His eye first fell on a large flat stone in the floor, like a gravestone, but without any ornament or inscription. It was a roughly vaulted place, unpaved, its floor of damp hard-beaten earth. In the wall to the right of that through which he had entered, was another opening, low down, like the crown of an arch the rest of which was beneath the floor. As near as he could judge, it was right under the built-up door in the passage above. He crept through it, and found himself under the spiral of the great stair, in the small space at the bottom of its well. On the floor lay a dust-pan and a house-maid's-brush—and there was the tiny door at which they were shoved in, after their morning's use upon the stair! It was open—inwards; he crept through it: he was in the great hall of the house—and there was one of its windows wide open! Afraid of being by any chance discovered, he put out his light, and proceeded up the stair in the dark.

He had gone but a few steps when he heard the sound of descending feet. He stopped and listened: they turned into the half-way room. When he reached it, he heard sounds which showed that the earl was in the closet behind it. Things rushed together in his mind. He hurried up to lady Arctura's room, thence descended, for the third time that night—but no farther than the oak door, passed through it, entered the little chamber, and hastening to the farther end of it, laid his ear against the wall. Plainly enough he heard the sounds he had expected—those of the dream-walking rather than sleep-walking earl, moaning, and calling in a low voice of entreaty after some one whose name did not grow audible to the listener.

"Ah!" thought Donal, "who would find it hard to believe in roaming and haunting ghosts, that had once seen this poor man roaming his own house, and haunting that chamber! How easily I could punish him now, with a lightning blast of terror!"

It was but a thought; it did not amount to a temptation; Donal knew he had no right. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, for he alone knows how to use it.

I do not believe that mere punishment exists anywhere in the economy of the highest; I think mere punishment a human idea, not a divine one. But the consuming fire is more terrible than any punishment invented by riotous and cruel imagination. Punishment indeed it is—not mere punishment; a power of God for his creature. Love is God's being; love is his creative energy; they are one: God's punishments are for the casting out of the sin that uncreates, for the recreating of the things his love made and sin has unmade.

He heard the lean hands of the earl go slowly sweeping, at the ends of his long arms, over the wall: he had seen the thing, else he could hardly have interpreted the sounds; and he heard him muttering on and on, though much too low for his words to be distinguishable. Had they been, Donal by this time was so convinced that he had to do with an evil and dangerous man, that he would have had little scruple in listening. It is only righteousness that has a right to secrecy, and does not want it; evil has no right to secrecy, alone intensely desires it, and rages at being foiled of it; for when its deeds come to the light, even evil has righteousness enough left to be ashamed of them. But he could remain no longer; his very soul felt sick within him. He turned hastily away to leave the place. But carrying his light too much in front, and forgetting the stool, he came against it and knocked it over, not without noise. A loud cry from the other side of the wall revealed the dismay he had caused. It was followed by a stillness, and then a moaning.

He made haste to find Simmons, and send him to his master. He heard nothing afterwards of the affair.



CHAPTER LXIII.

THE CLOSET.

Tender over lady Arctura, Donal would ask a question or two of the housekeeper before disclosing what further he had found. He sought her room, therefore, while Arctura and Davie, much together now, were reading in the library.

"Did you ever hear anything about that little room on the stair, mistress Brookes?" he asked.

"I canna say," she answered—but thoughtfully, "—Bide a wee: auld auntie did mention something ance aboot—bide a wee—I hae a wullin' memory—maybe I'll min' upo' 't i' the noo!—It was something aboot biggin' up an' takin' doon—something he was to do, an' something he never did!—I'm sure I canna tell! But gie me time, an' I'll min' upo' 't! Ance is aye wi' me—only I maun hae time!"

Donal waited, and said not a word.

"I min' this much," she said at length, "—that they used to be thegither i' that room. I min' too that there was something aboot buildin' up ae wa', an' pu'in' doon anither.—It's comin'—it's comin' back to me!"

She paused again awhile, and then said:

"All I can recollec', Mr. Grant, is this: that efter her death, he biggit up something no far frae that room!—what was't noo?—an' there was something aboot makin' o' the room bigger! Hoo that could be by buildin' up, I canna think! Yet I feel sure that was what he did!"

"Would you mind coming to the place?" said Donal. "To see it might help you to remember."

"I wull, sir. Come ye here aboot half efter ten, an' we s' gang thegither."

As soon as the house was quiet, they went. But Mistress Brookes could recall nothing, and Donal gazed about him to no purpose.

"What's that?" he said at last, pointing to the wall on the other side of which was the little chamber.

Two arches, in chalk, as it seemed, had attracted his gaze. Light surely was about to draw nigh through the darkness! Chaos surely was settling a little towards order!

The one arch was drawn opposite the hidden chamber; the other against the earl's closet, as it had come to be called in the house—most of the domestics thinking he there said his prayers. It looked as if there had been an intention of piercing the wall with such arches, to throw the two small rooms on the other side as recesses into the larger. But if that had been the intent, what could the building of a wall, vaguely recollected by mistress Brookes, have been for? That a wall had been built he did not doubt, for he believed he knew the wall, but why?

"What's that?" said Donal.

"What?" returned Mrs. Brookes.

"Those two arches."

The housekeeper looked at them thoughtfully for a few moments.

"I canna help fancyin'," she said slowly, "—yes, I'm sure that's the varra thing my aunt told me aboot! That's the twa places whaur he was goin' to tak the wall doon, to mak the room lairger. But I'm sure she said something aboot buildin' a wall as weel!"

"Look here," said Donal; "I will measure the distance from the door to the other side of this first arch.—Now come into the closet behind. Look here! This same measurement takes us right up to the end of the place! So you see if we were to open the other arch, it would be into something behind this wall."

"Then this may be the varra wa' he biggit?"

"I don't doubt it; but what could he have had it built for, if he was going to open the other wall? I must think it all over!—It was after his wife's death, you say?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"One might have thought he would not care about enlarging the room after she was gone!"

"But, sir, he wasna jist sic a pattren o' a guidman;" said the housekeeper. "An' what for mak this room less?"

"May it not have been for the sake of shutting out, or hiding something?" suggested Donal.

"I do remember a certain thing!—Curious!—But what then as to the openin' o' 't efter?"

"He has never done it!" said Donal significantly. "The thing takes shape to me in this way:—that he wanted to build something out of sight—to annihilate it; but in order to prevent speculation, he professed the intention of casting the one room into the other; then built the wall across, on the pretence that it was necessary for support when the other was broken through—or perhaps that two recesses with arches would look better; but when he had got the wall built, he put off opening the arches on one pretext or another, till the thing should be forgotten altogether—as you see it is already, almost entirely!—I have been at the back of that wall, and heard the earl moaning and crying on this side of it!"

"God bless me!" cried the good woman. "I'm no easy scaret, but that's fearfu' to think o'!"

"You would not care to come there with me?"

"No the nicht, sir. Come to my room again, an' I s' mak ye a cup o' coffee, an' tell ye the story—it's a' come back to me noo—the thing 'at made my aunt tell me aboot the buildin' o' this wa'. 'Deed, sir, I hae hardly a doobt the thing was jist as ye say!"

They went to her room: there was lady Arctura sitting by the fire!

"My lady!" cried the housekeeper. "I thoucht I left ye soon' asleep!"

"So I was, I daresay," answered Arctura; "but I woke again, and finding you had not come up, I thought I would go down to you. I was certain you and Mr. Grant would be somewhere together! Have you been discovering anything more?"

Mrs. Brookes gave Donal a look: he left her to tell as much or as little as she pleased.

"We hae been prowlin' aboot the hoose, but no doon yon'er, my lady. I think you an' me wad do weel to lea' that to Mr. Grant!"

"When your ladyship is quite ready to have everything set to rights," said Donal, "and to have a resurrection of the chapel, then I shall be glad to go with you again. But I would rather not even talk more about it just at present."

"As you please, Mr. Grant," replied lady Arctura. "We will say nothing more till I have made up my mind. I don't want to vex my uncle, and I find the question rather a difficult one—and the more difficult that he is worse than usual.—Will you not come to bed now, mistress Brookes?"



CHAPTER LXIV.

THE GARLAND-ROOM.

