Chapter IV: Introduction (4)

“Why, I say, Mr. Oldbuck,” replied the knight, “that so far as I am capable of judging, we ought to resist cum toto corpore regni--as the phrase is, unless I have altogether forgotten my Latin--an enemy who comes to propose to us a Whiggish sort of government, a republican system, and who is aided and abetted by a sort of fanatics of the worst kind in our own bowels. I have taken some measures, I assure you, such as become my rank in the community; for I have directed the constables to take up that old scoundrelly beggar, Edie Ochiltree, for spreading disaffection against church and state through the whole parish. He said plainly to old Caxon, that Willie Howie’s Kilmarnock cowl covered more sense than all the three wigs in the parish--I think it is easy to make out that inuendo--But the rogue shall be taught better manners.”

“O no, my dear sir,” exclaimed Miss Wardour, “not old Edie, that we have known so long;--I assure you no constable shall have my good graces that executes such a warrant.”

“Ay, there it goes,” said the Antiquary; “you, to be a staunch Tory, Sir Arthur, have nourished a fine sprig of Whiggery in your bosom--Why, Miss Wardour is alone sufficient to control a whole quarter-session--a quarter-session? ay, a general assembly or convocation to boot--a Boadicea she--an Amazon, a Zenobia.”

“And yet, with all my courage, Mr. Oldbuck, I am glad to hear our people are getting under arms.”

“Under arms, Lord love thee! didst thou ever read the history of Sister Margaret, which flowed from a head, that, though now old and somedele grey, has more sense and political intelligence than you find now-a-days in the whole synod? Dost thou remember the Nurse’s dream in that exquisite work, which she recounts in such agony to Hubble Bubble?--When she would have taken up a piece of broad-cloth in her vision, lo! it exploded like a great iron cannon; when she put out her hand to save a pirn, it perked up in her face in the form of a pistol. My own vision in Edinburgh has been something similar. I called to consult my lawyer; he was clothed in a dragoon’s dress, belted and casqued, and about to mount a charger, which his writing-clerk (habited as a sharp-shooter) walked to and fro before his door. I went to scold my agent for having sent me to advise with a madman; he had stuck into his head the plume, which in more sober days he wielded between his fingers, and figured as an artillery officer. My mercer had his spontoon in his hand, as if he measured his cloth by that implement, instead of a legitimate yard. The banker’s clerk, who was directed to sum my cash-account, blundered it three times, being disordered by the recollection of his military tellings-off at the morning-drill. I was ill, and sent for a surgeon--

He came--but valour so had fired his eye,
And such a falchion glittered on his thigh,
That, by the gods, with such a load of steel,
I thought he came to murder,--not to heal.

I had recourse to a physician, but he also was practising a more wholesale mode of slaughter than that which his profession had been supposed at all times to open to him. And now, since I have returned here, even our wise neighbours of Fairport have caught the same valiant humour. I hate a gun like a hurt wild duck--I detest a drum like a quaker;--and they thunder and rattle out yonder upon the town’s common, so that every volley and roll goes to my very heart.”

“Dear brother, dinna speak that gate o’ the gentlemen volunteers--I am sure they have a most becoming uniform--Weel I wot they have been wet to the very skin twice last week--I met them marching in terribly doukit, an mony a sair hoast was amang them--And the trouble they take, I am sure it claims our gratitude.”

“And I am sure,” said Miss M’Intyre, “that my uncle sent twenty guineas to help out their equipments.”

“It was to buy liquorice and sugar-candy,” said the cynic, “to encourage the trade of the place, and to refresh the throats of the officers who had bawled themselves hoarse in the service of their country.”

“Take care, Monkbarns! we shall set you down among the black-nebs by and by.”

“No Sir Arthur--a tame grumbler I. I only claim the privilege of croaking in my own corner here, without uniting my throat to the grand chorus of the marsh--Ni quito Rey, ni pongo Rey--I neither make king nor mar king, as Sancho says, but pray heartily for our own sovereign, pay scot and lot, and grumble at the exciseman--But here comes the ewe-milk cheese in good time; it is a better digestive than politics.”

When dinner was over, and the decanters placed on the table, Mr. Oldbuck proposed the King’s health in a bumper, which was readily acceded to both by Lovel and the Baronet, the Jacobitism of the latter being now a sort of speculative opinion merely,--the shadow of a shade.

After the ladies had left the apartment, the landlord and Sir Arthur entered into several exquisite discussions, in which the younger guest, either on account of the abstruse erudition which they involved, or for some other reason, took but a slender share, till at length he was suddenly started out of a profound reverie by an unexpected appeal to his judgment.

“I will stand by what Mr. Lovel says; he was born in the north of England, and may know the very spot.”

Sir Arthur thought it unlikely that so young a gentleman should have paid much attention to matters of that sort.

“I am avised of the contrary,” said Oldbuck.

“How say you, Mr. Lovel?--speak up for your own credit, man.”

Lovel was obliged to confess himself in the ridiculous situation of one alike ignorant of the subject of conversation and controversy which had engaged the company for an hour.

“Lord help the lad, his head has been wool-gathering!--I thought how it would be when the womankind were admitted--no getting a word of sense out of a young fellow for six hours after.--Why, man, there was once a people called the Piks”--

“More properly Picts,” interrupted the Baronet.

“I say the Pikar, Pihar, Piochtar, Piaghter, or Peughtar,” vociferated Oldbuck; “they spoke a Gothic dialect”--

“Genuine Celtic,” again asseverated the knight.

