Chapter II (5)

The house of Sir John Smith, the provost of Edinburgh, in the year 1645, was situated in the Cap-and-Feather close, an alley occupying the site of the present North Bridge. The bottom of this alley being closed, there was no thoroughfare or egress towards the North Loch; but the provost’s house possessed this convenience, being the tenement which closed the lower extremity, and having a back-door that opened upon an alley to the eastward, namely, Halkerston’s Wynd. This house was, at the time we speak of, crammed full of valuable goods, plate, &c., which had been deposited in the provost’s hands by many of his afflicted fellow-citizens, under the impression that, if they survived, he was honest enough to restore them unimpaired, and, if otherwise, he was worthy to inherit them. His daughter, who had been seized before it was found possible to remove her from the town, lay in a little room at the back of the house, which, besides one door opening from the large staircase in the front, had also a more private entry communicating with the narrower and obsolete “turnpike” behind. At that time, little precaution was taken anywhere in Scotland about the locking of doors. To have the door simply closed, so that the fairies could not enter, was in general considered sufficient, as it is at the present day in many remote parts. In Edinburgh, during the time of the plague, the greatest indifference to security of this sort prevailed. In general, the doors were left unlocked from within, in order to admit the cleansers, or any charitable neighbour who might come to minister to the bed-rid sick. This was not exactly the case in Sir John Smith’s house; for the main-door was scrupulously locked, with a view to the safety of the goods committed to his charge. Nevertheless, from neglect, or from want of apprehension, the posterior entrance was afterwards found to have been not so well secured.

The Barbary physician had administered a potion to his patient soon after his admission into the house. He knew that symptoms either favourable or unfavourable would speedily appear, and he therefore resolved to remain in the room in order to watch the result. About midnight, as he sat in a remote corner of the room, looking towards the bed upon which his charge was extended, while a small lamp burned upon a low table between, he was suddenly surprised to observe something like a dark cloud, unaccompanied by any noise, interpose itself slowly and gradually between his eyes and the bed. He at first thought that he was deceived,—that he was beginning to fall asleep,—or that the strange appearance was occasioned by some peculiarity of the light, which, being placed almost directly between him and the bed, caused him to see the latter object very indistinctly. He was soon undeceived by hearing a noise,—the slightest possible,—and perceiving something like motion in the ill-defined lineaments of the apparition. “Gracious Heaven!” thought he, “can this be the angel of death hovering over his victim, preparing to strike the mortal blow, and ready to receive the departing soul into the inconceivable recesses of its awful form?” It almost appeared as if the cloud stooped over the bed for the performance of this task. Presently, the patient uttered a half-suppressed sigh, and then altogether ceased the regular respirations, which had hitherto been monotonous and audible throughout the room. The awe-struck attendant could contain himself no longer, but permitted a sort of cry to escape him, and started to his feet. The cloud instantly, as it were, rose from its inclined posture over the bed, turned hastily round, and, in a moment contracting itself into a human shape, glided softly, but hastily, from the apartment. “Ha!” thought the African, “I have known such personages as this in Aleppo. These angels of death are sometimes found to be mortal themselves—I shall pursue and try.” He, therefore, quickly followed the phantom through the private door by which it had escaped, not forgetting to seize his semicircular sword in passing the table where it lay. The stair was dark and steep; but he kept his feet till he reached the bottom. Casting, then, a hasty glance around him, he perceived a shadow vanish from the moon-lit ground, at an angle of the house, and instantly started forward in the pursuit. He soon found himself in the open wynd above-mentioned, along which he supposed the mysterious object to have gone. All here was dark; but being certain of the course adopted by the pursued party, he did not hesitate a moment in plunging headlong down its steep profundity. He was confirmed in his purpose by immediately afterwards observing, at some distance in advance, a small jet of moonlight, proceeding from a side alley, obscured for a second by what he conceived to be the transit of a large dark object. This he soon also reached, and finding that his own person caused a similar obscurity, he was confirmed in his conjecture that the apparition bore a substantial form. Still forward and downward he boldly rushed, till, reaching an open area at the bottom, part of which was lighted by the moon, he plainly saw, at the distance of about thirty yards before him, the figure as of a tall man, loosely enveloped in a prodigious cloak, gliding along the ground, and apparently making for a small bridge, which at this particular place crossed the drain of the North Loch, and served as a communication with the village called the Mutries Hill. He made directly for the fugitive, thinking to overtake him almost before he could reach the bridge. But what was his surprise, when in a moment the flying object vanished from his sight, as if it had sunk into the ground, and left him alone and objectless in his headlong pursuit. It was possible that it had fallen into some concealed well or pit, but this he was never able to discover.

Bewildered and confused, he at length returned to the provost’s house, and re-entered the apartment of the sick maiden. To his delight and astonishment he found her already in a state of visible convalescence, with a gradually deepening glow of health diffusing itself over her cheek. Whether his courage and fidelity had been the means of scaring away the evil demon it is impossible to say; but certain it is, that the ravages of the plague began soon afterwards to decline in Edinburgh, and at length died away altogether.

