Yet he seemed to care far more about Miss Irma than even my grandmother, or the fellow of his name whom he had ridden so far to see.

He asked her whether she would rather stay where she was or come to Dumfries, to be near the theatre and Assembly balls. As for a chaperon, she could make her choice between Mrs. Hope of the Abbey and the Provost's lady. Either would be glad to oblige the daughter of a Maitland of Marnhoul—and perhaps also Mr. Richard Poole.

Then, after hearing her answer, he asked for pen and paper and wrote a few lines—

"As Miss Irma Maitland urgently desires that her brother and she should remain under the care of Mr. William Lyon and his wife at Heathknowes, and as the aforesaid William and Mary Lyon are able and willing to provide for their maintenance, we see no reason why the arrangement should not be an excellent and suitable one, at least until such time as Sir Louis must be sent to school, when the whole question will again come up. And this to hold good whatever may be the outcome of this interview with the person calling himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole,

"For Smart, Poole and Smart, "R. Poole."

He handed the paper across to my grandmother, in whom he easily recognized the ruling spirit of the household.

"There, madam," he said, "that will put matters on a right basis with my firm whatever may happen to me. And now, if you please, I should like to see my double at once. I suspect a kinsman, but do not be afraid of a vendetta. If Master Robin, of whose prowess I have already heard, has crushed in a rib or two, so much the better. Even if he had broken my worthy relative's back, I fear me few would have worn mourning!"

They found the three young men still in the room, and my grandmother did no more than assure herself of the presence of the still white-wrapped figure on the shakedown in the corner, before leading Mr. Richard into the parlour.

He went out from us with a jovial nod to my father, a low bow to Miss Irma, and mock salutation to little Sir Louis, his head high in the air, his riding whip swinging by its loop from his arm, and as it seemed, a vigour of blood sufficient for a dozen ordinary people circulating in his veins.

"Thank you, gentlemen," he said to my uncles, as soon as he had looked at the bed and lifted the kerchief which Mary Lyon had laid wet upon the brow. "I recognize, as I had reason to expect, a scion of my house, however unworthy, with whom it will be necessary for me to communicate privately. But if you will retire to the kitchen, I shall easily signal you should your services become again necessary."

He stood with the edge of the door in his hand, and with a slight bow ushered each of my uncles out. I was there, too, of course, seeing what was to be seen. His eye lighted on me, and a slinking figure I must have presented in spite of my usual courage, for he only turned one thumb back over his shoulder with a comical smile, and bade me get to bed, because when he was young he, too, knew what keyholes were good for.

The word "too" hurt me, for it meant that he thought I was going to eavesdrop, whereas I was merely, for the sake of Irma and the family, endeavouring to satisfy a perfectly legitimate curiosity.

I did, however, hear him say as he shut and locked the parlour door, "Now, sir, the play is played. Sit up and take off that clout. Let us talk out this affair like men!"

It was now night, and we were gathered in the kitchen. I do not think that even Rob took much supper. I know that but for my grandfather the horses would have had to go without theirs—and this, the most sacred duty of mankind about a farm, would for once have been neglected. We sat, mainly in the dark, with only the red glow of the fire in our faces, listening to the voice of a man that came in stormy gusts. The lamp had been left on the parlour table to give them light, and somehow we were so preoccupied that none of us thought of lighting a candle.

The great voice of Mr. Richard dominated us—so full of contempt and anger it was. We could not in the least distinguish what the impostor said in reply. Indeed, Rob and I could just hear a kind of roopy clattering like that of a hungry hen complaining to the vague Powers which rule the times and seasons of distribution from the "daich" bowl.

There was something very strange in all this—so strange that when my grandfather came back, for the first time in the history of Heathknowes, no chapter was read, no psalm sung or prayer read. Somehow it seemed like an impiety in the face of what was going on down there. Mr. Richard talked far the most. At first his mood was all of stormy anger, and the replies of the other, as I have said, almost inaudible.

But after a while these bursts of bellowing became less frequent. The low replying voice grew, if not louder, more persistent. Mr. Richard seemed to be denying or refusing something in short gruff gasps of breath.

"No, no—no! By heaven, sir, NO!" we heard him cry plainly. And somehow hearing that, Irma crept closer to me, and slid her hand in mine, a thing which she had not done since the night of watching in the Old House of Marnhoul.

Somehow both of us knew that it was a question of herself.

Then suddenly upon this long period of to-and-fro, there fell (as it were) the very calmness of reconciliation. Peace seemed to be made, and I think that all of us were glad of it, for the suspense and an increasing tension of the nerves were telling on us all.

"They are shaking hands," whispered my grandmother; "Mr. Richard has brought him to his senses. Fine I knew he would."

"I wonder if they will put him in prison or let him off because of the family?" said Rob, adjusting the bandage about his wounded leg. "Anyway, I am glad of the bit tramp he got from my yard clogs!"

"Wheesht!" whispered my grandfather, inclining his ear in the direction of the parlour door. We all listened, but it was nothing. Not a murmur.

"They will be writing something—some bond or deed, most likely."

"They are long about it," said William Lyon uneasily.

The silence endured and still endured till an hour was passed. My grandfather fidgeted in his chair. At last he said in a low tone, "Lads, we have endured long enough. We must see what they are at. If we are wrong, I will bear the weight!"

As one man the four moved towards the door, through the keyhole of which a ray of light was stealing from the lamp that had been left on the table.

"Open!" cried my grandfather suddenly and loudly. But the door remained fast.

"Is all right there, Master Richard?" he shouted. Still there was silence within.

"Put your shoulders to it, lads!" Eben and Tom were at it in a moment, while strong Rob, springing from the far side of the passage, burst the lock and sent the door back against the inner wall, the hinges snapped clean through.

Mr. Richard was sitting in a quiet room, his head leaning forward on his hands. His loaded riding whip was flung in a corner. The window was wide open, and the night black and quiet without. Sweet odours of flowers came in from the little garden. The lamp burned peacefully and nothing in the room was disturbed. But Mr. Wringham Pollixfen was not there, and when we touched him, Mr. Richard Poole was dead, his head dropped upon his arms.



PART III

CHAPTER XXII

BOYD CONNOWAY'S EVIDENCE

The loop of the riding-whip on Mr. Richard's wrist was broken, and behind his ear there was a lump the size of a small hen's egg. There were no signs of a struggle. The two men had been sitting face to face, eye to eye, when by a movement which must have been swift as lightning, one had disarmed and smitten the other.

Tom, Eben and Rob armed themselves and went out. But the branches of Marnhoul wood stood up against the sky, black, serried and silent. The fields beneath spread empty and grey. The sough of the wind and the fleeing cloud of night was all they saw or heard. They were soon within the house again, happy to be there and the door barred stoutly upon them.

Except for little Louis, who was already in bed on the other side of the house where his chamber was, and so knew nothing of the occurrence till the morning, there was no sleep for any that night at Heathknowes. At the first clear break of day Tom and Eben took the cart-horses and rode over to tell Dr. Gillespie, General Johnstone, and Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, who were all Justices of the Peace, of what had happened. They came, the General the most imposing, with a great army cloak and a star showing beneath the collar.

In the little detached sitting-room, which till the coming of the Maitlands had been used as a cheese-room, Mr. Richard Poole sat, as he had been found, his head still bowed upon his arms, but on his face, when they raised it to look, there was an absolute terror, so that even the General, who had seen many a day of battle, was glad to lay it down again.

They took such testimony as was to be had, which was but little, and all tending to one startling conclusion. Suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly, within hearing of eight or nine people, in a defensible house, with arms at hand, Mr. Richard Poole, of the firm of Smart, Poole and Smart, had been done to death.

Yet he had known something, though perhaps not the full extent of his danger. We recalled his silences, his moodiness as he approached the farm—the manner in which he had at once put aside all claims, even on a market Wednesday, that he might ride and speak with a man who, if he were not a felon, was certainly no honourable acquaintance for such as Mr. Richard.

The three gentlemen looked at each other and took snuff from the Doctor's gold box.

"Very serious, sir!" said Mr. Shepstone tentatively. For indeed he had not many ideas—a fact which the others charitably put down to his being an Episcopalian. Really he wanted to find out what they thought before committing himself.

"Tempestuous Theophilus!" cried the General, who in the presence of the Doctor always swore by unknown saints—to relieve himself, as was thought—"but 'tis more serious than you think. A fellow like this alive, at large, in our parish——"

"In my parish——" corrected the Doctor, who was the only man alive with a legal right to speak of Eden Valley parish as his own.

About noon the Fiscal, responsible law officer of the Crown, arrived from Kirkcudbright escorted by Tom and Eben. The evidence was all heard over again, the chamber—ex-cheese room, present parlour—again inspected, but nothing further appeared likely to be discovered, when a shadow fell across the threshold.

For some time, indeed, I had sat quaking in my corner, all cold with the fear of a flitting figure, appearing here and there, seen with the tail of the eye, and then disappearing like the black cat I see in corners when my eyes are overstrained with Greek.

