"Oh, wheesht, my darlings, wheesht!" she exclaimed, and she fell upon her knees and threw her arms round the necks of all the three, "you will get bread soon; the Almighty will not permit my bairns to perish; no, no; ye shall have bread."

In despair she hurried to the cottage of her birth. The door was opened by one who had been a rejected suitor. He gazed upon her intently for a few seconds; and she was still young, being scarce more than six-and-twenty, and in the midst of her wretchedness, yet lovely.

"Gude gracious, Tibby Fowler!" he exclaimed, "is that you? Poor creature! are ye seeking charity? Weel, I think ye'll mind what I said to you now, that your pride would have a fa'!"

While the heartless owner of the cottage yet spoke, a voice behind her was heard exclaiming, "It is her! it is her! my ain Tibby and her bairns!"

At the well-known voice, Tibby uttered a wild scream of joy, and fell senseless on the earth; but the next moment her husband, William Gordon, raised her to his breast. Three weeks before he had returned to Britain, and traced her from village to village, till he found her in the midst of their children, on the threshold of the place of her nativity. His story we need not here tell. He had fallen into the hands of the enemy; he had been retained for months on board of their vessel; and when a storm had arisen, and hope was gone, he had saved her from being lost and her crew from perishing. In reward for his services, his own vessel had been restored to him, and he was returned to his country, after an absence of eighteen months, richer than when he left, and laden with honours. The rest is soon told. After Tibby and her husband had wept upon each other's neck, and he had kissed his children, and again their mother, with his youngest child on one arm, and his wife resting on the other, he hastened from the spot that had been the scene of such bitterness and transport. In a few years more, William Gordon having obtained a competency, they re-purchased the cottage in the glen, where Tibby Fowler lived to see her children's children, and died at a good old age in the house in which she had been born—the remains of which, we have only to add, for the edification of the curious, may be seen until this day.



THE CRADLE OF LOGIE.

It is not very easy, when we consider the great desire manifested by authors and editors to serve up piquant dishes of fiction on the broad table of literature, to account for the fact that the undoubtedly true story of the Cradle of Logie and the Indian Princess, as she is often called, should never have appeared in print. It has apparently escaped the sharpest eyes of our chroniclers. Sir Walter Scott did not appear to have much fancy for Angus; but it would seem that the facts of this strange occurrence in a civilised country, and not very far back, had never reached him. Even the histories of Forfarshire are silent; and the pictures of Scotland for tourists, which generally seize on any romantic trait connected with a locality or an old ruin, have also overlooked them. Yet the principal personage in the drama was one whose name was for years in the mouths of the people, not only for peculiarities of character, but retribution of fate; and this local fame has died away only within a comparatively recent period. It was in my very early years that I saw the Cradle, and heard, imperfectly, its tale from my mother; but her account was comparatively meagre. I sought long for details; nor was I by any means successful till I fell in with a man named Aminadab Fairweather, a resident at the Scouring Burn, in Dundee, who was in the habit of frequenting Logie House, and who, though very old, remembered many of the circumstances.

The truth is, there were rich flesh-pots in Logie House—richer than those which supplied the muscles of the Theban mummies, so enduring through long ages, no doubt, from being so well fed; for Mr. Fletcher of Lindertes,[*] who was proprietor of the mansion, was the greatest epicurean and glossogaster that ever lived since Leontine times. Then a woman called Jenny McPherson, who had in early life, like "a good Scotch louse," who "aye travels south," found her way from Lochaber to London, where she had got into George's kitchen, and learned something better than to make sour kraut, was the individual who administered to her master's epicureanism, if not gulosity. Nay, it was said she had a hand in the tragedy of the Cradle; but, however that may be, it is certain she was deep in the confidences of Fletcher. But then Mrs. McPherson, as she chose to call herself—though the never a McPherson was connected with her except by the ties of blood, which, like those of all Celts, had their loose terminations dangling into infinity at the beginning of the world's history—was given to administering the contents of her savoury flesh-pots to others than the family of Logie; yea, like a true Highlander, she delighted in having henchmen—or haunchmen truly, in this instance—who gave her love in return for her edible luxuries. It happened that our said Aminadab was one of those favoured individuals; and it is lucky for this generation that he was, for if he had not been, there would assuredly have been no records of the Cradle and the black lady.

[note *: Mr. Fletcher had also the property of Balinsloe as well as Logie. They've all passed into other hands.]

It was in a little parlour off the big kitchen that Janet received her henchmen. And was there ever man so happy as our good Aminadab?—and that for several human reasons, whereof the first was certainly the Logie flesh-pots; the second, the stories about the romantic place wherewith she contrived to garnish and spice these savoury mouthfuls; and last, Janet herself, who was always under the feminine delusion that she was the corporate representative of the first of these reasons, if, indeed, the others were not mere adjecta, not to be taken into account; whereas there were doubts if she was for herself ever counted at all, except as the mere "old-pot" which contained the realities. And their happiness would certainly have been complete if it had not been—at least in the case of Aminadab—that it could be enjoyed only by passing through that grim medium, a churchyard. But then, is not all celestial bliss burdened by this condition; nay, is not even our earthly bliss, which is a foretaste of heaven, only a flower raised upon the rottenness of other flowers—a type of the soul as it issues from corruption? Yes, Aminadab could not get to the holy of holies except by passing through Logie kirkyard, a small and most romantic Golgotha, on the left of the road leading to Lochee, whose inhabitants it contained, and which was so limited and crowded, that one might prefigure it as one of those holes or dungeons in Michael Angelo's pictures, belching forth spirits in the shape of inverted tadpoles, the tail uppermost, and yet representing ascending sparks. The wickets that surrounded Logie House—lying as it does upon the south side of Balgay Hill, and flanked on the east by a deep gully, wherethrough runs a small stream, which, so far as I know, has no name—were locked at night. The terrors of this place, at the late hours when these said henchmen behoved to seek their savoury rewards, were the only drawback to Aminadab's supreme bliss.

And if the time of these symposial meetings had been somewhat later in the century, how much more formidable would have been a passage through this contracted valley of tumuli and bones! No churchyard, except those of Judea, was ever invested with such terrors—not the mystical fears of a divine fate seen in the descending cloud, with Justice gleaming with fiery eyes on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in Him "whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,"—no, but the revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God. Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption. There was, in that small place of skulls, a rehearsal of the great day. We hear little of these freaks now-a-days; but it was different then, when men made themselves demons by drink. One night William Maule of Panmure, then in his days of graceless frolic; Fletcher Read, the nephew of the laird, and subsequently the laird himself, of Logie; Rob Thornton, the merchant, Dudhope, and other kindred spirits, who used to sing in the inn of Sandy Morren, the hotel-keeper, "Death begone, here's none but souls," sallied drunk from the inn. The story goes that the night was dark, and there stood at the door a hearse, which had that day conveyed to the "howf," now about to be shut up because of its offence against the nostrils of men who are not destined to need a grave, the wife of an inconsolable husband and the mother of children; and thereupon came from Maule's mouth—for wickedness will seek its playful function in a pun—the proposition that the bacchanals should have a rehearsal in the kirkyard of Logie. Well, it signified, of course, nothing that the Black Princess had been buried there, so far away from the land of "the balmy East,"

"Where the roses blow and the oranges grow, And all is divine but man below."

Fletcher Read might have recollected this, but what though? Was not the pun a good one—worthy of Hood? They all mounted the hearse, Panmure being driver; nor could Sandy Morren give to these white-robed spirits, who were so soon to rise in glory from the envious earth, more than a sour-milk horn and half a dozen of snow-white table-cloths for the theatrical property of the great players. So it has been since the time when the shepherd who killed the son of Aebolus, for that he gave them wine which they thought was poison, because they found their heads out of order—wine still generates on folly the afflatus of madness. The story goes on. The night was as dark as those places they were to illumine with their white robes, alas! not of innocence. But the darkness was not of the moon's absence in another hemisphere; only that darkness which is cloud-born, and must cede in twinkling yet glorious intervening moments to the moon, when she will salute the graves and the marriage-guests; and the hearse, as it slowly wended its way up the road to Lochee, every now and then pouring forth from its dark inside peals of laughter. The travellers on the road look with wide eyes at the grim apparition, and flee. They arrive at the rough five-bar stile; it is thrown back, and the hearse is driven into the place of the dead. The story goes on. There is silence everywhere, and appropriately there, where the four brick corners of the smoke-coloured Cradle rise from the hollow of Balgay Hill. They waited till the moon shone out again in her calm, breathless repose; and then resounded from the clanging black boards of the hearse a terrible din resembling thunder, and already each man, with his table-cover rolled round him, was snug behind the solemn head-stones, storied with domestic loves severed by the dark angel.

Now was the time for the trumpet-call, which behoved to be sounded by the cycloborean lungs of the broad-chested Panmure. The story has no reason to flag where the stake of the grimelinage is the upraising of white-robed spirits. The sour-milk horn is sounded as it never was sounded before on the earth which had passed away; every spirit comes forth from below the head-stones; and there rose a wail of misery which nothing but wine could have produced.

"Mercy on our poor souls!"

"Justice," cried Maule. "Stand out there, Bob Thornton, and answer for the sins done in the body." The story goes on, and it intercalates "fie, fie, on man." Thornton stands forth shrieking for the said mercy.

"Was not you, sir, last night, of the time of the past world, in the inn kept by Sandy Morren, in the town called Bonnie Dundee—bonnie in all save its sin, and its magistracy gone a-begging, and its hemp-spinners,[*] and the effect of Sandy Riddoch's reign—drinking and swearing?"

[note *: There is some prevision here which I cannot explain.]

"I was."

"Then down with you to the pit which has no bottom whatsomever."

And Thornton disappears in the hollow not far from where the brick Cradle stands.

"Stand forth, Fletcher Read."

"Weren't you, sir, art and part in confining in yonder dungeon the poor unfortunate black lady, whereby she was murdered by that villain of an uncle of yours, Fletcher of Lindertes?"

"I was."

"Down with you to the pit and the lake of brimstone."

And down he went into the same valley.

"Stand forth, Dudhope."

