Chapter V: Part 5

It was not till after several days had passed that Mysie was able, as she still lay in bed, to whisper, amidst the recurring sobs, in the ear of her mother, as the latter bent over her, the real circumstances of her condition; and still, amidst the trembling words, came the vindication that she considered herself to be as much the wife of George Balgarnie as if they had been joined by “Holy Kirk;” a statement which the mother could not understand, if it was not to her a mystery, rendered even more mysterious by a reference which Mysie made to the law of the country, as she had heard the same from her cousin George Davidson, a writer’s clerk in the Lawnmarket. Much of which, as it came in broken syllables from the lips of the disconsolate daughter, the mother put to the account of the fond dreams of a mind put out of joint by the worst form of misery incident to young women. But what availed explanations, mysteries or no mysteries, where the fact was patent that Mysie Craig lay there, the poor heart-broken victim of man’s perfidy--her powers of industry broken and useless--the fine weaving genius of her fancy, whereby she wrought her embroidered devices to deck and adorn beauty, only engaged now on portraying all the evils of her future life; and, above all, was she not soon to become a mother?

Meanwhile, and in the midst of all this misery, the laid-up earnings of Mysie’s industry wore away, where there was no work by those cunning fingers--now thin and emaciated; and before the days passed, and the critical day came whereon another burden would be imposed on the household, there was need for the sympathy of neighbours in that form which soon wears out--pecuniary help. That critical day at length came. Mysie Craig gave birth to a boy, and their necessities from that hour grew in quicker and greater proportion than the generosity of friends. There behoved something to be done, and that without delay. So when Mysie lay asleep, with the innocent evidence of her misfortune by her side, Mrs Craig put on her red plaid and went forth on a mother’s duty, and was soon in the presence of George Balgarnie and his young wife. She was under an impulse which made light of delicate conventionalities, and did not think it necessary to give the lady an opportunity of being absent; nay, she rather would have her to be present--for was she, who had been so far privy to the intercourse between her husband and Mysie, to be exempt from the consequences which she, in a sense, might have been said to have brought about?

“Ye have ruined Mysie Craig, sir!” cried at once the roused mother. “Ye have ta’en awa her honour. Ye have ta’en awa her health. Ye have ta’en awa her bread. Ay, and ye have reduced three human creatures to want, it may be starvation; and I have come here in sair sorrow and necessity to ask when and whaur is to be the remeid?”

“When and where you may find it, woman!” said the lady, as she cast a side-glance to her husband, probably by way of appeal for the truth of what she thought it right to say. “Mr Balgarnie never injured your daughter. Let him who did the deed yield the remeid!”

“And do you stand by this?” said Mrs Craig.

But the husband had been already claimed as free from blame by his wife, who kept her eye fixed upon him; and the obligation to conscience, said by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is sometimes weaker than what is due to a wife, in the estimation of whom a man may wish to stand in a certain degree of elevation.

“You must seek another father to the child of your daughter,” said he, lightly. And, not content with the denial, he supplemented it by a laugh, as he added, “When birds go to the greenwood, they must take the chance of meeting the goshawk.”

“And that is your answer?” said she.

“It is; and you need never trouble either my wife or me more on this subject,” was the reply.

“Then may the vengeance o’ the God of justice light on the heads o’ baith o’ ye!” added Mrs Craig, as she went hurriedly away.

Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, for she held on her way direct to the Lawnmarket, where she found George Davidson, to whom she related as much as she had been able to get out of Mysie, and also what had passed at the interview with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing which, the young writer shook his head.

“You will get a trifle of aliment,” said he; “perhaps half-a-crown a week, but no more; and Mysie could have made that in a day by her beautiful work.”

“And she will never work mair,” said the mother, with a sigh.

“For a hundred years,” rejoined he, more to himself than to her, and probably in congratulation of himself for his perspicacity, “and since ever there was a college of justice, there never was a case where a man pulled up on oath for a promise of marriage admitted the fact. It is a good Scotch law--only we want a people to obey it. But what,” he added again, “if we were to try it, though it were only as a grim joke and a revenge in so sad and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig!”

Words which the mother understood no more than she did law Latin; and so she was sent away as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did not want to raise hopes which there was no chance of being fulfilled; but he knew as a Scotchman that a man who trusts himself to “a strae rape” in the hope of its breaking, may possibly hang himself, and so it happened that the very next day a summons was served upon George Balgarnie, to have it found and declared by the Lords of Session that he had promised to marry Mysie Craig, whereupon a child had been born by her; or, in fault of that, he was bound to sustain the said child. Thereupon, without the ordinary law’s delay, certain proceedings went on, in the course of which Mysie herself was examined as the mother to afford what the lawyers call a _semiplena probatio_, or half proof, to be supplemented otherwise, and thereafter George Balgarnie stood before the august fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with Mysie, except an occasional walk in the Hunter’s Bog; and this he would have denied also, but he knew that he had been seen, and that it would be sworn to by others; and then came the last question, which Mr Greerson, Mysie’s advocate, put in utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem to try to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put his head in a noose on the pretence of seeing how it fitted his neck, that he smiled even as the words came out of his mouth--

“Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig?”