The conclusion of this singular traditionary story bears that the provost’s daughter, being completely restored to health, was married to the foreigner who had saved her life. This seems to have been the result of an affection which they had conceived for each other during the period of her convalescence. The African, becoming joint-heir with his wife of the provost’s vast property, abandoned his former piratical life, became, it is said, a douce Presbyterian, and settled down for the remainder of his days in Edinburgh. The match turned out exceedingly well; and it is even said that the foreigner became so assimilated with the people of Edinburgh, to whom he had proved so memorable a benefactor, that he held at one time an office of considerable civic dignity and importance. Certain it is, that he built for his residence a magnificent “land” near the head of the Canongate, upon the front of which he caused to be erected a statue of the emperor of Barbary, in testimony of the respect he still cherished for his native country; and this memorial yet remains in its original niche, as a subsidiary proof of the verity of the above relation.

THE PROBATIONER’S FIRST SERMON.

BY DANIEL GORRIE.

On a cold March evening, and in the metropolis of Scotland, I received licence as a probationer. The reverend fathers of the Presbytery were so satisfied with my orthodoxy that they gave me most cordially the right hand of fellowship, and warmly wished me success. I had half-anticipated a reprimand for heretical tendencies; but as no censure was uttered, I was at once overcome by their kindness, and charmed with their unexpected liberality. I hastened home to receive the congratulations of my friends, and then I repaired to a clothier’s for a suit of canonical blacks. My mother had already provided a boxful of white cravats sufficient to supply the whole bench of bishops. To err is human, and it is also human for a humble man to feel considerably elated in certain circumstances, and at certain times.

I need not be ashamed to confess that a new dignity seemed to rest upon me, like the mantle of the prophet, on that eventful evening. I saw the reflection of my face on the bowl of a silver spoon, and wondered at the resemblance it bore to the bold, heroic countenance of Edward Irving. High were my hopes, and few were my fears, for I only expected to speak and conquer. The responsibilities of the profession were great, I knew, but they only cast their shadow before. The kind of life on which I was about to enter possessed all the attractions of novelty. I was to exchange passivity for action—the quiet of the cloister for the stir of the field. Yet, while thus I thought of the battle, and made my vows, the still picture of a rural manse, girdled with incense-breathing flowerplots, and shaded with murmuring trees, stole upon my slumbers ere I awoke at the dawn of the next day—a vision, alas! too often resembling the unreal beauty of the mirage in the desert.

It may be pardoned in a novitiate, standing on the threshold, if I saw only the sunny side of preacher-life. Spring was coming, like Miriam and her maidens, with timbrels and with dances, and the golden summer-tide was following in her wake, and I knew that I would look on many lovely scenes, receive kindness from strangers, enjoy the hospitality of the humble, and haply sow some seeds of goodness and truth in receptive hearts.

I had frequently heard strange stories about preachers, and several times I had met some curious specimens of the class. One, it was said, travelled over the country with a sermon and a-half and a tobacco-pipe. Another, it was averred, carried neither parchments nor portmanteau, went gadding abroad, and was in fact the generalissimo of gossips. A third poked his nose into presses, supped jelly and jam, pocketed lumps of sugar, and performed other absurdities not at all creditable to his cloth. I had also learned from ministers’ wives in the country, that some were as unsocial and morose as turnkeys, and others quite the reverse—lively young fellows, who could rock the cradle, and keep all the children in high glee. It was necessary for me, then, I felt, to be circumspect, to abstain from all eccentricities, to be sociable among social people, and dignified when occasion required. Experience soon taught me that a joke from clerical lips sounds like profanity in the ears of the rigidly righteous. A kind friend told me to beware of elders who wished to discuss the doctrine of reprobation, and to avoid walking arm-in-arm with any rural beauty.

“Were you, in your unsuspecting innocence,” he said, “to commit this last enormity, the village gossips would tell it to the beadle, the beadle to the managers, the managers to the elders, and your glory would depart.”

The advice was a wise one, as I afterwards found; but gallantry is more a characteristic of youth than prudence.

I had prepared a considerable supply of discourses. They were elaborately written, and I looked with paternal affection upon the companions of my future wanderings. I shunned those dry doctrinal discussions which shed so sweet an opiate over the eyes of old, young, and middle-aged. The topics selected were such as I believed would interest and instruct all classes of people. I had enlarged upon the zeal and self-sacrifice of the sainted men of old, pictured the Holy One silent in the death chamber, and weeping at the tomb, and drawn illustrations from the heavens above, and the earth beneath. Something fresh was needed, I thought—a Christianity rich in blossoms as in fruit.

