"If that were all!" Sir Walter said, with a snap of his thumb and

finger, which failed and gave no sound. He paused, and his countenance

grew grave as he observed this, looking with a half piteous surprise at

his own large feeble hand. "I canna even snap my thoom," he said under

his breath. Then with a feeble wave of that hand to his companion, he

added, "If it's to be done, lose no time."

This was the warrant upon which the minister brought Peter Oliphant to

Kellie Castle. He had as much trouble with the young man as he had with

the old. The house of Over-Kellie was still excited by the flying visit

of Mistress Jean when the minister reached it; and the Leddy, or the

Gudewife--for Marjory said truly that she was called sometimes one and

sometimes the other, according to the courtesy or indifference of her

rare visitors--could not be persuaded that the extraordinary mission of

the minister had not something to do with that exciting incident. The

Mistress felt that her Peter was called to the Castle to receive the

hand of the Princess, who must have found time enough in the ten minutes

of her stay to fall in love with him; and that this event at once and

for ever established his claims as heir-at-law, and made Kellie Castle

his. The young man naturally was more hard to be convinced; but he too

was excited, and not in perfect command of his faculties. If Jean had

discovered that he was a bonnie lad, he had still better means of

discovering that she was fair enough to dream of; and though this

encounter had made her first aware of him, it was by no means the first

time that her humble cousin had seen the young lady of Kellie. And, in

the glow of pride with which he remembered, though no such claim had

ever been acknowledged, that he was the undoubted next of kin, there

was, perhaps, something of a more generous fervour, a warm and noble

sentiment towards the friendless girl to whom the head of the house, as

all the countryside knew, was little more gentle than towards himself.

When Sir Walter died, it was he who would be the nearest in blood to her

to defend her rights or herself. The Lord Oliphant might be the head of

the name: but he was a man who loved gear, and was secretly operating,

as all the countryside believed, to draw the lands of Kellie and the old

Castle to himself.

It was therefore with no small exaltation of mind that Peter Oliphant

flung his bonnet upon his head, notwithstanding his mother's prayers

that he would put on his better suit and the hat in which he appeared at

kirk and market, to show his better breeding. "I will not stand covered

in Sir Walter's presence," he said; "and, as for my clothes, they're

well enough. He knows me for a country loon, whatever fine suit I might

wear."

"Loon, did the laddie say? and what next? I would like to see either

knight or yeoman, in all Fife, that would dare to call Peter Oliphant

loon," his mother said.

"And so would I," he said, with a laugh. He was strong and straight and

tall, with the brown hair and the laughing eyes that belonged to his

race. But they were eyes that could look fierce enough when occasion

required.

"By my troth, I would like that better," he continued, as they set out;

"a bout at single-stick, or a good frank blade, I am not that ill at:

but what am I to say to the old laird? a man wants lear for a

presence-chamber, even if it's but an old knight's."

"You have lear enough for that," said the minister, "if you would but

mind half that I have put into you, at the point of the sword, as a man

may say."

"A little Latin, and a shelf of old books," said Peter; "but you would

not advise me, Maister Melville, to tirl off a verb to Sir Walter, even

if I could mind it, the first time he has bethought himself that I'm

alive and within reach."

"My lad, I would not lippen to his bethinking himself," said the

minister; "just you mind it's mostly my doing, and my credit's

concerned. Na, I will not tell you, not a word, what to say; nature will

tell you, and that fine spirit of your ain that never let you be overly

modest before me. And I hope, so far as learning goes, I am of more

account than Sir Walter, if that was of any consequence."

"Little doubt of that," said Peter; but he was wise enough to know that

this was indeed of very little consequence, and that it was an extremely

different thing standing before the minister in Carnbee manse, though he

was a man of learning, and thus stepping suddenly into the presence of

old Sir Walter, though he had no letters at all.

CHAPTER III.

Peter Oliphant went into the great hall of Kellie Castle with very

mingled feelings. Though he had lived all his life almost within sight

of the home of his race, he had never crossed the threshold before; and

a kind of awe, a kind of defiance, the inalienable attraction of an

ancient family house, mingled with the indignant sentiment of a scion of

the family upon whom its door has been always closed, made his cheek

glow and his heart beat. This, then, was Kellie, which had been the home

of his fathers, which might be his home if justice prevailed and the law

of heirship and lineage. It was not a splendid place to overawe him. The

house of Kellie was not rich. Whatever superfluity the family had ever

possessed, Sir Walter and his sons had managed to get rid of in the days

when they went to England with King James--perhaps, like so many Scotch

gentlemen, in hope of advancement, but, like so many more, only wasting

their small substance in a brief attempt to hold head among the great

English lords ten times as rich as they were. There were few signs of

grandeur in the hall: a little show of silver on the buffet; heavy old

velvet curtain with tarnished embroideries; some carved furniture of

noble workmanship, marked with the three crescents of the family arms.

Those arms were dimly blazoned, too, on the high, carved mantelpiece,

with that proud motto which poverty turns into a brag or a jest,

according to the humour of the wearer--_À tout pourvoir_. Peter knew

that much at least, if no other word, of the French tongue, and had said

it over to himself many a day. It was but a sad word in the old house

that had little to provide and few to provide for--none but the old man

and the helpless girl. But if ever this house should come to the strong

hands, that if strength and labour and daring could do it would, so help

him heaven! carry it out to the letter! Peter's head, all throbbing and

resounding with excitement, was in a state of exaltation to which he had

never felt the parallel. And as it happened, the first thing that met

his eye was Mistress Jean, the heroine of the other day's

half-adventure. She was seated on a stool in the recess of the great

window, with a great book clasped in her arms, too heavy to hold, and

over which she was stooping, bent almost double. Jean's kirtle was not

so well preserved nor her snood so fresh as those of his own little

sister at Over-Kellie: and to his yeoman's eyes she was doing nothing

useful, nor perhaps able to do anything useful--a creature not made for

common occupations, but to be kept in sweet leisure and pleasure like

one of the lilies of the field. _À tout pourvoir!_ Here was one of the

things for which it would be his duty to provide. The thought brought a

sudden glow over him--the heat of resolution and enthusiasm. It was the

climax of all those mingled and tumultuous thoughts that had been

surging in his breast.

Jean looked up at the sound of the heavy steps ringing upon the floor,

and, throwing down her heavy book, darted forward; but, seized with a

sudden access of shyness, stopped and drew back before she had come up

to the visitors, and stood looking at them--herself a very pleasant

image, impetuous yet timid, her figure suddenly arrested in all its

swiftness of motion, her lips in their meaning of speech. The sight of

Peter Oliphant, so unexpected an apparition, made her dumb.

"We have come, Mistress Jean," said Mr Melville, "to speak a word with

Sir Walter, so please you, and by your brother's ain desire."

"By his--ain desire!" Jean looked at the pair before her. The well-known

figure of the minister, and the other, so much more interesting, still

in all the novelty of recent discovery, a personage not precisely like

the young Ansters of her acquaintance, wanting something, possessing

something, a different kind of being. Indeed the rustic young gentlemen

were but little superior even in breeding to this handsome yeoman, with

his greater maturity and higher consciousness of life and its struggles.

They were good to laugh with, to mock at, to dance with on the very few

occasions when such an opportunity occurred. But she had met with a

reality of life in the person of this modest yet ardent young man, who

reddened when he looked at her, which Jean had never encountered before.

At Sir Walter's own desire! was it on account of herself, for some

reason connected with that meeting, which some one must have betrayed

and reported? This idea had no time to grow, but it flashed upon her

suddenly, almost choking her with the sudden rise and hurried pulsation

of her heart.

"We will but bide a moment with your permission till Maister Neil comes

forth to bid us to the knight's presence," said the minister. "And it

will not be long, seeing the hour was fixed by himsel'."

"There is somebody with him," said Jean: and then her awe of the

situation yielding a little as she grew familiar with it, she laughed

and added, "It is one you do not love."

"And who may that be?" said Melville. His question was answered in a way

much more significant than any reply of hers. The curtain over the door

of Sir Walter's sitting-room was audibly thrust back, without, however,

revealing immediately the person coming forth: and a voice said,

speaking to the old knight within, "My lord shall hear every word of

your good intentions, every word! it is the thought of a true kinsman,

whatever comes. Be sure my lord shall hear: and farewell, sir, and the

blessing of God."

The new-comer paused to draw the curtain back to its usual folds,

covering the door, and then he turned round, and with a hasty

exclamation of surprise became aware of the group in the hall. He was

more conspicuous in his dress as a clergyman than was the minister of

Carnbee, with something on his dark head that suggested a tonsure,

though no such mark of the beast was permitted in Scotland, and wearing

the cassock of a priest. He came forward, however, with much appearance

of cordiality, "Ah, Brother Melville, it's long since we met! If we've

both come on the same ghostly errand, I wot our penitent will get

something confused in his Belief."

"I come on no ghostly errand," said Mr Melville, "but concerning the

affairs of this fleeting world: which have their importance too, as you

will agree with me."

"That do I--and whiles more bewildering still," said the Curate of

Pittenweem, rubbing his hands. "We have no doubt the luck, my kind

neighbour, to take different views on that subject too."

"It may be so," Melville replied gravely, but he added no more. He had

no inclination to disclose his hand, as his opponent had done

involuntarily by those last words behind the curtain. Low of Pittenweem

looked at him fiercely, but without any visible change of tone.

"And how's all with you, Pate?" he said with a smile. "I heard a bonnie

story the other day of one of these wild soldier fellows that are just a

pest on the roads, and how he was scared away and took the road west,

meddling with no person: for fear of a certain muckle rider, bigger than

himself, from the Over-Kellie gait."

"Oh, and it was me, Sir John!" cried Jean; "and the loon was after me on

my pony, till there came in sight----" Jean stopped suddenly, crimson

all over, half with annoyance at herself for having spoken, half because

of the smiling glance which Low directed from her to Peter Oliphant, and

back again--a smile which developed into a low laugh of malice, and

which filled her with unaccountable shame.

"There came in sight--the palladin, the grand knight"--he said these

words to the accompaniment of his laugh, till every line of Peter's

rustic dress, the blue bonnet in his hand, the heavy shoes on his feet,

seemed to come out under the sarcastic look, as if the curate had been

holding up a candle to show their roughness. And then he turned away,

still laughing softly to himself, and rubbing his hands. "I will not

interrupt such braw company," he said. "Good day to you, Mistress Jean:

and I wish ye, madam, a good fulfilment to all your virtuous wishes; and

one of those days ye can tell your mother, Pate, I'll come in for a

crack, and to hear the country news. Brother Melville, we'll probably

not be so long, you and me, this time of meeting again."

