In fact, a deep black cloud had already surmounted the setting sun; a few

large drops of rain fell, and the murmurs of distant thunder were heard.

"The deil's in this man," said Cuddie to himself; "I wish he would either

light aff or ride on, that he may quarter himsell in Hamilton or the

shower begin."

But the rider sate motionless on his horse for two or three moments after

his last question, like one exhausted by some uncommon effort. At length,

recovering himself as if with a sudden and painful effort, he asked

Cuddie "if Lady Margaret Bellenden still lived."

"She does," replied Cuddie, "but in a very sma' way. They hae been a sad

changed family since thae rough times began; they hae suffered eneugh

first and last,--and to lose the auld Tower and a' the bonny barony and

the holms that I hae pleughed sae often, and the Mains, and my kale-yard,

that I suld hae gotten back again, and a' for naething, as 'a body may

say, but just the want o' some bits of sheep-skin that were lost in the

confusion of the taking of Tillietudlem."

"I have heard something of this," said the stranger, deepening his voice

and averting his head. "I have some interest in the family, and would

willingly help them if I could. Can you give me a bed in your house

to-night, my friend?"

"It's but a corner of a place, sir," said Cuddie, "but we'se try, rather

than ye suld ride on in the rain and thunner; for, to be free wi' ye,

sir, I think ye seem no that ower weel."

"I am liable to a dizziness," said the stranger, but it will soon wear

off."

"I ken we can gie ye a decent supper, sir," said Cuddie; "and we'll see

about a bed as weel as we can. We wad be laith a stranger suld lack what

we have, though we are jimply provided for in beds rather; for Jenny has

sae mony bairns (God bless them and her) that troth I maun speak to Lord

Evandale to gie us a bit eik, or outshot o' some sort, to the onstead."

"I shall be easily accommodated," said the stranger, as he entered the

house.

"And ye may rely on your naig being weel sorted," said Cuddie; "I ken

weel what belangs to suppering a horse, and this is a very gude ane."

Cuddie took the horse to the little cow-house, and called to his wife to

attend in the mean while to the stranger's accommodation. The officer

entered, and threw himself on a settle at some distance from the fire,

and carefully turning his back to the little lattice window. Jenny, or

Mrs. Headrigg, if the reader pleases, requested him to lay aside the

cloak, belt, and flapped hat which he wore upon his journey, but he

excused himself under pretence of feeling cold, and, to divert the time

till Cuddie's return, he entered into some chat with the children,

carefully avoiding, during the interval, the inquisitive glances of his

landlady.

CHAPTER XVII.

What tragic tears bedim the eye!

What deaths we suffer ere we die!

Our broken friendships we deplore,

And loves of youth that are no more.

LOGAN.

Cuddie soon returned, assuring the stranger, with a cheerful voice, "that

the horse was properly suppered up, and that the gudewife should make a

bed up for him at the house, mair purpose-like and comfortable than the

like o' them could gie him."

"Are the family at the house?" said the stranger, with an interrupted and

broken voice.

"No, stir, they're awa wi' a' the servants,--they keep only twa nowadays,

and my gudewife there has the keys and the charge, though she's no a

fee'd servant. She has been born and bred in the family, and has a' trust

and management. If they were there, we behovedna to take sic freedom

without their order; but when they are awa, they will be weel pleased we

serve a stranger gentleman. Miss Bellenden wad help a' the haill warld,

an her power were as gude as her will; and her grandmother, Leddy

Margaret, has an unto respect for the gentry, and she's no ill to the

poor bodies neither.--And now, wife, what for are ye no getting forrit

wi' the sowens?"

"Never mind, lad," rejoined Jenny, "ye sall hae them in gude time; I ken

weel that ye like your brose het."

Cuddie fidgeted and laughed with a peculiar expression of intelligence at

this repartee, which was followed by a dialogue of little consequence

betwixt his wife and him, in which the stranger took no share. At length

he suddenly interrupted them by the question: "Can you tell me when Lord

Evandale's marriage takes place?"

"Very soon, we expect," answered Jenny, before it was possible for her

husband to reply; "it wad hae been ower afore now, but for the death o'

auld Major Bellenden."

"The excellent old man!" said the stranger; "I heard at Edinburgh he was

no more. Was he long ill?"

"He couldna be said to haud up his head after his brother's wife and his

niece were turned out o' their ain house; and he had himsell sair

borrowing siller to stand the law,--but it was in the latter end o' King

James's days; and Basil Olifant, who claimed the estate, turned a papist

to please the managers, and then naething was to be refused him. Sae the

law gaed again the leddies at last, after they had fought a weary sort o'

years about it; and, as I said before, the major ne'er held up his head

again. And then cam the pitting awa o' the Stewart line; and, though he

had but little reason to like them, he couldna brook that, and it clean

broke the heart o' him; and creditors cam to Charnwood and cleaned out a'

that was there,--he was never rich, the gude auld man, for he dow'd na

see onybody want."

"He was indeed," said the stranger, with a faltering voice, "an admirable

man,--that is, I have heard that he was so. So the ladies were left

without fortune, as well as without a protector?"

"They will neither want the tane nor the tother while Lord Evandale

lives," said Jenny; "he has been a true friend in their griefs. E'en to

the house they live in is his lordship's; and never man, as my auld

gudemother used to say, since the days of the Patriarch Jacob, served sae

lang and sae sair for a wife as gude Lord Evandale has dune."

"And why," said the stranger, with a voice that quivered with emotion,

"why was he not sooner rewarded by the object of his attachment?"

"There was the lawsuit to be ended," said Jenny readily, "forby many

other family arrangements."

"Na, but," said Cuddie, "there was another reason forby; for the young

leddy--"

"Whisht, hand your tongue, and sup your sowens," said his wife; "I see

the gentleman's far frae weel, and downa eat our coarse supper. I wad

kill him a chicken in an instant."

"There is no occasion," said the stranger; "I shall want only a glass of

water, and to be left alone."

"You'll gie yoursell the trouble then to follow me," said Jenny, lighting

a small lantern, "and I'll show you the way."

Cuddie also proffered his assistance; but his wife reminded him, "That

the bairns would be left to fight thegither, and coup ane anither into

the fire," so that he remained to take charge of the menage.

His wife led the way up a little winding path, which, after threading

some thickets of sweetbrier and honeysuckle, conducted to the back-door

of a small garden. Jenny undid the latch, and they passed through an

old-fashioned flower-garden, with its clipped yew hedges and formal

parterres, to a glass-sashed door, which she opened with a master-key,

and lighting a candle, which she placed upon a small work-table, asked

pardon for leaving him there for a few minutes, until she prepared his

apartment. She did not exceed five minutes in these preparations; but

when she returned, was startled to find that the stranger had sunk

forward with his head upon the table, in what she at first apprehended to

be a swoon. As she advanced to him, however, she could discover by his

short-drawn sobs that it was a paroxysm of mental agony. She prudently

drew back until he raised his head, and then showing herself, without

seeming to have observed his agitation, informed him that his bed was

prepared. The stranger gazed at her a moment, as if to collect the sense

of her words. She repeated them; and only bending his head, as an

indication that he understood her, he entered the apartment, the door of

which she pointed out to him. It was a small bedchamber, used, as she

informed him, by Lord Evandale when a guest at Fairy Knowe, connecting,

on one side, with a little china-cabinet which opened to the garden, and

on the other, with a saloon, from which it was only separated by a thin

wainscot partition. Having wished the stranger better health and good

rest, Jenny descended as speedily as she could to her own mansion.

"Oh, Cuddie!" she exclaimed to her helpmate as she entered, "I doubt

we're ruined folk!"

"How can that be? What's the matter wi' ye?" returned the imperturbed

Cuddie, who was one of those persons who do not easily take alarm at

anything.

"Wha d' ye think yon gentleman is? Oh that ever ye suld hae asked him to

light here!" exclaimed Jenny.

"Why, wha the muckle deil d'ye say he is? There's nae law against

harbouring and intercommunicating now," said Cuddie; "sae, Whig or Tory,

what need we care wha he be?"

"Ay, but it's ane will ding Lord Evandale's marriage ajee yet, if it 's

no the better looked to," said Jenny; "it's Miss Edith's first joe, your

ain auld maister, Cuddie."

"The deil, woman!" exclaimed Cuddie, starting up, "Crow ye that I am

blind? I wad hae kend Mr. Harry Morton amang a hunder."

"Ay, but, Cuddie lad," replied Jenny, "though ye are no blind, ye are no

sae notice-taking as I am."

"Weel, what for needs ye cast that up to me just now; or what did ye see

about the man that was like our Maister Harry?"

"I will tell ye," said Jenny. "I jaloused his keeping his face frae us,

and speaking wi' a madelike voice, sae I e'en tried him wi' some tales o"

lang syne; and when I spake o' the brose, ye ken, he didna just

laugh,--he's ower grave for that nowadays, but he gae a gledge wi' his

ee that I kend he took up what I said. And a' his distress is about Miss

Edith's marriage; and I ne'er saw a man mair taen down wi' true love in

my days,--I might say man or woman, only I mind how ill Miss Edith was

when she first gat word that him and you (ye muckle graceless loon) were

coming against Tillietudlem wi' the rebels.--But what's the matter wi'

the man now?"

"What's the matter wi' me indeed!" said Cuddie, who was again hastily

putting on some of the garments he had stripped himself of; "am I no gaun

up this instant to see my maister?"

"Atweel, Cuddie, ye are gaun nae sic gate," said Jenny, coolly and

resolutely.

"The deil's in the wife!" said Cuddie. "D 'ye think I am to be John

Tamson's man, and maistered by women a' the days o' my life?"

