The years were now to be counted as seven since Janet Dodds was plunged into the deep pool of the North Loch, and the state of mind of the married criminals, which we have tried to describe, had been growing and growing, for two of these years, as if it threatened to get stronger the older they grew, and the nearer the period of judgment. One morning when they were in bed—for even yet, while they concealed their thoughts from each other, and the name of Jenny Dodds was a condemned word in their vocabulary, even as the sacred name among the Romans, they had evinced no spoken enmity to each other—they heard a tirl at the door. The hour was early, and the douce genius of the grey dawn was deliberating with herself whether it was time to give place to her advancing sister, the morning. Mrs. Mary Dodds rose to answer the knock, and Thomas listened with natural curiosity to know who the early visitor was, and what was wanted. He heard a suppressed scream of fear from his wife, and the next moment she came rushing into the room; yet the never a word she uttered, and her lips were so white and dry that you might have supposed that her silence was the result of organic inability. Nor even when she got into bed again, and tried to hide her head with the bed-clothes, did her terror diminish, or her lips become more obedient to the feeling within; so that Thomas knew not what to think, except it was that she had seen a ghost—not an unnatural supposition at a time when occult causes and spiritual appearances were as undoubted as the phenomena of the electric telegraph are in our day. But he was not destined to be left many minutes more in ignorance of the cause of Mrs. Mary Dodds's terror, for, upon listening, he heard some one come into the kitchen, and bolt the door on the inside—so much for his ears; then he turned his eyes to the kitchen, into which he could, as well as the light of the grey dawn would permit, see from where he lay; and what did he see?

"How comes it? whence this mimic shape? In look and lineament so like our kind. You might accost the spectral thing, and say, 'Good e'en t'ye.'"

No other than the figure of Mrs. Janet Dodds herself. Yes, there she was in her old grey dress, busy taking off that plaid which Thomas knew so well, and hanging the same upon the peg, where she had hung it so often for five long years. Thomas was now as completely deprived of the power of speech as she who lay, equally criminal as himself, alongside of him; but able at least to look, or rather, unable to shut their eyes, they watched the doings of the strange morning visitor. They saw that she was moving about as if she were intent upon domestic work; and, by-and-by, there she was busy with coals and sticks brought from their respective places, putting on the fire, which she lighted with the indispensable spunk applied to the spark in the tinder-box. Next she undertook the sweeping of the floor, saying to herself—and they heard the words—"It looks as if it hadna been swept for seven years." Next she washed the dishes, which had been left on the table, indulging in the appropriate monologue implying the necessity of the work. Thereafter it appeared as if she was dissatisfied with the progress of the fire, for she was presently engaged in using the bellows, every blast of which was heard by the quaking couple in bed, and between the blasts the words came, "Ower late for Tammas's breakfast." So the blowing continued, till it was apparent enough, from the reflection of the flame on the wall, that she was succeeding in her efforts. Then, having made herself sure of the fire, she went to the proper place for the porridge goblet, took the same and put a sufficient quantity of water therein, placed it on the fire, and began to blow again with the same assiduity as before, with still interjected sentences expressive of her confidence that she would overcome the obstinacy of the coals. And overcome it she did, as appeared from the entire lighting up of the kitchen. Was ever Border Brownie so industrious! Some time now elapsed, as if she were sitting with due patience till the water should boil. Thereafter she rose, and they saw her cross the kitchen to the lobby, where the meal was kept, then return with a bowl containing what she no doubt considered a sufficient quantity. The stirring utensil called a "theedle" had also got into its proper place, and by-and-by they heard the sound of the same as it beat upon the bottom and sides, guided by an experienced hand, and, every now and then, the sweltering and totling of the pot. This process was now interrupted by the getting of the grey basin into which the porridge behoved to be poured; and poured it was, the process being followed by the sound of "the clauting o' the laggan," so familiar to Scotch ears. "Now it's ready for him," said the figure, as it moved across the kitchen again, to get the spoon and the bowl of milk, both of which they saw her place beside the basin.

All things being thus completed according to the intention of the industrious worker, a period of silence intervened, as if she had been taking a rest in the chair which stood by the fire. A most ominous interlude, for every moment the couple in bed expected that she would enter the bedroom, were it for nothing else than to "intimate breakfast;" an intimation which, if one could have judged by their erect hair and the sweat that stood in big drops on their brows, they were by no means prepared for. They were not to be subjected to this fearful trial, for the figure (so we must persist in calling it) was seen again to cross the kitchen, take down the plaid, and adjust it over the head according to the manner of the times. They then heard her draw the bolt, open the door, and shut the same again after her as she departed. She was gone.

Mr. Thomas Dodds and his wife now began to be able to breathe more freely. The hair resumed its flexibility, and the sweat disappeared; but, strange as it may seem, they never exchanged a word with each other as to who the visitor was, nor as to the morning's work she had so industriously and silently (with the exception of her monologues) executed. Too certain in their convictions as to the identity, whether in spirit or body, of the figure with that of her they had so cruelly put out of the way, they seemed to think it needless to question each other; and, independently of this, the old terror of the conscience was sufficient to seal their lips now, as it had done for a period before. Each of them supposed that the visitor was sent for the special purpose of some particular avengement of the crime upon the other; the appearance in so peaceful a way, in the meantime, being merely a premonition to show them that their consciences were not working in vain; and if Thomas was the greater sinner, which he no doubt suspected, in spite of himself, he might place against that conviction the fact that the inscrutable visitor had shown him the kindness at least of preparing his breakfast, and entirely overlooking the morning requirements of his spouse. Under these thoughts they rose and repaired with faltering step and fearful eyes to the kitchen. There everything was in the order they had anticipated from what they had seen and heard. Each looked with a shudder at the basin of porridge as if it had been invested with some terrible charm—nay, might it not have been poisoned?—a thought which rushed instantaneously into the head of Thomas, and entirely put to flight the prior hypothesis that he had been favoured by this special gift of cookery. The basin was accordingly laid aside by hands that trembled to touch it, and fear was a sufficient breakfast for both of them on that most eventful morning.

This occurrence, as may readily be supposed, was kept a profound secret. They both saw that it might be the forerunner of divine means to bring their evil deeds to light; and, under this apprehension, their taciturnity and mutual discontent, if not growing hatred, continued, broken only by occasional growls and curses, and the ejaculations forced out by the inevitable circumstances of their connection. The effect of the morning visit was meanwhile most apparent upon the man who committed the terrible act. He could not remain in the house, which, even in their happiest condition, was slovenly kept, showing everywhere the want of the skilled hands of that queen of housewives, Mrs. Janet Dodds—so ill-requited for her devotion to her husband. Nay, he felt all this as a reproof to him, and sorely and bitterly lamented the fatal act whereby he had deprived of life the best of wives, and the most honest and peaceful of womankind. Then the awe of divine vengeance deepened these shadows of the soul till he became moody and melancholy, walking hither and thither without an object, and in secluded places, looking fearfully around him as if he expected every moment the spectre visitor of the morning to appear before him. Nor was he less miserable at home, where the growing hatred made matters worse and worse every hour, and where, when the grey dawn came, he expected another visit and another scene of the same description as the last.

