Chapter II: Part 2

'This is intolerable,' muttered Mrs. Maclehose; 'I cannot lie and listen to it; 'tis inhuman.' She got out of bed and slid her feet into little slippers that had high red heels and no backs to them. She threw on her wrapper, and taking the rush-light in her hand, opened the door softly and listened. The passage was dark and cold. To her left, a wooden stair led upwards. From that region the sobbing came. ''Tis some fellow-creature in distress,' thought the kind little guest. 'Most likely but some servant-lass in a scrape, and in terror of her mistress: God knows I'd be the same. I'll go up--a comforting word never came amiss.' She set forth, but the red heels made such a tap, tapping on the bare boards, that she was terrified; she slipped off her shoes and crept bare-foot up the stair. She knocked at the first door she came to, which was the right one. The sobbing ceased at once, but no one answered. Then she lifted the latch softly and looked in.

What she saw was the bare little room with the deep-set window where Alison slept with her little brother. The child's cot was beside her bed, empty, for her misbehaviour had deprived her of Jacky. Alison sat up in bed, so dazed by the light that she could scarcely see the little figure with bare feet, and in the pink wrapper, with the neat lacy night-cap over the dark hair. Nancy could much more advantageously see a grey-eyed girl whose face was wet with tears, and whose childish curls tumbled about her neck and ears.

'Now, this is no servant-lass,' said Mrs. Maclehose to herself, and then, aloud, 'My love, don't be frightened, I beg! I heard someone crying in the night, and thought I might be helpful. If 'tis an intrusion, forgive me, and I'll go away.' Alison stared at the speaker with parted lips.

'Who are you?' she murmured. The little lady laughed softly, closed the door gently, and came nearer, shading the light with her hand.

'You may well ask,' said she, 'since I only came to-day! But tell me first who _you_ are--come!'

She deposited the rush-light on a chair, and plumping herself down on the edge of the bed, drew up her little bare feet under her, and peered into Alison's face with the most coaxing, the most beguiling, air in the world.

'I am Alison Graham,' stammered the daughter of the house.

'What! another of them?' cried Mrs. Maclehose, aghast; 'why, I saw a host--four--five--six; you're never a seventh, surely?'

'Yes,' said Alison, dolorously. 'There are seven of us: I am the oldest.'

'But you were not there, or spoken of,' persisted Mrs. Maclehose, scenting a mystery. 'Were you ill, love?' Alison turned her head away.

'No, not ill,' she said, truthful always, 'but--but my mother was not pleased with me, and so I was not down the stair.' Mrs. Maclehose put a soft little hand under Alison's chin, and turned the reluctant face towards her.

'Ah, child!' she said, ''tis some love trouble, never tell me it isn't! Tell me about it, for I am more learned in such than any other person in the world! I am an old friend of your mother's, but not so very old neither, in years, you know; and I am Nancy--Nancy Maclehose, to my sorrow. Now, come, out with it; 'tis a love tale--I know!'

'If it is,' cried Alison, between laughter and tears, but fairly won,' 'tis a love tale with no love in it, ma'am!'

'The very worst kind of all!' cried the confidante, serenely. 'And now, sure, I know all about it without being told! 'Tis some marriage they are forcing upon you for prudence' sake: some suitor--distasteful, old, uncouth--'

'Ah! they've been telling you,' murmured Alison, blushing.

'Not a word--I swear!' cried the vivacious little lady, enchanted at her own sagacity. 'But am I not right? A distasteful marriage, dictated by prudence; a fond heart that will have none of it, but faithful to another--'

'Ah! now there you are at fault,' began Alison, and then paused: why should she, to a perfect stranger, confess the humiliating fact that she had no lover, and no secret romance? But her native honesty prevailed.

'There is no "another,"' she murmured, shame-facedly.

'Some day there will be, then!' said Mrs. Maclehose, cheerfully, 'and you, be faithful to him, child!'

'Faithful?' cried Alison, wide-eyed. 'But I've never seen him, ma'am; he doesn't exist.'

'Ah! he _does_ exist, somewhere--a kindred soul,' said the romantic visitor, nodding sagely. 'He is only waiting for the chance--the divine chance....'

'I doubt he will never get it at The Mains,' said the prosaic Alison.

'Faint heart!' cried Mrs. Maclehose. 'Believe in Love, the greatest of all the gods!'

Alison, never thus adjured before, looked doubtful.

'My mother and father tell me not to think about love,' she said, hesitatingly; 'they say 'tis a delusion.'

'They blaspheme, child!' cried the visitor, with energy. ''Tis love that has wrought me all the woe in my own span of life, God wot, yet I believe in him--believe in him still, with all my heart and soul.... But tell me, love,' she went on, breaking off in her rhapsody, 'who is it they would tie you to?'

''Tis a Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, in Fife,' said Alison, hanging her head. Mrs. Maclehose uttered a little trill of laughter.

'Oh, never, never, Mr. Cheape!' she tittered. 'Don't tell me 'tis the inevitable, the invincible, the inveterate Jimmy Cheape! ...'

'Then you know him?' cried Alison, eagerly.

'Oh, Lord, child!' said Mrs. Maclehose, 'who doesn't, dear? He has stumped the streets of Edinburgh, and every sizeable town in the country, in search of a wife this twenty years and more! Jimmy Cheape! No, Alison (for you'll let me call you Alison? I like you, child, and will love you, I know--'tis all arranged by our Fates). No, no! 'tis not you that are destined for Mr. Cheape; never think it!'

'I would not think it, if I could help it,' said the literal Alison. 'But 'tis all arranged--indeed it is--and my mother set upon it in her mind, and nothing will turn her.'