“Gothic! Gothic! I’ll go to death upon it!” counter-asseverated the squire.

“Why, gentlemen,” sad Lovel, “I conceive that is a dispute which may be easily settled by philologists, if there are any remains of the language.”

“There is but one word,” said the Baronet, “but, in spite of Mr. Oldbuck’s pertinacity, it is decisive of the question.”

“Yes, in my favour,” said Oldbuck: “Mr. Lovel, you shall be judge--I have the learned Pinkerton on my side.”

“I, on mine, the indefatigable and erudite Chalmers.”

“Gordon comes into my opinion.”

“Sir Robert Sibbald holds mine.”

“Innes is with me!” vociferated Oldbuck.

“Riston has no doubt!” shouted the Baronet.

“Truly, gentlemen,” said Lovel, “before you muster your forces and overwhelm me with authorities, I should like to know the word in dispute.”

“Benval” said both the disputants at once.

“Which signifies caput valli,” said Sir Arthur.

“The head of the wall,” echoed Oldbuck.

There was a deep pause.--“It is rather a narrow foundation to build a hypothesis upon,” observed the arbiter.

“Not a whit, not a whit,” said Oldbuck; “men fight best in a narrow ring--an inch is as good as a mile for a home-thrust.”

“It is decidedly Celtic,” said the Baronet; “every hill in the Highlands begins with Ben.”

“But what say you to Val, Sir Arthur; is it not decidedly the Saxon wall?”

“It is the Roman vallum,” said Sir Arthur;--“the Picts borrowed that part of the word.”

“No such thing; if they borrowed anything, it must have been your Ben, which they might have from the neighbouring Britons of Strath Cluyd.”

“The Piks, or Picts,” said Lovel, “must have been singularly poor in dialect, since, in the only remaining word of their vocabulary, and that consisting only of two syllables, they have been confessedly obliged to borrow one of them from another language; and, methinks, gentlemen, with submission, the controversy is not unlike that which the two knights fought, concerning the shield that had one side white and the other black. Each of you claim one-half of the word, and seem to resign the other. But what strikes me most, is the poverty of the language which has left such slight vestiges behind it.”

“You are in an error,” said Sir Arthur; “it was a copious language, and they were a great and powerful people; built two steeples--one at Brechin, one at Abernethy. The Pictish maidens of the blood-royal were kept in Edinburgh Castle, thence called Castrum Puellarum.”

“A childish legend,” said Oldbuck, “invented to give consequence to trumpery womankind. It was called the Maiden Castle, quasi lucus a non lucendo, because it resisted every attack, and women never do.”

“There is a list of the Pictish kings,” persisted Sir Arthur, “well authenticated from Crentheminachcryme (the date of whose reign is somewhat uncertain) down to Drusterstone, whose death concluded their dynasty. Half of them have the Celtic patronymic Mac prefixed--Mac, id est filius;--what do you say to that, Mr. Oldbuck? There is Drust Macmorachin, Trynel Maclachlin (first of that ancient clan, as it may be judged), and Gormach Macdonald, Alpin Macmetegus, Drust Mactallargam” (here he was interrupted by a fit of coughing)--“ugh, ugh, ugh--Golarge Macchan--ugh, ugh--Macchanan--ugh--Macchananail, Kenneth--ugh--ugh-- Macferedith, Eachan Macfungus--and twenty more, decidedly Celtic names, which I could repeat, if this damned cough would let me.”

“Take a glass of wine, Sir Arthur, and drink down that bead-roll of unbaptized jargon, that would choke the devil--why, that last fellow has the only intelligible name you have repeated--they are all of the tribe of Macfungus--mushroom monarchs every one of them; sprung up from the fumes of conceit, folly, and falsehood, fermenting in the brains of some mad Highland seannachie.”

“I am surprised to hear you, Mr. Oldbuck: you know, or ought to know, that the list of these potentates was copied by Henry Maule of Melguin, from the Chronicles of Loch Leven and St. Andrews, and put forth by him in his short but satisfactory history of the Picts, printed by Robert Freebairn of Edinburgh, and sold by him at his shop in the Parliament Close, in the year of God seventeen hundred and five, or six, I am not precisely certain which--but I have a copy at home that stands next to my twelvemo copy of the Scots Acts, and ranges on the shelf with them very well. What say you to that, Mr. Oldbuck?”

“Say?--why, I laugh at Harry Maule and his history,” answered Oldbuck, “and thereby comply with his request, of giving it entertainment according to its merits.”

“Do not laugh at a better man than yourself,” said Sir Arthur, somewhat scornfully.

“I do not conceive I do, Sir Arthur, in laughing either at him or his history.”

“Henry Maule of Melgum was a gentleman, Mr. Oldbuck.”

“I presume he had no advantage of me in that particular,” replied the Antiquary, somewhat tartly.

“Permit me, Mr. Oldbuck--he was a gentleman of high family, and ancient descent, and therefore”--

“The descendant of a Westphalian printer should speak of him with deference? Such may be your opinion, Sir Arthur--it is not mine. I conceive that my descent from that painful and industrious typographer, Wolfbrand Oldenbuck, who, in the month of December 1493, under the patronage, as the colophon tells us, of Sebaldus Scheyter and Sebastian Kammermaister, accomplished the printing of the great Chronicle of Nuremberg--I conceive, I say, that my descent from that great restorer of learning is more creditable to me as a man of letters, than if I had numbered in my genealogy all the brawling, bullet-headed, iron-fisted, old Gothic barons since the days of Crentheminachcryme--not one of whom, I suppose, could write his own name.”

