Chapter VIII (3)

Time, however, passed on--with time came, but did not pass misfortune. Sally's father, who had long been addicted, at intervals, to hard drinking, was found one morning dead at the bottom of a cliff, over which, in returning home inebriated, he had tumbled. There were now three sisters, all below twelve, to provide for, and Sally's mother had long been almost bedrid with severe and chronic rheumatism; consequently, the burden of supporting this helpless family devolved upon Sarah, who was now in the bloom and in the strength of her womanhood. Instead of sitting down, however, to lament what could not be helped, Sarah immediately redoubled her diligence. She even learned to row a boat as well as a man, and contrived, by the help of the men her father used to employ, to keep his boat still going. Things prospered with her for a while; but, in a sudden storm, wherein five boats perished with all on board, she lost her whole resources. They are a high-minded people those Cellardyke fishers. The Blacks scorned to come upon the session. The young girls salted herrings, and cried haddocks in small baskets through the village and the adjoining burghs, and Sarah contrived still to keep up a cart for country service. Meanwhile, Sarah became the object of attention through the whole neighbourhood. Though somewhat larger in feature and limb than the Venus de Medicis, she was, notwithstanding, tight, clean, and sunny--her skin white as snow, and her frame a well-proportioned Doric--just such a help-mate as a husband who has to rough it through life might be disposed to select. Captain William M'Guffock, or, as he was commonly called, Big Bill, was the commander of a coasting craft, and a man of considerable substance. True, he was considerably older than Sally, and a widower, but he had no family, and a "bien house to bide in." You see that manse-looking tenement there, on the broad head towards the east--that was Captain M'Guffock's residence when his seafaring avocations did not demand his presence elsewhere. Well, Bill came acourting to Sally; but Sally "looked asclent and unco skeich." Someway or other, whenever she thought of matrimony--which she did occasionally--she at the same time thought of Thomas Laing, and, as she expressed it, her heart _scunnered_ at the thought. Consequently, Bill made little progress in his courtship; which was likewise liable to be interrupted, for weeks at a time, by his professional voyages. At last a letter arrived from on board a king's vessel, then lying in Leith Roads, apprising Thomas Laing's relatives that he had died of fever on the West India station. This news affected Sally more than anything which had hitherto happened to her. She shut herself up for two hours in her mother's bedroom, weeping aloud and bitterly, exclaiming, from time to time--"Oh! my Thomas!--my own dearest Thomas! I shall never love man again. I am thine in life and in death--in time and in eternity!" In vain did the poor bedrid woman try to comfort her daughter. Nature had her way; and, in less than three hours, Sarah Black was again in the streets, following, with a confused but a cheerful look, her ordinary occupation. This grief of Sarah's, had it been well nursed, might well have lasted a twelvemonth; but, luckily for Sarah, and for the labouring classes in general, she had not time to nurse her grief to keep it warm. "Give us this day our daily bread," said a poor helpless mother and three somewhat dependent sisters--and Sarah's exertions were redoubled.

"Oh, what a feelingless woman!" said Mrs. Paterson to me, as Sarah passed her door one day in my presence, absolutely singing--"Oh, what a feelingless woman!--and her father dead, and her mother bedrid, and poor Thomas Laing, whom she made such a fuss about, gone too--and there is she, absolutely singing after all!"

Mrs. Paterson is now Mrs. Robson, having married her second husband just six weeks after the death of the first, whom her improper conduct and unhappy temper contributed first to render miserable here, and at last to convey to the churchyard! Verily (added the worthy clergyman), the heart is deceitful above all things. But what, after all, could poor Sarah do, but marry Will M'Guffock, and thus amply provide, not only for herself, but for her mother and sister? Had Thomas (and her heart heaved at the thought) still been alive, she thought, she never would have brought herself to think of it in earnest; but now that Thomas had long ceased to think of her or of anything earthly, why should she not make a man happy who seemed distractedly in love with her, and at the same time honourably provide for her poor and dependent relatives? In the meantime, the sacramental occasion came round, and I had a private meeting previous to the first communion with Sarah Black. To me, in secret, she laid open her whole heart as if in the presence of her God; and I found her, though not a well-informed Christian by any means on doctrinal points, yet well disposed and exceedingly humble; in short, I had great pleasure in putting a token into her hand, at which she continued to look for an instant, and then returned it to me. I expressed surprise, at least by my looks. "I fear," said she, "that I am _unworthy_; for I have not told you that I am thinking of marrying a man whom I cannot love, merely to provide for our family. Is not this a sin?--and can I, with an intention of doing what I know to be wrong, safely communicate?" I assured her that, instead of thinking it a sin, I thought her resolution commendable, particularly as the object of her real affection was beyond its reach; and I mention the circumstance to show that there is often much honour, and even delicacy of feeling, natural as well as religious, under very uncongenial circumstances and appearances. Having satisfied her mind on this subject, I had the pleasure to see her at the communion table, conducting herself with much seeming seriousness of spirit. I could see her shed tears, and formed the very best opinion of her from her conduct throughout.