'_I_ will turn her!' cried the lively little grass-widow, with her charming smile and a flash of her dark eyes.

'Will you?' said Alison, solemnly, leaning forward and gazing at her new friend with devouring, wondering eyes. 'How?'

A clock struck two. It was a timely diversion, and Mrs. Maclehose jumped down from the bed on to her little bare feet.

'Two of the clock!' she cried, 'and me with a cold creeping down the spine of my back like a rill of ice-water! I must away to my bed, love.'

'Ah!' cried Alison, 'how selfish of me to have kept you in a cold room, talking.'

''Twas I kept myself, dear,' said the visitor, lightly. 'Not the first foolish thing I have done in my life, or likely to be the last, either. Will you call me, Nancy, child, and kiss me good-night?'

'Sure,' cried Alison, 'I think you are a dream, a fairy, or an angel!' The dream put out its arms, took Alison's head into their embrace, and kissed her curls.

'We'll meet to-morrow,' she said, 'and then you'll see I'm no dream.' Then she paddled over the cold bare boards on those little feet, and casting a last bright look over her shoulder to Alison in the bed, she was gone. Alison watched the light in the crack under the door, until it grew fainter and fainter, and then disappeared. Then, not a little comforted, she turned round in her nest, and slept like a child.

The next morning, Alison ventured to take her usual place in the household, and was met with smiles.

'Now you are come to your senses, Alison,' her mother said, 'and you will live to thank me that I showed you the way. See here, now,' she went on, 'this fine Edinburgh madam that has come here while you were up yonder, has gotten an influenza that will keep her in her bed for a week, I'm thinking. Not that I grudge it her either, for it aye goes clean against the grain wi' me to have sheets soiled for the one night; I'd far sooner get the week's work out o' them. You must take madam's breakfast up, though, and make yourself civil, Ally. She was aye a clever, going-about body, Nancy, fine and gleg at the dressing of herself up. 'Tis a God-send her coming now. She'll set us in the fashions for your wedding, and show us how to sort my bonny silk.'

Alison shuddered; but she prepared the tray for the visitor's breakfast, and proceeded to take it upstairs, her heart beating fast with curiosity.

Under the flowered curtains of the best bed a little figure, still huddled in the pink wrapper, was gripped in the agueish shivering of an influenza cold. It started up, however, with unimpaired liveliness when Alison appeared.

'Ah, child,' she cried, 'I knew it would be you! Come, let us look at each other in the broad daylight. Why, what a Juno it is!' looking Alison up and down. 'What a great, big girl, to be topped by those baby curls.'

Alison came to the bed, pulled the tumbled coverlet straight, and shook up the pillows, with her sensible literal air.

'You are feverish, ma'am,' she said, 'and shouldn't talk. Here is a warm shawl my mother sends to hap about you, and she says, please, will you keep still and warm, and she will bring you a hot posset presently.' The invalid laughed in the grave, girlish face.

'Oh, Solomon!' she said, 'and do you expect me to obey your good mother, and do the wise thing at the wise moment? You little know poor Nannie yet.' Her dark, bright eyes grew full of sadness for a moment, and she had the air of some pretty, soft, appealing little animal--a kitten, perhaps--checked in its play by a hurt. 'I want to talk,' she said, 'to talk, and talk, and talk. We must, you know, Alison, so as to see how we are to outwit Mr. Cheape.'

'When you are better,' said Alison, 'we will talk. I doubt you will hear plenty of Mr. Cheape,' she added, soberly.

At this moment a diversion occurred of a sufficiently prosaic nature to defer further confidences of a sentimental kind. The driver of the chaise in which Mrs. Maclehose had arrived the night before sent a message to say that he could wait no longer, but must return whence he came, and to that end he must be paid.

'Here, reach me my reticule, dear,' said the invalid to Alison, and she hunted in the dainty velvet bag for her purse, and in the purse for the necessary coin. This, however, did not appear to be instantly forthcoming. A slight frown ruffled her forehead, and the faintest flush rose on her cheek. ''Tis most provoking, Ally,' she said. 'I have run short. Will you run and ask your father, love, to pay the man for me, and I will this day write for more money to my cousin Herries, in Edinburgh, who manages my affairs. You see I trusted to be back in town immediately, and that's how I've let myself run into so beggarly a state.' She laughed lightly; her embarrassment was gone.

Alison duly ran down to her father, who paid two guineas to the driver, cocking his eye to himself as he did so.

'Women's debts!' he remarked within his own mind. 'It's little likely I'll ever see the colour of _that_ again.' And it may here be mentioned, as a little matter strictly between him and the reader, that he never did.

*CHAPTER VII.*

As the sagacious mistress of The Mains had foretold, the influenza kept Mrs. Maclehose in bed for a week. Fever succeeded ague, and cold and headache followed in their wake, and it was, for some days, a very sick little woman indeed, that tossed and tumbled between the linen sheets, under the flowered hangings of the best room. Alison waited upon her with a patience and prudence that had presently their own effect upon the volatile nature of the invalid; these solid, good qualities in the country girl seemed to have a singular fascination for the little town lady, in whose character, it is to be feared, they were conspicuously lacking. Alison, on her part, felt also curiously drawn to her guest. This delicate little personage, with all her pretty belongings, her petulant temper, and pretty ways, was a new type at The Mains. Simple Alison felt it a privilege to wait upon one so fine and dainty. She could lift her in her bed as though she were a child, and both her tiny hands could lie in Alison's one palm, and be spanned by a finger and thumb. And yet Alison felt there were more wits in one finger tip of this little lady than perhaps in the heads of everybody else at The Mains put together. Were there not poetry books upon her dressing-table, and did she not, indeed, write poetry herself? Alison had been for one year at a young ladies' seminary in the town of Stirling; but even the 'finish' imparted by this experience, could not diminish in her a sense of awe at the literary accomplishments of her new friend. But I think it was the storming of her confidence on that first night of their acquaintance that really impressed Alison with a sense of the new-comer's cleverness and power. To the intensely reserved, there is something almost preternatural in those qualities in another which overcome and overleap that reserve. And then Mrs. Maclehose knew all about Mr. Cheape! Secretly, but not very hopefully, for Alison's was not a sanguine nature, she hoped for deliverance from her threatened bondage, a deliverance that the cleverness of her new friend should effect.