I received an appointment for the first Sabbath after licence, and on Saturday afternoon I was rattling along Princes’ Street in the Queensferry omnibus. A small town across the Firth, in the kingdom of Fife, not far from the coast, was my destination. Although the sermon I was to deliver on the morrow had been well committed to memory, and frequently declaimed during the week, yet I found myself conning it over again ere we had crossed the Dean Bridge, and certain passages became mysteriously blended in my mind with the images of Craigcrook and Corstorphine. Then I began to wonder if the other passengers suspected I was a preacher on my maiden expedition. One woman was occupied in gazing very fondly upon the face of a dozing child three months old; a red-faced, purple-nosed old gentleman was sucking the round head of a walking-stick; a stout elderly lady seemed to find the leathern cushion very uncomfortable, since of her down-sitting and up-rising there was no end; a young gentleman of the Tittlebat Titmouse tribe breathed heavily, and at intervals snored; and a young lady, my _vis-a-vis_ in the opposite corner, was the only one who seemed really to be aware of my presence, and the only one who appeared willing to break the unsocial silence. I remembered my friend’s advice, and was somewhat afraid to speak. Besides, heads, and particulars, and practical applications, were making such a thoroughfare of my mind, that there was considerable danger of committing absurd mistakes in conversation. I became really sorry for the young lady, she looked at me so inquiringly, and seemed so anxious that I should speak. There was a keen frost in the air, and one or two outsiders were flapping their hands across their shoulders—might I not say that the afternoon was cold? Gray-white clouds were gathering from horizon to horizon and dimming the day—might I not suggest the possibility of snow? Suddenly the light wavering crystals slid down the window-glass, and with uplifted eyebrows and look of innocent surprise, the fair young traveller exclaimed, “Oh! it snows.”

“So it does, ma’am,” I rejoined, and spoke no more.

She might think of me that evening as very silent or very surly; but she no doubt changed her opinion next day, for I saw her sitting in the front gallery of the church when I rose to give out the first psalm.

In crossing the ferry, I thought not of the royal dames and princely pageants that so often in the days of other years passed to and from the shores of Fife. The waters of the Forth were dreary enough. Inchcolm and the opposite coast were shrouded from view in the streaming skirts of the snow-clouds. I rolled myself up in a corner of the boat where no deacon’s eye could intrude, and warmed my heart with a cigar. Then some limping fiend whispered in my ears the awful words, “What if you should _stick_?” Once I had witnessed an unfortunate being in that painful predicament in the pulpit. I had marked, with sickening apprehensions, the string of unconnected sentences, the hesitation, the pallor overspreading his face, the terrible stammer, the convulsive clutch, the pause, the sudden gulp, the dead stop, and portentous silence. A “stickit minister,” like Dominie Sampson, is nothing to a preacher who “sticks.” It was a horrid idea. I resisted the fiend, knit my brow, clenched my fist, and determined to speak or die. “Always keep your mouth open,” was the charge of a learned divine to his son, and the words afforded me much consolation.

The night was falling fast, and the snow was falling faster when I reached the outskirts of the little inland town where I had been appointed to officiate. Here my rapid march was arrested by an elderly man who inquired if I was the expected preacher, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, he relieved me of my portmanteau, which contained my precious parchment, and led the way to my lodgings. He gave me to understand that he was the beadle, and that I was to lodge with Mrs M‘Bain, who kept a small grocery shop, and had a room to spare in her house. The congregation, with much saving grace, had let the manse until a new minister was obtained. Old John, like the great proportion of country beadles, was a simple, decent man, and a sort of character in his way. He was particularly inquisitive, and asked me some very plain questions as we trudged along the narrow street, getting gradually whitened by the falling snow. He told me that my predecessor on the previous Sabbath was a very clever young man, but only a “wee thocht new-fangled.” From further inquiry I found that the learned Theban had been astonishing John and several members of the congregation by describing the revolution of the earth on its axis.

“Noo, sir,” said the worthy beadle, “can ye tell me, if the world is aye whirlin’ round aboot, what’s the reason we never come to the warm countries?”

I endeavoured to make the matter plain to his apprehension by supposing a rotatory motion of the human head, and the nose always maintaining its dignified position in the centre between the right ear and the left—an illustration which honest John did not seem to regard as satisfactory in the slightest degree.

Mrs M‘Bain’s house was of a very humble description; but she appeared to be a tidy woman, and the room allotted to me, though small, was clean and comfortable. John put down my portmanteau on a chair, with the mien and manner of one who has done his duty, and informed me that one of the elders and the precentor would likely call in a short time. For the precentor I was perfectly prepared, knowing well the psalms that would best suit my discourse; but I was not so sure what motive an elder could have for visiting me on a Saturday night. I inwardly hoped, at least, that if he did make his appearance, he would have the good sense not to trouble me long with his presence or his conversation, as I was again anxious to rehearse my discourse to silent chairs and an attentive table.

When Mrs M‘Bain was placing the tea-dishes on the table, she seemed disposed for a little talk, while I, on the contrary, was not at all in a communicative mood. However, she persevered, and drew me on by degrees, until at last she brought a series of queries to a climax by asking if I had been long a preacher. Now, this was a most absurd question for me to answer in my peculiar circumstances. If the people knew that I had never “wagged my head in a poupit” before, they would be sure to listen to me with the most dreadful silence, so that the slightest stammer would be multiplied and magnified by a hundred echoes. What was to be done? The question must be answered, and the truth must be told, despite the consequences. Mustering up courage, I told my landlady how the matter stood. Astonished she was, as might naturally have been expected. She uplifted her eyebrows, opened wide her eyes, drew a long breath, and said—“Dearie me, sir, ye’ll be awfu’ feared!” With this ejaculation, which afforded me little consolation indeed, Mrs M‘Bain left the apartment, and I knew that the tidings would be over the town, and talked about at every fireside in less than twenty minutes. It could not be helped; courage and resignation alone were required.

