As to getting into the house there was no difficulty. He had but to climb two walls to get to the door of Baliol's tower, and the key of that he always carried. If he had not had it, he would yet soon have got in; he knew the place better than any one else about it. Happily he had left the door locked when he went away, else probably they would have secured it otherwise. He entered softly, and, with a strange feeling of dread, went winding up the stair to his room—slowly, because he did not yet know at all what he was to do. If there were no false play, surely at least Mrs. Brookes would have written to tell him they were going! If only he could learn where she was! Before he reached the top he found himself very weary. He staggered in, and fell on his bed in the dark.

But he could not rest. The air seemed stifling. The storm had lulled, but the atmosphere was full of thunder. He got up and opened the window. A little breath came in and revived him; then came a little wind, and in the wind the moan of its harp. It woke many memories. There again was the lightning! The thunder broke with a great bellowing roar among the roofs and chimneys. It was to his mind! He went out on the roof, and mechanically took his way toward the nest of the music. At the base of the chimneys he sat down, and stared into the darkness. The lightning came; he saw the sea lie watching like a perfect peace to take up drift souls, and the land bordering it like a waste of dread; then the darkness swallowed both; and the thunder came so loud that it not only deafened but seemed to blind him beyond the darkness, that his brain turned to a lump of clay. Then came a silence, and the silence was like a deeper deafness. But from the deafness burst and trickled a faint doubtful stream: could it be a voice, calling, calling, from a great distance? Was he the fool of weariness and excitement, or did he actually hear his own name? Whose voice could it be but lady Arctura's, calling to him from the spirit world! They had killed her, and she was calling to let him know she was in the land of liberty! With that came another flash and another roar of thunder—and there was the voice again: "Mr. Grant! Mr. Grant! come, come! You promised!" Did he actually hear the words? They sounded so far away that it seemed as if he ought not to hear them. But could the voice be from the spirit-land? Would she claim his promise thence, tempting him thither? She would not! And she knew he would not go before his hour, if all the spirits on the other side were calling him. But he had heard of voices from far away, while those who called were yet in the body! If she would but say whither, he would follow her that moment! Once more it came, but very faint; he could not tell what it said. A wail of the ghost-music followed close.—God in heaven! could she be down in the chapel? He sprang to his feet. With superhuman energy he leapt up and caught the edge of the cleft, drew himself up till his mouth reached it, and cried aloud, "Lady Arctura!"

There came no answer.

"I am stupid as death!" he said to himself: "I have let her call me in vain!"

"I am coming!" he cried again, revived with sudden joy. He dropped on the roof, and sped down the stair to the door that opened on the second floor. All was dark as underground, but he knew the way so well he needed but a little guidance from his hands. He hurried to lady Arctura's chamber, and the spot where the press stood, ready with one shove to send it yards out of his way. There was no press there!—nothing but a smooth, cold, damp wall! His heart sank within him. Was he in a terrible dream? No, no! he had but made a mistake—had trusted too much to his knowledge of the house, and was not where he thought he was! He struck a light. Alas! alas! he was where he had intended! It was her room! There was the wardrobe, but nearer the door! Where it had stood was no recess!—nothing but a great patch of fresh plaster! It was no dream, but a true horror!

Instinctively clutching his skene dhu, he darted to the great stair. It must have been the voice of Arctura he had heard! She was walled up in the chapel!

Down the stair, with swift noiseless foot he sped, and stopped at the door of the half-way room. It was locked!

There was but one way left! To the foot of the stair he shot. Good heavens! if that way also should have been known to the earl! He crept through the little door underneath the stair, feeling with his hands ere his body was through: the arch was open! In an instant he was in the crypt.

But now to get up through the opening into the passage above—stopped with a heavy slab! He sprang at the steep slope of the window-sill, but there was no hold, and as often as he sprang he slipped down again. He tried and tried until he was worn out and almost in despair. She might be dying! he was close to her! he could not reach her! He stood still for a moment to think. To his mind came the word, "He that believeth shall not make haste." He thought with himself, "God cannot help men with wisdom when their minds are in too great a tumult to hear what he says!" He tried to lift up his heart and make a silence in his soul.

As he stood he seemed to see, through the dark, the gloomy place as it first appeared when he threw in the lighted letter. All at once he started from his quiescence, dropped on his hands and knees, and crawled until he found the flat stone like a gravestone. Out came his knife, and he dug away the earth at one end, until he could get both hands under it. Then he heaved it from the floor, and shifting it along, got it under the opening in the wall.



CHAPTER LXXIV.

A MORAL FUNGUS.

Spiritual insanity, cupidity, cruelty, and possibly immediate demoniacal temptation had long been working in and on a mind that had now ceased almost to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Every man who bends the energies of an immortal spirit to further the ends and objects of his lower being, fails so to distinguish; but with the earl the blindness had wrought outward as well as inwardly, so that he was even unable, during considerable portions of his life, to tell whether things took place outside or inside him. Nor did this trouble him—he was past caring. He would argue that what equally affected him had an equal right to be by him regarded as existent. He paid no heed to the different natures of the two kinds of existence, their different laws, and the different demands they made upon the two consciousnesses; he had in fact, by a long course of disobedience growing to utter disuse of conscience, arrived nearly at non-individuality. In regard to what was outside him he was but a mirror, in regard to what was inside him a mere vessel of imperfectly interacting forces. And now his capacities and incapacities together had culminated in a hideous plot, in which it would be hard to say whether the folly, the crime, or the cunning predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the daughter of his brother refused to wed her cousin, and so carry out what he asserted to have been the declared wish of her father, she should go after her father, and leave her property to the next heir, so that if not in one way then in another the law of nature might be fulfilled, and title and property united without the intervention of a marriage. As to any evil that therein might be imagined to befall his niece, he quoted the words of Hamlet—"Since no man has ought of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"—she would be no worse than she must have been when the few years of her natural pilgrimage were of necessity over: the difference to her was not worth thinking of beside the difference to the family! At the same time perhaps a scare might serve, and she would consent to marry Forgue to escape a frightful end!

The moment Donal was gone, he sent Forgue to London, and set himself to overcome the distrust of him which he could not but see had for some time been growing in her. With the sweet prejudices of a loving nature to assist him, he soon prevailed so far that, without much entreaty, she consented to accompany him to London—for a month or so, he said, while Davie was gone. The proposal had charms for her: she had been there with her father when a mere child, and never since. She wrote to Donal to let him know: how it was that her letter never reached him, it is hardly needful to inquire.

The earl, in order, he said, to show his recognition of her sweet compliance, made arrangements for posting it all the way. He would take her by the road he used to travel himself when he was a young man: she should judge whether more had not been lost than gained by rapidity! Whatever shortened any natural process, he said, simply shortened life itself. Simmons should go before, and find a suitable place for them!

They were hardly gone when Mrs. Brookes received a letter pretendedly from the clergyman of the parish, in a remote part of the south, where her mother, now a very old woman, lived, saying she was at the point of death, and could not die in peace without seeing her daughter. She went at once.

The scheme was a madman's, excellently contrived for the instant object, but with no outlook for immediately resulting perils.

After the first night on the road, he turned across country, and a little towards home; after the next night, he drove straight back, but as it was by a different road, Arctura suspected nothing. When they came within a few hours of the castle, they stopped at a little inn for tea; there he contrived to give her a certain dose. At the next place where they stopped, he represented her as his daughter taken suddenly ill: he must go straight home with her, however late they might be. Giving an imaginary name to their destination, and keeping on the last post-boy who knew nothing of the country, he directed him so as completely to bewilder him, with the result that he set them down at the castle supposing it a different place, and in a different part of the country. The thing was after the earl's own heart; he delighted in making a fool of a fellow-mortal. He sent him away so as not to enter the town: it was of importance his return should not be known.

It is a marvel he could effect what followed; but he had the remnants of great strength, and when under influences he knew too well how to manage, was for the time almost as powerful as ever: he got his victim to his room on the stair, and thence through the oak door.



CHAPTER LXXV.

THE PORCH OF HADES.

When Arctura woke from her unnatural sleep, she lay a while without thought, then began to localize herself. The last place she recalled was the inn where they had tea: she must have been there taken ill, she thought, and was now in a room of the same. It was quite dark: they might have left a light by her! She lay comfortably enough, but had a suspicion that the place was not over clean, and was glad to find herself not undrest. She turned on her side: something pulled her by the wrist. She must have a bracelet on, and it was entangled in the coverlet! She tried to unclasp it, but could not: which of her bracelets could it be? There was something attached to it!—a chain—a thick chain! How odd! What could it mean? She lay quiet, slowly waking to fuller consciousness.—Was there not a strange air, a dull odour in the room? Undefined as it was, she had smelt it before, and not long since!—It was the smell of the lost chapel!—But that was at home in the castle! she had left it two days before! Was she going out of her mind?

