When he went home he shut himself in his room and almost stealthily took out that slip of paper. It had begun to look yellow and faded, and Crawford had a strange fancy that it had a sad, pitiful appearance. He held it in his hand a few moments and then put it back again. It would be the new year soon, and he would decide then. He had made similar promises often; they always gave him temporary comfort.

Then gradually another element of pleasure crept into his life—Mrs. Hope's child. The boy amused him; he never resented his pretty, authoritative ways; a queer kind of companionship sprang up between them. It was one of perfect equality every way; an old man easily becomes a little child. And those who only knew Crawford among coals and pig iron would have been amazed to see him keeping up a mock dispute with this baby.



CHAPTER X.

One day, getting towards the end of December, the laird awoke in a singular mood. He had no mind to go to the works, and the weather promised to give him a good excuse. Over the dreary hills there was a mournful floating veil of mist. Clouds were flying rapidly in great masses, and showers streaming through the air in disordered ranks, driven furiously before a mad wind—a wind that before noon shook the doors and windows, and drove the bravest birds into hiding.

The laird wandered restlessly up and down.

"There is the dominie," cried Mrs. Hope, about one o'clock. "What brings him here through such a storm?"

Crawford walked to the door to meet him. He came striding over the soaking moor with his plaid folded tightly around him and his head bent before the blast. He was greatly excited.

"Crawford, come wi' me. The Athol passenger packet is driving before this wind, and there is a fishing smack in her wake."

"Gie us some brandy wi' us, Mrs. Hope, and you'll hae fires and blankets and a' things needfu' in case O' accident, ma'am." He was putting on his bonnet and plaid as he spoke, and in five minutes the men were hastening to the seaside.

It was a deadly coast to be on in a storm with a gale blowing to land. A long reef of sharp rocks lay all along it, and now the line of foaming breakers was to any ship a terrible omen of death and destruction. The packet was almost helpless, and the laird and Tallisker found a crowd of men waiting the catastrophe that was every moment imminent.

"She ought to hae gien hersel' plenty o' sea room," said the laird. He was half angry to see all the interest centred on the packet. The little fishing cobble was making, in his opinion, a far more sensible struggle for existence. She was managing her small resources with desperate skill.

"Tallisker," said the laird, "you stay here with these men. Rory and I are going half a mile up the coast. If the cobble drives on shore, the current will take a boat as light as she is over the Bogie Rock and into the surf yonder. There are doubtless three or four honest men in her, quite as weel worth the saving as those stranger merchant bodies that will be in the packet."

So Crawford and Rory hastened to the point they had decided on, and just as they reached it the boat became unmanageable. The wind took her in its teeth, shook her a moment or two like a thing of straw and rags, and then flung her, keel upwards, on the Bogie Rock. Two of the men were evidently good swimmers; the others were a boy and an old man. Crawford plunged boldly in after the latter. The waves buffeted him, and flung him down, and lifted him up, but he was a fine surf swimmer, and he knew every rock on that dangerous coast. After a hard struggle, all were brought safe to land.

Then they walked back to where the packet had been last seen. She had gone to pieces. A few men waited on the beach, picking up the dead, and such boxes and packages as were dashed on shore. Only three of all on board had been rescued, and they had been taken to the Keep for succor and rest.

The laird hastened home. He had not felt as young for many years. The struggle, though one of life and death, had not wearied him like a day's toil at the works, for it had been a struggle to which the soul had girded itself gladly, and helped and borne with it the mortal body. He came in all glowing and glad; a form lay on his own couch before the fire. The dominie and Mrs. Hope were bending over it. As he entered, Mrs. Hope sprang forward—

"Father!"

"Eh? Father? What is this?"

"Father, it is Colin."

Then he knew it all. Colin stretched out a feeble hand towards him. He was sorely bruised and hurt, he was white and helpless and death-like.

"Father!"

And the father knelt down beside him. Wife and friend walked softly away. In the solemn moment when these two long-parted souls met again there was no other love that could inter-meddle.

"My dear father—forgive me!"

Then the laird kissed his recovered son, and said tenderly,

"Son Colin, you are all I have, and all I have is yours."

"Father, my wife and son."

Then the old man proudly and fondly kissed Hope Crawford too, and he clasped the little lad in his arms. He was well pleased that Hope had thought it worth while to minister to his comfort, and let him learn how to know her fairly.

"But it was your doing, Tallisker, I ken it was; it has your mark on it." And he grasped his old friend's hand with a very hearty grip.

"Not altogether, laird. Colin had gone to Rome on business, and you were in sair discomfort, and I just named it to Mrs. Hope. After a' it was her proposal. Naebody but a woman would hae thought o' such a way to win round you."

Perhaps it was well that Colin was sick and very helpless for some weeks. During them the two men learned to understand and to respect each other's peculiarities. Crawford himself was wonderfully happy; he would not let any thought of the past darken his heart. He looked forward as hopefully as if he were yet on the threshold of life.

O mystery of life! from what depths proceed thy comforts and thy lessons! One morning at very early dawn Crawford awoke from a deep sleep in an indescribable awe. In some vision of the night he had visited that piteous home which memory builds, and where only in sleep we walk. Whom had he seen there? What message had he received? This he never told. He had been "spoken to."

Tallisker was not the man to smile at any such confidence. He saw no reason why God's messengers should not meet his children in the border-land of dreams. Thus he had counselled and visited the patriarchs and prophets of old. He was a God who changeth not; and if he had chosen to send Crawford a message in this way, it was doubtless some special word, for some special duty or sorrow. But he had really no idea of what Crawford had come to confess to him.

"Tallisker, I hae been a man in a sair strait for many a year. I hae not indeed hid the Lord's talent in a napkin, but I hae done a warse thing; I hae been trading wi' it for my ain proper advantage. O dominie, I hae been a wretched man through it all. Nane ken better than I what a hard master the deil is."

Then he told the dominie of Helen's bequest. He went over all the arguments with which he had hitherto quieted his conscience, and he anxiously watched their effect upon Tallisker. He had a hope even yet that the dominie might think them reasonable. But the table at which they sat was not less demonstrative than Tallisker's face; for once he absolutely controlled himself till the story was told. Then he said to Crawford,

"I'll no tak any responsibility in a matter between you and your conscience. If you gie it, gie it without regret and without holding back. Gie it cheerfully; God loves a cheerful giver. But it isna wi' me you'll find the wisdom to guide you in this matter. Shut yoursel' in your ain room, and sit down at the foot o' the cross and think it out. It is a big sum to gie away, but maybe, in the face o' that stupendous Sacrifice it willna seem so big. I'll walk up in the evening, laird; perhaps you will then hae decided what to do."

Crawford was partly disappointed. He had hoped that Tallisker would in some way take the burden from him—he had instead sent him to the foot of the cross. He did not feel as if he dared to neglect the advice; so he went thoughtfully to his own room and locked the door. Then he took out his private ledger. Many a page had been written the last ten years. It was the book of a very rich man. He thought of all his engagements and plans and hopes, and of how the withdrawal of so large a sum would affect them.

Then he took out Helen's last message, and sat down humbly with it where Tallisker had told him to sit. Suddenly Helen's last words came back to him, "Oh! the unspeakable riches!" What of? The cross of Christ—the redemption from eternal death—the promise of eternal life! Sin is like a nightmare; when we stir under it, we awake. Crawford sat thinking until his heart burned and softened, and great tears rolled slowly down his cheeks and dropped upon the paper in his hands. Then he thought of the richness of his own life—Colin and Hope, and the already beloved child Alexander—of his happy home, of the prosperity of his enterprises, of his loyal and loving friend Tallisker. What a contrast to the Life he had been told to remember! that pathetic Life that had not where to lay its head, that mysterious agony in Gethsemane, that sublime death on Calvary, and he cried out, "O Christ! O Saviour of my soul! all that I have is too little!"

When Tallisker came in the evening, Hope noticed a strange solemnity about the man. He, too, had been in the presence of God all day. He had been praying for his friend. But as soon as he saw Crawford he knew how the struggle had ended. Quietly they grasped each other's hand, and the evening meal was taken by Colin's side in pleasant cheerfulness. After it, when all were still, the laird spoke:

"Colin and Hope, I hae something I ought to tell you. When your sister Helen died she asked me to gie her share o' the estate to the poor children of our Father. I had intended giving Helen L100,000. It is a big sum, and I hae been in a sair strait about it. What say you, Colin?"

"My dear father, I say there is only one way out of that strait. The money must be given as Helen wished it. Helen was a noble girl. It was just like her."

"Ah, Colin, if you could only tell what a burden this bit o' paper has been to me! I left the great weight at the foot o' the cross this morning." As he spoke the paper dropped from his fingers and fell upon the table. Colin lifted it reverently and kissed it. "Father," he said, "may I keep it now? The day will come when the Crawfords will think with more pride of it than of any parchment they possess."

Then there was an appeal to Tallisker about its disposal. "Laird," he answered, "such a sum must be handled wi' great care. It is not enough to gie money, it must be gien wisely." But he promised to take on himself the labor of inquiry into different charities, and the consideration of what places and objects needed help most. "But, Crawford," he said, "if you hae any special desire, I think it should be regarded."

Then Crawford said he had indeed one. When he was himself young he had desired greatly to enter the ministry, but his father had laid upon him a duty to the family and estate which he had accepted instead.