All through the terrible time, the sense of help and comfort and protection in the presence of the young tutor, went on growing in the mind of Arctura. It was nothing to her—what could it be?—that he was the son of a very humble pair; that he had been a shepherd, and a cow-herd, and a farm labourer—less than nothing. She never thought of the facts of his life except sympathetically, seeking to enter into the feelings of his memorial childhood and youth; she would never have known anything of those facts but for their lovely intimacies of all sorts with Nature—nature divine, human, animal, cosmical. By sharing with her his emotional history, Donal had made its facts precious to her; through them he had gathered his best—by home and by prayer, by mother and father, by sheep and mountains and wind and sky. And now he was to her a tower of strength, a refuge, a strong city, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She trusted him the more that he never invited her trust—never put himself before her; for always before her he set Life, the perfect heart-origin of her and his yet unperfected humanity, teaching her to hunger and thirst after being righteous like God, with the assurance of being filled. She had once trusted in Miss Carmichael, not with her higher being, only with her judgment, and both her judgment and her friend had misled her. Donal had taught her that obedience, not to man but to God, was the only guide to holy liberty, and so had helped her to break the bonds of those traditions which, in the shape of authoritative utterances of this or that church, lay burdens grievous to be borne upon the souls of men. For Christ, against all the churches, seemed to her to express Donal's mission. An air of peace, an atmosphere of summer twilight after the going down of the sun, seemed to her to precede him and announce his approach with a radiation felt as rest. She questioned herself nowise about him. Falling in love was a thing unsuggested to her; if she was in what is called danger, it was of a better thing.

The next day she did not appear: mistress Brookes had persuaded her to keep her bed again for a day or two. There was nothing really the matter with her, she said herself, but she was so tired she did not care to lift her head from the pillow. She had slept well, and was troubled about nothing. She sent to beg Mr. Grant to let Davie go and read to her, and to give him something to read, good for him as well as for her.

Donal did not see Davie again till the next morning.

"Oh, Mr. Grant!" he said, "you never saw anything so pretty as Arkie is in bed! She is so white, and so sweet! and she speaks with a voice so gentle and low! She was so kind to me for going to read to her! I never saw anybody like her! She looks as if she had just said her prayers, and God had told her she should have everything she wanted."

Donal wondered a little, but hoped more. Surely she must be finding rest in the consciousness of God! But why was she so white? Was she going to die? A pang shot to his heart: if she were to go from the castle, it would be hard to stay in it, even for the sake of Davie! Donal, no more than Arctura, imagined himself fallen in love: he had loved once, and his heart had not yet done aching—though more with the memory than the presence of pain! He was utterly satisfied with what the Father of the children had decreed, and would never love again! But he did not seek to hide from himself that the friendship of lady Arctura, and the help she sought and he gave, had added a fresh and strong interest to his life. At the first dawn of power in his heart, when he began to make songs in the fields and on the hills, he had felt that to brighten with true light the clouded lives of despondent brothers and sisters was the one thing worthest living for: it was what the Lord came into the world for; neither had his trouble made him forget it—for more than one week or so: while the pain was yet gnawing grievously, he woke to it again with self-accusation—almost self-contempt. To have helped this lovely creature, whose life had seemed lapt in an ever closer-clasping shroud of perplexity, was a thing to be glad of—not to the day of his death, but to the never-ending end of his life! was an honour conferred upon him by the Father, to last for evermore! For he had helped to open a human door for the Lord to enter! she within heard him knock, but, trying, was unable to open! To be God's helper with our fellows is the one high calling; the presence of God in the house the one high condition.

At the end of a week Arctura was better, and able to see Donal. She had had mistress Brookes's bed moved into the same room with her own, and had made the dressing-room into a sitting-room. It was sunny and pleasant—the very place, Donal thought, he would have chosen for her. The bedroom too, which the housekeeper had persuaded her to take when she left her own, was one of the largest in the castle—the Garland-room—old-fashioned, of course, but as cheerful as stateliness would permit, with gorgeous hangings and great pictures—far from homely, but with sun in it half the day. Donal congratulated her on the change. She had been prevented from making one sooner, she said, by the dread of owing any comfort to circumstance: it might deceive her as to her real condition!

"It could not deceive God, though," answered Donal, "who fills with righteousness those who hunger after it. It is pride to refuse anything that might help us to know him; and of all things his sun-lit world speaks of the father of lights! If that makes us happier, it makes us fitter to understand him, and he can easily send what cloud may be needful to temper it. We must not make our own world, inflict our own punishments, or order our own instruction; we must simply obey the voice in our hearts, and take lovingly what he sends."

The next day she told him she had had a beautiful night, full of the loveliest dreams. One of them was, that a child came out of a grassy hillock by the wayside, called her mamma, and said she was much obliged to her for taking her off the cold stone, and making her a butterfly; and with that the child spread out gorgeous and great wings and soared up to a white cloud, and there sat laughing merrily to her.

Every afternoon Davie read to her, and thence Donal gained a duty—that of finding suitable pabulum for the two. He was not widely read in light literature, and it made necessary not a little exploration in the region of it.



CHAPTER LXV.

THE WALL.

On the day after the last triad in the housekeeper's parlour, as Donal sat in the schoolroom with Davie—about noon it was—he became aware that for some time he had been hearing laborious blows apparently at a great distance: now that he attended, they seemed to be in the castle itself, deadened by mass, not distance. With a fear gradually becoming more definite, he sat listening for a few moments.

"Davie," he said, "run and see what is going on."

The boy came rushing back in great excitement.

"Oh, Mr. Grant, what do you think!" he cried. "I do believe my father is after the lost room! They are breaking down a wall!"

"Where?" asked Donal, half starting from his seat.

"In the little room behind the half-way room—on the stair, you know!"

Donal was silent: what might not be the consequences!

"You may go and see them at work, Davie," he said. "We shall have no more lessons this morning.—Was your papa with them?"

"No, sir—at least, I did not see him. Simmons told me he sent for the masons this morning, and set them to take the wall down. Oh, thank you, Mr. Grant! It is such fun! I do wonder what is behind it! It may be a place you know quite well, or a place you never saw before!"

Davie ran off, and Donal instantly sped to a corner where he had hidden some tools, thence to lady Arctura's deserted room, and so to the oak door. He remembered seeing another staple in the same post, a little lower down: if he could get that out, he would drive it in beside the remains of the other, so as to hold the bolt of the lock: if the earl knew the way in, as doubtless he did, he must not learn that another had found it—not yet at least! As he went down, every blow of the masons pounding at the wall, seemed in his very ears.

He peeped through the press-door: they had not yet got through the wall: no light was visible! He made haste to restore things—only a stool and a few papers—to their exact positions when first he entered. Close to him on the other side of the partition, shaking the place, the huge blows were falling like those of a ram on the wall of a besieged city, of which he was the whole garrison. He stepped into the press and drew the door after him: with his last glance behind him he saw, in the faint gleam of light that came with it, a stone fall: he must make haste: the demolition would go on much faster now; but before they had the opening large enough to pass, he would have done what he wanted! With a strong piece of iron for a lever, he drew the staple from the post, then drove it in astride of the bolt, careful to time his blows to those of the masons. That done, he ran down to the chapel, gathered what dust he could sweep up from behind the altar and laid it on its top, restored on the bed, with its own dust, a little of the outline of what had lain there, dropped the slab to its place in the floor of the passage, closed the door of the chapel with some difficulty because of its broken hinge, and ascended.

The sounds of battering had ceased, and as he passed the oak door he laid his ear to it: some one was in the place! the lid of the bureau shut with a loud bang, and he heard a lock turned. The wall could not be half down yet: the earl must have entered the moment he could get through!

Donal hastened up, and out of the dreadful place, put the slab in the opening, secured it with a strut against the opposite side of the recess, and closed the shutters and drew the curtains of the room; if the earl came up the stair in the wall, found the stone immovable, and saw no light through any chink about its edges, he would not suspect it had been displaced!

He went then to lady Arctura.

"I have a great deal to tell you," he said, "but at this moment I cannot: I am afraid of the earl finding me with you!"

"Why should you mind that?" said Arctura.

"Because I think he is suspicious about the lost room. He has had a wall taken down this morning. Please do not let him see you know anything about it. Davie thinks he is set on finding the lost room: I think he knew all about it long ago. You can ask him what he has been doing: you must have heard the masons!"

"I hope I shall not stumble into anything like a story, for if I do I must out with everything!"

In the afternoon, Davie was full of the curious little place his father had discovered behind the wall; but, if that was the lost room, he said, it was not at all worth making such a fuss about: it was nothing but a big closet, with an old desk-kind of thing in it!

