"I tell you this last, my dear lord," continued the good doctor, "because I ought not to deceive you; and because, so far as I have seen, you are a courageous boy—nay, almost a man—or will be soon. I must forewarn you also that the experiment, is only an experiment— that it may fail; but even in that case you would be only where you were before—no better, no worse, except for the temporary annoyance and suffering."

"And if it succeeded?" said Helen, almost in a whisper, as she returned the letter.

The earl smiled—a bright, vague, but hopeful smile—"I might be a little more able to do things—to live my life with a little less trouble to myself, and possibly to other people. Well, Helen? You don't speak, but I think your eyes say 'Try!'"

"Yes, my dear." She sometimes, though not often now, lest it might vex him by making him still so much a child, called him "my dear."

This ended the conversation, which Helen did not communicate to any body, nor referred to again with Lord Cairnforth, though she pondered over it and him continually.

A week after this, Mr. Menteith unexpectedly appeared at the Castle, and after a long consultation with Mr. Cardross, it was agreed that what seemed the evident wish of the earl should be accomplished if possible; that he, Malcolm, Mrs. Campbell, and Mr. Menteith should start for London immediately.

Such a journey was then a very different thing from what it is now, and to so helpless a traveler as Lord Cairnforth its difficulties were doubled. He had to post the whole distance in his own carriage, which was fitted up so as to be as easy as possible in locomotion, besides being so arranged that he could sleep in it if absolutely necessary, for ordinary beds and ordinary chairs were sometimes very painful to him. Had he been poor, in all probability he would long ago have died—of sheer suffering.

Fortunately, it was summer time. He staid at Cairnforth till after his birthday, "for I may never see another," said he, with that gentle smile which seemed to imply that he would be neither glad nor sorry, and then he started. He was quite cheerful himself, but Mr. Menteith and Mrs. Campbell looked very anxious. Malcolm was full of superstitious forebodings, and Helen Cardross and her father, when they bade him good-by and watched the carriage drive slowly from the Castle doors, felt as sad as if they were parting from him, not for London, but for the other world.

Not until he was gone did they recognize how much they missed him: in the Manse parlor where "the earl's chair" took its regular place—in the pretty Manse garden, where its wheels had made in the gravel walks deep marks which Helen could not bear to have erased—in his pew at the kirk, where the minister had learned to look Sunday after Sunday for that earnest, listening face. Mr. Cardross, too, found it dull no longer to have his walk up to the Castle, and his hour or two's rest in the yet unfinished library, which he and Lord Cairnforth had already begun to consult about, and where the earl was always to be found, sitting at his little table with his books about him, and Malcolm lurking within call, or else placed contentedly by the French window, looking out upon that blaze of beauty into which the countess's flower-garden had grown. How little they had thought—the young father and mother, cut off in the midst of their plans, that their poor child would one day so keenly enjoy them all, and have such sore need for these or any other simple and innocent enjoyments.

"Papa, how we do miss him!" said Helen one day as she walked with her father through the Cairnforth woods. "Who would have thought it when he first came here only a few years ago?"

"Who would indeed?" said the minister, remembering a certain walk he had taken through these very paths nineteen years before, when he had wondered why providence had sent the poor babe into the world at all, and thought how far, far happier it would have been lying dead on its dead mother's bosom—that beautiful young mother, whose placid face upon the white satin pillows of her coffin Mr. Cardross yet vividly recalled; for he saw it often reflected in the living face of the son, whom, happily, she had died without beholding.

"That was a wise saying of King David's, 'Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men,'" mused Mr. Cardross, who had just been hearing from Mr. Mentieth a long story of his perplexities with "those Bruces," and had also had lately a few domestic dissensions in his own parish, which did quarrel among itself occasionally, and always brought its quarrels to be settled by the minister. "It is a strange thing, Helen, my dear, what wonderful peace there often is in great misfortunes. They are quite different from the petty miseries which people make for themselves."

"I suppose so. But do you think, papa, that any good will come out of the London journey?"

"I can not tell; still, it was right to try. You yourself said it was right to try."

"Yes;" and then, seeing it was done now, the practical, brave Helen stilled her uncertainties and let the matter rest.

No one was surprised that weeks elapsed before there came any tidings of the travelers. Then Mr. Menteith wrote, announcing their safe arrival in London, which diffused great joy throughout the parish, for of course every body knew whither Lord Cairnforth had gone, and many knew why. Scarcely a week passed that some of the far-distant tenantry even, who lived on the other side of the peninsula, did not cross the hills, walking many miles for no reason but to ask at the Manse what was the latest news of "our earl."

But after the first letter there came no farther tidings, and indeed none were expected. Mr. Menteith had probably returned to Edinburg, and in those days there was no penny post, and nobody indulged in unnecessary correspondence. Still, sometimes Helen thought, with a sore uneasiness, "If the earl had had good news to tell, he would have surely told it. He was always so glad to make any body happy."

The long summer twilights were ended, and one or two equinoctial gales had whipped the waters of Loch Beg into wild "white horses," yet still Lord Cairnforth did not return. At last, one Monday night, when Helen and her father were returning from a three days' absence at the "preachings'—that is, the half-yearly sacrament—in a neighboring parish, they saw, when they came to the ferry, the glimmer of lights from the Castle windows on the opposite shore of the loch.

"I do believe Lord Cairnforth is come home!"

"Ou ay, Miss Helen," said Duncan, the ferryman, "his lordship crossed wi' me the day; an' I'm thinking, minister," added the old man confidentially, "that ye suld just gang up to the Castle an' see him; for it's ma opinion that the earl's come back as he gaed awa, nae better and nae waur."

"What makes you thinks so? Did he say any thing?"

"Ne'er a word but just 'How are ye the day, Duncan?' and he sat and glowered at the hills and the loch, and twa big draps rolled down his puir bit facie—it's grown sae white and sae sma', ye ken—and I said, 'My lord, it's grand to see your lordship back. Ye'll no be gaun to London again, I hope?' 'Na, na,' says he; 'na, Duncan, I'm best at hame—best at hame!' And when Malcolm lifted him, he gied a bit skreigh, as if he'd hurted himself—Minister, I wish I'd thae London doctors here by our loch side," muttered Duncan between his teeth, and pulling away fiercely at his oar; but the minister said nothing.

He and Helen went silently home, and finding no message, walked on as silently up to the Castle together.



Chapter 6

Old Duncan's penetration had been correct—the difficult and painful London journey was all in vain. Lord Cairnforth had returned home neither better nor worse than he was before; the experiment had failed.

Helen and her father guessed this from their first sight of him, though they had found him sitting as usual in his arm-chair at his favorite corner, and when they entered the library he had looked up with a smile —the same old smile, as natural as though he had never been away.

"Is that you, Mr. Cardross? Helen too? How kind of you to come and see me so soon!"

But, in spite of his cheerful greeting, they detected at once the expression of suffering in the poor face—"sae white and sae sma'," as Duncan had said; pale beyond its ordinary pallor, and shrunken and withered like an old man's; the more so, perhaps, as the masculine down had grown upon cheek and chin, and there was a matured manliness of expression in the whole countenance, which formed a strange contrast to the still puny and childish frame—alas! Not a whit less helpless or less distorted than before. Yes, the experiment had failed.

They were so sure of this, Mr. Cardross and his daughter, that neither put to him a single question on the subject, but instinctively passed it over, and kept the conversation to all sorts of commonplace topics: the journey—the wonders of London—and the small events which had happened in quiet Cairnforth during the three months that the earl had been away.

Lord Cairnforth was the first to end their difficulty and hesitation by openly referring to that which neither of his friends could bear to speak of.

"Yes," he said, at last, with a faint, sad smile, "I agree with old Duncan—I never mean to go to London any more. I shall stay for the rest of my days among my own people."

"So much the better for them," observed the minister, warmly.

"Do you think that? Well, we shall see. I must try and make it so, as well as I can. I am but where I was before, as Dr. Hamilton said. Poor Dr. Hamilton! He is so sorry."

Mr. Cardross did not ask about what, but turned to the table and began cutting open the leaves of a book. For Helen, she drew nearer to Lord Cairnforth's chair, and laid over the poor, weak, wasted fingers her soft, warm hand.

The tears sprang to the young earl's eyes. "Don't speak to me," he whispered; "it is all over now; but it was very hard for a time."

"I know it."

"Yes—at least as much as you can know."

Helen was silent. She recognized, as she had never recognized before, the awful individuality of suffering which it had pleased God to lay upon this one human being—suffering at which even the friends who loved him best could only stand aloof and gaze, without the possibility of alleviation.

"Ay," he said, at last, "it is all over: I need try no more experiments. I shall just sit still and be content."

What was the minute history of the experiments he had tried, how much bodily pain they had cost him, and through how much mental pain he had struggled before he attained that "content," he did not explain even to Helen. He turned the conversation to the books which Mr. Cardross was cutting, and many other books, of which he had bought a whole cart-load for the minister's library. Neither then, nor at any other time, did he ever refer, except in the most cursory way, to his journey to London.

But Helen noticed that for a long while—weeks, nay, months, he seemed to avoid more than ever any conversation about himself. He was slightly irritable and uncertain of mood, and disposed to shut himself up in the Castle, reading, or seeming to read, from morning till night. It was not till a passing illness of the minister's in some degree forced him that he reappeared at the Manse, and fell into his old ways of coming and going, resuming his studies with Mr. Cardross, and his walks with Helen—or rather drives, for he had ceased to be carried in Malcolm's arms.