Of course I thought at once of the murderer Wringham Pollixfen lurking catlike among the office-houses in the hope of striking again, perhaps at Miss Irma—perhaps, also, as I now see, at Sir Louis. But indeed I never thought of him, at least not at the time. It was not the pretended Poole, however. It was a presence as quick, as agile, but more perfectly acquainted with the hidie-holes of the farmyard—in fact, Boyd Connoway.

Long before the others I got my eyes on him, and with the joy of a boy when a visitor enters the school at the dreariest hour of lessons, I rushed after him. To my surprise he went round the angle of the barn like a shot. But I had played at that game before. I took one flying leap into the little orchard from the window of the parlour which had been given up to the Maitlands, Louis and Miss Irma. Then I glided among the trees, choosing those I knew would hide me, and leaped on Master Boyd from behind as he was craning his neck to peer round the corner in the direction of the house door.

To my utter amaze he dropped to the ground with a throttled kind of cry as if some one had smitten him unawares. Here was surely something that I did not understand.

"Boyd, Boyd," I said in his ear, for I began to grow a little concerned myself—not terrified, you know, only anxious—"Boyd, it is only Duncan—Duncan MacAlpine from the school-house."

He turned a white, bewildered face to me, cold sweats pearling it, and his jaw worked in spasms. "Oh yes," he muttered, "Agnes Anne's brother!"

Now I did not see the use of dragging Agnes Anne continually into everything. Also I was one of the boys who had gone with Boyd Connoway oftenest to the fishing in Loch-in-Breck, and he need not have been afraid of me. But I think that he was a little unsettled by fear.

He did not explain, however, only bidding me shudderingly, "not to come at him that way again!" So I promised I would not, all the more readily that I heard him muttering to himself, "I thought he had me that time—yes, sure!"

Then I knew that he too was afraid of the man who called himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole and had killed the real Mr. Richard in our old cheese-room. But I was not a bit afraid, for had I not jumped through the orchard window, and run and clapped my hand on his shoulder without a thought of the creature ever crossing my mind.

At any rate I took him in with me—that is, Boyd Connoway. I cannot say that he wanted very much to go "before them Justices," as he said. But at least he preferred it to stopping outside. I think he was frightened of my coming out again and slapping down my hand on his shoulder. Lord knows he need not have been, for I promised not to. At any rate he came, which was the main thing.

He did not enjoy the ceremony, but stood before them with his blue coat with the large rolling collar, which had been made for a bigger man, buttoned about his waist, and his rig-and-furrow stockings of green, with home-made shoes called "brogues," the secret of making which he had brought with him from a place called Killybegs in County Donegal. He was all tashed with bits of straw and moss clinging to him. His knees too were wet where he had knelt in the marsh, and there was a kind of white shaking terror about the man that impressed every one. For Boyd Connoway had ever been the gayest and most reckless fellow in the parish.

When he was asked if he knew anything about the matter he only stammered, "Thank you kindly, Doctor, and you, General, and hoping that I have the honour of seein' you in good health, and that all is well with you at home and your good ladies and the childer!"

The General, who thought that he spoke in a mood of mockery, cautioned him that they were met there on a business of life and death, and were in no mood to be trifled with. Therefore, he, Boyd Connoway, had better keep his foolery for another time!

But the Doctor, being by his profession accustomed to diagnose the moods of souls, discerned the laboured pant of one who has been breathed by a long run from mortal terror—who has, as my father would have said, "ridden a race with Black Care clinging to the crupper"—and took Boyd in hand with better results. He agreed to tell all he knew, on being promised full and certain protection.

And it was something like this that he told his story, as it proved the only direct evidence in the case, at least for many and many a day.

"Doctor dear," he began, "ye are a married man yourself, and you will not be misunderstanding me when I ask that anything I may say shall not be used against me?"

The Fiscal looked up quickly.

"I warn you that it will," he said, "if you have had any hand in this murder!"

"Murder, is it?"—(Boyd Connoway gave a short grunting laugh)—"Aye, maybe, but 'tis not the murder that has been, but the murder that will be, if my wife Bridget gets wind of this! That's why I ask that it should be kept between ourselves—so that Bridget should not know!"

"Women," said the Fiscal oracularly, "must not be allowed to interfere with the evenhanded and fearless administration of justice."

"Then I take it," said Boyd, with a twinkle of the old mirth flickering up into his white and anxious face, "that your honour is not a married man!"

"No," said the Fiscal, with a smile.

"Then, if I may make so bould, your honour knows nothing about how it is 'twixt Bridget and me. His riverence the Doctor now——"

"Tell us what you know without digressions," said the Fiscal; "no use will be made of your evidence save in pursuing and bringing to justice the criminal."

"He's gone," said Boyd Connoway solemnly, "and a good riddance to the parish!"

"Wha-a-at?" cried the three magistrates simultaneously. And the Fiscal started to his feet.

"Who has gone?" he cried, and mechanically he drew from his pocket a silver call to summon his constables from the kitchen, where my uncles and they were having as riotous a time as they dared while so many great folk sat pow-wowing in the parlour near at hand.

"Who?" repeated Boyd Connoway, "well, I don't know for certain, but perhaps this little piece of paper will put you gentlemen on the track."

And he handed over a letter, much stained with sea-water and sand. The heel of a boot had trodden upon and partly obliterated the writing, the ink having run, and the whole appearance of the document being somewhat draggle-tailed.

But there was no doubt about the address. That was clearly written in a fine flowing English hand, "To His Excellency Lalor Maitland, late Governor of the Meuse, Constable of Dinant, etc., etc. These"—

We all looked at each other, and the Fiscal began to doubt whether the new evidence as to the suspected murderer would prove so valuable after all.

"Your Excellency" (the letter ran), "according to the promise made to you, the lugger Bloomendahl, of Walchern, Captain Vandam, has been cleared of cargo and is exclusively reserved for your Excellency's use. It will be well, therefore, to dispatch your remaining business in Scotland, as it is impossible to send back the Golden Hind or a vessel of similar size without causing remark. At the old place, then, a little after midnight of Thursday the 18th, a boat will be waiting for you at the eastern port or the western of Portowarren according to the wind. The tide is full about one."

"How came you by this?" the Fiscal demanded.

"Shall I tell ye in bits, sorr?" said Boyd, "or will ye have her from the beginning?"

"From the beginning," said the Fiscal, "only with as few digressions as possible."

"Sure," said Boyd innocently, "I got none o' them about me. Your honour can saarch me if ye like!"

"The Fiscal means," said the Doctor, "that you are to tell him the story as straightly and as briefly as possible."

"Straightly, aye, that I will," said Boyd, "there was never a crooked word came out of my mouth; but briefly, that's beyond any Irishman's power—least of all if he comes from County Donegal!"

"Go on!" cried the Fiscal impatiently.

"As all things do in our house, it began with Bridget," said Boyd Connoway; "ye see, sorr, she took in a man with a wound—powerful sick he was. The night after the 'dust-up' at the Big House was the time, and she nursed him and she cured him, the craitur. But, whatever the better Bridget was, all that I got for it was that I had to go to Portowarren at dead of night, and that letter flung at me like a bone to a dog, when I told him that I might be called in question for the matter of my wife."

"'Aye, put it on your wife,' says he, 'they will let you off. You have not the pluck of a half-drowned flea!'

"But when I insisted that I should have wherewith to clear me and Bridget also, he cast the letter down, dibbling it into the pebbles and sand with his heel just as he was going aboard.

"'There,' he cried, 'now you can put it on me!'"

"Lalor Maitland," said the Fiscal, ruminating, with his brow knit at the letter in his hand. "Where is that maid? Bring her here!"

I sprang away at once to knock on Irma's door, and bid her come, because the great folk were wanting her. And it seemed as if she had been expecting the summons too, for she was sitting ready close by little Louis. She cast a white shawl about her shoulders, crossed the kitchen and so into the room where the four gentlemen were sitting about the table—the Fiscal with his papers at the end, and behind the curtains drawn close about the press-bed where lay that which it was not good for young eyes to see.

"Miss Maitland, will you describe to us your cousin, Lalor Maitland, of whom you have already spoken to me?"

It was the Doctor who took her hand, while on the other side Boyd Connoway in his flapping clothes of antique pattern with brass buttons stood waiting his turn. Irma took one look about which I intercepted. And I think my nod together with the presence of my grandmother gave her courage, for she answered—

"Lalor Maitland? What has he to do with us? He shall not have us. We would kill ourselves if we could not run away. You would never think of giving us up to him——?"

"Never while I am alive!" cried my grandmother, but Dr. Gillespie signed to her to be silent.

"Will you describe him to us?" suggested the Doctor suavely, "what sort of a man, dark or fair, stout or spare, how he carries himself, what he came over to this country for, and where he is likely to have gone, if we find that he has left it?"

Irma thought a moment and then said, "Perhaps I shall not be quite just because I hated him so. But he was a man whom most call handsome, though to me there was always something dreadful about his face. His hair was dark brown mixed with grey. His features were cut like those of a statue, and his head small for his height. He was slender, light on his feet, and walked silently—ugh—yes, like a cat."

