CHAPTER I.

See Transcriber's Notes at end of Text.

Table of Contents and List of Illustrations added by Transcriber.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

NOVEMBER, 1877

Vol XX--No. 33

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877,

by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the

Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS

CHESTER AND THE DEE. by LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. by T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

SONG. by OSCAR LAIGHTON.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER IV.

WISHING WELL AND ILL.

CHAPTER V.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?

CHAPTER VI.

HER NAME.

CHAPTER VII.

JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

CHAPTER VIII.

"PERHAPS I'M LETTING SECRETS OUT."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE DREAM OF ST. THERESA. poem by EPES SARGENT.

THE FLIGHT OF A PRINCESS. by W.A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN.

A KENTUCKY DUEL. by WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

TWO PARTS.--I.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

THE DOINGS AND GOINGS-ON OF HIRED GIRLS. by MARY DEAN.

THE CHEF'S BEEFSTEAK by VIRGINIA W. JOHNSON.

LONDON AT MIDSUMMER. by H. JAMES, JR.

SVEN DUVA.

FROM THE SWEDISH OF JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG. by C. ROSELL.

A LAW UNTO HERSELF. by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE CHURCH OF ST. SOPHIA. by HUGH CRAIG.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MUSIC.

an article by A. de Lasalle.

"LES NAUFRAGÉS DE CALAIS." by E.W.L.

REALISTIC ART. by E.B.

ARTISTIC JENKINSISM.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Count Frontenac and New France under

Louis XIV. By Francis Parkman. Boston:

Little, Brown & Co.

Nimport. (Wayside Series.) Boston: Lockwood,

Brooks & Co.

Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin

(Letters from Philadelphia to a Friend).

Von Catherine Migerka. Wien.

Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet,

author of "Sidonie," "Robert Helmont,"

etc., by Mary Neal Sherwood,

translator of "Sidonie." Boston: Estes

& Lauriat.

X. Doudan, Mélanges et Lettres. Avec une

introduction par M. le comte d'Haussonville,

et des notices par MM. de Sacy et

Cuvillier-Fleury. Tome III. Paris: Calmann

Lévy.

_Books Received._

_New Music._

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL, CHESTER.

WATER TOWER, WITH ROMAN HYPOCAUST, CHESTER.

KING CHARLES'S TOWER, CHESTER.

RUINS OF ST. JOHN'S, CHESTER.

CATHEDRAL TOWER, FROM ST. JOHN'S STREET, CHESTER.

BOSS IN LADY CHAPEL, CHESTER.

OLD EPISCOPAL PALACE, CHESTER.

BRIDGE STREET ROW, CHESTER.

ANCIENT HALF-TIMBERED HOUSES, FOREGATE STREET, CHESTER.

VIEW OF CHESTER, FROM THE COP.

MOSTYN HALL.

IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN

RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.

"FOR THE SPACE OF A LIGHTNING FLASH THEIR EYES MET."--551.

CHESTER AND THE DEE.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL, CHESTER.]

The "city of the legions" still bears traces of the Roman dominion, more

proud of them than were the spirited Britons in the days when these

walls and other Roman buildings meant subjection to a foreign power.

The walls, which are nearly perfect, now provide a pleasant walk for the

citizens, a surface five or six feet broad, with a coped parapet or iron

railing on either side, and trees almost as old as the walls

overshadowing some parts of them. The old gates have been destroyed or

removed, and three modern archways now pierce the walls; but the memory

of the ancient city defences lingers in the names of some of the

principal streets--Northgate, Foregate, Bridgegate, Watergate streets,

etc. The Dee was approached by two of these gates, one of which opened

at the lower end of Bridge street on the old bridge, which still

remains, while Watergate street was similarly connected with the river.

Here stands the same old tower--Water Tower--which in mediæval times

served to defend the gate. A Roman column and base, like that discovered

in Bridge street, stand near it among the formal evergreens, and a

strange low building, seemingly entire, which distinguishes this

opening, is called by antiquaries a hypocaust or Roman warming

apparatus. The walls of the tower still exhibit iron staples, showing

that ships were anciently moored at this place, but the river has

considerably receded since these were used, for even during the civil

wars there was a wide space between the tower and the shore. Another of

the old towers, the Phœnix, now called King Charles's Tower, is

memorable as the spot whence Charles I. watched the defeat of his troops

by Cromwell on Rowton Heath or Moor. It is approached by a small stone

staircase with a wooden railing, and is only large enough to hold a

dozen men. The ruins of St. John's, the old Norman cathedral--the church

to which King Edgar, before it had become a bishop's seat, rowed up the

river with six Welsh kings as his oarsmen, himself steering the

barque--are very imposing, although here and there improvements of

questionable taste have been added. The new park laid out around them

sets them off to great advantage, and though the date of the

architecture of Harold's Chapel disproves the legend attached to it, one

is none the less glad to be reminded of the obstinate love and loyalty

of Englishmen to the unsuccessful hero of the battle of Hastings. He was

said to have fled to Chester, and lived as a hermit in a chapel near

this cathedral: as to his widow, her stay in Chester after her husband's

defeat and death is an historical fact. Harold shared the same poetical

fate as Arthur, Charlemagne and Barbarossa, and for over a century he

was believed by the people to be alive and plotting. Higden, the

chronicler of St. Werburgh's Abbey (the church which since Henry VIII.

has been the cathedral, and itself stood on the site of an older church

dedicated in Roman and British times to Saints Peter and Paul),

naturally adopted the legend and versified it. In Saxon times, though

the city was included in a large diocese, St. Chad, which ruled all the

kingdom of Mercia, it was practically independent, and in the possession

of various monastic houses. Of these, the greatest was the abbey of St.

Werburgh. Its shrine was the goal of pilgrimages, and is said to have

been endowed by the daughter of King Alfred. The present building dates

from the days of William Rufus, when Hugh d'Avranches--or Lupus, as he

was surnamed--earl of Chester, and one of the Conqueror's old

companions, became a monk in his newly-endowed abbey, which he peopled

with Benedictine monks from Bec in Normandy. Thus, sturdy British

Chester is connected ecclesiastically with the first two and perhaps

greatest archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom

were successively abbots of Bec, and the latter of whom spent some time

with Lupus in Chester. In the north transept and along the north wall of

the nave are remains of masonry said to belong to that precise period.

The restoration, both of the exterior, whose warm red coloring

(sandstone of the neighborhood) is not one of its least attractions, and

of the interior, has been thorough and careful: all old things, such as

a quaint boss in the Lady Chapel representing the murder of Saint

Thomas à Becket, have been carefully handled, and new things, when

introduced, are strictly in keeping with the old.

[Illustration: WATER TOWER, WITH ROMAN HYPOCAUST, CHESTER.]

[Illustration: KING CHARLES'S TOWER, CHESTER.]

The old episcopal palace, enlarged from the abbot's house after the

Reformation and the raising of the abbey into a cathedral church, still

presents some of the oldest Norman remains: it is now being altered to

suit the needs of the cathedral school, a foundation of Henry VIII. for

twenty-four boys, from whom were to be chosen the cathedral choristers.

This, like all other old foundations of the kind, has grown and become

enriched. Anthony Trollope's _Warden_ gives a good picture of the abuses

and anomalies resulting from the unforeseen increase of the funds of

such institutions. One of the chief benefits still retained by Chester

cathedral school is a yearly exhibition to either university. The old

city schools of English boroughs, as well as the almshouses and

hospitals dating from mediæval times, are among the most interesting and

characteristic English foundations, and the old guilds or trade

companies, with their property, privileges and insignia, no less so. In

Chester there are still nominally twenty-four of the latter, though

scarcely any have any property or importance except that of the

goldsmiths, who have an assay-master and office, and claim the

examination of all plate manufactured and for sale in Chester, Cheshire,

Lancashire and North Wales. They also have, or had, the old historic

mace of the city corporation, which was first displayed in 1508 at the

laying of the foundation-stone of the unfinished south-western tower of

the cathedral, was taken with the sword by the Parliamentarians during

their occupation of the staunch royalist city, and afterward restored at

the end of the war. The sword dates from Richard II.'s reign, when he

gave it to the city just before his disgrace at Flint Castle, a little

lower down the Dee. In 1506, Henry VII. expressly ordained that the

mayor of Chester and his successors "shall have this sword carried

before them with the point upward in the presence of all the nobles and

lords of the realm of England." It seems incredible that such a relic as

the mace should have been made over to a goldsmith in exchange for "new

plate," but such was the fact, and the present one dates only from 1668,

and was a gift from Charles, earl of Derby, "lord of Man and the Isles,"

who was mayor of Chester for that year.

The greatest peculiarity of Chester--greater even than its Roman

walls--lies in its sunken streets and the famous "Rows." These are

unique in England, and indeed in Europe. Likenesses to them are seen in

Berne, Utrecht and Thun, but nothing just the same, nothing so evidently

systematic and prearranged, is to be found anywhere. The principal

streets, especially the four great Roman ones that quartered the camp,

are sunk and cut into the rock, while the Rows are on the natural level

of the ground. The reason for this has been a standing problem to

antiquaries. Some have supposed that the excavation of the streets dates

from Roman times, and was only due to the necessity of making work for

the soldiers during long periods of inaction. The effect is most

singular. Hardly any description brings it satisfactorily before the eye

of one who has not seen it. The best which I have met with, and a much

better one than I should be able to give from my own experience, is that

of a German traveller, J.G. Kohl: "Let the reader imagine the front

wall of the first floor of each house to have been taken away, leaving

that part of the house completely open toward the street, the upper part

being supported by pillars or beams. Let him then imagine the side walls

also to have been pierced through, to allow a continuous passage along

the first floors of all the houses.... It must not be imagined that

these Rows form a very regular or uniform gallery. On the contrary, it

varies according to the size or circumstances of each house through

which it passes. Sometimes, when passing through a small house, the

ceiling is so low that one finds it necessary to doff the hat, while in

others one passes through a space as lofty as a saloon. In one house the

Row lies lower than in the preceding, and one has in consequence to go

down a step or two; and perhaps a house or two farther one or two steps

have to be mounted again. In one house a handsome, new-fashioned iron

railing fronts the street; in another, only a mean wooden paling. In

some stately houses the supporting columns are strong, and adorned with

handsome antique ornaments; in others, the wooden piles appear

time-worn, and one hurries past them, apprehensive that the whole

concern must topple down before long. The ground floors over which the

Rows pass are inhabited by a humble class of tradesmen, but it is at the

back of the Rows themselves that the principal shops are to be found....

The Rows are in reality on a level with the surface of the ground, and

the carriages rolling along below are passing through a kind of

artificial ravine. The back wall of the ground floor is everywhere

formed by the solid rock, and the courtyards of the houses, their

kitchens and back buildings, lie generally ten or twelve feet higher

than the street."

[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. JOHN'S, CHESTER.]

The Rows are connected with the streets by staircases, and sometimes,

when a lane breaks through the gallery entirely, there are two flights

of stairs for the wayfarer to pass over. Many of the houses have

latticed windows and strongly clasped doors, such as are seldom seen

elsewhere in England except in old churches and towers. The gable ends

of most houses facing the lanes are turned outward, and ornamented with

strong woodwork curiously painted. The colors are quite traceable yet in

many houses. There are also texts of Scripture and good common-sense

mottoes carved or painted over some of the doors, especially of shops

and inns. The lanes are very intricate and irregular: one of them, St.

Werburgh's street, gives a glimpse of the cathedral, to which it leads.

The Rows have served for trade, for shelter and for defence: they were

considered a point of vantage during the siege, and were also useful as

gathering-places for serious consultation. In those days, however,

little shops along the outer edges of the footways themselves were more

numerous than they are now, and the shops within the shelter of the Rows

were not glazed, but closed at night with shutters, which in the day

were fastened with hooks above the heads of the people. The siege tried

the city sorely, and the streets were disputed foot by foot, yet the old

half-timbered houses in the Foregate street date farther back than the

time when Sir William Brereton, the Parliamentarian general, was

quartered there and received messages of defiance from the mayor, to

whom he had sent proposals of surrender and compromise. The city did not

surrender until the king himself, despairing of his cause, sent the

corporation word to make terms unless relieved within ten days.

We have already alluded to the Cop, or high bank, on the right side of

the Dee, with the distant view of the Welsh mountains. The nearer view

over the city and the river is picturesque also, though less wild, but

there is more suggested than the present by the sight of Flint Castle,

where the estuary begins, Mostyn, where it ends, Basingwerk Abbey ruins,

and Holywell, the famous shrine of St. Winefred. At Flint, Froissart

places an incident which shows the sagacity, if not the personal

fidelity, of a dog. A greyhound (notoriously the least affectionate of

all dog-kind) belonging to Richard II., and who was known never to

notice any one but his master, suddenly began to fawn upon Bolingbroke

and make "to hym the same frendly countinaunce and chere as he was wonte

to do to the kynge. The duke, who knew not the grayhounde, demanded of

the kynge what the grayhounde wolde do. 'Cosyn,' quod the kynge, 'it is

a greit good token to you and an evyll sygne to me.' 'Sir, howe knowe

you that?' quod the duke. 'I knowe it well,' quod the kynge. 'The

grayhounde maketh you chere this daye as kynge of Englande, as ye

shalbe, and I shalbe deposed. The grayhounde hath this knowledge

naturallye: therefore take hym to you: he will folowe you and forsake

me.'"

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL TOWER, FROM ST. JOHN'S STREET, CHESTER.]

Castle Dinas Bran, above Llangollen, and Flint are the only two genuine

ruined castles on the Dee. About halfway between Flint and Mostyn, and

nearly side by side, opposite Neston in Cheshire, stand Basingwerk and

Holywell. Though the smelting-works and vitriol-manufactories at

Bagillt, a little above the Sands of Dee, disfigure the landscape, the

mention of metals carries us back over a long stretch of history. The

Romans worked this district of lead-mines pretty thoroughly, and the

lead-trade in Elizabeth's reign was flourishing and far-reaching. "One

of the local peculiarities of the case, which seems to be unique," says

Dean Howson, "is the mode in which the lead-market is conducted at

Holywell. Notices of the quantity and quality of the metal on sale are

forwarded to managers of lead-works; samples are sent and tested; the

purchasers meet at Holywell on a fixed Thursday in every month; the

samples are ticketed; the prices are written on pieces of paper which

are placed in a glass; the highest bidders are of course successful, and

the ceremony ends with a friendly lunch." These gatherings have been

called from time immemorial the "Holywell ticketings," but the crowds

they drew were once as nothing compared with the concourse of pilgrims

to St. Winefred's wonder-working well. The legend of her death and

resurrection is one of the most marvellous in the annals of Saxon

saints; but, unlike the patroness of Chester, St. Werburgh, the

authentic character of whose life is supported by hosts of reliable

chroniclers, historical proof is much lacking in this case. Yet the

faith in her legend defied proof and even scepticism, and the outward

signs of the popular belief in the healing virtues of her well, the

waters of which were believed to have sprung miraculously from the spot

where she was brought to life again and her head reunited to her body,

with only a pink-tinged ring round her throat showing the place of

severance, were multiplied century after century. Wales had many other

holy wells of great repute, but this was always foremost. I believe that

besides the natural purity of the water and the mediæval (and especially

Celtic) tendency to belief in marvels, some national associations were

connected with this spot, and that the Welsh prided themselves on the

possession of a well so famous that Saxons from all parts of England,

poor and rich alike, came humbly or sent alms lavishly for the privilege

of partaking of its healing waters. Its fame continued long after the

Reformation, when James II. visited it as a pilgrim. Pope Martin V. had

two centuries before granted indulgences to its frequenters. Even at the

present day local faith in its powers remains undisturbed, though the

legend has faded from men's minds, and neither prayers nor alms are

resorted to; but, as I have heard from one who visited it in company

with Montalembert and the late Lord Dunraven (a very good antiquary),

some small superstitious practices, chiefly the offering of a pin, are

substituted. The chapel above the well, which is enclosed by massive

arches, is quite a large building, and there is a churchyard around it.

The chancel windows, though fine as a whole, are very Late Gothic, or

rather Perpendicular.

[Illustration: BOSS IN LADY CHAPEL, CHESTER.]

The ruins of Basingwerk show a purer and simpler architecture. Dark old

elms and sycamores fill up the gaps in the masonry, and through the

lancet windows and pointed arches one catches glimpses of the sands

illustrated by Canon Kingsley's ballad, "The Sands of Dee." On the

opposite shore, at English West Kirby, the rule of this once mighty

Welsh abbey was humbly and gratefully acknowledged, though the monks of

Lupus's abbey of St. Werburgh once disputed the patronage of the parish

church there, and on this occasion won their cause. Hilbree Island, and

its smaller copy with its Eye-Mark and Beach-Mark, are plainly seen a

few miles farther out; also the bank of the "Constable's Sands," which

tradition connects with the miracle of the rescue of Lupus's son from

the advancing tide through the intercession of St. Werburgh. A stone

cross from the cell of the Hilbree anchorite is kept in a Liverpool

museum. This cell, on a bare patch of sheep-pasture, rocky, surrounded

by sands and rank reedy grass, is still part of St. Oswald's parish in

Chester, and the two houses on the island contain the quota of

parishioners. At present the island is used as a school and dépôt of

buoys for the perpetual marking out of the very intricate navigable

channels at the mouth of the Dee, and also as a lifeboat station, though

the boat's crew lives on the mainland at Hoylake. Between West Kirby and

Shotwick, on the Cheshire bank of the Dee, stretches a long plateau

studded with country-houses, some belonging to old county families, but

more to rich merchants and bankers.

Older memories cling to the Welsh side of the river, and of these there

are not a few gathered round Mostyn Hall, the first country-house on the

right-hand side of the river, sailing up from the sea. Though in

describing such places one is obliged to repeat one's self, there is in

reality a good deal that is individual and characteristic in each house,

especially in those that keep the traces of their antiquity visibly upon

them. The kernel of Mostyn dates from 1420, but without losing its old

look the house has been added to and altered to suit the needs and

tastes of its successive owners. The deer-park is large, and as well

stocked as it is beautifully wooded, and the entrance, called Porth

Mawr, leading into a fine avenue that ends at the hall-door, is

suggestive, like many another of the kind, of the care taken of timber

in England. There is no reckless and irregular cutting down of young

wood unfit for anything but fuel: brushwood is cleared away

systematically at certain intervals of from three to seven years, and

various portions of the woods are cleared successively, instead of being

all bared at once. Then, too, tracts are carefully planted with forest

trees at proper distances, and these future groves fenced in, while in

formerly neglected plantations the useless timber is thinned out and

room given the older trees to grow and spread. The planting of lawns and

pleasure-grounds with foreign specimen trees is one of the greatest

delights of an English country gentleman, and the acres of young

_wellingtonias, diodaras, araucarias_ (or monkey-puzzlers--so named from

their spiky leaves, that defy a monkey's climbing powers), various

American pines and oaks, catalpas, tulip trees, etc., etc., are as much

his pride as a flower-garden or a poultry-yard is the favorite hobby of

his wife. Mostyn, however, well surrounded by trees, could afford to

dispense with that attraction, considering its family museum and its

valuable library of old British history and poetry. The Welsh

manuscripts are a treasure in themselves, and a silver harp which has

been in the family for more than three centuries is shown with as much

pride as the pedigree, which occupies nearly fifty feet of parchment.

The old family armor is also interesting. Among purely historical relics

is a golden _torque_, or neck-band, worn by the princes of Wales in

ancient times. Some of the royal jewelry of the Irish kings in the

museum at Dublin, and one or two specimens I have seen at a private

collector's near London, have much the same shape and general

appearance, and the plaid-brooches now in common use in Scotland are not

unlike the old pins for fastening cloaks of which these museums, public

and private, are full.

[Illustration: OLD EPISCOPAL PALACE, CHESTER.]

The road from Mostyn onward passes through Northup, whose high

church-tower, encircled with strongly-defined bands of cusped work, is a

very prominent object in one of the loveliest landscapes of the Dee. In

some parts of the road oaks meet overhead for long distances, and

between the trunks the views of the undulating cultivated fields,

studded with broad tall trees, are continually changing. At high water

there is a kind of likeness here to the scenery of the English lakes,

though the mountains there are nearer and better defined; but at low

water the Dutch likeness breaks out again, and the low-lying fields of

wheat and hay melt away in the distance into vast flat sandbanks. Near

Northup are Halkin Castle, a house of the duke of Westminster, formal

and black, but with fine grounds and park, and Upper Soughton Hall,

belonging to Mr. Howard--a low, irregular, gabled building in the style

of Mostyn, gray and timeworn, and very attractive. Nearing Hawarden,

the road passes by (but does not lead to) the ruins of Ewloc Castle, a

place whose history is very slightly known, but whose walls, eight feet

thick, and curious staircase, approached by a small gateway and enclosed

in the wall, lead to more speculation than other and better-known

places. Its odd situation in a deep, gloomy dell, suggestive, as Dean

Howson says, of a Canadian forest-glen, is another attraction. Most

ruins, castles especially, are conspicuous objects on hilltops or open

plains. Ewloc is like some of the natural beauties of the Lake country,

for a sight of which you have to climb steep slippery paths or go down

rocky declines with fern on their glistening edges, lean over frail

parapets, and cross bridges almost as swinging in their miniature

proportions as the famous rope-bridges of Peru. The tall elms and beech

trees that shroud Heron Bridge, belonging to Mr. Charles Potts, mark one

of the most delightful of the Dee scenes. The house, a very unpretending

one, is a statelier counterpart of Erbistock, with its double terraces,

broken by flights of steps leading down to the water's edge. Netherlegh,

once the home of an old extinct Chester family, the Cotgreaves, almost

leans on one of the lodges of Eaton Hall, opposite which, but nearly two

miles from the river, is Saighton Tower, formerly a country-house of the

abbots of St. Werburgh, and already in earlier times held by the secular

canons of that church, to whom the Domesday survey secured it for

another half century. Of course it is a good deal altered now. By Bangor

we pass a group of old historic houses, each still in the hands of the

family that built or inherited it centuries ago--among others, Acton

Hall, the birthplace of Judge Jeffreys; then some newer houses, one of

which, a large one in the Italian style, belongs to Mr. Edmund Peel, one

of the greatest land-owners of the neighborhood. Knolton Hall, near

Erbistock, is one of the most beautiful of country-houses, yet not one

that has a history as such. It shows what taste can do. Its front is

black and white, the timber showing outside, as in many of the southern

Cheshire and Shropshire houses, and its low, broad-capped tower, its

dozen or so of gables, its stacks of twisted and carved chimneys, give

it a very English and home look. How much of the old original farmhouse

remains one can hardly tell. Mr. Cotton, brother of Lord Combermere, the

Peninsular hero, bought the estate when the place was in a half-ruined

condition, but saw that the house had great capabilities. I have known

such a restoration, on a smaller scale, to be as successful, when the

large kitchen was turned into a drawing-room, ingeniously pieced on to a

new and large alcove opening by a glass door on to the flower-garden,

and communicating by a tower staircase with the chapel beside it and the

"boudoir" up stairs; which room had a mullioned oriel window over the

glass door. A library, study and second drawing-room were made out of

the existing rooms down stairs, while the oldest part of the house, an

ivied square tower with an orthodox ghost-story, was turned into

schoolroom and nursery; and on a lower level (a feature which made the

hall quite different from any I ever saw in a large or a small house)

were built out a covered stone porch, a dining-room with mullioned

bay-window and a stone mantelpiece receding to the ceiling, and guarded

by two carved lions bearing shields, and a line of servants' offices

enclosing a courtyard and a spring of famous water.