Nearly a week had thus passed, and it was Sabbath morning. The tinsmiths' hammers were silent, the noisy games of the urchins were hushed, the street of the Bow resounded only occasionally to the sound of a foot—all Edinburgh was, in short, under the solemnity enjoined by the Calvinism so much beloved by the people; and surely the day might have been supposed to be held in such veneration by ministering spirits, sent down to earth to execute the purposes of Heaven, that no visit of the feared shadow would disturb even the broken rest of the wicked. So perhaps thought our couple; but their thoughts belied them, for just again, as the dawn broke over the tops of the high houses, the well-known tirl was heard at the door. Who was to open it? For days the mind of the wife had been made up. She would not face that figure again; no, if all the powers of the world were there to compel her; and as for Thomas, conscience had reduced the firmness of a man who once upon a time could kill to a condition of fear and trembling. Yet terrified as he was, he considered that he was here under the obligation to obey powers even higher than his conscience, and disobedience might bring upon him some evil greater than that under which he groaned. So up he got, trembling in every limb, and proceeding to the door, opened the same. What he saw may be surmised, but what he felt no one ever knew, for the one reason that he had never the courage to tell it, and for the other that no man or woman was ever placed in circumstances from which they could draw any conclusion which could impart even a distant analogy. This much, however, was known: Thomas retreated instantly to bed, and the visitor, in the same suit of hodden-grey, again entered, passed the bolt, took off her plaid, hung it up, and began the duties which she thought were suited to the day and the hour. So much being thus alike, the couple in the bedroom no doubt augured a repetition of the old process. They were right, and they were wrong. Their eyes were fixed upon her, and watched her movements; but the watch was that of the charmed eye, which is said to be without motive. They saw her once more go deliberately and tentily through the old process of putting on the fire, and they heard again the application of the bellows, every blast succeeding another with the regularity of a clock, until the kitchen was illuminated by the rising flame. This was all that could be called a repetition; for in place of going for the porridge goblet, she went direct for the tea-kettle, into which she poured a sufficient quantity of water, saying the while to herself, "Tammas maun hae his tea breakfast on Sabbath morning"—words which Thomas, as he now lay quaking in bed, knew very well he had heard before many a time and oft. Nor were the subsequent acts less in accordance with the old custom of the dwelling. There was no sweeping of the floor or scouring of pans on the sacred morning; in place of all which she had something else to do, for surely we must suppose that this gentle visitor was a good Calvinist, and would perform only the acts of necessity and mercy. These she had done in so far as regarded necessity, and now they saw her go to the shelf on which the Bible was deposited—a book which, alas! for seven years had not been opened by either of the guilty pair. Having got what she wanted, she sat down by the table, opened the volume at a place well thumbed, and began to read aloud a chapter in the Corinthians, which Thomas Dodds, the more by reason that he had heard it read two hundred and fifty times, knew by heart. This being finished, she turned up a psalm, yea, that very psalm which Janet Dodds had sung every Sunday morning, and, presently, the kitchen was resonant with the rising notes of the Bangor, as they came from a throat trembling with devotion—

"I waited on the Lord my God, And patiently did bear; At length to me He did incline My voice and cry to hear.

"He took me from a fearful pit, And from the miry clay, And on a rock He set my feet, Establishing my way."

The service finished, they saw her replace the book where she had found it; and by this time the kettle was spewing from the mouth thereof a volume of steam, as if it were calling to its old mistress to relieve it from the heat of the fire; nor was she long in paying due obedience. The tea-pot was got where she seemed to know it would be found, so also the tea-canister. The quantity to be put in was a foregone conclusion, and steadily measured with the spoon. The water was poured in, and the utensil placed on the cheek of the chimney in order to the indispensable infusion. Next the cup and saucer were placed on the table, then followed the bread and butter, and the sugar and the milk; all being finished by the words to herself, "There's nae egg in the house." Having thus finished her work, she took down her plaid, adjusted it carefully, opened the door, and departed.

The effect produced by this second spectral appearance could scarcely be exaggerated, yet we suspect you will not find it of that kind which is most in harmony with human nature, except in the case of Mrs. Dodds the second, who lay, as on the former occasion, sweating and trembling. It was now different with the husband, on whom apparently had fallen some of the seeds of the word, as they were scattered by the lips of the strange visitor, and conscience had prepared the soil. The constitutional strength of character which had enabled him to perpetrate a terrible deed of evil, was ready as a power to achieve his emancipation, and work in the direction of good. So, without saying a word of all that had been acted that morning, he rose and dressed himself, and, going into the kitchen, he sat down without the fear of poison, and partook of the breakfast which had been so strangely prepared for him, nor was he satisfied till he read the chapter and psalm with which he had been so long familiar. He then returned to the bedroom, and addressing his wife—

"You now see," said he, "that Heaven has found us out. That visitor is nae ither than Mrs. Janet Dodds returned frae the grave, and sure it is that nane are permitted to leave that place o' rest except for a purpose. No, it's no for naething that Janet Dodds comes back to her auld hame. What the purpose may be, the Lord only knows; but this seems to me to be clear enough—that you and I maun pairt. You see that nae breakfast has been laid for you. I have taen mine, and nae harm has come o't; a clear sign that though we are baith great criminals, you are considered to be the warst o' the twa. It was you wha put poison into my ear and cast glamour ower my een; it was you wha egged me on, for 'the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her words are smoother than oil; but her feet take hold of hell.' That I am guilty, I know; and 'though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.' I will dree my doom whatever it may be, and so maun you yours; but there may be a difference, and so far as mortal can yet see, yours will be waur to bear than mine. But, however a' that may be, the time is come when you maun leave this house. 'Cast out the strange woman, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease;' but 'go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end, when thy neighbour hath put thee to shame.' Keep your secret frae a' save the Lord; and may He hae mercy on your soul!"

With which words, savouring as they did of the objurgations of the black pot to the kettle, Mr. Thomas Dodds left his house, no doubt in the expectation that Mrs. Dodds secunda would move her camp, and betake herself once more to her old place of residence in the Grassmarket. Where he went that day no man ever knew, further than that he was seen in the afternoon in St. Giles's Church, where, no doubt, he did his best to make a cheap purchase of immunity to his soul and body, in consideration of a repentance brought on by pure fear, produced by a spectre; and who knows but that that was a final cause of the spectre's appearance? We have seen that it was a kindly spirit, preparing porridge and tea for him at the same time that it made his hair stand on end, and big drops of sweat settle upon his brow or roll down therefrom—a conjunction this of the tawse and the jelly-pot, whereby kind and loving parents try to redeem naughty boys. Nor let it be said that this kindly dealing with a murderer is contrary to the ways of Heaven; for, amidst a thousand other examples, did not Joshua, after the wall of Jericho lay flat at the blast of a trumpet, save that vile woman Rahab at the same time that he slew the young and the old, nay, the very infants, with the edge of the sword? All which, though we are not, by token of our sins, able to see the reason thereof, is doubtless consonant to a higher justice—altogether unlike our goddess, who is represented as blind, merely because she is supposed not to see a bribe when offered to her by a litigant. So the penitence of Mr. Thomas Dodds might be a very dear affair after all, in so much as terror is a condition of the soul which, of all we are doomed to experience, is the most difficult to bear, especially if it is a terror of divine wrath. On his return to his house in the evening, he found that Mrs. Mary had taken him at his word and decamped, but not without providing herself with as good a share of the "goods in communion" as she could, perhaps, at two or three returns, carry off. So was she like Zebulun in all save her righteousness, for she "rejoiced in her going out;" nay, she had some reason, for she had discovered that in a secret drawer of an old cabinet there was a pose of gold collected by the industrious hands of Mrs. Janet, and unknown to her husband, every piece of which she carried off in spite of all fear of the spectre, which, if a sensible one, might have been supposed to be more irritated at this heedless spoliation than at all the Jezebel had yet done, with the exception of the counselling her death in the deep hole of the North Loch. On seeing all this robbery, Mr. Dodds became more and more aware of the bad exchange he had made by killing his good spouse to enable him to take another, who had merely found more favour in his eyes by reason of her good looks; and we may augur how much deeper his feeling of regret would have been, had he known the secret pose, so frugally and prudently laid up, perhaps for his sake, at least for the sake of both, when disease or old age might overtake them, in a world where good and evil, pleasure and pain, appear to be fixed quantities, only shoved from one to another by wisdom and prudence, yet sometimes refusing to be moved even by these means.

After satisfying himself of the full extent of the robbery, which, after all, he had brought upon himself, and very richly deserved, he sat down upon a chair and began to moralize, after the manner of those late penitents who have found themselves out to be either rogues or fools—the number of whom comprehends, perhaps, all mankind. He had certainly good reason to be contrite. The angel in the house had become a spectre, and she who was no angel, either in the house or out of it, had carried off almost everything of any value he possessed. Nor did he stop at mere unspoken contrition, he bewailed in solemn tones his destiny, and then began to cast up all the perfections of good Janet, the more perfect and beautiful these seeming in proportion as he felt the fear of her reappearance, perhaps next time, in place of making his breakfast, to run away with him to the dire place of four letters. All her peculiarities were now virtues—nay, the very things which had appeared to him the most indefensible took on the aspect of angelic endowments. While her careful housewifery was all intended for his bodily health and comfort, her perseverance in adhering to the one chapter and the one psalm was due to that love of iteration which inspires those who are never weary of well-doing. And what was more extraordinary, one verse of the psalm—that which we have quoted—had special reference to the manner of her death, and her deliverance from condemnation in the world to come. No doubt the man who meditates upon his own crime or folly at the very moment when he is suffering from its sharp recalcitrations, is just about as miserable a wretch as the reformatory of the world can present; but when, to the effects upon himself, he is compelled to think of the cruelty he has exercised towards others—and those perhaps found out to be his best friends—we doubt if there are any words beyond the vocabulary of the condemned that are sufficient to express his anguish. Even this did not comprehend all the suffering of Mr. Dodds, for, was he not under doom without knowing what form it was to assume, whether the spectre (whose cookery might be a sham) would choke him, burn him, or run away with him?