The Fiscal looked an interrogation at Boyd Connoway.

"That is the man," he answered unhesitatingly, "though most of the time while he stayed with Bridget and me he kept his bed. Only from the way he got along the cliff by Portowarren, I judge he was only keeping out of sight and by no means so weak with his wound as he would have had us believe."

"And tell us what you saw of him yesterday, Wednesday?"

It was the Fiscal who asked the question, but I think all of us held our breaths to catch Boyd Connoway's answer. He shook his head with a disconcerted air like a boy who is set too hard a problem.

"I was from home most of the day, and when I came in, with a hunger sharp-set with half-a-dozen hours struggling with the wind, Bridget bade me be off at once to the Dutchman's Howff, which is in Colvend, just where the Boreland march dyke comes down to the edge of the cliff. I was to wait there on the edge of the heugh till one came and called me by name. When I complained of hunger, she put some dry bread into my hand, crying out that I might seek meat where I had worked my work.

"I saw that the 'ben' room was empty, and the blankets thrown over the three chair backs. But when I asked where the sick man was, Bridget stamped her foot and bade me attend to my business and she would take care of hers. But Jerry, my oldest boy, had a word with me before I left for the march dyke. He told me that the man 'down-the-house' had gone that morning as soon as my back was turned, after paying his mother in gold sovereigns, which she had immediately hidden.

"So I went and waited by the Boreland march dyke—a wild place where even the heather is laid flat by the wind. The gulls and corbies were calling down the cliff, and at the foot the sea was roaring through a narrow gully and spreading out fan-shaped along the sands of the Dutchman's Howff.

"I waited long, having nought to eat except the sheaf of loaf bread I gat with such an ill grace from Bridget, and at the end I was beginning to lose patience, when from the other side of the gully I heard a crying and a voice bade me follow the dyke upwards and stand by to help.

"So upon the top of the wall I got, and there beneath me was the man I had last seen lying in Bridget's best bed, cossetted and cared for as if he were a prince. But for all that he was short and angry, bidding me dispatch and help him or he would lose his tide."

"And did he wear the same clothes as when last you saw him?" said Shepstone Oglethorpe, with a shrewd air.

At which Boyd Connoway laughed for the first time since he had come into the presence of his betters.

"No," he said, "for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with one of my sarks on, and Bridget's best linen sheet tied in ribbons about his head."

"And how, then, was he dressed?" said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn at Shepstone.

"Oh," answered Boyd Connoway, "just like you or me. I took no particular notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I did. But the track is not canny even in the broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the glimmer o' the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide ye! But the man that had been hidden in our 'ben' room was aye for going on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious, as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co'en lads, waiting to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see."

"'You trust a man that kens,' I said to him, 'never a skarrow will wink, nor a lantern swing. The Isle o' Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder have their business better at their fingers' ends than that. But I will tell ye what ye may hear when we get down the hill by the joiner's shop—and that's the clink o' the saddle irons, and the waff o' their horses' lugs as they shake their necks—them no liking their heads tied up in bags.'

"'Get on,' he said, 'I wish your head were tied up in a bag!' And he tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. 'Set me on the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.'

"This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating (it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks!

"We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks—the same that Will of the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o' Auchenhay once held for two hours again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves Portowarren—no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the paler edge of the sea.

"Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I was held in suspicion for this night's work—as also my wife Bridget.

"After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight.

"'There,' he cried back, 'let them make what they will of that if ye be called in question. And, hear ye, Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a careless, idle good-for-nothing!'"

"Deil or man," broke in my grandmother, who thought she had kept silence long enough, "never was a truer word spoken!"

Boyd Connoway looked pathetically about. He seemed to implore some one to stand up in his defence. I would have liked to do it, because of his kindness to me, but dared not before such an assembly and on so solemn an occasion.

"I put it to the honourable gentlemen now assembled," said Boyd Connoway, "if a man can rightly be called a lazy good-for-nothing when he rose at four of the morning to cut his wife's firewood——"

"Should have done it the night before," interrupted my grandmother.

"And was at Urr kirkyard at ten to help dig a grave, handed the service of cake and wine at twelve, rung the bell, covered in the corp, and sodded him down as snug as you, Mr. Fiscal, will sleep in your bed this night——!"

"That will do," said the Fiscal, who thought Boyd Connoway had had quite enough rope. "Tell us what happened after that—and briefly, as I said before."

"Why, I went over to Widow McVinnie's to milk her cow. It calved only last Wednesday, and I am fond of 'beesten cheese.' Besides, the scripture says, 'Help the widows in their afflictions'—or words to that effect."

"After this man Lalor Maitland had got into the boat, what happened?"

The Fiscal spoke sharply. He thought he was being played with, when, in fact, Boyd was only letting his tongue run on naturally.

"Nothing at all, your honour," said Boyd promptly. "The men in the boat just set their oars to the work and were round the corner in a jiffey. I ran to the point by the narrow square opening into the soft sandstone rock, and lying low on my face I could see a lugger close in under the heugh of Boreland, where she would never have dared to go, save that the wind was off shore and steady. But after the noise of the oars in the rowlocks died away I heard no more, and look as I would, I never saw the lugger slip out of the deep shadow of the heughs. So, there being nothing further to be done, I filled my pockets with the dulse that grows there, thin and sweet. For nowhere along the Solway shore does one get the right purple colour and the clean taste of the dulse as in that of Portowarren, towards the right-hand nook as you stand looking up the brae face."

Having tendered this very precise indication to whom it might concern, Boyd bowed to the company and took his leave.

* * * * *

The Fiscal was for holding him in ward lest he should escape, being such a principal witness. But the three Justices knew well that there was no danger of this, and indeed all of them expressed their willingness to go bail for the appearance of Boyd Connoway whenever he should be wanted.

"And a great many times when he is not!" added my grandmother, with tart frankness.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE SHARP SPUR

Though, therefore, the mystery remained as impenetrable as ever, I think that the fact of the absence of Lalor Maitland put new vigour into all of us. Richard Poole was buried in Dumfries, where all the "good jovial fellows" of a dozen parishes gathered to give him an impressive funeral. The firm closed up its ranks and became merely Messrs. Smart and Smart. There was a new and loquacious tablet in St. Michael's relating in detail (with omissions) the virtues and attainments of the deceased Mr. Richard. But of the other Mr. Poole, calling himself Wringham Pollixfen, not a trace, not a suggestion, not a suspicion of his whereabouts had he left behind since he stepped out of our window into the dark.

But, nevertheless, in Eden Valley the air was clearer, the summer day longer and brighter, and the land had rest. It was an impressive day when Irma brought Louis to my father's school. The Academy remembers it yet.

The morning had opened rather desolately. With the dawn the slate-grey fingers of the rain clouds had reached down, spanning from Criffel to Screel. The sea mist did what faith also can do. It removed mountains. One after another they faded and were not. A chillish wind began to blow up from the Solway, and even in Eden Valley was heard the distant roar of the surf, through the low pass which is called the Nick of Benarick. The long grass first stood in beads and then began to trickle. Flowers drooped their heads if of the harebell sort, or stood spikily defiant like the yellow whin and the pink thistle.

I had got ready cloaks and hoods, you may be sure. I was on the spot at my grandmother's door a full hour before the time. Within I found Mary Lyon raging. Neither of the bairns should go out of her house on such a day! What for could they not be content to take their learning from Duncan and Agnes Anne? Miss Irma, she was sure, was well able to teach the bairn. It was all a foolishness, and very likely would end in something uncanny. If it did—well, let nobody blame her. She had lifted up her testimony, and thrown away her wisdom on deaf ears.

Which, indeed, was something not unlike the case.

For just then the sun shone out. The clouds divided to right and left, following the steep purpling ridges on either side of Eden Valley—and in the middle opening out a long sweet stream of brightness. Little Louis clapped his hands. He ached for the company of his kind. He talked "boys." He dreamed "boys"—not grown-up boys like me, but children of his own age. He despised Irma because she was a girl. Only Agnes Anne could anyways satisfy him, when she put on over her dress a pair of her grandfather's corduroy trousers, buttoned them above her shoulder, and pretended to give orders as in the pirn-mill. Even then, after a happy hour with the toys which Agnes Anne contrived for him, all at once Louis grew whimpering disappointedly, stared at her and said, "You are not a real little boy."

And I, who had the pick of the Eden Valley boys on my hand every time I went near my father's (and knew them for little beasts), wondered at his taste, when he could have Irma's company, not to speak of Agnes Anne's. But I resolved that I should keep a bright look-out and make the little villains behave. For at an early age our Eden Valley boys were just savages, ready to mock and rend any one of themselves who was a little better dressed, who wore boots instead of clogs with birch-wood soles, or dared to speak without battering the King's English out of all recognition.

My father and Miss Huntingdon would, of course, be ready to protect our small man as far as was in their power. But they, especially my father, were often far removed in higher spheres of work, while Miss Huntingdon was never in the boys' playground at all. But I had none of these disabilities. I was instructed, sharp-eyed, always on the spot, with fists in good repair—armed, too, with a certain authority and the habit of using it to the full.

