The day had passed noon before these new dispositions were planned. Posting ten men and a corporal to guard the charred remains of the camp, and two small bodies to patrol the road east and west of the house and to keep a portion of the defence busy in the courtlage, the lieutenant led the remainder of his force through an orchard divided from the south end of the house by a narrow lane, over which a barn abutted. Its high blank wall had been loopholed on both floors and was quite unassailable, but its roof was of thatch. And as he studied it, keeping his men in cover, a happy inspiration occurred to him. He sent back to the camp for an oil-can and a parcel of cotton wadding, and by three o'clock had opened a brisk fire of flaming bullets on the thatch. Within twenty minutes the marksmen had it well ignited. Behind and close above it rose a gable of the house itself, with a solitary window overlooking the ridge, and their hope was that the wind would carry the fire from one building to another.

Thatch well sodden with winter's rain does not blaze or crackle. Dense clouds of smoke went up, and soon small lines of flame were running along the slope of the roof, dying down, and bursting forth anew. By the light of them, through the smoke, the soldiers saw a man at the window above, firing, reloading, and firing again. They sent many a shot at the window; but good aim from their cover was impossible, and the loopholes of the barn itself spat bullets viciously and kept the assault from showing its head.

The man at the window—it was Roger Stephen—exposed himself recklessly even when the fire from the loopholes ceased, as to the lieutenant's surprise it did quite suddenly.

For a minute or so the thatch burned on in silence. Then from within the building came the sound of an axe crashing, stroke on stroke, upon the posts and timbers of the roof. Some madman was bringing down the barn-roof upon him to save the house. The man at the window went on loading and firing.

The soldiers themselves held their breath, and almost let it go in a cheer when, with a rumble and a thunderous roar, the roof sank and collapsed, sending up one furious rush of flame in a column of dust. But as the dust poured down the flame sank with it. The house was saved. They looked about them and saw the light fading out of the sky, and the lieutenant gave the order to return to camp. The man at the window sent a parting shot after them.

And with that ended the great assault, but scarcely had the Sheriff reached camp when a voice came crying after him through the dusk, and, turning, he spied a figure waving a white rag on a stick. The messenger was old Malachi, and he halted at a little distance, but continued to wave his flag vigorously.

"Hey?" bawled back the Sheriff. "What is it?"

"Flag o' truce!" bawled Malachi in answer. "Master's compliments, and if you've done for the day he wants to know if you've such a thing as a surgeon."

"Pretty job for us if we hadn't," growled the Sheriff. "I keep no surgeons for lawbreakers. How many wounded have you?"

"Ne'er a man amongst us, 'cept poor Jack Trevarthen, and he's dead. 'Tisn' for a man, 'tis for a woman. Mistress Stephen's crying out, and the master undertakes if you send a surgeon along he shall be treated careful."

So back with Malachi went the regimental surgeon, who had done his work with the wounded some hours before. Roger Stephen met him at the side wicket, and, leading him indoors, pointed up the stairs. "When 'tis over," said he, "you'll find me yonder in the parlour." He turned away, and upstairs the young doctor went.

Roger entered the parlour and shut the door behind him. The room was dark and the hearth cold; but he groped for a chair and sat for two hours alone, motionless, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his clasped, smoke-begrimed hands. He was listening. Now and again a moan reached him from the room overhead. From the kitchen came the sound of voices cursing loudly at intervals, but for the most part muttering— muttering. . .

The cursers were those who came in from their posts to snatch a handful of supper, and foraged about in larder and pantry demanding to know what had become of Jane. Jane was upstairs. . .

The mutterers were men who had abandoned their posts to discuss the situation by the kitchen fire. A brisk assault just now could hardly have missed success. Trevarthen's death had demoralised the garrison, and these men by the fire were considering the risk to their necks. Roger knew what they were discussing. By rising and stepping into the kitchen he could at least have shamed them back to duty. He knew this full well, yet he sat on motionless. . .

A sound fetched him to his feet—a child's wail.

He stood up in the darkness lifting his arms . . . as a man might yawn and stretch himself awaking from a long dream.

Someone tapped at the door, turned the handle, and stood irresolutely there peering into the darkness.

"Yes?" said Roger, advancing.

"Ah!" it was the surgeon's voice—"I beg your pardon, but finding you in darkness—Yes, it's all right—a fine boy, and the mother, I should say, doing well. Do you wish to go up?"

"God forbid!" said Roger, and led him to the kitchen, where the whisperers started up at his entrance. In the middle of the room, on a board across two trestles, lay something hidden by a white sheet—Trevarthen's body, recovered from the ruins of the barn.

"He was my friend," said Roger simply, pausing by the corpse. Then he turned with a grim smile on the malcontents. "Where's the brandy?" he asked. "The doctor'll have a drink afore he turns out into the night."

"No, I thank you, Mr. Stephen," said the young surgeon.

"Won't take it from me? Well, I thank ye all the same." He led his guest forth, let him out by the wicket, and returned to the kitchen.

"Lads," said he, "the night's foggy yet. You may slip away to your homes, if you go quiet. Step and tell the others, and send Malachi to me. I—I thank ye, friends, but, as you've been arguing to yourselves, the game's up; we won't stand another assault to-morrow."

They filed out and left him, none asking—as Trevarthen would have asked— concerning his own safety. By Trevarthen's body Malachi found him standing; and again, and in the same attitude, found him standing by it a quarter of an hour later, when, having muffled the horses' hoofs in straw, he returned to announce that all was ready, and the lane clear towards the moors. In so short a time the whole garrison had melted away.

"He was my friend," said Roger again, looking down on the sheet, and wondered why this man had loved him. Indeed, there was no explanation except that Trevarthen had been just Trevarthen.

He followed Malachi, wondering the while if he had ever thrown Trevarthen an affectionate word. Yet this man had cheerfully given up life for him, as he, Roger Stephen, was at this moment giving up more than life for a woman he hated.

He walked forth from Steens, leading his horse softly. At the foot of the lane he mounted, looked back in the darkness, and lifted a fist against the sky.

Then they headed eastward, and rode, Malachi and he, over the soundless turf and through the fog, breasting the moor together.

A little after midnight, on the high ground, they reined up, straining their ears at a rumbling sound borne up to them from the valley road below—the sound (though they knew it not) of two cannon ploughing through the mire towards Steens.

At eight o'clock next morning one of these guns opened fire, and with its first shot ripped a breach through the courtlage wall. There came no answer. When the Sheriff, taking courage, rode up to summon the house, its garrison consisted of two women and one sleeping babe.



XVI.

Four days later the fugitives were climbing a slope on the south-eastern fringe of Dartmoor. They mounted through a mist as dense almost as that in which they had ridden forth—a cloud resting on the hill's shoulder. But a very few yards above them the sky was blue, and to the south of them, had their eyes been able to pierce the short screen of vapour, the country lay clear for mile upon mile, away beyond Ashburton to Totnes, and beyond Totnes to Dartmouth and the Channel.

Roger Stephen's face was yellow with disease and hunger; he could hardly sit in his saddle. He panted, and beads stood out on his forehead as though he felt every effort of his straining horse. Malachi's face was white but expressionless. Life had never promised him much, and for him the bitterness of death was easily passed.

By-and-by, as a waft of wind lifted the cloud's ragged edge, his eyes sought the long slopes below, and then went up to a mass of dark granite topping the white cumulus above, and frowning over it out of the blue.

"Better get down here," he said.

Roger rode on unheeding.

"Better get down here, master," he repeated in a wheedling voice, and, dismounting, took Roger's rein. Roger obeyed at once, almost automatically. As his feet felt earth he staggered, swayed, and dropped forward into Malachi's arms.

"Surely! Surely!" the old man coaxed him, and took his arm. They left their horses to graze, and mounted the slope, the old man holding the younger's elbow, and supporting him. Each carried a gun slung at his back.

They reached the foot of the tor, and found a granite stairway, rudely cut, winding to its summit. Roger turned to Malachi with questioning eyes, like a child's.

"Surely! Surely!" repeated Malachi, glancing behind him. His eye had caught a glint of scarlet far down on the uncoloured slope.

With infinite labour and many pauses they climbed the stairway together, the old man always supporting the younger and coaxing him. In the broad stand of granite at the summit the rains had worn a basin, shallow, ample to recline in, even for a man of Roger's stature. Here Malachi laid him down, first drawing the gun-sling gently off his shoulders. Roger said nothing, but lay and gasped, staring up into the blue sky.

Malachi examined the two guns, looked to their locks, and, fishing in his pockets, drew forth a powder-horn and a bag of bullets. These he laid with the guns on the granite ledge before him, and, crawling forward on his stomach, peered over.

The cloud had drifted by. It was as he expected—the soldiers were climbing the slope. For almost half an hour he kept his position, and behind him Roger muttered on, staring up at the sky. Amid the mutterings from time to time the old man heard a curse. They sank at length to a mumble, senseless, rambling on and on, without intelligible words.

Malachi put a hand out for a gun, raised himself deliberately on his elbow, and fired. He did not look to see if his shot had told, but turned at once and, in the act of fitting the cloth to his ramrod, looked anxiously at his master. Even the mumbling had now ceased, but still Roger gazed fixedly up into the sky and panted. He had not heeded the report.

Malachi reloaded carefully, stretched out his hand upon the second gun, and fired again. This time he watched his shot, and noted that it had found its man. He turned to his master with a smile, reaching out his hand for the reloaded gun, picked it up, laid it down again, and felt in his pocket.