The dew of agony burst from her forehead. She would have started up, but was pulled hard by the wrist! She cried on God.—Yes, she was lying on the very spot where that heap of woman-dust had lain! she was manacled with the same ring from which that woman's arm had wasted—the decay of centuries her slow redeemer! Her being recoiled so wildly from the horror, that for a moment she seemed on the edge of madness. But madness is not the sole refuge from terror! Where the door of the spirit has once been opened wide to God, there is he, the present help in time of trouble! With him in the house, it is not only that we need fear nothing, but that is there which in its own being and nature casts out fear. God and fear cannot be together. It is a God far off that causes fear. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." Such a sense of absolute helplessness overwhelmed Arctura that she felt awake in her an endless claim upon the protection of her original, the source of her being. And what sooner would any father have of his children than action on such claim! God is always calling us as his children, and when we call him as our father, then, and not till then, does he begin to be satisfied. And with that there fell upon Arctura a kind of sleep, which yet was not sleep; it was a repose such as perhaps is the sleep of a spirit.

Again the external began to intrude. She pictured to herself what the darkness was hiding. Her feelings when first she came down into the place returned on her memory. The tide of terror began again to rise. It rose and rose, and threatened to become monstrous. She reasoned with herself: had she not been brought in safety through its first and most dangerous inroad?—but reason could not outface terror. It was fear, the most terrible of all terrors, that she feared. Then again woke her faith: if the night hideth not from him, neither does the darkness of fear!

It began to thunder, first with a low distant muttering roll, then with a loud and near bellowing. Was it God coming to her? Some are strangely terrified at thunder; Arctura had the child's feeling that it was God that thundered: it comforted her as with the assurance that God was near. As she lay and heard the great organ of the heavens, its voice seemed to grow articulate; God was calling to her, and saying, "Here I am, my child! be not afraid!"

Then she began to reason with herself that the worst that could happen to her was to lie there till she died of hunger, and that could not be so very bad! And therewith across the muttering thunder came a wail of the ghost-music. She started: had she not heard it a hundred times before, as she lay there in the dark alone? Was she only now for the first time waking up to it—she, the lady they had shut up there to die—where she had lain for ages, with every now and then that sound of the angels singing, far above her in the blue sky?

She was beginning to wander. She reasoned with herself, and dismissed the fancy; but it came and came again, mingled with real memories, mostly of the roof, and Donal.

By and by she fell asleep, and woke in a terror which seemed to have been growing in her sleep. She sat up, and stared into the dark. >From where stood the altar, seemed to rise and approach her a form of deeper darkness. She heard nothing, saw nothing, but something was there. It came nearer. It was but a fancy; she knew it; but the fancy assumed to be: the moment she gave way, and acknowledged it, that moment it would have the reality it had been waiting for, and clasp her in its skeleton-arms! She cried aloud, but it only came nearer; it was about to seize her!

A sudden, divine change!—her fear was gone, and in its place a sense of absolute safety: there was nothing in all the universe to be afraid of! It was a night of June, with roses, roses everywhere! Glory be to the Father! But how was it? Had he sent her mother to think her full of roses? Why her mother? God himself is the heart of every rose that ever bloomed! She would have sung aloud for joy, but no voice came; she could not utter a sound. What a thing this would be to tell Donal Grant! This poor woman cried, and God heard her, and saved her out of all her distresses! The father had come to his child! The cry had gone from her heart into his!

If she died there, would Donal come one day and find her? No! No! She would speak to him in a dream, and beg him not to go near the place! She would not have him see her lie like that he and she standing together had there looked upon!

With that came Donal's voice, floated and rolled in music and thunder. It came from far away; she did not know whether she fancied or really heard it. She would have responded with a great cry, but her voice vanished in her throat. Her joy was such that she remembered nothing more.



CHAPTER LXXVI.

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD.

Standing upon the edge of the stone leaned against the wall, Donal seized the edge of the slab which crossed the opening near the top, and drew himself up into the sloping window-sill. Pressing with all his might against the sides of the window, he succeeded at last in pushing up the slab so far as to get a hold with one hand on the next to it. Then slowly turning himself on his side, while the whole weight of the stone rested on his fingers, he got the other hand also through the crack. This effected, he hauled and pushed himself up with his whole force, careless of what might happen to his head. The top of it came bang against the stone, and lifted it so far that he got head and neck through. The thing was done! With one more Herculean lift of his body and the stone together, like a man rising from the dead, he rose from the crypt into the passage.

But the door of the chapel would not yield to a gentle push.

"My lady," he cried, "don't be afraid. I must make a noise. It's only Donal Grant! I'm going to drive the door open."

She heard the words! They woke her from her swoon of joy. "Only Donal Grant!" What less of an only could there be in the world for her! Was he not the messenger who raised the dead!

She tried to speak, but not a word would come. Donal drew back a pace, and sent such a shoulder against the door that it flew to the wall, then fell with a great crash on the floor.

"Where are you, my lady?" he cried.

But still she could not speak.

He began feeling about.

"Not on that terrible bed!" she heard him murmur.

Fear lest in the darkness he should not find her, gave her back her voice.

"I don't mind it now!" she said feebly.

"Thank God!" cried Donal; "I've found you at last!"

Worn out, he sank on his knees, with his head on the bed, and fell a sobbing like a child.

She would have put out her hand through the darkness to find him, but the chain checked it. He heard the rattle of it, and understood.

"Chained too, my dove!" he said, but in Gaelic.

His weakness was over. He thanked God, and took courage. New life rushed through every vein. He rose to his feet in conscious strength.

"Can you strike a light, and let me see you, Donal?" said Arctura.

Then first she called him by his Christian name: it had been so often in her heart if not on her lips that night!

The dim light wasted the darkness of the long buried place, and for a moment they looked at each other. She was not so changed as Donal had feared to find her—hardly so change to him as he was to her. Terrible as had been her trial, it had not lasted long, and had been succeeded by a heavenly joy. She was paler than usual, yet there was a rosy flush over her beautiful face. Her hand was stretched towards him, its wrist clasped by the rusty ring, and tightening the chain that held it to the post.

"How pale and tired you look!" she said.

"I am a little tired," he answered. "I came almost without stopping. My mother sent me. She said I must come, but she did not tell me why."

"It was God sent you," said Arctura.

Then she briefly told him what she knew of her own story.

"How did he get the ring on to your wrist?" said Donal.

He looked closer and saw that her hand was swollen, and the skin abraded.

"He forced it on!" he said. "How it must hurt you!"

"It does hurt now you speak of it," she replied. "I did not notice it before.—Do you suppose he left me here to die?"

"Who can tell!" returned Donal. "I suspect he is more of a madman than we knew. I wonder if a soul can be mad.—Yes; the devil must be mad with self-worship! Hell is the great madhouse of creation!"

"Take me away," she said.

"I must first get you free," answered Donal.

She heard him rise.

"You are not going to leave me?" she said.

"Only to get a tool or two."

"And after that?" she said.

"Not until you wish me," he answered. "I am your servant now—his no more."



CHAPTER LXXVII.

THE ANGEL OF THE DEVIL.

There came a great burst of thunder. It was the last of the storm. It bellowed and shuddered, went, and came rolling up again. It died away at last in the great distance, with a low continuous rumbling as if it would never cease. The silence that followed was like the Egyptian darkness; it might be felt.

Out of the tense heart of the silence came a faint sound. It came again and again, at regular intervals.

"That is my uncle's step!" said Arctura in a scared whisper through the dark.

It was plainly a slow step—far off, but approaching.

"I wonder if he has a light!" she added hurriedly. "He often goes in the dark without one. If he has you must get behind the altar."

"Do not speak a word," said Donal; "let him think you are asleep. If he has no light, I will stand so that he cannot come near the bed without coming against me. Do not be afraid; he shall not touch you."

The steps were coming nearer all the time. A door opened and shut. Then they were loud—they were coming along the gallery! They ceased. He was standing up there in the thick darkness!

"Arctura," said a deep, awful voice.

It was that of the earl. Arctura made no answer.

"Dead of fright!" muttered the voice. "All goes well. I will go down and see. She might have proved as obstinate as the boys' mother!"

Again the steps began. They were coming down the stair. The door at the foot of it opened. The earl entered a step or two, then stopped. Through the darkness Donal seemed to know exactly where he stood. He knew also that he was fumbling for a match, and watched intently for the first spark. There came a sputter and a gleam, and the match failed. Ere he could try another, Donal made a swift blow at his arm. It knocked the box from his hand.

"Ha!" he cried, and there was terror in the cry, "she strikes at me through the dark!"

Donal kept very still. Arctura kept as still as he. The earl turned and went away.

"I will bring a candle!" he muttered.

"Now, my lady, we must make haste," said Donal. "Do you mind being left while I fetch my tools?"

"No—but make haste," she answered.

"I shall be back before him," he returned.

"Be careful you do not meet him," said Arctura.

There was no difficulty now, either in going or returning. He sped, and in a space that even to Arctura seemed short, was back. There was no time to use the file: he attacked the staple, and drew it from the bed-post, then wound the chain about her arm, and tied it there.