"I am a man, now, or ought to be," he said once, as a reason for this, after which no one made any remarks on the subject. Malcolm still retained his place as the earl's close attendant—as faithful as his shadow, almost as silent.

But the next year or so made a considerable alteration in Lord Cairnforth. Not in growth—the little figure never grew any bigger than that of a boy of ten or twelve; but the childish softness passed from the face; it sharpened, and hardened, and became that of a young man. The features developed; and a short black beard, soft and curly, for it had never known the razor, added character to what, in ordinary men, would have been considered a very handsome face. It had none of the painful expression so often seen in deformed persons, but more resembled those sweet Italian heads of youthful saints—Saint Sebastian's, for instance—which the old masters were so fond of painting; and though there was a certain melancholy about it when in repose, during conversation it brightened up, and was the cheerfullest, most sunshiny face imaginable.

That is, it ultimately became so; but for a long time after the journey to London a shadow hung over it, which rarely quite passed away except in Helen's company. Nobody could be dreary for long beside Helen Cardross; and either through her companionship, or his own inherent strength of will, or both combined, the earl gradually recovered from the bitterness of lost hopes, whatsoever they had been, and became once more his own natural self, perhaps even more cheerful, since it was now not so much the gayety of a boy as the composed, equable serenity of a thoughtful man.

His education might be considered complete: it had advanced to the utmost limit to which Mr. Cardross could carry it; but the pupil insisted on retaining, nominally and pecuniarily, his position at the Manse.

Or else the two would spend hours—nay, days, shut up together in the Castle Library, the beautiful octagon room, with its painted ceiling, and its eight walls lined from floor to roof with empty shelves, to plan the filling of which was the delight of the minister's life, since, but for his poor parish and his large family, Mr. Cardross would have been a thorough bibliomaniac. Now, in a vicarious manner, the hobby of his youth reappeared, and at every cargo of books that arrived at the Castle his old eyes brightened—for he was growing to look really an old man now—and he would plunge among them with an ardor that sometimes made both the earl and Helen smile. But Helen's eyes were dim too, for she saw through all the tender cunning, and often watched Lord Cairnforth as he sat contentedly in his little chair, in the midst of a pile of books, examining, directing, and sympathizing, though doing nothing. Alas! nothing could he do. But it was one of the secrets which made these three lives so peaceful, that each could throw itself out of itself into that of another, and take thence, secondarily, the sunshine that was denied to its own.

Beyond the family at the Manse the earl had no acquaintance whatsoever, and seemed to desire none. His rank lifted him above the small proprietors who lived within visitable distance of the Castle: they never attempted to associate with him. Sometimes a stray caller appeared, prompted by curiosity, which Mrs. Campbell generally found ingenious reasons for leaving ungratified, and Lord Cairnforth's excessive shyness and dislike to appear before strangers did the rest. It is astonishing how little the world cares to cultivate those out of whom it can get nothing; and the small establishment at Cairnforth Castle, with its almost invisible head, soon ceased to be an object of interest to any body—at least to any body in that sphere of life where the earl would otherwise have moved.

Among his own tenantry, the small farmers along the shores of the two lochs which bounded the peninsula, his long minority and mysterious affliction made him personally almost unknown. They used to come twice a year, at WhitSunday and Martinmas, to pay their rents to Mr. Menteith; to inquire for my lord's health, and to drink in abundance of whisky; but the earl himself they never saw, and their feelings toward him were a mixture of reverence and awe.

It was different with the earl's immediate neighbors, the humble inhabitants of the clachan. These, during the last nine years, had gradually grown familiar, first with the little childish form, carried about tenderly in Malcolm's arms, and then with the muffled figure, scarcely less of a child to look at, which Malcolm, and sometimes Miss Cardross, drove about in a pony-chaise. At the kirk especially, though he was always carefully conveyed in first, and borne out last of all the congregation, his face—his sweet, kind, beautiful face was known to them all, and the children were always taught to doff their bonnets or pull their forelocks to the earl.

Beyond that, nobody knew any thing about him. His large property, accumulating every year, was entirely under the management of Mr. Menteith; he himself took no interest in it; and the way by which the former heirs of Cairnforth had used to make themselves popular from boyhood, by going among the tenantry, hunting, shooting, fishing, and boating, was impossible to this earl. His distant dependents hardly remembered his existence, and he took no heed of theirs, until a few months before he came of age, when one of these slight chances which often determine so much changed the current of affairs.

If was just before the "term." Mr. Menteith had been expected all day, but had not arrived, and the earl had taken a long drive with Helen and her father through the Cairnforth woods, where the wild daffodils were beginning to succeed the fading snowdrops, and the mavises had been heard to sing those few rich notes which belong especially to the twilights of early spring, and earnest of all the richness, and glory, and delight of the year. The little party seemed to feel it—that soft, dreamy sense of dawning spring, which stirs all the soul, especially in youth, with a vague looking forward to some pleasantness which never comes. They sat, silent and talking by turns, beside the not unwelcome fire, in a corner of the large library.

"We shall miss Alick a good deal this spring," said Helen, recurring to a subject of which the family heart was full, the departure of the eldest son to "begin the world" in Mr. Menteith's office in Edinburg. He was not a very clever lad, but he was sensible and steady, and blessed with that practical mother-wit which is often better than brains. The minister, though he had been bemoaning his boy's "little Latin and less Greek," and comparing Alick's learning very disadvantageously with that of the earl, to whom Mr. Cardross confided all his troubles, nevertheless seemed both proud and hopeful of his eldest son, the heir to his honest name, which Alick would now carry out into a far wider world than that of the poor minister of Cairnforth, and doubtless, in good time, transmit honorably to a third generation.

"Yes," added the father, when innumerable castles in the air had been built and rebuilt for Alick's future, "I'll not deny that my lad is a good lad. He is the hope of the house, and he knows it. It's little of worldly gear that he'll get for many a day, and he tells me he will have to work from morning till night; but he rather enjoys the prospect than not."

"No wonder. Work must be a happy thing," said, with a sigh, the young Earl of Cairnforth.

Helen's heart smote her for having let the conversation drift into this direction, as it did occasionally when, from their long familiarity with him, they forgot how he must feel about many things, natural enough to them, but to him, unto whom the outer world, with all its duties, energies, enjoyments, could never be any thing but a name, full of sharpest pain. She said, after a few minutes watching of the grave, still face—not exactly sad, but only very still, very grave—

"Just look at papa, how happy he is among those books you sent for! Your plan of his arranging the library is the delight of his life."

"Is it? I am so glad," said the earl, brightening up at once. 'What a good thing I thought of it!"

"You always do think of every thing that is good and kind," said Helen, softly.

"Thank you," and the shadow passed away, as any trifling pleasure always had power to make it pass. Sometimes Helen speculated vaguely on what a grand sort of man the earl would have been had he been like other people —how cheerful, how active, how energetic and wise. But then one never knows how far circumstances create and unfold character. We often learn as much by what is withheld as by what is enjoyed.

"Helen," he said, moving his chair a little nearer her—he had brought one good thing from London, a self-acting chair, in which he could wheel himself about easily, and liked doing it—"I wonder whether your father would have taken as much pleasure in his books thirty years ago. Do you think one could fill up one's whole life with reading and study?"

"I can not say; I'm not clever myself, you know."

"Oh, but you are—with a sort of practical cleverness. And so is Alick, in his own way. How happy Alick must be, going out into the world, with plenty to do all day long! How bright he looked this morning!"

"He sees only the sunny side of things, he is still no more than a boy."

"Not exactly; he is a year older than I am."

Helen hardly knew what to reply. She guessed so well the current of the earl's thoughts, which were often her own too, as she watched his absent or weary looks, though he tried hard to keep his attention to what Mr. Cardross was reading or discussing. But the distance between twenty and sixty—the life beginning and the life advancing toward its close— was frequently apparent; also between an active, original mind, requiring humanity for its study, and one whose whole bent was among the dry bones of ancient learning—the difference, in short, between learning and knowledge—the mere student and the man who only uses study as a means to the perfecting of his whole nature, his complete existence as a human being.

All this Helen felt with her quick, feminine instinct, but she did not clearly understand it, and she could not reason about it at all. She only answered in a troubled sort of way that she thought every body, somehow or other, might in time find enough to do—to be happy in doing—and she was trying to put her meaning into more connected and intelligible form, when, greatly to her relief, Malcom entered the library.

Malcolm, being so necessary and close a personal attendant on the earl, always came and went about his master without any body's noticing him; but now Helen fancied he was making signals to her or to some one. Lord Cairnforth detected them.

"Is any thing wrong, Malcolm? Speak out; don't hide things from me. I am not a child now."

There was just the slightest touch of sharpness in the gentle voice, and Malcolm did speak out.

"I wadna be troubling ye, my lord, but it's just an auld man, Dougal Mc Dougal, frae the head o' Loch Mhor—a puir doited body, wha says he maun hae a bit word wi' your lordship. But I tellt him ye coulna be fashed wi' the like o' him."

"That was not civil or right, Malcolm—an old man, too. Where is he?"

"Just by the door—eh—and he's coming ben—the ill-mannered loon!" cried Malcolm, angrily, as he interrupted the intruder—a tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, with the bonnet set upon the grizzled head in that sturdy independence—nay, more than independence—rudeness, rough and thorny as his own thistle, which is the characteristic of the Scotch peasant externally, till you get below the surface to the warm, kindly heart.