[Illustration: BRIDGE STREET ROW, CHESTER.]

Eaton Hall, the coldly magnificent pile of which we spoke before, has

its rival in Wynnestay, the house of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the

largest landowner in Wales. No doubt the old house, burnt down in 1858,

was less grand, but the loss of its collections of heirlooms, all things

of historical and national interest to a Welshman, was a worse one than

that of the building itself. Pennant, in his _Tour in Wales_ nearly a

century ago, describes it with the same comments on domestic

arrangements as many of our architects now start on as guiding

principles: "The most ancient part is a gateway of wood and plaister,

dated 1616. On a tower within the court is this excellent distich,

allusive to the name of the house, Wynne stay, or 'Rest satisfied with

the good things Providence has so liberally showered on you:'

Cui domus est victusque decens, cui patria dulcis,

Sunt satis hæc vitæ, cætera cura labor.

The new part, built by the first Sir Watkin, is of itself a good house,

yet was only a portion of a more extensive design. It is finished in

that substantial yet neat manner becoming the seat of an honest English

country gentleman, adapted to the reception of his worthy neighbors, who

may experience his hospitality without dread of spoiling his frippery

ornaments, becoming only the assembly-rooms of a town-house or the villa

of a great city." The present house is splendid and enormous, severer in

style than Eaton, but as wilderness-like in its magnificence. The trees

in the park, which is enclosed by an eight-mile wall, are very old and

grand, especially the Ruabon avenue, a mile in length, leading from the

gates of the old church, where are the family monuments. Wynnestay

formerly belonged to the founder of Valle Crucis Abbey, Madoc ap Gryfydd

Maeler, and came to the Wynns by the inter-marriage of one of the Gwedyr

family of that name with the heiress of Eyton Evans. This creation of

almost princely lines by the union of so much land and influence in one

family is characteristic of the Middle Ages in English history, and has

its faint shadow even in these days, when you invariably find in each

family its self-installed herald, sometimes an old maid, often an old

bachelor or widower, given to poring over pictures and pedigrees, and

dreamily recounting to mischievously attentive cousins the glories of

such an alliance, the importance of a fifty-sixth "quartering," or the

story of such and such an old love-affair that spoilt (or otherwise) the

negotiation for another thousand acres of land. The Welsh are even more

given to family pride than the English, but everywhere you find the old

sentiment lingering in some remote corner of the family, sometimes

cropping out in a beautiful illuminated volume, for which the head of

the family generally has to pay, or oftener making the life-study and

delight of some innocent, kind-hearted old bookworm. Luckily, we are

spared the heraldic lawsuits of old times, such as were sustained by the

Grosvenors and the Scropes in the reign of Richard II. respecting the

arms they each claimed to bear, and during which the names of two famous

men, Chaucer and John of Gaunt, were affixed as witnesses to the

manuscript account of it, still preserved in the library at Eaton Hall.

Owen Glendower and Hotspur were also called as witnesses at various

times on this 'three years' trial.

[Illustration: ANCIENT HALF-TIMBERED HOUSES, FOREGATE STREET, CHESTER.]

The view of the Dee from the southern point of Wynnestay Park is

perhaps, as a whole, the most remarkable on the river. It is very

perfect, and combines the unchangeable with the progressive, showing as

it does the swelling hills on both sides of the water, fishermen with

coracles on their backs, autumn tints on the clustering trees, and the

regular arches of the great railway viaduct. When the train is absent

these look not unlike those arches on the Campagna near Rome of which

every artist has a sketch and every traveller a recollection. Opposite

Wynnestay--which is in Denbighshire--is a detached bit of Flintshire

hemmed in between Cheshire and Shropshire, in which is Bettisfield, a

house of Lord Hanmer. Owen Glendower's wife was a Hanmer, and tradition

says she was married in Hanmer church. The present owner evidently

prefers his native river to the greater but not more historic ones of

the Continent, and has recorded his preference in some lines, of which

the following form the opening:

By the Elbe and through the Rheinland I've wandered far and wide,

And by the Save with silver tones, proud Danube's queenly bride;

By Arno's banks and Tiber's shore; but never did I see

A river I could match with thine, old Druid-haunted Dee.

[Illustration: VIEW OF CHESTER, FROM THE COP.]œ

Other houses on or near the river are Chirk Castle, dating just nine

hundred years back, the family-place of the Myddletons (now Biddulphs),

where among the old portraits is an authentic one of Oliver Cromwell;

Brynkinalt, where much of the youth of Wellington was spent with his

relation, Lord Arthur Hill Trevor, the owner; Plas Madoc, belonging to

the famous member of Parliament for Peterborough, whose rise in the

House is always heralded by a well-bred titter; and near Llangollen--for

this enumeration carries us up the stream again--Plas Newydd, the house

of the "Ladies of Llangollen." Farther up is Rhaggatt, the seat of a

very old Welsh family, the Lloyds, and opposite it was the old hall of

Owen Glendower, of which a Welsh bard says that it had "nine halls with

large wardrobes" (probably the retainers' rooms), and near this "a

wooden house supported on posts, with eight apartments for guests." Of

the park, warren, pigeon-house, mill, orchard, vineyard and fishpond,

"every convenience for good living and every support to hospitality," of

which Pennant speaks, there is hardly a trace now, though the moat is a

self-evident relic. Rug (pronounced Reeg) came from the Vaughans to the

Wynns by many stages of attainder, marriage and sale, and is famous as

the place where King Gryffydd ap Cynan was betrayed into the power of

Lupus, earl of Chester, who kept him a prisoner for twelve years in the

city castle; and near Bala Lake is Palé Hall, a new house representing a

very old one; Rhiwlas (pronounced Rovlas), whose owners, the Prices,

suffered in the Stuart cause, a member of the Long Parliament, one of

their family, being expelled on account of his loyalty to the king; and

Glann-y-llyn, a comfortable shooting-box of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. Of

course there are numberless other houses, the mere list of which one

could not get through without the help of a county history and a court

guide for each of the shires through which the Dee passes. Every library

stored in these old houses or carefully brought there from still older

ones forms an inexhaustible subject of interest, not only to the owners

(who are often the least benefited by it), but to inquiring minds of

various races and conditions. Even a lad let loose from college, his

mind full of athletics and Alpine Club aspirations, can find something

to admire in the relics or representations of ancient national games,

while the scholar discovers details full of interest in looking over the

books, manuscripts and curiosities. The size of the country-houses and

the extent of their gardens and parks seem perhaps disproportionate

compared with the confined space of the country itself: indeed, it is as

much their frequency in the landscape as the general cultivation of the

whole that has made England celebrated for its garden-like look; but the

historic associations of these small rivers and small territories are on

an equally large scale. Thousands of unnamed brooks on this side of the

ocean run through forests or farms as large as an English or Welsh

county, without rousing any save imaginary associations in the mind of

the traveller or the angler: they are as large as, and more varied in

scenery than, our "wizard stream;" but the old recollections, the

castles, the ruins, the modernized homes, the national relics, the

inherited traits of likeness between past and present, are wanting. In

Wales it is easy to leap back a few hundred years. The costume of the

market-women at the seacoast town of Aberystwith--not a sluggish place,

by any means--is almost literally like the old one in pictures of

"Mother Hubbard." I have seen young and pretty women wear it. The

neatly-roofed hay and straw stacks, so different from the ungainly

heaps so called in England, are thatched in the same way for which the

Welsh farmers were famous two hundred years ago, while many of the

poorer dwellings, especially in the slate districts, look just as they

may have done to Owen Glendower himself. The character of the people,

like that of the grave Highlanders, is stern and enduring, though their

temper is fierce and hot: it is easy to understand how passionately

certain forms of Methodism appealed to such temperaments, and developed

among them an enthusiasm easy to stir up into a likeness of that of the

old Cameronians.

[Illustration: MOSTYN HALL.]

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN.

Before the change which has recently befallen the chief German

watering-places, Baden--or, as it was more commonly called,

Baden-Baden--was the most frequented, the most brilliant and the most

profitable "hell" in Europe. Its baths and medicinal waters were a mere

excuse for the coming thither of a small number of the vast concourse

which annually filled its hotels. In any case, they sank into

comparatively utter insignificance. It was not for water--at least not

for the waters of any other stream than that of Pactolus--that the world

came to Baden. Of course, the sums realized by the keepers of the hell

were enormous; and they found it to be their interest to do all that

contributed to make the place attractive on a liberal scale. Gardens,

parks, miles of woodland walks admirably kept, excellent music in great

abundance, vast salons for dancing, for concerts, for reading-rooms, for

billiard-rooms, etc.--all as magnificent as carving and gilding and

velvet and satin could make them--were provided gratuitously, not for

those only who played at the tables, but for all those who would put

themselves within reach of the temptation to do so. And this liberal

policy was found to answer abundantly. Very many of the water-cure

places in the smaller states of Germany had their hells also, and did as

Baden did, on a more modest scale. Then came the German unification and

the great uprising of a German national consciousness. And German

national feeling said that this scandal should no longer exist. A

certain delay was rendered necessary by the contracts which were running

between the different small governments and the keepers of the

gambling-tables. But it was decreed that when the two or three years

which were required for these to run out should be at an end, they

should not be renewed. It was a serious resolution to take, for some

half dozen or so of these little pleasure-towns believed, not without

good reason, that the measure would be at once fatal to their prosperity

and well-nigh to their existence. And of course there were not wanting

large numbers of people who argued that the step was a quixotic one, as

needless and fallacious in a moral point of view as fatal on the side

of economic considerations. Could it be maintained that the governments

in question had any moral duty in the matter save as regarded the lives

and habits of their own people? And these were not imperilled by the

existence of the gambling-tables. For it was notorious that each of

these ducal and grand-ducal patrons of the blind goddess strictly

forbade their own subjects to enter the door of the play-saloons. And as

to those who resorted to them, and supplied the abundant flow of gold

that enriched the whole of each little state, could it be supposed that

any one of these gamblers would be reformed or saved from the

consequences of his vice by the shutting up of these tables? It was

difficult to answer this question in the affirmative. No liquor law ever

prevented men from getting drunk, nor could it be hoped that any closing

of this, that or the other hell could save gamblers from the indulgence

of their darling passion. Nevertheless, it can hardly be seriously

denied that the measure was the healthy outcome of a genuinely healthy

and highly laudable spirit. "Ruin yourself, if you will, but you shall

not come here for the purpose, and, above all, we will not touch the

profit to be made out of your vice." This was the feeling of the German

government, and, considering the amount of self-denial involved in the

act, Germany deserves no small degree of honor and praise for having

accomplished it.

And now it is time to ask, Has Baden--for we will confine our attention

to this ci-devant queen of hells--has Baden suffered that ruin which it

was so confidently predicted would overtake her? _Baden Revisited_, by

one who knew her well in the old days of her wickedness and wealth,

supplies the means for replying to the question. Unquestionably, in the

mere matter of the influx of gold the town has suffered very severely.

How were some four-and-twenty large hotels, besides a host of smaller

ones, which often barely sufficed to hold the crowds attracted by the

gambling-tables, to exist when this attraction ceased? It might have

been expected that a large number of these would at once have been shut

up. But such has not been the case. I believe that not one has been

closed. Nevertheless, a visitor's first stroll through the town, and

especially in the alleys and gardens around the celebrated

"Conversations-Haus," as it hypocritically called itself, is quite

sufficient to show how great is the difference between Baden as it was

and Baden as it is--between Baden the wealthy, gaudy, gay, privileged

home of vice, and Baden moralized and turned from the error of its ways.

And it cannot be denied that, speaking merely of the impression made

upon the eye, the difference is all in favor of vice. "As ugly as sin"

is a common phrase. But, unfortunately, the truth is that sin sometimes

looks extremely pretty, especially when well dressed and of an evening

by gaslight. And it did, it must be owned, look extremely pretty at

Baden. The French especially came there in those days in great numbers,

and they brought their Parisian toilettes with them. And somehow or

other, let the fact be explained as it may--and, though perhaps easily

explicable enough, I do not feel called upon to enter on the explanation

here--one used in those wicked old days to see a great number of very

pretty women at Baden, which can hardly be said to be the case at Baden

moralized. The whole social atmosphere of the place was wholly and

unmistakably different, and in outward appearance wicked Baden beat

moral Baden hollow. It would not do in the old time to examine the gay

scene which fluttered and glittered before the eyes much below the

absolute exterior surface. The little town in those old days, as

regarded a large proportion of the crowd which made it look so gay,

was--not to put too fine a point upon it--a sink of more unmitigated

blackguardism than could easily be found concentrated within so small a

compass on any other spot of the earth. A large number of the persons

who now congregate in this beautiful valley look, to tell the truth,

somewhat vulgar. Vulgar? As if the flaunting crowds which seemed to

insult the magnificent forests, the crystal streams and the smiling

lawns with their finery were not saturated with a vulgarity of the

most quintessential intensity! Yes, but that only showed itself to the

moral sense of those who could look a little below the surface, whereas

the vulgarity that may be noted sunning itself in the trim gardens and

sprawling on the satin sofas which are the legacy of the departed

wickedness is of the sort that shows itself upon the surface. In a word,

moral Baden looks a little _dowdy_, and _that_ wicked Baden never

looked.

[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN.]

The general determination at Baden when the terrible decree which put an

end to its career of wealth and wickedness came upon it like a

thunder-bolt was of the kind expressed by the more forcible than elegant

phrase, "Never say die!" The little town was determined to have a

struggle for its existence. It still had its mineral waters, so highly

valued by the Romans. The Romans, it may be remarked _en passant_, seem

to have discovered and profited by every mineral spring in Europe.

Hardly one of the more important springs can be named which cannot be

shown, either by direct historic testimony or by the still existing

remains of baths and the like, to have been known to the universal

conquerors. Well, Baden still had its waters, good for all the ills to

which flesh is heir--_capiti fluit utilis, utilis alveo_. It still had

its magnificent forests--pine and oak and beech in most lovely

juxtaposition and contrast. It had the interesting and charmingly

picturesque ruins of its ancient castle on the forest-covered hill above

the town, perched on one mighty mass of porphyry, and surrounded by

other ranges of the same rock, thrown into such fantastic forms that

they seem to assume the appearance of rival castellated ruins built on

Nature's own colossal plan, and such a world of strange forms of turrets

and spires and isolated towers and huge donjons that the Devil has

"pulpits" and "bridges" and "chambers" there, as is well known to all

tourists to be his wont in similar places. It had its other mediæval

baronial residences situated in the depths of the forest at pleasant

distances for either driving or walking. It had its delicious parks and

gardens, beginning from the very door of the "Conversations-Haus," with

brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay with shops and gas-lamps, and gradually

wandering away into umbrageous solitudes and hillside paths lit by the

moon alone--so gradually that she who had accepted an arm for a stroll

amid the crowd in the bright foreground of the scene found herself

enjoying solitude _à deux_ before she had time to become alarmed or

think what mamma would say. Then it had still the gorgeous halls, the

ball-rooms, the concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, with their gilding

and velvet and satin furniture, which had been created by a wave of the

wand of the great enchanter who presided at the green table. Why should

not all these good things be turned to the service of virtue instead of

vice? Why should not respectability and morality inherit the legacy of

departed wickedness? Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins,

with their pale blue eyes and pale blond hair, do their innocent

flirting amid the bowers where the Parisian demi-monde had outraged the

chaste wood-nymphs by its uncongenial presence? The loathsome patchouli

savor of the denizens of the Boulevard would hardly resist the purifying

breezes of one Black Forest winter. The notice to quit served on Mammon

would be equally efficacious as regarded the whole of his crew. The

whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to

the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging

from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that

it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the

livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage

to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours

and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest

cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate

prices. There could be no more of that reckless scattering of gold, no

more of that sublime indifference to the figure at the foot of the bill,

which characterized their former customers. What mattered a napoleon or

so more or less in their daily expense to him or her whose every

evening around the green table left them some thousands of francs richer

or poorer than the morning had found them? There can be no doubt, I

fear, that Baden would have much preferred a continuance in its old

ways. But the choice was not permitted to it. It is therefore making a

virtue of necessity, and striving to live under the new régime as best

it may. And I am disposed to think that better days may yet be in store

for it. At present, the preponderating majority of the visitors are

Germans. There are naturally no French, who heretofore formed the

majority of the summer population. There are hardly any Americans, and

very few English. Those of the class which used to find Baden delightful

find it, or conceive that they would find it, so no more. And English

and Americans of a different sort seem to have hardly yet become aware

that they would find there a very different state of things from that

which they have been accustomed to associate in idea with the name of

the place. It must be supposed, however, that they will shortly do so.

The natural advantages and beauties of the place are so great, the

accommodation is so good, and even in some respects the inheritance of

the good things the gamblers have left behind them so valuable, that it

is hardly likely that the place will remain neglected. Where else are

such public rooms and gardens to be found? The charge made at present

for the enjoyment of all this is about six or eight cents a day. Such a

payment could never have originally provided all that is placed at the

disposal of the visitor. He used in the old times to enjoy it all

absolutely gratuitously, unless he paid for it by his losses at the

tables. Play provided it all. But it is to be feared that the very

modest payment named above will be found insufficient even to keep up

the establishment which Mammon has bequeathed to Virtue. The ormolu and

the carved cornices, and the fresco-painted walls and the embroidered

satin couches and divans, and the miles upon miles of garden-walks, have

not indeed disappeared, as, according to all the orthodox legends, such

Devil's gifts should do, but they will wear out; and I do not think that

any eight cents a day will suffice to renew them. But in the mean time

you may avail yourself of them. You may lounge on the brocade-covered

divans which used to be but couches of thorns to so many of their

occupants, undisturbed by any more palpitating excitement than that

produced by the perusal of the daily paper. The lofty ceilings echo no

more the hateful warning croak of the croupier, "Faites votre jeu,

messieurs. Le jeu est fait!" which used to be ceaseless in them from

midday till midnight. There are no more studies to be made on the men

and women around you of all the expressions which eager avarice,

torturing suspense and leaden despair can impart to the human

countenance. The utmost you can hope to read on one of those placidly

stolid German burgher faces is the outward and visible sign of the

inward oppression caused by too copious a repast at the one-o'clock

_table d'hôte_. It is the less disagreeable and less unhealthy subject

of contemplation of the two. But the truth remains that virtuous Baden

does look somewhat dowdy.

* * * * *

Just seventy-three years ago a change as great as that which has

transformed Baden happened to an establishment which represented the

old-world social system of Europe as completely and strikingly as Baden

the "watering-place"--that is the modern phrase--did the Europe of the

latter half of the nineteenth century. In another green valley of this

region, as beautiful as, or even more beautiful than, that of Baden,

there existed a gathering-place of the sort produced by the exigencies

of a different stage of social progress--the convent of Allerheiligen,

or, as we should say, All Saints or Allhallows. It is within the limits

of an easy day's excursion from Baden, and no visitor who loves "the

merry green wood" should omit to give a day to Allerheiligen, for he

will scarcely find in his wanderings, let them be as extensive as they

may, a more perfect specimen of the loveliest forest scenery. It is an

old remark, that the ancient ecclesiastics who selected the sites of

the monastic establishments that were multiplied so excessively in every

country in Europe showed very excellent judgment and much practical

skill in the choice of them. And almost every visit made to the spot

where one of these cloister homes existed confirms the truth of the

observation, more especially as regards the communities belonging to the

great Benedictine family. The often-quoted line about seeking "to merit

heaven by making earth a hell," however well it may be applied to the

practices of some of the more ascetic orders, especially the mendicants,

cannot with any reason be considered applicable to the disciples of St.