He had already made up his mind what to do with her. He had been inclined to carry her away from the house: Doory would take care of her! But he saw that to leave the enemy in possession would be to yield him an advantage. Awkward things might result from it! the tongues of inventive ignorance and stupidity would wag wildly! He would take her to her room, and there watch her as he would the pearl of price!

"There! you are free, my lady," he said. "Now come."

He took her hands, and she raised herself wearily.

"The air is so stifling!" she said.

"We shall soon have better!" answered Donal.

"Shall we go on the roof?" she said, like one talking in her sleep.

"I will take you to your own room," replied Donal. "—But I will not leave you," he added quickly, seeing a look of anxiety cloud her face, "—so long as your uncle is in the house."

"Take me where you will," rejoined Arctura.

There was no way but through the crypt: she followed him without hesitation. They crept through the little closet under the stair, and were in the hall of the castle.

As they went softly up the stair, Donal had an idea.

"He is not back yet!" he said: "we will take the key from the oak door; he will think he has mislaid it, and will not find out that you are gone. I wonder what he will do!"

Cautiously listening to be sure the earl was not there, he ran to the oak door, locked it, and brought away the key. Then they went to the room Arctura had last occupied.

The door was ajar; there was a light in the room. They went softly, and peeped in. The earl was there, turning over the contents of her writing-desk.

"He will find nothing," she whispered with a smile.

Donal led her away.

"We will go to your old room," he said. "The whole recess is built up with stone and lime: he cannot come near you that way!"

She made no objection. Donal secured the doors, lighted a fire, and went to look for food. They had agreed upon a certain knock, without which she was to open to none.

While she was yet changing the garments in which she had lain on the terrible bed, she heard the earl go by, and the door of his room close. Apparently he had concluded to let her pass the night without another visit: he had himself had a bad fright, and had probably not got over it. A little longer and she heard Donal's gentle signal at the door of the sitting-room. He had brought some biscuits and a little wine in the bottom of a decanter from the housekeeper's room: there was literally nothing in the larder, he said.

They sat down and ate the biscuits. Donal told his adventures. They agreed that she must write to the factor to come home at once, and bring his sister. Then Donal set to with his file upon the ring: her hand was much too swollen to admit of its being removed as it had been put on. It was not easy to cut it, partly from the constant danger of hurting her swollen hand, partly that the rust filled and blunted the file.

"There!" he said at last, "you are free! And now, my lady, you must take some rest. The door to the passage is secure. Lock this one inside, and I will draw the sofa across it outside: if he come wandering in the night, and get into this room, he will not reach your door."

Weary as he was, Donal could not sleep much. In the middle of the night he heard the earl's door open, and watched and followed him. He went to the oak door, and tried in vain to open it.

"She has taken it!" he muttered, in what seemed to Donal an awe-struck voice.

All night long he roamed the house a spirit grievously tormented. In the gray of the morning, having perhaps persuaded himself that the whole affair was a trick of his imagination, he went back to his room.

In the morning Donal left the house, having first called to Arctura and warned her to lock the door of the sitting-room the moment he was gone. He ran all the way down to the inn, paid his bill, bought some things in the town for their breakfast, and taking the mare, rode up to the castle, and rang the bell. No notice was taken. He went and put up his animal, then let himself into the house by Baliol's tower, and began to sing. So singing he went up the great stair, and into and along the corridor where the earl lay.

The singing roused him, and brought him to his door in a rage. But the moment he saw Donal his countenance fell.

"What the devil are you doing here?" he said.

"They told me in the town you were in England, my lord!"

"I wrote to you," said the earl, "that we were gone to London, and that you need be in no haste to return. I trust you have not brought Davie with you?"

"I have not, my lord."

"Then make what haste back to him you can. He must not be alone with bumpkins! You may stay there with him till I send for you—only mind you go on with your studies. Now be off. I am at home but for a few hours on business, and leave again by the afternoon coach!"

"I do not go, my lord, until I have seen my mistress."

"Your mistress! Who, pray, is your mistress!"

"I am no longer in your service, my lord."

"Then what, in the name of God, have you done with my son?"

"In good time, my lord, when you have told me where my mistress is! I am in this house as lady Arctura's servant; and I desire to know where I shall find her."

"In London."

"What address, please your lordship? I will wait her orders here."

"You will leave this house at once," said the earl. "I will not have you here in both her ladyship's absence and my own."

"My lord, I am not ignorant how things stand: I am in lady Arctura's house; and here I remain till I receive her commands."

"Very well! By all means!"

"I ask you again for her address, my lord."

"Find it for yourself. You will not obey my orders: am I to obey yours?"

He turned on his heel, and flung to his door.

Donal went to lady Arctura. She was in the sitting-room, anxiously waiting his return. She had heard their voices, but nothing that passed. He told her what he had done; then produced his provisions, and together they prepared their breakfast. By and by they heard the earl come from his room, go here and there through the still house, and return to his apartment.

In the afternoon he left the house. They watched him away—ill able, apparently, even to crawl along. He went down the hill, nor once lifted his head. They turned and looked at each other. Profound pity for the wretched old man was the feeling of both. It was followed by one of intense relief and liberty.

"You would like to be rid of me now, my lady," said Donal; "but I don't see how I can leave you. Shall I go and fetch Miss Carmichael?"

"No, certainly," answered Arctura. "I cannot apply to her."

"It would be a pity to lose the advantage of your uncle's not knowing what has become of you."

"I wonder what he will do next! If I were to die now, the property would be his, and then Forgue's!"

"You can will it away, I suppose, my lady!" answered Donal.

Arctura stood thoughtful.

"Is Forgue a bad man, Mr. Grant?"

"I dare not trust him," answered Donal.

"Do you think he had any knowledge of this plot of his father's?"

"I cannot tell. I do not believe he would have left you to die in the chapel."



CHAPTER LXXVIII.

RESTORATION.

The same afternoon, while Donal was reading to Arctura in the library, there came a loud ringing of the door-bell. Donal ran to see, and to his great delight, there was mistress Brookes, half wild with anxious terror.

"Is my leddy safe?" she cried—then clasped Donal in her arms and embraced him as if he had been her son.

>From the moment she discovered herself fooled, she had been imagining all manner of terrible things—yet none so terrible as the truth. There was no end to her objurgations, exclamations, anathemas, and interjections.

"Now I can leave you in peace, my lady!" said Donal, who had not resumed his seat.

"Noo ye can bide whaur ye are, an' be thankfu'!" said mistress Brookes. "Wha daur meddle wi' ye, an' me i' the hoose! An' wha kens what the mad yerl, for mad I s' uphaud him, an' fit only to be lockit up—wha kens what he may do neist! Maister Grant, I cannot lat ye oot o' the hoose."

"I was only going as far as mistress Comin's," replied Donal.

"Weel, ye can gang; but min' ye're hame i' gude time!"

"I thought of putting up there, but I will do as my lady pleases."

"Come home," said Arctura.

Donal went, and the first person he saw when he entered the house was Eppy. She turned instantly away, and left the room: he could not help seeing why.

The old woman welcomed him with her usual cordiality, but not her usual cheerfulness: he had scarcely noted since her husband's death any change on her manner till now: she looked weary of the world.

She sat down, smoothed her apron on her knees, gave him one glance in the face, then looked down at her hands, and said nothing.

"I ken what ails ye, Doory," said Donal; "but i' the name o' him 'at's awa', hearken til me.—The lass is no lost, naither is the Lord asleep. Yer lamb 's been sair misguidit, sair pluckit o' her bonny woo', but gien for that she haud the closer by the Lord's flock, she'll ken it wasna for want o' his care the tod got a grup o' her. It's a terrible pity for the bonny cratur, disgracin' them 'at aucht her! What for winna yoong fowk believe them 'at speyks true, but wull believe them 'at tells them little but lees! Still, it's no as gien she had been stealin'! She's wrangt her puir sel', an' she's wrangt us a', an' she's wrangt the Lord; but for a' that ye canna luik doon upon her as upo' the man 'at's grown rich at the cost o' his neebours. There's mony a gran' prood leddy 'ill hae to stan' aside to lat Eppy pass up, whan we're 'afore the richteous judge."

"Eh, but ye speyk like my Anerew!" cried the poor woman, wiping her old eyes with her rough apron. "I s' do what I can for her; but there's no hidin' o' 't!"

"Hidin' o' 't!" cried Donal. "The Lord forbid! Sic things are no to be hidden! Sae lang 's she 's i' the warl', the thing has to be kenned o' a' 'at come nigh her. She maun beir her burden, puir lass! The Lord he'll lichten 't til her, but he'll hae naething smugglet up. That's no the w'y o' his kingdom!—I suppose there's nae doobt wha?"

"Nane. The Lord forbid!"

Two days after, Mr. Graeme and his sister returned, and at lady Arctura's request took up their abode at the castle. She told them that of late she had become convinced her uncle was no longer capable of attending to her affairs; that he was gone to London; that she had gone away with him, and was supposed to be with him still, though she had returned, and he did not know where she was. She did not wish him to know, but desired for the present to remain concealed. She had her reasons; and requested therefore as a personal favour that they would not once or to any one allude to her being at the castle. Mr. Graeme would in the meantime be so good as make himself acquainted, so far as possible, with the state of affairs between her and her uncle.

