"But surely that is no cause for a challenge, Excellenz?" said I. "How can an officer of the Kaiser bring such a challenge?"

"Ach!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "is not a fight a fight, cause or no cause? Moreover, is not Hellmuth after all the son of my mother's sister, though but a Rhineland donkey, and void of sense?"

So I showed him up to the room of the English Herr, and went away again, though not so far but that I could hear their voices.

It was the officer whom I heard speaking first. He spoke loudly, and as I say, having been of the Intelligence Department, I did not go too far away.

"You have my friend insulted, and you must immediately satisfaction make!" said the young Officier.

"That will I gladly do, if your friend will deign to come up here. There are more ways of fighting than getting into a feather-bed and cutting at the corners." So our young Englander spoke, with his high voice, piping and clipping his words as all the English do.

"Sir," said the officer, with some heat, "I bring you a cartel, and I am an officer of the Kaiser. What is your answer?"

"Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier, you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses is no fighting. Tell your friend to come up here and have a turn with the two-ounce gloves, and I shall be happy to give him all the satisfaction he wants. Otherwise I will only fight him with pistols, and to the death also. If he will not fight in my way, I shall beat him with a cane for having insulted me, whenever I meet him."

With that the officer came down to me, and he said, "It is as you thought. The Englishman will not fight with the Schlaeger, but he has more steel in his veins than a dozen of Hellmuths. Thunderweather, I shall fight Hellmuth myself to-morrow morning, if it be that he burns so greatly to be led away. Once before I gave him a scar of heavenly beauty!"

So he clanked off in the ten days' glory of his spurs. I have seen many such as he stiff on the slope of Spichern and in the woods beneath St. Germain. Yet he was a Kerl of mettle, and will make a brave soldier and upstanding officer.

But the Herr has again come in and he says that all this is a particular kind of nonsense which, because I write also for ladies, I shall not mention. I am not sure, also, what English words it is proper to put on paper. The Herr says that he will tear every word up that I have written, which would be a sad waste of the Frau Wittwe's paper and ink. He says, this hot Junker, that in all my writing there is yet no word of Paris or the days of the Commune, which is true. He also says that my head is the head of a calf, and, indeed, of several other animals that are but ill-considered in England.

So I will be brief.

In Seventy, therefore, I fought in the field and scouted with the Uhlans. Ah, I could tell the stories! Those were the days. It is a mistake to think that the country-people hated us, or tried to kill us. On the contrary, if I might tell it, many of the young maids—

Ach, bitte, Herr—of a surety I will proceed and tell of Paris. I am aware that it is not to be expected that the English should care to hear of the doings of the Reiters of the black-and-white pennon in the matter of the maids.

But in Seventy-one, during the siege and the terrible days of the Commune, I was in Paris, what you call a spy. It was the order of the Chancellor—our man of blood-and-iron. Therefore it was right and not ignoble that I should be a spy.

For I have served my country in more terrible places than the field of Weissenburg or the hill of Spichern.

Ja wohl! there were few Prussians who could be taken for Frenchmen, in Paris during those months when suspicion was everywhere. Yet in Paris I was, all through the days of the investiture. More, I was chief of domestic service at the Hotel de Ville, and my letters went through the balloon-post to England, and thence back to Versailles, where my brothers were and the Kaiser whom in three wars I have served. For I am Prussian in heart and by begetting, though born in Elsass.

So daily I waited on Trochu, as I had also waited on Jules Favre when he dined, and all the while the mob shouted for the blood of spies without. But I was Jules Lemaire from the Midi, a stupid provincial with the rolling accent, come to Paris to earn money and see the life. Not for nothing had I gone to school at Clermont-Ferrand.

But once I was nearly discovered and torn to pieces. The sweat breaks cold even now to think upon it. It was a March morning very early, soon after the light came stealing up the river from behind Notre-Dame. A bitter wind was sweeping the bare, barked, hacked trees on the Champs Elysees. It happened that I went every morning to the Halles to make the market for the day—such as was to be had. And, of course, we at the Hotel de Ville had our pick of the best before any other was permitted to buy. So I went daily as Monsieur Jules Lemaire from the Hotel de Ville. And please to take off your kepis, canaille of the markets.

Suddenly I saw riding towards me a Prussian hussar of my old regiment. He rode alone, but presently I spied two others behind him. The first was that same sergeant Strauss who had knocked me about so grievously when first I joined the colours. At that time I hated the sight of him, but now it was the best I could do to keep down the German "Hoch!" which rose to the top of my throat and stopped there all of a lump.

Listen! The gamins and vauriens of the quarters—louts and cruel rabble—were running after him—yes, screaming all about him. There were groups of National Guards looking for their regiments, or marauding to pick up what they could lay their hands on, for it was a great time for patriotism. But Strauss of the Blaue Husaren, he sat his horse stiff and steady as at parade, and looked out under his eyebrows while the mob howled and surged. Himmel! It made me proud. Ach, Gott! but the old badger-grey Strauss sat steady, and rode his horse at a walk—easy, cool as if he were going up Unter den Linden on Mayday under the eyes of the pretty girls. Not that ever old Strauss cared as much for maids' eyes as I would have done—ah me, in Siebenzig!

Then came two men behind him, looking quickly up the side-streets, with carbines ready across their saddles. And so they rode, these three, like true Prussians every one. And I swear it took Jacob Oertler, that was Jules of the Midi, all his possible to keep from crying out; but he could not for his life keep down the sobs. However, the Frenchmen thought that he wept to see the disgrace of Paris. So that, and nothing else, saved him.

When Strauss and his two stayed a moment to consult as to the way, the crowd of noisy whelps pressed upon them, snarling and showing their teeth. Then Strauss and his men grimly fitted a cartridge into each carbine. Seeing which, it was enough for these very faint-heart patriots. They turned and ran, and with them ran Jules of the Midi that waited at the Hotel de Ville. He ran as fast as the best of them; and so no man took me for a German that day or any other day that I was in Paris.

Then, after this deliverance, I went on to the Halles. The streets were more ploughed with shells than a German field when the teams go to and fro in the spring.

There were two men with me in the uniform of the Hotel de Ville, to carry the provisions. For already the new marketings were beginning to come in by the Porte Maillot at Neuilly.

As ever, when we came to the market-stalls, it was "Give place to the Hotel de Ville!" While I made my purchases, an old man came up to the butcher-fellow who was serving, and asked him civilly for a piece of the indifferent beef he was cutting for me. The rascal, a beast of Burgundy, dazed with absinthe and pig by nature, answered foully after his kind. The old man was very old, but his face was that of a man of war. He lifted his stick as though to strike, for he had a beautiful young girl on his arm. But I saw the lip of the Burgundian butcher draw up over his teeth like a snarling dog, and his hand shorten on his knife.

"Have politeness," I said sharply to the rascal, "or I will on my return report you to the General, and have you fusiladed!"

This made him afraid, for indeed the thing was commonly done at that time.

The old man smiled and held out his hand to me. He said—

"My friend, some day I may be able to repay you, but not now."

Yet I had interfered as much for the sake of the lady's eyes as for the sake of the old man's grey hairs. Besides, the butcher was but a pig of a Burgundian who daily maligned the Prussians with words like pig's offal.

Then we went back along the shell-battered streets, empty of carriages, for all the horses had been eaten, some as beef and some as plain horse.

"Monsieur the Commissary," said one of the porters, "do you know that the old man to whom you spoke, with the young lady, is le Pere Felix, whom all the patriots of Paris call the 'Deliverer of Forty-eight'?"

I knew it not, nor cared. I am a Prussian, though born in Elsass.

So in Paris the days passed on. In our Hotel de Ville the officials of the Provisional Government became more and more uneasy. The gentlemen of the National Guard took matters in their own hands, and would neither disband nor work. They sulked about the brows of Montmartre, where they had taken their cannon. My word, they were dirty patriots! I saw them every day as I went by to the Halles, lounging against the walls—linesmen among them, too, absent from duty without leave. They sat on the kerb-stone leaning their guns against the placard-studded wall. Some of them had loaves stuck on the points of their bayonets—dirty scoundrels all!

Then came the flight of one set of masters and the entry of another. But even the Commune and the unknown young men who came to the Hotel de Ville made no change to Jules, the head waiter from the Midi. He made ready the dejeuner as usual, and the gentlemen of the red sash were just as fond of the calves' flesh and the red wine as the brutal bourgeoisie of Thiers' Republic or the aristocrats of the regime of Buonaparte. It was quite equal.

It was only a little easier to send my weekly report to my Prince and Chancellor out at Saint Denis. That was all. For if the gentlemen who went talked little and lined their pockets exceedingly well, these new masters of mine both talked much and drank much. It was no longer the Commune, but the Proscription. I knew what the end of these things would be, but I gave no offence to any, for that was not my business. Indeed, what mattered it if all these Frenchmen cut each other's throats? There were just so many the fewer to breed soldiers to fight against the Fatherland, in the war of revenge of which they are always talking.

So the days went on, and there were ever more days behind them—east-windy, bleak days, such as we have in Pomerania and in Prussia, but seldom in Paris. The city was even then, with the red flag floating overhead, beautiful for situation—the sky clear save for the little puffs of smoke from the bombs when they shelled the forts, and Valerien growled in reply.

The constant rattle of musketry came from the direction of Versailles. It was late one afternoon that I went towards the Halles, and as I went I saw a company of the Guard National, tramping northward to the Buttes Montmartre where the cannons were. In their midst was a man with white hair at whom I looked—the same whom we had seen at the market-stalls. He marched bareheaded, and a pair of the scoundrels held him, one at either sleeve.