"Maybe not, Maister Low," said Melville.

"Wherever the ---- is, there will the eagles be gathered together," said

the other, going lightly towards the door, with a wave of his hand and a

nod of his head. Mr Melville drew a long breath.

"That is no canny forerunner," he said, "Peter, my good lad, for you and

me; but I will haste and see if the auld knight is weariet, or if he'll

see you still. Bide here for me."

When Peter was left alone with the young lady, there was a pause of much

embarrassment between these two young people, so suddenly brought

together by malicious suggestion, and by the involuntary flash of

thought that went from one to another, in the unlikely and unexpected

combination, in which all suddenly, in a moment, they had been placed.

Jean, who was full of saucy words at other times and in other company,

at this moment, when she would have given all her small possessions for

the power to throw one jibe at him, could not find a word to say. It was

Peter, whose grave mood had more solidity and could better resist the

excitement of the situation, who was the first to speak. "I have a

charge from my mother, Mistress Jean, with her duty--which is maybe more

than is due from her to you; but my mother, Lady Jean, though she is the

best woman in the world, was but a farmer's daughter, and cannot get out

of her head that the Laird's daughter is a Princess in the land."

"I have no quarrel with her for that," said Jean, restored to herself;

"but if I am a Princess you will maybe live to be the King. Here we are,

us two, and it's between us, Maister Peter. You are the just heir; but I

am the more just if it were not that I am a lassie, and whose fault is

that? I am sure it is by no will of mine."

"My Lady Jean," said Peter, "you say well it is my just right, as the

next man of the blood; but if by Sir Walter's will it should fall to

you, as may be--mind you this, whatever happens, I'll stand for you

through fire and water, and be your man, and a true kinsman, as long as

I live."

"No me!" cried Jean, giving a spring in her excitement. "If it falls to

you, I'll fight you every step, and go to the law with you, and never

yield while I've breath!"

Peter looked at her with a tender admiration--but that ineffable way of

taking the girl's hot words as if they meant nothing, which not even

love itself can make palatable to a girl. "Well-a-well," he said gently,

"the one thing and the other they mean just about the same."

"But nothing of the kind," she cried, almost with a soft shout of

passion, "nothing of the kind! they mean----" here it suddenly struck

Jean quite irrelevantly, as he stood before her with a deprecating

smile, by every turn of his figure and change of his face recommending

himself to her, seeking to please her, asking nothing better than to

serve and help her,--suddenly and supremely that he was a bonnie lad,

that nobody had ever looked at her like that, nor spoken to her like

that before. She stopped and gasped and put out her hand to him, which

was as unexpected as any other of her movements. "Cousin Peter," she

cried, "there's my hand upon it; we'll be grand enemies! We'll be true

as auld Sir William's sword, that he keepit the Castle of Stirling with,

that hangs there upon the wall. We'll fight fair, and never say an ill

word one of the other. And there's my hand."

She expected nothing but a comrade's grasp; but young Pate of

Over-Kellie had the gracious manners of the old chivalry, without

knowing whence they came. He stooped low almost to his knee, and kissed

the hand held out to him--an unlooked-for homage which altogether

overwhelmed the rustic maiden, who was scarcely by her own nature a lady

of romance. And at that moment the heavy curtain was drawn, and Mr

Melville's head put out calling Peter. The sudden light of a delightful

smile shone over the minister's face. "Ah!" he said, with a soft laugh,

which was not of ridicule but content. It was enough, however, to send

Jean back to her window-seat, all one blush, and to make Peter draw

himself up almost to more than his stature, as very red and portentously

serious he followed, transported out of all his nervousness about Sir

Walter--into the presence of the old knight.

Sir Walter sat by the fire, which smouldered sullenly, as if it felt the

inappropriateness of its presence on a warm spring day, as the centre of

the scene. But the old Master of Kellie was cold, the blood ran slow in

his veins, and all the fires of living were as low in him as the dull

glow in the coals. The gown in which he was enveloped was lined with

fur, and wrapped closely round him; and his head was so sunk into its

soft collar that the effect of his upward look was as if a pair of eyes

alone looked over his raised shoulder at the young man who came in. But

there was life in the look, which contradicted every other sign of

diminished vitality. It seemed almost to strike at Peter like the flash

of a blade into the air. The steel-like light quivered, and then

suddenly the old man turned his head away. There was a pause, and both

of his visitors thought for a moment that the old knight had fallen

asleep or lost consciousness--till at last the minister spoke, half

alarmed. He touched with a finger the wide sleeve of Sir Walter's coat.

"Here is the young lad, Sir Walter. Come in bye, Pate--show

yourself--and be not blate. What, man! ye are here in what may be your

own house."

Peter took a step forward into the room, opposite to the light which

fell full upon him, his somewhat rustic air lost in the temporary

exaltation of his look; but Sir Walter had returned to his fire, and

looked at him no more. His voice came out of the fur collar of his gown,

as out of a cave. "Ay! the young lad, say you? And what is his will, and

his errand here?"

"Speak to him, man; speak to him!" said the minster, in an undertone.

"I have no purpose, Sir Walter," said Peter; "but that ye were thought

to send for me; and me--I was very willing to come, as your kinsman, and

to ask how you did."

"Ay!" said Sir Walter again, "as my kinsman! Blate! I see little sign

that he is blate. Let him speak for himself. There are plenty of loons

in Fife that will swear themselves my kinsmen, however they came by the

name."

Peter was stung by this disdainful speech. "I am no loon," he said,

"minister, as you well know; and as for how I got the name, Sir Walter

he kens weel, seeing I am but his second cousin, when all is done, twice

removed."

"Ah, so! are you all that?" said the old knight: he raised his head, and

once more Peter felt himself struck as by a flame. But again the light

quivered, and Sir Walter swerved, and his head sank among his furs. Then

he added, averting his look, "What is your will of me, young man?"

"Nothing," said Peter. His heart swelled, a sudden sense of pity moved

him for the desolate old age before him--so lonely, so void of all the

charities and tenderness which ought to encircle the old. "And yet," he

said, a remorseful sense of all his own advantages over this solitary,

chilled, and suffering old man melting his spirit, "Sir Walter, if there

was any pleasure I could do you, for the sake of the drop's blood

between us, and because you have none of your own----"

"Eh! eh! what is that he says?--what is that he says?"

"Sir, I would fain, fain do you a pleasure, if that were possible,"

Peter said.

It was some time before the old knight spoke. "Gramercy for your

kindness, lad," he said; "I have plenty to do for me all I want. I seek

no service from the like of you."

"Yet it would be given out of a good heart," Peter said.

These words of manly kindness to the weak, given with an insistence of

which Peter, blate of nature as the minister had said--that is, proudly

shy of expressing emotion, as it is the drawback of his countrymen to

be--would not have believed himself capable, made a curious commotion in

the still air of that chamber, where all was stagnant, and life and

charity were seldom heard. Sir Walter put out a blanched hand with a

gesture to the minister, calling him forward, "Ye have tutored the lad

what to say."

"I would think shame," said Melville, "to try to tutor what's native to

a gentle spirit. And, Sir Walter, you are more understanding than to

believe what you say."

The old knight dropped his head again, and was silent once more. Then he

said, without raising his face, with his eyes fixed on the low red of

the fire, and a voice half buried in his fur collar, "Did I hear ye say

Pate?"

"His name is Peter----"

"Pate," repeated the old man, vaguely. "There was once another--but

keen, keen as a hawk, and gallant, and fine in every limb. Not like that

yeoman from the fields. Take him hence, take him hence! There is that in

the turn of his head that goes, that goes"--he made a pause, and gave

forth a long slow breath "to my hert!"

And again there was silence. Peter would have stolen away by natural

instinct, but did not dare to break the deep stillness by a movement,

and the minister stood doubtful, hesitating, afraid to shorten an

interview that might have important results, yet afraid at the same time

to injure the impression that had been made.

"Ay, Pate," Sir Walter said almost to himself, "Pate--like day to night,

like a prince to a churl--but just a turn of the head, a trick of the

voice. Eh! ye are still here? is it a service do ye think, young man, to

spy on the privacy of one that, kinsman or no kinsman, is the head of

your name?" he raised himself, putting his hand upon the table--"in

Fife," he added with a faint laugh, "in Fife--saving the rights of my

lord. Ay, my lord, that's the question. Well, sir! I thank ye for your

coming, and dismiss ye from further attendance. Master Melville, at your

leisure I will see you again."

The hall was vacant when Peter, with strange visions through his brain,

confused with his own good impulses and the less kind ones that came

hurrying after, stepped into it again. He did not know what he had

expected or hoped for, but there was disappointment and a little offence

in his mind. He was not sure if he had acquitted himself as a man in

this unusual trial or if he had failed. He was new to all these strange

and conflicting feelings. The old man in his chamber, the death in life

which Pate's animated youth had never seen before, and the young lady in

the hall, had given to him equally a great thrill and sensation of the

novel and unknown. Life seemed to have begun for him to-day.

CHAPTER IV.

In Sir Walter's chamber, after that interview, there were many comings

and goings. Sir John Low, as it was still the habit to call the curate,

came every day, for the knight, in the many fluctuations of his mind,

had at the last swayed towards the ritual and formulas to which he had

been accustomed in his youth, and there were consolations boldly

administered, though with precaution, by the curate which the minister,

although no further removed than the next parish, would have esteemed

sinful mummeries and offences to the truth. Mr Melville gave no

absolution, which the curate dispensed with confidence, soothing the

aged gentleman with rites by which his wavering mind was supported,

though he could not give above half his attention to them, but sat

turning over and over in his mind the one question that occupied him

even when the viaticum was put to his lips. Sir John came and went, and

a silent man from St Andrews, with a soberly clad attendant bearing a

bag full of papers and an inkhorn, also came and went, spending hours in

the Castle, and called in ever for a new discussion by the major-domo,

Neil Morison, who shared all the consultations, to which indeed his

master gave but the same distracted half attention which he gave to the

rites of the Church. The time had come to him when he could not fix his

mind to anything--whether it was those matters which were pressed upon

him as for his soul's weal, or those others which were in reality the

permanent subjects of his thoughts. Sir Walter, indeed, amid his dreams

and distractions, which broke everything with which he was occupied as

an image reflected in water is broken by every blowing breeze, was

conscious of many people coming and going, who were not seen of men.