In the afternoon also, the earl went to see his niece. It was the first time they met after his rude behaviour on her proposal to search for the lost room.

"What were you doing this morning, uncle?" she said. "There was such a thumping and banging somewhere in the castle! Davie said you were determined, he thought, to find the lost room."

"Nothing of the kind, my love," answered the earl. "—I do hope they will not spoil the stair carrying the stones and mortar down!"

"What was it then, uncle?"

"Simply this, my dear: my late wife, your aunt, and I, had a plan for taking that closet behind my room on the stair into the room itself. In preparation, I had a wall built across the middle of the closet, so as to divide it and make two recesses of it, and act also as a buttress to the weakened wall. Then your aunt died, and I hadn't the heart to open the recesses or do anything more in the matter. So one half of the closet was cut off, and remained inaccessible. But there had been left in it an old bureau, containing papers of some consequence, for it was heavy, and intended to occupy the same position after the arches were opened. Now, as it happens, I want one of those papers, so the wall has had to come down again."

"But, uncle, what a pity!" said Arctura. "Why did you not open the arches? The recesses would have been so pretty in that room!"

"I am sorry I did not think of asking you what you would like done about it, my child! The fact is I never thought of your taking any interest in the matter; I had naturally lost all mine. You will please to observe, however, I have only restored what I had myself disarranged—not meddled with anything belonging to the castle!"

"But now you have the masons here, why not go on, and make a little search for the lost room?" said Arctura, venturing once more.

"We might pull down the castle and be none the wiser! Bah! the building up of half the closet may have given rise to the whole story!"

"Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!"

"It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the building of that foolish wall."

"Surely some remember hearing it long before that!"

"Nothing is more treacherous than a memory confronted with a general belief," said the earl, and took his leave.

The next morning Arctura went to see the alteration. She opened the door of the little room: it was twice its former size, and two bureaus were standing against the wall! She peeped into the cupboard at the end of it, but saw nothing there.

That same morning she made up her mind that she would go no farther at present in regard to the chapel: it would be to break with her uncle!

In the evening, she acquainted Donal with her resolve, and he could not say she was wrong. There was no necessity for opposing her uncle—there might soon come one! He told her how he had entered the closet from behind, and of the noise he had made the night before, which had perhaps led to the opening of the place; but he did not tell her of what he had found on the bureau. The time might come when he must do so, but now he dared not render her relations with her uncle yet more uncomfortable; neither was it likely such a woman would consent to marry such a man as her cousin had shown himself; when that danger appeared, it would be time to interpose; for the mere succession to an empty title, he was not sure that he was bound to speak. The branch which could produce such scions, might well be itself a false graft on the true stem of the family!—if not, what was the family worth? He must at all events be sure it was his business before he moved in the matter!



CHAPTER LXVI.

PROGRESS AND CHANGE.

Things went on very quietly for a time. Arctura grew better, resumed her studies, and made excellent progress. She would have worked harder, but Donal would not let her. He hated forcing—even with the good will of the plant itself. He believed in a holy, unhasting growth. God's ways want God's time.

Long after, people would sometimes say to him—

"That is very well in the abstract; but in these days of hurry a young fellow would that way be left ages behind!"

"With God," would Donal say.

"Tut, tut! the thing would never work!"

"For your ends," Donal would answer, "it certainly would never work; but your ends are not those of the universe!"

"I do not pretend they are; but they are the success of the boy."

"That is one of the ends of the universe; and your reward will be to thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against the design of our creator: I would fain die loyal!"

He was of course laughed at, and not a little despised, as an extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal's best was so many miles a-head of theirs, that it was below their horizon altogether. If there be any relation between time and the human mind, every forcing of human process, whether in spirit or intellect, is hurtful, a retarding of God's plan.

Lady Arctura's old troubles were gradually fading into the limbo of vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in upon her like a flood: what if, after all, God were the self-loving being theology presented—a being from whom no loving human heart could but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature specially evil that she could not accept the God in whom the priests and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of profoundest wretchedness from such doubt, had a sudden flush of the world's beauty—that beauty which Jesus has told us to consider and the modern pharisee to avoid, broken like gentlest mightiest sunrise through the hellish fog, and she had felt a power upon her as from the heart of a very God—a God such as she would give her life to believe in—one before whom she would cast herself in speechless adoration—not of his greatness—of that she felt little, but of his lovingkindness, the gentleness that was making her great. Then would she care utterly for God and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would God appear to her not only true, but real—the heart of the human, to which she could cling, and so rest. The corruption of all religion comes of leaving the human, and God as the causing Human, for something imagined holier. Men who do not see the loveliness of the Truth, search till they find a lie they can call lovely. What but a human reality could the heart of man ever love! what else are we offered in Jesus but the absolutely human? That Jesus has two natures is of the most mischievous fictions of theology. The divine and the human are not two.

Suddenly, after an absence of months, reappeared lord Forgue—cheerful, manly, on the best terms with his father, and plainly willing to be on still better terms with his cousin! He had left the place a mooning youth; he came back a man of the world—easy in carriage, courteous in manners, serene in temper, abounding in what seemed the results of observation, attentive but not too attentive, jolly with Davie, distant with Donal, polite to all. Donal could hardly receive the evidence of his senses: he would have wondered more had he known every factor in the change. All about him seemed to say it should not be his fault if the follies of his youth remained unforgotten; and his airy carriage sat well upon him. None the less Donal felt there was no restoration of the charm which had at first attracted him; that was utterly vanished. He felt certain he had been going down hill, and was now, instead of negatively, consciously and positively untrue.

With gradations undefined, but not unmarked of Donal, as if the man found himself under influences of which the youth had been unaware, he began to show himself not indifferent to the attractions of his cousin. He expressed concern that her health was not what it had been; sought her in her room when she did not appear; professed an interest in knowing what books she was reading, and what were her studies with Donal; behaved like a good brother-cousin, who would not be sorry to be something more.

And now the earl, to the astonishment of the household, began to appear at table; and, apparently as a consequence of this, Donal was requested rather than invited to take his meals with the family—not altogether to his satisfaction, seeing he could not only read while he ate alone, but could get through more quickly, and have the time thus saved, for things of greater consequence. His presence made it easier for lord Forgue to act his part, and the manners he brought to the front left little to be desired. He bowed to the judgment of Arctura, and seemed to welcome that of his father, to whom he was now as respectful as moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a card he did not mean to show: who that is not absolutely true can escape the mishap!—there was condescension in his politeness to Donal! and this, had there been nothing else, would have been enough to revolt Arctura. But in truth he impressed her altogether as a man of outsides; she felt that she did not see the man he was, but the nearest approach he could make to the man he would be taken for. He was gracious, dignified, responsive, kind, amusing, accurate, ready—everything but true. He would make of his outer man all but what it was meant for—a revelation of the inner. It was that notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his dress was a revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only to show much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself, however long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and be read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover for the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool, whose very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a God when on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty pieces of silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those in the world of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!

Forgue had been in Edinburgh a part of the time, in England another part. He had many things to tell of the people he had seen, and the sports he had shared in. He had developed and enlarged a vein of gentlemanly satire, which he kept supplied by the observation and analysis of the peculiarities, generally weaknesses, of others. These, as a matter of course, he judged merely by the poor standard of society: questioned concerning any upon the larger human scale, he could give no account of them. To Donal's eyes, the man was a shallow pool whose surface brightness concealed the muddy bottom.



CHAPTER LXVII.

THE BREAKFAST-ROOM.

Two years before, lady Arctura had been in the habit of riding a good deal, but after an accident to a favourite horse for which she blamed herself, she had scarcely ridden at all. It was quite as much, however, from the influence of Miss Carmichael upon her spirits, that she had forsaken the exercise. Partly because her uncle was neither much respected nor much liked, she had visited very little; and after mental trouble assailed her, growing under the false prescriptions of the soul-doctor she had called in, she withdrew more and more, avoiding even company she would have enjoyed, and which would before now have led her to resume it.

For a time she persisted in refusing to ride with Forgue. In vain he offered his horse, assuring her that Davie's pony was quite able to carry him; she had no inclination to ride, she said. But at last one day, lest she should be guilty of unkindness, she consented, and so enjoyed the ride—felt, indeed, so much the better for it, that she did not thereafter so positively as before decline to allow her cousin to look out for a horse fit to carry her; and Forgue, taking her consent for granted, succeeded, with the help of the factor, in finding for her a beautiful creature, just of the sort to please her. Almost at sight of him she agreed to his purchase.