Was prudence, the chief of the four cardinal virtues, ever yet consistent with vice? Balgarnie waxed clever--a dangerous trick in a witness. He stroked his beard with a smile on his face, and answered--

“_Yes, once--when I was drunk!_”

Words which were immediately followed by the crack of a single word in the dry mouth of one of the advocates--the word “NICKED.”

And nicked he was; for the presiding judge, addressing the witness, said--

“The drunkenness may be good enough in its own way, sir; but it does not take away the effect of your promise--nay, it is even an aggravation, insomuch as having enjoyed the drink, you wanted to enjoy with impunity what you could make of the promise also.”

If Balgarnie had been a reader he might have remembered Waller’s verse--

“That eagle’s fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.”

So Mysie gained her plea, and the marriage with Anabella, for whom she had embroidered the marriage-gown, was dissolved. How matters progressed afterwards for a time we know not; but the Scotch know that there is wisdom in making the best of a bad bargain, and in this case it was a good one; for, as the Lady of Balgruddery, Mysie Craig did no dishonour to George Balgarnie, who, moreover, found her a faithful wife, and a good mother to the children that came of this strange marriage.

The Story of Pinched Tom.

In searching again Lord Kilkerran’s Session Papers in the Advocates’ Library, I observed a strange remark written on the margin of one of them--“Beware of pinched Tom”--the meaning of which I was at a loss to find. His lordship was known to be a very grave man, as well as an excellent lawyer, and all so unlike the Newtons and Harmands, who made the blind Lady Justice laugh by the antics of that other lady sung by Beranger--Dame Folly--that I was put to my wit’s end, although I admit that, by a reference to a part of the printed Session Papers opposite to which the remark was made, I thought I could catch a glimmering of his lordship’s intention. The law case occupying the papers comprehended a question of disputed succession, and that question involved the application of a curious law in Scotland, which still remains.

I believe we borrowed it from that great repertory from which our forefathers took so much wisdom--the Roman code; but be that as it may, (and it’s no great matter in so far as regards my story,) certain it is that it is a part of our jurisprudence, that where a marriage is dissolved by the death of the wife within a year and a day of the celebration thereof, without leaving a living child, the tocher goes back to the wife’s friends. Of course nothing is more untrue than that bit of connubial wit: that while we hold, according to the Bible, that a man and his wife are _one_, we also very sensibly hold that the husband is _that one_. Then the child behoves to be a living child; but what constituted a living child often turned out to be as difficult a question as what constitutes a new birth of a living Christian, according to our good old sturdy Calvinism; for as all doctors know that a child will, on coming into the world, give a breath or two with a shiver, and then go off like a candle not properly lighted, it became a question whether, in such a case, the child could be said to have lived. Sometimes, too, the living symptom is less doubtful, as in the case, also very common, where the little stranger gives a tiny scream, the consequence of the filling of the lungs by the rushing in of the air, and having experienced a touch of the evils of life, makes up its mind to be off as quickly as possible from a wicked world. Now this last symptom our Scotch law accepts as the only evidence which can be received that the child had within it a living-spirit, or, as we call it, an immortal soul. It would be of no importance that it opened and shut its eyes, moved its hands, or kicked or sprawled in any way you please; all this is nothing but infantine pantomime, and the worst pantomime, too, that it has no possible meaning that any rational person could understand, and so, therefore, it goes for nothing. In short, our law holds that, unless “baby squeak,” there is no evidence that baby ever lived. Nor is any distinction made between the male and the female, although we know so well that the latter is much more inclined to make a noise than the other, were it for nothing else than to exhibit a first attempt to do that at which the sex are so good when they grow up and get husbands.

To bring back the reader to Lord Kilkerran’s remark--“Beware of Pinched Tom”--the case to which the note applied comprehended the question whether the child had been heard to cry, and though the connexion might be merely imaginary on my part, I recollected in the instant having heard the story I now relate of Mr Thomas Whitelaw, a merchant burgess of Edinburgh, who figured somewhere between the middle and the end of last century, and took for wife a certain Janet Monypenny. In which union “the sufficient reason” which always exists, though we do not always know it, was on the part of the said Thomas the certainty that Janet’s name (defying Shakespeare’s question) was a real designative of a quality, that being that she possessed, in her own right, not merely many a penny, but so many thousand pennies, that they amounted to somewhere about two thousand merks, a large sum in those olden days. And this money was perhaps the more valuable, that the heiress had an unfortunate right by inheritance to consumption, whereby she ran a risk of being taken away, leaving her money unconsumed in the hands of her husband; an event, this latter, which our merchant burgess could certainly have turned to more certain account if he had provided against the law we have mentioned by entering into an antenuptial contract of marriage, wherein it might have been set forth that, though the marriage should be dissolved by the death of the wife before “year and day,” without a living child being born thereof, yet the husband’s right to the tocher would remain. But then Burgess Thomas did not know of any such law, while Mr George Monypenny, the brother of Mrs Janet, knew it perfectly, the more by token that he was a writer, that is, a legal practitioner, at the Luckenbooths. And though Mr George might have made a few pennies by writing out the contract, he never hinted to his intended brother-in-law of the propriety of any such act, because he knew that he had a chance of coming to more pennies, by the death of his sister, within the year and the day.