Benedict. In point of fact, at the time when the great and wealthy

convents of this order were founded it was rather outside the

convent-wall that men were making the world a hell upon earth. And for

those who could school themselves to consider celibacy no unendurable

evil it would be difficult to imagine a more favorable contrast than

that offered by "the world" in the Middle Ages and the retreat of the

cloister. A site well selected with reference to all the requirements of

climate, wood and water, and with an appreciative eye to the beauties of

Nature, in some sequestered but favored spot as much shut in from war

and its troubles as mountains, streams and forests could shut it in; a

building often palatial in magnificence, always comfortable, with all

the best appliances for study which the age could afford; with beautiful

churches for the practice of a faith entirely and joyfully believed in;

with noble halls for temperate but not ascetic meals, connected by

stairs by no means unused with excellent and extensive cellars; with

lovely cloisters for meditative pacing, and well-trimmed gardens for

pleasant occupation and delight,--what can be imagined more calculated

to ensure all the happiness which this earth was in those days capable

of affording?

Such a retreat was the convent of Allerheiligen. It was founded for

Premonstratensian monks at the close of the twelfth century by Uta,

duchess of Schawenburg, who concludes the deed of foundation, which

still exists, with these words: "And if anybody shall do anything in any

respect contrary to these statutes, he will for ever be subject to the

vengeance of God and of all saints." Poor Duchess Uta! Could her spirit

walk in this valley, as lovely now as when she gave it to her monks, and

look upon the ruins of the pile she raised, she would think that the

vengeance of God and all saints had been incurred to a considerable

extent by somebody. The waterfalls--seven of them in succession--made by

the little stream that waters the valley immediately after it has passed

through the isolated bit of flat meadow-land on which the convent was

built, continue to sing their unceasing song as melodiously as when the

duchess Uta visited the spot and marked it out for the "Gottes Haus" she

was minded to plant there. Her husband, the duke Welf, who had married

her when she was a well-dowered widow, had been a very bad husband,

which naturally tended to lead his neglected lady wife's mind in the

direction of founding religious houses. He was duke of Altorf and

Spoleto, the one possession lying on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne,

and the other among the ilex-woods that overlook the valley of the

Tiber--a strange conjunction of titles, which is in itself illustrative

of the shape European history took in that day, and of the

preponderating part which Germany played in Italy and among the rulers

of its soil. Being thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much in Italy, but

does not seem to have found it necessary to take his German wife with

him to those milder skies and easier social moralities. Uta stayed at

home amid the dark-green valleys of her native Black Forest, and planned

cloister-building. Before the chart, however, which was to give birth to

Allerheiligen was signed, Duke Welf came home, and having had, it would

seem, his fling to a very considerable extent, had reached by a natural

process that time of life and that frame of mind which inclined him to

join in his long-neglected wife's pietistic schemes. So they planned and

drew up the statutes together, and the convent was founded and built,

a son of Uta by her first husband being, as is recorded, the first

prior.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.]

It was not long before the young community became rich. Such was the

ordinary, the almost invariable, course of matters. Property was held on

very unstable conditions even by the great and powerful. The most secure

of all tenures was that by which the Church held what was once her own.

And in a state of things when men were persuaded both that it was very

doubtful whether they would be able to keep possession of their

property, especially whether they would be able to secure such

possessions to those who were to come after them, and that the surest

way to escape that retribution in the next world which they fully

believed to have been incurred by their deeds in this world was to give

what they possessed to some monastic institution, it is not difficult to

understand how and why monasteries grew rich. And it is equally

intelligible that the result should have followed which did, as we know,

follow almost invariably. As the monasteries became rich the monks

became corrupt--first comfortable, then luxurious, then licentious. The

Benedictines escaped this doom more frequently than the other orders.

Even after their great convents had become wealthy and powerful

landlords they were often very good landlords, and the condition of

their lands and of their tenants and vassals contrasted favorably with

that of the lands and dependants of their lay neighbors. The superiority

of the Benedictines in this respect was doubtless due to their studious

and literary habits and proclivities. It is constantly urged that the

cause of learning and of literature owes a great debt of gratitude to

the monks, but it should be said that this debt is due almost

exclusively to the sons of St. Benedict.

But something more than this may be said for the community founded by

Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose dwelling now complete the

picturesque charm of this most exquisite valley. By a rare exception

history has in truth nothing to say against them. Their record is quite

clear. All remaining testimony declares that from their first

establishment to the day of their dissolution the Allerheiligen monks

lived studious and blameless lives. Possibly, the profound seclusion of

their valley, literally shut in from the outer world by vast masses of

thick roadless forests, may have contributed to this result, though

similar circumstances do not in all cases seem to have ensured a similar

consequence. Good fortune probably did much in the matter. A happy

succession of three or four good and able abbots would give the place a

good name and beget a good tradition in the community; and this in such

cases is half the battle. "Such and such goings-on may do elsewhere, but

they won't suit Allerheiligen"--such a sentiment, once made common,

would do much for the continuance of a good and healthy tradition.

Accordingly, it was long before the sentence of dissolution went forth

against the monastery of Allerheiligen--that sentence which was to

produce a change in the place and all around it as momentous as that

other sentence which some seventy years later went forth against

Baden-Baden. It was not till 1802 that the monastery of Allerheiligen

was dissolved; and its extinction was due then not to any reason or

pretext drawn from the conduct of the inmates, but to the religious

dissensions and political quarrels of princes and governments. But the

doom was all the more irrevocably certain. In all the countries in which

monasteries have been abolished and Church property confiscated tales

eagerly spread, and by no means wholly disbelieved even by the spoilers

themselves, are current of the "judgments" and retribution which have

sooner or later fallen on those who have been enriched by the

secularization of Church property or who have taken part in the acts by

which the Church has been dispossessed. But rarely has what the world

now calls "chance" brought about what the Church would call so

startlingly striking a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven against the

despoilers of "God's house." St. Norbert was the original founder of the

Premonstratensian rule. And it was precisely on St. Norbert's Day next

after the dissolution of the monastery of Allerheiligen that a

tremendous and--the local chroniclers say--unprecedented storm of

thunder, lightning and hail broke over the woodland valley and the

devoted fabric in such sort that the lightning, more than once striking

the buildings, set them on fire and reduced the vast pile to the few

picturesque ruins which now delight the tourist and the landscape

painter. Could the purpose and intent of the supernal Powers have been

more strongly emphasized or more clearly marked? Truly, the scattered

monks may have been excused for recalling with awe, not unmingled with a

sense of triumph, the prophetic denunciation of their foundress Uta,

which has been cited above, against whoso should undo the pious deed she

was doing. For more than six hundred years her work had prospered and

her will had been respected, and now after all those centuries the

warning curse was still potent. Neither thunder nor lightning, nor the

anger of St. Norbert, however, availed to rebuild the monastery or

recall the monks. Their kingdom and the glory thereof has passed to

another, even to Herr Mittenmeyer, _Wirth und Gastgeber_, who has built

a commodious hostelry close by the ruins, which are mainly those of the

church, and on the site of the monastic buildings, and who distributes a

hospitality as universal, if not quite so disinterested, as that

practised by his cowled predecessors. There, for the sum of six

marks--about a dollar and a half--per diem you may find a well-furnished

cell and a fairly well-supplied refectory, and may amuse yourself with

pacing in the walks where St. Norbert's monks paced, looking on the

scenes of beauty on which they gazed, and casting your mind for the

nonce into the mould of the minds of those who so looked and mused. You

may do so, indeed, thanks to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater comfort,

materially speaking, than the old inmates of the valley could have done.

For the most charming and delicious walks have been made through the

woods on either side of the narrow valley, and skilfully planned so as

to show you all the very remarkable beauties of it. These, in truth, are

of no ordinary kind. The hillsides which enclose the valley are

exceedingly steep, almost precipitous indeed in some places, though not

sufficiently so to prevent them from being clothed with magnificent

forests. Down this narrow valley a little stream runs, and about a

quarter of a mile from the spot on which the convent stood, and the

ruins stand, makes a series of cascades of every variety of form and

position that can be conceived. All these falls, together with the

crystalline pools in huge caldrons worn by the waters out of the rocks

at their feet, were no doubt well known to the vassal fishermen who

brought their tribute of trout to the convent larder. But the majority

of the holy men themselves, I fancy, lived and died without seeing some

of the falls, for they would be by no means easily accessible without

the assistance of the paths which by dint of long flights of steps,

constructed of stones evidently brought from the ruins of the abbey,

carry the visitor to every spot of vantage-ground most favorable for

commanding a view of them. If, however, you have the advantage over the

monks in this respect, your retreat will be less adapted to the purposes

of retirement in another point of view. Ten or a dozen carriages a day

filled with German tourists, all in high spirits and all very thirsty

("Thanks be!" says Herr Mittenmeyer), are not appropriate aids to the

indulgence of contemplation. Scott advised his readers if they "would

view fair Melrose aright, to visit it by the pale moonlight." And to

those who would view Allerheiligen aright I would add the recommendation

that the moon should be an October moon. The usual holiday-making months

in Germany are by that time over. The professors have gone back to their

chairs in the different universities; the _privat-docents_ have reopened

their courses; the substantial burghers have returned to their shops;

and the _raths_ of all sorts and degrees have ensconced themselves once

more behind their official desks, and have ceased to "babble of green

fields" any more till this time twelvemonth. The tourists will have

gone, and the autumnal colors will have come into the woods. There is

much beech mixed with the pine in these forests, and the beech in

October is as gorgeous a master of color as Rubens or Veronese. Herr

Mittenmeyer's mind, too, will have entered into a more placid and

even-tempered phase. A stout, thickset man is Herr Mittenmeyer, with

broad, rubicund face and short bull neck, of the type that suggests the

possibility of an analogous shortness of temper under the pressure of

being called in six different directions at once. Altogether, it is

better in October. The song of the waterfall will not then be the only

one making the woods melodious. There will be a fitful soughing of the

wind in the forest. There will be a carpeting of dry, pale-brown

oak-leaves on all the paths which "will make your steps vocal." Again

and again, when slowly and musingly climbing the steep homeward path up

the valley in the dark hour, when the sun has set and before the moon

has yet risen, you will fancy that you hear the tread among the leaves

of a sandalled foot behind you. But it is well that the path leads you,

for there is no more any vesper-bell flinging its sweet and welcome

notes far and wide over hill and vale to guide the returning wanderer

through the forest.

Then the whole of this Black Forest region is full of legends and

traditional stories, which live longer and are more easily preserved

among a people where the sons and the daughters live and marry and die

for the most part under the shadow of the same trees and the same thatch

beneath which their fathers and mothers did the same. Of course, the

Black Huntsman is as well known as of yore, though perhaps somewhat more

rarely seen. But his habits and specialties have become too well known

to all readers of folk-lore to need any further notice. Less widely

known histories, each the traditional subject of inglenook talk in its

own valley, may be found at every step. There is a rather remarkable

grotto or cavern in the hill above Allerheiligen, the main ridge which

divides that valley from Achern and the Rhine. It is, you are told, the

Edelfrauengrab (the "Noble Lady's Grave"). And you will be further

informed, if you inquire aright, how that unhallowed spot came to be a

noble lady's grave, and something more than a grave. 'Twas at the time

of the Crusades--those mischief-making Crusades, which, among all the

other evil which they produced, would have absolutely overwhelmed the

divorce courts of those days with press of business if there had then

been any divorce courts. This noble lady's lord went to the Crusades.

How could a gallant knight and good Christian do aught else? Of course

he went to the Crusades! And of course his noble lady felt extremely

dull and disconsolate during his absence. What was she to do? There was

no circulating library; and even if there had been, she would not have

been able to avail herself of its resources, for, though tradition says

nothing upon the subject, it may be very safely assumed that she could

not read. And needlework in the company of her maids must have become

terribly wearisome after a time. She could go to mass, and to vespers

also. Probably she did so at the new church of the recently-established

community nestling in so charming a spot of the lovely valley beneath

her. Let us hope that it was not there that she fell in with one whom in

an hour of weakness she permitted to console her too tenderly for the

absence of her crusading lord. Had she waited with patience but only

nine months longer for his return, all would have been well. For he did

return as nearly as possible about that time; and, arriving at his own

castle-door, met one whom he at once recognized as his wife's

confidential maid coming out of the house and carrying a large basket.

The natural inquiry whither she was going, and what she had in her

basket, was answered by the statement--uttered with that ingenuous

fluency and masterly readiness for which ladies' maids have in all

countries, and doubtless in all ages, been celebrated--that the basket

contained a litter of puppies which she was taking to the river to

drown. Alas! the girl had adhered but too nearly to the truth. There

_were_ seven living and breathing creatures in the basket, and the

confidential maid had been sent on the very confidential errand of

drowning them. Woe worth the day! They were seven little unchristened

Christians, doomed to die one death as they had been born at one

birth--the result of that erring noble lady's fault. The methods of

injured husbands were wont to be characterized by much simplicity and

directness of purpose in those days. The noble crusader invoked the aid

of no court, either spiritual or lay. He happened to remember the

existence of a certain dismal cavern in the sandstone rock not far from

his dwelling. The entrance to it was very easily walled up. That cavern

became the noble lady's prison and deathbed, as well as her grave! And a

valuable possession has that lady's death and grave become to the

descendants of her lord's vassals, for many a gulden is earned by

guiding the curious to see the spot and by retailing the tragic

history.

Well! and of the two changes, the two abolitions, which have been here

recorded, which was the most needed, which the most salutary, which the

least mingled in its results with elements of evil? Poor Baden piteously

complains that it does not take half the money in the course of the year

that it used to receive as surely as "the season" came round in the old

times. And the poor, wholly unconverted by maxims of political economy,

declare that there have been no good times in the land since the

destruction of the monasteries. After all, Abbot Fischer (that was the

name of the last of the long line) and his monks were less objectionable

than M. Benazet and his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep the scales even

and make things pleasant all round by re-establishing both the abolished

institutions--restoring the croupiers and "makers of the game" to their

green table, and requiring them out of their enormous gains to re-endow

the convent? "C'est une idée, comme une autre!" as a Frenchman says.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

SONG.

Sweet wind that blows o'er sunny isles

The softness of the sea!

Blow thou across these moving miles

News of my love to me.

Ripples her hair like waves that sweep

About this pleasant shore:

Her eyes are bluer than the deep

Round rocky Appledore.

Her sweet breast shames the scattered spray,

Soft kissed by early light:

I dream she is the dawn of day,

That lifts me out of night.

OSCAR LAIGHTON.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER IV.

WISHING WELL AND ILL.

[Illustration]

Lottie's birthday had dawned, the fresh morning hours had slipped away,

the sun had declined from his midday splendor into golden afternoon, and

yet to Lottie herself the day seemed scarcely yet begun. Its crowning

delight was to be a dance given in her honor, and she awaited that dance

with feverish anxiety.

It was nearly three o'clock when the dog-cart from Brackenhill came

swiftly along the dusty road. It was nearing its destination: already

there were distant glimpses of Fordborough with its white suburban

villas. Percival Thorne thoroughly enjoyed the bright June weather, the

cloudless blue, the clear singing of the birds, the whisper of the

leaves, the universal sweetness from far-off fields and blossoms near at

hand. He gazed at the landscape with eyes that seemed to be looking at

something far away, and yet they were observant enough to note a figure

crossing a neighboring field. It was but a momentary vision, and the

expression of his face did not vary in the slightest degree, but he

turned to the man at his side and spoke in his leisurely fashion: "I'll

get down here and walk the rest of the way. You may take my things to

Mr. Hardwicke's."

The man took the reins, but he looked round in some wonder, as if

seeking the cause of the order. His curiosity was unsatisfied. The slim

girlish figure had vanished behind a clump of trees, and nothing was

visible that could in any way account for so sudden a change of purpose.

Glancing back as he drove off, he saw only Mr. Percival Thorne, darkly

conspicuous on the glaring road, standing where he had alighted, and

apparently lost in thought. The roan horse turned a corner, the sound of

wheels died away in the distance, and Percival walked a few steps in the

direction of Brackenhill, reached a stile, leaned against it and waited.

"Many happy returns of the day to you!" he said as the girl whom he had

seen came along the field-path.

Light leafy shadows wavered on her as she walked, and, all unconscious

of his presence, she was softly whistling an old tune.

The color rushed to her face, and she stopped short. "Percival! You

here?" she said.

"Yes: did I startle you? I was driving into the town, and saw you in the

distance. I could not do less--could I?--than stop then and there to pay

my respects to the queen of the day. And what a glorious day it is!"

Lottie sprang over the stile, and looked up and down the road. "Oh, you

are going to walk?" she said.

"I'm going to walk--yes. But what brings you here wandering about the

fields to-day?"

She had recovered her composure, and looked up at him with laughing

eyes: "It is wretched indoors. They are so busy fussing over things for

to-night, you know."

"Exactly what I thought you would be doing too."

"I? Oh, mamma said I wasn't a bit of use, and Addie said that I was more

than enough to drive Job out of his mind. The fact was, I upset one of

her flower-vases. And afterward--well, afterward I broke a big china

bowl."

"I begin to understand," said Percival thoughtfully, "that they might

feel able to get on without your help."

"Yes, perhaps they might. But they needn't have made such a noise about

the thing, as if nobody could enjoy the dance to-night because a china

bowl was smashed! Such rubbish! What could it matter?"

"Was it something unique?"

"Oh, it was worse than that," she answered frankly: "it was one of a

set. But I don't see why one can't be just as happy without a complete

set of everything."

"There I agree with you," he replied. "I certainly can't say that my

happiness is bound up with crockery of any kind. And, do you know,

Lottie, I'm rather glad it was one of a set. Otherwise, your mother

might have known that there was something magical about it, but one of a

set is prosaic--isn't it? Suppose it had been a case of--

If this glass doth fall,

Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!"

"Well, the luck would have been in uncommonly little bits," she replied.

"I smashed it on a stone step, and they were so cross that I was

crosser, so I said I would come out for a walk."

"And do you feel any better?" he asked in an anxious voice.

"Yes, thank you. Being in the open air has done me good."

"Then may I go with you? Or will nothing short of solitude effect a

complete cure?"

"You may come," she said gravely. "That is, if you are not afraid of the

remains of my ill-temper."

"No, I'm not afraid. I don't make light of your anger, but I believe I'm

naturally very brave. Where are we going?"

She hesitated a moment, then looked up at him: "Percival, isn't this the

way to the wishing-well? Ever since we came to Fordborough, three months

ago, I've wanted to go there. Do you know where it is?"

"Oh yes, I know it. It is about a mile from here, or perhaps a little

more. That won't be too far for you, will it?"

"Too far!" She laughed outright. "Why, I could walk ten times as far,

and dance all night afterward."

"Then we'll go," said Percival. And, crossing the road, they passed into

the fields on the opposite side. A pathway, too narrow for two to walk

abreast, led them through a wide sea of corn, where the flying breezes

were betrayed by delicate tremulous waves. Lottie led the way, putting

out her hand from time to time as she went, and brushing the bloom from

the softly-swaying wheat. She was silent. Fate had befriended her

strangely in this walk. The loneliness of the sunlit fields was far

better for her purpose than the crowd and laughter of the evening, but

her heart almost failed her, and with childish superstition she resolved

that she would not speak the words which trembled on her lips until she

and Percival should have drunk together of the wishing-well. He followed

her, silent too. He was well satisfied to be with his beautiful

school-girl friend, free to speak or hold his peace as he chose. Freedom

was the great charm of his friendship with Lottie--freedom from

restraint and responsibility. For if Percival was serenely happy and

assured on any single point, he was so with regard to his perfect

comprehension of the Blakes in general, and Lottie in particular. He had

some idea of giving his cousin Horace a word of warning on the subject

of Mrs. Blake's designs. He quite understood that good lady's feelings

concerning himself. "I'm nobody," he thought. "I'm not to be thrown

over, because I introduced Horace to them; besides, I'm an additional

link between Fordborough and Brackenhill, and Mrs. Blake would give her

ears to know Aunt Middleton. And I am no trouble so long as I am

satisfied to amuse myself with Lottie. In fact, I am rather useful. I

keep the child out of mischief, and I don't give her black eyes, as that

Wingfield boy did." And from this point Percival would glide into vague

speculation as to Lottie's future. He was inclined to think that the

girl would do something and be something when she grew up. She was

vehement, resolute, ambitious. He wondered idly, and a little

sentimentally, whether hereafter, when their paths had diverged for

ever, she would look back kindly to these tranquil days and to her old

friend Percival. He rather thought not. She would have enough to occupy

her without that.

It was true, after a fashion, that Lottie was ambitious in her dreams of

love. Her lover must be heroic, handsome, a gentleman by birth, with

something of romance about his story. A noble poverty might be more

fascinating than wealth. There was but one thing absolutely needful: he

must not be commonplace. It was the towering yet unsubstantial ambition

of her age, a vision of impossible splendor and happiness. Most girls

have such dreams: most women find at six or seven and twenty that their

enchanted castles in the air have shrunk to brick-and-mortar houses.

Tastes change, and they might even be somewhat embarrassed were they

called on to play their parts in the passionate love-poems which they

dreamed at seventeen. But the world was just opening before Lottie's

eyes, and she was ready to be a heroine of romance.

"This way," said Percival; and they turned into a narrow lane, deep and

cool, with green banks overgrown with ferns, and arching boughs above.

As they strolled along he gathered pale honeysuckle blossoms from the

hedge, and gave them to Lottie.

"How pretty it is!" said the girl, looking round.

"Wait till you see the well," he replied. "We shall be there directly:

it is prettier there."

"But this is pretty too: why should I wait?" said Lottie.

"You are right. I don't know why you should. Admire both: you are wiser

than I, Lottie."

As he spoke, the lane widened into a grassy glade, and Lottie quickened

her steps, uttering a cry of pleasure. Percival followed her with a

smile on his lips. "Here is your wishing-well," he said. "Do you like

it, now that you have found it out?"