This put Forgue in great spirits, and much contentment with himself. He did not doubt that, gaining thus opportunity so excellent, he would quickly succeed in withdrawing her from the absurd influence which, to his dismay, he discovered his enemy had in his absence gained over her. He ought not to have been such a fool, he said to himself, as to leave the poor child to the temptations naturally arising in such a dreary solitude! He noted with satisfaction, however, that the parson's daughter seemed to have forsaken the house. And now at last, having got rid of the folly that a while possessed him, he was prepared to do his duty by the family, and, to that end, would make unfaltering use of the fascinations experience had taught him he was, in a most exceptional degree, gifted with! He would at once take Arctura's education in his own hands, and give his full energy to it! She should speedily learn the difference between the assistance of a gentleman and that of a clotpoll!

He had in England improved in his riding as well as his manners, and knew at least how a gentleman, if not how a man, ought to behave to the beast that carried him. Also, having ridden a good deal with ladies, he was now able to give Arctura not a few hints to the improvement of her seat, her hand, her courage; nor was there any nearer road, he judged from what he knew of his cousin, to her confidence and gratitude, than showing her a better way in a thing.

But thinking that in teaching her to ride he could make her forget the man who had been teaching her to live, he was not a little mistaken in the woman he desired to captivate.

He did not yet love her even in the way he called loving, else he might have been less confident; but he found her very pleasing. Invigorated by the bright frosty air, the life of the animal under her, and the exultation of rapid motion, she seemed better in health, more merry and full of life, than he had ever seen her: he put all down to his success with her. He was incapable of suspecting how little of it was owing to him; incapable of believing how much to the fact that she now turned to the father of spirits without fear, almost without doubt; thought of him as the root of every delight of the world—at the heart of the horse she rode, in the wind that blew joy into hers as she swept through its yielding bosom; knew him as altogether loving and true, the father of Jesus Christ, as like him as like could be like—more like him than any one else in the universe could be like another—like him as only eternal son can be like eternal father.

It was no wonder that with such a well of living water in her heart she should be glad—merry even, and ready for anything her horse could do! Flying across a field in the very wildness of pleasure, her hair streaming behind her, and her pale face glowing, she would now and then take a jump Forgue declared he could not face in cold blood: he did not know how far from cold her blood was! He began to wonder he had been such a fool as neglect her for—well, never mind!—and to feel something that was like love, and was indeed admiration. But for the searing brand of his past, he might have loved her truly—as a man may, without being the most exalted of mortals; for in love we are beyond our ordinary selves; the deep thing in us peers up into the human air, and is of God—therefore cannot live long in the mephitic air of a selfish and low nature, but sinks again out of sight.

He was not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf which he could pass only on the narrow plank of her favour! The more he was with her, the more he admired her, the more he desired to marry her; the more satisfied he grew with his own improvement, the more determined he became that for no poor, unjust scruples would he forgo his happiness. There was but one trifle to be kept from the world; it might know everything else about him! and once in possession of the property, who would dispute the title? Then again he was not certain that his father had not merely invented a threat! Surely if the fact were such, he would, even in rage diabolic, have kept it to himself!

Impetuous, and accustomed to what he counted success, he soon began to make plainer advance toward the end on which his self-love and cupidity at least were set. But, knowing in a vague manner how he had carried himself before he went, Arctura, uninfluenced by the ways of the world, her judgment unwarped, her perception undimmed, her instincts nice, her personal delicacy exacting, had never imagined he could approach her on any ground but that of cousinship and a childhood of shared sports. She had seen that Donal was far from pleased with him, and believed Forgue knew that she knew he had been behaving badly. Her behaviour to him was indeed largely based on the fact that he was in disgrace: she was sorry for him.

By and by, however, she perceived that she had been allowing too much freedom where she was not prepared to allow more, and so one day declined to go with him. They had not had a ride for a fortnight, the weather having been unfavourable; and now when a morning broke into the season like a smile from an estranged friend, she would not go! He was annoyed—then alarmed, fearing adverse influence. They were alone in the breakfast-room.

"Why will you not, Arctura?" he asked reproachfully: "do you not feel well?"

"I am quite well," she answered.

"It is such a lovely day!" he pleaded.

"I am not in the mood. There are other things in the world besides riding, and I have been wasting my time—riding too much. I have learnt next to nothing since Larkie came."

"Oh, bother! what have you to do with learning! Health is the first thing."

"I don't think so—and learning is good for the health. Besides, I would not be a mere animal for perfect health!"

"Let me help you then with your studies."

"Thank you," she answered, laughing a little, "but I have a good master already! We, that is Davie and I, are reading Greek and mathematics with Mr. Grant."

Forgue's face flushed.

"I ought to know as much of both as he does!" he said.

"Ought perhaps! But you know you do not."

"I know enough to be your tutor."

"Yes, but I know enough not to be your pupil!"

"What do you mean?"

"That you can't teach."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you do not love either Greek or mathematics, and no one who does not love can teach." "That is nonsense! If I don't love Greek enough to teach it, I love you enough to teach you," said Forgue.

"You are my riding-master," said Arctura; "Mr. Grant is my master in Greek."

Forgue strangled an imprecation on Mr. Grant, and tried to laugh, but there was not a laugh inside him.

"Then you won't ride to-day?" he said.

"I think not," replied Arctura.

She ought to have said she would not. It is a pity to let doubt alight on decision. Her reply re-opened the whole question.

"I cannot see what should induce you to allow that fellow the honour of reading with you!" said Forgue. "He's a long-winded, pedantic, ill-bred lout!"

"Mr. Grant is my friend!" said Arctura, and raising her head looked him in the eyes.

"Take my word for it, you are mistaken in him," he said.

"I neither value nor ask your opinion of him," returned Arctura. "I merely acquaint you with the fact that he is my friend."

"Here's the devil and all to pay!" thought Forgue.

"I beg your pardon," he said: "you do not know him as I do!"

"Not?—and with so much better opportunity of judging!"

"He has never played the dominie with you!" said Forgue foolishly.

"Indeed he has!"

"He has! Confound his insolence! How?"

"He won't let me study as I want.—How has he interfered with you?"

"We won't quarrel about him," rejoined Forgue, attempting a tone of gaiety, but instantly growing serious. "We who ought to be so much to each other—"

Something told him he had already gone too far.

"I do not know what you mean—or rather, I am not willing to think I know what you mean," said Arctura. "After what took place—"

In her turn she ceased: he had said nothing!

"Jealous!" concluded Forgue; "—a good sign!"

"I see he has been talking against me!" he said.

"If you mean Mr. Grant, you mistake. He never, so far as I remember, once mentioned you to me."

"I know better!"

"You are rude. He never spoke of it; but I have seen enough with my own eyes—"

"If you mean that silly fancy—why, Arctura!—you know it was but a boyish folly!"

"And since then you have grown a man!—How many months has it taken?"

"I assure you, on the word of a gentleman, there is nothing in it now. It is all over, and I am heartily ashamed of it."

A pause of a few seconds followed: it seemed as many minutes, and unbearable.

"You will come out with me?" said Forgue: she might be relenting, though she did not look like it!

"No," she said; "I will not."

"Well," he returned, with simulated coolness, "this is rather cavalier treatment, I must say!—To throw a man over who has loved you so long—and for the sake of a lesson in Greek!"

"How long, pray, have you loved me?" said Arctura, growing angry. "I was willing to be friendly with you, so much so that I am sorry it is no longer possible!"

"You punish me pretty sharply, my lady, for a trifle of which I told you I was ashamed!" said Forgue, biting his lip. "It was the merest—"

"I do not wish to hear anything about it!" said Arctura sternly. Then, afraid she had been unkind, she added in altered tone: "You had better go and have a gallop. You may have Larkie if you like."

He turned and left the room. She only meant to pique him, he said to himself. She had been cherishing her displeasure, and now she had had her revenge would feel better and be sorry next! It was a very good morning's work after all! It was absurd to think she preferred a Greek lesson from a clown to a ride with lord Forgue! Was not she too a Graeme!

Partly to make reconciliation the easier, partly because the horse was superior to his own, he would ride Larkie!

