Chapter II (8)

At last he could not sustain the sweet, sad, beautiful sight of that which was now lying stretched upon his marriage-bed; and he found himself passing along the silent passages, with faint and distant lamentations meeting his ear, but scarcely recognised by his mind, until he felt the fresh air, and saw the gray dawn of morning. Slowly and unconsciously he passed on into the woods, and walked on and on, without aim or object, through the solitude of awakening nature. He heard or heeded not the wide-ringing songs of all the happy birds; he saw not the wild-flowers beneath his feet, nor the dew diamonds that glittered on every leaf of the motionless trees. The ruins of a lonely hut on the hill-side were close to him, and he sat down in stupifaction, as if he had been an exile in some foreign country. He lifted up his eyes, and the sun was rising, so that all the eastern heaven was tinged with the beautifulness of joy. The turrets of his own ancestral mansion were visible among the dark umbrage of its ancient grove: fair were the lawns and fields that stretched away from it towards the orient light, and one bright bend of the river kindled up the dim scenery through which it rolled. His own family estate was before his eyes, and as the thought rose within his heart, “All that I see is mine,” yet felt he that the poorest beggar was richer far than he, and that in one night he had lost all that was worth possessing. He saw the church tower, and thought upon the place of graves. “There will she be buried—there will she be buried,” he repeated with a low voice, while a groan of mortal misery startled the little mosswren from a crevice in the ruin. He rose up, and the thought of suicide entered into his sick heart. He gazed on the river, and, murmuring aloud in his hopeless wretchedness, said, “Why should I not sink into a pool and be drowned? But oh! Anna, thou who wert so meek and pure on earth, and who art now bright and glorious in heaven, what would thy sainted and angelic spirit feel if I were to appear thus lost and wicked at the judgment-seat?”

A low voice reached his ear, and, looking round, he beheld his old, faithful, white-headed servant on his knees—him who had been his father’s foster-brother, and who, in the privilege of age and fidelity and love to all belonging to that house, had followed him unregarded—had watched him as he wrung his hands, and had been praying for him to God while he continued sitting in that dismal trance upon that mouldering mass of ruins. “Oh! my young master, pardon me for being here. I wished not to overhear your words; but to me you have ever been kind, even as a son to his father. Come, then, with the old man back into the hall, and forsake not your mother, who is sore afraid.”

They returned, without speaking, down the glens and through the old woods, and the door was shut upon them. Days and nights passed on, and then a bell tolled; and the churchyard, that had sounded to many feet, was again silent. The woods around the hall were loaded with their summer glories; the river flowed on in its brightness; the smoke rose up to heaven from the quiet cottages; and nature continued the same—bright, fragrant, beautiful, and happy. But the hall stood uninhabited; the rich furniture now felt the dust; and there were none to gaze on the pictures that graced the walls. He who had been thus bereaved went across seas to distant countries, from which his tenantry, for three springs, expected his return; but their expectations were never realised, for he died abroad. His remains were brought home to Scotland, according to a request in his will, to be laid by those of his wife; and now they rest together, beside the same simple monument.

MISS PEGGY BRODIE.

BY ANDREW PICKEN.

“If I were a man, instead of being a woman, as unfortunately I happen to be,” said Miss Peggy Brodie to me, “I would call a meeting in public, on the part of the ladies, to petition the king for another war; for really, since the peace there is no such thing as any decent woman getting a husband, nor is there so much as the least stir or stramash now-a-days, even to put one in mind of such a thing. And the king, God bless him! is a man of sense, and understands what’s what perfectly,” continued Miss Peggy; “and I have not the least doubt that if he were only put in possession of the real state of the sex since the peace, he would give us a war at once, for it is cruel to keep so many women in this hopeless state.”

“Indeed, mem,” said I, looking as wise as I was able, “you may depend upon it, you are under a mistake.”

“Don’t tell me, sir,” replied Miss Brodie; “you men think you know everything. As if I did not understand politics sufficient to know that the king grants all reasonable petitions. I tell you, Mr What’s-your-name, that the whole sex in Glasgow, from Crossmyloof to the Rotten Row, and from Anderston to Camlachie, are in a state of the utmost distress since ever the peace;—and marriages may be made in heaven, or somewhere else that I do not know of, but there is none made hereaway, to my certain knowledge, since ever the sharpshooters laid down their arms, the strapping fallows!”

“I’m sure, mem,” said I, “for a peaceable man, I have been sadly deaved about these sharpshooters.”

“It’s no for you to speak against the sharpshooters, Mr Thingumy!” said Miss Brodie, getting into a pet; “you that never bit a cartridge in your life, I know by your look! and kens nae mair about platoon exercise, and poother wallets, and ramrods, than my mother does! But fair fa’ the time when we had a thriving war, an’ drums rattlin’ at every corner, an’ fifer lads whistlin’ up and down the streets on a market-day; an’ spruce sergeants parading the Saltmarket, pipe-clayed most beautiful! Then there was our ain sharpshooters, braw fallows, looking so noble in their green dresses, and lang feathers bobbing in their heads. Besides, there was the cavalry, and the Merchants’ corps, and the Trades’ and the Grocers’ corps. Why, every young man of the least pluck was a soldier in these heartsome days, and had such speerit and such pith, and thought no more of taking a wife then, than he would of killing a Frenchman before his breakfast, if he could hae seen one.”