“If you mean the observation as a sneer at my ancestry,” said the knight, with an assumption of dignified superiority and composure, “I have the pleasure to inform you, that the name of my ancestor, Gamelyn de Guardover, Miles, is written fairly with his own hand in the earliest copy of the Ragman-roll.”

“Which only serves to show that he was one of the earliest who set the mean example of submitting to Edward I. What have, you to say for the stainless loyalty of your family, Sir Arthur, after such a backsliding as that?”

“It’s enough, sir,” said Sir Arthur, starting up fiercely, and pushing back his chair; “I shall hereafter take care how I honour with my company one who shows himself so ungrateful for my condescension.”

“In that you will do as you find most agreeable, Sir Arthur;--I hope, that as I was not aware of the extent of the obligation which you have done me by visiting my poor house, I may be excused for not having carried my gratitude to the extent of servility.”

“Mighty well--mighty well, Mr. Oldbuck--I wish you a good evening--Mr. a--a--a--Shovel--I wish you a very good evening.”

Out of the parlour door flounced the incensed Sir Arthur, as if the spirit of the whole Round Table inflamed his single bosom, and traversed with long strides the labyrinth of passages which conducted to the drawing-room.

“Did you ever hear such an old tup-headed ass?” said Oldbuck, briefly apostrophizing Lovel. “But I must not let him go in this mad-like way neither.”

So saying, he pushed off after the retreating Baronet, whom he traced by the clang of several doors which he opened in search of the apartment for tea, and slammed with force behind him at every disappointment. “You’ll do yourself a mischief,” roared the Antiquary; “Qui ambulat in tenebris, nescit quo vadit--You’ll tumble down the back-stair.”

Sir Arthur had now got involved in darkness, of which the sedative effect is well known to nurses and governesses who have to deal with pettish children. It retarded the pace of the irritated Baronet, if it did not abate his resentment, and Mr. Oldbuck, better acquainted with the locale, got up with him as he had got his grasp upon the handle of the drawing-room door.

“Stay a minute, Sir Arthur,” said Oldbuck, opposing his abrupt entrance; “don’t be quite so hasty, my good old friend. I was a little too rude with you about Sir Gamelyn--why, he is an old acquaintance of mine, man, and a favourite; he kept company with Bruce and Wallace--and, I’ll be sworn on a black-letter Bible, only subscribed the Ragman-roll with the legitimate and justifiable intention of circumventing the false Southern--‘twas right Scottish craft, my good knight--hundreds did it. Come, come, forget and forgive--confess we have given the young fellow here a right to think us two testy old fools.”

“Speak for yourself, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck,” said Sir Arthur with much majesty.

“A-well, a-well--a wilful man must have his way.”

With that the door opened, and into the drawing-room marched the tall gaunt form of Sir Arthur, followed by Lovel and Mr. Oldbuck, the countenances of all the three a little discomposed.

“I have been waiting for you, sir,” said Miss Wardour, “to propose we should walk forward to meet the carriage, as the evening is so fine.”

Sir Arthur readily assented to this proposal, which suited the angry mood in which he found himself; and having, agreeable to the established custom in cases of pet, refused the refreshment of tea and coffee, he tucked his daughter under his arm; and after taking a ceremonious leave of the ladies, and a very dry one of Oldbuck--off he marched.

“I think Sir Arthur has got the black dog on his back again,” said Miss Oldbuck.

“Black dog!--black devil!--he’s more absurd than womankind--What say you, Lovel?--Why, the lad’s gone too.”

“He took his leave, uncle, while Miss Wardour was putting on her things; but I don’t think you observed him.”

“The devil’s in the people! This is all one gets by fussing and bustling, and putting one’s self out of one’s way in order to give dinners, besides all the charges they are put to!--O Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia!” said he, taking up a cup of tea in the one hand, and a volume of the Rambler in the other,--for it was his regular custom to read while he was eating or drinking in presence of his sister, being a practice which served at once to evince his contempt for the society of womankind, and his resolution to lose no moment of instruction,--“O Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia! well hast thou spoken--No man should presume to say, This shall be a day of happiness.”

Oldbuck proceeded in his studies for the best part of an hour, uninterrupted by the ladies, who each, in profound silence, pursued some female employment. At length, a light and modest tap was heard at the parlour door. “Is that you, Caxon?--come in, come in, man.”

The old man opened the door, and thrusting in his meagre face, thatched with thin grey locks, and one sleeve of his white coat, said in a subdued and mysterious tone of voice, “I was wanting to speak to you, sir.”

“Come in then, you old fool, and say what you have got to say.”

“I’ll maybe frighten the ladies,” said the ex-friseur.

“Frighten!” answered the Antiquary,--“what do you mean?--never mind the ladies. Have you seen another ghaist at the Humlock-knowe?”

“Na, sir--it’s no a ghaist this turn,” replied Caxton;--“but I’m no easy in my mind.”

“Did you ever hear of any body that was?” answered Oldbuck;--“what reason has an old battered powder-puff like you to be easy in your mind, more than all the rest of the world besides?”

“It’s no for mysell, sir; but it threatens an awfu’ night; and Sir Arthur, and Miss Wardour, poor thing”--

“Why, man, they must have met the carriage at the head of the loaning, or thereabouts; they must be home long ago.”

“Na, sir; they didna gang the road by the turnpike to meet the carriage, they gaed by the sands.”