Behind him came his daughter, weeping bitterly but silently, and with the salt water fairly dripping upon her plain black dress.

"What is this?" I asked, thinking that the cordon of the Public Safety would pass me, and that I might perhaps benefit my friend of the white locks.

"Who may you be that asks so boldly?" said one of the soldiers sneeringly.

They were ill-conditioned, white-livered hounds.

"Jules the garcon—Jules of the white apron!" cried one who knew me. "Know you not that he is now Dictator? Vive the Dictator Jules, Emperor-of 'Encore-un-Bock'!"

So they mocked me, and I dared not try them further, for we came upon another crowd of them with a poor frightened man in the centre. He was crying out—"For me, I am a man of peace—gentlemen, I am no spy. I have lived all my life in the Rue Scribe." But one after another struck at him, some with the butt-end of their rifles, some with their bayonets, those behind with the heels of their boots—till that which had been a man when I stood on one side of the street, was something which would not bear looking upon by the time that I had passed to the other. For these horrors were the commonest things done under the rule of Hell—which was the rule of the Commune. Then I desired greatly to have done my commission and to be rid of Paris.

In a little the Nationals were thirsty. Ho, a wine-shop! There was one with the shutters up, probably a beast of a German—or a Jew. It is the same thing. So with the still bloody butts of their chassepots they made an entrance. They found nothing, however, but a few empty bottles and stove-in barrels. This so annoyed them that they wrought wholesale destruction, breaking with their guns and with their feet everything that was breakable.

So in time we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted—the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting—the hostages all fusiladed.

When we arrived at the gate, there came out a finely dressed, personable man in a frock-coat, with a red ribbon in his button-hole. The officer in charge of the motley crew reported that he held a prisoner, the citizen commonly called Pere Felix.

"Pere Felix?" said the man in the frock-coat, "and who might he be?"

"A member of the Revolutionary Government of Forty-eight," said the old man with dignity, speaking from the midst of his captors; "a revolutionary and Republican before you were born, M. Raoul Regnault!"

"Ah, good father, but this is not Forty-eight! It is Seventy-one!" said the man on the steps, with a supercilious air. "I tell you as a matter of information!"

"You had better shoot him and have the matter over!" he added, turning away with his cane swinging in his hand.

Then, with a swirl of his sword, the officer marshalled us all into the courtyard—for I had followed to see the end. I could not help myself.

It was a great, bare, barren quadrangle of brick, the yard of Mazas where the prisoners exercise. The walls rose sheer for twenty feet. The doorway stood open into it, and every moment or two another company of Communists would arrive with a gang of prisoners. These were rudely pushed to the upper end, where, unbound, free to move in every direction, they were fired at promiscuously by all the ragged battalions—men, women, and even children shooting guns and pistols at them, as at the puppet-shows of Asnieres and Neuilly.

The prisoners were some of them running to and fro, pitifully trying between the grim brick walls to find a way of escape. Some set their bare feet in the niches of the brick and strove to climb over. Some lay prone on their faces, either shot dead or waiting for the guards to come round (as they did every five or ten minutes) to finish the wounded by blowing in the back of their heads with a charge held so close that it singed the scalp.

As I stood and looked at this horrible shooting match, a human shambles, suddenly I was seized and pushed along, with the young girl beside me, towards the wall. Horror took possession of me. "I am Chief Servitor at the Hotel de Ville," I cried. "Let me go! It will be the worse for you!"

"There is no more any Hotel de Ville!" cried one. "See it blaze."

"Accompany gladly the house wherein thou hast eaten many good dinners! Go to the Fire, ingrate!" cried another of my captors.

So for very shame, and because the young maid was silent, I had to cease my crying. They erected us like targets against the brick wall, and I set to my prayers. But when they had retired from us and were preparing themselves to fire, I had the grace to put the young girl behind me. For I said, if I must die, there is no need that the young maid should also die—at least, not till I am dead. I heard the bullets spit against the wall, fired by those farthest away; but those in front were only preparing.

Then at that moment something seemed to retard them, for instead of making an end to us, they turned about and listened uncertainly.

Outside on the street, there came a great flurry of cheering people, crying like folk that weep for joy—"Vive la ligne! Vive la ligne! The soldiers of the Line! The soldiers of the Line!"

The door was burst from its hinges. The wide outer gate was filled with soldiers in dusty uniforms. The Versaillists were in the city.

"Vive la ligne!" cried the watchers on the house-tops. "Vive la ligne!" cried we, that were set like human targets against the wall. "Vive la ligne!" cried the poor wounded, staggering up on an elbow to wave a hand to the men that came to Mazas in the nick of time.

Then there was a slaughter indeed. The Communists fought like tigers, asking no quarter. They were shot down by squads, regularly and with ceremony. And we in our turn snatched their own rifles and revolvers and shot them down also.... "Coming, Frau Wittwe! So fort!" ...

* * * * *

And the rest—well, the rest is, that I have a wife and seven beautiful children. Yes, "The girl I left behind me," as your song sings. Ah, a joke. But the seven children are no joke, young Kerl, as you may one day find.

And why am I Oberkellner at the Prinz Karl in Heidelberg? Ah, gentlemen, I see you do not know. In the winter it is as you see it; but all the summer and autumn—what with Americans and English, it is better to be Oberkellner to Madame the Frau Wittwe than to be Prince of Kennenlippeschoenberghartenau!



V

THE CASE OF JOHN ARNISTON'S CONSCIENCE

Hail, World adored! to thee three times all hail! We at thy mighty shrine—profane, obscure With clenched hands beat at thy cruel door, O hear, awake, and let us in, O Baal!

Low at thy brazen gates ourselves we fling— Hear us, even us, thy bondmen firm and sure, Our kin, our souls, our very God abjure! Art thou asleep, or dead, or journeying?

Bear us, O Ashtoreth, O Baal, that we In mystic mazes may a moment gleam, May touch and twine with hot hearts pulsing free Among thy groves by the Orontes stream.

Open and make us, ere our sick hearts fail, Hewers of wood within thy courts, O Baal!

"Pro Fano."

John Arniston's heart beat fast and high as he went homeward through the London streets. It had come at last. The blossom of love's passion-flower had been laid within his grasp. The eyes in whose light he had sunned himself for months had leaped suddenly into a sweet and passionate flame. He had seen the sun of a woman's wondrous beauty, and long followed it afar. Miriam Gale was the success of the season. It was understood that she had the entire unattached British peerage at her feet. Nevertheless, her head had touched John Arniston's shoulder to-night. He had kissed her hair. "A queen's crown of yellow gold," was what he said to himself as he walked along, the evening traffic of the Strand humming and surging about him. Because her lips had rested a moment on his, he walked light-headed as one who for the first time "tastes love's thrice-repured nectar."

He tried to remember how it happened, and in what order—so much within an hour.

He had gone in the short and dark London afternoon into her drawing-room. Something had detained him—a look, the pressure of a hand, a moment's lingering in a glance—he could not remember which. Then the crowd of gilded youth ebbed reluctantly away. There was long silence after they had gone, as Miriam Gale and he sat looking at each other in the ruddy firelight. Nor did their eyes sever till with sudden unanimous impulse they clave to one another. Then the fountains of the deep were broken up, and the deluge overwhelmed their souls.

What happened after that? Something Miriam was saying about some one named Reginald. Her voice was low and earnest, thrillingly sweet. How full of charm the infantile tremble that came into it as she looked entreatingly at him! He listened to its tones, and it was long before he troubled to follow the meaning. She was telling him something of an early and foolish marriage—of a life of pain and cruelty, of a new life and sphere of action, all leading up to the true and only love of her life. Well, what of that? He had always understood she had been married before. Enwoven in the mesh-net of her scented hair, her soft cheek warm and wet against his, all this talk seemed infinitely detached—the insignificant problems of a former existence, long solved, prehistoric, without interest. Then he spoke. He remembered well what he had said. It was that to-morrow they twain, drawing apart from all the evil tongues of the world, were to begin the old walk along the Sure Way of Happiness. The world was not for them. A better life was to be theirs. They would wander through noble and high-set cities. Italy, beloved of lovers, waited for them. Her stone-pines beckoned to them. There he would tell her about great histories, and of the lives of the knights and ladies who dwelt in the cities set on the hills.

"I am so ignorant," Miriam Gale had said, pushing his head back that she might look at his whole face at once. "I am almost afraid of you—but I love you, and I shall learn all these things."

It was all inconceivable and strange. The glamour of love mingled with the soft, fitful firelight reflected in Miriam's eyes, till they twain seemed the only realities. So that when she began to speak of her husband, it seemed at first no more to John Arniston than if she had told him that her shoeblack was yet alive. He and she had no past; only a future, instant and immediate, waiting for them to-morrow.

How many times did they not move apart after a last farewell? John Arniston could not tell, though to content himself he tried to count. Then, their eyes drawing them together again, they had stood silent in the long pause when the life throbs to and fro and the heart thunders in the ears. At last, with "To-morrow!" for an iterated watchword between them, they parted, and John Arniston found himself in the street. It was the full rush of the traffic of London; but to him it was all strangely silent. Everything ran noiselessly to-night. Newsboys mouthed the latest horror, and John Arniston never heard them. Mechanically he avoided the passers-by, but it was with no belief in their reality. To him they were but phantom shapes walking in a dream. His world was behind him—and before. The fragrance of the bliss of dreams was on his lips. His heart bounded with the thought of that "To-morrow" which they had promised to one another. The white Italian cities which he had visited alone gleamed whiter than ever before him. Was it possible that he should sit in the great square of St. Mark's with Miriam Gale by his side, the sun making a patchwork of gold and blue among the pinnacles of the Church of the Evangelist? There, too, he saw, as he walked, the Lido shore, and the long sickle sweep of the beach. The Adriatic slumbrously tossed up its toy surges, and lo! a tall girl in white walked hand-in-hand with him. He caught his breath. He had just realised that it was all to begin to-morrow. Then again he saw that glimmering white figure throw itself down in an agony of parting into the low chair, kneeling beside which his life began.

