When Sheila spoke he started.

"Did you not see it?"

"What?"

"The seal: it rose for a moment just over there," said the girl, with a great interest visible in her eyes.

The beautiful dreams he had been dreaming were considerably shattered by this interruption. How could a fairy princess be so interested in some common animal showing its head out of the sea? It also occurred to him, just at this moment, that if Sheila and Mairi went out in this boat by themselves, they must be in the habit of hoisting up the mainsail; and was such rude and coarse work befitting the character of a princess?

"He looks very like a black man in the water when his head comes up," said Sheila—"when the water is smooth so that you will see him look at you. But I have not told you yet about the Black Horse that Alister-nan-Each saw at Loch Suainabhal one night. Loch Suainabhal, that is inland and fresh water, so it was not a seal; but Alister was going along the shore, and he saw it lying up by the road, and he looked at it for a long time. It was quite black, and he thought it was a boat; but when he came near he saw it begin to move, and then it went down across the shore and splashed into the loch. And it had a head bigger than a horse, and quite black, and it made a noise as it went down the shore to the loch."

"Don't you think Alister must have been taking a little whisky, Miss Mackenzie?"

"No, not that, for he came to me just after he will see the beast."

"And do you really believe he saw such an animal?" said Lavender with a smile.

"I do not know," said the girl gravely. "Perhaps it was only a fright, and he imagined he saw it; but I do not know it is impossible there can be such an animal at Loch Suainabhal. But that is nothing: it is of no consequence. But I have seen stranger things than the Black Horse, that many people will not believe."

"May I ask what they are?" he said gently.

"Some other time, perhaps, I will tell you; but there is much explanation about it, and, you see, we are going in to Borvabost."

Was this, then, the capital of the small empire over which the princess ruled? He saw before him but a long row of small huts or hovels resembling bee-hives, which stood above the curve of a white bay, and at one portion of the bay was a small creek, near which a number of large boats, bottom upward, lay on the beach. What odd little dwellings those were! The walls, a few feet high, were built of rude blocks of stone or slices of turf, and from those low supports rose a rounded roof of straw, which was thatched over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all—not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men who, standing on one of the turf walls, were busily engaged in digging into the rich brown and black thatch and heaving it into a cart? Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding against the egress of the peat-smoke, it slowly saturated the thatch of the roof, which at certain periods of the year was then taken off to dress the fields, and a new roof of straw put on.

By this time they had run the Maighdean-mhara—the "Sea Maiden"—into a creek, and were climbing up the steep beach of shingle that had been worn smooth by the unquiet waters of the Atlantic.

"And will you want to speak to me, Ailasa?" said Sheila, turning to a small girl who had approached her somewhat diffidently.

She was a pretty little thing, with a round fair face tanned by the sun, brown hair and soft dark eyes. She was bare-headed, bare-footed and bare-armed, but she was otherwise smartly dressed, and she held in her hand an enormous flounder, apparently about half as heavy as herself.

"Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila?" said the small Ailasa, holding out the flounder, but looking down all the same.

"Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa?"

"Yes, it wass Donald and me: we wass out in a boat, and Donald had a line."

"And it is a present for me?" said Sheila, patting the small head and its wild and soft hair. "Thank you, Ailasa. But you must ask Donald to carry it up to the house and give it to Mairi. I cannot take it with me just now, you know."

There was a small boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister. Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned quite naturally in that direction, until she was suddenly stopped by Lavender, who called to her and put his hand in his pocket. But he was too late. Sheila had stepped in, and with a quick look, which was all the protest that was needed, shut her hand over the half crown he had in his fingers.

"Never mind, Ailasa," she said. "Go away and get Donald, and bid him carry the fish up to Mairi."

Lavender put up the half crown in his pocket in a somewhat dazed fashion: what he chiefly knew was that Sheila had for a moment held his hand in hers and that her eyes had met his.

Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather pleasant to him. It did not shock the romantic associations he had begun to weave around his fair companion. But when they had gone up to the cottages—Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived—and when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the fishermen's lives, and to explain how such and such things were done in the fields and in the pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was a little disappointed. Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what not. Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the stone wall. The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a London drawing-room was all very beautiful in its way, but here she was discussing as to the quality given to broth by the addition of a certain vegetable which she offered to send down from her own garden if the cottager in question would try to grow it.

"I wonder, Miss Mackenzie," he said at length, when they got outside, his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke—"I wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters that those people should find out for themselves."

The girl looked up with some surprise: "That is the work I have to do. My papa cannot do everything in the island."

"But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such things? Surely they ought to be able to look after their own gardens and houses. It is no degradation—certainly not, for anything you interested yourself in would become worthy of attention by the very fact—but, after all, it seems such a pity you should give up your time to these commonplace details."

"But some one must do it," said the girl quite innocently, "and my papa has no time. And they will be very good in doing what I ask them—every one in the island."

Was this a willful affectation? he said to himself. Or was she really incapable of understanding that there was anything incongruous in a young lady of her position, education and refinement busying herself with the curing of fish and the cost of lime? He had himself marked the incongruity long ago, when Ingram had been telling him of the remote and beautiful maiden whose only notions of the world had been derived from literature—who was more familiar with the magic land in which Endymion wandered than with any other—and that at the same time she was about as good as her father at planning a wooden bridge over a stream. When Lavender had got outside again—when he found himself walking with her along the white beach in front of the blue Atlantic—she was again the princess of his dreams. He looked at her face, and he saw in her eyes that she must be familiar with all the romantic nooks and glades of English poetry. The plashing of the waves down there and the music of her voice recalled the sad legends of the fishermen he hoped to hear her sing. But ever and anon there occurred a jarring recollection—whether arising from a contradiction between his notion of Sheila and the actual Sheila, or whether from some incongruity in himself, he did not stop to consider. He only knew that a beautiful maiden who had lived by the sea all her life, and who had followed the wanderings of Endymion in the enchanted forest, need not have been so particular about a method of boiling potatoes, or have shown so much interest in a pattern for children's frocks.

Mackenzie and Ingram met them. There was the usual "Well, Sheila?" followed by a thousand questions about the very things she had been inquiring into. That was one of the odd points about Ingram that puzzled and sometimes vexed Lavender; for if you are walking home at night it is inconvenient to be accompanied by a friend who would stop to ask about the circumstances of some old crone hobbling along the pavement, or who could, on his own doorstep, stop to have a chat with a garrulous policeman. Ingram was about as odd as Sheila herself in the attention he paid to those wretched cotters and their doings. He could not advise on the important subject of broth, but he would have tasted it by way of discovery, even if it had been presented to him in a tea-cup. He had already been prowling round the place with Mackenzie. He had inspected the apparatus in the creek for hauling up the boats. He had visited the curing-houses. He had examined the heaps of fish drying on the beach. He had drunk whisky with John the Piper and shaken hands with Alister-nan-Each. And now he had come to tell Sheila that the piper was bringing down luncheon from Mackenzie's house, and that after they had eaten and drunk on the white beach they would put out the Maighdean-mhara once more to sea, and sail over to Mevaig, that the stranger might see the wondrous sands of the Bay of Uig.

But it was not in consonance with the dignity of a king that his guests should eat from off the pebbles, like so many fishermen, and when Mairi and another girl brought down the baskets, luncheon was placed in the stern of the small vessel, while Duncan got up the sails and put out from the stone quay. As for John the Piper, was he insulted at having been sent on a menial errand? They had scarcely got away from the shore when the sounds of the pipes was wafted to them from the hillside above, and it was the "Lament of Mackrimmon" that followed them out to sea:

Mackrimmon shall no more return, Oh never, never more return!

That was the wild and ominous air that was skirling up on the hillside; and Mackenzie's face, as he heard it, grew wroth. "That teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his foot. "What for will he be playing Cha till mi tuilich?"

"It is out of mischief, papa," said Sheila—"that is all."

"It will be more than mischief if I burn his pipes and drive him out of Borva. Then there will be no more of mischief."

"It is very bad of John to do that," said Sheila to Lavender, apparently in explanation of her father's anger, "for we have given him shelter here when there will be no more pipes in all the Lewis. It wass the Free Church ministers, they put down the pipes, for there wass too much wildness at the marriages when the pipes would play."