"No good wasting time," he muttered.

He drew forth pipe and tinder-box, hunted out the last few crumbs of tobacco at the bottom of his pocket, and lit up, still keeping his eyes on Roger as he smoked.

A voice challenged far down the slope. He crawled to his master's side.

"There's one thing we two never could abide, master dear, could we? and that was folks interruptin'."

He took up the reloaded gun again, fired his last shot, and sat puffing.

Minutes passed, and then once more a voice challenged angrily from the foot of the tor. Malachi leaned across, closed the eyes that still stared up implacably, and arose, knocking out the ashes of his pipe against his boot-heel.

"Right you are!" he sang down bravely. "There be two men up here, and one was a good man; but he's dead, and the law that killed 'en takes naught from me but a few poor years that be worthless without 'en. Come ye up, friends, and welcome!"



THE HORROR ON THE STAIR.

Particulars concerning the end of Mistress Catherine Johnstone, late of Givens, in Ayrshire; from a private relation made by the young woman Kirstie Maclachlan to the Reverend James Souttar, A.M., Minister of the Parish of Wyliebank, and by him put into writing.

I had been placed in my parish of Wyliebank about a twelvemonth before making acquaintance with Mr. Johnstone, the minister at Givens, twelve miles away. This would be in the year 1721, and from that until the date of his death (which happened in the autumn of 1725) I saw him in all not above a dozen times. To me he appeared a douce, quiet man, commonplace in the pulpit and not over-learned, strict in his own behaviour, methodical in his duties, averse from gossip of all kinds, having himself a great capacity for silence, whereby he seemed perhaps wiser than he was, but not (I think) more charitable. He had greatly advanced his fortunes by marriage.

This marriage made him remarkable, who else had passed as quite ordinary; but not for the money it brought him. Of his wife I knew no more than my neighbours. She was a daughter of Sir John Telfair, of Balgarnock, a gentleman of note in Renfrewshire; and the story ran concerning her that, at the age of sixteen, having a spite against one of the maidservants, she had pretended to be bewitched and persecuted by the devil, and upheld the imposture so cleverly, with rigors, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and spitting forth of straws, chips and cinders, pins and bent nails, that the Presbytery ordained a public fast against witchcraft, and by warrant of Privy Council a Commission visited Balgarnock to take evidence of her condition. In the presence of these Commissioners, of whom the Lord Blantyre was president, the young lady flatly accused one Janet Burns, her mother's still-room maid, of tormenting her with aid of the black art, and for witness showed her back and shoulders covered with wales, some blue and others freshly bleeding; and further, in the midst of their interrogatories cast herself into a trance, muttering and offering faint combat to divers unseen spirits, and all in so lifelike a manner that, notwithstanding they could discover no evident proof of guilt, these wise gentry were overawed and did commit the woman Janet Burns to take her trial for witchcraft at Paisley. There, poor soul, as she was escorted to the prison, the town rabble met her with sticks and stones and closed the case; for on her way a cobble cast by some unknown hand struck her upon the temple, and falling into the arms of the guard, she never spoke after, but breathed her last breath as they forced her through the mob to the prison gates.

This was the tale told to me; and long before I heard it the reprobation of the vulgar had swung back from Janet Burns and settled upon her accuser. Certain it was that swiftly upon the woman's murder—as I may well call it—Miss Catherine made a recovery, nor was thereafter troubled with fits, swoons or ailments calling for public notice. Indeed, she was shunned by all, and lived (as well as I could discover) in complete seclusion for twenty years, until the minister of Givens sought her out with an offer of marriage.

By this time she was near forty; a thin, hard-featured spinster, dwelling alone with her mother the Lady Balgarnock. Her two younger sisters had married early—the one to Captain Luce, of Dunragit in Wigtownshire, the other to a Mr. Forbes, of whom I know nothing save that his house was in Edinburgh: and as they had no great love for Miss Catherine, so they neither sought her company nor were invited to Balgarnock. Her father, Sir John, had deceased a few months before Mr. Johnstone presented himself.

He made a short courtship of it. The common tongues accused him (as was to be expected) of coming after her money; whereas she and her old mother lived a cat-and-dog life together, and she besides was of an age when women will often marry the first man that offers. But I now believe, and (unless I mistake) the history will show, that the excuse vulgarly made for her did not touch the real ground of her decision. At any rate, she married him and lived from 1718 to 1725 in the manse at Givens, where I made her acquaintance.

I had been warned what to expect. The parishioners of Givens seldom had sight of her, and set it down to pride and contempt of her husband's origin. (He had been a weaver's son from Falkirk, who either had won his way to the Marischal College of Aberdeen by strength of will and in defiance of natural dullness, or else had started with wits but blunted them in carving his way thither.) She rarely set foot beyond the manse garden, the most of her time being spent in a roomy garret under the slates, where she spun a fine yarn and worked it into thread of the kind which is yet known as "Balgarnock thread," and was invented by her or by her mother—for accounts differ as to this. I have beside me an advertisement clipped from one of the newspapers of twenty years ago, which says: "The Lady Balgarnock and her eldest daughter having attained to great perfection in making whitening and twisting of SEWING THREED which is as cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people's being imposed upon by other Threed which may be sold under the name of Balgarnock Threed, the Papers in which the Lady Balgarnock at Balgarnock, or Mrs. Johnstone her eldest daughter, at Givens, do put up their Threed shall, for direction, have thereupon their Coat of Arms, 'Azure, a ram's head caboshed or.' Those who want the said Threed, which is to be sold from fivepence to six shillings per ounce, may write to the Lady Balgarnock at Balgarnock, or Mrs. Johnstone at Givens, to the care of the Postmaster at Glasgow; and may call for the same in Edinburgh at John Seton, Merchant, his shop in the Parliament Close, where they will be served either in Wholesale or Retail, and will be served in the same manner at Glasgow, by William Selkirk, Merchant, in Trongate."

In this art, then, the woman spent most of her days, preparing the thread with her own hands and bleaching her materials on a large slate raised upon brackets in the window of her garret. And, if one may confess for all, glad enough were Mr. Johnstone's guests when this wife of his rose from the table and departed upstairs. For a colder, more taciturn and discomfortable hostess could not be conceived. She would scarcely exchange a word through the meal—no, not with her husband, though he watched and seemed to forestall her wants with a tender officiousness. To see her seated there in black (which was her only wear), with her back to the window, her eyes on the board, and, as it seemed, the shadow of a long-past guilt brooding about her continually, gave me a feeling as of cold water dripping down the spine. And even the husband, though he pretended to observe nothing, must have known my relief when she withdrew and left us with the decanters.

Now I had tholed this penance, maybe, a dozen times, and could never win a speech from Mrs. Johnstone, nor a look, to show that she regarded me while present or remembered me after I had gone. So you may think I was surprised one day when the minister came riding over with word that his wife wanted a young girl for companion and to help her with the spinning, and had thought of me as likely to show judgment in recommending one. The girl must be sixteen, or thereabout, of decent behaviour and tractable, no gadder or lover of finery, healthy, able to read, an early riser, and, if possible, devout. For her parentage I need not trouble myself, if I knew of a girl suitable in these other respects.

It happened that I had of late been contriving some odd work about the manse for the girl Kirstie Maclachlan, not that the work needed doing, but to help her old mother; for we had no assessment for the poor, and the Session was often at its wits' end to provide relief, wherein as a man without family cares I could better assist than some of my neighbours. The girl's mother was a poor feckless creature who had left Wyliebank in her youth to take service in Glasgow, and there, beguiled at first by some villain, had gone from bad to worse through misguidance rather than wantonness, and at last crept home to her native parish to starve, if by starving she could save her child—then but an infant—from the city and its paths of destruction. This, in part by her own courage, and in part by the help of the charitable, she had managed to do, and lived to see Kirstie grow to be a decent, religiously minded young woman. Nor did the lass want for good looks in a sober way, nor for wit when it came to reading books; but in speech she was shy beyond reason, and would turn red and stammer if a stranger but addressed her. I think she could never forget that her birth had been on the wrong side of the blanket, and, supposing folks to be pitying her for it, sought to avoid them and their kindness.

It was Kirstie, then, whom I ventured to commend to Mr. Johnstone for his lady's requirements; and after some talk between us the good man sent for her and was satisfied with her looks and the few answers which, in her stammering way, she managed to return to his questions. When he set off homeward it was on the understanding that she should follow him to Givens on foot, which she did the next day with her stock of spare clothes in a kerchief. Nor, although I twice visited Givens during her service there, did I ever see her at the manse, but twice only before she returned to us with the tale I am to set down—the first time at the burying of her mother here in Wyliebank, and the second at Givens, when I was called thither to inter her master who died very suddenly by the bursting of a blood-vessel in the brain. After that she went to live with the widow in lodgings in Edinburgh; and from her, some fifteen months later, I received the news, in a letter most neatly indited, that Mrs. Johnstone had perished by her own hand, and a request to impart it to all in this parish whom it might concern. The main facts she told me then in writing, but the circumstances (being ever a sensible girl) she kept to transmit to me by word of mouth, rightly judging that the public enquiry had no business with them.

It seems, then, that Kirstie's first introduction to Mrs. Johnstone was none too cheerful; indeed, it came near to scaring her out of her senses. She arrived duly at Givens shortly before five of the afternoon (a warm day in June) and went straight to the manse, where the door was opened to her by Mr. Johnstone, who had seen her from the parlour window. He led the way back to the parlour, and, after a question or two upon her journey, took her up the main stairs to the landing. Here he halted and directed her up a narrow flight to her garret, which lay off to the right, at the very top.