"Were not you, sir, seen, on the 21st of December of the late dynasty of time, in the company of one of these denizens of Rougedom in the Overgate, that disgrace of the last world, for which it has very properly been burnt up like a scroll of Sandy Riddoch's peculations?"

"I was."

"Then down to the pit."

And Dudhope—even he the representative of Graham of opprobrious memory—disappeared.

"You're all (cried Maule) like the Lady of Luss's kain eggs, every one of which fell through the ring into the tub, and didn't count."

And so on with the rest, till there were no more to go down. Yet the horn sounded again, for Maule was not so drunk that he did not remember there were any more to come; but then, had he not been singing in Sandy Morren's, "Death begone, here's none but souls?" The story goes on. The horn having sounded, there stood forth a figure that did not belong to this crowd of sinners. It was a woman dressed in dark clothes, with a black bonnet, and an umbrella in her hand. How the great God can show his power over the little god, man! The woman was no other than a Mrs. Geddes of Lochee, who, having got a little too much at the Scouring Burn, had, on her way home, slipped into the resting-place of her husband, who had been buried only a week before, and having got drowsy, had fallen asleep on the flat stone which covered him. In a half dreamy state she had seen all this terrible mummery—no mummery to her; for she thought it real: and as every one stood forward by name, she often said to herself, "When will it be Johnnie's turn, poor man? for he was an awfu' sinner; I fear the pit's owre guid for him." But Johnnie was not called. And then she expected her own summons—fell agony of a moment of the expectation of scorching flames to envelope her body, the flesh of which, as she pinched herself, had feeling and sensibility. Then if these great men, whose names she had often heard of, and who, as having white robes, and riches, and honours, might have expected to get to heaven, and yet didn't, what was to become of her, who had only dark garments, and who had been drinking that night at the Scouring Burn? There was no great wonder that Mrs. Geddes was distressed, yea miserable; and when she heard the horn sounded and no one went forward—Johnnie was of course afraid, and was concealing himself—she stood up with her umbrella in her hand. And Maule, now getting terrified through the haze of his drunkenness, cried out, "Who are you?"

"Mrs. Geddes, Johnnie Geddes's wife, o' the village o' Lochee, just twa miles frae that sink o' sin, Bonnie Dundee. I hae been a great sinner. I kept company wi' Sandy Simpson when Johnnie was living, and came here to greet owre his grave."

"A woman!" cried Maule; "then to heaven as fast as your wings will carry you."

And this man, who braved God, shook with terror before a weak woman; and so did all these brave bacchanals, who, on hearing the horn when no more remained to be condemned, thought their false God had called them, and had returned to witness the object of their new-born fear. Hurrying into the hearse, the party were in a few minutes posting to Dundee in solemn silence, where they arrived about two o'clock, not to resume their orgies, but to separate each for his home, with the elements in him of a sense of retribution, not forgotten for many a day. At the long run the story finishes, and the chronicler, lifting up his hands to heaven, cries, "Is there no end, Lord, is there no end to the profanity of man? Lord, why stayeth the hand of vengeance?"

If guidman Aminadab had known these things—which he couldn't do, because, like Sir James Colquhoun's last day (of the session), which he wanted the judges to abolish, this last day (of the world) happened after the said Aminadab was in the habit of seeking Mrs. M'Pherson's parlour—he would have had greater deductions from his pleasure; for Aminadab read his Bible, and belonged to the first Secession. And so it was better he didn't, especially on that night when Mrs. M'Pherson had been so extraordinarily condescending to her henchman as to set before him a fine piece of pork, in recognition of his adherence to the resolution of leaving the flesh-pots of Egypt—the old Church. It was a dark night in January. There was a cheerful fire in the neat parlour, and Janet was communicative, if not chatty, in good English, got in George's kitchen at Kew.

"I would like all this better," said Aminadab, "if I had not that churchyard to come through; and then there's that fearful-looking Cradle in the hollow, with four lums like the stumpt posts of a child's rocking-bed. What is it, Janet?—it's not a cow-house, nor a henhouse, but a pure dungeon, fearful to free men, who might shudder to be confined in it."

"What more?" said Janet. "Do you know anything more, Aminadab?"

"Yes; but I am eating Logie's pork, and don't like to say much."

"Never mind the pork, man; speak out. Do the folks down in the town say anything, or shake their heads, or point their fingers?"

"Well, they say there's a human being confined in it," replied Aminadab. "And so they may, for sounds have been heard coming from the dark hole—ay, and I have heard them myself—deep moans and weeping. I would like to know if there's a secret."

"Hush, hush, Aminadab. There is a secret, and you're the only man I would speak of it to."

And Mrs. McPherson rose solemnly and locked the door upon herself and her henchman.

"You know, Aminadab, that my master came from Bombay some years ago, and brought home with him a black wife. Dear, good soul—so kind, so timid, so cheerful too; but, Heaven help me, what could I do?—for you know Mr. Fletcher is a terrible man. He does not fear the face of clay; and the scowl upon his face when he is in his moods is terrible. I am bound to obey."

"But what of her?" said Aminadab. "It's no surely she who is in the horrid hole?"

"Never you mind that, but eat your bacon, you fool for stopping me. When I'm stopped, I seldom begin again for a day and night at least."

"Something like your master, Janet."

"No, Aminadab; I have a heart, lad."

"That I know, Janet," said Aminadab, with a lump of pork in his mouth; "and—and—it—is—fat—lass."

"And the easier swallowed," said she

"I meant your heart, Mrs. McPherson.

"And I must swallow that too, as it seems to come up my throat and choke me, even as the pork seems to do you. Take time, Aminadab. There's no hurry, man. Ah well, then, we have it all among the servants how Mr. Fletcher got my lady. He was a great man in Bombay—governor, I think, or something near that—and my lady was the only daughter of the Nawab or Nabob of some kingdom near Bombay—I forget the strange Indian name. She was the very petted child of her father; and when Mr. Fletcher saw her, she was running about the palace like a wild, playful creature—I may say, our bonny little roes of the Highland hills, or maybe another creature she used to speak about, I think they call it gazelle, with such wonderful eyes for shining, that you cannot look into them no more you could at the sun. For, oh, Aminadab! they have strange things in these places, which are much nearer the sun than we are here in this old country. But the mighty Nabob was unwilling to give her to the white-faced lover, even though he was the governor of Bombay, forbye having Balinsloe and Lindertes in Scotland too. Maybe he thought a Scotsman could not like a black Indian princess, though she was with her grand shawls about her, and her jewelled turban, and diamonds and pearls, and all that; and maybe, Aminadab, he thought"—and here Janet lowered her husky voice—"that it was just for these fine things he wanted her, rich though he was himself. Yet, strange enough too, the Nabob had promised the man who should marry his daughter the weight of herself in fine Indian gold, weighed in a balance, as her tocher. Heard ye ever the like of a tocher, man?"

"That would depend upon her size and weight, Janet, lass. Now, had you a tocher like that, it would be a gey business, I think,—fourteen potato-stones at the very least, I would say, eh?"—and he must get quit of the mouthful before he could finish—"Eh, Janet?"

"And if you go on at that rate with my pork, you will not, by-and-by, be much behind me. But, guid faith, Aminadab, I'm not ashamed, lad, of my size. A poor, smoke-dried, shrivelled cook shames her guid savoury dishes, intended to fatten mankind and make them jolly. But you are right about the offer of the Nabob. The creature was small, and light, and lithe, and could not weigh much. But then, think of the jewels! These did not depend upon her weight, but upon their own light. Oh, what diamonds, and rubies, and pearls as big as marbles! I have looked at them till my eyes reeled with the light of them; and no wonder, when I have heard them valued at a hundred thousand guineas—and to think of all that being held in a little box! There is one necklace worth fifteen thousand itself."

"And yet a small neck, too, maybe?—'And thou shalt make a necklace to fit her neck,' said the Lord. It would not be half the girth of yours, Mrs. M'Pherson?"

"Ay, Aminadab; not a half, nor anything like it. But don't stop me again, lad, or I'll stop the pork. (A pause.) Ah, well, I fear it was the shining jewels, and not the black face, did the business on my master's side. And, of course, he would be all smiles at the Nabob's court; for, Aminadab, my lad, there never was on the face of God's earth a man who could so soon change the horrid dark scowl into the very light of sunshine as Mr. Fletcher. I have seen him, when in company with Kincaldrum, and Dudhope, and Gleneagles, and the rest, laughing till his face was as red as the sun, then, all of a sudden, when some of his moods came over him, turn just like a fiend new come out of—oh, I'll just say it out, Aminadab, though ye be of the Seceders—just hell, lad."

"But, good mother Janet—"

"Mother your own mother, man, till you be a father, Aminadab. Have I not told you to let me go on? There's no honour in a mother: that sow you are eating was the mother six times of thirteen at each litter; and I think that's about seventy-eight. Mother, forsooth! Ay, and yet you'll see a beggar wretch, clad in tanterwallops—rags is owre guid a word—coming to Logie door, and looking as if she had the right to demand meal from me, merely because she has two at her feet and one in her arms. Such honourable gaberlunzies get no meal from me. My master was keen for the match; but the Nabob was shy of the white face. And here's a curious thing—I got it from my lady herself. She said the Nabob, her papa, as she called him—for, just like us here, they have kindly words and real human feelings—made a bargain with my master, that if he took her away out of India to where the big woman they call the Company lives, he would be kind to her, and 'treat her as he would do a child which is rocked in a cradle.'"

"Better than Naomi's wish," said Aminadab; "'And the Lord grant ye find rest in the house of thy husband.'"

"That bargain they made him sign with blood drawn just right over his heart; and the Nabob signed, too, for the weight of gold and the jewels. Then came the marriage. Such a day had not been witnessed in Bombay for years, if ever, when a great son of the big woman was to be married to the daughter of a Nawab. All the great men of Bombay, and the rich Parsees, she called them, were at the king's court, and the little princes round about for hundreds of miles, and all the ministers of Indian state,—for you must know that the marriage was in the English fashion, as the Nawab thought he could bind the bridegroom best in that way. Then the grand feast, and such dancing, and deray, and firing of cannons, and waving of flags, was never seen!"

"'And all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.'"