The first moment she could sit up in her bed, Mrs. Maclehose demanded pens and paper, and said she must write letters.

'Could I not write for you, anything that's necessary?' Alison asked. 'You are still so weak.' The invalid shook her head and smiled.

'Ally,' she said, 'you don't know, or you don't realise, I expect, that I'm a mother, and there are my two poor little men all alone in Edinburgh town, wondering what has happened to their mammy.'

'Your two little boys,' cried Alison, eagerly. 'I'd like to know about them. Are they bigger than Jacky?'

'Lud, child, yes, I should think so!' said the fond mother, with, perhaps, a slightly-discontented air. 'Monsters of eight and ten years old! At least, Willy is a well-grown monster, the eldest. The younger is small; he's in but a crazy state of health, God help him! I know not what to make of it.' She moved uncomfortably in the bed, as if the thought goaded her. 'For the bairns, or their servant, Jean, I daresay you could scratch me a line, Ally,' she went on, 'but I've other and more solemn letters in hand. You must know I have one most sapient and noble cousin, Archibald Herries, a writer to His Majesty's Signet, who lives in the town, and to him must I render grave and solemn account of myself, with a prayer for monies, Ally, of the which I stand in parlous need at the present moment.'

'To be sure I could not write _that_ letter,' Alison acquiesced. Her patient, with a chin supported on a little white hand, was regarding her attentively. 'Do you know, Ally,' said she, 'you are rather like my cousin Archie yourself, a sort of Solomon, all the virtues and all the wisdoms and sobrieties combined.'

'Then you don't seem to like him much,' said Alison, with a pout.

'May God forgive me for an ungrateful and most base wretch, if I do not!' cried her friend, with unexpected energy. 'For of all the debts dependent women ever owed to protecting man, mine to my cousin Archie is the greatest. I should have been in the street, and my poor babes in the gutter long since, but for him. And that's the truth, Ally, and the plain truth. He who is my natural protector, bound to me by all the most sacred laws of God and man, chose to desert me, and leave me to the care, and even the charity, of others. God be the judge between us! I swear I was guiltless in that matter, and indeed guilt has never been imputed tome. Do you believe it, Ally?'

'Sure, I believe it with all my heart and soul,' cried Alison, with kindling eyes.

'And there spoke an enthusiasm and a trusting warmth of nature that were never Archie's, dear,' said Mrs. Maclehose, laughing once more. 'No, you are not like him, love. 'Tis for a coldness of nature, a perpetual suspicion that I blame him. He's not a kindred soul, and we are ever tacitly at war. God knows poor Nancy is no saint. But he misjudges me ever, and the injustice pricks. But there, that's enough. Let me get finished with this proper, virtuous, tiresome letter.'

In the long evenings of convalescence this seemingly ill-assorted pair were drawn closer and closer together in the links of their sudden friendship.

'Sing to me as you sing to Jacky, love,' Nancy would say, nestling down among the pillows. And in the gloaming of the quiet room, Alison, folding her hands in her lap, would sing in her sweet deep-throated voice those peculiarly poignant ballads of love and longing and loyalty, with which, since the memorable ''45,' the whole of Scotland was flooded.

'Where got you that trick of song, love?' Mrs. Maclehose would ask, sentimentally, 'since you say you have never loved?'

'I had one dozen of singing lessons at the school,' replied the ever-practical Alison, 'and I had begun to the harp before I left.'

'Was it that year of school made you different to your sisters, think you, Ally?'

'Am I different?' asked Alison, wonderingly.

'Oh, I would not miscall the honest lasses,' cried Nancy, 'they are all good and sweet, I am sure. But about you there is a difference--a gentler accent, a shade of softness--I know not what.'

''Twas a very genteel school, indeed,' said Alison, respectfully. 'But it was too dear. So I only stayed but the one year, instead of three, and poor Kate and Maggie never got at all.'

'You'd be a treasure, with that "wood-note wild" of yours to our bard, Ally!'

'Our bard?' inquired Alison, not at all certain what a bard might be.

'Ay,' said Nancy, with a kindling eye. 'Our bard, but not ours only! The world's poet--the singer for all time, and for all hearts--Robert Burns! Child, haven't you heard of him, the ploughman poet?'

'A ploughman?' said Alison, conjuring up the vision of one Donald, the ploughman at The Mains, with his stubbly beard and bowed legs.

'A ploughman, yes,' cried Nancy, 'but what a ploughman! He has had the town at his feet, Ally! From the highest to the lowest in the land, all men do him honour. And as for the women, child, they are ready to kill each other for a glint of his eye! The very duchesses hang about him, and there's not a titled lady that will not sorn upon and flatter him to get him to her tea-table. Never has the town gone so mad about a man before!'

'And have you often seen him?' asked Alison.