But stop—what was it after all that Miriam had been saying? Something about her husband? Had he heard aright—that he was still alive, only dead to her?—"Dead for many years," was her word. After all, it was no matter. Nothing mattered any more. His goddess had stepped down to him with open arms. He had heard the beating of her heart. She was a breathing, loving woman.

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow." It seemed so far away. And were there indeed other skies, blue and clear, in Italy, in which the sun shone? It seemed hard to believe with the fog of London, yellow and thick like bad pea-soup, taking him stringently in the throat.

How he found his way back to his room, walking thus in a maze, he never could recall. As the door clicked and he turned towards the fireplace, his eye fell upon a brown-paper parcel lying on the table. John Arniston opened it out in an absent way, his mind and fancy still abiding by the low chair in Miriam's room. What he saw smote him suddenly pale. He laid his hand on the mantelpiece to keep from falling. It was nothing more than a plain, thick quarto volume, covered with a worn overcoat of undressed calf-skin. At the angle of the back and on one side the rough hair was worn thin, and the skin showed through. His mother had done that, reaching it down for his father to "take the book"[2] in the old house at home. John Arniston sat down on the easy-chair with the half-unwrapped parcel on his knee. His eye read the pages without a letter printing itself on his retina. It was a book within a book, and without also, which he read. He read the tale of the smooth places on the side. No one in the world but himself could know what he read. He saw this book, his father's great house Bible, lying above a certain grey head, in the white square hole in the wall. Beneath it was a copy of the Drumfern Standard, and on the top a psalm-book in which were his mother's spectacles, put there when she took them off after reading her afternoon portion.

[Footnote 2: Engage in family worship.]

He opened the book at random: "And God spake all these words saying ... THOU SHALT NOT—" The tremendous sentence smote him fairly on the face. He threw his head violently back so that he might not read any further. The book slipped between his knees and fell heavily on the floor.

But the words which had caught his eye, "THOU SHALT NOT—" were printed in fire on the ceiling, or on his brain—he did not know which. He got up quickly, put on his hat, and went out again into the bitter night. He turned down to the left and paced the Thames Embankment. The fog was thicker than ever. Unseen watercraft with horns and steam-roarers grunted like hogs in the river. But in John Arniston's brain there was a conflict of terrible passion.

After all, it was but folklore, he said to himself. Nothing more than that. Every one knew it. All intelligent people were nowadays of one religion. The thing was manifestly absurd—the Hebrew fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to him at that moment.

Well, it was done with. The effete morality of a printed book was no tie upon him. The New Freedom was his—the freedom to do as he would and possess what he desired. Yet after all it was an old religion, this of John's. It has had many names; but it has never wanted priests to preach and devotees to practise its very agreeable tenets.

John Arniston stamped with his foot as he came to this decision. The fog was clearing off the river. It was no more than a mere scum on the water. There was a rift above, straight up to the stars.

"AND GOD SPAKE ALL THESE WORDS—."

"No," he said, over and over, "I shall not give her up. It is preposterous. Yet my father believed it. He died with his hand on the old Bible, his finger in the leaves—my mother—"

"AND GOD SPAKE ALL THESE WORDS—." The sentence seemed to flash through the rift over the shot-tower—to tingle down from the stars.

There are no true perverts. When man strips him to the bare buff, he is of the complexion his mother bestowed upon him. When his life's card-castle, laboriously piled, tumbles ignominious, he is again of his mother's religion.

"AND GOD—."

John Arniston stepped to the edge of the parapet. He looked over into the slow, swirling black water. It was a quick way that—but no—it was not to be his way. He looked at his watch. It was time to go to the office. He had an article to do. As well do that as anything. But first he would write a letter to her.

Shut in his room, his hand flying swiftly lest it should turn back in spite of him, John Arniston wrote a letter to Miriam Gale—a letter that was all one lie. He could not tell her the true reason why he would not go on the morrow. Who was he, that he should put himself in the attitude of being holier than Miriam Gale? It was certainly not because he did not wish to go—or that he thought it wrong. Simply, his father's calf-skin Bible barred the way, and he could no more pass over it than he could have trampled over his mother's body to his desire.

It was done. The letter was written. What was the particular excuse, invented fiercely at the moment, there is no use writing down here to cumber the page. John Arniston cheerfully gave himself over to the recording angel. Yet the ninth commandment is of equal interpretation, though it may be somewhat less clearly and tersely expressed than the seventh.

He went out and posted his note at a pillar-box in a quiet street with his own hand. The postman had just finished clearing when John came to thrust in the letter to Miriam Gale. The envelope slid into an empty receiver as the postman clicked the key. He turned to John with a look which said—"Too late that time, sir!" But John never so much as noticed that there was a postman by his side, who shouldered his bags with an air of official detachment. John Arniston went back to his room, and while he waited for a book of reference (for articles must be written so long as the pillars of the firmament stand) he lifted an evening paper which lay on the table. He ran his eye by instinct over the displayed cross headings. His eye caught a name. "Found Drowned at Battersea Bridge—Reginald Gale."

"Reginald Gale," said John to himself—"where did I hear that name?"

Like a flash, every word that Miriam had told him about her worthless husband—his treatment of her, his desertion within a few days of her marriage—stood plain before him as if he had been reading the thing in proof.... Miriam Gale was a free woman.

And his pitiable lying letter? It was posted—lurking in the pillar-box round the corner, waiting to speed on its way to break the heart of the girl, who had been willing to risk all, and count the world well lost for the sake of him.

He seized his hat and ran down-stairs, taking the steps half a dozen at a time. He met the boy coming up with the book. He passed as if he had stepped over the top of him. The boy turned and gazed open-mouthed. The gentlemen at the office were all of them funny upon occasion, but John Arniston had never had the symptoms before.

"He's got a crisis!" said the boy to himself, clutching at an explanation he had heard once given in the sub-editor's room.

For an hour John Arniston paced to and fro before that pillar-box, timing the passing policeman, praying that the postman who came to clear it might prove corruptible.

Would he never come? It appeared upon the white enamelled plate that the box was to be cleared in an hour. But he seemed to have waited seven hours in hell already. The policeman gazed at him suspiciously. A long row of jewellers' shops was just round the corner, and he might be a professional man of standing—in spite of the fur-collar of his coat—with an immediate interest in jewellery.

The postman came at last. He was a young, alert, beardless man, who whistled as he came. John Arniston was instantly beside him as he stooped to unlock the little iron door.

"See here," he said eagerly, in a low voice, "I have made a mistake in posting a letter. Two lives depend on it. I'll give you twenty pounds in notes into your hand now, if you let me take back the letter at the bottom of that pillar!"

"Sorry—can't do it, sir—more than my place is worth. Besides, how do I know that you put in that letter? It may be a jewel letter from one of them coves over there!"

And he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

John Arniston could meet that argument.

"You can feel it," he said; "try if there is anything in it, coin or jewels—you could tell, couldn't you?"

The man laughed.

"Might be notes, sir, like them in your hand—couldn't do it, indeed, sir."

The devil leaped in the hot Scots blood of John Arniston.

He caught the kneeling servant of Her Majesty's noblest monopoly by the throat, as he paused smiling with the door of the pillar-box open and the light of the street-lamp falling on the single letter which lay within. The clutch was no light one, and the man's life gurgled in his throat.

John Arniston snatched the letter, glanced once at the address. It was his own. There was, indeed, no other. Hurriedly he thrust the four notes into the hand of the half-choked postman. Then he turned and ran, for the windows of many tall houses were spying upon him. He dived here and there among archways and passages, manoeuvred through the purlieus of the market, and so back into the offices of his paper.

"And where is that Dictionary of National Biography?" asked John Arniston of the boy. The precious letter for which he had risked penal servitude and the cat in the prisons of his country for robbery of the Imperial mails (accompanied with violence), was blazing on the fire. Then, with professional readiness, John Arniston wrote a column and a half upon the modern lessons to be drawn from the fact that Queen Anne was dead. It was off-day at the paper, Parliament was not sitting, and the columns opposite the publishers' advertisements needed filling, or these gentlemen would grumble. The paper had a genuine, if somewhat spasmodic, attachment to letters. And from this John Arniston derived a considerable part of his income.

When he went back to his room he found that his landlady had been in attending to the fire. She had also lifted the fallen Bible, on which he could now look with some complacency—so strange a thing is the conscience.

On the worn hair covering of the old Bible lay a letter. It was from Miriam—a letter written as hastily as his own had been, with pitiful tremblings, and watered with tears. It told him, through a maze of burning love, among other things that she had been a wicked woman to listen to his words—and that while her husband lived she must never see him again. In time, doubtless, he would find some one worthier, some one who would not wreck his life, as for one mad half-hour his despairing Miriam had been willing to do. Finally, he would forgive her and forget her. But she was his own—he was to remember that.

In half an hour John Arniston was at the mortuary. Of course, he found a pressman there with a notebook before him. With him he arranged what should be said the next morning, and how the inquest should be reported. There was no doubt about the identity, and John Arniston soon possessed the proofs of it. But, after all, there was no need that the British public should know more than it already knew, or that the name of Miriam Gale should be connected with the drowned wretch, whose soddenly friendly leer struck John Arniston cold, as though he also had been in the Thames water that night.