But his reasoning was not so satisfactory to him as to put him in a good temper, and poor Larkie had to suffer for his ill-humour. His least movement that displeased him put him in a rage, and he rode him so foolishly as well as tyrannically that he brought him home quite lame, thus putting an end for a time to all hope of riding again with Arctura.

Instead of going and telling her what he had done, he sent for the farrier, and gave orders that the mishap should not be mentioned.

A week passed, and then another; and as he could say nothing about riding, he was in a measure self-banished from Arctura's company. A furious jealousy began to master him. He scorned to give place to it because of the insult to himself if he allowed a true ground for it. But it gradually gained power. This country bumpkin, this cow-herd, this man of spelling-books and grammars, to come between his cousin and him! Of course he was not so silly as imagine for a moment she cared for him!—that she would disgrace herself by falling in love with a fellow just loosed from the plough-tail! She was a Graeme, and could never be a traitor to her blood! If only he had not been such an infernal fool! A vulgar little thing without an idea in her head! So unpleasant—so disgusting at last with her love-making! Nothing pleased her but hugging and kissing!—That was how he spoke to himself of the girl he had been in love with!

Damn that schoolmaster! She would never fall in love with him, but he might prevent her from falling in love with another! No attractions could make way against certain prepossessions! The girl had a fancy for being a saint, and the lout burned incense to her! So much he gathered from Davie. His father must get rid of the fellow! If he thought he was doing so well with Davie, why not send the two away together till things were settled?

But the earl thought it would be better to win Donal. He counselled him that every Grant was lord Seafield's cousin, and every highlander an implacable enemy where his pride was hurt. His lordship did not reflect that, if what he said were true of Donal, he must have left the castle long ago. There was but one thing would have made it impossible for Donal to remain—interference, namely, between him and his pupil.

Forgue did not argue with his father. He had given that up. At the same time, if he had told all that had passed between him and Donal, the earl would have confessed he had advised an impossibility.

Forgue took a step in a very different direction: he began to draw to himself the good graces of Miss Carmichael: he did not know how little she could serve him. Without being consciously insincere, she flattered him, and speedily gained his confidence. Well descended on the mother-side, she had grown up fit, her father said, to adorn any society: with a keen appreciation of the claims and dignities of the aristocracy, she was well able to flatter the prejudices she honoured and shared in. Careful not to say a word against his cousin, she made him feel more and more that his chief danger lay in the influence of Donal. She fanned thus his hatred of the man who first came between him and his wrath; next, between him and his "love;" and last, between him and his fortunes.

If only Davie would fall ill, and require change of air! But Davie was always in splendid health!

Now that he saw himself in such danger of failing, he fancied himself far more in love with Arctura than he was. And as he got familiarized with the idea of his illegitimacy, although he would not assent to it, he made less and less of it—which would have been a proof to any other than himself that he believed it. In further sign of the same, he made no inquiry into the matter—did not once even question his father about it. If it was true, he did not want to know it: he would treat his lack of proof as ignorance, and act as with the innocence of ignorance! A fellow must take for granted what was commonly believed! At last, and the last was not long in arriving, he almost ceased to trouble himself about it.

His father laughed at his fear of failure with Arctura, but at times contemplated the thing as an awful possibility—not that he loved Forgue much. The only way fathers in sight of the grave can fancy themselves holding on to the things they must leave, is in their children; but lord Morven had a stronger and better reason for his unrighteousness: in a troubled, self-reproachful way, he loved the memory of their mother, and through her cared even for Forgue more than he knew. They were also his own as much as if he had been legally married to her! For the relation in which they stood to society, he cared little so long as it continued undiscovered. He enjoyed the idea of stealing a march on society, and seeing the sons he had left at such a disadvantage behind him, ruffling it, in spite of absurd law, with the foolish best. From the grave he would so have his foot on the neck of his enemy Law!—he was one of the many who can rejoice in even a stolen victory. Nor would he ever have been the fool to let the truth fly, except under the reaction of evil drugs, and the rush of fierce wrath at the threatened ruin of his cherished scheme.

Arctura thenceforth avoided her cousin as much as she could—only remembering that the house was hers, and she must not make him feel he was not welcome to use it. They met at meals, and she tried to behave as if nothing unpleasant had happened and things were as before he went away.

"You are very cruel, Arctura," he said one morning he met her in the terrace avenue.

"Cruel?" returned Arctura coldly; "I am not cruel. I would not willingly hurt anyone."

"You hurt me much; you give me not a morsel, not a crumb of your society!"

"Percy," said Arctura, "if you will be content to be my cousin, we shall get on well enough; but if you are set on what cannot be—once for all, believe me, it is of no use. You care for none of the things I live for! I feel as if we belonged to different worlds, so little have we in common. You may think me hard, but it is better we should understand each other. If you imagine that, because I have the property, you have a claim on me, be sure I will never acknowledge it. I would a thousand times rather you had the property and I were in my grave!"

"I will be anything, do anything, learn anything you please!" cried Forgue, his heart aching with disappointment.

"I know what such submission is worth!" said Arctura. "I should be everything till we were married, and then nothing! You dissemble, you hide even from yourself, but you are not hard to read."

Perhaps she would not have spoken just so severely, had she not been that morning unusually annoyed with his behaviour to Donal, and at the same time specially pleased with the calm, unconsciously dignified way in which Donal took it, casting it from him as the rock throws aside the sea-wave: it did not concern him! The dull world has got the wrong phrase: it is he who resents an affront who pockets it! he who takes no notice, lets it lie in the dirt.



CHAPTER LXVIII.

LARKIE.

It was a lovely day in spring.

"Please, Mr. Grant," said Davie, "may I have a holiday?"

Donal looked at him with a little wonder: the boy had never before made such a request! But he answered him at once.

"Yes, certainly, Davie. But I should like to know what you want it for."

"Arkie wants very much to have a ride to-day. She says Larkie—I gave him his name, to rime with Arkie—she says Larkie will forget her, and she does not wish to go out with Forgue, so she wants me to go with her on my pony."

"You will take good care of her, Davie?"

"I will take care of her, but you need not be anxious about us, Mr. Grant. Arkie is a splendid rider, and much pluckier than she used to be!"

Donal did, however—he could not have said why—feel a little anxiety. He repressed it as unfaithfulness, but it kept returning. He could not go with them—there was no horse for him, and to go on foot, would, he feared, spoil their ride. He was so much afraid also of presuming on lady Arctura's regard for him, that he would have shrunk from offering had it been more feasible. He got a book, and strolled into the park, not even going to see them off: Forgue might be about the stable, and make things unpleasant!

Had Forgue been about the stable, he would, I think, have somehow managed to prevent the ride, for Larkie, though much better, was not yet cured of his lameness. Arctura did not know he had been lame, or that he had therefore been very little exercised, and was now rather wild, with a pastern-joint far from equal to his spirit. There was but a boy about the stable, who either did not understand, or was afraid to speak: she rode in a danger of which she knew nothing. The consequence was that, jumping the merest little ditch in a field outside the park, they had a fall. The horse got up and trotted limping to the stable; his mistress lay where she fell. Davie, wild with misery, galloped home. From the height of the park Donal saw him tearing along, and knew something was amiss. He ran, got over the wall, found the pony's track, and following it, came where Arctura lay.

There was a little clear water in the ditch: he wet his handkerchief, and bathed her face. She came to herself, opened her eyes with a faint smile, and tried to raise herself, but fell back helpless, and closed her eyes again.

"I believe I am hurt!" she murmured. "I think Larkie must have fallen!"

Donal would have carried her, but she moaned so, that he gave up the idea at once. Davie was gone for help; it would be better to wait! He pulled off his coat and laid it over her, then kneeling, raised her head a little from the damp ground upon his arm. She let him do as he pleased, but did not open her eyes.

They had not long to wait. Several came running, among them lord Forgue. He fell beside his cousin on his knees, and took her hand in his. She neither moved nor spoke. As instead of doing anything he merely persisted in claiming her attention, Donal saw it was for him to give orders.

"My lady is much hurt," he said: "one of you go at once for the doctor; the others bring a hand-barrow—I know there is one about the place. Lay the squab of a sofa on it, and make haste. Let mistress Brookes know."

"Mind your own business," said Forgue.

"Do as Mr. Grant tells you," said lady Arctura, without opening her eyes.

The men departed running. Forgue rose from his knees, and walked slowly to a little distance, where he stood gnawing his lip.