"And whase man wad ye be? And wha wad ye hae to maister ye but me,

Cuddie, lad?" answered Jenny. "I'll gar ye comprehend in the making of a

hay-band. Naebody kens that this young gentleman is living but oursells;

and frae that he keeps himsell up sae close, I am judging that he's

purposing, if he fand Miss Edith either married, or just gaun to be

married, he wad just slide awa easy, and gie them nae mair trouble. But

if Miss Edith kend that he was living, and if she were standing before

the very minister wi' Lord Evandale when it was tauld to her, I'se

warrant she wad say No when she suld say Yes."

"Weel," replied Cuddie, "and what's my business wi' that? If Miss Edith

likes her auld joe better than her new ane, what for suld she no be free

to change her mind like other folk? Ye ken, Jenny, Halliday aye threeps

he had a promise frae yoursell."

"Halliday's a liar, and ye're naething but a gomeril to hearken till him,

Cuddie. And then for this leddy's choice, lack-a-day! ye may be sure a'

the gowd Mr. Morton has is on the outside o' his coat; and how can he

keep Leddy Margaret and the young leddy?"

"Isna there Milnwood?" said Cuddie. "Nae doubt the auld laird left his

housekeeper the liferent, as he heard nought o' his nephew; but it's but

speaking the auld wife fair, and they may a' live brawly thegither, Leddy

Margaret and a'."

"Rout tout, lad," replied Jenny; "ye ken them little to think leddies o'

their rank wad set up house wi' auld Ailie Wilson, when they're maist

ower proud to take favours frae Lord Evandale himsell. Na, na, they maun

follow the camp, if she tak Morton."

"That wad sort ill wi' the auld leddy, to be sure," said Cuddie; "she wad

hardly win ower a lang day in the baggage-wain."

"Then sic a flyting as there wad be between them, a' about Whig and

Tory," continued Jenny.

"To be sure," said Cuddie, "the auld leddy 's unto kittle in thae

points."

"And then, Cuddie," continued his helpmate, who had reserved her

strongest argument to the last, "if this marriage wi' Lord Evandale is

broken off, what comes o' our ain bit free house, and the kale-yard, and

the cow's grass? I trow that baith us and thae bonny bairns will be

turned on the wide warld!"

Here Jenny began to whimper; Cuddie writhed himself this way and that

way, the very picture of indecision. At length he broke out, "Weel,

woman, canna ye tell us what we suld do, without a' this din about it?"

"Just do naething at a'," said Jenny. "Never seem to ken onything about

this gentleman, and for your life say a word that he suld hae been here,

or up at the house! An I had kend, I wad hae gien him my ain bed, and

sleepit in the byre or he had gane up by; but it canna be helpit now. The

neist thing's to get him cannily awa the morn, and I judge he'll be in

nae hurry to come back again."

"My puir maister!" said Cuddie; "and maun I no speak to him, then?"

"For your life, no," said Jenny. "Ye're no obliged to ken him; and I

wadna hae tauld ye, only I feared ye wad ken him in the morning."

"Aweel," said Cuddie, sighing heavily, "I 'se awa to pleugh the outfield

then; for if I am no to speak to him, I wad rather be out o' the gate."

"Very right, my dear hinny," replied Jenny. Naebody has better sense than

you when ye crack a bit wi' me ower your affairs; but ye suld ne'er do

onything aff hand out o' your ain head."

"Ane wad think it's true," quoth Cuddie; "for I hae aye had some carline

or quean or another to gar me gang their gate instead o' my ain. There

was first my mither," he continued, as he undressed and tumbled himself

into bed; "then there was Leddy Margaret didna let me ca' my soul my ain;

then my mither and her quarrelled, and pu'ed me twa ways at anes, as if

ilk ane had an end o' me, like Punch and the Deevil rugging about the

Baker at the fair; and now I hae gotten a wife," he murmured in

continuation, as he stowed the blankets around his person, "and she's

like to tak the guiding o' me a' thegither."

"And amna I the best guide ye ever had in a' your life?" said Jenny, as

she closed the conversation by assuming her place beside her husband and

extinguishing the candle.

Leaving this couple to their repose, we have next to inform the reader

that, early on the next morning, two ladies on horseback, attended by

their servants, arrived at the house of Fairy Knowe, whom, to Jenny's

utter confusion, she instantly recognised as Miss Bellenden and Lady

Emily Hamilton, a sister of Lord Evandale.

"Had I no better gang to the house to put things to rights?" said Jenny,

confounded with this unexpected apparition.

"We want nothing but the pass-key," said Miss Bellenden; "Gudyill will

open the windows of the little parlour."

"The little parlour's locked, and the lock's, spoiled," answered Jenny,

who recollected the local spmpathy between that apartment and the

bedchamber of her guest.

"In the red parlour, then," said Miss Bellenden, and rode up to the front

of the house, but by an approach different from that through which Morton

had been conducted.

"All will be out," thought Jenny, "unless I can get him smuggled out of

the house the back way."

So saying, she sped up the bank in great tribulation and uncertainty.

"I had better hae said at ante there was a stranger there," was her next

natural reflection. "But then they wad hae been for asking him to

breakfast. Oh, safe us! what will I do?--And there's Gudyill walking in

the garden too!" she exclaimed internally on approaching the wicket; "and

I daurna gang in the back way till he's aff the coast. Oh, sirs! what

will become of us?"

In this state of perplexity she approached the cidevant butler, with the

purpose of decoying him out of the garden. But John Gudyill's temper was

not improved by his decline in rank and increase in years. Like many

peevish people, too, he seemed to have an intuitive perception as to what

was most likely to teaze those whom he conversed with; and, on the

present occasion, all Jenny's efforts to remove him from the garden

served only to root him in it as fast as if he had been one of the

shrubs.

Unluckily, also, he had commenced florist during his residence at Fairy

Knowe; and, leaving all other things to the charge of Lady Emily's

servant, his first care was dedicated to the flowers, which he had taken

under his special protection, and which he propped, dug, and watered,

prosing all the while upon their respective merits to poor Jenny, who

stood by him trembling and almost crying with anxiety, fear, and

impatience.

Fate seemed determined to win a match against Jenny this unfortunate

morning. As soon as the ladies entered the house, they observed that the

door of the little parlour--the very apartment out of which she was

desirous of excluding them on account of its contiguity to the room in

which Morton slept--was not only unlocked, but absolutely ajar. Miss

Bellenden was too much engaged with her own immediate subjects of

reflection to take much notice of the circumstance, but, desiring the

servant to open the window-shutters, walked into the room along with her

friend.

"He is not yet come," she said. "What can your brother possibly mean? Why

express so anxious a wish that we should meet him here? And why not come

to Castle Dinnan, as he proposed? I own, my dear Emily, that, even

engaged as we are to each other, and with the sanction of your presence,

I do not feel that I have done quite right in indulging him."

"Evandale was never capricious," answered his sister; "I am sure he will

satisfy us with his reasons, and if he does not, I will help you to scold

him."

"What I chiefly fear," said Edith, "is his having engaged in some of the

plots of this fluctuating and unhappy time. I know his heart is with that

dreadful Claverhouse and his army, and I believe he would have joined

them ere now but for my uncle's death, which gave him so much additional

trouble on our account. How singular that one so rational and so deeply

sensible of the errors of the exiled family should be ready to risk all

for their restoration!"

"What can I say?" answered Lady Emily,--"it is a point of honour with

Evandale. Our family have always been loyal; he served long in the

Guards; the Viscount of Dundee was his commander and his friend for

years; he is looked on with an evil eye by many of his own relations, who

set down his inactivity to the score of want of spirit. You must be

aware, my dear Edith, how often family connections and early

predilections influence our actions more than abstract arguments. But I

trust Evandale will continue quiet,--though, to tell you truth, I believe

you are the only one who can keep him so."

"And how is it in my power?" said Miss Bellenden.

"You can furnish him with the Scriptural apology for not going forth with

the host,--'he has married a wife, and therefore cannot come.'"

"I have promised," said Edith, in a faint voice; "but I trust I shall not

be urged on the score of time."

"Nay," said Lady Emily, "I will leave Evandale (and here he comes) to

plead his own cause."

"Stay, stay, for God's sake!" said Edith, endeavouring to detain her.

"Not I, not I," said the young lady, making her escape; "the third person

makes a silly figure on such occasions. When you want me for breakfast, I

will be found in the willow-walk by the river."

As she tripped out of the room, Lord Evandale entered. "Good-morrow,

Brother, and good-by till breakfast-time," said the lively young lady;

"I trust you will give Miss Bellenden some good reasons for disturbing

her rest so early in the morning."

And so saying, she left them together, without waiting a reply.

"And now, my lord," said Edith, "may I desire to know the meaning of your

singular request to meet you here at so early an hour?"

She was about to add that she hardly felt herself excusable in having

complied with it; but upon looking at the person whom she addressed, she

was struck dumb by the singular and agitated expression of his

countenance, and interrupted herself to exclaim, "For God's sake, what is

the matter?"

"His Majesty's faithful subjects have gained a great and most decisive

victory near Blair of Athole; but, alas! my gallant friend Lord Dundee--"

"Has fallen?" said Edith, anticipating the rest of his tidings.

"True, most true: he has fallen in the arms of victory, and not a man

remains of talents and influence sufficient to fill up his loss in King

James's service. This, Edith, is no time for temporizing with our duty. I

have given directions to raise my followers, and I must take leave of you

this evening."

"Do not think of it, my lord," answered Edith; "your life is--essential

to your friends,--do not throw it away in an adventure so rash. What can

your single arm, and the few tenants or servants who might follow you, do

against the force of almost all Scotland, the Highland clans only

excepted?"

"Listen to me, Edith," said Lord Evandale. "I am not so rash as you may

suppose me, nor are my present motives of such light importance as to

affect only those personally dependent on myself. The Life Guards, with

whom I served so long, although new-modelled and new-officered by the

Prince of Orange, retain a predilection for the cause of their rightful

master; and "--and here he whispered as if he feared even the walls of

the apartment had ears--"when my foot is known to be in the stirrup, two

regiments of cavalry have sworn to renounce the usurper's service, and

fight under my orders. They delayed only till Dundee should descend into

the Lowlands; but since he is no more, which of his successors dare take

that decisive step, unless encouraged by the troops declaring themselves!