I had just finished swallowing in haste three cups of very hot tea, when the precentor entered. He was a man past middle age, with a countenance somewhat grim and gaunt, and a very unmusical mouth. His hair was sandy-coloured, and he was Sawney all over. I saw at once, from his steady stare, and the peculiar expression of his face, that Mrs M‘Bain had communicated to him the very pleasant intelligence that the new arrival was a “green hand.” He was not long in making me know that he was aware of the fact, although he did so in a very cautious, provoking kind of style. When the ice was fairly broken, he said, “It’s a kittle thing standin’ up afore an audience the first time. I mind fine yet what an awfu’ state I was in when I first sang i’ the desk. I kent the Auld Hunderd as weel as I kent my mither; but I wasna lang begun when I ran awa’ wi’ the harrows.” This kind of talk was rapidly becoming unendurable, and I entertained anything but a Christian sentiment of brotherly love towards the conductor of the psalmody.

“How long have you acted as precentor,” I enquired, anxious to change the current of conversation.

“I’ve precented in oor kirk,” he replied, “for twunty years, and, barrin’ three days last simmer, I’ve never missed a Sabbath.”

“That is very extraordinary,” I rejoined; “and what was wrong with you last summer?”

“Weel, sir, ye see I was howkin’ tatties for the denner in oor yaird ae day, when I coupit ower a skep by mistake, and I was awfu’ stung by bees.”

“Dear me,” I rejoined (for I could not resist such a favourable opportunity of stinging him again), “it was curious how the bees should have taken you for a drone!”

This remark had the desired effect. The precentor soon took himself off, and I was left in undisputed possession of the room. I had offended the beadle, and insulted the precentor—how was it possible that I could preach with acceptation to the people? I became nervous lest the elder also should enter, for I was perfectly persuaded that I could not escape incurring his reprobation by some unfortunate reply.

As the night wore on, my trepidation increased. I paced up and down the room, repeating and re-repeating my discourse from beginning to end, and from the end to the beginning. Every period, colon, hyphen, point of exclamation, point of interrogation, and comma was engraved upon my mind, and yet I was not satisfied. Something might escape me—some sounding sentence might take wings and flee away. I heard Mrs M‘Bain listening at times behind the door when I went humming and thrumming across the room; and I felt a strong inclination to call her in, and punish her by making her act the part of a popular audience. I cooled down somewhat before bedtime, and, at my landlady’s request, retired early to bed.

“A gude sleep,” she said, “is the forerunner of a good sermon.”

“Yes,” I rejoined, “and a good sleep is the ordinary accompaniment of a bad one.”

Mrs M‘Bain chuckled, and looked as if she thought there was something promising in the young man after all.

To bed I went, but not to slumber, knowing well that sleep, like some eccentric daughters of Eve, must be won without being wooed. I did not try to “fall over.” None but the rankest fool ever thinks of perpetrating such absurdity. I commenced for the five hundredth time—what else could I do?—to con over my discourse. I had just finished the introduction, without missing a syllable, when—horror of horrors!—the first head had vanished—evaporated—gone to some outrageous limbo and could not, would not be recalled. What was to be done? I sat up in bed—a villanous crib it was—and the perspiration stood beaded on my brow. The tingling darkness filled the room; the snow-flakes fussled on the window panes. Mrs M‘Bain was in bed; the candle was out; there were no lucifers; my precious manuscript was under my pillow; the missing head was there, but I could neither see nor seize it. It was a _caput mortuum_. I cannot describe the agony that I endured, the feeling of despair that I experienced. My heart beat loudly, and the inexorable clock tick-ticked, as if everything in the world were going on with the utmost smoothness and regularity. I must have sat for an hour groping about in my benighted brain for my lost head. But sleep at length came, and fantastic dreams, born of fear and excitement, took possession of me. I thought that I stood on Mars Hill, and that around me was gathered a great crowd of Stoics, Epicureans, Methodists, Mormons, and Mahommedans. They listened attentively for a time, but as soon as I had finished the introduction to my discourse, they immediately commenced to grin and make grimaces, shouting, howling, roaring like legions of demons. In the twinkling of an eye, the scene changed, and I stood in the centre of a vast camp-meeting in the backwoods of America. Negroes and Red Indians were there as well as stalwart planters with their wives and families. A hymn, pealed with a sea-like sound from a thousand voices, had just died away, and I was preparing to address the mighty multitude, when a sudden storm came crashing down among the woods, and the assemblage was scattered abroad like the leaves of autumn. I was tossed throughout the night from one wildered dream to another, and finally awoke in the morning rather jaded than refreshed. With the return of consciousness, however, returned the lost head, and I was delighted to discover before rising that my memory was master of my discourse.