While he pondered over the disposal of his property, his sons, to whom

it should have gone by course of nature, came and went fitfully, more

clearly realised at those moments when, in his _malaise_ of mind and

body, he became impotent of all other thoughts, and turned towards them

as of old. Something had brought them back into the still air of that

death-chamber--something which no one knew of, which the old man himself

did not understand. It was the look of young Pate Oliphant, the turn of

his head, something in his voice, those subtle tokens of kin which come

and go, broken always, like that same reflection in water, not to be

traced, but thrilling for a moment now and then through every nerve.

That fugitive likeness had not inclined him towards Peter of

Over-Kellie. It had struck out rather a tone of wrath, of harsh

contrariety and opposition in his mind--with the impulse to push that

interloper out of his way who dared to remind him of Pate, his own Pate

of the other times. In his confusion of mind he did not remember how

that suggestion came--had he dared to speak of Pate, this stranger who

had no right? He forgot how it came. But Pate and the others had come

back: they were vaguely about him, always eluding him when he would have

appealed to them--present there he felt, by some secret understanding,

known only to himself and them, which if he betrayed it would harm them

all. And Sir John, quieting all the vague terrors in the old man's mind

in respect to death--terrors only half real, too, for nothing was very

real with Sir Walter--mingled other counsels, suggestions of another

name in which there perhaps was an escape from the confusion of his

soul.

The silent man from St Andrews disappeared one dim morning when the

world was all white, stifled in an easterly haar, after a sitting of an

hour with Sir Walter in his chamber--and that afternoon when the

minister of Carnbee appeared he was informed that all was nearly over,

and that the old knight, who had hung so long between life and death,

was in the very act of ending. The curtain was held back that Mr

Melville might enter; but as this was at the very moment when Sir John

was bending over the couch of the sufferer administering those rites

which were sacrilege to the preacher, Melville solemnly and indignantly

withdrew, and stood outside till all should be over. He stood against

the curtain with a stern expression on his face, his eyes half closed,

his lips sometimes moving. I fear he was angry that this mummery should

be permitted in a "Christian land," and thought many a harsh word of his

brother, even while he prayed fervently for the passing soul which these

rites were dismissing in peace. A little time after Sir John emerged,

solemn too, yet with something of triumph in his look. "He hath gone

forth well provided on his last journey," he said; "his end has been

peace." "If you call that peace," Melville could not keep from saying;

"I hope his end was also justice." "It was judgment," said the other

priest, walking back as if in a procession with his little vials: and

the old hall, so large, so empty, its great windows full of the whitened

mist, the shroud of the haar that covered all things, looked more

desolate, cold bare, and empty of life than words could say.

Before Sir Walter was carried to his rest in the family vault in Carnbee

kirkyard it was known all over Fife that Kellie Castle and estates had

been left by his will neither to his sister nor to the next of kin, but

to the head of the family, my Lord Oliphant, then in London with King

James, and not likely to put himself to much trouble in doing honour to

the funeral. It is true that he was the head of the family, and also

that there existed an additional link in the fact that Sir Walter had

married his sister. But the fief of Kellie was one which came not from

the parent house, but was acquired for his own hand by the original

holder, the founder of this branch, so that its bequest to the chief was

no reversion, but a free gift. Lord Oliphant was not rich; and poor as

had been the state kept by the old knight in the lingering end of his

days, his inheritance was not one to be despised. The knowledge made a

great sensation in the neighbourhood, where there had been many

speculations on the subject, the claims of Mistress Jean and of Pate

Oliphant having been largely discussed. By some of the neighbours it had

been believed that Sir Walter had no right to exclude the heir-at-law;

but this had been warmly disputed by others, who held that the death of

all the immediate members of his own family left the old knight a free

hand, and that, in the absence of any legal settlement, he had a right

to do what he liked with his own. His funeral brought together all the

gentry from that side of Fife, both gentle and simple indeed, of the

East Neuk, neighbours and tenants, a numerous company. And at this

ceremony the positions of the two clergymen were reversed. Sir John of

Pittenweem was not looked upon with very favourable eyes in the Kingdom,

and his return to the ancient ways, though it had to be winked at by

those who were aware that authority was no longer entirely on the side

of the Reformed Kirk, and that protection was now extended even to

something very like the odious Mass--was much against him in the opinion

of the multitude. That he had "played his cantrips" about the dying man

was whispered from one to another, and that he was a rank prelatist was

universally known. Maister Melville, that excellent and sound divine,

had now all the say.

There were other strange features in this funeral which were long

remembered. For one thing, there was nobody to conduct the mourning with

authority. Peter Oliphant stepped forward to follow the coffin, and no

one gainsaid his right to take the place of chief mourner; but he was

modest and a little backward in marshalling the others, notwithstanding

the support he received from several of the chief gentlemen present, who

acknowledged the title of the next of kin, even though it was known that

he was not the heir. But was he not the heir? would not natural right

prevail, though in opposition to an old man's testament, a doited old

man! These words were freely spoken even as the long procession set out

upon the heavy country road, winding dark and silent between the

hedgerows. Was he not a doited old man? Had not he taken, as somebody

had related, Pate Oliphant for his own son Pate, who, poor lad, had been

but a rover, and broken, folk said, his father's heart? And there were

some even who whispered that it was with the idea that Pate of

Over-Kellie was his own Pate, and to punish that ne'er-do-weel, that Sir

Walter in his dotage had left his lands away from the natural heir. This

discussion, however, was not all or even the most remarkable part of

what occurred. For at the cross-roads, where the way to Carnbee turned

off from the highway, a young gentleman, followed by three or four

retainers, came up almost at a gallop, with every sign of hard riding,

and in his travelling-dress, and made an effort to disturb the decorum

of the funeral by forcing his horse into the line and taking the place

next to the coffin where Pate walked leading the procession. This

incident caused a pause, and such an interruption of the solemnity as

threw the line of the mourners into confusion, and turned the

conventional stillness and whispered conversations of the funeral party

into something like a brawl. The new-comer proclaimed himself the

representative of Lord Oliphant, his son, sent to render the last

honours to his kinsman, and could only be prevented with the greatest

difficulty from taking his place forcibly at the head. This noisy

interruption, and the bad manners of the young gallant, who, when

prevented from taking the place of Pate, rode on himself and his

followers at either side of the coffin, breaking the quiet not only by

the excitement of their appearance but by the clangour of their ride,

and the breach of all those Scotch decorums which have always been so

rigid in respect to burial. Brawling at such a moment was not indeed

unheard of, any more than at any other moment, in the temper of the

times. But the depths of the peaceful country, where no such thing had

been thought of, and where my Lord Oliphant had neither friend nor

enemy, was displeasing to all. Nevertheless, perhaps, had it not been

for the steady backing of the minister and one or two of the elder men,

the position of Pate would have been a disagreeable one; for the

sympathies of the gentry were more with the Master of Oliphant than with

the humbler youth, whose blood they acknowledged, but whose breeding had

been that of a yeoman rather than of a landed gentleman. Pate himself,

however, proved his gentility by a bearing much more noble than that of

the intruder. He held his place with determination and without

flinching, yielding no step. And thus they carried old Sir Walter to his

grave.

On the return, however, Pate was less certain of his right and less

supported. It was the intruder then who had the upper hand. The elder

men might look coldly upon so irreverent an assertion of the position;

but the younger ones, who knew, or desired to know, the Master of

Oliphant, were glad to push forward, to claim his acquaintance, and to

accompany him back to Kellie Castle, where at least he had now the first

right to be. Pate felt himself left behind to the company of the tenants

and the smaller lairds, who, like himself, were rather patronised than

on an equal footing with the great proprietors. Mr Melville made an

effort to draw him into the quiet of the manse, which would have been

safer; but it was more natural that, indignant and injured as he felt

himself, he should prefer the sympathy of the others, who were full of

angry suggestion and advice. The young man had been profoundly

disappointed and cast down by Sir Walter's will. It was the destruction

of his brightest hopes: but it had not occurred to him that the question

was not closed, or that there might still be a chance of having justice

done him. Now the utterances of companions were no longer in whispers.

The doited auld man? Was he indeed a doited auld man? Pate thought of

the heavy look, the dreamy eye, the sudden kindling like a flame of Sir

Walter's brief words and moments of animation. He shook his head at

first, but afterwards his own mind took fire. It was galling to hear the

voices, already gay, of the others who clustered round young Oliphant,

and streamed after him, full of pleasure in the excitement of the

stranger's arrival, and also in their release from the gloomy ceremony:

he and his friends came behind, and different were their tones and their

looks.

"It is e'en like the impudence of thae minions of the Court," said one

of the neighbours, "that follow the English fashion, and despise their

native ways."

"English fashion or no," said another, "right is right. Body and banes!

if it were me, I would have my lord before the Feifteen before I drew

breath."

"And let them prove that the old knight was fit to mak' a

disposition----"

"I'll tell ye just this, Over-Kellie," said one of the tenants, raising

an expository hand. "I had a word with Andrew Morison, that is the

cousin of Neil at the Castle, and the hired man of Maister Playfair of

St Andrews, the writer--him ye ken of. He had a look within yon closed

cha'mer, at his maister's call, to bring in the papers. And Andrew, he

says the auld man was like an auld ghaist--the colour o' the pairchment

spread out on the table, and his een dead in his heid."

"Which was nowise natural," said another. "I hae seen him mysel', when

there was question o' a feu or siclike, that took his pairt, and a

free-spoken man that would hae his argument and tak' his jest like

another. You'll no tell me it's the time to test, when a man's like

yon."

"If it had been a reasonable testament----"

"Or like a leal kinsman: now Sir Walter was aye considered a very

honourable person when he was in his own command."

"Pate Oliphant," said one of his own comrades, "I would fecht till my

last drop o' blood, before I wad yield Kellie Castle and your auld name

to a popinjay of an Englished lord."

"My auld name," said Pate, holding his head high, "is in no danger,

Beatoun, from any man."

"Oh, ay, ay," cried Beatoun, impatiently, "we all ken your pride. But

Oliphant of Over-Kellie is one thing and Oliphant of Kellie Castle is

another: and Lord! if it were but for this day's work----"

"Cause enough, and reason gude for feud or fray; but it's law and not

blood that's in the question," said another. "A bit of yellow pairchment

and a muckle false seal, and the name of a doited auld man!"

All these speeches and many more of the same kind rang in Pate's ear and

echoed through and through him as he rode home.

CHAPTER V.