Meantime, the zeal of the soldiers will die away. I must bring them to a

decision while their hearts are glowing with the victory their old leader

has obtained, and burning to avenge his untimely death."

"And will you, on the faith of such men as you know these soldiers to

be," said Edith, "take a part of such dreadful moment?"

"I will," said Lord Evandale,--"I must; my honour and loyalty are both

pledged for it."

"And all for the sake," continued Miss Bellenden, "of a prince whose

measures, while he was on the throne, no one could condemn more than Lord

Evandale?"

"Most true," replied Lord Evandale; "and as I resented, even during the

plenitude of his power, his innovations on Church and State, like a

freeborn subject, I am determined I will assert his real rights, when he

is in adversity, like a loyal one. Let courtiers and sycophants flatter

power and desert misfortune; I will neither do the one nor the other."

"And if you are determined to act what my feeble judgment must still term

rashly, why give yourself the pain of this untimely meeting?"

"Were it not enough to answer," said Lord Evandale, "that, ere rushing on

battle, I wished to bid adieu to my betrothed bride? Surely it is judging

coldly of my feelings, and showing too plainly the indifference of your

own, to question my motive for a request so natural."

"But why in this place, my lord," said Edith; and why with such peculiar

circumstances of mystery?"

"Because," he replied, putting a letter into her hand, "I have yet

another request, which I dare hardly proffer, even when prefaced by these

credentials."

In haste and terror, Edith glanced over the letter, which was from her

grandmother.

"My dearest childe," such was its tenor in style and spelling, "I

never more deeply regretted the reumatizm, which disqualified me

from riding on horseback, than at this present writing, when I would

most have wished to be where this paper will soon be, that is at

Fairy Knowe, with my poor dear Willie's only child. But it is the

will of God I should not be with her, which I conclude to be the

case, as much for the pain I now suffer, as because it hath now not

given way either to cammomile poultices or to decoxion of wild

mustard, wherewith I have often relieved others. Therefore, I must

tell you, by writing instead of word of mouth, that, as my young

Lord Evandale is called to the present campaign, both by his honour

and his duty, he hath earnestly solicited me that the bonds of holy

matrimony be knitted before his departure to the wars between you

and him, in implement of the indenture formerly entered into for

that effeck, whereuntill, as I see no raisonable objexion, so I

trust that you, who have been always a good and obedient childe,

will not devize any which has less than raison. It is trew that the

contrax of our house have heretofore been celebrated in a manner

more befitting our Rank, and not in private, and with few witnesses,

as a thing done in a corner. But it has been Heaven's own free will,

as well as those of the kingdom where we live, to take away from us

our estate, and from the King his throne. Yet I trust He will yet

restore the rightful heir to the throne, and turn his heart to the

true Protestant Episcopal faith, which I have the better right to

expect to see even with my old eyes, as I have beheld the royal

family when they were struggling as sorely with masterful usurpers

and rebels as they are now; that is to say, when his most sacred

Majesty, Charles the Second of happy memory, honoured our poor house

of Tillietudlem by taking his /disjune/ therein," etc., etc., etc.

We will not abuse the reader's patience by quoting more of Lady

Margaret's prolix epistle. Suffice it to say that it closed by laying her

commands on her grandchild to consent to the solemnization of her

marriage without loss of time.

"I never thought till this instant," said Edith, dropping the letter from

her hand, "that Lord Evandale would have acted ungenerously."

"Ungenerously, Edith!" replied her lover. "And how can you apply such a

term to my desire to call you mine, ere I part from you, perhaps for

ever?"

"Lord Evandale ought to have remembered," said Edith, "that when his

perseverance, and, I must add, a due sense of his merit and of the

obligations we owed him, wrung from me a slow consent that I would one

day comply with his wishes, I made it my condition that I should not be

pressed to a hasty accomplishment of my promise; and now he avails

himself of his interest with my only remaining relative to hurry me with

precipitate and even indelicate importunity. There is more selfishness

than generosity, my lord, in such eager and urgent solicitation."

Lord Evandale, evidently much hurt, took two or three turns through the

apartment ere he replied to this accusation; at length he spoke: "I

should have escaped this painful charge, durst I at once have mentioned

to Miss Bellendon my principal reason for urging this request. It is one

which she will probably despise on her own account, but which ought to

weigh with her for the sake of Lady Margaret. My death in battle must

give my whole estate to my heirs of entail; my forfeiture as a traitor,

by the usurping Government, may vest it in the Prince of Orange or some

Dutch favourite. In either case, my venerable friend and betrothed bride

must remain unprotected and in poverty. Vested with the rights and

provisions of Lady Evandale, Edith will find, in the power of supporting

her aged parent, some consolation for having condescended to share the

titles and fortunes of one who does not pretend to be worthy of her."

Edith was struck dumb by an argument which she had not expected, and was

compelled to acknowledge that Lord Evandale's suit was urged with

delicacy as well as with consideration.

"And yet," she said, "such is the waywardness with which my heart reverts

to former times that I cannot," she burst into tears, "suppress a degree

of ominous reluctance at fulfilling my engagement upon such a brief

summons."

"We have already fully considered this painful subject," said Lord

Evandale; "and I hoped, my dear Edith, your own inquiries, as well as

mine, had fully convinced you that these regrets were fruitless."

"Fruitless indeed!" said Edith, with a deep sigh, which, as if by an

unexpected echo, was repeated from the adjoining apartment. Miss

Bellenden started at the sound, and scarcely composed herself upon Lord

Evandale's assurances that she had heard but the echo of her own

respiration.

"It sounded strangely distinct," she said, "and almost ominous; but my

feelings are so harassed that the slightest trifle agitates them."

Lord Evandale eagerly attempted to soothe her alarm, and reconcile her to

a measure which, however hasty, appeared to him the only means by which

he could secure her independence. He urged his claim in virtue of the

contract, her grandmother's wish and command, the propriety of insuring

her comfort and independence, and touched lightly on his own long

attachment, which he had evinced by so many and such various services.

These Edith felt the more, the less they were insisted upon; and at

length, as she had nothing to oppose to his ardour, excepting a causeless

reluctance which she herself was ashamed to oppose against so much

generosity, she was compelled to rest upon the impossibility of having

the ceremony performed upon such hasty notice, at such a time and place.

But for all this Lord Evandale was prepared, and he explained, with

joyful alacrity, that the former chaplain of his regiment was in

attendance at the Lodge with a faithful domestic, once a non-commissioned

officer in the same corps; that his sister was also possessed of the

secret; and that Headrigg and his wife might be added to the list of

witnesses, if agreeable to Miss Bellenden. As to the place, he had chosen

it on very purpose. The marriage was to remain a secret, since Lord

Evandale was to depart in disguise very soon after it was solemnized,--a

circumstance which, had their union been public, must have drawn upon him

the attention of the Government, as being altogether unaccountable,

unless from his being engaged in some dangerous design. Having hastily

urged these motives and explained his arrangements, he ran, without

waiting for an answer, to summon his sister to attend his bride, while he

went in search of the other persons whose presence was necessary.

When Lady Emily arrived, she found her friend in an agony of tears, of

which she was at some loss to comprehend the reason, being one of those

damsels who think there is nothing either wonderful or terrible in

matrimony, and joining with most who knew him in thinking that it could

not be rendered peculiarly alarming by Lord Evandale being the

bridegroom. Influenced by these feelings, she exhausted in succession all

the usual arguments for courage, and all the expressions of sympathy and

condolence ordinarily employed on such occasions. But when Lady Emily

beheld her future sister-in-law deaf to all those ordinary topics of

consolation; when she beheld tears follow fast and without intermission

down cheeks as pale as marble; when she felt that the hand which she

pressed in order to enforce her arguments turned cold within her grasp,

and lay, like that of a corpse, insensible and unresponsive to her

caresses, her feelings of sympathy gave way to those of hurt pride and

pettish displeasure.

"I must own," she said, "that I am something at a loss to understand all

this, Miss Bellenden. Months have passed since you agreed to marry my

brother, and you have postponed the fulfilment of your engagement from

one period to another, as if you had to avoid some dishonourable or

highly disagreeable connection. I think I can answer for Lord Evandale

that he will seek no woman's hand against her inclination; and, though

his sister, I may boldly say that he does not need to urge any lady

further than her inclinations carry her. You will forgive me, Miss

Bellenden; but your present distress augurs ill for my brother's future

happiness, and I must needs say that he does not merit all these

expressions of dislike and dolour, and that they seem an odd return for

an attachment which he has manifested so long, and in so many ways."

"You are right, Lady Emily," said Edith, drying her eyes and endeavouring

to resume her natural manner, though still betrayed by her faltering

voice and the paleness of her cheeks,--"you are quite right; Lord

Evandale merits such usage from no one, least of all from her whom he has

honoured with his regard. But if I have given way, for the last time, to

a sudden and irresistible burst of feeling, it is my consolation, Lady

Emily, that your brother knows the cause, that I have hid nothing from

him, and that he at least is not apprehensive of finding in Edith

Bellenden a wife undeserving of his affection. But still you are right,

and I merit your censure for indulging for a moment fruitless regret and

painful remembrances. It shall be so no longer; my lot is cast with

Evandale, and with him I am resolved to bear it. Nothing shall in future

occur to excite his complaints or the resentment of his relations; no

idle recollections of other days shall intervene to prevent the zealous

and affectionate discharge of my duty; no vain illusions recall the

memory of other days--"

As she spoke these words, she slowly raised her eyes, which had before

been hidden by her hand, to the latticed window of her apartment, which

was partly open, uttered a dismal shriek, and fainted. Lady Emily turned

her eyes in the same direction, but saw only the shadow of a man, which

seemed to disappear from the window, and, terrified more by the state of

Edith than by the apparition she had herself witnessed, she uttered

shriek upon shriek for assistance. Her brother soon arrived, with the

chaplain and Jenny Dennison; but strong and vigorous remedies were

necessary ere they could recall Miss Bellenden to sense and motion. Even

then her language was wild and incoherent.

