Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

"We have lost our pains this time," he said; "there is a party of French, of fully five times our number, not half a mile away." The captain on the news, wasn't slow, as you may think, in ordering us off; and, hastily gathering up our blankets, and the contents of our knapsacks, we struck across the sand just as the sun was setting. There is scarce any twilight in Egypt, master; it is pitch dark twenty minutes after sunset. The first part of the evening, too, is infinitely disagreeable. The days are burning hot, and not a cloud can be seen in the sky; but no sooner has the sun gone down, than there comes on a thick white fog, that covers the whole country, so that one can't see fifty yards around; and so icy cold is it, that it strikes a chill to the very heart. It is with these fogs that the dews descend; and deadly things they are. Well, the mist and the darkness came upon us at once; we lost all reckoning; and, after floundering on for an hour or so, among the sandhills, our captain called a halt, and bade us burrow as we best might among the hollows. Hungry as we were, we were fain to leave our supper, to begin the morning with, and huddled all together into what seemed a deep, dry, ditch. We were at first surprised, master, to find an immense heap of stone under us; we couldn't have lain harder had we lain on a Scotch cairn; and that, d'ye see, is unusual in Egypt, where all the sand has been blown by the hot winds from the desert, hundreds of miles away, and where, in the course of a few days' journey, one mayn't see a pebble larger than a pigeon's egg. There were hard, round, bullet-like masses under us, and others of a more oblong shape, like pieces of wood that had been cut for fuel; and, tired as we were, their sharp points, protruding through the sand, kept most of us from sleep. But that was little, master, to what we felt afterwards. As we began to take heat together, there broke out among us a most disagreeable stench; bad, at first, and unlike anything I had ever felt before, but at last altogether overpowering. Some of us became dead sick, and some, to show how much bolder they were than the rest, began to sing. One half the party stole away one by one, and lay down outside; for my own part, master, I thought it was the plague that was breaking out upon us from below, and lay still, in despair of escaping it. I was wretchedly tired, too, and, despite of my fears and the stench, I fell asleep, and slept till daylight. But never before, master, did I see such a sight as when I awoke. We had been sleeping on the carcases of ten thousand Turks, whom Bonaparty had massacred about a twelvemonth before. There were eyeless skulls grinning at us by hundreds from the side of the ditch, and black, withered hands and feet sticking out, with the white bones glittering between the shrunken sinews. The very sand, for roods around, had a brown iron-like tinge, and seemed baked into a half-solid mass, resembling clay. It was no place to loiter in; and you may trust me, master, we breakfasted elsewhere. Bill kept close to our captain all that morning; he didn't much like him, even so early in their acquaintance as this--no one did, in fact; but he was anxious to learn from him all he could regarding the colonel. He told him, too, something about his own early recollections; but he would better have kept them to himself. From that hour, master, Captain Turpic never gave him a pleasant look, and sought every means to ruin him.

We joined the army again on the evening of the 20th March. You know, master, what awaited us next morning. I had been marching, on the day of our arrival, for twelve hours, under a very hot sun, and was fatigued enough to sleep soundly. But the dead might have awakened next morning. The enemy broke in upon us about three o'clock. It was pitch dark. I had been dreaming, at the moment, that I was busily engaged in the landing, fighting in the front rank beside Bill, and I awoke to hear the enemy, outside the tent, struggling in fierce conflict with such of my comrades as, half-naked and half-armed, had been roused by the first alarm, and had rushed out to oppose them. You will not think I was long in joining them, master, when I tell you that Bill himself was hardly two steps a-head of me. Colonel Westhope was everywhere at once that morning, bringing his men in the darkness and the confusion, into something like order; threatening, encouraging, applauding, issuing orders--all in a breath. Just as we got out, the French broke through, beside our tent, and we saw him struck down in the throng. Bill gave a tremendous cry of 'Our colonel! our colonel!' and struck his pike up to the cross into the breast of the fellow who had given the blow. And, hardly had that one fallen, than he sent it crashing through the face of the next foremost, till it lay buried in the brain. The enemy gave back for a moment; and, as he was striking down a third, the colonel got up, badly wounded in the shoulder; but he kept the field all day. He knew Bill the moment he rose, and leant on him till he had somewhat recovered. 'I shall not forget, Bill,' he said, 'that you have saved your colonel's life.' We had a fierce struggle, master, ere we beat out the French; but, broken and half-naked as we were, we did beat them out, and the battle became general.