"I'm no ill-mannered, and I'll just gang through the hale house till I find my lord," said the old man, shaking off Malcolm with a strength that his seventy odd years seemed scarcely to have diminished. "I'm wushing ane harm to ony o' ye, but I maun get speech o' my lord. He's no bairn; he'll be ane-and-twenty the thirtieth o' June: I mind the day weel, for the wife was brought to bed o' her last wean the same day as the countess, and our Dougal's a braw callant the noo, ye ken. Gin the earl has ony wits ava, whilk folk thocht was aye doubtful', he'll hae gotten them by this time. I maun speak wi' himself', unless, as they said, he's no a' there."

"Haud your tongue, ye fule!" cried Malcolm, stopping him with a fierce whisper. "Yon's my lord!"

The old shepherd started back, for at this moment a sudden blaze-up of the fire showed him, sitting in the corner, the diminutive figure, attired carefully after the then fashion of gentlemen's dress, every thing rich and complete, even to the black silk stockings and shoes on the small, useless feet, and the white ruffles half hiding the twisted wrists and deformed hands.

"Yes, I am the Earl of Cairnforth. What did you want to say to me?"

He was so bewildered, the rough shepherd, who had spent all his life on the hill-sides, and never seen or imagined so sad a sight as this, that at first he could not find a word. Then he said, hanging back and speaking confusedly and humbly, "I ask your pardon, my lord—I dina ken—I'll no trouble ye the day."

"But you do not trouble me at all. Mr. Menteith is not here yet, and I know nothing about business; still, if you wished to speak to me, do so; I am Lord Cairnforth."

"Are ye?" said the shepherd, evidently bewildered still, so that he forgot his natural awe for his feudal superior. "Are ye the countess's bairn, that's just the age o' our Dougal? Dougal's ane o' the gamekeepers, ye ken—sic a braw fellow—sax feet three. Ye'll hae seen him, Maybe?"

"No, but I should like to see him. And yourself—are you a tenant of mine, and what did you want with me?"

Encouraged by the kindly voice, and his own self-interest becoming prominent once more, old Dougal told his tale—not an uncommon one —of sheep lost on the hill-side, and one misfortune following another, until a large family, children and orphan grandchildren, were driven at last to want the "sup o' parritch" for daily food, sinking to such depths of poverty as the earl in secluded life had never even heard of. And yet the proud old fellow asked nothing except the remission of one year's rent, after having paid rent honestly for half a lifetime. That stolid, silent endurance, which makes a Scotch beggar of any sort about the last thing you ever meet with in Scotland, supported him to the very end.

The earl was deeply touched. As a matter of course, he promised all that was desired of him, and sent the old shepherd away happy; but long after Dougal's departure he sat thoughtful and grave.

"Can such things be, Helen, and I never heard of them? Are some of my people—they are my people, since the land belongs to me—as terribly poor as that man?"

"Ay, very many, though papa looks after them as much as he can. Dougal is out of his parish, or he would have know him. Papa knows every body, and takes care of every body, as far as possible."

"So ought I—or I must do it when I am older," said the earl, thoughtfully.

"There will be no difficulty about that when you come of age and enter on your property."

"Is it a very large property? For I never heard or inquired."

"Very large."

"Show me its boundary; there is the map."

Helen took it down and drew with a pencil the limits of the Cairnforth estates. They extended along the whole peninsula, and far up into the main land.

"There, Lord Cairnforth, every bit of this is yours."

"To do exactly what I like with?"

"Certainly."

"Helen, it is an awfully serious thing."

Helen was silent.

"How strange!" He continued, after a pause. "And this was really all mine from the very hour of my birth?"

"Yes."

"And when I come of age I shall have to take my property into my own hands, and manage it just as I choose, or as I can?"

"Of course you will; and I think you can do it, if you try."

For it was not the first time that Helen had pondered over these things, since, being neither learned nor poetical, worldly-minded nor selfish, in her silent hours her mind generally wandered to the practical concerns of other people, and especially of those she loved.

"'Try' ought to be the motto of the Cardross arms—of yours certainly," said Lord Cairnforth, smiling. "I should like to assume it on mine, instead of my own 'Virtute et fide,' which is of little use to me. How can I—I—be brave or faithful?"

"You can be both—and you will," said Helen, softly. Years from that day she remembered what she had said, and how true it was.

A little while afterward, while the minister still remained buried in his beloved books, Lord Carinforth recurred again to Dougal Mac Dougal.

"The old fellow was right. If I am ever to have 'ony wits ava,' I ought to have them by this time. I am nearly twenty-one. Any other young man would have been a man long ago. And I will be a man—why should I not? True manliness is not solely outside. I dare say you could find many a fool and a coward six feet high."

"Yes," answered Helen, all she could find to say.

"And if I have nothing else, I have brains—quite as good brains, I think, as my neighbors. They can not say of me now that I'm 'no a' there.' Nay, Helen, don't look so fierce; they meant me no ill; it was but natural. Yes, God has left me something to be thankful for."

The earl lifted his head—the only part of his frame which he could move freely, and his eyes flashed under his broad brows. Thoroughly manly brows they were, wherein any acute observer might trace that clear sound sense, active energy, and indomitable perseverance which make the real man, and lacking which the "brawest" young follow alive is a mere body—and animal wanting the soul.

"I wonder how I should set about managing my property. The duty will not be as easy for me as for most people, you know," added he, sadly; "still, if I had a secretary—a thorough man of business, to teach me all about business, and to be constantly at my side, perhaps I might be able to accomplish it. And I might drive about the country—driving is less painful to me now—and get acquainted with my people; see what they wanted, and how I could best help them. They would get used to me, too. I might turn out to be a very respectable laird, and become interested in the improvement of my estates."

"There is great opportunity for that, I know," replied Helen. And then she told him of a conversation she had heard between her father and Mr. Menteith, when the latter had spoken of great changes impending over quiet Cairnforth: how a steamer was to begin plying up and down the loch —how there were continual applications for land to be feued—and how all these improvements would of necessity require the owner of the soil to take many a step unknown to and undreamed of by his forefathers —to make roads, reclaim hill and moorland, build new farms, churches, and school-houses.

"In short, as Mr. Menteith said, the world is changing so fast that the present Earl of Cairnforth will have any thing but the easy life of his father and grandfather.

"Did Mr. Menteith say that?" cried the earl, eagerly.

"He did, indeed; I heard him."

"And did he seem to think that I should be able for it?"

"I can not tell," answered truthful Helen. "He said not a word one way or the other about your being capable of doing the work; he only said the work was to done."

"Then I will try and do it."

The earl said this quietly enough, but his eyes gleamed and his lips quivered.

Helen laid her hand upon his, much move. "I said you were brave— always; still, you must think twice about it, for it will be a very responsible duty—enough, Mr. Menteith told papa, to require a man's whole energies for the next twenty years."

"I wonder if I shall live so long. Well, I am glad, Helen. It will be something worth living for."



Chapter 7

Malcolm's saying that "if my lord taks a thing into his heid he'll do't, ye ken," was as true now as when the earl was a little boy.

Mr. Mentieth hardly knew how the thing was accomplished—indeed, he had rather opposed it, believing the mere physical impediments to his ward's overlooking his own affairs were insurmountable; but Lord Cairnforth contrived in the course of a day or two to initiate himself very fairly in all the business attendant upon the "term;" to find out the exact extent and divisions of his property, and to whom it was feued. And on term-day he proposed, though with an evident effort which touched the old lawyer deeply, to sit beside Mr. Menteith while the tenants were paying their rents, so as to become personally known to each of them.

Many of these, like Dougal Mac Dougal, were over come with surprise, nay, something more painful than surprise, at the sight of the small figure which was the last descendant of the noble Earls of Cairnforth, and with whom the stalwart father and the fair young mother looking down from the pictured walls, contrasted so piteously; but after the first shock was over they carried away only the remembrance of his sweet, grave face, and his intelligent and pertinent observations, indicating a shrewdness for which even Mr. Menteith was unprepared. When he owned this, after business was done, the young earl smiled, evidently much gratified.

"Yes, I don't think they can say of me that I'm 'no a' there!" Also he that evening confessed to Helen that he found "business" nearly as interesting as Greek and Latin, perhaps even more so, for there was something human in it, something which drew one closer to one's fellow-creatures, and benefited other people besides one's own self. "I think," he added, "I should rather enjoy being what is called 'a good man of business.'"

He pleaded so hard for farther instruction in all pertaining to his estate that Mr. Menteith consented to spare two whole weeks out of his busy Edinburg life, during which Lord Cairnforth and he were shut up together for a great part of every day, investigating matters connected with the property, and other things which hitherto in the young man's education had been entirely neglected.

"For," said his guardian, sadly, "I own, I never thought of him as a young man—or as a man at all; nevertheless, he is one, and will always be. That clear, cool head of his, just for brains, pure brains, is worth both his father's and grandfather's put together."

And when Helen repeated this saying to Lord Cairnforth, he smiled his exceedingly bright smile, and was more cheerful, joyous, for days after.