So the marriage was entered into without more use of written paper than what we call the marriage lines, and Writer George was satisfied until he began to see that Mrs Whitelaw was likely to be a mother before the expiry of the year and the day; but then he had the consolation--for, alas! human nature was the same in those olden times that it is now--of seeing that, while poor Janet was increasing in one way, she was decreasing in another, so that it was not unlikely that there would be not only a dead child, but a dead mother; and then he would come in as nearest of kin for the tocher of two thousand merks, of all which speculations on the part of the unnatural brother, Burgess Thomas knew nothing. But it so happened that Mrs Euphan Lythgow, the most skilly howdie or midwife in Edinburgh at that time, was the woman who was to bring the child into the world, and she had seen indications enough to satisfy her that there was a probability that things would go on in the very way so cruelly hoped for by the man of the law; nay, she had her eyes--open enough at all times--more opened still by some questions put to her by the wily expectant, and so she held it to be her duty to go straight to Burgess Thomas.

“I fear,” said she, “baith for the mother and the bairn, for she is worn awa to skin and bane, and if she bear the heir she will only get lighter, as we ca’ it, to tak on a heavier burden, even that o’ death. The bairn may live, but it’s only a chance.”

Whereat Burgess Thomas looked sad, for he really loved his wife, but it might just happen that a thought came into his head that death had no power over the two thousand merks.

“If baith the mother and the bairn dee,” continued Euphan, “the money you got by her will tak wing and flee awa to Mr George, her brother.”

“What mean you, woman?” asked Mr Whitelaw, as he looked wistfully and fearfully into the face of the howdie.

“Had ye no’ a contract o’ marriage?” continued she.

“No,” was the answer.

“Aweel, ye’re in danger, for ken ye na it is our auld Scotch law that when there’s nae contract, and the year and the day hasna passed, and when the mither dees and the bairn dees without a cry, the tocher flees back again? Heard ye never the auld rhyme--

‘Mither dead and bairn gane,
Pay the tocher to her kin;
But an ye hear the bairn squeal,
Gudeman, grip the tocher weel.’”

“God bless me, Mrs Lythgow! is that the law?” cried the husband, in a fright.

“Indeed, and it is,” was the rejoinder. “You are muckle obliged to Writer George. If the bairn lives to be baptized, George is no the name it will bear.”

“No,” replied he; “if a boy, it will be baptized Thomas.”

“Tam!” ejaculated the howdie in a screechy voice, the reason of which might be that her son carrying that name had died during the year, and she was affected.

But no sooner had the word Tam passed from her lips, than a large red cat came from the rug, and looking up in her face, mewed in so very expressive a way that the sadness which the recollection of her boy had inspired passed suddenly away, and was succeeded by a comical look; and rubbing Bawdrons “along of the hair,” as Mr Dickens would express it, the true way of treating either cats or cat-witted people, she continued addressing the favourite--

“And you, Tam, and I will be better acquainted before the twa thousand merks are paid to Writer George.”

“What does the woman mean?” said the burgess. “What connexion is there between that animal and my wife’s fortune?”

“Ye’ll ken that when the time comes,” was the answer; “but coming nearer to the subject in hand, ye’ll take care to hae twa witnesses in the blue-painted parlour, next to your bed-room, when I’m untwining the mistress o’ her burden, whether it be a dead bairn or a living ane.”

“And what good will that do me if both the mother and child should die?” inquired he.

“Ye’ll ken that when Writer George comes and asks ye for the tocher,” was the answer.

Nor did Mrs Euphan Lythgow wait to throw any further light upon a subject which appeared to the burgess to require more than the candle of his own mind could supply if he should snuff it again and again, and arn’t we, every one of us, always snuffing the candle so often that we can see nothing? But Mrs Lythgow was what the Scotch people call “a skilly woman.” She could see--to use an old and very common expression--as far into a millstone as any one, and it was especially clear to her that she would deliver Mrs Whitelaw of a dead child, that death would deliver the mother of her life, and Writer George would deliver Maister Whitelaw of two thousand good merks of Scotch money, unless, as a poor salvage out of all this loss, she could deliver the burgess out of the hands of the writer. And so the time passed till the eventful evening came, when the wasted invalid was seized with those premonitory pains which have come right down from old mother Eve to the fair daughters of men, as a consequence of her eating the too sweet paradise pippin. The indispensable Mrs Euphan Lythgow was sent for express and came on the instant, for she knew she had unusual duties to perform, nor did she forget as one of the chief of those to get Mrs Jean Gilchrist, a neighbouring gossip, and Robina Proudfoot, the servant, ensconsed in the said blue-painted parlour, for the sole end that they should hear what they could hear, but as for seeing anything that passed within the veil of the secret temple of Lucina, they were not to be permitted to get a glimpse until such time as might please the priestess of the mysteries herself.