"Just so, guid auld Burgher lad," rejoined Mrs. M'Pherson.

"They had only been a few months married, when Mr. Fletcher's health having failed him,—and surely his liver is rotten to this day, if not his heart too,—he came home with his wife, and bought this bonnie place. She brought with her a squalling half-and-half thing,—there he's at the door this moment." By-and-by, "My little prince (she cried), go to Aditi—Ady, we call her—that's the black ayah my lady brought home with her."

"That will be another wife, I fancy," said Aminadab. "They have all two or three wives in the East, haven't they? Guid faith, ane's mair than eneugh here, if the Nawab's daughter's in her cradle."

"No, no, no, ye fool."

"'And I shall cut off the multitude of No,' Ezekiel thirtieth, fifteen."

"An ayah is a servant; and Ady's a good black soul as ever foolishly washed her face when there's no occasion for the trouble. And yet these black creatures are for ever washing themselves. They wash before breakfast and after breakfast, before dinner and after dinner, before supper and after supper, but the never a bit whiter they are that ever I could see."

"Yea, they might save themselves a great deal of trouble," said Aminadab.

"But they won't," rejoined Janet. "We have been tortured with their washings. Sometimes, when angry, I say to Ady, Can't you go down to the Scouring Burn?"

"'And wash thyself in the brook Cherith, which is before Jordan.'"

"But she says it's Brahma that bids her—that's their biggest god; and this Brahma is a trouble to us too. It seems he is everywhere; and Ady seeks him on Balgay Hill and in the churchyard o' nights, when the moon's out; thereafter coming in with those eyes of hers like flaming coals, darting them on us, who don't believe in Brahma, as if we were the real heathens, and not she and her mistress."

"'And thou shalt not erect a temple to Dagon, but cut him down to the stumps,'" said Amimadab.

"Hush, hush, man. Our servants are all in terror. They say that Ady is right, for that they have seen him in about the skirts of Balgay woods, and down in the hollow of the ravine, moving about like a spirit of darkness, with something white round his head, and a wide cloak wrapped about him."

Aminadab had just taken up a large tankard of ale, wherewith he intended to make a clean sweep of his hearty supper down his throat; but he paused, laid down the tankard, turned pale, shook, and looked wistfully into the face of his chieftainess. Nor did he speak a word, because some idea had probably magnetized his tongue at the wrong end, and the other would not move.

"Ady says, and so do the servants, that he has no shadow; and we should think he shouldn't, because our ghosts hereaway have none that ever I heard of. But that's a lie of their foolish religion; for I could swear I one night saw his shadow flit like that of a sun-dial, when the sun's in a hurry to get the curtains round his head, away past the east end of the house, and disappear in a moment. But I'll tell you what, Aminadab, he may, like our spirits, be a shadow himself. I could hardly speak for fear, though five minutes before I had as good a tankard of that Logie-brewed as you have before you; but I got my tongue through the ale at the other end o't, and cried out with Zechariah, wherein I was something like you, Aminadab, 'Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north.'"

"That would stump his Dagonship," said Aminadab, with an effort to be cheerful in spite of the foresaid idea, whatever it was. "Ay," he continued, after drinking off the tankard, and getting courage and wit at same time, "a line from the Bible is just like a rifle-shot in the hinder-end of these false gods. They can't stand it nohow."

"And you've stumpt me," replied the cook, "with the chopping-knife of your folly, so that I don't know where to find my legs again. It was a year after he came to Logie before another half-and-half was born—a boy too; and then there came a change over Mr. Fletcher's mind. There's something strange about those English that live long in India. I've noticed it when I was in London, in George's house; but it's all from the liver," continued the cook. "First grilled upon the ribs, then cooled with champagne, then healed up with curry, chiles, and ginger. No wonder the devil gets into the kitchen, where a dish like that is waiting him. Then they're so proud and selfish, and fond of themselves and their worthless lives."

"'Skin for skin, yea, all that they have, will they give for their lives.' So the devil said of him of Uz."

"But you see it's all in the liver," continued the cook. "Aditi came to me one day, and said, 'De 'Gyptians in India tink body divided into sixteen parts, with God to each part! he! he! Janette!' and the black creature laughed. Then I say, the liver of an Englishman, after he comes from India, is the devil's part; and so it was with Mr. Fletcher. He began first to interfere with Kalee's religion. 'Oh, terrible, Janette!' cried Ady, on another day; 'master cut off head of Kartekeya's peacock, and smashed de tail of Garoora.' On another day, 'Right eye of elephant head of Ganeso knocked into de skull.' Another day, this time in tears, weeping awfully, 'Oh, Janette! tail of holy cow clean snapt over de rump!'"

"All right," said Aminadab of the first Secession. "'And I will cause their images to cease out of Noph.'"

"Ay, but I am 'wide,'" continued the cook.

"Three feet and a half across the bosom," said Aminadab, who was still in his reverie, with the secret idea still exercising a power over him, even after the tankard of ale.

"Wide in my mind and charities, ye fool, man," continued she, not disinclined this time to laugh; for she was proud of being jolly in the person. "I felt for poor Kalee. She wept incessantly at the loss of the cow's tail, and asked me if I had seen it, nay, implored me like a worshipper to try to recover it for her. I said, God forgive me, that I had seen it in the dung-pit, and that George had carted it away. 'And didn't know de value!' cried Ady. 'Worth de necklace of diamonds;' and both she and Kalee broke out into such a yell as made the house ring. Yet with all this, Kalee still loved the gloomy man. She would throw her jewelled arms about his neck, and hang upon him, with her feet off the ground, so little, light, and lithe. She was so like a sapling, you could have bent her any way. And when the love was in her heart, and it was never absent, she was really bonny. Our eyes hereaway are mere cinders to these glowing churley bits of flaming sulphur; and then that strange look of the shining face, just as if she yearned to enter into his very soul,—ay, as the souls of these black creatures go up and form a part of Brahma's spirit, that's all over the earth."

"All art," cried Aminadab, getting impatient of Janet's eloquence—eloquence, I say; for Janet was a superior woman, and, though a cook, a natural genius. "All art. 'And he made her to use enchantments, and deal with familiar spirits and wizards,'"

"No, no, man, it was all real nature. But it wasna real nature made him throw the poor black soul away, whose gold and jewels he had bartered his white, I should say yellow, rotten-livered body for. Ay, if she had been a man, I would have liked her better than him; for, as I hate the skin of an old hen when the fat becomes rancid and golden, so do I hate a yellow-faced man, with the devil sitting gnawing at his liver."

"The reason the devil's so bitter," said Aminadab.

"Ay, if you were to try a beef-steak off his rump or spare-rib, ye'll find it more like the absynth I use in the kitchen than the flesh of a capon or three-year old stot."

"Yea, I would be like unto him who was made to 'suck honey out of the living rock.'"

"The cruel man threw her away from him, just as if her tocher had been the weight of herself in copper, instead of gold. And oh! it was so easily done; for the creature was not only, as I have said, light, but she had such a touchiness when her glancing eye saw that her love was not returned by him she loved beyond all the earth, that you would have thought she shrunk all up into a tiny child, couring in the corner of the big drawing-room, so like a wounded bird."

"Yaw-aw-aw," yawned the Seceder, half asleep. "'And he gave up the ghost in the room, while he sought his meat to relieve his soul.'"

"Asleep and dreaming," cried Mrs. M'Pherson, who had got into the very spirit of description. "Away to the Scouring Burn, and never show your face here again."

But Aminadab soon pacified the wide-souled and wide-bodied cook, who, being of his own persuasion, really loved the man. Yes, she was a Seceder from the old faith; and such a Seceder! No wonder there was a blank among the congregation of mere bodies.

It was now well on to twelve, and Aminadab had that Cradle to pass, and the kirkyard to get through; all, too, with that idea in his head to which we have alluded, and which, we may as well tell, was no other than a vivid recollection of having seen this Brahma on a prior night. He had discharged the notion at the time as an illusion, though in general he had little power over his supernatural fears, which were to him not indeed supernatural, but very natural; so much so, as we have said, that a mere inanimate and dead, very dead burying-place, had been more than once the means of cutting him out of a savoury piece of pork, and a good Logie-brewed tankard. It was the allusion made by Janet that recalled the suspicion that he had seen "something." Ah, "something!" what a pregnant vocable—so mysterious, so provocative of curiosity—an "it!"—of all the words in our language, the most suggestive of a difference from the real being of flesh and blood, carrying a name got at the baptismal font, whereby it shall be known and pass current like a counter. And is it not at best only a counter, yea, a counterfeit? We are only to each other as signs of things which are not seen; and yet we laugh when we hear the "it," as if it might not be the very thing of which we are one of the signs! Is it not thus that we are all humbugged in this world of ours? For we take the sign for the thing; yea, talk to the sign, and love it, or hate it, or worship it—all the while being as ignorant as mules, "ne pictum quidem vidit;" the very sign may be as far from the reality, as in philosophy we see it every day. And thus, all wandering and groping in the dark, the blind leading the blind, we screech like owls at a spark of light from the real fountain beyond Aldebaran.