"Now, dominie," he said, "canna I keep aye a young man in my place?"

"It is a worthy thought, Crawford."

So the first portion of Helen's bequest went to Aberdeen University. This endowment has sent out in Crawford's place many a noble young man into the harvest-field of the world, and who shall say for how many centuries it will keep his name green in earth and heaven! The distribution of the rest does not concern our story. It may safely be left in Dominie Tallisker's hands.

Of course, in some measure it altered Crawford's plans. The new house was abandoned and a wing built to the Keep for Colin's special use. In this portion the young man indulged freely his poetic, artistic tastes. And the laird got to like it. He used to tread softly as soon as his feet entered the large shaded rooms, full of skilful lights and white gleaming statues. He got to enjoy the hot, scented atmosphere and rare blossoms of the conservatory, and it became a daily delight to him to sit an hour in Colin's studio and watch the progress of some favorite picture.

But above all his life was made rich by his grandson. Nature, as she often does, reproduced in the second generation what she had totally omitted in the first. The boy was his grandfather over again. They agreed upon every point. It was the laird who taught Alexander to spear a salmon, and throw a trout-line, and stalk a deer. They had constant confidences about tackle and guns and snares. They were all day together on the hills. The works pleased the boy better than his father's studio. He trotted away with his grandfather gladly to them. The fires and molten metal, the wheels and hammers and tumult, were all enchantments to him. He never feared to leap into a collier's basket and swing down the deep, black shaft. He had also an appreciative love of money; he knew just how many sixpences he owned, and though he could give if asked to do so, he always wanted the dominie to give him a good reason for giving. The child gave him back again his youth, and a fuller and nobler one than he himself had known.

And God was very gracious to him, and lengthened out this second youth to a green old age. These men of old Gaul had iron constitutions; they did not begin to think themselves old men until they had turned fourscore. It was thirty years after Helen's death when Tallisker one night sent this word to his life-long friend,

"I hae been called, Crawford; come and see me once more."

They all went together to the manse. The dominie was in his ninety-first year, and he was going home. No one could call it dying. He had no pain. He was going to his last sleep

"As sweetly as a child, Whom neither thought disturbs nor care encumbers, Tired with long play, at close of summer's day Lies down and slumbers."

"Good-by, Crawford—for a little while. We'll hae nae tears. I hae lived joyfully before my God these ninety years; I am going out o' the sunshine into the sunshine. Crawford, through that sair strait o' yours you hae set a grand, wide-open door for a weight o' happiness. I am glad ye didna wait. A good will is a good thing, but a good life is far better. It is a grand thing to sow your ain good seed. Nae ither hand could hae done it sae well and sae wisely. Far and wide there are lads and lasses growing up to call you blessed. This is a thought to mak death easy, Crawford. Good-night, dears."

And then "God's finger touched him and he slept."

Crawford lived but a few weeks longer. After the dominie's death he simply sat waiting. His darling Alexander came home specially to brighten these last hours, and in his company he showed almost to the last hour the true Crawford spirit.

"Alexander," he would say, "you'll ding for your ain side and the Crawfords always, but you'll be a good man; there is nae happiness else, dear. Never rest, my lad, till ye sit where your fathers sat in the House o' Peers. Stand by the State and the Kirk, and fear God, Alexander. The lease o' the Cowden Knowes is near out; don't renew it. Grip tight what ye hae got, but pay every debt as if God wrote the bill. Remember the poor, dear lad. Charity gies itsel' rich. Riches mak to themselves wings, but charity clips the wings. The love o' God, dear, the love o' God—that is the best o' all."

Yes, he had a sair struggle with his lower nature to the very last, but he was constantly strengthened by the conviction of a "Power closer to him than breathing, nearer than hands or feet." Nine weeks after the dominie's death they found him sitting in his chair, fallen on that sleep whose waking is eternal day. His death was like Tallisker's—a perfectly natural one. He had been reading. The Bible lay open at that grand peroration of St. Paul's on faith, in the twelfth of Hebrews. The "great cloud of witnesses," "the sin which doth so easily beset us," "Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith"—these were probably his last earthly thoughts, and with them he passed into

"That perfect presence of His face Which we, for want of words, call heaven."



James Blackie's Revenge.



JAMES BLACKIE'S REVENGE.

CHAPTER I.

Few people who have travelled will deny that of all cities Glasgow is apparently the least romantic. Steeped in wet, white mist, or wrapped in yellow fog vapor, all gray stone and gray sky, dirty streets, and sloppy people, it presents none of the features of a show town. Yet it has great merits; it is enterprising, persevering, intensely national, and practically religious; and people who do not mind being damp have every chance to make a good living there. Even the sombre appearance of the dark gray granite of which it is built is not unsuitable to the sterling character of its people; for though this stone may be dull and ugly, there is a natural nobility about it, and it never can be mean.

I have said that, as a city, Glasgow is practically religious, and certainly this was the case something less than half a century ago. The number of its churches was not more remarkable than the piety and learning of its clergy; and the "skailing" of their congregations on a Sabbath afternoon was one of the most impressive sights, of its kind, in the world.

My true little story opens with the skailing of the Ramshorn Kirk, a very favorite place of worship with the well-to-do burghers of the east end of the city, and it was a peculiarly douce, decent, solemn-looking crowd that slowly and reverently passed out of its gates into the absolutely silent streets. For no vehicles of any kind disturbed the Sabbath stillness, and not until the people had gone some distance from the house of God did they begin to think their own thoughts, and with a certain grave reserve put them into words.

Among the groups who proceeded still farther east, towards the pleasant houses facing the "Green," one alone was remarkable enough to have elicited special notice from an observing stranger. It consisted of an old man and a young girl, evidently his daughter. Both were strikingly handsome, and the girl was much better dressed than the majority of women who took the same road. Long before they reached the Green they were joined by a younger man, whom the elder at once addressed in a reproving voice.

"Ye didna pay as much attention to the sermon as it behooved ye to do, James Blackie; and what for did ye speak to Robert Laird a'most within 'the Gates'?"

"I only asked if he had heard of the 'Bonnie Bess;' she is overdue five days, and eight good men in her, not to speak of the cargo."

"It's no cannie to be aye asking questions. Sit still and the news will come to ye: forbye, I'm no sure if yon was a lawfu' question; the Sabbath sun hasna set yet."

James Blackie mechanically turned to the west, and then slowly let his glance fall on the lovely face at his side.

"Christine," he asked softly, "how is all with you?"

"All is well, James."

Not another word was spoken until they reached David Cameron's home. He was carefully reconsidering the sermon—going over every point on his finger ends, lest he should drop any link of the argument; and James and Christine were listening to his criticisms and remarks. They all stopped before a shop over the windows of which was painted, "David Cameron, Dealer in Fine Teas;" and David, taking a large key from his pocket, opened the door, and said,

"Come in and eat wi' us, James; ye ken ye're welcome."

"Our friendship, Mr. Cameron, is a kind of Montgomery division—all on one side, nothing on the other; but I am 'so by myself' that I thank you heartily."

So David, followed by Christine and James, passed slowly through the darkened store, with its faint smells of Eastern spices and fragrant teas, into the little parlor beyond. The early winter night had now fallen, and the room, having only an outlet into a small court, would have been dark also but for the red glow of the "covered" fire. David took the poker and struck the great block of coal, and instantly the cheerful blaze threw an air of cosey and almost picturesque comfort over the homelike room.

The two men sat down beside the fire, spreading their hands to its warmth, and apparently finding their own thoughts excellent company, for neither of them spoke or moved until Christine reappeared. She had divested herself of the handsome black satin and velvet which formed her kirk suit; but in her long, plain dress of gray winsey, with a snowy lawn kerchief and cuffs, she looked still more fair and lovable.

James watched her as she spread the cloth and produced from various cupboards cold meats and pastries, bread and cakes, and many kinds of delicate preserves and sweetmeats. Her large, shapely hands among the gold-and-white china fascinated him, while her calm, noiseless, unhurried movements induced a feeling of passive repose that it required an effort to dispel, when she said in a low, even voice,

"Father, the food is waiting for the blessing."

It was a silent but by no means an unhappy meal. David was a good man, and he ate his food graciously and gratefully, dropping now and then a word of praise or thanks; and James felt it delightful enough to watch Christine. For James, though he had not yet admitted the fact to his own heart, loved Christine Cameron as men love only once, with that deep, pure affection that has perchance a nearer kindred than this life has hinted of.

He thought her also exquisitely beautiful, though this opinion would not have been indorsed by a majority of men. For Christine had one of those pale, statuesque faces apt to be solemn in repose; its beauty was tender and twilight, its expression serious and steadfast, and her clear, spiritual eyes held in them no light of earthly passion. She had grown up in that little back parlor amid the din and tumult of the city, under the gray, rainy skies, and surrounded by care and sin, as a white lily grows out of the dark, damp soil, drawing from the elements around only sweetness and purity.

She was very silent this afternoon, but apparently very happy. Indeed, there was an expression on her face which attracted her father's attention, and he said,

"The sermon has pleased thee well, I see, Christine."

"The sermon was good, but the text was enough, father. I think it over in my heart, and it leaves a light on all the common things of life." And she repeated it softly, "O Thou preserver of men, unto Thee shall all flesh come."

David lifted his bonnet reverently, and James, who was learned in what the Scotch pleasantly call "the humanities," added slowly,

"'But I, the mortal, Planted so lowly, with death to bless me, I sorrow no longer.'"