“But, Miss Brodie,” said I, “they were all so busy taking wives that they seem to have quite forgot to take you, in these happy times.”

“Ye needna be so very particular in your remarks, Mr Thingumy; for it was entirely my own fault, an’ I might hae gotten a husband any morning, just for going to the Green of Glasgow, where the lads were taking their morning’s drill; for it was there a’ my acquaintances got men, to my certain knowledge; and now it’s naething but “Mistress” this, an’ “Mistress” that, wi’ a’ the clippy lassocks that were just bairns the other day; and there they go, oxtering wi’ their men, to be sure, an’ laughin’ at me. Weel, it’s vera provokin’, sir, isn’t it?”

“’Deed, mem,” said I, “it’s rather a lamentable case. But why did you not catch a green sharpshooter yourself, in those blessed days?”

“Hoot, Mr Balgownie, it was quite my ain faut, as I said. I was perfectly ignorant of the most common principles of the art, and knew no more of the way and manner o’ catching a husband, no more than if I had never been born in Glasgow. In fac’, I was a perfect simpleton, an’ thought it the easiest matter in the warld; an’ ye see, sir, I had a wee trifle o’ siller, besides my looks (which, ye ken, Mr Thingumbob, were far from being disparageable); and so I was a perfect simple, and just thocht I was like the lass in the sang—

Set her up on Tintock tap,
The wind’ll blaw a man till her.

But ne’er a man was blawn to me; an’ there’s a’ my giggling acquaintances married, ane after the ither. There’s Bell Mushat, an’ Jeanie Doo, an’ Mary Drab, an’ Beanie Sma’, an’ Sally Daicle—naething but “marriet,” “marriet;” and here’s puir me and the cat, leading a single life until this blessed day. Hochhey! isn’t it very angersome, sir?”

“It is really a case o’ great distress, when one thinks o’ your worth, Miss Brodie,” said I, pathetically; “and if I did not happen to be engaged myself, it’s impossible to say, but—”

“Ay, there it is!” exclaimed Miss Peggy, “there it is! Every decent, sensible man like you, that sees what I am, are just married—married themselves, and tied up. An’ so I may just sit here, and blaw my fingers ower the fire wi’ the cat. Hoch-hey!”

“But surely, Miss Brodie,” said I, “you did not use due diligence in time and season, or you would not now be left at this sorrowful pass?”

“I let the sharpshooter times slip out o’ my fingers, like a stupid simpleton, as I say; but no woman could have been more diligent than I hae been o’ late years, an’ a’ to no purpose. Haven’t I walked the Trongate? Haven’t I walked the Green? Haven’t I gone to a’ the tea-drinkings within five miles, where I could get a corner for mysel? Haven’t I gone to the kirk three times every Sunday, forby fast days, thanksgiving days, and evening preachings? Haven’t I attended a’ the Bible meetings, and missionary meetings, forby auxiliary societies, and branch associations? Wasn’t I a member of a’ the ladies’ committees, and penny-a-week societies, frae Cranston Hill to the East Toll? Didn’t I gang about collecting pennies, in cauld March weather, climbin’ stairs, and knocking at doors like a beggar, until the folk were like to put me out, an’ the vera weans on the stairs used to pin clouts to our tails, an’ ca’ us penny-a-week auld maids? Eh! that was a sair business, sir, an’ little thanks we got; an’ I got the chilblains in the feet wi’ the cauld, that keepit me frae sleep for three weeks.”

“It’s really lamentable; but I should have thought that the saintly plan was a good one.”

“So it would have been, sir, if I had had more money; but, ye see, fifty pounds a year is thought nothing o’ now-a-days; an’ these kinds o’ people are terrible greedy o’ siller. Na, na, sir, gie me the sharpshooters yet.”

“Well now, Miss Brodie,” said I, “as we’re on the subject, let me hear how it was you lost your precious opportunities in the volunteering time.”

“Oh, sir, that was the time—volunteering! There never was such days as the volunteering days. Drums here, and bands o’ music there; sodgering up, and sodgering down; an’ then the young men looked so tall in their regimentals, and it was such a pleasure just to get ane o’ them by the arm, and to parade wi’ them before the Tontine, an’ then a’ your acquaintances to meet you walking wi’ a braw sharpshooter, and talking about you after in every house; and such shaking hands in the Trongate, and such treating us wi’ cakes in Baxter’s,—for the volunteering lads were sae free o’ their siller in thae days, puir chields! Oh, thae were times!”

“There are no such times now, I fear, Miss Peggy.”

“Oh, no, sir. An’ then the lads thought nothing to take you to the play at night, in thae days; and what a beautiful thing it was to sit in the front o’ the boxes o’ the big theatre in Queen Street, wi’ a red-coated, or a green-coated volunteer—it was so showy, and such an attraction, and a talk. To be sure, sir, it’s no a’thegither right to go openly to common playhouses; but a man must be got some place, an’ ye ken the sharpshooters couldna gang to the kirk in their green dress, puir fallows.”

“But you never told me, Miss Brodie, what art or mystery there is in man-catching, and yet you speak as if some of your female friends had practised, something past the common to that intent.”

