"No!" I answered dryly, "it would certainly have been a pity."

She looked at me curiously.

"Do you know," she said, "I always thought that you were playing, too!"

"Playing!" I exclaimed tragically. "Is it possible? Oh, Lottie!"

"Oh, I just thought it," she said remorsefully. "I am sorry if it was true—if you do really care about me so much—as all that!"

I was still thinking of Tam Gallaberry. So apparently was she.

Virtue is its own reward, and so is mutual consolation. It is very consoling. Half the happy love stories in the world begin that way—just with telling about the unhappy ones that went before. You take my word for it—I, Duncan MacAlpine, know what I am talking about. Charlotte Anderson too.

So finally, after a while, I became very noble and said what a fine thing it was to give up something very precious for others. And I asked her if she could think of anything much nobler than willingly to give up as fine a girl as herself—Charlotte Anderson—for the sake of Tam Gallaberry? She thought awhile and said she could not.

So I told her we must keep up appearances for a time, till we had made our arrangements what to do. Charlotte said that she had no objections as long as Tam Gallaberry did not know. So I said that she could write a long letter that very night, and give it to Agnes Anne in the morning, and I would go out to the stone, and put it underneath.

Then she cried, "Oh, will you?" And thanked me ever so sweetly, asking if, when I was about it, would I bring back the one I found there and send it to her by my sister, in another envelope—"just over the top, you know, without breaking the seal. Because such letters were sacred."

I said she need not trouble herself. I was only doing all this for her sake. I did not want to see what another man had to say to her!

And, if you will believe me, she was delighted, and said, "Now I know that you were not all pretending, but do care for me a little wee bit!"

Indeed, Charlotte was so delighted that it was perhaps as well for the smooth flowing of their love story that Tam Gallaberry was at that moment investigating their joint post office. For Lottie was a generous girl when her heart was moved, and though she kept the grand issues clear, she often confused details—as, for instance, whether the handkerchief was mine or my sister's, and whether I was myself or Tam Gallaberry.

But I considered such slips as these pardonable at twenty. At that age forgetfulness is easy. Afterwards the prison doors close, and now I am not mistaken for Tam Gallaberry any more—and what is more, I don't want to be. However, after a while I brought Charlotte to earth again, out of the exaltation of our mutual self-sacrifice, by the reminder that at that moment our fathers would be arranging as to our joint future—and that without the least regard for our present noble sentiments, or those of the happily absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.

She got down and looked at me, affrighted, her lips apart, and all panting like a bird newly ta'en in the hand.

"Oh, Duncan," she cried, "you will help me, won't you? You see how fond I am of you!"

I saw, exactly, but refrained from telling her that she had a strange way of showing it.

"I would do anything in the world for you," she added,—"only I want to marry Tom. Ye see? I have always meant to marry Tom! So I can't help it, can I?"

Her logic had holes in it, but her meaning was starry clear. I thanked her, and said that the best thing we could do was to take counsel together. Which we did there under the shelter of the great holly-bush. So much so that any one passing that way might have taken us for foolish lovers, instead of two people plotting how to get rid the one of the other.

What helped the illusion greatly was that it was a cold day, with every now and then a few driving flecks of snow. I had on a great rough Inverness cloak of my father's, far too large for me. I asked Charlotte if she were warm. She said she was, but did not persist too much in the statement. So we left Tom Gallaberry out of the question, and set ourselves to arrange what we were to say to our two fathers.

"It will be terrible hard to pretend!" I said, shaking my head.

"It will be a sin—at least, for long!" she answered.

I exposed the situation. There was to be no immediate talk of marriage. Even her father had allowed that I must get through college first. He was to pay my fees as a doctor. I did not want to be a doctor. Besides, I could not take her father's money——

Here Charlotte turned with so quick a flounce that she nearly landed herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off the drainage of the slope behind.

"Not take the money? Nonsense!" she cried. "Father has more than he knows what to do with!"

She paused a while, finger on lip, meditating, the double ply of calculation, stamped on her father's brow, very strongly marked on hers.

"Look here, Duncan," she said caressingly, like a grown woman wooing to get her own way, so deep her voice was, "daddy is giving you that money because you are going to marry me, isn't he?"

I signed, as well as I could, that Mr. Robert Anderson of Birkenbog considered himself as so doing.

She clapped her hands and cried out, as if she had stumbled on the solution of some exceedingly difficult problem, "Why, then, take the money and give it to Tom! He needs it for his farm—oh, just dreadful. He says the hill is not half stocked, and that a hundred or two more ewes would just be the saving of him!"

"But," said I, "I shall be entering into an agreement with your father, and shall have to give him receipts!"

"Well," she continued boldly, "Thomas will enter into an agreement with you, if he doesn't marry me—that is, if I am left on your hands—he will pay you the money back—or else give you the sheep!"

It will hardly be believed the difficulty I had to make Charlotte see the impossibility—nay, the dishonesty of an arrangement which appeared so simple to her. She thought for a while that I was just doing it out of jealousy, and she sulked.

I reasoned with her, but I might as well have tried logic on the Gallaberry black-faced ewes. She continued to revolve the project in her own mind.

"Whatever you—I mean we—can get out of father is to the good," she said. "He will never miss it. If you don't, I will ask him for the money for your fees myself and give it to Tom——"

"If you do!" I cried in horror,—"oh—you don't know what you are talking about, girl!"

"You don't love me a bit," she said. "What would it matter to you? Besides, if it comes to giving a receipt, I can imitate your signature to a nicety. Agnes Anne says so."

"But, Charlotte, it would be forgery," I gasped. "They hang people for forgery."

"No, they don't—at least, not for that sort," she argued, her eyes very bright with the working of her inward idea. "For how can it be forgery when it is your name I write, and I've told you of it beforehand? It's my father's money, isn't it, and he gives it to you for marrying me? Very well, then, it's yours—no, I mean it's Tom's because he means to marry me. At least I mean to marry him. Anyway, the money is not my father's, because he gives it freely to you (or Tom) for a certain purpose. Well, Tom is going to be the one who will carry out that purpose. So the money is his. Therefore it's honest and no forgery!"

These arguments were so strong and convincing to Charlotte that I did not attempt to discuss them further, salving my conscience by the thought that there remained his Majesty's post, and that a letter addressed to her father at the Farmers' Ordinary Room, in care of the King's Arms, would clear me of all financial responsibility. But this I took care not to mention to Lottie, because it might have savoured of treachery and disturbed her.

On the other hand, I began urging her to find another confidant than Agnes Anne. She would do well enough for ordinary letters which I was to send on to Cousin Tom. But she must not know they were not for me. She must think that all was going on well between us. This, I showed her, was a necessity. Charlotte felt the need also, and suggested this girl and that at Miss Seraphina Huntingdon's. But I objected to all. I had to think quick, for some were very nice girls, and at most times would have served their country quite well. But I stuck to it that they were too near head-quarters. They would be sure to get found out by Miss Huntingdon.

"It is true," she meditated, "she is a prying old cat."

"I don't see anybody for it but Miss Irma, over at my grandmother's!" I said, boldly striking the blow to which I had been so long leading up.

Charlotte gazed at me so long and so intently that I was sure she smelt a rat. But the pure innocence of my gaze, and the frank readiness with which I gave my reasons, disarmed her.

"You see," I said, "she is the only girl quite out of the common run to whom you have access. You can go to Heathknowes as often as you like with Agnes Anne. Nobody will say a word. They will think it quite natural—to hear the latest about me, you know. Then when you are alone with Miss Irma, you can burst into tears and tell her our secret——"

"All——?" she questioned, with strong emphasis.

"Well," I hastened to reply, "all that is strictly necessary for a stranger to know—as, for instance, that you don't want to marry me, and that I never wanted to marry you——"

"Oh," she cried, moving in a shocked, uneasy manner, "but I thought you did!"

"Well, but—," I stammered, for I was momentarily unhinged, "you see you must put things that way to get Miss Irma to help us. She can do anything with my father, and I believe she could with yours too if she got a chance."

"Oh, no, she couldn't!"

"Well, anyway, she would serve us faithfully, so long as we couldn't trust Agnes Anne. And you know we agreed upon that. If you can think of anything better, of course I leave it to you!"

She sat a long while making up her mind, with a woman's intuition that all the cards were not on the table. But in the long run she could make no better of it.

"Well, I will," she said; "I always liked her face, and I don't believe she is nearly so haughty as people make out."

