-Morlan,

mistaking his meaning, ‘but the circumstances--’

Mr. Sampson waved his hand impatiently.--‘It is not the lucre, it is not

the lucre; but that I, that have ate of her father’s loaf, and drank of

his cup, for twenty years and more--to think that I am going to leave

her, and to leave her in distress and dolour! No, Miss Lucy, you need

never think it! You would not consent to put forth your father’s poor

dog, and would you use me waur than a messan? No, Miss Lucy Bertram,

while I live I will not separate from you. I’ll be no burden; I have

thought how to prevent that. But, as Ruth said unto Naomi, “Entreat me

not to leave thee, nor to depart from thee; for whither thou goest I will

go, and where thou dwellest I will dwell; thy people shall be my people,

and thy God shall be my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will

I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death do

part thee and me.”’

During this speech, the longest ever Dominie Sampson was known to utter,

the affectionate creature’s eyes streamed with tears, and neither Lucy

nor Mac-Morlan could refrain from sympathising with this unexpected burst

of feeling and attachment. ‘Mr. Sampson,’ said Mac-Morlan, after having

had recourse to his snuff-box and handkerchief alternately, ‘my house is

large enough, and if you will accept of a bed there while Miss Bertram

honours us with her residence, I shall think myself very happy, and my

roof much favoured, by receiving a man of your worth and fidelity.’ And

then, with a delicacy which was meant to remove any objection on Miss

Bertram’s part to bringing with her this unexpected satellite, he added,

‘My business requires my frequently having occasion for a better

accountant than any of my present clerks, and I should be glad to have

recourse to your assistance in that way now and then.’

‘Of a surety, of a surety,’ said Sampson eagerly; ‘I understand

book-keeping by double entry and the Italian method.’

Our postilion had thrust himself into the room to announce his chaise and

horses; he tarried, unobserved, during this extraordinary scene, and

assured Mrs. Mac-Candlish it was the most moving thing he ever saw; ‘the

death of the grey mare, puir hizzie, was naething till’t.’ This trifling

circumstance afterwards had consequences of greater moment to the

Dominie.

The visitors were hospitably welcomed by Mrs. Mac-Morlan, to whom, as

well as to others, her husband intimated that he had engaged Dominie

Sampson’s assistance to disentangle some perplexed accounts, during which

occupation he would, for convenience sake, reside with the family. Mr.

Mac-Morlan’s knowledge of the world induced him to put this colour upon

the matter, aware that, however honourable the fidelity of the Dominie’s

attachment might be both to his own heart and to the family of

Ellangowan, his exterior ill qualified him to be a’squire of dames,’ and

rendered him, upon the whole, rather a ridiculous appendage to a

beautiful young woman of seventeen.

Dominie Sampson achieved with great zeal such tasks as Mr. Mac-Morlan

chose to entrust him with; but it was speedily observed that at a certain

hour after breakfast he regularly disappeared, and returned again about

dinner-time. The evening he occupied in the labour of the office. On

Saturday he appeared before Mac-Morlan with a look of great triumph, and

laid on the table two pieces of gold. ‘What is this for, Dominie?’ said

Mac-Morlan.

‘First to indemnify you of your charges in my behalf, worthy sir; and the

balance for the use of Miss Lucy Bertram.’

‘But, Mr. Sampson, your labour in the office much more than recompenses

me; I am your debtor, my good friend.’

‘Then be it all,’ said the Dominie, waving his hand, ‘for Miss Lucy

Bertram’s behoof.’

‘Well, but, Dominie, this money-’

‘It is honestly come by, Mr. Mac-Morlan; it is the bountiful reward of a

young gentleman to whom I am teaching the tongues; reading with him three

hours daily.’

A few more questions extracted from the Dominie that this liberal pupil

was young Hazlewood, and that he met his preceptor daily at the house of

Mrs. Mac-Candlish, whose proclamation of Sampson’s disinterested

attachment to the young lady had procured him this indefatigable and

bounteous scholar.

Mac-Morlan was much struck with what he heard. Dominie Sampson was

doubtless a very good scholar, and an excellent man, and the classics

were unquestionably very well worth reading; yet that a young man of

twenty should ride seven miles and back again each day in the week, to

hold this sort of TETE-A-TETE of three hours, was a zeal for literature

to which he was not prepared to give entire credit. Little art was

necessary to sift the Dominie, for the honest man’s head never admitted

any but the most direct and simple ideas. ‘Does Miss Bertram know how

your time is engaged, my good friend?’

‘Surely not as yet. Mr. Charles recommended it should be concealed from

her, lest she should scruple to accept of the small assistance arising

from it; but,’ he added, ‘it would not be possible to conceal it long,

since Mr. Charles proposed taking his lessons occasionally in this

house.’

‘O, he does!’ said Mac-Morlan.’ Yes, yes, I can understand that better.

And pray, Mr. Sampson, are these three hours entirely spent inconstruing

and translating?’

‘Doubtless, no; we have also colloquial intercourse to sweeten study:

neque semper arcum tendit apollo.’

The querist proceeded to elicit from this Galloway Phoebus what their

discourse chiefly turned upon.

‘Upon our past meetings at Ellangowan; and, truly, I think very often we

discourse concerning Miss Lucy, for Mr. Charles Hazlewood in that

particular resembleth me, Mr. Mac-Morlan. When I begin to speak of her I

never know when to stop; and, as I say (jocularly), she cheats us out of

half our lessons.’

‘O ho!’ thought Mac-Morlan, ‘sits the wind in that quarter? I’ve heard

something like this before.’

He then began to consider what conduct was safest for his protegee, and

even for himself; for the senior Mr. Hazlewood was powerful, wealthy,

ambitious, and vindictive, and looked for both fortune and title in any

connexion which his son might form. At length, having the highest opinion

of his guest’s good sense and penetration, he determined to take an

opportunity, when they should happen to be alone, to communicate the

matter to her as a simple piece of intelligence. He did so in as natural

a manner as he could. ‘I wish you joy of your friend Mr. Sampson’s good

fortune, Miss Bertram; he has got a pupil who pays him two guineas for

twelve lessons of Greek and Latin.’

‘Indeed! I am equally happy and surprised. Who can be so liberal? is

Colonel Mannering returned?’

‘No, no, not Colonel Mannering; but what do you think of your

acquaintance, Mr. Charles Hazlewood? He talks of taking his lessons here;

I wish we may have accommodation for him.’

Lucy blushed deeply. ‘For Heaven’s sake, no, Mr. Mac-Morlan, do not let

that be; Charles Hazlewood has had enough of mischief about that

already.’

‘About the classics, my dear young lady?’ wilfully seeming to

misunderstand her; ‘most young gentlemen have so at one period or

another, sure enough; but his present studies are voluntary.’

Miss Bertram let the conversation drop, and her host made no effort to

renew it, as she seemed to pause upon the intelligence in order to form

some internal resolution.

The next day Miss Bertram took an opportunity of conversing with Mr.

Sampson. Expressing in the kindest manner her grateful thanks for his

disinterested attachment, and her joy that he had got such a provision,

she hinted to him that his present mode of superintending Charles

Hazlewood’s studies must be so inconvenient to his pupil that, while that

engagement lasted, he had better consent to a temporary separation, and

reside either with his scholar or as near him as might be. Sampson

refused, as indeed she had expected, to listen a moment to this

proposition; he would not quit her to be made preceptor to the Prince of

Wales. ‘But I see,’ he added, ‘you are too proud to share my pittance;

and peradventure I grow wearisome unto you.’

‘No indeed; you were my father’s ancient, almost his only, friend. I am

not proud; God knows, I have no reason to be so. You shall do what you

judge best in other matters; but oblige me by telling Mr. Charles

Hazlewood that you had some conversation with me concerning his studies,

and that I was of opinion that his carrying them on in this house was

altogether impracticable, and not to be thought of.’

Dominie Sampson left her presence altogether crest-fallen, and, as he

shut the door, could not help muttering the ‘varium et mutabile’ of

Virgil. Next day he appeared with a very rueful visage, and tendered Miss

Bertram a letter. ‘Mr. Hazlewood,’ he said, ‘was to discontinue his

lessons, though he had generously made up the pecuniary loss. But how

will he make up the loss to himself of the knowledge he might have

acquired under my instruction? Even in that one article of writing,--he

was an hour before he could write that brief note, and destroyed many

scrolls, four quills, and some good white paper. I would have taught him

in three weeks a firm, current, clear, and legible hand; he should have

been a calligrapher,--but God’s will be done.’

The letter contained but a few lines, deeply regretting and murmuring

against Miss Bertram’s cruelty, who not only refused to see him, but to

permit him in the most indirect manner to hear of her health and

contribute to her service. But it concluded with assurances that her

severity was vain, and that nothing could shake the attachment of Charles

Hazlewood.

Under the active patronage of Mrs. Mac-Candlish, Sampson picked up some

other scholars--very different indeed from Charles Hazlewood in rank, and

whose lessons were proportionally unproductive. Still, however, he gained

something, and it was the glory of his heart to carry it to Mr.

Mac-Morlan weekly, a slight peculium only subtracted to supply his

snuff-box and tobacco-pouch.

And here we must leave Kippletringan to look after our hero, lest our

readers should fear they are to lose sight of him for another quarter of

a century.

CHAPTER XVI

Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her,

I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter,

For when she’s drest with care and cost, all tempting, fine,

and gay,

As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away.

Beggar’s Opera.

After the death of Mr. Bertram, Mannering had set out upon a short tour,

proposing to return to the neighbourhood of Ellangowan before the sale of

that property should take place. He went, accordingly, to Edinburgh and

elsewhere, and it was in his return towards the south-western district of

Scotland, in which our scene lies, that, at a post-town about a hundred

miles from Kippletringan, to which he had requested his friend, Mr.

Mervyn, to address his letters, he received one from that gentleman which

contained rather unpleasing intelligence. We have assumed already the

privilege of acting a secretis to this gentleman, and therefore shall

present the reader with an extract from this epistle.

‘I beg your pardon, my dearest friend, for the pain I have given you in

forcing you to open wounds so festering as those your letter referred to.

I have always heard, though erroneously perhaps, that the attentions of

Mr. Brown were intended for Miss Mannering. But, however that were, it

could not be supposed that in your situation his boldness should escape

notice and chastisement. Wise men say that we resign to civil society our

natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of

law should protect us. Where the price cannot be paid, the resignation

becomes void. For instance, no one supposes that I am not entitled to

defend my purse and person against a highwayman, as much as if I were a

wild Indian, who owns neither law nor magistracy. The question of

resistance or submission must be determined by my means and situation.

But if, armed and equal in force, I submit to injustice and violence from

any man, high or low, I presume it will hardly be attributed to religious

or moral feeling in me, or in any one but a Quaker. An aggression on my

honour seems to me much the same. The insult, however trifling in itself,

is one of much deeper consequence to all views in life than any wrong

which can be inflicted by a depredator on the highway, and to redress the

injured party is much less in the power of public jurisprudence, or

rather it is entirely beyond its reach. If any man chooses to rob Arthur

Mervyn of the contents of his purse, supposing the said Arthur has not

means of defence, or the skill and courage to use them, the assizes at

Lancaster or Carlisle will do him justice by tucking up the robber; yet

who will say I am bound to wait for this justice, and submit to being

plundered in the first instance, if I have myself the means and spirit to

protect my own property? But if an affront is offered to me, submission

under which is to tarnish my character for ever with men of honour, and

for which the twelve judges of England, with the chancellor to boot, can

afford me no redress, by what rule of law or reason am I to be deterred

from protecting what ought to be, and is, so infinitely dearer to every

man of honour than his whole fortune? Of the religious views of the

matter I shall say nothing, until I find a reverend divine who shall

condemn self-defence in the article of life and property. If its

propriety in that case be generally admitted, I suppose little

distinction can be drawn between defence of person and goods and

protection of reputation. That the latter is liable to be assailed by

persons of a different rank in life, untainted perhaps in morals, and

fair in character, cannot affect my legal right of self-defence. I may be

sorry that circumstances have engaged me in personal strife with such an

individual; but I should feel the same sorrow for a generous enemy who

fell under my sword in a national quarrel. I shall leave the question

with the casuists, however; only observing, that what I have written will

not avail either the professed duellist or him who is the aggressor in a

dispute of honour. I only presume to exculpate him who is dragged into

the field by such an offence as, submitted to in patience, would forfeit

for ever his rank and estimation in society.

‘I am sorry you have thoughts of settling in Scotland, and yet glad that

you will still be at no immeasurable distance, and that the latitude is

all in our favour. To move to Westmoreland from Devonshire might make an

East-Indian shudder; but to come to us from Galloway or Dumfries-shire is

a step, though a short one, nearer the sun. Besides, if, as I suspect,

the estate in view be connected with the old haunted castle in which you

played the astrologer in your northern tour some twenty years since, I

have heard you too often describe the scene with comic unction to hope

you will be deterred from making the purchase. I trust, however, the

hospitable gossiping Laird has not run himself upon the shallows, and

that his chaplain, whom you so often made us laugh at, is still in rerum

natura.

‘And here, dear Mannering, I wish I could stop, for I have incredible

pain in telling the rest of my story; although I am sure I can warn you

against any intentional impropriety on the part of my temporary ward,

Julia Mannering. But I must still earn my college nickname of Downright

Dunstable. In one word, then, here is the matter.

‘Your daughter has much of the romantic turn of your disposition, with a

little of that love of admiration which all pretty women share less or

more. She will besides, apparently, be your heiress; a trifling

circumstance to those who view Julia with my eyes, but a prevailing bait

to the specious, artful, and worthless. You know how I have jested with

her about her soft melancholy, and lonely walks at morning before any one

is up, and in the moonlight when all should be gone to bed, or set down

to cards, which is the same thing. The incident which follows may not be

beyond the bounds of a joke, but I had rather the jest upon it came from

you than me.

‘Two or three times during the last fortnight I heard, at a late hour in

the night or very early in the morning, a flageolet play the little Hindu

tune to which your daughter is so partial. I thought for some time that

some tuneful domestic, whose taste for music was laid under constraint

during the day, chose that silent hour to imitate the strains which he

had caught up by the ear during his attendance in the drawing-room. But

last night I sat late in my study, which is immediately under Miss

Mannering’s apartment, and to my surprise I not only heard the flageolet

distinctly, but satisfied myself that it came from the lake under the

window. Curious to know who serenaded us at that unusual hour, I stole

softly to the window of my apartment. But there were other watchers than

me. You may remember, Miss Mannering preferred that apartment on account

of a balcony which opened from her window upon the lake. Well, sir, I

heard the sash of her window thrown up, the shutters opened, and her own

voice in conversation with some person who answered from below. This is

not “Much ado about nothing”; I could not be mistaken in her voice, and

such tones, so soft, so insinuating; and, to say the truth, the accents

from below were in passion’s tenderest cadence too,--but of the sense I

can say nothing. I raised the sash of my own window that I might hear

something more than the mere murmur of this Spanish rendezvous; but,

though I used every precaution, the noise alarmed the speakers; down slid

the young lady’s casement, and the shutters were barred in an instant.

The dash of a pair of oars in the water announced the retreat of the male

person of the dialogue. Indeed, I saw his boat, which he rowed with great

swiftness and dexterity, fly across the lake like a twelve-oared barge.

Next morning I examined some of my domestics, as if by accident, and I

found the gamekeeper, when making his rounds, had twice seen that boat

beneath the house, with a single person, and had heard the flageolet. I

did not care to press any farther questions, for fear of implicating

Julia in the opinions of those of whom they might be asked. Next morning,

at breakfast, I dropped a casual hint about the serenade of the evening

before, and I promise you Miss Mannering looked red and pale alternately.

I immediately gave the circumstance such a turn as might lead her to

suppose that my observation was merely casual. I have since caused a

watch-light to be burnt in my library, and have left the shutters open,

to deter the approach of our nocturnal guest; and I have stated the

severity of approaching winter, and the rawness of the fogs, as an

objection to solitary walks. Miss Mannering acquiesced with a passiveness

which is no part of her character, and which, to tell you the plain

truth, is a feature about the business which I like least of all. Julia

has too much of her own dear papa’s disposition to be curbed in any of

her humours, were there not some little lurking consciousness that it may

be as prudent to avoid debate.

‘Now my story is told, and you will judge what you ought to do. I have

not mentioned the matter to my good woman, who, a faithful secretary to

her sex’s foibles, would certainly remonstrate against your being made

acquainted with these particulars, and might, instead, take it into her

head to exercise her own eloquence on Miss Mannering; a faculty which,

however powerful when directed against me, its legitimate object, might,

I fear, do more harm than good in the case supposed. Perhaps even you

yourself will find it most prudent to act without remonstrating, or

appearing to be aware of this little anecdote. Julia is very like a

certain friend of mine; she has a quick and lively imagination, and keen

feelings, which are apt to exaggerate both the good and evil they find in

life. She is a charming girl, however, as generous and spirited as she is

lovely. I paid her the kiss you sent her with all my heart, and she

rapped my ringers for my reward with all hers. Pray return as soon as you

can. Meantime rely upon the care of, yours faithfully, ‘ARTHUR MERVYN.

‘P.S.--You will naturally wish to know if I have the least guess

concerning the person of the serenader. In truth, I have none. There is

no young gentleman of these parts, who might be in rank or fortune a

match for Miss Julia, that I think at all likely to play such a

character. But on the other side of the lake, nearly opposite to Mervyn

Hall, is a d--d cake-house, the resort of walking gentlemen of all

descriptions--poets, players, painters, musicians--who come to rave, and

recite, and madden about this picturesque land of ours. It is paying some

penalty for its beauties, that they are the means of drawing this swarm

of coxcombs together. But were Julia my daughter, it is one of those sort

of fellows that I should fear on her account. She is generous and

romantic, and writes six sheets a week to a female correspondent; and

it’s a sad thing to lack a subject in such a case, either for exercise of

the feelings or of the pen. Adieu, once more. Were I to treat this matter

more seriously than I have done, I should do injustice to your feelings;

were I altogether to overlook it, I should discredit my own.’

The consequence of this letter was, that, having first despatched the

faithless messenger with the necessary powers to Mr. Mac-Morlan for

purchasing the estate of Ellangowan, Colonel Mannering turned his horse’s

head in a more southerly direction, and neither ‘stinted nor staid’ until

he arrived at the mansion of his friend Mr. Mervyn, upon the banks of one

of the lakes of Westmoreland.

CHAPTER XVII

Heaven first, in its mercy, taught mortals their letters,

For ladies in limbo, and lovers in fetters,

Or some author, who, placing his persons before ye,

Ungallantly leaves them to write their own story.

POPE, imitated.

When Mannering returned to England, his first object had been to place

his daughter in a seminary for female education, of established

character. Not, however, finding her progress in the accomplishments

which he wished her to acquire so rapid as his impatience expected, he

had withdrawn Miss Mannering from the school at the end of the first

quarter. So she had only time to form an eternal friendship with Miss

Matilda Marchmont, a young lady about her own age, which was nearly

eighteen. To her faithful eye were addressed those formidable quires

which issued forth from Mervyn Hall on the wings of the post while Miss

Mannering was a guest there. The perusal of a few short extracts from

these may be necessary to render our story intelligible.

FIRST EXTRACT

‘Alas! my dearest Matilda, what a tale is mine to tell! Misfortune from

the cradle has set her seal upon your unhappy friend. That we should be

severed for so slight a cause--an ungrammatical phrase in my Italian

exercise, and three false notes in one of Paisiello’s sonatas! But it is

a part of my father’s character, of whom it is impossible to say whether

I love, admire, or fear him the most. His success in life and in war, his

habit of making every obstacle yield before the energy of his exertions,

even where they seemed insurmountable--all these have given a hasty and

peremptory cast to his character, which can neither endure contradiction

nor make allowance for deficiencies. Then he is himself so very

accomplished. Do you know, there was a murmur, half confirmed too by some

mysterious words which dropped from my poor mother, that he possesses

other sciences, now lost to the world, which enable the possessor to

summon up before him the dark and shadowy forms of future events! Does

not the very idea of such a power, or even of the high talent and

commanding intellect which the world may mistake for it,--does it not,

dear Matilda, throw a mysterious grandeur about its possessor? You will

call this romantic; but consider I was born in the land of talisman and

spell, and my childhood lulled by tales which you can only enjoy through

the gauzy frippery of a French translation. O, Matilda, I wish you could

have seen the dusky visages of my Indian attendants, bending in earnest

devotion round the magic narrative, that flowed, half poetry, half prose,

from the lips of the tale-teller! No wonder that European fiction sounds

cold and meagre, after the wonderful effects which I have seen the

romances of the East produce upon their hearers.’

SECOND EXTRACT

‘You are possessed, my dear Matilda, of my bosom-secret, in those

sentiments with which I regard Brown. I will not say his memory; I am

convinced he lives, and is faithful. His addresses to me were

countenanced by my deceased parent, imprudently countenanced perhaps,

considering the prejudices of my father in favour of birth and rank. But

I, then almost a girl, could not be expected surely to be wiser than her

under whose charge nature had placed me. My father, constantly engaged in

military duty, I saw but at rare intervals, and was taught to look up to

him with more awe than confidence. Would to Heaven it had been otherwise!

It might have been better for us all at this day!’

THIRD EXTRACT

‘You ask me why I do not make known to my father that Brown yet lives, at

least that he survived the wound he received in that unhappy duel, and

had written to my mother expressing his entire convalescence, and his

hope of speedily escaping from captivity. A soldier, that “in the trade

of war has oft slain men,” feels probably no uneasiness at reflecting

upon the supposed catastrophe which almost turned me into stone. And

should I show him that letter, does it not follow that Brown, alive and

maintaining with pertinacity the pretensions to the affections of your

poor friend for which my father formerly sought his life, would be a more

formidable disturber of Colonel Mannering’s peace of mind than in his

supposed grave? If he escapes from the hands of these marauders, I am

convinced he will soon be in England, and it will be then time to

consider how his existence is to be disclosed to my father. But if, alas!

my earnest and confident hope should betray me, what would it avail to

tear open a mystery fraught with so many painful recollections? My dear

mother had such dread of its being known, that I think she even suffered

my father to suspect that Brown’s attentions were directed towards

herself, rather than permit him to discover their real object; and O,

Matilda, whatever respect I owe to the memory of a deceased parent, let

me do justice to a living one. I cannot but condemn the dubious policy

which she adopted, as unjust to my father, and highly perilous to herself

and me. But peace be with her ashes! her actions were guided by the heart

rather than the head; and shall her daughter, who inherits all her

weakness, be the first to withdraw the veil from her defects?’