“It’s not for me to speak to you about women’s affairs, Mr Balgownie; but I can tell you one thing. Do you mind lang Miss M‘Whinnie, dochter of auld Willie M‘Whinnie, that was elder in Mr Dumdrone’s kirk?”

“I think I recollect her face,” said I.

“Weel, sir, this was the way she used to do. Ye see, she was a great walker (for she was a lang-leggit lass, although her father is a wee gutty body), and if ye took a walk in the Green or the Trongate, ye’re sure to meet lang-leggit Nelly M‘Whinnie, lamping wi’ a parasol like a fishing-rod, simmer and winter, lookin’ ower her shoulder now and then to see when she should _fa’_ aff her feet.”

“Fall, Miss Brodie?—What do you mean by falling?”

“Hoot, sir, ye ken naething. Wasn’t it by fa’in’ that Nelly M‘Whinnie got a man? I’ll tell you how. She used to walk by hersel, an’ whenever she came near a handsome sharpshooter, or gentleman chield that she wished to pick acquaintance wi’, she just pretended to gie a bit stumble, or to fall on one knee or so; and then, ye ken, the gentleman couldna do less than rin to lift her up, and ask if she was hurt, and so forth; an’ then she wad answer so sweet, and thank him so kindly, that the man must sae something civil; and then she would say, ‘Oh, sir, you are so obliging and so polite an’ just in this way she made the pleasantest acquaintances, an’ got a man by it, or a’ was done.”

“Ha, ha, ha! That is perfectly ridiculous, and hardly credible,” said I.

“Na, ye needna laugh in the least,” continued Miss Brodie, “for I’m telling you the truth; and didna the same lass break her arm wi’ her fa’ing?”

“Break her arm, Miss Brodie! Are you serious?”

“It’s perfectly true, Mr Balgownie. Ye see, sir, she was walking on speculation, in her usual manner, in the Green o’ Glasgow it was, as I believe, and somewhere near the Humanity House, by the side of the Clyde, when she observed three strappin’ fellows come blattering up behind her. This was an opportunity not to be let pass, an’ the day being frosty, an’ the road slightly slippery, afforded an excellent pretence for a stumble at least. Weel, sir, just when the gentlemen had got within three yards o’ her, Nellie gied a bit awkward sprauchle, and shot out a leg; but whether Nellie had mista’en her distance, or whether the men were up to her fa’in’ system, an’ wadna bite, never clearly appeared; but they werena forward in time to catch the lassie in their arms as she expected; an’ after a sprauchle an’ a stumble, down she came in good earnest, an’ broke her arm.”

“Ha, ha, ha! I would rather hear that story than any one of Mr Dumdrone’s best discourses,” said I. “But are you sure it’s true?”

“Did I no see Miss M‘Whinnie, the time she was laid up, wi’ the broken arm in a sling? But you see, sir, the gentlemen did gather round her when they saw she was fairly whomel’t, an’ gathered her up, nae doubt; an’ as soon as she got better o’ the broken arm, she took to fa’in’ again. But I believe she never gaed farther than a stoyter or a stumble after that, till ance she got a man.”

“And so, Miss Brodie, she did fall into a marriage?”

“Ou, ’deed did she, sir. A fallow caught her at last, as she fell; and there was nae mair walking the Trongate wi’ the lang parasol, like a bellman’s staff. But in the time o’ the sharpshooters and the cavalry, and the Merchants’ corps, and a’ the corps, I mind as weel as yesterday, how a great illness took place among the young women, and neither pills nor boluses were found to be of the least service, an’ the doctors were perfectly puzzled and perplexed, and knew not what to recommend in this general distress. But the young women, ane and a’, prescribed for themselves, from an inward understanding o’ their complaints, and nothing, they said, would cure the prevailing sickness but a walk in the morning in the Green o’ Glasgow. Now, sir, it happened so providential, the whole time that this influenza lasted, that the Sharpshooter corps, and the Cavalry corps, and the Trades’ corps, and the Merchants’ corps, and the Grocers’ corps, and a’ the corps were exercising in the Green o’ Glasgow, where a’ the young ladies were walking for their health. It was so beautiful and good for the ladies, when they were sick, to see thae sharpshooters, how they marched, wheeled, an’ whooped, an’ whooped, an’ ran this way, and that way, an’ whiles they fired on their knees, an’ then they would clap down on their backs, and fire at us, puir chields. And then, ye see, just when we had gotten an appetite for our breakfasts by our walk, the corps would be dismissed, and then the volunteer lads couldna but spread themselves among the ladies that were outside, just to spier after their complaints; an’ then naething but link arm wi’ the sharpshooters an’ the other corps, dizzens in a row, an’ be escorted hame to breakfast. Many a lass that was quite poorly and badly was relieved by these morning walks, and are now married women. Ah, thae were pleasant days, Mr Balgownie!”

“But, dear me, Miss Brodie,” I said, “how did it happen that you were allowed to remain single all this time? Had you no wooers at all?”

“What do you mean, sir, by asking me such a question? Nae wooers! I tell you I had dizzens o’ lads running after me night and day, in thae pleasant times.”

“Well, but I don’t mean in the common way. I mean, had you any real sweetheart—any absolute offer?”