All which secrecy has been followed by the unfortunate consequence that history nowhere records what took place in that secret room for an hour or two after the two women took up their station in the said blue-painted chamber. But this much we know, that the house was so silent that our favourite Tom could not have chosen a more auspicious evening for mousing for prey in place of mewing for play, even if he had had all the sagacity of the famous cats of Tartesia. As for Mrs Gilchrist and Robina, they could not have listened more zealously, we might even say effectually, if they had been gifted with ears as long as those of certain animals in Trophonia; and surely we cannot be wrong in saying they were successful listeners, when we are able to report that Mrs Gilchrist nipped the bare fleshy arm of Robina, as a sign that she heard what she wanted to hear.

“That’s the scream o’ the wean!” said she.

“Ay, and may the Lord be praised!” was the answer of Robina, in spite of the nip.

But neither the one nor the other knew that that cry was verily worth two thousand merks to Maister Burgess Whitelaw, the father, who in a back-room sat in the deep pit of anxiety and heard nothing, and perhaps it was better that he didn’t, for that cry might have raised hopes--never to be realised--of the birth of a living son or daughter, who would by and by lisp in his ear the charmed word “Father”--of a dead wife’s recovery, after so terrible a trial to one so much wasted--of the saving of his fortune from the ruthless hands of his brother-in-law. But there is always some consolation for the miserable, and didn’t Mrs Janet’s favourite, even Tom himself, with his bright scarlet collar, come to him and sit upon his knee and look up in his face and purr so audibly, that one might have thought he was expressing sympathy and hope? So it is: nature is always laughing at her own work. Even as this pantomime was acting, Mrs Lythgow opened the door of the blue-painted chamber, and presenting a bundle to Mrs Gilchrist--

“The bairn is dead,” she whispered; “lay it on the table there out o’ the sight o’ its mother, who will not live lang enough even to see its dead face.”

“And yet we heard it cry,” said Robina. “Poor dear innocent,” she added, as she peered among the folds of the flannel, “ye have had a short life.”

“And no’ a merry ane,” added the gossip.

“Did ye expect the bairn to laugh, ye fule woman that ye are?” was the reply of the howdie. “Come and help me wi’ the deeing mither.”

And straightway the three women were by the bedside of the patient, in whose throat Death was already sounding his rattle, after the last effort of exhausted nature to give to the world a life in exchange for her own; and Mr Whitelaw was there too to witness the dying throes of his wife, with perhaps the thought in his mind that the gods are pitiless as well as foolish, for what was the use of giving him a dead child in recompense for a dead mother, and taking away from him, at the very same moment, the said two thousand merks of good Scotch money. Wherein, so far, Mr Whitelaw was himself unjust to these much abused gods; but he did not know as yet that the child had cried, and who knows what consoling effect that circumstance might have had upon one who was what Pindar calls “a man of money.” At least, we will give to any man more than one of these merks who will show us out of the great “Treasury of Evils,” mentioned by the Greek poets, any one which cannot be ameliorated by money. And so Mr Whitelaw heard, in the last expiring breath of Mrs Janet Monypenny the departing sign of the loss of the three greatest good things of this world--a wife, a child, and a tocher.

But the moral oscillation comes round as sure as that of the pendulum, and in accordance with that law Mr Whitelaw was, within a short time after the death of his wife, told by Mrs Gilchrist that the child had made the much-wished-for sign of life. A communication, this, very easily accounted for, but we do not undertake to explain why, when Mr Whitelaw heard it, he was scarcely equal to the task of preventing an expression upon his sorrowful countenance which an ill-natured person would call a smile. Nor, indeed, is there any way of explaining so inexplicable a phenomenon, except by having recourse to the fact mentioned by Burns, that “man is a riddle.” A solution which will also serve us when we further narrate that this small wail of the child lightened wonderfully Mr Whitelaw’s duty in getting all things arranged for the funeral, including the melancholy peculiarity of getting the coffin made that was to contain a mother and her first-born. Nay, it enabled him even at the funeral to meet the triumphant look of his brother-in-law, Writer George, as it clearly said, even in the midst of his tears, “You owe me two thousand merks;” for we are to remember that Mr Whitelaw, in exchange for the writer’s perfidy in not mentioning to him the necessity of a contract of marriage, had with a spice of malice concealed from him the fact of the child having been heard to cry, and then it was natural for the writer to suppose that the child had been born dead.