So all through the darkness he paced in front of the house of the Beloved. His letter to her, written on leaves of his notebook, in place of that which he had destroyed, went in with the morning's milk. In half an hour after he was with her. And when he came out again he had seen a wonderful thing—a beautiful woman to whom emotion was life, and the expression of it second nature, running through the gamut of twenty moods in a quarter of an hour. At the end, John departed in search of a licence and a church. And Miriam Gale put her considering finger to her lip, and said, "Let me see—which dresses shall I take?"

The highway robbery was never heard of. The excellent plaster which John Arniston left in the hand of the official had salved effectively the rude constriction of his throat, where John's right hand had closed upon it.

* * * * *

It was even better to sit with Miriam Arniston in reality in the great sun-lit square of St. Mark's than it had been in fantasy with Miriam Gale.

The only disappointment was, that the pigeons of the Square were certainly fatter and greedier than the pictured cloud of doves, which in his day-dream he had seen flash the under-side of their wings at his love as they checked themselves to alight at her feet.

But on Lido side there was no such rift in the lute's perfection. The sands, the wheeling sea-birds, the tall girl in white whose hand he held—all these were even as he had imagined them. Thither they came every day, passing along the straight dusty avenue, and then wandering for hours picking shells. They talked only when the mood took them, and in the pauses they listened idly to the slumbrous pulsations of Adria. John Arniston had lied at large in the letter he had written to his love. He had assaulted a man who righteously withstood him in the discharge of his duty, in order to steal that letter back again. Yet his conscience was wholly void of offence in the matter. The heavens smiled upon his bride and himself. There was now no stern voice to break through upon his blissful self-approval.

Why there should be this favouritism among the commandments, was not clear to John. Indeed, the thing did not trouble him. He was no casuist. He only knew that the way was clear to Miriam Gale, and he went to her the swiftest way.

But there were, for all that, the elements of a very pretty dilemma in the psychology of morals in the case of Miriam Gale and John Arniston. True, the calf-skin Bible said when it was consulted, "The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive."

But, after all, that might prove upon examination to have nothing to do with the matter.



VI

THE GLISTERING BEACHES

For wafts of unforgotten music come, All unawares, into my lonely room, To thrill me with the memories of the past— Sometimes a tender voice from out the gloom, A light hand on the keys, a shadow cast Upon a learned tome That blurs somewhat Alpha and Omega, A touch upon my shoulder, a pale face, Upon whose perfect curves the firelight plays, Or love-lit eyes, the sweetest e'er I saw.

"Memory Harvest."

It was clear morning upon Suliscanna. That lonely rock ran hundreds of feet up into the heavens, and pointed downwards also to the deepest part of the blue. Simeon and Anna were content.

Or, rather, I ought to say Anna and Simeon, and that for a reason which will appear. Simeon was the son of the keeper of the temporary light upon Suliscanna, Anna the daughter of the contractor for the new lighthouse, which had already begun to grow like a tall-shafted tree on its rock foundation at Easdaile Point. Suliscanna was not a large island—in fact, only a mile across the top; but it was quite six or eight in circumference when one followed the ins and outs of the rocky shore. Tremendous cliffs rose to the south and west facing the Atlantic, pierced with caves into which the surf thundered or grumbled, according as the uneasy giant at the bottom of the sea was having a quiet night of it or the contrary. Grassy and bare was the top of the island. There was not a single tree upon it; and, besides the men's construction huts, only a house or two, so white that each shone as far by day as the lighthouse by night.

There was often enough little to do on Suliscanna. At such times, after standing a long time with hands in their pockets, the inhabitants used to have a happy inspiration: "Ha, let us go and whitewash the cottages!" So this peculiarity gave the island an undeniably cheerful appearance, and the passing ships justly envied the residents.

Simeon and Anna were playmates. That is, Anna played with Simeon when she wanted him.

"Go and knit your sampler, girl!" Simeon was saying to-day. "What do girls know about boats or birds?"

He was in a bad humour, for Anna had been unbearable in her exactions.

"Very well," replied Anna, tossing her hair; "I can get the key of the boat and you can't. I shall take Donald out with me."

Now, Donald was the second lighthouse-keeper, detested of Simeon. He was grown-up and contemptuous. Also he had whiskers—horrid ugly things, doubtless, but whiskers. So he surrendered at discretion.

"Go and get the key, then, and we will go round to the white beaches. I'll bring the provisions."

He would have died any moderately painless death rather than say, "The oatcake and water-keg."

So in a little they met again at the Boat Cove which Providence had placed at the single inlet upon the practicable side of Suliscanna, which could not be seen from either the Laggan Light or the construction cottages. Only the lighter that brought the hewn granite could spy upon it.

"Mind you sneak past your father, Anna!" cried Simeon, afar off.

His voice carried clear and lively. But yet higher and clearer rose the reply, spoken slowly to let each word sink well in.

"Teach-your-grandmother-to-suck-eggs—ducks' eggs!"

What the private sting of the discriminative, only Simeon knew. And evidently he did know very well, for he kicked viciously at a dog belonging to Donald the second keeper—a brute of a dog it was; but, missing the too-well-accustomed cur, he stubbed his toe. He then repeated the multiplication table. For he was an admirable boy and careful of his language.

But, nevertheless, he got the provision out with care and promptitude.

"Where are you taking all that cake?" said his mother, who came from Ayrshire and wanted a reason for everything. In the north there is no need for reasons. There everything is either a judgment or a dispensation, according to whether it happens to your neighbour or yourself.

"I am no' coming hame for ony dinner," said Simeon, who adopted a modified dialect to suit his mother. With his father he spoke English only, in a curious sing-song tone but excellent of accent.

Mrs. Lauder—Simeon's mother, that is—accepted the explanation without remark, and Simeon passed out of her department.

"Mind ye are no' to gang intil the boat!" she cried after him; but Simeon was apparently too far away to hear.

He looked cautiously up the side of the Laggan Light to see that his father was still polishing at his morning brasses and reflectors along with Donald. Then he ran very swiftly through a little storehouse, and took down a musket from the wall. A powder-flask and some shot completed his outfit; and with a prayer that his father might not see him, Simeon sped to the trysting-stone. As it happened, his father was oblivious and the pilfered gun unseen.

Anna's experience had been quite different. Her procedure was much simpler. She found her father sitting in his office, constructed of rough boards. He frowned continuously at plans of dovetailed stones, and rubbed his head at the side till he was rapidly rubbing it bare.

Anna came in and looked about her.

"Give me the key of the boat," she said without preface. She used from habit, even to her father, the imperative mood affirmative.

Mr. Warburton looked up, smoothed his brow, and began to ask, "What are you going to do—?" But in the midst of his question he thought better of it, acknowledging its uselessness; and, reaching into a little press by his side, he took down a key and handed it to Anna without comment. Anna said only, "Thank you, father." For we should be polite to our parents when they do as we wish them.

She stood a moment looking back at the bowed figure, which, upon her departure, had resumed the perplexed frown as though it had been a mask. Then she walked briskly down to the boathouse.

Upon the eastern side of Suliscanna there is a beach. It is a rough beach, but landing is just possible. There are cunning little spits of sand in the angles of the stone reaches, and by good steering between the boulders it is just possible to make boat's-way ashore.

"Row!" said Anna, after they had pushed the boat off, and began to feel the hoist of the swell. "I will steer."

Simeon obediently took the oars and fell to it. So close in did Anna steer to one point, that, raising her hand, she pulled a few heads of pale sea-pink from a dry cleft as they drew past into the open water and began to climb green and hissing mountains.

Then Anna opened her plans to Simeon.

"Listen!" she said. "I have been reading in a book of my father's about this place, and there was a strange great bird once on Suliscanna. It has been lost for years, so the book says; and if we could get it, it would be worth a hundred pounds. We are going to seek it."

"That is nonsense," said Simeon, "for you can get a goose here for sixpence, and there is no bird so big that it would be worth the half of a hundred pounds."

"Goose yourself, boy," said Anna tauntingly. "I did not mean to eat, great stupid thing!"

"What did you mean, then?" returned Simeon.

"You island boy, I mean to put in wise folks' museums—where they put all sorts of strange things. I have seen one in London."

"Seen a bird worth a hundred pounds?" Simeon was not taking Anna's statements on trust any more.

"No, silly—not the bird, but the museum."

"Um—you can tell that to Donald; I know better than to believe."

"Ah, but this is true," said Anna, without anger at the aspersion on her habitual truthfulness. "I tell you it is true. You would not believe about the machine-boat that runs by steam, with the smoke coming from it like the spout of our kettle, till I showed you the picture of it in father's book."

"I have seen the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown. There are lies in pictures as well as in books!" said Simeon, stating a great truth.

"But this bird is called the Great Auk—did you never hear your father tell about that?"

Simeon's face still expressed no small doubt of Anna's good faith. The words conveyed to him no more meaning than if she had said the Great Mogul.

Then Anna remembered.

"It is called in Scotland the Gare Fowl!"

Simeon was on fire in a moment. He stopped rowing and started up.

"I have heard of it," he said. "I know all that there is to know. It was chased somewhere on the northern islands and shot at, and one of them was killed. But did it ever come here?"

"I have father's book with me, and you shall see!" Being prepared for scepticism, Anna did not come empty-handed. She pulled a finely bound book out of a satchel-pocket that swung at her side. "See here," she said; and then she read: "'After their ill-usage at the islands of Orkney, the Gare Fowl were seen several times by fishermen in the neighbourhood of the Glistering Beaches on the lonely and uninhabited island of Suliscanna. It is supposed that a stray bird may occasionally visit that rock to this day.'"

Simeon's eyes almost started from his head.