At first, the flare of the artillery, as the batteries blazed out in the darkness, dazzled and blinded me; but I loaded and fired incessantly; and the thicker the bullets went whistling past me, the faster I loaded and fired. A spent shot, that had struck through a sandbank, came rolling on like a bowl, and, leaping up from a hillock in front, struck me on the breast. It was such a blow, master, as a man might have given with his fist; but it knocked me down; and, ere I got up, the company was a few paces in advance. The bonnet of the soldier who had taken my place, came rolling to my feet ere I could join them. But, alas! it was full of blood and brains; and I found that the spent shot had come just in time to save my life. Meanwhile, the battle raged with redoubled fury on the left, and we in the centre had a short respite. And some of us needed it. For my own part, I had fired about a hundred rounds; and my right shoulder was as blue as your waistcoat.

You will wonder, master, how I should notice such a thing in the heat of an engagement; but I remember nothing better than that there was a flock of little birds shrieking and fluttering over our heads for the greater part of the morning. The poor little things seemed as if robbed of their very instinct by the incessant discharges on every side of them; and, instead of pursuing a direct course, which would soon have carried them clear of us, they kept fluttering in helpless terror in one little spot. About mid-day an _aide-de-camp_ went riding by us to the right.

'How goes it? how goes it?' asked one of our officers.

'It is just _who will_,' replied the _aide-de-camp_, and passed by like lightning. Another followed hard after him.

'How goes it now?' inquired the officer.

'Never better, boy!' said the second rider. 'The Forty-Second have cut Bonaparty's Invincibles to pieces, and all the rest of the enemy are falling back!'

We came more into action a little after. The enemy opened a heavy fire on us, and seemed advancing to the charge. I had felt so fatigued, master, during the previous pause, that I could scarcely raise my hand to my head; but, now that we were to be engaged again, all my fatigue left me, and I found myself grown fresh as ever. There were two field-pieces to our left that had done noble execution during the day; and Captain Turpic's company, including Bill and me, were ordered to stand by them in the expected charge. They were wrought mostly by seamen from the vessels--brave, tight fellows, who, like Nelson, never saw fear; but they had been so busy that they had shot away most of their ammunition; and, as we came up to them, they were about despatching a party to the rear for more.

'Right,' said Captain Turpic; 'I don't care though I lend you a hand, and go with you.'

'On your peril, sir!' said Bill Whyte, 'What! leave your company in the moment of the expected charge? I shall assuredly report you for cowardice and desertion of quarters, if you do.'

'And I shall have you broke for mutiny,' said the captain. 'How can these fellows know how to choose their ammunition without some one to direct them?'

And so off he went to the rear, with the sailors; but, though they returned, poor fellows! in ten minutes or so, we saw no more of the captain till evening. On came the French in their last charge. Ere they could close with us, the sailors had fired their field-pieces thrice; and we could see wide avenues opened among them with each discharge. But on they came. Our bayonets crossed and clashed with theirs for one half minute; and, in the next, they were hurled headlong down the declivity, and we were fighting among them pell-mell. There are few troops superior to the French, master, in a first attack; but they want the bottom of the British; and, now that we had broken them in the moment of their onset, they had no chance with us, and we pitched our bayonets into them as if they were so many sheaves in harvest. They lay in some places three and four tier deep--for our blood was up, master,--just as they advanced on us, we had heard of the death of our general; and they neither asked for quarter nor got it. Ah, the good and gallant Sir Ralph! We all felt as if we had lost a father; but he died as the brave best love to die. The field was all our own; and not a Frenchman remained who was not dead or dying. That action, master, fairly broke the neck of their power in Egypt.