'To my lasting sorrow and vexation, never!' cried Nancy, vehemently; 'and, oh, Ally, 'tis the one burning wish--the longing of my heart! And there's that insensible wretch, my cousin Herries, who has the entry almost everywhere the poet goes, and last winter saw him almost nightly, and he scorns the privilege that I would sell my soul for! Him have I plagued, and others have I plagued, to get me known to my idol; but in vain, as yet! It will come, though! Never was so ardent a wish that did not bring its own fulfilment, ay, and its own punishment too, sometimes,' she added, with a sudden wistfulness. 'Ally, _you_ never have these passions, these rebellious cravings, do you, child?'

'Sure, never,' said Alison, soberly, 'and never would, I think.'

'But I'm made up of them!' cried the little woman, 'and nothing stays me--no scruple, no prudence--when they are hot within me! Know this of your friend, Ally, and be warned in time. I wish you to know me as I really am. Nature has been kind to me in some respects, but one essential she has denied me utterly: it is that instantaneous perception of the fit and unfit, which is so useful in the conduct of life. But you are rich in this, Ally, and that is why I think that you might be my friend, and sometimes save me from myself.'

'I will be your friend,' said Alison, softly, 'though, sure, there never was a humbler one!'

Thus would these two swear an eternal friendship, over and over again. Alison heard more, also--heard a great deal, indeed, about the wondrous ploughman poet, whose image seemed to possess the ardent imagination of her friend. There was a certain little brownish, roughly-bound book amongst those which were wont to litter the coverlet of the best bed. It had a dog's-eared and most ungenteel appearance, but it was the Kilmarnock edition of the poems of Robert Burns, and had its letters been in gold and its binding of scented satin, it would not, in the then inflamed state of public adulation of the poet, have been too richly dressed. To the contents of this little book Alison listened, with a sort of tingling in her blood. She had a nature full of unuttered music, and she had been born and bred among those simple country scenes of her native land, whence the poet drew his inspiration. So he became, as he had become to thousands of his tongue-tied, voiceless, and strenuous countrymen and countrywomen, the very mouthpiece of her soul; and thus, long before a tangled thread from this man's chequered destiny became in-woven with the simple web of her own life, Alison got her first knowledge of Robert Burns.

But, in the meantime, the gay little invalid at The Mains, announced herself cured, and, in a cloud of pink wrapper and enveloping shawl, tottered from bed to the arm-chair by the fire.

'And, now, Ally,' she cried, 'now that my spirits are come again, now for your good mother and Mr. Cheape!'

*CHAPTER VIII.*

The task which the romantic Mrs. Maclehose had set herself in regard to Alison, was one entirely after her own heart. She considered herself a past-mistress in all things relating to the tender passion; and though she herself had met with signal and disastrous shipwreck amid the shoals of matrimony, there was nothing in life that interested her like affairs of the heart. On this occasion, indeed, it was the marring, and not the making, of a match, that she had in hand. But what mission could be more legitimate, what endeavour more congenial, than that of helping to liberate a young and interesting friend from the horrid bondage of a loveless contract? That the mistress of The Mains viewed the matter from a different standpoint, she was, of course, aware; in her fertile brain she had arranged a plan of warfare, and went to the battle wreathed in smiles.

The lady of the house herself opened the campaign; by marching into the invalid's room one morning with an armful of silk--the wedding silk, which she spread forth before her guest.

'Ye were ay a handy body at the clothes, Nancy,' she observed. 'Now tell me how to sort this silk for Alison, in the newest modes.'

'Ah! your lovely Alison--how interesting!' murmured the guest, sweetly.

'Alison's well enough,' said her impartial parent, coolly. 'We think her none so lovely here--a good girl, but homely; none the less likely to make a good wife to an honest gentleman.'

'To be sure, to be sure,' said Mrs. Maclehose, in a sprightly tone, 'a little bird has told me of that interesting matter!'

'Then it needna have fashed itself,' said Mrs. Graham, alluding to the feathered purveyor of secrets, 'for I was fair bursting to speak of it myself. 'Tis a most extraordinary piece of good fortune to us, this substantial offer for a tocherless lass like Alison. I cannot get over it yet, myself.'

'And yet, Alison'--said the guest cautiously, 'Alison herself does not speak of the matter with the enthusiasm one expects in a young heart on such an occasion.'

'Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?' inquired Mrs. Graham, contemptuously. 'No, nor sense from glaikit lasses! Alison's a fool, and doesna ken what's good for her. But--' grimly--'I've been teaching her, and she'll learn yet!'

'And the gentleman, ma'am?' inquired Nancy, casually, 'I protest I have hardly heard his name?'

''Tis one most excellent respectit laird,' said Mrs. Graham, swelling visibly with the importance of the announcement, 'one Mr. Cheape of Kincarley in the county of--' But here Nancy broke in upon her with a sharp titter, which, however, she had the appearance of politely suppressing. Mrs. Graham looked at her sharply.

'What's wrong wi' _you_?' she sarcastically inquired.

'Oh, la, ma'am! nothing, I assure you,' said Nancy, in an obvious struggle with a mirthful tendency, 'only Mr. Cheape--ha--ha--' and she tailed off into a giggle.

'What dirty gossip o' the gutters ha' ye got about the man?' said Mrs. Graham, with rising anger and a flashing eye, 'out with your scandal, if ye must!'

'Oh, scandal, lud, ma'am, no!' said Nancy. 'Scandal and poor Jimmy Cheape were never named together, only--'

'Only _what_,' cried the irate lady of The Mains, with a stamp of her big foot.