“Offer, sir! Indeed I had more than one. Wasna there Peter Shanks, the hosier, that perfectly plagued me, the dirty body? But ye see, sir, I couldna bear the creature, though he had twa houses in Camlachie; for, to tell you my weakness, sir, my heart was set upon—”

“Upon whom, Miss Brodie? Ah, tell me!”

“Upon a sharpshooter.”

“Bless my heart! But if you would just let me hear the tale.”

“Ah, sir, it’s a pitiful story,” said Miss Peggy, becoming lachrymose.

“I delight in pitiful stories,” said I, taking out my handkerchief.

“Weel, sir,—‘love and grief are sair to bide,’ as the sang says, and my heart wasna made o’ the adamant rock; so ye see, sir, there was a lad they ca’d Pate Peters, an’ he was in the sharpshooters; and he sat just quite near me in Mr Dumdrone’s kirk, for ye see, sir, it was there we fell in. Oh, sir, Pate was a beautiful youth: teeth like the ivory, an’ eyes as black as the slae, and cheeks as red as the rose.”

“Ah, Miss Brodie, Miss Brodie!”

“An’ when he was dressed in his sharpshooter’s dress,—ah, sir, but my heart was aye too, too susceptible. I will not trouble you, sir, wi’ the history o’ our love, which would have come to the most happy termination, but for a forward cutty of a companion o’ mine, of the name of Jess Barbour. But there can be nae doubt but Pate Peters was a true lover o’ me; for he used to come hame wi’ me frae Mr Dumdrone’s preaching whenever Jess wasna there, and I’m sure his heart burned wi’ a reciprocal flame. But ae night, sir,—I’ll ne’er forget that night!—I was coming hame frae a tea-drinking at Mr Warps’, the manufacturer on the other side o’ Clyde, when just as I got to the end o’ the wooden brig next the Green, wha does I meet but Pate Peters!

“Weel, sir, it was a moonlight night,—just such as lovers walk about in, an’ Pate and me linked arm-in-arm, walked and walked, round the Green o’ Glasgow. We stopped by the side o’ Clyde, an’ lookit up at the moon.

“‘Miss Peggy,’ says he, ‘do ye see that moon?’

“‘Yes,’ says I.

“‘That changeable moon,’ says he, ‘is the emblem o’ falseness in love.’

“‘Yes, Mr Peters,’ said I, an’ my heart was ready to melt.

“‘But I will never be false in love!’ says he.

“‘I hope you will be true until death,’ says I.

“‘To be sure I will, Miss Brodie,’ says he; these were his very words.”

“Ah, Miss Peggy,” I said, as I saw she was unable to get on, “that is quite affecting.”

“But he talked so sensibly, sir,” continued Miss Brodie; “he spoke even of marriage as plain as a man could speak. ‘Miss Peggy,’ said he, ‘do you remember what Mr Dumdrone, the minister, said last Sabbath? He said marriage was made in heaven; and he said that Solomon, the wisest of men, expressly said, in the Proverbs, he that getteth a good wife getteth a good thing’—Was not that plain speaking, Mr Balgownie?”

“Nothing could be plainer, Miss Peggy; but I’m interested in your story.”

“Weel, sir, he came home to the door wi’ me, and—it’s not for me to tell the endearments that passed between us!—So, sir, I went to sleep wi’ a light heart, an’ was for several days considering and contriving about our marriage, when—what do you think?—in three weeks, word was brought to me that the false and cruel man was married to Jess Barbour!”

“Bless me, Miss Brodie, what a woful story! It’s just like a romance?”

“So it is, Mr Balgownie,” said Miss Peggy, all blubbered with weeping. “It’s perfect romantic. Ye see, sir, what trials I had in love! But you’re not going away in that manner, sir?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Brodie,” said I, taking my hat; “I’m not able to stand it any longer.”

“You’re a feeling man,” said she, shaking me by the hand; “you’re a man o’ sweet feeling, Mr Balgownie.”

“You’re an ill-used woman, Miss Brodie!—Adieu, Miss Brodie!”—_The Dominie’s Legacy._

THE DEATH OF A PREJUDICE.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

At a late hour one Saturday evening, as, I was proceeding homewards along one of the crowded streets of our metropolis, I felt myself distinctly tapped on the shoulder, and, on looking round, a bareheaded man, dressed in a nightgown, thus abruptly questioned me—

“Did you ever, sir, thank God for preserving your reason?”

On my answering in the negative—

“Then do it now,” said he, “for I have lost mine.”

Notwithstanding the grotesque accompaniments of the man’s dress, and his undignified face, disfigured by a large red nose, the above appeal to me was striking and sublimely pathetic; and when he bowed to me with an unsteady fervour and withdrew immediately, I could not resist following him, which I was the more inclined to do, as he seemed to be labouring under some frenzy, and might need to be looked after.