The morning wore on, stiller for the snow that lay one or two inches deep on the ground. The hour of service approached, the bells began to sound; I never heard them pealing so loudly before, even in the largest cities. My heart beat to the beating of the bells. At last the beadle came, cool, calm, imperturbable, hoisted the pulpit Bible under his arm, and signified to me, with an easy inclination of his head, that all was now ready. Mrs M‘Bain was standing in the passage as we came out of the room, holding the door-key in one hand, and her Bible wrapped in a white pocket handkerchief in the other. I walked along the street as steadily and sedately as my perturbation would permit, and all the little boys and girls, I thought, knew that I was to preach my first sermon that day. There was a death-like stillness in the church when I entered. My look was concentrated on the pulpit, but I knew that every eye in the church was fixed upon the untried preacher. I managed to get through the introductory services with more fluency and calmness than I anticipated, only I invariably found myself conning over the first head of my discourse while the assembled worshippers were singing the psalms. The precentor _was_ a drone. Even that afforded me some satisfaction, although the unmelodious tones agitated still more my excited nervous system. At the close of the second psalm, the time of my great trial came. I rose and announced the text with great deliberation. Then every eye was fixed upon me; the moment was awful; the silence was dreadful. The ready manner in which the first dozen of sentences came to my recollection made me feel somewhat calm, comfortable, and composed; but a sudden sense of the peculiar nature of my situation, the consciousness that all the people knew it was my first appearance in public, disturbed my equanimity and shook my self-possession. A dizziness came over me; the congregation revolved around the pulpit. I grasped the Bible, and declaimed vehemently in order if possible to recover myself; but from the beginning of the first head to the last application, although I must have adhered to my manuscript, I was speaking like one in a dream, not master of myself, the will passive, and memory alone awake. When I concluded the last period, I could scarcely believe that I had preached my discourse. The weakness of my limbs told me of the struggle. On leaving the church I overheard some remarks concerning myself pass between two of the officials.

“He’s a brisk bit birkie that,” quoth the beadle.

“’Od ay,” responded the precentor, but “he has a bee in his bannet.”

Sweet reader, if you are studying for the Church, do not be deterred by vain fears from prosecuting your labours. It is a glorious thing to succeed, even when you are unconscious of your success, and thus it happened with “My First Sermon.”

THE CRIMES OF RICHARD HAWKINS.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

When a young man, Richard Hawkins was guilty of the heinous crime of betraying the daughter of a respectable farmer in the west of Galloway, of the name of Emily Robson. As he yet loved the injured maiden, he would have married her, but in this he was determinedly opposed by her relatives, and particularly by her only brother, betwixt whom and himself an inveterate hostility had, from various causes, been growing up since their earliest boyhood. From remorse partly, and shame and disappointment, and partly from other causes, Hawkins hereupon left his home and went abroad; but after making a considerable sum of money he returned to Scotland, determined to use every remonstrance to win over Emily’s friends to allow him yet by marriage to make reparation to the gentle maiden, the remembrance of whose beauty and faithful confiding spirit had unceasingly haunted him in a foreign land. He arrived first at Glasgow, and proceeded thence to Edinburgh, where he purposed to stay a week or a fortnight before going southward to his native county, in which also Emily Robson resided.

During his stay in the metropolis, having been one evening invited to sup at the house of a gentleman, originally from the same county with himself, scarcely had he taken his seat in his host’s parlour, when Emily’s brother entered, and, instantly recognizing him, advanced with a face of grim wrath, denounced him as a villain, declared he would not sit a moment in his company, and to make good his declaration, instantly turned on his heel and left the house. The violent spirit of Hawkins was in a moment stung to madness by this rash and unseasonable insolence, which was offered him, moreover, before a number of gentlemen; he rose, craved their leave for a moment, that he might follow, and show Mr Robson his mistake; and sallying out of the house, without his hat, he overtook his aggressor on the street, tapped him on the shoulder, and thus bespoke him, with a grim smile:—“Why, sir, give me leave to propound to you that this same word and exit of yours are most preciously insolent. With your leave, now, I must have you back, gently to unsay me a word or two; or, by heaven! this night your blood shall wash out the imputation!”

“This hour—this hour!” replied Robson, in a hoarse compressed whisper; “my soul craves to grapple with you, and put our mutual affair to a mortal arbitrament. Hark ye, Hawkins, you are a stranger in this city, I presume, and cannot reasonably be expected easily to provide yourself with a second; moreover, no one would back such a villain;—now, will you follow me this moment to my lodgings, accept from my hand one of a pair of pistols, and let us, without farther formality, retire to a convenient place, and do ourselves a pleasure and a justice. I am weary of living under the same sun with you, and if I can shed your foul blood beneath yon chaste stars of God, I would willingly die for it. Dare you follow me?—and, quickly, before those fellows think of looking after us?”

To Hawkins’ boiling heart of indignation ’twas no hard task so to follow, and the above proposal of Robson was strictly and instantly followed up. We must notice here particularly, that, as the parties were about to leave the house, a letter was put into Robson’s hand, who, seeing that it was from his mother, and bore the outward notification of mourning, craved Hawkins’ permission to read it, which he did with a twinkling in his eye, and a working, as of deep grief, in the muscles of his face; but in a minute he violently crushed the letter, put it into his pocket, and, turning anew to his foe with glaring eyes of anger, told him that all was ready. And now we shall only state generally, that within an hour from the first provocation of the evening, this mortal and irregular duel was settled, and left Robson shot through the body by his antagonist.