In the course of the investigations thereupon following, it became clear that a large portion of the moneys of the estate received by his lordship were nowise accounted for. Lady Arctura directed that further inquiry should in the meantime be stayed, but that no more money should be handed over to him.

For some time the factor heard nothing from his lordship. At length came instructions as to the forwarding of money, Forgue writing and his father signing. Mr. Graeme replied, excusing himself as he could, but sending no money. They wrote again. Again he excused himself. The earl threatened. Mr. Graeme took no heed. His lordship continued to demand and threaten, but neither he nor his son appeared. The factor at length wrote that he would pay no money but to lady Arctura. The earl himself wrote in reply, saying—had he been out of the country that he did not know she was dead and six weeks in her grave? Again the factor did not reply.

Donal rode back to Glashgar, and brought Davie home. Lessons were resumed, and Arctura took her full share in them.

Soon all about the castle was bustle and labour—masons and carpenters busy from morning to night. The wall that masked the windows of the chapel was pulled down; the windows, of stained glass, with never a crack, were cleaned; the passage under them was opened to the great stair; lady Arctura had a small sweet-toned organ built in the little gallery, and the mural stair from her own room opened again, that she might go down when she pleased to play on it—sometimes, in south-easterly winds, to listen to the aeolian harp dreaming out the music of the spheres.

In the process of removing the bed, much of it crumbled to dust. The carved tester and back were set up, the one over the great chimney-piece in the hall, the other over that in Arctura's room. The altar was replaced where the bed had been. The story of the finding of the lost chapel was written by Donal, and placed by Arctura among the records of the family.

But it soon became evident that what she had passed through had exercised a hurtful influence on lady Arctura's health. She was almost always happy, but her strength at times would suddenly desert her. Both Donal and mistress Brookes regarded her with some anxiety.

Her organ, to which she gave more labour than she was quite equal to, was now one of her main delights. Often would its chords be heard creeping through the long ducts and passages of the castle: either for a small instrument its tone was peculiarly penetrating, or the chapel was the centre of the system of the house. On the roof would Donal often sit listening to the sounds that rose through the shaft—airs and harmonies freed by her worshipping fingers—rejoicing to think how her spirit was following the sounds, guided by them in lovely search after her native country.

One day she went on playing till she forgot everything but her music, and almost unconsciously began to sing "The Lord is mindful of his own." She was unaware that she had two listeners—one on the roof above, one in the chapel below.

When twelve months were come and gone since his departure, the earl one bright morning approached the door of the castle, half doubting, half believing it his own: he was determined on dismissing the factor after rigorous examination of his accounts; and he wanted to see Davie. He had driven to the stables, and thence walked out on the uppermost terrace, passing the chapel without observing its unmasked windows. The great door was standing open: he went in, and up the stair, haunted by sounds of music he had been hearing ever since he stepped on the terrace.

But on the stair was a door he had never seen! Who dared make changes in his house? The thing was bewildering! But he was accustomed to be bewildered.

He opened the door—plainly a new one—and entered a gloomy little passage, lighted from a small aperture unfit to be called a window. The under side of the bare steps of a narrow stone stair were above his head. Had he or had he not ever seen the place before? On the right was a door. He went to it, opened it, and the hitherto muffled music burst loud on his ear. He started back in dismal apprehension:—there was the chapel, wide open to the eye of day!—clear and clean!—gone the hideous bed! gone the damp and the dust! while the fresh air trembled with the organ-breath rushing and rippling through it, and setting it in sweetest turmoil! He had never had such a peculiar experience! He had often doubted whether things were or were not projections from his own brain; he moved and acted in a world of subdued fact and enhanced fiction; he knew that sometimes he could not tell the one from the other; but never had he had the apparently real and the actually unreal brought so much face to face with each other! Everything was as clear to his eyes as in their prime of vision, and yet there could be no reality in what he saw!

Ever since he left the castle he had been greatly uncertain whether the things that seemed to have taken place there, had really taken place. He got himself in doubt about them the moment he failed to find the key of the oak door. When he asked himself what then could have become of his niece, he would reply that doubtless she was all right: she did not want to marry Forgue, and had slipped out of the way: she had never cared about the property! To have their own will was all women cared about! Would his factor otherwise have dared such liberties with him, the lady's guardian? He had not yet rendered his accounts, or yielded his stewardship. When she died the property would be his! if she was dead, it was his! She would never have dreamed of willing it away from him! She did not know she could: how should she? girls never thought about such things! Besides she would not have the heart: he had loved her as his own flesh and blood!

At intervals, nevertheless, he was assailed, at times overwhelmed, by the partial conviction that he had starved her to death in the chapel. Then he was tormented as with all the furies of hell. In his night visions he would see her lie wasting, hear her moaning, and crying in vain for help: the hardest heart is yet at the mercy of a roused imagination. He saw her body in its progressive stages of decay as the weeks passed, and longed for the process to be over, that he might go back, and pretending to have just found the lost room, carry it away, and have it honourably buried! Should he take it for granted that it had lain there for centuries, or suggest it must be lady Arctura—that she had got shut up there, like the bride in the chest? If he could but find an old spring lock to put on the door! But people were so plaguy sharp nowadays! They found out everything!—he could not afford to have everything found out!—God himself must not be allowed to know everything!

He stood staring. As he stood and stared, his mind began to change: perhaps, after all, what he saw, might be! The whole thing it had displaced must then be a fancy—a creation of the dreaming brain! God in heaven! if it could but be proven that he had never done it! All the other wicked things he was—or supposed himself guilty of—some of them so heavy that it had never seemed of the smallest use to repent of them—all the rest might be forgiven him!—But what difference would that make to the fact that he had done them? He could never take his place as a gentleman where all was known! They made such a fuss about a sin or two, that a man went and did worse out of pure despair!

But if he had never murdered anybody! In that case he could almost consent there should be a God! he could almost even thank him!—For what! That he was not to be damned for the thing he had not done—a thing he had had the misfortune to dream he had done—God never interfering to protect him from the horrible fancy? What was the good of a God that would not do that much for you—that left his creatures to make fools of themselves, and only laughed at them!—Bah! There was life in the old dog yet! If only he knew the thing for a fancy!

The music ceased, and the silence was a shock to him. Again he began to stare about him. He looked up. Before him in the air hovered the pale face of the girl he had—or had not murdered! It was one of his visions—but not therefore more unreal than any other appearance: she came from the world of his imagination—so real to him that in expectant moods it was the world into which he was to step the moment he left the body. She looked sweetly at him! She was come to forgive his sins! Was it then true? Was there no sin of murder on his soul? Was she there to assure him that he might yet hope for the world to come? He stretched out his arms to her. She turned away. He thought she had vanished. The next moment she was in the chapel, but he did not hear her, and stood gazing up. She threw her arms around him. The contact of the material startled him with such a revulsion, that he uttered a cry, staggered back, and stood looking at her in worse perplexity still. He had done the awful thing, yet had not done it! He stood as one bound to know the thing that could not be.

"Don't be frightened, uncle," said Arctura. "I am not dead. The sepulchre is the only resurrection-house! Uncle, uncle! thank God with me."

The earl stood motionless. Strange thoughts passed through him at their will. Had her presence dispelled darkness and death, and restored the lost chapel to the light of day? Had she haunted it ever since, dead yet alive, watching for his return to pardon him? Would his wife so receive him at the last with forgiveness and endearment? His eyes were fixed upon her. His lips moved tremulously once or twice, but no word came. He turned from her, glanced round the place, and said,

"It is a great improvement!"

I wonder how it would be with souls if they waked up and found all their sins but hideous dreams! How many would loathe the sin? How many would remain capable of doing all again? But few, perhaps no burdened souls can have any idea of the power that lies in God's forgiveness to relieve their consciousness of defilement. Those who say, "Even God cannot destroy the fact!" care more about their own cursed shame than their Father's blessed truth! Such will rather excuse than confess. When a man heartily confesses, leaving excuse to God, the truth makes him free, he knows that the evil has gone from him, as a man knows that he is cured of his plague.

"I did the thing," he says, "but I could not do it now. I am the same, yet not the same. I confess, I would not hide it, but I loathe it—ten times the more that the evil thing was mine."

Had the earl been able to say thus, he would have felt his soul a cleansed chapel, new-opened to the light and air;—nay, better—a fresh-watered garden, in which the fruits of the spirit had begun to grow! God's forgiveness is as the burst of a spring morning into the heart of winter. His autumn is the paying of the uttermost farthing. To let us go without that would be the pardon of a demon, not the forgiveness of the eternally loving God. But—Not yet, alas, not yet! has to be said over so many souls!

Arctura was struck dumb. She turned and walked out upon the great stair, her uncle following her. All the way up to the second floor she felt as if he were about to stab her in the back, but she would not look behind her. She went straight to her room, and heard her uncle go on to his. She rang her bell, sent for Donal, and told him what had passed.