The word operated like electricity on Oldbuck. “The sands!” he exclaimed; “impossible!”

“Ou, sir, that’s what I said to the gardener; but he says he saw them turn down by the Mussel-craig. In troth, says I to him, an that be the case, Davie, I am misdoubting”--

“An almanac! an almanac!” said Oldbuck, starting up in great alarm--“not that bauble!” flinging away a little pocket almanac which his niece offered him.--“Great God! my poor dear Miss Isabella!--Fetch me instantly the Fairport Almanac.”--It was brought, consulted, and added greatly to his agitation. “I’ll go myself--call the gardener and ploughman--bid them bring ropes and ladders--bid them raise more help as they come along--keep the top of the cliffs, and halloo down to them--I’ll go myself.”

“What is the matter?” inquired Miss Oldbuck and Miss M’Intyre.

“The tide!--the tide!” answered the alarmed Antiquary.

“Had not Jenny better--but no, I’ll run myself,” said the younger lady, partaking in all her uncle’s terrors--“I’ll run myself to Saunders Mucklebackit, and make him get out his boat.”

“Thank you, my dear, that’s the wisest word that has been spoken yet--Run! run!--To go by the sands!” seizing his hat and cane; “was there ever such madness heard of!”

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

--Pleased awhile to view
The watery waste, the prospect wild and new;
The now receding waters gave them space,
On either side, the growing shores to trace
And then returning, they contract the scene,
Till small and smaller grows the walk between.
Crabbe.

The information of Davie Dibble, which had spread such general alarm at Monkbarns, proved to be strictly correct. Sir Arthur and his daughter had set out, according to their first proposal, to return to Knockwinnock by the turnpike road; but when they reached the head of the loaning, as it was called, or great lane, which on one side made a sort of avenue to the house of Monkbarns, they discerned, a little way before them, Lovel, who seemed to linger on the way as if to give him an opportunity to join them. Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her father that they should take another direction; and, as the weather was fine, walk home by the sands, which, stretching below a picturesque ridge of rocks, afforded at almost all times a pleasanter passage between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns than the high-road.

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. “It would be unpleasant,” he said, “to be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr. Oldbuck had taken the freedom to introduce them to.” And his old-fashioned politeness had none of the ease of the present day which permits you, if you have a mind, to cut the person you have associated with for a week, the instant you feel or suppose yourself in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him. Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon of one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary despatched, the knight and his daughter left the high-road, and following a wandering path among sandy hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long grass called bent, soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out as they had computed but this gave them no alarm;--there were seldom ten days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a dry passage. But, nevertheless, at periods of spring-tide, or even when the ordinary flood was accelerated by high winds, this road was altogether covered by the sea; and tradition had recorded several fatal accidents which had happened on such occasions. Still, such dangers were considered as remote and improbable; and rather served, with other legends, to amuse the hamlet fireside, than to prevent any one from going between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns by the sands.

As Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour paced along, enjoying the pleasant footing afforded by the cool moist hard sand, Miss Wardour could not help observing that the last tide had risen considerably above the usual water-mark. Sir Arthur made the same observation, but without its occurring to either of them to be alarmed at the circumstance. The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting. Nearer to the beach the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.

With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps on some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her father’s side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one projecting point of headland or rock after another, and now found themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under water and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by pilots and ship-masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder.

Appalled by this sudden change of weather, Miss Wardour drew close to her father, and held his arm fast. “I wish,” at length she said, but almost in a whisper, as if ashamed to express her increasing apprehensions, “I wish we had kept the road we intended, or waited at Monkbarns for the carriage.”

Sir Arthur looked round, but did not see, or would not acknowledge, any signs of an immediate storm. They would reach Knockwinnock, he said, long before the tempest began. But the speed with which he walked, and with which Isabella could hardly keep pace, indicated a feeling that some exertion was necessary to accomplish his consolatory prediction.

They were now near the centre of a deep but narrow bay or recess, formed by two projecting capes of high and inaccessible rock, which shot out into the sea like the horns of a crescent;--and neither durst communicate the apprehension which each began to entertain, that, from the unusually rapid advance of the tide, they might be deprived of the power of proceeding by doubling the promontory which lay before them, or of retreating by the road which brought them thither.

As they thus pressed forward, longing doubtless to exchange the easy curving line, which the sinuosities of the bay compelled them to adopt, for a straighter and more expeditious path, Sir Arthur observed a human figure on the beach advancing to meet them. “Thank God,” he exclaimed, “we shall get round Halket-head!--that person must have passed it;” thus giving vent to the feeling of hope, though he had suppressed that of apprehension.

“Thank God, indeed!” echoed his daughter, half audibly, half internally, as expressing the gratitude which she strongly felt.

The figure which advanced to meet them made many signs, which the haze of the atmosphere, now disturbed by wind and by a drizzling rain, prevented them from seeing or comprehending distinctly.--Some time before they met, Sir Arthur could recognise the old blue-gowned beggar, Edie Ochiltree. It is said that even the brute creation lay aside their animosities and antipathies when pressed by an instant and common danger. The beach under Halket-head, rapidly diminishing in extent by the encroachments of a spring-tide and a north-west wind, was in like manner a neutral field, where even a justice of peace and a strolling mendicant might meet upon terms of mutual forbearance.

“Turn back! turn back!” exclaimed the vagrant; “why did ye not turn when I waved to you?”

“We thought,” replied Sir Arthur, in great agitation, “we thought we could get round Halket-head.”