So little Louis found himself among his boys. I picked him out half-a-dozen of the most peaceable to play with, after he had received his first lesson from a very proud and smiling Miss Huntingdon. Miss Irma, after being formally introduced to the school, left the sort of throne which had been set for her beside my father, to go and sit beside Agnes Anne at the top of the highest form of girls.

Her presence made a hush among the elder boys, and such of the young men as happened to be there that day. For though we had scholars up to the age of twenty, most of these were at work during the summer and came only in the winter season—though in the interval betwixt sowing and hay-harvest and between that again and the ripening of the corn we would receive stray visits from them, especially in the long wet spells of weather.

It was at noon and the girls were walking in their playground talking with linked arms, apart from the noisy sportings of the boys, when I caught my first glimpse of Uncle Rob. He was standing right opposite the school in the big door of the Eden Valley Mill. I wondered what he was doing there, for it was not the season for grinding much corn. Besides, it would have been handier to send it down and call for it again during such a busy season on the farm.

So I ran across and asked him what he was doing there. I could hardly hear his answer, for the loud plash-plash of the buckets of water as they fell into the great pool underneath the wheel.

I understood him, however, to say that it was open to me to attend to my own business and leave him to look after his.

In a moment the demon of jealousy entered into my soul. Could it be that he came there to be near Irma—Irma, whom I had fought for and saved half-a-dozen times over all by myself—for it is not worth while going back to what Agnes Anne did, as it were, accidentally. I was so angry at the mere thought that there and then I charged him with his perfidy. He laughed a short, contemptuous laugh.

"And what for no," he answered; "at least I have a trade at my finger-ends. I can drive a plough. I can thresh a mow. At a pinch I can even shoe a horse. But you—you have quit even the school-mastering!"

I do not know whether or not he said it unwittingly or with intent to sting me. But at any rate the thrust went home. I could hardly wait till my father had got through with his work that night, and was stretched in his easy-chair, his long pipe in one hand and a volume of Martial in the other. I broke in upon him with the words, "Father, I want to go to college with Freddie Esquillant!"

My father looked at me in surprise. I can see him still staring at me bemazed with his pipe half-way to his mouth, and the open book laid face downward upon his knee.

"Go to college—you?" His surprise was more cutting than Uncle Rob's mockery. Because, you see, my father knew. That is, he knew my scholarship. What he did not know was how much of my grandmother's spirit there was in me, and how I could keep working on and on if I had the chance.

"You have thought of this long?" he asked.

"No, father!"

"Ah, well, what put it into your head?" he asked kindly.

This I could hardly tell him without entering into my furious foolish jealousy of Uncle Rob, his waiting at the mill, and our exchange of words. So I only said, "It just came to me that I would like to get learning, father!"

"Ah, yes," he meditated, "that is mostly the way. It is like heavenly grace. It comes to a man when he least expects it—the desire for learning. We seek it diligently with tears. It comes not. We wake in the morning and lo! it is there!"

It is characteristic of my father that even then he did not concern himself about ways and means. For at the colleges of our land are "bursaries" provided by pious patrons, once poor themselves, and often with a thirst for knowledge unquenched—boys put too early to the bench or the counter. Now my father had the way of winning these for his pupils. He did not teach them directly how to gain them, but he supplied the inspiration.

"Read much and well. Get the spirit. Learn the grammar, certainly. But read Latin—till you can speak Latin, think Latin. It is more difficult to think Greek. Our stiff-necked, stubborn Lowland nature, produce of half-a-score of conquering nations, has not the right suppleness. But if there is any poetry in you, it will find you out when you read Euripides."

So though certainly I never got so far—the verbs irregular giving me a distaste for the business—at least I fell into line, and in due time—but there I am anticipating. I am writing of the day, the wonderful day when the sharp spur of Uncle Rob's reproach entered into my soul and I resolved to be—I hardly knew what. A band of little boys, all eager to see the pirn-mill in the Marnhoul wood, volunteered to accompany Louis home. They went on ahead, gambolling and shouting. Agnes Anne would have come also, but I suggested to her that she had better stay and help her mother.

She gave me one look—not by any means of anger. Rather if Agnes Anne had ever permitted herself to make fun of me, I should have set it down to that. But I knew well that could not be. She stayed at home, contentedly enough, however.

I went home with Irma. I did so because I had the cloaks and hoods to carry. Also I had something to tell her. It seemed something so terrible, so mighty, so full of risk and danger that my heart failed me in the mere thinking of it. I was to go away and leave her, for many years, seeing her only at intervals. It seemed a thing more and more impossible to be thought upon.

At the least I resolved to make myself out a martyr. It would be a blow to Irma also, and the thought that she would feel it so almost made up to me for my own pain, an ache which at the first moment had been of the nature of a sudden and deadly fear.

Yet I might have saved myself the trouble. Irma looked upon the matter in a very different light. She was not moved in the least.

"Yes, of course," she said, "you are only wasting your time here. Men must go out and see things in the world, that afterwards they may do things there. Here it is very well for us who have no friends and nowhere else to go. But as soon as Louis is at school or has to leave me—oh, it will happen in time, and I like looking forward—I shall go too."

"But what could you do?" I cried in amazement, for such a thing as a girl of her rank finding a place for herself was not dreamed of then. Only such as my grandmother and Aunt Jen worked "in the sphere in which Providence had placed them," as the minister said in his prayer.

"Never trouble your head," said Irma, "there never was a Maitland yet but gat his own will till he met with a Maitland to counter him!"

"Lalor!" I suggested. At the name she twisted her face into an expression of great scorn.

"Lalor!" she said; "well, and have I not countered him?"

She had, of course, but as far as I remembered there was something to be said about another person who had at least helped. Now that is the worst of girls. They are always for taking all the credit to themselves.

It was a grave day when I quitted Eden Valley for the first time. Every one was affected, the women folk, my mother, my grandmother, even Aunt Jen, went the length of tears. That is, all with only two exceptions, my father and Miss Irma. My father was glad and triumphant—confident that, though never the scholar Freddie Esquillant was bound to be, I was yet stronger in the more material parts of learning—those which most pleased the ordinary run of regents and professors.

I had already seen Irma early in the morning in that clump of trees beyond the well where the flowering currants made a scented wall, and in the midst the lilac bushes grow up into a cavern of delicately tinted, constantly tremulous shade.

I told her of my fears, whereat she scorned them and me, bidding me go forward bravely.

"I have never promised to be anybody's friend before," she said; "I shall not break my word!"

"But, Irma," I urged, for indeed I could not keep the words back, they being on the tip of my tongue, "what if in the meantime, when I am away so far and seeing you so little, you should promise somebody else to be more than a friend!"

She stood a moment with the severe look I had grown to fear upon her face. Then she smiled at me, at once amused and forgiving.

"You are a silly boy," she said; "but after all, you are but a boy. You will learn that I do not say one thing one day and another the next. There—I promised you a guerdon, did I not? That is the picture of my mother. You can open the back if you like!"

I set my thumb-nail to it, and there, freshly cut and tied with a piece of the very blue ribbon she was wearing, lay a lock of her hair, a curl curiously and as it seemed wilfully twisted back upon itself, as if it had refused to be so imprisoned—just, in fact, like Irma herself.

I should have kissed her hand if I had known how, but instead I kissed the lock of hair. When I looked up I am afraid that there was most unknightly water in my eyes.

"Come," she said, "this will never do. There must be none of that if you are to carry Irma Sobieski's pledge. Stand up—smile—ah, that is better. Look at me as if I were Lalor Maitland himself, rather than cry about it. You have my pledge, have you not—signed, sealed, and delivered? There!"

But how the legal formula was carried out by Miss Irma is nobody's business except our own—hers and mine, I mean. But at all events I went forth from the lilac clump by the well, and picked up my full water cans with a heart wondrously strengthened, and so up the path to Heathknowes with a back straight as a ramrod, because of the eyes that I knew were watching me through the chinks in the wall of summer blossom.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE COLLEGE OF KING JAMES

I arrived at Edinburgh with the most astonishing ache in my heart (or, at least, in the parts adjoining), and had I met with the least pitifulness I think I should have broken down entirely. But I found a very necessary stimulus in the details of the examination for the bursary. I had no doubt as to being nominated, but when the results were posted I felt shame to be whole three places in front of Freddie Esquillant, my master in all real scholarship, almost as much as my father was—but who, on the day of trial, had spent his time in answering thoroughly half-a-dozen questions without attempting the others.

At any rate it was none such bad news to send by the carrier, who put up at the Black Bull in the Grassmarket, down to my mother and grandmother in Eden Valley. I wrote to them separately, but to my father first, because he understood such things and I knew that his heart was set on Freddie and myself, though he thought (and rightly) that I was a mere clodhopper at my books compared to Fred. As far as the classics went, my father was in the right of it. But then Freddie could not write English, except in a kind of long-winded, elaborate way, as if he were translating from Cicero, which very likely was the case.