When people have such subjects of conversation, they talk moderately—for words are but poor interpreters of emotions whose sources lie in the depths of eternity. But they were none the less happy, and James felt as if he had been sitting at one of those tables which the Lord "prepareth in the wilderness," where the "cup runneth over" with joy and content.

Such moments rarely last long; and it is doubtful if we could bear to keep the soul always to its highest bent. When Christine had sided away the dishes and put in order the little room, David laid down his pipe, and said, "The Lord's day being now over, I may speak anent my ain matters. I had a letter, Christine, on Saturday, from my brother-in-law, McFarlane. He says young Donald will be in Glasgow next week."

"Will he stay here, father?"

"Na, na; he'll bide wi' the McFarlanes. They are rich folk; but siller is nae sin—an' it be clean-won siller."

"Then why did Uncle McFarlane write to you, father?"

"He wrote concerning the lad's pecuniary matters, Christine. Young Donald will need gude guiding; and he is my sister Jessie's only bairn—blood is thicker than water, ye'll allow that—and Donald is o' gentle blood. I'm no saying that's everything; but it is gude to come o' a gude kind."

"The McFarlanes have aye been for the pope and the Stuarts," said James, a little scornfully. "They were 'out' in the '79'; and they would pin the white cockade on to-morrow, if there was ever a Stuart to bid them do it."

"Maybe they would, James. Hielandmen hae a way o' sticking to auld friends. There's Camerons I wadna go bail for, if Prince Charlie could come again; but let that flea stick to the wa'. And the McFarlanes arena exactly papist noo; the twa last generations hae been 'Piscopals—that's ane step ony way towards the truth. Luther mayna be John Knox, but they'll win up to him some time, dootless they will."

"How old is young McFarlane?" asked James.

"He is turned twenty—a braw lad, his father says. I hae ne'er seen him, but he's Jessie's bairn, and my heart gaes out to meet him."

"Why did you not tell me on Saturday, father? I could have spoken for Maggie Maclean to help me put the house in order."

"I didna get the letter till the evening post. It was most as good as Sabbath then. Housecleaning is an unco temptation to women-folk, so I keepit the news till the Sabbath sun was weel set."

During this conversation James Blackie's heart had become heavy with some sad presentiment of trouble, such as arise very naturally in similar circumstances. As a poet says,

"Ah, no! it is not all delusion, That strange intelligence of sorrow Searching the tranquil heart's seclusion, Making us quail before the morrow. 'Tis the farewell of happiness departing, The sudden tremor of a soul at rest; The wraith of coming grief upstarting Within the watchful breast."

He listened to David Cameron's reminiscences of his bonnie sister Jessie, and of the love match she had made with the great Highland chieftain, with an ill-disguised impatience. He had a Lowlander's scorn for the thriftless, fighting, freebooting traditions of the Northern clans and a Calvinist's dislike to the Stuarts and the Stuarts' faith; so that David's unusual emotion was exceedingly and, perhaps, unreasonably irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting in song together.

"Oh, the bonnie, bonnie Hielands!" cried David with a passionate affection; "it is always Sabbath up i' the mountains, Christine. I maun see them once again ere I lay by my pilgrim-staff and shoon for ever."

"Then you are not Glasgow born, Mr. Cameron," said James, with the air of one who finds out something to another's disadvantage.

"Me! Glasgo' born! Na, na, man! I was born among the mountains o' Argyle. It was a sair downcome fra them to the Glasgo' pavements. But I'm saying naething against Glasgo'. I was but thinking o' the days when I wore the tartan and climbed the hills in the white dawns, and, kneeling on the top o' Ben Na Keen, saw the sun sink down wi' a smile. It's little ane sees o' sunrising or sunsetting here, James," and David sighed heavily and wiped away the tender mist from his sight.

James looked at the old man with some contempt; he himself had been born and reared in one or other of the closest and darkest streets of the city. The memories of his loveless, hard-worked childhood were bitter to him, and he knew nothing of the joy of a boyhood spent in the hills and woods.

"Life is the same everywhere, Mr. Cameron. I dare say there is as much sin and as much worry and care among the mountains as on the Glasgow pavements."

"You may 'daur say' it, James, but that winna mak it true. Even in this warld our Father's house has many mansions. Gang your way up and up through thae grand solitudes and ye'll blush to be caught worrying among them."

And then in a clear, jubilant voice he broke into the old Scotch version of the 121st Psalm:

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes from whence doth come mine aid; My safety cometh from the Lord, who heaven and earth hath made."

And he sang it to that loveliest of all psalm tunes, Rathiel's "St. Mary's." It was impossible to resist the faith, the enthusiasm, the melody. At the second bar Christine's clear, sweet voice joined in, and at the second line James was making a happy third.

"Henceforth thy goings out and in God keep for ever will."

"Thae twa lines will do for a 'Gude-night,'" said David in the pause at the end of the psalm, and James rose with a sigh and wrapped his plaid around him.



CHAPTER II.

James had gone into the house so happy and hopeful, he left it so anxious and angry—yes, angry. He knew well that he had no just cause for anger, but that knowledge only irritated him the more. Souls, as well as bodies, are subject to malignant diseases, and to-night envy and jealousy were causing James Blackie more acute suffering than any attack of fever or contagion. A feeling of dislike towards young Donald McFarlane had taken possession of his heart; he lay awake to make a mental picture of the youth, and then he hated the picture he had made.

Feverish and miserable, he went next morning to the bank in which he was employed, and endeavored amid the perplexities of compound interest to forget the anxieties he had invented for himself. But it was beyond his power, and he did not pray about them; for the burdens we bind on our own shoulders we rarely dare to go to God with, and James might have known from this circumstance alone that his trouble was no lawful one. He nursed it carefully all day and took it to bed with him again at night. The next day he had begun to understand how envy grew to hatred, and hatred to murder. Still he did not go to God for help, and still he kept ever before his eyes the image of the youth that he had determined was to be his enemy.

On Thursday night he could no longer bear his uncertainties. He dressed himself carefully and went to David Cameron's. David was in his shop tasting and buying teas, and apparently absorbed in business. He merely nodded to James, and bid him "walk through." He had no intention of being less kindly than usual, but James was in such a suspicious temper that he took his preoccupation for coolness, and so it was almost with a resentful feeling he opened the half-glass door dividing the shop from the parlor.

As his heart had foretold him, there sat the youth whom he had determined to hate, but his imagination had greatly deceived him with regard to his appearance. He had thought of Donald only as a "fair, false Highlander" in tartan, kilt, and philibeg. He found him a tall, dark youth, richly dressed in the prevailing Southern fashion, and retaining no badge of his country's costume but the little Glengary cap with its chieftain's token of an eagle's feather. His manners were not rude and haughty, as James had decided they would be; they were singularly frank and pleasant. Gracious and graceful, exceedingly handsome and light-hearted, he was likely to prove a far more dangerous rival than even James' jealous heart had anticipated.

He rose at Christine's introduction, and offered his hand with a pleasant smile to James. The latter received the courtesy with such marked aversion that Donald slightly raised his eyebrows ere he resumed his interrupted conversation with Christine. And now that James sat down with a determination to look for offences he found plenty. Christine was sewing, and Donald sat beside her winding and unwinding her threads, playing with her housewife, or teasingly hiding her scissors. Christine, half pleased and half annoyed, gradually fell into Donald's mood, and her still face dimpled into smiles. James very quickly decided that Donald presumed in a very offensive manner on his relationship to Christine.

A little after nine o'clock David, having closed his shop, joined them in the parlor. He immediately began to question James about the loss of the "Bonnie Bess," and from that subject they drifted easily into others of a local business interest. It was very natural that Donald, being a stranger both to the city and its business, should take no part in this discourse, and that he should, in consequence, devote himself to Christine. But James felt it an offence, and rose much earlier than was his wont to depart. David stayed him, almost authoritatively:

"Ye maun stop, baith o' ye lads, and join in my meat and worship. They are ill visitors that canna sit at ane board and kneel at ane altar."

For David had seen, through all their drifting talk of ships and cargoes, the tumult in James' heart, and he did not wish him to go away in an ungenerous and unjust temper. So both Donald and James partook of the homely supper of pease brose and butter, oatmeal cakes and fresh milk, and then read aloud with David and Christine the verses of the evening Psalm that came to each in turn. James was much softened by the exercise; so much so that when Donald asked permission to walk with him as far as their way lay together, he very pleasantly acceded to the request. And Donald was so bright and unpretentious it was almost impossible to resist the infectious good temper which seemed to be his characteristic.

Still James was very little happier or more restful. He lay awake again, but this night it was not to fret and fume, but to calmly think over his position and determine what was best and right to do. For James still thought of "right," and would have been shocked indeed if any angel of conscience had revealed to him the lowest depths of his desires and intentions. In the first place, he saw that David would tolerate no element of quarrelling and bitterness in his peaceful home, and that if he would continue to visit there he must preserve the semblance of friendship for Donald McFarlane. In the second, he saw that Donald had already made so good his lien upon his uncle's and cousin's affections that it would be very hard to make them believe wrong of the lad, even if he should do wrong, though of this James told himself there would soon be abundance.