As money ameliorates grief, business prevents grief from taking possession of the mind; and so we need not be surprised that within a week Mr Monypenny served Mr Whitelaw with a summons to appear before the fifteen Scotch lords who sat round a table in the form of a horse-shoe in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, or Court of Session, and there be ordered to pay to the pursuer or plaintiff the said two thousand merks, which devolved upon him, as the heir of his sister, in consequence of the dissolution of the marriage within a year and a day, without a living child being born thereof. Nor was Mr Whitelaw, angry as he was and withal confident of success, slow to give in his defence to the effect that the child had been born alive, and had been heard to scream--a defence which startled Writer George mightily; for it was the first intimation he had got of the important fact, and his experience told him how supple Scotch witnesses are--even to the extent that it took no fewer than fifteen learned judges to get the subtle thing called truth out of the subtle minds of “the canny people;” but he had no alternative than to consent to the commission to Maister Wylie, advocate, to take a proof of the defender’s averment and report. And so accordingly the proceedings went on. Mr Advocate Wylie sat in one of the rooms adjoining the court to take the depositions of the witnesses, and Mr Williamson was there for Mr Whitelaw, and Mr Hamilton for Mr Monypenny. The first witness called was Mrs Jean Gilchrist, who swore very honestly that she heard the child scream; and Robina Proudfoot swore as honestly to the same thing; nor could all the efforts of Mr Advocate Hamilton shake those sturdy witnesses, if it was not that, as so often happens with Scotch witnesses, the more the advocate wrestled with them, the more firm they waxed. Nor need we say that the philosophical axiom, that the intensity of belief is always inversely as the reason for it, never had weight with our Scotch judges. But then came the difficulty about the _causa scientiæ_; for neither of the two witnesses could swear that she _saw_ the child alive and after the scream, inasmuch as the child was certainly dead before they saw the body; so it was only at best a strong presumption that the cry actually did come from that child. The witnesses dispersed these quibbles, and insisted that, as there was no other child in that room, the cry could come from no other source than Mrs Whitelaw’s baby. But the crowning witness was to come--Mrs Euphan Lythgow herself, who would put an end to all doubts; and come she did. Asked whether she delivered Mrs Whitelaw of a child on the night in question, her answer was in the affirmative.

“Was it a boy or a girl?”

“A _callant_, sir,” was the answer; for Scotch witnesses _will_ use their own terms, let counsel do what they please. “And,” added Mrs Lythgow, “he was to be baptized after his father when the time came. He was to be called Tammas.”

“Just so,” continued Mr Hamilton; “and was he dead or alive when he was born?”

“Indeed, sir, little Tam wras as life-like as you are when I handled him wi’ thae hands.”

“How do you know that?” was the next question.

“Ken whether a bairn is dead or living?” responded the midwife, with an ironical laugh. “Do dead bairns scream, think ye, Maister Hamilton? Ay, sir, I heard little Tam cry just as plainly as I hear you speak. It’s God’s way wi’ mony a wean. They seem to ken it’s an ill warld they’re born into, wi’ so mony lawyers in’t, and they just gie a cry and gae awa back again.”

And thus the evidence was concluded; nor did it ever occur to these hair-wigged and ear-wigged gentlemen to ask the astute howdie whether there was any other creature in the house (except Mr Thomas Whitelaw himself, who was out of the question) that bore the name of Tam; and Mrs Lythgow’s conscience, like many others, sat as easy on the equivocation as a hen does on an addled egg with a shell like the rest, which contain little chickens all alive. And the case was virtually saved, as subsequently appeared, when the fifteen, all ear-wigged too, pronounced sentence in favour of the defender, Mr Whitelaw. But it was not till some time afterwards the real truth came out. “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” and when Mrs Euphan called for fee, on Mr Whitelaw asking how much, the cunning howdie replied--

“Just a hundred merks, Maister Whitelaw.”

“A hundred merks for bringing a child into the world, which lived no longer than to give a scream?”

“Ay, but you forget _pinched Tam_,” replied she.

Whereupon Mr Whitelaw began to meditate, and thereupon ejaculated--“Oh! I see. Yes, yes; I did forget pinched Tam; and now I remember, he came into me that evening after you had ejected him from the bed-room.”

“Surely, sir,” rejoined the woman; “think ye I was fule enough to keep him in the room to be seen by the women, after I had got out o’ him a’ that I wanted?”

And Mrs Lythgow got her hundred merks. How the incident came to the ears of Lord Kilkerran, history saith not; but if you are curious, you may see upon the margin of the said Session Paper the words--“Beware of pinched Tom!”

The Story of the Iron Press.