FOURTH EXTRACT ‘MERVYN HALL.

‘If India be the land of magic, this, my dearest Matilda, is the country

of romance. The scenery is such as nature brings together in her

sublimest moods-sounding cataracts--hills which rear their scathed heads

to the sky--lakes that, winding up the shadowy valleys, lead at every

turn to yet more romantic recesses--rocks which catch the clouds of

heaven. All the wildness of Salvator here, and there the fairy scenes of

Claude. I am happy too in finding at least one object upon which my

father can share my enthusiasm. An admirer of nature, both as an artist

and a poet, I have experienced the utmost pleasure from the observations

by which he explains the character and the effect of these brilliant

specimens of her power. I wish he would settle in this enchanting land.

But his views lie still farther north, and he is at present absent on a

tour in Scotland, looking, I believe, for some purchase of land which may

suit him as a residence. He is partial, from early recollections, to that

country. So, my dearest Matilda, I must be yet farther removed from you

before I am established in a home. And O how delighted shall I be when I

can say, Come, Matilda, and be the guest of your faithful Julia!

‘I am at present the inmate of Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn, old friends of my

father. The latter is precisely a good sort of woman, ladylike and

housewifely; but for accomplishments or fancy--good lack, my dearest

Matilda, your friend might as well seek sympathy from Mrs. Teach’em;--you

see I have not forgot school nicknames. Mervyn is a different--quite a

different being from my father, yet he amuses and endures me. He is fat

and good-natured, gifted with strong shrewd sense and some powers of

humour; but having been handsome, I suppose, in his youth, has still some

pretension to be a beau garcon, as well as an enthusiastic agriculturist.

I delight to make him scramble to the tops of eminences and to the foot

of waterfalls, and am obliged in turn to admire his turnips, his lucerne,

and his timothy grass. He thinks me, I fancy, a simple romantic Miss,

with some--the word will be out--beauty and some good-nature; and I hold

that the gentleman has good taste for the female outside, and do not

expect he should comprehend my sentiments farther. So he rallies, hands,

and hobbles (for the dear creature has got the gout too), and tells old

stories of high life, of which he has seen a great deal; and I listen,

and smile, and look as pretty, as pleasant, and as simple as I can, and

we do very well.

‘But, alas! my dearest Matilda, how would time pass away, even in this

paradise of romance, tenanted as it is by a pair assorting so ill with

the scenes around them, were it not for your fidelity in replying to my

uninteresting details? Pray do not fail to write three times a week at

least; you can be at no loss what to say.’

FIFTH EXTRACT

‘How shall I communicate what I have now to tell! My hand and heart still

flutter so much, that the task of writing is almost impossible! Did I not

say that he lived? did I not say I would not despair? How could you

suggest, my dear Matilda, that my feelings, considering I had parted from

him so young, rather arose from the warmth of my imagination than of my

heart? O I was sure that they were genuine, deceitful as the dictates of

our bosom so frequently are. But to my tale--let it be, my friend, the

most sacred, as it is the most sincere, pledge of our friendship.

‘Our hours here are early--earlier than my heart, with its load of care,

can compose itself to rest. I therefore usually take a book for an hour

or two after retiring to my own room, which I think I have told you opens

to a small balcony, looking down upon that beautiful lake of which I

attempted to give you a slight sketch. Mervyn Hall, being partly an

ancient building, and constructed with a view to defence, is situated on

the verge of the lake. A stone dropped from the projecting balcony

plunges into water deep enough to float a skiff. I had left my window

partly unbarred, that, before I went to bed, I might, according to my

custom, look out and see the moonlight shining upon the lake. I was

deeply engaged with that beautiful scene in the “Merchant of Venice”

where two lovers, describing the stillness of a summer night, enhance on

each other its charms, and was lost in the associations of story and of

feeling which it awakens, when I heard upon the lake the sound of a

flageolet. I have told you it was Brown’s favourite instrument. Who could

touch it in a night which, though still and serene, was too cold, and too

late in the year, to invite forth any wanderer for mere pleasure? I drew

yet nearer the window, and hearkened with breathless attention; the

sounds paused a space, were then resumed, paused again, and again reached

my ear, ever coming nearer and nearer. At length I distinguished plainly

that little Hindu air which you called my favourite. I have told you by

whom it was taught me; the instrument, the tones, were his own! Was it

earthly music, or notes passing on the wind, to warn me of his death?

‘It was some time ere I could summon courage to step on the balcony;

nothing could have emboldened me to do so but the strong conviction of my

mind that he was still alive, and that we should again meet; but that

conviction did embolden me, and I ventured, though with a throbbing

heart. There was a small skiff with a single person. O, Matilda, it was

himself! I knew his appearance after so long an absence, and through the

shadow of the night, as perfectly as if we had parted yesterday, and met

again in the broad sunshine! He guided his boat under the balcony, and

spoke to me; I hardly knew what he said, or what I replied. Indeed, I

could scarcely speak for weeping, but they were joyful tears. We were

disturbed by the barking of a dog at some distance, and parted, but not

before he had conjured me to prepare to meet him at the same place and

hour this evening.

‘But where and to what is all this tending? Can I answer this question? I

cannot. Heaven, that saved him from death and delivered him from

captivity, that saved my father, too, from shedding the blood of one who

would not have blemished a hair of his head, that Heaven must guide me

out of this labyrinth. Enough for me the firm resolution that Matilda

shall not blush for her friend, my father for his daughter, nor my lover

for her on whom he has fixed his affection.’

CHAPTER XVIII

Talk with a man out of a window!--a proper saying.

Much Ado about Nothing.

We must proceed with our extracts from Miss Mannering’s letters, which

throw light upon natural good sense, principle, and feelings, blemished

by an imperfect education and the folly of a misjudging mother, who

called her husband in her heart a tyrant until she feared him as such,

and read romances until she became so enamoured of the complicated

intrigues which they contain as to assume the management of a little

family novel of her own, and constitute her daughter, a girl of sixteen,

the principal heroine. She delighted in petty mystery and intrigue and

secrets, and yet trembled at the indignation which these paltry

manoeuvres excited in her husband’s mind. Thus she frequently entered

upon a scheme merely for pleasure, or perhaps for the love of

contradiction, plunged deeper into it than she was aware, endeavoured to

extricate herself by new arts, or to cover her error by dissimulation,

became involved in meshes of her own weaving, and was forced to carry on,

for fear of discovery, machinations which she had at first resorted to in

mere wantonness.

Fortunately the young man whom she so imprudently introduced into her

intimate society, and encouraged to look up to her daughter, had a fund

of principle and honest pride which rendered him a safer intimate than

Mrs. Mannering ought to have dared to hope or expect. The obscurity of

his birth could alone be objected to him; in every other respect,

With prospects bright upon the world he came, Pure love of virtue, strong

desire of fame, Men watched the way his lofty mind would take, And all

foretold the progress he would make.

But it could not be expected that he should resist the snare which Mrs.

Mannering’s imprudence threw in his way, or avoid becoming attached to a

young lady whose beauty and manners might have justified his passion,

even in scenes where these are more generally met with than in a remote

fortress in our Indian settlements. The scenes which followed have been

partly detailed in Mannering’s letter to Mr. Mervyn; and to expand what

is there stated into farther explanation would be to abuse the patience

of our readers.

We shall therefore proceed with our promised extracts from Miss

Mannering’s letters to her friend.

SIXTH EXTRACT

‘I have seen him again, Matilda--seen him twice. I have used every

argument to convince him that this secret intercourse is dangerous to us

both; I even pressed him to pursue his views of fortune without farther

regard to me, and to consider my peace of mind as sufficiently secured by

the knowledge that he had not fallen under my father’s sword. He

answers--but how can I detail all he has to answer? He claims those hopes

as his due which my mother permitted him to entertain, and would persuade

me to the madness of a union without my father’s sanction. But to this,

Matilda, I will not be persuaded. I have resisted, I have subdued, the

rebellious feelings which arose to aid his plea; yet how to extricate

myself from this unhappy labyrinth in which fate and folly have entangled

us both!

‘I have thought upon it, Matilda, till my head is almost giddy; nor can I

conceive a better plan than to make a full confession to my father. He

deserves it, for his kindness is unceasing; and I think I have observed

in his character, since I have studied it more nearly, that his harsher

feelings are chiefly excited where he suspects deceit or imposition; and

in that respect, perhaps, his character was formerly misunderstood by one

who was dear to him. He has, too, a tinge of romance in his disposition;

and I have seen the narrative of a generous action, a trait of heroism,

or virtuous self-denial, extract tears from him which refused to flow at

a tale of mere distress. But then Brown urges that he is personally

hostile to him. And the obscurity of his birth, that would be indeed a

stumbling-block. O, Matilda, I hope none of your ancestors ever fought at

Poictiers or Agincourt! If it were not for the veneration which my father

attaches to the memory of old Sir Miles Mannering, I should make out my

explanation with half the tremor which must now attend it.’

SEVENTH EXTRACT

‘I have this instant received your letter--your most welcome letter!

Thanks, my dearest friend, for your sympathy and your counsels; I can

only repay them with unbounded confidence.

‘You ask me what Brown is by origin, that his descent should be so

unpleasing to my father. His story is shortly told. He is of Scottish

extraction, but, being left an orphan, his education was undertaken by a

family of relations settled in Holland. He was bred to commerce, and sent

very early to one of our settlements in the East, where his guardian had

a correspondent. But this correspondent was dead when he arrived in

India, and he had no other resource than to offer himself as a clerk to a

counting-house. The breaking out of the war, and the straits to which we

were at first reduced, threw the army open to all young men who were

disposed to embrace that mode of life; and Brown, whose genius had a

strong military tendency, was the first to leave what might have been the

road to wealth, and to choose that of fame. The rest of his history is

well known to you; but conceive the irritation of my father, who despises

commerce (though, by the way, the best part of his property was made in

that honourable profession by my great-uncle), and has a particular

antipathy to the Dutch--think with what ear he would be likely to receive

proposals for his only child from Vanbeest Brown, educated for charity by

the house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen! O, Matilda, it will never do; nay,

so childish am I, I hardly can help sympathising with his aristocratic

feelings. Mrs. Vanbeest Brown! The name has little to recommend it, to be

sure. What children we are!’

EIGHTH EXTRACT

‘It is all over now, Matilda! I shall never have courage to tell my

father; nay, most deeply do I fear he has already learned my secret from

another quarter, which will entirely remove the grace of my

communication, and ruin whatever gleam of hope I had ventured to connect

with it. Yesternight Brown came as usual, and his flageolet on the lake

announced his approach. We had agreed that he should continue to use this

signal. These romantic lakes attract numerous visitors, who indulge their

enthusiasm in visiting the scenery at all hours, and we hoped that, if

Brown were noticed from the house, he might pass for one of those

admirers of nature, who was giving vent to his feelings through the

medium of music. The sounds might also be my apology, should I be

observed on the balcony. But last night, while I was eagerly enforcing my

plan of a full confession to my father, which he as earnestly deprecated,

we heard the window of Mr. Mervyn’s library, which is under my room, open

softly. I signed to Brown to make his retreat, and immediately reentered,

with some faint hopes that our interview had not been observed.

‘But, alas! Matilda, these hopes vanished the instant I beheld Mr.

Mervyn’s countenance at breakfast the next morning. He looked so

provokingly intelligent and confidential, that, had I dared, I could have

been more angry than ever I was in my life; but I must be on good

behaviour, and my walks are now limited within his farm precincts, where

the good gentleman can amble along by my side without inconvenience. I

have detected him once or twice attempting to sound my thoughts, and

watch the expression of my countenance. He has talked of the flageolet

more than once, and has, at different times, made eulogiums upon the

watchfulness and ferocity of his dogs, and the regularity with which the

keeper makes his rounds with a loaded fowling-piece. He mentioned even

man-traps and springguns. I should be loth to affront my father’s old

friend in his own house; but I do long to show him that I am my father’s

daughter, a fact of which Mr. Mervyn will certainly be convinced if ever

I trust my voice and temper with a reply to these indirect hints. Of one

thing I am certain--I am grateful to him on that account--he has not told

Mrs. Mervyn. Lord help me, I should have had such lectures about the

dangers of love and the night air on the lake, the risk arising from

colds and fortune-hunters, the comfort and convenience of sack-whey and

closed windows! I cannot help trifling, Matilda, though my heart is sad

enough. What Brown will do I cannot guess. I presume, however, the fear

of detection prevents his resuming his nocturnal visits. He lodges at an

inn on the opposite shore of the lake, under the name, he tells me, of

Dawson; he has a bad choice in names, that must be allowed. He has not

left the army, I believe, but he says nothing of his present views,

‘To complete my anxiety, my father is returned suddenly, and in high

displeasure. Our good hostess, as I learned from a bustling conversation

between her housekeeper and her, had no expectation of seeing him for a

week; but I rather suspect his arrival was no surprise to his friend Mr.

Mervyn. His manner to me was singularly cold and constrained,

sufficiently so to have damped all the courage with which I once resolved

to throw myself on his generosity. He lays the blame of his being

discomposed and out of humour to the loss of a purchase in the south-west

of Scotland on which he had set his heart; but I do not suspect his

equanimity of being so easily thrown off its balance. His first excursion

was with Mr. Mervyn’s barge across the lake to the inn I have mentioned.

You may imagine the agony with which I waited his return! Had he

recognized Brown, who can guess the consequence! He returned, however,

apparently without having made any discovery. I understand that, in

consequence of his late disappointment, he means now to hire a house in

the neighbourhood of this same Ellangowan, of which I am doomed to hear

so much; he seems to think it probable that the estate for which he

wishes may soon be again in the market. I will not send away this letter

until I hear more distinctly what are his intentions.’

‘I have now had an interview with my father, as confidential as, I

presume, he means to allow me. He requested me to-day, after breakfast,

to walk with him into the library; my knees, Matilda, shook under me, and

it is no exaggeration to say I could scarce follow him into the room. I

feared I knew not what. From my childhood I had seen all around him

tremble at his frown. He motioned me to seat myself, and I never obeyed a

command so readily, for, in truth, I could hardly stand. He himself

continued to walk up and down the room. You have seen my father, and

noticed, I recollect, the remarkably expressive cast of his features. His

eyes are naturally rather light in colour, but agitation or anger gives

them a darker and more fiery glance; he has a custom also of drawing in

his lips when much moved, which implies a combat between native ardour of

temper and the habitual power of self-command. This was the first time we

had been alone since his return from Scotland, and, as he betrayed these

tokens of agitation, I had little doubt that he was about to enter upon

the subject I most dreaded.

‘To my unutterable relief, I found I was mistaken, and that, whatever he

knew of Mr. Mervyn’s suspicions or discoveries, he did not intend to

converse with me on the topic. Coward as I was, I was inexpressibly

relieved, though, if he had really investigated the reports which may

have come to his ear, the reality could have been nothing to what his

suspicions might have conceived. But, though my spirits rose high at my

unexpected escape, I had not courage myself to provoke the discussion,

and remained silent to receive his commands.

‘“Julia,” he said, “my agent writes me from Scotland that he has been

able to hire a house for me, decently furnished, and with the necessary

accommodation for my family; it is within three miles of that I had

designed to purchase.” Then he made a pause, and seemed to expect an

answer.

‘“Whatever place of residence suits you, sir, must be perfectly agreeable

to me.”

‘“Umph! I do not propose, however, Julia, that you shall reside quite

alone in this house during the winter.”

‘“Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn,” thought I to myself.--“Whatever company is

agreeable to you, sir,” I answered aloud.

‘“O, there is a little too much of this universal spirit of submission,

an excellent disposition in action, but your constantly repeating the

jargon of it puts me in mind of the eternal salaams of our black

dependents in the East. In short, Julia, I know you have a relish for

society, and I intend to invite a young person, the daughter of a

deceased friend, to spend a few months with us.”

‘“Not a governess, for the love of Heaven, papa!” exclaimed poor I, my

fears at that moment totally getting the better of my prudence.

‘“No, not a governess, Miss Mannering,” replied the Colonel, somewhat

sternly, “but a young lady from whose excellent example, bred as she has

been in the school of adversity, I trust you may learn the art to govern

yourself.”

‘To answer this was trenching upon too dangerous ground, so there was a

pause.

‘“Is the young lady a Scotchwoman, papa?”

‘“Yes”--drily enough.

‘“Has she much of the accent, sir?”

‘“Much of the devil!” answered my father hastily; “do you think I care

about a’s and aa’s, and i’s and ee’s,? I tell you, Julia, I am serious in

the matter. You have a genius for friendship, that is, for running up

intimacies which you call such.” (Was not this very harshly said,

Matilda?) “Now I wish to give you an opportunity at least to make one

deserving friend, and therefore I have resolved that this young lady

shall be a member of my family for some months, and I expect you will pay

to her that attention which is due to misfortune and virtue.”

‘“Certainly, sir. Is my future friend red-haired?”

‘He gave me one of his stern glances; you will say, perhaps, I deserved

it; but I think the deuce prompts me with teasing questions on some

occasions.

‘“She is as superior to you, my love, in personal appearance as in

prudence and affection for her friends.”

‘“Lord, papa, do you think that superiority a recommendation? Well, sir,

but I see you are going to take all this too seriously; whatever the

young lady may be, I am sure, being recommended by you, she shall have no

reason to complain of my want of attention.” After a pause--“Has she any

attendant? because you know I must provide for her proper accommodation

if she is without one.”

‘“N--no--no, not properly an attendant; the chaplain who lived with her

father is a very good sort of man, and I believe I shall make room for

him in the house.”

“‘Chaplain, papa? Lord bless us!”

‘“Yes, Miss Mannering, chaplain; is there anything very new in that word?

Had we not a chaplain at the Residence, when we were in India?”

‘“Yes, papa, but you was a commandant then.”

‘“So I will be now, Miss Mannering, in my own family at least.”

‘“Certainly, sir. But will he read us the Church of England service?”

‘The apparent simplicity with which I asked this question got the better

of his gravity. “Come, Julia,” he said, “you are a sad girl, but I gain

nothing by scolding you. Of these two strangers, the young lady is one

whom you cannot fail, I think, to love; the person whom, for want of a

better term, I called chaplain, is a very worthy, and somewhat ridiculous

personage, who will never find out you laugh at him if you don’t laugh

very loud indeed.”

‘“Dear papa, I am delighted with that part of his character. But pray, is

the house we are going to as pleasantly situated as this?”

‘“Not perhaps as much to your taste; there is no lake under the windows,

and you will be under the necessity of having all your music within

doors.”

‘This last coup de main ended the keen encounter of our wits, for you may

believe, Matilda, it quelled all my courage to reply.

‘Yet my spirits, as perhaps will appear too manifest from this dialogue,

have risen insensibly, and, as it were, in spite of myself. Brown alive,

and free, and in England! Embarrassment and anxiety I can and must

endure. We leave this in two days for our new residence. I shall not fail

to let you know what I think of these Scotch inmates, whom I have but too

much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace

of honourable spies; a sort of female Rozencrantz and reverend

Guildenstern, one in tartan petticoats, the other in a cassock. What a

contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself! I shall

write instantly on my arriving at our new place of abode, and acquaint my

dearest Matilda with the farther fates of--her

‘JULIA MANNERING.’

CHAPTER XIX

Which sloping hills around inclose,

Where many a beech and brown oak grows

Beneath whose dark and branching bowers

Its tides a far-fam’d river pours,

By natures beauties taught to please,

Sweet Tusculan of rural easel

WARTON.

Woodbourne, the habitation which Mannering, by Mr. Mac-Morlan’s

mediation, had hired for a season, was a large comfortable mansion,

snugly situated beneath a hill covered with wood, which shrouded the

house upon the north and east; the front looked upon a little lawn

bordered by a grove of old trees; beyond were some arable fields,

extending down to the river, which was seen from the windows of the

house. A tolerable, though old-fashioned garden, a well-stocked dove-cot,

and the possession of any quantity of ground which the convenience of the

family might require, rendered the place in every respect suitable, as

the advertisements have it, ‘for the accommodation of a genteel family.’

Here, then, Mannering resolved, for some time at least, to set up the

staff of his rest. Though an East-Indian, he was not partial to an

ostentatious display of wealth. In fact, he was too proud a man to be a

vain one. He resolved, therefore, to place himself upon the footing of a

country gentleman of easy fortune, without assuming, or permitting his

household to assume, any of the faste which then was considered as

characteristic of a nabob.

He had still his eye upon the purchase of Ellangowan, which Mac-Morlan

conceived Mr. Glossin would be compelled to part with, as some of the

creditors disputed his title to retain so large a part of the

purchase-money in his own hands, and his power to pay it was much

questioned. In that case Mac-Morlan was assured he would readily give up

his bargain, if tempted with something above the price which he had

stipulated to pay. It may seem strange that Mannering was so much

attached to a spot which he had only seen once, and that for a short

time, in early life. But the circumstances which passed there had laid a

strong hold on his imagination. There seemed to be a fate which conjoined

the remarkable passages of his own family history with those of the

inhabitants of Ellangowan, and he felt a mysterious desire to call the

terrace his own from which he had read in the book of heaven a fortune

strangely accomplished in the person of the infant heir of that family,

and corresponding so closely with one which had been strikingly fulfilled

in his own. Besides, when once this thought had got possession of his

imagination, he could not, without great reluctance, brook the idea of

his plan being defeated, and by a fellow like Glossin. So pride came to

the aid of fancy, and both combined to fortify his resolution to buy the

estate if possible.

Let us do Mannering justice. A desire to serve the distressed had also

its share in determining him. He had considered the advantage which Julia

might receive from the company of Lucy Bertram, whose genuine prudence

and good sense could so surely be relied upon. This idea had become much

stronger since Mac-Morlan had confided to him, under the solemn seal of

secrecy, the whole of her conduct towards young Hazlewood. To propose to

her to become an inmate in his family, if distant from the scenes of her

youth and the few whom she called friends, would have been less delicate;

but at Woodbourne she might without difficulty be induced to become the

visitor of a season, without being depressed into the situation of an

humble companion. Lucy Bertram, with some hesitation, accepted the

invitation to reside a few weeks with Miss Mannering. She felt too well

that, however the Colonel’s delicacy might disguise the truth, his

principal motive was a generous desire to afford her his countenance and

protection, which his high connexions, and higher character, were likely

to render influential in the neighbourhood.