She might well have been satisfied, even if she had been harder to

please. It was a spring of the fairest water, bubbling into a tiny

hollow. The little pool was like a brimming cup, with colored pebbles

and dancing sand at the bottom, and delicate leaf-sprays clustered

lightly round its rim. And this gem of sparkling water was set in a

space of mossy sward, with trees which leant and whispered overhead,

their quivering canopy pierced here and there by golden shafts of

sunlight and glimpses of far-off blue.

"It is like fairy-land," said Lottie.

"Or like something in Keats's poems," Percival suggested.

"I never read a line of them, so I can't say," she answered with defiant

candor, while she inwardly resolved to get the book.

He smiled: "You don't read much poetry yet, do you? Ah, well, you have

time enough. How about wishing, now we are here?" he went on, stooping

to look into the well. "Your wishes ought to have a double virtue on

your birthday."

"I only hope they may."

"What! have you decided on something very important? Seventeen to-day!

Lottie, don't wish to be eighteen: that will come much too soon without

wishing."

"I don't want to be eighteen. I think seventeen is old enough," she

answered dreamily.

"So do I." He was thinking, as he spoke, what a charming childish age it

was, and how, before he knew Lottie, he had fancied from books that

girls were grown up at seventeen.

"Now I am going to wish," she said seriously, "and you must wish after

me." Bending over the pool, she looked earnestly into it, took water in

the hollow of her hand and drank. Then, standing back, she made a sign

to her companion.

He stepped forward, and saying, with a bright glance, "My wishes must be

for you to-day, Queen Lottie," he followed her example. But when he

looked up, shaking the cold drops from his hand, he was struck by the

intense expression on her downward-bent face. "What has the child been

wishing?" he wondered; and an idea flashed suddenly into his mind which

almost made him smile. "By Jove!" he said to himself, "there will be a

fiery passion one of these fine days, when Lottie falls in love." But

even as he thought this the look which had startled him was gone.

"We needn't go back directly, need we?" she said. "Let us rest a little

while."

"By all means," Percival replied, "I'm quite ready to rest as long as

you like: I consider resting my strong point. What do you say to this

bank? Or there is a fallen tree just across there?"

"No. Percival, listen! There are some horrid people coming: let us go on

a little farther, out of their way."

He listened: "Yes, there are some people coming. Very likely they are

horrid, though we have no fact to go upon except their desire to find

the wishing-well: at any rate, we don't want them. Lottie, you are

right: let us fly."

They escaped from the glade at the farther end, passed through a gate

into a field, and found themselves once more in the broad sunlight. They

paused for a moment, dazzled and uncertain which way to go. "_Why_ did

those people come and turn us out?" said Thorne regretfully. A shrill

scream of laughter rang through the shade which they had just left.

"What shall we do now?"

"I don't mind: I like this sunshine," said Lottie. "Percival, don't you

think there would be a view up there?"

"Up there" was a grassy little eminence which rose rather abruptly in

the midst of the neighboring fields. It was parted from the place where

they stood by a couple of meadows.

"I should think there might be."

"Then let us go there. When I see a hill I always feel as if I must get

to the top of it."

"I've no objection to that feeling in the present case, as the hill

happens to be a very little one," Percival replied. "And the shepherds

and shepherdesses in our Arcadia are unpleasantly noisy. But I don't see

any gate into the next field."

"Who wants a gate? There's a gap by that old stump."

"And you don't mind this ditch? It isn't very wide," he said as he

stood on the bank.

"No, I don't mind it."

He held out his hand: she laid hers on it and sprang lightly across,

with a word of thanks. A few months earlier she would have scorned Cock

Robin's assistance had the ditch been twice as wide, as that day she

would have scorned any assistance but Percival's. It was well that she

did not need help, for his outstretched hand, firm as it was, gave her

little. It rather sent a tremulous thrill through her as she touched it

that was more likely to make her falter than succeed. She was not vexed

that he relapsed into silence as they went on their way. In her eyes his

aspect was darkly thoughtful and heroic. As she walked by his side the

low grass-fields became enchanted meads and the poor little flowers

bloomed like poets' asphodel. A lark sang overhead as never bird sang

before, and the breeze was sweet with memories of blossom. When they

stood on the summit of the little hill the view was fair as Paradise. A

big gray stone lay among the tufts of bracken, as if a giant hand had

tossed it there in sport. Lottie sat down, leaning against it, and

Percival threw himself on the grass at her feet.

She was nerving herself to overcome an unwonted feeling of timidity. She

had dreamed of this birthday with childish eagerness. Her fancy had made

it the portal of a world of unknown delights. She grew sick with fear,

lest through her weakness or any mischance the golden hours should glide

by, and no golden joy be secured before the night came on. Golden hours?

Were they not rather golden moments on the hillside with Percival? He

loved her--she was sure of that--but he was poor, and would never speak.

What could she say to him? She bent forward a little that she might see

him better as he lay stretched on the warm turf unconscious of her eyes.

Through his half-closed lids he watched the little gray-blue butterflies

which flickered round him in the sunny air, emerging from or melting

into the eternal vault of blue.

"Percival!"

She had spoken, and ended the long silence. She almost fancied that her

voice shook and sounded strange, but he did not seem to notice it.

"Yes?" he said, and turned his face to her--the face that was the whole

world to Lottie.

"Percival, is it true that your father was the eldest son, and that you

ought to be the heir?"

He opened his eyes a little at the breathless question. Then he laughed:

"I might have known that you could not live three months in Fordborough

without hearing something of that."

"It is true, then? Mayn't I know?"

"Certainly." He raised himself on his elbow. "But there is no injustice

in the matter, Lottie. The eldest son died, and my father was the

second. He wanted to have his own way, as we most of us do, and he gave

up his expectations and had it. He did it with his eyes open, and it was

a fair bargain."

"He sold his birthright, like Esau? Well, that might be quite right for

him, but isn't it rather hard on you?"

"Not at all," he answered promptly. "I never counted on it, and

therefore I am not disappointed. Why should I complain of not having

what I did not expect to have? Shall I feel very hardly used when the

archbishopric of Canterbury falls vacant and they pass me over?"

"But your father shouldn't have given up your rights," the girl

persisted.

"Why, Lottie," he said with a smile, "it was before I was born! And I'm

not so sure about my rights. I don't know that I have any particular

rights or wrongs." There was a pause, and then he looked up. "Suppose

the birthright had been Jacob's, and he had thrown it away for Rachel's

sake: would you have blamed him?"

"No," said Lottie, with kindling eyes.

"Then Jacob and Rachel's son is not hardly used, and has no cause to

complain of his lot," Percival concluded, sinking back lazily.

Lottie was silent for a moment. Then she apparently changed the

subject: "Do you remember that day Mrs. Pickering called and talked

about William?"

"Oh yes, I remember. I scandalized the old lady, didn't I? Lottie, I'm

half afraid I scandalized your mother into the bargain."

"I've been thinking about what you said," Lottie went on very

seriously--"about being idle all your life."

"Ah!" said Percival, drawing a long breath. "_You_ are going to lecture

me? Well, I don't know why I should be surprised. Every one lectures me:

they don't like it, but feel it to be their duty. I dare say Addie will

begin this evening." He was amused at the idea of a reproof from Lottie,

and settled his smooth cheek comfortably on his sleeve that he might

listen at his ease. "Go on," he said: "it's very kind of you, and I'm

quite ready."

"Suppose I'm not going to lecture you," said Lottie.

"Why, that's still kinder. What then?"

"Suppose I think you are right."

"Do you?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "William Pickering may spend his life

scraping pounds and pence together. Men who can't do anything else may

as well do that, for it _is_ nice to be rich. But if you have enough,

why should you spend your time over it--the best years of your life

which will never come back?"

"Never!" said Percival. "You are right."

There was a long pause. Lottie pulled a bit of fern, and looked at him

again. There was a line between his dark brows, as if he were pursuing

some thought which her words had suggested, but he held his head down

and was silent. She threw the fern away and pressed her hands together:

"But, Percival, you do care for money, after all. You set it above

everything else, as they all do, only in a different way. You are right

in what you say, but they are more honest, for they say and do alike."

"Do I care for money? Lottie, it's the first time I have ever been

charged with that."

"Because you talk as if you didn't. But you do. Why did you say you

would never marry an heiress? The color went right up to the roots of

your hair when they talked about it, and you said it would be

contemptible: that was the word--contemptible. Then I suppose if you

cared for her, and she loved you with all her heart and soul, you would

go away and leave her to hate the world and herself and you, just

because she happened to have a little money. And you say you don't care

about it!"

"Lottie, you don't know what you are talking about." His eyes were fixed

on the turf. She had called up a vision in which she had no part. "You

don't understand," he began.

"It is you who don't understand," she answered desperately. "You men

judge girls--I don't know how you judge them--not by themselves: by

their worldly-wise mammas, perhaps. Do you fancy we are always counting

what money men have or what we have? It's you who think so much about

it. Oh, Percival!" the strong voice softened to sudden tenderness, "do

you think I care a straw about what I shall have one day?"

"Good God!" Percival looked up, and for the space of a lightning flash

their eyes met. In hers he read enough to show him how blind he had

been. In his she read astonishment, horror, repulsion.

Repulsion she read it, but it was not there. To her dying day Lottie

will believe that she saw it in his eyes. Did she not feel an icy stab

of pain when she recognized it? Never was she more sure of her own

existence than she was sure of this. And yet it was not there. She had

suddenly roused him from a dream, and he was bewildered, shocked--sorry

for his girl-friend, and bitterly remorseful for himself.

Lottie knew that she had made a terrible mistake, and that Percival did

not love her. There was a rushing as of water in her ears, a black mist

swaying before her eyes. But in a moment all that was over, and she

could look round again. The sunlit world glared horribly, as if it

understood and pressed round her with a million eyes to mock her burning

shame.

"No, I never thought you cared for money," said Percival, trying to seem

unconscious of that lightning glance with all its revelations. He had

not the restless fingers so many men have, and could sit contentedly

without moving a muscle. But now he was plucking nervously at the turf

as he spoke.

"What does it matter?" said Lottie. "I shall come to care for it one of

these days, I dare say."

He did not answer. What could he say? He was cursing his blind folly.

Poor child! Why, she _was_ only a child, after all--a beautiful,

headstrong, wilful child, and it was not a year since he met her in the

woods with torn frock and tangled hair, her long hands bleeding from

bramble-scratches and her lips stained with autumn berries. How fiercely

and shyly she looked at him with her shining eyes! He remembered how she

stopped abruptly in her talk and answered him in monosyllables, and how,

when he left the trio, the clear, boyish voice broke instantly into a

flood of happy speech. As he lay there now, staring at the turf, he

could see his red-capped vision of Liberty as plainly as if he stood on

the woodland walk again with the September leaves above him. He felt a

rush of tender, brotherly pity for the poor mistaken child--"brotherly"

in default of a better word. Probably a brother would have been more

keenly alive to the forward folly of Lottie's conduct. Percival would

have liked to hold out his hand to the girl, to close it round hers in a

tight grasp of fellowship and sympathy, and convey to her, in some

better way than the clumsy utterance of words, that he asked her pardon

for the wrong he had unconsciously done her, and besought her to be his

friend and comrade for ever. But he could not do anything of the kind:

he dared not even look up, lest a glance should scorch her as she

quivered in her humiliation. He ended as he began, by cursing the serene

certainty that all was so harmless and so perfectly understood, which

had blinded his eyes and brought him to this.

And Lottie? She hardly knew what she thought. A wild dream of a desert

island in tropic seas, with palms towering in the hot air and snow-white

surf dashing on the coral shore, and herself and Cock Robin parted from

all the world by endless leagues of ocean, flitted before her eyes. But

that was impossible, absurd.

[Illustration: "FOR THE SPACE OF A LIGHTNING FLASH THEIR EYES

MET."--Page 551.]

_He_ was laughing at her, no doubt--scorning her in his heart. Oh, why

had she been so mad? Suppose a thunder-bolt were to fall from the blue

sky and crush him into eternal silence as he lay at her feet pulling his

little blades of grass? No! Lottie did not wish that: the thought was

hideous. Yet had not such a wish had a momentary life as she stared at

the hot blue sky? Was it written there, or wandering in the air, or

uttered in the busy humming of the flies, so that as she gazed and

listened she became conscious of its purport? Surely she never wished

it. Why could not the gray rock against which she leaned totter and fall

and bury her for ever, hiding her body from sight while her spirit fled

from Percival? Yet even that was not enough: they might meet in some

hereafter. Lottie longed for annihilation in that moment of despair.

This could not last. It passed, as the first faintness had done, and

with an aching sense of shame and soreness (almost worse to bear because

there was no exaltation in it) she came back to every-day life. She

pushed her hair from her forehead and got up. "I suppose you are not

going to stay here all day?" she said.

Percival stretched himself with an air of indolent carelessness: "No, I

suppose not. Do you think duty calls us to go back at once?"

"It is getting late," was her curt reply; and he rose without another

word.

She was grave and quiet: if anything, she was more self-possessed than

he was, only she never looked at him. Perhaps if he could have made her

understand what was in his heart when first he realized the meaning of

her hasty words, she might have grasped the friendly hand he longed to

hold out to her. But not now. Her face had hardened strangely, as if it

were cut in stone. They went down the hill in silence, Percival

appearing greatly interested in the landscape. As they crossed the level

meadows Lottie looked round with a queer fancy that she might meet the

other Lottie there, the girl who had crossed them an hour before. At the

ditch Thorne held out his hand again. She half turned, looked straight

into his eyes with a passionate glance of hatred, and sprang across,

leaving him to follow.

He rejoined her as she reached the glade. While they had been on the

hill the sun had sunk below the arching boughs, and half the beauty of

the scene was gone. The noisy picnic party had unpacked their hampers,

the turf was littered with paper and straw, and a driver stood in a

central position, with his head thrown back, drinking beer from a

bottle. Lottie went straight to the well and took another draught.

"Two wishes in one day?" said Percival.

"Second thoughts are best," she answered, turning coldly away. "Is there

no other way home? I hate walking the same way twice."

"There is the road: I'm afraid it may be hot, but it would be a change."

"I should prefer the road," she said.

That walk seemed interminable to Percival Thorne. He was ready to

believe that the road lengthened itself, in sheer spite, to leagues of

arid dust, and that every familiar landmark fled before him. At last,

however, they approached a point where two ways diverged--the one

leading straight into the old town, while the other, wide and trimly

kept, passed between many bright new villas and gardens. At that corner

they might part. But before they reached it a slim, gray-clad figure

appeared from the suburban road and strolled leisurely toward them.

Percival looked, looked again, shaded his eyes and looked. "Why, it's

Horace!" he exclaimed.

Lottie made no reply, but she awoke from her sullen musing, a light

flashed into her eyes, and she quickened her pace toward the man who

should deliver her from her _tête-à-tête_ with Percival.

CHAPTER V.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?

Percival advanced to meet his cousin. "You here, Horace?" he said.

"So it seems," the other replied, in a voice which sounded exactly as if

Percival had answered his own question.

The two young men were wonderfully alike, though hardly one person in a

hundred could see it. They were exactly the same height, their features

were similar, they walked across the room in precisely the same way, and

unconsciously reproduced each other's tricks of manner with singular

fidelity. Yet any remark on this resemblance would almost certainly

encounter a wondering stare, and "Oh, do you think so? Well, I must

confess I can't see much likeness myself;" the fact being that the

similarity was in form and gait, while both color and expression

differed greatly. Horace's hair had the same strong waves as Percival's,

but it was chestnut-brown, his eyes were a clear light gray, his

complexion showed a fatal delicacy of white and red. His expression was

more varying, his smile was readier and his glance more restless.

He had once taken a college friend, whose hobby was photography, to

Brackenhill. Young Felton arrived with all his apparatus, and

photographed the whole household with such inordinate demands on their

time, and such atrocious results, that every one fled from him in

horror. Horace was the most patient of his victims, and Felton declared

that he _would_ have a good one of Thorne. But even Horace was tired out

at last, and said very mildly that he didn't particularly care for the

smell of the stuff, and he was afraid his portraits wouldn't help him to

a situation if ever he wanted one--apply, stating terms and enclosing

carte; that he thought it uncommonly kind of Felton to take so much

trouble, but if ever he let him try again, he'd be--Sissy was there, and

the sentence, which had been said over his shoulder as he leaned out of

the window, ended in a puff of smoke up into the blue. Felton begged for

one more, and persuaded Sissy to be his advocate. "I've an idea that

something will come of it," said the hapless photographer. Horace

yielded at last, and sat down, grimly resolute that he would yield no

more. Something _did_ come of it. Felton got it very much too dark, and

the result was a tolerable photograph and a startling likeness of

Percival.

The incident caused some little amusement at Brackenhill, and visitors

were duly puzzled with the portrait. But it was not long remembered,

and people dropped into their former habit of thinking that there was

but a slight resemblance between the cousins. Only, Percival carried off

the photograph, and was interested for a week or two in questions of

doubtful identity, looking up a few old cases of mysterious claimants,

and speculating as to the value of the testimony for and against them.

Horace shook hands with Lottie, and uttered his neatly-worded birthday

wishes. Her answer was indistinctly murmured, but she looked up at him,

and he paused, struck as by something novel and splendid, when he

encountered the dark fire of her eyes. "I left them wondering what had

become of you," he said. "They thought you were wandering about alone

somewhere, and had lost yourself."

"Instead of which we met on the road, didn't we?" said Percival.

"Yes," she answered indifferently.--"And you came to look for me?"

"Of course. I was on my way to hunt up the town-crier and to make our

loss known to the police. In half an hour's time we should have been

dragging all the ponds."

"I think I'd better go and set mamma's anxious mind at rest," said

Lottie with a short laugh. "Good-bye for the present." She was gone in a

moment, leaving the young men standing in the middle of the road. Horace

made a movement as if to follow her, then checked himself and looked at

his cousin.

Percival made haste to speak: "So you have come down for the

birthday-party, too? Where are you staying?"

"Oh, the Blakes find me a bed. I'm off again to-morrow morning."

"You are now at Scarborough with my aunt? I have it on Sissy's

authority."

"There's no occasion to disturb that faith," said Horace lightly. "Are

you going into the town? I'll walk a little way with you."

"You are not going to see them at Brackenhill before you leave?"

Horace shook his head: "Say nothing about me. Did you tell them where

you were going?"

"No. I don't suppose they know of the Blakes' existence."

"So much the better. _I'm_ not going to enlighten them."

They strolled on side by side, and for a minute neither spoke. Horace

was chafing because it had occurred to him that afternoon that Mrs.

Blake seemed rather to take his devotion to Addie for granted. His path

was made too smooth and obvious, and it was evident that the prize might

be had for the asking. Consequently, Master Horace, who was not at all

sure that he wanted it, was irritable and inclined to swerve aside.

"Are not you playing a dangerous game?" said Percival. "Sooner or later

some one will mention the fact of these visits to the squire, and

there'll be a row."

"Well, then, there _must_ be a row. It's uncommonly hard if I'm never to

speak to any one without going to Brackenhill first to ask leave," said

Horace discontentedly. "How should you like it yourself?"

"Not at all."

"No more do I. I'm tired of being in leading-strings, and the long and

short of it is that I mean to have my own way in this, at any rate."

"In _this_? Is this a matter of great importance, then? Horace, mind

what you are after with the Blakes."

"You're a nice consistent sort of fellow," said Horace.

"Oh, you may call me what you like," Percival replied.

"Who introduced me to these people before they came to Fordborough? Who

comes down to Brackenhill--the dullest hole, now there's no

shooting--because it's Lottie Blake's birthday? Whose name is a sort of

household word here--Percival this and Percival that? Percival without

any Thorne to it, mind."

"I plead guilty. What then?"

"What then? Why, I wish you to remark that _this_ is your example, while

your precept is--"

"Take care what you are about with the Blakes. Yes, old fellow, you'd

better leave my example alone, and stick to the precept. My wisdom

takes that form, I admit." He spoke with more meaning than Horace

perceived.

"Well, thanks for your advice," said the young man with a laugh. "Though

I can't see any particular harm in my coming down to-day."

"No harm. Only remember that there is such a place as Brackenhill."

"The governor oughtn't to find fault with me, since you're in the same

boat. He never thinks you can do wrong."

"Never."

"You're a lucky fellow to have only yourself to please."

"Very lucky," said Percival dryly. "Will you change places with me?"

"Change places? What do you mean?"

The other looked fixedly at him, and said in a pointed manner, "I fancy

it might easily be managed--with Addie Blake's help."

The suggestion was unpleasant. Horace winced, and vented his displeasure

in a random attack: "And why Addie, I should like to know? How can you

tell it is Addie at all?"

"Who, then?"

"Why not Lottie?" The words were uttered without a moment's thought, and

might have been forgotten as soon as said. But Percival was taken by

surprise, and a look of utter incredulity flashed across his face.

Horace caught it and was piqued. "Unless you understand her so well that

you are sure that no one else has a chance. Of course, if that is the

case--"

"Not at all," Percival exclaimed. "It's not for me to pretend to

understand Lottie: I'm not such a fool as that."

"All the same," Horace said to himself, "you think you understand her

better than I do, and you don't believe I should have a chance if I

tried to cut you out. Well, Mr. Percy, you may be right, but, on the

other hand, you _may_ be mistaken." And, as he walked back to the

Blakes, Horace hurriedly resolved to teach his cousin that he was not to

consider Lottie his exclusive property. He knew the folly of such a

proceeding, but who was ever hindered from obeying the dictates of

wounded vanity by the certainty that he had much better not?

Percival sincerely wished the evening over. He dared not stay away, lest

his absence should provoke comment, but he feared some childish outbreak

of petulance on Lottie's part. When he saw her he was startled by her

beauty. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were full of brilliant

meaning. She cast a defiant glance at him as she went by. She was

burning with shame, and maddened by the cruel injustice of her fate. A

white light seemed to have poured in upon her, and she found it

incredible that she could ever have felt or acted as she had felt and

acted that afternoon. She said to herself that she might as well have

been punished for her conduct in a dream.