Deeply steeped in this remorseful contemplation, during which the figure of his ill-used wife flitted before the eye of his fancy with scarcely less of substantial reality than she had shown in her spectral form, he found that he had lost all regard to time. The night was fast setting in, the shadows of the tall houses were falling deeper and deeper on the room, and the Sabbath stillness was a solemn contrast to the perturbations inside the chamber of his soul, where "the serpents and the cockatrices would not be charmed." Still, everything within and without was dreary, and the spoliation of his means did not tend to enliven the outer scene, or impart a charm to the owner. While in this state of depression, Tammas heard a knock at the door. It was not, as on the former occasions, what is called a tirl. It might be a neighbour, or it might be an old crony, and he stood in need of some one to raise his spirits, so he went to the door and opened it. But what was his horror when he saw enter a female figure, in all respects so like his feared visitor that he concluded in the instant that she was the same! nor could all his penitence afford him resolution enough to make a proper examination; besides, it was grey dark, and even a pair of better eyes than he could boast of, might, under the circumstances soon to appear, have been deceived. Retreating into the kitchen, he was followed by this dubious, and yet not dubious visitor, who, as he threw himself upon a chair, took a seat right opposite to him.

"Ye'll no ken me, Tammas Dodds?" said she.

Whereupon Tammas looked and looked again, and still the likeness he dreaded was so impressive, that, in place of moving his tongue, he moved, that is, he shuddered, all over.

"What—eh?" at length he stuttered; "ken ye? wha in God's name are ye? No surely Mrs. Janet Dodds in the likeness of the flesh!"

"No, but her sister, Mrs. Paterson," replied the other. "And is it possible ye can hae forgotten the only woman who was present at your first marriage?"

"Ay, ay," replied Tammas, as he began to come to a proper condition of perceiving and thinking; "and it was you, then, wha was here this morning?"

"No, no," replied she; "I have not been here for seven long years, even since that terrible night when you pushed Janet into the North Loch."

"And may Heaven and its angels hae mercy upon me!" ejaculated he.

"Aiblins they may," said she, "for your purpose was defeated; yea, even by that Heaven and thae angels."

"What mean you, woman?" cried the astonished man. "What, in the name o' a' that's gude on earth and holy in heaven, do ye mean?"

"Just that Janet Dodds is at this hour a leevin' woman," was the reply.

"The Lord be thanked!" cried Tammas again, "for 'He preserveth all them that love Him.'"

"'But all the wicked He will destroy,'" returned she; "and surely it was wicked to try to drown sae faithful a wife and sae gude a Christian."

"Wicked!" rejoined he, in rising agony. "'Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let them reprove me, it shall,' as Solomon says, 'be an excellent oil.'"

"I am glad," continued the woman, "to find you with a turned heart; but whaur is the Jezebel ye took in her place?"

"Awa this day," replied he. "I have found her out, and never mair is she wife o' mine."

"Sae far weel and better," said she.

"Ay, but speak to me o' Janet," cried he, earnestly. "Come, tell me how she escaped, whaur she is, and how she is; for now I think there is light breaking through the fearfu' cloud."

"Light indeed," continued Mrs. Paterson; "and now, listen to a strange tale, mair wonderfu' than man's brain ever conceived. When ye thought ye had drowned her, and cared naething doubtless—for ye see I maun speak plain—whether her spirit went to the ae place or the ither, ay, and ran awa to add to murder a lee, she struggled out o' the deep, yea—

'He took her from the fearfu' pit, And from the miry clay.'

And when she got to the bank she ran as for the little life was in her, until she came to the foot of Halkerstone's Wynd, where she crossed to the other side of the loch. When she thought hersel' safe, she took the road to Glasgow, where I was then living wi' my husband, wha is since dead. The night was dark, but self-preservation maks nae gobs at dangers; so on she went, till in the grey morning she made up to the Glasgow carrier, wha agreed to gie her a cast even to the end o' his journey. It was the next night when she arrived at my door, cold and hungry, and, what was waur, sair and sick at heart. She told me the hail story as weel as she could for sobs and greeting; for the thought aye rugged at her heart that the man she had liked sae weel, and had toiled for night and day, should hae turned out to be the murderer o' his ain wife."

"And weel it might hae rugged and rugged," ejaculated Tammas.

"I got aff her wet clothes," continued she, "and gave her some strong drink to warm her, and then we considered what was to be dune. My husband was for off to Edinburgh to inform on ye, even if there should hae been a drawing o' the neck on't; but Janet cried, and entreated baith him and me to keep the thing quiet. She said she couldna gae back to you; and as for getting you punished, she couldna bear the thought o't. And then we a' thought what a disgrace it would be to our family if it were thought that my sister had been attempted to be murdered by her husband. We knew weel enough ye would say she had fallen in by accident; and when afterwards we heard that ye had buried a body that had been found in the loch, we made up our minds as to what we would do. We just agreed to keep Janet under her maiden name. Nane in Glasgow had ever seen her before, and her ain sorrows kept her within doors, so that the secret wasna ill to keep. Years afterwards, my husband was ta'en from me, and Janet and I came, about twa months syne, to live at Juniper Green, wi' John Paterson, my husband's brother, wha had offered us a hame."

"And is Janet there now?" cried Tammas, impatiently.

"Ay," continued Mrs. Paterson; "but, alas! she's no what she was. She gets at times out o' her reason, and will be that way for days thegether. The doctor has a name for it ower lang for my tongue, but it tells naething but what we ken ower weel. When in thae fits she thinks she is here in the Bow, and living with you, and working and moiling in the house just as she used to do langsyne. Mairower, and that troubles us maist ava, she will be out when the reason's no in, so that we are obliged to watch her. Five days syne she was aff in the morning before daylight, and even so late as this morning she played us the same trick; whaur she gaed we couldna tell, but I had some suspicion she was here."

"Ay," replied Mr. Dodds, as he opened his eyes very wide; "she was here wi' a vengeance."

Thus Mrs. Paterson's story was finished; and our legend of the Brownie, more veritable, we opine, than that of Bodsbeck, is also drawing to a conclusion. Tammas, after a period of meditation, more like one of Janet's hallucinations than a fit of rational thinking, asked his sister-in-law whether she thought that Janet, in the event of her getting quit of her day-dreams, would consent to live with him again. To which question she answered that she was not certain; for that Janet, when in her usual state of mind, was still wroth against him for the attempt to take away her life; but she added that she had no objection, seeing he was penitent, to give him an opportunity to plead for himself. She even went further, and agreed to use her influence to bring about a reconciliation. It was therefore agreed between them that the sister should call again when Janet had got quit of her temporary derangement, and Thomas might follow up this intimation with a visit. About four days thereafter, accordingly, Mrs. Paterson kept her word, and next day Mr. Dodds repaired to Juniper Green. At first Janet refused to see him; but upon Mrs. Paterson's representations of his penitence and suffering, she became reconciled to an interview. We may venture to say, without attempting a description of a meeting unparalleled in history, that if Janet Dodds had not been a veritable Calvinist, no good could have come of all Mr. Dodds's professions; but she knew that the Master cast out the dumb spirit which tore the possessed, and that that spirit attempted murder not less than Tammas. Wherefore might not his dumb spirit be cast out as well by that grace which aboundeth in the bosom of the Saviour? We do not say that a return of her old love helped this deduction, because we do not wish to mix up profane with sacred things. Enough if we can certify that a very happy conclusion was the result. The doctor did his duty, and Janet having been declared compos mentis, returned to her old home. Her first duty was to look for "the pose." It was gone in the manner we have set forth; but Janet could collect another, and no doubt in due time did; nor did she fail of any of her old peculiarities, all of which became endeared to Thomas by reason of their being veritable sacrifices to his domestic comfort.



GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.

THE LAST SCRAP.