About the same time the orphan girl received a letter from Mrs. Bertram,

the relation to whom she had written, as cold and comfortless as could

well be imagined. It inclosed, indeed, a small sum of money, but strongly

recommended economy, and that Miss Bertram should board herself in some

quiet family, either at Kippletringan or in the neighbourhood, assuring

her that, though her own income was very scanty, she would not see her

kinswoman want. Miss Bertram shed some natural tears over this

cold-hearted epistle; for in her mother’s time this good lady had been a

guest at Ellangowan for nearly three years, and it was only upon

succeeding to a property of about L400 a year that she had taken farewell

of that hospitable mansion, which otherwise might have had the honour of

sheltering her until the death of its owner. Lucy was strongly inclined

to return the paltry donation, which, after some struggles with avarice,

pride had extorted from the old lady. But on consideration she contented

herself with writing that she accepted it as a loan, which, she hoped in

a short time to repay, and consulted her relative upon the invitation she

had received from Colonel and Miss Mannering. This time the answer came

in course of post, so fearful was Mrs. Bertram that some frivolous

delicacy, or nonsense, as she termed it, might induce her cousin to

reject such a promising offer, and thereby at the same time to leave

herself still a burden upon her relations. Lucy, therefore, had no

alternative, unless she preferred continuing a burden upon the worthy

Mac-Morlans, who were too liberal to be rich. Those kinsfolk who formerly

requested the favour of her company had of late either silently, or with

expressions of resentment that she should have preferred Mac-Morlan’s

invitation to theirs, gradually withdrawn their notice.

The fate of Dominie Sampson would have been deplorable had it depended

upon any one except Mannering, who was an admirer of originality, for a

separation from Lucy Bertram would have certainly broken his heart.

Mac-Morlan had given a full account of his proceedings towards the

daughter of his patron. The answer was a request from Mannering to know

whether the Dominie still possessed that admirable virtue of taciturnity

by which he was so notably distinguished at Ellangowan. Mac-Morlan

replied in the affirmative. ‘Let Mr. Sampson know,’ said the Colonel’s

next letter, ‘that I shall want his assistance to catalogue and put in

order the library of my uncle, the bishop, which I have ordered to be

sent down by sea. I shall also want him to copy and arrange some papers.

Fix his salary at what you think befitting. Let the poor man be properly

dressed, and accompany his young lady to Woodbourne.’

Honest Mac-Morlan received this mandate with great joy, but pondered much

upon executing that part of it which related to newly attiring the worthy

Dominie. He looked at him with a scrutinising eye, and it was but too

plain that his present garments were daily waxing more deplorable. To

give him money, and bid him go and furnish himself, would be only giving

him the means of making himself ridiculous; for when such a rare event

arrived to Mr. Sampson as the purchase of new garments, the additions

which he made to his wardrobe by the guidance of his own taste usually

brought all the boys of the village after him for many days. On the other

hand, to bring a tailor to measure him, and send home his clothes, as for

a school-boy, would probably give offence. At length Mac-Morlan resolved

to consult Miss Bertram, and request her interference. She assured him

that, though she could not pretend to superintend a gentleman’s wardrobe,

nothing was more easy than to arrange the Dominie’s.

‘At Ellangowan,’ she said, ‘whenever my poor father thought any part of

the Dominie’s dress wanted renewal, a servant was directed to enter his

room by night, for he sleeps as fast as a dormouse, carry off the old

vestment, and leave the new one; nor could any one observe that the

Dominie exhibited the least consciousness of the change put upon him on

such occasions.’

Mac-Morlan, in conformity with Miss Bertram’s advice, procured a skilful

artist, who, on looking at the Dominie attentively, undertook to make for

him two suits of clothes, one black and one raven-grey, and even engaged

that they should fit him--as well at least (so the tailor qualified his

enterprise) as a man of such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by

merely human needles and shears. When this fashioner had accomplished his

task, and the dresses were brought home, Mac-Morlan, judiciously

resolving to accomplish his purpose by degrees, withdrew that evening an

important part of his dress, and substituted the new article of raiment

in its stead. Perceiving that this passed totally without notice, he next

ventured on the waistcoat, and lastly on the coat. When fully

metamorphosed, and arrayed for the first time in his life in a decent

dress, they did observe that the Dominie seemed to have some indistinct

and embarrassing consciousness that a change had taken place on his

outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon

his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve

of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed

some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread

upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always

took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his

garments, ‘by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.’ The only remark he

was ever known to make on the subject was, that ‘the air of a town like

Kippletringan seemed favourable unto wearing apparel, for he thought his

coat looked almost as new as the first day he put it on, which was when

he went to stand trial for his license as a preacher.’

When the Dominie first heard the liberal proposal of Colonel Mannering,

he turned a jealous and doubtful glance towards Miss Bertram, as if he

suspected that the project involved their separation; but when Mr.

Mac-Morlan hastened to explain that she would be a guest at Woodbourne

for some time, he rubbed his huge hands together, and burst into a

portentous sort of chuckle, like that of the Afrite in the tale of ‘The

Caliph Vathek.’ After this unusual explosion of satisfaction, he remained

quite passive in all the rest of the transaction.

It had been settled that Mr. and Mrs. Mac-Morlan should take possession

of the house a few days before Mannering’s arrival, both to put

everything in perfect order and to make the transference of Miss

Bertram’s residence from their family to his as easy and delicate as

possible. Accordingly, in the beginning of the month of December the

party were settled at Woodbourne.

CHAPTER XX

A gigantic genius fit to grapple with whole libraries

--BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON

The appointed day arrived when the Colonel and Miss Mannering were

expected at Woodbourne. The hour was fast approaching, and the little

circle within doors had each their separate subjects of anxiety.

Mac-Morlan naturally desired to attach to himself the patronage and

countenance of a person of Mannering’s wealth and consequence. He was

aware, from his knowledge of mankind, that Mannering, though generous and

benevolent, had the foible of expecting and exacting a minute compliance

with his directions. He was therefore racking his recollection to

discover if everything had been arranged to meet the Colonel’s wishes and

instructions, and, under this uncertainty of mind, he traversed the house

more than once from the garret to the stables. Mrs. Mac-Morlan revolved

in a lesser orbit, comprehending the dining-parlour, housekeeper’s room,

and kitchen. She was only afraid that the dinner might be spoiled, to the

discredit of her housewifely accomplishments. Even the usual passiveness

of the Dominie was so far disturbed that he twice went to the window

which looked out upon the avenue, and twice exclaimed, ‘Why tarry the

wheels of their chariot?’ Lucy, the most quiet of the expectants, had her

own melancholy thoughts. She was now about to be consigned to the charge,

almost to the benevolence, of strangers, with whose character, though

hitherto very amiably, displayed, she was but imperfectly acquainted. The

moments, therefore, of suspense passed anxiously and heavily.

At length the trampling of horses and the sound of wheels were heard. The

servants, who had already arrived, drew up in the hall to receive their

master and mistress, with an importance and EMPRESSEMENT which to Lucy,

who had never been accustomed to society, or witnessed what is called the

manners of the great, had something alarming. Mac-Morlan went to the door

to receive the master and mistress of the family, and in a few moments

they were in the drawing-room.

Mannering, who had travelled as usual on horseback, entered with his

daughter hanging upon his arm. She was of the middle size, or rather

less, but formed with much elegance; piercing dark eyes, and jet-black

hair of great length, corresponded with the vivacity and intelligence of

features in which were blended a little haughtiness, and a little

bashfulness, a great deal of shrewdness, and some power of humorous

sarcasm. ‘I shall not like her,’ was the result of Lucy Bertram’s first

glance; ‘and yet; I rather think I shall,’ was the thought excited by the

second.

Miss Mannering was furred and mantled up to the throat against the

severity of the weather; the Colonel in his military great-coat. He bowed

to Mrs. Mac-Morlan, whom his daughter also acknowledged with a

fashionable courtesy, not dropped so low as at all to incommode her

person. The Colonel then led his daughter up to Miss Bertram, and, taking

the hand of the latter, with an air of great kindness and almost paternal

affection, he said, ‘Julia, this is the young lady whom I hope our good

friends have prevailed on to honour our house with a long visit. I shall

be much gratified indeed if you can render Woodbourne as pleasant to Miss

Bertram as Ellangowan was to me when I first came as a wanderer into this

country.’

The young lady courtesied acquiescence, and took her new friend’s hand.

Mannering now turned his eye upon the Dominie, who had made bows since

his entrance into the room, sprawling out his leg, and bending his back

like an automaton, which continues to repeat the same movement until the

motion is stopt by the artist. ‘My good friend, Mr. Sampson,’ said

Mannering, introducing him to his daughter, and darting at the same time

a reproving glance at the damsel, notwithstanding he had himself some

disposition to join her too obvious inclination to risibility; ‘this

gentleman, Julia, is to put my books in order when they arrive, and I

expect to derive great advantage from his extensive learning.’

‘I am sure we are obliged to the gentleman, papa, and, to borrow a

ministerial mode of giving thanks, I shall never forget the extraordinary

countenance he has been pleased to show us. But, Miss Bertram,’ continued

she hastily, for her father’s brows began to darken, ‘we have travelled a

good way; will you permit me to retire before dinner?’

This intimation dispersed all the company save the Dominie, who, having

no idea of dressing but when he was to rise, or of undressing but when he

meant to go to bed, remained by himself, chewing the cud of a

mathematical demonstration, until the company again assembled in the

drawing-room, and from thence adjourned to the dining-parlour.

When the day was concluded, Mannering took an opportunity to hold a

minute’s conversation with his daughter in private.

‘How do you like your guests, Julia?’

‘O, Miss Bertram of all things; but this is a most original parson; why,

dear sir, no human being will be able to look at him without laughing.’

‘While he is under my roof, Julia, every one must learn to do so.’

‘Lord, papa, the very footmen could not keep their gravity!’

‘Then let them strip off my livery,’ said the Colonel, ‘and laugh at

their leisure. Mr. Sampson is a man whom I esteem for his simplicity and

benevolence of character.’

‘O, I am convinced of his generosity too,’ said this lively lady; ‘he

cannot lift a spoonful of soup to his mouth without bestowing a share on

everything round.’

‘Julia, you are incorrigible; but remember I expect your mirth on this

subject to be under such restraint that it shall neither offend this

worthy man’s feelings nor those of Miss Bertram, who may be more apt to

feel upon his account than he on his own. And so, goodnight, my dear; and

recollect that, though Mr. Sampson has certainly not sacrificed to the

graces, there are many things in this world more truly deserving of

ridicule than either awkwardness of manners or simplicity of character.’

In a day or two Mr. and Mrs. Mac-Morlan left Woodbourne, after taking an

affectionate farewell of their late guest. The household were now settled

in their new quarters. The young ladies followed their studies and

amusements together. Colonel Mannering was agreeably surprised to find

that Miss Bertram was well skilled in French and Italian, thanks to the

assiduity of Dominie Sampson, whose labour had silently made him

acquainted with most modern as well as ancient languages. Of music she

knew little or nothing, but her new friend undertook to give her lessons,

in exchange for which she was to learn from Lucy the habit of walking,

and the art of riding, and the courage necessary to defy the season.

Mannering was careful to substitute for their amusement in the evening

such books as might convey some solid instruction with entertainment,

and, as he read aloud with great skill and taste, the winter nights

passed pleasantly away.

Society was quickly formed where there were so many inducements. Most of

the families of the neighbourhood visited Colonel Mannering, and he was

soon able to select from among them such as best suited his taste and

habits. Charles Hazlewood held a distinguished place in his favour, and

was a frequent visitor, not without the consent and approbation of his

parents; for there was no knowing, they thought, what assiduous attention

might produce, and the beautiful Miss Mannering, of high family, with an

Indian fortune, was a prize worth looking after. Dazzled with such a

prospect, they never considered the risk which had once been some object

of their apprehension, that his boyish and inconsiderate fancy might form

an attachment to the penniless Lucy Bertram, who had nothing on earth to

recommend her but a pretty face, good birth, and a most amiable

disposition. Mannering was more prudent. He considered himself acting as

Miss Bertram’s guardian, and, while he did not think it incumbent upon

him altogether to check her intercourse with a young gentleman for whom,

excepting in wealth, she was a match in every respect, he laid it under

such insensible restraints as might prevent any engagement or

ECLAIRCISSEMENT taking place until the young man should have seen a

little more of life and of the world, and have attained that age when he

might be considered as entitled to judge for himself in the matter in

which his happiness was chiefly interested.

While these matters engaged the attention of the other members of the

Woodbourne family, Dominie Sampson was occupied, body and soul, in the

arrangement of the late bishop’s library, which had been sent from

Liverpool by sea, and conveyed by thirty or forty carts from the sea-port

at which it was landed. Sampson’s joy at beholding the ponderous contents

of these chests arranged upon the floor of the large apartment, from

whence he was to transfer them to the shelves, baffles all description.

He grinned like an ogre, swung his arms like the sails of a wind-mill,

shouted ‘Prodigious’ till the roof rung to his raptures. ‘He had never,’

he said, ‘seen so many books together, except in the College Library’;

and now his dignity and delight in being superintendent of the collection

raised him, in his own opinion, almost to the rank of the academical

librarian, whom he had always regarded as the greatest and happiest man

on earth. Neither were his transports diminished upon a hasty examination

of the contents of these volumes. Some, indeed, of BELLES LETTRES, poems,

plays, or memoirs he tossed indignantly aside, with the implied censure

of ’psha,’ or ‘frivolous’; but the greater and bulkier part of the

collection bore a very different character. The deceased prelate, a

divine of the old and deeply-learned cast, had loaded his shelves with

volumes which displayed the antique and venerable attributes so happily

described by a modern poet:--

That weight of wood, with leathern coat o’erlaid,

Those ample clasps of solid metal made,

The close-press’d leaves unoped for many an age,

The dull red edging of the well-fill’d page,

On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll’d,

Where yet the title stands in tarnish’d gold.

Books of theology and controversial divinity, commentaries, and

polyglots, sets of the Fathers, and sermons which might each furnish

forth ten brief discourses of modern date, books of science, ancient and

modern, classical authors in their best and rarest forms--such formed the

late bishop’s venerable library, and over such the eye of Dominie Sampson

gloated with rapture. He entered them in the catalogue in his best

running hand, forming each letter with the accuracy of a lover writing a

valentine, and placed each individually on the destined shelf with all

the reverence which I have seen a lady pay to a jar of old china. With

all this zeal his labours advanced slowly. He often opened a volume when

halfway up the library steps, fell upon some interesting passage, and,

without shifting his inconvenient posture, continued immersed in the

fascinating perusal until the servant pulled him by the skirts to assure

him that dinner waited. He then repaired to the parlour, bolted his food

down his capacious throat in squares of three inches, answered ay and no

at random to whatever question was asked at him, and again hurried back

to the library, as soon as his napkin was removed, and sometimes with it

hanging round his neck like a pinafore;--

How happily the days Of Thalaba went by!

And, having thus left the principal characters of our tale in a situation

which, being sufficiently comfortable to themselves, is, of course,

utterly uninteresting to the reader, we take up the history of a person

who has as yet only been named, and who has all the interest that

uncertainty and misfortune can give.

CHAPTER XXI

What say’st thou, Wise One? that all powerful Love

Can fortune’s strong impediments remove,

Nor is it strange that worth should wed to worth,

The pride of genius with the pride of birth.

CRABBE.

V. Brown--I will not give at full length his thrice unhappy name--had

been from infancy a ball for fortune to spurn at; but nature had given

him that elasticity of mind which rises higher from the rebound. His form

was tall, manly, and active, and his features corresponded with his

person; for, although far from regular, they had an expression of

intelligence and good-humour, and when he spoke, or was particularly

animated, might be decidedly pronounced interesting. His manner indicated

the military profession, which had been his choice, and in which he had

now attained the rank of captain, the person who succeeded Colonel

Mannering in his command having laboured to repair the injustice which

Brown had sustained by that gentleman’s prejudice against him. But this,

as well as his liberation from captivity, had taken place after Mannering

left India. Brown followed at no distant period, his regiment being

recalled home. His first inquiry was after the family of Mannering, and,

easily learning their route northward, he followed it with the purpose of

resuming his addresses to Julia. With her father he deemed he had no

measures to keep; for, ignorant of the more venomous belief which had

been instilled into the Colonel’s mind, he regarded him as an oppressive

aristocrat, who had used his power as a commanding officer to deprive him

of the preferment due to his behaviour, and who had forced upon him a

personal quarrel without any better reason than his attentions to a

pretty young woman, agreeable to herself, and permitted and countenanced

by her mother. He was determined, therefore, to take no rejection unless

from the young lady herself, believing that the heavy misfortunes of his

painful wound and imprisonment were direct injuries received from the

father, which might dispense with his using much ceremony towards him.

How far his scheme had succeeded when his nocturnal visit was discovered

by Mr. Mervyn, our readers are already informed.

Upon this unpleasant occurrence Captain Brown absented himself from the

inn in which he had resided under the name of Dawson, so that Colonel

Mannering’s attempts to discover and trace him were unavailing. He

resolved, however, that no difficulties should prevent his continuing his

enterprise while Julia left him a ray of hope. The interest he had

secured in her bosom was such as she had been unable to conceal from him,

and with all the courage of romantic gallantry he determined upon

perseverance. But we believe the reader will be as well pleased to learn

his mode of thinking and intention from his own communication to his

special friend and confidant, Captain Delaserre, a Swiss gentleman who

had a company in his regiment.

EXTRACT

‘Let me hear from you soon, dear Delaserre. Remember, I can learn nothing

about regimental affairs but through your friendly medium, and I long to

know what has become of Ayre’s court-martial, and whether Elliot gets the

majority; also how recruiting comes on, and how the young officers like

the mess. Of our kind friend the Lieutenant-Colonel I need ask nothing; I

saw him as I passed through Nottingham, happy in the bosom of his family.

What a happiness it is, Philip, for us poor devils, that we have a little

resting-place between the camp and the grave, if we can manage to escape

disease, and steel, and lead, and the effects of hard living. A retired

old soldier is always a graceful and respected character. He grumbles a

little now and then, but then his is licensed murmuring; were a lawyer,

or a physician, or a clergyman to breathe a complaint of hard luck or

want of preferment, a hundred tongues would blame his own incapacity as

the cause. But the most stupid veteran that ever faltered out the

thrice-told tale of a siege and a battle, and a cock and a bottle, is

listened to with sympathy and reverence when he shakes his thin locks and

talks with indignation of the boys that are put over his head. And you

and I, Delaserre, foreigners both--for what am I the better that I was

originally a Scotchman, since, could I prove my descent, the English

would hardly acknowledge me a countryman?--we may boast that we have

fought out our preferment, and gained that by the sword which we had not

money to compass otherwise. The English are a wise people. While they

praise themselves, and affect to undervalue all other nations, they leave

us, luckily, trap-doors and back-doors open, by which we strangers, less

favoured by nature, may arrive at a share of their advantages. And thus

they are in some respects like a boastful landlord, who exalts the value

and flavour of his six-years-old mutton, while he is delighted to

dispense a share of it to all the company. In short, you, whose proud

family, and I, whose hard fate, made us soldiers of fortune, have the

pleasant recollection that in the British service, stop where we may upon

our career, it is only for want of money to pay the turnpike, and not

from our being prohibited to travel the road. If, therefore, you can

persuade little Weischel to come into OURS, for God’s sake let him buy

the ensigncy, live prudently, mind his duty, and trust to the fates for

promotion.

‘And now, I hope you are expiring with curiosity to learn the end of my

romance. I told you I had deemed it convenient to make a few days’ tour

on foot among the mountains of Westmoreland with Dudley, a young English

artist with whom I have formed some acquaintance. A fine fellow this, you

must know, Delaserre: he paints tolerably, draws beautifully, converses

well, and plays charmingly on the flute; and, though thus well entitled

to be a coxcomb of talent, is, in fact, a modest unpretending young man.

On our return from our little tour I learned that the enemy had been

reconnoitring. Mr. Mervyn’s barge had crossed the lake, I was informed by

my landlord, with the squire himself and a visitor.

‘“What sort of person, landlord?”

‘“Why, he was a dark officer-looking mon, at they called Colonel. Squoire

Mervyn questioned me as close as I had been at ‘sizes. I had guess, Mr.

Dawson” (I told you that was my feigned name), “but I tould him nought of

your vagaries, and going out a-laking in the mere a-noights, not I; an I

can make no sport, I’se spoil none; and Squoire Mervyn’s as cross as

poy-crust too, mon; he’s aye maundering an my guests but land beneath his

house, though it be marked for the fourth station in the survey. Noa,

noa, e’en let un smell things out o’ themselves for Joe Hodges.”

‘You will allow there was nothing for it after this but paying honest Joe

Hodges’s bill and departing, unless I had preferred making him my

confidant, for which I felt in no way inclined. Besides, I learned that

our ci-devant Colonel was on full retreat for Scotland, carrying off poor

Julia along with him. I understand from those who conduct the heavy

baggage that he takes his winter quarters at a place called Woodbourne,

in ---shire in Scotland. He will be all on the alert just now, so I must

let him enter his entrenchments without any new alarm. And then, my good

Colonel, to whom I owe so many grateful thanks, pray look to your

defence.

‘I protest to you, Delaserre, I often think there is a little

contradiction enters into the ardour of my pursuit. I think I would

rather bring this haughty insulting man to the necessity of calling his

daughter Mrs. Brown than I would wed her with his full consent, and with

the King’s permission to change my name for the style and arms of

Mannering, though his whole fortune went with them. There is only one

circumstance that chills me a little: Julia is young and romantic. I

would not willingly hurry her into a step which her riper years might

disapprove; no--nor would I like to have her upbraid me, were it but with

a glance of her eye, with having ruined her fortunes, far less give her

reason to say, as some have not been slow to tell their lords, that, had

I left her time for consideration, she would have been wiser and done

better. No, Delaserre, this must not be. The picture presses close upon

me, because I am aware a girl in Julia’s situation has no distinct and

precise idea of the value of the sacrifice she makes. She knows

difficulties only by name; and, if she thinks of love and a farm, it is a

ferme ornee, such as is only to be found in poetic description or in the

park of a gentleman of twelve thousand a year. She would be ill prepared

for the privations of that real Swiss cottage we have so often talked of,

and for the difficulties which must necessarily surround us even before

we attained that haven. This must be a point clearly ascertained.

Although Julia’s beauty and playful tenderness have made an impression on

my heart never to be erased, I must be satisfied that she perfectly

understands the advantages she foregoes before she sacrifices them for my

sake.