On Mr. Menteith's return home, he sent back to the Castle one of his old clerks, who had been acquainted with the Cairnforth affairs for nearly half a century; he also was astonished at the capacity which the young earl showed. Of course, physically, he was entirely helpless; the little forked stick was still in continual requisition; nor could he write except with much difficulty; but he had the faculty of arrangement and order, and the rare power—rarer than is supposed—of guiding and governing, so that what he could not do himself he could direct others how to do, and thus attain his end so perfectly, that even those who knew him best were oftentimes actually amazed at the result he effected.

Then he enjoyed his work; took such an interest in the plans for feuing land along the loch-side, and the sort of houses that was to be built upon each feu, the roads he would have to make, and especially in the grand wooden pier which, by Mr. Menteith's advice, was shortly to be erected in lieu of the little quay of stones at the ferry, which had hitherto served as Cairnforth's chief link with the outside world.

If Mr. Cardross and Helen grieved a little over this advancing tide of civilization, which might soon sweep away many things old and dear from the shores of beautiful Loch Beg, they grew reconciled when they saw the light in the earl's eyes, and heard him talk with an interest and enthusiasm quite new to him of what he meant to do when he came of age. Only in all his projects was one peculiarity rather uncommon in young heirs—the entire absence of any schemes for personal pleasure. Conforts he had, of course; his faithful friends and servants took care that his condition should have every alleviation that wealth could furnish; but of enjoyments, after the fashion of youth, he planned nothing; for, indeed, what of them was left him to enjoy?

And so, faster than was usual, being so well filled with occupations, the weeks and months slipped by, until the important thirtieth of June, when Mr. Menteith's term of guardianship would end, and a man's free life and independent duties, so far as he could perform them, would legally begin for the Earl of Cairnforth.

There had been great consultations on this topic all along the two lochs, and beyond them, for Dougal Mac Dougal had carried his story of the earl and his goodness to the extreme verge of the Cairnforth territory. Throughout June the Manse was weekly haunted by tenants arriving from all quarters to consult the minister, the universal referee, as to how best they could celebrate the event, which, whenever it occurred, had for generations been kept gloriously in the little peninsula, though no case was known of any earl's attaining his majority as being already Earl of Cairnforth. The Montgomeries were usually a long-lived race, and their heirs rarely came to their titles till middle-aged fathers of families.

"But we maun hae grand doings this time, ye ken," said an old farmer to the minister, "for I doubt there'll ne'er be anither Earl o' Cairnforth."

Which fact every one seemed sorrowfully to recognize. It was not only probable, but right, that in this Lord Cairnforth—so terribly afflicted—the long line should end.

As the day of the earl's majority approached, the minister's feelings were of such a mingled kind that he shrank from these demonstrations of joy, and rather repressed the warm loyalty which was springing up every where toward the young man. But after taking counsel with Helen, who saw into things a little deeper than he did, Mr. Cardross decided that it was better all should be done exactly as if the present lord were not different from his forefathers, and that he should be helped both to act and to feel as like other people as possible.

Therefore, on a bright June morning, as bright as that of his sad birth-day and his mother's death-day, twenty-one years before, the earl awoke to the sound of music playing—if the national pipes of the peninsula could be called music—underneath his window, and heard his good neighbors from the clachan, young and old, men, women, and bairns, uniting their voices in one hearty shout, wishing "A lang life and a merry ane" to the Earl of Cairnforth.

Whether or not the young man's heart echoed the wish, who could tell? It was among the solemn secrets which every human soul has to keep and ever must keep between itself and its Maker.

Very soon the earl appeared out of doors, wheeling himself along the terrace in his little chair, answering smilingly the congratulations of every body, and evidently enjoying the pleasant morning, the sunshine, and the scent of the flowers in what was still called "The countess's garden." People notice afterward how very like he looked that day to his beautiful mother; and many a mother out of the clachan, who remembered the lady's face still, and how, during her few brief months of married happiness and hope, she used to stop her pretty pony-carriage to notice every poor woman's baby she chanced to pass—many of these now regarded pitifully and tenderly her only son, the last heir of the last Countess of Cairnfoth.

Yet he certainly enjoyed himself, there could be no doubt of it; and when, later in the day, he discovered a conspiracy between the Castle, the Manse, and the clachan, which resulted in a grand feast on the lawn, he was highly delighted.

"All this for me!" he cried, almost childish in his pleasure. "How good every body is to me!"

And he insisted on mixing with the little crowd, and seeing them sit down to their banquet, which they ate as if they had never eaten in their lives before, and drank—as Highlanders can drink, and Highlanders alone. But, before the whisky began to grow dangerous, the oldest man among the tenantry, who declared that he could remember three Earls of Cairnfoth, proposed the health of this earl, which was received with acclamations long and loud, the pipers playing the family tune of "Montgomerie's Reel," which was chiefly notable for having neither beginning, middle, nor ending.

Lord Cairnforth bowed his head in acknowledgment.

"Ought not somebody to make a little speech of thanks to them?" whispered he to Helen, who stood close behind his chair.

"You should; and I think you could," was her answer.

"Very well; I will try."

And in his poor feeble voice, which trembled much, yet was distinct and clear, he said a few words, very short and simple, to the people near him. He thanked them for all this merry-making in his honor, and said, "he was exceedingly happy that day." He told them he meant always to reside at Cairnforth, and to carry out all sorts of plans for the improvement of his estates, both for his tenants' benefits and his own. That he hoped to be both a just and kind landlord, working with and for his tenantry to the utmost of his power.

"That is," he added, with a slight fall of the voice, "to the utmost of those few powers which it has pleased Heaven to give me."

After this speech there was a full minute's silence, tender, touching silence, and the arose a cheer, long and loud, such had rarely echoed through the little peninsula on the coming of age of any Lord Cairnforth.

When the tenantry had gone away to light bonfires on the hill-side, and perform many other feats of jubilation, a little dinner-party assembled in the large dining-room, which had been so long disused, for the earl always preferred the library, which was on a level with his bedroom, whence he could wheel himself in and out as he pleased. To-day the family table was outspread, and the family plate glittered, and the family portraits stared down from the wall as the last Earl of Cairnforth moved—or rather was moved—slowly down the long room. Malcolm was wheeling him to a side seat well sheltered and comfortable, when he said,

"Stop! Remember I am twenty-one to-day. I think I ought to take my seat at the head of my own table."

Malcolm obeyed. And thus, for the first time since the late earl's death, the place—the master's place—was filled.

"Mr. Cardross, will you say grace?"

The minister tried once—twice—thrice; but his voice failed him. His tender heart, which had lived through so many losses, and this day saw all the past brought before him vivid as yesterday, entirely broke down. Thereupon the earl, from his seat at the head of his own table, repeated simply and naturally the few words which every head of a household—as priest in his own family—may well say, "For these and all other mercies, Lord, make us thankful."

After that, Mr. Menteith took snuff vehemently, and Mr. Cardross openly wiped his eyes. But Helen's, if not quite dry, were very bright. Her woman's heart, which looked beyond the pain of suffering into the beauty of suffering nobly endured, even as faith looks through "the grave and gate of death" into the glories of immortality—Helen's heart was scarcely sad, but very glad and proud.

The day after Lord Cairnforth's coming of age Mr. Menteith formally resigned his trust. He had managed the property so successfully during the long minority that even he himself was surprised at the amount of money, both capital and income, which the earl was now master of, without restriction or reservation, and free from the control of any human being.

"Yes, my lord," said he, when the young man seemed subdued and almost overcome by the extent of his own wealth, "it is really all your own. You may make ducks and drakes of it, as the saying goes, as soon as ever you please. You are accountable for it to no one—except One," added the good, honest, religious man, now growing an old man, and a little gentler, grave, as well as a little more demonstrative than he had been twenty years before.

"Except One. I know that; I hope I shall never forget it," replied the Earl of Cairnforth.

And then they proceeded to wind up their business affairs.

"How strange it is," observed the earl, when they had nearly concluded, "how very strange that I should be here in the world, an isolated human being, with not a single blood relation, not a soul who has any real claim upon me!"

"Certainly not—no claim whatsoever; and yet you are not quite without blood relations."

Lord Cairnforth looked surprised. "I always understood that I had no near kindred."

'Of near kindred you have none. But there are certain far-away cousins, of whom, for many reasons, I never told you, and begged Mr. Cardross not to tell you either."

"I think I ought to have been told."

Mr. Menteith explained his strong reasons for silence, such as the late lord's unpleasant experience—and his own—of the Bruce family, and the necessity he saw for keeping his ward quite out of their association and their influence till his character was matured, and he was of age to judge for himself, and act for himself, concerning them. All the more, because remote as their kinship was, and difficult to be proved, still, if proved, they would be undoubtedly his next heirs.

"My next heirs," repeated the earl—"of course. I must have an heir. I wonder I never thought of that. If I died, there must be somebody to succeed me in the title and estates."

"Not in the title," said Mr. Menteith, hesitating, for he saw it was opening a subject most difficult and painful, yet which must be opened sometime or other, and the old was too hones to shrink from so doing, if necessary.

"Why not the title?"

"It is entailed, and can be inherited in the direct male line only."

"That is, it descends from father to son?"

"Exactly so."

"I see," said the young man, after a long pause.

"Then I am the last Earl of Cairnforth."

There was no answer. Mr. Menteith could not for his life have given one; besides, none seemed required. The earl said it as if merely stating a fact beyond which there is no appeal, and neither expecting nor desiring any refutation or contradiction.

"Now," Lord Cairnforth continued, suddenly changing the conversation, "let us speak once more of the Bruces, who, you say, might any day succeed to my fortune, and would probably make a very bad use of it."