'Well, ma'am,' said Nancy, coyly, 'I'd sooner bite my tongue out, sure, than that it should meddle with Miss Alison's good fortune. Only, since you ask me, it does surprise me that so distinguished a family as Graham of The Mains shouldn't look higher for their eldest daughter than poor Jimmy Cheape.'

'A distinguished family,' said Mrs. Graham, with a mincing mimicry of her guest's tone, 'a distinguished family wi' seven daughters has to take what it can get. It can ill afford genteel ideas like yours, Nancy,' with somewhat withering significance. 'But what's wrong wi' Mr. Cheape, to _your_ fine notions, may I ask?'

'Well, ma'am, since you _will_ have it,' said Nancy, with an air of reluctant candour, 'simply that he's the leavings of so many other folk,--that's all.'

'Oh, is he, indeed?' said Mrs. Graham, with fine sarcasm.

''Tis so old a tale, indeed,' pursued Nancy, pictorially, 'that it stretches back clean and away beyond my poor memory. But even to my knowledge, Jimmy Cheape has been the rejected of ladies more than I can count, and such as are not worthy to tie the shoes of Miss Alison.'

'Oh, ay!' commented Mrs. Graham, with a vicious eye upon her informant. 'Well?'

'There was Jenny M'Lure,' continued Nancy, with a reminiscent air. 'All of one winter he was after her, not that _she_ would look at him though, and the whole town laughing and looking on. And then there was Molly Baleny--_she_ might have had him, for she was near forty and no beauty, but she put him to the door too. And there was Jean M'Gregor, the cutler's daughter, you know, in Nicol Street; a fine dance she led him, the hussy--for, after all, a laird was a bit of a string to her bow. But, of course, she gave him the go-by in the end, and, in my opinion, she was heartless in the way she held up an old man like that to be the jest of the town: 'twas no womanly behaviour. And there were others, I assure you; he's been on his knees to some girl or another in the public park, 'twas the season's great joke, but I forget her name. 'Tis not that he's wicked or a man of ill-conduct in any way, ma'am--but he is so comical, and no woman will marry a man that is a laughing-stock.'

'Will she no?' said Mrs. Graham, with a darting eye. 'But some'll take a wastrel, and no be able to keep him when they've got him!' Nancy winced visibly under this vigorous blow, from no uncertain arm. 'My woman!' her hostess proceeded, 'if I find you setting Ally against her beau, it's the door you'll be shown, and that in a hurry! She's got to take Mr. Cheape, or she's got to beg. There's some's content to beg, but it'll no be my daughter!' And the lady of The Mains, gathering up the wedding silk, and with her head in the air, marched out of the room.

Nancy sank back in her chair, worsted, she felt, in this encounter.

'Your good mother, Ally,' she said to her friend, when Alison, appeared, 'is somewhat bludgeon-like in her methods of war. My poor little weapons are too fine.' Alison smiled rather wanly.

'Our mother is very strong in her wishes, and the getting of them,' she remarked. ''Tis not easy to move her.'

'Ah, but wait till I get at your father,' cried Nancy, recovering her spirits. 'I'm a wonderful hand with the men.'

'My mother is angry with you now,' said Alison, quietly, 'and with me too. She has put me to the clear-starching with the maids in the laundry, all the afternoon, for fear I should sit with you.'

'Oh, ho!' said Nancy, 'sets the wind in that quarter? But we'll see whose cleverest yet. Keep a good heart, Ally--you'll not marry Mr. Cheape!' But Alison shook her head despondently, and vanished. There were no more twilight talks and songs in the gloamings after that.

Thus matters remained at a standstill for several days, and Nancy chafed under the well-meant but awkward attentions of Kate and Maggie, who were sent to take Alison's place in the best room, about the invalid. She longed to be gone. The dreariness of the country at this season depressed the little townswoman, and she settled a day in her mind for her departure.

'But I'll save that child from her virago of a mother,' she said to herself, with determination, 'even if I have to carry her off with me by force. Though where,' she added, with a little grimace to herself, 'though where I'm to put the big creature, if I take her, Lord only knows! Is there a corner of my garret she can sleep in? Well, Providence must see to that!'

Nancy was never frustrated in a kind action by so paltry a detail. The charming vision of herself in the blotched old mirror--she was at her first _toilette_--smiled back at her approvingly, with the humid sparkle of her long, soft, dark eyes. She was about to try her arts on the laird.

*CHAPTER IX.*

The mistress of The Mains, having mounted the gig, was away to the weekly butter market; Alison was invisible, set, in a distant corner of the house, upon some interminable domestic task. Nancy opened her door, peeped out, and listened; the house was quiet. The laird, she knew, was within and at her mercy, for she had heard he had the rheumatics in his back, and could not go forth in the damp. She tripped away down the passage, and by peeping into one room after another, at last found the library, and the laird in it.

'Here's the den,' she cried, gaily, 'and the lion within!' And she looked up into her host's rugged face with those eyes of hers, which no man in his senses could resist, saving, indeed, a certain legal gentleman, in Edinburgh, of a hard heart.

The laird was in a doleful mood, inclined to those modified views of the desirability of life which are fostered in a man by a touch of lumbago. He stood with his back to the green-washed mantelpiece, with its pessimistic motto, and his countenance was dourly set. It, however, melted in a smile at the sight of his guest, as, indeed, that guest intended that it should.

'And now I'm come to have a confidential talk with you,' said she, ensconcing herself in his big chair, and shaking a finger at him. ''Tis of your daughter, Alison. Laird, it can never be that a man like you gives his daughter to a man like Jimmy Cheape!'