"My lord," said Donal, "please run and fetch a little brandy for her ladyship. She has fainted."

What could Forgue do but obey! He started at once, and with tolerable speed. Then Arctura opened her eyes, and smiled.

"Are you suffering much, my lady?" asked Donal.

"A good deal," she answered, "but I don't mind it.—Thank you for not leaving me.—It is no more than I can bear, only bad when I try to move."

"They will not be long now," he said.

Again she closed her eyes, and was silent. Donal watched the sweet face, which a cloud of suffering would every now and then cross, and lifted up his heart to the saviour of men.

He saw them coming with the extemporized litter, behind them mistress Brookes, with Forgue and one of the maids.

When she came up, she addressed herself in silence to Donal. He told her he feared her ladyship's spine was hurt, After his direction she put her hands under her and the maid took her feet, while he, placing his other arm under her shoulders, and gently rising, raised her body. Being all strong and gentle, they managed the moving well, and laid her slowly on the litter. Except a moan or two, and a gathering of the brows, she gave no sign of suffering; nothing to be called a cry escaped her.

Donal at the head and a groom at the foot, lifted the litter, and with ordered step, started for the house. Once or twice she opened her eyes and looked up at Donal, then, as if satisfied, closed them again. Before they reach the house the doctor met them, for they had to walk slowly.

Forgue came behind in a devilish humour. He knew that first his ill usage of Larkie, and then his preventing anything being said about it, must have been the cause of the accident; but he felt with some satisfaction—for self simply makes devils of us—that if she had not refused to go out with him, it would not have happened; he would not have allowed her to mount Larkie. "Served her right!" he caught himself saying once, and was ashamed—but presently said it again. Self is as full of worms as it can hold; God deliver us from it!



CHAPTER LXIX.

THE SICK-CHAMBER.

She was carried to her room and laid on her bed. The doctor requested Mrs. Brookes and Donal to remain, and dismissed the rest, then proceeded to examine her. There were no bones broken, he said, but she must be kept very quiet. The windows must be darkened, and she must if possible sleep. She gave Donal a faint smile, and a pitiful glance, but did not speak. As he was following the doctor from the room, she made a sign to Mrs. Brookes with her eyes that she wanted to speak to him.

He came, and bent over to hear, for she spoke very feebly.

"You will come and see me, Mr. Grant?"

"I will, indeed, my lady."

"Every day?"

"Yes, most certainly," he replied.

She smiled, and so dismissed him. He went with his heart full.

A little way from the door stood Forgue, waiting for him to come out. He had sent the doctor to his father. Donal passed him with a bend of the head. He followed him to the schoolroom.

"It is time this farce was over, Grant!" he said.

"Farce, my lord!" repeated Donal indignantly.

"These attentions to my lady."

"I have paid her no more attention than I would your lordship, had you required it," answered Donal sternly.

"That would have been convenient doubtless! But there has been enough of humbug, and now for an end to it! Ever since you came here, you have been at work on the mind of that inexperienced girl—with your damned religion!—for what end you know best! and now you've half killed her by persuading her to go out with you instead of me! The brute was lame and not fit to ride! Any fool might have seen that!"

"I had nothing to do with her going, my lord. She asked Davie to go with her, and he had a holiday on purpose."

"All very fine, but—"

"My lord, I have told you the truth, but not to justify myself: you must be aware your opinion is of no value in my eyes! But tell me one thing, my lord: if my lady's horse was lame, how was it she did not know? You did!"

Forgue thought Donal knew more than he did, and was taken aback.

"It is time the place was clear of you!" he said.

"I am your father's servant, not yours," answered Donal, "and do not trouble myself as to your pleasure concerning me. But I think it is only fair to warn you that, though you cannot hurt me, nothing but honesty can take you out of my power."

Forgue turned on his heel, went to his father, and told him he knew now that Donal was prejudicing the mind of lady Arctura against him; but not until it came in the course of the conversation, did he mention the accident she had had.

The earl professed himself greatly shocked, got up with something almost like alacrity from his sofa, and went down to inquire after his niece. He would have compelled Mrs. Brookes to admit him, but she was determined her lady should not be waked from a sleep invaluable to her, for the sake of receiving his condolements, and he had to return to his room without gaining anything.

If she were to go, the property would be his, and he could will it as he pleased—that was, if she left no will. He sent for his son and cautioned him over and over to do nothing to offend her, but wait: what might come, who could tell! It might prove a serious affair!

Forgue tried to feel shocked at the coolness of his father's speculation, but allowed that, if she was determined not to receive him as her husband, the next best thing, in the exigence of affairs, would certainly be that she should leave a world for whose uses she was ill fitted, and go where she would be happier. The things she would then have no farther need of, would be welcome to those to whom by right they belonged more really than to her! She was a pleasant thing to look upon, and if she had loved him he would rather have had the property with than without her; but there was this advantage, he would be left free to choose!

Lady Arctura lay suffering, feverish, and restless. Mrs. Brookes would let no one sit up with her but herself. The earl would have sent for "a suitable nurse!" a friend of his in London would find one! but she would not hear of it. And before the night was over she had greater reason still for refusing to yield her post: it was evident her young mistress was more occupied with Donal Grant than with the pain she was suffering! In her delirium she was constantly desiring his presence. "I know he can help me," she would say; "he is a shepherd, like the Lord himself!" And mistress Brookes, though by no means devoid of the prejudices of the rank with which her life had been so much associated, could not but allow that a nobler life must be possible with one like Donal Grant than with one like lord Forgue.

In the middle of the night Arctura became so unquiet, that her nurse, calling the maid she had in a room near, flew like a bird to Donal, and asked him to come down. He had but partially undressed, thinking his help might be wanted, and was down almost as soon as she. Ere he came, however, she had dismissed the maid.

Donal went to the bedside. Arctura was moaning and starting, sometimes opening her eyes, but distinguishing nothing. Her hand lay on the counterpane: he laid his upon it. She gave a sigh as of one relieved; a smile came flickering over her face, and she lay still for some time. Donal sat down beside her, and watched. The moment he saw her begin to be restless or look distressed, he laid his hand upon hers; she was immediately quiet, and lay for a time as if she knew herself safe. When she seemed about to wake, he withdrew.

So things went on for many nights. Donal slept instead of working when his duties with Davie were over, and lay at night in the corridor, wrapt in his plaid. For even after Arctura began to recover, her nights were sorely troubled, and her restoration would have been much retarded, had not Donal been near to make her feel she was not abandoned to the terrors she passed through.

One night the earl, wandering about in the anomalous condition of neither ghost nor genuine mortal, came suddenly upon what he took for a huge animal in wait to devour. He was not terrified, for he was accustomed to such things, and thought at first it was not of this world: he had no doubt of the reality of his visions, even when he knew they were invisible to others, and even in his waking moments had begun to believe in them as much as in the things then evident to him—or rather, perhaps, to disbelieve equally in both. He approached to see what it was, and stood staring down upon the mass. Gently it rose and confronted him—if confronting that may be called where the face remained so undefined—for Donal took care to keep his plaid over his head: he had hope in the probable condition of the earl! He turned from him and walked away.



CHAPTER LXX.

A PLOT.

But his lordship had his suspicions, and took measures to confirm or set them at rest—with the result that he concluded Donal madly in love with his niece, and unable, while she was ill, to rest anywhere but, with the devotion of a savage, outside her door: if he did not take precautions, the lout would oust the lord! Ever since Donal spoke so plainly against his self-indulgence, he had not merely hated but feared the country lad. He recognized that Donal feared nothing, had no respect of persons, would speak out before the world. He was doubtful also whether he had not allowed him to know more than it was well he should know. It was time to get rid of him—only it must be done cautiously, with the appearance of a good understanding! If he had him out of the house before she was able to see him again, that would do! And if in the meantime she should die, all would be well! His distrust, once roused, went farther than that of his son. He had not the same confidence in blue blood; he knew a few things more than Forgue—believed it quite possible that the daughter of a long descent of lords and ladies should fall in love with a shepherd-lad. And as no one could tell what might have to be done if the legal owner of the property persisted in refusing her hand to the rightful owner of it, the fellow might be seriously in the way!

Arctura slowly recovered. She had not yet left her room, but had been a few hours on the couch every day for a fortnight, and the doctor, now sanguine of her final recovery, began to talk of carrying her to the library. The earl, who never suspected that Mrs. Brookes, having hitherto kept himself from her room, would admit the tutor, the moment he learned that the library was in view for her, decided that there must be no more delay. He had by this time contrived a neat little plan.