In a few days or weeks after this, the proclamation lines were put into my hands, and I had the pleasure of uniting her to Captain M'Guffock in due course. They had, however, only been married a few weeks, when an occurrence of a very awkward character threw her and her husband, who was, in fact, an ill-tempered, passionate man, into much perplexity. The captain was absent on a coasting voyage, as usual; and his wife was superintending the washing of some clothes, whilst the sun was setting. It was a lovely evening in the month of July, and the fishing boats were spread out all over the mouth of the Firth, from the East Neuk to the Isle of May, in the same manner in which you see them at present. Mrs. M'Guffock's mind assumed, notwithstanding the glorious scenery around her, a serious cast, for she could not help recalling many such evenings in which she had rejoiced in company and in unison with her beloved Thomas. She felt and knew that it was wrong to indulge such emotions; but she could not help it. At last, altogether overcome, she threw herself forward on the green turf, and prayed audibly--"O my God, give me strength and grace to forget my own truly beloved Thomas! Alas! he knows not the struggles which I have to exclude him from my sinful meditations. Even suppose he were again to arise from the dead, and appear in all the reality of his youthful being, I must, and would fly from him as from my most dangerous foe." She lifted up her eyes in the twilight, and in the next instant felt herself in the arms of a powerful person, who pressed her in silence to his breast. Amazed and bewildered, she neither screamed nor fainted, but, putting his eager kisses aside, calmly inquired who he was who dared thus to insult her. She had no sooner pronounced the inquiry, than she heard the words, "Thomas--your own Thomas!" pronounced in tones which could not be mistaken. This, indeed, overpowered her; and, with a scream of agony, she sank down dead on the earth. This brought immediate assistance; but she was found lying by herself, and talking wildly about her Thomas Laing. Everybody who heard her concluded that she had either actually seen her lover's ghost, or that her mind had given way under the pressure of regret for her marriage, and that she was now actually a lunatic. For twelve hours she continued to evince the most manifest marks of insanity; but sleep at last soothed and restored her, and she immediately sent for me. I endeavoured to persuade her that it must be all a delusion, and that the imagination oftentimes created such fancies. I gave instances from books which I had read, as well as from a particular friend of my own who had long been subject to such delusive impressions, and at last she became actually persuaded that there had been no reality in what she had so vividly perceived, and still most distinctly and fearfully recollected. I took occasion then to urge upon her the exceeding sinfulness of allowing any image to come betwixt her and her lawful married husband; and left her restored, if not to her usual serenity, at least to a conviction that she had only been disturbed by a vision.

When her husband returned, I took him aside, and explained my views of the case, and stated my most decided apprehension that some similar impression might return upon her nerves, and that her sisters (her mother being now removed by death) should dwell in the same house with her. To this, however, the captain objected, on the score that, though he was willing to pay a person to take care of them in their own house, he did not deem them proper company, in short, for a _captain's wife_. I disliked the reasoning, and told him so; but he became passionate, and I saw it was useless to contend further. From that day, however, Bill M'Guffock seemed to have become an altered man. Jealousy, or something nearly resembling it, took possession of his heart; and he even ventured to affirm that his wife had a paramour somewhere concealed, with whom, in his long and necessary absences, she associated. He alleged, too, that in her sleep she would repeat the name of her favourite, and in terms of present love and fondness. I now saw that I had not known the depth of "a first love," otherwise I should not have advised this unhappy marriage, all advantageous as it was in a worldly point of view. A sailor's life, however, is one of manifest risk, and in less than a twelvemonth Sarah M'Guffock was a young widow, without incumbrance, and with her rights to her just share of the captain's effects. Her sorrow for the death of her husband was, I believe, sincere; but I observed that she took an early opportunity of joining her sisters in her old habitation, immediately beneath that still tenanted by the friends of Laing.

Matters were in this situation, when I was surprised one evening, whilst sitting meditating in the manse of Kilrenny, about dusk, with a visit from a tall and well-dressed stranger. He asked me at once if I could give him a private interview for a few minutes, as he had something of importance to communicate. Having taken him into my study, and shut the door, I reached him a chair, and desired him to proceed.

"I had left the parish," said the stranger, "before you were minister of Kilrenny, in the time of worthy Mr. Brown, and therefore you will probably not know even my name. I am Thomas Laing!"

"I did not indeed," said I, "know you, but I have heard much about you; and I know one who has taken but too deep an interest in your fate. But how comes it," added I, beginning to think that I was conversing either with a vision or an impostor--"how comes it that you are here, seemingly alive and well, whilst we have all been assured of your death some years ago?"

The stranger started, and immediately exclaimed--"Dead!--dead!--who said I was dead?"

"Why," said I, "there was a letter came, I think, to your own father, mentioning your death by fever in the West Indies."

"Do I look like a dead man?" said the stranger; but, immediately becoming absent and embarrassed, he sat for a while silent, and then resumed:--"Some one," said he, "has imposed upon my dear Sarah, and for the basest of purposes. I now see it all. My dear girl has been sadly used."

"This is, indeed, strange," said I; "but let me hear how it is that I have the honour of a visit from you at this time and in this place?"