Percival plucked up courage enough to go and ask her to dance. He was

distressed and pitiful, and longing to make amends, and stood before her

like the humblest of suitors. She assented coolly enough. No one saw

that there was anything amiss, though he was quick to remark that she

gave him only square dances. No more waltzes with Lottie for him. But

Horace had one, and when it was over he leaned almost exhausted against

the wall, while Lottie stood by his side and fanned herself. The fan

seemed to throb in unison with her strong pulses, quickened by the dance

and slackening as she rested.

"That was splendid," said Horace with breathless brevity. "Best waltz I

ever had."

"Ah!" said Lottie, turning toward him. "Suppose Addie heard that, Mr.

Thorne?"

They looked straight into each other's eyes, and Horace felt a strange

thrill run through him. He evaded her question with a laugh. "Why do you

call me Mr. Thorne?" he asked. "If you call that fellow by his Christian

name, why not me? Mine isn't such a mouthful as Percival: try it."

"We knew him first, you see," Lottie replied with much innocence.

"As if that had anything to do with it! If you had known my grandfather

first, I suppose you would have called him Godfrey?"

"Perhaps he wouldn't have asked me," said Lottie.

Horace smiled: "Well, perhaps he wouldn't. He isn't much given to making

such requests, certainly. But I do ask you. Look!" he exclaimed, with

sudden animation, "there's Mrs. Blake taking that dried-up little

woman--what is her name?--to the piano. I may have the next dance, I

hope."

"How many more things are you going to ask for all at once?" The bright

fan kept up its regular come and go, and Lottie's eyes were very arch

above it. "I'm sure you don't take after your grandfather."

"Believe me," said Horace, "you would be awfully bored if I did. But you

haven't given me an answer. This dance?"

"I've promised it to Mr. Hardwicke. Adieu, _Horace_!" And before he

could utter a syllable she was across the room, standing by the little

spinster who was going to play, and helping her to undo a clashing

bracelet of malachite and silver which hung on her bony wrist.

Horace, gazing after her, felt a hand on his shoulder and looked round.

"I'm off when this dance is over," said Percival, who seemed weary and

depressed. "You still wish me not to say that I have seen you?"

Horace nodded: "I shall be at Scarborough again to-morrow night. There's

no occasion to say anything."

"All right. You know best."

"Who can tell what may happen?" said Horace. "Why should one be in a

hurry to do anything unpleasant? Put it off, and you may escape it

altogether. For instance, the governor may change all at once, as people

do in tracts and Christmas books. I don't say it's likely, but I feel

that I ought to give him the chance."

"Very good," said Percival; and he strolled away. Horace noted his

preoccupied look with a half smile, but after a moment his thoughts and

eyes went back to Lottie Blake, and he forgot all about his cousin and

Brackenhill.

CHAPTER VI.

HER NAME.

Most country towns have some great event which marks the year, or some

peculiarity which distinguishes them from their neighbors. This one has

its annual ball, that its races, another its volunteer reviews. One

seems to relish no amusement which has not a semi-religious flavor, and

excels in school-feasts, choir-festivals, and bazaars. Some places only

wake up on the fifth of November, and some are devoted to amateur

theatricals. Fordborough had its agricultural show.

Crowds flocked to it, not because they cared for fat cattle, steam

ploughs and big vegetables, but because everybody was to be seen there.

You stared at the prize pig side by side with the head of one of the

great county families, who had a faint idea that he had been introduced

to you somewhere (was it at the last election?), and politely entered

into conversation with you on the chance. You might perhaps suspect that

his remembrance of you was not very clear, when you reflected afterward

that he

Asked after my wife, who is dead,

And my children, who never were born;

but at any rate he meant to be civil, and people who saw you talking

together would not know what he said. Or you might find the old friend

you had not seen for years, gold eye-glass in hand, peering at a plate

of potatoes. Or you were young, and there was a girl--no, _the_ girl,

the one girl in all the world--bewitchingly dressed, a miracle of

beauty, looking at Jones's patent root-pulper. You lived for months on

the remembrance of the words you exchanged by a friendly though rather

deafening threshing-machine when her mamma (who never liked you) marched

serenely on, unconscious that Edith was lingering behind. Then there was

the flower-show, where a band from the nearest garrison town played the

last new waltzes, and people walked about and looked at everything

except the flowers. Fordborough was decked with flags and garlands, and

appropriate sentiments on the subject of agriculture, in evergreen

letters stitched on calico, were lavishly displayed. Every one who

possessed anything beyond a wheelbarrow got into it and drove about, the

bells clashed wildly in the steeple, and everything was exceedingly

merry--if it didn't rain.

People in that part of the world always filled their houses with guests

when the time for the show came round. Even at Brackenhill, though the

squire said he was too old for visitors, he made a point of inviting

Godfrey Hammond, while Mrs. Middleton, as soon as the day was fixed,

sent off a little note to Horace. It was taken for granted that Horace

would come. Aunt Harriet considered his invariable presence with them on

that occasion as a public acknowledgment of his position at Brackenhill.

But the day was gone by when Mr. Thorne delighted to parade his grandson

round the field, showing off the slim handsome lad, and proving to the

county that with his heir by his side he could defy the son who had

defied him. Matters were changed since then. The county had, as it were,

accepted Horace. The quarrel was five-and-twenty years old, and had lost

its savor. It was tacitly assumed that Alfred had in some undefined way

behaved very badly, that he had been very properly put on one side, and

that in the natural course of things Horace would succeed his

grandfather, and was a nice, gentlemanly young fellow. Mr. Thorne had

only to stick to what he had done to ensure the approval of society.

But people did not want, and did not understand, the foreign-looking

young man with the olive complexion and sombre eyes who had begun of

late years to come and go about Brackenhill, and who was said to be able

to turn old Thorne round his finger. This was not mere rumor. The

squire's own sister complained of his infatuation. It is true that she

also declared that she believed the newcomer to be a very good young

fellow, but the complaint was accepted and the addition smiled away. "It

is easy to see what her good young man wants there," said her friends;

and there was a general impression that it was a shame. Opinions

concerning the probable result varied, and people offered airily to bet

on Horace or Percival as their calculations inclined them. The majority

thought that old Thorne could never have the face to veer round again;

but there was the possibility on Percival's side that his grandfather

might die intestate, and with so capricious and unaccountable a man it

did not seem altogether improbable. "Then," as people sagely remarked,

"this fellow would inherit--that is, if Alfred's marriage was all

right." No one had any fault, except of a negative kind, to find with

Percival, yet the majority of Mr. Thorne's old friends were inclined to

dislike him. He did not hunt or go to races: he cared little for horses

and dogs. No one understood him. He was indolent and sweet-tempered, and

he was supposed to be satirical and scheming. What could his grandfather

see in him to prefer him to Horace? Percival would have answered with a

smile, "I am not his heir."

Mr. Thorne was happy this July, his boy having come to Brackenhill for a

few days which would include the show.

It was the evening before, and they were all assembled. Horace,

coffee-cup in hand, leant in his favorite attitude against the

chimney-piece. He was troubled and depressed, repulsed Mrs. Middleton's

smiling attempts to draw him out, and added very little to the general

conversation. "Sulky" was Mr. Thorne's verdict.

Percival was copying music for Sissy. She stood near him, bending

forward to catch the full light of the lamp to aid her in picking up a

dropped stitch in her aunt's knitting. Close by them sat Godfrey Hammond

in an easy-chair.

He was a man of three or four and forty, by no means handsome, but very

well satisfied with his good figure and his keen, refined features. He

wanted color, his closely-cut hair was sandy, his eyes were of the

palest gray, and his eyebrows faintly marked. He was slightly underhung,

and did not attempt to hide the fact, wearing neither beard nor

moustache. His face habitually wore a questioning expression.

Godfrey Hammond never lamented his want of good looks, but he bitterly

regretted the youth which he had lost. His regret seemed somewhat

premature. His fair complexion showed little trace of age, he had never

known what illness was, and men ten or fifteen years younger might have

envied him his slight active figure. But in truth the youth which he

regretted was a dream. It was that legendary Golden Age which crowns the

whole world with far-off flowers and fills hearts with longings for its

phantom loveliness. The present seemed to Hammond hopeless, commonplace

and cold, a dull procession of days tending downward to the grave. He

was thus far justified in his regrets, that if his youth were as full of

beauty and enthusiasm as he imagined it, he was very old indeed.

"What band are they going to have to-morrow, Percival?" asked Sissy.

"I did hear, but I forget. Stay, they gave me a programme when I was at

the bookseller's this afternoon." He thrust his hand into his pocket and

pulled out a handful of papers and letters. "It was a pink thing--I

thought you would like it: what has become of it, I wonder?"

As he turned the papers over a photograph slipped out of its envelope.

Sissy saw it: "Percival, is that some one's carte? May I look?"

"What!" said Godfrey Hammond, sticking a glass in his eye and peering

short-sightedly, "Percy taking to carrying photographs about with him!

Wonders will never cease! What fair lady may it be?--Come, man, let us

have a look at her."

Percival colored very slightly, and then, as it were, contradicted his

blush by tossing the envelope and its contents across to Godfrey: "No

fair lady. Ask Sissy what she thinks of him."

"Why, it's young Lisle!" said Hammond. Mr. Thorne looked up with sudden

interest.

Percival reclaimed the photograph: "Here, Sissy, what do you say? Should

you like him for your album?"

"For my album? A man I never saw! Who is he?" Miss Langton inquired.

"Oh, he's very handsome, though, isn't he?"

Percival saw his grandfather was looking. "It's Mr. Lisle's son," he

said.

"And very handsome? Doesn't take after his father."

(Mr. Lisle had been Percival's guardian for the few months between his

father's death and his majority. It had been a great grief to Mr.

Thorne. Something which he said to his grandson when he first came to

Brackenhill had been met by the rejoinder, very cool though perfectly

respectful in tone, "But, sir, if Mr. Lisle does not disapprove--" The

power-loving old man could not pardon Mr. Lisle for having an authority

over Percival which should have belonged to him.)

He put on his spectacles to look at the photograph which Sissy brought.

It was impossible to deny the beauty of the face, though the style was

rather effeminate: the features were almost faultless.

"Is it like him?" said Sissy, looking up at young Thorne.

"Very like," he replied: "it doesn't flatter him at all, if that is what

you mean: does it, Hammond?"

"Not at all."

"He used to sing in the choir of their church," Percival went on. "They

photographed him once in his surplice--a sort of ideal chorister. All

the old ladies went into raptures, and said he looked like an angel."

"And the young ladies?" said Mrs. Middleton.

"Showed that they thought it."

"H'm!" said Mr. Thorne. "And where may this paragon be?"

"At Oxford."

"Going into the Church?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Not that I ever heard: I don't fancy his tastes

lie that way. He is very musical: probably that was why he joined the

choir."

"I should say Lisle had money enough," said Godfrey Hammond: "he lives

in very good style--if anything, a little too showy perhaps. He won't

want a profession. Most likely he will spend his life in thinking that

one of these days he will do something wonderful and convulse the

musical world. Happy fellow!"

"But suppose he doesn't do it?" said Sissy.

"Happier fellow still! He will never have a doubt, and never know what

failure is."

"Perhaps," she said, looking at the bright beautiful face, "it would be

better if Mr. Lisle were poor."

"I doubt if he would appreciate the kindness which doomed him to

poverty," smiled Hammond.

"But perhaps he would not only dream then of something great: he might

do it," said Sissy. "That is, do you think he could really do anything

great?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Talent looks very big in a small room."

"Is he the only one?" Mrs. Middleton inquired of Percival.

"The only son: there is a daughter."

"A daughter! Is she as wonderful as her brother?" Sissy exclaimed. "Have

you got her photograph? What is she like?"

"I will tell you," said Godfrey Hammond, speaking very deliberately in

his high-pitched voice. "Miss Lisle is a very charming young lady. She

is like her brother, but she is not so good-looking, and she is

decidedly more masculine."

"Oh!" in a disdainful tone. Then, turning swiftly round: "But what do

you say, Percival?"

He answered her, but he looked at Godfrey: "Hardly a fair

description--not so much a portrait as a caricature. Miss Lisle's

features are not so perfect as her brother's: she would not attract the

universal admiration which he does. But I think there could be no

question that hers is the nobler face."

"She is fortunate in her champion," said Hammond. "It's all right, no

doubt, and the fault is mine. I may not have so keen an eye for latent

nobility."

"Stick to her brother, then, and let Miss Lisle alone;" and Percival

stooped over his copying again. Sissy came back to the table, but as she

passed the lonely figure by the chimney-piece she spoke: "You are very

silent, to-night, Horace."

"I don't seem to have much to say for myself, do I?"

She took up her knitting, and after a moment he came and stood by her.

The light fell on his face. "And you don't look well," she said.

"There's not much amiss with me."

"I shall betray you," said Percival as he ruled a line. "He coughed in

the hall, Sissy: I heard him, three times."

"Oh, my dear boy, you should take more care," exclaimed Aunt Middleton:

"I know you have been dreadfully ill."

"I was blissfully unconscious of it, then," said Horace. "It was

nothing, and I'm all right, thank you.--You are very busy, Sissy: what

are you worrying about down there?" He laid his hand caressingly on her

shoulder. Percival and she acted brother and sister sometimes, but with

Horace, whose pet and playfellow she had been as a little child, it was

much more like reality.

"Only a stitch gone."

"Well, let it go: you have lots without it."

"You silly boy! it isn't that. Don't you know it would run farther and

farther, and ruin the whole work if it were not picked up at once?"

"You may not be aware of it," said Hammond, "but that sounds remarkably

like a tract."

"Then I hope you'll all profit by it.--Horace, do you hear? If ever you

drop a stitch, be warned." She looked up as she said it, and something

in his face made her fancy that he _had_ dropped a stitch of some kind.

When she was saying good-night to Percival, Sissy asked abruptly, in a

low voice, "What is Miss Lisle's name?"

He answered, "Judith."

CHAPTER VII.

JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

Sissy, when she reached her room that night, drew up the blind and stood

looking out at the park, which was flooded with moonlight. "It ought to

be Percival's," she thought. "I should like Horace to have plenty of

money, but the old house ought to be Percival's. He is so good: he

screens Horace instead of thinking of himself. I do believe Horace is in

some scrape now. And Aunt Middleton is always thinking about him, too:

she won't let Uncle Thorne be just to Percival. Oh, it is a shame!--If

he had Brackenhill perhaps he would marry Miss Lisle. I wonder if he is

in love with her? He spoke so coolly, not as if he were the least bit

angry, when Godfrey Hammond laughed at her. But he said she had a noble

face.--What did it remind me of when he said 'Judith'?" Sissy was

perplexed for a few moments, and then their talk on the terrace a month

before flashed into her mind--"Jael, or Judith, or Charlotte Corday,"

and she remembered the very intonation with which Percival had repeated

"Judith." "Ah!" said the girl half aloud, with a sudden intuition, "he

was thinking of her when he talked of heroic women!--Why wasn't I born

noble and heroic as well as others? Is it my fault if I can't _bear_

people to be angry with me--if I always stop and think and hesitate, and

then the moment is gone? I couldn't have driven the nail in, like Jael,

for fear there should be just time for him to look up at me. I should

have thrown the hammer down and died, I think. I wonder what made her

able to do it--how she struck, and how she felt when the nail went

crashing in? I wonder whether I _could_ have done it if Sisera had hated

Percival--if I knew he meant to kill him--if it had been Percival's life

or his?"

Sissy proceeded to ponder the biblical narrative (with this slight

variation), but she came to no satisfactory decision. She inclined to

the opinion that Sisera would have woke up, somehow. She could not

imagine what she could possibly feel like when the deed was done, except

that she was certain she should be afraid ever to be alone with herself

again for one moment as long as she lived.

So she went back to the original question: "I dare say Miss Lisle is

brave and calm, and horribly strong-minded: why wasn't I born the same

as she was? Perhaps Percival would have cared for me then. He _did_ say

even I might find something I could die for: he didn't think I was quite

a coward. Ah! if I could only show him I wasn't!"

She stood for a moment looking out: "He may marry Miss Lisle if he

likes, and--and I hope they'll be very happy indeed. But if ever I get a

chance I'll do something--for Percival."

With which magnanimous determination Sissy went to bed; and if she did

not have a nightmare tumult of Jael and Judith, nails and hammers, and

murdered men about her pillow as she slept, I can but think her

fortunate. But her last thought was a happy one: "Perhaps he doesn't

care about her, after all!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"PERHAPS I'M LETTING SECRETS OUT."

Fordborough had a glorious day for the agricultural show. Not a cloud

dimmed the brightness of the sky: a breath of warm wind stirred the

flags from time to time, and all was going as merrily as possible. The

dogs were all barking in their special division, the poultry were all

cackling in theirs. People had looked at the animals, as in duty bound,

and were now putting their catalogues in their pockets and crowding into

the flower-show.

The Brackenhill party were there. Mr. Thorne, his sister, Godfrey

Hammond and Miss Langton had come over in state behind the sleek

chestnut horses, and the young men had arranged to follow in the

dog-cart. At present the two divisions had not met--nay, showed no

symptom of uniting, but rather of breaking up into three or four. Mrs.

Middleton and Sissy had been walking about, encountering a bewildering

number of acquaintances, and earnestly endeavoring to disseminate a

knowledge of the fact that they considered it a beautiful day. Godfrey

Hammond, their squire for some time, after arranging when he would meet

them by the tent where the potatoes were, had taken himself off to look

up some of the country gentlemen whom he met year after year when he

came down to Brackenhill. There happened to be several squires of the

old sort in the neighborhood, and with these Godfrey Hammond enjoyed a

friendship based on mutual contempt. He laughed at them, and they knew

it; they laughed at him, and he knew it; and each being convinced that

his cause for scorn was the one well founded, they all got on

delightfully together. Mr. Thorne, meanwhile, was strolling round the

field, halting to talk from time to time, but fettered by no

companionship.

He was presently pounced on by Mrs. Rawlinson, a fair, flushed beauty of

two-and-forty with a daughter of fifteen. People with a turn for

compliment always supposed that this daughter was Mrs. Rawlinson's

sister, and when that assumption was negatived there had once been a

prompt reply, "Oh, your _step_-daughter you mean!" (The man who invented

that last refinement of politeness was welcome to dine at the

Rawlinsons' whenever he liked, and, the dinners being good, he was to be

met there about twice a week.)

She came down upon Mr. Thorne like a bright blue avalanche. "Ah!" she

said, having shaken hands with him, "_I_ saw what you were doing. Now,

do you agree with Mr. Horace Thorne in his taste? Oh, it's no use

denying it: I saw you were looking at the beautiful Miss Blake."

"It is very possible," Mr. Thorne replied, "only I didn't know of her

existence."

"Oh, how severe you are! I suppose you mean you don't admire that style?

Well, now you mention it, perhaps--"

"I simply mean what I say. I was not aware that there was a Miss Blake

on the ground to-day."

"Well, I _am_ surprised! You _are_ in the dark! Do you see those tall

girls in black and white, close by their mother, that fine woman in

green?"

"Perfectly. And which is the beautiful Miss Blake?"

"Oh!" with a little giggle. "Fancy! _Which_ is the beautiful Miss Blake?

Why, the elder one, of course: there! she is just looking round."

Mr. Thorne put up his eye-glass. "Indeed!" he said; "and who may Miss

Blake be?"

"They have come to that pretty white house where old Miss Hayward

lived. Mr. Blake was a relation of hers, and she left it to him. He has

some sort of business in London--very rich, they say, and all the young

men are after the daughters."

"Probably the daughters haven't the same opinion of the young men of the

present day that I have," said Mr. Thorne; "so I needn't pity them."

"Fancy your not knowing anything about them! I _am_ surprised!" Mrs.

Rawlinson repeated. "Such friends of Mr. Horace Thorne's, too! Ah, by

the way, you must mind what you say about the young men who are after

them. He's quite a favorite there, I'm told."

"Perhaps Horace told you," the old gentleman suggested with a quiet

smile: "the news sounds as if it might come from that authority."

"Oh, no: I think not. Any one in Fordborough could tell you all about

it. I suppose this summer--But, dear me! here am I rattling on: perhaps

I am letting secrets out."

"Not much of a secret if it is Fordborough talk," said Mr. Thorne

blandly. But something in the expression of his eyes made Mrs. Rawlinson

feel that she was on dangerous ground, and at any rate she had said

enough. She hurried off to greet a friend she saw in the distance.

Mr. Thorne was speedily joined by a neighboring landowner. "I didn't

know I should see you here to-day," he said to the newcomer. "I heard

you were laid up."

Mr. Garnett cursed his gout, but declared himself better.

"Look here," said Thorne, laying his hand on the other's sleeve, "you

know every one. Who and what are these Blakes?"

"Bless me! you don't mean you don't know? Why, the name's up in

every railway-station in the United Kingdom. 'Patent British

Corn-Flour'--that's the man. 'Delicious Pudding in Five Minutes'--you

know the sort of thing. I don't know that he does much in it now: I

suppose he has a share. Very rich, they say."

Mr. Thorne had withdrawn his hand, and was listening with the utmost

composure. "Ah!" he said, "very rich? And so all these good Fordborough

people are paying court to him?"

"No," Garnett grinned, "they don't get the chance: don't see much of

him. No loss. They pay court to the daughters: it does just as well, and

it's a great deal pleasanter. Dear! dear! what a money-loving age it is!

Nothing but trade, trade, trade! We shall see a duke behind the counter

before long if we go on at this rate. Gentlemen used to be more

particular in our young days--eh, Thorne?" Having said this, he

remembered that Thorne's son married the candlemaker's daughter. For a

moment he was confounded, and then had to repress an inclination to

laugh.