There was another reason for my being particularly interested in him: I had seen him before; and his appearance and interruption had once before given me great disgust. It was thus:—On my return to Scotland, after an absence of five years, which I had passed in the West Indies, I found the one beloved dead, for whom had been all my hopes and all my good behaviour through those long years. When all the world, with the hard severity of truth and prudence, frowned on the quick reckless spirit of my youth, she alone had been my gentle prophetess, and sweetly told that my better heart should one day, and that soon, give the lie to the cold prudential foreboders. For her sweet sake, I tried to be as a good man should be; and when I returned to my native land, it was all for her, to bring her by that one dearest, closest tie, near to the heart which (I speak not of my own vanity, but to her praise) she had won to manly bearing. O God! O God! I found her in the dust,—in her early grave; no more to love me, no more to give me her sweet approval. It was then my melancholy pleasure to seek the place where last we parted by the burn in the lonely glen. As I approached the place, to throw myself down on the very same green spot on which she had sat when last we met, I found it occupied by a stranger; I withdrew, but to return the following evening. I found the sacred spot again preoccupied by the same stranger, who, independent of his coarse red face, his flattened, ill-shaped, bald head (for he sat looking into his hat), and the undignified precaution of his coat-skirts carefully drawn aside, to let him sit on his outspread handkerchief, disgusted me by the mere circumstance of his unseasonable appearance in such a place, which had thus twice interrupted the yearning of my heart, to rest me there one hour alone. This second night also I hastily withdrew. I came a third night, and found a continuance of the interruption. The same individual was on the same spot, muttering to himself, and chucking pebbles into a dark pool of the burn immediately before him. I retired, cursing him in my heart, and came no more back to the place.

Now, in the frenzied man who accosted me, as above-mentioned, on the street by night, I recognized at once the individual who had so interrupted me some months before, in the lonely glen by the side of the burn; and, in addition to the reason already given for my wish now to follow him, there was the superadded anxiety to be kind to a man in such distress, whom, perhaps in the very beginning of his sorrows, I had heartily and unreasonably cursed. I was still following him, when a woman, advanced in life, rushed past me, and, laying hold of him, cried loudly for assistance. This was easily found in such a place; and the poor man was, without delay, forcibly carried back to her house, where, on my following, I learned that he was a lodger with the woman, that he was sick of a brain fever, and that, during a brief interval in her watching of him, he had made his escape down-stairs, and had got upon the street. I was now deeply interested in the poor fellow, and determined to see him again the following morning, which I did, and found him much worse. On making inquiry at the woman of the house respecting him, she told me that he had no relatives in this country, though he was a Scotchman; that he was a half-pay officer in his Majesty’s service; that he did not seem to want money; that he was a noble-hearted, generous man. She added, moreover, that he had lodged in her house two months; and that, previous to his illness, he had spoken of a friend whom he expected every day to visit him from a distant part of the country, to make arrangements for their going together to the continent.

In two days more, poor Lieutenant Crabbe (such, I learned, was his name and commission) died; and, by a curious dispensation of Providence, I ordered the funeral, and laid in the grave the head of the man whom, only a few months before, I had cursed as a disgusting, impertinent fellow. The alien-mourners had withdrawn from the sodded grave, and I had just paid the sexton for this last office to poor Crabbe, when the woman in whose house he had died advanced with a young man, apparently an officer, in whose countenance haste and unexpected affliction were strongly working. “That’s the gentleman, sir,” said the woman, pointing to myself.

“Very well, good woman,” said the stranger youth, whose tones bespoke him an Englishman, and whose voice, as he spoke, seemed broken with deep sorrow. “I will see you again, within an hour, at your house, and settle all matters.” The woman, who had doubtless come to show him the churchyard, hereupon retired; and the young Englishman, coming up to me, grasped me kindly by the hand, whilst his eyes glistened with tears.

“So, sir,” said he, “you have kindly fulfilled my office here, which would to God I had been in time to do myself for poor Crabbe! You did not know him, I believe?”

“No,” I answered.

“But I did,” returned the youth; “and a braver, nobler heart never beat in the frame of a man. He has been most unhappy, poor fellow, in his relatives.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” I could only reply.

“If I could honour you in any way, sir,” rejoined the youth, “which your heart cares for, beyond its own noble joy, in acting the manly and humane part which you have acted towards my poor friend, I would delight to honour you. You are at least entitled to some information about the deceased, which I may give you in a way which will best show the praise and the heart of poor Crabbe. I have some letters here in my pocket, which I brought with me, alas! that he might explain something to me, which they all, more or less contain, relative to a piece of special business; from one of them I shall read an extract, relative to his early history, and the miserable occasion on which he found his long-lost father, whom, after long and patient efforts to trace his parents, he was at length directed to seek in one of your villages in the south of Scotland.”

The particular letter was selected, and the young Englishman, over the grave of his friend, read as follows:—