The house of Over-Kellie had not the dignity of the Castle; yet the

living-room into which Peter strayed with absent eyes, flinging himself

down on an oak bench beside the long table, was not entirely without

pretension. The windows were high in the walls; the fire was a

wide-spreading ingle, with some seats under its ruddy arch. A large

oaken table occupied the centre of the room; but it was kept with

greater care than was common, cleanly swept, with a pair of large silver

candlesticks on the high mantel-shelf, and some carving on the panels.

On one side of the fireplace a casement had been put in with a broad

sill, so that the women might have light for their work, and weapons

hung upon the walls by way of ornament--an old Andrea Ferrara, and some

pieces of plain armour such as were worn by squires and yeomen. The only

thing that made any stronger call upon the attention was the carving of

the mantelpiece, on which there was what seemed a rough copy of the

shield which occupied a similar position at Kellie Castle, with the

motto sprawling in rather ungainly letters, out of proportion with the

armorial bearings, _À tout pourvoir_, in a lengthened scroll by itself.

The Leddy, or, to compromise the matter, the Mistress of Over-Kellie,

which was a title equally befitting, whether she was by right Gudewife

or Leddy, came hurriedly out of the house to greet Pate, eager to hear

all that had happened, and what had specially befallen himself in this

crisis of his affairs. The Mistress had still hoped, or persuaded

herself she hoped, that the previous news about Sir Walter's will might

be untrue; and, as she followed her son up the few steps which led to

the great room, had overflowed in a string of questions, echoed by her

daughter Margaret, who followed close upon her steps. "Oh, Pate! what

did they say till ye? was the writer there? was there any person that

had authority? Pate, my man, did you lay his head in the grave?--for

sure, it was your right."

"Ay," said Peter, "I laid his head in the grave--muckle good as that did

me; for sure, as you say, it was my right."

"And is it true about the testament?" asked his sister.

"It canna be true--I will not believe it: it is but the ill-will of

Maister Playfair," said the Mistress; "they were ever against our

house."

"Mother, mother, what has the writer to do with it? he cannot alter what

Sir Walter says. But maybe it is not so ill as we thought," said

Margaret, with devouring eyes on her brother's face.

"Let me be! let me be! I would like a stoup of your ale, mother. The

roads are very heavy both for man and beast."

"You are tired, my bonnie lad! Na, I'll not say another word," said the

Mistress, while Margaret flew down-stairs to get him the refreshment he

asked. "We might have thought if we had not been so taken up concerning

the news. Na, na, I will not hurry you, my Patie. Just take your time,

my bonnie lad!"

And she seated herself on the settle near the fire, and took up, not

without a little ostentation and with a sigh of excitement, her habitual

work. Margaret stood gazing on the other side of the table while he

drank, and their united force of curiosity and suspense moved him more

by repression than it had done by utterance.

"Well, then," said Pate, "hear this: my Lord Oliphant--that is the head

of our name--if I were ten times over the first of it in Fife, no mortal

man can contradict that."

A sob of opposition and protest came from the overcharged bosom of the

Mistress. Mortal man she was not, but woman; and therefore resistant to

every statement which diminished the importance of those she loved.

"The head of our name," repeated Pate, with a wave of his hand, in fine

acknowledgment of an allegiance which was not agreeable to him. "There

is therefore excuse, if excuse were wanted. It is no alienation; but

might, in the language of some persons, be conceived a giving back."

Pate was not without his share of schooling; he could be sententious,

which has always been a possibility to a Scotsman, when he chose.

"Given back!" said the quick Margaret, "but it never came from thence.

Look at the Buik, and look at the tree. It was no fief of Aberdalghie,

but won by our awin spear and our awin bow."

The women were wild with this outrageous pretence; but Pate, whose

heart, he thought, was broken, bent his head down on his hands and spoke

no word.

Afterwards he began to tell them what had happened, which they listened

to with cries of indignation and wrath. If it had been the Prince of

Scotland (or of Wales, as it was heard with indignation that the heir of

the crown was now to be called) who had tried to push forth Pate from

his lawful place, his mother and sister would have risked their loyalty

to resist it. But a young popinjay of a Master of Oliphant, as Robbie

Beatoun had justly said! And then by degrees they elicited from Pate all

he had heard about Sir Walter's incompetence, and how Sir John and the

Writer between them had swayed his mind, in spite of all that Maister

Melville, good friend and true, had been able to do.

"I am no for fechting," said the Mistress. "I've seen more of it in my

time than I would desire to see again; but to sustain a mortal wrong,

and not to say a word--I would raise the country afore I would abide

that."

"I would rather sell my shoon off my feet, and my gown off my back!"

said Margaret, ever the first to see what was the real question.

"Whisht, mother, whisht! If it was to raise the country and haud the

Castle against whoever should oppose! Ah!" cried Pate, with a sigh,

"that was the way in the former days, when there was a king in

Scotland."

"And what for no?" cried the Mistress, with a gleam of war in her eyes;

but then she threw her apron over her head and began to cry. "The Lord

forgive me," she said; "to bid the lads to fecht, that are aye o'er

ready; and me that have seen the son brought in stiff and stark to his

ain mother's hearthstane! Oh no, my Patie, no! I am an ill woman to

think such thoughts."

"If that were the way of it!" cried Pate. "But the strong hand will not

serve us, mother; and he is the chief of our name. How could I rouse the

fisher-lads at St Monance, that are most Oliphants, against the head of

our own name?"

"There's not one of them but would follow you, Pate. It is you that are

the head of the name!"

"Whisht, Peggy!--to their death and the ruin of their sma' houses, and

starvation to their bairns--me that should rather feed and fend them!"

Peter half turned with a wave of his hand towards the motto rudely

carved upon the mantelpiece, "_À tout pourvoir_." He pronounced it as

his equal might do to-day, _Aw toutt pourvoïre_. "If ye ken nothing

else, you ken the meaning of that."

The women turned their eyes to it sadly, both answering, yet with

reluctance, to the spell. "Indeed it was an ill day it was pitten

there," said the Mistress, shaking her head. "Your father, honest

man--and blessed be his rest!--was just wud of these auld words. Never

was there a crown-piece to ware upon unthankful folk but yon was what he

said. Yon fishers in St Monance! He would point it to me that would have

held him back, and says he, 'Ye dinna understand, Marg'ret, but I

understand. The haill tot provided for: that's what it means--and the

honour of my name.' 'Laird, laird,' I aye said, 'you are far o'er muckle

taken up with the honour of your name.'"

"Not so," said Pate.

"Never so!" cried young Margaret, kindled and shining forth, her eyes

"keen with honour" in a glow of youth and brightness against the old

dull panelled wall.

"And that is just what cuts deepest," said the young man--"the law, and

the siller: it is either to abide the wrong, or to risk the pickle land

and the old rooftree, and your living, mother. Say that Peggy is safe in

Rob Beatoun's hands. But there is you and me, and them that hang upon

us. Me, I could go away to the wars in Germany, where there's ever

place for a Scot, like many a kinsman before me; but that would be no

pleasant issue for my mother."

"O Pate! Pate!" she cried, otherwise speechless, holding up her hands in

an agony.

"And the plea at law," he went on. "The plea at law! there's something

that is as devouring as the grave. And it's that is the only way. Look,

mother! shall I take your living and mine and fling it to thae dogues? I

might get righted of my wrong; but if not we would be beggars, with a

wallet on our back and a staff in our hand. And what would come of the

name then, or the old o'erword of the name? My heart is just broken,"

cried Pate, with a wild movement of his arms. "Run the risk of

everything we yet possess--or else brook the wrong. How is a man to

decide? Whiles I think I would sooner perish than brook the wrong----"

"You must not do it, you must not do it!" cried the mother and daughter

in one breath.

"Or be counted among the dyvors at the horn," cried Pate. "The broken

men that have neither land nor dwelling to their name. The Lord preserve

me! but I am in a sore strait. Dishonour one way and ruin the t'other.

To be stripped of all, or to sit still like a coward and brook the wrong

and the shame."

At this moment the attention of the agitated group was suddenly

diverted. The sound of a horse's hoofs, urged in a headlong gallop along

the road, had been audible for a minute or two: and now there rang into

the air the sudden clash of the swinging gate, the bringing up of a

horse upon the paved yard, and the sound of some one flinging from the

saddle. "Where are they? in the big room?" some one cried: and the door

swinging open admitted Mistress Jean from the Castle, breathless with

haste, excitement, and agitation, her fair face glowing, her bright hair

waving, her riding-skirt splashed with the heavy mud of the road. "Oh

take me in!" she cried. "Oh save me, Leddy; I have no place to hide my

head, and Kellie has come into a stranger's hands."

"My bonnie bairn!" cried the Mistress, rising from her seat, "who has

dared to frichten you like this?"

"Oh, I'm safe, I'm safe," cried Mistress Jean, "now I'm here. But I

thought I would never win here----" She flung herself into the great

chair from which the Mistress had risen. "The hall is full of men," she

said, pushing back her hair from her forehead, "drinking wine and

holding muckle loud talk--and my brother, Sir Walter, that was lying

there yestreen, only laid in his grave this very day."

"If there was any man that dared," cried Peter, flaming up in response,

with a kindled eye and flashing face, "to lay a little finger upon

you----"

"On me!" cried Mistress Jean, in high disdain. "He would have brooked a

buffet in reply, and that I can answer for; but yonder young lord--if

he's the Maister of Oliphant, as they say, he does muckle harm to a good

name--he cried to me as a bonnie lass, the coward loon! and held wine to

me to drink the health of the new lord--me! that am Leddy by all rules

in my ain right."

"And so you are," cried Margaret; "I have ever said so--if nature and

law were the same."

The Mistress shook her head. "Not for a lass, not for a lass!" she said;

but her kind hand rested with a caressing touch upon the girl's

shoulder. "Think no more o't," she said, "my bonnie doo! you are safe

here."

"But I must think more of it," cried Mistress Jean. "I am no doo, but of

a fighting race. He is riding off the morn, that painted pyet of a

Maister--maybe to-night. And by St Margaret!--which is a good oath, for

we bear her blood--I'll hold the auld house against him and all his! I

will do it! Cousin Pate, you're my chief vassal, for you're the next of

the name: you're my captain; up with you, when you hear what I say!

Raise every Oliphant in Fife. They are no maidens spinning at their

wheels, but buirdly men!"