The door stood ajar, and facing it was another door, wide open, through which a ray of the evening sun slanted across the stairhead. Kirstie, with her bundle in one hand and the other upon the hasp, turned to look down upon the minister, to make sure she was entering the right chamber. He stood at the foot of the stairs, and his eyes were following her (as she thought) with a very curious expression; but before he could nod she happened to throw a glance into the room opposite, and very nearly dropped her bundle.

Yet there was nothing to be scared at; merely the figure of an elderly woman in black bent over her spinning-wheel there in the dim light. It was Mrs. Johnstone, of course, seated at her work; but it came upon the girl with suddenness, like an apparition, and the fright, instead of passing, began to take hold of her as the uncanny woman neither spoke nor looked up. The room about her was bare, save for some hanks of yarn littered about the boards and a great pile of it drying on a tray by the window. The one ray of sunlight seemed to pass over this without searching the corners under the sloping roof, and fell at Kirstie's feet.

She has told me that she must have stood there for minutes with her heart working like a pump. When she looked down the stair again the minister was gone. She pulled her wits together, stepped quickly into her own room, and, having closed the door behind her, sat down on the bed to recover.

Being a lass of spirit, she quickly reasoned herself out of this foolishness, rose, washed, changed her stockings, put off her shawl for cap and apron, and—albeit in trepidation—presented herself once more at the door of Mrs. Johnstone's garret.

"Please you, mistress," she managed to say, "I am Kirstie Maclachlan, the new maid from Wyliebank."

Mrs. Johnstone looked up and fixed her with a pair of eyes that (she declared) searched her through and through; but all she said was, "The minister tells me you can read."

"Yes, mistress."

"What books have you brought?"

Kirstie, to be sure, had two books in her bundle—a Bible and John Bunyan's Grace Abounding, the both of them gifts from me. Mrs. Johnstone commanded her to fetch the second and start reading at once; "for," she explained, not unkindly, "it will suit you best, belike, to begin with something familiar; and if I find you read well and pleasantly, we will get a book from the manse library."

So the girl found a stool in the corner, and, seating herself near the window, began to read by the waning light. She had, indeed, an agreeable voice, and I had taken pains to teach her. She read on and on, gathering courage, yet uncertain if Mrs. Johnstone approved; who said no word, but continued her spinning until darkness settled down on the garret and blurred the print on the page.

At last she looked up, and, much to Kirstie's surprise, with a sigh. "That will do, girl, you read very nicely. Run down and find your supper, and after that the sooner you get to bed the better. We rise early in this house. To-morrow I will put you in the way of your duties."

Downstairs Kirstie met the minister who had been taking a late stroll in the garden and now entered by the back-door. He halted under the lamp in the passage. "Well," he asked, "what did she say?"

"She bade me get my supper and be early in the morning," Kirstie answered simply.

For some reason this seemed to relieve him. He hung up his hat and stood pulling at his fingers until the joints cracked, which was a trick with him. "She needs to be soothed," he said. "If you read much with her, you must come to me to choose the books; yet she must think she has chosen them herself. We must manage that somehow. The great thing is to keep her mind soothed."

Kirstie did not understand. A few minutes later as she went up the stairs to her room the door opposite still remained open. All was dark within, but whether or not Mrs. Johnstone sat there in the darkness she could not tell.

The next morning she entered on her duties, which were light enough. Indeed, she soon suspected that her mistress had sought a companion rather than a servant, and at first had much to-do to find employment. Soon, however, Mrs. Johnstone took her into confidence, and began to impart the mysteries of whitening and twisting the famous Balgarnock thread; and so by degrees, without much talk on either side, there grew a strange affection betwixt them. Sure, Kirstie must have been the first of her sex to whom the strange woman showed any softness; and on her part the girl asserts that she was attracted from the first by a sort of pity, without well knowing for what her pity was demanded. The minister went no farther with his confidences: he could see that Kirstie suited, and seemed resolved to let well alone. The wife never spoke of herself; and albeit, if Kirstie's reading happened to touch on the sources of Christian consolation, she showed some eagerness in discussing them, it was done without any personal or particular reference. Yet, even in those days, Kirstie grew to feel that terror was in some way the secret of her mistress's strangeness; that for the present the poor woman knew herself safe and protected from it, but also that there was ever a danger of that barrier falling—whatever it might be—and leaving her exposed to some enemy, from the thought of whom her soul shrank.

I do not know how Kirstie became convinced that, whoever or whatever the enemy might be, Mr. Johnstone was the phylactery. She herself could give no grounds for her conviction beyond his wife's anxiety for his health and well-being. I myself never observed it in a woman, and if I had, should have set it down to ordinary wifely concern. But Kirstie assures me, first, that it was not ordinary, and, secondly, that it was not at all wifely—that Mrs. Johnstone's care of her husband had less of the ministering unselfishness of a woman in love than of the eager concern of a gambler with his stake. The girl (I need not say) did not put it thus, yet this in effect was her report. And she added that this anxiety was fitful to a degree: at times the minister could hardly take a walk without being fussed over and forced to change his socks on his return; at others, and for days together, his wife would resign the care of him to Providence, or at any rate to Fate, and trouble herself not at all about his goings-out or his comings-in, nor whether he wore a great-coat or not, nor if he returned wet to the skin and neglected to change his wear.

Well, the girl was right, as was proved on the afternoon when Mr. Johnstone, taking his customary walk upon the Kilmarnock road, fell and burst a blood-vessel, and was borne home to the manse on a gate. The two women were seated in the garret as usual when the crowd entered the garden; and with the first sound of the bearers' feet upon the path, which was of smooth pebbles compacted in lime, Mrs. Johnstone rose up, with a face of a sudden so grey and terrible that Kirstie dropped the book from her knee.

"It has come!" said the poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!" she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried, "you won't leave me? I have been kind to you—say you won't leave me!"

Before Kirstie well understood, her mistress's arms were about her and the gaunt woman clinging to her body and trembling like a child. "You will save me, Kirstie? You will live here and not forsake me? There is nobody now but you!" she kept crying over and over.

The girl held her firmly with a grasp above the elbows to steady her and allay the trembling, and, albeit dazed herself, uttered what soothing words came first to her tongue. "Why, mistress, who thinks of leaving you? Not I, to be sure. But let me get you to bed, and in an hour you will be better of this fancy, for fancy it must be."

"He is dead, I tell you," Mrs. Johnstone insisted, "and they are bringing him home. Hark to the door—that was never your master's knock—and the voices!"

She was still clinging about Kirstie when the cook came panting up the stairs and into the room with a white face; for it was true, and the minister had breathed his last between the garden gate and his house door.

As I have said, I rode over from Wyliebank four days later to read the burial service. The widow was not to be seen, and of Kirstie, who ever hid herself from the sight of strangers, I caught but a glimpse. She did not follow the coffin, but remained upstairs (as I suppose) comforting her mistress. The other poor distracted servants, between tears and ignorance, made but a sorry business of entertaining the company, so that but half a dozen at most cared to return to the house, of whom I was not one.

The manse had to be vacated, and within a week or two I heard that Mrs. Johnstone had sold a great part of her furniture, dismissed all her household but Kirstie, and retired to a small cottage a little further up the street and scarcely a stone's-throw from the manse.

"She made," says Kirstie, "little show of mourning for her husband, nor for months afterwards did she return to the terror she had shown that day in the garret, yet I am sure that from the hour of his death she never knew peace of mind. She had fitted up a room in the cottage with her wheel and bleaching boards, and we spent all our time in reading or thread-making. At night my cot would be strewn in her bedroom, and we slept with a candle burning on the table between us; but once or twice I woke to see her laid on her side, or resting on her elbow, with her face towards me and her eyes fixed upon mine across the light. This used to frighten me, and she must have seen it, for always she would stammer that I need not be alarmed, and beg me to go to sleep again like a good child. I soon came to see that, whatever her own terror might be, she had the utmost dread of my catching it, and that her hope lay in keeping me cheerful. Since I had nothing on my mind at that time, and knew of no cause for fear, I used to sleep soundly enough; but I begin to think that my mistress slept scarcely at all. I cannot remember once waking without finding her awake and her eyes watching me as I say.

"She herself would not set foot outside the cottage for weeks together, and if by chance we did take a walk it would be towards sunset, when the fields were empty and the folk mostly gathered on the green at the far end of the village. There was a footpath led across these fields at the back of the cottage, and here at such an hour she would sometimes consent to take the air, leaning on my arm; but if any wayfarer happened to come along the path I used to draw her aside into the field, where we made believe to be gathering of wild flowers. She had a dislike of meeting strangers and a horror of being followed; the sound of footsteps on the path behind us would drive her near crazy."

I think 'twas this frequent pretence of theirs to be searching for wild flowers which brought the suspicion of witchcraft upon them among the population of Givens. The story of the woman's youth was remembered against her, if obscurely. Folks knew that she had once been afflicted or possessed by an evil spirit, and from this 'twas a short step to accuse her of gathering herbs at nightfall for the instruction of Kirstie in the black art. In the end the rumour drove them from Givens, and in this manner.