No sooner did Hawkins see him fall, than horror and remorse for his deed rushed upon him; he ran to the prostrate youth, attempted to raise him up, but dared not offer pity or ask forgiveness, for which his soul yet panted. The wounded man rejected his assistance—waved him off, and thus faintly but fearfully spoke:—“Now, mine enemy! I will tell you, that you may sooner know the curse of God, which shall for ever cling and warp itself round all the red cords of your heart. That letter from my mother, which you saw me read, told me of the death of that sister Emily whom I so loved; whom you—oh, God!—who never recovered from your villany. And my father, too!—Off, fiend, nor mock me! You shall not so triumph—you shall not see me die!” So saying, the wounded youth, who was lying on his back, with his pale writhen features upturned, and dimly seen in the twilight, with a convulsive effort now threw himself round, with his face upon the grass.

In a fearful agony stood Hawkins, twisting his hands, not knowing whether again to attempt raising his victim, or to run to the city for a surgeon. The former he at length did, and found no resistance; for, alas! the unhappy youth was dead. The appearance of two or three individuals now making towards the bloody spot, which was near the suburbs of the town, and to which, in all probability, they had been drawn by the report of the pistols, roused Hawkins, for the first time, to a sense of his own danger. He quickly left the ground, dashed through the fields, and, without distinctly calculating his route, instinctively turned towards his native district.

As he proceeded onwards, he began to consider the bearings of his difficult situation, and at last resolved to hasten on through the country, to lay his case before his excellent friend Frank Dillon, who was the only son of a gentleman in the western parts of Galloway, and who, he knew, was at present residing with his father. Full of the most riotous glee, and nimble-witted as Mercutio, Frank, he was aware, could be no less gravely wise as an adviser in a difficult emergency, and he determined, in the present case, to be wholly ruled by his opinion. Invigorated from thus having settled for himself a definite course, he walked swiftly forward through the night, which shone with the finest beauty of the moon. Yet what peace to the murderer, whose red title not the fairest duellist, who has slain a human being, can to his own conscience reduce? The cold glittering leaves on the trees, struck with a quick, momentary gust, made him start as he passed; and the shadowy foot and figure of the lover, coming round from the back window of the lone cottage, was to his startled apprehension the avenger of blood at hand. As he looked afar along the glittering road, the black fir trees upon the edge of the moor seemed men coming running down to meet him; and the long howl of some houseless cur, and the distant hoof of the traveller, which struck his listening ear with two or three beatings, seemed all in the track of pursuit and vengeance.

Morning came, and to the weary fugitive was agreeably cloudy; but the sun rose upon him in the forenoon, shining from between the glassy, glistering clouds with far greater heat than it does from a pure blue sky. Hawkins had now crossed many a broad acre of the weary moorlands, fatigued and thirsty, his heart beating in his ears, and not a drop of water that he could see to sprinkle the dry pulses of his bosom, when he came to a long morass, which barred his straightforward path. His first business was to quench his thirst from a dull stank, overgrown with paddowpipe, and black with myriads of tadpoles. There, finding himself so faint from fatigue that he could not brook the idea of going round by the end of the moss, and being far less able to make his way through the middle of it, by leaping from _hagg_ to _hagg_, he threw himself down on the sunny side of some long reeds, and fell fast asleep.

He was waked by the screaming of lapwings, and the noise of a neighbouring bittern, to a feeling of violent throbbing, headache, and nausea, which were probably owing to the sun’s having beat upon him whilst he lay asleep, aggravated by the reflection from the reeds. He arose, but finding himself quite unable to pursue his journey, again threw himself down on a small airy brow of land, to get what breeze might be stirring abroad. There were several companies of people at work digging peats in the moss, and one party now sat down very near him to their dinner. One of them, a young woman, had passed so near him, as to be able to guess, from his countenance, that he was unwell; and in a few minutes, with the fine charity of womanhood, she came to him with some food, of which, to satisfy her kindness, rather than his own hunger, he ate a little. The air changed in the afternoon, and streaming clouds of hail crossed over that wild country, yet he lay still. Party after party left the moss, and yet he was there. He made, indeed, a show of leaving the place at a quick rate, to disappoint the fears of the people who had seen him at noon, and who, as they again came near to gather up their supernumerary clothes, were evidently perplexed on his account, which they showed by looking first towards him and then at each other. It was all he could do to get quite out of their sight beyond a little eminence; and there, once more, he lay down in utter prostration of mind and body.