"Worth a hundred pounds!" he said over and over as if to himself.

Anna, who knew the ways of this most doubting of Thomases, pulled a piece of paper from her satchel and passed it to him to read. It related at some length the sale in a London auction-room of a stuffed Great Auk in imperfect condition for one hundred and fifty pounds.

"That would be pounds sterling!" said Simeon, who was thinking. He had a suspicion that there might be some quirk about pounds "Scots," and was trying to explain things clearly to himself.

"Now, we are going to the Glistering Beaches to look for the Great Auk!" said Anna as a climax to the great announcement.

The water lappered pleasantly beneath the boat as Simeon deftly drew it over the sea. There is hardly any pleasure like good oarsmanship. In rowing, the human machine works more cleanly and completely than at any other work. Before the children rose two rocky islands, with an opening between, like a birthday cake that has been badly cut in the centre and has had the halves moved a little way apart. This was Stack Canna.

"Do you think that there would be any chance here?" said Anna. The splendour of the adventure was taking possession of her mind.

"Of course there would; but the best chance of all will be at the caves of Rona Wester, for that is near the Glistering Beaches, and the birds would be sure to go there if the people went to seek them at the Beaches."

"Has any one been there?" asked Anna.

"Fishers have looked into them from the sea. No one has been in!" said Simeon briefly.

The tops of the Stack of Canna were curiously white, and Simeon watched the effect over his shoulder as he rowed.

"Look at the Stack," he said, and the eyes of his companion followed his.

"Is it snow?" she asked.

"No; birds—thousands of them. They are nesting. Let us land and get a boat-load to take back."

But Anna declared that it must not be so. They had come out to hunt the Great Auk, and no meaner bird would they pursue that day.

Nevertheless, they landed, and made spectacles of themselves by groping in the clay soil on the top of the Stack for Petrels' eggs. But they could not dig far enough without spades to get many, and when they did get to the nest, it was hardly worth taking for the sake of the one white egg and the little splattering, oily inmate.

Yet on the wild sea-cinctured Stack, and in that young fresh morning, the children tasted the joy of life; and only the fascinating vision of the unknown habitant of the Glistering Beaches had power to wile them away.

But there before them, a mile and a half round the point of Stack, lay the Beaches. On either side of the smooth sweep of the sands rose mighty cliffs, black as the eye of the midnight and scarred with clefts like battered fortresses. Then at the Beaches themselves, the cliff wall fell back a hundred yards and left room for the daintiest edging of white sand, shining like coral, crumbled down from the pure granite—which at this point had not been overflowed like the rest of the island of Suliscanna by the black lava.

Such a place for play there was not anywhere—neither on Suliscanna nor on any other of the outer Atlantic isles. Low down, by the surf's edge, the wet sands of the Glistering Beaches were delicious for the bare feet to run and be brave and cool upon. The sickle sweep of the bay cut off the Western rollers, and it was almost always calm in there. Only the sea-birds clashed and clanged overhead, and made the eye dizzy to watch their twinkling gyrations.

Then on the greensward there was the smoothest turf, a band of it only—not coarse grass with stalks far apart, as it is on most sea-beaches; but smooth and short as though it had been cropped by a thousand woolly generations. "Such a place!" they both cried. And Anna, who had never been here before, clapped her hands in delight.

"This is like heaven!" she sighed, as the prow of the boat grated refreshingly on the sand, and Simeon sprang over with a splash, standing to his mid-thigh in the salt water to pull the boat ashore.

Then Simeon and Anna ran races on the smooth turf. They examined carefully the heaped mounds of shells, mostly broken, for the "legs of mutton" that meant to them love and long life and prosperity. They chose out for luck also the smooth little rose-tinted valves, more exquisite than the fairest lady's finger-nails.

Next they found the spring welling up from an over-flow mound which it had built for itself in the ages it had run untended. Little throbbing grains of sand dimpled in it, and the mound was green to the top; so that Simeon and Anna could sit, one on one side and the other upon the other, and with a farle of cake eat and drink, passing from hand to hand alternate, talking all the time.

It was a divine meal.

"This is better than having to go to church!" said Anna.

Simeon stared at her. This was not the Sabbath or a Fast-day. What a day, then, to be speaking about church-going! It was bad enough to have to face the matter when it came.

"I wonder what we should do if the Great Auk were suddenly to fly out of the rocks up there, and fall splash into the sea," he said, to change the subject.

"The Great Auk does not fly," said positive Anna, who had been reading up.

"What does it do, then?" said Simeon. "No wonder it got killed!"

"It could only waddle and swim," replied Anna.

"Then I could shoot it easy! I always can when the things can't fly, or will stand still enough.—It is not often they will," he added after due consideration.

Many things in creation are exceedingly thoughtless.

Thereupon Simeon took to loading his gun ostentatiously, and Anna moved away. Guns were uncertain things, especially in Simeon's hands, and Anna preferred to examine some of the caves. But when she went to the opening of the nearest, there was something so uncanny, so drippy, so clammy about it, with the little pools of water dimpled with drops from above, and the spume-balls rolled by the wind into the crevices, that she was glad to turn again and fall to gathering the aromatic, hay-scented fennel which nodded on the edges of the grassy slopes.

There was no possibility of getting up or down the cliffs that rose three hundred feet above the Glistering Beaches, for the ledges were hardly enough for the dense population of gannets which squabbled and babbled and elbowed one another on the slippery shelves.

Now and then there would be a fight up there, and white eggs would roll over the edge and splash yellow upon the turf. Wherever the rocks became a little less precipitous, they were fairly lined with the birds and hoary with their whitewash.

After Simeon had charged his gun, the children proceeded to explore the caves, innocently taking each other's hands, and advancing by the light of a candle—which, with flint and steel, they had found in the locker of their boat.

First they had to cross a pool, not deep, but splashy and unpleasant. Then more perilously they made their way along the edges of the water, walking carefully upon the slippery stones, wet with the clammy, contracted breath of the cave. Soon, however, the cavern opened out into a wider and drier place, till they seemed to be fairly under the mass of the island; for the cliffs, rising in three hundred feet of solid rock above their heads, stretched away before them black and grim to the earth's very centre.

Anna cried out, "Oh, I cannot breathe! Let us go back!"

But the undaunted Simeon, determined to establish his masculine superiority once for all, denied her plumply.

"We shall go back none," he said, "till we have finished this candle."

So, clasping more tightly her knight-errant's hand, Anna sighed, and resigned herself for once to the unaccustomed pleasure of doing as she was bid.

Deeper and deeper they went into the cleft of the rocks, stopping sometimes to listen, and hearing nothing but the beating of their own hearts when they did so.

There came sometimes, however, mysterious noises, as though the fairy folks were playing pipes in the stony knolls, of which they had both heard often enough. And also by whiles they heard a thing far more awful—a plunge as of a great sea-beast sinking suddenly into deep water.

"Suppose that it is some sea-monster," said Anna with eyes on fire; for the unwonted darkness had changed her, so that she took readily enough her orders from the less imaginative boy—whereas, under the broad light of day, she never dreamed of doing other than giving them.

Once they had a narrow escape. It happened that Simeon was leading and holding Anna by the hand, for they had been steadily climbing upwards for some time. The footing of the cave was of smooth sand, very restful and pleasing to the feet. Simeon was holding up the candle and looking before him, when suddenly his foot went down into nothing. He would have fallen forward, but that Anna, putting all her force into the pull, drew him back. The candle, however, fell from his hand and rolled unharmed to the edge of a well, where it lay still burning.

Simeon seized it, and the two children, kneeling upon the rocky side, looked over into a deep hole, which seemed, so far as the taper would throw its feeble rays downwards, to be quite fathomless.

But at the bottom something rose and fell with a deep roaring sound, as regular as a beast breathing. It had a most terrifying effect to hear that measured roaring deep in the bowels of the earth, and at each respiration to see the suck of the air blow the candle-flame about.

Anna would willingly have gone back, but stout Simeon was resolved and not to be spoken to.

They circled cautiously about the well, and immediately began to descend. The way now lay over rock, fine and regular to the feet as though it had been built and polished by the pyramid-builders of Egypt. There was more air, also, and the cave seemed to be opening out.

At last they came to a glimmer of daylight and a deep and solemn pool. There was a path high above it, and the pool lay beneath black like ink. But they were evidently approaching the sea, for the roar of the breaking swell could distinctly be heard. The pool narrowed till there appeared to be only a round basin of rock, full of the purest water, and beyond a narrow bank of gravel. Then they saw the eye of the sea shining in, and the edge of a white breaker lashing into the mouth of the cave.

But as they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and patiently and pathetically waggle that strange head.

"It is the Great Auk itself—we have found it!" said Anna in a hushed whisper.

"Hold the candle till I kill it with a stone—or, see! with this bit of timber."

"Wait!" said Anna. "It looks so old and feeble!"

"Our hundred pounds," said Simeon.

"It looks exactly like your grandfather," said Anna; "look at his eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!"

"Wouldn't I just—for a hundred pounds!" said Simeon briskly, looking for a larger stone.

"Don't let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is enough. None shall be so great as we."

The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place. Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.

Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after him.

The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading right for the North and the Iceland skerries—where, it may be, he abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the island of Suliscanna.

The children reached home very late that night, and were received with varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.



BOOK SECOND

INTIMACIES

I

Take cedar, take the creamy card, With regal head at angle dight; And though to snatch the time be hard, To all our loves at home we'll write.

II

Strange group! in Bowness' street we stand— Nine swains enamoured of our wives, Each quaintly writing on his hand, In haste, as 'twere to save our lives.