"Oh," replied Thomas Laing (for it was he in verity), "I will soon give you the whole story:--

"When I left this, fourteen years ago come the time, I embarked at Greenock, working my way out to New York. As I was an excellent hand at a rope and an oar, I early attracted the captain's notice, who made some inquiries respecting my place of birth and my views in life. I told him that I was literally "at sea," having nothing particularly in view--that I had been bred a fisher, and understood sailing and rowing as well as any one on board. The captain seemed to have something in his head, for he nodded to me, saying, 'Very well, we will see what can be done for you when we arrive at New York.' When we were off Newfoundland, we were overtaken by a terrible storm, which drove us completely out of our latitude, till, at last, we struck on a sandbank--the sea making for several hours a complete breach over the deck. Many were swept away into the devouring flood; whilst some of us--amongst several others the captain and myself--clung to what remained of the ship's masts till the storm somewhat abated. We then got the boat launched, and made for land, which we could see looming at some distance ahead. We got, however, entangled amongst currents and breakers; and, within sight of a boat which was making towards us from the shore, we fairly upset--and I remember nothing more till I awoke, in dreadful torment, in some fishermen's boat. Beside me lay the captain, the rest had perished. When we arrived at the land, we were placed in one of the fishermen's huts, where we were most kindly treated--assisting, as we did occasionally, in the daily labours of the cod fishery. I displayed so much alertness and skill in this employment, that the factor on the station made me an advantageous offer, if I would remain with them and assist in their labours. With this offer, having no other object distinctly in view, I complied. But my kind and good-hearted captain, possessing less dexterity in this employment, was early shipped at his own request for England. The most of the hands, about two hundred in all, on the station where I remained, were Scotch and Irish, and a merry, jovial set we were. The men had wives and families; and the governor or factor lived in a large slated house, very like your manse, upon a gentle eminence, a little inland. Towards the coast the land is sandy and flat; but in the interior there is much wood, a very rich soil, and excellent fresh water. Where we remained the water was brackish, and constituted the chief inconvenience of our station. The factor or agent, commonly called by the men the governor, used to visit us almost every day, and remained much on board when ships were loading for Europe. One fine summer's day we were all enjoying the luxury of bathing, when, all on a sudden, the shout was raised--'A shark! a shark!' I had just taken my place in the boat, and was still undressed, when I observed one man disappear, being dragged under the water by the sea monster. The factor, who was swimming about in the neighbourhood, seemed to be paralyzed by terror, for he made for the boat, plashing like a dog, with his hands and arms frequently stretched out of the water. I saw his danger, and immediately plunged in to his rescue, which, with some difficulty, I at last effected.

"Poor Pat Moonie was seen no more; nor did the devouring monster reappear. The factor immediately acknowledged his obligations to me, by carrying me home with him, and introducing me to his lady and an only daughter--I think I never beheld a more beautiful creature; but I looked upon her as a being of a different order from myself, and I still thought of my own dear Sally and sweet home at Cellardykes. Through the factor's kindness, I got the management of a boat's crew, with considerable emolument which belonged to the situation. I then behoved to dress better, at least while on land, than I used to do, and I was an almost daily visitor at Codfield House, the name of the captain's residence. My affairs prospered; I made, and had no way of spending money. The factor was my banker, and his fair daughter wrote out the acknowledgments for her father to sign. One beautiful Sabbath-day, after the factor--who officiated at our small station as clergyman--had read us prayers and a sermon, I took a walk into the interior of the country, where, with a book in her hand, and an accompaniment of Newfoundland dogs, I chanced to meet with Miss Woodburn, the factor's beautiful child. She was only fourteen, but quite grown, and as blooming a piece of womanhood as ever wore kid gloves or black leather. She seemed somewhat embarrassed at my presence, and blushed scarlet, entreating me to prevent one of her dogs from running away with her glove, which he was playfully tossing about in his mouth. The dog would not surrender his charge to any one but to his mistress; and, in the struggle, he bit my hand somewhat severely. You may see the marks of his teeth there still" (holding out his hand while he spoke). "Poor Miss Woodburn knew not what to do first; she immediately dropped the book which she was reading--scolded the offending dog to a distance--took up the glove, which the dog at her bidding had dropped, and wrapped it close and firmly around my bleeding hand; a band of long grass served for thread to make all secure, and in a few days my hand was in a fair way of recovery--but not so my heart; I felt as if I had been all at once transformed into a gentleman--the soft touch of Miss Eliza's fair fingers seemed to have transformed me, skin, flesh, and bones, into another species of being. I shook like an aspen leaf whenever I thought of our interesting interview; and I could observe that Eliza changed colour, and looked out of the window whenever I entered the room. But, sir, I am too particular, and I will now hasten to a close." I entreated him (said the parson) to go on in his own way, and without any reference to my leisure. He then proceeded:--"Well, sir, from year to year I prospered, and from year to year got more deeply in love with the angel which moved about in my presence. At last our attachment became manifest to the young lady's parent; and, to my great surprise, it was proposed that we should make a voyage to New York, and there be united in matrimony. All this while, sir, I thought of my own dear Sally, and the thought not unfrequently made me miserable; but what was Sally to me now?--perhaps she was dead--perhaps she was married--perhaps--but I could scarcely think it--she had forgot me; and then the blooming rosebud was ever in my presence, and hallowed me, by its superior purity and beauty, into a complete gentleman. Well, married we were at New York, and for several months I was the happiest of men, and my dear wife (I know it) the happiest of women; but the time of her labour approached--and child and mother lie buried in the cemetery at New York, where we had now fixed our residence." (Here poor Thomas wept plentifully, and, after a pause proceeded.)--"I could not reside longer in a place which was so dismally associated in my mind; so, having wound up my worldly affairs, and placed my little fortune--about one thousand pounds--in the bank, I embarked for Europe, along with my father and mother-in-law, who were going home to end their days in the place of their nativity, Belfast, in Ireland. I determined upon landing at the Cove of Cork, to visit once more my native village, and to have at least one interview with Sally. I learned, on my arrival at Largo, that Sally was married to the old captain. I resolved, however, ere I went finally to settle in Belfast, to have one stolen peep at my first love--my own dear Sally. I came upon her whilst repeating my name in her prayers--I embraced her convulsively--repeated her name twice in her hearing--heard her scream--saw her faint--kissed her fondly again and again--and, strangers appearing, I immediately absconded."