It is a fact well known to Dr. Lee, and to many besides, that notwithstanding the extensive researches of Wodrow and others, there have died away in the silent lapse of time, or are still hovering over our cleuchs and glens, in the aspect of a dim and misty tradition, many instances of extreme cruelty and wanton oppression, exercised (during the reign of Charles II.) over the poor Covenanters, or rather Nonconformists, of the south and west counties of Scotland. In particular, although the whole district suffered, it was in the vale of the Nith, and in the hilly portion of the parish of Closeburn, that the fury of Grierson, Dalzell, and Johnstone—not to mention an occasional simoom, felt on the withering approach of Clavers with his lambs—was felt to the full amount of merciless persecution and relentless cruelty. The following anecdote I had from a sister of my grandmother, who lived till a great age, and who was lineally descended from one of the parties. I have never seen any notice whatever taken of the circumstances; but am as much convinced of its truth, in all its leading features, as I am of that of any other similar statements which are made in Wodrow, "Naphtali," or the "Cloud of Witnesses."

The family of Harkness has been upwards of four hundred years tenants on the farm of Queensberry, occupying the farm-house and steading situated upon the banks of the Caple, and known by the name of Mitchelslacks. The district is wild and mountainous, and, at the period to which I refer, in particular, almost inaccessible through any regularly constructed road. The hearts, however, of these mountain residents were deeply attuned to religious and civil liberty, and revolted with loathing from the cold doctrines and compulsory ministrations of the curate of Closeburn. They were, therefore, marked birds for the myrmidons of oppression, led on by Claverhouse, and "Red Rob," the scarlet-cloaked leader of his band.

It was about five o'clock of the afternoon, in the month of August, that a troop of horse was seen crossing the Glassrig—a flat and heathy muir—and bearing down with great speed upon Mitchelslacks. Mrs. Harkness had been very recently delivered of a child, and still occupied her bed, in what was denominated the chamber, or cha'mer—an apartment separated from the rest of the house, and set apart for more particular occasions. Her husband, the object of pursuit, having had previous intimation, by the singing or whistling of a bird (as was generally reported on such occasions), had betaken himself, some hours before, to the mountain and the cave—his wonted retreat on similar visits. From this position, on the brow of a precipice, inaccessible by any save a practised foot, he could see his own dwelling, and mark the movements which were going on outside. The troop, having immediately surrounded the houses, and set a guard upon every door and window, as well as an outpost, or spy, upon an adjoining eminence, immediately proceeded with the search—a search conducted with the most brutal incivility, and even indelicacy; subjecting every child and servant to apprehensions of the most horrid and revolting character. It would be every way improper to mention even a tithe of the oaths and blasphemy which were not only permitted, but sanctioned and encouraged, by their impious and regardless leader. Suffice it to say, that after every other corner and crevice was searched in vain, the cha'mer was invaded, and the privacy of a female, in very interesting and delicate circumstances, rudely and suddenly entered.

"The old fox is here," said Clavers, passing his sword up to the hilt betwixt the mother and her infant, sleeping unconsciously on her arm, and thrusting it home with such violence that the point perforated the bed, and even penetrated the floor beneath.

"Toss out the whelp," vociferated Red Rob—always forward on such occasions; "and the b—ch will follow." And, suiting the action to the word, he rolled the sleeping, and happily well-wrapped, infant on the floor.

"The Lord preserve my puir bairn!" was the instantaneous and instinctive exclamation of the agonized and now demented mother, springing at the same time from her couch, and catching up her child with a look of the most despairing alarm. A cloud of darkened feeling seemed to pass over the face and features of the infant,[*] and a cry of helpless suffering succeeded, at once to comfort and to madden the mother. "A murderous and monstrous herd are ye all," said she, again resuming her position, and pressing the affrighted, rather than injured child to her breast. "Limbs of Satan and enemies of God, begone! He whom ye seek is not here; nor will the God he serves and you defy, ever suffer him, I fervently hope and trust, to fall into your merciless and unhallowed hands."

[note *: "In the light of heaven its face Grew dark as they were speaking."]

At this instant a boy about twelve years of age was dragged into the room, and questioned respecting the place of his father's retreat, sometimes in a coaxing, and at others in a threatening manner. The boy presented, to every inquiry, the aspect of dogged resistance and determined silence.

"Have the bear's cub to the croft," said Clavers, "and shoot him on the spot."

The boy was immediately removed; and the distracted mother left, happily for herself, in a state of complete insensibility. There grew, and there still grows, a rowan-tree in the corner of the garden or kailyard of Mitchelslacks; to this tree or bush the poor boy was fastened with cords, having his eyes bandaged, and being made to understand, that, if he did not reveal his father's retreat, a ball would immediately pass through his brain. The boy shivered, attempted to speak, then seemed to recover strength and resolution, and continued silent.

"Do you wish to smell gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the earth a few paces off.

The boy uttered a loud and unearthly scream, and his head sunk upon his breast. At this instant, the aroused and horrified mother was seen on her bended knees, with clasped hands, and eyes in which distraction rioted, at the feet of the destroyers. But nature, which had given her strength for the effort, now deserted her, and she fell lifeless at the feet of her apparently murdered son. Even the heart of Clavers was somewhat moved at this scene; and he was in the act of giving orders for an immediate retreat, when there rushed into the circle, in all the frantic wildness of a maniac, at once the father and the husband. He had observed from his retreat the doings of that fearful hour: and, having every reason to conclude that he was purchasing his own safety at the expense of the lives of his whole family, he had issued from the cave, and hurled himself from the steep, and was now in the presence of those whom he deemed the murderers of his family.

"Fiends—bloody, brutal, heartless fiends—are ye all! And is this your work, ye sons of the wicked and the accursed one? What! could not one content ye? Was not the boy enough to sacrifice on your accursed temple to Moloch, but ye must imbrue your hands in the blood of a weak, an infirm, a helpless woman! Oh, may the God of the Covenant," added he, bending reverently down upon his knees, and looking towards heaven, "may the God of Jacob forgive me for cursing ye! And, thou man of blood" (addressing Clavers personally), "think ye not that the blood of Brown, and of my darling child, and my beloved wife—think ye not, wot ye not, that their blood, and the blood of the thousand saints which ye have shed, will yet be required, ay, fearfully required, even to the last drop, by an avenging God, at your hands?"

Having uttered these words with great and awful energy, he was on the point of drawing his sword, concealed under the flap of his coat, and of selling his life as dearly as possible, when Mrs. Harkness, who had now recovered her senses, rushed into his arms, exclaiming—

"Oh Thomas, Thomas, what is this ye hae done? Oh, beware, beware!—I am yet alive and unskaithed. God has shut the mouths of the lions; they have not been permitted to hurt me. And our puir boy, too, moves his head, and gives token of life. But you, you, my dear, dear, infatuated husband—oh, into what hands have ye fallen, and to what a death are ye now reserved!"

"Unloose the band," vociferated Clavers; "make fast your prisoner's hands, and, in the devil's name, let us have done with this drivelling!"

There was a small public-house at this time at Closeburn mill, and into this Clavers and his party went for refreshment; whilst an adjoining barn, upon which a guard was set, served to secure the prisoner. No sooner was Mr. Harkness left alone, and in the dark—for it was now nightfall—than he began to think of some means or other of effecting his escape. The barn was happily known to him; and he recollected that, though the greater proportion of the gable was built of stone and lime, yet that a small part towards the top, as was sometimes the case in these days, was constructed of turf, and that, should he effect an opening through the soft material, he might drop with safety upon the top of a peat-stack, and thus effect his escape to Creechope Linn, with every pass and cave of which he was intimately acquainted. In a word, his escape was effected in this manner; and though the alarm was immediately given, and large stones rolled over the precipices of the adjoining linn, he was safely ensconced in darkness, and under the covert of a projecting rock; and ultimately (for, in the course of a few days, King William and liberty were the order of the day) he returned to his wife and his family, there to enjoy for many years that happiness which the possession of a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man is sure to impart. The brother, however, of this more favoured individual was not so fortunate, as may be gathered from Wodrow, and the "Cloud of Witnesses;" for he was executed ere the day of deliverance, at the Gallowlee, and his most pathetic and eloquent address is still extant.

Let us rejoice with trembling that we live in an age and under a government so widely different from those now referred to; and whilst on our knees we pour forth the tribute of thankfulness to God, let us teach our children to prize the precious inheritance so dearly purchased by our forefathers.

* * * * *



THE STORY OF MARY BROWN.