III

O wondrous messenger, to fly All through the night from post to post! Thou bearest home a kiss, a sigh— And but a halfpenny the cost!

IV

To-morrow when they crack their eggs, They'll say beside each matin urn— "These men are still upon their legs; Heaven bless 'em—may they soon return!"

GEORGE MILNER.



I

THE LAST ANDERSON OF DEESIDE

Pleasant is sunshine after rain, Pleasant the sun; To cheer the parched land again, Pleasant the rain.

Sweetest is joyance after pain, Sweetest is joy; Yet sorest sorrow worketh gain, Sorrow is gain.

"As in the Days of Old."

"Weel, he's won awa'!"

"Ay, ay, he is that!"

The minister's funeral was winding slowly out of the little manse loaning. The window-blinds were all down, and their bald whiteness, like sightless eyes looking out of the white-washed walls and the trampled snow, made the Free Church manse of Deeside no cheerful picture that wild New Year's Day. The green gate which had so long hung on one hinge, periodically mended ever since the minister's son broke the other swinging on it the summer of the dry year before he went to college, now swayed forward with a miserably forlorn lurch, as though it too had tried to follow the funeral procession of the man who had shut it carefully the last thing before he went to bed every night for forty years.

Andrew Malcolm, the Glencairn joiner, who was conducting the funeral—if, indeed, Scots funerals can ever be said to be conducted—had given it a too successful push to let the rickety hearse have plenty of sea-room between the granite pillars. It was a long and straggling funeral, silent save for the words that stand at the opening of this tale, which ran up and down the long black files like the irregular fire of skirmishers.

"Ay, man, he's won awa'!"

"Ay, ay, he is that!"

This is the Scottish Lowland "coronach," characteristic and expressive as the wailing of the pipes to the Gael or the keening of women among the wild Eirionach.

"We are layin' the last o' the auld Andersons o' Deeside amang the mools the day," said Saunders M'Quhirr, the farmer of Drumquhat, to his friend Rob Adair of the Mains of Deeside, as they walked sedately together, neither swinging his arms as he would have done on an ordinary day. Saunders had come all the way over Dee Water to follow the far-noted man of God to his rest.

"There's no siccan men noo as the Andersons o' Deeside," said Rob Adair, with a kind of pride and pleasure in his voice. "I'm a dale aulder than you, Saunders, an' I mind weel o' the faither o' him that's gane." (Rob had in full measure the curious South-country disinclination to speak directly of the dead.)

"Ay, an angry man he was that day in the '43 when him that's a cauld corp the day, left the kirk an' manse that his faither had pitten him intil only the year afore. For, of coorse, the lairds o' Deeside were the pawtrons o' the pairish; an' when the auld laird's yae son took it intil his head to be a minister, it was in the nature o' things that he should get the pairish.

"Weel, the laird didna speak to his son for the better part o' twa year; though mony a time he drave by to the Pairish Kirk when his son was haudin' an ootdoor service at the Auld Wa's where the three roads meet. For nae sicht could they get on a' Deeside for kirk or manse, because frae the Dullarg to Craig Ronald a' belanged to the laird. The minister sent the wife an' bairns to a sma' hoose in Cairn Edward, an' lodged himsel' amang sic o' the farmers as werena feared for his faither's factor. Na, an' speak to his son the auld man wadna, for the very dourness o' him. Ay, even though the minister wad say to his faither, 'Faither, wull ye no' speak to yer ain son?' no' ae word wad he answer, but pass him as though he hadna seen him, as muckle as to say—'Nae son o' mine!'

"But a week or twa after the minister had lost yon twa nice bairns wi' the scarlet fever, his faither an' him forgathered at the fishin'—whaur he had gane, thinkin' to jook the sair thochts that he carried aboot wi' him, puir man. They were baith keen fishers an' graun' at it. The minister was for liftin' his hat to his faither an' gaun by, but the auld man stood still in the middle o' the fit-pad wi' a gey queer look in his face. 'Wattie!' he said, an' for ae blink the minister thocht that his faither was gaun to greet, a thing that he had never seen him do in a' his life. But the auld man didna greet. 'Wattie,' says he to his son, 'hae ye a huik?'

"Ay, Saunders, that was a' he said, an' the minister juist gied him the huik and some half-dizzen fine flees forbye, an' the twa o' them never said Disruption mair as lang as they leeved.

"'Ye had better see the factor aboot pittin' up a meetin'-hoose and a decent dwallin', gin ye hae left kirk and manse!' That was a' that the auld laird ever said, as his son gaed up stream and he down.

"Ay, he's been a sair-tried man in his time, your minister, but he's a' by wi't the day," continued Saunders M'Quhirr, as they trudged behind the hearse.

"Did I ever tell ye, Rob, aboot seem' young Walter—his boy that gaed wrang, ye ken—when I was up in London the year afore last? Na? 'Deed, I telled naebody binna the mistress. It was nae guid story to tell on Deeside!

"Weel, I was up, as ye ken, at Barnet Fair wi' some winter beasts, so I bade a day or twa in London, doin' what sma' business I had, an' seein' the sichts as weel, for it's no' ilka day that a Deeside body finds themsel's i' London.

"Ae nicht wha should come in but a Cairn Edward callant that served his time wi' Maxwell in the Advertiser office. He had spoken to me at the show, pleased to see a Gallawa' face, nae doot. And he telled me he was married an' workin' on the Times. An' amang ither things back an' forrit, he telled me that the minister o' Deeside's son was here. 'But,' says he, 'I'm feared that he's comin' to nae guid.' I kenned that the laddie hadna been hame to his faither an' his mither for a maitter o' maybe ten year, so I thocht that I wad like to see the lad for his faither's sake. So in a day or twa I got his address frae the reporter lad, an' fand him after a lang seek doon in a gey queer place no' far frae where Tammas Carlyle leeves, near the water-side. I thocht that there was nae ill bits i' London but i' the East-end; but I learned different.

"I gaed up the stair o' a wee brick hoose nearly tumlin' doon wi' its ain wecht—a perfect rickle o' brick—an' chappit. A lass opened the door after a wee, no' that ill-lookin', but toosy aboot the heid an' unco shilpit aboot the face.

"'What do you want?' says she, verra sharp an' clippit in her mainner o' speech.

"'Does Walter Anderson o' Deeside bide here?' I asked, gey an' plain, as ye ken a body has to speak to thae Englishers that barely can understand their ain language.

"'What may you want with him?' says she.

"'I come frae Deeside,' says I—no' that I meaned to lichtly my ain pairish, but I thocht that the lassie micht no' be acquant wi' the name o' Whunnyliggate. 'I come frae Deeside, an' I ken Walter Anderson's faither.'

"'That's no recommend,' says she. 'The mair's the peety,' says I, 'for he's a daicent man.'

"So she took ben my name, that I had nae cause to be ashamed o', an' syne she brocht word that I was to step in. So ben I gaed, an' it wasna a far step, eyther, for it was juist ae bit garret room; an' there on a bed in the corner was the minister's laddie, lookin' nae aulder than when he used to swing on the yett an' chase the hens. At the verra first glint I gat o' him I saw that Death had come to him, and come to bide. His countenance was barely o' this earth—sair disjaskit an' no' manlike ava'—mair like a lassie far gane in a decline; but raised-like too, an' wi' a kind o' defiance in it, as if he was darin' the Almichty to His face. O man, Rob, I hope I may never see the like again."

"Ay, man, Saunders, ay, ay!" said Rob Adair, who, being a more demonstrative man than his friend, had been groping in the tail of his "blacks" for the handkerchief that was in his hat. Then Rob forgot, in the pathos of the story, what he was searching for, and walked for a considerable distance with his hand deep in the pocket of his tail-coat.

The farmer of Drumquhat proceeded on his even way.

"The lassie that I took to be his wife (but I asked nae questions) was awfu' different ben the room wi' him frae what she was wi' me at the door—fleechin' like wi' him to tak' a sup o' soup. An' when I gaed forrit to speak to him on the puir bit bed, she cam' by me like stour, wi' the water happin' off her cheeks, like hail in a simmer thunder-shoo'er."

"Puir bit lassockie!" muttered Rob Adair, who had three daughters of his own at home, as he made another absent-minded and unsuccessful search for his handkerchief. "There's a smurr o' rain beginnin' to fa', I think," he said, apologetically.

"'An' ye're Sandy MacWhurr frae Drumquhat,' says the puir lad on the bed. 'Are your sugar-plums as guid as ever?'

"What a quastion to speer on a dying bed, Saunders!" said Rob.

"'Deed, ye may say it. Weel, frae that he gaed on talkin' aboot hoo Fred Robson an' him stole the hale o' the Drumquhat plooms ae back-end, an' hoo they gat as far as the horse waterin'-place wi' them when the dogs gat after them. He threepit that it was me that set the dogs on, but I never did that, though I didna conter him. He said that Fred an' him made for the seven-fit march dike, but hadna time to mak' ower it. So there they had to sit on the tap o' a thorn-bush in the meadow on their hunkers, wi' the dogs fair loupin' an' yowlin' to get haud o' them. Then I cam' doon mysel' an' garred them turn every pooch inside oot. He minded, too, that I was for hingin' them baith up by the heels, till what they had etten followed what had been in their pooches. A' this he telled juist as he did when he used to come ower to hae a bar wi' the lassies, in the forenichts after he cam' hame frae the college the first year. But the lad was laughin' a' the time in a way I didna like. It wasna natural—something hard an' frae the teeth oot, as ye micht say—maist peetifu' in a callant like him, wi' the deid-licht shinin' already in the blue een o' him."