Twilight began to darken upon the pools of that desolate place. The wild birds were gone to their heathy nests, all save the curlew, whose bravura was still sung over the fells, and borne far away into the dim and silent night. At length a tall, powerful-looking man came stepping through the moss, and as he passed near the poor youth, asked, in slow speech, who he was. In the reaction of nature, Hawkins was, in a moment, anxious about his situation, and replied to him that he had fallen sick on his way, and was unable to go in quest of a resting-place for the night. Approaching and turning himself round to the youth as he arose, the genius of the place had him on his back in a moment, and went off with him carelessly and in silence over the heath. In about half an hour they came to a lonely cottage, which the kind creature entered; and, setting the young man down, without the least appearance of fatigue on his part, “Here, gudewife,” said he, “is a bairn t’ye, that I hae foun’ i’ the moss: now, let us see ye be gude to him.” Either this injunction was very effective, or it was not at all necessary; for, had the youth been her own son, come from a far country to see her, this hostess of the cottage could not have treated him more kindly. From his little conversation during the evening, her husband, like most very bulky men, appeared to be of dull intellect; but there was a third personage in the composition of his household, a younger brother, a very little man,—the flower of the flock,—who made ample amends for his senior brother’s deficiencies as a talker. A smattering of Church-history had filled his soul with a thousand stories of persecution and martyrdom, and, from some old history of America, he had gained a little knowledge of Upper Canada, for which, Hawkins was during the night repeatedly given to understand, he was once on the very point of setting out, an abiding embryo of bold travel, which, in his own eye, seemed to invest him with all the honours and privileges of _bona fide_ voyagers. His guest had a thousand questions put to him on these interesting topics, less for his answers, it was evident, than for an opportunity to the little man of setting forth his own information. All this was tolerably fair; but it was truly disgusting when the little oracle took the Bible after supper, and, in place of his elder brother, who was otherwise also the head of the family, performed the religious services of the evening, presuming to add a comment to the chapter which he read; to enforce which, his elbow was drawn back to the sharpest angle of edification, from which, ever and anon unslinging itself like a shifting rhomboid, it forced forward the stiff information in many a pompous instalment. The pertinacious forefinger was at work too; and before it trembled the mystic Babylon, which, in a side argument, that digit was uplifted to denounce. Moreover, the whole lecture was given in a squeaking, pragmatic voice, which sounded like the sharping of thatchers’ knives.

Next morning the duellist renewed his journey, hoping against eveningtide to reach Dillon’s house, which he guessed could not now be more than forty miles distant. About mid-afternoon, as he was going through a small hamlet of five or six cottages, he stepped into one of them, and requested a little water to drink. There was a hushed solemnity, he could see in a moment, throughout the little apartment into which, rather too unceremoniously, he had entered; and a kind-looking matron, in a dark robe, whispered in his ear, as she gave him a porringer of sweet water, with a little oatmeal sprinkled upon it, that an only daughter of the house, a fine young woman, was lying “a corpse.” Without noticing his presence, and indeed with her face hid, sat the mother doubtless of the maiden, heedless of the whispered consolations of two or three officious matrons, and racking in that full and intense sorrow with which strangers cannot intermeddle. The sloping beams of the declining sun shone beautifully in through a small lattice, illumining a half-decayed nosegay of flowers which stood on the sunny whitewashed sill—emblem of a more sorrowful decay!—and after traversing the middle of the apartment, with a thin deep bar of light, peopled by a maze of dancing motes, struck into the white bed, where lay something covered up and awfully indistinct, like sanctified thing not to be gazed at, which the fugitive’s fascinated eye yet tried to shape into the elegant body of the maiden, as she lay before her virgin sheets purer than they, with the salt above her still and unvexed bosom. The restricted din of boys at play—for that buoyant age is yet truly reverential, and feels most deeply the solemn occasion of death—was heard faint and aloof from the house of mourning. This, and the lonely chirrup of a single sparrow from the thatch; the soft purring of the cat at the sunny pane; the muffled tread of the mourners over the threshold; and the audible grief of that poor mother, seemed, instead of interruption, rather parts of the solemn stillness.

As Hawkins was going out, after lingering a minute in this sacred interior, he met, in the narrow passage which led to the door, a man with the coffin, on the lid of which he read, as it was pushed up to his very face, “Emily Robson, aged 22.” The heart of the murderer—the seducer—was in a moment as if steeped in the benumbing waters of petrifaction; he was horrified; he would fain have passed, but could not for want of room; and as the coffin was not to be withdrawn in accommodation to him, he was pushed again into the interior of the cottage to encounter a look of piercing recognition from Emily’s afflicted mother, who had started up on hearing the hollow grating of the coffin as it struck occasionally on the walls of the narrow entrance. “Take him away—take him away—take him away!” she screamed, when she saw Hawkins, and pressed her face down on the white bed of death. As for the youth, who was fearfully conscious of another bloody woe which had not yet reached her heart, and of which he was still the author, and who saw, moreover, that this poor mother was now come to poverty, probably from his own first injury against the peace of her family, he needed not to be told to depart. With conscience, that truest conducting-rod, flashing its moral electricities of shame and fear, and with knees knocking against each other, he stumbled out of the house, and making his way by chance to an idle quarry, overgrown with weeds, he there threw himself down, with his face on the ground. In this situation he lay the whole night and all next forenoon; and in the afternoon—for he had occasionally risen to look for the assembling of the funeral train—he joined the small group who carried his Emily to the churchyard, and saw her young body laid in the grave. Oh! who can cast away carelessly, like a useless thing, the finely-moulded clay, perfumed with the lingering beauty of warm motions, sweet graces, and young charities! But had not the young man, think ye, tenfold reason to weep for her whom he now saw laid down within the dark shadow of the grave?