"And what do the people dance to now?" asked the young gentleman, who seemed to resent this piece of paternal government.

Sheila laughed in an embarrassed way.

"Miss Mackenzie would rather not tell you," said Ingram. "The fact is, the noble mountaineers of these districts have had to fall back on the Jew's harp. The ministers allow that instrument to be used—I suppose because there is a look of piety in the name. But the dancing doesn't get very mad when you have two or three young fellows playing a strathspey on a bit of trembling wire."

"That teffle of a piper John!" growled Mackenzie under his breath; and so the Maighdean-mhara lightly sped on her way, opening out the various headlands of the islands, until at last she got into the narrows by Eilean-Aird-Meinish, and ran up the long arm of the sea to Mevaig.

They landed and went up the rocks. They passed two or three small white houses overlooking the still, green waters of the sea, and then, following the line of a river, plunged into the heart of a strange and lonely district, in which there appeared to be no life. The river-track took them up a great glen, the sides of which were about as sheer as a railway-cutting. There were no trees or bushes about, but the green pasture along the bed of the valley wore its brightest colors in the warm sunlight, and far up on the hillsides the browns and crimsons of the heather and the silver-gray of the rocks trembled in the white haze of the heat. Over that again the blue sky, as still and silent as the world below.

They wandered on, content with idleness and a fine day. Mr. Mackenzie was talking with some little loudness, so that Lavender might hear, of Mr. John Stuart Mill, and was anxious to convey to Ted Ingram that a wise man, who is responsible for the well-being of his fellow-creatures, will study all sides of all questions, however dangerous. Sheila was doing her best to entertain the stranger, and he, in a dream of his own, was listening to the information she gave him. How much of it did he carry away? He was told that the gray goose built its nest in the rushes at the edge of lakes: Sheila knew several nests in Borva. Sheila also caught the young of the wild-duck when the mother was guiding them down the hill-rivulets to the sea. She had tamed many of them, catching them thus before they could fly. The names of most of the mountains about here ended in bhal, which was a Gaelic corruption of the Norse fiall, a mountain. There were many Norse names all through the Lewis, but more particularly toward the Butt. The termination bost, for example, at the end of many words, meant an inhabited place, but she fancied bost was Danish. And did Mr. Lavender know of the legend connected with the air of Cha till, cha till mi tuille?

Lavender started as from a trance, with an impression that he had been desperately rude. He was about to say that the gray gosling in the legend could not speak Scandinavian, when he was interrupted by Mr. Mackenzie turning and asking him if he knew from what ports the English smacks hailed that came up hither to the cod and the ling fishing for a couple of months in the autumn. The young man said he did not know. There were many fishermen at Brighton. And when the King of Borva turned to Ingram, to see why he was shouting with laughter, Sheila suddenly announced to the party that before them lay the great Bay of Uig.

It was certainly a strange and impressive scene. They stood on the top of a lofty range of hill, and, underneath them lay a vast semicircle, miles in extent, of gleaming white sand, that had in bygone ages been washed in by the Atlantic. Into this vast plain of silver whiteness the sea, entering by a somewhat narrow portal, stretched in long arms of a pale blue. Elsewhere, the great crescent of sand was surrounded by a low line of rocky hill, showing a thousand tints of olive-green and gray and heather-purple; and beyond that again rose the giant bulk of Mealasabhal, grown pale in the heat, into the southern sky. There was not a ship visible along the blue plain of the Atlantic. The only human habitation to be seen in the strange world beneath them was a solitary manse. But away toward the summit of Mealasabhal two specks slowly circled in the air, which Sheila thought were eagles; and far out on the western sea, lying like dusky whales in the vague blue, were the Pladda Islands—the remote and unvisited Seven Hunters—whose only inhabitants are certain flocks of sheep belonging to dwellers on the mainland of Lewis.

The travelers sat down on a low block of gneiss to rest themselves, and then and there did the King of Borva recite his grievances and rage against the English smacks. Was it not enough that they should in passing steal the sheep, but that they should also, in mere wantonness, stalk them as deer, wounding them with rifle-bullets, and leaving them to die among the rocks? Sheila said bravely that no one could tell that it was the English fishermen who did that. Why not the crews of merchant-vessels, who might be of any nation? It was unfair to charge upon any body of men such a despicable act, when there was no proof of it whatever.

"Why, Sheila," said Ingram with some surprise, "you never doubted before that it was the English smacks that killed the sheep."

Sheila cast down her eyes and said nothing.

Was the sinister prophecy of John the Piper to be fulfilled? Mackenzie was so much engaged in expounding politics to Ingram, and Sheila was so proud to show her companion all the wonders of Uig, that when they returned to Mevaig in the evening the wind had altogether gone down and the sea was as a sea of glass. But if John the Piper had been ready to foretell for Mackenzie the fate of Mackrimmon, he had taken means to defeat destiny by bringing over from Borvabost a large and heavy boat pulled by six rowers. These were not strapping young fellows, clad in the best blue cloth to be got in Stornoway, but elderly men, gray, wrinkled, weather-beaten and hard of face, who sat stolidly in the boat and listened with a sort of bovine gaze to the old hunchback's wicked stories and jokes. John was in a mischievous mood, but Lavender, in a confidential whisper, informed Sheila that her father would speedily be avenged on the inconsiderate piper.

"Come, men, sing us a song, quick!" said Mackenzie as the party took their seats in the stern and the great oars splashed into the sea of gold. "Look sharp, John, and no teffle of a drowning song!"

In a shrill, high, querulous voice the piper, who was himself pulling one of the two stroke oars, began to sing, and then the men behind him, gathering courage, joined in an octave lower, their voices being even more uncertain and lugubrious than his own. These poor fishermen had not had the musical education of Clan-Alpine's warriors. The performance was not enlivening, and as the monotonous and melancholy sing-song that kept time to the oars told its story in Gaelic, all that the English strangers could make out was an occasional reference to Jura or Scarba or Isla. It was, indeed, the song of an exile shut up in "sea-worn Mull," who was complaining of the wearisome look of the neighboring islands.

"But why do you sing such Gaelic as that, John?" said young Lavender confidently. "I should have thought a man in your position—the last of the Hebridean bards—would have known the classical Gaelic. Don't you know the classical Gaelic?"

"There iss only the wan sort of Kallic, and it is a ferry goot sort of Kallic," said the piper with some show of petulance.

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know your own tongue? Do you not know what the greatest of all the bards wrote about your own island?—'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum, agus, Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine Styornoway, Arma virumque cano, Macklyoda et Borvabost sub tegmine fagi?'"

Not only John the Piper, but all the men behind him, began to look amazed and sorely troubled; and all the more so that Ingram—who had picked up more Gaelic words than his friend—came to his assistance, and began to talk to him in this unknown tongue. They heard references in the conversation to persons and things with which they were familiar in their own language, but still accompanied by much more they could not understand.

The men now began to whisper awe-stricken questions to each other; and at last John the Piper could not restrain his curiosity. "What in ta name of Kott is tat sort of Kallic?" he asked, with some look of fear in his eyes.

"You are not much of a student, John," said Lavender carelessly, "but still, a man in your position should know something of your own language. A bard, a poet, and not know the classical form of your own tongue!"

"Is it, ta Welsh Kallic?" cried John in desperation, for he knew that the men behind him would carry the story of his ignorance all over Borvabost.

"The Welsh Gaelic? No. I see you will have to go to school again."

"There iss no more Kallic in ta schools," said the piper, eagerly seizing the excuse. "It iss Miss Sheila, she will hef put away all ta Kallic from ta schools."

"But you were born half a century before Miss Sheila: how is it you neglected to learn that form of Gaelic that has been sacred to the use of the bards and poets since the time of Ossian?"

There were no more quips or cranks for John the Piper during the rest of the pull home. The wretched man relapsed into a moody silence and worked mechanically at his oar, brooding over this mysterious language of which he had not even heard. As for Lavender, he turned to Mackenzie and begged to know what he thought of affairs in France.