[Illustration: Uttered A Dismal Shriek, And Fainted--224]

"Press me no farther," she said to Lord Evandale,--"it cannot be; Heaven

and earth, the living and the dead, have leagued themselves against this

ill-omened union. Take all I can give,--my sisterly regard, my devoted

friendship. I will love you as a sister and serve you as a bondswoman,

but never speak to me more of marriage."

The astonishment of Lord Evandale may easily be conceived.

"Emily," he said to his sister, "this is your doing. I was accursed when

I thought of bringing you here; some of your confounded folly has driven

her mad!"

"On my word, Brother," answered Lady Emily, "you're sufficient to drive

all the women in Scotland mad. Because your mistress seems much disposed

to jilt you, you quarrel with your sister, who has been arguing in your

cause, and had brought her to a quiet hearing, when, all of a sudden, a

man looked in at a window, whom her crazed sensibility mistook either for

you or some one else, and has treated us gratis with an excellent tragic

scene."

"What man? What window?" said Lord Evandale, in impatient displeasure.

"Miss Bellenden is incapable of trifling with me; and yet what else could

have--"

"Hush! hush!" said Jenny, whose interest lay particularly in shifting

further inquiry; "for Heaven's sake, my lord, speak low, for my lady

begins to recover."

Edith was no sooner somewhat restored to herself than she begged, in a

feeble voice, to be left alone with Lord Evandale. All retreated,--Jenny

with her usual air of officious simplicity, Lady Emily and the chaplain

with that of awakened curiosity. No sooner had they left the apartment

than Edith beckoned Lord Evandale to sit beside her on the couch; her

next motion was to take his hand, in spite of his surprised resistance,

to her lips; her last was to sink from her seat and to clasp his knees.

"Forgive me, my lord!" she exclaimed, "forgive me! I must deal most

untruly by you, and break a solemn engagement. You have my friendship, my

highest regard, my most sincere gratitude; you have more,--you have my

word and my faith; but--oh, forgive me, for the fault is not mine--you

have not my love, and I cannot marry you without a sin!"

"You dream, my dearest Edith!" said Evandale, perplexed in the utmost

degree, "you let your imagination beguile you; this is but some delusion

of an over-sensitive mind. The person whom you preferred to me has been

long in a better world, where your unavailing regret cannot follow him,

or, if it could, would only diminish his happiness."

"You are mistaken, Lord Evandale," said Edith, solemnly; "I am not a

sleep-walker or a madwoman. No, I could not have believed from any one

what I have seen. But, having seen him, I must believe mine own eyes."

"Seen him,--seen whom?" asked Lord Evandale, in great anxiety.

"Henry Morton," replied Edith, uttering these two words as if they were

her last, and very nearly fainting when she had done so.

"Miss Bellenden," said Lord Evandale, "you treat me like a fool or a

child. If you repent your engagement to me," he continued, indignantly,

"I am not a man to enforce it against your inclination; but deal with me

as a man, and forbear this trifling."

He was about to go on, when he perceived, from her quivering eye and

pallid cheek, that nothing less than imposture was intended, and that by

whatever means her imagination had been so impressed, it was really

disturbed by unaffected awe and terror. He changed his tone, and exerted

all his eloquence in endeavouring to soothe and extract from her the

secret cause of such terror.

"I saw him!" she repeated,--"I saw Henry Morton stand at that window, and

look into the apartment at the moment I was on the point of abjuring him

for ever. His face was darker, thinner, and paler than it was wont to be;

his dress was a horseman's cloak, and hat looped down over his face; his

expression was like that he wore on that dreadful morning when he was

examined by Claverhouse at Tillietudlem. Ask your sister, ask Lady Emily,

if she did not see him as well as I. I know what has called him up,--he

came to upbraid me, that, while my heart was with him in the deep and

dead sea, I was about to give my hand to another. My lord, it is ended

between you and me; be the consequences what they will, she cannot marry

whose union disturbs the repose of the dead."

"Good Heaven!" said Evandale, as he paced the room, half mad himself with

surprise and vexation, "her fine understanding must be totally

overthrown, and that by the effort which she has made to comply with my

ill-timed, though well-meant, request. Without rest and attention her

health is ruined for ever."

At this moment the door opened, and Halliday, who had been Lord

Evandale's principal personal attendant since they both left the Guards

on the Revolution, stumbled into the room with a countenance as pale and

ghastly as terror could paint it.

"What is the matter next, Halliday?" cried his master, starting up. "Any

discovery of the--"

He had just recollection sufficient to stop short in the midst of the

dangerous sentence.

"No, sir," said Halliday, "it is not that, nor anything like that; but I

have seen a ghost!"

"A ghost, you eternal idiot!" said Lord Evandale, forced altogether out

of his patience. "Has all mankind sworn to go mad in order to drive me

so? What ghost, you simpleton?"

"The ghost of Henry Morton, the Whig captain at Bothwell Bridge," replied

Halliday. "He passed by me like a fire-flaught when I was in the garden!"

"This is midsummer madness," said Lord Evandale, "or there is some

strange villainy afloat. Jenny, attend your lady to her chamber, while I

endeavour to find a clue to all this."

But Lord Evandale's inquiries were in vain. Jenny, who might have given

(had she chosen) a very satisfactory explanation, had an interest to

leave the matter in darkness; and interest was a matter which now weighed

principally with Jenny, since the possession of an active and

affectionate husband in her own proper right had altogether allayed her

spirit of coquetry. She had made the best use of the first moments of

confusion hastily to remove all traces of any one having slept in the

apartment adjoining to the parlour, and even to erase the mark of

footsteps beneath the window, through which she conjectured Morton's face

had been seen, while attempting, ere he left the garden, to gain one look

at her whom he had so long loved, and was now on the point of losing for

ever. That he had passed Halliday in the garden was equally clear; and

she learned from her elder boy, whom she had employed to have the

stranger's horse saddled and ready for his departure, that he had rushed

into the stable, thrown the child a broad gold piece, and, mounting his

horse, had ridden with fearful rapidity down towards the Clyde. The

secret was, therefore, in their own family, and Jenny was resolved it

should remain so.

"For, to be sure," she said, "although her lady and Halliday kend Mr.

Morton by broad daylight, that was nae reason I suld own to kenning him

in the gloaming and by candlelight, and him keeping his face frae Cuddie

and me a' the time."

So she stood resolutely upon the negative when examined by Lord Evandale.

As for Halliday, he could only say that as he entered the garden-door,

the supposed apparition met him, walking swiftly, and with a visage on

which anger and grief appeared to be contending.

"He knew him well," he said, "having been repeatedly guard upon him, and

obliged to write down his marks of stature and visage in case of escape.

And there were few faces like Mr. Morton's." But what should make him

haunt the country where he was neither hanged nor shot, he, the said

Halliday, did not pretend to conceive.

Lady Emily confessed she had seen the face of a man at the window, but

her evidence went no farther. John Gudyill deponed /nil novit in causa/.

He had left his gardening to get his morning dram just at the time when

the apparition had taken place. Lady Emily's servant was waiting orders

in the kitchen, and there was not another being within a quarter of a

mile of the house.

Lord Evandale returned perplexed and dissatisfied in the highest degree

at beholding a plan which he thought necessary not less for the

protection of Edith in contingent circumstances, than for the assurance

of his own happiness, and which he had brought so very near perfection,

thus broken off without any apparent or rational cause. His knowledge of

Edith's character set her beyond the suspicion of covering any capricious

change of determination by a pretended vision. But he would have set the

apparition down to the influence of an overstrained imagination, agitated

by the circumstances in which she had so suddenly been placed, had it not

been for the coinciding testimony of Halliday, who had no reason for

thinking of Morton more than any other person, and knew nothing of Miss

Bellenden's vision when he promulgated his own. On the other hand, it

seemed in the highest degree improbable that Morton, so long and so

vainly sought after, and who was, with such good reason, supposed to be

lost when the "Vryheid" of Rotterdam went down with crew and passengers,

should be alive and lurking in this country, where there was no longer

any reason why he should not openly show himself, since the present

Government favoured his party in politics. When Lord Evandale reluctantly

brought himself to communicate these doubts to the chaplain, in order to

obtain his opinion, he could only obtain a long lecture on demonology, in

which, after quoting Delrio and Burthoog and De L'Ancre on the subject of

apparitions, together with sundry civilians and common lawyers on the

nature of testimony, the learned gentleman expressed his definite and

determined opinion to be, either that there had been an actual apparition

of the deceased Henry Morton's spirit, the possibility of which he was,

as a divine and a philosopher, neither fully prepared to admit or to

deny; or else that the said Henry Morton, being still in /rerum natura/,

had appeared in his proper person that morning; or, finally, that some

strong /deceptio visus/, or striking similitude of person, had deceived

the eyes of Miss Bellenden and of Thomas Halliday. Which of these was the

most probable hypothesis, the doctor declined to pronounce, but expressed

himself ready to die in the opinion that one or other of them had

occasioned that morning's disturbance.

Lord Evandale soon had additional cause for distressful anxiety. Miss

Bellenden was declared to be dangerously ill.

"I will not leave this place," he exclaimed, "till she is pronounced to

be in safety. I neither can nor ought to do so; for whatever may have

been the immediate occasion of her illness, I gave the first cause for it

by my unhappy solicitation."

He established himself, therefore, as a guest in the family, which the

presence of his sister, as well as of Lady Margaret Bellenden (who, in

despite of her rheumatism, caused herself to be transported thither when

she heard of her granddaughter's illness), rendered a step equally

natural and delicate. And thus he anxiously awaited until, without injury

to her health, Edith could sustain a final explanation ere his departure

on his expedition.

"She shall never," said the generous young man, "look on her engagement

with me as the means of fettering her to a union, the idea of which seems

almost to unhinge her understanding."