“I could have wept tears of blood, on finding things as they are with the unhappy old man who is indeed my father. I shall speak to you now as I would commune with my own heart; but yet it must be in mild terms, lest I be wickedly unfilial. Is not this awful? From the very little which I knew of myself ere I came to this country, and from information which I have gathered within these two weeks from the old clergyman of this village, it appears that my mother had died a few days after giving me birth, and that my uncle, who had never been satisfied with the marriage, took me, when very young, from my father, whose unhappy peculiarities led him readily to resign me; gave me my mother’s name, and carried me with him to Holland, where he was a merchant. He was very kind to me in my youth; and, when I was of proper age, bought me a commission in the British army, in which I have served, as you know, for nearly ten years, and which, you also know, I was obliged to leave, in consequence of a wound in one of my ankles, which, subject to occasional swelling, has rendered me quite unfit for travel. My uncle died about three years ago, and left me heir to his effects, which were considerable. Nothing in his papers led me to suppose that my father might yet be living, but I learned the fact from a confidential friend of his, who communicated it to me, not very wisely, perhaps, since he could not tell me even my real name. Bitterly condemning my uncle’s cruel policy, which had not allowed him to hold any intercourse whatever with my father, and which had cut me off from the natural guardian of my life, I hasted over to this country, with no certain hope of success in finding out whose I was, beyond what my knowledge that I bore my mother’s name led me to entertain. I had my own romance connected with the pursuit. I said to myself, that I might have little sisters, who should be glad to own me, unworthy though I was; I might bring comfort to a good old man, whose infirmities of age were canonized by the respect due to his sanctity; who, in short, had nothing of age but its reverence; and who, like another patriarch, was to fall upon my neck, and weep for joy like a little child. Every night I was on board, hasting to this country, I saw my dream-sisters, so kind, so beautiful: they washed my feet; they looked at the scars of my wounds; they were proud of me for having been a soldier, and leaned on my arm as we went to church, before all the people, who were lingering in the sunny churchyard; and the good old man went before, looking oft back to see that we were near behind, accommodating his step to show that he too was one of the party, though he did his best to appear self-denied.

“After getting the clue, as mentioned in my last letter to you, I took a seat in the mail, which I was told would pass at a little distance from the village whither I was bound. Would to God I had set out the day before, that so I might have prevented a horrid thing! The coach was stopped for me at a little bridge, that I might get out; the village, about a mile off, was pointed out to me; and I was advised to follow a small foot-path, which led along by a rivulet, as being the nearest way to the place in question. Twilight was now beginning to deepen among the elms that skirted the path into which I had struck; and in this softest hour of nature, I had no other thought than that I was drawing near a home of peace. I know not whether the glen which I was traversing could have roused such indescribable emotions within me, had I not guessed that scenes were before me which my childhood must have often seen; but every successive revelation of the pass up which I was going,—pool after pool ringed by night insects, and shot athwart on the surface by those unaccountable diverging lines, so fine, so rapid, which may be the sport too of invisible insects,—stream after stream, with its enamelled manes of cool green velvet, which anon twined themselves out of sight beneath the rooted brakes,—one shy green nook in the bank after another, overwaved by the long pensile boughs of trees, and fringed with many a fairy mass of blent wild flowers;—all these made me start, as at the melancholy recurrence of long-forgotten dreams. And when the blue heron rose from the stream where he had been wading, and with slow flagging wing crossed and re-crossed the water, and then went up the darkened valley to seek his lone haunt by the mountain spring, I was sure I had seen the very same scene, and the very same bird, some time in my life before. My dear Stanley, you cannot guess why I dwell so long on these circumstances! For it enters my very heart with anguish, to tell the moral contrast to my hopes, and to these peaceful accompaniments of outward nature. It must be told. Listen to what follows.

“I had not walked more than a quarter of a mile up the valley, when I heard feeble cries for assistance, as of some one in the last extremity, drowning in the stream. I made what haste I could, and, on getting round a sloping headland of the bank, which shot forward to the edge of the rounding water, I found myself close upon a company of fellows, habited like Christmas mummers, apparently amusing themselves with the struggles of a person in the water, who, even as he secured a footing, and got his head above, was again pushed down by his cruel assailants. I was upon them ere they were aware, and reached one fellow, who seemed particularly active, an excellent thwack with my ratan, from which, however, recovering, he took to his heels, followed by his associates. My next business was to relieve the object of their cruelty; but this was no easy task; for, being probably by this time quite exhausted, he had yielded to the current; and, ere I could reach him, was rolled down into a large black pool. He was on the point of sinking for ever, when I caught hold of him—good God! an old man—by his gray hair, and hauled him out upon the bank, where he lay to all appearance quite dead. Using such means as were in my power to assist in restoring suspended animation, I succeeded so well, that ere long the poor old man showed symptoms of returning life. I looked round me in this emergency, but there was neither house nor living person to be seen; so what could I do, but take the old, bare headed man on my back, and carry him to the village, which I knew was not far off. And there, God in heaven! who should I find him to be, but my own father!

“To you, Stanley, I can say everything which I dare whisper to my own heart; but this is a matter which even my own private bosom tries to eschew. It seems—it seems that the unhappy old man is narrow-hearted—a miser, as they term it here; and that for some low petty thefts he was subjected by some fellows of the village to the above ducking. I know well, Stanley, you will not despise me for all this, nor because I must now wear my own name of Crabbe, which I am determined, in justice to that unhappy old father, henceforth to do. On the contrary, you will only advise me well how to win upon his harder nature, and bring him round to more liberal habits. Listen to the following scheme of my own for the same purpose, which struck me one evening as I sat ‘chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,’ beside the pool whence I rescued the poor old man. For indeed—indeed, I must grapple with the realities of the moral evil, however painful or disgusting. That being is my father; and no one can tell how much his nature may have been warped and kept perverse by the loss of the proper objects of natural affection. Is it not my bounden duty, then, to be found to him, and by my constant presence, to open his heart, which has been too much constringed by his lonely situation? I shall hedge him round, in the first place, from insults; I shall live with him, in his own house, all at my expense; and our household economy shall be as liberal as my finances will permit. I shall give much money in charity, and make him the dispenser of it; for our best feelings are improved by outward practice. Whenever I may be honoured by an invitation to a good man’s table, the slightest hint to bring him with me shall be taken advantage of; and he _shall_ go, that the civilities of honourable men may help his self-respect, and thereby his virtue. Now, may God aid me in this moral experiment, to try it with discretion, to make the poor old man doubly mine own!”