"I believe so; upon my conscience I do!" said Mr. Menteith, earnestly, "else I never should have felt justified in keeping them out of your way as I have done."

"Who are they? I mean, of what does the family consist?"

"An old man—Colonel Bruce he calls himself, and is known as such in every disreputable gambling town on the Continent; a long tribe of girls, and one son, eldest or youngest, I forget which, who was sent to India through some influence I used for your father's sake, but who may be dead by now for aught I know. Indeed, the utmost I have had to do with the family of late years has been paying the annuity granted them by the late earl, which I continued, not legally, but through charity, on trust that the present earl would never call me to account for the same."

"Most certainly I never shall."

"Then you will take my advice, and forgive my intruding upon you a little more of it?"

"Forgive? I am thankful, my good old friend, for every wise word you say to me."

Again the good lawyer hesitated: "There is a subject, one exceedingly difficult to speak of, but it should be named, since you might not think of it yourself. Lord Cairnforth, the only way in which you can secure your property against these Bruces is by at once making your will."

"Making my will!" replied the earl, looking as if the new responsibilities opening upon him were almost bewildering.

"Every man who has any thing to leave ought to make a will as soon as ever he comes of age. Vainly I urged this upon your father."

"My poor father! That he should die—so young and strong—and I should live—how strange it seems! You think, then—perhaps Dr. Hamilton also thinks—that my life is precarious?"

"I can not tell; my dear lord, how could any man possibly tell?"

"Well, it will not make me die one day sooner or later to have made my will: as you say, every man ought to do it; I ought especially, for my life is more doubtful than most people's, and it is a solemn charge to posses so large a fortune as mine."

"Yes. The good—or harm—that might be done with it is incalculable."

"I feel that—at least I am beginning to feel it."

And for a time the earl sat silent and thoughtful; the old lawyer fussing about, putting papers and debris of all sorts into their right places, but feeling it awkward to resume the conversation.

"Mr. Menteith, are you at liberty now? For I have quite made up my mind. This matter of the will shall be settled at once. It can be done?"

"Certainly."

"Sit down, then, and I will dictate it. But first you must promise not to interfere with any disposition I may see fit to make of my property."

"I should not have the slightest right to do so, Lord Cairnforth."

"My good old friend! Well, now, how shall we begin?"

"I should recommend your first stating any legacies you may wish to leave to dependents—for instance, Mrs. Campbell, or Malcolm, and then bequeathing the whole bulk of your estates to some one person— some young person likely to outlive you, and upon whom you can depend to carry out all your plans and intentions, and make as good a use of your fortune as you would have done yourself. That is my principle as to choice of an heir. There are many instances in which blood is not thicker than water, and a friend by election is often worthier and dearer, besides being closer than any relative."

"You are right."

"Still, consanguinity must be considered a little. You might leave a certain sum to these Bruces—or if, on inquiry, you found among them any child whom you approved, you could adopt him as your heir, and he could take the name Montgomerie."

"No," replied the ear, decisively, "that name is ended. All I have to consider is my own people here—my tenants and servants. Whoever succeeds me ought to know them all, and be to them exactly what I have been, or rather what I hope to be."

"Mr. Cardross, for instance. Were you thinking of him as your heir?"

"No, not exactly," replied Lord Cairnforth, slightly coloring. "He is a little too old. Besides, he is not quite the sort of person I should wish—too gentle and self-absorbed—too little practical."

"One of his sons, perhaps?"

"No, nor one of yours either; to whom, by the way you will please to set down a thousand pounds apiece. Nay, don't look so horrified; it will not harm them. But personally I do not know them, nor they me. And my heir should be some one whom I thoroughly do know, thoroughly respect, thoroughly love. There is but one person in the world—one young person—who answers to all those requisites."

"Who is that?"

"Helen Cardross."

Mr. Menteith was a good deal surprised. Though he had a warm corner in his heart for Helen, still, the idea of her as heiress to so large an estate was novel and startling. He did not consider himself justified in criticizing the earl's choice; still, he thought it odd. True, Helen was a brave, sensible, self-dependent woman—not a girl any longer —and accustomed from the age of fifteen to guide a household, to be her father's right hand, and her brothers' help and counselor—one of those rare characters who, without being exactly masculine, are yet not too feebly feminine—in whom strength is never exaggerated to boldness, nor gentleness deteriorated into weakness. She was firm, too; could form her own opinion and carry it out; though not accomplished, was fairly well educated, possessed plenty of sound practical knowledge of men and things, and, above all, had habits of extreme order and regularity. People said, sometimes, that Miss Cardross ruled not only the Manse, but the whole parish; however, if so, she did it in so sweet a way that nobody ever objected to her government.

All these things Mr. Menteith ran over in his acute mind within the next few minutes, during which he did not commit himself to any remarks at all. At last he said,

"I think, my lord, you are right. Helen's no bonnie, but she is a rare creature, with the head of a man and the heart of a woman. She is worth all her brothers put together, and, under the circumstances, I believe you could not do better than make her your heiress."

"I am glad you think so," was the brief answer. Though, by the expression of the earl's face, Mr. Menteith clearly saw that, whether he had thought it or not, the result would have been just the same. He smiled a little to himself, but he did not dispute the matter. He knew that one of the best qualities the earl possessed—most blessed and useful to him, as it is to every human being—was the power of making up his own mind, and acting upon it with that quiet resolution which is quite distinct from obstinacy—obstinacy, usually the last strong-hold of cowards, and the blustering self-defense of fools.

"There is but one objection to your plan, Lord Cairnforth. Miss Cardross is young—twenty-six, I think."

"Twenty-five and a half."

"She may not remain always Miss Cardross. She may marry; and we can not tell what sort of man her husband may be, or how fit to be trusted with so large a property."

"So good a woman is not likely to choose a man unworthy of her," said Lord Cairnforth, after a pause. "Still, could not my fortune be settled upon herself as a life-rent, to descend intact to her heirs—that is, her children?"

"My dear lord, how you must have thought over every thing!"

"You forget, my friend, I have nothing to do but to sit thinking."

There was a sad intonation in the voice which affected Mr. Menteith deeply. He made no remark, but busied himself in drawing up the will, which Lord Cairnforth seemed nervously anxious should be completed that very day.

"For, suppose any thing should happen—if I died this night, for instance! No, let what is done be done as soon as possible, and as privately."

"You wish, then, the matter to be kept private?" asked Mr. Menteith.

"Yes."

So in the course of the next few hours the will was drawn up. It was somewhat voluminous with sundry small legacies, no one being forgotten whom the earl desired to benefit or thought needed his help; but the bulk of his fortune he left unreservedly to Helen Cardross. Malcolm and another servant were called in as witnesses, and the earl saying to them with a cheerful smile "that he was making his will, but did not mean to die a day the sooner," signed it with that feeble, uncertain signature which yet had cost him years of pains to acquire, and never might have been acquired at all but for his own perseverance and the unwearied patience of Helen Cardross.

"She taught me to write, you know," said he to Mr. Menteith, as—the witnesses being gone—he, with a half-amused look, regarded his own autograph.

"You have used the results of her teaching well on her behalf today. It is no trifle—a clear income of ten thousand a year; but she will make a good use of it."

"I am sure of that. So, now, all is safe and right, and I may die as soon as God pleases."

He leaned his head back wearily, and his face was overspread by that melancholy shadow which it wore at times, showing how, at best, life was a heavy burden, as it could not but be—to him.

"Come, now," said the earl, rousing himself, "we have still a good many things to talk over, which I want to consult you about before you go," whereupon the young man opened up such a number of schemes, chiefly for the benefit of his tenantry and the neighborhood, that Mr. Menteith was quite overwhelmed.

"Why, my lord, you are the most energetic Earl of Cairnforth that ever came to the title. It would take three lifetimes, instead of a single one, even if that reached threescore and ten, to carry out all you want to do."

"Would it? Then let us hope it was not for nothing that those good folk yesterday made themselves hoarse with wishing me 'a lang life and a merry ane.' And when I die—but we'll not enter upon that subject. My dear old friend, I hope for many and many a thirtieth of June I shall make you welcome to Cairnforth. And now let us take a quiet drive together, and fetch all the Manse people up to dinner at the Castle."



Chapter 8

The same evening the earl and his guests were sitting in the June twilight—the long, late northern twilight, which is nowhere more lovely than on the shores of Loch Beg. Malcolm had just come in with candles, as a gentle hint that it was time for his master, over whose personal welfare he was sometimes a little too solicitous, to retire, when there happened what for the time being startled every body present.

Malcolm, going to the window, sprang suddenly back with a shout and a scream.

"I kent it weel. It was sure to be! Oh, my lord, my lord!"

"What is the matter?" said Mr. Menteith, sharply. "You're gone daft, man;" for the big Highlander was trembling like a child.

"Whisht! Dinna speak o't. It was my lord's wraith, ye ken. It just keekit in and slippit awa."

"Folly! I saw nothing."

"But I think I did," said Lord Cairnforth.

"Hear him! Ay, he saw't his ain sel. Then it maun be true. Oh my dear lord!"

Poor Malcolm fell on his knees by the earl's little chair in such agitation that Mr. Cardross looked up from his book, and Helen from her peaceful needle-work, which was rarely out of her active hands.