And the owls were more busy than pleasant that night in the deep woods of Balgay Hill. It was a sign that the moon was not kindly to their heavy eyes. The scene, as Aminadab issued from the postern, might have been felt as beautiful, from the very awe which it inspired. But Aminadab was no lover of Nature, especially if he saw in her recesses any hiding-places for such beings as Brahma, more mysterious to him from knowing nothing at all about him, except that he was some Ashtoreth, or Chemosh, or Milcom, in a new form, let loose from hell, to disturb the pure souls of Seceders destined for heaven. The full moon fell on the hollow in the hills, surmounted by the dark woods of Balgay right aface of him, the house of Logie behind, and the declinations on either side, in one of which lay the little Golgotha. There, in the midst of the hollow, stood, grim and desolate, the dark brick-built Cradle, casting its shadow to the south; the four-corner prominences shooting out like horns, and so unlike the habitation of a human being, yea, unlike any composition of brick and lime ever reared by the hand of a genius for house-making. The shadow lay on the grass like those ghastly sun-pictures so called, yet more like moon-born things; and then the solemn silence, only relieved to be deepened by the occasional to-hoo! was oppressive to him, as if a medium for some footsteps to startle him into superstition. Yet he was drawn towards the horrid dungeon in spite of his very self. Janet's story would come at last, he thought, to a termination which would justify his own suspicions. And even there before him was evidence in the same direction; for having thrown himself, as if by an effort, into the shade of the dungeon, he could see beyond its verge, and by, as it were, looking round the corner, the body of the dark-faced Aditi. She had, no doubt, come stealthily from the house, and was postured in an attitude far deeper in humiliation and adjuration than we practise in our land. Her face was covered by her hands; for, in truth, she could see nothing through these mere light-permitting slips of a brick's width, wherewith this horrible hole was supplied, as if by a relaxation of severity in its last stage of perfect inhumanity. No, nothing could be seen, but something might be heard; yea, the most piteous moans that ever burst from an oppressed heart, and yet so soft, so uncomplaining, as if the sufferer found no fault with aught in the world but herself. Then Aditi's sounds were something like responses, rising as the internal sounds rose, and as they died away—a jabbering wail of an Eastern tongue. Aminadab, blunt though he was, and fonder of pork than poetry, and of scriptural quotations—which he had always at his tongue's end for conclaves of weavers—than impassioned sentiments, rising at the inspiring touch of this strange world's endless and ever-occurring occasions, was impressed. He looked over the dark abode, up at the moon, then at the prostrate Ady, and thought of the distance between that prisoner and the gay palace where she was brought up, with its paradise of flowers, and aromas, and singing birds of gold and azure—far away, far away. And then that blood-written oath—oh, so literally fulfilled and obeyed! But the thought was evanescent from very fear. Nor was his nervousness unjustified; for, even as he turned his head, he saw a figure wrapped up in a dark cloak, and surmounted by a white coil of pure linen, as he thought, emerging from the clump of thick trees that stood on the north end of the burying-ground. The figure, having run as it were in fear so far forward, no sooner saw the projecting head of Aminadab, than it turned and retreated. At the same instant Ady rose, as if disturbed, and ran to the house. Yet the moaning did not cease. It seemed interminable; or, if to be terminated by the absence of Ady, the sufferer did not know she was gone. And oh, these wails!—Aminadab fled and took them along with him, nor did they ever leave him.

Even when he went to bed they were fresh upon his ear, claiming precedence to the vision of his eye; though that, too, asserted its authority as something miraculous—whether the Eastern mystery itself, or some tutelary genius brought from heaven by the shriek of man's cruelty. Nor could he rest for the thought that, humble as he was, he was surely taken there that he might go to the powers of earth to ask them to aid the powers of heaven. Why, that Cradle had been built within the limits of civilisation. Even the mason was known: the bricks were not Egyptian bricks, nor the mortar foreign, nor the wood a tree from the heart of Africa; and yet, why was it there—nay, why was the use of it not inquired into? If Jeshurun had waxed fat and kicked against the Lord of heaven, was there no lord of earth that could tame this yellow-livered worshipper of Baal, who yet was received among the chiefs of Israel to drink the pure juice of the grape, and make a god of his belly, and to sing obscene songs? Even in that house there was riot and debauchery upon the spoils of that woman, encaged like a beast, and at the world's end from her natural protectors.

Yea, our good soul Aminadab became bold. He was privileged, if not called. But then that Brahma—that incarnation of a power confessed by millions on millions of people possessed of souls, and therefore something in God's reckonings! It was no illusion. Twice he had seen the mysterious being. How did he come hither to the Ultima Thule, as it were, of the known world? Why did he come just at a juncture when the daughter of a king of his own favoured people was immured in a dungeon, and calling for his help? Because he must have known that a spark of the spirit that belonged to him, and would go back to him, was threatened to be extinguished by power in a land owing no obedience to him. But didn't that same moon shine on the children of Brahma as well as on the children of Christ? and were there no powers in heaven but what we confessed? How philosophical all this in a Scouring Burn weaver in hysterics! Yet there are greater men than Aminadab who could not explain such things. Ah, well; to the honour of poor Aminadab, it was for once not pork he sought at Logie House. Next night at ten he was in the parlour; but how did he get there, and Brahma in these very woods? Aminadab very probably could not have told himself; yet there he was.

"Come again so soon, Aminadab?"

"Ay," replied he. "'Though a man may fall, he may be raised up again.' I stumbled in front of my friend, but she will not kick me; yea, she will lift me up."

"Be silent," she said. "You were seen last night near the Cradle, where no one dare approach. None of the servants go there save me; and even Ady, if she goes, it is by stealth. Ah, you know something now; but there's one thing you don't know, and that is, that rich men can pay watchers to discover those who search into their iniquities."

"Whatever I know," said Aminadab, "I am ignorant of this: why that dungeon, containing a human being, can keep its place at the distance of a mile from a town with 30,000 inhabitants."

"But they don't know it, lad. Be you quiet, and pick that leg of a chicken; that is better than the knowledge that kills. There is not one of the magistrates would dare to touch a hair on Mr. Fletcher's head, no, for all that lies in the power of Brahma."

"But why do you keep the secret? 'The steps of a good woman are ordered by the Lord;' but does He order you to step to the Cradle?"

"I do it for good," said she, "because I can soften griefs that are unbearable; and cooks have something in their power. But if I were to say a word to Fletcher, I would be turned away, and another might treat the prisoner worse."

"But why would not the powers interfere?"

"Because bailies love a dinner and fine wines; and it is easier to wink than think, and easier to think than get themselves out of trouble by acting on their thoughts. Will that satisfy you? It is a strange business; but the world's a strange place, and strange men and women live therein. Meat and drink and honour are better than wisdom. Look to your plate, Aminadab. Oh! I wish I knew less; but I saw what was coming when I saw George Cameron begin to build what he said was to be like a cradle. Did I not recollect what Kalee told me about the blood-bond? Did we not all witness the growing gloom gathering day by day over his face? Then separate beds. Then no more companionship, out or in. The gloom for ever, and the tears of Kalee for ever and ever, and the terror and anguish of poor soul Aditi! Ah! yes; but he never struck her, never upbraided her; and at length she shrunk from him as if from a serpent. And this he could not bear: it made his dun-yellow black, Aminadab! Then, when the Cradle was finished, and a truckle and a table and a chair were put in, he called me to him, and said, with a horrid smile on his face, 'M'Pherson, you are a Highlander, and staunch to your master. I am true to my word. Yes, I signed a bond, when I married Kalee, that I would treat her as a father would a child whom he rocked in a cradle. I have obeyed. Kalee goes into the Cradle to-night. You are to give her child's food; but you cannot rock the Cradle. Let the winds which drive in past Balgay woods do that if they can. My honour is pure. Swear to obey me.'

"I could not say no, and look on that face. Kalee has been in that dungeon, fed by me, and has never seen her children for a whole year."

"The vengeance of the Lord hangeth over the wicked by a burnt thread," said Aminadab.

"Yes, who was to know that her own protector, even the great spirit of her land, was to come here to help her? He was seen last night again! He wanders about and about—flits hither and thither. He needs no rest—no food. He is independent of rain, and wind, and thunder, and storms."

"But he does not help her," said Aminadab.

"His time is coming. Kalee is dying."

"Dying!"

"Ay, dying. Then Brahma will claim that which is a part of himself, and then will be the time of his return to his chosen people."

"Horrible!" ejaculated Aminadab. The chicken stood untasted. "Does Mr. Fletcher know this?"

"Why, to be sure, haven't I told him? But may not a child die in its own cradle, and the father continue feasting with the lords and the lairds, drinking and swearing, and debauching, when he knows that his honour is discharged,—ay, and the blood-bond paid?"

"And the body, when she dies—"

"Will be in Logie burying-ground; ay, and strange people from the East, a long way beyond where our sun rises, with black faces and bleeding hearts, will come and bend over the little grave, and weep for the daughter of their prince. Ah! Aminadab, grief makes a learned woman of me, a poor servant; but I cannot save Kalee, none can save her now. Consumption has set in; and bad air, and a rejected love, and a mother's yearning will do the work. I was with her now with my cruse—all alone with her; for no one dare approach. She knows she's dying. She asked for the children—

"'Will you not let me see my boys?'

"I shook my head.

"'And will Fletcher not see me before I die, to receive my last kiss?'

"I shook my head.

"'And Aditi, who will return to my father's palace, is she to be kept from me to the end?'

"I shook my head."

"And will no one watch?" said Aminadab.

"Yes, I will watch all night; but it will be unknown to Fletcher. No one can speak to him now. He goes hither and thither. He has no rest yet; the gloom is deeper than ever."

"Horrible mystery!" again ejaculated Aminadab. "But 'the wicked shall perish; they shall consume into smoke, they shall consume away.'"

Occasions make heroes of very ordinary men; and Aminadab felt that he could be one of these worthies that night. He soon left after these words of Janet; but he was now more upon his guard against watchers. Perhaps Janet had mentioned them to induce him to avoid too minute an examination where there was danger of another kind; and this rather encouraged him. The only fault of his heroism was the strange feelings which arose in his mind when he thought of the Indian spirit. Somehow this vision could not be got rid of, or analyzed by the small philosophy he had. As for Fletcher, he viewed him merely as a human monster,—no uncommon phenomenon at a time when, although there might not be any greater evil than now, men were more reckless of consequences, more dead to shame, less under the control of public opinion, probably not less under the fear of God. He cleared the wicket. It was again a bright moonlight night. He passed again the Cradle, and was bold enough to listen again. Alas! the wail was weaker, the bright lamp of these eyes was fast losing its oil. So he thought; for he could hear only now and then a very inaudible sob, and occasionally a very weak wail, shrill and yet low. He could not stay, for Janet would be coming stealthily with her cruse,—yes, her cruse; for, so far as he could see by the narrow slips, all was darkness around the dying stranger, in a proud land of liberty and humanity—the proudest seen on the face of the earth, or perhaps ever will be seen; yet by-and-by to have more reason to be proud—by-and-by, when Kalee would be asleep in the bosom of Brahma, her body only the monument of the shams of that proud land of liberty and humanity, and the true religion of God's covenant from the beginning.