Though the widow so seldom showed herself abroad, in her care for Kirstie's cheerfulness she persuaded the girl to take a short walk every morning through the village. In truth Kirstie hated it. More and more as her mistress clung to her she grew to cling to her mistress; it seemed as if they two were in partnership against the world, and the part of protector which she played so watchfully and courageously for her years took its revenge upon her. For what makes a child so engaging as his trust in the fellow-creatures he meets and his willingness to expect the best of them? To Kirstie, yet but a little way past childhood, all men and women were possible enemies, to be suspected and shunned. She took her walk dutifully because Mrs. Johnstone commanded it, and because shops must be visited and groceries purchased; but it was penance to her, and she would walk a mile about to avoid a knot of gossips or to wile the time away until a shop emptied.

But one day in the long main street she was fairly caught by a mob of boys hunting and hooting after a negro man. They paid no heed to Kirstie, who shrank into a doorway as he passed down the causeway—a seaman, belike, trudging to Irvine or Saltcoats. He seemed by his gait to be more than half drunk, and by the way he shook his stick back at the boys and cursed them; but they would not be shaken off, and in the end he took refuge in the "Leaping Fish," where his tormentors gathered about the doorway and continued their booing until the landlord came forth and dispersed them.

By this time Kirstie had bolted from the doorway and run home. She said nothing of her adventure to Mrs. Johnstone; but in the dusk of the evening a riot began in the street a little way below the cottage. The black seaman had been drinking all day, and on leaving the "Leaping Fish," had fallen into a savage quarrel with a drover. Two or three decent fellows stopped the fight and pulled him off; but they had done better by following up their kindness and seeing him out of the village, for he was now planted with his back to a railing, brandishing his stick and furiously challenging the whole mob. So far as concerned him the mischief ended by his overbalancing to aim a vicious blow at an urchin, and crashing down upon the kerb, where he lay and groaned, while the blood flowed from an ugly cut across the eyebrow.

For a while the crowd stood about him in some dismay. A few were for carrying him back to the public-house; but at some evil prompting a voice cried out, "Take him to the widow Johnstone's! A witch should know how to deal with her sib, the black man." I believe so godless a jest would never have been played, had not the cottage stood handy and (as one may say) closer than their better thoughts. But certain it is that they hoisted the poor creature and bore him into Mrs. Johnstone's garden, and began to fling handfuls of gravel at the upper windows, where a light was burning.

At the noise of it against the pane Mrs. Johnstone, who was bending over the bedroom fire and heating milk for her supper, let the pan fall from her hand. For the moment Kirstie thought she would swoon. But helping her to a seat in the armchair, the brave lass bade her be comforted—it could be naught but some roystering drunkard—and herself went downstairs and unbarred the door. At the sight of her—so frail a girl—quietly confronting them with a demand to know their business, the crowd fell back a step or two, and in that space of time by God's providence arrived Peter Lawler, the constable, a very religious man, who gave the ringleaders some advice and warning they were not likely to forget. Being by this made heartily ashamed of themselves, they obeyed his order to pick up the man from the doorstep, where he lay at Kirstie's feet, and carry him back to the "Leaping Fish;" and so slunk out of the garden.

When all were gone Kirstie closed and bolted the door and returned upstairs to her mistress, whom she found sitting in her chair and listening intently.

"Who was it?" she demanded.

"Oh, nothing to trouble us, ma'am; but just a poor wandering blackamoor I met in the street to-day. The people, it seems, were bringing him here by mistake."

"A blackamoor!" cried Mrs. Johnstone, gasping. "A blackamoor!"

Now Kirstie was for running downstairs again to fetch some milk in place of what was spilt, but at the sound of the woman's voice she faced about.

"Pick together the silver, Kirstie, and fetch me my bonnet!" At first Mrs. Johnstone began to totter about the room without aim, but presently fell to choosing this and that of her small possessions and tossing them into the seat of the armchair in a nervous hurry which seemed to gather with her strength. "Quick, lass! Did he see you? . . . ah, but that would not tell him. What like was he?" She pulled herself together and her voice quavered across the room. "Lass, lass, you will not forsake me? Do not speir now, but do all that I say. You promised—you did promise!" All this while she was working in a fever of haste, pulling even the quilt from the bed and anon tossing it aside as too burdensome. She was past all control. "Do not speir of me," she kept repeating.

"What, ma'am? Are we leaving?" Kirstie stammered once; but the strong will of the woman—mad though she might be—was upon her, and by-and-by the girl began packing in no less haste than her mistress. "But will you not tell me, ma'am?" she entreated between her labours.

"Not here! not here!" Mrs. Johnstone insisted. "Help me to get away from here!"

It was two in the morning when the women unlatched the door of the cottage and crept forth across the threshold—and across the stain of blood which lay thereon, only they could not see it. They took the footpath, each with a heavy bundle beneath her arm, and turning their backs on Givens walked resolutely forward for three miles to the cross-roads where the Glasgow coach would be due to pass in the dawn. Upon the green there beside the sign-post Kirstie believes that she slept while Mrs. Johnstone kept guard over the bundles; but she remembers little until she found herself, as if by magic, on the coach-top and dozing on a seat behind the driver.

From Glasgow, after a day's halt, they took another coach to Edinburgh, and there found lodgings in a pair of attics high aloft in one of the great houses, or lands, which lie off Parliament Square to the north. The building—a warren you might call it—had six stories fronting the square, the uppermost far overhanging, and Kirstie affirms that her window, pierced in the very eaves, stood higher than the roof of St. Giles' Church.

Hither in due course a carrier's cart conveyed Mrs. Johnstone's sticks of furniture, and here for fifteen months the two women lay as close as two needles in a bottle of hay. The house stood upon a ridge, and at the back of it a dozen double flights of stairs dived into courts and cellars far below the level of the front. It was by these—a journey in themselves— that Kirstie sometimes made exit and entrance when she had business at the shops, and she has counted up to me a list, which seemed without end, of the offices, workshops, and tenements she passed on her way, beginning with a wine store in the basement, mounting to perruquiers' and law-stationers' shops, and so up past bookbinders', felt-maker's, painters', die-sinkers', milliners' workrooms, to landings on which, as the roof was neared, the tenants herded closer and yet closer in meaner and yet meaner poverty.

The most of Kirstie's business was with Mr. John Seton, the agent, to whom she carried the thread spun by her mistress in the attic, and from whom she received the moneys and accounts of profits. Once or twice, at their first coming, Mrs. Johnstone had descended for a walk in the streets; but by this time the unhappy lady had it fixed in her mind that she was being watched and followed, and shook with apprehension at every corner. So pitiable indeed were the glances she flung behind her, and so frantic the precautions she used to shake off her supposed pursuers and return by circuitous ways, that Kirstie pressed her to no more such expeditions.

To the girl, still ignorant of the cause of this terror, her mistress was evidently mad. But mad or no, she grew daily weaker in health and her handiwork began to worsen in quality, until Kirstie was forced to use deceit and sell only her own thread to Mr. Seton, though she pretended to dispose of Mrs. Johnstone's, and accounted for the falling off in profit by a feigned tale of brisker competition among their Dutch rivals—an imposture in which the agent helped her, telling the same story in writing; for Mrs. Johnstone, whose eye for a bargain continued as sharp as ever, had actually begun to suspect the lass of robbing her.

About this time as Kirstie passed down the stairs she took notice that a new tradesman had set up business on the landing below. At first she wondered that a barber—for this was his trade—should task his customers to climb so many flights from the street; but it seemed that the fellow knew what he was about, for after the first week she never descended without meeting a customer or two mounting to his door or being followed down by one with his wig powdered and chin freshly scraped. The barber himself she never saw, though once, when the door stood ajar, she caught a glimpse of his white jacket and apron.

She believed that he entered into occupation at Michaelmas; at any rate, he had been plying his trade for close on two months, when on November 17th, 1739, and at a quarter to three in the afternoon, Kirstie went down to the Parliament Close to carry a packet of thread to Mr. Seton. The packet was smaller than usual, for Mrs. Johnstone had not been able to finish her weekly quantity; but this did not matter, since for a month past she had made none that was saleworthy.

Now this Mr. Seton was a pleasant man, in age almost threescore, and full of interest in Mrs. Johnstone, having done business for her and her mother, the Lady Balgarnock, pretty well all his life. And so it often happened that, while weighing the thread and making out his receipt for it, he would invite Kirstie to his office, in the rear of the shop, and discuss her mistress's health or some late news of the city, or advise her upon any small difficulty touching which she made bold to consult him—as, for instance, this pious deception in the matter of the thread.

But to-day in the midst of their discourse Kirstie felt a sudden uneasiness. Explain it she could not. Yet there came to her a sense, almost amounting to certainty, that Mrs. Johnstone was in trouble and had instant need of her. She had left her but a few minutes, and in ordinary health; there was no reason to be given for this apprehension. Nevertheless, as I say, she felt it as urgent as though her mistress's own voice were calling. Mr. Seton observed her change of colour, and broke off his chat to ask what was amiss. She knew that if she stayed to explain he would laugh at her for a silly fancy; and if it were more than a fancy, why then to explain would be a loss of precious time. Pleading, therefore, some forgotten duty, she left the good man hurriedly, and hastening out through the shop ran across Parliament Close and up the great staircase as fast as her legs could take her.

By the time she reached the fourth flight of stairs she began to feel ashamed of the impulse which brought her, and to argue with herself against it; but at the same time her ears were open and listening for any unusual sound in the rooms above. There was no such sound until she had mounted half-way up the sixth flight, when she heard a light footstep cross the landing, and, looking up, saw the barber's door very gently closing and shutting out a glimpse of his white jacket.