"Not a bit, she isn't——" I was beginning joyously, when I caught Lottie's eye; "I mean—" I added lamely, "a girl always understands another girl's affairs, and will help if she can—unless she has herself some stake in the game!"

And in saying this, I believe that for once in a way I hit upon a great and nearly universal truth.



CHAPTER XXVIII

LOVE AND THE LOGICIAN

I knew that the Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the "clachan," where most of the show folk congregated. The rooks were cawing belatedly in the tall ashes round the big square—into which, in the old times of the Annandale thieves, the country folk used to drive the cattle to be out of the way of Johnstones and Jardines.

I skirted the town, therefore, so as not to meet with the full blast of the riot. With such an unruly gang about, I kept Charlotte Anderson well in sight till I saw her safe into Miss Seraphina's. Of course, nobody who knew her for a daughter of Fighting Rob of Birkenbog would have laid hand upon her, but at such a time there might be some who did not know the repute of her father.

The great gong in front of the "Funny Folks" booth went "Bang! bang!" Opposite, the fife and drum spoke for the temple of the legitimate drama. At the selling-stalls importunate vendors of tin-ware rattled their stock-in-trade and roared at the world in general, as if buyers could be forced to attend to the most noisy—which, indeed, they mostly did.

From the dusky kennels in which the gipsies told fortunes and mended the rush-bottomed chairs of the Valley goodwives came over the wall a faint odour of mouldy hay, which lingered for weeks about every apartment to which any of their goods were admitted.

As for me, I had had enough of girls for one day, and I was wondering how best to cut across the fields, take a turn about the town, and so get home to my father's by the wood of pines behind the school, when suddenly a voice dropped upon me that fairly stunned me, so unexpected it was.

"Mr. Duncan MacAlpine," it said, "I congratulate you on your choice of a father-in-law. You could not have done better!"

It was Miss Irma herself, taking a walk in a place where at such a time she had no business to be—on the little farm path that skirts the woods above the town. Louis was with her, but I thought that in the far distance I could discern the lounging shadow of the faithful Eben.

I stood speechless straight before her, but she passed on, lightly switching the crisped brown stalks of last year's thistles with a little wand she had brought. I saw that she did not mean to speak to me, and I turned desperately to accompany her.

"I will thank you to pass your way," she said sharply. "I am glad you are to have such a wife and such a dowry. Also a father-in-law who will be at the kind trouble of paying your college fees till you are quite ready to marry his daughter. It is a thing not much practised among gentlefolk, but, what with being so much with your mantua-makers, you will doubtless not know any better!"

"Irma—Irma," I cried, not caring any more for Eben, now in the nearer distance, "it is all a mistake—indeed, a mistake from the beginning!"

"Very possibly," she returned, with an airy haughtiness; "at any rate, it is no mistake of mine!"

And there, indeed, she had me. I had perforce to shift my ground.

"I am not going to marry Charlotte Anderson," I said.

"Then the more shame of you to deceive her after all!" she cried. "It seems that you make a habit of it! Surely I am the last person to whom you ought to boast of that!"

"On the contrary, you are the first!"

But she passed on her way, her head high, an invincible lightness in the spring of every footstep, a splash of scarlet berries making a star among her dark hair, and humming the graceless lilt which told how—

"Willie's ga'en to Melville Castle, Boots an' spurs an' a'—!"

As for me, I was ready to sink deep into the ground with despondency, wishful to rise never more. But I stopped, and though Uncle Eben was almost opposite to me, and within thirty yards, I called after her, "The day will come, Irma Maitland, when you will be sorry for the injustice you are doing!"

For I thought of how she would feel when Charlotte told about her cousin Tam Gallaberry and all that I had done for them—though, indeed, it was mostly by accident. Only I could trust Charlotte to keep her thumb upon that part of it.

I did not know what she felt then, nor, perhaps, do I quite know yet; but she caught a tangle of wild cut-leafed ivy from a tree on which I had long watched it grow, and with a spray of small green leaves she crowned herself, and so departed as she had come, singing as if she had not a care in the world, or as if I, Duncan MacAlpine, were the last and least of all.

And yet I judged that there might be a message for me in that very act. She had escaped me, and yet there was something warm in her heart in spite of all. Perhaps, who knows, an angel had gone down and troubled the waters; nor did I think, somehow, that any other would step in there before me.

After that I went down to see Fred Esquillant, who listened with sad yet brilliant eyes to my tangled tale.

"You are the lucky one," I said, "to have nothing to do with the lasses. See what trouble they lead you into."

He broke out suddenly.

"Be honest, Duncan," he said, "if you must boast! If you are bound to lie, let it not be to me. You would not have it otherwise. You would not be as I am, not for all the gold of earth. No"—he held his breath a long while—"no, and I, if I had the choice, would I not give all that I have, or am ever likely to have, for—but no, I'm a silent Scot, and I canna speak the word——"

"I'm the other sort of Scot," I cried, "and I'll speak it for you. Man, it's the first decent human thing I have ever heard come out o' your mouth. You would give all for LOVE!"

"Oh, man," he cried, snatching his fingers to his ears as if I blasphemed, "are ye not feared?"

"No, I'm not," I declared, truly enough; "what for should I be feared? Of a lassie? Tell a lassie—that ye—that ye——"

"No, no," cried Fred Esquillant, "not again!"

"Well, then, that ye 'like' her—we will let it go at that. She will want ye to say the other, but at least that will do to begin on. And come, tell me now, what's to hinder ye, Fred?"

"Oh, everything," he said; "it's just fair shameless the way folk can bring themselves to speak openly of suchlike things!"

"And where would you have been, my lad, if once on a day your faither had not telled your mither that she was bonny?"

"I don't know, and as little do I care," he cried.

"Well, then," said I, "there's Amaryllis—what about her?"

"That's Latin," said Fred, waving his arm.

"And there's Ruth, and the lass in the Song of Solomon!"

"That's in the Bible," he murmured, as if he thought no better of the Sacred Word for giving a place to such frivolities.

"Fred," I said, "tell me what you would be at? Would you have all women slain like the babes of Bethlehem, or must we have you made into a monk and locked in a cell with only a book and an inkhorn and a quill?"

"Neither," he said; "but—oh, man, there is something awesome, coarse-grained and common in the way the like o' you speak about women."

"Aye, do ye tell me that?" I said to try him; "coarse, maybe, as our father Adam, when he tilled his garden, and common as the poor humanity that is yet of his flesh and blood."

"There ye go!" he cried; "I knew well that my words were thrown away."

"Speak up, Mr. Lily Fingers," I answered; "let us hear what sort of a world you would have without love—and men and women to make it."

"It would be like that in which dwell the angels of heaven—where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage!"

"Well," said I, "speaking for myself and most lads like me, we will mend our ways before we get a chance of trying that far country! And in the meantime here we are—our feet in the mire, and our heads not so very near the sky. Talk of angels—where are we to get their society? And the likest to them that I have ever heard tell of are just women—good women, innocent lasses, beginning to feel the stir of their own power—and all the better and the stronger are they for that! Oh, Fred, I saw an angel within the last half-hour! There she stood, her eyes shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a butterfly, the dimples playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to the sons of men, 'Come, seek me on your knees—you know you can't help loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!"

"And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?"

"Oh, ye Lallan Scot!" I cried; "ye Westland stot! Is there no hot blood of the Celt in you? What brought you to Galloway, where the Celt sits on every hill-top, names every farm and lea-rig, and lights his Baal-fires about the standing stones on St. John's Eve?"

"Man," said Fred, shaking his head, "I aye thought ye were a barbarian. Now I know it. If you had your way, you would raid your neighbours' womenfolk and bring them in by the hair of their heads, trailing them two at a time. For me, I worship them like stars, standing afar off."

"Aye," said I, "that would be a heap of use to the next generation, and the lasses themselves would like it weel!"

But what Freddy Esquillant said about the next generation was unworthy of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he spake in his haste.

All the same, I noticed that, if ever any of the stars came near to his earth, it would be a certain very moderately brilliant planet, bearing the name of Agnes Anne or, more scientifically, MacAlpine Minima, which would attract Master Fred's reluctant worship.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE AVALANCHE

And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. And though the session before I had thought but little of the letters (and indeed there was nothing in them), yet this time there were none at all, which suited me far worse. For, as it seemed, the mere sight of the hand-of-write would have cheered me.