"This," said the minister, "explains all;--but go on--I am anxious to hear the conclusion of your somewhat eventful history."

"Why, I was off immediately for Belfast, where I at present reside with my father-in-law, whose temper, since the loss of his child, has been much altered for the worse. But I am here on a particular errand, in which your kind offices, sir--for I have heard of your goodness of heart--may be of service to me. I observed the death of the old captain in the newspaper, and I am here once more to enjoy an interview with his widow. I wish you, sir, to break the business to her; meanwhile, I will lodge at the Old Inn, Mrs. Laing's, at Anstruther, and await your return."

I agreed (continued the parson of Kilrenny) to wait upon the widow; and to see, in fact, how the wind set, in regard to "first love." I found her, as I expected, neatly clad in her habiliments of widowhood, and employed in making some dresses for a sister's marriage. I asked and obtained a private interview, when I detailed, as cautiously as I could, the particulars of Thomas Laing's history. I could observe that her whole frame shook occasionally, and that tears came, again and again, into her eyes. I was present, but a fortnight ago, at their first interview at the inn; and I never saw two human beings evince more real attachment for each other. On their bended knees, and with faces turned towards heaven, did they unite in thanking God that he had permitted them, to have another interview with each other in this world of uncertainty and death. It has been since discovered that the letter announcing Laing's death was a forgery of the old captain, which has reconciled his widow very much to the idea of shortening her days of mourning. In a word, this evening, and in a few hours, I am going to unite the widower and the widowed, together with a younger sister and a fine young sailor, in the holy bonds of matrimony; and, as a punishment for your giving me all this trouble in narrating this story, I shall insist upon your eating fresh herring, with the fresh-herring Presbytery of St. Andrew's, which meets here at Mrs. Laing's to-day, and afterwards witnessing the double ceremony.

To this I assented, and certainly never spent an evening more agreeably than that which I divided betwixt the merry lads of St. Andrew's Presbytery, and the fair dames and maidens of Cellardykes, who graced the marriage ceremony. Such dancing as there was, and such screaming, and such music, and such laughing; yet, amidst it all, Mr. and Mrs. Laing preserved that decent decorum, which plainly said, "We will not mar the happiness of the young; but we feel the goodness and providence of our God too deeply, to permit us to join in the noisy part of the festivity."

"The fair maid of Cellardykes," with her kind-hearted husband--I may mention, for the satisfaction of my fair readers in particular--may now be seen daily at their own door, and in their own garden, on the face of the steep which overlooks the village. They have already lived three years in complete happiness, and have been blessed with two as fine healthy children as a Cellardykes sun ever rose upon. Mr. Laing has become an elder in the church, and both husband and wife are most exemplary in the discharge of their religious, as well as relative duties. God has blessed them with an ample competence; and sure is the writer of this narrative, that no poor fisherman or woman ever applied to this worthy couple without obtaining relief.