CHAPTER XVIII.

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shades!

Ah, fields beloved in vain!

Where once my careless childhood strayed,

A stranger yet to pain.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

It is not by corporal wants and infirmities only that men of the most

distinguished talents are levelled, during their lifetime, with the

common mass of mankind. There are periods of mental agitation when the

firmest of mortals must be ranked with the weakest of his brethren, and

when, in paying the general tax of humanity, his distresses are even

aggravated by feeling that he transgresses, in the indulgence of his

grief, the rules of religion and philosophy by which he endeavours in

general to regulate his passions and his actions. It was during such a

paroxysm that the unfortunate Morton left Fairy Knowe. To know that his

long-loved and still-beloved Edith, whose image had filled his mind for

so many years, was on the point of marriage to his early rival, who had

laid claim to her heart by so many services as hardly left her a title to

refuse his addresses, bitter as the intelligence was, yet came not as an

unexpected blow.

During his residence abroad he had once written to Edith. It was to bid

her farewell for ever, and to conjure her to forget him. He had requested

her not to answer his letter; yet he half hoped, for many a day, that she

might transgress his injunction. The letter never reached her to whom it

was addressed, and Morton, ignorant of its miscarriage, could only

conclude himself laid aside and forgotten, according to his own

self-denying request. All that he had heard of their mutual relations

since his return to Scotland prepared him to expect that he could only

look upon Miss Bellenden as the betrothed bride of Lord Evandale; and

even if freed from the burden of obligation to the latter, it would still

have been inconsistent with Morton's generosity of disposition to disturb

their arrangements, by attempting the assertion of a claim proscribed by

absence, never sanctioned by the consent of friends, and barred by a

thousand circumstances of difficulty. Why then did he seek the cottage

which their broken fortunes had now rendered the retreat of Lady Margaret

Bellenden and her granddaughter? He yielded, we are under the necessity

of acknowledging, to the impulse of an inconsistent wish which many might

have felt in his situation.

Accident apprised him, while travelling towards his native district, that

the ladies, near whose mansion he must necessarily pass, were absent; and

learning that Cuddie and his wife acted as their principal domestics, he

could not resist pausing at their cottage to learn, if possible, the real

progress which Lord Evandale had made in the affections of Miss Bellen

den--alas! no longer his Edith. This rash experiment ended as we have

related, and he parted from the house of Fairy Knowe, conscious that he

was still beloved by Edith, yet compelled, by faith and honour, to

relinquish her for ever. With what feelings he must have listened to the

dialogue between Lord Evandale and Edith, the greater part of which he

involuntarily overheard, the reader must conceive, for we dare not

attempt to describe them. An hundred times he was tempted to burst upon

their interview, or to exclaim aloud, "Edith, I yet live!" and as often

the recollection of her plighted troth, and of the debt of gratitude

which he owed Lord Evandale (to whose influence with Claverhouse he

justly ascribed his escape from torture and from death), withheld him

from a rashness which might indeed have involved all in further distress,

but gave little prospect of forwarding his own happiness. He repressed

forcibly these selfish emotions, though with an agony which thrilled his

every nerve.

"No, Edith!" was his internal oath, "never will I add a thorn to thy

pillow. That which Heaven has ordained, let it be; and let me not add, by

my selfish sorrows, one atom's weight to the burden thou hast to bear. I

was dead to thee when thy resolution was adopted; and never, never shalt

thou know that Henry Morton still lives!"

As he formed this resolution, diffident of his own power to keep it, and

seeking that firmness in flight which was every moment shaken by his

continuing within hearing of Edith's voice, he hastily rushed from his

apartment by the little closet and the sashed door which led to the

garden.

But firmly as he thought his resolution was fixed, he could not leave the

spot where the last tones of a voice so beloved still vibrated on his

ear, without endeavouring to avail himself of the opportunity which the

parlour window afforded to steal one last glance at the lovely speaker.

It was in this attempt, made while Edith seemed to have her eyes

unalterably bent upon the ground, that Morton's presence was detected by

her raising them suddenly. So soon as her wild scream made this known to

the unfortunate object of a passion so constant, and which seemed so

ill-fated, he hurried from the place as if pursued by the furies. He

passed Halliday in the garden without recognising or even being sensible

that he had seen him, threw himself on his horse, and, by a sort of

instinct rather than recollection, took the first by-road in preference

to the public route to Hamilton.

In all probability this prevented Lord Evandale from learning that he was

actually in existence; for the news that the Highlanders had obtained a

decisive victory at Killiecrankie had occasioned an accurate look-out to

be kept, by order of the Government, on all the passes, for fear of some

commotion among the Lowland Jacobites. They did not omit to post

sentinels on Bothwell Bridge; and as these men had not seen any traveller

pass westward in that direction, and as, besides, their comrades

stationed in the village of Bothwell were equally positive that none had

gone eastward, the apparition, in the existence of which Edith and

Halliday were equally positive, became yet more mysterious in the

judgment of Lord Evandale, who was finally inclined to settle in the

belief that the heated and disturbed imagination of Edith had summoned up

the phantom she stated herself to have seen, and that Halliday had, in

some unaccountable manner, been infected by the same superstition.

Meanwhile, the by-path which Morton pursued, with all the speed which his

vigorous horse could exert, brought him in a very few seconds to the

brink of the Clyde, at a spot marked with the feet of horses, who were

conducted to it as a watering-place. The steed, urged as he was to the

gallop, did not pause a single instant, but, throwing himself into the

river, was soon beyond his depth. The plunge which the animal made as his

feet quitted the ground, with the feeling that the cold water rose above

his swordbelt, were the first incidents which recalled Morton, whose

movements had been hitherto mechanical, to the necessity of taking

measures for preserving himself and the noble animal which he bestrode. A

perfect master of all manly exercises, the management of a horse in water

was as familiar to him as when upon a meadow. He directed the animal's

course somewhat down the stream towards a low plain, or holm, which

seemed to promise an easy egress from the river. In the first and second

attempt to get on shore, the horse was frustrated by the nature of the

ground, and nearly fell backwards on his rider. The instinct of

self-preservation seldom fails, even in the most desperate circumstances,

to recall the human mind to some degree of equipoise, unless when

altogether distracted by terror, and Morton was obliged to the danger in

which he was placed for complete recovery of his self-possession. A third

attempt, at a spot more carefully and judiciously selected, succeeded

better than the former, and placed the horse and his rider in safety upon

the farther and left-hand bank of the Clyde.

"But whither," said Morton, in the bitterness of his heart, "am I now to

direct my course? or rather, what does it signify to which point of the

compass a wretch so forlorn betakes himself? I would to God, could the

wish be without a sin, that these dark waters had flowed over me, and

drowned my recollection of that which was, and that which is!"

The sense of impatience, which the disturbed state of his feelings had

occasioned, scarcely had vented itself in these violent expressions, ere

he was struck with shame at having given way to such a paroxysm. He

remembered how signally the life which he now held so lightly in the

bitterness of his disappointment had been preserved through the almost

incessant perils which had beset him since he entered upon his public

career.

"I am a fool!" he said, "and worse than a fool, to set light by that

existence which Heaven has so often preserved in the most marvellous

manner. Something there yet remains for me in this world, were it only to

bear my sorrows like a man, and to aid those who need my assistance. What

have I seen, what have I heard, but the very conclusion of that which I

knew was to happen? They"--he durst not utter their names even in

soliloquy--"they are embarrassed and in difficulties. She is stripped of

her inheritance, and he seems rushing on some dangerous career, with

which, but for the low voice in which he spoke, I might have become

acquainted. Are there no means to aid or to warn them?"

As he pondered upon this topic, forcibly withdrawing his mind from his

own disappointment, and compelling his attention to the affairs of Edith

and her betrothed husband, the letter of Burley, long forgotten, suddenly

rushed on his memory, like a ray of light darting through a mist.

"Their ruin must have been his work," was his internal conclusion. "If it

can be repaired, it must be through his means, or by information obtained

from him. I will search him out. Stern, crafty, and enthusiastic as he

is, my plain and downright rectitude of purpose has more than once

prevailed with him. I will seek him out, at least; and who knows what

influence the information I may acquire from him may have on the fortunes

of those whom I shall never see more, and who will probably never learn

that I am now suppressing my own grief, to add, if possible, to their

happiness."

Animated by these hopes, though the foundation was but slight, he sought

the nearest way to the high-road; and as all the tracks through the

valley were known to him since he hunted through them in youth, he had no

other difficulty than that of surmounting one or two enclosures, ere he

found himself on the road to the small burgh where the feast of the

popinjay had been celebrated. He journeyed in a state of mind sad indeed

and dejected, yet relieved from its earlier and more intolerable state of

anguish; for virtuous resolution and manly disinterestedness seldom fail

to restore tranquillity even where they cannot create happiness. He

turned his thoughts with strong effort upon the means of discovering

Burley, and the chance there was of extracting from him any knowledge

which he might possess favourable to her in whose cause he interested

himself; and at length formed the resolution of guiding himself by the

circumstances in which he might discover the object of his quest,

trusting that, from Cuddie's account of a schism betwixt Burley and his

brethren of the Presbyterian persuasion, he might find him less

rancorously disposed against Miss Bellenden, and inclined to exert the

power which he asserted himself to possess over her fortunes, more

favourably than heretofore.

Noontide had passed away when our traveller found himself in the

neighbourhood of his deceased uncle's habitation of Milnwood. It rose

among glades and groves that were chequered with a thousand early

recollections of joy and sorrow, and made upon Morton that mournful

impression, soft and affecting, yet, withal, soothing, which the

sensitive mind usually receives from a return to the haunts of childhood

and early youth, after having experienced the vicissitudes and tempests

of public life. A strong desire came upon him to visit the house itself.