Henceforward I could only learn, as it were, by ricochet what was going on. My grandmother never set pen to paper. Her tongue to guide was trouble enough to her without setting down words on paper to rise up in judgment against her. True, my father wrote regularly to inquire if my professor had any new light on the high things of Plato, the Iberian flavour in Martial's Epigrams, and such like subjects which were better fitted to interest a learned dominie who had lost the scholar of his choice than to comfort a young fellow who has only lost his sweetheart.

For her part Agnes Anne wrote me reams about Charlotte, but never mentioned a word as to the Maitlands, though she did say that Charlotte was a good deal at Heathknowes, and (a trifle spitefully, perhaps) that she did not know what took her there unless it were to see Uncle Rob! This poor Uncle Rob of ours—his reputation was in everybody's mouth, certainly. He had been, so they said, a runagate, a night-raker, and in the days of his youth a trifle wild. But now with the shadows of forty deepening upon him, it was not fair that all the hot blood of his teens and twenties should rise up in judgment against him. Still so it was. And the reason of it was, he had not, as he ought, married and settled. For which sin of omission, as the gossips of Eden Valley said, "there was bound to be a reason!"

Charlotte herself did not send a line, excepting always the letters I was to forward to Tom Gallaberry at his farm of Ewebuchts on the Water of Ae. This at the time I judged unkind, but afterwards I found that Cousin Tom had insisted upon it, on the threat of going to her father and telling him the whole affair. For, in spite of all, Cousin Thomas was jealous—as most country lads are of college-bred youths, and he pinned Charlotte carefully down in her correspondence. However, I made him pay his own postages, which was a comfort, and as Agnes Anne and often my father would slip their letters into the same packet, after all I had only the extra weight to pay.

Still, I did think that some of them might have told me something of Irma. But none did, till one great day I got a letter—from whom think you? I give you fifty guesses—well, from my Aunt Jen. And it contained more than all the rest put together, though all unconsciously, and telling me things that I might have gone a long time ignorant of—if she had suspected for a moment I was keen about them.

Heathknowes, this the thirteenth Aprile.

"Dear Nephew Duncan,

"Doubtless you will be having so many letters that you will not be caring for one from a cross auld maid, who is for ever finding fault with you when ye are at home. But who, for all that, does not forget to bear ye up in the arms of her petitions before the Throne—no, night and morning both.

"This is writ to tell you that I have sent ye, by the wish of my mither, one cheese of seven pounds weight good, as we are hearing that you are thinking to try and find something to do in Edinburgh during the summer time. Which will be an advisable thing, if it be the Lord's will—for faint-a-hait do ye do here except play ill pranks and run the country.

"However, what comes o't we shall see. Also there is a pig of butter. It may be the better of a trifle more salt, that is, if the weather is onyway warm. So I have put in a little piece of board and ye can work the salt in yourself. Be a good lad, and mind there are those here that are praying for ye to be guided aright. Big towns are awful places for temptation by what they say, and that ye are about the easiest specimen to be tempted, that I have yet seen with these eyes. Howsomever, maybe ye will have gotten grace, or if not that, at least a pickle common-sense, whilk often does as well—or better.

"It's a Guid's blessing that ye have been led to stop where ye are. For that lassie Charlotte Anderson is going on a shame to be seen. Actually she is never off our doorstep—fleeing and rinning all hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel', it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne—some that cost as muckle as sevenpence—a ruination and a disgrace!" [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] "Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads—for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden's e'e is filled with vanity and the gauds o' grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and quiet spirit!

"But, for your comfort, if ye are so far left to yourself as to take comfort in the like—and the bigger fool you—it is no the lads after all. It's just Irma Maitland!

"I declare they two are never sindry. They will be out talk-talking, yatter-yattering when the kye are being milked in the morning. Irma makes her carry the water, that's one comfort. But I wonder at that silly auld clocking hen, Seraphina Huntingdon. It's a deal of work she will be getting, but I suppose the premium pays for all, and she will not care a farthing now that Charlotte's market is made. Not that I would trust you (or any student lad) the length of my stirabout potstick—or indeed (not to shame my own father) anything that wears hose and knee-breeches. And maybe that's the reason every silly birkie thinks he has the right to cast up to me that I am an auld maid. Faith, there's few that wear the wedding ring with whom I would change places. But what of that?

"The folk are all well here, both bairns and grown folk, and we will be blithe to hear from you, and if you have the time to send a scraps of your pen to your auld maiden aunt, that mony a time (though Lord knows not half often enough) has garred your lugs ring for your misdeeds—she will be pleased to hear if the butter and cheese were some kitchen to your tasteless town's bread.

"Your obdt. servt. and affectionate aunt, "Janet Lyon."

From this information I hoped great things—at least a letter demanding pardon from Irma, or an account of how she had confessed all from that graceless and thankless forgetful besom Charlotte. But I heard nothing further till, one day going past after another, about a twelvemonth after amazing word came. It was when I was busy with some literary work I had gotten from one of the printers in the town—correcting proofs and looking out for misspellings in the compositions of an eminent hand. I will be plain—it was poor work, and as poorly paid. But I could live on it, and in any case it was better than slaving at tutoring. That is, as tutoring was at that time in Edinburgh—a dull boy whom none could make anything of, insolent servants, sneering elder sisters and a guinea a month to pay for all. However, I tried it and made some of them stop sneering—at least the sisters.

I was, I say, in the Rankeillor Street lodgings and Amelia was going out at the door with my tea-things—as usual calling me names for "idling within doors" when Fred was out at his classes. Freddie had private permission from one of the professors to read in his library, so often did not come home till late. But I stuck to my arm-chair and my printer's slips like a burr to homespun. Suddenly there was a great noise on the stairs. "There," cries Amelia, "that's one of your countrymen, or I'm no judge of the Galloway bray!"

For, as I have indicated before, Amelia was far from imitating her mother's English politeness.

The next moment the front door was driven in with a mighty brange against the wall (for Amelia had been out the moment before on the landing to throw some turnip-tops on the ash "backet"). A huge man in many swathes of riding-coat dashed in and caught me by the throat. Amelia had the two-pronged carving fork in her hand, and seeing her mother's lodger (as she thought) in danger of being choked to death, without having regulated his week's bill, she threw herself upon my assailant and struck vehemently with the fork.

The huge man in the many capes doubtless suffered no grievous harm. It had hardly been possible for a pistol-ball to penetrate such an armature, but still the sudden assault from behind, and perhaps some subtle feminine quality in Amelia's screams, made him turn about to see what was happening.

The man was Fighting Anderson of Birkenbog himself, and he kept crying, "Where have you hidden her, rascal, thief? I will kill you, villain of a scribbler! It was because you were plotting this that you dare not show your face in the country!"

But every time he threw himself upon me, Amelia, who did not want for spunk, dug at him with the two-pronged fork, and stuck it through so many plies of his mantle till he was obliged to cry out, "Here, lassie, lay down that leister, or ye will hae me like miller Tamson's riddle, that the cat can jump through back-foremost."

After adjusting his coat collar he turned to me and demanded, in a more sensible and quiet way, what had become of his daughter.

At the question, Amelia went into one of her foolish fits of laughter and cried out, "What, anither of them?"

Whereupon to prevent misunderstandings, I explained that the young lady was my landlady's daughter, and a friend of Freddy Esquillant's.

"Oh, you students," he said, and sat down to wipe his brow, having seen from the most cursory examination of our abode, wholly open to the view, and exiguous at the best, that certainly Charlotte was not hidden there.

"She left home three days syne as if to go to Miss Huntingdon's," he said, "and ever since her mother has gone from one hysteric to another. So, knowing nothing better to do, and maybe judging you by myself in my own young days (for which I am sure I ask your pardon) I started out to make sure that everything had been done decently and in order. Though as sure as my name is Robert Anderson, I cannot think why you did not come and wed the lass decently at home——"

We were at this point in our explanation, Amelia's ear was (doubtless) close to the back of the door, and Birkenbog was relapsing into his first belief, when I heard the key in the lock and the light foot of Freddy in the passage.

It came as a huge relief, for here was my witness.

He entered, and, seeing the visitor, bowed and deposited his books in the corner. He was for going out again, doubtless thinking that Charlotte's father and I were at business together. So, indeed, we were—but not such as I wished to keep anyways private between us. I could not, with any self-respect, go on depending any longer on Amelia's two-pronged fork.