‘Am I too proud, Delaserre, when I trust that even this trial may

terminate favourably to my wishes? Am I too vain when I suppose that the

few personal qualities which I possess, with means of competence, however

moderate, and the determination of consecrating my life to her happiness,

may make amends for all I must call upon her to forego? Or will a

difference of dress, of attendance, of style, as it is called, of the

power of shifting at pleasure the scenes in which she seeks

amusement--will these outweigh in her estimation the prospect of domestic

happiness and the interchange of unabating affection? I say nothing of

her father: his good and evil qualities are so strangely mingled that the

former are neutralised by the latter; and that which she must regret as a

daughter is so much blended with what she would gladly escape from, that

I place the separation of the father and child as a circumstance which

weighs little in her remarkable case. Meantime I keep up my spirits as I

may. I have incurred too many hardships and difficulties to be

presumptuous or confident in success, and I have been too often and too

wonderfully extricated from them to be despondent.

‘I wish you saw this country. I think the scenery would delight you. At

least it often brings to my recollection your glowing descriptions of

your native country. To me it has in a great measure the charm of

novelty. Of the Scottish hills, though born among them, as I have always

been assured, I have but an indistinct recollection. Indeed, my memory

rather dwells upon the blank which my youthful mind experienced in gazing

on the levels of the isle of Zealand, than on anything which preceded

that feeling; but I am confident, from that sensation as well as from the

recollections which preceded it, that hills and rocks have been familiar

to me at an early period, and that, though now only remembered by

contrast, and by the blank which I felt while gazing around for them in

vain, they must have made an indelible impression on my infant

imagination. I remember, when we first mounted that celebrated pass in

the Mysore country, while most of the others felt only awe and

astonishment at the height and grandeur of the scenery, I rather shared

your feelings and those of Cameron, whose admiration of such wild rocks

was blended with familiar love, derived from early association. Despite

my Dutch education, a blue hill to me is as a friend, and a roaring

torrent like the sound of a domestic song that hath soothed my infancy. I

never felt the impulse so strongly as in this land of lakes and

mountains, and nothing grieves me so much as that duty prevents your

being with me in my numerous excursions among recesses. Some drawings I

have attempted, but I succeed vilely. Dudley, on the contrary, draws

delightfully, with that rapid touch which seems like magic; while I

labour and botch, and make this too heavy and that too light, and produce

at last a base caricature. I must stick to the flageolet, for music is

the only one of the fine arts which deigns to acknowledge me.

‘Did you know that Colonel Mannering was a draughtsman? I believe not,

for he scorned to display his accomplishments to the view of a subaltern.

He draws beautifully, however. Since he and Julia left Mervyn Hall,

Dudley was sent for there. The squire, it seems, wanted a set of drawings

made up, of which Mannering had done the first four, but was interrupted

by his hasty departure in his purpose of completing them. Dudley says he

has seldom seen anything so masterly, though slight; and each had

attached to it a short poetical description. Is Saul, you will say, among

the prophets? Colonel Mannering write poetry! Why, surely this man must

have taken all the pains to conceal his accomplishments that others do to

display theirs. How reserved and unsociable he appeared among us! how

little disposed to enter into any conversation which could become

generally interesting! And then his attachment to that unworthy Archer,

so much below him in every respect; and all this because he was the

brother of Viscount Archerfield, a poor Scottish peer! I think, if Archer

had longer survived the wounds in the affair of Cuddyboram, he would have

told something that might have thrown light upon the inconsistencies of

this singular man’s character. He repeated to me more than once, “I have

that to say which will alter your hard opinion of our late Colonel.” But

death pressed him too hard; and if he owed me any atonement, which some

of his expressions seemed to imply, he died before it could be made.

‘I propose to make a further excursion through this country while this

fine frosty weather serves, and Dudley, almost as good a walker as

myself, goes with me for some part of the way. We part on the borders of

Cumberland, when he must return to his lodgings in Marybone, up three

pair of stairs, and labour at what he calls the commercial part of his

profession. There cannot, he says, be such a difference betwixt any two

portions of existence as between that in which the artist, if an

enthusiast, collects the subjects of his drawings and that which must

necessarily be dedicated to turning over his portfolio and exhibiting

them to the provoking indifference, or more provoking criticism, of

fashionable amateurs. “During the summer of my year,” says Dudley, “I am

as free as a wild Indian, enjoying myself at liberty amid the grandest

scenes of nature; while during my winters and springs I am not only

cabined, cribbed, and confined in a miserable garret, but condemned to as

intolerable subservience to the humour of others, and to as indifferent

company, as if I were a literal galley slave.” I have promised him your

acquaintance, Delaserre; you will be delighted with his specimens of art,

and he with your Swiss fanaticism for mountains and torrents.

‘When I lose Dudley’s company, I am informed that I can easily enter

Scotland by stretching across a wild country in the upper part of

Cumberland; and that route I shall follow, to give the Colonel time to

pitch his camp ere I reconnoitre his position. Adieu! Delaserre. I shall

hardly find another opportunity of writing till I reach Scotland.’

CHAPTER XXII

Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,

And merrily bend the stile-a,

A merry heart goes all the day,

A sad one tires in a mile-a.

--Winter’s Tale.

Let the reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the

scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of

mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are preeminent; let him look

along that BLIND ROAD, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by

the passengers’ footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight shade of

verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only visible to the

eye when at some distance, ceases to be distinguished while the foot is

actually treading it; along this faintly-traced path advances the object

of our present narrative. His firm step, his erect and free carriage,

have a military air which corresponds well with his well-proportioned

limbs and stature of six feet high. His dress is so plain and simple that

it indicates nothing as to rank; it may be that of a gentleman who

travels in this manner for his pleasure, or of an inferior person of whom

it is the proper and usual garb. Nothing can be on a more reduced scale

than his travelling equipment. A volume of Shakspeare in each pocket, a

small bundle with a change of linen slung across his shoulders, an oaken

cudgel in his hand, complete our pedestrian’s accommodations, and in this

equipage we present him to our readers.

Brown had parted that morning from his friend Dudley, and begun his

solitary walk towards Scotland.

The first two or three miles were rather melancholy, from want of the

society to which he had of late been accustomed. But this unusual mood of

mind soon gave way to the influence of his natural good spirits, excited

by the exercise and the bracing effects of the frosty air. He whistled as

he went along, not ‘from want of thought,’ but to give vent to those

buoyant feelings which he had no other mode of expressing. For each

peasant whom he chanced to meet he had a kind greeting or a good-humoured

jest; the hardy Cumbrians grinned as they passed, and said, ‘That’s a

kind heart, God bless un!’ and the market-girl looked more than once over

her shoulder at the athletic form, which corresponded so well with the

frank and blythe address of the stranger. A rough terrier dog, his

constant companion, who rivalled his master in glee, scampered at large

in a thousand wheels round the heath, and came back to jump up on him and

assure him that he participated in the pleasure of the journey. Dr.

Johnson thought life had few things better than the excitation produced

by being whirled rapidly along in a post-chaise; but he who has in youth

experienced the confident and independent feeling of a stout pedestrian

in an interesting country, and during fine weather, will hold the taste

of the great moralist cheap in comparison.

Part of Brown’s view in choosing that unusual track which leads through

the eastern wilds of Cumberland into Scotland, had been a desire to view

the remains of the celebrated Roman Wall, which are more visible in that

direction than in any other part of its extent. His education had been

imperfect and desultory; but neither the busy scenes in which he had been

engaged, nor the pleasures of youth, nor the precarious state of his own

circumstances, had diverted him from the task of mental improvement. ‘And

this then is the Roman Wall,’ he said, scrambling up to a height which

commanded the course of that celebrated work of antiquity. ‘What a

people! whose labours, even at this extremity of their empire,

comprehended such space, and were executed upon a scale of such grandeur!

In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few

traces will exist of the labours of Vauban and Coehorn, while this

wonderful people’s remains will even then continue to interest and

astonish posterity! Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their

theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid,

and majestic character of their language; while our modern labours, like

our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their fragments.’ Having

thus moralised, he remembered that he was hungry, and pursued his walk to

a small public-house, at which he proposed to get some refreshment.

The alehouse, for it was no better, was situated in the bottom of a

little dell, through which trilled a small rivulet. It was shaded by a

large ash tree, against which the clay-built shed that served the purpose

of a stable was erected, and upon which it seemed partly to recline. In

this shed stood a saddled horse, employed in eating his corn. The

cottages in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which

characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little

for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of

ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical

scrawl below attempted to express a promise of ‘good entertainment for

man and horse.’ Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered

the cabaret. [Footnote: See Note 2.]

The first object which caught his eye in the kitchen was a tall, stout,

country-looking man in a large jockey great-coat, the owner of the horse

which stood in the shed, who was busy discussing huge slices of cold

boiled beef, and casting from time to time an eye through the window to

see how his steed sped with his provender. A large tankard of ale flanked

his plate of victuals, to which he applied himself by intervals. The good

woman of the house was employed in baking. The fire, as is usual in that

country, was on a stone hearth, in the midst of an immensely large

chimney, which had two seats extended beneath the vent. On one of these

sat a remarkably tall woman, in a red cloak and slouched bonnet, having

the appearance of a tinker or beggar. She was busily engaged with a short

black tobacco-pipe.

At the request of Brown for some food, the landlady wiped with her mealy

apron one corner of the deal table, placed a wooden trencher and knife

and fork before the traveller, pointed to the round of beef, recommended

Mr. Dinmont’s good example, and finally filled a brown pitcher with her

home-brewed. Brown lost no time in doing ample credit to both. For a

while his opposite neighbour and he were too busy to take much notice of

each other, except by a good-humoured nod as each in turn raised the

tankard to his head. At length, when our pedestrian began to supply the

wants of little Wasp, the Scotch store-farmer, for such was Mr. Dinmont,

found himself at leisure to enter into conversation.

‘A bonny terrier that, sir, and a fell chield at the vermin, I warrant

him; that is, if he’s been weel entered, for it a’ lies in that.’

‘Really, sir,’ said Brown, ‘his education has been somewhat neglected,

and his chief property is being a pleasant companion.’

‘Ay, sir? that’s a pity, begging your pardon, it’s a great pity that;

beast or body, education should aye be minded. I have six terriers at

hame, forbye twa couple of slow-hunds, five grews, and a wheen other

dogs. There’s auld Pepper and auld Mustard, and young Pepper and young

Mustard, and little Pepper and little Mustard. I had them a’ regularly

entered, first wi’ rottens, then wi’ stots or weasels, and then wi’ the

tods and brocks, and now they fear naething that ever cam wi’ a hairy

skin on’t.’

‘I have no doubt, sir, they are thoroughbred; but, to have so many dogs,

you seem to have a very limited variety of names for them?’

‘O, that’s a fancy of my ain to mark the breed, sir. The Deuke himsell

has sent as far as Charlie’s Hope to get ane o’ Dandy Dinmont’s Pepper

and Mustard terriers. Lord, man, he sent Tam Hudson [Footnote: The real

name of this veteran sportsman is now restored.] the keeper, and sicken a

day as we had wi’ the foumarts and the tods, and sicken a blythe gae-down

as we had again e’en! Faith, that was a night!’

‘I suppose game is very plenty with you?’

‘Plenty, man! I believe there’s mair hares than sheep on my farm; and for

the moor-fowl or the grey-fowl, they lie as thick as doos in a dookit.

Did ye ever shoot a blackcock, man?’

‘Really I had never even the pleasure to see one, except in the museum at

Keswick.’

‘There now! I could guess that by your Southland tongue. It’s very odd of

these English folk that come here, how few of them has seen a blackcock!

I’ll tell you what--ye seem to be an honest lad, and if you’ll call on

me, on Dandy Dinmont, at Charlie’s Hope, ye shall see a blackcock, and

shoot a blackcock, and eat a blackcock too, man.’

‘Why, the proof of the matter is the eating, to be sure, sir; and I shall

be happy if I can find time to accept your invitation.’

‘Time, man? what ails ye to gae hame wi’ me the now? How d’ ye travel?’

‘On foot, sir; and if that handsome pony be yours, I should find it

impossible to keep up with you.’

‘No, unless ye can walk up to fourteen mile an hour. But ye can come ower

the night as far as Riccarton, where there is a public; or if ye like to

stop at Jockey Grieve’s at the Heuch, they would be blythe to see ye, and

I am just gaun to stop and drink a dram at the door wi’ him, and I would

tell him you’re coming up. Or stay--gudewife, could ye lend this

gentleman the gudeman’s galloway, and I’ll send it ower the Waste in the

morning wi’ the callant?’

The galloway was turned out upon the fell, and was swear to

catch.--‘Aweel, aweel, there’s nae help for’t, but come up the morn at

ony rate. And now, gudewife, I maun ride, to get to the Liddel or it be

dark, for your Waste has but a kittle character, ye ken yoursell.’

‘Hout fie, Mr. Dinmont, that’s no like you, to gie the country an ill

name. I wot, there has been nane stirred in the Waste since Sawney

Culloch, the travelling-merchant, that Rowley Overdees and Jock Penny

suffered for at Carlisle twa years since. There’s no ane in Bewcastle

would do the like o’ that now; we be a’ true folk now.’

‘Ay, Tib, that will be when the deil’s blind; and his een’s no sair yet.

But hear ye, gudewife, I have been through maist feck o’ Galloway and

Dumfries-shire, and I have been round by Carlisle, and I was at the

Staneshiebank Fair the day, and I would like ill to be rubbit sae near

hame, so I’ll take the gate.’

‘Hae ye been in Dumfries and Galloway?’ said the old dame who sate

smoking by the fireside, and who had not yet spoken a word.

‘Troth have I, gudewife, and a weary round I’ve had o’t.’

‘Then ye’ll maybe ken a place they ca’ Ellangowan?’

‘Ellangowan, that was Mr. Bertram’s? I ken the place weel eneugh. The

Laird died about a fortnight since, as I heard.’

‘Died!’ said the old woman, dropping her pipe, and rising and coming

forward upon the floor--‘died? are you sure of that?’

‘Troth, am I,’ said Dinmont, ‘for it made nae sma’ noise in the

country-side. He died just at the roup of the stocking and furniture; it

stoppit the roup, and mony folk were disappointed. They said he was the

last of an auld family too, and mony were sorry; for gude blude’s scarcer

in Scotland than it has been.’

‘Dead!’ replied the old woman, whom our readers have already recognised

as their acquaintance Meg Merrilies--‘dead! that quits a’ scores. And did

ye say he died without an heir?’

‘Ay did he, gudewife, and the estate’s sell’d by the same token; for they

said they couldna have sell’d it if there had been an heir-male.’

‘Sell’d!’ echoed the gipsy, with something like a scream; ‘and wha durst

buy Ellangowan that was not of Bertram’s blude? and wha could tell

whether the bonny knave-bairn may not come back to claim his ain? wha

durst buy the estate and the castle of Ellangowan?’

‘Troth, gudewife, just ane o’ thae writer chields that buys a’ thing;

they ca’ him Glossin, I think.’

‘Glossin! Gibbie Glossin! that I have carried in my creels a hundred

times, for his mother wasna muckle better than mysell--he to presume to

buy the barony of Ellangowan! Gude be wi’ us; it is an awfu’ warld! I

wished him ill; but no sic a downfa’ as a’ that neither. Wae’s me! wae’s

me to think o’t!’ She remained a moment silent but still opposing with

her hand the farmer’s retreat, who betwixt every question was about to

turn his back, but good-humouredly stopped on observing the deep interest

his answers appeared to excite.

‘It will be seen and heard of--earth and sea will not hold their peace

langer! Can ye say if the same man be now the sheriff of the county that

has been sae for some years past?’

‘Na, he’s got some other birth in Edinburgh, they say; but gude day,

gudewife, I maun ride.’ She followed him to his horse, and, while he drew

the girths of his saddle, adjusted the walise, and put on the bridle,

still plied him with questions concerning Mr. Bertram’s death and the

fate of his daughter; on which, however, she could obtain little

information from the honest farmer.

‘Did ye ever see a place they ca’ Derncleugh, about a mile frae the Place

of Ellangowan?’

‘I wot weel have I, gudewife. A wild-looking den it is, wi’ a whin auld

wa’s o’ shealings yonder; I saw it when I gaed ower the ground wi’ ane

that wanted to take the farm.’

‘It was a blythe bit ance!’ said Meg, speaking to herself. ‘Did ye notice

if there was an auld saugh tree that’s maist blawn down, but yet its

roots are in the earth, and it hangs ower the bit burn? Mony a day hae I

wrought my stocking and sat on my sunkie under that saugh.’

‘Hout, deil’s i’ the wife, wi’ her saughs, and her sunkies, and

Ellangowans. Godsake, woman, let me away; there’s saxpence t’ ye to buy

half a mutchkin, instead o’ clavering about thae auld-warld stories.’

‘Thanks to ye, gudeman; and now ye hae answered a’ my questions, and

never speired wherefore I asked them, I’ll gie you a bit canny advice,

and ye maunna speir what for neither. Tib Mumps will be out wi’ the

stirrup-dram in a gliffing. She’ll ask ye whether ye gang ower Willie’s

Brae or through Conscowthart Moss; tell her ony ane ye like, but be sure

(speaking low and emphatically) to tak the ane ye dinna tell her.’ The

farmer laughed and promised, and the gipsy retreated.

‘Will you take her advice?’ said Brown, who had been an attentive

listener to this conversation.

‘That will I no, the randy quean! Na, I had far rather Tib Mumps kenn’d

which way I was gaun than her, though Tib’s no muckle to lippen to

neither, and I would advise ye on no account to stay in the house a’

night.’

In a moment after Tib, the landlady, appeared with her stirrup-cup, which

was taken off. She then, as Meg had predicted, inquired whether he went

the hill or the moss road. He answered, the latter; and, having bid Brown

good-bye, and again told him, ‘he depended on seeing him at Charlie’s

Hope, the morn at latest,’ he rode off at a round pace.

CHAPTER XXIII

Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway

--Winter’s Tale.

The hint of the hospitable farmer was not lost on Brown. But while he

paid his reckoning he could not avoid repeatedly fixing his eyes on Meg

Merrilies. She was in all respects the same witch-like figure as when we

first introduced her at Ellangowan Place. Time had grizzled her raven

locks and added wrinkles to her wild features, but her height remained

erect, and her activity was unimpaired. It was remarked of this woman, as

of others of the same description, that a life of action, though not of

labour, gave her the perfect command of her limbs and figure, so that the

attitudes into which she most naturally threw herself were free,

unconstrained, and picturesque. At present she stood by the window of the

cottage, her person drawn up so as to show to full advantage her

masculine stature, and her head somewhat thrown back, that the large

bonnet with which her face was shrouded might not interrupt her steady

gaze at Brown. At every gesture he made and every tone he uttered she

seemed to give an almost imperceptible start. On his part, he was

surprised to find that he could not look upon this singular figure

without some emotion. ‘Have I dreamed of such a figure?’ he said to

himself, ‘or does this wild and singular-looking woman recall to my

recollection some of the strange figures I have seen in our Indian

pagodas?’

While he embarrassed himself with these discussions, and the hostess was

engaged in rummaging out silver in change of half-a-guinea, the gipsy

suddenly made two strides and seized Brown’s hand. He expected, of

course, a display of her skill in palmistry, but she seemed agitated by

other feelings.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘tell me, in the name of God, young man, what is

your name, and whence you came?’

‘My name is Brown, mother, and I come from the East Indies.’

‘From the East Indies!’ dropping his hand with a sigh; ‘it cannot be

then. I am such an auld fool, that everything I look on seems the thing I

want maist to see. But the East Indies! that cannot be. Weel, be what ye

will, ye hae a face and a tongue that puts me in mind of auld times. Good

day; make haste on your road, and if ye see ony of our folk, meddle not

and make not, and they’ll do you nae harm.’

Brown, who had by this time received his change, put a shilling into her

hand, bade his hostess farewell, and, taking the route which the farmer

had gone before, walked briskly on, with the advantage of being guided by

the fresh hoof-prints of his horse. Meg Merrilies looked after him for

some time, and then muttered to herself, ‘I maun see that lad again; and

I maun gang back to Ellangowan too. The Laird’s dead! aweel, death pays

a’ scores; he was a kind man ance. The Sheriff’s flitted, and I can keep

canny in the bush; so there’s no muckle hazard o’ scouring the

cramp-ring. I would like to see bonny Ellangowan again or I die.’

Brown meanwhile proceeded northward at a round pace along the moorish

tract called the Waste of Cumberland. He passed a solitary house, towards

which the horseman who preceded him had apparently turned up, for his

horse’s tread was evident in that direction. A little farther, he seemed

to have returned again into the road. Mr. Dinmont had probably made a

visit there either of business or pleasure. ‘I wish,’ thought Brown, ‘the

good farmer had staid till I came up; I should not have been sorry to ask

him a few questions about the road, which seems to grow wilder and

wilder.’

In truth, nature, as if she had designed this tract of country to be the

barrier between two hostile nations, has stamped upon it a character of

wildness and desolation. The hills are neither high nor rocky, but the

land is all heath and morass; the huts poor and mean, and at a great

distance from each other. Immediately around them there is generally some

little attempt at cultivation; but a half-bred foal or two, straggling

about with shackles on their hind legs, to save the trouble of

inclosures, intimate the farmer’s chief resource to be the breeding of

horses. The people, too, are of a ruder and more inhospitable class than

are elsewhere to be found in Cumberland, arising partly from their own

habits, partly from their intermixture with vagrants and criminals, who

make this wild country a refuge from justice. So much were the men of

these districts in early times the objects of suspicion and dislike to

their more polished neighbours, that there was, and perhaps still exists,

a by-law of the corporation of Newcastle prohibiting any freeman of that

city to take for apprentice a native of certain of these dales. It is

pithily said, ‘Give a dog an ill name and hang him’; and it may be added,

if you give a man, or race of men, an ill name they are very likely to do

something that deserves hanging. Of this Brown had heard something, and

suspected more, from the discourse between the landlady, Dinmont, and the

gipsy; but he was naturally of a fearless disposition, had nothing about

him that could tempt the spoiler, and trusted to get through the Waste

with daylight. In this last particular, however, he was likely to be

disappointed. The way proved longer than he had anticipated, and the

horizon began to grow gloomy just as he entered upon an extensive morass.