"Ah, it was a different world altogether," said Thorne, gliding

dexterously away from the corn-flour and candles too. "There was a young

fellow staying with us a little while ago who was wild about

photography. If he didn't get just the right focus, the thing came out

all wrong: he always made a mess of his groups. The focus was right for

us in our young days, eh? Now we have to stand on one side and come out

all awry. No fault in the sun, you know."

"I don't care much about photographs," said Garnett. "All very well for

the young folks, I dare say, but _I_ sha'n't make a pretty picture on

this side of doomsday!" And indeed it did not seem likely that he would.

So he departed, grinning, to say to the next man he met, "What do you

think I've been doing? Laughing about Blake's patent corn-flour to old

Thorne: forgot the composite candles--did, upon my word! Said 'Gentlemen

used to be more particular in _our_ young days,' and the minute it was

out of my mouth I remembered Jim and the candles. Fine girl she was,

certainly. Poor old Thorne! he was terribly cut up at the time. It was

grand to see the two old fellows meet--as good as a play. Thorne held

out just the tips of his fingers: I believe he thought if he shook hands

with old Benham he should smell of tallow for ever. Ever see Benham's

monument? They ordered it down from town--man knew nothing of course:

how should he? So he went and put some angels weeping, and an inverted

torch, just like a bundle of candles. Fact, by Jove! I went to have a

look at it myself one day. Some of the Benhams were very sore about it.

Dear! dear! I shouldn't think the old fellow could ever have a quiet

night there with that over him. Only, as he was covered up snugly first,

perhaps he doesn't know;" and Garnett, chuckling to himself at the idea,

marched off to have a look at the prize pig.

Meanwhile, the young Thornes had arrived, and came strolling around the

field--a noticeable pair enough, tall, handsome and well dressed,

walking side by side in all faith and friendliness, as they were not

often to walk again. When people talked of them afterward a good many

remembered how they looked on that day. Apparently, Horace had resolved

to throw off his trouble of the night before, and had succeeded. There

was something almost defiant in the very brightness of his aspect, and

the heat had flushed him a little, so that no one would have echoed

Sissy's exclamation of "You don't look well." On the contrary, he was

congratulated on his looks by many of his old friends, and seemed full

of life and energy.

Turning the corner of one of the tents, the two came suddenly on the

Blakes. There was not one of the four who was utterly unconcerned at

that meeting, though the interests and motives which produced the little

thrill of excitement were curiously mingled and opposed. Two pairs of

eyes flashed bright signals of mutual understanding: the others made no

sign of what might be hidden in their depths. Delicately-gloved hands

were held out, Mrs. Blake came forward fluent and friendly, and the two

groups melted into one.

Horace and Addie led the way round the tent. Percival followed with

Lottie and her mother, feeling that he had never rightly appreciated the

latter's conversational powers before. When they emerged into the

sunlight again, they encountered Mrs. Pickering and her girls, and in

the talk that ensued our hero found himself standing by Addie.

"Percival," she said in a low, quick tone, "don't be surprised. I want

to say a word to you. Look as if it were nothing."

Though he was startled, he contrived not to betray it. After the first

moment there is small danger of failing to appear indifferent--very

great danger of seeming preternaturally indifferent. Percival had tact

enough to avoid this. He listened, and replied with the polite

attention, which was natural to him, but his manner was tinged--any

words I can find seem too coarse to describe it--with just the faintest

shade of languor, just the slightest possible show of scorn and

weariness of the great agricultural show itself. It was not enough to

attract notice: it was quite enough to preclude any idea of excited

interest.

"I am in a little difficulty," said Addie. "You could help me if you

would."

"You may command me."

"You will not mind a little trouble? And you would keep my secret? I

have no right to ask, but there is no one--I think you are my friend."

"Suppose me a brother for this occasion, Addie. Waste no more time in

apologies."

"A brother! Be it so. Then, my brother, I have to go through Langley

Wood to-morrow evening, and I am afraid to go alone."

"I will gladly be your escort. Where shall I meet you?"

"There is a milestone about a quarter of a mile on the road to our

house, after you have passed the gate into the wood. Don't come any

farther. Somewhere between the gate and that."

"I know it. At what time?"

"Half-past eight, or a few minutes earlier. Will that suit you?"

"Perfectly. I will be there."

"If you don't see me before nine don't wait for me. I shall have failed

somehow."

"I understand," said Percival.

"I will explain to-morrow. You must trust me till then."

"You shall do as you please. I don't ask for any explanations, remember.

Have you been having much croquet lately?"

"Oh, much as usual. Lottie has been beating me, also as usual. We have

joined the Fordborough Croquet Club."

"Then I suspect the former members feel small."

"One or two of the best players feel ill-tempered, I think, unless they

make-believe very much. Lottie means to win the ivory mallet, she says;

and I think she will. Mrs. Rawlinson's sister always considered herself

the champion, and I am sure Lottie," etc., etc.

In short, by the time it occurred to anybody that Percival and Addie

were talking together, their conversation, carried smoothly on, was

precisely what anybody might hear.

The Pickerings went off in one direction, the Blakes in another, and the

young men resumed their walk.

"That's over, and the governor not by," said Horace.

"Don't be too secure," was Percival's reply. "Everybody talks about

everybody else at Fordborough."

"Well," said Horace, who apparently would not be discouraged, "it's

something not to have been standing between the old gentleman and Aunt

Middleton, and then to have seen Mrs. Blake sailing straight at one, her

face illuminated with a smile visible to the naked eye a quarter of a

mile off--eh, Percy?"

"You are a lucky fellow, no doubt," said Percival.

"And, after all, it is quite possible--"

"That you may be a very lucky fellow indeed? Yes, it is quite possible.

But I don't quite see what you are after, Horace."

("Nor I," thought Horace to himself, "and that's the charm of it,

somehow.")

"Surely it isn't worth while getting into trouble with my grandfather

for a mere flirtation."

"If you always stop to think whether a thing is worth while or not,

Percy, I wouldn't be you for all the money that ever was coined."

"And if it is more," said the other, not heeding the remark--"I like

fair play, but if it is more--"

"What then?" For Percival hesitated.

"We'll talk of that another time," said the latter. "Not now. Only don't

be rash. Look! there's Sissy."

"How pretty she is!" thought Percival, as they went toward her. "What

can Horace see in Addie Blake, that he should prefer her? She is a fine

girl, handsome--magnificent, if you like--but Sissy is like a beautiful

old picture, sweet and delicate and innocent. I can't fancy her with

secrets like Addie with this Langley Wood mystery of hers. If it had not

been for that ideal of mine--"

They had reached the two ladies.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thorne had listened to more odds and ends of gossip, and

had gone on his way, warily searching among the shifting, many-colored

groups. He was curious, and in due time his curiosity was gratified. The

Blake girls passed him so closely that he could have touched them. They

knew perfectly well who he was, and Lottie looked at him, but Addie

passed on in her queenly fashion, with her head high, apparently not

aware of his existence.

"So," said the old gentleman to himself, "that is Horace's taste? Well,

she is very superb and disdainful, and I should think Patent Corn-Flour

paid pretty well. She might have bestowed a glance on me, as I suppose

she destines me the honor of being her grandpapa-in-law, but no doubt

she knows what she is about, and it may be wiser to seem utterly

unconscious, as Horace has not introduced us yet. Perhaps he will defer

that ceremony a little while longer still. As for the other, she looked

me straight in the face, as if she didn't care a rap for any man living.

I shouldn't think that girl was afraid of anything on earth--or under it

or above it, for that matter. A temper of her own, plainly enough. The

beautiful Miss Blake is Horace's taste, of course (I could have sworn to

that without a word from him), and ninety-nine out of a hundred would

agree with him. But if I were five-and-twenty, and had to choose between

them, I'd take that fierce-eyed girl and tame her!"

Of which process it may fairly be conjectured that it would have ended

in total defeat for Mr. Thorne, or in mutual and inextinguishable

hatred, or, it might be--for he was hard as well as capricious--in a

Lottie like a broken bow. In neither case a very desirable result.

Godfrey Hammond, looking at his watch, and going in the direction of the

tent where the potatoes were, perceived Mrs. Rawlinson, and endeavored

to elude her. He loathed the woman, as he candidly owned to himself,

because he had once nearly approached the other extreme. It was a

horrible thought. What had come over him and her? Either she was

strangely and hideously transformed--and how could he tell that as

fearful a change might not have come to him?--or else his youth was a

time of illusion and bad taste. That perfect time, that golden dawn of

manhood, when the world lay before him steeped in rosy light, when every

pleasure had its bloom upon it, and every day was crowned with joy--Good

Heavens! was it _then_ that he cared to dance the polka in Fordborough

drawing-rooms with Mrs. Rawlinson--Lydia Lloyd as she was of old? Little

did that fascinating lady think what disgust at the remembrance of his

incredible folly was in his soul as he met her.

For she caught him and shook hands with him, and would not let him go

till she had reminded him of old times as if they might have been

yesterday and might be again to-morrow. He smiled, and blandly made

answer as if they two were a pair of antediluvian polka-dancers left in

a waltzing age to see another generation spinning gayly round. (He could

dance quite as well as Horace when he chose.)

Mrs. Rawlinson did not like his style of conversation, and said

abruptly, "I had a talk with Mr. Thorne about half an hour ago. I _was_

surprised! Mr. Horace Thorne seems to keep the old man quite in the

dark."

"Mr. Horace Thorne is a clever fellow, then," said Hammond dryly.

"Oh, you know all about it, I dare say. But really, I _did_ think it was

too bad. He didn't seem ever to have heard Miss Blake's name. He

certainly didn't know her when he saw her."

"Unfortunate man! For Miss Blake so decidedly eclipses the Fordborough

young ladies that such ignorance is deplorable. No doubt you did what

you could to remove it?"

"Well"--Mrs. Rawlinson tossed her blue bonnet--"I really thought I ought

to give him a hint: it seemed to me that it was quite a charity."

"A charity--ah yes, of course. Charity never faileth, does it?" And

Hammond raised his hat and bowed himself off.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE DREAM OF ST. THERESA.

Have you heard of the dream that she had--

Theresa the saintly?

Come, listen, ye good and ye bad!

And heed it not faintly.

A weird, awful woman she saw,

And wondered what brought her:

In one hand she bore flaming straw,

In the other hand water.

"Where bound?" asked Theresa. "Oh tell!"

This answer was given:

"Theresa, I go to quench hell,

And then to burn heaven."

"But why," asked the saint, "do you make

So wild an endeavor?"

"So that men, for His own holy sake,

May love God for ever."

EPES SARGENT.

THE FLIGHT OF A PRINCESS.

A voluminous parcel of letters and official documents quite recently

brought to light in one of the continental court archives[1] invalidates

in many material points the short notices which historians have given us

of the captivity and flight from Innsbruck of Princess Clementina

Sobiesky, the elder Pretender's wife, and supplies us with an ample and

interesting account of this episode in the lives of the two most

persecuted men of the day, the Pretender and his father-in-law, Prince

James Sobiesky of Poland.

[Footnote 1: They were discovered by Dr. D. Schönherr, the keeper of the

imperial archives at Innsbruck, to whom the writer is indebted for

drawing his attention to this interesting discovery. The private

imperial archives at Vienna, examined by the writer, yielded also

interesting documents.]

It will be remembered that after the failure of his Scotch expedition of

1715 the Pretender--or, as he was then commonly styled, the Chevalier de

St. George--was obliged to quit France and Germany and retire to Italy,

where the misfortunes of his family, proceeding in part from its

devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, gave him the best right to expect

a hospitable reception. Here he opened a negotiation with Prince James

Sobiesky which had for its object his marriage with Princess Clementina,

Sobiesky's daughter. Sobiesky was the son of John, king of Poland, the

heroic deliverer of Vienna and Christendom from the Turks. This

unfortunate prince, having signally failed in his repeated attempts to

instal himself upon the Polish throne, vacated by his father's death,

had retired to Ohlau, a large estate near Breslau in Silesia belonging

to the emperor Charles VI., and with which the latter had invested him.

The negotiations carried on between the two parties ended in the formal

betrothal of the Princess Clementina to James III., king of Great

Britain and Ireland, as the Pretender styled himself.

Meanwhile, the English government had exhibited great solicitude to

frustrate the Pretender's intention of strengthening his cause by

contracting a marriage likely to yield an heir to his pretensions to the

crown of Great Britain. The Pretender and Sobiesky were both perfectly

well aware of this, and hence Sobiesky's anxiety that the union should

be completed as soon as possible. Through the vacillating character of

the bridegroom valuable time was lost at the last moment, and before the

project could be carried out the petty court at Ohlau was surrounded by

English spies. We know that in August, 1718, the English government was

acquainted with the whole plot, and was using to the utmost the

influence which its friendly relationship with the emperor of Germany

gave it. A prohibition was obtained from him forbidding all further

intercourse between the Pretender and Sobiesky, whose wife, it should be

mentioned, was the emperor's aunt.

Sobiesky vainly expostulated with his imperial kinsman. He reminded him

that although he was then residing within the frontiers of the empire,

he was nevertheless an independent prince; and he begged him to consider

that his conduct was unworthy of their close relationship and

incompatible with every feeling of gratitude toward the memory of his

father, the brave deliverer of Vienna and of Christendom. Charles, who

had at this time very good reasons for wishing to keep on a good footing

with England, not only turned a deaf ear to the expostulations of Prince

Sobiesky, but actually threatened him with his highest displeasure if he

did not sever his connection with that "worthless vagabond princeling."

Sobiesky, convinced that nothing was to be gained by delay, and quite

prepared to sacrifice the favor of his mighty kinsman for the sake of

compassing his object, determined to send his daughter to Italy to join

her betrothed, with a view to the consummation of the marriage.

In the latter half of September, 1718, Princess Clementina and her

mother, accompanied by a suite consisting of a lady-in-waiting, a

confidential maid, Monsieur Châteaudoux, a gentleman of the household,

with his servant, and Monsieur la Haye,[2] gentleman-in-waiting of the

Pretender, left Ohlau for Innsbruck _en route_ for Italy. Secret as the

preparations for the journey had been kept, they had not escaped the

notice of the English agent at Breslau; and a few hours after the

departure of the princess and her party an English and a German courier

left that town--the one for London, the other for Warsaw. In a

remarkably short time the former had accomplished his journey, and was

back again in Vienna, the bearer of an autograph letter from the king,

George I., to the emperor Charles. The immediate upshot was a despatch

sent off in hot haste to the provincial government of Tyrol, ordering

that body to stop the princely party wherever they could lay hands on

them, "be it in Innsbruck or any other part of our empire."

[Footnote 2: A member, no doubt, of the noble Scotch family of Hay, so

famous for its devotion to the Jacobite cause.]

The twelve privy councillors who constituted the government of Tyrol

were "sorely perplexed and harassed by this order;" for it appears that

so little time had been lost by the courier on his way to and from

London that the order actually reached Innsbruck two days before the

arrival of the party, who, as we must presume, accomplished their

journey from Breslau to Augsburg, and from thence to Innsbruck, by very

easy stages. The first despatch from the emperor was short, and was

couched in somewhat mysterious terms, so that the bewildered privy

councillors, exaggerating the importance of their commission, caused the

most portentous precautions to be taken. Bodies of armed men were

despatched in all directions to watch the different mountain-passes and

high-roads leading into the country from the North. To the astonishment

of the zealous statesmen, the princely party arrived two days later

(October 3d), "quietly and properly mannered." They took rooms at the

principal hostelry, swinging the signboard of the Golden Rose.[3]

[Footnote 3: This inn, under the same name, is thriving to this day.]

When their arrival became known, a privy council was immediately

convoked, and the councillors, who had received that morning minute

instructions from the emperor, sent to their noble visitors a deputation

consisting of two of their number, Count Lodron and Count Sonnenburg.

Their request for an interview was at first refused, on the plea that

the illustrious travellers were at the time engaged in their devotions

and very much fatigued by their journey. The lady-in-waiting, who in the

absence of a chamberlain acted as spokesman, was then informed by the

two counts that they came by the express order of His Majesty "to convey

a certain message to the princess and her daughter."[4] Thereupon they

were allowed to enter and present themselves to the princess-mother.

"After humbly offering their congratulations on their safe arrival,"

the two councillors acquainted the princess-mother with the desire of

the emperor that she and her daughter should take up their residence at

Innsbruck. On receiving this startling news, "the princess seemed a bit

frightened, and stood silent for a little time." Presently she replied

that she was quite willing to comply with His Majesty's order, strange

as it seemed to her, "for," said she, "our journey had for its sole

object a visit to the holy shrine at Loretto, there to perform our

prayers." Bowing humbly, the deputation assured her of their ignorance

of the whole matter, whereupon the princess dismissed them. They had

hardly reached the council-hall, where their ten comrades were awaiting

them, as we may presume, full of eagerness and curious to hear how they

had fared, when the gentleman-in-waiting of the princess overtook them

and acquainted them with her wish to be allowed to inspect the imperial

cabinet order. The councillors, "though in our character," said they to

the emperor, "as representatives of your most exalted person, we were

surely not obliged to produce our credentials," forthwith returned and

complied with the princess's request. The minute résumé sent by them to

the emperor, and from which we make these verbatim extracts, then says:

"The inspection of the document seemed to satisfy the princess,

especially when Your Majesty's humble servants pointed out to her the

autograph signature of Your exalted Majesty."

[Footnote 4: We must mention that from this point in the story we make

use of the copious material contained in the bundle of official

documents recently discovered.]

Upon a hint of the princess the two councillors placed at her service

the court courier; and we hear that this personage left for Vienna that

same night as the bearer of two letters from the princess--one to her

sister, mother of Charles VI., the other to the emperor himself--as well

as of a minute protocol in which the privy councillors detailed the

occurrences of this eventful day.

The Pretender, it seems, must have awaited the party from Ohlau near the

Austrian-Italian frontier, for on the 9th of October, six days after

their arrival at Innsbruck, a Scotch nobleman appears on the scene.

According to the declaration of the postmaster-general of Tyrol, Count

Taxis, this gentleman had travelled with the greatest despatch the night

through from Trent to Innsbruck. At Innsbruck he seems suddenly to have

lost the desire to continue his journey, for after stopping two days in

the town, during which time he was seen conversing with a person in the

suite of Princess Sobiesky, he was about to start for Italy, whence he

had come, when the privy councillors, whose suspicion had been aroused

by his strange conduct, had him arrested and brought before them. On

being asked for his passport, he maintained that he had none, and

declared himself "to be a Scotch nobleman, his name Robert Seiberg

[_sic_], thirty-six years of age, and travelling for his amusement."

When pressed to give further information, he told them that he had been

on the Continent for the last two years, that he had been travelling in

France and Italy, and that he was on his way to Vienna when he

accidentally met a friend and countryman of his named La Haye, who was

travelling in the suite of Princess Sobiesky. More pressure being

brought to bear upon him, he produced a passport which he said he had

received from the Irish Capuchin monks at Prague, and which bore the

name of Count John Wirmann. He was then asked if he possessed any

letters or documents bearing upon the Pretender or the Sobiesky family.

He declined to answer this question; and when force was threatened he

requested a private interview with the president of the council. To him

he ultimately acknowledged that "he was a servant of King James of

England." He was then asked to produce the letters and documents in his

possession. Amongst them was found a letter in English, but without

address, heading or signature. It was a communication from the Princess

Clementina to her affianced, and in it she informed him of the

misfortune that had befallen them, and warned him not to entrust any

letters to couriers or messengers. She told him that her mother had

written to her sister and to the emperor, but that she feared their

efforts would be in vain. The closing sentence of the letter is: "We

receive much honor and politeness. Adieu."

This letter, with the rest of the papers found upon Fremont,[5] was sent

to the emperor, and the bearer himself was taken to a second-class

hostelry. Here he was closely watched, and although he had given his

word of honor not to escape, he was not allowed even to go out alone.

[Footnote 5: We learn from a letter from that nobleman to a friend in

Paris, which is amongst the papers in the imperial archives at Vienna,

that this was his real name.]

To the mortification of the privy council, the emperor discountenanced

their rigorous proceeding, for the next courier from Vienna brought an

imperial order commanding them to set the "Stuart messenger" at liberty,

and forthwith to provide suitable lodgings in a private house, as

befitted their rank, for the two illustrious ladies and their suite. The

emperor had at first intended to place the imperial palace at their

disposal, but he subsequently ordered "that a more respectable private

house in or out of the town" should be prepared for the ladies, adding

"that he did not wish the noble ladies to know that this was done by his

order, but rather that it should seem an act of politeness on the part

of the privy council."

Baron Greiffen, a member of that body, seems to have been the only one

that took the hint to heart; for we find that the two princesses and

their suite removed their domicil to the "palatial building"--in reality

a quiet and by no means very magnificent house--of which the above-named

nobleman was owner. The princely party entered upon their new residence,

which was situated in the new town just outside the town-walls, on the

23d and 24th of October. Trained servants were now added to the princely

household by the cautious privy councillors. Amongst these, however, as

we see by the minutes sent to the emperor, were a couple of "trusty

personages"--in other words, court spies. A handsome offering of choice

game, fish and wine, the usual form of paying homage to distinguished

guests, was presented to the princesses.

While the princesses are installing themselves in their new prison, we

will turn for a moment to the Pretender, who had arrived on the 8th of

October at Bologna, where he was to await the coming of the princess and

her daughter. For seven days he remained without news, a prey to

anxiety. On the 15th of October he received the first intimation of the

fate that had befallen his bride, and the very next day he despatched

two letters to the mother and daughter at Innsbruck.[6] From the answer

to these missives we learn that the princesses had by no means given up

the project of effecting their flight to Italy. The long, dreary winter

evenings and the absence of all society in dull Innsbruck left them full

time and opportunity to plan the best means of escape; and though they

were surrounded by watchful spies and guarded by a morbidly cautious

government, they yet found ways and means to communicate two or three

times with their friends in the North and the South. Strange to say, the

councillors themselves afforded them on one occasion the means of

intercourse with the Pretender. Under the pretence that bills of

exchange were awaiting her at Venice, Princess Sobiesky obtained

permission to send her gentleman-in-waiting, La Haye, to the latter town

to arrange "these necessary money-matters."