“Halket-head!--the tide will be running on Halket-head by this time like the Fall of Fyers!--it was a’ I could do to get round it twenty minutes since--it was coming in three feet abreast. We will maybe get back by Bally-burgh Ness Point yet. The Lord help us!--it’s our only chance. We can but try.”

“My God, my child!”--“My father! my dear father!” exclaimed the parent and daughter, as, fear lending them strength and speed, they turned to retrace their steps, and endeavoured to double the point, the projection of which formed the southern extremity of the bay.

“I heard ye were here frae the bit callant ye sent to meet your carriage,” said the beggar, as he trudged stoutly on a step or two behind Miss Wardour; “and I couldna bide to think o’ the dainty young leddy’s peril, that has aye been kind to ilka forlorn heart that cam near her. Sae I lookit at the lift and the rin o’ the tide, till I settled it that if I could get down time eneugh to gie you warning, we wad do weel yet. But I doubt, I doubt, I have been beguiled! for what mortal ee ever saw sic a race as the tide is risening e’en now? See, yonder’s the Ratton’s Skerry--he aye held his neb abune the water in my day--but he’s aneath it now.”

Sir Arthur cast a look in the direction in which the old man pointed. A huge rock, which in general, even in spring-tides, displayed a hulk like the keel of a large vessel, was now quite under water, and its place only indicated by the boiling and breaking of the eddying waves which encountered its submarine resistance.

“Mak haste, mak haste, my bonny leddy,” continued the old man--“mak haste, and we may do yet! Take haud o’ my arm--an auld and frail arm it’s now, but it’s been in as sair stress as this is yet. Take haud o’ my arm, my winsome leddy! D’ye see yon wee black speck amang the wallowing waves yonder? This morning it was as high as the mast o’ a brig--it’s sma’ eneugh now--but, while I see as muckle black about it as the crown o’ my hat, I winna believe but we’ll get round the Ballyburgh Ness, for a’ that’s come and gane yet.”

Isabella, in silence, accepted from the old man the assistance which Sir Arthur was less able to afford her. The waves had now encroached so much upon the beach, that the firm and smooth footing which they had hitherto had on the sand must be exchanged for a rougher path close to the foot of the precipice, and in some places even raised upon its lower ledges. It would have been utterly impossible for Sir Arthur Wardour, or his daughter, to have found their way along these shelves without the guidance and encouragement of the beggar, who had been there before in high tides, though never, he acknowledged, “in sae awsome a night as this.”

It was indeed a dreadful evening. The howling of the storm mingled with the shrieks of the sea-fowl, and sounded like the dirge of the three devoted beings, who, pent between two of the most magnificent, yet most dreadful objects of nature--a raging tide and an insurmountable precipice--toiled along their painful and dangerous path, often lashed by the spray of some giant billow, which threw itself higher on the beach than those that had preceded it. Each minute did their enemy gain ground perceptibly upon them! Still, however, loth to relinquish the last hopes of life, they bent their eyes on the black rock pointed out by Ochiltree. It was yet distinctly visible among the breakers, and continued to be so, until they came to a turn in their precarious path, where an intervening projection of rock hid it from their sight. Deprived of the view of the beacon on which they had relied, they now experienced the double agony of terror and suspense. They struggled forward, however; but, when they arrived at the point from which they ought to have seen the crag, it was no longer visible: the signal of safety was lost among a thousand white breakers, which, dashing upon the point of the promontory, rose in prodigious sheets of snowy foam, as high as the mast of a first-rate man-of-war, against the dark brow of the precipice.

The countenance of the old man fell. Isabella gave a faint shriek, and, “God have mercy upon us!” which her guide solemnly uttered, was piteously echoed by Sir Arthur--“My child! my child!--to die such a death!”

“My father! my dear father!” his daughter exclaimed, clinging to him--“and you too, who have lost your own life in endeavouring to save ours!”

“That’s not worth the counting,” said the old man. “I hae lived to be weary o’ life; and here or yonder--at the back o’ a dyke, in a wreath o’ snaw, or in the wame o’ a wave, what signifies how the auld gaberlunzie dies?”

“Good man,” said Sir Arthur, “can you think of nothing?--of no help?--I’ll make you rich--I’ll give you a farm--I’ll”--

“Our riches will be soon equal,” said the beggar, looking out upon the strife of the waters--“they are sae already; for I hae nae land, and you would give your fair bounds and barony for a square yard of rock that would be dry for twal hours.”

While they exchanged these words, they paused upon the highest ledge of rock to which they could attain; for it seemed that any further attempt to move forward could only serve to anticipate their fate. Here, then, they were to await the sure though slow progress of the raging element, something in the situation of the martyrs of the early church, who, exposed by heathen tyrants to be slain by wild beasts, were compelled for a time to witness the impatience and rage by which the animals were agitated, while awaiting the signal for undoing their grates, and letting them loose upon the victims.

Yet even this fearful pause gave Isabella time to collect the powers of a mind naturally strong and courageous, and which rallied itself at this terrible juncture. “Must we yield life,” she said, “without a struggle? Is there no path, however dreadful, by which we could climb the crag, or at least attain some height above the tide, where we could remain till morning, or till help comes? They must be aware of our situation, and will raise the country to relieve us.”