Choosing his steps with care and deliberation, the young officer

proceeded along a path that sometimes sunk between two broken black banks

of moss earth, sometimes crossed narrow but deep ravines filled with a

consistence between mud and water, and sometimes along heaps of gravel

and stones, which had been swept together when some torrent or waterspout

from the neighbouring hills overflowed the marshy ground below. He began

to ponder how a horseman could make his way through such broken ground;

the traces of hoofs, however, were still visible; he even thought he

heard their sound at some distance, and, convinced that Mr. Dinmont’s

progress through the morass must be still slower than his own, he

resolved to push on, in hopes to overtake him and have the benefit of his

knowledge of the country. At this moment his little terrier sprung

forward, barking most furiously.

Brown quickened his pace, and, attaining the summit of a small rising

ground, saw the subject of the dog’s alarm. In a hollow about a gunshot

below him a man whom he easily recognised to be Dinmont was engaged with

two others in a desperate struggle. He was dismounted, and defending

himself as he best could with the butt of his heavy whip. Our traveller

hastened on to his assistance; but ere he could get up a stroke had

levelled the farmer with the earth, and one of the robbers, improving his

victory, struck him some merciless blows on the head. The other villain,

hastening to meet Brown, called to his companion to come along, ‘for that

one’s CONTENT,’ meaning, probably, past resistance or complaint. One

ruffian was armed with a cutlass, the other with a bludgeon; but as the

road was pretty narrow, ‘bar fire-arms,’ thought Brown, ‘and I may manage

them well enough.’ They met accordingly, with the most murderous threats

on the part of the ruffians. They soon found, however, that their new

opponent was equally stout and resolute; and, after exchanging two or

three blows, one of them told him to ‘follow his nose over the heath, in

the devil’s name, for they had nothing to say to him.’

Brown rejected this composition as leaving to their mercy the unfortunate

man whom they were about to pillage, if not to murder outright; and the

skirmish had just recommenced when Dinmont unexpectedly recovered his

senses, his feet, and his weapon, and hastened to the scene of action. As

he had been no easy antagonist, even when surprised and alone, the

villains did not choose to wait his joining forces with a man who had

singly proved a match for them both, but fled across the bog as fast as

their feet could carry them, pursued by Wasp, who had acted gloriously

during the skirmish, annoying the heels of the enemy, and repeatedly

effecting a moment’s diversion in his master’s favour.

‘Deil, but your dog’s weel entered wi’ the vermin now, sir!’ were the

first words uttered by the jolly farmer as he came up, his head streaming

with blood, and recognised his deliverer and his little attendant.

‘I hope, sir, you are not hurt dangerously?’

‘O, deil a bit, my head can stand a gay clour; nae thanks to them,

though, and mony to you. But now, hinney, ye maun help me to catch the

beast, and ye maun get on behind me, for we maun off like whittrets

before the whole clanjamfray be doun upon us; the rest o’ them will no be

far off.’ The galloway was, by good fortune, easily caught, and Brown

made some apology for overloading the animal.

‘Deil a fear, man,’ answered the proprietor; ‘Dumple could carry six

folk, if his back was lang eneugh; but God’s sake, haste ye, get on, for

I see some folk coming through the slack yonder that it may be just as

weel no to wait for.’

Brown was of opinion that this apparition of five or six men, with whom

the other villains seemed to join company, coming across the moss towards

them, should abridge ceremony; he therefore mounted Dumple en croupe, and

the little spirited nag cantered away with two men of great size and

strength as if they had been children of six years old. The rider, to

whom the paths of these wilds seemed intimately known, pushed on at a

rapid pace, managing with much dexterity to choose the safest route, in

which he was aided by the sagacity of the galloway, who never failed to

take the difficult passes exactly at the particular spot, and in the

special manner, by which they could be most safely crossed. Yet, even

with these advantages, the road was so broken, and they were so often

thrown out of the direct course by various impediments, that they did not

gain much on their pursuers. ‘Never mind,’ said the undaunted Scotchman

to his companion, ‘if we were ance by Withershins’ Latch, the road’s no

near sae soft, and we’ll show them fair play for’t.’

They soon came to the place he named, a narrow channel, through which

soaked, rather than flowed, a small stagnant stream, mantled over with

bright green mosses. Dinmont directed his steed towards a pass where the

water appeared to flow with more freedom over a harder bottom; but Dumple

backed from the proposed crossing-place, put his head down as if to

reconnoitre the swamp more nearly, stretching forward his fore-feet, and

stood as fast as if he had been cut out of stone.

‘Had we not better,’ said Brown, ‘dismount, and leave him to his fate; or

can you not urge him through the swamp?’

‘Na, na,’ said his pilot, ‘we maun cross Dumple at no rate, he has mair

sense than mony a Christian.’ So saying, he relaxed the reins, and shook

them loosely. ‘Come now, lad, take your ain way o’t, let’s see where

ye’ll take us through.’

Dumple, left to the freedom of his own will, trotted briskly to another

part of the latch, less promising, as Brown thought, in appearance, but

which the animal’s sagacity or experience recommended as the safer of the

two, and where, plunging in, he attained the other side with little

difficulty.

‘I’m glad we’re out o’ that moss,’ said Dinmont, ‘where there’s mair

stables for horses than change-houses for men; we have the Maiden-way to

help us now, at ony rate.’ Accordingly, they speedily gained a sort of

rugged causeway so called, being the remains of an old Roman road which

traverses these wild regions in a due northerly direction. Here they got

on at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, Dumple seeking no other

respite than what arose from changing his pace from canter to trot. ‘I

could gar him show mair action,’ said his master, ‘but we are twa

lang-legged chields after a’, and it would be a pity to stress Dumple;

there wasna the like o’ him at Staneshiebank Fair the day.’

Brown readily assented to the propriety of sparing the horse, and added

that, as they were now far out of the reach of the rogues, he thought Mr.

Dintnont had better tie a handkerchief round his head, for fear of the

cold frosty air aggravating the wound.

‘What would I do that for?’ answered the hardy farmer; ‘the best way’s to

let the blood barken upon the cut; that saves plasters, hinney.’

Brown, who in his military profession had seen a great many hard blows

pass, could not help remarking, ‘he had never known such severe strokes

received with so much apparent indifference.’

‘Hout tout, man! I would never be making a humdudgeon about a scart on

the pow; but we’ll be in Scotland in five minutes now, and ye maun gang

up to Charlie’s Hope wi’ me, that’s a clear case.’

Brown readily accepted the offered hospitality. Night was now falling

when they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way through a

pastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt than those which

Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy sides at once upon the

river. They had no pretensions to magnificence of height, or to romantic

shapes, nor did their smooth swelling slopes exhibit either rocks or

woods. Yet the view was wild, solitary, and pleasingly rural. No

inclosures, no roads, almost no tillage; it seemed a land which a

patriarch would have chosen to feed his flocks and herds. The remains of

here and there a dismantled and ruined tower showed that it had once

harboured beings of a very different description from its present

inhabitants; those freebooters, namely, to whose exploits the wars

between England and Scotland bear witness.

Descending by a path towards a well-known ford, Dumple crossed the small

river, and then, quickening his pace, trotted about a mile briskly up its

banks, and approached two or three low thatched houses, placed with their

angles to each other, with a great contempt of regularity. This was the

farm-steading of Charlie’s Hope, or, in the language of the country, ‘the

town.’ A most furious barking was set up at their approach by the whole

three generations of Mustard and Pepper, and a number of allies, names

unknown. The farmer [Footnote: See Note 3.] made his well-known voice

lustily heard to restore order; the door opened, and a half-dressed

ewe-milker, who had done that good office, shut it in their faces, in

order that she might run ‘ben the house’ to cry ‘Mistress, mistress, it’s

the master, and another man wi’ him.’ Dumple, turned loose, walked to his

own stable-door, and there pawed and whinnied for admission, in strains

which were answered by his acquaintances from the interior. Amid this

bustle Brown was fain to secure Wasp from the other dogs, who, with

ardour corresponding more to their own names than to the hospitable

temper of their owner, were much disposed to use the intruder roughly.

In about a minute a stout labourer was patting Dumple, and introducing

him into the stable, while Mrs. Dinmont, a well-favoured buxom dame,

welcomed her husband with unfeigned rapture. ‘Eh, sirs! gudeman, ye hae

been a weary while away!’

CHAPTER XXIV

Liddell till now, except in Doric lays,

Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,

Unknown in song, though not a purer stream

Rolls towards the western main

Art of Preserving Health.

The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more

refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe

have either altogether disappeared or are greatly modified. Without

losing the rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown

to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of

their possessions but in all the comforts of life. Their houses are more

commodious, their habits of life regulated so as better to keep pace with

those of the civilised world, and the best of luxuries, the luxury of

knowledge, has gained much ground among their hills during the last

thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing, is now fast

losing ground; and, while the frankness of their extensive hospitality

continues the same, it is, generally speaking, refined in its character

and restrained in its excesses.

‘Deil’s in the wife,’ said Dandie Dinmont, shaking off his spouse’s

embrace, but gently and with a look of great affection; ‘deil’s in ye,

Ailie; d’ye no see the stranger gentleman?’

Ailie turned to make her apology--‘Troth, I was sae weel pleased to see

the gudeman, that--but, gude gracious! what’s the matter wi’ ye baith?’

for they were now in her little parlour, and the candle showed the

streaks of blood which Dinmont’s wounded head had plentifully imparted to

the clothes of his companion as well as to his own. ‘Ye’ve been fighting

again, Dandie, wi’ some o’ the Bewcastle horse-coupers! Wow, man, a

married man, wi’ a bonny family like yours, should ken better what a

father’s life’s worth in the warld’; the tears stood in the good woman’s

eyes as she spoke.

‘Whisht! whisht! gudewife,’ said her husband, with a smack that had much

more affection than ceremony in it; ‘never mind, never mind; there’s a

gentleman that will tell you that, just when I had ga’en up to Lourie

Lowther’s, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and gotten just

in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily awa hame, twa

landloupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me or I was thinking, and got me

down, and knevelled me sair aneuch, or I could gar my whip walk about

their lugs; and troth, gudewife, if this honest gentleman hadna come up,

I would have gotten mair licks than I like, and lost mair siller than I

could weel spare; so ye maun be thankful to him for it, under God.’ With

that he drew from his side-pocket a large greasy leather pocket-book, and

bade the gudewife lock it up in her kist.

‘God bless the gentleman, and e’en God bless him wi’ a’ my heart; but

what can we do for him, but to gie him the meat and quarters we wadna

refuse to the poorest body on earth--unless (her eye directed to the

pocketbook, but with a feeling of natural propriety which made the

inference the most delicate possible), unless there was ony other way--’

Brown saw, and estimated at its due rate, the mixture of simplicity and

grateful generosity which took the downright way of expressing itself,

yet qualified with so much delicacy; he was aware his own appearance,

plain at best, and now torn and spattered with blood, made him an object

of pity at least, and perhaps of charity. He hastened to say his name was

Brown, a captain in the----regiment of cavalry, travelling for pleasure,

and on foot, both from motives of independence and economy; and he begged

his kind landlady would look at her husband’s wounds, the state of which

he had refused to permit him to examine. Mrs. Dinmont was used to her

husband’s broken heads more than to the presence of a captain of

dragoons. She therefore glanced at a table-cloth not quite clean, and

conned over her proposed supper a minute or two, before, patting her

husband on the shoulder, she bade him sit down for ‘a hard-headed loon,

that was aye bringing himsell and other folk into collie-shangies.’

When Dandie Dinmont, after executing two or three caprioles, and cutting

the Highland fling, by way of ridicule of his wife’s anxiety, at last

deigned to sit down and commit his round, black, shaggy bullet of a head

to her inspection, Brown thought he had seen the regimental surgeon look

grave upon a more trifling case. The gudewife, however, showed some

knowledge of chirurgery; she cut away with her scissors the gory locks

whose stiffened and coagulated clusters interfered with her operations,

and clapped on the wound some lint besmeared with a vulnerary salve,

esteemed sovereign by the whole dale (which afforded upon fair nights

considerable experience of such cases); she then fixed her plaster with a

bandage, and, spite of her patient’s resistance, pulled over all a

night-cap, to keep everything in its right place. Some contusions on the

brow and shoulders she fomented with brandy, which the patient did not

permit till the medicine had paid a heavy toll to his mouth. Mrs. Dinmont

then simply, but kindly, offered her assistance to Brown.

He assured her he had no occasion for anything but the accommodation of a

basin and towel.

‘And that’s what I should have thought of sooner,’ she said; ‘and I did

think o’t, but I durst na open the door, for there’s a’ the bairns, poor

things, sae keen to see their father.’

This explained a great drumming and whining at the door of the little

parlour, which had somewhat surprised Brown, though his kind landlady had

only noticed it by fastening the bolt as soon as she heard it begin. But

on her opening the door to seek the basin and towel (for she never

thought of showing the guest to a separate room), a whole tide of

white-headed urchins streamed in, some from the stable, where they had

been seeing Dumple, and giving him a welcome home with part of their

four-hours scones; others from the kitchen, where they had been listening

to old Elspeth’s tales and ballads; and the youngest, half-naked, out of

bed, all roaring to see daddy, and to inquire what he had brought home

for them from the various fairs he had visited in his peregrinations. Our

knight of the broken head first kissed and hugged them all round, then

distributed whistles, penny-trumpets, and gingerbread, and, lastly, when

the tumult of their joy and welcome got beyond bearing, exclaimed to his

guest--‘This is a’ the gude-wife’s fault, Captain; she will gie the

bairns a’ their ain way.’

‘Me! Lord help me,’ said Ailie, who at that instant entered with the

basin and ewer, ‘how can I help it? I have naething else to gie them,

poor things!’

Dinmont then exerted himself, and, between coaxing, threats, and shoving,

cleared the room of all the intruders excepting a boy and girl, the two

eldest of the family, who could, as he observed, behave themselves

‘distinctly.’ For the same reason, but with less ceremony, all the dogs

were kicked out excepting the venerable patriarchs, old Pepper and

Mustard, whom frequent castigation and the advance of years had inspired

with such a share of passive hospitality that, after mutual explanation

and remonstrance in the shape of some growling, they admitted Wasp, who

had hitherto judged it safe to keep beneath his master’s chair, to a

share of a dried-wedder’s skin, which, with the wool uppermost and

unshorn, served all the purposes of a Bristol hearth-rug.

The active bustle of the mistress (so she was called in the kitchen, and

the gudewife in the parlour) had already signed the fate of a couple of

fowls, which, for want of time to dress them otherwise, soon appeared

reeking from the gridiron, or brander, as Mrs. Dinmont denominated it. A

huge piece of cold beef-ham, eggs, butter, cakes, and barley-meal

bannocks in plenty made up the entertainment, which was to be diluted

with home-brewed ale of excellent quality and a case-bottle of brandy.

Few soldiers would find fault with such cheer after a day’s hard exercise

and a skirmish to boot; accordingly Brown did great honour to the

eatables. While the gudewife partly aided, partly instructed, a great

stout servant girl, with cheeks as red as her top-knot, to remove the

supper matters and supply sugar and hot water (which, in the damsel’s

anxiety to gaze upon an actual live captain, she was in some danger of

forgetting), Brown took an opportunity to ask his host whether he did not

repent of having neglected the gipsy’s hint.

‘Wha kens?’ answered he; ‘they’re queer deevils; maybe I might just have

‘scaped ae gang to meet the other. And yet I ‘ll no say that neither; for

if that randy wife was coming to Charlie’s Hope, she should have a pint

bottle o’ brandy and a pound o’ tobacco to wear her through the winter.

They’re queer deevils; as my auld father used to say, they’re warst where

they’re warst guided. After a’, there’s baith gude and ill about the

gipsies.’

This, and some other desultory conversation, served as a ‘shoeing-horn’

to draw on another cup of ale and another ‘cheerer,’ as Dinmont termed it

in his country phrase, of brandy and water. Brown then resolutely

declined all further conviviality for that evening, pleading his own

weariness and the effects of the skirmish, being well aware that it would

have availed nothing to have remonstrated with his host on the danger

that excess might have occasioned to his own raw wound and bloody

coxcomb. A very small bed-room, but a very clean bed, received the

traveller, and the sheets made good the courteous vaunt of the hostess,

‘that they would be as pleasant as he could find ony gate, for they were

washed wi’ the fairy-well water, and bleached on the bonny white gowans,

and bittled by Nelly and herself, and what could woman, if she was a

queen, do mair for them?’

They indeed rivalled snow in whiteness, and had, besides, a pleasant

fragrance from the manner in which they had been bleached. Little Wasp,

after licking his master’s hand to ask leave, couched himself on the

coverlet at his feet; and the traveller’s senses were soon lost in

grateful oblivion.

CHAPTER XXV

Give ye, Britons, then,

Your sportive fury, pitiless to pour

Loose on the nightly robber of the fold.

Him from his craggy winding haunts unearth’d,

Let all the thunder of the chase pursue.

THOMSON’S Seasons.

Brown rose early in the morning and walked out to look at the

establishment of his new friend. All was rough and neglected in the

neighbourhood of the house;--a paltry garden, no pains taken to make the

vicinity dry or comfortable, and a total absence of all those little

neatnesses which give the eye so much pleasure in looking at an English

farm-house. There were, notwithstanding, evident signs that this arose

only from want of taste or ignorance, not from poverty or the negligence

which attends it. On the contrary, a noble cow-house, well filled with

good milk-cows, a feeding-house, with ten bullocks of the most approved

breed, a stable, with two good teams of horses, the appearance of

domestics active, industrious, and apparently contented with their lot;

in a word, an air of liberal though sluttish plenty indicated the wealthy

fanner. The situation of the house above the river formed a gentle

declivity, which relieved the inhabitants of the nuisances that might

otherwise have stagnated around it. At a little distance was the whole

band of children playing and building houses with peats around a huge

doddered oak-tree, which was called Charlie’s Bush, from some tradition

respecting an old freebooter who had once inhabited the spot. Between the

farm-house and the hill-pasture was a deep morass, termed in that country

a slack; it had once been the defence of a fortalice, of which no

vestiges now remained, but which was said to have been inhabited by the

same doughty hero we have now alluded to. Brown endeavoured to make some

acquaintance with the children, but ‘the rogues fled from him like

quicksilver,’ though the two eldest stood peeping when they had got to

some distance. The traveller then turned his course towards the hill,

crossing the foresaid swamp by a range of stepping-stones, neither the

broadest nor steadiest that could be imagined. He had not climbed far up

the hill when he met a man descending.

He soon recognised his worthy host, though a ‘maud,’ as it is called, or

a grey shepherd’s plaid, supplied his travelling jockey-coat, and a cap,

faced with wild-cat’s fur, more comrhodiously covered his bandaged head

than a hat would have done. As he appeared through the morning mist,

Brown, accustomed to judge of men by their thewes and sinews, could not

help admiring his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the steady

firmness of his step. Dinmont internally paid the same compliment to

Brown, whose athletic form he now perused somewhat more at leisure than

he had done formerly. After the usual greetings of the morning, the guest

inquired whether his host found any inconvenient consequences from the

last night’s affray.

‘I had maist forgotten’t,’ said the hardy Borderer; ‘but I think this

morning, now that I am fresh and sober, if you and I were at the

Withershins’ Latch, wi’ ilka ane a gude oak souple in his hand, we wadna

turn back, no for half a dizzen o’ yon scaff-raff.’

‘But are you prudent, my good sir,’ said Brown, ‘not to take an hour or

two’s repose after receiving such severe contusions?’

‘Confusions!’ replied the farmer, laughing in derision. ‘Lord, Captain,

naething confuses my head. I ance jumped up and laid the dogs on the fox

after I had tumbled from the tap o’ Christenbury Craig, and that might

have confused me to purpose. Na, naething confuses me, unless it be a

screed o’ drink at an orra time. Besides, I behooved to be round the

hirsel this morning and see how the herds were coming on; they’re apt to

be negligent wi’ their footballs, and fairs, and trysts, when ane’s away.

And there I met wi’ Tarn o’ Todshaw, and a wheen o’ the rest o’ the

billies on the water side; they’re a’ for a fox-hunt this morning,--ye’ll

gang? I ‘ll gie ye Dumple, and take the brood mare mysell.’

‘But I fear I must leave you this morning, Mr. Dinmont,’ replied Brown.

‘The fient a bit o’ that,’ exclaimed the Borderer. ‘I’ll no part wi’ ye

at ony rate for a fortnight mair. Na, na; we dinna meet sic friends as

you on a Bewcastle moss every night.’

Brown had not designed his journey should be a speedy one; he therefore

readily compounded with this hearty invitation by agreeing to pass a week

at Charlie’s Hope.

On their return to the house, where the goodwife presided over an ample

breakfast, she heard news of the proposed fox-hunt, not indeed with

approbation, but without alarm or surprise. ‘Dand! ye’re the auld man

yet; naething will make ye take warning till ye’re brought hame some day

wi’ your feet foremost.’

‘Tut, lass!’ answered Dandle, ‘ye ken yoursell I am never a prin the waur

o’ my rambles.’

So saying, he exhorted Brown to be hasty in despatching his breakfast,

as, ‘the frost having given way, the scent would lie this morning

primely.’

Out they sallied accordingly for Otterscope Scaurs, the farmer leading

the way. They soon quitted the little valley, and involved themselves

among hills as steep as they could be without being precipitous. The

sides often presented gullies, down which, in the winter season, or after

heavy rain, the torrents descended with great fury. Some dappled mists

still floated along the peaks of the hills, the remains of the morning

clouds, for the frost had broken up with a smart shower. Through these

fleecy screens were seen a hundred little temporary streamlets, or rills,

descending the sides of the mountains like silver threads. By small

sheep-tracks along these steeps, over which Dinmont trotted with the most

fearless confidence, they at length drew near the scene of sport, and

began to see other men, both on horse and foot, making toward the place

of rendezvous. Brown was puzzling himself to conceive how a fox-chase

could take place among hills, where it was barely possible for a pony,

accustomed to the ground, to trot along, but where, quitting the track

for half a yard’s breadth, the rider might be either bogged or

precipitated down the bank. This wonder was not diminished when he came

to the place of action.

They had gradually ascended very high, and now found themselves on a

mountain-ridge, overhanging a glen of great depth, but extremely narrow.