Retreating quickly, he proceeded over the green hollow, and got into the skirt of Balgay wood. There he stood patiently, still fearful, but with the new-born zeal of curiosity and sympathy. By-and-by he saw Janet come out with her cruse, and walk as lightly as her huge body would permit. She looked round and round, as if in great fear of Fletcher, probably of the Indian spirit; for it was clear she had a conviction of the truth of the real presence of Brahma. All is still; no Fletcher seen, nor watch. But in about half an hour the dark Aditi came trotting out, clothed in pure white, looking also fearfully about her; but it was more clear that she expected some one. Stranger still, she made for the very spot where Aminadab was watching. He studied her direction to the breadth of a line, and stepped aside. There was plenty of foliage and some thick bushes. He threw himself down on the ground, and heard the sighing of Ady as if almost close to him. By-and-by she was joined by the mystery—yes, that being who had so long been the terror of Logie House to all but the master, who knew nothing of him. He was there; but Aminadab could not see more of him than his head, which was, as usual, enveloped in the same white cloth. He heard their conversation, of which not a word could he understand. But oh, that natural language of the heart, which is the same in all lands, and will be the same in heaven—those quick utterances, deep sighs, shakings of the frame as if the beings were convulsed! It seemed to be the last meeting; it was so eloquent of heart loves, so mysterious in religious aspirations. But here occurred a strange incident. Even at the distance where they were, a loud, shrill scream was heard, as if the last of expiring human nature. How it shook these two, till the very leaves rustled, and the night-hawks and owls screamed their terrible discord! All was still again. The male ran, as if moved by the frenzy of a dervish, forward towards the Cradle; then, as he saw the door half open, retreated. Aminadab could make nothing of the figure, beyond the conviction that it was the same he had seen by fitful glimpses before. It was altogether indescribable, unlike anything he had ever seen or read of. On his return, Ady met him and caught him in her arms, as if to lead him back to the wood. Yet he was fitful, anxious, and flighty, as if he knew not where to go, or what to do. Again the rapid whisperings, so sharp and intense as sometimes to appear like hissing of strange foreign creatures. It seemed as if his soul was on fire, and urged him he knew not whither. At that instant the door of the Cradle opened altogether, and Janet came out with the light. Ady darted forward like a moonbeam in the midst of another moonbeam, and seen by its superior whiteness. An instant served for some communication between her and Janet. Then a shrill scream from Ady, a running hither and thither on the part of the male figure, and at length, darting into the wood, he disappeared. Aminadab now saw Janet go into the house. Was all over? Aminadab could not tell. Ady still hung round the Cradle. She even circled it like a hovering ghost. At length she neared the door. The key had been left, and she entered.

Now was Aminadab's time. He rushed forward, opened the door, and entered the dungeon. A terrible sight met his eyes—sight! yes; even in the comparative darkness, there was enough in the small glimmer of moonlight entering by one of the holes to carry objects to eyes that would have pierced the deepest gloom. There is said to be no darkness in the world sufficient to conceal objects entirely; but here there was, in addition to the attenuated beam, the white dress of Ady, and the bed where Kalee lay. Janet had described it, and the table and the chair: what more than the bare walls was there to describe? Nothing. On that bed, covered by a thin white cloth, lay this Indian princess dead, with Ady hanging over her, and pulling at her, and offering to her blank eyes, once like diamonds, a small figure of an Indian god. Then the groans and suppressed shrieks of the faithful soul, as she still pulled and shook the corpse, as if she could get from it one last look directed to the wooden figure. Too late! Kalee had died, not only away from her people, but away from the gods of her people. All of a sudden the ayah ceased her endeavours, and directed her eagle eye, suffused with tears, up to the roof. Quick words followed the look. Aminadab could not understand them, but the motions and aspirations convinced him that she cried, "There, there, Brahma; there she goes, to be of thy eternal and infinite soul, from which she came, and to which she flies."

Then, suddenly, she rushed out of the dungeon. Aminadab looked after her. She did not go to Logie House, but in the direction of the wood, whither the indescribable figure had gone. Aminadab heard no more, scarcely saw more, if it was not the corpse lying before him. He was afraid of Janet, more of Fletcher, who might now at length come to pass his eyes over the body in the Cradle, where he was to cherish her as a father cherisheth his child; yet he would look, and look again. How shrivelled that face of darkness, yet how calm and loving-like; as if, even in the midst of the agony of the last hour, it smiled love to her destroyer!

By-and-by a light again approached. It was Janet with a white sheet.

"You here! Good heavens! Away, away! Fletcher is to look at her; yes, he is to look at her in the cradle he promised her. Away! no more."

"I saw Brahma," said Aminadab; "yes, true Brahma, Brahma!"

"Fool, fool! Man, I only told you it was Brahma to keep you from the Cradle for your own safety."

"Then who was the strange being?"

"I dare not tell you that; but I fear Ady's away with him, without hat, or cloak, or box, or supper."

"To where?"

"Nor that, lad. But I fear you will hear more of this Scotch tragedy some day. Get you gone; there is Fletcher."

Aminadab obeyed.

And Fletcher did see her. Some time after the departure of Aminadab he crossed the green. It seemed that night he had refrained from company, not through penitence, or any motive that man could divine in the nature of the man. Strangely-formed beings do things which do not seem to belong to their natures or to human nature, and it is this that makes them strange. Before he entered this, not, alas! Domdaniel, he called Janet to the door. He wanted to be alone. She gave him the cruse; and with the old gloom upon his face, perhaps he wanted to test his courage. It could not be that he wanted to look once more on the face of the mother of his children; nor that he felt now that there had been one in the world who really did love him, as few women have ever loved. Then man measures woman's love by his own; but when was man's heart stirred by nature's strongest passion like that of devoted woman? while now the world did not contain one heart that was moved to him by anything stronger than dithyrambic delirium. Who knows? But there was Fletcher looking on the corpse of his wife, and waving over her face the light of the small cruse he held in his hand! Was he moved, as he saw the still, death-bound features, that once could not contain the expression which the leaping heart, with that burning fire in it of that land of the sun, tried in vain to force into it; the eye, too, that flashed and leapt as never is seen in our country of humid fogs, stifling the inborn heat and blearing the vision; and those arms that entwined him so as the vine holds the olive in its grasp, as if it would give the juice which fires and inebriates, for the oil that calms, and fattens, and sustains? All over that lithe body which enabled her, when he saw her first in the land of her fathers, to bound and flee as if she had wings, and these beautiful as the monaul's, ay, and enabled her, too, to play round him in that Eastern gaiety which had charmed him, if he ever loved her, and even for a time made his home like Fairydom! Who shall say there was no movement in his stern features, no moisture in his eye, no trembling of the lip, no tremor of the body, as he might have read the last effort of nature in the expression of calm forgiveness or continued affection? Who could read him?

At midnight, two days after, Kalee slept in Logie kirkyard. There is no stone to point out the grave of the Indian princess, who lies—as becomes, too, in our boasted land of liberty, entitled to her boast in an equality at length, which even pride cannot deny—among the humble artisans and cottars of Lochee. Did Fletcher Read, on that after day, when Panmure blew the white iron trump, not expect to see Kalee rise up and seek judgment on the house of Logie? The blood was hereditary, and the heart that is fed by the blood, and which impels it.

If it had not been that Aminadab married the portly Janet, we might have heard no more of the fortunes of this man. But how true Aminadab's quotation, that God's vengeance never sleeps! Where, in all the scathed corpses of heaven's lightning, was there ever one that told its tale like that of Fletcher of Balinsloe, Lindertes, and Logie? He was recalled to India again.

"Ay, Aminadab, he was forced to go by the Government; but maybe the Government was only like a thing that is moved by the storm, and cuts in twain, where its own silly power could do nothing. Before he went, he married a beautiful little woman,[*] perhaps the most spirited in the shire, white as Kalee was black, and come, too, of gentle blood. Why did she marry this man? Had she not heard of the fate of Kalee? Had she not seen the Cradle (still standing in the hollow of the hill)? No doubt; but woman will go through worse storms than man's passion to get to the goal of wealth and honour. Then there is a frenzy in woman, Aminadab. She is like the boys, who seek danger for its own sake, and will skim on skates the rim of the black pool that descends from the film of ice down to the bubbling well of death below. Women have an ambition to tame wild men; ay, even wild men have a charm for them, which the tame sons of prudence and industry cannot inspire. So it was: they were married, and he took her to India."

[note *: Afterwards, as I have heard, the wife of Milne of Milneford. She lived till nearly a hundred.]

"'So the Lord did lead him; and there was no strange god with them.'"

"Ay, but there was a God before him, lad."

"What mean you, Janet?"

"Do you not recollect of Brahma?"

"Do not mention that strange figure, Janet. My blood runs cold."

Janet laughed.

"Runs cold, lad, at what? Brahma was just one of the Nawab's great men, whom he sent over here to watch the fate of his daughter. Why, man, he lodged next door to you, with Mrs. Lyon at the Scouring Burn."

"The black man the boys used to run after?"

"The very same. He returned with Ady, and was at the court of the Nawab and told all, ay, and more than we knew—that Fletcher would be obliged to visit Bombay again ere long after. He had got this from some of the authorities in England. For many a day did the prince weep for his Kalee; for many a day did he watch for the murderer's arrival, ay, as a tiger of his jungles watches in the night with fiery eyes for a beast even more cruel than himself. He had even all the coast of Coromandel, I think they call it, to give intelligence of the vessel. The very name of the vessel was known; the very paint of its sides, and the flag it bore—so well had he kept up his knowledge of what was going on in England."

"Wonderful!" cried Aminadab. "'And the fowler that did slay, falleth into his own net.'"

"And a terrible net, with meshes of sharp steel to hold and cut."

"Ah!" cried Aminadab, as he rubbed his hands, and chuckled like a big boy who sees the porridge boiling.

"You may well be anxious, lad; but you'll have more than you want."

"No, unless he is put into a fiery pit and burnt to a cinder, or into a den of tigers, or a nest of hooded snakes, or—"

"Peace, lad; better than all. But surely we are forgetting that we are Christians, that we have seen the new light of grace, Aminadab."

"Ay, true. Mercy pertaineth to the Lord. We belong to the furnace which trieth gold; not to the refining-pot of the Old Church, which is for silver."