Our colonel was severely wounded, as I have told you, early in the morning; but, though often enough urged to retire, he had held out all day, and had issued his orders with all the coolness and decision for which he was so remarkable; but, now that the excitement of the fight was over, his strength failed him at once, and he had to be carried to his tent. He called for Bill, to assist in bearing him off. I believe it was merely that he might have an opportunity of speaking to him. He told him that, whether he died or lived, he would take care that he should be provided for. He gave Captain Turpic charge, too, that he should keep a warm side to Bill. I overheard our major say to the captain, as we left the tent--'Good heavens! did you ever see two men liker one another than the colonel and our new sergeant?' But the captain carelessly remarked, that the resemblance didn't strike him.

We met, outside, with a comrade. He had had a cousin in the Forty-Second, he said, who had been killed that morning, and he was anxious to see the body decently burried, and wished us to go along with him. And so we both went. It is nothing, master, to see men struck down in warm blood, and when one's own blood is up; but oh, 'tis a grievous thing, after one has cooled down to one's ordinary mood, to go out among the dead and the dying. We passed through what had been the thick of the battle. The slain lay in hundreds and thousands--like the ware and tangle on the shore below us--horribly broken, some of them, by the shot; and blood and brains lay spattered on the sand. But it was a worse sight to see, when some poor wretch, who had no chance of living an hour longer, opened his eyes as we passed, and cried out for water. We soon emptied our canteens, and then had to pass on. In no place did the dead lie thicker than where the Forty-Second had engaged the Invincibles, and never were there finer fellows. They lay piled in heaps--the best men of Scotland over the best men of France--and their wounds, and their number, and the postures in which they lay, showed how tremendous the struggle had been. I saw one gigantic corpse, with the head and neck cloven through the steel cab to the very brisket. It was that of a Frenchman; but the hand that had drawn the blow, lay cold and stiff, not a yard away, with the broadsword still firm in its grasp. A little farther on, we found the body we sought. It was that of a fair young man; the features were as composed as if he were asleep; there was even a smile on the lips; but a cruel cannon shot had torn the very heart out of the breast. Evening was falling. There was a little dog whining and whimpering over the body, aware, it would seem, that some great ill had befallen its master; but yet tugging, from time to time, at his clothes, that he might rise and come away.

'Ochon, ochon! poor Evan M'Donald!' exclaimed our comrade; 'what would Christy Ross, or your good old mother, say to see you lying here!'

Bill burst out a-crying, as if he had been a child; and I couldn't keep dry-eyed neither, master. But grief and pity are weaknesses of the bravest natures. We scooped out a hole in the sand with our bayonets and our hands, and, burying the body, came away.

The battle of the 21st broke, as I have said, the strength of the French in Egypt; for, though they didn't surrender to us until about five months after, they kept snug behind their walls, and we saw little more of them. Our colonel had gone aboard of the frigate, desperately ill of his wounds--so ill that it was several times reported he was dead; and most of our men were suffering sadly from sore eyes ashore. But such of us as escaped, had little to do, and we contrived to wile away the time agreeably enough. Strange country, Egypt, master. You know, our people have come from there; but, trust me, I could find none of my cousins among either the Turks or the Arabs. The Arabs, master, are quite the gipsies of Egypt: and Bill and I--but he paid dearly for them afterwards, poor fellow--used frequently to visit such of their straggling tribes as came to the neighbourhood of our camp. You, and the like of you, master, are curious to see _our_ people, and how we get on--and no wonder; and we were just as curious to see the Arabs. Toward evening, they used to come in from the shore or the desert, in parties of ten or twelve; and wild-looking fellows they were; tall, but not very tall; thin, and skinny, and dark; and an amazing proportion of them blind of an eye--an effect, I suppose, of the disease from which our comrades were suffering so much. In a party of ten or twelve--and their parties rarely exceeded a dozen--we found that every one of them had some special office to perform. One carried a fishing net, like a herring have; one, perhaps, a basket of fish, newly caught; one a sheaf of wheat; one, a large copper basin, or rather platter; one, a bundle of the dead boughs and leaves of the date tree; one, the implements for lighting a fire; and so on. The first thing they always did, after squatting down in a circle, was to strike a light; the next, to dig a round pot-like hole in the sand, in which they kindle their fire. When the sand has become sufficiently hot, they throw out the embers, and, placing the fish, just as they had caught them, in the bottom of the hole, heaped the hot sand over them, and the fire over that. The sheaf of wheat was next untied, and each taking a handful, held it over the flame till it was sufficiently scorched, and then rubbed out the grain between their hands, into the copper plate. The fire was then drawn off a second time, and the fish dug out, and, after rubbing off the sand, and taking out the bowels, they sat down to supper. And such, master, was the ordinary economy of the poorer tribes, that seemed drawn to the camp merely by curiosity. Some of the others brought fruit and vegetables to our market, and were much encouraged by our officers; but a set of greater rascals never breathed. At first, several of our men got flogged through them. They had a trick of raising a hideous outcry in the market place for every trifle--certain, d'ye see, of attracting the notice of some of our officers, who were all sure to take part with them. The market, master, had to be encouraged, at all events; and it was some time ere the tricks of the rascals were understood in the proper quarter. But, to make short, Bill and I went out one morning to our walk. We had just heard--and heavy news it was to the whole regiment--that our colonel was despaired of, and had no chance of seeing out the day. Bill was in miserably low spirits. Captain Turpic had insulted him most grossly that morning. So long as the colonel had been expected to recover, he had shown him some degree of civility; but he now took every opportunity of picking a quarrel with him. There was no comparison in battle, master, between Bill and the captain; for the captain, I suspect, was little better than a coward; but, then, there was just as little on parade the other way; for Bill, you know, couldn't know a great deal, and the captain was a perfect martinet. He had called him vagrant and beggar, master, for omitting some little piece of duty; now, he couldn't help having been with _us_, you know; and, as for beggary, he had never begged in his life. Well, we had walked out towards the market, as I say.