'Sells her, you mean,' said the laird, sourly. He was indeed Alison's father, from whom she had taken her own direct, literal ways of thought and speech. ''Tis true, we have sold the lass.'

'For shame--for shame!' cried Nancy. 'Your best and bonniest! I'll not stand by and see it done. Sure as I'm a woman, I forbid the banns, and will prevent it!'

'You'd need be quick, then,' said the laird, with a short sarcastic laugh. 'Ally doesn't know it, for her mother keeps it quiet as yet, but the man comes to-morrow s'en-night, and expects to find all ready for the marriage.'

'Lord-a-mercy! then we must act promptly, indeed!' said Nancy. 'I'm not without a practical suggestion in the matter, I assure you. Instead of giving the lassie to old Cheape, like a tit-bit to an ogre, give her to me. Do you hear, laird?'

'Ay, I hear,' said the laird, laconically. 'I would if I could, mistress, for my stomach rises at this marriage. But the wife is set on a husband for Ally.'

'I'll get her another,' cried Nancy, eagerly. 'The town's full of sparks, and to spare!'

'A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, the wife would tell you,' said the laird, with a sorry smile. 'Besides, there's money between old Cheape and me. I cannot back out of the bargain now.'

'Tut, he'll never mind the money!' cried Nancy. 'He's been a lender to half the fathers, brothers, uncles, and guardians in Scotland; for 'tis the only way he can get word with a woman. It's second nature to him to get the go-by, and if he misses Ally, he'll take up with one of her sisters in the twinkling of an eye.'

''Tis easy to be speaking to _me_,' said the laird, grimly. 'Why don't you speak to the mistress? 'Tis her business rather than mine, surely?'

'She's not to be moved,' said Nancy, demurely. 'But, laird, that which cannot be done by force, can often be done by guile. Are you willing, in your heart of hearts, to be off with this marriage? I know you are!'

'I am,' said the laird, rather heavily, for his conscience spoke at last.

'Well, give me a hand, and 'twill be done!' said Nancy. 'I leave this place in four days, and a man and chaise from C---- take me to Green Loaning to get the Edinburgh coach--isn't that so? And I must leave this door in the dark of the morning, before six? Isn't that the case?'

'Ay is it,'--said the laird, 'an awkward start.'

'Make it yet an hour awkwarder,' cried Nancy. 'And let no one know the time, save Ally and me, and you. Let the chaise be at the outer gate, and we'll slip down and be off before a soul's stirring. Is the mistress a good sleeper?'

'A gey and heavy sleeper in the mornings, now that she puts on years and weight,' answered the husband, with a sigh. 'She talks enough at night, God wot! But 'tis snoring in the morning, and I that have to rise to bustle the maids from their beds. Well?'

'Then you can slip down without danger and see us away,' said Nancy. 'I doubt, without your countenance in the matter, Ally would never come. But with it she'll fly this marriage as she would the devil.'

'I believe she will,' the laird muttered; but he seemed to hesitate. ''Tis a simple enough plan,' he conceded. 'I see nothing to hinder its working. But how can I consent to foist the lass on to you? Her future--'

'Ah--bah--the future!' said Nancy, 'let the future take care of itself! There is but one for a fine girl like Ally. And this storm will blow by, besides, and you be glad to see her here again, long before I am ready to part from her. For I'll be glad of Ally, let me tell you. There's nothing so needful in my unhappy situation as a companion of my own sex. Are not the prudent among my acquaintance telling me so every day of my life? So consent, for my sake as well as Alison's, and believe that you confer a favour by doing so.'

'You make the debtor seem generous,' said the laird, not unkindly, 'but I consent. Though the Lord only knows what I shall say to the wife when you're gone!'

'Ah, men must be brave--'tis their duty!' cried Nancy. 'And now, be wise too, and say not a word of this to a soul--not to Ally even, for her terror and indecision would discover themselves in a moment. I'll break it to her but the night before, and carry the citadel of her conscience and her scruples by storm--sweep off with her on the wings of surprise. You arrange with the driver of the chaise: I will manage the rest.'

It was not, therefore, till practically but a few hours before the meditated flight that Alison knew of the change in store for her. She had gone to bed drowned in tears at the prospect of her friend's departure, and in quiet despair at the conviction that now all chance of a rescue from Mr. Cheape was gone. Then Nancy came creeping up to her room in the dark on tip-toe, like the little conspirator that she was, shading the rush-light with her hand. Jacky slept beside his sister again, so their talk was in excited whispers.

'Ally,' Nancy said, leaning over the girl, and patting her wet cheek with a little hand, 'cry no more, dear love, 'tis all arranged with your father, and in the happiest way! No horrid Mr. Cheape for you; you are free! And you come with me to Edinburgh town in the morning!'

'I--to Edinburgh?' whispered the startled Alison.

'To me, child, to me!' Nancy whispered back. 'Did you think I was to part from my Ally without a blow struck for her freedom, and leave her to her fate? Oh, fie! faithless one! 'Tis your father and I have fixed it all between us; your mother knows naught. The chaise comes while she is still abed--more than an hour before she thinks--and we steal away, with your father, good man, to speed us at the gate. 'Tis quite an elopement, I declare; only I, alas! am of the wrong sex. You must rise, Ally, and put a few duds together; the laird says he will send a trunk after you to town. He has mine taken down already, so there will be no noise in the early hours. Will you come with me, Ally, and share my humble garret? 'Tis a poor thing, but mine own, and you're thrice welcome, God knows!'

Bewilderment still reigned in Alison's eyes and brain. 'Must I leave them all,' she whispered, 'my sisters and Jacky--?'