"He thinks he has seen his master's wraith; and because the earl signed his will this morning, he is sure to die, especially as Lord Cairnforth saw the same thing himself. Will you say, my lord, what you did see?"

"Mr. Menteith, I believe I saw a man peering in at that window."

"It wasna a man—it was a speerit," moaned Malcolm. "My lord's wraith, for sure."

"I don't think so, Malcolm; for it was a tall, thin figure that moved about lightly and airily—was come and gone in a moment. Not very like my wraith, unless wraith of myself as I might have been."

The little party were silent till Helen said,

"What do you think it was, then?"

"Certainly a man, made of honest flesh and blood, though not much of either, for he was excessively thin and sickly-looking. He just 'keerkit in,' as Malcolm says, and disappeared."

"What an odd circumstance!" said Mr. Menteith.

"Not a robber, I trust. I am much more afraid of robbers than of ghosts."

"We never rob at Cairnforth; we are very honest people here. No, I think it is far likelier to be one of those stray tourists who are brought here by the steamers. They sometimes take great liberties, wandering into the Castle grounds, and perhaps one of them thought he might as well come and stare in at my windows."

"I hope he was English; I should not like a Scotsman to do such a rude thing," cried Helen, indignantly.

Lord Cairnforth laughed at her impulsiveness. There was much of the child nature mingled in Helen's gravity and wisdom, and she sometimes did both speak and act from impulse—especially generous and kindly impulse—as hastily and unthinkingly as a child.

"Well, Malcolm, the only way to settle this difficulty is to search the house and grounds. Take a good thick stick and a lantern, and whatever you find—be it tourist or burglar, man or spirit—bring him at once to me."

And then the little group waited, laughing among themselves, but still not quite at ease. Lord Cairnforth would not allow Mr. Cardross and Helen to walk home; the carriage was ordered to be made ready.

Presently, Malcolm appeared, somewhat crestfallen.

"It is a man, my lord, and no speerit. But he wadna come ben. He says he'll wait your lordship's will, and that's his name," laying a card before the earl, who looked at it and started with surprise.

"Mr. Menteith, just see—'Captain Ernest Henry Bruce.' What an odd coincidence!"

"Coincidence, indeed!" repeated the lawyer, skeptically. "Let me see the card."

"Earnest Henry! was that the name of the young man whom you sent out to India?"

"How should I remember? It was ten or fifteen years ago. Very annoying! However, since he is a Bruce, or says he is, I suppose your lordship must just see him."

"Certainly," replied, in his quiet, determined tone, the Earl of Cairnforth.

Helen, who looked exceedingly surprised, offered to retire, but the earl would not hear of it.

"No, no; you are a wise woman, and an acute one too. I would like you to see and judge of this cousin of mine—a faraway cousin, who would like well enough, Mr. Menteith guesses, to be my heir. But we will not judge him harshly, and especially we will not prejudge him. His father was nothing to boast of, but this may be a very honest man for all we know. Sit by me, Helen and take a good look at him."

And, with a certain amused pleasure, the earl watched Helen's puzzled air at being made of so much importance, till the stranger appeared.

He was a man of about thirty, though at first sight he seemed older, from his exceedingly worn and sickly appearance. His lank black hair fell about his thin, sallow face; he wore what we now call the Byron collar and Byron tie—for it was in the Byron era, when sentimentalism and misery-making were all the fashion. Certainly the poor captain looked miserable enough, without any pretense of it; for, besides his thin and unhealthy aspect, his attire was in the lowest depth of genteel shabbiness. Nevertheless, he looked gentlemanly, and clever too; nor was it an unpleasant face, though the lower half of it indicated weakness and indecision; and the eyes—large, dark, and hollow—were a little too closely set together, a peculiarity which always gives an uncandid, and often a rather sinister expression to any face. Still there was something about the unexpected visitor decidedly interesting.

Even Helen looked up from her work once—twice—with no small curiosity; she saw so few strangers, and of men, and young men, almost none, from year's end to year's end. Yet it was a look as frank, as unconscious, as maidenly as might have been Miranda's first glance at Ferdinand.

Captain Bruce did not return her glance at all. His whole attention was engrossed by Lord Cairnforth.

"My lord, I am so sorry—so very sorry—if I startled you by my rudeness. The group inside was so cheering a sight, and I was a poor weary wayfarer."

"Do not apologize, Captain Bruce. I am happy to make your acquaintance."

"It has been the wish of my life, Lord Cairnforth, to make yours."

Lord Cairnforth turned upon him eyes sharp enough to make a less acute person than the captain feel that honesty, rather than flattery, was the safest tack to go upon. He took the hint.

"That is, I have wished, ever since I came home from India, to thank you and Mr. Menteith—this is Mr. Menteith, I presume?—for my cadetship, which I got through you. And though my ill health has blighted my prospects, and after some service—for I exchanged from the Company's civil into the military service—I have returned to England an invalided and disappointed man, still my gratitude is exactly the same, and I was anxious to see and thank you, as my benefactor and my cousin."

Lord Cairnforth merely bent his head in answer to this long speech, which a little perplexed him. He, like Helen, was both unused and indifferent to strangers.

But Captain Bruce seemed determined not to be made a stranger. After the brief ceremony of introduction to the little party, he sat down close to Lord Cairnforth, displacing Helen, who quietly retired, and began to unfold all his circumstances, giving as credentials of identity a medal received for some Indian battle; a letter from his father, the colonel, whose handwriting Mr. Menteith immediately recognized, and other data, which sufficiently proved that he really was the person he assumed to be.

"For," said he, with that exceedingly frank manner he had, the sort of manner particularly taking with reserved people, because it saves them so much trouble—"for otherwise how should you know that I am not an impostor—a swindler—instead of your cousin, which I hope you believe I really am, Lord Cairnforth?"

"Certainly," said the earl, smiling, and looking both amused an interested by this little adventure, so novel in his monotonous life.

Also, his kindly heart was touched by the sickly and feeble aspect of the young man, by his appearance of poverty, and by something in his air which the earl fancied implied that brave struggle against misfortune, more pathetic than misfortune itself. With undisguised pleasure, the young host sat and watched his guest doing full justice to the very best supper that the Castle could furnish.

"You are truly a good Samaritan," said Captain Bruce, pouring out freely the claret which was then the universal drink of even the middle classes in Scotland. "I had fallen among thieves (literally, for my small baggage was stolen from me yesterday, and I have no worldly goods beyond the clothes I stand in); you meet me, my good cousin, with oil and wine, and set me on your own beast, which I fear I shall have to ask you to do, for I am not strong enough to walk any distance. How far is it to the nearest inn?"

"About twenty miles. But we will discuss that question presently. In the mean time, eat and drink; you need it."

"Ah! Yes. You have never known hunger—I hope you never may; but it is not a pleasant thing, I assure you, actually to want food."

Helen looked up sympathetically. As Captain Bruce took not the slightest notice of her, she had ample opportunity to observe him. Pity for his worn face made her lenient. Lord Cairnforth read her favorable judgment in her eyes, and it inclined him also to judge kindly of the stranger. Mr. Menteith alone, more familiar with the world, and goaded by it into that sharp suspiciousness which is the last hardening of a kindly and generous heart—Mr. Menteith held aloof for some time, till at last even he succumbed to the charm of the captain's conversation. Mr. Cardross had already fallen a willing victim, for he had latterly been deep in the subject of Warren Hastings, and to meet with any one who came direct from that wondrous land of India, then as mysterious and far-away a region as the next world, to people in England, and especially in the wilds of Scotland, was to the good minister a delight indescribable.

Captain Bruce, who had at first paid little attention to any body but his cousin, soon exercised his faculty of being "all things to all men," gave out his stores of information, bent all his varied powers to gratify Lord Cairnforth's friends, and succeeded.

The clock had struck twelve, and still the little party were gathered round the supper-table. Captain Bruce rose.

"I am ashamed to have detained you from your natural rest, Lord Cairnforth. I am but a poor sleeper myself; my cough often disturbs me much. Perhaps, as there is no inn, one of your servants could direct me to some cottage near, where I could get a night's lodging, and go on my way to-morrow. Any humble place will do; I am accustomed to rough it; besides, it suits my finances: half-pay to a sickly invalid is hard enough—you understand?"

"I do."

"Still, if I could only get health! I have been told that this part of the country is very favorable to people with delicate lungs. Perhaps I might meet with some farm-house lodging?"

"I could not possibly allow that," said Lord Cairnforth, unable, in spite of all Mr. Menteith's grave warning looks, to shut up his warm heart any longer. "The Castle is your home, Captain Bruce, for as long as you may find it pleasant to remain here."

The invitation, given so unexpectedly and cordially, seemed to surprise, nay, to touch the young man exceedingly.

"Thank you, my cousin. You are very kind to me, which is more than I can say of the world in general. I will thankfully stay with you for a little. It might give me a chance of health."

"I trust so."

Still, to make all clear between host and guest, let me name some end to my visit. This is the first day of July; may I accept your hospitality for a fortnight—say till the 15th?"

"Till whenever you please," replied the earl, courteously and warmly; for he was pleased to find his cousin, even though a Bruce, so very agreeable; glad, too, that he had it in his power to do him a kindness, which, perhaps, had too long been neglected. Besides, Lord Cairnforth had few friends, and youth so longs for companionship. This was actually the first time he had had a chance of forming an intimacy with a young man of his own age, education, and position, and he caught at it with avidity, the more so because Captain Bruce seemed likely to supply all the things which he had not and never could have—knowledge of the world outside; "hair-breadth 'scapes" and adventurous experiences, told with a point and cleverness that added to their charm.