So I said, "Freddy, bear me witness that I have not been out of the house this week, except to go to the printer's with my work——"

"Fegs," cried a voice through the jar of the door, "there is no need for Freddy to bear ye out in that. You have only to look at the carpet under the legs of your chair. It has gotten a tairgin', as if all the hosts of King Pharaoh had trampled over it down to the Red Sea!"

But I would not keep the old man any longer in suspense.

"I fear, Birkenbog," I said, "that you have given yourself a bootless journey. From what I suspect, your flown bird will be nested nearer home."

"Where?" he cried; "tell me the scoundrel's name."

"Fairly and soothly, Birkenbog," said I, "peace is best among near friends—not to speak of kinsfolk!"

"Aye," said he, "fairly and soothly be it! But I have to ken first that it is fairly and soothly. Who is the man?"

"I do not know for certain," I said, "but I have every reason to believe that your daughter is at this moment Mistress Thomas Gallaberry of Ewebuchts, on the Water of Ae!"

"Oh, the limmer," he cried, and started up as if to fly at me again. His face was indeed a study. First there appeared the usual hot wrath, overlapping in ruddy fold on fold, and revealing the owner's full-fed intent to punish. This gradually gave way to a look of humorous appreciation, and then all of a sudden, he slapped his thigh in an agony of joyous appreciation.

"Oh, the limmer," he cried, "only a week since my kinsman Tam Gallaberry asks me brave and canny for the lend of five hundred to stock his Back Hill. He offered decent enough security, and as usual I took Charlotte's opinion on the business. For it's her that has the great head for the siller. Oh yes, she has that. And as soon as they gat the tocher, he's off wi' the lassie. Certes, but he is the cool hand."

"If you allow me to judge, I should say the cool hand was Charlotte!" I ventured.

"Right, man," he cried, "little do I doubt it! Tam Gallaberry has led a grey mare to his stable that will prove the better horse, and that he will ken before he is a fortnight older."

Then he turned upon me, short and sharp.

"You have kenned this some while, I'm jaloosin'?"

"Yes," said I, for I felt that he might have me awkwardly trapped if he went on, "that is one of the reasons why I did not come home. I knew that Charlotte had made up her mind never to marry me——"

"And ye took it like that?" he cried; "man, ye havena muckle spunk!"

"It was not generally so thought at the time of the assault on the great house of Marnhoul," I answered; "and indeed I remember one old gentleman about your figure, with a white crape over his nose, that shook me by the hand and took my name down in his book——"

"Wheesht—wheesht," he said, looking about uneasily, "siccan things are better never minted so close to the Parliament House where bide the Red Fifteen!"

"Well," said I, "that's as may be, but I cannot have it said by you or any man that I lack spunk!"

"Oh," said he, "though I never was troubled that gate mysel'—there's mony a bold man has turned hen-hearted when it came to a question of the lasses. There's Freddy here, one wad never think it of him, but there has he gotten yon lass that nearly did for me with her twa-pronged fork. She's a smart hizzy, and will make a lively wife to some man. But I maun e'en be riding back to put a question or so to the man that has stown awa' my bit ewe-lamb and put her in fold by the Water of Ae."

At that moment Amelia came in with a triumphant smile. "It's a laddie from the post, and he winna gie up the letter unless you pay him sevenpence for postage dues and a penny for himself!"

"There's the sevenpence, and clash the door in his face!" I cried. For I was bravely well acquainted with the exigencies of these post-office "keelies."

But Birkenbog, who was in good humour at the way he had been done by his daughter, threw a handful of copper "bodles" across the table to Amelia.

"There's for the messenger!" he said. And I could see that he looked at the letter when it came with some anxiety.

As I supposed, it was from Charlotte, and the thinnest and least bulky of her billets that had ever come up these stairs. I handed it across to him, where he sat newly glooming at me.

"Open it!" I said.

"Since when has Robert Anderson of Birkenbog taken to opening letters addressed to other men?"

"Never heed—not till this very minute, maybe. Open that one, at any rate!" And I ran my finger along the sealed edge.

This was Charlotte's letter to me.

From our home at Ewebuchts, Tuesday.

"Dear Duncan,

"How can we ever make it up to you? We were married yesterday by Mr. Torrance, the minister at Quarrelwood, and came home here in time for the milking of the cows. My father has kindly given my Thomas five hundred on account of my marriage portion, but he does not know it yet. I left all well. Thomas joins in kind messages to all inquiring friends. He is looking over my shoulder now, as perhaps you may be already aware from the style of composition.

"Yours truly, "Charlotte Gallaberry.

"P.S.—Oh, I forget to tell you, it will be as well to barricade your door. For I left word with one of the servant lasses that I was off to Edinburgh. Father will likely call to see you, and he is sure to have with him the whip wherewith he downed the highwayman. But I know well your bravery, and do sincerely thank you for all you may have to undergo for me.

"Charlotte."

"Humph," said her father, as he flung it across the table to me, "in my opinion ye are well shut of her! She will twist that Tam Gallaberry round her finger and then—whizz—she will make him spin like a peerie!"

He rose, and without any adieus stamped his way down the stairs, sniffing as he went at every landing. We stood at the window watching his progress along the street—capes swaying, broad bonnet of blue cocked at an angle on top, red double-chinned face looking straight ahead. Amelia came over to my shoulder and looked too.

But all she said was, "And now, when it's past and gone, will ye tell me if Yon is what you learned folk caa' an avalanche?"



CHAPTER XXX

THE VANISHING LADY

During the next three years (and that is a long driech time) I made many excuses for not going down to Eden Valley. I cannot say whether I managed to get myself believed or not. But the fact of the matter is, that, as things were, I could not bring myself to face Irma again and so bring back the pain. My father had come up to see me twice. Once he had brought my mother, of whom Mrs. Craven had made much, recognizing a kindred refinement of spirit. But Amelia and my Aunt Jen (who came at the time of the General Assembly) learned to respect one another—all the more that they had been highly prejudiced before meeting.

"She seems a weel-doing lass, wi' no feery-faries aboot her!" declared my aunt, speaking of Amelia Craven. While that young woman, delivering her mind after the departure of Miss Janet Lyon, declared that she was a "wiselike woman and very civil—but I'll wager she came here thinking that I was wanting ye. Faith, no, I wadna marry any student that ever stepped in leather—I ken ower muckle aboot them!"

"There's Freddie!" I suggested.

"Oh," said Amelia shortly, "he's different, I allow. But then, there's a medium. One doesna want a man with his nose aye in a book. But one that, when ye spit at him, will spit back!"

"Try me!" I said, daring her in conscious security.

"Goliah of Gath," cried she, "but I wad be sair left to mysel'!"

We continued, however, to be pretty good friends always, and in a general way she knew about Irma. She had seen the oval miniature lying on the table. She had also closely interrogated Freddy, and lastly she had charged me with the fact, which I did not deny.

Freddy was now assistant to the professor of Humanity, which is to say of the Latin language, while besides my literary work on the Universal Review I was interim additional Under-secretary to the University Court. In both which positions, literary and secretarial, I did the work for which another man pocketed the pay.

But after all I was not ill-off. One way and another I was making near on to a hundred pounds a year, which was a great deal for the country and time, and more than most ministers got in country parts. I wrote a great many very learned articles, though I signed none. I even directed foreign affairs in the Review, and wrote the most damaging indictments against "the traditional policy of the house of Austria."

Then the other man, the great one in the public eye, he who paid me—put in this and that sonorous phrase, full of echoing emptiness, launched an antithesis which had done good service a time or two on the hustings or in the House of Commons, and—signed the article. Well, I do not object. That was what I was there for, and after all I made myself necessary to the Universal Review. It would never have appeared in time but for me. I verified quotations, continued articles that were too short by half-a-dozen pages, found statistics where there were blanks in the manuscript, invented them if I could not find them, generally bullied the printers and proof-readers, saw to the cover, and never let go till the "Purple-and-Green," as we were called, was for sale on all the counters and speeding over Britain in every postboy's leathers.

Now one of my employers (the best) lived away among the woods above Corstorphine and another out at the Sciennes—so between them I had pretty long tramps—not much in the summer time when nights hardly existed, but the mischief and all when for weeks the sun was an unrealized dream, and even the daylight only peered in for a morning call and then disappeared.

But at the time of which I write the days were lengthening rapidly. I was deep in our spring number of the Universal. Only the medical students were staying on at the University, and the Secretary's spacious office could safely be littered with all sort of printing debris. My good time was beginning.