"D'ye no' mind, Saunders, o' him comin' hame frae the college wi' a hantle o' medals an' prizes?" said Rob Adair, breaking in as if he felt that he must contribute his share to the memories which shortened, if they did not cheer, their road. "His faither was rael prood o' him, though it wasna his way to say muckle. But his mither could talk aboot naething else, an' carriet his picture aboot wi' her a' ower the pairish in her wee black retical basket. Fegs, a gipsy wife gat a saxpence juist for speerin' for a sicht o' it, and cryin', 'Blessings on the laddie's bonny face!'"

"Weel," continued Saunders, imperturbably taking up the thread of his narrative amid the blattering of the snow, "I let the lad rin on i' this way for a while, an' then says I, 'Walter, ye dinna ask after yer faither!'

"'No, I don't,' says he, verra short. 'Nell, gie me the draught.' So wi' that the lassie gied her een a bit quick dab, syne cam' forrit, an' pittin' her airm aneath his heid she gied him a drink. Whatever it was, it quaitened him, an' he lay back tired-like.

"'Weel,' said I, after a wee, 'Walter, gin ye'll no' speer for yer faither, maybe ye'll speer for yer ain mither?'

"Walter Anderson turned his heid to the wa'. 'Oh, my mither! my ain mither!' he said, but I could hardly hear him sayin' it. Then more fiercely than he had yet spoken he turned on me an' said, 'Wha sent ye here to torment me before my time?'

* * * * *

"I saw young Walter juist yince mair in life. I stepped doon to see him the next mornin' when the end was near. He was catchin' and twitchin' at the coverlet, liftin' up his hand an' lookin' at it as though it was somebody else's. It was a black fog outside, an' even in the garret it took him in his throat till he couldna get breath.

"He motioned for me to sit doon beside him. There was nae chair, so I e'en gat doon on my knees. The lass stood white an' quaite at the far side o' the bed. He turned his een on me, blue an' bonnie as a bairn's; but wi' a licht in them that telled he had eaten o' the tree o' knowledge, and that no' seldom.

"'O Sandy,' he whispered, 'what a mess I've made o't, haven't I? You'll see my mither when ye gang back to Deeside. Tell her it's no' been so bad as it has whiles lookit. Tell her I've aye loved her, even at the warst—an'—an' my faither too!' he said, with a kind o' grip in his words.

"'Walter,' says I, 'I'll pit up a prayer, as I'm on my knees onyway.' I'm no' giftit like some, I ken; but, Robert, I prayed for that laddie gaun afore his Maker as I never prayed afore or since. And when I spak' aboot the forgiein' o' sin, the laddie juist steekit his een an' said 'Amen!'

"That nicht as the clock was chappin' twal' the lassie cam' to my door (an' the landlady wasna that weel pleased at bein' raised, eyther), an' she askit me to come an' see Walter, for there was naebody else that had kenned him in his guid days. So I took my stave an' my plaid an' gaed my ways wi' her intil the nicht—a' lichtit up wi' lang raws o' gas-lamps, an' awa' doon by the water-side whaur the tide sweels black aneath the brigs. Man, a big lichtit toun at nicht is far mair lanesome than the Dullarg muir when it's black as pit-mirk. When we got to the puir bit hoosie, we fand that the doctor was there afore us. I had gotten him brocht to Walter the nicht afore. But the lassie was nae sooner within the door than she gied an unco-like cry, an' flang hersel' distrackit on the bed. An' there I saw, atween her white airms and her tangled yellow hair, the face o' Walter Anderson, the son o' the manse o' Deeside, lyin' on the pillow wi' the chin tied up in a napkin!

"Never a sermon like that, Robert Adair!" said Saunders M'Quhirr solemnly, after he had paused a moment.

Saunders and Robert were now turning off the wind-swept muir-road into the sheltered little avenue which led up to the kirk above the white and icebound Dee Water. The aged gravedigger, bent nearly double, met them where the roads parted. A little farther up the newly elected minister of the parish kirk stood at the manse door, in which Walter Anderson had turned the key forty years ago for conscience' sake.

Very black and sombre looked the silent company of mourners who now drew together about the open grave—a fearsome gash on the white spread of the new-fallen snow. There was no religious service at the minister's grave save that of the deepest silence. Ranked round the coffin, which lay on black bars over the grave-mouth, stood the elders, but no one of them ventured to take the posts of honour at the head and the foot. The minister had left not one of his blood with a right to these positions. He was the last Anderson of Deeside.

"Preserve us! wha's yon they're pittin' at the fit o' the grave? Wha can it be ava?" was whispered here and there back in the crowd. "It's Jean Grier's boy, I declare—him that the minister took oot o' the puirhoose, and schuled and colleged baith. Weel, that cowes a'! Saw ye ever the like o' that?"

It was to Rob Adair that this good and worthy thought had come. In him more than in any of his fellow-elders the dead man's spirit lived. He had sat under him all his life, and was sappy with his teaching. Some would have murmured had they had time to complain, but no one ventured to say nay to Rob Adair as he pushed the modest, clear-faced youth into the vacant place.

Still the space at the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation. With a swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into the grave.

"He's there afore his faither," said Saunders M'Quhirr.

So sudden and unexpected was the movement, that, though the fall of the cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed through the bowed ranks of the bearers. "It was his ain boy Wattie come to lay his faither's heid i' the grave!" cried Daft Jess, the parish "natural," in a loud sudden voice from the "thruch" stone near the kirkyaird wall where she stood at gaze.

And there were many there who did not think it impossible.

As the mourners "skailed" slowly away from the kirkyaird in twos and threes, there was wonderment as to who should have the property, for which the late laird and minister had cared so little. There were very various opinions; but one thing was quite universally admitted, that there would be no such easy terms in the matter of rent and arrears as there had been in the time of "him that's awa'." The snow swept down with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished from each other's sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a great tent of many flapping folds. Grave and quiet is the Scottish funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes but once. On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called mirthful.

So the last Anderson of Deeside, and the best of all their ancient line, was gathered to his fathers in an equal sleep that snowy January morning. There were two inches of snow in the grave when they laid the coffin in. As Saunders said, "Afore auld Elec could get him happit, his Maister had hidden him like Moses in a windin'-sheet o' His ain." In the morning, when Elec went hirpling into the kirkyaird, he found at the grave-head a bare place which the snow had not covered. Then some remembered that, hurrying by in the rapidly darkening gloaming of the night after the funeral, they had seen some one standing immovable by the minister's grave in the thickly drifting snow. They had wondered why he should stand there on such a bitter night.

There were those who said that it was just the lad Archibald Grier, gone to stand a while by his benefactor's grave.

But Daft Jess was of another opinion.



II

A SCOTTISH SABBATH DAY

"On this day Men consecrate their souls, As did their fathers."

* * * * *

And ah! the sacred morns that crowned the week— The path betwixt the mountains and the sea, The Sannox water and the wooden bridge, The little church, the narrow seats—and we That through the open window saw the ridge Of Fergus, and the peak Of utmost Cior Mohr—nor held it wrong, When vext with platitude and stirless air, To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song.

"Memory Harvest."

I. THE BUIK

Walter Carmichael often says in these latter days that his life owed much of its bent to his first days of the week at Drumquhat.

The Sabbath morning broke over the farm like a benediction. It was a time of great stillness and exceeding peace. It was, indeed, generally believed in the parish that Mrs. M'Quhirr had trained her cocks to crow in a fittingly subdued way upon that day. To the boy the Sabbath light seemed brighter. The necessary duties were earlier gone about, in order that perfect quiet might surround the farm during all the hours of the day. As Walter is of opinion that his youthful Sabbaths were so important, it may be well to describe one of them accurately. It will then be obvious that his memory has been playing him tricks, and that he has remembered only those parts of it which tell somewhat to his credit—a common eccentricity of memories.

It is a thousand pities if in this brief chronicle Walter should be represented as a good boy. He was seldom so called by the authorities about Drumquhat. There he was usually referred to as "that loon," "the hyule" "Wattie, ye mischeevious boy." For he was a stirring lad, and his restlessness frequently brought him into trouble. He remembers his mother's Bible lessons on the green turn of the loaning by the road, and he is of opinion now that they did him a great deal of good. It is not for an outside historian to contradict him; but it is certain that his mother had to exercise a good deal of patience to induce him to give due attention, and a species of suasion that could hardly be called moral to make him learn his verses and his psalm.

Indeed, to bribe the boy with the promise of a book was the only way of inspiring in him the love of scriptural learning. There was a book-packman who came from Balmathrapple once a month, and by the promise of a new missionary map of the world (with the Protestants in red, floating like cream on the top, and the pagans sunk in hopeless black at the bottom) Wattie could be induced to learn nearly anything. Walter was, however, of opinion that the map was a most imperfect production. He thought that the portion of the world occupied by the Cameronians ought to have been much more prominently charted. This omission he blamed on Ned Kenna the bookman, who was a U.P.

Walter looked for the time when all the world, from great blank Australia to the upper Icy Pole, should become Cameronian. He anticipated an era when the black savages would have to quit eating one another and learn the Shorter Catechism. He chuckled when he thought of them attacking Effectual Calling.

But he knew his duty to his fellows very well, and he did it to the best of his ability. It was, when he met a Free Kirk or Established boy, to throw a stone at him; or alternatively, if the heathen chanced to be a girl, to put out his tongue at her. This he did, not from any special sense of superiority, but for the good of their souls.