The story of the Iron Press hung about my memory for years before I got it localised; nor do I know very well how it came to me, whether from the page of an old broad-sheet, or the tougher tongue of an old dame--the real vellum for the inscription of wonderful legends. However this may be, it is of small importance, inasmuch as I was subsequently so fortunate--and the word will be properly estimated by the real story-hunter--as to find myself in the very room where the recess of the press was still to be seen. How I did look at it, to be sure! nay, if it had been of gold--all my own, too--I question if I could have gazed into the dark recess with more interest; for gold, to people of my bias, is nothing in comparison with the enchantment that hangs about the real concrete _souvenir_ of an old wonder. But before going further, I must apprise the English reader that the word “press”--a Scotch word of somewhat doubtful derivation (_maugre_ Jamieson)--is convertible into the more modern designation “cupboard,” or rather “pantry;” with the qualification that our Scotch term more generally implies the adjunct of a door with lock and key.

With which help you may be induced to represent to yourself, as vividly as the fervour of your imagination may enable you, the house in Hyndford’s Close, which, at the time wherein we are concerned, was occupied by a retired advocate called Mr George Plenderleith. You may see in it yet the signs of its old gentility. There are the panellings on the walls, the hooks whereon were suspended the flowered and figured draperies, the painted roofs, the peculiar enamelled sides of the chimneys having the appearance of china--all so very unlike our modern house fashions. It may not be that the iron press which was in the back bed-room, and the recess of which still remains, had anything to do with the fashion of the time; nor would it be easy to divine its use in a private gentleman’s house, who had no ledgers, journals, or cash-books to preserve from fire, lest certain creditors might say they were burnt to help concealment. Perhaps it was for the conservation of some great property rights, or title-deeds as we call them; perhaps state papers--anything you like, but not the least unlikely, it may have been for the purpose of concealing some unfortunate Covenanter, who could still boast, in his pathetic way, that he had verily nowhere to lay his head; for the cell was too small for a reclining posture--nay, he could scarcely have got upon his knees to offer his Ebenezer for the preservation of the solemn league and covenant, and give thanks that he had got out of “the bishop’s drag-net” and into an iron cage.

Most certainly, at least, this iron cage was not intended to immure the delicate person of the beautiful Ailsie Plenderleith, the only daughter of the advocate--nay, the greatest belle you could have met, displaying her gown of mazerine and her petticoat of cramosie, from “the castle on the knowe to the palace in the howe;” or, as the saying went, from “the castle gate to the palace yett.” We don’t doubt that our Miss Ailsie deserved all this high-flown praise; only we are to keep in mind that no young lady that ever figured in a legend, from the time of the Fair Maid of Troy to her of Perth, was ever anything less than an angel without wings. And in the case of our Ailsie, she might well have passed for possessing these appendages too, when we consider that she would not be behind her sister-belles in the size of those heavy folds of braided silk they drew through their pocket-holes, and seemed to fly with. We need not say that such a creature, if amiable in her mind and affections, would be doated on by such a father as Mr Plenderleith, who had now no wife to console him, and who would expect from his child at least as much love as he was willing to bestow on her. And so, to be sure, it was; he loved his dear Ailsie to what may be called paternal distraction, but as for how much dutiful affection Ailsie bestowed on him, we cannot say.

On another point we can be more sure, and that is, that although her father had many nice beaux in his eye who had a power to _dot_, and doubtless on so fine a subject no disinclination at all to _doat_, the never a one of them would the saucy Ailsie look upon except with that haughty disdain which, when it appears in a beautiful woman, is so apt to pique young admirers into greater adoration, mixed, it may be, sometimes with a little choler--a thing that is not so alien to love as you would imagine. Nor was the reason of all this cold _hauteur_ any wonder at all when we are given to know that Miss Plenderleith had one day, by the merest chance, taken into her eye, and even to the back or innermost recesses thereof, the figure of a young student of “old Embro’ College,” called Frederick Lind, a poor bursar of no family, but blessed with what was ten thousand times of more importance in the estimation of the tasteful Ailsie--a handsome person, and a fine ruddy, intelligent face, which was lighted up with an eye as likely to drink up the form of Ailsie as hers had been to receive his. And no doubt it may appear very wonderful that Cupid, who is, as they say, as blind as a bat, and so hits by chance, should have the power of imparting to the eyes of his victims the faculty not only of seeing each other more clearly than before, but also of reading each other’s eyes so plainly, that by a glance they know that they are mutually thinking of each other. But such, we all know very well, is the fact, and so Frederick Lind and Ailsie Plenderleith came to this state of knowledge, and not only so, they came to means of ascertaining, by actual conversation, whether such was really the case or not--the consequence of which was just the natural one, that the sympathy of this knowledge became the sympathy of love; and we suspect that if any one was to blame for this, it was Old Mother Nature herself, who is considerably stronger and more dogmatic in her opinions than either mother or father of earthly mould.

The connexion thus formed--we are compelled, though sorry, to say, clandestinely--might not have entailed upon the young devotees any very formidable consequences, had they been prudent, and confined their meetings to St Leonard’s Double-dykes, St Anthony’s Well, the Giant’s Ribs, the Hunter’s Bog, or the Friar’s Walk. Nay, they might have adventured even less recondite walks; but they had some notions of comfort which would be gratified with nothing short of a roof over their very irrational heads, and probably a fire burning by their sides, as if love could not have kept itself in fuel without the assistance of so coarse and earthy a thing as Midlothian coal.