"For the things David will think sinful beyond all measure," he argued, "will seem but Puritanical severity to him; forbye, he is rich, gay, handsome, and has little to do with his time, he'll get well on to Satan's ground before he knows it;" and then some whisper dim and low in his soul made him blush and pause and defer the following out of a course which was to begin in such a way.

So Donald and he fell into the habit of meeting at David's two or three nights every week, and an apparent friendship sprang up between them. It was only apparent, however. On Donald's side was that good-natured indifference that finds it easy enough to say smooth words, and is not ready to think evil or to take offence; on James' part a wary watchfulness, assuming the role of superior wisdom, half admiring and half condemning Donald's youthful spirits and ways.

David was quite deceived; he dropped at once the authoritative manner which had marked his displeasure when he perceived James' disposition to envy and anger; he fell again into his usual pleasant familiar talks with the young man, for David thought highly of James as of one likely to do his duty to God and himself.

In these conversations Donald soon began to take a little share, and when he chose to do so, evinced a thought and shrewdness which greatly pleased his uncle; more generally, however, he was at Christine's side, reading her some poem he had copied, or telling her about some grand party he had been at. Sometimes James could catch a few words of reproof addressed in a gentle voice to Donald by Christine; more often he heard only the murmur of an earnest conversation, or Christine's low laugh at some amusing incident.

The little room meanwhile had gradually become a far brighter place. Donald kept it sweet and bright with his daily offerings of fresh flowers; the pet canary he had given Christine twittered and sang to her all the day through. Over Christine herself had come the same bright change; her still, calm face often dimpled into smiles, her pale-gold hair was snooded with a pretty ribbon, and her dress a little richer. Yet, after all, the change was so slight that none but a lover would have noticed it. But there was not a smile or a shade of brighter color that James did not see; and he bore it with an equanimity which used often to astonish himself, though it would not have done so if he had dared just once to look down into his heart; he bore it because he knew that Donald was living two lives—one that Christine saw, and one that she could not even have imagined.

It was, alas, too true that this gay, good-natured young man, who had entered the fashionable world without one bad habit, was fast becoming proficient in all its follies and vices. That kind of negative goodness which belonged naturally to him, unfortified by strict habits and strong principles, had not been able to repel the seductions and temptations that assail young men, rich, handsome, and well-born. There was an evil triumph in James' heart one night when Donald said to him, as they walked home after an evening at David's,

"Mr. Blackie, I wish you could lend me L20. I am in a little trouble, and I cannot ask Uncle David for more, as I have already overdrawn my father's allowance."

James loaned it with an eager willingness, though he was usually very cautious and careful of every bawbee of his hard-earned money. He knew it was but the beginning of confidence, and so it proved; in a very little while Donald had fallen into the habit of going to James in every emergency, and of making him the confidant of all his youthful hopes and follies.

James even schooled himself to listen patiently to Donald's praises of his cousin Christine. "She is just the wife I shall need when I settle down in three or four years," Donald would say complacently, "and I think she loves me. Of course no man is worthy of such a woman, but when I have seen life a little I mean to try and be so."

"Umph!" answered James scornfully, "do you suppose, Mr. McFarlane, that ye'll be fit for a pure lassie like Christine Cameron when you have played the prodigal and consorted with foolish women, and wasted your substance in riotous living?"

And Donald said with an honest blush, "By the memory of my mother, no, I do not, James. And I am ashamed when I think of Christine's white soul and the stained love I have to offer it. But women forgive! Oh, what mothers and wives and sisters there are in this world!"

"Well, don't try Christine too far, Donald. She is of an old Covenanting stock; her conscience feels sin afar off. I do not believe she would marry a bad, worldly man, though it broke her heart to say 'No.' I have known her far longer than you have."

"Tut, man, I love her! I know her better in an hour than you could do in a lifetime;" and Donald looked rather contemptuously on the plain man who was watching him with eyes that might have warned any one more suspicious or less confident and self-satisfied.



CHAPTER III.

The summer brought some changes. Christine went to the seaside for a few weeks, and Donald went away in Lord Neville's yacht with a party of gay young men; James and David passed the evenings generally together. If it was wet, they remained in the shop or parlor; if fine, they rambled to the "Green," and sitting down by the riverside talked of business, of Christine, and of Donald. In one of these confidential rambles James first tried to arouse in David's mind a suspicion as to his nephew's real character. David himself introduced the subject by speaking of a letter he had received from Donald.

"He's wi' the great Earl o' Egremont at present," said David proudly, for he had all a Scotsman's respect for good birth; "and there is wi' them young Argyle, and Lord Lovat, and ithers o' the same quality. But our Donald can cock his bonnet wi' ony o' them; there is na better blood in Scotland than the McFarlanes'. It taks money though to foregather wi' nobeelity, and Donald is wanting some. So, James, I'll gie ye the siller to-night, and ye'll send it through your bank as early as may be in the morn."

"Donald wanting money is an old want, Mr. Cameron."

David glanced quickly at James, and answered almost haughtily, "It's a common want likewise, James Blackie. But if Donald McFarlane wants money, he's got kin that can accommodate him, James; wanters arena always that fortunate."

"He has got friends likewise, Mr. Cameron; and I am sure I was proud enough to do him a kindness, and he knows it well."

"And how much may Donald be owing you, I wonder?"

"Only a little matter of L20. You see he had got into—"

"Dinna fash yoursel' wi' explanations, James. Dootless Donald has his faults; but I may weel wink at his small faults, when I hae sae mony great faults o' my ain."

And David's personal accusation sounded so much like a reproof, that James did not feel it safe to pursue the subject.

That very night David wrote thus to his nephew:

"Donald, my dear lad, if thou owest James Blackie L20, pay it immediate. Lying is the second vice, owing money is the first. I enclose draft for L70 instead o' L50, as per request."

That L70 was a large sum in the eyes of the careful Glasgow trader; in the young Highlander's eyes it seemed but a small sum. He could not form any conception of the amount of love it represented, nor of the struggle it had cost David to "gie awa for nae consideration" the savings of many days, perhaps weeks, of toil and thought.

In September Christine came back, and towards the end of October, Donald. He was greatly improved externally by his trip and his associations—more manly and more handsome—while his manners had acquired a slight touch of hauteur that both amused and pleased his uncle. It had been decided that he should remain in Glasgow another winter, and then select his future profession. But at present Donald troubled himself little about the future. He had returned to Christine more in love with the peace and purity of her character than ever; and besides, his pecuniary embarrassments in Glasgow were such as to require his personal presence until they were arranged.

This arrangement greatly troubled him. He had only a certain allowance from his father—a loving but stern man—who having once decided what sum was sufficient for a young man in Donald's position, would not, under any ordinary circumstances, increase it. David Cameron had already advanced him L70. James Blackie was a resource he did not care again to apply to. In the meantime he was pressed by small debts on every hand, and was living among a class of young men whose habits led him into expenses far beyond his modest income. He began to be very anxious and miserable. In Christine's presence he was indeed still the same merry-hearted gentleman; but James saw him in other places, and he knew from long experience the look of care that drew Donald's handsome brows together.

One night, towards the close of this winter, James went to see an old man who was a broker or trader in bills and money, doing business in the Cowcaddens. James also did a little of the same business in a cautious way, and it was some mutual transaction in gold and silver that took him that dreary, soaking night into such a locality.

The two men talked for some time in a low and earnest voice, and then the old man, opening a greasy leather satchel, displayed a quantity of paper which he had bought. James looked it over with a keen and practised eye. Suddenly his attitude and expression changed; he read over and over one piece of paper, and every time he read it he looked at it more critically and with a greater satisfaction.

"Andrew Starkie," he said, "where did you buy this?"

"Weel, James, I bought it o' Laidlaw—Aleck Laidlaw. Ye wadna think a big tailoring place like that could hae the wind in their faces; but folks maun hae their bad weather days, ye ken; but it blew me gude, so I'll ne'er complain. Ye see it is for L89, due in twenty days now, and I only gied L79 for it—a good name too, nane better."

"David Cameron! But what would he be owing Laidlaw L89 for clothes for?"

"Tut, tut! The claithes were for his nephew. There was some trouble anent the bill, but the old man gied a note for the amount at last, at three months. It's due in twenty days now. As he banks wi' your firm, ye may collect it for me; it will be an easy-made penny or twa."

"I would like to buy this note. What will you sell it for?"

"I'm no minded to sell it. What for do ye want it?"

"Nothing particular. I'll give you L90 for it."

"If it's worth that to you, it is worth mair. I'm no minded to tak L90."

"I'll give you L95."

"I'm no minded to tak it. It's worth mair to you, I see that. What are you going to mak by it? I'll sell it for half o' what you are counting on." "Then you would not make a bawbee. I am going to ware L95 on—on a bit of revenge. Now will you go shares?"

"Not I. Revenge in cold blood is the deil's own act. I dinna wark wi' the deil, when it's a losing job to me."

"Will you take L95 then?"

"No. When lads want whistles they maun pay for them."

"I'll give no more. For why? Because in twenty days you will do my work for me; then it will cost me nothing, and it will cost you L89, that is all about it, Starkie."

Starkie lifted the note which James had flung carelessly down, and his skinny hands trembled as he fingered it. "This is David Cameron's note o' hand, and David Cameron is a gude name."

"Yes, very good. Only that is not David Cameron's writing, it is a—forgery. Light your pipe with it, Andrew Starkie."