When Walter awoke, the sun had long been up, and already all sounds of labour, usually so loud, were hushed about the farm. There was a breathless silence, and the boy knew even in his sleep that it was the Sabbath morning. He arose, and unassisted arrayed himself for the day. Then he stole forth, hoping that he would get his porridge before the "buik" came on. Through the little end window he could see his grandfather moving up and down outside, leaning on his staff—his tall, stooped figure very clear against the background of beeches. As he went he looked upward often in self-communion, and sometimes groaned aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayer. His brow rose like the wall of a fortress. A stray white lock on his bare head stirred in the crisp air.

Wattie was about to omit his prayers in his eagerness for his porridge, but the sight of his grandfather induced him to change his mind. He knelt reverently down, and was so found when his mother came in. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and silently beckoned the good mistress of the house forward to share in the sight. But neither of the women knew how near the boy's prayers came to being entirely omitted that morning. And what is more, they would not have believed it had they been informed of it by the angel Gabriel. For this is the manner of women—the way that mothers are made. The God of faith bless them for it! The man has indeed been driven out of Paradise, but the woman, for whose expulsion we have no direct scriptural authority, certainly carries with her materials for constructing one out of her own generous faith and belief. Often men hammer out a poor best, not because they are anxious to do the good for its own sake, but because they know that some woman expects it of them.

The dwelling-house of Drumquhat was a low one-storied house of a common enough pattern. It stood at one angle of the white fortalice of buildings which surrounded the "yard." Over the kitchen and the "ben the hoose" there was a "laft," where the "boys"[3] slept. The roof of this upper floor was unceiled, and through the crevices the winter snows sifted down upon the sleepers. Yet were there no finer lads, no more sturdy and well set-up men, than the sons of the farmhouse of Drumquhat. Many a morning, ere the eldest son of the house rose from his bed in the black dark to look to the sheep, before lighting his candle he brushed off from the coverlet a full arm-sweep of powdery snow. It was a sign of Walter's emancipation from boyhood when he insisted on leaving his mother's cosy little wall-chamber and climbing up the ladder with the boys to their "laft" under the eaves. Nevertheless, it went with a sudden pang to the mother's heart to think that never more should she go to sleep with her boy clasped in her arms. Such times will come to mothers, and they must abide them in silence. A yet more bitter tragedy is when she realises that another woman is before her in her son's heart.

[Footnote 3: As in Ireland, all the sons of the house are "boys" so long as they remain under the roof-tree, even though they may carry grey heads on their shoulders.]

The whole family of Saunders M'Quhirr was collected every Sabbath morning at the "buik." It was a solemn time. No one was absent, or could be absent for any purpose whatever. The great Bible, clad rough-coated in the hairy hide of a calf, was brought down from the press and laid at the table-end. Saunders sat down before it and bowed his head. In all the house there was a silence that could be felt. It was at this time every Sabbath morning that Walter resolved to be a good boy for the whole week. The psalm was reverently given out, two lines at a time—

"They in the Lord that firmly trust, Shall be like Zion hill"—

and sung to the high quavering strains of "Coleshill," garnished with endless quavers and grace-notes.

The chapter was then read with a simple trust and manfulness like that of an ancient patriarch. Once at this portion of the service the most terrible thing that ever happened at Drumquhat took place. Walter had gone to school during the past year, and had been placed in the "sixpenny"; but he had promptly "trapped" his way to the head of the class, and so into the more noble "tenpenny," which he entered before he was six. The operation of "trapping" was simply performed. When a mistake was made in pronunciation, repetition, or spelling, any pupil further down the class held out his hand, snapping the finger and thumb like a pop-gun Nordenfeldt. The master's pointer skimmed rapidly down the line, and if no one in higher position answered, the "trapper," providing always that his emendation was accepted, was instantly promoted to the place of the "trapped." The master's "taws" were a wholesome deterrent of persistent or mistaken trapping; and, in addition, the trapped boys sometimes rectified matters at the back of the school at the play-hour, when fists became a high court of appeal and review.

Walter had many fights—"Can ye fecht?" being the recognised greeting to the new comer at Whinnyliggate school. When this was asked of Walter, he replied modestly that he did not know, whereupon his enemy, without provocation, smote him incontinently on the nose. Him our boy-from-the-heather promptly charged, literally with tooth and nail, overbore to the dust, and, when he held him there, proceeded summarily to disable him for further conflict, as he had often seen Royal do when that mild dog went forth to war. Walter could not at all understand why he was dragged off his assailant by the assembled school, and soundly cuffed for a young savage who fought like the beasts. Wattie knew in his heart that this objection was unreasonable, for whom else had he seen fight besides the beasts? But in due time he learned to fight legitimately enough, and to take his share of the honours of war. Moreover, the reputation of a reserve of savagery did him no harm, and induced many an elder boy who had been "trapped" to forego the pleasure of "warming him after the schule comes oot," which was the formal challenge of Whinnyliggate chivalry.

But this Sabbath morning at the "buik," when the solemnity of the week had culminated, and the portion was being read, Walter detected a quaint antiquity in the pronunciation of a Bible name. His hand shot out, cracking like a pistol, and, while the family waited for the heavens to fall, Walter boldly "trapped" the priest of the household at his own family altar!

Saunders M'Quhirr stopped, and darted one sharp, severe glance at the boy's eager face. But even as he looked, his face mellowed into what his son Alec to this day thinks may have been the ghost of a smile. But this he mentions to no one, for, after all, Saunders is his father.

The book was closed. "Let us pray," Saunders said.

The prayer was not one to be forgotten. There was a yearning refrain in it, a cry for more worthiness in those whom God had so highly favoured. Saunders was allowed to be highly gifted in intercession. But he was also considered to have some strange notions for a God-fearing man.

For instance, he would not permit any of his children to be taught by heart any prayer besides the Lord's Prayer. After repeating that, they were encouraged to ask from God whatever they wanted, and were never reproved, however strange or incongruous their supplications might be. Saunders simply told them that if what they asked was not for their good they would not get it—a fact which, he said, "they had as lief learn sune as syne."

This excellent theory of prayer was certainly productive of curious results. For instance, Alec is recorded in the family archives to have interjected the following petition into his devotions. While saying his own prayers, he had been keeping a keen fraternal eye upon sundry delinquencies of his younger brother. These having become too outrageous, Alec continued without break in his supplications—"And now, Lord, will you please excuse me till I gang an' kick that loon Rab, for he'll no' behave himsel'!" So the spiritual exercises were interrupted, and in Alec's belief the universe waited till discipline allowed the petitionary thread to be taken up.

The "buik" being over, the red farm-cart rattled to the door to convey such of the churchgoers as were not able to walk all the weary miles to the Cameronian kirk in Cairn Edward. The stalwart, long-legged sons cut across a shorter way by the Big Hoose and the Deeside kirk. Both the cart and the walkers passed on the way a good many churches, both Established and Free; but they never so much as looked the road they were on.

This hardly applied to Alec, whose sweetheart (for the time-being) attended the Free kirk at Whinnyliggate. He knew within his own heart that he would have liked to turn in there, and the consciousness of his iniquity gave him an acute sense of the fallen nature of man—at least, till he got out of sight of the spireless rigging of the kirk, and out of hearing of the jow of its bell. Then his spirits rose to think that he had resisted temptation. Also, he dared not for his life have done anything else, for his father's discipline, though kindly, was strict and patriarchal.

And, moreover, there was a lass at the Cameronian kirk, a daughter of the Arkland grieve, whose curls he rather liked to see in the seat before him. He had known her when he went to the neighbouring farm to harvest—for in that lowland district the corn was all cut and led, before it was time to begin it on the scanty upland crop which was gathered into the barns of Drumquhat. Luckily, she sat in a line with the minister; and when she was there, two sermons on end were not too long.

II. THE ROAD TO THE KIRK

The clean red farm-cart rattled into the town of Cairn Edward at five minutes past eleven. The burghers looked up and said, "Hoo is the clock?" Some of them went so far as to correct any discrepancy in their time-keepers, for all the world knew that the Drumquhat cart was not a moment too soon or too late, so long as Saunders had the driving of it. Times had not been too good of late; and for some years—indeed, ever since the imposition of the tax on light-wheeled vehicles—the "tax-cart" had slumbered wheelless in the back of the peat-shed, and the Drumquhat folk had driven a well-cleaned, heavy-wheeled red cart both to kirk and market. But they were respected in spite of their want of that admirable local certificate of character, "He is a respectable man. He keeps a gig." One good man in Whinnyliggate says to this day that he had an excellent upbringing. He was brought up by his parents to fear God and respect the Drumquhat folks!

Walter generally went to church now, ever since his granny had tired of conveying him to the back field overlooking the valley of the Black Water of the Dee, while his mother made herself ready. He was fond of going there to see the tents of the invading army of navvies who were carrying the granite rock-cuttings and heavy embankments of the Portpatrick Railway through the wilds of the Galloway moors. But Mary M'Quhirr struck work one day when the "infant," being hungry for a piece, said calmly, "D'ye no think that we can gang hame? My mither will be awa' to the kirk by noo!"

On the long journey to church, Walter nominally accompanied the cart. Occasionally he seated himself on the clean straw which filled its bottom; but most of the time this was too fatiguing an occupation for him. On the plea of walking up the hills, he ranged about on either side of the highway, scenting the ground like a young collie. He even gathered flowers when his grandfather was not looking, and his mother or his "gran," who were not so sound in the faith, aided and abetted him by concealing them when Saunders looked round. The master sat, of course, on the front of the cart and drove; but occasionally he cast a wary eye around, and if he saw that they were approaching any houses he would stop the cart and make Walter get in. On these occasions he would fail to observe it even if Walter's hands contained a posy of wild-flowers as big as his head. His blindness was remarkable in a man whose eyesight was so good. The women-folk in the cart generally put the proceeds of these forays under the straw or else dropped them quietly overboard before entering Cairn Edward.