He sent for Donal. He had been thinking, the earl said, that he must want a holiday: he had not seen his parents since he came to the castle! and he had been thinking besides, how desirable it was that Davie should see some other phases of life than those to which he had hitherto been accustomed. There was great danger of boys brought up in his position getting narrow, and careless of the lives and feelings of their fellowmen! He would take it as a great kindness if Donal, who had a regard to the real education of his pupil, would take him to his home, and let him understand the ways of life among the humbler classes of the nation—so that, if ever he went into parliament, he might have the advantage of knowing the heart of the people for whom he would have to legislate.

Donal listened, and could not but agree with the remarks of his lordship. In himself he had not the least faith—wondered indeed which of them thought the other the greater fool to imagine that after all that had passed Donal would place any confidence in what the earl said; but he listened. What lord Morven really had in his mind, he could not surmise; but not the less to take Davie to his father and mother was a delightful idea. The boy was growing fast, and had revealed a faculty quite rare in one so young, for looking to the heart of things, and seeing the relation of man to man; therefore such a lesson as the earl proposed would indeed be invaluable to him! Then again, this faculty had been opened in him through a willing perception of those eternal truths, in a still higher relation of persons, which are open only to the childlike nature; whence he would be especially fitted for such company as that of his father and mother, who could now easily receive the boy as well as himself, since their house and their general worldly condition had been so much bettered by their friend, sir Gibbie! With them Davie would see genuine life, simplicity, dignity, and unselfishness—the very embodiment of the things he held constantly before him! There might be some other reason behind the earl's request which it would be well for him to know; but he would sooner discover that by a free consent than by hanging back: anything bad it could hardly be! He shrank indeed from leaving lady Arctura while she was yet so far from well, but she was getting well much faster now: for a fortnight there had been no necessity for his presence to soothe her while she slept. Neither did she yet know, so far, at least, as he or mistress Brookes was aware, that he had ever been near her in the night! It was well also because of the position of things between him and lord Forgue, that he should be away for a while: it would give a chance for that foolish soul to settle down, and let common sense assume the reins, while yet the better coachman was not allowed to mount the box! He had, of course, heard nothing of the strained relations between him and lady Arctura; he might otherwise have been a little more anxious. For the earl, Davie, he thought, would be a kind of pledge or hostage—in regard of what, he could not specify; but, though he little suspected what such a man was capable of sacrificing to gain a cherished end, some security for him, some hold over him, seemed to Donal not undesirable.

When Davie heard the proposal, he was wild with joy. Actually to see the mountains, and the sheep, and the colleys, of which Donal had told him such wonderful things! To be out all night, perhaps, with Donal and the dogs and the stars and the winds! Perhaps a storm would come, and he would lie in Donal's plaid under some great rock, and hear the wind roaring around them, but not able to get at them! And the sheep would come and huddle close up to them, and keep them warm with their woolly sides! and he would stroke their heads and love them! Davie was no longer a mere child—far from it; but what is loveliest in the child's heart was only the stronger in him; and the prospect of going with Donal was a thing to be dreamed of day and night till it came! Nor were the days many before their departure was definitely settled.

The earl would have Mr. Grant treat his pupil precisely as one of his own standing: he might take him on foot if he pleased!

The suggestion was eagerly accepted by both. They got their boxes ready for the carrier, packed their wallets, and one lovely morning late in spring, just as summer was showing her womanly face through its smiles and tears, they set out together.

It was with no small dismay that Arctura heard of the proposal. She said nothing, however—only when Donal came to take his leave she broke down a little.

"We shall often wish, Davie and I, that you were with us, my lady," he said.

"Why?" she asked, unable to say more.

"Because we shall often feel happy, and what then can we do but wish you shared our happiness!"

She burst into tears, and presently was able to speak.

"Don't think me silly," she said. "I know God is with me, and as soon as you are gone I will go to him to comfort me. But I cannot help feeling as if you were leaving me like a lamb among wolves. I can give no reason for it; I only feel as if some danger were near me. But I have you yet, mistress Brookes: God and you will take care of me!—Indeed, if I hadn't you," she added, laughing through her tears, "I should run away with Mr. Grant and Davie!"

"If I had known you felt like that," said Donal, "I would not have gone. Yet I hardly see how I could have avoided it, being Davie's tutor, and bound to do as his father wishes with him. Only, dear lady Arctura, there is no chance in this or in anything! We will not forget you, and in three weeks or a month we shall be back."

"That is a long time," said Arctura, ready to weep again.

Is it necessary to say she was not a weak woman? It is not betrayal of feeling, but avoidance of duty, that constitutes weakness. After an illness he has borne like a hero, a strong man may be ready to weep like a child. What the common people of society think about strength and weakness, is poor stuff, like the rest of their wisdom.

She speedily recovered her composure, and with the gentlest smile bade Donal good-bye. She was in her sitting-room next the state-chamber where she now slept; the sun was shining in at the open window, and with it came the song of a little bird, clear and sweet.

"You hear him," said Donal. "—how he trusts God without knowing it! We are made able to trust him knowing in whom we believe! Ah, dear lady Arctura! no heart even yet can tell what things God has in store for them who will just let him have his way with them. Good-bye. Write to me if anything comes to you that I can help you in. And be sure I will make haste to you the moment you let me know you want me."

"Thank you, Mr. Grant: I know you mean every word you say! If I need you, I will not hesitate to send for you—only if you come, it will be as my friend, and not—"

"It will be as your servant, not lord Morven's," said Donal. "I quite understand. Good bye. The father of Jesus Christ, who was so sure of him, will take care of you: do not be afraid."

He turned and went; he could no longer bear the look of her eyes.



CHAPTER LXXI.

GLASHGAR.

Out of Arctura's sight Donal had his turn of so-called weakness!

The day was a glorious one, and Davie, full of spirits, could not understand why he seemed so unlike himself.

"Arkie would scold you, Mr. Grant!" he said.

Donal avoided the town, and walked a long way round to get into the road beyond it, his head bent as if he were pondering a pain. At moments he felt as if he must return at once, and refuse to leave the castle for any reason. But he could not see that it was the will of God he should do so. A presentiment is not a command. A prophecy may fail of the least indication of duty. Hamlet defying augury is the consistent religious man Shakspere takes pains to show him. A presentiment may be true, may be from God himself, yet involve no reason why a man should change his way, should turn a step aside from the path before him. St. Paul received warning after warning on his road to Jerusalem that bonds and imprisonment awaited him, and these warnings he knew came from the spirit of prophecy, but he heeded them only to set his face like a flint. He knew better than imagine duty determined by consequences, or take foresight for direction. There is a higher guide, and he followed that. So did Donal now. Moved to go back, he did not go back—neither afterwards repented that he did not.

I will not describe the journey. Suffice it to say that, after a few days of such walking as befitted an unaccustomed boy, they climbed the last hill, crossed the threshold of Robert Grant's cottage, and were both clasped in the embrace of Janet. For Davie rushed into the arms of Donal's mother, and she took him to the same heart to which she had taken wee sir Gibbie: the bosom of the peasant woman was indeed one to fee to.

Then followed delights which more than equalled the expectations of Davie. One of them was seeing how Donal was loved. Another was a new sense of freedom: he had never imagined such liberty as he now enjoyed. It was as if God were giving it to him, fresh out of his sky, his mountains, his winds. Then there was the twilight on the hill-side, with the sheep growing dusky around him; when Donal would talk about the shepherd of the human sheep; and hearing him Davie felt not only that there was once, but that there is now a man altogether lovely—the heart of all beauty everywhere—a man who gave himself up to his perfect father and his father's most imperfect children, that he might bring his brothers and sisters home to their father; for all his delight is in his father and his father's children. He showed him how the heart of Jesus was, all through, the heart of a son, a son that adored his perfect father; and how if he had not had his perfect son to help him, God could not have made any of us, could never have got us to be his little sons and daughters, loving him with all our might. Then Davie's heart would glow, and he would feel ready to do whatever that son might want him to do; and Donal hoped, and had good ground for hoping, that, when the hour of trial came, the youth would be able to hold, not merely by the unseen, but by the seemingly unpresent and unfelt, in the name of the eternally true.