Pate had started with a reddening cheek at the word vassal; but with

another glance at her, a smile of wonderful tenderness and brightness

came over his face, and he bowed his head with a look of mingled

reverence and protection beautiful to see. "That am I," he said, "and at

my Lady's bidding I'll----" He paused again. The old cloud, dissipated

for a moment, came over him. "But, Mistress Jean," he said, "bethink you

first what it will be. Clean rebellion against King and law."

"I have ever been a Queen's woman," cried Jean; "and that for your law!"

she cried, snapping her fingers, "that takes your native heritage out of

your hands, because, at God's will, not your own, you are a lass born

instead of a man!"

"Eh! and from the man also--the true heir--at the will of a doited auld

laird," cried the Mistress, forgetting the foremost grace of hospitality

in her indignation for her son.

"How dare you call my brother, Sir Walter, a doited----" cried Jean,

with flashing eyes. And then suddenly she calmed down. "It's maybe

true, since both him and me we are cheated of our rights. And are ye

then so slack, Peter Oliphant, that for the sake of King and law ye will

not stand to defend your own?"

"Lady Jean," said Pate, "I and mine are at your orders, and our right is

the same; but for the lads that would follow me, and rise at your

name--the fishers at St Monance, the small farmers intill Carnbee--every

man with his little gear that he has gathered out of the heavy

ploughland or the stormy sea--do ye mind that every one would be putten

to the horn, their sma' tenements levelled with the earth, and their

bairns scattered to the winds? For this house we are ready, though it

means want for my mother and banishment (at the best) for me. We were

not even without a thought of it, as they will tell you,--though I allow

for our own hand,--till that glowered at me in the face."

"What?" cried Jean, staring wildly, as if he had pointed to a ghost.

He pointed again in silence to the fireplace, where Jean's lighter eyes

caught the rough carving with a flutter of volatile observation. "Eh!"

she cried, "but it's ill done! But all this mocking, and I want a true

man. What are these auld words--if I kent what they meant--to you, Peter

Oliphant, and me?"

"They are just the o'erword of the race," he said, "that our fathers

have left to us--the best they could, and the most meaning in the least

buik.[1] To provide for all, that's what it means--no to devote them to

death and ruin for our service. Mistress Jean, when you think well of

it, that will suffice, I trow, for you and me."

[Footnote 1: Smallest space.]

"I trow no such thing!" cried the girl; "for what should a man die for

if not for his laird's rights, or his leddy's, as the case may be? Is

there aucht more honourable, Pate?--a good cause and a good weapon, and

stout auld walls to hold against the world! Me, that am only a lass, the

more's the pity, it would put pith into the very arm of me!"

She held it out, pushing up her sleeve--a well-knit, vigorous, brown

arm, but so slim and soft that 'the tension of the general feeling was

relieved by the sudden laugh into which she herself was the first to

break. "But a pistol covers all that," she added afterwards. "I could

load and I could fire with any man."

"But no to shoot a neighbour dead," said Margaret, with a shiver,

holding the soft arm with two caressing hands, smoothing down the sleeve

over it with a tender touch. The thrill ran through the other, too,

though she tossed her fair head.

"I did not say a neighbour; but if it was yon fause gallant, with his

air like a lady's love, and his coarse cry to what he thought was a lass

of no account----Yon was no gentleman, Cousin Pate," she said, turning

to him with a glance which made Pate's face glow crimson, and filled his

heart with a sudden flood of pride and exhilaration. The appeal in

itself carried a sanction higher than that of any court of honour.

Jean's implied acknowledgment of her rustic cousin's highest claim could

not have animated him more had it come from the king upon his throne.

But the lamp burned late that night in the windows of Over-Kellie, and

many were the anxious consultations held under its roof. As the evening

went on, it was Pate and his mother whose voices were the most heard.

Jean fell, like Margaret, into the position of an eager listener,

submitting for the first time to the supremacy of strength and age,

leaving the decision to them, flashing only now and then, as Margaret

did, an eager light of suggestion upon every new discussion as it rose.

CHAPTER VI.

News were brought to Over-Kellie only in the afternoon of the next day

that the new heir, who had made so ungracious an entrance, was gone. It

was brought by Neil Morison, in the faded velvet doublet which was his

habit of state, attended by the varlet called Jaicque (_Anglicè_, Jack),

who was man enough to groom all the horses left in the Kellie

stables--to wit, a sober steed of all work, now ridden by Maister Neil,

and the skittish pony of Mistress Jean, who held in these old unused

stalls something like the same position which her mistress held in the

Castle. It was Jaicque who opened the gate, and "tirled at the pin" of

the house door, and held the stirrup while the major-domo got down from

his horse, which he did slowly and with difficulty. He had been Sir

Walter's faithful attendant, and long confinement to his master's

chamber had given to his scarcely more than middle age the aspect of an

old man. He gave the Mistress a bow which almost alarmed her, it was so

grand, a much finer bow than that with which he signified his sense of

the presence of his own young lady, whom it appeared he had come to

seek.

"I was weel aware," he said, "and it was the conviction of our Mistress

Marjory, who is my Lady Jean's auld caretaker, and kens her ways, that

our young damsel, Leddy Over-Kellie, would have taken shelter here."

"It was the natural place for her to come to,--my son Pate," said the

Mistress, "being her own blood relation and next of kin."

"Madam," said Neil, "we've mair confidence in yoursel' as a guardian

than in any man whatsomever. But we judge it quite safe for the young

leddy to come her ways hame."

"I will never cross the door," cried Jean, "as long as yon painted pyet,

yon fause lord, is there."

"The popinjay," said Margaret, in the background, proud of the name her

lover had given.

"He is nae lord," said Neil; "his father is the Lord Oliphant, and he is

but the Master, and may never be a lord at all for ought that we can

tell,--nor would it be, I'm thinking, ony great loss to the name, for a

wilder or a wantoner I have never seen. Anyway, Mistress Jean, he is

gane. And, so far as I hear, none of them will meddle us more till the

summer, and for the present you are better at hame than ony other

where."

"Till the summer," Jean said, with sparkling eyes. She gave a glance at

Pate, who had just entered the room, and stood a little perplexed and

doubtful on the threshold in his farmer's dress, as he had hastened from

the fields on hearing of this emissary from the Castle. For aught he

knew, it might have been some scornful message from the interloper which

Neil brought; and he stood, his ruddy face clouded with unusual

sternness, expectant and somewhat defiant. "Cousin Pate," cried Jean,

over the head of the old servant, "yon popinjay is gone, and they are

not coming back till the summer: the summer, and there's three months to

that. Oh, if ye were my real captain, and like our forebears of the

past! Neil, did you ever hear tell that Kellie Castle had held out

against a mortal foe?"

"And where is the mortal foe, my young leddy? Sir Walter, my honoured

master, had neither feud nor fray with any man--that is," said Neil,

with caution, "not for many a year."

"Eh! may the green turf lie soft upon him," said the Mistress; "he was

an auld, auld man."

"No so old as ye think--if it were not for care and sorrow. I have seen

a stour about the Castle, and swords drawn, if that is what you mean,

my Lady Jean. There are few castles in Scotland, nor even ha'-houses,"

said Neil, "that could say less."

"Eh, and that is true!" said the Mistress; "but the present times are

more quiet, the Lord be thanked!"

"The most of the fiery blood is away," said the old man. "Your own son

now, young Over-Kellie, there, where he stands, he has his farms and his

fields to think of, and never fashes his thoom about feats of arms."

Pate, still lingering at the door, grew darkly red, and came forward

with a gloomy brow. "I have my father's sword, Maister Neil," he said,

"ready for any man that doubts my spirit."

"Ay, ay, I ken that," said the major-domo. "The father's sword, maist

likely rusted to its scabbard, and as heavy as a plough pettle. But the

young gallants have blades that flash out at a moment's notice, as free

as breath, though it's the stoppage of breath they're bent upon." The

old servitor laughed, a low laugh, like the creaking of a door, at his

own wit. But it was at Pate's expense, and the young man felt it to the

bottom of his heart.

"Yesterday was no day for a brawl," he said; "but let him cross my gait

again, and he will learn if there is rust or not on a man's sword."

"I lovena the lad," said Neil. "He has nae respect either for a young

lass nor an auld man. But he's no sweart with his blade, and he'll stand

up to you were you Wallace wight."

It is hard upon a young man to be driven to protestations of what he

would do if the occasion came, and Neil's tone was bitter to Pate, in

the uneasy pride of his position, thus waved aside more or less

offensively not only by the others, but by the very servants of the

others, conscious of all the external differences between the place he

claimed and that to which, notwithstanding his claims of blood, he had

been barn. Might ill be the fate of that Oliphant who was first led away

by love of a fair face, and married a farmer's daughter, and settled

down on a yeoman's land! And yet that Oliphant was the source of all his

claims, the honour of his house, and a far better man than if, like any

swashbuckler, the laird's younger son of Kellie had died in a foolish

fray, and left behind him neither heir nor land.

"Cousin Pate," cried Jean, "mind that it is you I look to. I will not

say another word; but the walls, they are old and they are strong, and

if the men are not stout, the knaves belie their name: and as for your

auld motto, I just cast it in your teeth. Provide, then, an' ye are so

fond of it! and let it be for your lady, as is your bounden duty, and

you the next kinsman." She took up the edge of her riding-cape, which

Margaret with affectionate devotion had been arranging on her

shoulders--at the spot where the gold lace with which it was trimmed was

frayed and broken--and held it up to him. "Next kinsman, and only

friend," she said, putting her hand into his with a gleam of moisture in

her eyes that made them twice as bright as usual: and they were bright

enough at all times, as bright as stars to Pate's thought. They were not

the Oliphant eyes, which in their kind were not to be despised, brown,

glowing, and liquid, full of laughter and light: but blue, with such a

sparkle in them as the sapphire has, and shooting out rays like

arrows--that kind of blue fire which has something in it more keen than

the brown, piercing and cutting like a dart. It softened with the last

words, and the water swam in the darkness of the blue.