"I will go to him," said Donal.

Arctura said nothing more, thus leaving the matter entirely in his hands.

Donal found him lying on the couch.

"My lord," he said, "you must be aware of the reasons why you should not present yourself here!"

The earl started up in one of his ready rages:—they were real enough! With epithets of contemptuous hatred, he ordered Donal from the room and the house. Donal answered nothing till the rush of his wrath had abated.

"My lord," he said, "there is nothing I would not do to serve your lordship. But I have no choice but tell you that if you do not walk out, you shall be expelled!"

"Expelled, you dog!"

"Expelled, my lord. The would-be murderer of his hostess must at least be put out of the house."

"Good heavens!" cried the earl, changing his tone with an attempted laugh, "has the poor, hysterical girl succeeded in persuading a man of your sense to believe her childish fancies?"

"I believe every word my lady says, my lord. I know that you had nearly murdered her."

The earl caught up the poker and struck at his head. Donal avoided the blow. It fell on the marble chimney-piece. While his arm was yet jarred by the impact, Donal wrenched the poker from him.

"My lord," he said, "with my own hands I drew the staple of the chain that fastened her to the bed on which you left her to die! You were yet in the house when I did so."

"You damned rascal, you stole the key. If it had not been for that I should have gone to her again. I only wanted to bring her to reason!"

"But as you had lost the key, rather than expose your cruelty, you went away, and left her to perish! You wanted her to die unless you could compel her to marry your son, that the title and property might go together; and that when with my own ears I heard your lordship tell that son that he had no right to any title!"

"What a man may say in a rage goes for nothing," answered the earl, sulkily rather than fiercely.

"But not what a woman writes in sorrow!" rejoined Donal. "I know the truth from the testimony of her you called your wife, as well as from your own mouth!"

"The testimony of the dead, and at second hand, will hardly be received in court!" returned the earl.

"If after your lordship's death, the man now called lord Forgue dares assume the title of Morven, I will publish what I know. In view of that, your lordship had better furnish him with the vouchers of his mother's marriage. My lord, I again beg you to leave the house."

The earl cast his eyes round the walls as if looking for a weapon. Donal took him by the arm.

"There is no farther room for ceremony," he said. "I am sorry to be rough with your lordship, but you compel me. Please remember I am the younger and the stronger man."

As he spoke he let the earl feel the ploughman's grasp: it was useless to struggle. His lordship threw himself on the couch.

"I will not leave the house. I am come home to die," he yelled. "I'm dying now, I tell you. I cannot leave the house! I have no money. Forgue has taken all."

"You owe a large sum to the estate!" said Donal.

"It is lost—all lost, I tell you! I have nowhere to go to! I am dying!"

He looked so utterly wretched that Donal's heart smote him. He stood back a little, and gave himself time.

"You would wish then to retire, my lord, I presume?" he said.

"Immediately—to be rid of you!" the earl answered.

"I fear, my lord, if you stay, you will not soon be rid of me! Have you brought Simmons with you?"

"No, damn him! he is like all the rest of you: he has left me!"

"I will help you to bed, my lord."

"Go about your business. I will get myself to bed."

"I will not leave you except in bed," rejoined Donal with decision; and ringing the bell, he desired the servant to ask mistress Brookes to come to him.

She came instantly. Before the earl had time even to look at her, Donal asked her to get his lordship's bed ready:—if she would not mind doing it herself, he said, he would help her: he must see his lordship to bed.

She looked a whole book at him, but said nothing. Donal returned her gaze with one of quiet confidence, and she understood it. What it said was, "I know what I am doing, mistress Brookes. My lady must not turn him out. I will take care of him."

"What are you two whispering at there?" cried the earl. "Here am I at the point of death, and you will not even let me go to bed!"

"Your room will be ready in a few minutes, my lord," said Mrs. Brookes; and she and Donal went to work in earnest, but with the door open between the rooms.

When it was ready,

"Now, my lord," said Donal, "will you come?"

"When you are gone. I will have none of your cursed help!"

"My lord, I am not going to leave you."

With much grumbling, and a very ill grace, his lordship submitted, and Donal got him to bed.

"Now put that cabinet by me on the table," he said.

The cabinet was that in which he kept his drugs, and had not been touched since he left it.

Donal opened the window, took up the cabinet, and threw it out.

With a bellow like that of a bull, the earl sprang out of bed, and just as the crash came from below, ran at Donal where he stood shutting the window, as if he would have sent him after the cabinet. Donal caught him and held him fast.

"My lord," he said, "I will nurse you, serve you, do anything, everything for you; but for the devil I'll be damned if I move hand or foot! Not one drop of hellish stuff shall pass your lips while I am with you!"

"But I am dying! I shall die of the horrors!" shrieked the earl, struggling to get to the window, as if he might yet do something to save his precious extracts, tinctures, essences, and compounds.

"We will send for the doctor," said Donal. "A very clever young fellow has come to the town since you left: perhaps he can help you. I will do what I can to make you give your life fair play."

"Come, come! none of that damned rubbish! My life is of no end of value to me! Besides, it's too late. If I were young now, with a constitution like yours, and the world before me, there might be some good in a paring or two of self-denial; but you wouldn't stab your murderer for fear of the clasp knife closing on your hand! you would not fire your pistol at him for fear of its bursting and blowing your brains out!"

"I have no desire to keep you alive, my lord; but I would give my life to let you get some of the good of this world before you pass to the next. To lengthen your life infinitely, I would not give you a single drop of any one of those cursed drugs!"

He rang the bell again.

"You're a friendly fellow!" grunted his lordship, and went back to his bed to ponder how to gain the solace of his passion.

Mrs. Brookes came.

"Will you please send to Mr. Avory, the new surgeon," said Donal, "and ask him, in my name, to come to the castle."

The earl was so ill, however, as to be doubtful, much as he desired them, whether, while rendering him for the moment less sensible to them, any of his drugs would do no other than increase his sufferings. He lay with closed eyes, a strange expression of pain mingled with something like fear every now and then passing over his face. I doubt if his conscience troubled him. It is in general those, I think, who through comparatively small sins have come to see the true nature of them, whose consciences trouble them greatly. Those who have gone from bad to worse through many years of moral decay, are seldom troubled as other men, or have any bands in their death. His lordship, it is true, suffered terribly at times because of the things he had done; but it was through the medium of a roused imagination rather than a roused conscience: the former deals with consequences; the latter with the deeds themselves.

He declared he would see no doctor but his old attendant Dowster, yet all the time was longing for the young man to appear: he might—who could tell?—save him from the dreaded jaws of death!

He came. Donal went to him. He had summoned him, he said, without his lordship's consent, but believed he would see him; the earl had been long in the habit of using narcotics and stimulants, though not alcohol, he thought; he trusted Mr. Avory would give his sanction to the entire disuse of them, for they were killing him, body and soul.

"To give them up at once and entirely would cost him considerable suffering," said the doctor.

"He knows that, and does not in the least desire to give them up. It is absolutely necessary he should be delivered from the passion."

"If I am to undertake the case, it must be after my own judgment," said the doctor.

"You must undertake two things, or give up the case," persisted Donal.

"I may as well hear what they are."

"One is, that you make his final deliverance from the habit your object; the other, that you will give no medicine into his own hands."

"I agree to both; but all will depend on his nurse."

"I will be his nurse."

The doctor went to see his patient. The earl gave one glance at him, recognized firmness, and said not a word. But when he would have applied to his wrist an instrument recording in curves the motions of the pulse, he would not consent. He would have no liberties taken with him, he said.

"My lord, it is but to inquire into the action of your heart," said Mr. Avory.

"I'll have no spying into my heart! It acts just like other people's!"

The doctor put his instrument aside, and laid his finger on the pulse instead: his business was to help, not to conquer, he said to himself: if he might not do what he would, he would do what he could.

While he was with the earl, Donal found lady Arctura, and told her all he had done. She thanked him for understanding her.



CHAPTER LXXIX.

A SLOW TRANSITION.

A dreary time followed. Sometimes the patient would lie awake half the night, howling with misery, and accusing Donal of heartless cruelty. He knew as well as he what would ease his pain and give him sleep, but not a finger would he move to save him! He was taking the meanest of revenges! What did it matter to him what became of his soul! Surely it was worse to hate as he made him hate than to swallow any amount of narcotics!

"I tell you, Grant," he said once, "I was never so cruel to those I treated worst. There's nothing in the Persian hells, which beat all the rest, to come up to what I go through for want of my comfort. Promise to give it me, and I will tell you where to find some."

As often as Donal refused he would break out in a torrent of curses, then lie still for a space.

"How do you think you will do without it," Donal once rejoined, "when you find yourself bodiless in the other world?"

"I'm not there yet! When that comes, it will be under new conditions, if not unconditioned altogether. We'll take the world we have. So, my dear boy, just go and get me what I want. There are the keys!"

"I dare not."

"You wish to kill me!"

"I wouldn't keep you alive to eat opium. I have other work than that. Not a finger would I move to save a life for such a life. But I would willingly risk my own to make you able to do without it. There would be some good in that!"