One circumstance more, and my narrative closes. As Mr. Laing was one evening taking a walk along the seashore, viewing the boats as they mustered for the herring fishing, he was shot at from behind one of the rocks, and severely wounded in the shoulder--the ball or slug-shot having lodged in the clavicle, and refusing, for some days, to be extracted. The hue-and-cry was immediately raised; but the guilty person was nowhere to be seen. He had escaped in a boat, or had hid himself in a crevice of the rock, or in some private and friendly house in the village. Poor Thomas Laing was carried home to his distracted wife more dead than alive; and Dr. Goodsir being called, disclosed that, in his present state, the lead could not be extracted. Poor Sarah was never a moment from her husband's side, who fevered, and became occasionally delirious--talking incoherently of murder and shipwreck, and Woodburn, and love, and marriage, and Sarah Black. All within his brain was one mad wheel of mixed and confused colours, such as children make when they wheel a stick, dyed white, black, and red, rapidly around. Suspicion, from the first, fell upon the brother of the boy Rob Paterson, whom Laing had killed many years before. Revenge is the most enduring, perhaps, of all the passions, and rather feeds upon itself than decays. Like fame, "it acquires strength by time;" and it was suspected that Dan Paterson, a reckless and a dissipated man, had done the deed. In confirmation of this supposition, Dan was nowhere to be found, and it was strongly suspected that his wife and his son, who returned at midnight with the boat, had set Dan on shore somewhere on the coast, and that he had effected his escape. Death, for some time, seemed every day and hour nearer at hand; but at last the symptoms softened, the fever mitigated, the swelling subsided, and, after much careful and skilful surgery, most admirably conducted by Dr. Goodsir's son, the ball was extracted. The wound closed without mortification; and, in a week or two, Mr. Laing was not only out of danger, but out of bed, and walking about, as he does to this hour, with his arm in a sling. It was about the period of his recovery, that Dan Paterson was taken as he was skulking about in the west country, apparently looking out for a ship in which to sail to America. He was immediately brought back to Cellardykes, and lodged in Anstruther prison. Mr. Laing would willingly have forborne the prosecution; but the law behoved to have its course. Dan was tried for "maiming with the intention of murder," and was condemned to fourteen years' transportation. This happened in the year 1822, the year of the King's visit to Scotland. Mr. and Mrs. Laing actually waited upon his Majesty King George the Fourth, at the palace of Dalkeith, and, backed by the learned judge and counsel, obtained a commutation of the punishment, from banishment to imprisonment for a limited period. The great argument in his favour was the provocation he had received. Dan Paterson now inhabits a neat cottage in the village, and Mr. Laing has quite set him up with a boat of his own, ready rigged and fitted for use. He has entirely reformed, has become a member of a temperance society, and his wife and family are as happy as the day is long. Mr. and Mrs. Laing are supplied with the very best of fish, and stockings and mittens are manufactured by the Patersons for the little Laings, particularly during boisterous weather, when fishing is out of the question. Thus has a wise Providence made even the wrath of man to praise him. The truth of the above narrative may be tested any day, by waiting upon the Rev. Mr. Dickson, or upon the parties themselves at Braehead of Cellardykes.

PRESCRIPTION;

OR, THE 29TH OF SEPTEMBER.

The serene calmness and holy inspiration of some of our cottage retreats in Scotland are often the envy of the town-poet or philosopher, who looks upon the sequestered spots as possessing all the beauty and repose of the beatific Beulah, where the feet of the pilgrim found repose, and his spirit rest. The desire arises out of that discontent which, less or more, is the inheritance of man in this sphere; it is the residuum of the worldly feelings which, like the clay that, in inspired hands, gave the power of sight to the blind, opens the eyes to immortality. The wish for retirement belongs to good, if it is not a part of the great principle that inclines us to look far away to purer regions for the rest which is never disturbed, and the joy that knows no abatement. Yet how vain are often our thoughts as we survey the white-washed hut in the valley, covered with honeysuckle and white roses; the plot before the door; the croonin dame on her tripod; the lass with the lint-white locks, singing, in snatches of Nature's own language, her purest feelings, like the swelling of a mountain spring! The heart is not still there, any more than in the crowded mart. The birds whistle, but they die too; the rose blooms, but it is eaten in the heart by the palmer worm; the sun shines, but there is a shade at his back. Alas for mortal aspirations--there is nothing here of one side. Like the two parties who fought for the truth of the two pleas--that the statue was white, or that it was black--we find, after all our labour lost, that one side is of the one colour, and the other of the opposite. These thoughts arise in us at this moment, as we recollect the little cottage of Homestead, situated in a collateral valley on the Borders. We were born at a stone-cast from it; and, even in the dream of age, see issuing from it, or entering it, a creature who might have stood for Wordsworth's Highland Girl--a slender, gracile thing, retiring and modest; as delicate in her feelings as in the hue of her complexion; her thoughts of her glen and waterfall only natural to her--all others, fearful even to herself, glenting forth through a flushed medium, which equally betrayed the workings of the blood in the transparent veins--a being of young life, elasticity, and sensitiveness, such as, like some modest flower, we find only in certain recesses of the valleys in mountain-lands. Such were you, Alice Scott, when you first darted across our path on the hills. We have said that we see you now through the dream of age; and, holding to the parallel, there is a change o'er the mood of our vision, for we see you again in a form like that of "The Ladye Geraldine"--your mountain russets off; the bandeau that bound the flying locks laid aside; the irritability and flush of the young spirit abated; and, instead of these, the gown of silk, the coif of satin, and the slow and dignified step of conscious worth and superiority. And whence this change?