Pate said little for the rest of the day to the inquisitive and anxious

women of his house; but he pondered long as he strode about the fields

in the afternoon, and later in the night, when the labourers had gone to

their houses, to the scattered clump of lowly cottages that sheltered

beyond the farm-buildings, and all the members of the family within the

house, bound to be early astir in the morning, had gone to rest. There

had been talk enough and consultation. But though the Mistress and

Margaret had not been able to refrain from carrying on the arguments of

last night between themselves, there was a consciousness even in their

minds that it was he alone who had to decide. And they had withdrawn to

their beds, a little reluctant, yet constrained by necessity and a sense

of duty, to leave him to himself. It was a relief to him when they were

gone, and yet it troubled him to feel himself left under the flickering

light of the cruse in the stillness of the house to face this problem

which was his, and not another's. He had been more or less of an easy

mind during all his youth, disturbed from time to time by his gentle

blood and his possibilities, which from shadows, that they had been at

first, had grown into present and real things, as old Sir Walter's

family had failed one by one, and it had become more and more apparent

that it was he, and only he, who was the heir. The lass who was the last

of the house of Kellie had not seemed of much importance to Pate's

eyes,--not more than she had been to old Sir Walter, who was her

brother, though he might almost have been her grandfather, and to whom

she was an accident, troublesome, and sometimes exasperating to think

of, and therefore pushed aside and not considered at all. Neither did

Pate think of her. He had been troubled at times by the consciousness

that he had not been bred so well as he was born--that he had about him

that something of the fields and the plough which made him different

from the young gallants, the flash of whose ready rapiers from the

scabbard was, as Neil had said, with wise and wounding justice, unlike

the deliberate drawing of the sword which perhaps had rusted a little in

its sheath. And the thought of this, and such incidents as had occurred

yesterday, when the train of gentlemen who, though they resented his

intrusion, and supported Pate in his rights, still crowded about the

Master of Oliphant, and left his kinsman to such consolation as the

humbler yeomen could bestow,--had irritated and vexed him. It seemed to

Pate a humiliation, not only that they should withdraw, but that he

himself should care.

But all these thoughts had gone like last year's snow, in a new dilemma

very differently felt. That he should not after all be the next in

succession, the just heir; that there should be some one between him and

Kellie,--to have discovered this, had he ever anticipated or dreamt of

such a possibility, would have been in all his previous thoughts a sort

of deathblow. But somehow that dread discovery did not hurt him at all.

No; nor that he should be recognised as the first vassal, the loyal

servant of this intruder, who shut him out of his lawful inheritance. He

had tried for a moment to be angry, even to be wounded, but he had not

succeeded. It had given him a shock; but the shock had been such as the

discovery of a new inheritance, a something better even than Kellie,

might have given. Who was it, this true heir, for whom he was called

upon to give up the claim which had been dear as his life? who commanded

him imperiously as the first vassal, the nearest kinsman, servant, and

officer. It would have been incredible to him that he should have

accepted such a position; that he should have met the call, not with

defiance, rage, denial, but with a consent and acquiescence which

astonished himself; which filled him with generous emotion, with a kind

of pleasure, with a soft humorous sense of something beyond reason in

it, foolish, noble, more exquisite than any emotion he had ever felt

before. To secure the home of his fathers, the hope of his life, the

right most dear to him--for Jean! not for himself. It brought the

moisture into his eyes, a dew of pain, yet warm with every sweetness. He

turned round on the heavy wooden stool, beside the big table, on which

he sat, and fixed his eyes on the words scrabbled in stone upon the

chimney, and still more misshapen and irregular in that medium through

which he looked at them. "À TOVT POVRVOIR." What meaning had been in

these words! He had seen himself the master of his father's house, the

head of his name, the providence of his race. Not an Oliphant in St

Monance, not a fisher on the coast, that would not be the better for

him, that would not rejoice to think that the auld blood had been

revived in the new master, and every ancient tradition of kindness from

lord to vassal made true. It was no ignoble hope that had been in the

young man's heart. No one had ever called old Sir Walter an ill laird;

but he had grown old, indifferent, rapt in the shadows of his old age,

no longer capable of thought or care for those around him. Whereas Pate

was young, full of sympathy, full of vigour, knowing every man and

caring for every house. To cry "an Oliphant!" in a street brawl, or take

the crown of the causeway from any passer-by, had not been in his

thoughts; but to be the defence of his own folk, the champion of Fife,

one of the supporters of the common weal!

Pate rose up with a start, pricked by his thoughts, and went to the

fireplace--leaning his head upon the rude carving, and gazing down at

the smouldering red on the hearth. Would she be that? A bit of a lass,

not much more than a child, without knowledge; also a creature of

caprice, moved not, like himself, by long-held, long-pondered

resolution, but by every wind that blew, by sudden impulses, perhaps

unwise, by the council of the moment, born to-day and gone to-morrow. He

pressed his brow upon the stone till the carving was printed upon it, as

it had been before on his heart. Who could tell what mood would sway

her, what strength she would have, what instruction would commend itself

to her--what (and perhaps this was the great question of all)--what

husband she would marry? But that question, which suddenly roused the

blood in every vein, so that Pate felt a sudden flush go over him from

head to foot,--that question had to be crushed at once, having nothing

to do with the matter. That was not his affair. No such solutions from

fairyland were to be brought into the consideration of a man's duty. The

women might dwell upon them. They might so, if they would, set injustice

right, and contradict the laws of nature at their pleasure; but such

considerations were not for him. The question was not one of fancy or of

chance, but of what he, a strong man and a steadfast, taking gravely

into consideration every side of the subject, was to do: and this was

what he had to settle now.

CHAPTER VII.

"My friend Pate," said Sir John Low, "I cannot think that you have so

little sense--a young man of havins, as I have ever kent you--as to

oppose my Lord Oliphant in his lawfu' rights. The estate has been gifted

to him fully and fairly by him that had the power. And you have but the

drap's blood. We are not denying your blood-right. You are the next of

kin; but if Sir Walter thought it the best thing to put back the auld

lands under the hand of the undoubted head of the house----"

"It is just _that_ that will have to be tried," said Pate.

"Man," cried Sir John, "what are you but a distant kinsman after all?

And my lord also is a kinsman--maybe farder off in degree, but assured

in line as the fountainhead to the stream."

"Mess John," said Pate, "we will leave counting the degrees. There is

one that needs no counting, being the child of the same father, and more

near in kin than I am, as I frankly allow." Here Pate lifted his bonnet

from his head with a certain solemnity. "That she is a maid and not a

man is naught; for the maid has succeeded to the father as long as there

has been law in Scotland. And I have even heard say----"

"Mistress Jean!" cried the curate, elevating his eyebrows; and he smote

Pate on the back a jovial blow, all unlike his lean form and the gleam

in his eyes. "Ha, my bonnie lad! you are none so simple for a country

clown. You would strengthen one ill claim with another, and win the

knight's spurs by the help of the distaff! Whiles it is not a bad plan."

That Pate's cheek should have flamed at this filled him with a sense of

humiliation; but it was anger and not shame that brought the red, which

flushed fiercely over his brow and lent a red light to his hazel eyes.

"The lady's claim is firm as Carnbee Law," he said. "I yield to it, with

no liking, nor even surety of well-doing. She may carry the auld castle

that is the home of my fathers into a stranger name--the whilk would be

the grief of my life. I yield to her, because I cannot in justice

withstand. She claims me as her defender, which doubtless I am, being

the first man--in Fife--of my name."

Sir John, who had been staring at him open-mouthed, here burst into a

laugh. "And you tell me that's your reason!" he cried, in a derisive

tone.

"You, or any man," said Pate, calmly. "And I would do the same," he

added with a smile, turning upon the half-priest, who followed

stealthily, as far as he dared, the habits of the old faith, sure of

indulgence in the unsettled state of affairs--"I would do the same if I

were one of your lambs, that tell you all in your ear ahint the

kirk-door."

"It would be well for you, my lad, if you did the same," said the

curate, reddening in his turn; "and ye should hear from me that when you

lippen to a young lass you are a fool for your pains."

"What!" said Pate, "is that the counsel you give, Sir John? To leave the

orphan lass undefended, and bow the head to the silken lord? That is not

the lear that has been learned to me."

"Silence, yeoman!" cried the angry curate. "Are you one to teach your

betters, let alone your priest?"

"Ay," said Pate, "or any honest man; and I acknowledge no priest but

only him that teaches the Word--which never yet bade to pass over the

weak, even when it is to your own hurt, as this is to mine."

"Here's one coming that will give you grand reason for every fule-deed

you like to do," cried Sir John--"ay, and tie you up safe and fast to

the lass that ye think has such a grand tocher. But bide awhile, bide

awhile, Pate the pious. Succouring orphans is a fine thing when your own

rights are not so clear as ye thought; but when you find a useless wife

on your hands, and all the cows to milk, and the byres to clean----"

"You have an ill tongue, if you were ten times a priest!" cried Pate,

with a clouded brow.

But the controversy was stopped by Master Melville, who came up hastily,

quickening his usually sober steps at the sound of Pate's voice raised

above its usual tone, and the laughing, scornful attitude of Sir John.

"Your look is not peaceful, Peter," he said, "nor your eye content."

"Did you expect to find me content, Maister Melville," said Pate, "with

my rights taken up by others, and myself scorned before my neighbours? I

would then be a man not like other men."

"The Lord of Over-Kellie," said Sir John, "was, by my faith, near upon

charging me with a cartel of war to that other nobleman the Lord

Oliphant; but that I am a man of peace and carry no gage."

"You might moderate your jesting, Brother Low," said Melville, "and so

show yourself a man of peace. This is not the time, Peter, to bandy

words, with whosoever it may be. You have your duty to do for your

kindred and your name."

"It is what I am ready to do at all times," cried Pate, hastily, eager

to find in the minister's face the counsel already established in his

own.

"We will say good morrow, first," said Melville, "to this reverend

brother. It is an evil thing to be overly much concerned with the

affairs of this world, Maister Low. Here are you and me, both led away

by these heathenish disputes, that should have been in our quiet studies

pondering our sermons, and the Lord's Day coming on----"

"I am no man for long sermons," said Sir John, "nor am I liked the less

on that account, so far as I can see."

"Well, sermons are my trade," said Melville, passing his

brother-clergyman with a bow. He put his arm in Pate's, and led the

young man with him, gently forcing his steps. "All he means," said the

minister, holding Pate's arm tight and leading him on, "is to make you

talk and give forth your foam and nonsense, the whilk he will turn into

solid mischief. I hope I am no uncharitable," he added, devoutly; "but

come you, Patie, my man, and talk out your soul: you are safer with me

than with him."

"No, minister," said Pate, "I have no need for blethering, as you seem

to think: my mind is steady and made up. The young lady is more wronged

than I am. She is her father's just heir. She claims me as her first

servant, and I allow the claim. I am the man nearest to her. I am

fechting, and I will fecht, to the death, for her right and not mine."

"Pate! lad!" said the minister; his voice faltered, and even his step

for the moment. Then he cried, "No wonder he did not understand!"