[Footnote 6: These letters must have fallen into the hands of the

councillors, for we find that exact copies of them, together with a copy

of Princess Clementina's answer, were sent to the emperor, and are still

preserved in the private imperial court archives at Vienna.]

After the departure of the princess from Ohlau the English government

concentrated its attention upon the unfortunate father of the bride, for

it was obvious that as long as the head of the family continued to

advocate the marriage, all efforts to dissolve the betrothal would prove

abortive. He was therefore made the object of countless intrigues on the

part of England's staunch ally the emperor. A special commissioner,

Count Praschma, then governor of Silesia, was sent by the imperial court

to Ohlau. On the 14th of October he met Prince Sobiesky, but, though the

interview lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon till a late hour

of the night, the count did not succeed in bringing Sobiesky to more

reasonable views. Sobiesky refused to give him then and there a definite

answer, and begged him to come again the next day. "The matter," he

said, "was of too vital importance for him to give a decisive answer

that day." The result of the next day's interview was that Count

Praschma set down in writing, at the prince's dictation, two separate

minutes--the one addressed to the emperor personally, the other also

nominally addressed to him, but specially prepared for the scrutiny of

the English ambassador at Vienna. Did we not know that the courier who

left for Vienna the same evening with these two documents was also the

bearer of a third, a private letter from Praschma to the emperor, we

should naturally wonder at the count's willingness to comply with this

whim of Sobiesky--a proceeding which would have been fraught with some

danger for the imperial commissioner. These documents are not without

interest, for they give us a picture of the political intrigues forming

such unstable links between the courts of St. James and Vienna. The

limited space of this paper, however, compels us to confine ourselves to

a brief résumé of their contents. In the first, addressed to the emperor

personally, Prince Sobiesky lays great stress upon "the certainty that

the marriage with the Pretender would prove to be a source of great

political advantage to Austria"--an argument which, we must confess, was

well adapted to find favor in the eyes of Charles VI., the last male

descendant of a house in the history of which marriage had played such a

momentous rôle. He pointed out to the emperor that "His British Majesty"

would find in the annulment of the betrothal no help in suppressing

rebellion in his kingdom; and, moreover, that it would be quite

impossible for the king by any means to prevent the Pretender's

marrying. "It is well known," he goes on to say, "that the

English"--meaning the rebels--"wait only for the marriage of the

Pretender, and not for an alliance with a foreign power." He begs his

imperial kinsman not to shut his eyes to the obvious precariousness of

King George's tenure of the throne, nor to the well-known fact that dire

necessity alone had impelled the king to come to his aid by sending the

English fleet to Naples. The emperor is warned that the king of England

would assuredly break off his alliance with him the moment he had no

longer cause to dread the Pretender; and he is reminded that while the

former was at best a cold and crafty ally, he would find the prince a

staunch and powerful confederate. "It is therefore," he continues, "for

Your Majesty's interest to bring about a marriage, and not to allow the

royal house of Stuart to become extinct. And even, taking the worst for

granted, if the Pretender did not succeed in realizing his pretensions

to the British throne, it would be only fair on the part of Your Majesty

to remind King George that the marriage would detract nothing from, and

have no influence whatever upon, the alliance between him and Your

Majesty." Sobiesky closes his letter by assuring the emperor how deeply

he regretted his displeasure, and by declaring that he had acted in good

faith to the emperor; "for," said he, "I would never have advocated this

match without the consent of Your Majesty had I not received the written

assurance of Her Majesty the empress Eleonora (the emperor's mother)

that she had spoken to Your Majesty on this matter. To me this was

sufficient; for, considering the course of European politics, I dared

not hope to receive open signs of Your Majesty's approbation."

Count Praschma remarks, in his private report to the emperor, that he

believes "Prince Sobiesky places great reliance on the assistance

proffered by the Roman Curia, on the good-will displayed by the regent

of France, no less than on the guarantee ensured to him by Sweden and

Prussia, and on the concurrence of Russia."

In the second document Prince Sobiesky displays far more energy and

spirit in resisting the overbearing demands of King George, whom he

persistently styles throughout the whole of this second paper "elector

of Hanover." He not only condemns the king's intrigues as perfidious,

but also asserts with much emphasis that the marriage between his

daughter and the Pretender had been consummated and stood irrevocable.

He trusts that His Majesty will decline to uphold any further these

grossly unjust concessions which the elector and his government had

dared to exact of a monarch who was famed for his justice and benignity.

He humbly reminds the emperor, his exalted kinsman, that the great

services which his (Sobiesky's) father had rendered to Christendom

deserved worthier recognition than the open persecution to which he and

his family were then subjected. He declares with some asperity that the

elector of Hanover has no right whatever over his person, and that he,

an independent prince, reserves to himself the power to dispose of his

own flesh and blood. The threats of England would never frighten him

into submission, especially as he is sure of the aid of several

potentates--a circumstance which ensures to him the safety of his

estates in Poland and France. "The marriage," says he, "is not opposed

to the interest of Your Majesty in respect to your alliance with the

elector, for the union does not enrich the Pretender either in money or

in land. And were it possible that the marriage could be still

prevented, the Pretender would assuredly turn to some more powerful

court, able to supply him not only with a wife, but also with ample

funds and troops." Sobiesky closed his missive with the request to His

Majesty to take back the investiture of Ohlau, "a place which had become

unbearable to him through the ignominious treatment to which he was

constantly exposed, no less than by the endless trouble and pecuniary

losses which the management of that imperial estate entailed upon him."

He was desirous of removing to some distant and secluded spot, far away

from Poland, where he could end his days in peace.

These two important missives were followed a few days later (17th and

19th of October) by two more letters from the prince to Chancellor

Count Zinzendorf at Vienna. Of their contents--which are generally a

repetition of the arguments contained in the first two--we need not

speak, except in reference to one point, which was evidently the result

of an after-thought that had rushed through the bewildered prince's

head. The reader will have observed that Sobiesky, while using the name

of almost every potentate of Europe to strengthen his arguments, omits

to mention the Pope, the staunchest and most powerful partisan he had.

This omission he seeks to repair in his letters to Zinzendorf, in which

he endeavors to persuade the emperor that the marriage ceremony had

really been performed, though only by proxy, and that hence it was a

_matrimonium ratum_, which, according to the canon law, could not be

dissolved without drawing upon the parties concerned in the act the just

wrath of the pontiff and of every good Catholic.

These four letters, but chiefly the first two, had evidently some effect

in making the emperor waver. This appears from one of the most striking

sentences in a letter from the imperial court to Monsieur de

Peutenrieder, imperial ambassador at the court of St. James, which runs

as follows: "In the mean while I beg you to remember that we are very

desirous of extricating ourselves from this dilemma _honesto et licito

modo_. We were, and are still, quite willing and prepared to do

everything in this delicate affair according to the wishes of the king,

to convince him of our love and friendship.... The emperor wishes you to

convince the king, as politely and delicately as possible, that we fear

our measures in this marriage affair will prove abortive."

Politicians in England, less scrupulous than their confrères on the

Continent, persisted in their demand that no concessions should be made

to Prince Sobiesky until the betrothal, the work of Alberoni and the

Roman Curia, was formally dissolved. In a formal protest which the

English ambassador at the imperial court handed in (9th of December)

stress is laid upon the fact that Prince Sobiesky was not an

independent prince, but rather a subject of the emperor, and that hence

his conduct, culpable in the extreme, deserved to be visited by the

emperor with severity. It was alleged to be ridiculous that he held out

against the express wish of the allies, well knowing how easy it would

be for the king of England to ruin him entirely. Even Venice, whither it

was said Prince Sobiesky wished to retire, would not receive him for

fear of annoying England. The duke of Modena, prompted by sincere

consideration for England, had broken off his engagement with the eldest

daughter of Prince Sobiesky, and it was very probable that the duke of

Guastalla would follow this example.

We should tire the reader were we to repeat all the arguments employed

by statesmen in defence of the English policy. Untenable as most of them

were, they sufficed to dispel such slight qualms of conscience as had

arisen in Charles's mind. England's powerful fleet and beef-fed troops

were then far more important to Charles than the empty thanks of a

thriftless princeling.

While the father was thus being made the centre of political intrigues,

the lives of his wife and daughter, on whose account the courts of

Europe had been thrown into a state of commotion, flowed on in the same

dull routine which had marked them from the very beginning. Four long

months were thus spent, and the rigorous winter of Tyrol was at its

height, when the guardians of the princesses, the worthy privy

councillors, were suddenly startled from their lethargic repose by the

news that the friends of their noble prisoners in the North and the

South were on the move. On the 11th of February, 1719, it became known

in Vienna that Prince Sobiesky had mysteriously left Ohlau, and that it

was supposed he had repaired to Augsburg. Ten days later the governor of

Mantua (then part of the empire) reported that the Pretender had turned

his back on Rome on the 8th of February, and had posted to Florence.

These two highly suspicious movements convinced the emperor that the

Sobiesky party was bent upon rescuing Princess Clementina. Strict

injunctions were therefore despatched to Innsbruck, enforcing redoubled

precautions against a surprise, while the governors of Mantua and Trent

were at the same time commanded to keep a watchful eye on all travellers

that passed through those towns, and were supplied with minute

instructions for their conduct should the Pretender visit either of

them. Force was not to be used in ejecting the person of the Pretender,

but he was to be told quite politely "that the emperor had given strict

orders not to allow him to proceed on his journey toward Innsbruck, and

that hence his further stay in the town was useless."

Politely as this imperial decree was framed, the Pretender did not give

the authorities occasion to make use of it, for his journey had Spain,

and not Innsbruck, for its goal. Ignorant of this circumstance,

government continued to maintain its cautious attitude. A staff officer

and a body of men were under a plausible pretext quartered in the house

adjoining the Sobiesky palace, and the two spies in the retinue of the

Princess Clementina were ordered "to make it a point to catch sight of

her at least once in every twenty-four hours." The privy councillors,

indeed, deemed all these precautions superfluous, for they placed full

reliance on the barrier, seemingly insurmountable by a delicate young

woman, with which Nature had surrounded the prisoner in the shape of a

severe winter blocking up all the Alpine passes leading to the South;

and they now reported to the emperor that they had done everything in

their power to make escape or rescue impossible.

Nothing of importance occurred for the next two months, save that the

princess-mother wrote to the emperor, and informed the Innsbruck

government that she desired to return to Ohlau--a request which the

emperor immediately granted, little thinking it to be a mere ruse on the

part of the ladies to lull their watchful guardians.

The night of the 27th of April was at last to witness the triumph of the

artful prisoners over their vigilant jailers.

In the afternoon of that day Princess Clementina drove, as usual, to the

church of the Franciscans (well known to all tourists for its celebrated

monument to Maximilian I.), there to perform her devotions. From thence

she drove home. It was the last time the sedate burghers of Innsbruck

set eyes upon her. Mother and daughter passed the evening in the usual

manner, as the spies witnessed with their own eyes. At eleven o'clock

the servants retired, and none of them had observed, as they deposed

upon their oath, anything in the least suspicious, save that Monsieur de

Châteaudoux was seen under the gate by the scullery-maid half an hour

later.

On the following morning the servants were told that Princess Clementina

was ill, and that they must keep as quiet as possible in order that her

fitful slumbers might not be disturbed. No suspicion was aroused by this

incident for two whole days. The escape had taken place on Thursday

night, and not till late in the evening of Saturday did the head-steward

of the Sobiesky household, one of the court spies, think proper to

inform one of the privy councillors of the fact that the young princess

had remained invisible, shut up in her room, since Friday morning. The

suspicions of the privy councillor were aroused, and notwithstanding the

late hour a council was immediately convoked to deliberate on the best

means of convincing themselves by actual inspection of the presence of

their prisoner. It was decided that the doctor who had been in the habit

of attending the Sobiesky family should be sent early the next morning

to see her in person. The physician, on presenting himself to the

lady-in-waiting, was politely informed that "he was only to come when

called." Not a little startled, for hitherto he had had free access to

the princess's room, he forthwith informed the privy councillors, who

were spending their Sunday forenoon in debate, of the result of his

visit. Upon hearing the physician's tale, they despatched Baron

Greiffen, the owner of the house in which the Sobiesky family lived, to

insist upon an interview with Princess Clementina, and thus pacify

their minds. The lady-in-waiting vainly endeavored to rid herself of the

inopportune visitor by pleading for her sick mistress; and when,

finally, Baron Greiffen assumed a sterner tone, she pertly asked him,

"And what if the princess has really given you the slip?" These words

amounted, of course, to an open confession of the deplorable fact. No

doubt they grated very harshly on the ears of the hapless councillors,

whose commission now obliged the baron to break the news of the

prisoner's escape to his confrères, who were anxiously awaiting his

return in the Diet Hall.

We will not pry into the feelings of utter consternation and abject

bewilderment which took possession of that solemn-faced company when

they heard that their charge had so ignominiously duped them. These

feelings are dimly reflected in the pile of long-winded minutes which

followed each other in quick succession, and in which the councillors

vainly endeavored to appease the wrath of their monarch.

Charles, on hearing of Princess Clementina's escape, is said to have

burst out in a fit of laughter, which, however, soon gave way to a storm

of rage. On this occasion, it is likewise reported, he made the only pun

that ever passed his lips.

But to return to the twelve hapless councillors, whom we left staring

blankly at each other in the Innsbruck Diet Hall. Two of their

number--the very same who had had the honor of receiving the princess on

her arrival in the town--were sent off to seek an interview with her

mother. "They found her," as they state in one of the minutes, "bathed

in tears, but quite willing and prepared to give them all the

information she could respecting the mysterious and most deplorable

flight of her daughter, of which, so she assured us, she had known

absolutely nothing." Her words, confirmed by her tears, at first found

ready credence with her gullible visitors. Later on they asked

themselves, "If she really did not know anything of the flight, why did

she not inform us at once?" and some revulsion in their feelings

accordingly took place.

The princess-mother then handed to the deputies a letter which "she had

found on her daughter's dressing-table on the morning of her flight." In

this letter, the original of which is before us, Princess Clementina

informs her mother, whom she addresses as "Your Royal Highness," that

the day before she had received two letters--one from her father, and

the other from her husband the king, in which they both begged her to

entrust herself to the care of certain persons who would be sent to take

her away as speedily as possible. High-flown passages, breathing the

deepest regret for the step she is about to take without her mother's

knowledge and consent, intermingled with quite unnatural expressions of

humiliation before the august personage of "Madame, my dear mother, Your

Royal Highness," make up the rest of this capital sham.

From the depositions of the various witnesses examined by the

councillors it is easy to fit together the details of this remarkable

escape--details which, as we have hinted in the beginning of this paper,

differ on important points from the scanty notices on the subject which

French and English historians have given us.

Sir Walter Scott, in his _Tales of a Grandfather_, gives us correctly

the names at least of the persons who were immediately concerned in the

abduction. Prominent among these persons was Charles Wogan, one of the

prisoners of Preston, and one of the most devoted partisans of the

Stuarts. It was he who devised the plan, and to whom the princess had

been instructed by her father, in a letter which lies before us, to

entrust herself. Major Misset, his wife, and Captain Toole, with two

attendants, and finally the maid-servant of Mrs. Misset, who was to take

the place of Princess Clementina, made up the rest of the company. These

persons were divided into two distinct parties--the first consisting of

three gentlemen, Wogan, Misset and Toole, and "two ladies," Mrs.

Misset's maid being ranked with her mistress; and the second of Captain

Toole's two attendants. It is unnecessary to speak of these again, for,

as far as we can see, their aid was not called into requisition.

Wogan's party travelled from Augsburg _viâ_ Füssen and Reusse to

Innsbruck, at that time the usual route to Italy from South Germany. To

enable them to make frequent stoppages without arousing suspicion, "one

of the ladies" (Mrs. Misset's maid) was reported to be enceinte. They

stopped twenty-four hours at Nassereit, a post-station near the Bavarian

frontier and a few hours' journey from Innsbruck, assigning as the

reason for this strange proceeding the "precarious condition of the

lady," who, as the postboy declared, was beautifully dressed and wore a

red cloak, but kept her features hidden under a thick veil. In reality,

they awaited at Nassereit the final orders of Châteaudoux. These were

brought by his servant the morning after their arrival. The party set

out in the afternoon, and after short stoppages at the intermediate

post-stations arrived at Innsbruck at half-past 9 P.M. (27th of April).

They drove to a second-class hostelry outside the town, whither one of

the gentlemen (in all probability Captain Toole) had preceded them,

ordering a comfortable room to be immediately heated. The Kellnerin

(barmaid)--there were no waiters--seems to have had eyes for the

gentlemen only, for while she deposed that the latter were "young,

handsome and very well dressed," she could give very little information

as to the appearance of the two ladies. In fact, all she remembered was

that the smaller one had a black veil. Wogan, the smallest and stoutest

of the three gentlemen, wore a handsome white coat, and nether garments

to match, while his head was adorned with an aristocratic perruque.

Captain Toole was, according to her account, a tall and very handsome

man, clothed in light garments. On being shown into the apartment, the

lady with the black veil threw herself upon the bed, while the other sat

down near the table with the gentlemen. Supper was ordered and brought

up. The so-called _Herrenmahl_ or "gentlemen's meal," consisted of

barley soup, roast meat, veal ragoût and salad, washed down by two

_mass_ or four bottles of wine. On the police-sheet, which was

presented to them before they retired, they inscribed themselves as

"Monsieur de Cernes, avec son épouse et famille, de Flandre, en voyage

pour Loretto."

We have selected these few extracts from the enormous mass of evidence

collected by the distracted councillors in order to give the reader some

little idea of the consternation excited by this daring and well-planned

escapade.

When the party had finished their repast the second lady joined her

companion on the bed, while the "two" gentlemen--the third being

evidently on the watch--left the room to take a stroll under the arched

gateway of the house. Here the postilion, on coming to receive his

orders, met them. He was told by the smaller of the two (that is, Wogan)

that they would leave punctually at two o'clock that same night. This

was, properly speaking, against the town laws, but the postilion, who

had been told that they would proceed on their journey that night, had

provided for the emergency by seeking the necessary permission from the

postmaster-general, Count Taxis. This he had received in the shape of a

message brought down by the lady's maid of the countess, "that he might

drive on whenever he liked."

The most important part of the whole undertaking yet remained to be

performed. This was the abduction of Princess Clementina from her house,

situated in quite another part of the town, and conducting her through

the streets to the hostelry. We have seen that on the night in question

the servants of the Sobiesky household had retired at eleven o'clock,

and that Monsieur Châteaudoux was seen loitering about the gate half an

hour later, evidently for the purpose of choosing a propitious moment to

let the princess out of the house. By one o'clock the princess was

already in the hostelry. She had donned the same attire as the three

gentlemen who accompanied her wore--viz., a long white cloak and a broad

hat. The distance between the two houses was considerable; and, what was

worse, the party had to pass the only bridge that led across the Inn,

the hostelry being situated on the other side of the river. While they

were groping their way through the crazy lanes and winding streets of

the town an incident occurred which came near exemplifying the old adage

about the cup and the lip. The party were placed for a quarter of an

hour or thereabouts in the most imminent risk of detection. The minutes

which proved such pleasant reading for the emperor contain such ample

information, paraded in the most pompous style, of this most ludicrous

adventure, that we do not hesitate to give the reader a short extract.

We must premise that the night was extremely dark, and a violent storm

of sleet and snow was raging at the time. This, however, did not prevent

the Rumormeister--or, as we might translate the word, the "riotmaster,"

whose duties were those of a police sergeant and night watchman--from

being out on patrol, accompanied by several trusty men, on the lookout,

not for robbers and thieves, but for students. It seems that the

frequenters of the Innsbruck University gave great and constant trouble

to this most important of town functionaries. By all that we hear of

their mad excesses and their riotous conduct, we can conclude that "Gown

_versus_ Town" was a constant war-cry in those dark days of Innsbruck.

The "riotmaster"--evidently a most conscientious personage, judging from

his conduct on that auspicious night--was of course constantly the

object of the students' spite and revenge. To quote the words of this

much-exposed individual, we find "that he completed his first round that

night by ten o'clock. He had met some students, but they did not

commence any riot or fight. At twelve o'clock, while on his second

round, he was approaching the meat-booths"--a row of stalls of which

some time previously the students had made a clean sweep--"when by the

light of his lantern he and his men perceived some persons standing

about. As the thought struck him that these might be students, he firmly

advanced with the intention of catching the evil-doers and giving them

a sound thrashing." On getting quite close to the booths he and his men

heard a "subtile woman's voice." At this moment three figures issued

from the gloom, while a fourth followed them at a little distance, and

passing by him they turned the corner of the street leading to the Inn

bridge. Our confidence in the courage of the riotmaster is rudely shaken

by his next remark: "I called out Good-night! but they did not answer

me; and after vainly searching behind the booths for the female whose

voice we had heard, but whom we did not perceive among the four persons

that left, we proceeded with due caution to follow these suspicious

personages." When they reached the bridge, the butcher's man, leading

three oxen and carrying a lantern, met them, and him the riotmaster

asked if he had not seen four students on the bridge. Upon receiving a

negative reply, the whole matter seemed more suspicious than ever, and

he was just ordering his men to search below the bridge, where the

students might have secreted themselves, when the butcher himself came

up and told him he had met four persons on the other side of the bridge.