And so they sailed back to Borvabost over the smooth water that lay like a lake of gold. Was it not a strange sight to see the Atlantic one vast and smooth yellow plain under the great glow of saffron that spread across the regions of the sunset? It was a world of light, unbroken but by the presence of a heavy coaster that had anchored in the bay, and that sent a long line of trembling black down on the perfect mirror of the sea. As they got near the shore the portions that were in shadow showed with a strange distinctness the dark green of the pasture and the sharp outlines of the rocks; and there was a cold scent of seaweed in the evening air. The six heavy oars plashed into the smooth bay. The big boat was moored to the quay, and its passengers landed once more in Borva. And when they turned, on their way home, to look from the brow of the hill, on which Sheila had placed a garden-seat, lo! all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness of the approaching twilight.

So another day had passed, devoid of adventure or incident. Lavender had not rescued his wonderful princess from an angry sea, nor had he shown prowess in slaying a dozen stags, nor in any way distinguished himself. To all outward appearance the relations of the party were the same at night as they had been in the morning. But the greatest crises of life steal on us imperceptibly, and have sometimes occurred and wound us in their consequences before we know. The memorable things in a man's career are not always marked by some sharp convulsion. The youth does not necessarily marry the girl whom he happens to fish out of a mill-pond: his future life may be far more definitely shaped for him at a prosaic dinner-table, where he fancies he is only thinking of the wines. We are indeed but as children seated on the shore, watching the ripples that come on to our feet; and while the ripples unceasingly repeat themselves, and while the hour that passes is but as the hour before it, constellation after constellation has gone by over our heads unheeded and unseen, and we awake with a start to find ourselves in a new day, with all our former life cut off from us and become as a dream.

CHAPTER V.

SHEILA SINGS.

A knocking at Ingram's door.

"Well, what's the matter?"

"Will ye be goin' to ta fishin', Mr. Ingram?"

"Is that you, Duncan? How the devil have you got over from Mevaig at this hour of the morning?"

"Oh, there wass a bit breeze tis morning, and I hef prought over ta Maighdean-mhara. And there iss a very goot ripple on ta watter, if you will tek ta other gentleman to try for ta salmon."

"All right! Hammer at his door until he gets up. I shall be ready in ten minutes."

About half an hour thereafter the two young men were standing at the front of Mackenzie's house, examining the enormous rod that Duncan had placed against the porch. It was still early morning, and there was a cold wind blowing in from the sea, but there was not a speck of cloud in the sky, and the day promised to be hot. The plain of the Atlantic was no longer a sheet of glass: it was rough and gray, and far out an occasional quiver of white showed where a wave was hissing over. There was not much of a sea on, but the heavy wash of the water round the rocks and sandy bays could be distinctly heard in the silence of the morning.

And what was this moving object down there by the shore where the Maighdean-mhara lay at anchor? Both the young men at once recognized the glimmer of the small white feather and the tightly-fitting blue dress of the sea-princess.

"Why, there is Sheila!" cried Ingram. "What in all the world is she about at such an hour?"

At this moment Duncan came out with a book of flies in his hand, and he said in rather a petulant way, "And it iss no wonder Miss Sheila will be out. And it wass Miss Sheila herself will tell me to see if you will go to ta White Water and try for a salmon."

"And she is bringing up something from the boat: I must go and carry it for her," said Lavender, making down the path to the shore with the speed of a deer.

When Sheila and he came up the hill there was a fine color in the girl's face from her morning's exertions, but she was not disposed to go indoors to rest. On the contrary, she was soon engaged in helping Mairi to bring in some coffee to the parlor, while Duncan cut slices of ham and cold beef big enough to have provisioned a fishing-boat bound for Caithness. Sheila had had her breakfast; so she devoted all her time to waiting upon her two guests, until Lavender could scarcely eat through the embarrassment produced by her noble servitude. Ingram was not so sensitive, and made a very good meal indeed.

"Where's your father, Sheila?" said Ingram when the last of their preparations had been made and they were about to start for the river, "Isn't he up yet?"

"My father?" said the girl, with the least possible elevation of her eyebrows—"he will be down at Borvabost an hour ago. And I hope that John the Piper will not see him this morning. But we must make haste, Mr. Ingram, for the wind will fall when the sun gets stronger, and then your friend will have no more of the fishing."

So they set out, and Ingram put Sheila's hand on his arm, and took her along with him in that fashion, while the tall gillie walked behind with Lavender, who was or was not pleased with the arrangement. The young man, indeed, was a trifle silent, but Duncan was in an amiable and communicative mood, and passed the time in telling him stories of the salmon he had caught, and of the people who had tried to catch them and failed. Sheila and Ingram certainly went a good pace up the hill and round the summit of it, and down again into the valley of the White Water. The light step of the girl seemed to be as full of spring as the heather on which she trod; and as for her feet getting wet, the dew must have soaked them long ago. She was in the brightest of spirits. Lavender could hear her laughing in a low pleased fashion, and then presently her head would be turned up toward her companion, and all the light of some humorous anecdote would appear in her face and in her eloquent eyes, and it would be Ingram's turn to break out into one of those short abrupt laughs that had something sardonic in them.

But hark! From the other side of the valley comes another sound, the faint and distant skirl of the pipes, and yonder is the white-haired hunchback, a mere speck in a waste of brown and green morass. What is he playing to himself now?

"He is a foolish fellow, that John," said the tall keeper, "for if he comes down to Borvabost this morning it iss Mr. Mackenzie will fling his pipes in ta sea, and he will hef to go away and work in ta steamboat. He iss a ferry foolish fellow; and it wass him tat wass goin' into ta steamboat before, and he went to a tailor in Styornoway, and he said to him, 'I want a pair o' troosers.' And the tailor said to him, 'What sort o' troosers iss it you will want?' And he said to him, 'I want a pair o' troosers for a steamboat.' A pair o' troosers for a steamboat!—he is a teffle of a foolish fellow. And it wass him that went in ta steamboat with a lot o' freens o' his, that wass a' goin' to Skye to a big weddin' there; and it wass a very bad passage, and when tey got into Portree the captain said to him, 'John, where iss all your freens that tey do not come ashore?' And he said to him, 'I hef peen down below, sir, and four-thirds o' ta whole o' them are a' half-trooned and sick and tead.' Four-thirds o' ta whole o' them! And he iss just the ferry man to laugh at every other pody when it iss a mistake you will make in ta English."

"I suppose," said Lavender, "you found it rather difficult to learn good English?"

"Well, sir, I hefna got ta goot English yet. But Miss Sheila she has put away all the Gaelic from the schools, and the young ones they will learn more of ta good English after that."

"I wish I knew as much Gaelic as you know English," said the young man.

"Oh, you will soon learn. It iss very easy if you will only stay in ta island."

"It would take me several months to pick it up, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes—nine or six—that will do," said Duncan. "You will begin to learn ta names o' ta islands and ta places. There now, as far as you can see is ta Seann Bheinn; and it means ta old hill. And there is a rock there: it is Stac-nan Balg—"

Here Duncan looked rather perplexed.

"Yes," said Lavender: "what does that mean?"

"It means—it means," said Duncan in still greater perplexity, and getting a little impatient, "it means—stac, tat iss a steep rock: Stac-nan-Balg—it means—well, sir, it is ower deep for ta English"

The tone of mortification in which Duncan uttered these words warned Lavender that his philological studies might as well cease; and indeed Sheila and Ingram had by this time reached the banks of the White Water, and were waiting Duncan and the majestic rod.

It was much too bright and pleasant a morning for good fishing, but there was a fair ripple on the pools of the stream, where ever and anon a salmon fresh run from the sea would leap into the air, showing a gleaming curve of silver to the sunlight. The splash of the big fish seemed an invitation, and Duncan was all anxiety to teach the stranger, who, as he fancied, knew nothing about throwing a fly. Ingram lay down on a rock some little distance back from the banks, and put his hands beneath his head and watched the operations going forward. But was it really Duncan who was to teach the stranger? It was Sheila who picked out flies for him. It was Sheila who held the rod while he put them on the line. It was Sheila who told him where the bigger salmon usually lay—under the opposite bank of the broad and almost lake-like pool into which the small but rapid White Water came tumbling and foaming down its narrow channel of rocks and stones.

Then Sheila waited to see her pupil begin. He had evidently a little difficulty about the big double-handed rod, a somewhat more formidable engine of destruction than the supple little thing with which he had whipped the streams of Devonshire and Cornwall.