Sir Arthur, who heard, but scarcely comprehended, his daughter’s question, turned, nevertheless, instinctively and eagerly to the old man, as if their lives were in his gift. Ochiltree paused--“I was a bauld craigsman,” he said, “ance in my life, and mony a kittywake’s and lungie’s nest hae I harried up amang thae very black rocks; but it’s lang, lang syne, and nae mortal could speel them without a rope--and if I had ane, my ee-sight, and my footstep, and my hand-grip, hae a’ failed mony a day sinsyne--And then, how could I save you? But there was a path here ance, though maybe, if we could see it, ye would rather bide where we are--His name be praised!” he ejaculated suddenly, “there’s ane coming down the crag e’en now!”--Then, exalting his voice, he hilloa’d out to the daring adventurer such instructions as his former practice, and the remembrance of local circumstances, suddenly forced upon his mind:--“Ye’re right!--ye’re right!--that gate--that gate!--fasten the rope weel round Crummies-horn, that’s the muckle black stane--cast twa plies round it--that’s it!--now, weize yoursell a wee easel-ward--a wee mair yet to that ither stane--we ca’d it the Cat’s-lug--there used to be the root o’ an aik tree there--that will do!--canny now, lad--canny now--tak tent and tak time--Lord bless ye, tak time--Vera weel!--Now ye maun get to Bessy’s apron, that’s the muckle braid flat blue stane--and then, I think, wi’ your help and the tow thegither, I’ll win at ye, and then we’ll be able to get up the young leddy and Sir Arthur.”

The adventurer, following the directions of old Edie, flung him down the end of the rope, which he secured around Miss Wardour, wrapping her previously in his own blue gown, to preserve her as much as possible from injury. Then, availing himself of the rope, which was made fast at the other end, he began to ascend the face of the crag--a most precarious and dizzy undertaking, which, however, after one or two perilous escapes, placed him safe on the broad flat stone beside our friend Lovel. Their joint strength was able to raise Isabella to the place of safety which they had attained. Lovel then descended in order to assist Sir Arthur, around whom he adjusted the rope; and again mounting to their place of refuge, with the assistance of old Ochiltree, and such aid as Sir Arthur himself could afford, he raised himself beyond the reach of the billows.

The sense of reprieve from approaching and apparently inevitable death, had its usual effect. The father and daughter threw themselves into each other’s arms, kissed and wept for joy, although their escape was connected with the prospect of passing a tempestuous night upon a precipitous ledge of rock, which scarce afforded footing for the four shivering beings, who now, like the sea-fowl around them, clung there in hopes of some shelter from the devouring element which raged beneath. The spray of the billows, which attained in fearful succession the foot of the precipice, overflowing the beach on which they so lately stood, flew as high as their place of temporary refuge; and the stunning sound with which they dashed against the rocks beneath, seemed as if they still demanded the fugitives in accents of thunder as their destined prey. It was a summer night, doubtless; yet the probability was slender, that a frame so delicate as that of Miss Wardour should survive till morning the drenching of the spray; and the dashing of the rain, which now burst in full violence, accompanied with deep and heavy gusts of wind, added to the constrained and perilous circumstances of their situation.

“The lassie!--the puir sweet, lassie!” said the old man: “mony such a night have I weathered at hame and abroad, but, God guide us, how can she ever win through it!”

His apprehension was communicated in smothered accents to Lovel; for with the sort of freemasonry by which bold and ready spirits correspond in moments of danger, and become almost instinctively known to each other, they had established a mutual confidence.--“I’ll climb up the cliff again,” said Lovel--“there’s daylight enough left to see my footing; I’ll climb up, and call for more assistance.”

“Do so, do so, for Heaven’s sake!” said Sir Arthur eagerly.

“Are ye mad?” said the mendicant: “Francie o’ Fowlsheugh, and he was the best craigsman that ever speel’d heugh (mair by token, he brake his neck upon the Dunbuy of Slaines), wodna hae ventured upon the Halket-head craigs after sun-down--It’s God’s grace, and a great wonder besides, that ye are not in the middle o’ that roaring sea wi’ what ye hae done already--I didna think there was the man left alive would hae come down the craigs as ye did. I question an I could hae done it mysell, at this hoar and in this weather, in the youngest and yaldest of my strength--But to venture up again--it’s a mere and a clear tempting o’ Providence.”

“I have no fear,” answered Lovel; “I marked all the stations perfectly as I came down, and there is still light enough left to see them quite well--I am sure I can do it with perfect safety. Stay here, my good friend, by Sir Arthur and the young lady.”

“Dell be in my feet then,” answered the bedesman sturdily; “if ye gang, I’ll gang too; for between the twa o’ us, we’ll hae mair than wark eneugh to get to the tap o’ the heugh.”

“No, no--stay you here and attend to Miss Wardour--you see Sir Arthur is quite exhausted.”

“Stay yoursell then, and I’ll gae,” said the old man;--“let death spare the green corn and take the ripe.”

“Stay both of you, I charge you,” said Isabella, faintly; “I am well, and can spend the night very well here--I feel quite refreshed.” So saying, her voice failed her--she sunk down, and would have fallen from the crag, had she not been supported by Lovel and Ochiltree, who placed her in a posture half sitting, half reclining, beside her father, who, exhausted by fatigue of body and mind so extreme and unusual, had already sat down on a stone in a sort of stupor.

“It is impossible to leave them,” said Lovel--“What is to be done?--Hark! hark!--did I not hear a halloo?”

“The skreigh of a Tammie Norie,” answered Ochiltree--“I ken the skirl weel.”

“No, by Heaven!” replied Lovel, “it was a human voice.”