"Thereupon," says the report, "we returned to our quarters, confident

that they were only French people"--meaning outlandish or foreign folk.

But to return from this ludicrous interlude, the details of which the

privy councillors narrate with the most self-assured satisfaction as

evidence of the active zeal of their town functionary. The party on

reaching the inn divided itself, the three gentlemen ascending the

stairs, while the Princess Clementina hid herself in the carriage. Our

friend the Kellnerin was still up, and met the gentlemen on the landing,

"whereupon they seemed annoyed, and told me I might go to bed, for they

did not require me any more." The girl once away in her bedroom, it was

easy enough to bring the princess up stairs unobserved. Although we can

without difficulty follow the whole undertaking from step to step, there

is one point which the documents before us fail to clear up--when and

where Mrs. Misset's maid took the place of the princess, and what

became of her afterward.

It seems to us that Wogan exaggerated the difficulties of the scheme, or

at least omitted to take into account the astounding stupidity of the

Kellnerin, and in fact of everybody with whom the party came in contact.

For all that the Kellnerin observed, they might have dispensed with the

"sick lady" altogether, and yet have driven away from the house with two

princesses instead of one. Of such an extraordinarily unsophisticated

nature was this simple handmaiden that, when helping the sick lady down

stairs to the carriage, she noticed that the skirt of her dress was wet,

and that the dress itself was of brown taffeta, similar to the one the

princess generally wore (proving thereby that she had frequently seen

the princess). Nevertheless, no suspicion crossed her mind, though she

knew that the party had arrived in a closed carriage, and that the

ladies had not gone out.

Punctually at two o'clock the party drove off, the two ladies and two of

the gentlemen inside, the third on horseback acting as outrider. At the

very first station after Innsbruck, Schönberg on the Brenner road, some

delay occurred, for the great depth of snow obliged them to add two more

horses to the four they already had, and the whole house had to be

roused. Nothing of importance seems to have occurred in crossing the

high Brenner Pass, although the huge masses of snow on the slopes of the

mountains threatened every minute to bury the travellers. At Trent they

received the second check, which, from the results that seemed at first

inevitable, was far more serious than that at Schönberg. That very

morning the margravine of Baden had passed through Trent, and her

numerous carriages had required every one of the post-horses stabled in

the town. The postmaster, Count Wolkenstein, the very man whom the privy

councillors had warned some months previously to keep a sharp lookout on

all travellers, helped them out of the scrape by providing private

horses--a matter of some difficulty.

On Saturday night (29th of April) at ten o'clock, Princess Clementina

had reached Venetian territory at Peri, and was saved. This was half an

hour before the privy councillors at Innsbruck had received the first

intimation of her absence. The grand reward of liberty, we presume,

fully compensated the youthful princess for the fatigues and absorbing

excitement of the preceding eight and forty hours. Little as we may

sympathize with the cause for which this brave little party were

fighting, we cannot deny them the praise that in the face of the

difficulties which stood in their way, much as they may have been

lightened by the inordinate slowness of mind in general at Innsbruck,

the undertaking was a decidedly plucky one and deserved the successful

issue it had.

Princess Clementina's gentleman-in-waiting, the oft-mentioned

Châteaudoux, fared less happily in his attempt to follow his mistress.

The day after the princess's flight from Innsbruck, and before the

slightest suspicion had been aroused in the minds of the privy

councillors, Châteaudoux, having in due form received permission to

undertake a journey to Italy on business matters, as on a former

occasion, left Innsbruck. He had delayed his departure too long,

however, for though he had a clear start of nearly twenty-four hours,

the lieutenant who commanded the pursuit of the princess overtook him

close to the frontier and led him back to Roveredo, where he remained

eighty-five days in confinement. The important papers and his mistress's

jewels were taken from him and sent to Innsbruck, whence the papers

wandered by the usual route to the emperor: the jewels, however, were

handed to the princess-mother.

From Peri the fugitives hastened to Bologna, where, as we know, the

marriage ceremony was solemnized by proxy,[7] Lord Dunbar being the

Pretender's representative. From Bologna the princess proceeded to Rome,

where a royal reception was given her at the hands of the highest

dignitaries of Church and State. A medal well known to numismatists

commemorates the incident of the flight. On the obverse we see Princess

Clementina's bust and the inscription "Clementina, Queen of Great

Britain, France, Scotland and Ireland:" the reverse represents her

riding in a car drawn by a spirited team and guided by Amor, the god of

love, as coachman. The words, "I follow fortune and the good cause," and

below, "To Deluded Guardians, 1719," surround this novel design, which

reminds us somewhat of the incidents peculiar to a Gretna-Green runaway

match.

[Footnote 7: The marriage was consummated on the 1st of September at

Monte Fiascone.]

At Rome, where the Pretender and his wife took up their permanent

residence, and where they were treated as became their rank of titular

king and queen of England, that gifted but foolish adventurer, Baron

Pöllnitz, frequently met them. The description which he gives in his

_Mémoires_ of Princess Clementina's person and appearance is worth

quoting. "The queen," so he styles her, "is a princess who really

deserves to be a queen. Without being a beauty of the first rank, she

combines in her person resistless charms. She has a sterling character,

and never did one find greater humility and tender-heartedness. She is

obliging, compassionate and charitable: her piety is sincere, and her

life is that of a saint.... Did she possess a kingdom, she would

assuredly make it her first aim to discharge conscientiously her queenly

duties. Nature has bestowed upon her those gifts that would ensure her

success. She has remarkable powers of comprehension and a truly

wonderful memory. She speaks the Polish, German, French, Italian and

English tongues so perfectly as to leave it an open question which of

these is her mother-language. Of all royal personages with whom I have

had the honor of coming into contact, she is the most worthy of general

veneration, and I would wish to see her happy."

Unfortunately, Fate bereft this unhappy princess of the chance of

proving the truth of the old adage about fools speaking the truth.[8]

W.A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN.

[Footnote 8: Pöllnitz was at one time court-jester to Frederick II. of

Prussia.]

A KENTUCKY DUEL.

TWO PARTS.--I.

CHAPTER I.

It was Aunt Fanny Brown who caused the duel between Captain Mason and

Bob Nettles. Aunt Fanny was a high-nosed, aristocratic dowager, of a

pretty taste in old china, who put her wig in curl papers and came down

to breakfast in the roseate bloom of sixty summers, as if defying

perfidy to call it paint. A Washington, New Orleans and Louisville

belle, she had received from her husband five hundred acres of

blue-grass land and the finest racing stables in that part of the State.

To the surprise of all but the knowing, she conducted the business with

admirable skill. Many a jockey has walked out of the pink boudoir before

a crack race so completely dazed and pumped he did not dare to chaff

even a stable-boy. The newsboy's stamp, the dissipated buck's allowance

and the leakage of the shop-till all found a way to irrigate Aunt

Fanny's fat blue-grass pastures and to keep glossy her satin-coated

stock. Not that she soiled her aristocratic hands with such canaille,

but she domineered the whole race of Brown, from Vandyke Brown the

artist, who painted her stud, to little Yelloe Ochre and Burnett Umber

of the stable-yard, poor but proud in the aristocracy of horse.

Aunt Fanny proposed to marry her nephew, Lind Mason--or Lindley Brown

Mason, for the remotest relation took a color from the parent stock--to

little Sue Brown, daughter of her nephew, Walter Brown, Esq., pork

merchant. That was her object in the intriguing that led to the duel.

Captain Mason was a man-about-town, with no wish to marry any one in

particular, but anxious to raise the wind, to clear off his play debts

and attend the match race between Kentucky and Asteroid, then much

talked of in racing circles. His object, to use his own picturesque

language, was "to put the saddle on the right horse."

Bob Nettles, the other party to the duel, was a sort of general clerk or

factotum to Walter Brown. He was _épris_ of little Sudie Brown, his

employer's daughter, one of those merry little romps no one thinks of as

a grown woman until she surprises society by marrying. Bob was a shy,

modest little fellow, with scrubby poll, pug nose, stubby palms, like

leather, from base ball, and with a habit of laughing in the nose,

called sniggering. He had merry gray eyes and hair of a pure tow color,

which I take to be the true plebeian tint, without a sanguine shade in

it--just the last man you would think of as engaging in a duel. To tell

how these various shades were woven into the carmine flower is the

purpose of this sketch.

Bob would probably never have looked so high but for the bookkeeper at

Brown, Ochre & Co.'s pork-house, Major Johnstone--nicknamed Toady

Johnstone, because he could not help reflecting the air, tone, gestures

and opinions of those he conversed with. But the major was of tried

courage, and had a pistol wound from a duel in the thigh; and no one

ever heard an ungentlemanly word from his lips. He had a store of

singularly inept recollections in respect to such marriages, which had

generally, turned out badly; but that was nothing. The major, like a

novelist, believed he had done his whole duty in marrying a couple, and

the deuce might take them after that.

Sue had not, at this time, shown any marked preference, though she liked

Bob as a playmate, and had a sort of awe of her cousin Lind and his

marvellous stories of adventures in the Lost Cause. It was her mother,

who by no means approved of a match with the little plebeian, that first

gave her daughter a hint of such pretensions.

It was the morning Sudie proposed that garden-party, and at Mrs.

Brown's country-house. The view overlooked a jumble of village roofs

very confusing to any conception of regular thoroughfares, and faced the

meeting-house, in much disrepair, because the Masons and Methodists had

agreed to put up a lodge and a church together, and had not yet put up

something else necessary to such enterprise. The house had just been

cleaned: fresh streaks of moisture dried off the porch and mixed with

the fragrance of verbenas and the cool pungency of soot from the

freshly-cleaned chimneys. The bees droned under the pear trees; the

redbirds sang in the cedars; even the black cook, scouring her tins in

the kitchen, caught the infection and shouted jubilant doxologies at the

top of her voice. Sudie swung in a hammock on the porch. Mrs. Brown read

the _Woman in White_, and held a feather-duster over the colored girl

red-painting the pavements, as if it were a wand. Then Sue proposed that

garden-party that made all the mischief.

"But the house just cleaned, and all the carpets to take up!" murmured

Mrs. Brown, pursuing the indomitable Miss Holcombe across the page like

a flea.

"Oh no, mamma: we'll dance out here," said Sue. "This house was just

built for fun. It's so"--pouncing on the expressive word--"jolly!"

"Well, you must see your aunt," said Mrs. Brown, who dreaded the

dowager.

"Why?" asked the little rebel. "She'll just say, 'There, child, don't

trouble me with details;' and if I put in a lump of sugar or spike of

cloves without telling her, she'll snub me before papa for extravagance.

Besides, she'll say Bobby Nettles isn't aristocratic; and we can't have

a garden-party without Bob."

"I don't understand the fuss you girls make over that little fellow,"

said Mrs. Brown. "Why, he is not as tall as you!"

"Yes he is, mamma," answered Sue, laughing at the recollection. "We

measured, and Mr. Warrener bumped our heads and drove a hairpin clear

into my wits. Bob hasn't any, but he's so accommodating."

"Your aunt won't like it," said Mrs. Brown with a peculiar stress on

the pronoun.

Sue blushed to the roots of her hair and looked a little startled: "La,

mamma! I didn't mean that: I don't think of him that way. Little Bob

Nettles! Why, mamma!" For all that, little Sue kept laughing to herself

and blushing, as if there was something not altogether unpleasant in the

thought.

Mr. Brown pooh-poohed the necessity of consulting his aunt about his

home hospitalities, but thought it only courtesy to inform her of what

was contemplated. This he undertook to do, and failed. It was the first

offence.

His factotum, Bob, was to have the conduct of the preliminaries, for

those were idle days at the pork-house. The great vats were dry, the

pens vacant, Parker's patent fingers for lifting swine reached out

beggarly hands for alms. At any hour of the forenoon you could see

the rows of porkmen sitting on chairs atilt on the flags. Take a

retail grocer, water him well, he buds into a forwarding and

commission merchant, flowers a transportation agent, and matures a

great pork merchant. Why? I don't know. No more do I know why a

livery-stable-keeper always develops into a candidate for sheriff. It is

a mystery, a branch of the great Darwinian theory. At eleven o'clock

they stop talking steamboat, the chairs come down with a crack, and the

stately figures--all Kentucky pork-dealers are large, fine-looking

men--troop into the beer-saloon to drink lager and eat pretzels. Bob

does not go--he knows Mr. Brown does not want a beer-drinker to overlook

his transactions in pork--nor does the major, who objects to beer as

slops, and says it is hard on the coats of the stomach. The major has a

theory on the coats of the stomach he has never been able to propound,

from his agreeable facility in coinciding with any one who questions it.

They remain outside to inhale the fragrance of oak shavings in the

cooper-shop opposite, and to watch Beargrass glass itself under the old

stone bridge like a great green eye and lid.

As Walter Brown, Esq., passes out he stops by Bob's chair: "Here,

Nettles, I have to meet the Board of Trade at twelve. Would you see to

these commissions for Puss?" Would he? Bob enters the street-car with

the others. Mr. Brown adds: "Oh, I promised Sue to let her aunt Fanny

know. Would you mind--?"

"Hm-m!" hesitates Bob. "Old lady's rather uppish--got the scrinctum

scranctums 'bout me, somehow: my nose is too short. Beg pardon, but she

don't like me."

"Confounded old jockey!" ejaculates the irreverent Brown at the

inconvenience; and Redmond Ochre, Esq., thinks such language in a

prospective legatee should be reported; and it is, and Aunt Fanny rages.

These offences, however, were mere preliminaries to that which the

unlucky Nettles was destined to give, and which was the true origin of

that duel and its results.

He arrived at Mrs. Brown's in the afternoon in a grocer's van.

"La! if it isn't Bob!" screamed Sudie, rushing out, very fresh and

rumpled.--"Why, what have you got there?"

"Goodies," said Bob, "and things marked 'L'eau'--'riginal packages. Shut

your eyes and open your mouth when the vane o' the church is blowing

south. Ain't it hunkidory?"

"My precious papa!" screamed Sudie. "Come right in here.--Mamma, here's

Mr. Nettles," offering him like a saucer of cream.--"Just wait till I

get my bonnet--where is my bonnet?--and we'll run right down to Mrs.

Dinwiddie's and get Vixie and Cordie to help."

The two went giggling and romping down the lawn, more like two hoydens

than boy and girl, and pretty soon returned with two others. It would be

hard to tell what help Sue wanted, unless it was to laugh, though she

did that very well, for Bob did the entertaining. They played "Old

Maid," and they put the odd queen on Bob with as frank cheating as if

they were the three knaves in the pack. Then they blacked Bob's comical

face with soot, and in this costume he mimicked everybody, even the

great dragon, Aunt Fanny, being put up to it by her nephew; whereat

Mrs. Brown looked grave, while Mr. Brown roared like a great bull

alligator.

How did Bob Nettles entertain that family? He was not witty; he could

not tell a story without missing the point; he was a poor buffoon; he

did not know a pun from a problem; and his voice in singing was hee-haw

and screech. Yet he did entertain them better than noted humorists would

have done. O thou immaculate and pure spirit of Fun! fathered in no

classic fable, brought to sweetness by no toil of thought, thou art

indeed the lowliest and sweetest of thy kind. Growing like the wild

fruits and berries that the humblest may partake of thy bounty and be

filled, thy nutriment is in a quick and cheerful spirit, and thy

abundance in the broadest sympathies of our common nature.

But this childish mummery did the mischief, carried as it was by the

common vehicle of scandal in the South.

Dame Brown had two maids--Ma'amselle Hortense, who enamelled that fine

old face and retired to her crucifix and French novels; and Memmie, the

mulatto, elderly, with a complexion like a soiled and creased

straw-colored kid glove, light-blue eyes, and a prim, affected laugh

like the crackle of letter paper.

The morning after Bob's mimicry the latter went about muttering, as her

kind do, to attract attention.

"What is it, Memmie?" asked the dowager, carelessly closing and relaxing

her upper lip before a hand-mirror to adjust her false teeth. "Have you

and Hortense quarrelled again?"

"Te-hee," crackled the negress. "Missis sich sweet dispisition me 'n'

Miss Ho'tense 'bleege to be frien's. If ma'amselle hain't got the true

spirit of the Methodies, hallelujah! amen! She ain't none o' them

Nettleses pesterin' roun', a-blackin' of his face fo' tu 'ten' like of

it's a-missus's beyoucheeful enamuel; and Mistah Waltah a-laughin' of

hoss-laughs, a-sayin' it's the very spit o' ole Miss Fanny.--Whar ye

been wid dat choc'lit all dis time missis a-waitin'?" breaking out on

the under-servant with the breakfast tray. "Some'hin' hap'n top o' yo'

head, gal: yo' mammy'll have to git ye peg t' hang yo' hat on. Yo's

wuss'n Nettles, niggah as ye is."

Dame Brown's first thought was of a _lettre de cachet_: she would have

chopped off Bob's head without the slightest compunction. Her next was

to reduce the rebellious province of Walter Brown and occupy its fairest

possession, Sudie, much given to upset the tea-caddy upon occasion.

The General Gage she proposed for this expedition was her nephew.

Captain Mason was one of those elegant do-nothings whom statisticians

grub out and sentimentalists wail over, as if I were to shed a few

ink-drops because the morning-glory at my porch will not make an edible

potato of its root, like its first cousin the yam in the near field. He

was portly, rosy in the jowls, with fat blue eyes of a tendency to get

bloodshot in the corners, and curly brown hair. He wore sumptuous

waistcoats, lawn fronts, much irrigation of vest-chain and jewels, like

her of Banbury Cross; after which it is superfluous to add skill in

billiards and games of chance. He affected a pompous sort of military

horse-talk, as if the steed in the book of Job neighed through his

conversation. Sudie Brown thought him just awful, and was quite sure he

had chopped off heads with that ostentatious sabre he kept on view. But

waggish Confederates had a way of playing on the captain's foible by

such remarks as "I say, Lind, how about the four Dutchmen you scalped at

Perryville?" and there would be good entertainment for an hour, or

indeed as long as one chose to listen. If it was absurd to think of that

merry little prig Nettles in such a business, Captain Mason's old

companions-in-arms at the mere suggestion of his being brought to face a

loaded pistol burst into great guffaws of laughter. For all that, it got

to look very ugly, and one silly, loving little heart suffered

unspeakable agonies of apprehension before it was over.

Captain Mason had stepped into Rufer's gorgeous saloon as if to collect

his rents, and came out wiping his moustache as if he had eaten them,

when he was hailed by Aunt Fanny's African page, and ushered into the

presence in time to witness a spectacle of materialization that would

astound Spiritualists.

Mason, in a puffy sort of way, stood greatly in awe of his aunt--who, in

addition to all a man knows, knew all a woman knows--and would have

liked to impress her. He began: "Ah, how dee do, aunt? Just been looking

at Woodlawn. Company's rather gravelled, eh? Thought to give 'em a lift

and take the race-course myself."

"You take Woodlawn!" cried the dowager, absolutely startled out of her

discernment by the notion of getting the once-famous racing-park in the

family. Then, recognizing the tremendous bounce, she said sharply,

"Pshaw! Do you know a young fellow named Nettles?"

"Nettles? Net-tles?" repeated Mason, hesitating, in doubt if it was a

proper acquaintance to acknowledge just then. "Well, yes--a clerk or

duffer of some sort at Uncle Brown's pork-house. Oh yes, I know the

cad--by sight."

"I did not ask if you knew him by scent," said the dowager, who took no

pains to conceal her contempt for her nephew. "He is making up to little

Sue Brown. Susannah is too silly to see it, and Walter Brown is an

obstinate fool. Low people are always trying to make good connections.

You can cut him out if you like."

There was a little chuckle of delight under Mason's watch-pocket, as if

that dry timepiece laughed like a dice-box at the thought of the little

round-eyed girl who had listened to his vaporing with no mere hypocrisy

of belief; but he said, "Marry for money! eh, aunty? Not that she isn't

a clean little filly, built up from the ground, neat pastern, good

shoulders; but marry for money! eh, aunty?"

It was the purest of cant. He knew, his aunt knew, he would as soon

think of eating his knife and fork as marrying a piece of furniture that

did not feed him.

"Bah! ostrich with your head in the sand!" said his aunt. "You have

played Ancient Pistol all your life. I show you where it will win. Will

you play?"

Lind looked over his hand: he remembered that he had made Bob fag on the

playground, and as he thought of little Sue he believed it feasible; but

he saw more tricks in his hand than that one. "Well," said he

affectedly, "if it is to keep out an interloper I don't mind; but you

said pistols? A man that has seen Perryville, Stone River, Vicksburg,

Gettysburg"--Lind got his battles mixed sometimes in the haste of

composition--"don't mind saying he has seen enough of bloodshed."

"Pah!" said the dowager in the tone of Hamlet putting down Yorick's

skull. "You amuse me to disgust. I'll mop up all the blood spilt with a

cambric handkerchief. Will you do it?"

"Didn't I say so?" answered Mason, chafing under her open contempt. "But

war cannot be carried on without funds, and Asteroid let into me

heavily." He was playing for the odd trick now.

"I expected that," said the dowager contemptuously. "How much?"

"Well, say two hundred," hesitated Lind, for he expected a

controversy--"for first impressions."

She only took out her portemonnaie and said, "See that you earn it."

"You bet! I mean, Thank ye, aunt," muttering as he left the room,

"Confounded old cow with the crumpled horn! but who thought she would

milk so easy?"

Elated with having "made a raise," he went strutting and breathing down

the avenue, clanking his chains and thinking of his little cousin as

already won.

But that was the way of the dowager, this Queen Catharine of the Browns.

If she heard of derelictions from loyalty, she did not stop to mediate

and discuss, but, like a vigorous ruler, took prompt means to put them

down. We shall see how she succeeded, and what befel her chief marshal

in this campaign.