For the moment she thought little of this. The latch had scarcely clicked before she reached the landing outside, from which the last flight ran straight up to her mistress's door. It stood open, though she had closed it less than a quarter of an hour before. This was the first time she had found it open on her return.

She caught at the stair-rail. Through the door and over the line of the topmost stair she could just see the upper panes of the window at the back of Mrs. Johnstone's room. A heavy beam crossed the ceiling in front of the window, and from it, from a hook she had used that morning for twisting her yarn, depended a black bundle.

The bundle—it was big and shapeless—swayed ever so slightly between her and the yellow light sifted through the window. She tottered up, her knees shaking, and flung herself into the room with a scream.

While she fumbled, still screaming, at the bundle hanging from the beam, a step came swiftly up the stair, and the barber stood in the doorway. She recognised him by his white suit, and on the instant saw his face for the first time. He was a negro.

He laid a finger on his lips. Somehow the light showed them to her blood-red, although the rest of his features, barring the whites of his eyes, were all but indiscernible in the dusk. And somehow Kirstie felt a silence imposed on her by this gesture. He stepped across the boards swiftly and silently as a cat, found a stool, and set it under the beam. In the act of mounting it he signalled to Kirstie to run downstairs for help.

Silent as he, Kirstie slipped out at the door: on the threshold she glanced over her shoulder and saw him upon the stool fumbling with one hand at the yarn-rope, and with the other searching his apron pocket for a knife or razor. She ran down the garret stairs, down the next flight. . . .

Here, on the landing, she paused. She had not screamed since the black man first appeared in the doorway. She was not screaming now; she felt that she could not even raise the faintest cry. But a suspicion fastened like a hand on the back of her neck and held her.

She hesitated for a short while, and began to climb the stairs again. From the landing she looked up into the room. The black man was still on the stool, his hand still on the rope. He had not cut the bundle down— was no longer even searching for a knife.

She had been deceived. The man, whoever he was, had dismissed her when every moment was precious, and was himself not even trying to help. Nay, it might be . . .

She fought down the horror of it and rushed up the stair to fight the thing, man or devil, and save her mistress. On her way she fumbled for the scissors in her pocket. As she broke into the garret the barber, leaving the bundle to swing from its rope, stepped off the stool and, darting to a corner of the room, seemed to stand at bay there. Kirstie sprang toward the stool and hacked at the rope. As the body dropped she faced around on the man's corner, meaning to kill or be killed.

But there was no man in the corner. Her eyes searched into its dusk, and met only the shadow of the sloping attic. He had gone without a sound. There had been no sound in the room but the thud of Mrs. Johnstone's body, and this thud seemed to Kirstie to be taken up and echoed by the blow of her own forehead upon the boards as she fell across the feet of her mistress.



THE MAZED ELECTION (1768).



A PASSAGE FROM THE ORAL HISTORY OF ARDEVORA.



I.

Woman Suffrage? It's surprising to me how light some folks will talk— with a Providence, for all they know, waiting round the corner to take them at their word. I put my head in at the Working Man's Institute last night, and there was the new Coastguard officer talking like a book, arguing about Woman Suffrage in a way that made me nervous. "Look 'ee here," he was saying, "a woman must be either married, or unmarried, or otherwise. Keep they three divisions clear in your heads, and then I'll ask you to follow me—" And all the company sitting round with their mouths open. I came away: I couldn't stand it. It put me in mind how my poor mother used to warn me against squinting for fun. "One of these days," she'd say, "the wind'll take and change sudden while you're doing it; and there you'll be fixed and looking fifty ways for Sunday until we meet in the land of marrow and fatness."

And here in Ardevora, of all places!—where the womenkind be that masterful already, a man must get into his sea-boots before he can call his soul his own. Why, there was a woman here once that never asked for a vote in her life, and yet capsized an Election for Parliament—candidates, voters, and the whole apple-cart—as easy as you might turn over a plate. Did you ever hear tell of Kitty Lebow and her eight tall daughters? No; I daresay not. The world's old and losing its memory when it begins to talk of Woman Suffrage.

This Kitty, or Christian, or Christiana Lebow was by birth a Bottrell: and a finer family than the Bottrells, by their own account, you wouldn't find in all England. Not that it matters whether they came over with William the Norman, nor whether they could once on a time ride from sea to sea on their own acres. For Kitty was the last to carry the name, and she left it in Ardevora vestry the day she signed marriage with Paul Lebow (or, as he wrote it, Lebeau—"b-e-a-u,"): and the property had gone generations before. As she said 'pon her death-bed, "five-foot-six of church-hay will hold the only two achers left to me," she being a little body and very facetious to the last, and meaning her legs, of course.

Now the reason I can't tell you: but the mischief with the Bottrells was this: That for generation after generation all the spirit of the family went to the females. The men just dandered away their time and their money, fell into declines, or had fits and went out like the snuff of a candle. But the women couldn't be held nor bound, lived to any age they pleased, and either kept their sweethearts on the hook or married them and made their lives a burden. Oh, a bean-fed sex, sir, and monstrous handsome! And Kitty, though little, was as handsome as any, and walked Ardevora streets with her eight daughters, all tall as grenadiers and terrible as an army with banners.

Her father, old Piers Bottrell, had been a ship's captain: a very tidy old fellow in his behaviour, but muddled in mind, especially towards the end; so that when he died (which he did in his bed, quite peaceful) he must needs take and haunt the house. There wasn't a ha'porth of reason for it, that anyone could discover; and Kitty didn't mind it one farthing. But some say it frightened her husband into his grave: though I reckon he took worse fright at Kitty presenting him with eight daughters one after the other. With a woman like that, you can't say where accident ends and love of mischief begins. And for that matter, there was no telling why she'd married the man at all except for mischief: his father and mother being poor French refugees that had come to Ardevora, thirty years before, and been given shelter by the borough charity in the old Ugnes House[1]— the same that old Piers Bottrell afterwards bought and died in: and Lebow himself, though born in the town and a fisherman by calling, never able to get his tongue round good plain English until the day he was drowned on the whiting-grounds and left Kitty a widow-woman.

All this, as you'll see by-and-by, has to do in one way or another with the Great Election, which took place in the year '68. (The way I'm so glib with the date is that Kit Lebow was so proud of her doings on that day, she had a silver cup made for a momentum and used to measure out her guineas in it: and her great-great-gran'daughter, Mary Ann Cocking, has the cup to this day in her house in Nanjivvey Street, where I've seen it a score of times and spelled out the writing, "C. L."—for Christian Lebow—"1768"). And concerning this Election you must know that "the Duke's interest," as they called it—that's to say, the Whigs—had ruled the roost in Ardevora for more than fifty years; mainly through the Duke's agent, old Squire Martin of Tregoose, that collected the rents, held pretty well all the public offices inside his ten fingers, and would save up a grudge for time-out-of-mind against any man that crossed him. Two members we returned in those days, and in grown men's memories scarce a Tory among them.

There was grumbling, you may be sure: but the old gang held their way, and thought to carry this Election as easy as the others, until word came down that one of the Tory candidates would be Dr. Macann, the famous Bath physician; and this was a facer.

What made this Dr. Macann such a tearing hot candidate was his having been born at Trudgian, a mile out of town here to the west'ard. The Macanns had farmed Trudgian, for maybe a hundred years, having come over from Ireland to start with: a poor, hand-to-mouth lot, respected for nothing but their haveage,[2] which was understood to be something out of the common. But this Samuel, as he was called, turned out a bright boy with his books, and won his way somehow to Cambridge College; and from College, after doing famously, he took his foot in his hand and went up to walk the London hospitals; and so bloomed out into a great doctor, with a gold-headed cane and a wonderful gift with the women—a personable man, too, with a neat leg, a high colour, and a voice like a church-organ. The best of the fellow was he helped his parents and never seemed ashamed of 'em. And for this, and because he'd done credit to the town, the folks couldn't make too much of him.

Well, as I said, this putting up of Macann was a facer for the Duke's men, and they met at the George and Dragon Inn to talk over their unpopularity. There was old Squire Martin, as wicked as a buck rat in a sink; and his son Bob that had lately taken over the Duke's agency; and his brother Ned, the drunken Vicar of Trancells; and his second cousin John Martin, otherwise John a Hall, all wit and no character; and old Parson Polsue, with his curate, old Mr. Grandison, the one almost too shaky to hold a churchwarden pipe while the other lighted it; and Roger Newte, whose monument you see over the hill—a dapper, youngish-looking man, very careful of his finger-nails and smooth in his talk till he got you in a corner. Last but not least was this Roger Newte, who had settled here as Collector of Customs and meant to be Mayor next year; a man to go where the devil can't, and that's between the oak and the rind.

Well, there they were met, drinking punch and smoking their clays and discussing this and that; and Mr. Newte keeping the peace between John a Hall, with his ill-regulated tongue, and the old Parson, who, to say truth, was half the cause of their unpopularity, the church services having sunk to a public scandal; and yet they durstn't cast him over, by reason that he owned eight ramshackle houses, and his curate a couple besides, and by mock-sale could turn these into as many brand-new voters.

"There's nothing for it but pluck," said Mr. Newte. "We must make a new Poor Rate. They've been asking a new one for years; and, bejimbers! I hope they'll like the one they get."

The old Squire stroked his chin. "That's a bit too dangerous, Newte."

"Where's the danger? Churchwardens and Overseers, we can count on every man."