"Ah, well! God's judgment was soon executed. The ship was recognised and hailed long before she arrived at Bombay. A crowd of black devils boarded her, seized Fletcher, and dragged him on shore. Not an instant was lost. Trial was a laughter. They danced round in joy, making the very Brahma hear their orgies. Four horses, ropes, victim between two and two, whip, yell, and Fletcher is in four quarters.

"Nor did they end here. They had forgotten the white wife. She too—justice demanded it. They did not ask why; but the sailors had suspected what was going on; and when they saw the devils coming back, they put Mrs. Fletcher into a big basket, and hoisted her to the top-mast. The poor woman could see from that height the mangled remains of her husband; but she was an extraordinary woman. She kept her place composedly as she heard the yells of the demons. They could not find her, and went away like wild animals deprived of their bloody prey. The ship went on. Mrs. Fletcher returned safe to Scotland, where she was known as the heroine who had gone through so much for the love of a villain."

The story of Fletcher has died away in Angus; but at one time it was in every mouth, and many a head was shaken as the Sunday loiterers from Dundee and Lochee passed by the Cradle in their walks on Balgay Hill. I have heard that it was demolished as a disgrace to Scotland somewhere about 1810 or 1812. The hollow where the ruins stood is quite visible yet, and the old circumambulating ghost, which, by-the-bye, has unfortunately a white face, is not yet laid.



THE DEATH OF THE CHEVALIER DE LA BEAUTE.

It was near midnight, on the 12th of October 1516, when a horseman, spurring his jaded steed, rode furiously down the path leading to the strong tower of Wedderburn. He alighted at the gate, and knocked loudly for admission.

"What would ye?" inquired the warder from the turret.

"Conduct me to your chief," was the laconic reply of the breathless messenger.

"Is your message so urgent that ye must deliver it to-night?" continued the warder, who feared to kindle the fiery temper of his master, by disturbing him with a trifling errand.

"Urgent, babbler!" replied the other, impatiently; "to-day the best blood of the Homes has been lapped by dogs upon the street; and I have seen it."

The warder aroused the domestics in the tower, and the stranger entered. He was conducted into a long, gloomy apartment, dimly lighted by a solitary lamp. Around him hung rude portraits of the chiefs of Wedderburn, and on the walls were suspended their arms and the spoils of their victories. The solitary apartment seemed like the tomb of war. Every weapon around him had been rusted with the blood of Scotland's enemies. It was a fitting theatre for the recital of a tale of death. He had gazed around for a few minutes, when heavy footsteps were heard treading along the dreary passages, and the next moment Sir David Home entered, armed as for the field.

"Your errand, stranger?" said the young chief of Wedderburn, fixing a searching glance upon him as he spoke.

The stranger bowed, and replied, "The Regent"———

"Ay!" interrupted Home, "the enemy of our house, the creature of our hands, whom we lifted from exile to sovereignty, and who now with his minions tracks our path like a bloodhound! What of this gracious Regent? Are ye, too, one of his myrmidons, and seek ye to strike the lion in his den?"

"Nay," answered the other; "but from childhood the faithful retainer of your murdered kinsman."

"My murdered kinsman!" exclaimed Wedderburn, grasping the arm of the other. "What! more blood! more! What mean ye, stranger?"

"That, to gratify the revenge of the Regent Albany," replied the other, "my lord Home and your kinsman William have been betrayed and murdered. Calumny has blasted their honour. Twelve hours ago I beheld their heads tossed like footballs by the foot of the common executioner, and afterwards fixed over the porch of the Nether Bow, for the execration and indignities of the slaves of Albany. All day the blood of the Homes has dropped upon the pavement, where the mechanic and the clown pass over and tread on it."

"Hold!" cried Home, and the dreary hall echoed with his voice. "No more!" he continued; and he paced hurriedly for a few minutes across the apartment, casting a rapid glance upon the portraits of his ancestors. "By heavens! they chide me," he exclaimed, "that my sword sleeps in the scabbard, while the enemies of the house of Home triumph." He drew his sword, and approaching the picture of his father, he pressed the weapon to his lips, and continued, "By the soul of my ancestors, I swear upon this blade, that the proud Albany and his creatures shall feel that one Home still lives!" He dashed the weapon back into its sheath, and approaching the stranger, drew him towards the lamp, and said, "Ye are Trotter, who was my cousin's henchman, are ye not?"

"The same," replied the messenger.

"And ye come to rouse me to revenge?" added Sir David. "Ye shall have it, man—revenge that shall make the Regent weep—revenge that the four corners of the earth shall hear of, and history record. Ye come to remind me that my father and my brother fell on the field of Flodden, in defence of a foolish king, and that I, too, bled there—that there also lie the bones of my kinsman, Cuthbert of Fastcastle, of my brother Cockburn and his son, and the father and brother of my Alison. Ye come to remind me of this; and that, as a reward for the shedding of our blood, the head of the chief of our house has been fixed upon the gate of Edinburgh as food for the carrion crow and the night owl! Go, get thee refreshment, Trotter; then go to rest, and dream of other heads exalted, as your late master's is, and I will be the interpreter of your visions."

Trotter bowed and withdrew, and Lady Alison entered the apartment.

"Ye are agitated, husband," said the gentle lady, laying her hand upon his; "hath the man brought evil tidings?"

"Can good tidings come to a Home," answered Sir David, "while the tyrant Albany rides rough-shod over the nobility of Scotland, and, like a viper, stings the bosom that nursed him? Away to thy chamber, Alison; leave me, it is no tale for woman's ears."

"Nay, if you love me, tell me," she replied, laying her hand upon his brow, "for since your return from the field of Flodden, I have not seen you look thus."

"This is no time to talk of love, Aley," added he. "But come, leave me, silly one, it concerns not thee; no evil hath overtaken the house of Blackadder, but the Homes have become a mark for the arrows of desolation, and their necks a footstool for tyrants. Away, Alison; to-night I can think of but one word, and that is—vengeance!"

Lady Alison wept, and withdrew in silence; and Wedderburn paced the floor of the gloomy hall, meditating in what manner he should most effectually resent the death of his kinsman.

It was only a few weeks after the execution of the Earl of Home and his brother, that the Regent Albany offered an additional insult to his family by appointing Sir Anthony D'Arcy warden of the east marches, an office which the Homes had held for ages. D'Arcy was a Frenchman, and the favourite of the Regent; and, on account of the comeliness of his person, obtained the appellation of the Sieur de la Beaute. The indignation of Wedderburn had not slumbered, and the conferring the honours and the power that had hitherto been held by his family upon a foreigner, incensed him to almost madness. For a time, however, no opportunity offered of causing his resentment to be felt; for D'Arcy was as much admired for the discretion and justice of his government as for the beauty of his person. To his care the Regent had committed young Cockburn, the heir of Langton, who was the nephew of Wedderburn. This the Homes felt as a new indignity, and, together with the Cockburns, they forcibly ejected from Langton Castle the tutors whom D'Arcy had placed over their kinsman. The tidings of this event were brought to the Chevalier while he was holding a court at Kelso; and immediately summoning together his French retainers and a body of yeomen, he proceeded with a gay and a gallant company by way of Fogo to Langton. His troop drew up in front of the castle, and their gay plumes and burnished trappings glittered in the sun. The proud steed of the Frenchman was covered with a panoply of gold and silver, and he himself was decorated as for a bridal. He rode haughtily to the gate, and demanded the inmates of the castle to surrender.

"Surrender! boasting Gaul!" replied William Cockburn, the uncle of the young laird; "that is a word the men of Merse have yet to learn. But yonder comes my brother Wedderburn; speak it to him."

D'Arcy turned round, and beheld Sir David Home and a party of horsemen bearing down upon them at full speed. The Chevalier drew back, and waiting their approach, placed himself at the head of his company.

"By the mass! Sir Warden," said Sir David, riding up to D'Arcy, "and ye have brought a goodly company to visit my nephew. Come ye in peace, or what may be your errand?"

"I wish peace," replied the Chevalier, "and come to enforce the establishment of my rights; why do you interfere between me and my ward?"

"Does a Frenchman talk of his rights upon the lands of Home?" returned Sir David; "or by whose authority is my nephew your ward?"

"By the authority of the Regent, rebel Scot!" retorted D'Arcy.

"By the authority of the Regent!" interrupted Wedderburn; "dare ye, foreign minion, speak of the authority of the murderer of the Earl of Home, while within the reach of the sword of his kinsman?"

"Ay! and in his teeth dare tell him," replied the Chevalier, "that the Home now before me is not less a traitor than he who proved false to his sovereign on the field of Flodden, who conspired against the Regent, and whose head now adorns the port of Edinburgh."

"Wretch!" exclaimed the henchman Trotter, dashing forward, and raising his sword, "said ye that my master proved false at Flodden?"

"Hold!" exclaimed Wedderburn, grasping his arm. "Gramercy, ye uncivilised dog! for the sake of your master's head would ye lift your hand against that face which ladies die to look upon? Pardon me, most beautiful Chevalier! the salutation of my servant may be too rough for your French palate, but you and your master treated my kinsman somewhat more roughly. What say ye, Sir Warden? do ye depart in peace, or wish ye that we should try the temper of our Border steel upon your French bucklers?"

"Depart ye in peace, vain boaster," replied D'Arcy, "lest a worse thing befall you."

"Then on, my merry men!" cried Wedderburn, "and to-day the head of the Regent's favourite, the Chevalier of Beauty, for the head of the Earl of Home!"