Well, the need of keeping my head for the examiners' questions, the mending of my pens, the big barren room with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened and tempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness of my cloak and the clumsiness of my countrified rig—these all kept me singularly aware of myself, and prevented any yielding to the folly of homesickness, or, as in my case, "Irma-sickness," to give the trouble its proper name.

After long search I took up my lodging in a new house at the end of Rankeillor Street, in a place where there was the greenness of fields every way about, except behind in the direction of the college. It was the very last house, and from my garret window I could see the top of Arthur's Seat and the little breakneck path feeling its way round the foot of the Salisbury Crags, afterwards to be widened into the "Radicals' Road." Southward all was green and whaup-haunted to the grey hip of Pentland, and we saw the spread of the countryside when we—that is, Freddie and I—went down the Dalkeith Road to the red-roofed hamlet of Echobank. Here, four times a week we bought a canful of milk that had to do us two days. For there was something about the taste of the town milk that scunnered us—Freddie especially being more delicately stomached than I.

Here, too, was a red-cheeked serving maid who provoked us—but more especially poor Fred, who asked nothing better than that the wench should let him alone. But I cared not so greatly—though, of course, she was nothing to me. How could she be with the gage of Miss Irma hard under my armpit, just where the Eden Valley tailor had placed my inside pocket?

Which reminds me that Fred, fluttering the leaves of his lexicon, or mooning over his beloved Greek verses (which the professor discouraged because he could not make as good himself), would sigh a little ghost of a sigh as often as he saw me take it out and lay it on the table beside me like a watch. For long I thought it was because he feared it would make me neglect my work, but now, looking back, I can see with great clearness that it was because he felt that love and suchlike were ruled out of his life. It was quite a year before I first mentioned Irma to him by name. Yet he never asked, nor showed that he noticed at all, save for that quick, gentle sigh.

As portrayed in the miniature, Irma's mother was a gentle fair-haired woman, with a face like a flower sheltered under a broad-brimmed white beaver hat, the very mate and marrow of those I have since seen in the pictures by the great Sir Joshua. She had a dimpled chin that nested in a fluffy blurr of lace. She was as unlike as possible to my dear brave Irma, with her curls like shining jet, and the clean-cut, decisive profile. But I saw at once from whom Baby Louis had gotten his fair soft curls, his blue eyes, and the wistful appeal of his smile. They were always before me as I sat with my elbows on the ink-splattered table, and I did all my work conscious of the rebellious twist of raven curl that was on the other side. I did not open this often, only when by myself, and then with extreme care, for the glass, being old, was a little loose, and it seemed as if the vivid life in the swirl of hair actually moved it out of its place. For even so much of Irma as a curl of her locks perforce retained something of her extraordinary vitality.

It often used to come to me that Irma must be like her father over again, only with all his faults turned to good, strengthened by the determination he lacked. She had his restlessness, his brilliancy, his power over men and women. Only along with these she had strength to guide herself (which he, poor man, never had), and enough over for me also. And I have my father's word and my own consciousness that I needed that guidance.

College life is strange and solitary at these northern universities—especially at those in the two great cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The lad comes up knowing perhaps one other of his age and standing. If he has a family one or two elder students will be ordered by their people to look him up. Seldom do they repeat the visit. Their circle is formed. They want no "yellow nebs."

For the rest he is alone, protected from the devil and the young lusts of the flesh by the memory of his mother, perhaps by the remembrance that about that time his father is striving hard to pinch to pay his fees, but lastly, chiefly and most practically by those empty pockets.

If he have a family in the town, he is hardly a student like the others. He has his comrades within cry, his houses of call, girls here and there whom he has met at dances in friendly houses, sisters and cousins of his own or of his friends—in short, all the machinery of social life to carry him on.

But for the great majority life is other and sterner. As Milton lamenting his blindness, the stranger student mourns wisdom and life "at one entrance quite shut out." The influence of women, sweeter than that of the Pleiades, is absent, save in the shape of seamy-faced grim-mouthed landladies, or, in a favourable case, which was ours (or might have been), our red-cheeked, frank-tongued, oncoming wench in the milk-house at Echobank, and the baker's daughter across the way.

The first result of this is a great outbreak of sentimentality among the callowlings. They have pictures (oh, such caricatures!) to carry in breast-pockets—or locks of hair, like mine. Their hearts are inflammable as those of the flaxen-haired youths I met afterwards in the universities of Germany, only living on oatmeal, without sausages, and less florid with beer. Yet on the whole, the aforesaid empty purse aiding, we were filled with not dishonest sentiment, keen as sleuth-hounds on the track of knowledge, and disputatious as only lads of Calvinistic training can be.

Our landladies were much alike, our rooms furnished with the same Spartan plainness. Only in Mistress Craven I happened on a good one, and abode with her all the days of my stay at College, till the way opened out for me to wider horizons and a humaner life.

But I can see the room yet, and the narrow passage which led to it. Here, close to the door, was a clock with a striking apparatus of surprising shrillness to warn us of the flight of the half-hours. "Ting!" another gone! Then, as the hour drew near, this academic clock cleared its decks for real action—almost it might be said that it cleared its throat, such a roopy gasping crow did it emit. This was technically called "the warning."

And three times a day at the sound of it we rose, gathered our books and fled fleetfoot for the college. The clock at Mistress Craven's was set ten minutes fast, so as to leave us time to flee down the Pleasance, dodge through a side alley, cut Simon's Square diagonally, debouch upon Drummond Street (shunning Rutherford's change-house, with its "kittle" step down into the cellar), and lo! there, big, barren, grey, grave, cauldrife as a Scots winter, was the College of King James—with the bell, unheard in the side-streets, fairly "gollying" at us—an appalling volume of sound—yet one which, on the whole, we minded less than the skirl and rasp of Mistress Craven's family clock.

I have been speaking for myself. Fred Esquillant was always in time, easy, quiet, letting nothing interfere with his duty. But for me I was not built so. I watched for adventure and followed it. The dog I had met yesterday looked not in vain for a pat. A girl waved a kerchief to the student passing with the books under his arm. She did not know me, nor I her. But in the general interests of my class I had to wave back—without prejudice, be it said, to the black lock behind the miniature in my pocket.

We came back, as we had occasion, from our classes to the crowded stair of our "land"—with its greasy handrail, and the faint whiff of humanity clinging about the numbered doorways. Our key grated in the lock. Mrs. Craven opened the kitchen door with a cry that our dinners would be ready in a jiffey. We were done with the world for the day. Henceforth four walls contained us. Many books lay tumbled about, or had to be heaped on the floor whenever the half of the table was laid for a meal.

I sat farthest from the fire, but facing it. Above and directly before my eyes was a full-rigged ship, sailing among furious painted billows directly against the lofty cliffs of a lea-shore, the captain on the bridge regarding this manoeuvre with the utmost complaisance. Beneath was a china shepherdess without the head—opposite a parrot with a bunch of waxen cherries in its beak.

When we took the room, the backs of the chairs had been covered with newly-washed embroidery in raspy woollens and starched linen thread. There had also been a tablecloth, and upon it (neatly arranged by Mrs. Craven's daughter Amelia) a selection of the family "good books"—to wit, the Holy Bible containing entries of the Craven family, with the dates of birth altered or erased, Josephus with steel pictures, the Saint's Rest and some others. These had at once been removed, according to agreement made before taking possession, and now, wrapped in the tablecloth, reposed in a cupboard.

Only The Cloud of Witnesses and Fox's Martyrs were spared at my special request. As for Freddie, he needed no other literature than his text-books, and set himself to win medals like one who had been fitted by machinery for that purpose.

Mrs. Craven was an Englishwoman who had brought herself to this by marrying a carter from Gilmerton. So she retained a pleasant habit of curtseying which her daughter, born in Edinburgh and given to snuffing up the east wind, did not in the least strive to imitate, so far at least as we were concerned.

But on the whole those rooms in Rankeillor Street were pleasant and even model lodgings. Many a fine gentleman settled in the new town fared worse, even artistically. We had on the wall in little black frames many browned prints by a man of whom we had never heard, one Hogarth by name, some of the details of which made Freddie blush and me laugh aloud. But these doubtful subjects were counterbalanced by an equal number illustrative of the Pilgrim's Progress, beginning at the sofa-back with the Slough of Despond, going through the Wicket Gate, past fierce Giant Pope and up craggy Hills of Difficulty to a flaming Celestial City apparently being destroyed by fire with extreme rapidity.

In a glass-fronted corner cupboard were memorials of the late Mr. Craven. To wit, a large punch-bowl, remarkable for having melted down a flourishing business in the "carrying" way, four pair of horses with wagons to match, a yard and suitable stabling, and, finally, Mr. Craven, late of Gilmerton, himself.

On the top shelf was all that remained of the tea-service he had presented to his "intended" when he was still at the head of the Gilmerton "yard"—she being at the time lady's-maid at Dalkeith Palace and high in favour with "her Grace." Much art was needed in dusting these and arranging them to make cups and saucers stand so that their chipped sides would not show.