"Oh, damn your preaching!"

But the force of the habit abated a little. Now and then it seemed to return as strong as ever, but the fit went off again. His sufferings plainly decreased.

The doctor, having little yet of a practice, was able to be with him several hours every day, so that Donal could lie down. As he grew better, Davie, or mistress Brookes, or lady Arctura would sit with him. But Donal was never farther off than the next room. The earl's madness was the worst of any, a moral madness: it could not fail to affect the brain, but had not yet put him beyond his own control. Repeatedly had Donal been on the verge of using force to restrain him, but had not yet found himself absolutely compelled to do so: fearless of him, he postponed it always to the very last, and the last had not yet arrived.

The gentle ministrations of his niece by and by seemed to touch him. He was growing to love her a little, He would smile when she came into the room, and ask her how she did. Once he sat looking at her for some time—then said,

"I hope I did not hurt you much."

"When?" she asked.

"Then," he answered.

"Oh, no; you did not hurt me—much!"

"Another time, I was very cruel to your aunt: do you think she will forgive me!"

"Yes, I do."

"Then you have forgiven me?"

"Of course I have."

"Then of course God will forgive me too!"

"He will—if you leave off, you know, uncle."

"That's more than I can promise."

"If you try, he will help you."

"How can he? It is a second nature now!"

"He is your first nature. He can help you too by taking away the body and its nature together."

"You're a fine comforter! God will help me to be good by taking away my life! A nice encouragement to try! Hadn't I better kill myself and save him the trouble!"

"It's not the dying, uncle! no amount of dying would ever make one good. It might only make it less difficult to be good."

"But I might after all refuse to be good! I feel sure I should! He had better let me alone!"

"God can do more than that to compel us to be good—a great deal more than that! Indeed, uncle, we must repent."

He said no more for some minutes; then suddenly spoke again.

"I suppose you mean to marry that rascal of a tutor!" he said.

She started up, and called Donal. But to her relief he did not answer: he was fast asleep.

"He would not thank you for the suggestion, I fear," she said, sitting down again. "He is far above me!"

"Is there no chance for Forgue then?"

"Not the smallest. I would rather have died where you left me than—"

"If you love me, don't mention that!" he cried. "I was not myself—indeed I was not! I don't know now—that is, I can't believe sometimes I ever did it."

"Uncle, have you asked God to forgive you!"

"I have—a thousand times."

"Then I will never speak of it again."

In general, however, he was sullen, cantankerous, abusive. They were all compassionate to him, treating him like a spoiled, but not the less in reality a sickly child. Arctura thought her grandmother could not have brought him up well; more might surely have been made of him. But Arctura had him after a lifetime fertile in cause of self-reproach, had him in the net of sore sickness, at the mercy of the spirit of God. He was a bad old child—this much only the wiser for being old, that he had found the ways of transgressors hard.

One night Donal, hearing him restless, got up from the chair where he watched by him most nights, and saw him staring, but not seeing: his eyes showed that they regarded nothing material. After a moment he gave a great sigh, and his jaw fell. Donal thought he was dead. But presently he came to himself like one escaping from torture: a terrible dream was behind him, pulling at the skirts of his consciousness.

"I've seen her!" he said. "She's waiting for me to take me—but where I do not know. She did not look angry, but then she seldom looked angry when I was worst to her!—Grant, I beg of you, don't lose sight of Davie. Make a man of him, and his mother will thank you. She was a good woman, his mother, though I did what I could to spoil her! It was no use! I never could!—and that was how she kept her hold of me. If I had succeeded, there would have been an end of her power, and a genuine heir to the earldom! What a damned fool I was to let it out! Who would have been the worse!"

"He's a heartless, unnatural rascal, though," he resumed, "and has made of me the fool I deserved to be made! His mother must see it was not my fault! I would have set things right if I could! But it was too late! And you tell me she has had a hand in letting the truth out—leaving her letters about!—That's some comfort! She was always fair, and will be the less hard on me. If I could see a chance of God being half as good to me as my poor wife. She was my wife! I will say it in spite of all the priests in the stupid universe! She was my wife, and deserved to be my wife; and if I had her now, I would marry her, because she would be foolish enough to like it, though I would not do it all the time she was alive, let her beg ever so! Where was the use of giving in, when I kept her in hand so easily that way? That was it! It was not that I wanted to do her any wrong. But you should keep the lead. A man mustn't play out his last trump and lose the lead. But then you never know about dying! If I had known my poor wife was going to die, I would have done whatever she wanted. We had merry times together! It was those cursed drugs that wiled the soul out of me, and then the devil went in and took its place!—There was curara in that last medicine, I'll swear!—Look you here now, Grant:—if there were any way of persuading God to give me a fresh lease of life! You say he hears prayer: why shouldn't you ask him? I would make you any promise you pleased—give you any security you wanted, hereafter to live a godly, righteous, and sober life."

"But," said Donal, "suppose God, reading your heart, saw that you would go on as bad as ever, and that to leave you any longer would only be to make it the more difficult for him to do anything with you afterwards?"

"He might give me a chance! It is hard to expect a poor fellow to be as good as he is himself!"

"The poor fellow was made in his image!" suggested Donal.

"Very poorly made then!" said the earl with a sneer. "We might as well have been made in some other body's image!"

Donal thought with himself.

"Did you ever know a good woman, my lord?" he asked.

"Know a good woman?—Hundreds of them!—The other sort was more to my taste! but there was my own mother! She was rather hard on my father now and then, but she was a good woman."

"Suppose you had been in her image, what then?"

"You would have had some respect for me!"

"Then she was nearer the image of God than you?"

"Thousands of miles!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman?"

"Know a bad woman? Hundreds that would take your heart's blood as you slept to make a philtre with!"

"Then you saw a difference between such a woman and your mother?"

"The one was of heaven, the other of hell—that was all the little difference!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman grow better?"

"No, never.—Stop! let me see. I did once know a woman—she was a married woman too—that made it all the worse—all the better I mean: she took poison—in good earnest, and died—died, sir—died, I say—when she came to herself, and knew what she had done! That was the only woman I ever knew that grew better. How long she might have gone on better if she hadn't taken the poison, I can't tell. That fixed her good, you see!"

"If she had gone on, she might have got as good as your mother?"

"Oh, hang it! no; I did not say that!"

"I mean, with God teaching her all the time—for ten thousand years, say—and she always doing what he told her!"

"Oh, well! I don't know anything about that. I don't know what God had to do with my mother being so good! She was none of your canting sort!"

"There is an old story," said Donal, "of a man who was the very image of God, and ever so much better than the best of women."

"He couldn't have been much of a man then!"

"Were you ever afraid, my lord?"

"Yes, several times—many a time."

"That man never knew what fear was."

"By Jove!"

"His mother was good, and he was better: your mother was good, and you are worse! Whose fault is that?"

"My own; I'm not ashamed to confess it!"

"Would to God you were!" said Donal: "you shame your mother in being worse than she was. You were made in the image of God, but you don't look like him now any more than you look like your mother. I have a father and mother, my lord, as like God as they can look!"

"Of course! of course! In their position there are no such temptations as in ours!"

"I am sure of one thing, my lord—that you will never be at any peace until you begin to show the image in which you were made. By that time you will care for nothing so much as that he should have his way with you and the whole world."

"It will be long before I come to that!"

"Probably; but you will never have a moment's peace till you begin. It is no use talking though. God has not made you miserable enough yet."

"I am more miserable than you can think."

"Why don't you cry to him to deliver you?"

"I would kill myself if it weren't for one thing."

"It is from yourself he would deliver you."

"I would, but that I want to put off seeing my wife as long as I can."

"I thought you wanted to see her!"

"I long for her sometimes more than tongue can tell."

"And you don't want to see her?"

"Not yet; not just yet. I should like to be a little better—to do something or other—I don't know what—first. I doubt if she would touch me now—with that small, firm hand she would catch hold of me with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it hadn't been that she loved me—me, do you hear, you dog!—though there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no great catch; and for the rank, she never got any good of that, nor would if she had lived till I was earl; she had a conscience—which I never had—and would never have consented to be called countess. 'It will be no worse than passing for my wife now,' I would say. 'What's either but an appearance? What's any thing of all the damned humbug but appearance? One appearance is as good as another appearance!' She would only smile—smile fit to make a mule sad! And then when her baby was dying, and she wanted me to take her for a minute, and I wouldn't! She laid her down, and got what she wanted herself, and when she went to take the child again, the absurd little thing was—was—gone—dead, I mean gone dead, never to cry any more! There it lay motionless, like a lump of white clay. She looked at me—and never—in this world—smiled again!—nor cried either—all I could do to make her!"