The young female we have thus apostrophised, was the daughter of Adam Scott, a cottar, who occupied the small cottage of Homestead, under the proprietor of Whitecraigs--a fine property, lying to the south of the cottage; and the mansion of which is yet to be seen by the traveller who seeks the Tweed by the windings of the river Lyne. Old Adam died, and left his widow and daughter to the protection of his superior, Mr. Hayston, who, recollecting the services and stanch qualities of his tenant, did not despise the charge. The small bield was allowed to the mother and daughter, rent free; and some assistance, in addition to the produce of their hands, enabled them to live as thousands in this country live, whose capability of supporting life might be deemed a problem difficult of solution by those whose only care is how to destroy God's gifts. Nature is as curious in her disposal of qualities as the great genius of chance or convention is of the distribution of means. Literature has worn out the characteristic and gloomy lines of the description of the fair and the good; and the impatience of the mind of the nineteenth century--a mind greedy of caricature, and regardless of written sentiment--may warn us from the portrayment of what people now like better to see than to read or hear of. Away, then, with the usual terms, and let old Dame Scott and her daughter be deemed as of those beings who have interested you in the quiet recesses of humble poverty, where Nature, as if in sport or satire, loves to play fantastic tricks. If you have no living models to go by, call up some of the pages of the thousand volumes that have been multiplied on a subject which has been more spoiled by poetical imagery, than benefited by sober observation.

Within about five years of the death of the husband and father, old Hayston died, and left Whitecraigs to his only son, Hector, who was kind enough to continue the gift of the father to the inmates of Homestead; but he loaded them with a condition, unspoken, yet implied. The young laird and the pretty cottage maiden had foregathered often amidst the romantic scenes on the Lyne; and that which Nature probably intended as a guard and a mean of segregation--the shrinking timidity of her own mountain child, when looked upon by the eye of, to her, aristocracy--only tended to an opposite effect. A poet has compared love to an Eastern bird, which loses all its beauty when it flies, and it is as true as it is a pretty conceit; but if there was any feathered creature whose wings, reflecting, from its monaul tints, the sun in greater splendour, when on the wing, it would supply as applicable and not less poetical an emblem of the object of the little god's heart-stirrings; and so it seemed to the young laird of Whitecraigs, that, as Alice Scott bounded away over the green hills, or down by the Lyne banks, at his approach, her flight added to the interest which she had already inspired when she had no means of escape. But, as the wildest doe may be caught and tamed, so was she, who was as a white one removed from the herd. The young man possessed attractions beside those of imputed wealth and station; and probably, though we mean not to be severe upon the sex, the process by which his affection had been increased was reversed in its effects upon her, to whom assiduous seeking was as the assiduous retreating had been to him.

Yet all was, we believe, honourable in the intentions of young Hayston; and, as for Alice, she was in the primeval condition of a total unconsciousness of evil. The "one blossom on earth's tree," as the poet has it, was by her yet unplucked, nor knew she how many thousands have had cause to sing--

"I have plucked the one blossom that hangs on earth's tree;
I have lived--I have loved, and die."

Her former timidity was the _à priori_ proof of the strength of the feeling that followed, when the sensitiveness of fear gave way to confidence. Town loves are a thing of sorry account: the best of them are a mere preference of the one to the many; and he who is fortunate enough to outshine his rivals, may pride himself in the possession of some superior recommendations which have achieved a triumph. Were he to look better to it, he might detect something, too, in the force of resources. At best, a few hundred pounds will turn the scale; for he is by all that a better man; and the trained eye of town beauties has a strange responsive twinkle in the glare of the one thing needful. In the remote and beautiful parts of a romantic country, things are otherwise ordered: affection there, is as the mountain flower to the gallipot rose; and it is a mockery to tell us that the difference is only perceptible to those who are weak enough to be romantic. A doughty warrior would recognise and acknowledge the difference, and fight a great deal better too, after he had blubbered over a mountain or glen born love for a creature who would look upon him as the soul of the retreat, and hang on his breast in the outpourings of Nature's feelings. That young Whitecraigs appreciated the triumph he had secured, there can be no reason to doubt. He had been within the drying atmosphere of towns, and had sung and waltzed, probably, with a round hundred of creatures who understood the passion, much as Audrey understood poetry--deeming it honest enough, but yet a composition made up of the elements of side glances, arias, smorzando-sighs, and quadrilles. With Alice Scott on his bosom, the quiet glen as their retreat, the green umbrageous woods their defence, its birds as their musicians, and the wimpling Lyne as the speaking Naiad, he forgot, if he did not despise, the scenes he had left. She flew from him now no longer. The fowler had succeeded to captivate, not intentionally to kill.