'It's all nonsense, Jack,' says he, 'to be so dull on the matter; I'll e'en treat you to some fruit. I have a Sicilian dollar here. See that lazy fellow with the spade lying in front, and the burning mountain smoking behind him; we must see if he can't dig out for us a few _prans'_ worth of dates.

Well, master, up he went to a tall, thin, rascally-looking Arab, with one eye, and bought as much fruit from him as might come to one-tenth of the dollar which he gave him, and then held out his hand for the change. But there was no change forthcoming. Bill wasn't a man to be done out of his cash in that silly way, and so he stormed at the rascal; but he, in turn, stormed as furiously, in his own lingo, at him, till at last Bill's blood got up, and, seizing him by the breast, he twisted him over his knee, as one might a boy of ten years or so. The fellow raised a hideous outcry, as if Bill were robbing and murdering him. Two officers, who chanced to be in the market at the time, came running up at the noise; one of them was the scoundrel Turpic; and Bill was laid hold of, and sent off under guard to the camp. Poor fellow! he got scant justice there. Turpic had procured a man-of-war's man, who swore, as he well might, indeed, that Bill was the smuggler who had swamped the Kirkcudbright custom-house boat. There was another brought forward, who swore that both of us were gipsies, and told a blasted rigmarole story, without one word of truth in it, about the stealing of a silver spoon. The Arab had his story, too, in his own lingo; and they received every word of it; for my evidence went for nothing. I was of a race who never spoke the truth, they said--as if I weren't as good as a Mahommedan Arab. To crown all, in came Turpic's story, about what he called Bill's mutinous spirit in the action of the 21st. You may guess the rest, master. The poor fellow was broke that morning, and told that, were it not in consideration of his bravery, he would have got a flogging into the bargain.