If the reader of what I am going to relate for his or her edification, or for perhaps a greater luxury, viz. wonder, should be so unreasonable as to ask for my authority, I shall be tempted, because a little piqued, to say that no one should be too particular about the source of pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing but what you can prove to be a reality, you will, under good philosophical leadership, have no great faith in the sun—a thing which you never saw, the existence of which you are only assured of by a round figure of light on the back of your eye, and which may be likened to tradition; so all you have to do is to believe like a good Catholic, and be contented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an Arab of the City—a poor street boy, who didn't know who his father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her by a pretty sharp experience, insomuch as she took from him every penny he made by holding horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in return. But Bill got out of this bondage by the mere chance of having been taken a fancy to by Mr. Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St. Mary's Wynd (an ancestor, we suspect, of the Ramsays of Barnton), who thought he saw in the City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs to the Bedouin, and who accordingly elevated him to the position of a stable-boy, with board and as many shillings a week as there are days in that subdivision of time.

Nor did William Halket—to whom for his merits we accord the full Christian name—do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything that came in his way. Then, to render the connection reciprocal, William was gratefully alive to the conviction that if he had not been, as it were, taken from the street, the street might have been taken from him, by his being locked up some day in the Heart of Midlothian. So things went on in St. Mary's Wynd for five or six years, and might have gone on for twice that period, had it not been that at a certain hour of a certain day William fell in love with a certain Mary Brown, who had come on that very day to be an under-housemaid in the inn; and strange enough, it was a case of "love at first sight," the more by token that it took effect the moment that Mary entered the stable with a glass of whisky in her hand sent to him by Mrs. Ramsay. No doubt it is seldom that a fine blooming young girl, with very pretty brown hair and very blue eyes, appears to a young man with such a recommendation in her hand; but we are free to say that the whisky had nothing to do with an effect which is well known to be the pure result of the physical attributes of the individual. Nay, our statement might have been proved by the counterpart effect produced upon Mary herself, for she was struck by William at the same moment when she handed him the glass; and we are not to assume that the giving of a pleasant boon is always attended with the same effect as the receiving of it.

But, as our story requires, it is the love itself between these two young persons, whose fates were so remarkable, we have to do with—not the causes, which are a mystery in all cases. Sure it is, humble in position as they were, they could love as strongly, as fervently, perhaps as ecstatically, as great people—nay, probably more so, for education has a greater chance of moderating the passion than increasing it; and so, notwithstanding of what Plutarch says of the awfully consuming love between Phrygius and Picrea, and also what Shakespeare has sung or said about a certain Romeo and a lady called Juliet, we are certain that the affection between these grand personages was not more genuine, tender, and true, than that which bound the simple and unsophisticated hearts of Will Halket and Mary Brown. But at best we merely play on the surface of a deep subject when we try with a pen to describe feelings, and especially the feelings of love. We doubt, if even the said pen were plucked from Cupid's wing, whether it would help us much. We are at best only left to a choice of expressions, and perhaps the strongest we could use are those which have already been used a thousand times—the two were all the world to each other, the world outside nothing at all to them; so that they could have been as happy on the top of Mount Ararat, or on the island of Juan Fernandez, provided they should be always in each other's company, as they were in St. Mary's Wynd. And as for whispered protestations and chaste kisses— for really their love had a touch of romance about it you could hardly have expected, but which yet kept it pure, if not in some degree elevated above the loves of common people—these were repeated so often about the quiet parts of Arthur's Seat and the King's Park, and the fields about the Dumbiedykes and Duddingstone Loch, that they were the very moral aliments on which they lived. In short, to Mary Brown the great Duke of Buccleuch was as nothing compared to Willie Halket, and to Willie Halket the beautiful Duchess of Grammont would have been as nothing compared to simple Mary Brown. All which is very amiable and very necessary; for if it had been so ordained that people should feel the exquisite sensations of love in proportion as they were beautiful, or rich, or endowed with talent (according to a standard), our world would have been even more queer than that kingdom described by Gulliver, where the ugliest individual is made king or queen.

Things continued in this very comfortable state at the old inn in St. Mary's Wynd for about a year, and it had come to enter into the contemplation of Will that upon getting an increase of his wages he would marry Mary, and send her to live with her mother, a poor, hard-working washerwoman, in Big Lochend Close; whereunto Mary was so much inclined, that she looked forward to the day as the one that promised to be the happiest that she had yet seen, or would ever see. But, as an ancient saying runs, the good hour is in no man's choice; and about this time it so happened that Mr. Peter Ramsay, having had a commission from an old city man, a Mr. Dreghorn, located as a planter in Virginia, to send him out a number of Scottish horses, suggested to William that he would do well to act as supercargo and groom. Mr. Dreghorn had offered to pay a good sum to the man who should bring them out safe, besides paying his passage over and home. And Mr. Ramsay would be ready to receive Will into his old place again on his return. As for Mary, with regard to whom the master knew his man's intentions, she would remain where she was, safe from all temptation, and true to the choice of her heart. This offer pleased William, because he saw that he could make some money out of the adventure, whereby he would be the better able to marry, and make a home for the object of his affections; but he was by no means sure that Mary would consent; for women, by some natural divining of the heart, look upon delays in affairs of love as ominous and dangerous. And so it turned out that one Sabbath evening, when they were seated beneath a tree in the King's Park, and William had cautiously introduced the subject to her, she was like other women.

"The bird that gets into the bush," she said, as the tears fell upon her cheeks, "sometimes forgets to come back to the cage again. I would rather hae the lean lintie in the hand, than the fat finch on the wand."

"But you forget, Mary, love," was the answer of Will, "that you can feed the lean bird, but you can't feed me. It is I who must support you. It is to enable me to do that which induces me to go. I will come with guineas in my pocket where there are now only pennies and placks; and you know, Mary, the Scotch saying, 'A heavy purse makes a light heart.'"

"And an unsteady one," rejoined Mary. "And you may bring something else wi' you besides the guineas; maybe a wife."

"One of Mr. Dreghorn's black beauties," said Will, laughing. "No, no, Mary, I am too fond of the flaxen ringlets, the rosy cheeks, and the blue eyes; and you know, Mary, you have all these, so you have me in your power. But to calm your fears, and stop your tears, I'll tell you what I'll do."

"Stay at hame, Will, and we'll live and dee thegither."

"No," replied Will; "but, like the genteel lover I have read of, I will swear on your Bible that I will return to you within the year, and marry you at the Tron Kirk, and throw my guineas into the lap of your marriage-gown, and live with you until I die."

For all which and some more we may draw upon our fancy; but certain it is, as the strange story goes, that Will did actually then and there—for Mary had been at the Tron Kirk, and had her Bible in her pocket (an article, the want of which is not well supplied by the scent-bottle of our modern Maries)—swear to do all he had said, whereupon Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up murmuring—perhaps no more than that. Certain also it is, that before the month was done, Will, with his living, kicking charges, and after more of these said tears from Mary than either of them had arithmetic enough to enable them to count, embarked at Leith for Richmond, at which place the sugar-planter had undertaken to meet him.

We need say nothing of the voyage across the Atlantic, somewhat arduous at that period, nor need we pick up Will again till we find him in Richmond, with his horses all safe, and as fat and sleek as if they had been fed by Neptune's wife, and had drawn her across in place of her own steeds. There he found directions waiting from Mr. Dreghorn, to the effect that he was to proceed with the horses to Peach Grove, his plantation, a place far into the heart of the country. But Will was content; for had he not time and to spare within the year, and he would see some more of the new world, which, so far as his experience yet went, seemed to him to be a good place for a freeman to live in? So off he went, putting up at inns by the way, as well supplied with food and fodder as Mr. Peter Ramsay's, in St. Mary's Wynd, and showing off his nags to the planters, who wondered at their bone and muscle, the more by reason they had never seen Scotch horses before. As he progressed, the country seemed to Will more and more beautiful, and by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest country in the world.

Nor when the Scotsman reached Peach Grove did the rosy side of matters recede into the shady; for he was received in a great house by Mr. Dreghorn with so much kindness, that, if the horses rejoiced in maize and oats, Will found himself, as the saying goes, in five-bladed clover. But more awaited him, even thus much more, that the planter, and his fine lady of a wife as well, urged him to remain on the plantation, where he would be well paid and well fed; and when Will pleaded his engagement to return to Scotland within the year, the answer was ready, that he might spend eight months in Virginia at least, which would enable him to take home more money,—an answer that seemed so very reasonable, if not prudent, that "Sawny" saw the advantage thereof and agreed. But we need hardly say that this was conceded upon the condition made with himself, that he would write to Mary all the particulars, and also upon the condition, acceded to by Mr. Dreghorn, that he would take the charge of getting the letter sent to Scotland.