Here the sportsmen had collected, with an apparatus which would have

shocked a member of the Pychely Hunt; for, the object being the removal

of a noxious and destructive animal, as well as the pleasures of the

chase, poor Reynard was allowed much less fair play than when pursued in

form through an open country. The strength of his habitation, however,

and the nature of the ground by which it was surrounded on all sides,

supplied what was wanting in the courtesy of his pursuers. The sides of

the glen were broken banks of earth and rocks of rotten stone, which sunk

sheer down to the little winding stream below, affording here and there a

tuft of scathed brushwood or a patch of furze. Along the edges of this

ravine, which, as we have said, was very narrow, but of profound depth,

the hunters on horse and foot ranged themselves; almost every farmer had

with him at least a brace of large and fierce greyhounds, of the race of

those deer-dogs which were formerly used in that country, but greatly

lessened in size from being crossed with the common breed. The huntsman,

a sort of provincial officer of the district, who receives a certain

supply of meal, and a reward for every fox he destroys, was already at

the bottom of the dell, whose echoes thundered to the chiding of two or

three brace of foxhounds. Terriers, including the whole generation of

Pepper and Mustard, were also in attendance, having been sent forward

under the care of a shepherd. Mongrel, whelp, and cur of low degree

filled up the burden of the chorus. The spectators on the brink of the

ravine, or glen, held their greyhounds in leash in readiness to slip them

at the fox as soon as the activity of the party below should force him to

abandon his cover.

The scene, though uncouth to the eye of a professed sportsman, had

something in it wildly captivating. The shifting figures on the

mountain-ridge, having the sky for their background, appeared to move in

the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and maddened with the

baying beneath, sprung here and there, and strained at the slips, which

prevented them from joining their companions. Looking down, the view was

equally striking. The thin mists were not totally dispersed in the glen,

so that it was often through their gauzy medium that the eye strove to

discover the motions of the hunters below. Sometimes a breath of wind

made the scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself

through its rude and solitary dell. They then could see the shepherds

springing with fearless activity from one dangerous point to another, and

cheering the dogs on the scent, the whole so diminished by depth and

distance that they looked like pigmies. Again the mists close over them,

and the only signs of their continued exertions are the halloos of the

men and the clamours of the hounds, ascending as it were out of the

bowels of the earth. When the fox, thus persecuted from one stronghold to

another, was at length obl’ged to abandon his valley, and to break away

for a more distant retreat, those who watched his motions from the top

slipped their greyhounds, which, excelling the fox in swiftness, and

equalling him in ferocity and spirit, soon brought the plunderer to his

life’s end.

In this way, without any attention to the ordinary rules and decorums of

sport, but apparently as much to the gratification both of bipeds and

quadrupeds as if all due ritual had been followed, four foxes were killed

on this active morning; and even Brown himself, though he had seen the

princely sports of India, and ridden a-tiger-hunting upon an elephant

with the Nabob of Arcot, professed to have received an excellent

morning’s amusement. When the sport was given up for the day, most of the

sportsmen, according to the established hospitality of the country, went

to dine at Charlie’s Hope.

During their return homeward Brown rode for a short time beside the

huntsman, and asked him some questions concerning the mode in which he

exercised his profession. The man showed an unwillingness to meet his

eye, and a disposition to be rid of his company and conversation, for

which Brown could not easily account. He was a thin, dark, active fellow,

well framed for the hardy profession which he exercised. But his face had

not the frankness of the jolly hunter; he was down-looked, embarrassed,

and avoided the eyes of those who looked hard at him. After some

unimportant observations on the success of the day, Brown gave him a

trifling gratuity, and rode on with his landlord. They found the goodwife

prepared for their reception; the fold and the poultry-yard furnished the

entertainment, and the kind and hearty welcome made amends for all

deficiencies in elegance and fashion.

CHAPTER XXVI

The Elliots and Armstrongs did convene,

They were a gallant company!

Ballad of Johnnie Armstrong

Without noticing the occupations of an intervening day or two, which, as

they consisted of the ordinary silvan amusements of shooting and

coursing, have nothing sufficiently interesting to detain the reader, we

pass to one in some degree peculiar to Scotland, which may be called a

sort of salmon-hunting. This chase, in which the fish is pursued and

struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long-shafted trident, called a

waster, is much practised at the mouth of the Esk and in the other salmon

rivers of Scotland. The sport is followed by day and night, but most

commonly in the latter, when the fish are discovered by means of torches,

or fire-grates, filled with blazing fragments of tar-barrels, which shed

a strong though partial light upon the water. On the present occasion the

principal party were embarked in a crazy boat upon a part of the river

which was enlarged and deepened by the restraint of a mill-wear, while

others, like the ancient Bacchanals in their gambols, ran along the

banks, brandishing their torches and spears, and pursuing the salmon,

some of which endeavoured to escape up the stream, while others,

shrouding themselves under roots of trees, fragments of stones, and large

rocks, attempted to conceal themselves from the researches of the

fishermen. These the party in the boat detected by the slightest

indications; the twinkling of a fin, the rising of an airbell, was

sufficient to point out to these adroit sportsmen in what direction to

use their weapon.

The scene was inexpressibly animating to those accustomed to it; but, as

Brown was not practised to use the spear, he soon tired of making efforts

which were attended with no other consequences than jarring his arms

against the rocks at the bottom of the river, upon which, instead of the

devoted salmon, he often bestowed his blow. Nor did he relish, though he

concealed feelings which would not have been understood, being quite so

near the agonies of the expiring salmon, as they lay flapping about in

the boat, which they moistened with their blood. He therefore requested

to be put ashore, and, from the top of a heugh or broken bank, enjoyed

the scene much more to his satisfaction. Often he thought of his friend

Dudley the artist, when he observed the effect produced by the strong red

glare on the romantic banks under which the boat glided. Now the light

diminished to a distant star that seemed to twinkle on the waters, like

those which, according to the legends of the country, the water-kelpy

sends for the purpose of indicating the watery grave of his victims. Then

it advanced nearer, brightening and enlarging as it again approached,

till the broad flickering flame rendered bank and rock and tree visible

as it passed, tingeing them with its own red glare of dusky light, and

resigning them gradually to darkness, or to pale moonlight, as it

receded. By this light also were seen the figures in the boat, now

holding high their weapons, now stooping to strike, now standing upright,

bronzed by the same red glare into a colour which might have befitted the

regions of Pandemonium.

Having amused himself for some time with these effects of light and

shadow, Brown strolled homewards towards the farm-house, gazing in his

way at the persons engaged in the sport, two or three of whom are

generally kept together, one holding the torch, the others with their

spears, ready to avail themselves of the light it affords to strike their

prey. As he observed one man struggling with a very weighty salmon which

he had speared, but was unable completely to raise from the water, Brown

advanced close to the bank to see the issue of his exertions. The man who

held the torch in this instance was the huntsman, whose sulky demeanour

Brown had already noticed with surprise. ‘Come here, sir! come here, sir!

look at this ane! He turns up a side like a sow.’ Such was the cry from

the assistants when some of them observed Brown advancing.

‘Ground the waster weel, man! ground the waster weel! Haud him down! Ye

haena the pith o’ a cat!’ were the cries of advice, encouragement, and

expostulation from those who were on the bank to the sportsman engaged

with the salmon, who stood up to his middle in water, jingling among

broken ice, struggling against the force of the fish and the strength of

the current, and dubious in what manner he should attempt to secure his

booty. As Brown came to the edge of the bank, he called out--‘Hold up

your torch, friend huntsman!’ for he had already distinguished his dusky

features by the strong light cast upon them by the blaze. But the fellow

no sooner heard his voice, and saw, or rather concluded, it was Brown who

approached him, than, instead of advancing his light, he let it drop, as

if accidentally, into the water.

‘The deil’s in Gabriel!’ said the spearman, as the fragments of glowing

wood floated half-blazing, half-sparkling, but soon extinguished, down

the stream. ‘The deil’s in the man! I’ll never master him without the

light; and a braver kipper, could I but land him, never reisted abune a

pair o’ cleeks.’[Footnote: See Note 4] Some dashed into the water to lend

their assistance, and the fish, which was afterwards found to weigh

nearly thirty pounds, was landed in safety.

The behaviour of the huntsman struck Brown, although he had no

recollection of his face, nor could conceive why he should, as it

appeared he evidently did, shun his observation. Could he be one of the

footpads he had encountered a few days before? The supposition was not

altogether improbable, although unwarranted by any observation he was

able to make upon the man’s figure and face. To be sure the villains wore

their hats much slouched, and had loose coats, and their size was not in

any way so peculiarly discriminated as to enable him to resort to that

criterion. He resolved to speak to his host Dinmont on the subject, but

for obvious reasons concluded it were best to defer the explanation until

a cool hour in the morning.

The sportsmen returned loaded with fish, upwards of one hundred salmon

having been killed within the range of their sport. The best were

selected for the use of the principal farmers, the others divided among

their shepherds, cottars, dependents, and others of inferior rank who

attended. These fish, dried in the turf smoke of their cabins or

shealings, formed a savoury addition to the mess of potatoes, mixed with

onions, which was the principal part of their winter food. In the

meanwhile a liberal distribution of ale and whisky was made among them,

besides what was called a kettle of fish,--two or three salmon, namely,

plunged into a cauldron and boiled for their supper. Brown accompanied

his jolly landlord and the rest of his friends into the large and smoky

kitchen, where this savoury mess reeked on an oaken table, massive enough

to have dined Johnnie Armstrong and his merry-men. All was hearty cheer

and huzza, and jest and clamorous laughter, and bragging alternately, and

raillery between whiles. Our traveller looked earnestly around for the

dark countenance of the fox-hunter; but it was nowhere to be seen.

At length he hazarded a question concerning him. ‘That was an awkward

accident, my lads, of one of you, who dropped his torch in the water when

his companion was struggling with the large fish.’

‘Awkward!’ returned a shepherd, looking up (the same stout young fellow

who had speared the salmon); ‘he deserved his paiks for’t, to put out the

light when the fish was on ane’s witters! I’m weel convinced Gabriel

drapped the roughies in the water on purpose; he doesna like to see ony

body do a thing better than himsell.’

‘Ay,’ said another, ‘he’s sair shamed o’ himsell, else he would have been

up here the night; Gabriel likes a little o’ the gude thing as weel as

ony o’ us.’

‘Is he of this country?’ said Brown.

‘Na, na, he’s been but shortly in office, but he’s a fell hunter; he’s

frae down the country, some gate on the Dumfries side.’

‘And what’s his name, pray?’

‘Gabriel.’

‘But Gabriel what?’

‘Oh, Lord kens that; we dinna mind folk’s afternames muckle here, they

run sae muckle into clans.’

‘Ye see, sir,’ said an old shepherd, rising, and speaking very slow, ‘the

folks hereabout are a’ Armstrongs and Elliots,[Footnote: See Note 5] and

sic like--two or three given names--and so, for distinction’s sake, the

lairds and farmers have the names of their places that they live at; as,

for example, Tam o’ Todshaw, Will o’ the Flat, Hobbie o’ Sorbietrees, and

our good master here o’ the Charlie’s Hope. Aweel, sir, and then the

inferior sort o’ people, ye’ll observe, are kend by sorts o’ by-names

some o’ them, as Glaiket Christie, and the Deuke’s Davie, or maybe, like

this lad Gabriel, by his employment; as, for example, Tod Gabbie, or

Hunter Gabbie. He’s no been lang here, sir, and I dinna think ony body

kens him by ony other name. But it’s no right to rin him doun ahint his

back, for he’s a fell fox-hunter, though he’s maybe no just sae clever as

some o’ the folk hereawa wi’ the waster.’

After some further desultory conversation, the superior sportsmen retired

to conclude the evening after their own manner, leaving the others to

enjoy themselves, unawed by their presence. That evening, like all those

which Brown had passed at Charlie’s Hope, was spent in much innocent

mirth and conviviality. The latter might have approached to the verge of

riot but for the good women; for several of the neighbouring mistresses

(a phrase of a signification how different from what it bears in more

fashionable life!) had assembled at Charlie’s Hope to witness the event

of this memorable evening. Finding the punch-bowl was so often

replenished that there was some danger of their gracious presence being

forgotten, they rushed in valorously upon the recreant revellers, headed

by our good mistress Ailie, so that Venus speedily routed Bacchus. The

fiddler and piper next made their appearance, and the best part of the

night was gallantly consumed in dancing to their music.

An otter-hunt the next day, and a badger-baiting the day after, consumed

the time merrily. I hope our traveller will not sink in the reader’s

estimation, sportsman though he may be, when I inform him that on this

last occasion, after young Pepper had lost a fore-foot and Mustard the

second had been nearly throttled, he begged, as a particular and personal

favour of Mr. Dinmont, that the poor badger, who had made so gallant a

defence, should be permitted to retire to his earth without farther

molestation.

The farmer, who would probably have treated this request with supreme

contempt had it come from any other person, was contented in Brown’s case

to express the utter extremity of his wonder. ‘Weel,’ he said, ‘that’s

queer aneugh! But since ye take his part, deil a tyke shall meddle wi’

him mair in my day. We ‘ll e’en mark him, and ca’ him the Captain’s

brock; and I’m sure I’m glad I can do ony thing to oblige you,--but, Lord

save us, to care about a brock!’

After a week spent in rural sport, and distinguished by the most frank

attentions on the part of his honest landlord, Brown bade adieu to the

banks of the Liddel and the hospitality of Charlie’s Hope. The children,

with all of whom he had now become an intimate and a favourite, roared

manfully in full chorus at his departure, and he was obliged to promise

twenty times that he would soon return and play over all their favourite

tunes upon the flageolet till they had got them by heart. ‘Come back

again, Captain,’ said one little sturdy fellow, ‘and Jenny will be your

wife.’ Jenny was about eleven years old; she ran and hid herself behind

her mammy.

‘Captain, come back,’ said a little fat roll-about girl of six, holding

her mouth up to be kissed, ‘and I’ll be your wife my ainsell.’

‘They must be of harder mould than I,’ thought Brown, ‘who could part

from so many kind hearts with indifference.’ The good dame too, with

matron modesty, and an affectionate simplicity that marked the olden

time, offered her cheek to the departing guest. ‘It’s little the like of

us can do,’ she said, ‘little indeed; but yet, if there were but ony

thing--’

‘Now, my dear Mrs. Dinmont, you embolden me to make a request: would you

but have the kindness to weave me, or work me, just such a grey plaid as

the goodman wears?’ He had learned the language and feelings of the

country even during the short time of his residence, and was aware of the

pleasure the request would confer.

‘A tait o’ woo’ would be scarce amang us,’ said the goodwife,

brightening, ‘if ye shouldna hae that, and as gude a tweel as ever cam

aff a pirn. I’ll speak to Johnnie Goodsire, the weaver at the Castletown,

the morn. Fare ye weel, sir! and may ye be just as happy yoursell as ye

like to see a’ body else; and that would be a sair wish to some folk.’

I must not omit to mention that our traveller left his trusty attendant

Wasp to be a guest at Charlie’s Hope for a season. He foresaw that he

might prove a troublesome attendant in the event of his being in any

situation where secrecy and concealment might be necessary. He was

therefore consigned to the care of the eldest boy, who promised, in the

words of the old song, that he should have

A bit of his supper, a bit of his bed,

and that he should be engaged in none of those perilous pastimes in which

the race of Mustard and Pepper had suffered frequent mutilation. Brown

now prepared for his journey, having taken a temporary farewell of his

trusty little companion.

There is an odd prejudice in these hills in favour of riding. Every

farmer rides well, and rides the whole day. Probably the extent of their

large pasture farms, and the necessity of surveying them rapidly, first

introduced this custom; or a very zealous antiquary might derive it from

the times of the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ when twenty thousand

horsemen assembled at the light of the beacon-fires. [Footnote: It would

be affectation to alter this reference. But the reader will understand

that it was inserted to keep up the author’s incognito, as he was not

likely to be suspected of quoting his own works. This explanation is also

applicable to one or two similar passages, in this and the other novels,

introduced for the same reason.] But the truth is undeniable; they like

to be on horseback, and can be with difficulty convinced that any one

chooses walking from other motives than those of convenience or

necessity. Accordingly, Dinmont insisted upon mounting his guest and

accompanying him on horseback as far as the nearest town in

Dumfries-shire, where he had directed his baggage to be sent, and from

which he proposed to pursue his intended journey towards Woodbourne, the

residence of Julia Mannering.

Upon the way he questioned his companion concerning the character of the

fox-hunter; but gained little information, as he had been called to that

office while Dinmont was making the round of the Highland fairs. ‘He was

a shake-rag like fellow,’ he said, ‘and, he dared to say, had gipsy blood

in his veins; but at ony rate he was nane o’ the smaiks that had been on

their quarters in the moss; he would ken them weel if he saw them again.

There are some no bad folk amang the gipsies too, to be sic a gang,’

added Dandie; ‘if ever I see that auld randle-tree of a wife again, I ‘ll

gie her something to buy tobacco. I have a great notion she meant me very

fair after a’.’

When they were about finally to part, the good farmer held Brown long by

the hand, and at length said, ‘Captain, the woo’s sae weel up the year

that it’s paid a’ the rent, and we have naething to do wi’ the rest o’

the siller when Ailie has had her new gown, and the bairns their bits o’

duds. Now I was thinking of some safe hand to put it into, for it’s ower

muckle to ware on brandy and sugar; now I have heard that you army

gentlemen can sometimes buy yoursells up a step, and if a hundred or twa

would help ye on such an occasion, the bit scrape o’ your pen would be as

good to me as the siller, and ye might just take yer ain time o’ settling

it; it wad be a great convenience to me.’ Brown, who felt the full

delicacy that wished to disguise the conferring an obligation under the

show of asking a favour, thanked his grateful friend most heartily, and

assured him he would have recourse to his purse without scruple should

circumstances ever render it convenient for him. And thus they parted

with many expressions of mutual regard.

CHAPTER XXVII

If thou hast any love of mercy in thee,

Turn me upon my face that I may die.

JOANNA BALLIE.

Our traveller hired a post-chaise at the place where he separated from

Dinmont, with the purpose of proceeding to Kippletringan, there to

inquire into the state of the family at Woodbourne, before he should

venture to make his presence in the country known to Miss Mannering. The

stage was a long one of eighteen or twenty miles, and the road lay across

the country. To add to the inconveniences of the journey, the snow began

to fall pretty quickly. The postilion, however, proceeded on his journey

for a good many miles without expressing doubt or hesitation. It was not

until the night was completely set in that he intimated his apprehensions

whether he was in the right road. The increasing snow rendered this

intimation rather alarming, for, as it drove full in the lad’s face and

lay whitening all around him, it served in two different ways to confuse

his knowledge of the country, and to diminish the chance of his

recovering the right track. Brown then himself got out and looked round,

not, it may be well imagined, from any better hope than that of seeing

some house at which he might make inquiry. But none appeared; he could

therefore only tell the lad to drive steadily on. The road on which they

were ran through plantations of considerable extent and depth, and the

traveller therefore conjectured that there must be a gentleman’s house at

no great distance. At length, after struggling wearily on for about a

mile, the post-boy stopped, and protested his horses would not budge a

foot farther; ‘but he saw,’ he said, ‘a light among the trees, which must

proceed from a house; the only way was to inquire the road there.’

Accordingly, he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat and

a pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the seven-fold

shield of Ajax. As in this guise he was plodding forth upon his voyage of

discovery, Brown’s impatience prevailed, and, jumping out of the

carriage, he desired the lad to stop where he was by the horses, and he

would himself go to the house; a command which the driver most joyfully

obeyed.

Our traveller groped along the side of the inclosure from which the light

glimmered, in order to find some mode of approaching in that direction,

and, after proceeding for some space, at length found a stile in the

hedge, and a pathway leading into the plantation, which in that place was

of great extent. This promised to lead to the light which was the object

of his search, and accordingly Brown proceeded in that direction, but

soon totally lost sight of it among the trees. The path, which at first

seemed broad and well marked by the opening of the wood through which it

winded, was now less easily distinguishable, although the whiteness of

the snow afforded some reflected light to assist his search. Directing

himself as much as possible through the more open parts of the wood, he

proceeded almost a mile without either recovering a view of the light or

seeing anything resembling a habitation. Still, however, he thought it

best to persevere in that direction. It must surely have been a light in

the hut of a forester, for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of an

ignis fatuus. The ground at length became broken and declined rapidly,

and, although Brown conceived he still moved along what had once at least

been a pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow concealing those

breaches and inequalities, the traveller had one or two falls in

consequence. He began now to think of turning back, especially as the

falling snow, which his impatience had hitherto prevented his attending

to, was coming on thicker and faster.

Willing, however, to make a last effort, he still advanced a little way,

when to his great delight he beheld the light opposite at no great

distance, and apparently upon a level with him. He quickly found that

this last appearance was deception, for the ground continued so rapidly

to sink as made it obvious there was a deep dell, or ravine of some kind,

between him and the object of his search. Taking every precaution to

preserve his footing, he continued to descend until he reached the bottom

of a very steep and narrow glen, through which winded a small rivulet,

whose course was then almost choked with snow. He now found himself

embarrassed among the ruins of cottages, whose black gables, rendered

more distinguishable by the contrast with the whitened surface from which

they rose, were still standing; the side-walls had long since given way

to time, and, piled in shapeless heaps and covered with snow, offered

frequent and embarrassing obstacles to our traveller’s progress. Still,

however, he persevered, crossed the rivulet, not without some trouble,

and at length, by exertions which became both painful and perilous,

ascended its opposite and very rugged bank, until he came on a level with

the building from which the gleam proceeded.

It was difficult, especially by so imperfect a light, to discover the

nature of this edifice; but it seemed a square building of small size,

the upper part of which was totally ruinous. It had, perhaps, been the

abode in former times of some lesser proprietor, or a place of strength

and concealment, in case of need, for one of greater importance. But only

the lower vault remained, the arch of which formed the roof in the

present state of the building. Brown first approached the place from

whence the light proceeded, which was a long narrow slit or loop-hole,

such as usually are to be found in old castles. Impelled by curiosity to

reconnoitre the interior of this strange place before he entered, Brown

gazed in at this aperture. A scene of greater desolation could not well

be imagined. There was a fire upon the floor, the smoke of which, after

circling through the apartment, escaped by a hole broken in the arch

above. The walls, seen by this smoky light, had the rude and waste

appearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A cask or two, with

some broken boxes and packages, lay about the place in confusion. But the

inmates chiefly occupied Brown’s attention. Upon a lair composed of

straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still that,

except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave,

Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view he

perceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one or

two of those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs that precede dissolution

when the frame is tenacious of life. A female figure, dressed in a long

cloak, sate on a stone by this miserable couch; her elbows rested upon

her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp beside

her, was bent upon that of the dying person. She moistened his mouth from

time to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a low

monotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, in

some parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgar

and ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling

of the bell in Catholic days. She accompanied this dismal sound with a

slow rocking motion of her body to and fro, as if to keep time with her

song. The words ran nearly thus:--

Wasted, weary, wherefore stay,

Wrestling thus with earth and clay?