“From this extract,” said the young Englishman, carefully folding up his deceased friend’s letter, “you will see something of the exalted nature of poor Ramsay—Crabbe, I should say, according to his own decided wish. I may here mention, that the death of the old man, which took place not many weeks after the above brutalities were inflicted upon him, and which, in all likelihood, was hastened by the unhappy infliction, never allowed his son to put in practice those noble institutes of moral discipline, which he had devised, to repair and beautify the degraded fountain of his life. I doubt not that this miserable end of his old parent, and the sense of his own utter loneliness, in respect of kindred, preyed upon the generous soldier, and helped to bring on that frenzy of fever, which so soon turned his large, his noble heart, into dust and oblivion. Peace be with his ashes; and everlasting honour wait upon his name!—To-morrow morning, sir,” continued the youth, “I set out again for England, and I should like to bear your name along with me, coupled with the memory which shall never leave me, of your disinterested kindness towards my late friend. I talk little of thanks; for I hold you well repaid, by the consciousness of having done the last duties of humanity for a brave and good man.”

According to the Englishman’s request, I gave him my name, and received his in return; and, shaking hands over the grave of poor Crabbe, we parted.

“Good God!” said I to myself, as I left the churchyard, “it appears, then, that at the very moment when this generous soldier was meditating a wise and moral plan to win his debased parent to honour and salvation—at that very moment I was allowing my heart to entertain a groundless feeling of dislike to him.” My second more pleasing reflection was, that this unmanly prejudice had easily given way. How could it last, under the awful presence of Death, who is the great apostle of human charity? Moreover, from the course of incidents above mentioned, I have derived this important lesson for myself:—Never to allow a hasty opinion, drawn from a man’s little peculiarities of manner or appearance, particularly from the features of his face, or the shape of his head, as explained by the low quackeries of Lavater and Spurzheim, to decide unfavourably against a man, who, for aught I truly know, may be worthy of unqualified esteem.

ANENT AULD GRANDFAITHER, AUNTIE BELL, MY AIN FAITHER, &c.

BY D. M. MOIR.

The sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;
But he has tint the blithe blink he had
In my ain countree.
_Allan Cunningham._

Auld Grandfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or aught year auld; yet I mind him full weel; it being a curious thing how early such matters take haud of ane’s memory. He was a straught, tall, auld man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hinging down about his haffets; a Roman nose, and twa cheeks blooming through the winter of his lang age like roses, when, puir body, he was sand-blind with infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alane; but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door, leaning forit his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in feeling the beams of God’s ain sun beaking on him. A blackbird, that he had tamed, hung above his head in a whand cage of my faither’s making; and he had taken a pride in learning it to whistle twa or three turns of his ain favourite sang, “Ower the Water to Charlie.”

I recollect, as well as yesterday, that on the Sundays he wore a braid bannet with a red worsted cherry on the tap o’t; and had a single-breasted coat, square in the tails, of light Gilmerton blue, with plaited white buttons, bigger than crown pieces. His waistcoat was low in the neck, and had flap pouches, wherein he kept his mull for rappee, and his tobacco box. To look at him, wi’ his rig-and-fur Shetland hose pulled up ower his knees, and his big glancing buckles in his shoon, sitting at our doorcheek, clean and tidy as he was kept, was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on earth, to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld. Puir body, mony a bit Gibraltar-rock and gingerbread did he give to me, as he would pat me on the head, and prophesy that I would be a great man yet; and sing me bits of auld sangs, about the bloody times of the Rebellion and Prince Charlie. There was nothing that I liked so well as to hear him set a-going with his auld warld stories and lilts; though my mother used sometimes to say, “Wheesht, grandfaither, ye ken it’s no canny to let out a word of thae things; let byganes be byganes, and forgotten.” He never liked to gie trouble, so a rebuke of this kind would put a tether to his tongue for a wee; but when we were left by ourselves, I used aye to egg him on to tell me what he had come through in his far-away travels beyond the broad seas; and of the famous battles he had seen and shed his precious blood in; for his pinkie was hacked off by a dragoon of Cornel Gardiner’s down by at Prestonpans, and he had catched a bullet with his ankle over in the north at Culloden. So it was no wonder that he liked to crack about these times, though they had brought him muckle and no little mischief, having obliged him to skulk like another Cain among the Highland hills and heather, for many a long month and day, homeless and hungry. Not dauring to be seen in his own country, where his head would have been chacked off like a sybo, he took leg-bail in a ship, over the sea, among the Dutch folk; where he followed out his lawful trade of a cooper, making girrs for the herring barrels, and so on; and sending, when he could find time and opportunity, such savings from his wages as he could afford, for the maintenance of his wife and small family of three helpless weans, that he had been obliged to leave, dowie and destitute, at their native home of pleasant Dalkeith.