"His nephew gave it himsel' to Aleck Laidlaw—"

"I know. And I hate his nephew. He has come between me and Christine Cameron. Do you see now?"

"Oh! oh! oh! I see, I see! Well, James, you can have it for L100—as a favor."

"I don't want it now. He could not have a harder man to deal with than you are. You suit me very well."

"James, such business wont suit me. I can't afford to be brought into notice. I would rather lose double the money than prosecute any gentleman in trouble."

The older man had reasoned right—James dared not risk the note out of sight, dared not trust to Starkie's prosecution. He longed to have the bit of paper in his own keeping, and after a wary battle of a full hour's length Andrew Starkie had his L89 back again, and James had the note in his pocket-book.

Through the fog, and through the wind, and through the rain he went, and he knew nothing, and he felt nothing but that little bit of paper against his breast. Oh, how greedily he remembered Donald's handsome looks and stately ways, and all the thousand little words and acts by which he imagined himself wronged and insulted. Now he had his enemy beneath his feet, and for several days this thought satisfied him, and he hid his secret morsel of vengeance and found it sweet—sharply, bitterly sweet—for even yet conscience pleaded hard with him.

As he sat counting his columns of figures, every gentle, forgiving word of Christ came into his heart. He knew well that Donald would receive his quarterly allowance before the bill was due, and that he must have relied on this to meet it. He also knew enough of Donald's affairs to guess something of the emergency that he must have been in ere he would have yielded to so dangerous an alternative. There were times when he determined to send for Donald, show him the frightful danger in which he stood, and then tear the note before his eyes, and leave its payment to his honor. He even realized the peace which would flow from such a deed. Nor were these feelings transitory, his better nature pleaded so hard with him that he walked his room hour after hour under their influence, and their power over him was such as delayed all action in the matter for nearly a week.



CHAPTER IV.

At length one morning David Cameron came into the bank, and having finished his business, walked up to James and said, "I feared ye were ill, James. Whatna for hae ye stayed awa sae lang? I wanted ye sairly last night to go o'er wi' me the points in this debate at our kirk. We are to hae anither session to-night; ye'll come the morn and talk it o'er wi' me?"

"I will, Mr. Cameron."

But James instantly determined to see Christine that night. Her father would be at the kirk session, and if Donald was there, he thought he knew how to whisper him away. He meant to have Christine all to himself for an hour or two, and if he saw any opportunity he would tell her all. When he got to David's the store was still open, but the clerk said, "David has just gone," and James, as was his wont, walked straight to the parlor.

Donald was there; he had guessed that, because a carriage was in waiting, and he knew it could belong to no other caller at David Cameron's. And never had Donald roused in him such an intense antagonism. He was going to some National Celebration, and he stood beside Christine in all the splendid picturesque pomp of the McFarlane tartans. He was holding Christine's hand, and she stood as a white lily in the glow and color of his dark beauty. Perhaps both of them felt James' entrance inopportune. At any rate they received him coldly, Donald drew Christine a little apart, said a few whispered words to her, and lifting his bonnet slightly to James, he went away.

In the few minutes of this unfortunate meeting the devil entered into James' heart. Even Christine was struck with the new look on his face. It was haughty, malicious, and triumphant, and he leaned against the high oaken chimney-piece in a defiant way that annoyed Christine, though she could not analyze it.

"Sit down, James," she said with a touch of authority—for his attitude had unconsciously put her on the defensive. "Donald has gone to the Caledonian club; there is to be a grand gathering of Highland gentlemen there to-night."

"Gentlemen!"

"Well, yes, gentlemen! And there will be none there more worthy the name than our Donald."

"The rest of them are much to be scorned at, then."

"James, James, that speech was little like you. Sit down and come to yourself; I am sure you are not so mean as to grudge Donald the rights of his good birth."

"Donald McFarlane shall have all the rights he has worked for; and when he gets his just payment he will be in Glasgow jail."

"James, you are ill. You have not been here for a week, and you look so unlike yourself. I know you must be ill. Will you let me send for our doctor?" And she approached him kindly, and looked with anxious scrutiny into his face.

He put her gently away, and said in a thick, rapid voice,

"Christine, I came to-night to tell you that Donald McFarlane is unworthy to come into your presence—he has forged your father's name."

"James, you are mad, or ill, what you say is just impossible!"

"I am neither mad nor ill. I will prove it, if you wish."

At these words every trace of sympathy or feeling vanished from her face; and she said in a low, hoarse whisper,

"You cannot prove it. I would not believe such a thing possible."

Then with a pitiless particularity he went over all the events relating to the note, and held it out for her to examine the signature.

"Is that David Cameron's writing?" he cried; "did you ever see such a weak imitation? The man is a fool as well as a villain."

Christine gazed blankly at the witness of her cousin's guilt, and James, carried away with the wicked impetuosity of his passionate accusations of Donald's life, did not see the fair face set in white despair and the eyes close wearily, as with a piteous cry she fell prostrate at his feet.

Ah, how short was his triumph! When he saw the ruin that his words had made he shrieked aloud in his terror and agony. Help was at hand, and doctors were quickly brought, but she had received a shock from which it seemed impossible to revive her. David was brought home, and knelt in speechless distress by the side of his insensible child, but no hope lightened the long, terrible night, and when the reaction came in the morning, it came in the form of fever and delirium.

Questioned closely by David, James admitted nothing but that while talking to him about Donald McFarlane she had fallen at his feet, and Donald could only say that he had that evening told her he was going to Edinburgh in two weeks, to study law with his cousin, and that he had asked her to be his wife.

This acknowledgement bound David and Donald in a closer communion of sorrow. James and his sufferings were scarcely noticed. Yet, probably of all that unhappy company, he suffered the most. He loved Christine with a far deeper affection than Donald had ever dreamed of. He would have given his life for hers, and yet he had, perhaps, been her murderer. How he hated Donald in those days! What love and remorse tortured him! And what availed it that he had bought the power to ruin the man he hated? He was afraid to use it. If Christine lived, and he did use it, she would never forgive him; if she died, he would be her murderer.

But the business of life cannot be delayed for its sorrows. David must wait in his shop, and James must be at the bank; and in two weeks Donald had to leave for Edinburgh, though Christine was lying in a silent, broken-hearted apathy, so close to the very shoal of Time that none dared say, "She will live another day."

How James despised Donald for leaving her at all; he desired nothing beyond the permission to sit by her side, and watch and aid the slow struggle of life back from the shores and shades of death.

It was almost the end of summer before she was able to resume her place in the household, but long before that she had asked to see James. The interview took place one Sabbath afternoon while David was at church. Christine had been lifted to a couch, but she was unable to move, and even speech was exhausting and difficult to her. James knelt down by her side, and, weeping bitterly, said,

"O Christine, forgive me!"

She smiled faintly.

"You—have—not—used—yonder—paper,—James?"

"Oh, no, no."

"It—would—kill—me. You—would—not—kill—me?"

"I would die to make you strong again."

"Don't—hurt—Donald. Forgive—for—Christ's—sake,—James!"

Poor James! It was hard for him to see that still Donald was her first thought, and, looking on the wreck of Christine's youth and beauty, it was still harder not to hate him worse than ever.

Nor did the temptation to do so grow less with time. He had to listen every evening to David's praises of his nephew: how "he had been entered wi' Advocate Scott, and was going to be a grand lawyer," or how he had been to some great man's house and won all hearts with his handsome face and witty tongue. Or, perhaps, he would be shown some rich token of his love that had come for Christine; or David would say, "There's the 'Edinbro' News,' James; it cam fra Donald this morn; tak it hame wi' you. You're welcome." And James feared not to take it, feared to show the slightest dislike to Donald, lest David's anger at it should provoke him to say what was in his heart, and Christine only be the sufferer.

One cold night in early winter, James, as was his wont now, went to spend the evening in talking with David and in watching Christine. That was really all it was; for, though she had resumed her house duties, she took little part in conversation. She had always been inclined to silence, but now a faint smile and a "Yes" or "No" were her usual response, even to her father's remarks. This night he found David out, and he hesitated whether to trouble Christine or not. He stood for a moment in the open door and looked at her. She was sitting by the table with a little Testament open in her hand; but she was rather musing on what she had been reading than continuing her occupation.

"Christine!"

"James!"

"May I come in?"

"Yes, surely."

"I hear your father has gone to a town-meeting."

"Yes."

"And he is to be made a bailie."

"Yes."

"I am very glad. It will greatly please him, and there is no citizen more worthy of the honor."

"I think so also."

"Shall I disturb you if I wait to see him?"

"No, James; sit down."

Then Christine laid aside her book and took her sewing, and James sat thinking how he could best introduce the subject ever near his heart. He felt that there was much to say in his own behalf, if he only knew how to begin. Christine opened the subject for him. She laid down her work and went and stood before the fire at his side. The faintest shadow of color was in her face, and her eyes were unspeakably sad and anxious. He could not bear their eager, searching gaze, and dropped his own.

"James, have you destroyed yonder paper?"

"Nay, Christine; I am too poor a man to throw away so much hard-won gold. I am keeping it until I can see Mr. McFarlane and quietly collect my own."

"You will never use it in any way against him?"

"Will you ever marry him? Tell me that."

"O sir!" she cried indignantly, "you want to make a bargain with my poor heart. Hear, then. If Donald wants me to marry him I'll never cast him off. Do you think God will cast him off for one fault? You dare not say it."