Well, in one of my walks out to Corstorphine, I was aware, not for the first time, of the figure of a girl, carefully veiled, that at my approach—we were always meeting one another—slipped aside into a close. I thought nothing of this for the first two or three times. But the fourth, I conceived there was something more in it than met the eye. So I made a detour, and, near by the end of George Street—unfinished at that time like all the other streets in that new neighbourhood—I met my vanishing lady face to face as she emerged upon the Queensferry Road. She had lifted her veil a little in order the better to pick her way among the building and other materials scattered there.

It was Irma—Irma Maitland herself, grown into a woman, her eyes brighter, her cheeks paler, the same Irma though different—with a little startled look certainly, but now not proud any more, and—looking every day of her twenty-two years.

"Irma!" I gasped, barring the way.

She stopped dead. Then she clutched at her skirt, and said feverishly, "Let me pass, sir, or I shall call for help!"

"Call away," I answered cheerfully. "I will only say that you have run off from the home which has sheltered you for many years, and that your friends are very anxious about you. Where are you staying?"

I glanced at her black dress. It was not mourning exactly, but then Irma never did anything like any one else. A fear took me that it might be little Louis who was dead, and yet for the life of me I dared not ask, knowing how she loved the child.

When I asked where she was staying, she plucked again at her skirt, lifting it a little as when she was being challenged to run a race. But seeing no way clear, she answered as it were under compulsion, "With my Aunt Kirkpatrick at the Nun's House!"

At first I had the fear that this might prove to be some Catholic place like the convent to which she had been sent in Paris. But it turned out to be only a fine old mansion, standing by itself in a garden with a small grey lodge to it, far out on the road to the Dean.

"Take me there!" I said, "for I must tell my grandmother what I have seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to dry up the Nor' Loch!"

Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask why she had left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough begin to defend herself. And so it was.

"The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here," she said. "It was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to say to your grandmother, while she——"

"I understand," said I; "she had a great deal to say to them!"

Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.

"Yes," she answered, "the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown, of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!"

"So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?" I said.

"Oh, the good souls," she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance, "never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all loved me—even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a psalm book bound in black leather when I came away."

And at the remembrance she wept afresh.

"I must stop this," she said, dabbing her eyes with a very early-April smile, "my Aunt Kirkpatrick will think it is because of meeting you. She is always free with her imagination, my Lady Kirkpatrick—a clever woman for all that—only, what is it that you say, 'hard and fyky!' She has seen many great people and kings, and was long counted a great beauty without anything much coming of it."

I thought I would risk changing the subject to what was really uppermost in my mind.

"And Charlotte?" I ventured, as blandly as I could muster.

"I wonder you are not shamed!" she said, with a glint in her eye that hardly yet expressed complete forgiveness. "I know all about that. And if you think you can come to me bleating like a sore wronged and innocent lamb, you are far mistaken!"

So this was the reason of her long silence. Charlotte had babbled. I might have known. Still, I could not charge my conscience with anything very grave. After all, the intention on both sides—Charlotte's as well as mine,—had been of the best. She wanted to marry her Tam of the Ewebuchts, which she had managed—I, to wed Irma, from which I was yet as far off as ever.

So I made no remark, but only walked along in a grieved silence. It was not very long till Irma remarked, a little viciously, but with the old involuntary toss of her head which sent all her foam-light curls dipping and swerving into new effects and combinations—so that I could hardly take my eyes off her—"Would you like to hear more about Charlotte?"

"Yes!" said I boldly. For I knew the counter for her moods, which was to be of the same, only stronger.

"Well, she has two children, and when the second, a boy, was born, she claimed another five hundred pounds from her father to stock a farm for him—the old man called it 'a bonny bairn-clout' for our Lottie's Duncan!"

"What did you say the bairn's name was?"

"Duncan—after you!" This with an air of triumph, very pretty to see.

"And the elder, the girl?" I asked—though, indeed, that I knew—from the old letters of my Aunt Jen.

"Irma!" she answered, some little crestfallen.

"After you?"

She had barely time to nod when we passed in at the lodge gate of the Nun's House. The old porter came to the gate to make his reverence, and no doubt to wonder who the young lady, his mistress's kinswoman, had gotten home with her.

I found the Lady Kirkpatrick—Lady by courtesy, but only known thus by all her circle—to be a little vivid spark of a white-haired woman, sitting on a sofa dressed in the French fashion of forty years ago, and with a small plume of feathers in a jewelled turban that glittered as she moved. At first she was kind enough to me.

"Hey, Master-of-Arts Duncan MacAlpine, this is a bonny downcome for your grandfather's son, and you come of decent blood up in Glen Strae—to be great with the Advocate, and scribbling his blethers! A sword by your side would have suited ye better, I'm thinking!"

"Doubtless, my lady," I answered, "if such had been my state and fortune. Nevertheless, I can take a turn at that too, if need be."

"Aha, ye have not lost the Highland conceit, in drawing water from the wells of Whiggery!"

"If I mistake not," I replied, "your ladyship did not care to bide always about a king's court when she had the chance."

For I knew her history, as did everybody in Edinburgh—a little gossiping town at that time—now, they say, purged of scandal—which is a Heaven's miracle if ever there was one.

"Och, hear him!" she cried, throwing up her fan with a jerk to the end of its tether with a curious flouting disdain, "politics are very well when it is 'Have at them, my merry men a'!' But after, when all is done and laid on the shelf like broken bairns'-plaiks, better be a Whig in the West Bow than a Jesuit in a king's palace abroad!"

And, like enough (so at least it was whispered), the choice had been offered her.

Then all in a moment she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye that was hardly less than impish. Indeed, I may say that she flew at me much like an angry wasp when a chance of your walking-stick stirs its nest.

"It's prophesied," she said, "that some day a Kirkpatrick of Closeburn will be greater than a queen. For me it was, 'Thank you kindly! I would rather dwell in the Nun's House of the Dean than possess the treasures of Egypt!' But this lass is a Kirkpatrick too, though only through her grandmother, and I troth it may be her that's to wear the crown. At any rate, mind you, no dominie's son with his fingers deep in printer's ink, and in the confidence of our little Advocate that rideth on the white horse—only it's a powny—must venture any pretensions——"

"You mistake me," said I, suddenly very dignified, "my family——"

"Fiddlesticks," cried the old lady; "there's Bellman Jock wha's faither was a prince o' the bluid. But what the better is he o' that? Na, na, there's to be no trokin', nor eyesdropping, nor yet slipping of notes into itching palms, nor seeing one another to doors!—Och, aye, I ken the gait o't fine. Mony is the time I have seen it travelled. This young leddy is for your betters, sirrah, and being but the son of a village dominie, and working for your bread among Leein' Johnny's hundred black men in Parliament Close, ye may—an it please ye, and if ye please, gie this door a wide gae-by. For if ye come a second time, Samuel Whan, the porter, will have his orders to steek the yett in your face!"

"Madame," said I, very fine, "it shall not be done twice!"

I stole a glance at Irma, who was standing with her face white and her lips trembling.

"No," said she, "nor yet once. I came here at your request, Aunt Kirkpatrick. For years and years my brother and I have sorned on the family of this gentleman—you yourself grant he is that——"

"No such thing!" snapped my lady Kirkpatrick, "gentleman indeed—a newsmonger's apprentice! That's your gentrice!"

"We dwelt there, my brother and I," Irma went on, "none of my family troubling their heads or their purses about us, yet without a plack we were treated as brother and sister by all the family."

"Be off, then, with your brother, since you are so fond of him!" cried the fiery old lady, rising with a long black cane in her hand, a terrier yelping and snapping at her heels. "I am for London next week, and I cannot be at the chairge of a daft hempie, especially one of such low, common tastes."

At these words, so unexpected and uncalled for, Irma put out her hand and took mine. She spoke very gently.

"Duncan," she said, "we are not wanted here. Let us be going!"

"But—Irma——!" I gasped, for even then I would take no advantage. "Whither shall I conduct you? Have you other friends in Edinburgh?"

"Before a minister!" she said. "That will be best. I have no friends but you!"