'Ay, must you,' said Nancy, with a little not unnatural impatience, 'or stay, and be taken from them by ogre Cheape in a fortnight!'

'In a fortnight! Was he coming so soon?' said Alison, with a white face, and then the magnitude of her friend's action on her behalf dawning upon her, she cried, with a half sob, 'Oh, Nancy! how can I thank you for this deliverance?'

'Then you'll come, Ally?'

'Come? How can I fail?' said Alison. 'And, Nancy, what'll I say? But I'll not speak, I'll do. I'll try with all my strength to do something that shall reward you. I'll be your servant, anything!'

'Be my own friend, sweetest--'tis enough,' said Nancy. 'And now, mind, not a moment later than the half after four. 'Twill be as pitch as night, a strange start. I protest 'tis a perfect adventure! I'd not have missed it for worlds. Keep a good heart, Ally, just not too soft, you know, and brave.' And she tip-toed away again, nodding and smiling.

Alison rose and dressed, and did not sleep again that night, but sat still by Jacky's cot, her young brain whirling with confused, grave thoughts. When it was time to go she kissed Jacky, pulled up the coverlet where he had tossed it from his rosy limbs, and smoothed his curls, that were so like her own. He had been her charge since birth, and now she was leaving him to others. She took a last look round the bare little room of her maidenhood, and then with her bundle in her hand, she slipped away down to the distant kitchen to light a stealthy fire, so that Nancy might have a cup of chocolate to start on. The old house of her childhood seemed full of accusing shadows as she flitted through it, dark and cold and strange to the eye in these unholy hours. She was thankful when Nancy joined her; they both crouched over the fire, for it was bitter cold. Both, too, heard presently, with the sharp ears of excitement, the distant rumble of wheels. The chaise had come.

The laird put his head in at the back door.

'Come, lasses,' he said. He had a lantern, and they followed him out into the starlight of the winter morning. A wind, forlorn and cold as the grave, blew in their faces. The chaise was already piled with Nancy's goods--the laird's doing with his own hands. Alison could see the rough familiar figure of him moving about with the lantern, the father whose weakness and whose strength she knew and understood, the man so much finer and nobler than the woman who ruled him. The heart of the girl yearned over him, and she flung her arms round his neck.

'There was nothing for it but to run, Ally,' he said, patting her shoulder. And then he helped her into the coach, for she stumbled, blind with tears. And then the coach rolled away into the dark, leaving the laird alone at the postern, whence presently he turned slowly away. For in an hour's time he had to meet his wife; and it is my opinion that, in these degenerate days of ours, a man has won the Victoria Cross for less.

*CHAPTER X.*

On one of those dull November afternoons which Mrs. Maclehose spent in convalescence at The Mains, her two little sons, in the good town of Edinburgh, set out to walk from their mother's house in the Potterrow, of the old town, to their cousin Archibald Herries's office in the then very modern George Street, of the new. As far as the North Bridge their servant Jean accompanied them, basket upon arm; but she had shopping in the Leith Row, and dismissed them in the direction of George Street, with directions 'to be guid bairns, not to play themselves on the road, to be civil to their cousin and give him the message, and to hasten home again before it was dark.'

They were little fellows of eight and ten respectively, the elder, a well-grown sturdy boy with red cheeks, the younger, a puny creature, with a small pale face, in which were set his mother's eyes without their laughter. Both were dressed alike in little green suits which they had long out-grown, and the frilled edges of their wide white collars were in places frayed and torn. Their shoes were worn, and as the younger one walked, indeed, the sole of his little left shoe threatened momentarily to part company with its sustaining upper, and slip-slopped upon the pavement at each dragging step. The two walked hand in hand, casting anxious glances upon the imposing-looking houses to their right.

At the extreme west end of George Street, indeed as far west as it then extended, was the house they sought,--a high granite-built edifice, with steps leading up to the door, upon which a brass-plate held the names--'Herries and Creighton, Writers to the Signet.' It was with difficulty, and only by standing on tip-toe, that Willy could reach the knocker, and the attitude had the effect of stretching him to such an extent, that it seemed quite impossible he could ever shrink again within the limits of the little green suit.

'I doubt that was another tear, Danny,' he said gravely to his little brother, as an ominous crack made itself heard in the region of the arm-hole; but he managed to wriggle the sleeves to his wrists again without further disaster. A cross-looking old woman opened the door and admitted them to the office.

In a light, handsome room to the front, above stairs, the walls lined partly with books and partly with piled-up boxes of deeds, a young man sat writing at a table. He was of slight and decidedly graceful figure, and soberly dressed; his powdered hair, tied with a black ribbon, lent perhaps additional delicacy to his fair, rather over-refined, regular features. He turned about in his chair, and his cold blue eyes lit up, not unkindly, as the two little boys were ushered into his presence.

'Well, my men,' he said, 'so here you are. What's the news?'

'Mother's coming home, Cousin Archie,' said Willy, pulling a letter from his pocket.

'Ay, so I hear,' said the young lawyer, not without a dryness in his tone. 'I have a letter from your mother, too, you see,' and he tapped an open missive on his desk.

'There is a beautiful new lady coming home with mother, to stay with us,' said Danny, lifting his large dark eyes to his cousin's face.

'You don't say so!' said Cousin Archie. He took the child up on his knee.

'Yes,' continued Danny, settling himself against a comfortable shoulder. 'She has a little brother of her own, and so she is to be like a big sister to us.'

'Oh, that's the idea, is it?' said Archibald Herries. 'And does your mother say where this mighty fine young lady is to find a room?'