The wretched man burst into tears, and the heart of Donal gave a leap for joy. Common as tears are, fall as they may for the foolishest things, they may yet be such as to cause joy in paradise. The man himself may not know why he weeps, and his tears yet indicate his turning on his road. The earl was as far from a good man as man well could be; there were millions of spiritual miles betwixt him and the image of God; he had wept it was hard to say at what—not at his own cruelty, not at his wife's suffering, not in pity of the little soul that went away at last out of no human embrace; himself least of all could have told why he wept; yet was that weeping some sign of contact between his human soul and the great human soul of God; it was the beginning of a possible communion with the Father of all! Surely God saw this, and knew the heart he had made—saw the flax smoking yet! He who will not let us out until we have paid the uttermost farthing, rejoices over the offer of the first golden grain.

Donal dropped on his knees and prayed:—

"O Father of us all!" he said, "in whose hands are these unruly hearts of ours, we cannot manage ourselves; we ruin our own selves; but in thee is our help found!"

Prayer went from him; he rose from his knees.

"Go on; go on; don't stop!" cried the earl. "He may hear you—who can tell!"

Donal went down on his knees again.

"O God!" he said, "thou knowest us, whether we speak to thee or not; take from this man his hardness of heart. Make him love thee."

There he stopped again. He could say no more.

"I can't pray, my lord," he said, rising. "I don't know why. It seems as if nothing I said meant anything. I will pray for you when I am alone."

"Are there so many devils about me that an honest fellow can't pray in my company?" cried the earl. "I will pray myself, in spite of the whole swarm of them, big and little!—O God, save me! I don't want to be damned. I will be good if thou wilt make me. I don't care about it myself, but thou canst do as thou pleasest. It would be a fine thing if a rascal like me were to escape the devil through thy goodness after all. I'm worth nothing, but there's my wife! Pray, pray, Lord God, let me one day see my wife again!—For Christ's sake—ain't that the way, Grant?—Amen."

Donal had dropped on his knees once more when the earl began to pray. He uttered a hearty Amen. The earl turned sharply towards him, and saw he was weeping. He put out his hand to him, and said,

"You'll stand my friend, Grant?"



CHAPTER LXXX.

AWAY-FARING.

Suddenly what strength lady Arctura had, gave way, and she began to sink. But it was spring with the summer at hand; they hoped she would recover sufficiently to be removed to a fitter climate. She did not herself think so. She had hardly a doubt that her time was come. She was calm, often cheerful, but her spirits were variable. Donal's heart was sorer than he had thought it could be again.

One day, having been reading a little to her, he sat looking at her. He did not know how sad was the expression of his countenance. She looked up, smiled, and said,

"You think I am unhappy!—you could not look at me like that if you did not think so! I am only tired; I am not unhappy. I hardly know now what unhappiness is! If ever I look as if I were unhappy, it is only that I am waiting for more life. It is on the way; I feel it is, because I am so content with everything; I would have nothing other than it is. It is very hard for God that his children will not trust him to do with them what he pleases! I am sure, Mr. Grant, the world is all wrong, and on the way to be all wondrously right. It will cost God much labour yet: we will cost him as little as we can—won't we?—Oh, Mr. Grant, if it hadn't been for you, God would have been far away still! For a God I should have had something half an idol, half a commonplace tyrant! I should never have dreamed of the glory of God!"

"No, my lady!" returned Donal; "if God had not sent me, he would have sent somebody else; you were ready!"

"I am very glad he sent you! I should never have loved any other so much!"

Donal's eyes filled with tears. He was simple as a child. No male vanity, no self-exultation that a woman should love him, and tell him she loved him, sprang up in his heart. He knew she loved him; he loved her; all was so natural it could not be otherwise: he never presumed to imagine her once thinking of him as he had thought of Ginevra. He was her servant, willing and loving as any angel of God: that was all—and enough!

"You are not vexed with your pupil—are you?" she resumed, again looking up in his face, this time with a rosy flush on her own.

"Why?" said Donal, with wonder.

"For speaking so to my master."

"Angry because you love me?"

"No, of course!" she responded, at once satisfied. "You knew that must be! How could I but love you—better than any one else in the world! You have given me life! I was dead.—You have been like another father to me!" she added, with a smile of heavenly tenderness. "But I could not have spoken to you like this, if I had not known I was dying."

The word shot a sting as of fire through Donal's heart.

"You are always a child, Mr. Grant," she went on; "death is making a child of me; it makes us all children: as if we were two little children together, I tell you I love you.—Don't look like that," she continued; "you must not forget what you have been teaching me all this time—that the will of God, the perfect God, is all in all! He is not a God far off: to know that is enough to have lived for! You have taught me that, and I love you with a true heart fervently."

Donal could not speak. He knew she was dying.

"Mr. Grant," she began again, "my soul is open to his eyes, and is not ashamed. I know I am going to do what would by the world be counted unwomanly; but you and I stand before our Father, not before the world. I ask you in plain words, knowing that if you cannot do as I ask you willingly, you will not do it. And be sure I shall plainly be dying before I claim the fulfilment of your promise if you give it. I do not want your answer all at once: you must think about it."

Here she paused a while, then said,

"I want you to marry me, if you will, before I go."

Donal could not yet speak. His soul was in a tumult of emotion.

"I am tired," she said. "Please go and think it over. If you say no, I shall only say, 'He knows best what is best!' I shall not be ashamed. Only you must not once think what the world would say: of all people we have nothing to do with the world! We have nothing to do but with God and love! If he be pleased with us, we can afford to smile at what his silly children think of us: they mind only what their vulgar nurses say, not what their perfect father says: we need not mind them—need we?—I wonder at myself," she went on, for Donal did not utter a word, "for being able to speak like this; but then I have been thinking of it for a long time—chiefly as I lie awake. I am never afraid now—not though I lie awake all night: 'perfect love casteth out fear,' you know. I have God to love, and Jesus to love, and you to love, and my own father to love! When you know him, you will see how good a man can be without having been brought up like you!—Oh, Donal, do say something, or I shall cry, and crying kills me!"

She was sitting on a low chair, with the sunlight across her lap—for she was again in the sunny Garland-room—and the firelight on her face. Donal knelt gently down, and laid his hands in the sunlight on her lap, just as if he were going to say his prayers at his mother's knee. She laid both her hands on his.

"I have something to tell you," he said; "and then you must speak again."

"Tell me," said Arctura, with a little gasp.

"When I came here," said Donal, "I thought my heart so broken that it would never love—that way, I mean—any more. But I loved God better than ever: and as one I would fain help, I loved you from the very first. But I should have scorned myself had I once fancied you loved me more than just to do anything for me I needed done. When I saw you troubled, I longed to take you up in my arms, and carry you like a lovely bird that had fallen from one of God's nests; but never once, my lady, did I think of your caring for my love: it was yours as a matter of course. I once asked a lady to kiss me—just once, for a good-bye: she would not—and she was quite right; but after that I never spoke to a lady but she seemed to stand far away on the top of a hill against a sky."

He stopped. Her hands on his fluttered a little, as if they would fly.

"Is she still—is she—alive?" she asked.

"Oh yes, my lady."

"Then she may—change—" said Arctura, and stopped, for there was a stone in her heart.

Donal laughed. It was an odd laugh, but it did Arctura good.

"No danger of that, my lady! She has the best husband in the world—a much better than I should have made, much as I loved her."

"That can't be!"

"Why, my lady, her husband's sir Gibbie! She's lady Galbraith! I would never have wished her mine if I had known she loved Gibbie. I love her next to him."

"Then—then—"

"What, my lady?"

"Then—then—Oh, do say something!"

"What should I say? What God wills is fast as the roots of the universe, and lovely as its blossom."

Arctura burst into tears.

"Then you do not—care for me!"

Donal began to understand. In some things he went on so fast that he could not hear the cry behind him. She had spoken, and had been listening in vain for response! She thought herself unloved: he had shown her no sign that he loved her!

His heart was so full of love and the joy of love, that they had made him very still: now the delight of love awoke. He took her in his arms like a child, rose, and went walking about the room with her, petting and soothing her. He held her close to his heart; her head was on his shoulder, and his face was turned to hers.

"I love you," he said, "and love you to all eternity! I have love enough now to live upon, if you should die to-night, and I should tarry till he come. O God, thou art too good to me! It is more than my heart can bear! To make men and women, and give them to each other, and not be one moment jealous of the love wherewith they love one another, is to be a God indeed!"

So said Donal—and spoke the high truth. But alas for the love wherewith men and women love each other! There were small room for God to be jealous of that! It is the little love with which they love each other, the great love with which they love themselves, that hurts the heart of their father.

Arctura signed at length a prayer for release, and he set her gently down in her chair again. Then he saw her face more beautiful than ever before; and the rose that bloomed there was the rose of a health deeper than sickness. These children of God were of the blessed few who love the more that they know him present, whose souls are naked before him, and not ashamed. Let him that hears understand! if he understand not, let him hold his peace, and it will be his wisdom! He who has no place for this love in his religion, who thinks to be more holy without it, is not of God's mind when he said, "Let us make man!" He may be a saint, but he cannot be a man after God's own heart. The finished man is the saved man. The saint may have to be saved from more than sin.

"When shall we be married?" asked Donal.

"Soon, soon," answered Arctura.