All which having been arranged, Mr. Halket—for we cannot now continue to take the liberty of calling him Will—was forthwith elevated to the position of driving negroes in place of horses, an occupation which he did not much relish, insomuch that he was expected to use the lash, an instrument of which he had been very chary in his treatment of four-legged chattels, and which he could not bring himself to apply with anything but a sham force in reference to the two-legged species. But this objection he thought to get over by using the sharp crack of his Jehu-voice as a substitute for that of the whip; and in this he persevered, in spite of the jeers of the other drivers, who told him the thing had been tried often, but that the self-conceit of the negro met the stimulant and choked it at the very entrance to the ear; and this he soon found to be true. So he began to do as others did; and he was the sooner reconciled to the strange life into which he had been precipitated by the happy condition of the slaves themselves, who, when their work was over, and at all holiday hours, dressed themselves in the brightest colours of red and blue and white, danced, sang, ate corn-cakes and bacon, and drank coffee with a zest which would have done a Scotch mechanic, with his liberty to produce a lock-out, much good to see. True, indeed, the white element of the population was at a discount at Peach Grove. But in addition to the above source of reconciliation, Halket became day by day more captivated by the beauty of the country, with its undulating surface, its wooded clumps, its magnolias, tulip-trees, camellias, laurels, passion-flowers, and palms, its bright-coloured birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it is famous all over the world. But nature might charm as it might—Mary Brown was three thousand miles away.

Meanwhile the time passed pleasantly, for he was accumulating money; Mary's letter would be on the way, and the hope of seeing her within the appointed time was dominant over all the fascinations which charmed the senses. But when the month came in which he ought to have received a letter, no letter came—not much this to be thought of, though Mr. Dreghorn tried to impress him with the idea that there must be some change of sentiment in the person from whom he expected the much-desired answer. So Halket wrote again, giving the letter, as before, to his master, who assured him it was sent carefully away; and while it was crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improving his penmanship and arithmetic, under the hope held out to him by his master that he would, if he remained, be raised to a book-keeper's desk; for the planter had seen early that he had got hold of a long-headed, honest, sagacious "Sawny," who would be of use to him. On with still lighter wing the intermediate time sped again, but with no better result in the shape of an answer from her who was still the object of his day fancies and his midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. A third letter was despatched, but the returning period was equally a blank. We have been counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the termination of his year, and with growing changes too in himself; for as the notion began to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary was either dead or faithless, another power was quietly assailing him from within,—no other than ambition in the most captivating of all shapes—Mammon. We all know the manner in which the golden deity acquires his authority; nor do we need to have recourse to the conceit of the old writer who tells us that the reason why gold has such an influence upon man, lies in the fact that it is of the colour of the sun, which is the fountain of light, and life, and joy. Certain it is, at least, that Halket having been taken into the counting-house on a raised salary, began "to lay by," as the Scotch call it; and by-and-by, with the help of a little money lent to him by his master, he began by purchasing produce from the neighbouring plantations, and selling it where he might,—all which he did with advantage, yet with the ordinary result to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good account the king's head, the king's head began to turn his own.

And now in place of months we must begin to count by lustrums; and the first five years, even with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least, lost Mary, proved in Halket's case the truth of the book written by a Frenchman, to prove that man is a plant; for he had already thrown out from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and if that bore golden blossoms, so did he; yet, true to his first love, there was not among all these flowers one so fair as the fair-haired Mary. Nay, with all hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end of the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, when, strangely enough, and sadly too, he was told by Mr. Dreghorn, that having had occasion to hear from Mr. Peter Ramsay on the subject of some more horse-dealings, that person had reported to him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old stable-boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it had been made at an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of the said god, Mammon; for, as to the notion of putting any of those beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter's house at Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power of the god increased with the offerings, one of which was his large salary as manager, a station to which he was elevated shortly after he had received the doleful tidings of Mary's death. Another lustrum is added, and we arrive at ten years; and yet another, and we come to fifteen; at the end of which time Mr. Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested. If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot—fortunate, save for one misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold—purchasing from the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under the condition of an annuity.

And Halket was now rich, even beyond what he had ever wished; but the chariot-wheels of Time would not go any slower—nay, they moved faster, and every year more silently, as if the old Father had intended to cheat the votary of Mammon into a belief that he would live for ever. The lustrums still passed: another five, another, and another, till there was scope for all the world being changed, and a new generation taking the place of that with which William Halket and Mary Brown began. And he was changed too, for he began to take on those signs of age which make the old man a painted character; but in one thing he was not changed, and that was the worshipful stedfastness, the sacred fidelity, with which he still treasured in his mind the form and face, the words and the smiles, the nice and refined peculiarities that feed love as with nectared sweets, which once belonged to Mary Brown, the first creature that had moved his affections, and the last to hold them, as the object of a cherished memory for ever. Nor with time, so deceptive, need we be so sparing in dealing out those periods of five years, but say at once that at last William Halket could count twelve of them since first he set his foot on Virginian soil; yea, he had been there for sixty summers, and he had now been a denizen of the world for seventy-eight years. In all which our narrative has been strange, but we have still the stranger fact to set forth, that at this late period he was seized with that moral disease (becoming physical in time) which the French call mal du pays, the love of the country where one was born, and first enjoyed the fresh springs that gush from the young heart. Nor was it the mere love of country, as such, for he was seized with a particular wish to be where Mary lay in the churchyard of the Canongate, to erect a tombstone over her, to seek out her relations and enrich them, to make a worship out of a disappointed love, to dedicate the last of his thoughts to the small souvenirs of her humble life. Within a month this old man was on his way to Scotland, having sold the plantation, and taken bills with him to an amount of little less than a hundred thousand pounds.

In the course of five weeks William Halket put his foot on the old pier of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been urchins when he went away. The look of the old harbour revived the image which had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the running of the one image into the other produced the ordinary illusion of all that long interval appearing as a day; but there was no illusion in the change, that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and there was no Mary Brown there now. Having called a coach, he told the driver to proceed up Leith Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay's inn, in St. Mary's Wynd; but the man told him there was no inn there, nor had been in his memory. The man added that he would take him to the White Horse in the Canongate, and thither accordingly he drove him. On arriving at the inn, he required the assistance of the waiter to enable him to get out of the coach; nor probably did the latter think this any marvel, after looking into a face so furrowed with years, so pale with the weakness of a languid circulation, so saddened with care. The rich man had only an inn for a home, nor in all his native country was there one friend whom he hoped to find alive. Neither would a search help him, as he found on the succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures; and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years—a similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him, as he was indeed strange to them. True, too, as the coachman said, Peter Ramsay's inn, where he had heard Mary singing at her work, and the stable where he had whistled blithely among his favourite horses, were no longer to be seen—etiam cineres perierunt—their very sites were occupied by modern dwellings. What of that small half-sunk lodging in Big Lochend Close, where Mary's mother lived, and where Mary had been brought up, where perhaps Mary had died? Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to hobble down the Canongate to that little lodging, and might there not be for him a sad pleasure even to enter and sit down by the same fireplace where he had seen the dearly-beloved face, and listened to her voice, to him more musical than the melody of angels?

And so, after he had walked about till he was wearied, and his steps became more unsteady and slow, and as yet without having seen a face which he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big Close. There was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often been responded to by Mary's finger on the glass, as a token that he would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to enter that house rose again like a yearning; and what more in the world than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of seeing the room where she was born—yea, where probably she had died. In as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair, which in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he was at the foot of it. There was there the old familiar dark passage, with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any interest to him. Arrived at it, he stood in doubt. He would knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him; and yet, what had he to fear? For half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown. At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see more of him, for the lobby was still darker.

"Who may live here?" said he, in the expectation of hearing some name unknown to him.

The answer, in a broken, cracked voice, was not slow—

"Mary Brown; and what may you want of her?"

"Mary Brown!" but not a word more could he say, and he stood as still as a post; not a movement of any kind did he show for so long a time that the woman might have been justified in her fear of a very spirit.

"And can ye say nae mair, sir?" rejoined she. "Is my name a bogle to terrify human beings?"

But still he was silent, for the reason that he could not think, far less speak, nor even for some minutes could he achieve more than the repetition of the words, "Mary Brown."