The first cast sent both flies and a lump of line tumbling on to the pool, and would have driven the boldest of salmon out of its wits. The second pretty nearly took a piece out of Ingram's ear, and made him shift his quarters with rapidity. Duncan gave him up in despair. The third cast dropped both flies with the lightness of a feather in the running waters of the other side of the pool; and the next second there was a slight wave along the surface, a dexterous jerk with the butt, and presently the line was whirled out into the middle of the pool, running rapidly off the reel from the straining rod.

"Plenty o' line, sir, plenty o' line!" shouted Duncan in a wild fever of anxiety, for the fish had plunged suddenly.

Ingram had come running down to the bank. Sheila was all excitement and interest as she stood and watched every slackening or tightening of the line as the fish went up the pool and down the pool, and crossed the current in his efforts to escape. The only self-possessed person, indeed, was Lavender himself, who presently said, "Miss Mackenzie, won't you take the rod now and have the honor of landing him? I don't think he will show much more fight."

At this moment, however, the line slackened suddenly, and the fish threw himself clean out of the water, turning a complete summersault. It was a dangerous moment, but the captive was well hooked, and in his next plunge Lavender was admonished by Duncan to keep a good strain on him.

"I will take the second one," Sheila promised, "if you like; but you must surely land your first salmon yourself."

I suppose nobody but a fisherman can understand the generosity of the offer made by the young man. To have hooked your first salmon—to have its first wild rushes and plunges safely over—and to offer to another the delight of bringing him victoriously to bank! But Sheila knew. And what could have surpassed the cleverness with which he had hooked the fish, and the coolness and courage he showed throughout the playing of him, except this more than royal offer on the part of the young hero?

The fish was losing strength. All the line had been got in, although the fore finger of the fisherman felt the pulse of his captive, as it were, ready for any expiring plunge. They caught occasional glimpses of a large white body gliding through the ruddy-brown water. Duncan was down on his knees more than once, with the landing-net in his hand, but again and again the big fish would sheer off, with just such indications of power as to make his conqueror cautious. At length he was guided slowly in to the bank. Behind him the landing-net was gently let into the water—then a quick forward movement, and a fourteen-pounder was scooped up and flung upon the bank, landing-net and all. "Hurrah!" cried Ingram, and Lavender blushed like a school-girl; and Sheila, quite naturally and without thinking, shook hands with him and said, "I congratulate you;" and there was more congratulation in her glad eyes than in that simple little gesture.

It was a good beginning, and of course the young man was very much pleased to show Sheila that he was no mere lily-fingered idler about town. He buckled to his work in earnest. With a few more casts he soon got into the way of managing the big rod; and every time the flies fell lightly on the other side of the pool, to be dragged with gentle jerks across the foaming current of the stream. Ingram went back to his couch on the rock. He lay and watched the monotonous flinging back of the long rod, the light whistle of the line through the air, and the careful manipulation of the flies through the water. Or was it something else that he was watching—something that awakened in his mind a sudden sense of surprise and fear, and a new and strange consciousness that he had been guiltily remiss?

Sheila was wholly preoccupied with her companion and his efforts. He had had one or two rises, but had struck either too soon or too late, until at last there was a terrific plunge and rush, and again the line was whirled out. But Duncan did not like the look of it, somehow. The fish had been sheering off when it was hooked, and the deep plunge at the outset was ugly.

"Now will you take the rod?" said Lavender to Sheila.

But before she could answer the fish had come rushing up to the surface, and had thrown itself out of the water, so that it fell on the opposite bank. It was a splendid animal, and Duncan, despite his doubts, called out to Ingram to slacken his hold. There was another spring into the air, the fish fell with a splash into the water, and the line was flying helplessly in the air, with the two flies floating about.

"Ay," said Duncan, with a sigh, "it wass foul-hooked. It wass no chance of catching him whatever."

Lavender was more successful next time, however, with a pretty little grilse of about half a dozen pounds, that seemed to have in him the spirit and fight of a dozen salmon. How he rushed and struggled, how he plunged and sulked, how he burrowed along the banks, and then ran out to the middle of the pool, and then threw himself into the air, with the line apparently but not really doubling up under him! All these things can only be understood by the fisherman who has played in a Highland stream a wild and powerful little grilse fresh in from the salt water. And it was Sheila who held him captive, who humored him when he sulked, and gently guided him away from dangerous places, and kept him well in hand when he tried to cross the current, until at last, all the fierceness gone out of him, he let himself be tenderly inveigled into the side of the pool, where Duncan, by a dexterous movement, surrounded him with network and placed his shining body among the bright green grass.

But Ingram was not so overjoyed this time. He complimented Sheila in a friendly way, but he was rather grave, and obviously did not care for this business of fishing. And so Sheila, fancying that he was rather dull because he was not joining in the sport, proposed that he should walk back to the house with her, leaving Mr. Lavender with Duncan. And Ingram was quite ready to do so.

But Lavender protested that he cared very little for salmon-fishing. He suggested that they should all go back together. The sun was killing the wind, and soon the pools would be as clear as glass. Had they not better try in the afternoon, when perhaps the breeze would freshen? And so they walked back to the house.

On the garden-seat a book lay open. It was Mr. Mill's Essay on Liberty, and it had evidently been left there by Mr. Mackenzie, perhaps—who knows?—to hint to his friends from the South that he was familiar with the problems of the age. Lavender winked to Ingram, but somehow his companion seemed in no humor for a joke.

They had luncheon then, and after luncheon Ingram touched Lavender on the shoulder and said, "I want to have a word with you privately. Let's walk down to the shore."

And so they did; and when they had got some little distance from the house, Ingram said, "Look here, Lavender. I mean to be frank with you. I don't think it fair that you should try to drag Sheila Mackenzie into a flirtation. I knew you would fall in love with her. For a week or two, that does not matter—it harms no one. But I never thought of the chance of her being led into such a thing, for what is a mere passing amusement to you would be a very serious thing to her."

"Well?"

"Well? Is not that enough? Do you think it fair to take advantage of this girl's ignorance of the world?"

Lavender stopped in the middle of the path, and said, somewhat stiffly, "This may be as well settled at once. You have talked of flirtation and all that sort of thing. You may regard it as you please, but before I leave this island I mean to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be my wife."

"Why, you are mad!" cried Ingram, amazed to see that the young man was perfectly serious.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Do you mean to say," continued Ingram, "that even supposing Sheila would consent—which is impossible—you would try to take away that girl from her father?"

"Girls must leave their fathers some time or other," said Lavender somewhat sullenly.

"Not unless they are asked."

"Oh well, they are sure to be asked, and they are sure to go. If their mothers had not done so before them, where would they be? It's all very well for you to talk about it and argue it out as a theory, but I know what the facts of the case are, and what any man in my position would do; and I know that I am careless of any consequences so long as I can secure her for my wife."

"Apparently you are—careless of any consequences to herself or those about her."

"But what is your objection, Ingram?" said the young man, suddenly abandoning his defiant manner: "why should you object? Do you think I would make a bad husband to the woman I married?"

"I believe nothing of the sort. I believe you would make a very good husband if you were to marry a woman whom you knew something about, and whom you had really learned to love and respect through your knowledge of her. I tell you, you know nothing about Sheila Mackenzie as yet. If you were to marry her to-morrow, you would discover in six months she was a woman wholly different from what you had expected."

"Very well, then," said Lavender with an air of triumph, "you can't deny this: you think so much of her that the real woman I would discover must be better than the one I imagine; and so you don't expect I shall be disappointed?"

"If you marry Sheila Mackenzie you will be disappointed—not through her fault, but your own. Why, a more preposterous notion never entered into a man's head! She knows nothing of your friends or your ways of life: you know nothing of hers. She would be miserable in London, even if you could persuade her father to go with her, which is the most unlikely thing in the world. Do give up this foolish idea, like a good fellow; and do it before Sheila is dragged into a flirtation that may have the most serious consequences to her."