"The house of Home and revenge!" shouted his followers, and rushed upon the armed band of D'Arcy. At first the numbers were nearly equal, and the contest was terrible. Each man fought hand to hand, and the ground was contested inch by inch. The gilded ornaments of the French horses were covered with blood, and their movements were encumbered by their weight. The sword of Wedderburn had already smitten three of the Chevalier's followers to the ground, and the two chiefs now contended in single combat. D'Arcy fought with the fury of despair, but Home continued to bear upon him as a tiger that has been robbed of its cubs. Every moment the force of the Chevalier was thinned, and every instant the number of his enemies increased, as the neighbouring peasantry rallied round the standard of their chief. Finding the most faithful of his followers stretched upon the earth, D'Arcy sought safety in flight. Dashing his silver spurs into the sides of his noble steed, he turned his back upon his desperate enemy, and rushed along in the direction of Pouterleiny, and through Dunse, with the hope of gaining the road to Dunbar, of which town he was governor. Fiercely Wedderburn followed at his heels, with his naked sword uplifted, and ready to strike; immediately behind him rode Trotter, the henchman of the late earl, and another of Home's followers named Dickson. It was a fearful sight as they rushed through Dunse, their horses striking fire from their heels in the light of the very sunbeams, and the sword of the pursuer within a few feet of the fugitive. Still the Chevalier rode furiously, urging on the gallant animal that bore him, which seemed conscious that the life of its rider depended upon its speed. His flaxen locks waived behind him in the wind, and the voice of his pursuers ever and anon fell upon his ear, like a dagger of death thrust into his bosom. The horse upon which Wedderburn rode had been wounded in the conflict, and, as they drew near Broomhouse, its speed slackened, and his followers, Trotter and Dickson, took the lead in the pursuit. The Chevalier had reached a spot on the right bank of the Whitadder, which is now in a field of the farm of Swallowdean, when his noble steed, becoming entangled with its cumbrous trappings, stumbled, and hurled its rider to the earth. The next moment the swords of Trotter and Dickson were through the body of the unfortunate Chevalier.

"Off with his head!" exclaimed Wedderburn, who at the same instant reached the spot. The bloody mandate was readily obeyed; and Home, taking the bleeding head in his hand, cut off the flaxen tresses, and tied them as a trophy to his saddle-bow. The body of the Chevalier de la Beaute was rudely buried on the spot where he fell. A humble stone marks out the scene of the tragedy, and the people in the neighbourhood yet call it "Bawty's Grave." The head of the Chevalier was carried to Dunse, where it was fixed upon a spear at the cross, and Wedderburn exclaimed, "Thus be exalted the enemies of the house of Home!"

The bloody relic was then borne in triumph to Home Castle, and placed upon the battlements. "There," said Sir David, "let the Regent climb when he returns from France for the head of his favourite; it is thus that Home of Wedderburn revenges the murder of his kindred."



THE STORY OF THE PELICAN.

Though not so much a tradition as a memory still fresh probably in the minds of some of the good old Edinburgh folks, we here offer, chiefly for the benefit of our young female readers who are fond of a story wherein little heroines figure, as in Beranger's Sylphide, an account of a very famous adventure of a certain little Jeannie Deans in our city—the more like the elder Jeannie, inasmuch as they both were concerned in a loving effort to save the life of a sister. Whereunto, as a very necessary introduction, it behoves us to set forth that there was, some sixty years ago, more or less, a certain Mr. William Maconie, who was a merchant on the South Bridge of Edinburgh, but who, for the sake of exercise and fresh air—a commodity this last he need not have gone so far from the Calton Hill to seek—resided at Juniper Green, a little village three or four miles from St. Giles's. Nor did this distance incommode him much, seeing that he had the attraction to quicken his steps homewards of a pretty young wife and two little twin daughters, Mary and Annie, as like each other as two rosebuds partially opened, and as like their mother, too, as the objects of our simile are to themselves when full blown.

Peculiar in this respect of having twins at the outset, and sisters too—a good beginning of a contract to perpetuate the species—Mr. Maconie was destined to be even more so, inasmuch as there came no more of these pleasant deliciae domi, at least up to the time of our curious story—a circumstance the more to be regretted by the father, in consequence of a strange fancy (never told to his wife) that possessed him of wishing to insure the lives of his children as they came into the world, or at least after they had got through the rather uninsurable period of mere infant life. And in execution of this fancy—a very fair and reasonable one, and not uncommon at that time, whatever it may be now, when people are not so provident—he had got an insurance to the extent of five hundred pounds effected in the Pelican Office—perhaps the most famous at that time—on the lives of the said twins, Mary and Annie, who were, no doubt, altogether unconscious of the importance they were thus made to hold in the world.

Yet, unfortunately for the far-seeing and provident father, this scheme threatened to fructify sooner than he wished, if indeed it could ever have fructified to his satisfaction; for the grisly spectre of typhus laid his relentless hand upon Mary when she—and of a consequence Annie—was somewhere about eight years old. And surely, being as we are very hopeful optimists in the cause of human nature, we need not say that the father, as he and his wife watched the suffering invalid on through the weary days and nights of the progress towards the crisis of that dangerous ailment, never once thought of the Pelican, except as a bird that feeds its young with the warm blood of its breast. But, sorrowful as they were, their grief was nothing in comparison with the distress of little Annie, who slipped about listening and making all manner of anxious inquiries about her sick sister, whom she was prohibited from seeing for fear of her being touched by the said spectre; nor was her heart the less troubled with fears for her life, that all things seemed so quiet and mysterious about the house—the doctor coming and going, and the father and mother whispering to each other, but never to her, and their faces so sad-like and mournful, in place of being, as was their wont, so cheerful and happy.

And surely all this solicitude on the part of Annie Maconie need not excite our wonder, when we consider that, from the time of their birth, the twin sisters had never been separated, but that, from the moment they had made their entrance on this world's stage, they had been always each where the other was, and had run each where the other ran, wished each what the other wished, and wept and laughed each when the other wept or laughed. Nature indeed, before it came into her fickle head to make two of them, had in all probability intended these little sisters—"little cherries on one stalk"—to be but one; and they could only be said not to be one, because of their bodies being two—a circumstance of no great importance, for, in spite of the duality of body, the spirit that animated them was a unity, and as we know from an old philosopher called Plato, the spirit is really the human creature, the flesh and bones constituting the body being nothing more than a mere husk intended at the end to feed worms. And then the mother helped this sameness by dressing them so like each other, as if she wanted to make a Comedy of Errors out of the two little female Dromios.

But in the middle of this mystery and solicitude, it happened that Annie was to get some light; for, at breakfast one morning—not yet that of the expected crisis—when her father and mother were talking earnestly in an undertone to each other, all unaware that the child, as she was moving about, was watching their words and looks, much as an older victim of credulity may be supposed to hang on the cabbalistic movements and incantations of a sibyl, the attentive little listener eagerly drank in every word of the following conversation:—

"The doctor is so doubtful," said the anxious mother, with a tear in her eye, "that I have scarcely any hope; and if she is taken away, the very look of Annie, left alone 'bleating for her sister lamb,' will break my heart altogether."

"Yes," rejoined Mr. Maconie, "it would be hard to bear; but"—and it was the first time since Mary's illness he had ever remembered the insurance—"it was wise that I insured poor Mary's life in the Pelican."

"Insured her life in the Pelican!" echoed the wife in a higher tone. "That was at least lucky; but, oh! I hope we will not need to have our grief solaced by that comfort in affliction for many a day."

And this colloquy had scarcely been finished when the doctor entered, having gone previously into the invalid's room, with a very mournful expression upon his face; nor did his words make that expression any more bearable, as he said—

"I am sorry to say I do not like Mary's appearance so well to-day. I fear it is to be one of those cases where we cannot discover anything like a crisis at all; indeed I have doubts about this old theory being applicable to this kind of fever, where the virus goes on gradually working to the end."

"The end!" echoed Mrs. Maconie; "then, doctor, I fear you see what that will be."

"I would not like to say," added he; "but I fear you must make up your mind for the worst."

Now, all this was overheard by Annie, who, we may here seize the opportunity of saying, was, in addition to being a sensitive creature, one of those precocious little philosophers thinly spread in the female world, and made what they are often by delicate health, which reduces them to a habit of thinking much before their time. Not that she wanted the vivacity of her age, but that it was tempered by periods of serious musing, when all kinds of what the Scotch call "auld farrant" (far yont) thoughts come to be where they should not be, the consequence being a weird-like kind of wisdom, very like that of the aged; so the effect on a creature so constituted was just equal to the cause. Annie ran out of the room with her face concealed in her hands, and got into a small bedroom darkened by the window-blind, and there, in an obscurity and solitude suited to her mind and feelings, she resigned herself to the grief of the young heart. It was now clear to her that her dear Mary was to be taken from her; had not the doctor said as much? And then she had never seen death, of which she had read and heard and thought so much, that she looked upon it as a thing altogether mysterious and terrible. But had she not overheard her father say that he had insured poor dear Mary's life with the Pelican? and had she not heard of the pelican—yea, the pelican of the wilderness—as a creature of a most mythical kind, though she knew not aught of its nature, whether bird or beast, or man or woman, or angel? But whatever it might be, certain it was that her father would never have got this wonderful creature to insure Mary's life if it was not possessed of the power to bring about so great a result. So she cogitated and mused and philosophized in her small way, till she came to the conclusion that the pelican not only had the destiny of Mary in its hands, but was under an obligation to save her from that death which was so terrible to her. Nor had she done yet with the all-important subject; for all at once it came into her head as a faint memory, that one day, when her father was taking her along with her mother through the city, he pointed to a gilded sign, with a large bird represented thereon, tearing its breast with its long beak, and letting out the blood to its young, who were holding their mouths open to drink it in. "There," said he, "is the Pelican;" words she remembered even to that hour, for they were imprinted upon her mind by the formidable appearance of the wonderful-looking creature feeding its young with the very blood of its bosom. But withal she had sense enough to know—being, as we have said, a small philosopher—that a mere bird, however endowed with the power of sustaining the lives of its offspring, could not save that of her sister, and therefore it behoved to be only the symbol of some power within the office over the door of which the said sign was suspended. Nor in all this was Annie Maconie more extravagant than are nineteen-twentieths of the thousand millions in the world who still cling to occult causes.

And with those there came other equally strange thoughts; but beyond all she could not for the very life of her comprehend that most inexcusable apathy of her father, who, though he had heard with his own ears, from good authority, that her beloved Mary was lying in the next bedroom dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to town—even to that very Pelican who had so generously undertaken to insure Mary's life. It was an apathy unbecoming a father; and the blood of her little heart warmed with indignation at the very time that the said heart was down in sorrow as far as its loose strings would enable it to go. But was there no remedy? To be sure there was, and Annie knew, moreover, what it was; but then it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that sacrifice she also knew, though it must of necessity be kept in the meantime as secret as the wonderful doings in the death-chamber of the palace of a certain Bluebeard.