"Aye, there ye are!" cried the old lady, "I was sure there was something at the back of this sudden flight to Edinburgh. The dear little brother—oh, but we were that fond of him—the poor, poor innocent bairn. Such a comfort for him to know his sister near at hand! Yet, though I have done with you, Mistress Irma Sobieski, I may say that I wish you no ill. Make a better use of your youth than maybe I have done. If ye need a helping hand, there's my sister Frances out at the Sciennes. She's fair crammed like a Strasburg goose wi' the belles-lettres. She will maybe never let ye within the door, but a shilling a week of outdoor relief ye are sure of—for she sets up for being full of the milk of human kindness. She set her cap at John Home when he came home from London. She would never even allow that Davie Hume was an atheist, whilk was as clear as that I hae a nose to my face!—— Off with you to Fanny's at the Sciennes. And a long guid day to the pair of ye—ye are a disobedient regardless lassock, and ye are heapin' up wrath again the day of wrath, but for all that I'm no sayin' that I'll forget you in my will! There are others I like waur nor you, when all's said and done!"

"I would not take a penny of yours if I were starving on the street!" cried Irma.

"Save us!" said the old lady, lifting up her black wand, "ye will maybe think different when ye are real hungrysome. The streets are nae better than they are caa'ed. But off wi' ye, and get honestly tied up! Bid Samuel Whan shut the yett after ye!"



CHAPTER XXXI

TWICE MARRIED

Now I have never to this day been able to make up my mind whether the Lady Kirkpatrick was really stirred with such anger as she pretended, whether she was only more than a little mad, or if all was done merely to break down Irma's reserve by playing on her anger and pride.

If the last was the cause of my lady's strange behaviour to us, it was shiningly successful.

"We will not go a step to find my Lady Frances," said Irma when we were outside; "if she be so full of all the wisdoms, she would very likely try to separate us."

And certainly it was noways my business to make any objections. So, hardly crediting my happiness, I went southwards over the Bridges, with Irma by my side, my heart beating so rarely that I declare I could hardly bethink me of a minister to make me sure of Irma before she had time to change her mind. As was usual at that hour at the Surgeon's Hall, we met Freddy Esquillant coming from the direction of Simon Square. Him I sent off as quickly as he could to Rankeillor Street for Amelia Craven. I felt that this was no less than Amelia's due, for many a time and oft must she have been wearied with my sighs and complaints—very suitable to the condition of a lover, but mightily wearisome to the listener.

Irma said nothing. She seemed to be walking in a dream, and hardly noticed Freddy—or yet the errand upon which I sent him.

It came to me that, as the matter was of the suddenest, Amelia Craven might help us to find a small house of our own where we might set up our household gods—that is, when we got any.

An unexpected encounter preceded the one expected. I was marching along to our rendezvous with Freddy and Amelia at the crossing from Archers' Hall to the Sciennes, when all of a sudden whom should we meet right in the face but my rosy-cheeked, bunchy little employer—my Lord Advocate in person, all shining as if he had been polished, his face smiling and smirking like a newly-oiled picture, and on his arm, but towering above him, a thin, dusky-skinned woman, plainly dressed, and with an enormous bonnet on her head, obviously of her own manufacture—a sort of tangle of black, brown and green which really had to be seen to be believed.

"Aha!" cried my Lord Advocate; "whither away, young sir? Shirking the proofs, eh, my lad? And may I have the honour to be presented to your sister from the country—for so, by her fresh looks, I divine the young lady to be."

"If you will wait a few minutes till we can find a minister, I will say, 'This, sir, is my wedded wife,'" I declared manfully.

"And is the young lady of the same mind?" quoth my Lord, with a quick, gleg slyness.

"I am, sir—if the business concerns you!" said Irma, looking straight at him.

"What, and dare you say that you will take a man like this for your wedded husband?" he demanded, with the swift up-and-down play of his bushy brows which was habitual to him.

"I see not what business it is of yours," Irma answered, as sharply, "but I do take him for my husband."

"There!" cried the lawyer, pulling out his snuffbox and tapping it vehemently, "it is done. I have performed my first marriage, and all the General Assembly, or the Gretna Green Welder himself, could not have done it neater or made a better job. Declaration before witnesses being sufficient in the eye of the law of Scotland, I declare you two man and wife!"

Irma looked distressed.

"But I do not feel in the least married," she said; "I must have a minister!"

"You can have all the ministers in Edinburgh, my lass, but you have been duly wedded already in the presence of the first legal authority of your kingdom, not to mention that of the Lady Frances Kirkpatrick——"

"My aunt Frances, after all!" cried Irma, suddenly flushing.

"Who may you be?" said the tall lady, with the face like sculptured gingerbread.

"Who was she, you mean, my Lady Frances?" said the Advocate blandly, helping himself to a pinch of snuff. "I can tell you who she is—Mrs. Duncan MacAlpine, wife of my private assistant and the sub-editor of the Universal Review."

It was the first time he had given me that title, which pleased me, and led me to hope that he meant to accompany the honour by a rise in salary.

"I am—I was—Irma Sobieski Maitland," the answer was rather halting and faint, for Irma was easily touched, and it was only when much provoked that she put on her "No-one-shall-touch-me-with-impunity" air.

"If the bride be at all uneasy in her mind," said the Lord Advocate, "here we are at Mr. Dean's door. I dare say he will step down-stairs into the chapel and put on his surplice. From what I judge of the lady's family, she will probably have as little confidence in a Presbyterian minister as in a Presbyterian Lord Advocate!"

Freddy and Amelia were waiting across the street. I beckoned to them, and they crossed reluctantly, seeing us talking with my Lord Advocate, whom, of course, all the world of Edinburgh knew. I was not long in making the introductions.

"Miss Craven, late of Yorkshire, and Mr. Frederick Esquillant, assistant to Professor Greg at the College."

"Any more declarations before witnesses to-day?" said my Lord, looking quaintly at them. "Ah—the crop is not ripe yet. Well, well—we must be content for one day."

And he vanished into a wide, steeply-gabled house, standing crushed between higher "lands."

"The Dean will officiate, never fear," said Lady Frances. "So you have been staying with my sister, and of course she turned you out. Well, she sent you to me, I'll wager, and you were on your way. You could not have done better than come direct to me."

"Indeed it was quite an accident," said Irma, who never would take credit for what she had not deserved; "you see, I did not know you, and I thought that one like my Lady Kirkpatrick was quite enough——"

"Hush, hush," said the tall brown woman; "perhaps she means better than you give her credit for. She is a rich woman, and can afford to pay for her whimsies. Be sure she meant some kindness. But, at any rate, here comes the Advocate with our good Dean."

We mounted into a curiously arranged house. At first one saw nothing but flights on flights of stairs, range above range apparently going steeply up to the second floor, without any first floor rooms at all.

Mr. Dean was a handsome old man with white hair, and he took our hands most kindly.

"My friend here," he said, smiling at my Lord Advocate, "tells me that he has not left very much for me to do from a legal point of view. But I look upon marriage as a sacrament, and though the bridegroom is not, as I hear, of our communion, I have no difficulty in acceding to the request of my Lord—especially since our good Lady Frances has deigned to be present as a near relative of the bride."

He called something into a sort of stone tube. Then bidding us to be seated, he went into another room to array himself in his surplice, from which, presently, he came out, holding a service-book in his hand.

We followed him down-stairs—I with Lady Frances on my arm, the Lord Advocate preceding us with Irma, whom he was to give away. He appeared to take quite a boyish interest in the whole affair, from which I augured the best for our future.

We were rather hampered at the turning of the stair, and had to drop into single file again, when Irma clutched suddenly at my hand, and in the single moment we had together in the dusk, she whispered, "Oh, I am so glad!"

Lady Frances told me as we passed into the little half-underground chapel, low and barrel-shaped as to the roof, with the candles ready alight on the altar, that all this secrecy had come down from the time when the service according to the Episcopal form had been strictly forbidden in Edinburgh—at least in any open way.

I cannot describe what followed. I must have stood like a dummy, muttering over what I was prompted to say. But the responses came to Irma's lips as if she had many times rehearsed them—which perhaps was the case—I know now that she had always kept her father's King Edward prayer-book, and read it when alone. We stood by the rails of what I now know to have been the altar. All about was hung with deep crimson, and the heavy curtains were looped back with golden cord. A kind of glory shone behind the altar, in the midst of which appeared, in Hebrew letters, the name of God. Irma, who was far more self-possessed than I, found time to wonder and even to ask me what it meant. And I, translating freely (for I had picked up somewhat of that language from Freddy Esquillant), said, "Thou, God, seest me."

Which, at any rate, if not exactly correct, was true and apt enough.

"Well, are you well married now, babes?" said the Advocate, and I tried to answer him as we made our way to the vestry—I stumbling and self-abased, Irma with the certainty and calmness of a widow at least thrice removed from the first bashfulness of a bride.