"The parish will appeal, as sure as a gun. King's Bench will send down a mandamus, and the game's up. I don't want to go to prison at my time of life."

"I know something of the law," said Mr. Newte—and indeed he'd studied it at Lincoln's Inn, and kept more knowledge under his wig than any man in the borough. "I know something of law, and there's no question of going to prison. The Tories will appeal to the next Quarter Sessions, and Quarter Sessions will maybe quash the Rate; and that'll take time. Then the Overseers will sit still for a week or two, or a month or two, until the Tories lose patience and apply to London for a writ. Down comes the writ, we'll say. Whereupon the Overseers will sit down and make out a new Rate just a shade different from the last, and the Tories will have to begin again—Quarter Sessions, Court o' King's Bench, mandamus—"

"King's Bench will send down, more like, and attach the Overseers for contempt of Court," suggested young Bob Martin, who was one of them.

"Not a bit of it; but I'll allow you may find it hard to keep their pluck to the sticking-point. Very well, then here's another plan: When it comes to the writ, the Overseers can make out a new Rate 'agreeable to the form and tenor of the same,' as the words go. But a new Rate's worthless until you, Squire, and you, Parson, have signed the allowance for it as magistrates: and now comes your turn to give trouble."

"And how'm I to do that?" asked the old Squire.

"Why, by keeping out of the way, to be sure. Take a holiday: find out some little spa that suits your complaint, and go and drink the waters."

"Ay, do, Parson," chimed in John a Hall. "Take Grandison, here, along with you, and we'll all have a holiday together."

"At the worst," chipped in Newte, "they'll fine you fifty pounds for misbehaviour."

"Fifty pounds! Fine me fifty pounds?" the Parson quavered, his pipe-stem waggling.

"Bless your heart, sir, we can work it in somehow with the Election expenses. But it may not come to that. Parliament's more than five years old already, and I'll warrant the King dissolves it by next spring at latest: which reminds me that keeping an eye on the Voters' List is all very well, but unless we can find a hot pair of candidates, this Macann may unsaddle us after all."



II.

Well, this or something like it was the plan agreed on; and for candidates they managed to get the Duke's own son, Lord William, and a Major Dyngwall, a friend of his, very handsome to look at, but shy in the mouth-speech. With Dr. Macann the Tories put up a Mr. Saule, from Bristol, who took a terrible deal of snuff and looked wise, but had some maggot in his head that strong drink isn't good for a man. Why or how this should be he might have known but couldn't tell, being a desperate poor speaker, and, if possible, a worse hand at it than Major Dyngwall.

I won't take you through all the battle over the Poor Rate. You understand that the right of voting for Parliament belonged to all the inhabitants of the borough paying Scot and Lot; and who these were the Rate-sheet determined. So you may fancy the pillaloo that went up when the Overseers posted their new assessment on the church door and 'twas found they'd ruled out no less than sixty voters known, or suspected to be, in Dr. Macann's interest. The Tories appealed to Quarter Sessions, of course, and the Rate was quashed. On their side, Roger Newte and Bob Martin kept the Overseers up to the proper mark of stubbornness: so to London the matter went, and from London down came the order for a new assessment. But by this time Parliament's days were numbered; and, speculating on this, Mr. Newte (who was now Mayor of the Borough) played a stroke in a thousand. He persuaded the Overseers to make a return to the writ certifying they had obeyed it to the best of their skill and conscience, and drawn up a new list: which list they posted a fortnight later, and only seven days—as it turned out—before Parliament dissolved: and will you believe it, but the only difference between it and the old one was that they'd added the name of Christiana Lebow, widow—who, being a woman, hadn't a vote at all!

But wait a bit! The Overseers, choosing their time, had this new list posted in the church porch at ten o'clock one morning; and having posted it, stepped across the road to the "George and Dragon." The old inn used to stand slap opposite the church; and there, in the parlour-window, were assembled all the Duke's men—Squire Martin and his son, Roger Newte, John a Hall, the Parson, and, all the rest of the gang—as well to see how the people would take it as to give the timorous Overseers a backing. This was Newte's idea—to sit there in full view, put a bold face on it, and have the row—if row there was to be—over at once. And, to top it up, they had both the Whig candidates with them—these having arrived in Ardevora three days before, and begun their canvass, knowing that Parliament must be dissolved and the new writs issued in a few days at farthest.

Well, a crowd gathered at once about the list, and some ran off with the dare-devil news of it, while others hung about and grumbled and let out a few oaths every now and then and looked like men in two minds about stoning the windows opposite, where the Duke's gang lounged as careless as brass, sipping their punch and covering the poor Overseers, that half expected to be ducked in the harbour sooner or later for their morning's work.

For one solid hour they sat there, fairly daunting the crowd: but as the church clock struck eleven, Major Dyngwall, the candidate—that was talking to old Parson Polsue, and carrying it off very fairly—puts his eyeglass up of a sudden, and, says he, "Amazons, begad!" meaning, as I have heard it explained, that here were some out-of-the-common females.

And out of the common they were—Kit Lebow with her eight daughters, all wafting up the street like a bevy of peacocks in their best hoops and bonnets: Kit herself sailing afore, with her long malacca staff tap-tapping the cobbles, and her tall daughters behind like a bodyguard— two and two—Maria, Constantia, Elizabeth Jane, Perilla, Christian the Younger, Marcella, Thomasine, and Lally. Along she comes, marches up to the board—the crowd making way for her—and reads down the list. "H'm," says she, and wheeling to the rightabout, marches straight across to the open window of the "George."

"Give you good morning, gentlemen," says she, dropping a curtsey. "I see you've a-put me on the Voters' List; and, with your leave, I'd like a look at your candidates."

"With pleasure, madam," says Lord William, starting up from the table where he was writing at the back of the room, and coming forward with a bow. And Major Dyngwall bowed likewise to her and to the whole company of her daughters spreading out behind her like a fan. "Take your glass down from your eye, young man," she said, addressing herself to the Major. "One window should be shelter enough for a sojer—and la! you're none so ill-featured for a pair of Whigs."

"Ay," put in John a Hall, "they'll stand comparisons with your Sammy Macann, mistress." And he pitched to sing a verse of his invention, that the Whigs of the town afterwards got by heart—

"Doctor Macann 's an Irishman, He's got no business here; Mister Saule He's nothin' at all, He won't lev us have no beer.

"Well, indeed now," answered Kitty, pitching her voice back for the crowd to hear, "'tis the Martins should know if the Macanns be Irish, and what business an Irishman has in Ardevora: for, if I recollect, the first Macann and the first Martin were shipwrecked together coming over from Dungarvan in a cattle-boat, and they do say 'twas Macann owned the cattle and Martin drove 'em. And as for Mr. Saule," she went on, while the crowd grinned to see John a Hall turning red in the gills, "if he stops off the beer in this town, 'tis yourself will be the healthier for it, whoever's hurt."

"May I have the pleasure to learn this lady's name?" asked Lord William very politely, turning to the old Squire.

"She's just an eccentric body, my Lord," said he; "and, I'm sorry to say, a violent enemy to your Lordship's cause."

"Hoity-me-toity!" says Kitty. "I'm Christian Lebow, that used to be Bottrell: which means that your forefathers and mine, my Lord, came over to England together, like the Macanns and the Martins, though maybe some time before, and not in a cattle-boat. No enemy am I to your Lordship, nor to the Major here, as I'll prove any day you choose to drink a dish of tea with me or to taste my White Ale; but only to the ill company you keep with these Martins and Newtes, that have robbed sixty honest men of their votes and given one to me that can't use it. I can't use it to keep you out of Parliament-house. I would if I could—honest fighting between gentlefolks; but I may use it before the Election's over to make these rogues laugh on the wrong side of their faces."

She used to say afterwards that the words came into her mouth like prophesying: but I believe she just spoke out in her temper, as women will. At any rate, Lord William smiled and bowed, and said he, "The Major and I will certainly do ourselves the pleasure of calling and tasting your ale, Mrs. Lebow."

"The recipe is three hundred years old," said Kitty, and swept him a curtsey, the like of which for stateliness you don't see nowadays: it wants practice and sea-room. And all her eight daughters curtsied to the daps behind her in a half-moon, to the delight of Major Dyngwall, that had been studying Lally the youngest (which is short for Eulalia), through his eyeglass. And with that, to the admiration of the multitude, they faced about and went sailing up the street.



III.

Well, I suppose in the heat of the fight—the nomination taking place a few days afterwards, and the struggle being a mighty doubtful one, for all the trick of the Rating List, against which the Tories had sent up an appeal—Lord William forgot all about his promise to call and taste Mrs. Lebow's White Ale. It came into his mind of a sudden on the day before the Election, being Sunday morning, and he breakfasting with the Major and half a dozen of their supporters up at Tregoose, where old Squire Martin kept open house for the Whigs right through the contest.

"Plague take it!" says he, running his eye down the Voters' List between his sips of coffee. "I've clean neglected that old lady and her brew. I suppose 'tis dreadful stuff?" he goes on, rather anxious-like, lifting an eye towards the old Squire.

"I've never had the privilege to taste it," says the Squire.

"Oh, 'tis none so bad," puts in the Major carelessly.

"Why, Dyngwall—how the Dickens alive do you know?"

"I dropped in the other day—in fact, I've called once or twice. The old lady's monstrous entertaining," answered the Major, pretty pink in the face.