"But hadna ye better come in, good sir?" said she. "Ye may ken our auld saying, 'They that speak in the dark may miss their mark;' for words carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, to say the truth, I am old and blind."

And, moving more as an automaton than as one under a will, Halket was seated on a chair, with this said old and blind woman by his side, who sat silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger to explain what he wanted. Nor was the opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in the obscure light of the room, to scrutinize her form and features; and in doing this, he went upon the presumption that this second Mary Brown only carried the name of the first; but as he looked he began to detect features which riveted his eyes; where the reagent was so sharp and penetrating, the analysis was rapid—it was also hopeful—it was also fearful. Yes, it was true that that woman was his Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the blue eyes were grey, without light and without speculation; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet, withal, he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic of the idol he had worshipped through life; it was the only remnant in the world which had any interest for him; and he could on the instant have clasped her to his breast, and covered her pale face with his tears. But how was he to act? A sudden announcement might startle and distress her.

"There was once a Mary Brown," said he, "who was once a housemaid in Mr. Peter Ramsay's inn in St. Mary's Wynd."

"And who can it be that can recollect that?" was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. "Ye maun be full o' years. Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever had in this world."

"And there was one William Halket there at that time also," he continued.

Words which, as they fell upon the ear, seemed to be a stimulant so powerful as to produce a jerk in the organ; the dulness of the eyes seemed penetrated with something like light, and a tremor passed over her entire frame.

"That name is no to be mentioned, sir," she said nervously, "except aince and nae mair; he was my ruin; for he pledged his troth to me, and promised to come back and marry me, but he never came."

"Nor wrote you?" said Halket.

"No, never," replied she; "I would hae gien the world for a scrape o' the pen o' Will Halket; but it's a' past now, and I fancy he is dead and gone to whaur there is neither plighted troth, nor marriage, nor giving in marriage; and my time, too, will be short."

A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, carrying the suspicion that Mr. Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never forwarded the letters, whereto many circumstances tended.

"And what did you do when you found Will had proved false?" inquired Halket. "Why should that have been your ruin?"

"Because my puir heart was bound up in him," said she, "and I never could look upon another man. Then what could a puir woman do? My mother died, and I came here to work as she wrought—ay, fifty years ago, and my reward has been the puir boon o' the parish bread; ay, and waur than a' the rest, blindness."

"Mary!" said Halket, as he took her emaciated hand into his, scarcely less emaciated, and divested of the genial warmth.

The words carried the old sound, and she started and shook.

"Mary," he continued, "Will Halket still lives. He was betrayed, as you have been betrayed. He wrote three letters to you, all of which were kept back by his master, for fear of losing one who he saw would be useful to him; and, to complete the conspiracy, he reported you dead upon the authority of Peter Ramsay. Whereupon Will betook himself to the making of money; but he never forgot his Mary, whose name has been heard as often as the song of the birds in the groves of Virginia."

"Ah, you are Will himself!" cried she. "I ken now the sound o' your voice in the word 'Mary,' even as you used to whisper it in my ear in the fields at St. Leonard's. Let me put my hand upon your head, and move my fingers ower your face. Yes, yes. Oh, mercy, merciful God, how can my poor worn heart bear a' this!"

"Mary, my dear Mary!" ejaculated the moved man, "come to my bosom and let me press you to my heart; for this is the only blissful moment I have enjoyed for sixty years."

Nor was Mary deaf to his entreaties, for she resigned herself as in a swoon to an embrace, which an excess of emotion, working on the shrivelled heart and the wasted form, probably prevented her from feeling.

"But, oh, Willie!" she cried, "a life's love lost; a lost life on both our sides."

"Not altogether," rejoined he, in the midst of their mutual sobs. "It may be—nay, it is—that our sands are nearly run. Yea, a rude shake would empty the glass, so weak and wasted are both of us; but still there are a few grains to pass, and they shall be made golden. You are the only living creature in all this world I have any care for. More thousands of pounds than you ever dreamt of are mine, and will be yours. We will be married even yet, not as the young marry, but as those marry who may look to their knowing each other as husband and wife in heaven, where there are no cruel, interested men to keep them asunder; and for the short time we are here you shall ride in your carriage as a lady, and be attended by servants; nor shall a rude breath of wind blow upon you which it is in the power of man to save you from."

"Ower late, Willie, ower late," sighed the exhausted woman, as she still lay in his arms. "But if all this should please my Will—I canna use another name, though you are now a gentleman—I will do even as you list, and that which has been by a cruel fate denied us here we may share in heaven."

"And who shall witness this strange marriage?" said he. "There is no one in Edinburgh now that I know or knows me. Has any one ever been kind to you?"

"Few, few indeed," answered she. "I can count only three."

"I must know these wonderful exceptions," said he, as he made an attempt at a grim smile; "for those who have done a service to Mary Brown have done a double service to me. I will make every shilling they have given you a hundred pounds. Tell me their names."

"There is John Gilmour, my landlord," continued she, "who, though he needed a' his rents for a big family, passed me many a term, and forbye brought me often, when I was ill and couldna work, many a bottle o' wine; there is Mrs. Paterson o' the Watergate, too, who aince, when I gaed to her in sair need, gave me a shilling out o' three that she needed for her bairns; and Mrs. Galloway, o' Little Lochend, slipt in to me a peck o' meal ae morning when I had naething for breakfast."

"And these shall be at our marriage, Mary," said he. "They shall be dressed to make their eyes doubtful if they are themselves. John Gilmour will wonder how these pounds of his rent he passed you from have grown to hundreds; Mrs. Paterson's shilling will have grown as the widow's mite never grew, even in heaven; and Mrs. Galloway's peck of meal will be made like the widow's cruse of oil—it will never be finished while she is on earth."

Whereupon Mary raised her head. The blank eyes were turned upon him, and something like a smile played over the thin and wasted face. At the same moment a fair-haired girl of twelve years came jumping into the room, and only stopped when she saw a stranger.

"That is Helen Kemp," said Mary, who knew her movements. "I forgot Helen; she lights my fire, and when I was able to gae out used to lead me to the Park."

"And she shall be one of the favoured ones of the earth," said he, as he took by the hand the girl, whom the few words from Mary had made sacred to him, adding, "Helen, dear, you are to be kinder to Mary than you have ever been;" and, slipping into the girl's hand a guinea, he whispered, "You shall have as many of these as will be a bigger tocher to you than you ever dreamed of, for what you have done for Mary Brown."

And thus progressed to a termination a scene, perhaps more extraordinary than ever entered into the head of a writer of natural things and events not beyond the sphere of the probable. Nor did what afterwards took place fall short of the intentions of a man whose intense yearnings to make up for what had been lost led him into the extravagance of a vain fancy. He next day took a great house, and forthwith furnished it in proportion to his wealth. He hired servants in accordance, and made all the necessary arrangements for the marriage. Time, which had been so cruel to him and his sacred Mary, was put under the obligation of retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs. Paterson, Mrs. Galloway, and Helen Kemp were those, and those alone, privileged to witness the ceremony. We would not like to describe how they were decked out, nor shall we try to describe the ceremony itself. But vain are the aspirations of man when he tries to cope with the Fates! The changed fortune was too much for the frail and wasted bride to bear. She swooned at the conclusion of the ceremony, and was put into a silk-curtained bed. Even the first glimpse of grandeur was too much for the spirit whose sigh was "vanity, all is vanity," and, with the words on her lips, "A life's love lost," she died.



TIBBY FOWLER.

"Tibby Fowler o' the glen, A' the lads are wooin' at her."—Old Song.