At lang and last, when the breeze had blown ower, and the feverish pulse of the country began to grow calm and cool, auld grandfaither took a longing to see his native land; and, though not free of jeopardy from king’s cutters on the sea, and from spies on shore, he risked his neck over in a sloop from Rotterdam to Aberlady, that came across with a valuable cargo of smuggled gin. When grandfaither had been obliged to take the wings of flight for the preservation of his life and liberty, my faither was a wean at grannie’s breast: so, by her fending,—for she was a canny, industrious body, and kept a bit shop, in the which she sold oatmeal and red herrings, needles and prins, potaties and tape, and cabbage, and what not,—he had grown a strapping laddie of eleven or twelve, helping his two sisters, one of whom perished of the measles in the dear year, to gang errands, chap sand, carry water, and keep the housie clean. I have heard him say, when auld granfaither came to their door at the dead of night, tirling, like a thief o’ darkness, at the window-brod to get in, that he was so altered in his voice and lingo, that no living soul kenned him, not even the wife of his bosom; so he had to put grannie in mind of things that had happened between them, before she would allow my faither to lift the sneck, or draw the bar. Many and many a year, for gude kens how long after, I’ve heard tell that his speech was so Dutchified as to be scarcely kenspeckle to a Scotch European; but Nature is powerful, and in the course of time he came in the upshot to gather his words together like a Christian.

* * * * *

Of my auntie Bell, that, as I have just said, died of measles in the dear year, at the age of fourteen, I have no story to tell but one, and that a short one, though not without a sprinkling of interest.

Among her other ways of doing, grannie kept a cow, and sold the milk round about to the neighbours in a pitcher, whiles carried by my faither, and whiles by my aunties, at the ransom of a ha’penny the mutchkin. Well, ye observe, that the cow ran yield, and it was as plain as pease that the cow was with calf;—Geordie Drowth, the horse-doctor, could have made solemn affidavy on that head. So they waited on, and better waited on, for the prowie’s calving, keeping it upon draff and aitstrae in the byre; till one morning every thing seemed in a fair way, and my auntie Bell was set out to keep watch and ward.

Some of her companions, howsoever, chancing to come by, took her out to the back of the house to have a game at the pallall; and, in the interim, Donald Bogie, the tinkler from Yetholm, came and left his little jackass in the byre, while he was selling about his crockery of cups and saucers and brown plates, on the auld ane, through the town, in two creels.

In the middle of auntie Bell’s game, she heard an unco noise in the byre; and, kenning that she had neglected her charge, she ran round the gable, and opened the door in a great hurry; when, seeing the beastie, she pulled it to again, and fleeing, half out of breath, into the kitchen, cried, “Come away, come away, mother, as fast as ye can. Eh, lyst, the cow’s cauffed,—and it’s a cuddie!”

* * * * *

The weaver he gaed up the stair,
Dancing and singing;
A bunch o’ bobbins at his back,
Rattling and ringing.
_Old Song._

My own faither, that is to say, auld Mansie Wauch, with regard to myself, but young Mansie, with reference to my grandfaither, after having run the errands, and done his best to grannie during his early years, was, at the age of thirteen, as I have heard him tell, bound a ’prentice to the weaver trade, which, from that day and date, for better for worse, he prosecuted to the hour of his death;—I should rather have said to within a fortnight o’t, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever, that cut through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, “How time flies like a weaver’s shuttle!”

He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the physog like myself, though scarcely so weel-faured; with a kind of blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour,—which I scarcely think it would do, but might arise either from the dust of the blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron, from rubbing against and handling the webs of checkit claith in the loom.

Ill would it become me, I trust a dutiful son, to say that my faither was anything but a decent, industrious, hardworking man, doing everything for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all that kenned the value of his worth. As to his decency, few—very few indeed—laid beneath the mools of Dalkeith kirkyard, made their beds there, leaving a better name behind them; and as to industry, it is but little to say that he toiled the very flesh off his bones, ca’ing the shuttle from Monday morning till Saturday night, from the rising up of the sun even to the going down thereof; and whiles, when opportunity led him, or occasion required, digging and delving away at the bit kail-yard, till moon and stars were in the lift, and the dews of heaven that fell on his head were like the oil that flowed from Aaron’s beard, even to the skirts of his garment. But what will ye say there? Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others with a parritch-stick. Of the latter was my faither, for, with all his fechting, he never was able much more than to keep our heads above the ocean of debt. Whatever was denied him, a kind Providence, howsoever, enabled him to do that; and so he departed this life, contented, leaving to my mother and me, the two survivors, the prideful remembrance of being, respectively, she the widow, and me the son, of an honest man. Some left with twenty thousand cannot boast so much; so ilka ane has their comforts.

Having never entered much into public life, further than attending the kirk twice every Sabbath, and thrice when there was evening service, the days of my faither glided over like the waters of a deep river that make little noise in their course; so I do not know whether to lament or rejoice at having almost nothing to record of him. Had Bonaparte as little ill to account for, it would be well this day for him; but, losh me! I had amaist skipped ower his wedding.