"O-ho!" Lord William screwed up one eye. "And so, belike, are the eight handsome daughters? But look ye here, Dyngwall," says he, "I can't have you skirmishing on your own account in this fashion. If there's a baby left to be kissed in this town—or anything older, for that matter—we go shares, my lad."

"You needn't be so cussedly offensive, need you?" says the Major, firing up, to the astonishment of all.

Lord William looks at him for a moment. "My dear fellow," says he, "I beg your pardon."

And the Major was mollified at once, the two (as I said) being old friends.

"But all the same," says his Lordship to himself, "I'd best go call on this old lady without losing time." So he put it to Squire Martin: "I've a promise to keep, and tomorrow we shall be busy-all. Couldn't we start early to-day, and pay Mrs. Lebow a visit on our way to church?"

"You won't get no comfort out of calling," said the Squire: "but let it be as you please."

So off they set: and as Kitty and her daughters were tying their bonnet-strings for churchgoing—blue and gold every one of them (these being the Tory colours), and only Lally thinking to herself that scarlet and orange might, maybe, suit her complexion better—there came a knock at the door, and squinting over her blind Kitty caught sight of Lord William and the Major, with the old Squire behind them, that had never crossed her doorstep in his life.

She wasn't going to lower her colours, of course. But down she went in her blue and gold, opened the door, and curtseyed. (Oh! the pink of manners!) "No inconvenience at all," she said, and if ever a cordial was needed it would be before sitting out one of old Parson Palsy's forty-year-old sermons. So out came the famous White Ale, with the long-stemmed glasses proper to drink it from, and a dish of ratafias to corroborate the stomach. And behold, all was bowing and compliments and enmity forgot, till Lord William happened to say—

"Strong stuff, Squire—eh? The Major should look to his head with it, after his morning tankard: but for coffee-drinkers like you and me I reckon there's no danger."

Kitty gave a little gasp, all to herself. "Do you take coffee with your breakfast, my Lord?" she asked—and declared to her last day it seemed like another person speaking, her voice sounded so faint and unnatural.

"Ha-bitually," says Lord William, and begins discoursing on the coffee-bean, and how it cleared the brain.

Kitty couldn't look at him steady, but was forced to glance away and out of window. The tears and the fun were rising together within her like a spring tide. Lord William thought that her mind was running on the clock, and she wished to be rid of them. So the bowing and compliments began again, and inside of ten minutes the visitors had made their congees and were out in the street. The door was scarcely shut upon them when Kitty sank down all of a heap in her armchair and began to rock herself to and fro.

"Oh, oh, oh!" she began; and her daughters truly thought at first 'twas hysterics. "I'll give it forty minutes," she said. "Maria, if 'twasn't so near upon church-time, I'd ask you to loosen my stays. White Ale upon coffee! Oh, oh, oh!" And with that she started up. "Forty minutes! What it'll do in forty minutes no earthly power can tell. But get ready, girls, and follow close till I'm safe in church."

So forth she sailed, and her eight daughters behind her, down the street, in by the churchyard gate, and up through the crowd to the porch with her face set like the calm of Doomsday.



IV.

Well, the congregation settled itself, and service began, and not a sign— as why should there be?—of any feelings but holy devotion. The Whigs looked at their books, and the Tories looked at their books; and poor old Curate Grandison lost his place and his spectacles, and poor old Parson Polsue dropped asleep in the First Lesson. He'd neglected two parishes to come and preach the sermon: for Ardevora, you must know, was one of three livings he held besides a canonry, and he kept Grandison to serve the three, that being all he could afford after paying for his carriage-and-pair and postillions to carry him back and forth between us and Penzance, where he lodged for the sake of his asthma and the little card-parties for which Penzance was famous in those days. But not even an Election Sunday could keep him properly awake. So on went the old comedy, as by law established; the congregation, Whig and Tory, not able to hear one word in ten, but taking their cues from Tommy Size, the parish clerk.

The first sign of something amiss came about midway in the hymn before the sermon, with old Squire Martin's setting down his book and dropping into his seat very sudden. Few noticed it, the pew being a tall one; but the musicianers overlooking it from the gallery saw him crossing his hands over his waistcoat, which caused one or two to play their notes false; and Nance Julian in the pew behind heard him groan: "I can't sit it out! Not for a hundred pounds can I sit it out!"

By this time Parson Polsue, with his sermon tucked under his arm, was tottering up the pulpit stairs, and Churchwarden Hancock standing underneath, as usual, to watch him arrive safe or to break his fall if he tumbled. And just as he reached the top and caught hold of the desk cushion to stay himself, Lord William dropped out of view in the face of the congregation, and the hymn—music and singing together—ciphered out like an organ with its bellows slit.

The next moment open flew the door of the Tregoose pew, and out poured Lord William and Squire Martin with judgment on their faces, making a bee-line for the fresh air; and after them Major Dyngwall with a look of concern; and after him young Bob Martin, that had only waited to pick up the others' hats.

Well, you can't run a spark through a barrel of gunpowder. Like wildfire it flew about the church that the Duke's party and the Parson had quarrelled, and this was a public protest. Whig and Tory settled that with one scrape of the feet, and Major Dyngwall turned in the porch to find the whole crowd at his heels.

"My good people," says he, "pray don't alarm yourselves! I—I don't quite know what's the matter: a sudden indisposition—nothing serious. Do, please, go back!"

"Go back? Not a bit of it! You're quite right, sir—disgrace to a Christian country—high time for a public example—stand to it, sir, and the Bishop will have to interfere. Three cheers for the Red and Orange! Three cheers for Religion and no Abuses! Three cheers for Lord William and Major Dyngwall! Hip-hip-hooray!" Do what the Major might, the crowd swept him and the poor sufferers through the churchyard and across the street, and hung cheering around the "George and Dragon," while he dosed the pair inside with hot brandy-and-water.

And all this while Kitty stood—as she declared ever after—with the thoughts hissing in her head like eggs in a frying-pan. She heard the crowd cheering outside, and felt the votes slipping away with every cheer. She cast her eyes up to the pulpit, and there, through a haze, saw old Parson Polsue rubbing his spectacles and shaking like an aspen. Her wits only came back to her when the Tory candidates, in the pew before her, reached for their hats and prepared to follow the mob. Dr. Macann was actually fumbling with the button of the door. Quick as thought then she seized a hassock, sprang on it, and, reaching over the partition, pressed a hand down on his chestnut wig.

"Sit still—sit still, man!" she commanded. "Thee'rt throwing helve after hatchet, I tell 'ee. What's a stomach-ache, after all?"

"I don't follow you, Mrs. Lebow," said the Doctor: and small blame to him.

"Never you mind about understanding," said Kitty. "But sit you down and keep your eye on the Parson. See the colour on him—that's anger, my dear! And see his jaw, full of blessed stubbornness! Nine good votes he has, and old Grandison a couple beside: and every one of 'em as good as cast for you, if you'll sit it out. Sit quiet for two minutes now, and to-morrow you shall sit for Ardevora."

"But the crowd?" the Doctor couldn't help murmuring, though none the less he obeyed.

Kitty's eye began to twinkle. "Leave the crowd to me," she was beginning, when her eye lit on John a Hall, that had entered and was making his way towards the pulpit, from which in the fury of his anger old Polsue was climbing down with a nimbleness you wouldn't believe. And with that she almost laughed out, for a worse peacemaker the Whigs couldn't have chosen. But Major Dyngwall had sent him, having none to advise, and being near to his wits' end, poor young man.

"Beg your pardon, Parson," began John a Hall, stepping up with that grin on his face which he couldn't help and which the Parson abominated: "but I'm here to bring Lord William's compliments and apologies, and assure you from him that your sermon had nothing to do with his stomach-ache. Nothing whatever!"

Parson Polsue opened his mouth to answer, but thought better of it. I reckon he remembered the sacred edifice. At any rate he went past John a Hall with a terrific turn of speed, and old Grandison after him: and the next news was the vestry-door slammed-to behind them both, as 'twere with the very wind of wrath.

"And my poor mother used to recommend it for the colic!" said Kitty; which puzzled the Doctor worse than ever.



V.

Before evening 'twas known through Ardevora that the Parson's votes and interests had been booked by the Tories; which, of course, only made the Church rebels (as you might call them) the more set on standing by their conversion and voting for the Whigs. Nobody could tell their numbers for certain, but nobody put them down under twenty; and both the Doctor and Mr. Saule called on Kitty that evening with faces like fiddles. But Kitty wasn't to be daunted. "My dears," she said, "if the worst comes to the worst, and you can't win these votes back by four o'clock to-morrow, I've a stocking full of guineas at your service; and I ha'n't lived in Ardevora all this while without picking up the knowledge how to spend 'em; and that's at your service too. But we'll try a cheaper way first," says she, smiling to herself very comfortably.

Up at Tregoose they'd put Lord William and the old Squire to bed: and a score of Whig supporters spent the best part of the evening downstairs in the dining-room, with Major Dyngwall in the chair, working out the Voters' List and making fresh calculations. On the whole they felt cheerful enough, and showed it: but they had to own, first, that the Parson's votes were almost as bad as lost, whereas the amount of gains couldn't be reckoned with certainty: and second, that, resting as they did upon a confusion between religious feeling and the stomach-ache, 'twas important that Lord William should recover by next morning, show himself about the town and at the hustings, and clinch the mistake. John a Hall, who had a head on his shoulders when parsons weren't concerned, shook it at this. He didn't believe for a moment that Lord William could be brought up to the poll; and as it turned out, he was right. But towards the end of the discussion he put forward a very clever suggestion.