"Old Alison," he thought, "will not know me, more than the honest couple

whom I saw yesterday. I may indulge my curiosity, and proceed on my

journey, without her having any knowledge of my existence. I think they

said my uncle had bequeathed to her my family mansion,--well, be it so. I

have enough to sorrow for, to enable me to dispense with lamenting such a

disappointment as that; and yet methinks he has chosen an odd successor

in my grumbling old dame, to a line of respectable, if not distinguished,

ancestry. Let it be as it may, I will visit the old mansion at least once

more."

The house of Milnwood, even in its best days, had nothing cheerful about

it; but its gloom appeared to be doubled under the auspices of the old

housekeeper. Everything, indeed, was in repair; there were no slates

deficient upon the steep grey roof, and no panes broken in the narrow

windows. But the grass in the court-yard looked as if the foot of man had

not been there for years; the doors were carefully locked, and that which

admitted to the hall seemed to have been shut for a length of time, since

the spiders had fairly drawn their webs over the door-way and the

staples. Living sight or sound there was none, until, after much

knocking, Morton heard the little window, through which it was

usual to reconnoitre visitors, open with much caution. The face of

Alison, puckered with some score of wrinkles in addition to those with

which it was furrowed when Morton left Scotland, now presented itself,

enveloped in a /toy/, from under the protection of which some of her grey

tresses had escaped in a manner more picturesque than beautiful, while

her shrill, tremulous voice demanded the cause of the knocking.

"I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson, who resides here,"

said Henry.

"She's no at hame the day," answered Mrs. Wilson, /in propria persona/,

the state of whose headdress, perhaps, inspired her with this direct mode

of denying herself; "and ye are but a mislear'd person to speer for her

in sic a manner. Ye might hae had an M under your belt for Mistress

Wilson of Milnwood."

"I beg pardon," said Morton, internally smiling at finding in old Ailie

the same jealousy of disrespect which she used to exhibit upon former

occasions,--"I beg pardon; I am but a stranger in this country, and have

been so long abroad that I have almost forgotten my own language."

"Did ye come frae foreign parts?" said Ailie; "then maybe ye may hae

heard of a young gentleman of this country that they ca' Henry Morton?"

"I have heard," said Morton, "of such a name in Germany."

"Then bide a wee bit where ye are, friend; or stay,--gang round by the

back o' the house, and ye'll find a laigh door; it's on the latch, for

it's never barred till sunset. Ye 'll open 't,--and tak care ye dinna fa'

ower the tub, for the entry's dark,--and then ye'll turn to the right,

and then ye'll hand straught forward, and then ye'll turn to the right

again, and ye 'll tak heed o' the cellarstairs, and then ye 'll be at the

door o' the little kitchen,--it's a' the kitchen that's at Milnwood

now,--and I'll come down t'ye, and whate'er ye wad say to Mistress

Wilson ye may very safely tell it to me."

A stranger might have had some difficulty, notwithstanding the minuteness

of the directions supplied by Ailie, to pilot himself in safety through

the dark labyrinth of passages that led from the back-door to the little

kitchen; but Henry was too well acquainted with the navigation of these

straits to experience danger, either from the Scylla which lurked on one

side in shape of a bucking tub, or the Charybdis which yawned on the

other in the profundity of a winding cellar-stair. His only impediment

arose from the snarling and vehement barking of a small cocking spaniel,

once his own property, but which, unlike to the faithful Argus, saw his

master return from his wanderings without any symptom of recognition.

"The little dogs and all!" said Morton to himself, on being disowned by

his former favourite. "I am so changed that no breathing creature that I

have known and loved will now acknowledge me!"

At this moment he had reached the kitchen; and soon after, the tread of

Alison's high heels, and the pat of the crutch-handled cane which served

at once to prop and to guide her footsteps, were heard upon the

stairs,--an annunciation which continued for some time ere she fairly

reached the kitchen.

Morton had, therefore, time to survey the slender preparations for

housekeeping which were now sufficient in the house of his ancestors. The

fire, though coals are plenty in that neighbourhood, was husbanded with

the closest attention to economy of fuel, and the small pipkin, in which

was preparing the dinner of the old woman and her maid-of-all-work, a

girl of twelve years old, intimated, by its thin and watery vapour, that

Ailie had not mended her cheer with her improved fortune.

When she entered, the head, which nodded with self-importance; the

features, in which an irritable peevishness, acquired by habit and

indulgence, strove with a temper naturally affectionate and good-natured;

the coif; the apron; the blue-checked gown,--were all those of old Ailie;

but laced pinners, hastily put on to meet the stranger, with some other

trifling articles of decoration, marked the difference between Mrs.

Wilson, life-rentrix of Milnwood, and the housekeeper of the late

proprietor.

"What were ye pleased to want wi' Mrs. Wilson, sir? I am Mrs. Wilson,"

was her first address; for the five minutes time which she had gained for

the business of the toilet entitled her, she conceived, to assume the

full merit of her illustrious name, and shine forth on her guest in

unchastened splendour. Morton's sensations, confounded between the past

and present, fairly confused him so much that he would have had

difficulty in answering her, even if he had known well what to say. But

as he had not determined what character he was to adopt while concealing

that which was properly his own, he had an additional reason for

remaining silent. Mrs. Wilson, in perplexity, and with some apprehension,

repeated her question.

"What were ye pleased to want wi' me, sir? Ye said ye kend Mr. Harry

Morton?"

"Pardon me, madam," answered Henry, "it was of one Silas Morton I spoke."

The old woman's countenance fell.

"It was his father, then, ye kent o', the brother o' the late Milnwood?

Ye canna mind him abroad, I wad think,--he was come hame afore ye were

born. I thought ye had brought me news of poor Maister Harry."

"It was from my father I learned to know Colonel Morton," said Henry; "of

the son I know little or nothing,--rumour says he died abroad on his

passage to Holland."

"That's ower like to be true," said the old woman with a sigh, "and mony

a tear it's cost my auld een. His uncle, poor gentleman, just sough'd awa

wi' it in his mouth. He had been gieing me preceeze directions anent the

bread and the wine and the brandy at his burial, and how often it was to

be handed round the company (for, dead or alive, he was a prudent,

frugal, painstaking man), and then he said, said he, 'Ailie,' (he aye

ca'd me Ailie; we were auld acquaintance), 'Ailie, take ye care and haud

the gear weel thegither; for the name of Morton of Milnwood 's gane out

like the last sough of an auld sang.' And sae he fell out o' ae dwam into

another, and ne'er spak a word mair, unless it were something we cou'dna

mak out, about a dipped candle being gude eneugh to see to dee wi'. He

cou'd ne'er bide to see a moulded ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on

the table."

While Mrs. Wilson was thus detailing the last moments of the old miser,

Morton was pressingly engaged in diverting the assiduous curiosity of the

dog, which, recovered from his first surprise, and combining former

recollections, had, after much snuffing and examination, begun a course

of capering and jumping upon the stranger which threatened every instant

to betray him. At length, in the urgency of his impatience, Morton could

not forbear exclaiming, in a tone of hasty impatience, "Down, Elphin!

down, sir!"

"Ye ken our dog's name," said the old lady, struck with great and sudden

surprise,--"ye ken our dog's name, and it's no a common ane. And the

creature kens you too," she continued, in a more agitated and shriller

tone,--"God guide us! it's my ain bairn!"

So saying, the poor old woman threw herself around Morton's neck, cling

to him, kissed him as if he had been actually her child, and wept for

joy. There was no parrying the discovery, if he could have had the heart

to attempt any further disguise. He returned the embrace with the most

grateful warmth, and answered,--

"I do indeed live, dear Ailie, to thank you for all your kindness, past

and present, and to rejoice that there is at least one friend to welcome

me to my native country."

"Friends!" exclaimed Ailie, "ye'll hae mony friends,--ye 'll hae mony

friends; for ye will hae gear, hinny,--ye will hae gear. Heaven mak ye a

gude guide o't! But eh, sirs!" she continued, pushing him back from her

with her trembling hand and shrivelled arm, and gazing in his face as if

to read, at more convenient distance, the ravages which sorrow rather

than time had made on his face,--"Eh, sirs! ye're sair altered, hinny;

your face is turned pale, and your een are sunken, and your bonny

red-and-white cheeks are turned a' dark and sun-burnt. Oh, weary on the

wars! mony 's the comely face they destroy.--And when cam ye here, hinny?

And where hae ye been? And what hae ye been doing? And what for did ye na

write to us? And how cam ye to pass yoursell for dead? And what for did

ye come creepin' to your ain house as if ye had been an unto body, to gie

poor auld Ailie sic a start?" she concluded, smiling through her tears.

It was some time ere Morton could overcome his own emotion so as to give

the kind old woman the information which we shall communicate to our

readers in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIX.

Aumerle that was,

But that is gone for being Richard's friend;

And, madam, you must call him Rutland now.

Richard II.

The scene of explanation was hastily removed from the little kitchen to

Mrs. Wilson's own matted room,--the very same which she had occupied as

housekeeper, and which she continued to retain. "It was," she said,

"better secured against sifting winds than the hall, which she had found

dangerous to her rheumatisms, and it was more fitting for her use than

the late Milnwood's apartment, honest man, which gave her sad thoughts;"

and as for the great oak parlour, it was never opened but to be aired,

washed, and dusted, according to the invariable practice of the family,

unless upon their most solemn festivals. In the matted room, therefore,

they were settled, surrounded by pickle-pots and conserves of all kinds,

which the ci-devant housekeeper continued to compound, out of mere habit,

although neither she herself, nor any one else, ever partook of the

comfits which she so regularly prepared.

Morton, adapting his narrative to the comprehension of his auditor,

informed her briefly of the wreck of the vessel and the loss of all

hands, excepting two or three common seamen who had early secured the

skiff, and were just putting off from the vessel when he leaped from the

deck into their boat, and unexpectedly, as well as contrary to their

inclination, made himself partner of their voyage and of their safety.