Besides, the captain was decidedly "interesting." Young ladies would have thought him so, with his pale face and pensive air, which, seeing that the Byron fever had not yet attacked the youths of Cairnforth, appeared to his simple audience a melancholy quite natural and not assumed. And his delicacy of health was a fact only too patent. There was a hectic brilliant color on his cheek, and his cough interrupted him continually. His whole appearance implied that, in any case, a long life was scarcely probable, and this alone was enough to soften any tender heart toward him.

"What does Helen think of my new cousin?" whispered Lord Cairnforth, looking up to her with his affectionate eyes, as she bent over his chair to bid him goodnight.

"I like him," was the frank answer. "He is very agreeable, and then he looks so ill."

"Was I right in asking him to stay here?"

"Yes, I think so. He is your nearest relation, and, as the proverb says, 'Bluid is thicker than water.'"

"Not always."

"But now you will soon be able to judge how you like him, I hope you will be very kind to him."

"Do you, Helen? Then I certainly will."

The earl kept his word. Many weeks went by; the 15th of July was long past, and still Captain Bruce remained a guest at the Castle—quite domesticated, for he soon made himself as much at home as if he had dwelt there all his days. He fluctuated a little between the Castle and the Manse, but soon decided that the latter was "rather a dull house" —the boys rough—the minister too much of a student—and Miss Cardross "a very good sort of girl, but certainly no beauty," which dictum delivered in an oracular manner, as from one well accustomed to criticize the sex, always amused the earl exceedingly.

To Lord Cairnforth, his new-found cousin devoted himself in the most cousinly way. Tender, respectful, unobtrusive, bestowing on him enough, and not too much of his society; never interfering, and yet always at hand with any assistance required: he was exactly the companion which the earl needed, and liked constantly beside him. For, of course, Malcolm, fond and faithful as he was, was only a servant; a friend, who was also a gentleman, yet who did not seem to feel or dislike the many small cares and attentions which were necessities to Lord Cairnforth, was quite a different thing. It was a touching contrast to see the two together; the active, elegant young man—for, now he was well-dressed, Captain Bruce looked remarkably elegant and gentlemanly, and the little motionless figure, as impassive and helpless almost as an image carved in stone, but yet who was undoubtedly the Earl of Cairnforth, and sole master of Cairnforth Castle.

Perhaps the wisest bit of the captain's proceedings was the tact with which he always recognized this fact, and paid his cousin that respect and deference, and that tacit acknowledgment of his rights of manhood and government which could not but be soothing and pleasant to one so afflicted. Or perhaps—let us give the kindest interpretation possible to all things—the earl's helplessness and loveableness touched a chord long silent, or never stirred before in the heart of the man of the world. Possibly—who can say?—he really began to like him.

At any rate, he seemed as if he did, and Lord Cairnforth gave back to him in double measure all that he bestowed.

As a matter of course, all the captain's pecuniary needs were at once supplied. His threadbare clothes became mysteriously changed into a wardrobe supplied with every thing that a gentleman could desire, and a rather luxurious gentleman too; which, owing to his Indian habits and his delicate health, the young captain turned out to be. At first he resisted all this kindness; but all remonstrances being soon overcome, he took his luxuries quite naturally, and evidently enjoyed them, though scarcely so much as the earl himself.

To that warm heart, which had never had half enough of its ties whereon to expend itself and its wealth of generosity, it was perfectly delicious to see the sick soldier daily gaining health by riding the Cairnforth horses, shooting over the moors, or fishing in the lochs. Never had the earl so keenly enjoyed his own wealth, and the blessings it enabled him to lavish abroad; never in his lifetime had he looked so thoroughly contented.

"Helen," he said one day, when she had come up for an hour or two to the Castle, and then as usual, Captain Bruce had taken the opportunity of riding out—he owned he found Miss Cardross's company and conversation "slow"—"Helen, that young man looks stronger and better every day. What a bright-looking fellow he is! It does one good to see him." And the earl followed with his eyes the graceful steed and equally graceful rider, caracoling in front of the Castle window.

Helen said nothing.

"I think," he continued, "that the next best thing to being happy one's self is to be able to make other people so. Perhaps that may be the sort of happiness they have in the next world. I often speculate about it, and wonder what sort of creature I shall find myself there. But." added he, abruptly, "now to business. You will be my secretary this morning instead of Bruce?"

"Willingly;" for, though she too, like Malcolm, had been a little displaced by this charming cousin, there was not an atom of jealousy in her nature. Hers was that pure and unselfish affection which could bear to stand by and see those she loved made happy, even though it was by another than herself.

She fell to work in her old way, and the earl employed as much as he required her ready handwriting, her clear head, and her full acquaintance with every body and every thing in the district; for Helen was a real minister's daughter—as popular and as necessary in the parish as the minister himself; and she was equally important at the Castle, where she was consulted, as this morning, on every thing Lord Cairnforth was about to do, and on the wisest way of expending—he did not wish to save—the large yearly income which he now seemed really beginning to enjoy.

Helen, too, after a long morning's work, drew her breath with a sigh of pleasure.

"What a grand thing it is to be as rich as you are!"

"Why so?"

"One can do such a deal of good with plenty of money."

"Yes. Should you like to be very rich, Helen?" watching her with an amused look.

Helen shook her head and laughed. "Oh, it's no use asking me the question, for I shall never have the chance of being rich."

"You can not say; you might marry, for instance."

"That is not likely. Papa could never do without me; besides, as the folk say, I'm 'no bonnie, ye ken.' But," speaking more seriously, "indeed, I never think of marrying. If it is to be it will be; if not, I am quite happy as I am. And for money, can I not always come to you whenever I want it? You supply me endlessly for my poor people. And, as Captain Bruce was saying to papa the other night, you are a perfect mine of gold—and of generosity."

"Helen," Lord Cairnforth said, after he had sat thinking a while, "I wanted to consult you about Captain Bruce. How do you like him? That is, do you still continue to like him, for I know you did at first?"

"And I do still. I feel so very sorry for him."

"Only, my dear"—Lord Cairnforth sometimes called her "my dear," and spoke to her with a tender, superior wisdom—"one's link to one's friends ought to be a little stronger than being sorry for them; one ought to respect them. One must respect them before one can trust them very much—with one's property, for instance."

"Do you mean," said straightforward Helen, "that you have any thoughts of making Captain Bruce your heir?"

"No, certainly not; but I have grave doubts whether I ought not to remember him in my will, only I wished to see his health re-established first, since, had he continued as delicate as when he came, he might not even have outlived me."

"How calmly you talk of all this," said Helen, with a little shiver. She, full of life and health, could hardly realize the feeling of one who stood always on the brink of another world, and looking to that world only for real health—real life.

"I think of it calmly, and therefore speak calmly. But, dear Helen, I will not grieve you to-day. There is plenty of time, and all is safe, whatever happens. I can trust my successor to do rightly. As for my cousin, I will try him a little longer, lest he prove

"'A little more than kin, and less than kind.'"

"There seems no likelihood of that. He always speaks in the warmest manner of you whenever he comes to the Manse; that is what makes me like him, I fancy; and also, because I would always believe the best of people until I found out to the contrary. Life would not be worth having if we were continually suspecting every body—believing every body bad till we had found them out to be good. If so, with many, I fear we should never find the good out at all. That is—I can't put it cleverly, like you, but I know what I mean."

Lord Cairnforth smiled. "So do I, Helen, which is quite enough for us two. We will talk this over some other time; and meanwhile"—he looked at her earnestly and spoke with meaning—"if ever you have an opportunity of being kind to Captain Bruce, remember he is my next of kin, and I wish it."

"Certainly," answered Helen. "But I am never likely to have the chance of doing any kindness to such a very fine gentleman."

Lord Cairnforth smiled to himself once more, and let the conversation end; afterward—long afterward, he recalled it, and thought with a strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal; nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face—not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true—with the sun shining on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears—oceans of bitterness—that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite faded out of Helen's eyes.

"Ay," Lord Cairnforth said to himself, when she had gone away, and he was left alone in that helpless solitude which, being the inevitable necessity, had grown into the familiar habit of his life, "ay, it is all right. No harm could come—there would be nothing neglected—even were I to die to-morrow."

That "dying to-morrow," which might happen to any one of us, how few really recognize it and prepare for it! Not in the ordinary religious sense of "preparation for death"—often a most irreligious thing —a frantic attempt of sinning and terror-stricken humanity to strike a balance-sheet with heaven, just leaving a sufficient portion on the credit side—but preparation in the ordinary worldly meaning— keeping one's affairs straight and clear, that no one may be perplexed therewith afterward; forgiving and asking forgiveness of offenses; removing evil done, and delaying not for a day any good that it is possible to do.

It was a strange thing; but, as after his death it was discovered, the true secret of the wonderful calmness and sweetness which, year by year, deepened more and more in Lord Cairnforth's character, ripening it to a perfectness in which those who only saw the outside of his could hardly believe, consisted in this ever-abiding thought—that he might die to-morrow. Existence was to him such a mere twilight, dim, imperfect, and sad, that he never rested in it, but lived every day, as it were, in prospect of the eternal dawn.