We signed the register, in which (the Advocate took care to inform us) were some very distinguished names indeed. Which, however, was entirely the same to me.

Then as I thanked Mr. Dean for his kindness, not daring to offer any poor fee, the Advocate chatted with Amelia Craven with great delicacy and understanding, inquiring chiefly as to Freddy's attainments and prospects.

But what was my surprise when, as soon as we were on the cobble stones, the Lady Frances turned sharply upon Irma, and said, quite in the style of my Lady Kirkpatrick, "And now, Irma Maitland, since your husband has no house or any place to take you to, you had better come to my house in the Sciennes till he can make proper arrangements. It is not at all suitable that a Maitland should be on a common stair like a travelling tinker looking for lodgings."

Hearing which the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better than many stage-plays to him.

As for Irma, she looked at me, but now sweetly and innocently, as if asking for counsel, not haughty or disdainful as had been her wont. The accusation of poverty touched me, and I was on the point of telling her to choose for herself, that I would find her a house as soon as possible, when Amelia Craven thrust herself forward.

Up to this point she had kept silent, a little awed by the great folk, or perhaps by the church, with the red hangings and twinkling, mysterious candles on the altar.

"I do not know a great deal," she said, "but this I do know, that a wife's place is with her husband—and especially when the 'love, honour and obey' is hardly out of her mouth. She shall come home to my mother's with me, even if Duncan MacAlpine there has not enough sense to bid her."

Upon which the Advocate strove (or at least appeared to strive) to please everybody and put everybody in the right. It was perhaps natural that, till arrangements were completed, so young a bride should remain with her family. But, on the other hand, young people could not begin too soon to face the inevitable trials of life. The feelings of the young lady who had expressed her mind in so lively a manner—Miss—Miss—ah yes, Craven—Miss Amelia Craven—did her all honour. It only remained to hear the decision of—of (a smirk, several dimples and a prolonged tapping on the lid of his snuffbox)—Mistress Duncan MacAlpine.

"I will go with my husband," said Irma simply.

"There's for you, Frances!" cried the Advocate, turning to his companion with a little teasing "hee-hee" of laughter, almost like the neigh of a horse; "there spoke all the woman."

But Lady Frances had very deliberately turned about and was walking, without the least greeting or farewell, in the direction of her own house of Sciennes.

"There goes a Kirkpatrick," said the Advocate, tapping his box cynically; "cry with them, they will hunt your enemies till they drop. Cry off with them, and it's little you will see of them but the back of their hand."

He touched my Irma on her soft cheek with the tips of his fingers. "And I wish, for your goodman's sake," he said, "that this little lady's qualities do not run in the female line."

"I hope," said Irma, "that I shall always have grace to obey my husband."

"Graces you have—overly many of them, as it is easy to see," quoth the gallant Advocate, taking off his hat and bowing low, "but it is seldom indeed that ladies use either Grace or their graces for such a purpose!"



CHAPTER XXXII

THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE MEADOWS

Irma and I had a great seeking for the little house, great enough for two, with such convenience as, at the time, could be called modern, and yet within reach of our very moderate means. First of all Freddy and I had gone to the Nun's House to ask for Irma's box and accoutrement. These made no great burden. Nevertheless, we borrowed a little "hurley," or handcart, from the baker's girl opposite, who certainly bore no malice. I had our marriage lines in my pocket, lest any should deny my rights. But though we did not see the Lady Kirkpatrick, the goods were all corded and placed ready behind the door of the porter's lodge. We had them on the "hurley" in a minute. The Lady Frances passed in as we were carrying out the brass-bound trunk of Irma's that had been my grandmother's. She went by as if she had not seen us, her curiously mahogany face more of the punchinello type than ever—yet somehow I could not feel but that most of this anger was assumed. These women had shown Irma no kindness, indeed had never troubled themselves about her existence, all the long time she had stayed at Heathknowes. Why, then, begin so suddenly to play upon the sounding strings of family and long descent?

Indeed, we two thought but little more about the matter. Our minds were fully enough occupied. The wonder of those new days—the unexpected, unforeseen glory of the earth—the sudden sweetness of love, unbelievable, hardly yet realized, overwhelmed and confounded us.

And, more than all, there was the search for a house. The Advocate met me every day with his queer smile, but though he put my salary on a more secure basis, and arranged that in future I should be paid by the printer and not by himself, the sum total of my income was not materially altered.

"What's enough for one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned in the law.

"I began the same way myself," he said, "and though I have a bigger house now and serving men in kneebreeks and powder in their hair, I never go by that cottage out by Comely Bank without a 'pitter-patter' of my sinful old heart!"

He thought for a while, and then added, "Aye, aye—there's no way for young folk to start life like being poor and learning to hain on the gowns and the broadcloth! What matter the trimmings, when ye have one another?"

As to the house, it was naturally Irma who did most of the searching. For me, I had to be early at the secretary's office, and often late at the printer's. But there was always some time in the day that I had to myself—could I only foresee it before I left home in the morning. "Home" was, so far, at Mrs. Craven's, where the good Amelia had given us up her chamber, and Freddy rose an hour earlier, so that his wall-press bed might be closed and the "room" made ready for Irma's breakfast parlour.

All the three begged that we might stay on. We were, they declared with one voice, not putting them to the smallest inconvenience. But I knew different, and besides, I had a constant and consuming desire for a house of mine own, however small.

Ever since I first knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious silences of three years—when, quite against the proverb, love had grown by feeding upon itself.

And my dream was this.

I was in a great city, harassed by many duties, troubled by enemies open and concealed. There was the drear emptiness of poverty in my pocket, present anxiety in my heart, and little hope in the outlook. But I had work—I did not know in my dream what that work was—only that it sufficed to keep body and soul together, but after it was done I was weak and weary, a kind of unsatisfied despondency gnawing at my heart.

Then I got loose for an hour or so from my unknown tasks. My path lay across a kind of open place into which many narrow streets ran, while some dived away into the lower deeps of the city. People went their ways as I was doing mine, dejected and sad. But always, as I crossed toward the opening of a wide new street, where against the sky were tall scaffoldings and men busy with hod and mortar, I saw Irma coming towards me. She was neat and youthful, but dressed poorly in plain things—homespun, and in my dream, I judged, also home-made.

I saw her afar off, and the heart within me gave a great leap. She came towards me smiling, and lo! I seemed to stand still and worship the lithe carriage and elastic step. The world grew all sweet and gay. The lift above became blue and high. The sun shone no longer grey and brown, but smiling and brilliant—as—as the face of Irma.

Strangely enough she did not greet me nor hold out her hand as acquaintances do. She came straight up to me as if the encounter were the merest matter-of-course, while as I stood there, with the hunger and the wretchedness all gone out of me, the weariness and misery melted in the grace of that radiant smile, she uttered just these words, "I have found the Little House Round the Corner!"

Now I will tell of a strange thing—so strange that I have consulted Irma about it, whether I should write it down here or keep it just for ourselves.

And she said, "It is true—so why not set it down?" Well, this is what happened. One day I had arranged to meet Irma at the corner of the quaint little village of Laurieston, which, as all the world knows, looks down on the saughs of the Meadows and out upon the slopes of Bruntsfield where, among the whins, the city golfers lose their balls.

At that time, as all the world knows, there was undertaken a certain work of opening out that part of the ancient wall which runs westward from Bristo Port at the head of the Potter Row. Some great old houses had gone down, and I mind well that I was greatly attracted by the first view of the Greyfriars Kirk that ever I had from that quarter. (It was soon lost again behind new constructions, but for a time it was worth seeing, with its ancient "through" stones, and the Martyrs' Monument showing its bossy head over the low wall.)

So much taken up with this was I, that I did not notice the altered aspect of the place. Yet I looked about me like one who is suddenly confronted by something very familiar. There was the wide space. There were the narrow streets I knew so well. Yonder was the Candlemaker Row diving down into the bowels of the earth. Away towards the Greyfriars were the tall "lands" which the masons were pulling down. Nearer were men climbing up ladders with hods on their shoulders. Highest of all, against the blue sky, naked as a new gibbet, stood out the framework of a crane.

It was the very place of my dream. I knew it well enough, indeed, but never until that day it had looked so. And there, coming smiling down the midst, easily as one might down the aisle of an empty church, was Irma herself, as plain and poor in habiliment as my dream, but smiling—ah, with a smile that turned all my heart to water, so dear it was. It was good of God to let us love each other like that—and be poor.