I was strictly forbidden ever to dance, flap my long arms, or otherwise disport myself near this sacred enclosure, as I sometimes did when the blood ran high or the temperature low. As for Freddie, he could do no wrong. At least, he never did. I was in despair about him, and foresaw trouble.

As to situation, we had the Meadows behind us, and (except the Sciennes and Merchiston), all was free and open as far as Bruntsfield and the Borough Muir. But towards Holyrood and the College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk and Peebles that had changed horses last at Cockmuir Inn at the back of Kingside.

All this I describe so minutely, once for all, because there is more to come of it, and these precincts on the southern border of Edinburgh, where Cromwell had once encamped, were mightily familiar to me before all was done.



CHAPTER XXV

SATAN FINDS

Of course Christmas time soon came, when we collegers had our first vacation, and Fred and I footed it down to Eden Valley. They had been preparing for us, and the puddings, white and black, hung in rows along the high cross-bars in the kitchen.

Everybody was glad to see us, except, as it appeared at first, Miss Irma. I called her Irma when I thought of the round locket with the hair and her mother's picture in it, also the letters she had sent me—though these were but few, and, for all that was in them, might have been written to the Doctor. But when I returned and met her full in the doorway of my grandmother's house, she gave me her hand as calmly as if she had clean forgotten all that had ever been between us.

For me, I was all shaken and blushing—a sight to be seen. So much so that Aunt Jen, coming in with the milk for the evening's porridge, cocked an eye at me curiously. But if Irma felt anything, I am very sure that it did not show on her face. And that is one of the greatest advantages girls have—care or not care, they can always hide it.

My mother shed tears over me. My father took stock of my progress, and asked me for new light on certain passages we had been reading, but soon deserted me with the familiar contemptuous toss of the head, which meant that he must wait for Fred Esquillant. He might have learned by this time. At anything practical I was miles ahead of Freddie, who had no world outside of his classical books. But then my father was of the same type, with, in addition, the power of imparting and enthusing strong in him—his practical side, which Freddie did not possess—indeed, never felt the lack of, much less the ambition to possess. He was content to know. He had no desire to impart his knowledge.

I spent six mornings and five evenings out of my scanty twenty days at the little thicket by the well. But the lilac was leafless now, and the path which led back to the house of Heathknowes empty and deserted.

Once while I was in hiding my Uncle Rob came and stood so long by his water-pails, looking across the hills in the direction of the Craig Farm, that I made sure he had found me out, or was trying for a talk with Miss Irma on his own account.

But Rob, as I might have known, was far too inconstant. As the saying went, "He had a lass for ilka day in the week and twa for the Sabbath." It is more than likely that his long rumination at the well was the result of uncertainty as to whether it was the turn of Jeannie at the Craig or Bell down by at Parkhill.

At any rate, it had no connection with me, for he went off home with his burden, where presently I could hear him arranging with Eben as to the foddering of the "beasts" and the "bedding" of the horses. For my three uncles kept accounts as to exchanges of work, and were very careful as to balancing them, too—though Rob occasionally "took the loan" of good-tempered Eben without repayment of any sort.

After my fifth solitary vigil among the rustling of the frozen stems and the dank desolation of the icebound copse on the edge of the marsh, I began to go about with a huge affectation of gloom on my face. It was clear that I was being played with. For this I had scorned the red-cheeked dairy-lass at Echobank, and the waved kerchiefs of the baker's daughter opposite. And the more unhappy and miserable I looked, the closer I drew my inky cloak about me, the gayer, the more light-hearted became Miss Irma.

I plotted deep, dark, terrible deeds. She urged me to yet another help of dumpling. She had made the jam herself, she said. Or the shortbread—now there was something like shortbread, made after a recipe learned in Brabant! (I wondered the word did not choke her, thinking of Lalor—but, perhaps, who knew? she would not after all be so unwilling!) I had shed my blood for naught—not that I had really shed any, but it felt like that. I had gone forth to conquer the world for the sake of a faithless girl—though, again, I had not even done quite that, seeing that Freddy Esquillant bade fair to beat me in all the classes—except, perhaps, in the Mathematic, for which he had no taste. But the principle was the same. I was deserted, and my whole aspect became so dejected that my mother spoke to my father about my killing myself in Edinburgh with study, which caused that good (and instructed) man to exclaim, "Fiddlesticks!" Then she went to my grandmother, who prescribed senna tea, which she brewed and stood by till I had drunk. I resolved to wear my heart a little less on my sleeve, and always after that assured my grandmother that I was feeling very well indeed. Also I made shift to eat a little, even in public, contriving it so, however, that the effort to appear brave and gay ought to have been evident even to Miss Irma.

Every day Louis and she went to the Academy, and I went with them, one of the uncles—generally Eben, the universally disposable—following to the village with a loaded pistol in his tail-coat pocket.

For though there had been, as yet, no more than the ordinary winter traffic by the well-recognized Free Traders of the Solway board, no man could tell when the lugger from the Texel, or even the Golden Hind herself might try again the fortune of our coasts. The latter vessel had been growing famous, multiplying her captures and cruelties; indeed, behaving little otherwise than if she carried the black flag with the skull and cross-bones. And though a large part of his Majesty's navy had been trying to catch her, hardly a monthly number of the Scots Magazine came to my father without some new exploit being deplored in the monthly chronicle over near the end.

Nearer home, Messrs. Smart and Smart had offered by post to occupy themselves with the future of the young baronet Sir Louis, on condition that he should be given up to them to be sent to school, but in their communication nothing was said about Miss Irma. So my grandfather sent word that, subject to the law of the land, he would continue to protect both the children whom Providence had placed in his care. And this was doubtless what the Dumfries lawyers expected. The care and culture of the estate during a long minority was what they thought about as being most to their advantage, and it was quite evident that little Louis, for the present, could hardly be better situated than at Heathknowes. Messrs. Smart and Smart sent a man down to spy out the land, on pretext of offering compensation, but his report must have been favourable both as to the security of the farm-town and as to my grandfather's repute for generosity and open-handedness. For he did not return, and as to payment, nothing more was ever heard at Heathknowes about the matter.

The young people were now quite fixtures there, and though they were spoken of as Miss Irma and Master Louis, Irma had carried her main point, which was that they should be treated in all respects as of the family. The sole difference made was that now the farm lads and lasses, and the two men from the pirn-mill (whom my grandfather's increasing trade with the English weavers had compelled him to take on), had their meals at a second table, placed crosswise to that at which the family dined and supped. But this was chiefly to prevent little Louis from occupying himself with watching to see when they would swallow their knives, and nudging his neighbours Irma and Aunt Jen to "look out," at any particular dangerous and intricate feat of conjuring.

As for me, I could not at all understand why Irma cold-shouldered me during these first Christmas vacations, and indeed I had secretly resolved to return no more to the house of Heathknowes till I had made sure of a better reception. I began to count it a certainty that Irma, feeling that she had gone too far and too fast with me before I went off, was now getting out of the difficulty by a regime of extraordinary coldness and severity. And if that were the case, I was not the man to baulk her.

For about this time a man I began to count myself.

Worst of all, going home to the school-house there came into my head one of the most stupid ideas that had ever got lodging there—though, according to my grandmother, I am rather a don at harbouring suchlike.

It occurred to me that a plan I had read of in some book or other might suit my case. If I could only make Irma jealous, the tables might be turned, and she become as anxious and desirous of making up as I was.

It seemed to me a marvellously original idea. Irma had cared enough to give me her mother's miniature. She had cut off a lock of her hair, which she had not done for all the world of her admirers—else she would long have gone bald.

Now it happened that though there were a good many dressmakers in Eden Valley, including some that worked out for so much a day, there was only one Ladies' Milliner and Mantua-maker. This was the sister of our infant-mistress, Miss Huntingdon. Her establishment was in itself a kind of select academy. She had an irreproachable connection, and though she worked much and well with her nimble fingers, she got most of her labour free by an ingenious method.

She initiated into her mysteries none of the poorer girls of the place, who might in time be tempted to "set up for themselves," and so spoil their employer's market. She received only, as temporary boarders, daughters of good houses, generally pretty girls looking forward with some confidence to managing houses of their own. At that time every girl who set up to be anything in our part of the country aspired to make her own dresses and build the imposing fabric of her own bonnets.

So Miss Huntingdon had a full house of pretty maidens who came as "approvers"—a fanciful variation of "improvers" invented by Miss Huntingdon herself, and used whenever she spoke of "My young ladies," which she did all day long—or at least as often as she was called into the "down-stairs parlour," where (as in a nunnery) ordinary business was transacted.

A good many of the elder girls whom I had known at the Academy had migrated there at the close of their period of education—several who, though great maidens of seventeen or eighteen, had hardly appeared upon my father's purely classical horizon—seen by him only at the Friday's general review of English and history, and taught for the rest of the week by little Mr. Stephen, by myself—and in sewing, fancy-work, and the despised samplers by Miss Huntingdon, the ever diligent, who, to say the truth, acted in this matter as jackal to her elder sister's lion.