A distant hail was repeated, the sound plainly distinguishable among the various elemental noises, and the clang of the sea-mews by which they were surrounded. The mendicant and Lovel exerted their voices in a loud halloo, the former waving Miss Wardour’s handkerchief on the end of his staff to make them conspicuous from above. Though the shouts were repeated, it was some time before they were in exact response to their own, leaving the unfortunate sufferers uncertain whether, in the darkening twilight and increasing storm, they had made the persons who apparently were traversing the verge of the precipice to bring them assistance, sensible of the place in which they had found refuge. At length their halloo was regularly and distinctly answered, and their courage confirmed, by the assurance that they were within hearing, if not within reach, of friendly assistance.

CHAPTER EIGHTH.

There is a cliff, whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully on the confined deep;
Bring me but to the very brim of it,
And I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear.
King Lear.

The shout of human voices from above was soon augmented, and the gleam of torches mingled with those lights of evening which still remained amidst the darkness of the storm. Some attempt was made to hold communication between the assistants above and the sufferers beneath, who were still clinging to their precarious place of safety; but the howling of the tempest limited their intercourse to cries as inarticulate as those of the winged denizens of the crag, which shrieked in chorus, alarmed by the reiterated sound of human voices, where they had seldom been heard.

On the verge of the precipice an anxious group had now assembled. Oldbuck was the foremost and most earnest, pressing forward with unwonted desperation to the very brink of the crag, and extending his head (his hat and wig secured by a handkerchief under his chin) over the dizzy height, with an air of determination which made his more timorous assistants tremble.

“Haud a care, haud a care, Monkbarns!” cried Caxon, clinging to the skirts of his patron, and withholding him from danger as far as his strength permitted--“God’s sake, haud a care!--Sir Arthur’s drowned already, and an ye fa’ over the cleugh too, there will be but ae wig left in the parish, and that’s the minister’s.”

“Mind the peak there,” cried Mucklebackit, an old fisherman and smuggler--“mind the peak--Steenie, Steenie Wilks, bring up the tackle--I’se warrant we’ll sune heave them on board, Monkbarns, wad ye but stand out o’ the gate.”

“I see them,” said Oldbuck--“I see them low down on that flat stone--Hilli-hilloa, hilli-ho-a!”

“I see them mysell weel eneugh,” said Mucklebackit; “they are sitting down yonder like hoodie-craws in a mist; but d’yo think ye’ll help them wi’ skirling that gate like an auld skart before a flaw o’ weather?--Steenie, lad, bring up the mast--Od, I’se hae them up as we used to bouse up the kegs o’ gin and brandy lang syne--Get up the pickaxe, make a step for the mast--make the chair fast with the rattlin--haul taught and belay!”

The fishers had brought with them the mast of a boat, and as half of the country fellows about had now appeared, either out of zeal or curiosity, it was soon sunk in the ground, and sufficiently secured. A yard across the upright mast, and a rope stretched along it, and reeved through a block at each end, formed an extempore crane, which afforded the means of lowering an arm-chair, well secured and fastened, down to the flat shelf on which the sufferers had roosted. Their joy at hearing the preparations going on for their deliverance was considerably qualified when they beheld the precarious vehicle by means of which they were to be conveyed to upper air. It swung about a yard free of the spot which they occupied, obeying each impulse of the tempest, the empty air all around it, and depending upon the security of a rope, which, in the increasing darkness, had dwindled to an almost imperceptible thread. Besides the hazard of committing a human being to the vacant atmosphere in such a slight means of conveyance, there was the fearful danger of the chair and its occupant being dashed, either by the wind or the vibrations of the cord, against the rugged face of the precipice. But to diminish the risk as much as possible, the experienced seaman had let down with the chair another line, which, being attached to it, and held by the persons beneath, might serve by way of gy, as Mucklebackit expressed it, to render its descent in some measure steady and regular. Still, to commit one’s self in such a vehicle, through a howling tempest of wind and rain, with a beetling precipice above and a raging abyss below, required that courage which despair alone can inspire. Yet, wild as the sounds and sights of danger were, both above, beneath, and around, and doubtful and dangerous as the mode of escaping appeared to be, Lovel and the old mendicant agreed, after a moment’s consultation, and after the former, by a sudden strong pull, had, at his own imminent risk, ascertained the security of the rope, that it would be best to secure Miss Wardour in the chair, and trust to the tenderness and care of those above for her being safely craned up to the top of the crag.

“Let my father go first,” exclaimed Isabella; “for God’s sake, my friends, place him first in safety!”

“It cannot be, Miss Wardour,” said Lovel;--“your life must be first secured--the rope which bears your weight may”--

“I will not listen to a reason so selfish!”

“But ye maun listen to it, my bonnie lassie,” said Ochiltree, “for a’ our lives depend on it--besides, when ye get on the tap o’ the heugh yonder, ye can gie them a round guess o’ what’s ganging on in this Patmos o’ ours--and Sir Arthur’s far by that, as I’m thinking.”

Struck with the truth of this reasoning, she exclaimed, “True, most true; I am ready and willing to undertake the first risk--What shall I say to our friends above?”

“Just to look that their tackle does not graze on the face o’ the crag, and to let the chair down and draw it up hooly and fairly;--we will halloo when we are ready.”

With the sedulous attention of a parent to a child, Lovel bound Miss Wardour with his handkerchief, neckcloth, and the mendicant’s leathern belt, to the back and arms of the chair, ascertaining accurately the security of each knot, while Ochiltree kept Sir Arthur quiet. “What are ye doing wi’ my bairn?--what are ye doing?--She shall not be separated from me--Isabel, stay with me, I command you!”