But Pate neither comprehended nor desired to comprehend the meaning of

this reply. He was entirely preoccupied with his own thoughts. "That is

my solemn determination," he said. "I have had my fancies; but then I

kent nothing of her, nor of her just rights. I will get them for her if

I can, minister: it is my first duty, as the next of the name."

"She is but a lassie," said the minister, "and a wild one; no training,

no mother, grown up just like a blade o' grass on the lee. There is no

telling what the like of her may do. She will take your very heart out

of your life, and never ken what a gift it is. She may not even thank

you. She may think it's only her right and your duty."

"And what is it else?" said Pate. "You are all the professor I ever

had: if my lear is poor it is your blame. I think I have heard from your

very mouth that if a man does not stand for his ain, specially for them

of his own house----"

"Oh, laddie, do not tackle me out of my own mouth!" cried the minister,

peevishly; "many a foolish thing I've said. Meantime, you must mind that

when the Apostle said yon, he was thinking nought of a man's house,

according to your meaning of the word. Little recked that holy man of

the Oliphants or any Scots name, with their pride and their clanships.

What he meant was the man's wife and his bairns--and no a distant cousin

twenty times removed."

"No more than three times, minister," said Pate; "make me not out more

loon than laird. And as she's her father's daughter, and he so old a

man, she is of the elder generation, my father's second cousin, and no

more than second cousin once removed to me. And what could be nearer my

own house than that? Nay, the holy man, as you say--I wot not how to

call him--would e'en have been of my mind."

"Paul he was, and not always favourable to Peter," said Melville,

shaking his head, yet with a tremulous smile on his face. "Pate, I will

ask you but one thing. Is it for the hope of this maiden's love that you

take up her forlorn cause?"

"Maister Melville," said Pate, "I ken not if I love her; but reason none

have I to think that she has ever wared a thought on me. There is clear

in my mind the danger, and mostly the certainty, that she will mate with

some stranger and carry the auld house into another name,--the whilk

would be bitter to me--more bitter than words can say."

"If it is so," said the minister, "then the Lord bless you, my lad,

Pate. Laird or no laird, you are a true man, and that's better than rank

or high degree."

"You mind, minister," said Pate, with a smile, "_Aw toutt

pourvoïre_--you were the first to learn me what its meaning was."

"I was ever a fool," said Melville, "and ever will be! It is not that

kind of lesson that makes a man win lairdship and land."

"But it is maybe the best consolation when he has to bide without them,"

Peter said.

They had come in their walk within sight of Kellie Castle, which stood

square and strong, rising with its turrets to the sky from amid the

peaceful fields, as it still stands undismayed by all the progress of

the centuries. It is a little grim and grey in the darkness of its stone

walls nowadays, all Scotland having been seized since then with that

false reserve which discredits colour; but in these days, no doubt, much

of the rough mass, especially in its out-buildings, must have shone in

white or yellow, the old tints, weather-stained and glorious, which the

country then loved. Pate looked towards that home of his fathers,

lifting once more the bonnet from his brow. It had been a kind of idol

to him throughout his youth, his every hope had centred in it; it had

been his ambition, the desire of his heart--not an ignoble one. He

looked upon it now with a smile full of sorrow and disappointment, and a

thought, had he known it, higher than any other hope that had ever

before centred upon Kellie. If it were won for her, then would it be

well lost.

"Fare thee weel, auld Kellie," he said with a half laugh to hide that

tremor; "thou wilt never be to me or mine; and I have glowered at thee,

and longed for thee all my life long: which maybe you will say,

minister, is just a judgment on me for a covetous thought."

"You will never hear such a word from me, Pate, my man," said the

minister. "I have more opinion, if I dare to say it, of your good Lord

and mine."

He, too, lifted his hat in reverence as he spoke, and after a moment

both turned away.

"After all," said Master Melville, "this is not the subject on which I

sought you in haste, my lad, Pate. I hear that yonder wild lassie, hot

with her race and her youth, is for defending the auld Castle by force

of arms. She will call out every Oliphant in the Kingdom of Fife, you

the captain: she will fill the stores with provender, and furbish up the

auld armour, and hold the place against lord and loon. It's over the

whole countryside already, and the lads at St Monance all alow. There

needs but a spark to fall, and there will be a blaze to light up Fife.

Pate, do you think what that would be? Two whole parishes put to the

horn. The men, that are the breadwinners, in prison or hounded out of

the land. The women helpless with their bairns; the boats all useless on

the shore, the plough in the furrow. Ever have I learned you, Pate

Oliphant, that a man's first thought should be for them about him that

are in want of good guiding and help to do well. You cannot stand

against the law. You cannot stand against the chief of your name, that

has riches and troopers at his command (though well I wot he is a

wastrel, and his son after him). Mistress Jean, she is but a bairn. The

right and the wrong have gone to her head, and of the consequences she

takes no thought. Vain to, speak till her of ruined houses and men

slain or banished. She just thinks of victory and the three silver

crescents waving over Kellie, and the tyrant driven away. As if she was

a queen fighting for her crown--and, waes me! we have well known in this

generation what comes of that."

Pate had walked on by the minister's side, silent, his head bowed,

listening. He looked up hastily, interrupting--

"A princess; but with more right than the law, and more innocence than

that gowan-flower. There is no similitude."

"Nor am I making any comparisons, Pate Oliphant," said the minister with

a smile; "but what is all that," he cried, as a sound as of shouting and

tumult came to them over the cliffs on the breeze which is always fresh

(or salt as the case may be) blowing off the Firth over the Fife braes.

They had walked far in their talk, and were now near the old village of

St Monance, with its old kirk dating from the days of King David, that

"sore sanct for the crown." The sound evidently came from that quarter,

and both the men quickened their steps accordingly. The village

consisted then, as now, of a straggling line of red and moss-grown

cottages, parallel--if any parallel could be to a coast cut up in

zigzags by the line of rocks--with the margin of the sea. It was

entirely a fisher village, the boats drawn up high in the rocky openings

of the beach, almost on a level with the houses, and nets spread

everywhere, drying, or mending, or being baited at every point. But in

the centre of the "toun," where the space between the houses and the sea

was a little wider, was a little crowd of fishermen, their dark figures

lighted up by a touch of brighter colour in a kirtle or petticoat, and

the white specks of the mutches which every decent woman wore. They were

all circling round a gayer figure in their midst, Mistress Jean to wit,

uplifted on her pony, with her hair flowing under her riding-cap, the

highest light in the picture, as her delicate face was, among all the

ruddy, weather-beaten, glowing countenances round. Jean had, it was

evident, been making something like an oration to her assembled vassals,

and her eyes shining, her hair waving, her arm in the air, had kindled

the fishers to enthusiasm. "We are Oliphants all," she was saying as the

minister and Pate came up, "every one kin, far off or near, and hey for

the silver crescents and bonnie Kellie Castle, that never owned master

since the days of Bruce but----" she stopped with the pause of natural

eloquence as her kinsman pushed into the crowd: then waving her whip,

cried with all the force of her young voice, and a daring which brought

the blood to her cheek, "Pate Oliphant's line, and mine."

Never was a touch more effective. As he pushed forward, scarcely hearing

what she said, there rose a general shout, "Pate Oliphant and the bonny

Leddy; Leddy Jean and the kind house o' Kellie! We're for them and nae

land-loupers. The Bruce's blood and the auld name!"

"Mistress Jean," said Pate, "what do you here? This is no court of law,

to judge between you and him that, right or wrong, is no land-louper,

but the head of our name."

"Land-louper yourself, Pate Oliphant!" cried Jean, in high indignation.

"Let go my bridle! If you will not tell the lads, what is left to me but

to do it? and you, if you will not speak, be silent, sir! for though I

do you all honour, and name you with myself, you are but my vassal like

the rest. And that you ken!"

Pate's bonnet was in his hand, and he bowed low; but he held her bridle

without flinching, though pony and rider both rebelled. "It is not safe

for a spirity creature like this," he said, "the roaring of those loons

so near her lug. Silence, lads! The lady understands, without more of

your rowting, that you're all leal, and her friends."

The men had slunk a step backward in dismay at what seemed to them a

family quarrel. They brightened again, and answered, "Ay, that are we!"

"To our last drap o' blood!" "And yours too, Maister Pate!"--with a

subdued clamour, daunted by his look, for he was not a man to trifle

with, as they knew.

"My bonny bairn," Mr Melville was saying at the other side, "if you will

curb your pony to an auld man's pace, I would fain go with you. There's

danger baith for man and beast here."

"And what do I care for danger?" cried Jean; "it's just half the

pleasure. Bid Pate Oliphant let go my bridle. Do you think, me that am

'most in arms for my rights, I will be guided by him?" She touched the

excited pony with her whip, which made a bound, scattering the

fisher-folk. But not Pate, who, setting his teeth, and digging his heels

into the earth, held her with a grasp of iron. Jean had the whip raised

again, with the intention, it seemed, this time, of striking him, when

the minister called out to her--

"Slip down, lassie! the little beast is wild wud; she'll dash you

against the rocks; she'll have your brains out: slip down, slip down,

and you'll take little harm."

"Leddy, ye canna haud her a minute longer," cried a fisher--one rushing

on each side to pluck her from her saddle. But the girl blazed over

them, her hair waving in their faces, her blue eyes darting fire.

"Away!" she cried. "Away! Hold off! She may master you and me, but

she'll not master Pate!"

CHAPTER VIII.

There ensued after this a very dark time in the life of Peter Oliphant

of Over-Kellie. When Jean found that not she, any more than the pony,

could master Pate, she withdrew altogether her favour and friendship

from him. Shut up within the old house, which Lord Oliphant after that

one demonstration of taking possession left unvisited, she passed the

lingering spring and summer, often seen about the country roads on her

pony, but keeping up a seclusion within, quite uncongenial to her

temper, and which even Margaret from Over-Kellie was not allowed to

break. The suit at law, brought before the courts by her kinsman and

next friend on her behalf as a minor,--that Sir Walter's will might be

set aside as barred by her right of succession, and also as procured by

undue influence, when in his age and weakness he was no longer able

fully to exercise his faculties,--excited for a moment her hottest

wrath. She burst forth upon Maister Melville, who gave her the

information, with blazing artillery of looks and words, of which he

avowed that could the first have slain him he would now have been a lost

man. But the mild divine, being full of experience and observation,

believed he saw behind all this fury a certain exultation. "How daured

he, after denying me, and contradicting me, and leaving me here to eat

my heart, while he went off to his plough, the dastard, no to answer his

lady's call! And I doubt not he's laying his furrows and sowing his

grain as if there was no such person as Jean Oliphant shut up in

Kellie," the girl cried, glowing with rage and curiosity and eagerness.