Chapter 9

This summer, which, as it glided away, Lord Cairnforth often declared to be the happiest of his life, ended by bringing him the first heavy affliction—external affliction—which his life had ever known.

Suddenly, in the midst of the late-earned rest of a very toilsome career, died Mr. Menteith, the earl's long-faithful friend, who had been almost as good to him as a father. He felt it sorely; the more so, because, though his own frail life seemed always under the imminent shadow of death, death had never touched him before as regarded other people. He had lived, as we all unconsciously do, till the great enemy smites us, feeling as if, whatever might be the case with himself, those whom he loved could never die. This grief was something quite new to him, and it struck him hard.

The tidings came on a gloomy day in late October, the season when Cairnforth is least beautiful; for the thick woods about it make the always damp atmosphere heavy with "the moist, rich smell of the rotting leaves," and the roads lying deep in mud, and the low shore hung with constant mists, give a general impression of dreariness. The far-away hills vanish entirely for days together, and the loch itself takes a leaden hue, as if it never could be blue again. You can hardly believe that the sun will ever again shine out upon it; the white waves rise, the mountains reappear, and the whole scene grows clear and lovely, as life does sometimes if we have only patience to endure through the weary winter until spring.

But for the good man, John Menteith, his springs and winter were alike ended; he was gathered to his fathers, and his late ward mourned him bitterly.

Mr. Cardross and Helen, coming up to the Castle as soon as the news reached them, found Lord Cairnforth in a state of depression such as they had never before witnessed in him. One of the things which seemed to affect him most painfully, as small things sometimes do in the midst of deepest grief, was that he could not attend Mr. Menteith's funeral.

"Every other man," said he, sadly, "every other man can follow his dear friends and kindred to the grave, can give them respect in death as he has given them love and help during life—I can do neither. I can help no one—be of use to no one. I am a mere cumberer of the ground. It would be better if I were away."

"Hush! Do not dare to say that," answered Mr. Cardross. And he sent the rest away, even Helen, and sat down beside his old pupil, not merely as a friend, but as a minister—in the deepest meaning of the word, even as it was first used of Him who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."

Helen's father was not a demonstrative man under ordinary circumstances; he was too much absorbed in his books, and in a sort of languid indifference to worldly matters, which had long hung over him, more or less, ever since his wife's death; but, when occasion arose, he could rise equal to it; and he was one of those comforters who knew the way through the valley of affliction by the marks which their own feet have trod.

He and the earl spent a whole hour alone together. Afterward, when sorrow, compared to which the present grief was calm and sacred, fell upon them both, they remembered this day, and were not afraid to open their wounded hearts to one another.

At last Mr. Cardross came out of the library, and told Helen that Lord Cairnforth wanted to speak to her.

"He wishes to have your opinion, as well as my own, about a journey he is projecting to Edinburg, and some business matters which he desires to arrange there. I think he would have like to see Captain Bruce too. Where is he?"

The captain had found this atmosphere of sorrow a little too overpowering, and had disappeared for a long ride; so Miss Cardross had been sitting alone all the time.

"Your father has been persuading me, Helen," said the earl, when she came in, "that I am not quite so useless in the world as I imagined. He says he has reason to believe, from things Mr. Menteith let fall, that my dear old friend's widow is not very well provided for, and she and her children will have a hard battle even now. Mr. Cardross thinks I can help her very materially, in one way especially. You know I have made my will?"

"Yes," replied unconscious Helen, "you told me so."

"Mr. Menteith drew it up the last time he was here. How little we thought it would be really the last time! Ah! Helen, if we could only look forward!"

"It is best not," said Helen, earnestly.

"Well, my will is made. And though in it I left nothing to Mr. Menteith himself, seeing that such a return of his kindness would be very unwelcome, I insisted doing what was equivalent—bequeathing a thousand pounds to each of his children. Was I right in that? You do not object"?

"Most assuredly not," answered Helen, though a little surprised at the question. Still, she was so long accustomed to be consulted by the earl, and to give her opinion frankly and freely on all points, that the surprise was only momentary.

"And, by the way, I mean to leave the same sum—one thousand pounds —to my cousin, Captain Bruce. Remember that, Helen; remember it particularly, will you? In case any thing should happen before I have time to add this to my will. But to the Menteiths. Your father thinks, and I agree with him, that the money I design for them will be far better spent now, or some portion of it, in helping these fatherless children on in the world, than in keeping them waiting for my death, which may not happen for years. What do you think?"

Helen agreed heartily. It would cause a certain diminution of yearly income, but then the earl had far more than enough for his own wants, and if not spent thus, the sum would certainly have been expended by him some other form of benevolence. She said as much.

"Possibly it might. What else should I do with it?" was Lord Cairnforth's answer. "But, in order to get at the money, and alter my will, so that in no case should this sum be paid twice over, to the injury of my heir—I must take care of my heir," and he slightly smiled, "I ought to go at once to Edinburg. Shall I?"

Helen hesitated. The earl's last journey had been so unpropitious— he had taken so long a time to recover from it—that she had earnestly hoped he would never attempt another. She expressed this as delicately as she could.

"No, I never would have attempted it for myself. Change is only pain and weariness to me. I have no wish to leave dear, familiar Cairnforth till I leave it for—the place where my good old friend is now. And sometimes, Helen, I fancy the hills of Paradise will not be very unlike the hills about our loch. You would think of me far away, when you were looking at them sometimes?"

Helen fixed her tender eyes upon him—"It is quite as likely that you may have to think of me thus, for I may go first; I am the elder of us two. But all that is in God's hands alone. About Edinburg now. When should you start?"

"At once, I think; though, with my slow traveling, I should not be in time for the funeral; and even if I were, I could not attend it without giving much trouble to other people. But, as your father has shown me, the funeral does not signify. The great matter is to be of use to Mrs. Menteith and the children in the way I explained. Have I your consent, my dear!"

For an answer, Helen pointed to a few lines in a Bible which lay open on the library table: no doubt her father had been reading out of it, for it was open at that portion which seems to have plumbed the depth of all human anguish—the Book of Job. She repeated the verses:

"'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me;

"'Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him:

"'The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.'

"That is what will be said of you one day, Lord Cairnforth. Is not this something worth living for?"

"Ay, it is!" replied the earl, deeply moved; and Helen was scarcely less so.

They discussed no more the journey to Edinburg; but Lord Cairnforth, in his decided way, gave orders immediately to prepare for it, taking with him, as usual, Malcolm and Mrs. Campbell. By the time Captain Bruce returned from his ride, the guest was startled by the news that his host meant to quit Cairnforth at daylight the next morning, which appeared to disconcert the captain exceedingly.

"I would volunteer to accompany you, cousin," said he, after expressing his extreme surprise and regret, "but the winds of Edinburg are ruin to my weak lungs, which the air here suits so well. So I must prepare to quit pleasant Cairnforth, where I have received so much kindness, and which I have grown to regard almost like home—the nearest approach to home that in my sad, wandering life I ever knew."

There was an unmistakable regret in the young man's tone which, in spite of his own trouble, went to the earl's good heart.

"Why should you leave at all?" said he. "Why not remain here and await my return, which can not be long delayed—two months at most—even counting my slow traveling? I will give you something to do meanwhile: I will make you viceroy of Cairnforth during my absence—that is, under Miss Cardross, who alone knows all the parish affairs—and mine. Will you accept the office?"

"Under Miss Cardross?" Captain Bruce laughed, but did not seem quite to relish it. However, he expressed much gratitude at having been thought worthy of the earl's confidence.

"Don't be humble, my good cousin and friend. If I did not trust you, and like you, I should never think of asking you to stay. Mr. Cardross —Helen—what do you say to my plan"?

Both gave a cordial assent, as was indeed certain. Nothing ill was known of Captain Bruce, and nothing noticed in him unlikeable, or unworthy of liking. And even as to his family, who wrote to him constantly, and whose letters he often showed, there had appeared sufficient evidence in their favor to counterbalance much of the suspicions against them, so that the earl was glad he had leaned to the charitable side in making his cousin welcome to Cairnforth; glad, too, that he could atone by warm confidence and extra kindness for what now seemed too long a neglect of those who were really his nearest kith and kin.

Mr. Cardross also; any prejudices he had from his knowledge of the late earl's troubles with the Bruces were long ago dispersed. And Helen was too innocent herself ever to have had a prejudice at all. She said, when appealed to pointedly by the earl, as he now often appealed to her in many things, that she thought the scheme both pleasant and advisable.

"And now, papa," added she, for her watchful eye detected Lord Cairnforth's pale face and wearied air, "let us say good-night—and good-by."

Long after, they remembered, all of them, what an exceedingly quiet and ordinary good-by it was, none having the slightest feeling that it was more than a temporary parting. The whole thing had been so sudden, and the day's events appeared quite shadowy, and as if every body would wake up to-morrow morning to find them nothing but a dream.

Besides, there was a little hurrying and confusion consequent on the earl's insisting on sending the Cardrosses home, for the dull, calm day had changed into the wildest of nights—one of those sudden equinoctial storms, that in an hour or two alter the whole aspect of things this region.

"You must take the carriage, Helen—you and your father; it is the last thing I can do for you—and I would do every thing in the world for you if I could; but I shall, one day. Good-by. Take care of yourself, my dear."

These were the earl's farewell words to her. She was so accustomed to his goodness and kindness that she never thought much about them till long afterward, when kindness was gone, and goodness seemed the merest delusion and dream.