In return she got a chamber, a seat at the table with the young ladies, and a home. Nor will I say that Miss Seraphina, Ladies' Milliner and Mantua-maker, was not a good and kind sister to Miss Rebecca, the little teacher at thirty pounds a year in the Infant Department at the Academy of Eden Valley.

But my mother in her time—Aunt Janet, even—had passed that way, though Miss Huntingdon considered Jen one of her failures because she had not "married from her house." Most of the well-to-do farmers within ten miles sent their daughters to complete their education at Miss Huntingdon's academy of the needle and the heavy blocking-iron. My father, when he passed, did not know them, so great in his eyes was their fall. Yet by quiet persistence, of which she had the secret, my mother wore him down to winking at her sending Agnes Anne there for three hours a day.

"I'm sure," she said, "I used to watch for you every time you went by to school, and one day the frill of your shirt sleeve was hanging down, torn on a nail. I was sorry, and wished that I could have run out and mended it for you!"

What this reminiscence had to do with Agnes Anne's being allowed to go to Miss Huntingdon's I do not quite see. But learned men are much like others, and somehow the little speech softened my father. So Agnes Anne went, as, indeed, my mother had resolved from the beginning that she should. And it was through Agnes Anne that my temptation came.

She made a friend there. Agnes Anne always must have one bosom friend of her own sex. For this Irma was too old, as well as too brilliant, too fitful, fairylike, changeful in her mood to serve long. Besides, she awed Agnes Anne too much to allow her to confide in her properly. And without hour-long confessions all about nothing, Agnes Anne had no use for any girl friend. There was an unwritten convention that one should listen sympathetically to the other's tale of secrets, no matter how long and involved, always on the supposition that the service should be mutual.

Charlotte Anderson was the name of Agnes Anne's friend. In a week's time these two were seldom separate, and wandered about our garden, and under the tall pine umbrellas with bent heads and arms lovingly interlaced. Charlotte was a pretty girl, blooming, fresh, rosy, with a pair of bold black eyes which at once denied and defied, and then, as it were, suddenly drooped yieldingly. I was a fool. I might have known—only I did not.

Now my idea was to make just as much love to Charlotte as would warn Miss Irma that she was in danger of losing me and to assist me in this (though I did not reveal my intention of merely baiting my trap with her) who more willing than Charlotte Anderson!

But I had counted without two somewhat important factors—Miss Irma, and Miss Seraphina Huntingdon. I was utterly deceived about the character of Irma, and I had no idea of the extreme notions of rigid propriety upon which Miss Seraphina conducted her business, nor of the explanation of the large proportion of successful weddings in which the lady mantua-maker had played the part of subordinate providence.

Indeed, certain of the light-minded youth of Eden Valley called the parlour with the faded red velvet chairs by the name of "Little Heaven"—because so many marriages had been made there.



CHAPTER XXVI

PERFIDY, THY NAME IS WOMAN!

Old Robert Anderson of Birkenbog was known to me by sight—a huge, jovial, two-ply man, chin and waistcoat alike testifying to good cheer. He wore a large horse-shoe pin in his unstiffened stock. A watch that needed an inch-thick chain to haul up its sturdy Nuremburg-egg build, strained the fob on his right side, as if he carried a mince-pie concealed there. His laugh dominated the market-place, and when he stood with his legs wide apart pouring a sample of oats slowly from one hand into the palm of the other, his red face with the cunning quirks in it had always a little gathering of admirers, eager for the next high-spiced tale. He had originally come from the English border, and in his "burr" and accent still bore token of that nationality.

Nevertheless, he had his admirers, some of them fervent as well as constant.

Cochrane of the Holm would be there, his hand on the shoulder of Blethering Johnny from the Dinnance. These two always laughed before a word was uttered. They thought Birkenbog so funny that everything he said was side-splitting even before he had said it.

I remember being a great deal impressed myself by Old Birkenbog. He was a wonderful horseman as a boy, and when he came to the market alone he rode a big black horse of which even the head ostler stood in awe in the yard of the King's Arms. Once he had thrashed a robber who had assailed him on his way to pay his rent, and had brought him into town trotting cross-handed at his horse's tail, the captive of his loaded whip and stout right arm. It is doubtful if this draggled Dick Turpin, lying in Bridewell, appreciated Birkenbog's humour quite so much as did Cochrane and Blethering Jock when he told them the story afterwards.

If I had any common-sense I might have seen that Birkenbog was not a safe man to trouble in the matter of an only daughter, without the most serious intentions in the world. But, truth to tell, I never thought of him knowing, which was in itself a thing quite superfluous and altogether out of my calculations. I had had some small experience of girls even before Miss Irma came to change everything. And the fruit of my observations had been that, though girls tell each other's secrets freely enough, they keep a middling tight grip on their own. Nay, they can even be trusted with yours, in so far as these concern themselves—until, of course, you quarrel with them—and then—well, then look out!

Certainly I found lots of chances to talk to Charlotte. In fact Agnes Anne made them for me, and coached me on what to say out of books. Also she cross-examined Charlotte afterwards upon my performances, and supplemented what I had omitted by delivering the passage in full. My poor version, however, pleased Charlotte just as much, for merely being "walked out" gave her a standing among Miss Seraphina's young ladies, who asked her what it felt like to be engaged.

All had to be gone about in so ceremonious a manner, too, at least at first—when I made my formal call on Miss Huntingdon, who received me in her parlour with prim civility, as if I had come to order a leghorn hat of the best.

"My mother's compliments, and might Miss Charlotte Anderson be allowed to accompany Agnes Anne to tea at four hours that day? I would be responsible—yes, I knew Miss Huntingdon to be most particular upon this point—for the convoy of the young ladies to the school-house, and would see Miss Anderson safe home again."

My mother winked at these promenades, because in her heart of hearts she was more than a little jealous of Irma. Charlotte Anderson she could understand. She was of her own far-off kin, but Irma and her brother had descended upon us, as it were, from another world.

Why Agnes Anne meddled I cannot so well make out, unless it were the mania which at a certain age attacks most nice girls—that of distributing their brothers among their dearest friends—as far, that is, as they will go round.

So Charlotte and I walked under the tall firs of the Academy wood in the hope that Irma might be passing that way. I escorted her home in full sight of all Eden Valley—that was always on the look-out for whatever might happen in the way of courtship about the shop of the famous mantua-maker.

And yet (I know people will think I am lying) never, I say, did I find Miss Irma so desirable in my eyes as when I saw her at Heathknowes during these days of folly. It was not that she was kinder to me. She appeared not to think of me either one way or the other. She curtsied to me, like a bird, flirting the train of her gown like a wagtail on a stone by the running stream. One forenoon she met us, strolling with little Louis by the hand, her black hair crowned with scarlet hips—those berries of the wild dog-rose which grow so great in our country lanes. She waved us a joyous little salute from the top of a stile, on which she perched as lightly as if joyful graces were fluttering about her, and she herself ready to take wing.

But she never so much as looked wistful, but let me go my way with a single flirt of a kerchief she was adjusting about her brother's neck. As for me I was ready to hang myself in self-contempt and hatred of poor innocent Charlotte Anderson, who smiled and imagined, doubtless, that she was fulfilling the end for which she had come to Miss Huntingdon's.

After we had separated I went to thinking sadly on the stupidity of my performances. This field of thought was a large one and the consideration of it, patch by patch, took some time. It was market day. The bleating of flocks was about me, a pleasant smell of wool and tar and heather—and of bullocks blowing clouds of perfumed breath that condensed upon the frosty air. I was leaning my arms upon the stone dyke of the Market Hill and thinking of Irma, now by my own act rendered more inaccessible than ever—when a hand, heavy as a ham falling from a high ceiling, descended upon my shoulder. A voice of incomparable richness, a little husky perhaps with the morning's moistening at the King's Arms, cried out, "So ho, lad! thou dost not want assurance! Thinking on the lasses at thy age! You're the chap, they tell me, that's been walkin' out my daughter in broad daylight! Well, well, cannot find it in my heart to be too hard—did the like mysel' thirty years ago, and never regretted it. School-master's son, aren't ye? Thought I kenned ye by sight! Student lad at the College of Edinburgh? Yes, yes—knew thy father any time ever since he came from the North. No man has anything to say again thy father! Except that he does not lay on the young rascals' backs half heavily enough! I dare say thou would be noways the worse of a dressing down thysel'!"

All this time he was thumping me on my back, and I was standing before him with such a red face, and (I doubt not) such a compound of idiocy and black despair upon it, that I might have been listening to my doom being pronounced by the mouth of some full-blooded, jovial red judge, with a bunch of seals the size of your fist dangling from his fob and the loaded whip with which he had brought down the highwayman, under his arm.

"Come thou up to the King's Arms!" he cried; "don't stand there looking like a dummy. Let's have the matter out! Thour't noan shamed, surely! There's no reason for why. At thy age, laddie—hout-hout—there's no wrong as young folks go. Come thy ways, lad!"