From the body pass away.

Hark! the mass is singing.

From thee doff thy mortal weed,

Mary Mother be thy speed,

Saints to help thee at thy need.

Hark! the knell is ringing.

Fear not snow-drift driving fast,

Sleet, or hail, or levin blast.

Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,

And the sleep be on thee cast

That shall ne’er know waking.

Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone,

Earth flits fast, and time draws on.

Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,

Day is near the breaking.

The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and hollow

groans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the mortal strife.

‘It will not be,’ she muttered to herself; ‘he cannot pass away with that

on his mind, it tethers him here--

Heaven cannot abide it,

Earth refuses to hide it.

[Footnote: See Note 6.]

I must open the door’; and, rising, she faced towards the door of the

apartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and,

withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable appearance

of the place, the door was cautiously secured), she lifted the latch,

saying,

Open lock, end strife, Come death, and pass life.

Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her as she

opened the door. She stepped back a pace, and he entered, instantly

recognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the same gipsy woman whom

he had met in Bewcastle. She also knew him at once, and her attitude,

figure, and the anxiety of her countenance, assumed the appearance of the

well-disposed ogress of a fairy tale, warning a stranger not to enter the

dangerous castle of her husband. The first words she spoke (holding up

her hands in a reproving manner) were, ‘Said I not to ye, Make not,

meddle not? Beware of the redding straik! [Footnote: The redding straik,

namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt two

combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the most

dangerous blow a man can receive.] You are come to no house o’ fair-strae

death.’ So saying, she raised the lamp and turned its light on the dying

man, whose rude and harsh features were now convulsed with the last

agony. A roll of linen about his head was stained with blood, which had

soaked also through the blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under no

natural disease that the wretch was suffering. Brown started back from

this horrible object, and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, ‘Wretched

woman, who has done this?’

‘They that were permitted,’ answered Meg Merrilies, while she scanned

with a close and keen glance the features of the expiring man. ‘He has

had a sair struggle; but it’s passing. I kenn’d he would pass when you

came in. That was the death-ruckle; he’s dead.’

Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices. ‘They are coming,’

said she to Brown; ‘you are a dead man if ye had as mony lives as hairs.’

Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of defence. There was none

near. He then rushed to the door with the intention of plunging among the

trees, and making his escape by flight from what he now esteemed a den of

murderers, but Merrilies held him with a masculine grasp. ‘Here,’ she

said, ‘here, be still and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or

hear, and nothing shall befall you.’

Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman’s

intimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but in

obeying her. She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw on the

opposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him carefully,

and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay about the place.

Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown arranged as softly as he

could the means of peeping from under the coverings by which he was

hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and

most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set about

arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by

its side. ‘Best to do this,’ she muttered, ‘ere he stiffen.’ She placed

on the dead man’s breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one

candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both.

Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices

had been heard without.

Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at this

moment his fears mastered his courage so completely that the cold drops

burst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserable

concealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight murder, without

weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which would

be only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach other

ear than their own; his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion of

a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and

imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling--the

bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read in

her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her

features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which

females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether

smother. There was no such touch of humanity about this woman. The

interest, whatever it was, that determined her in his favour arose not

from the impulse of compassion, but from some internal, and probably

capricious, association of feelings, to which he had no clue. It rested,

perhaps, on a fancied likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her father

in the sleeping monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapid

succession through Brown’s mind as he gazed from his hiding-place upon

this extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, and

he was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting an

escape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, which

had consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room for

resistance nor flight.

Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to every

sound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to the

dead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position.

‘He’s a bonny corpse,’ she muttered to herself, ‘and weel worth the

streaking.’ And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort of

professional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutiae, as if with

the skill and feelings of a connoisseur. A long, dark-coloured sea-cloak,

which she dragged out of a corner, was disposed for a pall. The face she

left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the capes of

the cloak so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the body, as she

muttered, ‘a mair decent appearance.’

At once three or four men, equally ruffians in appearance and dress,

rushed into the hut. ‘Meg, ye limb of Satan, how dare you leave the door

open?’ was the first salutation of the party.

‘And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in the

dead-thraw? how d’ye think the spirit was to get awa through bolts and

bars like thae?’

‘Is he dead, then?’ said one who went to the side of the couch to look at

the body.

‘Ay, ay, dead enough,’ said another; ‘but here’s what shall give him a

rousing lykewake.’ So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a corner,

while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the activity with

which she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope of her fidelity

towards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to engage the ruffians

in their debauch, to prevent the discovery which might take place if by

accident any of them should approach too nearly the place of Brown’s

concealment.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Nor board nor garner own we now,

Nor roof nor latched door,

Nor kind mate, bound, by holy vow,

To bless a good man’s store

Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,

And night is grown our day;

Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!

And use it as ye may

JOANNA BAILLIE.

Brown could now reckon his foes: they were five in number; two of them

were very powerful men, who appeared to be either real seamen or

strollers who assumed that character; the other three, an old man and two

lads, were slighter made, and, from their black hair and dark complexion,

seemed to belong to Meg’s tribe. They passed from one to another the cup

out of which they drank their spirits. ‘Here’s to his good voyage!’ said

one of the seamen, drinking; ‘a squally night he’s got, however, to drift

through the sky in.’

We omit here various execrations with which these honest gentlemen

garnished their discourse, retaining only such of their expletives as are

least offensive.

‘A does not mind wind and weather; ‘a has had many a north-easter in his

day.’

‘He had his last yesterday,’ said another gruffly; ‘and now old Meg may

pray for his last fair wind, as she’s often done before.’

‘I’ll pray for nane o’ him,’ said Meg, ‘nor for you neither, you randy

dog. The times are sair altered since I was a kinchen-mort. Men were men

then, and fought other in the open field, and there was nae milling in

the darkmans. And the gentry had kind hearts, and would have given baith

lap and pannel to ony puir gipsy; and there was not one, from Johnnie Faa

the upright man to little Christie that was in the panniers, would cloyed

a dud from them. But ye are a’ altered from the gude auld rules, and no

wonder that you scour the cramp-ring and trine to the cheat sae often.

Yes, ye are a’ altered: you ‘ll eat the goodman’s meat, drink his drink,

sleep on the strammel in his barn, and break his house and cut his throat

for his pains! There’s blood on your hands, too, ye dogs, mair than ever

came there by fair righting. See how ye’ll die then. Lang it was ere he

died; he strove, and strove sair, and could neither die nor live; but

you--half the country will see how ye’ll grace the woodie.’

The party set up a hoarse laugh at Meg’s prophecy.

‘What made you come back here, ye auld beldam?’ said one of the gipsies;

‘could ye not have staid where you were, and spaed fortunes to the

Cumberland flats? Bing out and tour, ye auld devil, and see that nobody

has scented; that’s a’ you’re good for now.’

‘Is that a’ I am good for now?’ said the indignant matron. ‘I was good

for mair than that in the great fight between our folk and Patrico

Salmon’s; if I had not helped you with these very fambles (holding up her

hands), Jean Baillie would have frummagem’d you, ye feckless do-little!’

There was here another laugh at the expense of the hero who had received

this amazon’s assistance.

‘Here, mother,’ said one of the sailors, ‘here’s a cup of the right for

you, and never mind that bully-huff.’

Meg drank the spirits, and, withdrawing herself from farther

conversation, sat down before the spot where Brown lay hid, in such a

posture that it would have been difficult for any one to have approached

it without her rising. The men, however, showed no disposition to disturb

her.

They closed around the fire and held deep consultation together; but the

low tone in which they spoke, and the cant language which they used,

prevented Brown from understanding much of their conversation. He

gathered in general that they expressed great indignation against some

individual. ‘He shall have his gruel,’ said one, and then whispered

something very low into the ear of his comrade.

‘I’ll have nothing to do with that,’ said the other.

‘Are you turned hen-hearted, Jack?’

‘No, by G-d, no more than yourself, but I won’t. It was something like

that stopped all the trade fifteen or twenty years ago. You have heard of

the Loup?’

‘I have heard HIM (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell

about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he

fetched him off the perch!’

‘Well, but it did up the trade for one while,’ said Jack.

‘How should that be?’ asked the surly villain.

‘Why,’ replied Jack, ‘the people got rusty about it, and would not deal,

and they had bought so many brooms that--’

‘Well, for all that,’ said the other, ‘I think we should be down upon the

fellow one of these darkmans and let him get it well.’

‘But old Meg’s asleep now,’ said another; ‘she grows a driveller, and is

afraid of her shadow. She’ll sing out, some of these odd-come-shortlies,

if you don’t look sharp.’

‘Never fear,’ said the old gipsy man; ‘Meg’s true-bred; she’s the last in

the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and often cuts

queer words.’

With more of this gibberish they continued the conversation, rendering it

thus, even to each other, a dark obscure dialect, eked out by significant

nods and signs, but never expressing distinctly, or in plain language,

the subject on which it turned. At length one of them, observing Meg was

still fast asleep, or appeared to be so, desired one of the lads ‘to hand

in the black Peter, that they might flick it open.’ The boy stepped to

the door and brought in a portmanteau, which Brown instantly recognised

for his own. His thoughts immediately turned to the unfortunate lad he

had left with the carriage. Had the ruffians murdered him? was the

horrible doubt that crossed his mind. The agony of his attention grew yet

keener, and while the villains pulled out and admired the different

articles of his clothes and linen, he eagerly listened for some

indication that might intimate the fate of the postilion. But the

ruffians were too much delighted with their prize, and too much busied in

examining its contents, to enter into any detail concerning the manner in

which they had acquired it. The portmanteau contained various articles of

apparel, a pair of pistols, a leathern case with a few papers, and some

money, etc., etc. At any other time it would have provoked Brown

excessively to see the unceremonious manner in which the thieves shared

his property, and made themselves merry at the expense of the owner. But

the moment was too perilous to admit any thoughts but what had immediate

reference to self-preservation.

After a sufficient scrutiny into the portmanteau, and an equitable

division of its contents, the ruffians applied themselves more closely to

the serious occupation of drinking, in which they spent the greater part

of the night. Brown was for some time in great hopes that they would

drink so deep as to render themselves insensible, when his escape would

have been an easy matter. But their dangerous trade required precautions

inconsistent with such unlimited indulgence, and they stopped short on

this side of absolute intoxication. Three of them at length composed

themselves to rest, while the fourth watched. He was relieved in this

duty by one of the others after a vigil of two hours. When the second

watch had elapsed, the sentinel awakened the whole, who, to Brown’s

inexpressible relief, began to make some preparations as if for

departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated.

Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after

some rummaging which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and

shovel; another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead

body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and

the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still

remained in garrison.

After the space of about half an hour, one of those who had departed

again returned, and whispered the others. They wrapped up the dead body

in the sea cloak which had served as a pall, and went out, bearing it

along with them. The aged sibyl then arose from her real or feigned

slumbers. She first went to the door, as if for the purpose of watching

the departure of her late inmates, then returned, and commanded Brown, in

a low and stifled voice, to follow her instantly. He obeyed; but, on

leaving the hut, he would willingly have repossessed himself of his

money, or papers at least, but this she prohibited in the most peremptory

manner. It immediately occurred to him that the suspicion of having

removed anything of which he might repossess himself would fall upon this

woman, by whom in all probability his life had been saved. He therefore

immediately desisted from his attempt, contenting himself with seizing a

cutlass, which one of the ruffians had flung aside among the straw. On

his feet, and possessed of this weapon, he already found himself half

delivered from the dangers which beset him. Still, however, he felt

stiffened and cramped, both with the cold and by the constrained and

unaltered position which he had occupied all night. But, as he followed

the gipsy from the door of the hut, the fresh air of the morning and the

action of walking restored circulation and activity to his benumbed

limbs.

The pale light of a winter’s morning was rendered more clear by the snow,

which was lying all around, crisped by the influence of a severe frost.

Brown cast a hasty glance at the landscape around him, that he might be

able again to know the spot. The little tower, of which only a single

vault remained, forming the dismal apartment in which he had spent this

remarkable night, was perched on the very point of a projecting rock

overhanging the rivulet. It was accessible only on one side, and that

from the ravine or glen below. On the other three sides the bank was

precipitous, so that Brown had on the preceding evening escaped more

dangers than one; for, if he had attempted to go round the building,

which was once his purpose, he must have been dashed to pieces. The dell

was so narrow that the trees met in some places from the opposite sides.

They were now loaded with snow instead of leaves, and thus formed a sort

of frozen canopy over the rivulet beneath, which was marked by its darker

colour, as it soaked its way obscurely through wreaths of snow. In one

place, where the glen was a little wider, leaving a small piece of flat

ground between the rivulet and the bank, were situated the ruins of the

hamlet in which Brown had been involved on the preceding evening. The

ruined gables, the insides of which were japanned with turf-smoke, looked

yet blacker contrasted with the patches of snow which had been driven

against them by the wind, and with the drifts which lay around them.

Upon this wintry and dismal scene Brown could only at present cast a very

hasty glance; for his guide, after pausing an instant as if to permit him

to indulge his curiosity, strode hastily before him down the path which

led into the glen. He observed, with some feelings of suspicion, that she

chose a track already marked by several feet, which he could only suppose

were those of the depredators who had spent the night in the vault. A

moment’s recollection, however, put his suspicions to rest. It was not to

be thought that the woman, who might have delivered him up to her gang

when in a state totally defenceless, would have suspended her supposed

treachery until he was armed and in the open air, and had so many better

chances of defence or escape. He therefore followed his guide in

confidence and silence. They crossed the small brook at the same place

where it previously had been passed by those who had gone before. The

footmarks then proceeded through the ruined village, and from thence down

the glen, which again narrowed to a ravine, after the small opening in

which they were situated. But the gipsy no longer followed the same

track; she turned aside, and led the way by a very rugged and uneven path

up the bank which overhung the village. Although the snow in many places

hid the pathway, and rendered the footing uncertain and unsafe, Meg

proceeded with a firm and determined step, which indicated an intimate

knowledge of the ground she traversed. At length they gained the top of

the bank, though by a passage so steep and intricate that Brown, though

convinced it was the same by which he had descended on the night before,

was not a little surprised how he had accomplished the task without

breaking his neck. Above, the country opened wide and uninclosed for

about a mile or two on the one hand, and on the other were thick

plantations of considerable extent.

Meg, however, still led the way along the bank of the ravine out of which

they had ascended, until she heard beneath the murmur of voices. She then

pointed to a deep plantation of trees at some distance. ‘The road to

Kippletringan,’ she said, ‘is on the other side of these inclosures. Make

the speed ye can; there’s mair rests on your life than other folk’s. But

you have lost all--stay.’ She fumbled in an immense pocket, from which

she produced a greasy purse--‘Many’s the awmous your house has gi’en Meg

and hers; and she has lived to pay it back in a small degree;’ and she

placed the purse in his hand.

‘The woman is insane,’ thought Brown; but it was no time to debate the

point, for the sounds he heard in the ravine below probably proceeded

from the banditti. ‘How shall I repay this money,’ he said, ‘or how

acknowledge the kindness you have done me?’

‘I hae twa boons to crave,’ answered the sibyl, speaking low and hastily:

‘one, that you will never speak of what you have seen this night; the

other, that you will not leave this country till you see me again, and

that you leave word at the Gordon Arms where you are to be heard of, and

when I next call for you, be it in church or market, at wedding or at

burial, Sunday or Saturday, mealtime or fasting, that ye leave everything

else and come with me.’

‘Why, that will do you little good, mother.’

‘But ‘twill do yoursell muckle, and that’s what I’m thinking o’. I am not

mad, although I have had eneugh to make me sae; I am not mad, nor

doating, nor drunken. I know what I am asking, and I know it has been the

will of God to preserve you in strange dangers, and that I shall be the

instrument to set you in your father’s seat again. Sae give me your

promise, and mind that you owe your life to me this blessed night.’

‘There’s wildness in her manner, certainly,’ thought Brown, ‘and yet it

is more like the wildness of energy than of madness.’--‘Well, mother,

since you do ask so useless and trifling a favour, you have my promise.

It will at least give me an opportunity to repay your money with

additions. You are an uncommon kind of creditor, no doubt, but--’

‘Away, away, then!’ said she, waving her hand. ‘Think not about the goud,

it’s a’ your ain; but remember your promise, and do not dare to follow me

or look after me.’ So saying, she plunged again into the dell, and

descended it with great agility, the icicles and snow-wreaths showering

down after her as she disappeared.

Notwithstanding her prohibition, Brown endeavoured to gain some point of

the bank from which he might, unseen, gaze down into the glen; and with

some difficulty (for it must be conceived that the utmost caution was

necessary) he succeeded. The spot which he attained for this purpose was

the point of a projecting rock, which rose precipitously from among the

trees. By kneeling down among the snow and stretching his head cautiously

forward, he could observe what was going on in the bottom of the dell. He

saw, as he expected, his companions of the last night, now joined by two

or three others. They had cleared away the snow from the foot of the rock

and dug a deep pit, which was designed to serve the purpose of a grave.

Around this they now stood, and lowered into it something wrapped in a

naval cloak, which Brown instantly concluded to be the dead body of the

man he had seen expire. They then stood silent for half a minute, as if

under some touch of feeling for the loss of their companion. But if they

experienced such, they did not long remain under its influence, for all

hands went presently to work to fill up the grave; and Brown, perceiving

that the task would be soon ended, thought it best to take the gipsy

woman’s hint and walk as fast as possible until he should gain the

shelter of the plantation.

Having arrived under cover of the trees, his first thought was of the

gipsy’s purse. He had accepted it without hesitation, though with

something like a feeling of degradation, arising from the character of

the person by whom he was thus accommodated. But it relieved him from a

serious though temporary embarrassment. His money, excepting a very few

shillings, was in his portmanteau, and that was in possession of Meg’s

friends. Some time was necessary to write to his agent, or even to apply

to his good host at Charlie’s Hope, who would gladly have supplied him.

In the meantime he resolved to avail himself of Meg’s subsidy, confident

he should have a speedy opportunity of replacing it with a handsome

gratuity. ‘It can be but a trifling sum,’ he said to himself, ‘and I

daresay the good lady may have a share of my banknotes to make amends.’

With these reflections he opened the leathern purse, expecting to find at

most three or four guineas. But how much was he surprised to discover

that it contained, besides a considerable quantity of gold pieces, of

different coinages and various countries, the joint amount of which could

not be short of a hundred pounds, several valuable rings and ornaments

set with jewels, and, as appeared from the slight inspection he had time

to give them, of very considerable value.

Brown was equally astonished and embarrassed by the circumstances in

which he found himself, possessed, as he now appeared to be, of property

to a much greater amount than his own, but which had been obtained in all

probability by the same nefarious means through which he had himself been

plundered. His first thought was to inquire after the nearest justice of

peace, and to place in his hands the treasure of which he had thus

unexpectedly become the depositary, telling at the same time his own

remarkable story. But a moment’s consideration brought several objections

to this mode of procedure In the first place, by observing this course he

should break his promise of silence, and might probably by that means

involve the safety, perhaps the life, of this woman, who had risked her

own to preserve his, and who had voluntarily endowed him with this

treasure--a generosity which might thus become the means of her ruin.

This was not to be thought of. Besides, he was a stranger, and for a time

at least unprovided with means of establishing his own character and

credit to the satisfaction of a stupid or obstinate country magistrate.

‘I will think over the matter more maturely,’ he said; ‘perhaps there may

be a regiment quartered at the county town, in which case my knowledge of

the service and acquaintance with many officers of the army cannot fail

to establish my situation and character by evidence which a civil judge

could not sufficiently estimate. And then I shall have the commanding

officer’s assistance in managing matters so as to screen this unhappy

madwoman, whose mistake or prejudice has been so fortunate for me. A

civil magistrate might think himself obliged to send out warrants for her

at once, and the consequence, in case of her being taken, is pretty

evident. No, she has been upon honour with me if she were the devil, and

I will be equally upon honour with her. She shall have the privilege of a

court-martial, where the point of honour can qualify strict law. Besides,

I may see her at this place, Kipple--Couple--what did she call it? and

then I can make restitution to her, and e’en let the law claim its own

when it can secure her. In the meanwhile, however, I cut rather an

awkward figure for one who has the honour to bear his Majesty’s

commission, being little better than the receiver of stolen goods.’

With these reflections, Brown took from the gipsy’s treasure three or

four guineas, for the purpose of his immediate expenses, and, tying up

the rest in the purse which contained them, resolved not again to open it

until he could either restore it to her by whom it was given, or put it

into the hands of some public functionary. He next thought of the

cutlass, and his first impulse was to leave it in the plantation. But,

when he considered the risk of meeting with these ruffians, he could not

resolve on parting with his arms. His walking-dress, though plain, had so

much of a military character as suited not amiss with his having such a

weapon. Besides, though the custom of wearing swords by persons out of

uniform had been gradually becoming antiquated, it was not yet so totally

forgotten as to occasion any particular remark towards those who chose to

adhere to it. Retaining, therefore, his weapon of defence, and placing

the purse of the gipsy in a private pocket, our traveller strode

gallantly on through the wood in search of the promised highroad.

CHAPTER XXIX

All school day’s friendship childhood innocence’

We Hermia like two artificial gods

Have with our needles created both one flower,

Both on one sampler sitting on one cushion,

Both warbling of one song both in one key

As if our hands our sides, voices and minds

Had been incorporate

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

JULIA MANNERING TO MATILDA MARCHMONT

‘How can you upbraid me, my dearest Matilda, with abatement in friendship

or fluctuation in affection? Is it possible for me to forget that you are

the chosen of my heart, in whose faithful bosom I have deposited every

feeling which your poor Julia dares to acknowledge to herself? And you do

me equal injustice in upbraiding me with exchanging your friendship for

that of Lucy Bertram. I assure you she has not the materials I must seek

for in a bosom confidante. She is a charming girl, to be sure, and I like

her very much, and I confess our forenoon and evening engagements have

left me less time for the exercise of my pen than our proposed regularity

of correspondence demands. But she is totally devoid of elegant

accomplishments, excepting the knowledge of French and Italian, which she

acquired from the most grotesque monster you ever beheld, whom my father

has engaged as a kind of librarian, and whom he patronises, I believe, to

show his defiance of the world’s opinion. Colonel Mannering seems to have

formed a determination that nothing shall be considered as ridiculous so

long as it appertains to or is connected with him. I remember in India he

had picked up somewhere a little mongrel cur, with bandy legs, a long

back, and huge flapping ears. Of this uncouth creature he chose to make a

favourite, in despite of all taste and opinion; and I remember one

instance which he alleged, of what he called Brown’s petulance, was, that

he had criticised severely the crooked legs and drooping ears of Bingo.