Landed at Flushing, he was fortunate enough to meet with an old officer

who had been in service with his father. By his advice, he shunned going

immediately to the Hague, but forwarded his letters to the court of the

Stadtholder.

"Our prince," said the veteran, "must as yet keep terms with his

father-in-law and with your King Charles; and to approach him in the

character of a Scottish malecontent would render it imprudent for him to

distinguish you by his favour. Wait, therefore, his orders, without

forcing yourself on his notice; observe the strictest prudence and

retirement; assume for the present a different name; shun the company of

the British exiles; and, depend upon it, you will not repent your

prudence."

The old friend of Silas Morton argued justly. After a considerable time

had elapsed, the Prince of Orange, in a progress through the United

States, came to the town where Morton, impatient at his situation and the

incognito which he was obliged to observe, still continued, nevertheless,

to be a resident. He had an hour of private interview assigned, in which

the prince expressed himself highly pleased with his intelligence, his

prudence, and the liberal view which he seemed to take of the factions of

his native country, their motives and their purposes.

"I would gladly," said William, "attach you to my own person; but that

cannot be without giving offence in England. But I will do as much for

you, as well out of respect for the sentiments you have expressed, as for

the recommendations you have brought me. Here is a commission in a Swiss

regiment at present in garrison in a distant province, where you will

meet few or none of your countrymen. Continue to be Captain Melville, and

let the name of Morton sleep till better days."

"Thus began my fortune," continued Morton; "and my services have, on

various occasions, been distinguished by his Royal Highness, until the

moment that brought him to Britain as our political deliverer. His

commands must excuse my silence to my few friends in Scotland; and I

wonder not at the report of my death, considering the wreck of the

vessel, and that I found no occasion to use the letters of exchange with

which I was furnished by the liberality of some of them,--a circumstance

which must have confirmed the belief that I had perished."

"But, dear hinny," asked Mrs. Wilson, "did ye find nae Scotch body at the

Prince of Oranger's court that kend ye? I wad hae thought Morton o'

Milnwood was kend a' through the country."

"I was purposely engaged in distant service," said Morton, "until a

period when few, without as deep and kind a motive of interest as yours,

Ailie, would have known the stripling Morton in Major-General Melville."

"Malville was your mother's name," said Mrs. Wilson; "but Morton sounds

far bonnier in my auld lugs. And when ye tak up the lairdship, ye maun

tak the auld name and designation again."

"I am like to be in no haste to do either the one or the other, Ailie,

for I have some reasons for the present to conceal my being alive from

every one but you; and as for the lairdship of Milnwood, it is in as good

hands."

"As gude hands, hinny!" re-echoed Ailie; "I'm hopefu' ye are no meaning

mine? The rents and the lands are but a sair fash to me. And I'm ower

failed to tak a helpmate, though Wylie Mactrickit the writer was very

pressing, and spak very civilly; but I 'm ower auld a cat to draw that

strae before me. He canna whilliwhaw me as he's dune mony a ane. And then

I thought aye ye wad come back, and I wad get my pickle meal and my soup

milk, and keep a' things right about ye as I used to do in your puir

uncle's time, and it wad be just pleasure eneugh for me to see ye thrive

and guide the gear canny. Ye'll hae learned that in Holland, I'se

warrant, for they're thrifty folk there, as I hear tell.--But ye'll be

for keeping rather a mair house than puir auld Milnwood that's gave; and,

indeed, I would approve o' your eating butchermeat maybe as aften as

three times a-week,--it keeps the wind out o' the stamack."

"We will talk of all this another time," said Morton, surprised at the

generosity upon a large scale which mingled in Ailie's thoughts and

actions with habitual and sordid parsimony, and at the odd contrast

between her love of saving and indifference to self-acquisition. "You

must know," he continued, "that I am in this country only for a few days

on some special business of importance to the Government, and therefore,

Ailie, not a word of having seen me. At some other time I will acquaint

you fully with my motives and intentions."

"E'en be it sae, my jo," replied Ailie, "I can keep a secret like my

neighbours; and weel auld Milnwood kend it, honest man, for he tauld me

where he keepit his gear, and that's what maist folk like to hae as

private as possibly may be.--But come awa wi' me, hinny, till I show ye

the oak-parlour how grandly it's keepit, just as if ye had been expected

haine every day,--I loot naebody sort it but my ain hands. It was a kind

o' divertisement to me, though whiles the tear wan into my ee, and I said

to mysell, What needs I fash wi' grates and carpets and cushions and the

muckle brass candlesticks ony mair? for they'll ne'er come hame that

aught it rightfully."

With these words she hauled him away to this sanctum sanctorum, the

scrubbing and cleaning whereof was her daily employment, as its high

state of good order constituted the very pride of her heart. Morton, as

he followed her into the room, underwent a rebuke for not "dighting his

shune," which showed that Ailie had not relinquished her habits of

authority. On entering the oak-parlour he could not but recollect the

feelings of solemn awe with which, when a boy, he had been affected at

his occasional and rare admission to an apartment which he then supposed

had not its equal save in the halls of princes. It may be readily

supposed that the worked-worsted chairs, with their short ebony legs and

long upright backs, had lost much of their influence over his mind; that

the large brass andirons seemed diminished in splendour; that the green

worsted tapestry appeared no masterpiece of the Arras loom; and that the

room looked, on the whole, dark, gloomy, and disconsolate. Yet there were

two objects, "The counterfeit presentment of two brothers," which,

dissimilar as those described by Hamlet, affected his mind with a variety

of sensations. One full-length portrait represented his father in

complete armour, with a countenance indicating his masculine and

determined character; and the other set forth his uncle, in velvet and

brocade, looking as if he were ashamed of his own finery, though entirely

indebted for it to the liberality of the painter.

"It was an idle fancy," Ailie said, "to dress the honest auld man in thae

expensive fal-lalls that he ne'er wore in his life, instead o' his douce

Raploch grey, and his band wi' the narrow edging."

In private, Morton could not help being much of her opinion; for anything

approaching to the dress of a gentleman sate as ill on the ungainly

person of his relative as an open or generous expression would have done

on his mean and money-making features. He now extricated himself from

Ailie to visit some of his haunts in the neighbouring wood, while her own

hands made an addition to the dinner she was preparing,--an incident no

otherwise remarkable than as it cost the life of a fowl, which, for any

event of less importance than the arrival of Henry Morton, might have

cackled on to a good old age ere Ailie could have been guilty of the

extravagance of killing and dressing it. The meal was seasoned by talk of

old times and by the plans which Ailie laid out for futurity, in which

she assigned her young master all the prudential habits of her old one,

and planned out the dexterity with which she was to exercise her duty as

governante. Morton let the old woman enjoy her day-dreams and

castle-building during moments of such pleasure, and deferred till some

fitter occasion the communication of his purpose again to return and

spend his life upon the Continent.

His next care was to lay aside his military dress, which he considered

likely to render more difficult his researches after Burley. He exchanged

it--for a grey doublet and cloak, formerly his usual attire at Milnwood,

and which Mrs. Wilson produced from a chest of walnut-tree, wherein she

had laid them aside, without forgetting carefully to brush and air them

from time to time. Morton retained his sword and fire-arms, without which

few persons travelled in those unsettled times. When he appeared in his

new attire, Mrs. Wilson was first thankful "that they fitted him sae

decently, since, though he was nae fatter, yet he looked mair manly than

when he was taen frae Milnwood."

Next she enlarged on the advantage of saving old clothes to be what she

called "beet-masters to the new," and was far advanced in the history of

a velvet cloak belonging to the late Milnwood, which had first been

converted to a velvet doublet, and then into a pair of breeches, and

appeared each time as good as new, when Morton interrupted her account of

its transmigration to bid her good-by.

He gave, indeed, a sufficient shock to her feelings, by expressing the

necessity he was under of proceeding on his journey that evening.

"And where are ye gaun? And what wad ye do that for? And whar wad ye

sleep but in your ain house, after ye hae been sae mony years frae hame?"

"I feel all the unkindness of it, Ailie, but it must be so; and that was

the reason that I attempted to conceal myself from you, as I suspected

you would not let me part from you so easily."

"But whar are ye gaun, then?" said Ailie, once more. "Saw e'er mortal een

the like o' you, just to come ae moment, and flee awa like an arrow out

of a bow the neist?"

"I must go down," replied Morton, "to Niel Blane the Piper's Howff; he

can give me a bed, I suppose?"

"A bed? I'se warrant can he," replied Ailie, "and gar ye pay weel for 't

into the bargain. Laddie, I daresay ye hae lost your wits in thae foreign

parts, to gang and gie siller for a supper and a bed, and might hae baith

for naething, and thanks t' ye for accepting them."

"I assure you, Ailie," said Morton, desirous to silence her

remonstrances, "that this is a business of great importance, in which I

may be a great gainer, and cannot possibly be a loser."

"I dinna see how that can be, if ye begin by gieing maybe the feck o'

twal shillings Scots for your supper; but young folks are aye

venturesome, and think to get siller that way. My puir auld master took

a surer gate, and never parted wi' it when he had anes gotten 't."

Persevering in his desperate resolution, Morton took leave of Ailie, and

mounted his horse to proceed to the little town, after exacting a solemn

promise that she would conceal his return until she again saw or heard

from him.

"I am not very extravagant," was his natural reflection, as he trotted

slowly towards the town; "but were Ailie and I to set up house together,

as she proposes, I think my profusion would break the good old creature's

heart before a week were out."

CHAPTER XX.

Where's the jolly host

You told me of? 'T has been my custom ever

To parley with mine host.

Lover's Progress.

Morton reached the borough town without meeting with any remarkable

adventure, and alighted at the little inn. It had occurred to him more

than once, while upon his journey, that his resumption of the dress which

he had worn while a youth, although favourable to his views in other

respects, might render it more difficult for him to remain incognito. But

a few years of campaigns and wandering had so changed his appearance that

he had great confidence that in the grown man, whose brows exhibited the

traces of resolution and considerate thought, none would recognise the

raw and bashful stripling who won the game of the popinjay. The only

chance was that here and there some Whig, whom he had led to battle,

might remember the Captain of the Milnwood Marksmen; but the risk, if

there was any, could not be guarded against.