While all this was going forward, and generating confidence in the ordinary ratio of successful immunity, our good and loving old Mr Advocate Plenderleith was just as busy with _his_ eyes in endeavouring to find out among the said beaux of Edinburgh, with their braided broad-tailed coats and ruffled wristbands, of which Mr Frederick Lind had nothing to boast, such a one as would be likely to form a suitable husband to his pretty but scornful, (to all save one,) daughter, and a promising son-in-law to himself; that is, one who would bring a sum to the mutual exchequer, and take care not only of Ailsie, but that fine property of his in Lanarkshire, called Threemarks, from its valuation in the land-roll being of that very considerable extent. And so he did his best to invite one or two of them to his house in Hyndford’s Close to drink a bottle of claret, and see Miss Ailsie through the charmed medium of the same, being satisfied that a young woman is seen to more advantage through that medium than through the roses of the Paphian groves where Venus dallies with her son. But all this paternal black-footing would not do, because the step went only in one direction, without a return. Our Ailsie scorned them all--a very unwise policy in the little rebel, for she might have seen that her father, who was a shrewd man, would be likely to suspect that the ship which rides at an anchor, however little seen, is just that very one which seems to defy most the blustering winds and the rolling waves. And accordingly Mr Plenderleith began to think that his daughter’s heart must be anchored somewhere--not so likely on golden sands as on some tough clay--and _that_ “where” he would have given his old Parliament-House wig, with all the meal in it to boot, to find out. Nay, he began to be angry before he could assure himself of the fact; and being as determined under a restrainer as he ever had been under a retainer, he was a dangerous man for even a loving daughter to tamper with.

But old fathers, probably with spectacles, are not good watchers of their love-stricken daughters; and Mr Plenderleith, knowing this, placed confidence in his old servant or servitor, (as these domestic Balderstones were then called,) Andrew Crabbin, and got him to keep an eye upon the outgoings and incomings, and companionship and letters of the unsuspecting Ailsie. On the other hand, she was inclined to place faith in Andrew--not that she let him know the name or degree of her beloved Frederick, but that she bespoke his secrecy in the event of his seeing her with a highly respectable young man, of genteel connexions, whom her father would be delighted to receive as a son-in-law, but who was not just yet in a position to present himself in the drawing-room. Which two confidences Andrew received together, and found means in his canny Scotch head to entertain both kindly, but with a foregone conclusion that he would make more money out of the rents and fees of his master than the pin-money of poor Ailsie.

Yet Miss Plenderleith was so dexterous in managing her intrigue, that Andrew had for a time nothing to reveal; but opportunity comes at the end to patience, and this was the case one night when Andrew was busy cleaning his master’s long boots in an outhouse at the back of the dwelling-house; for as he was straining to get the article in his hand as bright as the “Day and Martin” of the time would make it, his attention was directed to a sound from the red-tiled roof. Whereupon, pricking up his ears, Andrew put his head out at the door, and what in all this wide earth does he see but two boots disappearing at Ailsie’s bed-room window! He had never seen any of the two or three pairs his master possessed going into the house in that way, and probably he did not need that fact to explain to him the wonderful apparition. Nor was it any question with him what to do. The hour was late, but his master was not gone to bed, if he was not yet engaged over his mulled claret, with a bit of toast done pretty brown in it.

Having accordingly got, unobserved from above, into the back-door--the more by reason that he waited till the window-sash came down with all prudential softness of sound--Andrew made his way up-stairs to the room where Mr Plenderleith was regaling himself, and probably thinking of the scornful Ailsie, who would not accord to his matrimonial wishes. “There’s a young man gone in this minute at Miss Ailsie’s bed-room window,” said he, in a mysterious way, to his master; whereupon Mr Plenderleith started up in a great rage, and rushing to a closet brought forth a long rapier of formidable sharpness. “I will slay him on the spot,” said he, “for it is hamesucken and a deuced deal more, and I have law on my side. Come with me, Andrew Crabbin.” But Andrew’s intermediate views did not accord with the slaughter of Ailsie’s lover. “Wait,” says he, “till I listen;” and hastening to Miss Plenderleith’s room, he tirled at the door, so that it might be heard inside, but not by his enraged master, whose spirit was more in his fiery eye than his ear; and coming back more slowly than comported with his master’s fury--“Now’s your time,” said he, “for I heard him inside.” Nor was there now any time lost, for the infuriated father rushed along the lobby to his daughter’s chamber door, which, to his surprise, he found unfastened; and, having entered, he found Ailsie all very much at her ease, nor was there anything to rouse his suspicions at all except the condition of the blind, which was drawn up. No more was needed--that was enough; the angry father accused his daughter with having had a man in her bed-room. Ailsie denied the charge, but it was of no avail. Orders were upon the instant issued to get the carriage ready, and in the course of an hour afterwards Mr Plenderleith and his daughter, with Andrew and the two female servants in a hired carriage, were on their way to his house at Threemarks. The house in Hyndford’s Close was shut up. Mr Plenderleith had in so short a period made up his mind, and executed a purpose which he considered necessary to his own honour and his daughter’s preservation.