"I do not say but what God will pardon. But we are human beings; we are not near to God yet."

"But we ought to be trying to get near him; and oh, James, you never had so grand a chance. See the pitiful face of Christ looking down on you from the cross. If that face should turn away from you, James—if it should!"

"You ask a hard thing of me, Christine."

"Yes, I do."

"But if you will only try and love me—"

"Stop, James! I will make no bargain in a matter of right and wrong. If for Christ's sake, who has forgiven you so much, you can forgive Donald, for Christ's dear sake do it. If not, I will set no earthly love before it. Do your worst. God can find out a way. I'll trust him."

"Christine! dear Christine!"

"Hush! I am Donald's promised wife. May God speak to you for me. I am very sad and weary. Good-night."

James did not wait for David's return. He went back to his own lodging, and, taking the note out of his pocket-book, spread it before him. His first thought was that he had wared L89 on his enemy's fine clothes, and James loved gold and hated foppish, extravagant dress; his next that he had saved Andrew Starkie L89, and he knew the old usurer was quietly laughing at his folly. But worse than all was the alternative he saw as the result of his sinful purchase: if he used it to gratify his personal hatred, he deeply wounded, perhaps killed, his dearest love and his oldest friend. Hour after hour he sat with the note before him. His good angel stood at his side and wooed him to mercy. There was a fire burning in the grate, and twice he held the paper over it, and twice turned away from his better self.

The watchman was calling "half-past two o'clock," when, cold and weary with his mental struggle, he rose and went to his desk. There was a secret hiding-place behind a drawer there, in which he kept papers relating to his transactions with Andrew Starkie, and he put it among them. "I'll leave it to its chance," he muttered; "a fire might come and burn it up some day. If it is God's will to save Donald, he could so order it, and I am fully insured against pecuniary loss." He did not at that moment see how presumptuously he was throwing his own responsibility on God; he did not indeed want to see anything but some plausible way of avoiding a road too steep for a heart weighed down with earthly passion to dare.

Then weeks and months drifted away in the calm regular routine of David's life. But though there were no outward changes, there was a very important inward one. About sixteen months after Donald's departure he returned to visit Christine. James, at Christine's urgent request, absented himself during this visit; but when he next called at David's, he perceived at once that all was not as had been anticipated. David had little to say about him; Christine looked paler and sadder than ever. Neither quite understood why. There had been no visible break with Donald, but both father and daughter felt that he had drifted far away from them and their humble, pious life. Donald had lost the child's heart he had brought with him from the mountains; he was ambitious of honors, and eager after worldly pleasures and advantages. He had become more gravely handsome, and he talked more sensibly to David; but David liked him less.

After this visit there sprang up a new hope in James' heart, and he waited and watched, though often with very angry feelings; for he was sure that Donald was gradually deserting Christine.

She grew daily more sad and silent; it was evident she was suffering. The little Testament lay now always with her work, and he noticed that she frequently laid aside her sewing and read it earnestly, even while David and he were quietly talking at the fireside.

One Sabbath, two years after Donald's departure, James met David coming out of church alone. He could only say, "I hope Christine is well."

"Had she been well, she had been wi' me; thou kens that, James."

"I might have done so. Christine is never absent from God's house when it is open."

"It is a good plan, James; for when they who go regular to God's house are forced to stay away, God himself asks after them. I hae no doubt but what Christine has been visited."

They walked on in silence until David's house was in sight. "I'm no caring for any company earth can gie me the night, James; but the morn I hae something to tell you I canna speak anent to-day."



CHAPTER V.

The next day David came into the bank about noon, and said, "Come wi' me to McLellan's, James, and hae a mutton pie, it's near by lunch-time." While they were eating it David said, "Donald McFarlane is to be wedded next month. He's making a grand marriage."

James bit his lip, but said nothing.

"He's spoken for Miss Margaret Napier; her father was ane o' the Lords o' Session; she's his sole heiress, and that will mean L50,000, foreby the bonnie place and lands o' Ellenshawe."

"And Christine?"

"Dinna look that way, man. Christine is content; she kens weel enough she isna like her cousin."

"God be thanked she is not. Go away from me, David Cameron, or I shall say words that will make more suffering than you can dream off. Go away, man."

David was shocked and grieved at his companion's passion. "James," he said solemnly, "dinna mak a fool o' yoursel'. I hae long seen your ill-will at Donald. Let it go. Donald's aboon your thumb now, and the anger o' a poor man aye falls on himsel'."

"For God's sake don't tempt me farther. You little know what I could do if I had the ill heart to do it."

"Ow! ay!" said David scornfully, "if the poor cat had only wings it would extirpate the race of sparrows from the world; but when the wings arena there, James lad, it is just as weel to mak no boast o' them."

James had leaned his head in his hands, and was whispering, "Christine! Christine! Christine!" in a rapid inaudible voice. He took no notice of David's remark, and David was instantly sorry for it. "The puir lad is just sorrowful wi' love for Christine, and that's nae sin that I can see," he thought. "James," he said kindly, "I am sorry enough to grieve you. Come as soon as you can like to do it. You'll be welcome."

James slightly nodded his head, but did not move; and David left him alone in the little boarded room where they had eaten. In a few minutes he collected himself, and, like one dazed, walked back to his place in the bank. Never had its hours seemed so long, never had the noise and traffic, the tramping of feet, and the banging of doors seemed so intolerable. As early as possible he was at David's, and David, with that fine instinct that a kind heart teaches, said as he entered, "Gude evening, James. Gae awa ben and keep Christine company. I'm that busy that I'll no shut up for half an hour yet."

James found Christine in her usual place. The hearth had been freshly swept, the fire blazed brightly, and she sat before it with her white seam in her hand. She raised her eyes at James' entrance, and smilingly nodded to a vacant chair near her. He took it silently. Christine seemed annoyed at his silence in a little while, and asked, "Why don't you speak, James? Have you nothing to say?"

"A great deal, Christine. What now do you think of Donald McFarlane?"

"I think well of Donald."

"And of his marriage also?"

"Certainly I do. When he was here I saw how unfit I was to be his wife. I told him so, and bid him seek a mate more suitable to his position and prospects."

"Do you think it right to let yonder lady wed such a man with her eyes shut?"

"Are you going to open them?" Her face was sad and mournful, and she laid her hand gently on James' shoulder.

"I think it is my duty, Christine."

"Think again, James. Be sure it is your duty before you go on such an errand. See if you dare kneel down and ask God to bless you in this duty."

"Christine, you treat me very hardly. You know how I love you, and you use your power over me unmercifully."

"No, no, James, I only want you to keep yourself out of the power of Satan. If indeed I have any share in your heart, do not wrong me by giving Satan a place there also. Let me at least respect you, James."

Christine had never spoken in this way before to him; the majesty and purity of her character lifted him insensibly to higher thoughts, her gentleness soothed and comforted him. When David came in he found them talking in a calm, cheerful tone, and the evening that followed was one of the pleasantest he could remember. Yet James understood that Christine trusted in his forbearance, and he had no heart to grieve her, especially as she did her best to reward him by striving to make his visits to her father unusually happy.

So Donald married Miss Napier, and the newspapers were full of the bridegroom's beauty and talents, and the bride's high lineage and great possessions. After this Donald and Donald's affairs seemed to very little trouble David's humble household. His marriage put him far away from Christine's thoughts, for her delicate conscience would have regarded it as a great sin to remember with any feeling of love another woman's affianced husband; and when the struggle became one between right and wrong, it was ended for Christine. David seldom named him, and so Donald McFarlane gradually passed out of the lives he had so sorely troubled.

Slowly but surely James continued to prosper; he rose to be cashier in the bank, and he won a calm but certain place in Christine's regard. She had never quite recovered the shock of her long illness; she was still very frail, and easily exhausted by the least fatigue or excitement. But in James' eyes she was perfect; he was always at his best in her presence, and he was a very proud and happy man when, after eight years' patient waiting and wooing, he won from her the promise to be his wife; for he knew that with Christine the promise meant all that it ought to mean.

The marriage made few changes in her peaceful life. James left the bank, put his savings in David's business, and became his partner. But they continued to live in the same house, and year after year passed away in that happy calm which leaves no records, and has no fate days for the future to date from.

Sometimes a letter, a newspaper, or some public event, would bring back the memory of the gay, handsome lad that had once made so bright the little back parlor. Such strays from Donald's present life were always pleasant ones. In ten years he had made great strides forward. Every one had a good word for him. His legal skill was quoted as authority, his charities were munificent, his name unblemished by a single mean deed.

Had James forgotten? No, indeed. Donald's success only deepened his hatred of him. Even the silence he was compelled to keep on the subject intensified the feeling. Once after his marriage he attempted to discuss the subject with Christine, but the scene had been so painful he had never attempted it again; and David was swift and positive to dismiss any unfavorable allusion to Donald. Once, on reading that "Advocate McFarlane had joined the Free Kirk of Scotland on open confession of faith," James flung down the paper and said pointedly, "I wonder whether he confessed his wrong-doing before his faith or not."

"There's nane sae weel shod, James, that they mayna slip," answered David, with a stern face. "He has united wi' Dr. Buchan's kirk—there's nane taken into that fellowship unworthily, as far as man can judge."

"He would be a wise minister that got at all Advocate McFarlane's sins, I am thinking."