Obediently I followed in his wake as he elbowed a way through the crowd, salutations pouring in upon him on every side.

"Ah, Birkenbog, what's brought you into the market this day—sellin' lambs?"

"That's as may be—buyin' calves more belike!"

This was for my benefit, and the old brute, tasting his sorry jest, turned and slapped me again, winking all the time with his formidable brows in a spasmodic and horrible manner, that was like a threat.

Now, I did not mind Lalor Maitland or Galligaskins when my blood was up. But now it was down—far down—indeed in my very boots.

All the time and every step of the way, I was trying in a void and empty brain to evolve plans of escape. I could only hear the rich port-wine chuckle of that great voice, and watch the gleam of those huge silver spurs.

And so presently we came to the King's Arms. Never was bold wooer in a more hopeless position. Whichever way I turned the case was desperate—if I resisted, I could not expect to fare better than Tam Haggart, whom that whip shank had beaten to the ground on the Corse o' Slakes. If I let myself drift, then farewell all hope of Irma Maitland.

I hesitated and was lost. But who in my place could have bettered it—save by not being such a portentous fool to begin with? But when that is in a man, it will out.

I entered the King's Arms meekly, and before I knew what I was doing I had been presented to three or four solid-thighed, thick-headed, stout-legginged farmers as "Our Lottie's intended." They laughed, and came near to shaking my hand off. I felt that if I backed out after that, I never could show my face in Eden Valley again.

Then we proceeded to business. I had not been accustomed to drink anything stronger than water, and I was not going to begin now—so much of sense I had left in me. So as often as the mighty farmer of Birkenbog had his tankard pointed at the cornice of the commercial room of the King's Arms, I poured the contents of mine carefully among the sawdust on the floor.

And then my formidable "future" father-in-law got to the root of the matter.

"Father know about this?" He shot out the question as from a catapult.

"No, sir," said I, "I did not think of troubling him just yet—till——"

"Till what?"

"Till things were a bit more settled," I faltered. He put his loosely clenched fist on my knee. It appeared as large as the flat part of a pair of smith's bellows.

"Well, that's what we are here now for, eh?" he said. "I doan't blame ye, you young dog. Now I like a fine up-standing wench myself, well filled out, none o' your flails done up in a bean-sack, nor yet a tea-pot little body that makes the folk laugh as they see her trotting alongside a personable man like me. Lottie will do ye fine. She's none great at the books—takes after her mother in that, but she's a good girl, and I'll warrant ye, she will keep up her end of an argument well enough after a year or two's practice. But, mind you, lad, there's to be nothing come of this till I see you safe through college as a doctor. Fees? Nonsense! Go to the hospitals, man, I'll pay for that part. It can come off what I have put aside to give the man that took Lottie off my hands! A doctor—yes, that's the business, and one sore needed here in this very Eden Valley! Whisht—there—who think ye bought old Andrew Leith's practice and house? Who keeps the lads from the college there and sends them packing at the end of every six months? Why, me—Anderson of Birkenbog. So haste ye fast, and when ye are ready, the house is ready, and the practice and the tocher—and as for the lass ye have made it up with her yourself, as I understand."

Never was there a poorer-spirited wooer! No, never one. The very pour of words stunned me. Had it not been for the coming and going of Dutch-girthed brother-farmers, dumping bags of "samples" on the table, and hauling at purses tied with leathern strings out of tight breeches pockets, the "What's your will, sir?" of Tom the drawer, and the clink of cannikins, I must have been found out even then.

But the part of the trouble which was to be mine personally was coming to an end. After all, his daughter's future was only an item in Birkenbog's programme of the day.

"Well, then, lad"—he clapped me again on the shoulder (I sitting there with the soul of an oyster)—"we have arranged everything comfortable—eh? Now you can go and tell Lottie. Aye, and ye can say to Miss—what's her name—Thimbolina, the old dowager with the corkscrews—with my compliments, that there's a sweet-milk cheese ripening on the dairy shelves for her at Birkenbog. Hear ye that, lad?"

I took my leave as best I could. I felt I had hopelessly committed myself. For though I had not said a word, I had not dared to reveal to this fierce father, that being in love with another, I had been using his daughter as a stalking horse.

"And, look here, Duncan lad," he said, "I'll just step up and have a word with your father. The clearer understanding there is between families on such like arrangements, the less trouble there will be in the future!"

And he strode away out into the yard, halting, however, at the door to call out in a voice that could be heard all over the neighbourhood, "Come thy ways up to Birkenbog on Sunday and take a bit o' dinner wi' us! Then thou canst see our Lottie and tell her how many times sweeter she is than a sugar-plum! Ho, ho!"

He was gone at last and I fairly blushed myself down the street, pushing my way between the ranks of the market stalls and the elbowing farmers.

"Are ye blind or only daft?" one apple wife called out, as I shook her rickety erection of trestles and boards. She was as red in the face as Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and sheltered her goods on rainy days.

But I heeded not. I was seeking solitude. I felt that I wanted nothing from the entire clan of human beings. I had lost all that I should ever really love. Irma—Irma! And here was I, settled for life with one for whom I cared not a penny!

By the time I had reached this stage, I had come out upon the bare woods that mount the path by the riverside. I came to the great holly, a cave of green shade in summer, and now a warm shelter in these tall solitudes of wattled branches standing purple and black against the winter sky.

Ah, there was some one there already. I stepped out again quickly, but not too fast to see that it was Charlotte Anderson herself I had stumbled upon—and that she was crying!



CHAPTER XXVII

"THEN, HEIGH-HO, THE MOLLY!"

"Charlotte!" said I, taking in a sudden pity a step nearer and holding out my hand; but she only snatched her arm away fretfully and cried the more bitterly.

"Has your father been speaking unkindly to you?" I asked her, being much surprised.

She shook her head, and a wet handkerchief plashed on my hand like a sob as she shook it out.

"What is it, then?" I asked, more and more amazed at the turn things were taking. Never had I thought for a moment that Charlotte would not be as pleased and happy to have me as I was the reverse.

"Oh," she burst out at last, sobbing between each hurried phrase, "I don't blame you, Duncan. It's all that horrid old cat, Miss Seraphina—Diabolina, the girls call her—she writes everything we do to our people at home. She's always writing, and she spies on us, too, and listens—opens our letters! She has brought all this on me——"

"Brought what on you?" I inquired blankly.

"Having to marry you and all!" she said, and had recourse to her wet handkerchief again. But that being altogether too sodden to afford her any relief, she signalled to me, as if I had been Agnes Anne or another girl, to pass her mine. Fortunately for once I could do so without shame. For Miss Irma had been teaching me things—or at least the desire to appear well in her eyes.

Charlotte Anderson did not appear to notice, but went on crying.

"And don't you want to marry me, Lottie?" I said softly, taking her hand. She let me now, perhaps considered as the proprietor of the handkerchief.

"Of course I don't," said she. "Oh, how could I?"

Now this, considered apart, was certainly hurtful to my pride. For, having frequently considered my person, as revealed in my mother's big Sunday mirror, I thought that she could very well. On my side there was certainly nothing to render the matter impossible. Moreover, how about our walks and talks! She had, then, merely been playing with me. Oh, Perfidy, thy name is Woman!

I was silent and paused for an explanation. I soon got it, considered as before, as the sympathetic owner of the handkerchief.

"It's Tam Galaberry," she said, "my cousin, you know, Duncan. He used to come to see me ... before ... before you! But his sister went to Dumfries to learn the high-class millinery, and since then Miss Seraphina cannot thole him. As if he had anything to do with that. And she wrote home, and my father threatened Tam to shoot him with the gun if he came after me—all because we were cousins—and only seconds at any rate. Oh-h-h-h! What shall I do?"

I had to support Charlotte here—though merely as handkerchief-holder and in the purest interests of the absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.

But the relief to my own mind, in spite of the hurt to my pride, was immediate and enormous. But a thought leaped up in my heart which cooled me considerably.

"Oh, Lottie," I said, as sadly as I could, "you have been false and deceitful. You have come near to breaking my heart——"

"I ken I have—I ken I have!" she cried. "Oh, can you ever forgive me?"

"Only, Charlotte," I answered nobly, "because I care for your happiness more than for my own!"

"Oh, Duncan, but you are good!" She threw herself into my arms. I really think she mistook me for Agnes Anne for the moment. But any consolations I applied were, as before, in the interests of Tam Gallaberry.

"I knew I was wicked and wrong all the time," she said, "but when we walked out, you remember the dyke we used to lean against" (she glanced up at me with simple child-like eyes, tear-stained), "you must remember? Well, one of the stones was loose. And Tam used to put one letter there, and I took it out and slid it in my pocket, and put mine back the same! Agnes Anne was looking the other way, of course, and you—you——"

"Was otherwise employed than thinking of such deceit!" I said grandly.

"You were kissing me! And I let you—for Tam's sake," Charlotte murmured, smiling. "Otherwise the poor fellow would have had five miles to come that next day, and I could not bear that he should not find his letter!"