The Howff seemed full and frequented as if possessed of all its old

celebrity. The person and demeanour of Niel Blane, more fat and less

civil than of yore, intimated that he had increased as well in purse as

in corpulence; for in Scotland a landlord's complaisance for his guests

decreases in exact proportion to his rise in the world. His daughter had

acquired the air of a dexterous barmaid, undisturbed by the circumstances

of love and war, so apt to perplex her in the exercise of her vocation.

Both showed Morton the degree of attention which could have been expected

by a stranger travelling without attendants, at a time when they were

particularly the badges of distinction. He took upon himself exactly the

character his appearance presented, went to the stable and saw his horse

accommodated, then returned to the house, and seating himself in the

public room (for to request one to himself would, in those days, have

been thought an overweening degree of conceit), he found himself in the

very apartment in which he had some years before celebrated his victory

at the game of the popinjay,--a jocular preferment which led to so many

serious consequences.

He felt himself, as may well be supposed, a much changed man since that

festivity; and yet, to look around him, the groups assembled in the Howff

seemed not dissimilar to those which the same scene had formerly

presented. Two or three burghers husbanded their "dribbles o' brandy;"

two or three dragoons lounged over their muddy ale, and cursed the

inactive times that allowed them no better cheer. Their cornet did not,

indeed, play at backgammon with the curate in his cassock, but he drank

a little modicum of /aqua mirabilis/ with the grey-cloaked Presbyterian

minister. The scene was another, and yet the same, differing only in

persons, but corresponding in general character.

Let the tide of the world wax or wane as it will, Morton thought as he

looked around him, enough will be found to fill the places which chance

renders vacant; and in the usual occupations and amusements of life,

human beings will succeed each other as leaves upon the same tree, with

the same individual difference and the same general resemblance.

After pausing a few minutes, Morton, whose experience had taught him the

readiest mode of securing attention, ordered a pint of claret; and as the

smiling landlord appeared with the pewter measure foaming fresh from the

tap (for bottling wine was not then in fashion), he asked him to sit down

and take a share of the good cheer. This invitation was peculiarly

acceptable to Niel Blane, who, if he did not positively expect it from

every guest not provided with better company, yet received it from many,

and was not a whit abashed or surprised at the summons. He sat down,

along with his guest, in a secluded nook near the chimney; and while he

received encouragement to drink by far the greater share of the liquor

before them, he entered at length, as a part of his expected functions,

upon the news of the country,--the births, deaths, and marriages; the

change of property; the downfall of old families, and the rise of new.

But politics, now the fertile source of eloquence, mine host did not care

to mingle in his theme; and it was only in answer to a question of Morton

that he replied, with an air of indifference, "Um! ay! we aye hae sodgers

amang us, mair or less. There's a wheen German horse down at Glasgow

yonder; they ca' their commander Wittybody, or some sic name, though he's

as grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e'er I saw."

"Wittenbold, perhaps?" said Morton,--"an old man, with grey hair and

short black moustaches; speaks seldom?"

"And smokes for ever," replied Niel Blane. "I see your honour kens the

man. He may be a very gude man too, for aught I see,--that is,

considering he is a sodger and a Dutchman; but if he were ten generals,

and as mony Wittybodies, he has nae skill in the pipes; he gar'd me stop

in the middle of Torphichen's Rant,--the best piece o' music that ever

bag gae wind to."

"But these fellows," said Morton, glancing his eye towards the soldiers

that were in the apartment, are not of his corps?"

"Na, na, these are Scotch dragoons," said mine host,--"our ain auld

caterpillars; these were Claver'se's lads a while syne, and wad be again,

maybe, if he had the lang ten in his hand."

"Is there not a report of his death?" inquired Morton.

"Troth is there," said the landlord; "your honour is right,--there is sic

a fleeing rumour; but, in my puir opinion, it's lang or the deil die. I

wad hae the folks here look to themsells. If he makes an outbreak, he'll

be doun frae the Hielands or I could drink this glass,--and whare are

they then? A' thae hell-rakers o' dragoons wad be at his whistle in a

moment. Nae doubt they're Willie's men e'en now, as they were James's a

while syne; and reason good,--they fight for their pay; what else hae

they to fight for? They hae neither lands nor houses, I trow. There's ae

gude thing o' the change, or the Revolution, as they ca' it,--folks may

speak out afore thae birkies now, and nae fear o' being hauled awa to the

guard-house, or having the thumikins screwed on your finger-ends, just as

I wad drive the screw through a cork."

There was a little pause, when Morton, feeling confident in the progress

he had made in mine host's familiarity, asked, though with the hesitation

proper to one who puts a question on the answer to which rests something

of importance, "Whether Blane knew a woman in that neighbourhood called

Elizabeth Maclure?"

"Whether I ken Bessie Maclure?" answered the landlord, with a landlord's

laugh,--"How can I but ken my ain wife's (haly be her rest!)--my ain

wife's first gudeman's sister, Bessie Maclure? An honest wife she is, but

sair she's been trysted wi' misfortunes,--the loss o' twa decent lads o'

sons, in the time o' the persecution, as they ca' it nowadays; and

doucely and decently she has borne her burden, blaming nane and

condemning nane. If there's an honest woman in the world, it's Bessie

Maclure. And to lose her twa sons, as I was saying, and to hae dragoons

clinked down on her for a month bypast,--for, be Whig or Tory uppermost,

they aye quarter thae loons on victuallers,--to lose, as I was saying--"

"This woman keeps an inn, then?" interrupted Morton.

"A public, in a puir way," replied Blane, looking round at his own

superior accommodations,--"a sour browst o' sma' ale that she sells to

folk that are over drouthy wi' travel to be nice; but naething to ca' a

stirring trade or a thriving changehouse."

"Can you get me a guide there?" said Morton.

"Your honour will rest here a' the night? Ye'll hardly get accommodation

at Bessie's," said Niel, whose regard for his deceased wife's relative by

no means extended to sending company from his own house to hers.

"There is a friend," answered Morton, "whom I am to meet with there, and

I only called here to take a stirrup-cup and inquire the way."

"Your honour had better," answerd the landlord, with the perseverance of

his calling, "send some ane to warn your friend to come on here."

"I tell you, landlord," answered Morton, impatiently, "that will not

serve my purpose; I must go straight to this woman Maclure's house, and

I desire you to find me a guide."

"Aweel, sir, ye'll choose for yoursell, to be sure," said Niel Blane,

somewhat disconcerted; "but deil a guide ye'll need if ye gae doun the

water for twa mile or sae, as gin ye were bound for Milnwoodhouse, and

then tak the first broken disjasked-looking road that makes for the

hills,--ye'll ken 't by a broken ash-tree that stands at the side o' a

burn just where the roads meet; and then travel out the path,--ye canna

miss Widow Maclure's public, for deil another house or hauld is on the

road for ten lang Scots miles, and that's worth twenty English. I am

sorry your honour would think o' gaun out o' my house the night. But my

wife's gude-sister is a decent woman, and it's no lost that a friend

gets."

Morton accordingly paid his reckoning and departed. The sunset of the

summer day placed him at the ash-tree, where the path led up towards the

moors.

"Here," he said to himself, "my misfortunes commenced; for just here,

when Burley and I were about to separate on the first night we ever met,

he was alarmed by the intelligence that the passes were secured by

soldiers lying in wait for him. Beneath that very ash sate the old woman

who apprised him of his danger. How strange that my whole fortunes should

have become inseparably interwoven with that man's, without anything more

on my part than the discharge of an ordinary duty of humanity! Would to

Heaven it were possible I could find my humble quiet and tranquillity of

mind upon the spot where I lost them!"

Thus arranging his reflections betwixt speech and thought, he turned his

horse's head up the path.

Evening lowered around him as he advanced up the narrow dell which had

once been a wood, but was now a ravine divested of trees, unless where a

few, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks,

or clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of men and

of cattle, like the scattered tribes of a conquered country, driven to

take refuge in the barren strength of its mountains. These too, wasted

and decayed, seemed rather to exist than to flourish, and only served to

indicate what the landscape had once been. But the stream brawled down

among them in all its freshness and vivacity, giving the life and

animation which a mountain rivulet alone can confer on the barest and

most savage scenes, and which the inhabitants of such a country miss when

gazing even upon the tranquil winding of a majestic stream through plains

of fertility, and beside palaces of splendour. The track of the road

followed the course of the brook, which was now visible, and now only to

be distinguished by its brawling heard among the stones or in the clefts

of the rock that occasionally interrupted its course.

"Murmurer that thou art," said Morton, in the enthusiasm of his reverie,

"why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment? There is a

sea to receive thee in its bosom; and there is an eternity for man when

his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and

over. What thy petty fuming is to the deep and vast billows of a

shoreless ocean, are our cares, hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows to the

objects which must occupy us through the awful and boundless succession

of ages!"

Thus moralizing, our traveller passed on till the dell opened, and the

banks, receding from the brook, left a little green vale, exhibiting a

croft, or small field, on which some corn was growing, and a cottage,

whose walls were not above five feet high, and whose thatched roof, green

with moisture, age, houseleek, and grass, had in some places suffered

damage from the encroachment of two cows, whose appetite this appearance

of verdure had diverted from their more legitimate pasture. An ill-spelt

and worse-written inscription intimated to the traveller that he might

here find refreshment for man and horse,--no unacceptable intimation,

rude as the hut appeared to be, considering the wild path he had trod in

approaching it, and the high and waste mountains which rose in desolate

dignity behind this humble asylum.

It must indeed have been, thought Morton, in some such spot as this that

Burley was likely to find a congenial confident.

As he approached, he observed the good dame of the house herself, seated

by the door; she had hitherto been concealed from him by a huge

alder-bush.