All our readers have heard and sung of "Tibby Fowler o' the glen;" but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom. Now, gentle reader, if you have looked upon the scene we have described, we shall make plain to you the situation of Tibby Fowler's cottage, by a homely map, which is generally at hand. You have only to bend your arm, and suppose your shoulder to represent Edrington Castle, your hand Clarabad, and near the elbow you will have the spot where "ten cam' rowing owre the water;" a little nearer to Clarabad is the "lang dyke side," and immediately at the foot of it is the site of Tibby's cottage, which stood upon the Edrington side of the river; and a little to the west of the cottage, you will find a shadowy row of palm-trees, planted, as tradition testifieth, by the hands of Tibby's father, old Ned Fowler, of whom many speak until this day. The locality of the song was known to many; and if any should be inclined to inquire how we became acquainted with the other particulars of our story, we have only to reply, that that belongs to a class of questions to which we do not return an answer. There is no necessity for a writer of tales taking for his motto—vitam impendere vero. Tibby's parents had the character of being "bien bodies;" and, together with their own savings, and a legacy that had been left them by a relative, they were enabled at their death to leave their daughter in possession of five hundred pounds. This was esteemed a fortune in those days, and would afford a very respectable foundation for the rearing of one yet. Tibby, however, was left an orphan, as well as the sole mistress of five hundred pounds, and the proprietor of a neat and well-furnished cottage, with a piece of land adjoining, before she had completed her nineteenth year; and when we add that she had hair like the raven's wings when the sun glances upon them, cheeks where the lily and the rose seemed to have lent their most delicate hues, and eyes like twin dew-drops glistening beneath a summer moonbeam, with a waist and an arm rounded like a model for a sculptor, it is not to be wondered at that "a' the lads cam' wooin' at her." But she had a woman's heart as well as woman's beauty and the portion of an heiress. She found her cottage surrounded, and her path beset, by a herd of grovelling pounds-shillings-and-pence hunters, whom her very soul loathed. The sneaking wretches, who profaned the name of lovers, seemed to have money written on their very eyeballs, and the sighs they professed to heave in her presence sounded to her like stifled groans of—your gold—your gold! She did not hate them, but she despised their meanness; and as they one by one gave up persecuting her with their addresses, they consoled themselves with retorting upon her the words of the adage, that "her pride would have a fall!" But it was not from pride that she rejected them, but because her heart was capable of love —of love, pure, devoted, unchangeable, springing from being beloved, and because her feelings were sensitive as the quivering aspen, which trembles at the rustling of an insect's wing. Amongst her suitors there might have been some who were disinterested; but the meanness and sordid objects of many caused her to regard all with suspicion, and there was none among the number to whose voice her bosom responded as the needle turns to the magnet, and frequently from a cause as inexplicable. She had resolved that the man to whom she gave her hand should wed her for herself—and for herself only. Her parents had died in the same month; and about a year after their death she sold the cottage and the piece of ground, and took her journey towards Edinburgh, where the report of her being a "great fortune," as her neighbours term her, might be unknown. But Tibby, although a sensitive girl, was also, in many respects, a prudent one. Frequently she had heard her mother, when she had to take but a shilling from the legacy, quote the proverb, that it was

"Like a cow in a clout, That soon wears out."

Proverbs we know are in bad taste, but we quote it, because by its repetition the mother produced a deeper impression on her daughter's mind than could have been effected by a volume of sentiment. Bearing therefore in her memory the maxim of her frugal parent, Tibby deposited her money in the only bank, we believe, that was at that period in the Scottish capital, and hired herself as a child's maid in the family of a gentleman who occupied a house in the neighbourhood of Restalrig. Here the story of her fortune was unknown, and Tibby was distinguished only for a kind heart and a lovely countenance. It was during the summer months, and Leith Links became her daily resort; and there she was wont to walk with a child in her arms and another leading by the hand, for there she could wander by the side of the sounding sea; and her heart still glowed for her father's cottage and its fairy glen, where she had often heard the voice of its deep waters, and she felt the sensation which we believe may have been experienced by many who have been born within hearing of old Ocean's roar, that wherever they may be, they hear the murmur of its billows as the voice of a youthful friend, and she almost fancied, as she approached the sea, that she drew nearer the home which sheltered her infancy. She had been but a few weeks in the family we have alluded to, when, returning from her accustomed walk, her eyes met those of a young man habited as a seaman. He appeared to be about five-and-twenty, and his features were rather manly than handsome. There was a dash of boldness and confidence in his countenance; but as the eyes of the maiden met his, he turned aside as if abashed and passed on. Tibby blushed at her foolishness, but she could not help it, she felt interested in the stranger. There was an expression, a language, an inquiry in his gaze, she had never witnessed before. She would have turned round to cast a look after him, but she blushed deeper at the thought, and modesty forbade it. She walked on for a few minutes, upbraiding herself for entertaining the silly wish, when the child who walked by her side fell a few yards behind. She turned round to call him by his name—Tibby was certain that she had no motive but to call the child, and though she did steal a sidelong glance towards the spot where she had passed the stranger, it was a mere accident, it could not be avoided—at least so the maiden wished to persuade her conscience against her conviction; but that glance revealed to her the young sailor, not pursuing the path on which she had met him, but following her within the distance of a few yards, and until she reached her master's door, she heard the sound of his footsteps behind her. She experienced an emotion between being pleased and offended at his conduct, though we suspect the former eventually predominated, for the next day she was upon the Links as usual, and there also was the young seaman, and again he followed her to within sight of her master's house. How long this sort of dumb love-making, or the pleasures of diffidence continued, we cannot tell. Certain it is that at length he spoke, wooed, and conquered; and about a twelvemonth after their first meeting, Tibby Fowler became the wife of William Gordon, the mate of a foreign trader. On the second week after their marriage William was to sail upon a long, long voyage, and might not be expected to return for more than twelve months. This was a severe trial for poor Tibby, and she felt as if she would not be able to stand up against it. As yet her husband knew nothing of her dowry, and for this hour she had reserved its discovery. A few days before their marriage she had lifted her money from the bank and deposited it in her chest.

"No, Willie, my ain Willie," she cried, "ye maunna, ye winna leave me already: I have neither faither, mother, brother, nor kindred; naebody but you, Willie; only you in the wide world; and I am a stranger here, and ye winna leave your Tibby. Say that ye winna, Willie." And she wrung his hand, gazed in his face, and wept.

"I maun gang, dearest; I maun gang," said Willie, and pressed her to his breast; "but the thocht o' my ain wifie will mak the months chase ane anither like the moon driving shadows owre the sea. There's nae danger in the voyage, hinny, no a grain o' danger; sae dinna greet; but come, kiss me, Tibby, and when I come hame I'll mak ye leddy o' them a'."

"Oh no, no, Willie!" she replied; "I want to be nae leddy; I want naething but my Willie. Only say that ye'll no gang, and here's something here, something for ye to look at." And she hurried to her chest, and took from it a large leathern pocket-book that had been her father's, and which contained her treasure, now amounting to somewhat more than six hundred pounds. In a moment she returned to her husband; she threw her arms around his neck; she thrust the pocket-book into his bosom. "There, Willie, there," she exclaimed; "that is yours—my faither placed it in my hand wi' a blessing, and wi' the same blessing I transfer it to you—but dinna, dinna leave me." Thus saying, she hurried out of the room. We will not attempt to describe the astonishment, we may say the joy, of the fond husband, on opening the pocket-book and finding the unlooked-for dowry. However intensely a man may love a woman, there is little chance that her putting an unexpected portion of six hundred pounds into his hands will diminish his attachment; nor did it diminish that of William Gordon. He relinquished his intention of proceeding on the foreign voyage, and purchased a small coasting vessel, of which he was both owner and commander. Five years of unclouded prosperity passed over them, and Tibby had become the mother of three fair children. William sold his small vessel and purchased a larger one, and in fitting it up all the gains of his five successful years were swallowed up. But trade was good. She was a beautiful brig, and he had her called the Tibby Fowler. He now took a fond farewell of his wife and little ones upon a foreign voyage which was not calculated to exceed four months, and which held out high promise of advantage. But four, eight, twelve months passed away, and there were no tidings of the Tibby Fowler. Britain was then at war; there were enemies' ships and pirates upon the sea, and there had been fierce storms and hurricanes since her husband left; and Tibby thought of all these things and wept; and her lisping children asked her when their father would return, for he had promised presents to all, and she answered, to-morrow, and to-morrow, and turned from them and wept again. She began to be in want, and at first she received assistance from some of the friends of their prosperity; but all hope of her husband's return was now abandoned; the ship was not insured, and the mother and her family were reduced to beggary. In order to support them, she sold one article of furniture after another, until what remained was seized by the landlord in security for his rent. It was then that Tibby and her children, with scarce a blanket to cover them, were cast friendless upon the streets, to die or to beg. To the last resource she could not yet stoop, and from the remnants of former friendship she was furnished with a basket and a few trifling wares, with which, with her children by her side, she set out, with a broken and a sorrowful heart, wandering from village to village. She had travelled in this manner for some months, when she drew near her native glen, and the cottage that had been her father's, that had been her own, stood before her. She had travelled all the day and sold nothing. Her children were pulling by her tattered gown, weeping and crying, "Bread, mother, give us bread!" and her own heart was sick with hunger.