Lavender would not promise, but all that afternoon various resolutions and emotions were struggling within him for mastery, insomuch that Duncan could not understand the blundering way in which he whipped the pools. Mackenzie, Sheila and Ingram had gone off to pay a visit to an old crone who lived in a neighboring island, and in whom Ingram had been much interested a few years before; so that Lavender had an opportunity of practicing the art of salmon-fishing without interruptions. But all the skill he had shown in the morning seemed to have deserted him; and at last he gave the rod to Duncan, and, sitting down on a top-coat flung on the wet heather, indolently watched the gillie's operations.

Should he at once fly from temptation and return to London? Would it not be heroic to leave this old man in possession of his only daughter? Sheila would never know of the sacrifice, but what of that? It might be for her happiness that he should go.

But when a young man is in love, or fancies himself in love, with a young girl, it is hard for him to persuade himself that anybody else can make her as happy as he might. Who could be so tender to her, so watchful over her, as himself? He does not reflect that her parents have had the experience of years in taking care of her, while he would be a mere novice at the business. The pleasure with which he regards the prospect of being constantly with her he transfers to her, and she seems to demand it of him as a duty that he should confer upon her this new happiness.

Lavender met Sheila in the evening, and he was yet undecided. Sometimes he fancied, when their eyes met unexpectedly, that there was something wistful as well as friendly in her look: was she too dreaming of the vague possibilities of the future? This was strange, too, that after each of those little chance reveries she seemed to be moved by a resolution to be more than usually affectionate toward her father, and would go round the table and place her hand on his shoulder and talk to him. Perhaps these things were but delusions begotten of his own imaginings, but the possibility of their being real agitated him not a little, and he scarcely dared to think what might follow.

That evening Sheila sang, and all his half-formed resolutions vanished into air. He sat in a corner of the curious, dimly-lit and old-fashioned chamber, and, lying back in the chair, abandoned himself to dreams as Sheila sang the mystic songs of the northern coasts. There was something strangely suggestive of the sea in the room itself, and all her songs were of the sea. It was a smaller room than the large apartment in which they had dined, and it was filled with curiosities from distant shores and with the strange captures made by the Borva fishermen. Everywhere, too, were the trophies of Mackenzie's skill with rod and rifle. Deer's horns, seal skins, stuffed birds, salmon in glass cases, masses of coral, enormous shells and a thousand similar things made the little drawing-room a sort of grotto; but it was a grotto within hearing of the sound of the sea, and there was no musty atmosphere in a room that was open all day to the cold winds of the Atlantic.

With a smoking tumbler of whisky and water before him, the King of Borva sat at the table, poring over a large volume containing plans for bridges. Ingram was seated at the piano, in continual consultation with Sheila about her songs. Lavender, in this dusky corner, lay and listened, with all sorts of fancies crowding in upon him as Sheila sang of the sad and wild legends of her home. Was it by chance, then, he asked himself, that these songs seemed so frequently to be the lamentation of a Highland girl for a fair-haired lover beyond the sea? First of all she sang the "Wail of Dunevegan," and how strangely her voice thrilled with the sadness of the song!—

Morn, oh mantle thy smiles of gladness! Night, oh come with thy clouds of sadness! Earth, thy pleasures to me seem madness! Macleod, my leal love, since thou art gone. Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan! Dunevegan!

It was as in a dream that he heard Ingram talking in a matter-of-fact way about the various airs, and asking the meaning of certain lines of Gaelic to compare them with the stiff and old-fashioned phrases of the translation. Surely this girl must have sat by the shore and waited for her absent lover, or how could she sing with such feeling?—

Say, my love, why didst thou tarry Far over the deep sea? Knew'st thou not my heart was weary, Heard'st thou not how I sighed for thee! Did no light wind bear my wild despair Far over the deep sea?

He could imagine that beautiful face grown pale and wild with anguish. And then some day, as she went along the lonely island, with all the light of hope gone out of her eyes, and with no more wistful glances cast across the desolate sea, might not the fair-haired lover come at last, and leap ashore to clasp her in his arms, and hide the wonder-stricken eyes and the glad face in his bosom? But Sheila sang of no such meeting. The girl was always alone, her lover gone away from her across the sea or into the wilds.

Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: Why tarries the youth with the bright yellow hair: Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: Why seeks he the hill when his flock is not there?

That was what he heard her sing, until it seemed to him that her singing was a cry to be taken away from these melancholy surroundings of sea and shore, and carried to the secure and comfortable South, to be cherished and tended and loved. Why should this girl be left to live a cruel life up in these wilds, and to go through the world without knowing anything of the happy existence that might have been hers? It was well for harder and stronger natures to withstand the buffetings of wind and rain, and to be indifferent to the melancholy influences of the lonely sea and the darkness of the northern winters; but for her—for this beautiful, sensitive, tender-hearted girl—surely some other and gentler fate was in store. What he, at least, could do he would. He would lay his life at her feet; and if she chose to go away from this bleak and cruel home to the sunnier South, would not he devote himself, as never a man had given himself to a woman before, to the constant duty of enriching her life with all the treasures of admiration and respect and love?

It was getting late, and presently Sheila retired. As she bade "Good-night" to him, Lavender fancied her manners was a little less frank toward him than usual, and her eyes were cast down. All the light of the room seemed to go with her when she went.

Mackenzie mixed another tumbler of toddy, and began to expound to Ingram his views upon deer-forests and sheep-farms. Ingram lit a cigar, stretched out his legs and proceeded to listen with much complacent attention. As for Lavender, he sat a while, hearing vaguely the sounds of his companions' voices, and then, saying he was a trifle tired, he left and went to his own room. The moon was then shining clearly over Suainabhal, and a pathway of glimmering light lay across Loch Roag.

He went to bed, but not to sleep. He had resolved to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be his wife, and a thousand conjectures as to the future were floating about his imagination. In the first place, would she listen to his prayer? She knew nothing of him beyond what she might have heard from Ingram. He had had no opportunity, during their friendly talking, of revealing to her what he thought of herself; but might she not have guessed it? Then her father—what action might not this determined old man take in the matter? Would his love for his daughter prompt him to consider her happiness alone? All these things, however, were mere preliminaries, and the imagination of the young man soon overleapt them. He began to draw pictures of Sheila as his wife in their London home, among his friends, at Hastings, at Ascot, in Hyde Park. What would people say of the beautiful sea-princess with the proud air, the fearless eyes and the gentle and musical voice? Hour after hour he lay and could not sleep: a fever of anticipation, of fear and of hope combined seemed to stir in his blood and throb in his brain. At last, in a paroxysm of unrest, he rose, hastily dressed himself, stole down stairs, and made his way out into the cool air of the night.

It could not be the coming dawn that revealed to him the outlines of the shore and the mountains and the loch? The moon had already sunk in the south-west: not from her came that strange clearness by which all these objects were defined. Then the young man bethought him of what Sheila had said of the twilight in these latitudes, and, turning to the north, he saw there a pale glow which looked as if it were the last faint traces of some former sunset. All over the rest of the heavens something of the same metallic clearness reigned, so that the stars were pale, and a gray hue lay over the sea, and over the island, the white bays, the black rocks and the valleys, in which lay a scarcely perceptible mist.

He left the house and went vaguely down to the sea. The cold air, scented strongly with the seaweed, blew about him, and was sweet and fresh on the lips and the forehead. How strange was the monotonous sound of the waves, mournful and distant, like the sound in a seashell! That alone spoke in the awful stillness of the night, and it seemed to be telling of those things which the silent stars and the silent hills had looked down on for ages and ages. Did Sheila really love this terrible thing, with its strange voice talking in the night, or did she not secretly dread it and shudder at it when she sang of all that old sadness? There was ringing in his ears the "Wail of Dunevegan" as he listened for a while to the melancholy plashing of the waves all around the lonely shores; and there was a cry of "Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan, oh!" weaving itself curiously with those wild pictures of Sheila in London which were still floating before his imagination.

He walked away around the coast, seeing almost nothing of the objects around him, but conscious of the solemn majesty of the mountains and the stillness of the throbbing stars. He could have called aloud, "Sheila! Sheila!" but that all the place seemed associated with her presence; and might he not turn suddenly to find her figure standing by him, with her face grown wild and pale as it was in the ballad, and a piteous and awful look in her eyes? Did the figure accuse him? He scarcely dared look round, lest there should be a phantom Sheila appealing to him for compassion, and complaining against him with her speechless eyes for a wrong that he could not understand. He fled from her, but he knew she was there; and all the love in his heart went out to her as if beseeching her to go away and forsake him, and forgive him the injury of which she seemed to accuse him. What wrong had he done her that he should be haunted by this spectre, that did not threaten, but only looked piteously toward him with eyes full of entreaty and pain?