And as she came nearer, she did not hold out her hand, nor greet me—but when she was quite close she said, exactly as in the dream, "I have found the Little House round the Corner!" Yet she had never heard of my dream before.

That this is true, we do solemnly bear witness, each for our own parts, thereof, and hereto append our names—

Duncan MacAlpine. Irma MacAlpine.

* * * * *

Irma had found it, indeed, but as I judged at the first sight of the house, it was bound to be too expensive for our purses. I immediately decided that something must be wrong somewhere, when I heard that we could have this pleasant cottage with its scrap of garden, long and narrow certainly, but full of shade and song of birds, for the inconsiderable rent of ten pounds a year. We thought of many dangers and inconveniences, but Irma was infinitely relieved when it came out to be only ghosts. Servants, it appeared, could not be got to stay.

"Is that all?" said Irma scornfully. "Well, then, I don't mean to keep any servants, and as for ghosts, Louis and I have lived in a big house in a wood full of them from cellar to roof-tree! You let ghosts alone, they will let you alone! 'Freits follow them that look for them!"



CHAPTER XXXIII

AND THE DOOR WAS SHUT

We were poor, very poor indeed in these days. Irma had many a wrinkled brow and many an anxious heart over the weekly expenses—so much to be set aside for rent, so much for mysterious things called taxes—which, seeing no immediate good arise from them, my little rebel hated with all her heart, and devised all sorts of schemes to evade.

But every week there was the joy of a victory won. Untoward circumstances had been vanquished—the butcher, the baker had been settled with or—done without. For sometimes Amelia Craven came to give us a day's baking, and an array of fragrant scones and girdle-cakes, which I was taken into the kitchen to see on my return home, gave us the assurance of not having to starve for many days yet.

I was glad, too, for it was my busy season, and I had to be much from home. There was, indeed, a certain nondescript Mistress McGrier, who came to help with the heavier duties of the house. She was the daughter of one janitor at the college, the wife of yet another (presently suspended for gross dereliction of duty), and she did some charing to earn an honest penny. But there was little human to be found about her. Whisky, poor food, neglect, and actual ill treatment had left her mind after the pattern of her countenance, mostly blank. Yet I was not sorry when she stayed, especially as the autumnal days shortened, till near the time of my return. Mrs. McGrier frankly tarried for her tea, and her conversation was not enlivening, since she could talk of little save her sorrows as a wife, and how she was trusting to some one in the office (meaning me) for the future reinstatement of her erring janitor.

Sometimes, on Sundays, she would bring him, as it were framed and glazed to a painful pitch of perfection. His red hair was plastered with pomatum, identical with that which had been used upon his boots. Janitor McGrier had been a soldier, and always moved as if to words of command unheard to other mortals. If he had only two yards to go, he started as if from the halt. His pale blue eyes were fixed in his head, and he chewed steadily at lozenges of peppermint or cinnamon to hide the perfume of the glass of "enlivener" with which his wife had bribed him as an argument for submitting to get up and be dressed.

It was only on such show occasions that Mrs. McGrier was voluble. And that, solely, because "Pathrick" said nothing. Even as I remembered him in the days of his pride at the door of the Greek classroom, Pathrick had always possessed the shut mouth, the watery, appealing eye, and the indicative thumb which answered the question of a novice only with a quick jerk in the requisite direction.

I think Pathrick sometimes conceived dark suspicions that I had changed Irma in the intervals of his visits. You see, this small witch had but two dresses that were any way respectable—that is to say, street-going or Sabbath-keeping. But then she had naturally such an instinct of arrangement that a scrap of ribbon, or the lace scarf my grandmother had given her, made so great a difference that she seemed to have an entire wardrobe at her command. No doubt a woman would have picked out the fundamental sameness at a glance. But it did very well for men, who only care for the effect.

Even the Advocate would look in on his way to or from the Sciennes for a cup of tea from Irma. And in our little parlour he would sit and rap on his snuffbox, talking all the while, and forgetting to go till it was dark—as gentle and human as any common man.

When Freddy and Amelia Craven came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his assistance to get married—which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many a dull afternoon for Irma.

Sometimes, if I got away early, I would find him already installed, his hat stuck on his gold-headed cane in the corner—as it were, all his high authority laid aside, while he regarded with moist eyes the work-basket in which Irma kept her interminable scraplets of white things which I would not have meddled with the tip of one of my fingers, but which the Advocate turned over with an ancient familiarity, humming a tune all the while—a tune, however, apt to break off suddenly with a "Humph," and an appeal to the much-enduring lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox.

But I think the dearest and best remembered of all these early experiences happened one winter's evening in the midst of the press and bustle which always attended the opening of the autumn session. The winter number of the Universal was almost due, and we were backward, having had to wait for the copy of an important contributor, whose communication, in the present state of affairs, might even overturn a policy—or, at least, in the opinion of the Advocate, could not be done without. I need not say that the article in question represented his own views with remarkable exactitude, and he looked to it to further his rising influence in London. As he grew greater, he was more often in the south, and we saw less and less of him. On the other hand, the practical work of the Review fell more and more upon me.

So this night, as I say, I was late, and on turning out into the south-going street which leads past the Surgeons' Hall and St. Patrick's Square—my mind being busy with an extra article which I must write to give our readers the necessary number of sheets—for the first and certainly for the last time in my life I continued my train of thought without remembering either that I was a married man, or that my little Irma must be tired waiting for me.

In mitigation of sentence I can only urge the day-long preoccupations in which I had been plunged, and the article, suddenly become necessary, which I must begin to write instanter. But at any rate, excuse or no excuse, it is certain that I woke from my daydream to find myself in Rankeillor Street, almost at the foot of the old Craven stairs which, as a bachelor, I had climbed so often.

Then, with a sudden shamed leap of the heart and a plunge of the hand into my breeches pocket for my door key, I turned about. I had forgotten, though only for a moment, the little wife working among her cloud of feathery linen and trimmings, and the little white house round the corner above the Meadows. You may guess whether or no I hurried along between ash "backets" of the most unparklike Gifford Park, how sharply I turned and scudded along Hope Park, dodging the clothes' posts to the right, from which prudent housewives had removed the ropes with the deepening of the twilight.

The dark surface of the Meadows spread suddenly before me in an amplitude of bleakness. A thin, sleety scuff of passing snow-cloud beat in my face. A tall man wrapped in a cloak edged suspiciously nearer as if to take stock of me, but my haste, and perhaps a certain wildness in the disorder of my dress and hat made him think better of it—that is, if indeed he ever thought ill of it—and with a muttered "Good-e'en to ye," he passed upon his way.

I could see it now. The light in the window, the two candles that were always set at the elbow of the busy little housewife, the supper, frugal but well-considered, simmering on the hob, the table spread white and dainty, with knives and forks of silver (the Advocate's gift) laid out in order.

Then all the warm and loving things that sleep in the breast of a man rose up within me. The long, weary day was forgotten. The article I must write was shoved into a corner out of the way. For this one hour, in spite of whistling wintry winds and scouring sleet-drifts, the little light yonder in the window was sufficient.

Two farthing dips, a hearth fire, and a loving heart! Earth had nothing more to give, and my spirit seemed glorified within me. I had a curious feeling of melting within me, which was by no means a desire to weep, but rather as if all the vital parts of the man I was had been suddenly turned to warm water. I cannot tell if any one has ever felt the like before, but certainly I did that night, and "warm water" comes as near to the real thing as I can find words to express.

It seemed an age while I was crossing the short, stubbly grass of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was the putting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger—sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a little late in getting home.

As I ran up the short path to the gate I blew into my key. The latch of the garden-gate clicked in the blast which swept across from the Blackfords. But there at last before me was the door. The key glided, well-accustomed, into its place, not rattling, but with the slide of long-polished and intimate steel—soft, like silk on silk.

But the key never turned. The door opened, seemingly of itself, and, gloriously loving, a candle held high in her hand, her full, white house-gown sweeping to her feet, the little wife stood waiting.

I said nothing about the overplus of work that had filled my head as I turned from the high, bleak portals of the University—nothing of how, all unknowing, my traitor feet had carried me to the stairway in Rankeillor Street—nothing of the long way, or the suspicious man in the cloak, of the blast and the bent and the sting of the sleet in my face.

I was at home, just she and I—the two of us alone. And upon us two the door was shut.



CHAPTER XXXIV

A VISIT FROM BOYD CONNOWAY

"I wonder," said Irma one Saturday morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, "I wonder what that man is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!"