Great thoughts these for so little a woman as Annie Maconie; and no doubt the greatness and the weight of them were the cause why, for all that day—every hour of which her father was allowing to pass—she was more melancholy and thoughtful than she had ever been since Mary began to be ill. But, somehow, there was a peculiar change which even her mother could observe in her; for while she had been in the habit of weeping for her sister, yea, and sobbing very piteously, she was all this day apparently in a reverie. Nor even up to the time of her going to bed was she less thoughtful and abstracted, even as if she had been engaged in solving some problem great to her, however small it might seem to grown-up infants. As for sleeping under the weight of so much responsibility, it might seem to be out of the question; and so, verily, it was; for her little body, acted on by the big thoughts, was moved from one side to another all night, so that she never slept a wink, still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, of poor Mary, her father's criminal passiveness, and that most occult remedy which so completely engrossed her mind.

But certainly it was the light of morning for which sister Annie sighed; and when it came glinting in at the small window, she was up and beginning to dress, all the while listening lest the servant or any other one in the house should know she was up at that hour. Having completed her toilet, she slipped down stairs, and having got to the lobby, she was provident enough to lay hold of an umbrella, for she suspected the elements as being in league against her. Thus equipped, she crept out by the back door, and having got thus free, she hurried along, never looking behind her till she came to the main road to Edinburgh, when she mounted the umbrella—one used by her father, and so large that it was more like a main-sheet than a covering suitable to so small a personage; so it behoved, that if she met any other "travellers on purpose bent," the moving body must have appeared to be some small tent on its way to a fair, carried by the proprietor thereof, of whom no more could be seen but the two short toddling legs, and the hem of the black riding-hood. But what cared Annie? She toiled along; the miles were long in comparison of the short legs, but then there was a large purpose in that little body, in the view of which miles were of small account, however long a time it might take those steps to go over them. Nor was it any drawback to all this energy, concentrated in so small a bulk, that she had had no breakfast. Was the dying sister Mary able to take any breakfast? and why should Annie eat when Mary, who did all she did—and she always did everything that sister Mary did—could not? The argument was enough for our little logician.

By the time she reached, by those short steps of hers, the great city, it was half-past eleven, and she had before her still a great deal to accomplish. She made out, after considerable wanderings, the street signalized above all streets by that wonderful bird; but after she got into it, the greater difficulty remained of finding the figure itself, whereto there was this untoward obstacle, that it was still drizzling in the thick Scotch way of concrete drops of mist, and the umbrella which she held over her head was so large that no turning it aside would enable her to see under the rim at such an angle as would permit her scanning so elevated a position, and so there was nothing for it but to draw it down. But even this was a task—heavy as the mainsheet was with rain, and rattling in a considerable wind—almost beyond her strength; and if it hadn't been that a kindly personage who saw the little maid's difficulty gave her assistance, she might not have been able to accomplish it. And now, with the heavy article in her hand, she peered about for another half-hour, till at length her gladdened eye fell upon the mystic symbol.

And no sooner had she made sure of the object than she found her way into the office, asking the porter as well as a clerk where the pelican was to be found,—questions that produced a smile; but smile here or smile there, Annie was not to be beat; nor did she stop in her progress until at last she was shown into a room where she saw, perched on a high stool, with three (of course) long legs, a strange-looking personage with a curled wig and a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room with the umbrella, not much shorter or less in circumference than herself, the gentleman looked curiously at her, wondering no doubt what the errand of so strange a little customer could be.

"Well, my little lady," said he, "what may be your pleasure?"

"I want the pelican," said Annie.

The gentleman was still more astonished, even to the extent that he laid down his pen and looked at her again.

"The pelican, dear?"

"Ay, just the pelican," answered she deliberately, and even a little indignantly. "Are you the pelican?"

"Why, yes, dear; all that is for it below the figure," said he, smiling, and wondering what the next question would be.

"I am so glad I have found you," said she; "because sister Mary is dying."

"And who is sister Mary?"

"My sister, Mary Maconie, at Juniper Green."

Whereupon the gentleman began to remember that the name of William Maconie was in his books as holder of a policy.

"And what more?"

"My father says the pelican insured Mary's life; and I want you to come direct and do it, because I couldn't live if Mary were to die; and there's no time to be lost."

"Oh! I see, dear. And who sent you?"

"Nobody," answered Annie. "My father wouldn't come to you; and I have come from Juniper Green myself without telling my father or mother."

"Oh yes, dear! I understand you."

"But you must do it quick," continued she, "because the doctor says she's in great danger; so you must come with me and save her immediately."

"I am sorry, my dear little lady," rejoined he, "that I cannot go with you; but I will set about it immediately, and I have no doubt, being able to go faster than you, that I will get there before you, so that all will be right before you arrive."

"See that you do it, then," said she; "because I can't live if Mary dies. Are you quite sure you will do it?"

"Perfectly sure, my little dear," added he. "Go away home, and all will be right; the pelican will do his duty."

And Annie being thus satisfied, went away, dragging the main-sheet after her, and having upon her face a look of contentment, if not absolute happiness, in place of the sorrow which had occupied it during all the time of her toilsome journey. The same road is to be retraced; and if she had an object before which nerved her little limbs, she had now the delightful consciousness of that object having been effected—a feeling of inspiration which enabled her, hungry as she was, to overcome all the toil of the return. Another two hours, with that heavy umbrella over head as well as body, brought her at length home, where she found that people had been sent out in various directions to find the missing Annie. The mother was in tears, and the father in great anxiety; and no sooner had she entered and laid down her burden, than she was clasped to the bosom, first of one parent, and then of the other.

"But where is the pelican?" said the anxious little maid.

"The pelican, my darling!" cried the mother; "what do you mean?"

"Oh! I have been to him at his own office at Edinburgh to get him to come and save Mary's life, and he said he would be here before me."

"And what in the world put it in your head to go there?" again asked the mother.

"Because I heard my father say yesterday that the pelican had insured dear sister Mary's life, and I went to tell him to come and do it immediately; because if Mary were to die, I couldn't live, you know. That's the reason, dear mother."

"Yes, yes," said the father, scarcely able to repress a smile which rose in spite of his grief. "I see it all. You did a very right thing, my love. The pelican has been here, and Mary is better."

"Oh! I am so glad," rejoined Annie; "for I wasn't sure whether he had come or not; because, though I looked for him on the road, I couldn't see him."

At the same moment the doctor came in, with a blithe face.

"Mary is safe now," said he. "There has been a crisis, after all. The sweat has broken out upon her dry skin, and she will be well in a very short time."

"And there's no thanks to you," said Annie, "because it was I who went for the pelican."

Whereupon the doctor looked to the father, who, taking him aside, narrated to him the story, at which the doctor was so pleased that he laughed right out.

"You're the noblest little heroine I ever heard of," said he.

"But have you had anything to eat, dear, in this long journey?" said the mother.

"No, I didn't want," was the answer; "all I wanted was to save Mary's life, and I am glad I have done it."

And glad would we be if, by the laws of historical truth, our stranger story could have ended here; but, alas! we are obliged to pain the good reader's heart by saying that the demon who had left the troubled little breast of Mary Maconie took possession of Annie's. The very next day she lay extended on the bed, panting under the fell embrace of the relentless foe. As Mary got better, Annie grew worse; and her case was so far unlike Mary's, that there was more a tendency to a fevered state of the brain. The little sufferer watched with curious eyes the anxious faces of her parents, and seemed conscious that she was in a dangerous condition. Nor did it fail to occur to her as a great mystery as well as wonder, why they did not send for the wonderful being who had so promptly saved the life of her sister. The thought haunted her, yet she was afraid to mention it to her mother, because it implied a sense of danger—a fear which one evening she overcame. Fixing her eyes, now every moment waxing less clear, on the face of her mother—

"Oh mother, dear," she whispered, "why do you not send for the pelican?"

In other circumstances the mother would have smiled; but, alas, no smile could be seen on that pale face. Whether the pelican was sent for we know not, but certain it is, that he had no power to save poor Annie, and she died within the week. But she did not die in vain, for the large sum insured upon her life eventually came to Mary, whom she loved so dearly.



THE WIDOW'S AE SON.

We will not name the village where the actors in the following incidents resided; and it is sufficient for our purpose to say that it lay in the county of Berwick, and within the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Dunse. Eternity has gathered forty winters into its bosom since the principal events took place. Janet Jeffrey was left a widow before her only child had completed his tenth year. While her husband lay upon his deathbed, he called her to his bedside, and, taking her hand within his, he groaned, gazed on her face, and said, "Now, Janet, I'm gaun a lang and a dark journey; but ye winna forget, Janet—ye winna forget—for ye ken it has aye been uppermost in my thoughts and first in my desires, to mak Thamas a minister; promise me that ae thing, Janet, that, if it be HIS will, ye will see it performed, an' I will die in peace." In sorrow the pledge was given, and in joy performed. Her life became wrapt up in her son's life; and it was her morning and her evening prayer that she might live to see her "dear Thamas a shining light in the kirk." Often she declared that he was an "auld farrant bairn, and could ask a blessing like ony minister." Our wishes and affections, however, often blind our judgment. Nobody but the mother thought the son fitted for the kirk, nor the kirk fitted for him. There was always something original, almost poetical about him; but still Thomas was "no orator as Brutus was." His mother had few means beyond the labour of her hands for their support. She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings of his field labour and occasional teaching, she was enabled to make preparation for sending him to Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to her neighbours her double spinel yarn—observing, "It's nae finer than he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended the classes regularly and faithfully; and truly as St. Giles's marked the hour, the long, lean figure of Thomas Jeffrey, in a suit of shabby black, and half a dozen volumes under his arm, was seen issuing from his garret in the West Bow, darting down the frail stair with the velocity of a shadow, measuring the Lawnmarket and High Street with gigantic strides, gliding like a ghost up the South Bridge, and sailing through the Gothic archway of the College, till the punctual student was lost in its inner chambers. Years rolled by, and at length the great, the awful day arrived—