On my word, Matilda, I believe he nurses his high opinion of this most

awkward of all pedants upon a similar principle. He seats the creature at

table, where he pronounces a grace that sounds like the scream of the man

in the square that used to cry mackerel, flings his meat down his throat

by shovelfuls, like a dustman loading his cart, and apparently without

the most distant perception of what he is swallowing, then bleats forth

another unnatural set of tones by way of returning thanks, stalks out of

the room, and immerses himself among a parcel of huge worm-eaten folios

that are as uncouth as himself! I could endure the creature well enough

had I anybody to laugh at him along with me; but Lucy Bertram, if I but

verge on the border of a jest affecting this same Mr. Sampson (such is

the horrid man’s horrid name), looks so piteous that it deprives me of

all spirit to proceed, and my father knits his brow, flashes fire from

his eye, bites his lip, and says something that is extremely rude and

uncomfortable to my feelings.

‘It was not of this creature, however, that I meant to speak to you, only

that, being a good scholar in the modern as well as the ancient

languages, he has contrived to make Lucy Bertram mistress of the former,

and she has only, I believe, to thank her own good sense, or obstinacy,

that the Greek, Latin (and Hebrew, for aught I know), were not added to

her acquisitions. And thus she really has a great fund of information,

and I assure you I am daily surprised at the power which she seems to

possess of amusing herself by recalling and arranging the subjects of her

former reading. We read together every morning, and I begin to like

Italian much better than when we were teased by that conceited animal

Cicipici. This is the way to spell his name, and not Chichipichi; you see

I grow a connoisseur.

‘But perhaps I like Miss Bertram more for the accomplishments she wants

than for the knowledge she possesses. She knows nothing of music

whatever, and no more of dancing than is here common to the meanest

peasants, who, by the way, dance with great zeal and spirit. So that I am

instructor in my turn, and she takes with great gratitude lessons from me

upon the harpsichord; and I have even taught her some of La Pique’s

steps, and you know he thought me a promising scholar.

‘In the evening papa often reads, and I assure you he is the best reader

of poetry you ever heard; not like that actor who made a kind of jumble

between reading and acting,--staring, and bending his brow, and twisting

his face, and gesticulating as if he were on the stage and dressed out in

all his costume. My father’s manner is quite different; it is the reading

of a gentleman, who produces effect by feeling, taste, and inflection of

voice, not by action or mummery. Lucy Bertram rides remarkably well, and

I can now accompany her on horseback, having become emboldened by

example. We walk also a good deal in spite of the cold. So, upon the

whole, I have not quite so much time for writing as I used to have.

‘Besides, my love, I must really use the apology of all stupid

correspondents, that I have nothing to say. My hopes, my fears, my

anxieties about Brown are of a less interesting cast since I know that he

is at liberty and in health. Besides, I must own I think that by this

time the gentleman might have given me some intimation what he was doing.

Our intercourse may be an imprudent one, but it is not very complimentary

to me that Mr. Vanbeest Brown should be the first to discover that such

is the case, and to break off in consequence. I can promise him that we

might not differ much in opinion should that happen to be his, for I have

sometimes thought I have behaved extremely foolishly in that matter. Yet

I have so good an opinion of poor Brown, that I cannot but think there is

something extraordinary in his silence.

‘To return to Lucy Bertram. No, my dearest Matilda, she can never, never

rival you in my regard, so that all your affectionate jealousy on that

account is without foundation. She is, to be sure, a very pretty, a very

sensible, a very affectionate girl, and I think there are few persons to

whose consolatory friendship I could have recourse more freely in what

are called the real evils of life. But then these so seldom come in one’s

way, and one wants a friend who will sympathise with distresses of

sentiment as well as with actual misfortune. Heaven knows, and you know,

my dearest Matilda, that these diseases of the heart require the balm of

sympathy and affection as much as the evils of a more obvious and

determinate character. Now Lucy Bertram has nothing of this kindly

sympathy, nothing at all, my dearest Matilda. Were I sick of a fever, she

would sit up night after night to nurse me with the most unrepining

patience; but with the fever of the heart, which my Matilda has soothed

so often, she has no more sympathy than her old tutor. And yet what

provokes me is, that the demure monkey actually has a lover of her own,

and that their mutual affection (for mutual I take it to be) has a great

deal of complicated and romantic interest. She was once, you must know, a

great heiress, but was ruined by the prodigality of her father and the

villainy of a horrid man in whom he confided. And one of the handsomest

young gentlemen in the country is attached to her; but, as he is heir to

a great estate, she discourages his addresses on account of the

disproportion of their fortune.

‘But with all this moderation, and self-denial, and modesty, and so

forth, Lucy is a sly girl. I am sure she loves young Hazlewood, and I am

sure he has some guess of that, and would probably bring her to

acknowledge it too if my father or she would allow him an opportunity.

But you must know the Colonel is always himself in the way to pay Miss

Bertram those attentions which afford the best indirect opportunities for

a young gentleman in Hazlewood’s situation. I would have my good papa

take care that he does not himself pay the usual penalty of meddling

folks. I assure you, if I were Hazlewood I should look on his

compliments, his bowings, his cloakings, his shawlings, and his handings

with some little suspicion; and truly I think Hazlewood does so too at

some odd times. Then imagine what a silly figure your poor Julia makes on

such occasions! Here is my father making the agreeable to my friend;

there is young Hazlewood watching every word of her lips, and every

motion of her eye; and I have not the poor satisfaction of interesting a

human being, not even the exotic monster of a parson, for even he sits

with his mouth open, and his huge round goggling eyes fixed like those of

a statue, admiring Mess Baartram!

‘All this makes me sometimes a little nervous, and sometimes a little

mischievous. I was so provoked at my father and the lovers the other day

for turning me completely out of their thoughts and society, that I began

an attack upon Hazlewood, from which it was impossible for him, in common

civility, to escape. He insensibly became warm in his defence,--I assure

you, Matilda, he is a very clever as well as a very handsome young man,

and I don’t think I ever remember having seen him to the same

advantage,--when, behold, in the midst of our lively conversation, a very

soft sigh from Miss Lucy reached my not ungratified ears. I was greatly

too generous to prosecute my victory any farther, even if I had not been

afraid of papa. Luckily for me, he had at that moment got into a long

description of the peculiar notions and manners of a certain tribe of

Indians who live far up the country, and was illustrating them by making

drawings on Miss Bertram’s work-patterns, three of which he utterly

damaged by introducing among the intricacies of the pattern his specimens

of Oriental costume. But I believe she thought as little of her own gown

at the moment as of the Indian turbands and cummerbands. However, it was

quite as well for me that he did not see all the merit of my little

manoeuvre, for he is as sharp-sighted as a hawk, and a sworn enemy to the

slightest shade of coquetry.

‘Well, Matilda, Hazlewood heard this same half-audible sigh, and

instantly repented his temporary attentions to such an unworthy object as

your Julia, and, with a very comical expression of consciousness, drew

near to Lucy’s work-table. He made some trifling observation, and her

reply was one in which nothing but an ear as acute as that of a lover, or

a curious observer like myself, could have distinguished anything more

cold and dry than usual. But it conveyed reproof to the self-accusing

hero, and he stood abashed accordingly. You will admit that I was called

upon in generosity to act as mediator. So I mingled in the conversation,

in the quiet tone of an unobserving and uninterested third party, led

them into their former habits of easy chat, and, after having served

awhile as the channel of communication through which they chose to

address each other, set them down to a pensive game at chess, and very

dutifully went to tease papa, who was still busied with his drawings. The

chess-players, you must observe, were placed near the chimney, beside a

little work-table, which held the board and men, the Colonel at some

distance, with lights upon a library table; for it is a large

old-fashioned room, with several recesses, and hung with grim tapestry,

representing what it might have puzzled the artist himself to explain.

‘“Is chess a very interesting game, papa?”

‘“I am told so,” without honouring me with much of his notice.

‘“I should think so, from the attention Mr. Hazlewood and Lucy are

bestowing on it.”

‘He raised his head “hastily and held his pencil suspended for an

instant. Apparently he saw nothing that excited his suspicions, for he

was resuming the folds of a Mahratta’s turban in tranquillity when I

interrupted him with--“How old is Miss Bertram, sir?”

‘“How should I know, Miss? About your own age, I suppose.”

‘“Older, I should think, sir. You are always telling me how much more

decorously she goes through all the honours of the tea-table. Lord, papa,

what if you should give her a right to preside once and for ever!”

‘“Julia, my dear,” returned papa, “you are either a fool outright or you

are more disposed to make mischief than I have yet believed you.”

‘“Oh, my dear sir! put your best construction upon it; I would not be

thought a fool for all the world.”

‘“Then why do you talk like one?” said my father.

‘“Lord, sir, I am sure there is nothing so foolish in what I said just

now. Everybody knows you are a very handsome man” (a smile was just

visible), “that is, for your time of life” (the dawn was overcast),

“which is far from being advanced, and I am sure I don’t know why you

should not please yourself, if you have a mind. I am sensible I am but a

thoughtless girl, and if a graver companion could render you more

happy--”

‘There was a mixture of displeasure and grave affection in the manner in

which my father took my hand, that was a severe reproof to me for

trifling with his feelings. “Julia,” he said, “I bear with much of your

petulance because I think I have in some degree deserved it, by

neglecting to superintend your education sufficiently closely. Yet I

would not have you give it the rein upon a subject so delicate. If you do

not respect the feelings of your surviving parent towards the memory of

her whom you have lost, attend at least to the sacred claims of

misfortune; and observe, that the slightest hint of such a jest reaching

Miss Bertram’s ears would at once induce her to renounce her present

asylum, and go forth, without a protector, into a world she has already

felt so unfriendly.”

‘What could I say to this, Matilda? I only cried heartily, begged pardon,

and promised to be a good girl in future. And so here am I neutralised

again, for I cannot, in honour or common good-nature, tease poor Lucy by

interfering with Hazlewood, although she has so little confidence in me;

and neither can I, after this grave appeal, venture again upon such

delicate ground with papa. So I burn little rolls of paper, and sketch

Turks’ heads upon visiting cards with the blackened end--I assure you I

succeeded in making a superb Hyder-Ally last night--and I jingle on my

unfortunate harpsichord, and begin at the end of a grave book and read it

backward. After all, I begin to be very much vexed about Brown’s silence.

Had he been obliged to leave the country, I am sure he would at least

have written to me. Is it possible that my father can have intercepted

his letters? But no, that is contrary to all his principles; I don’t

think he would open a letter addressed to me to-night, to prevent my

jumping out of window to-morrow. What an expression I have suffered to

escape my pen! I should be ashamed of it, even to you, Matilda, and used

in jest. But I need not take much merit for acting as I ought to do. This

same Mr. Vanbeest Brown is by no means so very ardent a lover as to hurry

the object of his attachment into such inconsiderate steps. He gives one

full time to reflect, that must be admitted. However, I will not blame

him unheard, nor permit myself to doubt the manly firmness of a character

which I have so often extolled to you. Were he capable of doubt, of fear,

of the shadow of change, I should have little to regret.

‘And why, you will say, when I expect such steady and unalterable

constancy from a lover, why should I be anxious about what Hazlewood

does, or to whom he offers his attentions? I ask myself the question a

hundred times a day, and it only receives the very silly answer that one

does not like to be neglected, though one would not encourage a serious

infidelity.

‘I write all these trifles because you say that they amuse you, and yet I

wonder how they should. I remember, in our stolen voyages to the world of

fiction, you always admired the grand and the romantic,--tales of

knights, dwarfs, giants, and distressed damsels, oothsayers, visions,

beckoning ghosts, and bloody hands; whereas I was partial to the involved

intrigues of private life, or at farthest to so much only of the

supernatural as is conferred by the agency of an Eastern genie or a

beneficent fairy. YOU would have loved to shape your course of life over

the broad ocean, with its dead calms and howling tempests, its tornadoes,

and its billows mountain-high; whereas I should like to trim my little

pinnace to a brisk breeze in some inland lake or tranquil bay, where

there was just difficulty of navigation sufficient to give interest and

to require skill without any sensible degree of danger. So that, upon the

whole, Matilda, I think you should have had my father, with his pride of

arms and of ancestry, his chivalrous point of honour, his high talents,

and his abstruse and mystic studies. You should have had Lucy Bertram too

for your friend, whose fathers, with names which alike defy memory and

orthography, ruled over this romantic country, and whose birth took

place, as I have been indistinctly informed, under circumstances of deep

and peculiar interest. You should have had, too, our Scottish residence,

surrounded by mountains, and our lonely walks to haunted ruins. And I

should have had, in exchange, the lawns and shrubs, and green-houses and

conservatories, of Pine Park, with your good, quiet, indulgent aunt, her

chapel in the morning, her nap after dinner, her hand at whist in the

evening, not forgetting her fat coach-horses and fatter coachman. Take

notice, however, that Brown is not included in this proposed barter of

mine; his good-humour, lively conversation, and open gallantry suit my

plan of life as well as his athletic form, handsome features, and high

spirit would accord with a character of chivalry. So, as we cannot change

altogether out and out, I think we must e’en abide as we are.’

END OF VOLUME I

GUY MANNERING

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

VOLUME II

GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER

CHAPTER I

I renounce your defiance; if you parley so roughly I’ll

barricade my gates against you. Do you see yon bay window?

Storm, I care not, serving the good Duke of Norfolk

Merry Devil of Edmonton.

JULIA MANNERING to MATILDA MARCHMONT

‘I rise from a sick-bed, my dearest Matilda, to communicate the strange

and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to

jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some

flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in

fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to

record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or

to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda,

as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a

half-rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice as represented in the

landscape of Salvator. But I will not anticipate my narrative.

‘The first part of my story is frightful enough, though it had nothing to

interest my feelings. You must know that this country is particularly

favourable to the commerce of a set of desperate men from the Isle of

Man, which is nearly opposite. These smugglers are numerous, resolute,

and formidable, and have at different times become the dread of the

neighbourhood when any one has interfered with their contraband trade.

The local magistrates, from timidity or worse motives, have become shy of

acting against them, and impunity has rendered them equally daring and

desperate. With all this my father, a stranger in the land, and invested

with no official authority, had, one would think, nothing to do. But it

must be owned that, as he himself expresses it, he was born when Mars was

lord of his ascendant, and that strife and bloodshed find him out in

circumstances and situations the most retired and pacific.

‘About eleven o’clock on last Tuesday morning, while Hazlewood and my

father were proposing to walk to a little lake about three miles’

distance, for the purpose of shooting wild ducks, and while Lucy and I

were busied with arranging our plan of work and study for the day, we

were alarmed by the sound of horses’ feet advancing very fast up the

avenue. The ground was hardened by a severe frost, which made the clatter

of the hoofs sound yet louder and sharper. In a moment two or three men,

armed, mounted, and each leading a spare horse loaded with packages,

appeared on the lawn, and, without keeping upon the road, which makes a

small sweep, pushed right across for the door of the house. Their

appearance was in the utmost degree hurried and disordered, and they

frequently looked back like men who apprehended a close and deadly

pursuit. My father and Hazlewood hurried to the front door to demand who

they were, and what was their business. They were revenue officers, they

stated, who had seized these horses, loaded with contraband articles, at

a place about three miles off. But the smugglers had been reinforced, and

were now pursuing them with the avowed purpose of recovering the goods,

and putting to death the officers who had presumed to do their duty. The

men said that, their horses being loaded, and the pursuers gaining ground

upon them, they had fled to Woodbourne, conceiving that, as my father had

served the King, he would not refuse to protect the servants of

government when threatened to be murdered in the discharge of their duty.

‘My father, to whom, in his enthusiastic feelings of military loyalty,

even a dog would be of importance if he came in the King’s name, gave

prompt orders for securing the goods in the hall, arming the servants,

and defending the house in case it should be necessary. Hazlewood

seconded him with great spirit, and even the strange animal they call

Sampson stalked out of his den, and seized upon a fowling-piece which my

father had laid aside to take what they call a rifle-gun, with which they

shoot tigers, etc., in the East. The piece went off in the awkward hands

of the poor parson, and very nearly shot one of the excisemen. At this

unexpected and involuntary explosion of his weapon, the Dominie (such is

his nickname) exclaimed, “Prodigious!” which is his usual ejaculation

when astonished. But no power could force the man to part with his

discharged piece, so they were content to let him retain it, with the

precaution of trusting him with no ammunition. This (excepting the alarm

occasioned by the report) escaped my notice at the time, you may easily

believe; but, in talking over the scene afterwards, Hazlewood made us

very merry with the Dominie’s ignorant but zealous valour.

‘When my father had got everything into proper order for defence, and his

people stationed at the windows with their firearms, he wanted to order

us out of danger--into the cellar, I believe--but we could not be

prevailed upon to stir. Though terrified to death, I have so much of his

own spirit that I would look upon the peril which threatens us rather

than hear it rage around me without knowing its nature or its progress.

Lucy, looking as pale as a marble statue, and keeping her eyes fixed on

Hazlewood, seemed not even to hear the prayers with which he conjured her

to leave the front of the house. But in truth, unless the hall-door

should be forced, we were in little danger; the windows being almost

blocked up with cushions and pillows, and, what the Dominie most

lamented, with folio volumes, brought hastily from the library, leaving

only spaces through which the defenders might fire upon the assailants.

‘My father had now made his dispositions, and we sat in breathless

expectation in the darkened apartment, the men remaining all silent upon

their posts, in anxious contemplation probably of the approaching danger.

My father, who was quite at home in such a scene, walked from one to

another and reiterated his orders that no one should presume to fire

until he gave the word. Hazlewood, who seemed to catch courage from his

eye, acted as his aid-de-camp, and displayed the utmost alertness in

bearing his directions from one place to another, and seeing them

properly carried into execution. Our force, with the strangers included,

might amount to about twelve men.

‘At length the silence of this awful period of expectation was broken by

a sound which at a distance was like the rushing of a stream of water,

but as it approached we distinguished the thick-beating clang of a number

of horses advancing very fast. I had arranged a loophole for myself, from

which I could see the approach of the enemy. The noise increased and came

nearer, and at length thirty horsemen and more rushed at once upon the

lawn. You never saw such horrid wretches! Notwithstanding the severity of

the season, they were most of them stripped to their shirts and trowsers,

with silk handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and all well armed

with carbines, pistols, and cutlasses. I, who am a soldier’s daughter,

and accustomed to see war from my infancy, was never so terrified in my

life as by the savage appearance of these ruffians, their horses reeking

with the speed at which they had ridden, and their furious exclamations

of rage and disappointment when they saw themselves baulked of their

prey. They paused, however, when they saw the preparations made to

receive them, and appeared to hold a moment’s consultation among

themselves. At length one of the party, his face blackened with gunpowder

by way of disguise, came forward with a white handkerchief on the end of

his carbine, and asked to speak with Colonel Mannering. My father, to my

infinite terror, threw open a window near which he was posted, and

demanded what he wanted. “We want our goods, which we have been robbed of

by these sharks,” said the fellow; “and our lieutenant bids me say that,

if they are delivered, we’ll go off for this bout without clearing scores

with the rascals who took them; but if not, we’ll burn the house, and

have the heart’s blood of every one in it,”--a threat which he repeated

more than once, graced by a fresh variety of imprecations, and the most

horrid denunciations that cruelty could suggest.

‘“And which is your lieutenant?” said my father in reply.

‘“That gentleman on the grey horse,” said the miscreant, “with the red

handkerchief bound about his brow.”

‘“Then be pleased to tell that gentleman that, if he and the scoundrels

who are with him do not ride off the lawn this instant, I will fire upon

them without ceremony.” So saying, my father shut the window and broke

short the conference.

‘The fellow no sooner regained his troop than, with a loud hurra, or

rather a savage yell, they fired a volley against our garrison. The glass

of the windows was shattered in every direction, but the precautions

already noticed saved the party within from suffering. Three such volleys

were fired without a shot being returned from within. My father then

observed them getting hatchets and crows, probably to assail the

hall-door, and called aloud, “Let none fire but Hazlewood and me;

Hazlewood, mark the ambassador.” He himself aimed at the man on the grey

horse, who fell on receiving his shot. Hazlewood was equally successful.

He shot the spokesman, who had dismounted and was advancing with an axe

in his hand. Their fall discouraged the rest, who began to turn round

their horses; and a few shots fired at them soon sent them off, bearing

along with them their slain or wounded companions. We could not observe

that they suffered any farther loss. Shortly after their retreat a party

of soldiers made their appearance, to my infinite relief. These men were

quartered at a village some miles distant, and had marched on the first

rumour of the skirmish. A part of them escorted the terrified revenue

officers and their seizure to a neighbouring seaport as a place of

safety, and at my earnest request two or three files remained with us for

that and the following day, for the security of the house from the

vengeance of these banditti.

‘Such, dearest Matilda, was my first alarm. I must not forget to add that

the ruffians left, at a cottage on the roadside, the man whose face was

blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear

transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the

corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a

person notorious as a poacher and smuggler. We received many messages of

congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally

allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly

check the presumption of these lawless men. My father distributed rewards

among his servants, and praised Hazlewood’s courage and coolness to the

skies. Lucy and I came in for a share of his applause, because we had

stood fire with firmness, and had not disturbed him with screams or

expostulations. As for the Dominie, my father took an opportunity of

begging to exchange snuff-boxes with him. The honest gentleman was much

flattered with the proposal, and extolled the beauty of his new snuff-box

excessively. “It looked,” he said, “as well as if it were real gold from

Ophir.” Indeed, it would be odd if it should not, being formed in fact of

that very metal; but, to do this honest creature justice, I believe the

knowledge of its real value would not enhance his sense of my father’s

kindness, supposing it, as he does, to be pinchbeck gilded. He has had a

hard task replacing the folios which were used in the barricade,

smoothing out the creases and dog’s-ears, and repairing the other

disasters they have sustained during their service in the fortification.

He brought us some pieces of lead and bullets which these ponderous tomes

had intercepted during the action, and which he had extracted with great

care; and, were I in spirits, I could give you a comic account of his

astonishment at the apathy with which we heard of the wounds and

mutilation suffered by Thomas Aquinas or the venerable Chrysostom. But I

am not in spirits, and I have yet another and a more interesting incident

to communicate. I feel, however, so much fatigued with my present

exertion that I cannot resume the pen till to-morrow. I will detain this

letter notwithstanding, that you may not feel any anxiety upon account of

your own

‘JULIA MANNERING.’