Donal's youth began to seem far behind him. All bitterness was gone out of his memories of lady Galbraith. He loved her tenderly, but was pleased she should be Gibbie's.

How much of this happy change was owing to his interest in lady Arctura he did not inquire: greatly interested in her—more in very important ways than he had ever been in lady Galbraith—he was so jealous of his heart, shrank so much from the danger of folly, knew so well how small an amount of yielding might unfit him for the manly and fresh performance of his duties—among which came first a due regard for her well-being lest he should himself fail or mislead her—that he often turned his thoughts into another channel, lest in that they should run too swiftly, deepen it too fast, and go far to imprison themselves in another agony.

To lady Galbraith he confided his uneasiness about lady Arctura—not that he could explain—he could only confess himself infected with her uneasiness, and the rather that he knew better than she the nature of those with whom she might have to cope. If Mrs. Brookes had not been there, he dared not have come away, he said, leaving her with such a dread upon her.

Sir Gibbie listened open-mouthed to the tale of the finding of the lost chapel, hidden away because it held the dust of the dead, and perhaps sometimes their wandering ghosts.

They assured him that, if he would bring lady Arctura to them, they would take care of her: had she not better give up the weary property, they said, and come and live with them, and be free as the lark? But Donal said, that, if God had given her a property, he would not have her forsake her post, but wait for him to relieve her. She must administer her own kingdom ere she could have an abundant entrance into his! Only he wished he were near her again to help her!



CHAPTER LXXII.

SENT, NOT CALLED.

He had been at home about ten days, during which not a word had come to Davie or himself from the castle, and was beginning to grow, not perhaps anxious, but hungry for news of lady Arctura, when from a sound sleep he started suddenly awake one midnight to find his mother by his bedside: she had roused him with difficulty.

"Laddie," she said, "I'm thinkin ye're wantit."

"Whaur am I wantit, mother?" he asked, rubbing his eyes, but with anxiety already throbbing at his heart.

"At the castle," she replied.

"Hoo ken ye that?" he asked.

"It wad be ill tellin' ye," she answered. "But gien I was you, Donal, I wad be aff afore the day brak, to see what they're duin' wi' yon puir leddy at the muckle place ye left. My hert's that sair aboot her, I canna rest a moment till I hae ye awa' upo' the ro'd til her!"

Long before his mother had ended, Donal was out of bed, and hurrying on his clothes. He had the profoundest faith in whatever his mother said. Was it a vision she had had? He had never been told she had the second sight! It might have been only a dream, or an impression so deep she must heed it! One thing was plain: there was no time to ask questions! It was enough that his mother said "Go;" more than enough that it was for lady Arctura! How quickest could he go? There were horses at sir Gibbie's: he would make free with one! He put a crust of bread in his pocket, and set out running. There was a little moonlight, enough for one who knew every foot of the way; and in half an hour of swift descent, he was at the stable door of Glashruach.

Finding himself unable to rouse anyone, he crept through a way he knew, opened the door, without a moment's hesitation saddled and bridled sir Gibbie's favourite mare, led her out, and mounted her.

Safe in the saddle, with four legs busy under him, he had time to think, and began to turn over in his mind what he must do. But he soon saw there was no planning anything till he knew what was the matter—of which he had dreadful forebodings. His imagination started and spurred by fear, he thought of many dread possibilities concerning which he wondered that he had never thought of them before: if he had he could not have left the castle! What might not a man in the mental and moral condition of the earl, unrestrained by law or conscience, risk to secure the property for his son? Might he not poison her, smother her, kill her somehow, anyhow that was safest? Then rushed into his mind what the housekeeper had told him of his cruelty to his wife: a man like that, no longer feeling, however knowing the difference between right and wrong, hardly knowing the difference between dreaming a thing and doing the thing, was no fitter member of a family than any devil in or out of hell! He would have blamed himself bitterly had he not been sure he was not following his own will in going away. If there were a better way it had not been intended he should take it, else it would have been shown him! But now he would be restrained by no delicacy towards the earl: whatever his hand found to do he would do, regardless of appearances! If he could not reach lady Arctura, he would seek the help of the law, tell what he knew, and get a warrant of search. He dared not think what he dreaded, but he would trust nothing but seeing her with his own eyes, and hearing from her own mouth that all was well—which could not be, else why should his mother have sent him to her? Doubtless the way would unfold before him as he went on; but if everything should seem to go against him, he would yet say with sir Philip Sidney that, "since a man is bound no farther to himself than to do wisely, chance is only to trouble them that stand upon chance." If his plans or attempts should one after the other fail, "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will"! So he rode on, careful over his mare, lest much haste should be little speed. The animal was strong and in good condition, and by the time Donal had seen the sun rise, ascend the heavens, and go half-way down their western slope, and had stopped three times to refresh the mare, he found himself, after much climbing and descent, on a good level road that promised by nightfall to bring him to the place of his desire.

But the mare was now getting tired, and no wonder, for she had had more than a hard day's work. Donal dismounted every now and then to relieve her, that he might go the faster when he mounted again, comforting himself that in the true path the delays are as important as the speed; for the hour is the point, not the swiftness: an hour too soon may even be more disastrous than an hour too late! He would arrive at the right time for him whose ways are not as our ways inasmuch as they are greatly better! The sun went down and the stars came out, and the long twilight began. But before he was a mile farther he became aware that the sky had clouded over, the stars had vanished, and rain was at hand. The day had been sultry, and relief was come. Lightning flamed out, and darkness full of thunder followed. The storm was drawing nearer, but his mare, though young and high-spirited, was too weary to be frightened; the rain refreshed both, and they made a little more speed. But it was dark night, with now grumbling now raging storm, before they came where, had it been light, Donal would have looked to see the castle.



CHAPTER LXXIII.

IN THE NIGHT.

When he reached the town, he rode into the yard of the Morven Arms, and having found a sleepy ostler, gave up his mare: he would be better without her at the castle!—whither he was setting out to walk when the landlord appeared.

"We didna luik to see you, sir, at this time!" he said.

"Why not?" returned Donal.

"We thoucht ye was awa' for the simmer, seein' ye tuik the yoong gentleman wi' ye, an' the yerl himsel' followt!"

"Where is he gone?" asked Donal.

"Oh! dinna ye ken, sir? hae na ye h'ard?"

"Not a word."

"That's verra strange, sir!—There's a clean clearance at the castel. First gaed my lord Forgue, an' syne my lord himsel' an' my lady, an' syne gaed the hoosekeeper—her mither was deein', they said. I'm thinkin' there maun be a weddin' to the fore. There was some word o' fittin' up the auld hoose i' the toon, 'cause lord Forgue didna care aboot bein' at the castel ony langer. It's strange ye haena h'ard, sir!"

Donal stood absorbed in awful hearing. Surely some letter must have miscarried! The sure and firm-set earth seemed giving way under his feet.

"I will run up to the castle, and hear all about it," he said. "Look after my mare, will you?"

"But I'm tellin' ye, sir, ye'll fin' naebody there!" said the man. "They're a' gane frae the hoose ony gait. There's no a sowl aboot that but deif Betty Lobban, wha wadna hear the angel wi' the last trump. Mair by token, she's that feart for robbers she gangs til her bed the minute it begins to grow dark, an' sticks her heid 'aneth the bed-claes—no 'at that maks her ony deifer!"

"Then you think there is no use in going up?"

"Not the smallest," answered the inn-keeper.

"Get me some supper then. I will take a look at my mare."

He went and saw that she was attended to—then set off for the castle as fast as his legs would carry him. There was foul play beyond a doubt!—of what sort he could not tell! If the man's report was correct, he would go straight to the police! Then first he remembered, in addition to the other reported absences, that before he left with Davie, the factor and his sister had gone together for a holiday: had this been contrived?

He mounted the hill and drew near the castle. A terrible gloom fell upon him: there was not a light in the sullen pile! It was darksome even to terror! He went to the main entrance, and rang the great bell as loud as he could ring it, but there was no answer to the summons, which echoed and yelled horribly, as if the house were actually empty. He rang again, and again came the horrible yelling echo, but no more answer than if it had been a mausoleum. He had been told what to expect, yet his heart sank within him. Once more he rang and waited; but there was no sound of hearing. The place grew terrible to him. But his mother had sent him there, and into it he must go! He must at least learn whether it was indeed abandoned! There was false play! he kept repeating to himself; but what was it? where and how was it to be met?