He left the shore, and blindly made his way up to the pasture-land above, careless whither he went. He knew not how long he had been away from the house, but here was a small fresh-water lake set round about with rushes, and far over there in the east lay a glimmer of the channels between Borva and Lewis. But soon there was another light in the east, high over the low mists that lay along the land. A pale blue-gray arose in the cloudless sky, and the stars went out one by one. The mists were seen to lie in thicker folds along the desolate valleys. Then a faintly yellow whiteness stole up into the sky, and broadened and widened, and behold! the little moorland loch caught a reflection of the glare, and there was a streak of crimson here and there on the dark-blue surface of the water. Loch Roag began to brighten. Suainabhal was touched with rose-red on its eastern slopes. The Atlantic seemed to rise out of its purple sleep with the new light of a new dawn; and then there was a chirruping of birds over the heath, and the first shafts of the sunlight ran along the surface of the sea, and lit up the white wavelets that were breaking on the beach. The new day struck upon him with a strange sense of wonder. Where was he? Whither had gone the wild visions of the night, the feverish dread, the horrible forebodings? The strong mental emotion that had driven him out now produced its natural reaction: he looked about in a dazed fashion at the revelation of light around him, and felt himself trembling with weakness. Slowly, blindly and hopelessly he set to walk back across the island, with the sunlight of the fresh morning calling into life ten thousand audible things of the moorland around him.

And who was this who stood at the porch of the house in the clear sunshine? Not the pale and ghastly creature who had haunted him during those wild hours, but Sheila herself, singing some snatches of a song, and engaged in watering the two bushes of sweetbrier at the gate. How bright and roseate and happy she looked, with the fine color of her face lit up by the fresh sunlight, and the brisk breeze from the sea stirring now and again the loose masses of her hair! Haggard and faint as he was, he would have startled her if he had gone up to her then. He dared not approach her. He waited until she had gone round to the gable of the house to water the plants there, and then he stole into the house and up stairs, and threw himself upon the bed. And outside he still heard Sheila singing lightly to herself as she went about her ordinary duties, little thinking in how strange and wild a drama her wraith had that night taken part.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[Footnote 12: Pronounced Argyud-chark; literally, "hen-money."]



MEDICAL EXPERT EVIDENCE.

There is scarcely any position of more responsibility than that of the medical expert in cases of alleged poisoning. Often he stands with practically absolute power between society and the accused—the former looking to him for the proof of the crime and for the protection which discovery brings; the latter relying upon him for the vindication of his innocence. How profound and complete, then, should be his knowledge! how thorough his skill! how pure and spotless his integrity! how unimpeachable his results! Yet recently the humiliating spectacle has been repeatedly presented of expert swearing against expert, until the question at issue was apparently degraded into one of personal feeling or of professional reputation. So far has this gone that both judicial and public opinion seems to be demanding the abolition of expert testimony. The medical expert must, however, remain an essential feature in our criminal procedures, partaking as he does of the functions of the lawyer, inasmuch as he has, to some extent, the right to argue before the jury, partaking also of the judicial character in that it is his duty to express an opinion upon evidence, but differing from both judge and advocate in that as a witness he testifies to facts. Were the attempt made to do away with his functions, there would be an end to just convictions in the class of cases spoken of, because no one would be qualified to say whether any given death had been produced by poison or by a natural cause.

In many matters that come under the notice of medical experts there is room for honest differences of opinion. Of such nature are questions of sanity and insanity. It must be remembered that these are, after all, relative terms. Reason leaves its seat by almost imperceptible steps. Who can determine with exactness the line that separates eccentricity from madness—responsibility from irresponsibility? Moreover, the phenomena upon which opinion is based are, in such cases, so hidden, so complex, so obscure, that in the half-lights of a few short interviews they will often be seen differently by different observers.

In scarcely any of its parts does toxicology belong to this class of subjects—certainly not at all in so far as it deals with mineral poisons. To a great extent it is a fixed science—a science whose boundaries may be widened, whose processes may be rendered more delicate, but whose principles are in great measure settled for ever. Not in the imperfections of the science, but in the habits of the American medical profession and in the methods of our criminal procedures, lies the origin of the evils complained of.

Some of the causes of the present difficulties are readily to be seen. One is the common ignorance of legal or forensic medicine among the members of the profession. In none of our medical colleges is legal medicine taught as a part of the regular course or as an essential branch of study. Consequently, when the student graduates he has only heard a few passing allusions to the subject from professors of other branches. Unfortunately, this is more or less true of many other medical subjects of importance: helped out, however, by his mother wit, and impelled by necessity, the imperfectly-educated graduate after a time becomes very generally a skillful practitioner. During the period of growth his daily needs govern the direction of his studies, which are therefore more or less exclusively confined to the so-called practical branches. Forensic medicine is not one of these, poison cases are comparatively rare, and to be called upon to give a definite opinion upon such matters before a legal tribunal happens not once in the lifetime of most medical men. Consequently, to a great part of the American medical profession legal medicine is a veritable terra incognita.

Moreover, the whole drift of modern medicine is toward a division of labor, and forensic medicine is more widely separated from the ordinary specialties of the science than these are from one another. In a case of delicate eye-surgery who would value the opinion of a man whose attention had been devoted mainly to thoracic diseases? What specialist of the latter character would even offer an opinion? Yet physicians who acknowledge that they have paid no especial attention to toxicology do not hesitate to give the most positive opinions upon the most delicate questions of that science. Men who would, as in honor bound, ask for a consultation in any case of serious sickness outside of their line of private practice, on the witness-stand put forth with the utmost boldness their ignorant crudities, careless or forgetful of the fact that they may be imperiling the life of an innocent human being. On the trial of Mrs. Wharton for the attempted murder of Mr. Van Ness, Dr. Williams asserted that there are peculiar characteristic symptoms or groups of symptoms of tartar emetic poisoning;[13] and both he and Dr. Chew—who with frankness acknowledged that he had not especially studied toxicology—did most positively recognize tartar emetic as the sole possible cause of certain symptoms which were but a little beyond the line of medicinal action, and for which obviously possible natural cause existed. Contrast these bold opinions with the cautious statement of a man who had given a lifetime of study to this particular subject. On the trial of Madeleine Smith, Professor Christison—at that time the first toxicologist of England—stated that if in any case the symptoms and post-mortem appearances corresponded exactly with those caused by arsenic, he should be led to suspect poisoning.

Another source of mischief lies in the fact that the law does not recognize the well-established principles of forensic medicine, and consequently the books in which these principles are laid down by the highest authorities are excluded by the courts, while the viva voce evidence of any medical man, however ignorant on such points, is admitted as that of an expert.

It is therefore not to be wondered at that juries give but little consideration to the knowledge or professional standing of expert witnesses. It is, in fact, notorious that the medical autocrat of the village, who has superintended the entrance of the majority of the jurymen into this troublous world, is a more important witness than the most renowned special student of the branch: indeed, the chief value of the real expert often rests on his ability to influence the local physician.[14] At the late Wharton-Van Ness trial the defence desired to show that the work of the chemist employed by the prosecution was unreliable, because the analyses made by him in a previous case had "been condemned by the united voice of the whole scientific world." The court was not able to see the relevancy of this, and refused to allow the professional ability or standing of an expert to be called in question. The witness thus adjudged competent brought no results into court; had kept no laboratory notes; relied solely on a memory so deficient that although he had been teaching for thirty-five years, he could not tell the shape of a crystal of tartar emetic, the poison in question; and upon the stand made a statement different from one which he had furnished officially to the district attorney of Baltimore fourteen months before.

There are principles of toxicology which ought to have legal force and recognition, and ought to govern expert testimony in the same way that the principles of evidence govern ordinary testimony. Without presuming to enumerate these, I will cite two or three for illustration. Certain substances, the so-called irritant poisons, such as arsenic, tartar emetic and the like, induce their toxic effects by causing irritation and inflammation of the alimentary canal. All authorities agree that poisoning by these substances cannot be proved, or even rendered, very probable, by symptoms alone—that chemical evidence, the discovery of the poison in the food, dejections, or in case of death the body, is absolutely essential for making out a case. Irritation and inflammation of the alimentary canal occur so often and so suddenly from natural causes, which are sometimes apparent, but often hidden, that no especial weight can be attached to them.