Two years passed over in this intercourse. There was no secret about it. The dame was well apprised of their proceeding; and the open frankness of the youth dispelled all the fears of wrong which the innocence of the daughter, undefended by experience, might have scarcely guaranteed to one who, at least, had heard something of the ways of the world. The income from Whitecraigs, somewhere about seven hundred a-year, was more than sufficient for the expenditure of the older Haystons; and Hector, at this time, did not seem inclined to alter the line of life followed by his fathers. He had not spoken of marriage to the mother; but he had not hesitated to breathe into the ear of Alice all that was necessary to lead her to the conclusion, to which her heart jumped, that she was to be the lady of the stately white mansion that, at one time, had appeared to her as a great temple where humble worshippers of the glen and the wood might not lay their sandals at the doorway. She had entered the vestibule only as an alms-seeker, and trembled to think she might have been observed throwing a side glance into the interior, where pier-glasses might have reflected the form of the russet-clad child of the valley and hill. The tale has been told a thousand times, and the world is not mended by it. The young master pressed her to his bosom, imprinted a kiss, and was away into the mazes of life in the metropolis, whither some affairs, left unsettled by his father, carried him. Six months passed away, and the rents of the succeeding term were collected by Mr. Pringle, the agent of the family, in Peebles. There was no word for poor Alice, though the small allowance was handed in by the agent, who, ignorant of the state of matters between the young couple, informed the mother that the master of Whitecraigs was on the eve of being married to a young lady of some wealth in the metropolis. The statement was heard by the daughter; and what henceforth but that of Thekla's song:--

"The clouds are flying, the woods are sighing--
The maiden is walking the grassy shore;
And as the wave breaks with might, with might,
She singeth aloud through the darksome night;
But a tear is in her troubled eye."

Alice Scott was changed; yet, who shall tell what that change was? If the slow and even progress of the spirit may defy the eye of the metaphysician, who may describe its moods of disturbance? Poetry is familiar with these things, and we have fair rhymes to tell us of the wanderings, and the lonely musings by mountain streams, and the eye that looks and sees not, and the wasting form, and the words that come like the sounds from deep caves; yet, after all, they tell us but little, and that little is but to tickle us with the resonance of spoken sentiment, leaving the sad truth as little understood as before. True it was, that Alice Scott did all these things, and more too: the charm of the hills and the water banks was gone: the light spirit that carried her along, as if borne on the winds, was quenched; the songs by which she gladdened the ears of her mother, as she plied her portable handwork on the green, was no more heard mingling its notes with the music of the Lyne; and the face that shone transparently, like painted alabaster, as if part of the light came from within, was as the poet says--

"Like an April morn
Clad in a wintry cloud."

Nor did additional time seem to possess any power save that of increasing the pain of the heart-stroke. Most of the griefs of mortals have their appointed modes of alleviation--some are complaining griefs, some are talkative, and some sorrows are sociable for selfishness. But the heart-wound of her who has only those scenes of nature which were associated with the image of the unkind one, to wear off the impressions of which, under other hues, they form a part, is a silent mourner. There is enough of a painful eloquence around her, and her voice would be only the small whisper that is lost in the wailings of the storm in the glen. Yet painful as the language is, she courts it in silence, even while it mixes and blends with the poison which consumes her. It was in vain that her mother, who saw with a parental eye the malady which is the best understood by those of her class and age, urged her with kindness to betake herself to her household duties. She was seldom to be prevailed upon to remain within doors; the hill-side, or the bosom of the glen, or the back of the willows by the water-side, were her choice. Ordinary meal times were forgotten or unheeded, where Nature had renounced her cravings, or given all her energies to the heart.

The next intelligence received at Homestead was that of the marriage of Hector Hayston, and his departure for France. The servants at Whitecraigs were discharged, as if there had been no expectation, for a long period, of the return of the young laird. The supply to the two females was increased, and paid by Mr. Pringle, who, now probably aware of the situation of Alice, delicately avoided any allusion to his employer. Report, however, was busy with her tales; and the absence of the youth was attributed to the workings of conscience or of shame. There was little truth in the report. The object of his first affections might easily have been banished from Whitecraigs, and he who had been guilty of leaving her maybe supposed capable of removing her from scenes which could only add to her sorrow. A true solution of his conduct might have been found in the fact, that Hayston was now following his pleasures in the society of his wife's friends--a gay and lavish circle--and did not wish to detract from his enjoyment by adding banishment and destitution to a wrong now irremediable. Little more was heard of him for some time, with the exception of a floating report, that he had borrowed, through his agent, the sum of ten thousand pounds from a Mr. Colville, a neighbouring proprietor, and pledged to him Whitecraigs in security. The circumstance interested greatly the neighbouring proprietors, who shook their heads in significant augury of the probable fate of their young neighbour in the whirlpool of continental life. Yet the allowance to Dame Scott at the next term was regularly paid; and if there was a tear in her eye, as she looked, first at the money, and then at the thin, pallid creature who sat silent at the window, it was not that she dreaded its discontinuance from the result of the extravagance of the giver. The effect of the act of payment of the money had, on a former occasion, been noticed by Pringle on the conduct of Alice: it was on this occasion repeated. She rose from her seat, looked steadfastly for a moment at the gift as it lay on the table, placed her hand on her forehead, and flitted out of the room. The eye of the agent followed her from the window: her step was hurried, without an object of impulse. She might go--but whither? probably she knew not herself; yet on she sped till she was lost among the trees on the edge of the glen.