"To-morrow then?"

"No, not to-morrow: there is no such haste—now that we understand each other," she added with a rosy smile. "I want to be married to you before I die, that is all—not just to-morrow, or the next day."

"When you please, my love," said Donal.

She laid her head on his bosom.

"We are as good as married now," she said: "we know that each loves the other! How I shall wait for you! You will be mine, you know—a little bit mine—won't you?—even if you should marry some beautiful lady after I am gone?—I shall love her when she comes."

"Arctura!" said Donal.



CHAPTER LXXXI.

A WILL AND A WEDDING.

But the opening of the windows of heaven, and the unspeakable rush of life through channels too narrow and banks too weak to hold its tide, caused a terrible inundation: the red flood broke its banks, and weakened all the land.

Arctura sent for Mr. Graeme, and commissioned him to fetch the family lawyer from Edinburgh. Alone with him she gave instructions concerning her will. The man of business shrugged his shoulders, laden with so many petty weights, bowed down with so many falsest opinions, and would have expostulated with her.

"Sir!" she said.

"You have a cousin who inherits the title!" he suggested.

"Mr. Fortune," she returned, "it may be I know as much of my family as you. I did not send for you to consult you, but to tell you how I would have my will drawn up!"

"I beg your pardon, my lady," rejoined the lawyer, "but there are things which may make it one's duty to speak out."

"Speak then; I will listen—that you may ease your mind."

He began a long, common-sense, worldly talk on the matter, nor once repeated himself. When he stopped,—

"Now have you eased your mind?" she asked.

"I have, my lady."

"Then listen to me. There is no necessity you should hurt either your feelings or your prejudices. If it goes against your conscience to do as I wish, I will not trouble you."

Mr. Fortune bowed, took his instructions, and rose.

"When will you bring it me?" she asked.

"In the course of a week or two, my lady."

"If it is not in my hands by the day after to-morrow, I will send for a gentleman from the town to prepare it."

"You shall have it, my lady," said Mr. Fortune.

She did have it, and it was signed and witnessed.

Then she sank more rapidly. Donal said no word about the marriage: it should be as she pleased! He was much by her bedside, reading to her when she was able to listen, talking to her or sitting silent when she was not.

Arctura had at once told mistress Brookes the relation in which she and Donal stood to each other. It cost the good woman many tears, for she thought such a love one of the saddest things in a sad world. Neither Arctura nor Donal thought so.

The earl at this time was a little better, though without prospect of even temporary recovery. He had grown much gentler, and sadness had partially displaced his sullenness. He seemed to have become in a measure aware of the bruteness of the life he had hitherto led: he must have had a glimpse of something better. It is wonderful what the sickness which human stupidity regards as the one evil thing, can do towards redemption! He showed concern at his niece's illness, and had himself carried down every other day to see her for a few minutes. She received him always with the greatest gentleness, and he showed something that seemed like genuine affection for her.

It was a morning in the month of May—

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold—

when Donal, who had been with Arctura the greater part of the night, and now lay on the couch in a neighbouring room, heard Mrs. Brookes call him.

"My lady wants you, sir," she said.

He started up, and went to her.

"Send for the minister," she whispered, "—not Mr. Carmichael; he does not know you. Send for Mr. Graeme too: he and mistress Brookes will be witnesses. I must call you husband once before I die!"

"I hope you will many a time after!" he returned.

She smiled on him with a look of love unutterable.

"Mind," she said, holding out her arms feebly, but drawing him fast to her bosom, "that this is how I love you! When you see me dull and stupid, and I hardly look at you—for though death makes bright, dying makes stupid—then say to yourself, 'This is not how she loves me; it is only how she is dying! She loves me and knows it—and by and by will be able to show it!'"

They were precious words both then and afterwards!

With some careful questioning, to satisfy himself that, so evidently at the gate of death she yet knew perfectly her own mind,—and not without some shakes of the head revealing disapprobation, the minister did as he was requested, and wrote a certificate of the fact, which was duly signed and witnessed.

And if he showed his disapproval yet more in the prayer with which he concluded the ceremony, none but mistress Brookes showed responsive indignation.

The bridegroom gave his bride one gentle kiss, and withdrew with the clergyman.

"Pardon me if I characterize this as a strange proceeding!" said the latter.

"Not so strange perhaps as it looks, sir!" said Donal.

"On the very brink of the other world!"

"The other world and its brink too are his who ordained marriage!"

"For this world only," said the minister.

"The gifts of God are without repentance," said Donal.

"I have heard of you!" returned the clergyman. "You are one, they tell me, given to misusing scripture."

He had conceived a painful doubt that he had been drawn into some plot!

"Sir!" said Donal sternly, "if you saw any impropriety in the ceremony, why did you perform it? I beg you will now reserve your remarks. You ought to have made them before or not at all. If you be silent, the thing will probably never be heard of, and I should greatly dislike having it the town-talk."

"Except I see reason—that is, if nothing follow to render disclosure necessary, I shall be silent," said the minister.

He would have declined the fee offered by Donal; but he was poor, and its amount prevailed: he accepted it, and took his leave with a stiffness he intended for dignity: he had a high sense, if not of the dignity of his office, at least of the dignity his office conferred on him.

Donal had next a brief interview with Mr. Graeme. The factor was in a state of utter bewilderment, and readily yielded Donal a promise of silence: the mere whim of a dying girl, it had better be ignored and forgotten! As to Grant's part in it he did not know what to think. It could not affect the property, he thought: it could hardly be a marriage! And then there was the will—of the contents of which he knew nothing! If it were a complete marriage, the will was worth nothing, being made before it!

I will not linger over the quiet, sad time that followed. Donal was to Arctura, she said, father, brother, husband, in one. Through him she had reaped the harvest of the world, in spite of falsehood, murder, fear, and distrust! She lay victorious on the battlefield!

In the heart of her bridegroom reigned a peace the world could not give or take away. He loved with a love that cast the love of former days into the shadow of a sweet but undesired remembrance. A long twilight life lay before him, but he would have plenty to do! and such was the love between him and Arctura, that every doing of the will of God was as the tying of a fresh bond between him and her: she was his because they were the Father's, whose will was the life and bond of the universe.

"I think," said Donal, that same night by her bed, "when my mother dies, she will go near you: I will, if I can, send you a message by her. But it will not matter; it can only tell you what you will know well enough—that I love you, and am waiting to come to you."

The stupidity of calling oneself a Christian, and doubting if we shall know our friends hereafter! In those who do not believe such a doubt is more than natural, but in those who profess to believe, it shows what a ragged scarecrow is the thing they call their faith—not worth that of many an old Jew, or that of here and there a pagan!

"I shall not be far from you, dear, I think—sometimes at least," she said, speaking very low. "If you dream anything nice about me, think I am thinking of you. If you should dream anything not nice, think something is lying to you about me. I do not know if I shall be allowed to come near you, but if I am—and I think I shall be—sometimes, I shall laugh to myself to think how near I am, and you fancying me a long way off! But any way all will be well, for the great life, our God, our father, is, and in him we cannot but be together."

After that she fell into a deep sleep, and slept for hours. Then suddenly she sat up. Donal put his arm behind and supported her. She looked a little wild, shuddered, murmured something he could not understand, then threw herself back into his arms. Her expression changed to a look of divinest, loveliest content, and she was gone.



CHAPTER LXXXII.

THE WILL.

When her will was read, it was found that, except some legacies, and an annuity to Mrs. Brookes, she had left everything to Donal.

Mr. Graeme, rising the moment the lawyer looked up, congratulated Donal—politely, not cordially, and took his leave.

"If you are walking towards home," said Donal, "I will walk with you."

"I shall be happy," said Mr. Graeme—feeling it not a little hard that one who would soon be heir presumptive to the title should have to tend the family property in the service of a stranger and a peasant.

"Lord Morven cannot live long," said Donal as they went. "It is not to be wished he should."

Mr. Graeme returned no answer. Donal resumed.

"I think I ought to let you know at once that you are heir to the title."

"I think you owe the knowledge to myself!" said the factor, not without a touch of contempt.

"By no means," rejoined Donal: "on presumption, after lord Forgue, you told me;—after lord Morven, I tell you."

"I am at a loss to imagine on what you found such a statement," said Graeme, beginning to suspect insanity.

"Naturally; no one knows it but myself. Lord Morven knows that his son cannot succeed, but he does not know that you can. I am prepared, if not to prove, at least to convince you that he and his son's mother were not married."

Mr. Graeme was for a moment silent. Then he laughed a little laugh—not a pleasant one. "Another of Time's clownish tricks!" he said to himself: "the earl the factor on the family-estate!" Donal did not like the way he took it, but saw how natural it was.

"I hope you have known me long enough," he said, "to believe I have contrived nothing?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Grant: the whole business looks suspicious. The girl was dying! You knew it!"

"I do not understand you."

"What did you marry her for?"

"To make her my wife."

"Pray what could be the good of that except—?"

"Does it need any explanation but that we loved each other?"

"You will find it difficult to convince the world that such was your sole motive."