"Dinna say all ye think, James. They walk too fair for earth that naebody can find fault wi'."

So James nursed the evil passion in his own heart; indeed, he had nursed it so long that he could not of himself resign it, and in all his prayers—and he did pray frequently, and often sincerely—he never named this subject to God, never once asked for his counsel or help in the matter.

Twelve years after his marriage with Christine David died, died as he had often wished to die, very suddenly. He was well at noon; at night he had put on the garments of eternal Sabbath. He had but a few moments of consciousness in which to bid farewell to his children. "Christine," he said cheerfully, "we'll no be lang parted, dear lassie;" and to James a few words on his affairs, and then almost with his last breath, "James, heed what I say: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall—obtain mercy.'"

There seemed to have been some prophetic sense in David's parting words to his daughter, for soon after his death she began to fail rapidly. What James suffered as he saw it only those can tell who have watched their beloved slowly dying, and hoped against hope day after day and week after week. Perhaps the hardest part was the knowledge that she had never recovered the health she had previous to the terrible shock which his revelation of Donald's guilt had been to her. He forgot his own share in the shock and threw the whole blame of her early decay on Donald. "And if she dies," he kept saying in his angry heart, "I will make him suffer for it."

And Christine was drawing very near to death, though even when she was confined to her room and bed James would not believe it. And it was at this time that Donald came once more to Glasgow. There was a very exciting general election for a new Parliament, and Donald stood for the Conservative party in the city of Glasgow. Nothing could have so speedily ripened James' evil purpose. Should a forger represent his native city? Should he see the murderer of his Christine win honor upon honor, when he had but to speak and place him among thieves?

During the struggle he worked frantically to defeat him—and failed. That night he came home like a man possessed by some malicious, ungovernable spirit of hell. He would not go to Christine's room, for he was afraid she would discover his purpose in his face, and win him from it. For now he had sworn to himself that he would only wait until the congratulatory dinner. He could get an invitation to it. All the bailies and the great men of the city would be there. The newspaper reporters would be there. His triumph would be complete. Donald would doubtless make a great speech, and after it he would say his few words.

Then he thought of Christine. But she did not move him now, for she was never likely to hear of it. She was confined to her bed; she read nothing but her Bible; she saw no one but her nurse. He would charge the nurse, and he would keep all papers and letters from her. He thought of nothing now but the near gratification of a revengeful purpose for which he had waited twenty years. Oh, how sweet it seemed to him!

The dinner was to be in a week, and during the next few days he was like a man in a bad dream. He neglected his business, and wandered restlessly about the house, and looked so fierce and haggard that Christine began to notice, to watch, and to fear. She knew that Donald was in the city, and her heart told her that it was his presence only that could so alter her husband; and she poured it out in strong supplications for strength and wisdom to avert the calamity she felt approaching.

That night her nurse became sick and could not remain with her, and James, half reluctantly, took her place, for he feared Christine's influence now. She would ask him to read the Bible, to pray with her; she might talk to him of death and heaven; she might name Donald, and extract some promise from him. And he was determined now that nothing should move him. So he pretended great weariness, drew a large chair to her bedside, and said,

"I shall try and sleep a while, darling; if you need me you have only to speak."



CHAPTER VI.

He was more weary than he knew, and ere he was aware he fell asleep—a restless, wretched sleep, that made him glad when the half-oblivion was over. Christine, however, was apparently at rest, and he soon relapsed into the same dark, haunted state of unconsciousness. Suddenly he began to mutter and moan, and then to speak with a hoarse, whispered rapidity that had in it something frightful and unearthly. But Christine listened with wide-open eyes, and heard with sickening terror the whole wicked plot. It fell from his half-open lips over and over in every detail; and over and over he laughed low and terribly at the coming shame of the hated Donald.

She had not walked alone for weeks, nor indeed been out of her room for months, but she must go now; and she never doubted her strength. As if she had been a spirit, she slipped out of bed, walked rapidly and noiselessly into the long-unfamiliar parlor. A rushlight was burning, and the key of the old desk was always in it. Nothing valuable was kept there, and people unacquainted with the secret of the hidden drawer would have looked in vain for the entrance to it. Christine had known it for years, but her wifely honor had held it more sacred than locks or keys could have done. She was aware only that James kept some private matter of importance there, and she would as readily have robbed her husband's purse as have spied into things of which he did not speak to her.

Now, however, all mere thoughts of courtesy or honor must yield before the alternative in which James and Donald stood. She reached the desk, drew out the concealing drawer, pushed aside the slide, and touched the paper. There were other papers there, but something taught her at once the right one. To take it and close the desk was but the work of a moment, then back she flew as swiftly and noiselessly as a spirit with the condemning evidence tightly clasped in her hand.

James was still muttering and moaning in his troubled sleep, and with the consciousness of her success all her unnatural strength passed away. She could hardly secrete it in her bosom ere she fell into a semi-conscious lethargy, through which she heard with terror her husband's low, weird laughter and whispered curses.

At length the day for the dinner came. James had procured an invitation, and he made unusual personal preparations for it. He was conscious that he was going to do a very mean action, but he would look as well as possible in the act. He had even his apology for it ready; he would say that "as long as it was a private wrong he had borne the loss patiently for twenty years, but that the public welfare demanded honest men, men above reproach, and he could no longer feel it his duty," etc., etc.

After he was dressed he bid Christine "Good-by."

"He would only stay an hour," he said, "and he must needs go, as Donald was her kin."

Then he went to the desk, and with hands trembling in their eagerness sought the bill. It was not there. Impossible! He looked again—again more carefully—could not believe his eyes, and looked again and again. It was really gone. If the visible hand of God had struck him, he could not have felt it more consciously. He mechanically closed the desk and sat down like one stunned. Cain might have felt as James did when God asked him, "Where is thy brother?" He did not think of prayer. No "God be merciful to me a sinner" came as yet from his dry, white lips. The fountains of his heart seemed dry as dust. The anger of God weighed him down till

"He felt as one Who, waking after some strange, fevered dream, Sees a dim land and things unspeakable, And comes to know at last that it is hell."

Meantime Christine was lying with folded hands, praying for him. She knew what an agony he was going through, and ceaselessly with pure supplications she prayed for his forgiveness. About midnight one came and told him his wife wanted to see him. He rose with a wretched sigh, and looked at the clock. He had sat there six hours. He had thought over everything, over and over—the certainty that the paper was there, the fact that no other paper had been touched, and that no human being but Christine knew of the secret place. These things shocked him beyond expression. It was to his mind a visible assertion of the divine prerogative; he had really heard God say to him, "Vengeance is mine." The lesson that in these materialistic days we would reason away, James humbly accepted. His religious feelings were, after all, his deepest feelings, and in those six hours he had so palpably felt the frown of his angry Heavenly Father that he had quite forgotten his poor, puny wrath at Donald McFarlane.

As he slowly walked up stairs to Christine he determined to make to her a full confession of the deed he had meditated. But when he reached her bedside he saw that she was nearly dead. She smiled faintly and said,

"Send all away, James. I must speak alone with you, dear; we are going to part, my husband."

Then he knelt down by her side and held her cold hands, and the gracious tears welled up in his hot eyes, and he covered them with the blessed rain.

"O James, how you have suffered—since six o'clock."

"You know then, Christine! I would weep tears of blood over my sin. O dear, dear wife, take no shameful memory of me into eternity with you."

"See how I trust you, James. Here is poor, weak Donald's note. I know now you will never use it against him. What if your six hours were lengthened out through life—through eternity? I ask no promise from you now, dear."

"But I give it. Before God I give it, with all my heart. My sin has found me out this night. How has God borne with me all these years? Oh, how great is his mercy!"

Then Christine told him how he had revealed his wicked plot, and how wonderful strength had been given her to defeat it; and the two souls, amid their parting sighs and tears, knew each other as they had never done through all their years of life.

For a week James remained in his own room. Then Christine was laid beside her father, and the shop was reopened, and the household returned to its ways. But James was not seen in house or shop, and the neighbors said,

"Kirsty Cameron has had a wearisome sickness, and nae doobt her gudeman was needing a rest. Dootless he has gane to the Hielands a bit."

But it was not northward James Blackie went. It was south; south past the bonnie Cumberland Hills and the great manufacturing towns of Lancashire and the rich valleys of Yorkshire; southward until he stopped at last in London. Even then, though he was weary and sick and the night had fallen, he did not rest. He took a carriage and drove at once to a fashionable mansion in Baker street. The servant looked curiously at him and felt half inclined to be insolent to such a visitor.

"Take that card to your master at once," he said in a voice whose authority could not be disputed, and the man went.

His master was lying on a sofa in a luxuriously-furnished room, playing with a lovely girl about four years old, and listening meanwhile to an enthusiastic account of a cricket match that two boys of about twelve and fourteen years were giving him. He was a strikingly handsome man, in the prime of life, with a thoroughly happy expression. He took James' card in a careless fashion, listened to the end of his sons' story, and then looked at it. Instantly his manner changed; he stood up, and said promptly,

"Go away now, Miss Margaret, and you also, Angus and David; I have an old friend to see." Then to the servant, "Bring the gentleman here at once."

When he heard James' step he went to meet him with open hand; but James said,

"Not just yet, Mr. McFarlane; hear what I have to say. Then if you offer your hand I will take it."

"Christine is dead?"

"Dead, dead."