'It was Jean sent us to ask you that,' said Willy, innocently. 'I sleep with mother, you know, and Danny by Jean in the other room, but mother says the lady will want Jean's bed, and Jean would know where she's to sleep, and may she get M'Alister, our landlord, to hire us the garret? It's empty, and 'twill make no difference to him.'

'Except in the matter of the rent--none whatever, Willy,' said Herries, more drily than ever. 'But that's a secondary matter which we need not mention.'

He was frowning, and his delicate features looked severe and cold. Nevertheless a smile lurked about his lips, and it ended in a rather bitter laugh.

'Tell Jean to get the garret from M'Alister,' he said. 'You would not put her out in the street for the new lady--would you, Danny?'

'To be sure not,' said Danny solemnly. Herries had absently held one of the boy's thin legs, and with a movement the ragged foot-gear caught his eye.

'That's a sorry shoe, Danny,' he said. 'What's the matter with it?'

'Well,' said Danny, gravely, 'it is the sole coming off, I think. It has been coming off for a long time.'

'Why don't you get it mended, man?' the cousin enquired.

'It should have been mended,' Danny answered, lifting those soft, dark eyes of his again. 'But Jean said there was no more money.'

Herries threw back his head and laughed.

'That's a sad complaint,' he said. 'But come, boys, I'll walk home with you, and on the way we'll get a new pair of shoes for Danny. Come!'

The three issued forth together, and walked along George Street eastward. At the head of the Leith Row they went into a shoemaker's, and Danny was fitted with a stout new pair of shoes, for which his cousin paid. Then they began to climb the old town at a brisk pace, but presently the younger child lagged behind.

'Are the new shoes hurting you, my man?' asked Herries. His usually rather curt tones were very kind when he spoke to the little boy.

''Tisn't the shoes, Cousin Archie,' said Willy, answering for his brother. 'But Danny has a sore leg that makes him hirple when he walks far.'

'Oh! he has, has he?' said Herries, looking at the child in perplexity. 'Come, boy, I can carry you up the brae, I think.'

He lifted the little creature, infinitely too small and light for his years, to his right arm, and, with a pause now and again for breath, carried him a long way. They were mounting still, sometimes by steep and narrow causeways, sometimes by actual flights of steps. A wintry sky of dulled flame was spread over the wonderful rock-built city round them, but the deep-cut valley in its midst was lost in a murky vapour--half smoke, half fog. When they got to the Potterrow, Herries set the child down, and stretched his cramped and aching arm. He was not a robust man, and the burden had taxed his muscles. They walked on until, in the narrow, echoing street, they came upon an archway, commonly yclept 'The General's Entry,' under which a door admitted to the common stair leading to the humble lodging occupied, at the present time, by Mrs. Maclehose.

'Now, be off, boys, and away up to Jean,' said Herries.

'Good-night, Cousin Archie,' the children's voices dutifully answered.

Herries heard their feet clatter on the stone stair, then turned away.

A solitary walk was no novelty to Archibald Herries, for he was, though young, a somewhat solitary man in circumstances, perhaps by inclination as well. He was the last living representative of a good old family in the south of Scotland, which had, by a series of misfortunes, political and other, lost lands and houses, and now threatened itself to disappear. An orphan since his infancy, Herries had been destined by his guardians for the army, but a constitutional delicacy showed itself early in the lad, and such a career became manifestly unadvisable, though all his dreams and ambitions, as a boy, were centred round it. He was bidden to fix his thoughts on the law, then considered perhaps the most highly respectable profession in Scotland, and it was intended that he should be called to the Bar as an advocate. But here again his unlucky star intervened, for Herries soon found himself wanting in those very qualities of brilliance and assurance which alone can lead to distinction in such a career. The more sober avenues of the law remained open to him, and these he finally entered and pursued. His circumstances--he had inherited a modest but certain income--made his entry into a good legal house, first as a subordinate and finally as a partner, secure; and from that point onward his success was solid, progressive, and, indeed, distinguished. Intellectually well-balanced, shrewd, long-headed, prudent, and not a little cold, Herries at thirty, had all the weighty qualities of character essential in the best class of family lawyer. The heads of his firm retired, but not a client deserted him, and he had, at this time, when he was about thirty-three, perhaps one of the most extended legal concerns in Scotland--a business worth many thousands of pounds. He had taken as partner a very respectable man of the name of Creighton, much older than himself, who had been senior and confidential clerk of the firm for over thirty years. Mr. Creighton occupied lodgings of his own, from which he daily came and went; but Herries lived in the fine modern George Street mansion, which he had bought, in solitary state, but for his old housekeeper and a valet. Creighton had his office in one of the rooms by day, and four clerks did their work in yet another. It was a most substantial establishment, already one of the landmarks of New Edinburgh. In the eyes of the world, Herries was indeed a successful person. Yet he carried, locked in his bosom, that sense of failure and disappointment which dogs a sensitive man, who pursues an uncongenial occupation, and succeeds, yet without attaining a single desire of his heart.

Socially, Herries had the Edinburgh world at his feet. He bore a good name, he was a rising man, and had a pleasing person and gentlemanly address. Caps were set at the successful young lawyer, naturally. But Herries, though not averse to occasional dalliance, was hardly a lady's man. One winter, indeed, a great beauty took the town by storm, and Herries did a little more than dangle in her train, and got a little more, too, than mere crumbs from her table. But the beauty, though she weighed him in the balance, found him wanting, and married a title. It was a disappointment to ambition--the wish to win and wear what all men coveted--rather than to love; yet it had been a shock, too, that drove further inward the already inward nature of the man. He had buckled to his business after it with a more dogged exclusiveness than ever.