"I don't know," says he, "if the Major here's an early riser?"

"Moderately," says Major Dyngwall, looking for the moment as if the question took him fairly aback. They didn't think much of this at the time, but it came back to their minds later on.

"Well, then," says John a Hall, "you're all terrible certain about the Parson's votes being lost; but dang me if I've lost hope of 'em yet. Though I can't do it myself, I believe the old fool could be handled. By five in the morning, say, we shall know about Lord William. If he can't leave his bed—and I'll bet he can't—I suggest that the Major steps down, pays an early call, and tells Parson the simple truth from beginning to end."

"An excellent suggestion!" put in Mr. Newte. "I was about to make it myself. There's nothing like telling the truth, after all: and I'll take care it doesn't get about the town till the poll's closed."

Well, so it was arranged: and early next morning, after dressing himself very carefully and making sure that Lord William couldn't leave his room (he was as yellow as an egg, poor fellow, with a kind of mild janders), away the Major starts upon his errand, promising to be back by seven, to be driven down to the poll behind a brass band.

On the stroke of eight, when Roger Newte, as Mayor and Returning Officer, declared the poll open, down the street came the blue-and-gold band, with Dr. Macann and Mr. Saule behind it bowing and smiling in a two-horse shay, and a fine pillaloo of supporters. They cheered like mad to find themselves first in the field, though disappointed in their hearts (I believe), having counted on a turn-up with the opposition band, just to start the day sociably. The Tory candidates climbed the hustings, and there the Doctor fired off six speeches and Mr. Saule a couple, while the votes came rolling in like pennies at the door of a menagerie. And still no sign of the Whigs, nor sound of any band from the direction of Tregoose. By half-past eight Roger Newte was looking nervous, and began to send off small boys to hurry his friends up. Towards nine o'clock Dr. Macann made another speech, and set the crowd roaring with "'Tis the voice of the sluggard," out of Dr. Watts's hymn-book. "But I don't even hear his voice!" said he, very facetious-like: and "Seriously, gentlemen, my Whig friends might be more careful of your feelings. We know that they consider Ardevora their own: but they might at least avoid insulting the British Liberty they have injured,"—telling words, these, I can assure you. "Nor," he went on, "is it quite fair treatment of our worthy Mayor here, who cannot be expected, single-handed, to defy you as he defied the Court of King's Bench and treat your votes as he treated your Rate List." Newte had to stand there and swallow this, though it was poison to him, and he swore next day he'd willingly spend ten years in the pit of the wicked for getting quits with Macann. But what fairly knocked the fight out of him was to see, five minutes later, old Parson Polsue totter up the steps towards him with a jaw stuck out like a mule's, and Grandison behind, and all their contingent. Though made up of Tories to a man, the crowd couldn't help hissing; but it affected the old Parson not a doit.

"Macann and Saule," said he, speaking up sharp and loud: and at the names the hissing became a cheer fit to lift the roofs off their eaves.

Newte fairly forgot himself. "Ha—haven't you seen Major Dyngwall this morning?" he managed to ask.

And with that the crowd below parted, and John a Hall came roaring through it like a bull.

"Where's the Major? Major Dyngwall! Who's seen Major Dyngwall?"

"Ay, we're all asking that?" called out some person, sarcastic-like: and all began to laugh and to boo. But John a Hall caught at the rail and swung himself up the steps.

"You thundering fools!" he bellowed. "Is it foul play that tickles you? One of our candidates you've contrived to poison, and I've left him at Tregoose between life and death. What have you done with the other?" By this time he had the mob fairly hushed and gaping. "What have you done with the other?" he shouted, banging his fist down on the Returning Officer's table. "Let Parson Polsue speak first, for to my knowledge the Major was bound for his lodgings when last seen."

"I haven't set eyes on him," said Parson Polsue.

"I saw him!" piped up a woman in the crowd. "I saw him about six this morning. He was walking along the foreshore towards Mr. Grandison's."

At this everyone turned to the Curate; but he shook his head. "Major Dyngwall has not called on me this morning. Indeed, I have not seen him."

"Then run you and search—half a dozen of you!" commanded John a Hall. "I'll get to the bottom of this, I warn you. And as for you, Dr. Macann, and you, Mr. Saule—if you haven't learnt the difference between honest fighting and poisoning—kidnapping—murder, maybe—"

But he got no further. "That's enough of big words," said a voice, very quiet, but so that all had to listen: and behold, there was Kitty Lebow mounting the steps, as cool as cream in a dairy.

She landed on the platform and took a glance about her, and the folk read in her eye that she had come to enjoy herself. "Reckon I have a right here so well as the best of you, since you put me on the Rate List," says she, with a dry sort of twinkle. And with that she rounded on John a Hall. "I think I heard you talkin' of poison, Mr. Martin," says she, "not to mention kidnapping, and worse. And you asked, or my ears deceived me, if we knew the difference between poison and fair play? Well, we do. And likewise we know the difference between sickness and shamming; and likewise, again, the difference between making a demonstration in church and walking out because you've three fingers of White Ale inside you and it don't lie down with your other vittles. I ask ye, folks all,"—and here she swung round to the crowd—"did ever one of you hear that Christiana Lebow's White Ale was poison? Hasn't it been known and famous in this town before ever a Martin came to trouble us? And hasn't it times and again steadied my own inside when it rebelled against their attorney's— tricks? Well now, I tell you, I gave three fingers of it to Lord William yesterday when he called in the way of politeness on his road to church: and sorry I am for the young man; and wouldn't ha' done it if I guessed he'd been taking coffee with his breakfast. For White Ale and coffee be like Bottrells and Martins: they weren't made to mix. And another three fingers I doled out to the old Squire, and more by token 'twas the first time he'd ever darkened my threshold. That's my story: 'tis truth from a truth-speaking woman. And now if any silly fellow is going to vote Whig because o' yesterday, all I can say is—let him drink a breakfast cup of coffee and come to me for a glass of the other stuff; and if in forty minutes' time he's got any particular concern about Church matters, you may call me a—a—Martin!"

"That's all very well, ma'am," shouted John a Hall, as soon as he could make himself heard for the laughing. "But it don't account for the Major."

"'Twasn't meant to, my son," snapped Kitty, by this time in high good humour over her success as a public speaker. "But you started to talk about poison, so I thought I'd correct 'ee before you made a second goose of yourself over kidnapping."

But just at this moment a couple of men came running and shouting from the far end of the street.

"We've found 'en! We've found 'en!"

"Where is he to?" and "I told you so!" cried John a Hall and Kitty both in one breath.

"He's over 'pon the Island, making love to Mrs. Lebow's youngest daughter, Lally! The tide's cut 'em off; but Arch'laus Trebilcock's put off to fetch 'em home in his new boat!"

I've heard tell that Kitty took it steady as a regiment. It must have been a dreadful moment, the laughter turning on a sudden against her. But she stood for a while, and then to the surprise of everyone she lifted her head and smiled with the best. Then she caught old Polsue's eye, who was watching her as only a parson can, and, like a woman, she fixed on him as the man to answer.

"I reckon I can trust a daughter o' mine," says she.

It must have been nervous work for her, though, as they brought the pair along the street: and poor Lally didn't help her much by looking a picture of shame. But the Major stepped along gaily and up to the platform; and I'll warrant a tier of guns there couldn't have tried a man's courage worse.

"I humbly beg your pardon, madam. The tide cut us off while I was engaged in persuading your daughter to accept my hand. I cannot tell you,"—here he let fly a lover's glance at Lally—"if the delay helped me. But she has accepted me, ma'am, and with your leave we shall be the happiest couple in England."

They do say that Mrs. Lebow's hand went up to box the poor girl's ears. But the Bottrells had wits as well as breed, one and all; and it ended by her giving the Major two fingers and dropping him one of those curtseys that I've described to you already.

Ay, and the cream of the fun was that, what with her public speaking for one party and giving her daughter to the other, the doubtful voters couldn't for the life of them tell how to please her. "I'll vote, if you please, for Mrs. Lebow," said more than one of them, "if you'll tell me which side she's for." And I suppose that gave Newte his chance. At any rate, he returned Lord William and Major Dyngwall as polling 85 and 127 against Dr. Macann 42 and Mr. Saule 36. And so Miss Lally became a Member of Parliament's wife and rode in her coach.

"Indeed, and I'm sorry for Macann," said Kitty that night, as she untied her bonnet-strings; "but taking one thing with another, 'tis long since I've had such an enjoyable day."

[1] Probably "Huguenot's House." [2] Lineage.



THE HOTWELLS DUEL.

From the Memoirs of Joshua Frampton, Esq., late Honorary Physician to the Wells, and Surgeon.

I cannot pass this year 1790 without speaking of a ridiculous adventure which, but that it providentially happened at the close of our season, when the Spa was emptying and our fashionables talked more of packing their trunks than of the newest scandals, might have done me some professional damage besides bringing unmerited public laughter upon the heads of two honest gentlemen. As it was, our leading news-sheet, the Hotwells Courant, did not even smoke the affair, and so lost a nine days' wonder; while the Whig Examiner, after printing an item which threw me into a two days' perspiration, forbore to follow up the scent—the reason being that Mr. Lemoine, its editor, was shortly expecting an addition to his family, and, knowing his nervousness upon these occasions and his singular confidence in my skill, I was able to engage him by arguments to which at another time he might have listened less amiably.