Thus longer time passed, but there seemed no change to Alice, save in the continual decrease of the frame, under the pressure of a mind that communed with the past, and only looked to the future as containing some day that would witness the termination of her sorrows. The anglers on the Lyne became familiar with her figure, for they had seen it on the heights, with her garments floating in the breeze, and had come up to her as she sat by the waterside, but they passed on. At the worst she could be but one whose spirit was not settled enough to admit of her according with the ways of honest maidens; and they might regret that the beauty that still lurked amidst the ravages of the disease of the heart, had not been turned to better account. It is thus that one part of mankind surveys another: they form their theory of a condition whose secret nature is only known to its possessor; draw their moral from false premises, formed as a compliment to their own conduct and situation, and pass on to their pleasure.

Yet there occurred an important exception to these remarks:--One day Alice had taken up her seat on the banks of a small pond in front of the house of Whitecraigs. She sat opposite to the front of the dwelling, and seemed to survey its closed windows and deserted appearance, with the long grass growing up through the gravel of the walks--the broken pailings and decayed out-houses; a scene that might be supposed to harmonize with the feelings of a mind broken and desolate. There might seem even a consanguinity in the causes of the condition of both. The scene might have suited the genius of a Danby. There was no living creature to disturb the silence. The house of faded white, among the dark trees, cheerless and forsaken; the face of Alice Scott emaciated and pale, with the lustre of the loch, shining in the sun, reflected on it, directed towards the habitation of which she should have been mistress; her eyes, which had forgotten the relief of tears, fixed on the scene so pregnant with unavailing reminiscences--with these we would aid the artist.

But the charm was gone, as a voice sounded behind her. She started, and, according to her custom, would have fled as the hare that remembers the snare; but she was detained. A man, advanced in years, poorly clad, with hair well smitten with snow tints, and a staff in his hand, stood beside her, holding her by the skirt of the gown.

"I am weary," said he; "I have walked from Moffat, and would sit here for a time, if you would speak to me of the scenes and people of these parts." And the application of his hand again to her gown secured a compliance, dictated more by fear than inclination. She sat, while she trembled. "You are fair," continued he; "but my experience of sorrow tells me that grief has been busier with your young heart than years. I will not pry into your secrets. To whom does Whitecraigs now belong?"

The name had not been breathed by her to mortal since that day she had heard of the intended marriage. She made an effort to pronounce it, failed, and fixed her eyes on the pond. The stranger gazed on her, waiting for her reply.

"Hector Hayston," she at length muttered.

"And why has he left so fair a retreat to the desolation that has overtaken it?" rejoined he again. The question was still more unfortunate. She had no power to reply. Her face was turned from him, and repressed breathings heaved her bosom. "You may tell me, then, if one Dame Scott lives in these parts?" he said again, as he marked her strange manner, and probably augured that his prior question was fraught with pain.

"Yes--yes," she replied, with a sudden start, as if relieved from pain, while she regained her feet; "yonder lives my mother."

The stranger stood with his eyes fixed upon her, as if in deep scrutiny of the inexplicable features of her character and appearance; but he added not a word, till he saw her move as if she wished to be gone.

"You will go with me?" he said.

But the words were scarcely uttered, when she was away through the woods, leaving him to seek his way to the house of her mother, whither, accordingly, he directed his steps, from some prior knowledge he possessed of the locality about which he had been making inquiries. As he went along, he seemed wrapt in meditation--again and again looking back, to endeavour to get another sight of the girl, who was now seated on the edge of the stream, and again seized by some engrossing thought that claimed all the energies of his spirit. On coming up to the door of the cottage, he tapped gently with his long staff; and, upon being required by the dame to enter, he passed into the middle of the floor, and stood and surveyed the house and its inmate.

"I have nothing for you," said the latter; "so you must pass on to those whom God has ordained as the distributors of what the needy require. Alas! I am myself but a beggar."

The words seemed to have been wrung out of her by the meditative mood in which the stranger had found her, and, whether it was that the interest which had been excited in him by the appearance of the daughter had been increased by the confession of the mother, or that there was some secret cause working in his mind, he passed his hand over his eyes, and for a moment turned away his head.

"I have been both a beggar and a giver in my day," he replied, as he laid down his hat and staff, and took a chair opposite to the dame; "and I am weary of the one character and of the other. I have got with a curse; and I have given for ingratitude. But I may here give, and you may receive, without either. There is an unoccupied bed; I am weary of wandering, and have enough to pay for rest."

"That is better than charity," rejoined the dame--"ay, even the charity of the stranger."

"And why of the _stranger_, dame?" added he. "I have hitherto thought that the charity of _friends_ was that which might be most easily borne. And who may be your benefactor?"

"Hector Hayston of Whitecraigs," replied she, hanging her head, and drawing a deep breath.

The stranger detected the same symptoms of pain in the mother as those he had observed in the daughter.

"Then forgets he not his cottars in his absence," he added. "But why has he left a retreat fairer than any I have yet seen throughout a long pilgrimage over many lands?"

"We will not speak of that," she replied, rising slowly, and going to the window, where she stood for a time in silence.

"You have a daughter, dame," resumed the man, as he watched the indications of movement in the heart of the mother. "I saw her sitting looking at the mansion of Whitecraigs. I fear she can lend you small aid; yet, if her powers of mind and body were equal to the beauty that has too clearly faded from her cheeks, methinks you would have had small need to have taken the charity of either friends or strangers."