In the case of the so-called neurotic poisons, those which act upon the nervous system, the symptoms are so closely simulated by natural disease that even when they agree in the most absolute manner with those usually developed by any such poison they only render poisoning highly probable, not certain.[15] When in any case the symptoms diverge from the typical array, poisoning becomes improbable just in proportion to the amount of divergence.

All toxicological authorities also agree that in the case of the metallic poisons, such as tartar emetic and arsenic, the metal must be brought into court, and that the so-called "color tests" are not to be relied on. When sulphuretted hydrogen is passed through solutions of these metallic substances colored precipitates are thrown down, which at one time were thought to be absolute proof of the existence of the poison in the original solution. But in the celebrated Donnal case, tried at Falmouth, England, in 1817, Dr. Neale saved the accused by showing that a decoction of onions, of which the deceased had eaten a short time before death, yielded similar precipitates to those relied upon by the prosecution as establishing the presence of arsenic in the stomach. In regard to tartar emetic, Dr. Taylor, in his work on medical jurisprudence, says: "Antimony in the metallic state is so easily procured from a small quantity of material that on no account should this be omitted. A reliance on a small quantity of a colored precipitate would be most unsatisfactory as chemical evidence." In defiance of all the authorities the prosecution, on the trial of Mrs. Wharton for the murder of General Ketchum, rested its proof of poison upon these color tests and their sequences. The defence, however, found that the counterparts of three out of the four so-called characteristic reactions were readily performed with the substances known to have been in the stomach of General Ketchum at the time of his death.

Several cases of poisoning which have been tried recently in this State and Maryland have attracted much attention, and I propose now briefly to outline these, and show that the disgraceful scenes which have taken place were not due to deficiencies of toxicological science, but to the causes already spoken of.

First in time among these causes celebres was the Schoeppe case, the facts of which may be briefly summed up as follows: Dr. Schoeppe, a young German practicing medicine in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, became engaged to be married to a Miss Stennecke, a maiden lady of sixty years of age. Miss Stennecke was somewhat of an invalid, not often actually sick, but habitually distressed by dyspeptic symptoms, etc. On the morning of the 27th of January, 1869, feeling unwell, she sent for Dr. Schoeppe, who gave her an emetic. In the afternoon, according to the testimony of her maid, she was weak, but apparently not ill. Between 7 and 8 P.M., however, she became much worse, and her servant noticed that she was very drowsy, so that if left alone she would immediately fall asleep whilst sitting in her chair. Shortly after this she was put to bed, and was not seen again until the next morning about six o'clock, when she was found comatose, with contracted pupils, irregular respiration and complete muscular relaxation. Late in the afternoon of the same day she died quietly.

Nothing was said about poisoning until some days afterward, when, a will having been produced in favor of Dr. Schoeppe, an accusation was made against him. The body of Miss Stennecke was exhumed, and underwent a post-mortem examination, which, for culpable carelessness and inexcusable omissions, stands unrivaled. Not a single organ in the whole body was thoroughly examined, and many of the more important parts were not looked at. Death, preceded by the symptoms exhibited in the case of Miss Stennecke, occurs not infrequently from insidious disease of the kidneys, yet these organs were not taken out of the body. The stomach was examined chemically by Professor Aiken of the University of Maryland, who reported that he had found prussic acid, and who testified on the trial that Miss Stennecke had received a fatal dose of that poison. When, however, his evidence was sifted, it was discovered that he had only obtained traces of the poison by the distillation of the stomach with sulphuric acid. As saliva contains ferrocyanide of potassium, out of which sulphuric acid generates prussic acid, the latter substance will always be obtained by the process adopted by Professor Aiken from any stomach which has in it the least particle of saliva. If, then, the professor did really get prussic acid, without doubt he manufactured it.

Dr. Hermann, however, testified that Miss Stennecke, whom he saw on the morning of her death, must have died of a compound poison, because her eye looked like that of a hawk killed by himself some years before with a dose of all the poisons he had in his apothecary's shop. Dr. Conrad confirmed the assertion of Dr. Hermann, that Miss Stennecke could not have died from a natural cause, and testified that as the liver was healthy, therefore the kidneys must have been so too—a conclusion which could only have been evolved from his inner consciousness.

In vain Professor Wormley protested, declaring that it was impossible Miss Stennecke could have been killed by prussic acid, because that poison always does its work in a few minutes, if at all, whereas Miss Stennecke lived nearly twenty-four hours after the alleged poisoning. What did it matter that Dr. Conrad had shown himself by his post-mortem examination ignorant of the first rudiments of legal medicine, and that Dr. Hermann was a village doctor of the olden type dragged into court from a mediaeval contest with the diseases of simple country-folk, while Professor Wormley had devoted his life to toxicology and achieved a world-wide reputation? What did it matter that the written words of all authorities upon such subjects in every land were in absolute accord with Dr. Wormley? Under the ruling—which has been reaffirmed at Annapolis—the settled principles of science were overborne by ignorant conjecture, and to the mockery of justice, to the deep disgrace of our commonwealth, Dr. Schoeppe was condemned to death upon evidence which, from the same bench, was subsequently stigmatized as being insufficient to warrant his commitment for trial.

Three years of close confinement under the shadow of death followed. The governor refused a pardon, and Dr. Schoeppe heard the hammer driving the nails into his scaffold beneath the prison-window. He was measured for his coffin, but at the last moment was reprieved, and listened to the heavy thud as the drop fell and a man whose companion he was to have been on the scaffold was launched into eternity. Finally, moved by the incessant pleadings of Mr. Hepburn, the junior counsel, by the urgings of the public press, led by the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and by the protests of numerous scientific bodies, the legislature passed a special act granting Dr. Schoeppe a new trial. On this occasion the judge allowed the weakness of the expert testimony for the prosecution to be demonstrated, and chiefly as a result of this demonstration—of what has been called the "coarse brutality" of showing Dr. Conrad's ignorance—Dr. Schoeppe was acquitted.

If the principles contended for in this article had been acknowledged, the processes and results in the case of Dr. Schoeppe would have been far different. In the first place, the post mortem would have been entrusted to some one qualified to make it—an expert in legal medicine—and very probably a natural cause for the death of Miss Stennecke would have been found. Such post mortem not having been made, the case, after Professor Aiken's analysis, would have been dropped, because it was impossible that prussic acid could have caused the death. Had, however, capable experts failed to detect a natural cause of death, a very serious case might have been made out against Dr. Schoeppe, even though the analyst had not found morphia in the stomach. The prosecution might have affirmed that the poison had been absorbed, and therefore was not in the stomach, and, for the support of the charge, relied upon the resemblance of the symptoms to those produced by morphia, and upon the absence of natural cause of death.

A case which has acquired even more celebrity than the last is that of Mrs. Wharton of Baltimore. The chief facts, as developed at the first trial at Annapolis, are as follows: General Ketchum, a man of over middle age and usually in good health, was very much engaged in attending to matters of business at Washington throughout the entire day of the 24th of June, 1871. The weather was very hot, yet he walked about hurriedly and steadily, getting no dinner, and returning in the evening to Mrs. Wharton's at Baltimore about 9 P.M., where he ate a very hearty meal, consisting partly of raspberries. During the night he was heard to go down stairs several times. The next day he complained of feeling unwell, but took at bed-time a glass of lemonade with brandy, and during the night had some slight vomiting and purging. In the morning he complained of sick stomach and giddiness, and at Mrs. Wharton's earnest request[16] Dr. Williams was finally sent for, and on arriving at 4 P.M. found him sitting up and vomiting, and prescribed as for a slight attack of cholera morbus. The next morning General Ketchum thought himself so much better that he discharged his physician. He was, however, very drowsy during the day, and the evidence at the trial rendered it probable that he took laudanum on this day upon his own responsibility. In the evening he was found sleeping heavily upon the lounge, and again at Mrs. Wharton's request Dr. Williams was sent for, but did not think it worth while to come. The next morning Mrs. Wharton again sent for Dr. Williams, as General Ketchum was found still lying upon the lounge in a stupor. He remained in this state until his death, which took place in a convulsion at 3 P.M. He had had during the intervening period repeated convulsions, and about one o'clock had become very uneasy, uttering incoherent cries, but did not recover true consciousness. At the examination of the body, made the following morning, the spinal cord was not looked at: the inner membranes of the brain were found congested, and the brain-substance presented throughout "those dark points of blood which indicate passive congestion." No other lesions were found, and the stomach was handed for analysis to Professor Aiken, who in due time reported that he had "satisfied himself" of the existence of at least twenty grains of tartar emetic in it.