In the evening, he found his way to Frank Dillon’s; met his friend by chance at a little distance from his father’s house, and told him at once his unhappy situation. “My father,” replied Frank, “cannot be an adviser here, because he is a Justice of the Peace. But he has been at London for some time, and I do not expect him home till to-morrow; so you can go with me to our house for this night, where we shall deliberate what next must be done in this truly sad affair of yours. Come on.”

It is unnecessary for us to explain at length the circumstances which frustrated the friendly intentions of Dillon, and which enabled the officers of justice to trace Hawkins to his place of concealment. They arrived that very evening; and, notwithstanding the efforts of Frank to save his friend, secured the unhappy duellist, who, within two days afterwards, found himself in Edinburgh, securely lodged in jail.

The issue of Hawkins’ trial was that he was condemned to death as a murderer. This severe sentence of the law was, however, commuted into that of banishment for seven years. But he never again returned to his native country. And it must be told of him also, that no happiness ever shone upon this after-life of his. Independent of his first crime, which brought a beautiful young woman prematurely to the grave, he had broken rashly “into the bloody house of life,” and, in the language of Holy Writ, “slain a young man to his hurt.”

Oh! for that still and quiet conscience—those third heavens within a man—wherein he can soar within himself and be at peace, where the image of God shines down, never dislimned nor long hid by those wild racks and deep continents of gloom which come over the soul of the blood-guilty man!

THE HEADSTONE.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

The coffin was let down to the bottom of the grave, the planks were removed from the heaped-up brink, the first rattling clods had struck their knell, the quick shovelling was over, and the long, broad, skilfully cut pieces of turf were aptly joined together, and trimly laid by the beating spade, so that the newest mound in the churchyard was scarcely distinguishable from those that were grown over by the undisturbed grass and daisies of a luxuriant spring. The burial was soon over; and the party, with one consenting motion, having uncovered their heads in decent reverence of the place and occasion, were beginning to separate, and about to leave the churchyard. Here some acquaintances, from distant parts of the parish, who had not had an opportunity of addressing each other in the house that had belonged to the deceased, nor in the course of the few hundred yards that the little procession had to move over from his bed to his grave, were shaking hands, quietly but cheerfully, and inquiring after the welfare of each other’s families. There, a small knot of neighbours were speaking, without exaggeration, of the respectable character which the deceased had borne, and mentioning to one another little incidents of his life, some of them so remote as to be known only to the grayheaded persons of the group; while a few yards farther removed from the spot, were standing together parties who discussed ordinary concerns, altogether unconnected with the funeral, such as the state of the markets, the promise of the season, or change of tenants; but still with a sobriety of manner and voice that was insensibly produced by the influence of the simple ceremony now closed, by the quiet graves around, and the shadow of the spire and gray walls of the house of God.

Two men yet stood together at the head of the grave, with countenances of sincere but unimpassioned grief. They were brothers, the only sons of him who had been buried. And there was something in their situation that naturally kept the eyes of many directed upon them for a longer time, and more intently, than would have been the case had there been nothing more observable about them than the common symptoms of a common sorrow. But these two brothers, who were now standing at the head of their father’s grave, had for some years been totally estranged from each other, and the only words that had passed between them, during all that time, had been uttered within a few days past, during the necessary preparations for the old man’s funeral.

No deep and deadly quarrel was between these brothers, and neither of them could distinctly tell the cause of this unnatural estrangement. Perhaps dim jealousies of their father’s favour—selfish thoughts that will sometimes force themselves into poor men’s hearts respecting temporal expectations—unaccommodating manners on both sides—taunting words that mean little when uttered, but which rankle and fester in remembrance—imagined opposition of interests, that, duly considered, would have been found one and the same—these, and many other causes, slight when single, but strong when rising up together in one baneful band, had gradually but fatally infected their hearts, till at last they who in youth had been seldom separate, and truly attached, now met at market, and, miserable to say, at church, with dark and averted faces, like different clansmen during a feud.

Surely if anything could have softened their hearts towards each other, it must have been to stand silently, side by side, while the earth, stones, and clods, were falling down upon their father’s coffin. And, doubtless, their hearts were so softened. But pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from being felt, may prevent them from being shown; and these two brothers stood there together, determined not to let each other know the mutual tenderness that, in spite of them, was gushing up in their hearts, and teaching them the unconfessed folly and wickedness of their causeless quarrel.

A headstone had been prepared, and a person came forward to plant it. The elder brother directed him how to place it—a plain stone, with a sand-glass, skull, and cross-bones, chiselled not rudely, and a few words inscribed. The younger brother regarded the operation with a troubled eye, and said, loudly enough to be heard by several of the bystanders, “William, this was not kind in you;—you should have told me of this. I loved my father as well as you could love him. You were the elder, and, it may be, the favourite son; but I had a right in nature to have joined you in ordering this headstone, had I not?”

During these words, the stone was sinking into the earth, and many persons who were on their way from the grave returned. For a while the elder brother said nothing, for he had a consciousness in his heart that he ought to have consulted his father’s son in designing this last becoming mark of affection and respect to his memory; so the stone was planted in silence, and now stood erect, decently and simply among the other unostentatious memorials of the humble dead.