"You can tell him that it's he that is the land-louper, and no credit to

his gentle blood, to turn his back on the auld house and upon me."

"No back of his has been turned on any lawful risk," said the minister;

"on certain destruction no brave man will run if he is other than a

fool. Ken you what your kinsman is doing, Mistress Jean? He is risking

his whole living, with the chance of loss that will banish him the

country--and that not for himself, as once he thought, but for you."

"Banish him the country!" said Jean, with blanched lips.

"Ay, my little maiden, you ken not either the risk or the pain. You

think it is but to out with the flag, and load the arquebus, and the

right will prevail; whereas it would be death to many a bonny lad, and

destruction to many an honest house, and no hope to do more."

"All that," she cried, with an impatient wave of her hand, "is over and

gone, since he refused and would not stand by me, nor be my captain as I

bade him; but to gang to the law is one thing and be banished the

country is another. And who would banish him the country for standing by

his--next friend? if that is what you call it," she added, in a subdued

voice.

The minister smiled within himself to see how swiftly she had accepted

the position, notwithstanding her first revolt; but he proceeded to

explain to her that the law cost much siller, and Peter had little but

his land and his old house; and if the plea lingered long--as it might

well do--till all his money was spent, there would be nothing for him

when he had secured a living for his mother but to quit Scotland, either

for the foreign wars, like so many of the Scots, or to sail away to one

of the New-found-lands over the seas, where folk said there were estates

for the asking, a fine caller climate, none of your tropiques, a new

Scotland cold but fair. And then Jean wept, and declared that she would

not have it, that no man should risk life or land for her cause: and

afterwards dried her eyes and waved her golden locks, and declared that

it was even like him, just like what was to be looked for from Pate, and

showed that he was the maist fulish lad in all the land, as she had

always said. But even after this she would not come forth nor make

friends, though Margaret, when next she came to the Castle gate, was

brought up to the hall, and many kisses passed between the girls, and

still more kind words.

The cause was heard, by good fortune, with less delay than was feared,

and it was thought at first with much prospect of success. Pate himself,

being anxious, made more than one visit to Edinburgh, which indeed was a

journey in those days.

But, alas! there was no longer any occasion for hope, when one day in

July when the sun was at its hottest, and the genial earth warm through

and through, and the corn turning red against the blue of the sea, as I

saw it but the other year, glowing as if it would take light and

flame--Pate Oliphant, just come back, and weary with the journey, stood

hard by his own hall-door, leaning upon the wall, his bonnet low on his

brow, and his heart full of trouble. He had flung out of the big room

from his mother's questions and his sister's outcries of sympathy and

distress, feeling that he could not bear even the sympathy, much less

the questions: how was this, and how was that? when all he could tell or

think of was just that the cause was lost. Oh, easy enough to see how it

was, if they would but think, instead of asking questions! My Lord

Oliphant had friends enow; he was a Lord of King James's Court; he was

sib to all the nobles, and even to one of those carles on the judges'

bench, with their muckle wigs and their weariful tongues. A losing

litigant is prone to be doubtful of the impartiality of the law. Pate

Oliphant could not but feel that, had he been Oliphant of Kellie (as he

ought to have been), any suit of his would have been more safe to end as

he wished.

He was standing there, idly lashing the air with the riding-switch that

was still in his hand, his bonnet low on his brow, and his heart in his

bosom, when there came suddenly into the silence of the afternoon a

sound of horse's hoofs at the gallop on the rough road that led to the

house. Margaret, who had come out after her brother, cried out with a

start, "Hear till her! It is Jean's powney, the little wild beast--wild

like her mistress. It's our Leddy Jean."

"Leddy, puir lassie!" cried the Mistress; "no more Leddy, if a' be true,

Margaret, than you or me."

"And even so worthy of the more respect," cried Pate, rousing from his

despair. There was no mistaking the breakneck gallop, which seemed to

join the two, pony and girl, in one personality. Jean's one idea now,

clearly told by every flying beat of the hoofs upon the road, was a

fiery desire to get there, to fling herself upon the protection or

sympathy of her friends. Pate flung his bonnet on the ground, and

hastened to throw open the gate, receiving her with uncovered head and

reverential gesture, as if she had been a queen. But Mistress Jean, in

hot haste, too impetuous to pause, flashed past him like a gleam of

sudden light--her golden locks flying, her complexion bright with haste

and excitement. She drew up before the door, and flung herself from the

pony's back without waiting for any aid. "They have come, they have

come!" she cried, with only breath enough to say the words. She was so

keen, however, to tell her story, that the immediate painful meaning of

it was lost in eagerness. "Here am I, flung upon you like a stone, fired

out upon you like a bullet out of a gun," she cried, with a laugh of

excitement. "O Pate Oliphant! if ye would but have done it, you and me

would have been in harness this day, and the silver crescents flying

out-owre the grey wall! for they are come--they are come!"

"The silver crescents," said Pate, "are their cognisance as well as

yours and mine: and they have won the day."

"Listen to me," cried Jean, shaking her half-curled locks about her

ears, her eyes blazing, her countenance, in her excitement, undismayed.

"I was sitting quiet in the great window, thinking no harm, when in a

moment there arose sic a tumult as if a haill army had broken in; and

before I could say more than a word to old Marjory, there they were,

bursting up ilka stair, some from the west tower, some from the south,

with a clatter of rapiers by their side, and spurs on their heels--the

villain sound," she cried, "and them no better than reivers upon a poor

maiden--but notwithstanding," she added, pausing with a sigh, "a bonnie

noise!" She cast a sudden glance at Pate, standing there in the dust of

his journey, the sun shining on his bared head. He had no swingeing

rapier, but a whinger in his belt and a spur on his heel, for use and

not for show, a subdued figure, not like the gallants in their bravery.

He felt this glance to the bottom of his heart, divining something of

it, but not Jean's instant second thought, that not one of them, fine as

they might be, was such a bonnie lad!

"I am telling ye," cried Jean, renewing her tale with a flush upon her

cheeks which came from her own consciousness of that thought, "that they

all burst in in a moment, men's voices, and the jingling and the

clattering of them, that filled the hall. It is well for me that I never

stop to think, as the Mistress says; for if I had stoppit, or thought,

or lingered a moment, I would have been in their hands, the popinjays!

and no time for parley. I just flashed up 'most before I saw them,

divining in my heart, and slippit behind the curtain that is over yonder

sma' door, Margaret, you will mind? I just lingered to see that it was

safe, and heard their outcry, 'Where is she?' and 'Call forth the

leddy,' which proved they had not seen me--though one cried there was

some person gone forth, and another that he had heard a step--which was

a muckle lee, whoever told it," cried Jean, pausing in her childish

sense of triumph yet injury; "you ken whether I have a foot like a

trooper, to be heard among armed men."

"Thus I got to the stable," she went on, "like an arrow from a bow: and

Jaicque, who is faithful, and me, that have saddled her many a day, we

got on her gear before you could turn round, and away by the back of the

outhouses, and the bridle-path by Kellie Mill, and never a soul to hear

us or see us, all the gaping fools about being out to see the gallants'

train. And here I am," she cried, suddenly pausing and looking round. Up

to this moment her tone had been almost joyous, her bearing almost gay,

in the heat of excitement and novelty, which were life to this young

creature. She stopped, and her countenance changed. She looked round

upon them--the Mistress at the stair-head wringing her hands, the young

master of Over-Kellie standing at the pony's head, with a sobered

wistful look of discouragement and downfall, nobody, as it seemed,

sympathetic but Margaret, who, excited like herself, half crying, half

laughing, had clasped the hands which still held the bridle, caressing

them in the absence of other means of showing her pity and her love.

"Now I am here," repeated Jean, slowly, a sudden cloud of surprise and

dismay sweeping over her, "but you are not glad to see me. O Pate

Oliphant, Pate Oliphant, take your hand from my bridle! Next of kin you

may be, but no next of heart!"

"You silly lassie!" cried the Mistress, taking, though she was a little

timid and cautious in her elder days, but two steps down the four

stairs.

If I had space I would tell how Jean came to understand the saddened

looks of her next of kin, and how Pate discovered that no popinjay of

them all was in her eyes half the man that he was, though he had refused

to take up arms or spend men's lives in a hopeless cause. They had to

subdue their pride to the acceptance of their fate, which was much

harder upon Peter Oliphant--born, you would have said, to no

better--than on Mistress Jean, though her proud cousins called her no

more than the Gudewife of Over-Kellie, scorning her blood and her

rights. But the family kept their homely life there unbroken for many

generations, keeping up the old name and kindly tradition long after the

Lords Oliphant, though this is no brag of a child of Over-Kellie, but a

sad saying, were, like the Flowers of the Forest, a' wede away. There

was another lawsuit, of which no better came; but Peter Oliphant of

Over-Kellie, though no more than a bonnet-laird, no doubt, "with his

bairns and his oyes all around him, oh," came to be more or less a

contented man. He knew French to a certain degree, as has been said,

thanks to Maister Melville, whose breeding and education had been much

in foreign countries; and though he pronounced it like good broad Scots,

and was no professor for the grammar, here is this little composition of

his in that language, beaten out as he went about his fields through

many a quiet day, and pondered his life and the life of man in the long

silence of the years. _À tout pourvoir_ had been the proud device of his

youth, when everything seemed within his power; but this was what he

put into that old tongue of gallant device as the burden of his age,

with the accent of Scotland and of long life--

"Ayant pourvu

Autant qu'a pu,

quoth Pate."

And may we all say as much, however humbly, his descendant prayeth, at

the end of the dim valley from whence begins to glow over the dark braes

the rising of a better sun.

* * * * *

[The Lord Oliphant, perhaps harshly treated above, was a man of many

troubles and difficulties, much like those of Sir Walter of Kellie, whom

he succeeded. He, too, died with no son to follow, and would have passed

over his daughter; and a romance of mingled lawsuits and royal

interference might well be made out of his history and that of his

successors--but this must be for another hand. As dates are the useful

things that are most apt to fail in family tradition, I do not attempt

to say which of his successors sold Kellie Castle--to them a useless and

unnecessary burden, though so dear to those who lost it--to the family

of Erskine, who took from it in later days a title, and made it their

home.]

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.