They sat down opposite each other, and James did not spare himself. From his discovery of the note in old Starkie's possession until the death of Christine, he confessed everything. Donald sat with downcast eyes, quite silent. Once or twice his fierce Highland blood surged into his face, and his hand stole mechanically to the place where his dirk had once been, but the motion was as transitory as a thought. When James had finished he sat with compressed lips for a few moments, quite unable to control his speech; but at length he slowly said,

"I wish I had known all this before; it would have saved much sin and suffering. You said that my indifference at first angered you. I must correct this. I was not indifferent. No one can tell what suffering that one cowardly act cost me. But before the bill fell due I went frankly to Uncle David and confessed all my sin. What passed between us you may guess; but he forgave me freely and fully, as I trust God did also. Hence there was no cause for its memory to darken life."

"I always thought Christine had told her father," muttered James.

"Nay, but I told him myself. He said he would trace the note, and I have no doubt he knew it was in your keeping from the first."

Then James took it from his pocket-book.

"There it is, Mr. McFarlane. Christine gave it back to me the hour she died. I promised her to bring it to you and tell you all."

"Christine's soul was a white rose without a thorn. I count it an honor to have known and loved her. But the paper is yours, Mr. Blackie, unless I may pay for it."

"O man, man! what money could pay for it? I would not dare to sell it for the whole world! Take it, I pray you."

"I will not. Do as you wish with it, James, I can trust you."

Then James walked towards the table. There were wax lights burning on it, and he held it in the flame and watched it slowly consume away to ashes. The silence was so intense that they heard each other breathing, and the expression on James' face was so rapt and noble that even Donald's stately beauty was for the moment less attractive. Then he walked towards Donald and said,

"Now give me your hand, McFarlane, and I'll take it gladly."

And that was a handclasp that meant to both men what no words could have expressed.

"Farewell, McFarlane; our ways in this world lie far apart; but when we come to die it will comfort both of us to remember this meeting. God be with you!"

"And with you also, James. Farewell."

Then James went back to his store and his shadowed household life. And people said he looked happier than ever he had done, and pitied him for his sick wife, and supposed he felt it a happy release to be rid of her. So wrongly does the world, which knows nothing of our real life, judge us.

You may see his gravestone in Glasgow Necropolis to-day, and people will tell you that he was a great philanthropist, and gave away a noble fortune to the sick and the ignorant; and you will probably wonder to see only beneath his name the solemn text, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."



Facing His Enemy.



FACING HIS ENEMY.

CHAPTER I.

Forty years ago there stood in the lower part of the city of Glasgow a large, plain building which was to hundreds of very intelligent Scotchmen almost sacred ground. It stood among warehouses and factories, and in a very unfashionable quarter; but for all that, it was Dr. William Morrison's kirk. And Dr. Morrison was in every respect a remarkable man—a Scotchman with the old Hebrew fervor and sublimity, who accepted the extremest tenets of his creed with a deep religious faith, and scorned to trim or moderate them in order to suit what he called "a sinfu' latitudinarian age."

Such a man readily found among the solid burghers of Glasgow a large "following" of a very serious kind, douce, dour men, whose strongly-marked features looked as if they had been chiselled out of their native granite—men who settled themselves with a grave kind of enjoyment to listen to a full hour's sermon, and who watched every point their minister made with a critical acumen that seemed more fitting to a synod of divines than a congregation of weavers and traders.

A prominent man in this remarkable church was Deacon John Callendar. He had been one of its first members, and it was everything to his heart that Jerusalem is to the Jew, or Mecca to the Mohammedan. He believed his minister to be the best and wisest of men, though he was by no means inclined to allow himself a lazy confidence in this security. It was the special duty of deacons to keep a strict watch over doctrinal points, and though he had never had occasion to dissent in thirty years' scrutiny, he still kept the watch.

In the temporal affairs of the church it had been different. There was no definite creed for guidance in these matters, and eight or ten men with strong, rugged wills about L, s., d., each thinking highly of his own discretion in monetary affairs, and rather indifferently of the minister's gifts in this direction, were not likely to have always harmonious sessions.

They had had a decidedly inharmonious one early in January of 184-, and Deacon Callendar had spoken his mind with his usual blunt directness. He had been a good deal nettled at the minister's attitude, for, instead of seconding his propositions, Dr. Morrison had sat with a faraway, indifferent look, as if the pending discussion was entirely out of his range of interest. John could have borne contradiction better. An argument would have gratified him. But to have the speech and statistics which he had so carefully prepared fall on the minister's ear without provoking any response was a great trial of his patience. He was inwardly very angry, though outwardly very calm; but Dr. Morrison knew well what a tumult was beneath the dour still face of the deacon as he rose from his chair, put on his plaid, and pulled his bonnet over his brows.

"John," he said kindly, "you are a wise man, and I aye thought so. It takes a Christian to lead passion by the bridle. A Turk is a placid gentleman, John, but he cannot do it."

"Ou, ay! doubtless! There is talk o' the Turk and the Pope, but it is my neighbors that trouble me the maist, minister. Good-night to ye all. If ye vote to-night you can e'en count my vote wi' Dr. Morrison's; it will be as sensible and warld-like as any o' the lave."

With this parting reflection he went out. It had begun to snow, and the still, white solitude made him ashamed of his temper. He looked up at the quiet heavens above him, then at the quiet street before him, and muttered with a spice of satisfaction, "Speaking comes by nature, and silence by understanding. I am thankfu' now I let Deacon Strang hae the last word. I'm saying naught against Strang; he may gie good counsel, but they'll be fools that tak it."

"Uncle!"

"Hout, Davie! Whatna for are you here?"

"It began to snow, and I thought you would be the better of your cloak and umbrella. You seem vexed, uncle."

"Vexed? Ay. The minister is the maist contrary o' mortals. He kens naething about church government, and he treats gude siller as if it wasna worth the counting; but he's a gude man, and a great man, Davie, and folk canna serve the altar and be money-changers too. I ought to keep that i' mind. It's Deacon Strang, and no the minister."

"Well, uncle, you must just thole it; you know what the New Testament says?"

"Ay, ay; I ken it says if a man be struck on one cheek, he must turn the other; but, Davie, let me tell you that the man who gets the first blow generally deserves the second. It is gude Christian law no to permit the first stroke. That is my interpretation o' the matter."

"I never thought of that."

"Young folk don't think o' everything."

There was something in the tone of this last remark which seemed to fit best into silence, and David Callendar had a particular reason for not further irritating his uncle. The two men without any other remark reached the large, handsome house in Blytheswood Square which was their home. Its warmth and comfort had an immediate effect on the deacon. He looked pleasantly at the blazing fire and the table on the hearthrug, with its basket of oaten cakes, its pitcher of cream, and its whiskey-bottle and toddy glasses. The little brass kettle was simmering before the fire, his slippers were invitingly warm, his loose coat lying over the back of his soft, ample chair, and just as he had put them on, and sank down with a sigh of content, a bright old lady entered with a spicy dish of kippered salmon.

"I thought I wad bring ye a bit relish wi' your toddy, deacon. Talking is hungry wark. I think a man might find easier pleasuring than going to a kirk session through a snowstorm."

"A man might, Jenny. They'd suit women-folk wonderfu'; there's plenty o' talk and little wark."

"Then I dinna see ony call to mak a change, deacon."

"Now, Jenny, you've had the last word, sae ye can go to bed wi' an easy mind. And, Jenny, woman, dinna let your quarrel wi' Maggie Launder come between you and honest sleep. I think that will settle her," he observed with a pawky smile, as his housekeeper shut the door with unnecessary haste.

Half an hour afterwards, David, mixing another glass of toddy, drew his chair closer to the fire, and said, "Uncle John, I want to speak to you."

"Speak on, laddie;" but David noticed that even with the permission, cautious curves settled round his uncle's eyes, and his face assumed that business-like immobility which defied his scrutiny.

"I have had a very serious talk with Robert Leslie; he is thinking of buying Alexander Hastie out."

"Why not think o' buying out Robert Napier, or Gavin Campbell, or Clydeside Woolen Works? A body might as weel think o' a thousand spindles as think o' fifty."

"But he means business. An aunt, who has lately died in Galloway, has left him L2,000."

"That isna capital enough to run Sandy Hastie's mill."

"He wants me to join him."

"And how will that help matters? Twa thousand pounds added to Davie Callendar will be just L2,000."

"I felt sure you would lend me L2,000; and in that case it would be a great chance for me. I am very anxious to be—"

"Your ain maister."

"Not that altogether, uncle, although you know well the Callendars come of a kind that do not like to serve. I want to have a chance to make money."

"How much of your salary have you saved?"

"I have never tried to save anything yet, uncle, but I am going to begin."

The old man sat silent for a few moments, and then said, "I wont do it, Davie."

"It is only L2,000, Uncle John."

"Only L2,000! Hear the lad! Did ye ever mak L2,000? Did ye ever save L2,000? When ye hae done that ye'll ne'er put in the adverb, Davie. Only L2,000, indeed!"

"I thought you loved me, uncle."

"I love no human creature better than you. Whatna for should I not love you? You are the only thing left to me o' the bonnie brave brother who wrapped his colors round him in the Afghan Pass, the brave-hearted lad who died fighting twenty to one. And you are whiles sae like him that I'm tempted—na, na, that is a' byganes. I will not let you hae the L2,000, that is the business in hand."