It is highly probable that this official announcement had much influence upon the minds of Drs. Williams and Chew, with their colleagues, and it is very certain that by it and their representations was created the public belief in Baltimore that General Ketchum had been poisoned. The false analysis remained for months uncontradicted, and backed up as it was by the whole intellectual and moral force of the University of Maryland, it could scarcely happen otherwise than that public opinion should become so set and hardened that no testimony at the trial could affect it, especially as local pride and local prejudice came to its support when experts from other cities questioned the work of the Baltimore physicians.

Mrs. Wharton's servants were first accused, but after a few days she was arrested, and with her daughter—who has clung throughout to her faith in her mother's purity and goodness—was thrust into a common felon's cell, with only the grated bars between her and the lowest of men in every stage of drunkenness and delirium. After nearly two weeks her lawyers obtained her removal to one of the better rooms of the jail, but it was months before anything was said in her favor.

The trial opened on December 4, 1871, at Annapolis, and lasted nearly two months. The circumstantial evidence certainly went no farther than to render it probable that if General Ketchum died of poison it was administered by Mrs. Wharton. The State attempted to prove as a motive that Mrs. Wharton owed the deceased money. They were signally unsuccessful in this, however; so that a very intelligent member of the jury said to the writer since the trial, "Whether Mrs. Wharton did or did not poison General Ketchum, certainly the State completely failed to prove a motive." The defence admitted that Mrs. Wharton had bought tartar emetic near the time of the alleged poisoning, but proved that she was in the habit of using it externally as a counter-irritant, and that it was purchased in the most open manner, through a third party, not with the secresy that marks the steps of the poisoner.

Thus the whole case centred in a rather remarkable degree upon the expert testimony, and the very point of it all was the chemical analysis. This is not the place to follow out in detail the scientific testimony, but only to point out some peculiarities of it. Almost all the medical witnesses for the prosecution were colleagues of Professor Aiken, none of them men of eminence in toxicological science—surgeons, physiologists, obstetricians, the whole faculty, trying apparently to hide the nakedness of their colleague. Never was strong language more justifiable than that of Mr. Hagner, when he said, "It seemed that the University of Maryland was on trial, and that blood was demanded to support it."

After all, the testimony of most of these gentlemen amounted only to this: that they did not believe the death of General Ketchum could have occurred from natural causes. On the other hand, the numerous medical witnesses for the defence, unconnected by any bond of common interest, testified that natural causes, were sufficient to account for the death; many of them asserting that the case in all its symptoms and post-mortem appearances tallied precisely with the so-called fulminating form of cerebro-spinal meningitis, which was prevalent in Baltimore at the time of General Ketchum's death.[17]

The medical witnesses for the defence further called attention to the fact that the symptoms of General Ketchum's illness were wholly different from those produced by tartar emetic, and some denied that the latter could have caused the sickness. The chemical evidence for the prosecution was triumphantly refuted. It was shown that antimony did not conform in its reactions with at least one of the tests, which Professor Aiken said his precipitates did; that almost all the other reactions could be closely simulated with ordinary organic bodies; that the processes used were those universally condemned by authorities; and that carelessness was everywhere so manifest in their conduction as to entirely vitiate any results. It was also proved that Professor Aiken had simply estimated the amount of tartar emetic in General Ketchum's stomach by the ocular comparison of the bulk of precipitates, neither of which could have been pure, and in neither of which was the existence of antimony really proved. To weigh a precipitate was a labor not to be thought of when nothing more important than the life of a woman was involved: guessing was all that such a trifling issue demanded!

The most extraordinary event of this most extraordinary trial occurred when the chemists for the defence had completely broken down the testimony of Professor Aiken. With the knowledge, it is said, of at least one of the judges, without the presence of a representative of the defence, or even of a legal officer, the body of General Ketchum was secretly exhumed by the doctors who had shown themselves so eager for the execution of Mrs. Wharton. The viscera, which they removed, were put into the hands not of a chemist of national reputation, but of an individual who had been advanced from the position of hospital steward at Washington to that of professor of chemistry in a small local institute at Baltimore. This professor, when on the witness-stand, was singularly confused as to his weights and measures, and finally shared the ignominy of his predecessor. The defence had several chemists at Annapolis of world-wide reputation and unspotted integrity. If the prosecution really believed that General Ketchum had been poisoned, if they really did expect tartar emetic to be found, why did they not allow the presence of these gentlemen at the analysis, and thereby ensure the condemnation of Mrs. Wharton? The conviction is irresistible that they were afraid of the truth—that they were simply determined to procure the desired verdict at all hazards and by any means. Yet this was the procedure for the completion of which the court suspended the trial for two days, because, as Chief-Justice Miller stated from the bench, "it thought the ends of justice demanded it"! Is any further evidence needed of the strange ideas, of the perversion of truth and justice, which have grown out of the American method of using expert testimony?

Before leaving this trial I desire to quote from advanced sheets of the edition of Dr. Taylor's great work on medical jurisprudence, now passing through the press. Reviewing the trial in London with that freedom from bias which the isolation of distance produces, he says: "The trial lasted fifty-two days, and an astonishing amount of evidence was brought forward by the defence and prosecution, apparently owing to the high social position of the parties, for there is nothing, medically speaking, which might not have been settled in forty-eight hours. The general died after a short illness, but the symptoms, taken as a whole, bore no resemblance to those observed in poisoning with antimony; and but for the alleged discovery after death of tartar emetic in the stomach, no suspicion of poisoning would probably have arisen.... The chemical evidence," he adds, "does not conflict with the pathological evidence, for it failed to show with clearness and distinctness the presence and proportion of poison said to have been found. The evidence that antimony was really there was not satisfactory, and that twenty grains were in the stomach wholly unproven."[18]

What would have been the course of this trial if expert testimony were established upon proper principles? Professor Aiken having shown his complete incompetency in the Schoeppe case, the analysis would have been entrusted to some skillful chemist, who by failing to discover poison would have established the innocence of Mrs. Wharton, or by bringing positive results into court have ensured conviction; or, Dr. Aiken having made the analysis, and having broken all the laws of toxicological evidence, his testimony would have been ruled out, and the case dismissed because the bungling of the State's witness had destroyed the evidences of guilt or of innocence.

In January, 1873, Mrs. Wharton was tried at Annapolis for attempting to poison Eugene Van Ness. The facts of the case are briefly as follows: Mr. Van Ness, whose relations with the Wharton family had been extremely intimate for many years, was a bank-clerk, but during the spring and early summer of 1871, besides attending to his regular duties, was employed in settling a large estate. He habitually rose early, often at 5 A.M., and generally worked until eleven o'clock at night. During this period he suffered from severe nervous headaches, and probably from other symptoms of an overworked nervous system, but on this point the testimony disagreed. His stomach is at all times so sensitive that brandy nauseates him. On the 19th of June, after taking some claret on an empty stomach at Mrs. Wharton's, he felt very badly, suffering from lightness of the head or giddiness and general wretchedness, with stiffness and numbness in the back of his neck. On the 20th he stopped at Mrs. Wharton's about 4 P.M., having eaten nothing for seven or eight hours, and took raspberries with cream, and drank claret. This claret, he stated, "had a taste like peach leaves."[19] Directly after this he had an attack similar to, but much more violent than, that of the day before. Some little time after this, whilst in a condition of profound relaxation, he took some brandy, and at once emptied his stomach by a single spasmodic effort of vomiting, with immediate relief. The weather was extremely hot during the whole time in which the various attacks here narrated took place.