Time passed on, and in the meantime Andrew kept his secret, delighted in his own mind that he had saved the life of the young man. About a month afterwards Mr Plenderleith came to town alone, and having entered the house found everything precisely as he left it. But he had an object--no other than to discover whether Ailsie had left any letters whereby he might discover the name of the clandestine lover. So far he succeeded, and having returned to Threemarks, he some time afterwards despatched Andrew to Edinburgh to make inquiries as to a student of the name of Frederick Lind. This commission Andrew executed with fidelity, but all his efforts were vain; no tidings could be heard of the youth. The landlady with whom he had lodged said that he had gone out one night and had never returned; and the opinion of his relations, to whom she had communicated the fact of his absence, was, that he had gone to England, where he also had relations. With this account Mr Plenderleith was so far pleased, but he continued from time to time to repeat his inquiries with no better, or rather to him worse, success. Yet such was his apprehension lest his daughter should again have it in her power to deceive him, that he remained at Threemarks for the full space of three years and more.

Meanwhile Ailsie, having come to the conclusion that she would not see her lover again, renounced all thoughts of him except what perhaps at night would rise up to her fancy, when the internal lights play false with the reason. The young heart requires only time to renounce the strongest passion, though a cherished memory will still hang suspended over the sacred tomb of its affections. And so it was. More time passed, till at length Ailsie Plenderleith agreed to give her hand to a young advocate of the name of George Graham, who had good prospects at the bar. The couple were to be married in Hyndford’s Close, and the house was put in order to receive them. Ailsie came in a bride. The ceremony was performed with great _éclat_ and rejoicings. And now comes that part of the legend which always fits so well to some great occasion, such as a marriage; but we must take these things as we find them. The new-married couple were to sleep in the room which had been the scene of so strange a play three or four years ago. On returning to take off her bride’s dress, her eye became fixed upon the door of the iron press. A wild thought seized her brain: she applied her finger to the well-known spring. The door opened, and the skeleton of Frederick Lind fell out against her, rattling in the clothes that hung about it, and striking her as it fell with a loud crash on the floor.

The explanation of our legend is not difficult. Lind had been pushed into the press on previous occasions, without the door being closed entirely upon him. Ailsie, on the fatal evening, had no doubt thought that she had left the door as she used to do; but in the hurry consequent on the coming of her father, she had committed the terrible mistake of imparting to it too much impulse, whereby the lock had caught; and as the spring was not available inside, the prisoner was immured beyond the chance of escape. So narrow, too, was the recess, that the skeleton form had stood upright in the clothes, and it thus fell out when relieved of the support of the door.

The Story of the Girl Forger.

It is a common thing for writers of a certain class, when they want to produce the feeling of wonder in their readers, to introduce some frantic action, and then to account for it by letting out the secret that the actor was mad. The trick is not so necessary as it seems, for the strength of human passions is a potentiality only limited by experience; and so it is that a sane person may under certain stimulants do the maddest thing in the world. The passion itself is always true, it is only the motive that may be false; and therefore it is that in narrating for your amusement, perhaps I may add instruction, the following singular story--traces of the main parts of which I got in the old books of a former procurator-fiscal--I assume that there was no more insanity in the principal actor, Euphemia, or, as she was called, Effie, Carr, when she brought herself within the arms of the law, than there is in you, when now you are reading the story of her strange life. She was the only daughter of John Carr, a grain merchant, who lived in Bristo Street. It would be easy to ascribe to her all the ordinary and extraordinary charms that are thought so necessary to embellish heroines; but as we are not told what these were in her case, we must be contented with the assurance that nature had been kind enough to her to give her power over the hearts of men. We shall be nearer our purpose when we state, what is necessary to explain a peculiar part of our story, that her father, in consequence of his own insufficient education, had got her trained to help him in keeping his accounts with the farmers, and in writing up his books; nay, she enjoyed the privilege of writing his drafts upon the Bank of Scotland, which the father contrived to sign, though in his own illiterate way, and with a peculiarity which it would not have been easy to imitate.

But our gentle clerk did not consider these duties imposed upon her by her father as excluding her either from gratifying her love of domestic habits by assisting her mother in what at that time was denominated hussyskep or housekeeping, or from a certain other gratification, which might without a hint from us be anticipated--no other than the luxury of falling head and ears, and heart too we fancy, in love with a certain dashing young student of the name of Robert Stormonth, then attending the University more for the sake of polish than of mere study; for he was the son of the proprietor of Kelton, and required to follow no profession. How Effie got entangled with this youth we have no means of knowing, so we must be contented with the Scotch proverb--

“Tell me where the flea may bite,
And I will tell where love may light.”