“Lordsake, Sir Arthur, haud your tongue, and be thankful to God that there’s wiser folk than you to manage this job,” cried the beggar, worn out by the unreasonable exclamations of the poor Baronet.

“Farewell, my father!” murmured Isabella--“farewell, my--my friends!” and shutting her eyes, as Edie’s experience recommended, she gave the signal to Lovel, and he to those who were above. She rose, while the chair in which she sate was kept steady by the line which Lovel managed beneath. With a beating heart he watched the flutter of her white dress, until the vehicle was on a level with the brink of the precipice.

“Canny now, lads, canny now!” exclaimed old Mucklebackit, who acted as commodore; “swerve the yard a bit--Now--there! there she sits safe on dry land.”

A loud shout announced the successful experiment to her fellow-sufferers beneath, who replied with a ready and cheerful halloo. Monkbarns, in his ecstasy of joy, stripped his great-coat to wrap up the young lady, and would have pulled off his coat and waistcoat for the same purpose, had he not been withheld by the cautious Caxon. “Haud a care o’ us! your honour will be killed wi’ the hoast--ye’ll no get out o’your night-cowl this fortnight--and that will suit us unco ill.--Na, na--there’s the chariot down by; let twa o’ the folk carry the young leddy there.”

“You’re right,” said the Antiquary, readjusting the sleeves and collar of his coat, “you’re right, Caxon; this is a naughty night to swim in.--Miss Wardour, let me convey you to the chariot.”

“Not for worlds till I see my father safe.”

In a few distinct words, evincing how much her resolution had surmounted even the mortal fear of so agitating a hazard, she explained the nature of the situation beneath, and the wishes of Lovel and Ochiltree.

“Right, right, that’s right too--I should like to see the son of Sir Gamelyn de Guardover on dry land myself--I have a notion he would sign the abjuration oath, and the Ragman-roll to boot, and acknowledge Queen Mary to be nothing better than she should be, to get alongside my bottle of old port that he ran away from, and left scarce begun. But he’s safe now, and here a’ comes”--(for the chair was again lowered, and Sir Arthur made fast in it, without much consciousness on his own part)--“here a’ comes--Bowse away, my boys! canny wi’ him--a pedigree of a hundred links is hanging on a tenpenny tow--the whole barony of Knockwinnock depends on three plies of hemp--respice finem, respice funem--look to your end--look to a rope’s end.--Welcome, welcome, my good old friend, to firm land, though I cannot say to warm land or to dry land. A cord for ever against fifty fathom of water, though not in the sense of the base proverb--a fico for the phrase,--better _sus. per funem_, than _sus. per coll_.”

While Oldbuck ran on in this way, Sir Arthur was safely wrapped in the close embraces of his daughter, who, assuming that authority which the circumstances demanded, ordered some of the assistants to convey him to the chariot, promising to follow in a few minutes, She lingered on the cliff, holding an old countryman’s arm, to witness probably the safety of those whose dangers she had shared.

“What have we here?” said Oldbuck, as the vehicle once more ascended--“what patched and weather-beaten matter is this?” Then as the torches illumed the rough face and grey hairs of old Ochiltree,--“What! is it thou?--Come, old Mocker, I must needs be friends with thee--but who the devil makes up your party besides?”

“Ane that’s weel worth ony twa o’ us, Monkbarns;--it’s the young stranger lad they ca’ Lovel--and he’s behaved this blessed night as if he had three lives to rely on, and was willing to waste them a’ rather than endanger ither folk’s. Ca’ hooly, sirs, as ye, wad win an auld man’s blessing!--mind there’s naebody below now to haud the gy--Hae a care o’ the Cat’s-lug corner--bide weel aff Crummie’s-horn!”

“Have a care indeed,” echoed Oldbuck. “What! is it my rara avis--my black swan--my phoenix of companions in a post-chaise?--take care of him, Mucklebackit.”

“As muckle care as if he were a graybeard o’ brandy; and I canna take mair if his hair were like John Harlowe’s.--Yo ho, my hearts! bowse away with him!”

Lovel did, in fact, run a much greater risk than any of his precursors. His weight was not sufficient to render his ascent steady amid such a storm of wind, and he swung like an agitated pendulum at the mortal risk of being dashed against the rocks. But he was young, bold, and active, and, with the assistance of the beggar’s stout piked staff, which he had retained by advice of the proprietor, contrived to bear himself from the face of the precipice, and the yet more hazardous projecting cliffs which varied its surface. Tossed in empty space, like an idle and unsubstantial feather, with a motion that agitated the brain at once with fear and with dizziness, he retained his alertness of exertion and presence of mind; and it was not until he was safely grounded upon the summit of the cliff, that he felt temporary and giddy sickness. As he recovered from a sort of half swoon, he cast his eyes eagerly around. The object which they would most willingly have sought, was already in the act of vanishing. Her white garment was just discernible as she followed on the path which her father had taken. She had lingered till she saw the last of their company rescued from danger, and until she had been assured by the hoarse voice of Mucklebackit, that “the callant had come off wi’ unbrizzed banes, and that he was but in a kind of dwam.” But Lovel was not aware that she had expressed in his fate even this degree of interest,--which, though nothing more than was due to a stranger who had assisted her in such an hour of peril, he would have gladly purchased by braving even more imminent danger than he had that evening been exposed to. The beggar she had already commanded to come to Knockwinnock that night. He made an excuse.--“Then to-morrow let me see you.”