I spent the evening of that day with Bill, outside the camp, and we ate the dates together, that in the morning had cost him so dear. The report had gone abroad--luckily a false one--that our colonel was dead; and that put an end to all hope, with the poor fellow, of having his case righted. We spoke together for, I am sure, two hours--spoke of Bill's early recollections, and of the hardship of his fate all along. And it was now worse with him, he said, than it had ever been before. He spoke of the strange, unaccountable hostility of Turpic; and I saw his brow grow dark, and the veins of his neck swell almost to bursting. He trusted they might yet meet, he said, where there would be none to note who was the officer and who the private soldier. I did my best, master, to console the poor fellow, and we parted. The first thing I saw as I opened the tent door next morning, was Captain Turpic, brought into the camp by the soldier whose cousin Bill and I had assisted to bury. The captain was leaning on his shoulder, somewhat less than half alive, as it seemed, with four of his front teeth struck out, and a stream of blood all along his vest and small clothes. He had been met with by Bill, who had attacked him, he said, and, after breaking his sword, would have killed him, had not the soldier come up and interfered. But that, master, was the captain's story. The soldier told me, afterwards, that he saw the captain draw his sword ere Bill lifted hand at all; and that, when the poor fellow did strike, he gave him only one knock-down blow on the mouth, that laid him insensible at his feet; and that, when down, though he might have killed him twenty times over, he didn't so much as crook a finger on him. Nay, more; Bill offered to deliver himself up to the soldier, had not the latter assured him that he would to a certainty be shot, and advised him to make off. There was a party dispatched in quest of him, master, the moment Turpic had told his story; but he was lucky enough, poor fellow, to elude them; and they returned in the evening, just as they had gone out. And I saw no more of Bill in Egypt, master.

Never had troops less to do than we had, for the six months or so we afterwards remained in the country; and time hung wretchedly on the hands of some of us. Now that Bill was gone, I had no comrade with whom I cared to associate; and, as you may think, I often didn't know what to do with myself. After all our fears and regrets, master, our colonel recovered, and, one morning, about four months after the action, came ashore to see us. We were sadly pestered with flies, master. I have seen, I am sure, a bushel of them on the top of our tent at once. They buzzed all night by millions round our noses, and many a plan did we think of to get rid of them; but, after destroying hosts on hosts they still seemed as thick as before. I had fallen on a new scheme this morning. I placed some sugar on a board, and surrounded it with gunpowder; and, when the flies had settled by thousands on the sugar, I fired the powder by means of a train, and the whole fell dead on the floor of the tent. I had just got a capital shot, when up came the colonel, and sat down beside me.

'I wish to know,' he said, 'all you can tell me about Bill Whyte; you were his chief friend and companion, I have heard, and are acquainted with his early history. Can you tell me ought of his parentage.'

'Nothing of that, colonel,' I said; 'and yet I have known Bill almost ever since he knew himself.'

And so, master, I told him all that I knew; how Bill had been first taken to us by my mother; of the purse of gold she had brought with her, which had kept us all so merry; and of the noble spirit he had shown among us when he grew up. I told him, too, of some of Bill's early recollections; of the scarlet dress trimmed with silver, which had been brought to his mind by the sergeant's coat the first day he wore it; of the gentleman and lady, too, whom he remembered to have lived with; and of the supposed resemblance he had found between the former and the colonel. The colonel, as I went on, was strangely agitated, master. He held an open letter in his hand, and seemed, every now and then, to be comparing particulars; and, when I mentioned Bill's supposed recognition of him, he actually started from off his seat.

'Good Heavens!' he exclaimed, 'why was I not brought acquainted with this before!'

I explained the why, master, and told him all about Captain Turpic; and he left me with, you may be sure, no very favourable opinion of the captain. But I must now tell you, master, a part of my story which I had but from hearsay.

The colonel had been getting over the worse effects of his wound, when he received a letter from a friend in England, informing him that his brother-in-law, the father of Captain Turpic, had died suddenly, and that his sister, who, to all appearance was fast following, had been making strange discoveries regarding an only son of the colonel's, who was supposed to have been drowned about seventeen years before. The colonel had lost both his lady and child by a frightful accident. His estate lay near Olney, on the banks of the Ouse; and the lady, one day, during the absence of the colonel, who was in London, was taking an airing in the carriage with her son, a boy of three years or so, when the horses took fright, and, throwing the coachman, who was killed on the spot, rushed into the river. The Ouse is a deep, sluggish stream, dark and muddy in some of the more dangerous pools, and mantled over with weeds. It was into one of these the carriage was overturned; assistance came too late, and the unfortunate lady was brought out, a corpse; but the body of the child was nowhere to be found. It now came out, however, from the letter, that the child had been picked up, unhurt, by the colonel's brother-in-law, who, after concealing it for nearly a week, during the very frenzy of the colonel's distress, had then given it to a gipsy. The rascal's only motive--he was a lawyer, master--was that his own son, the captain, who was then a boy of twelve years or so, and not wholly ignorant of the circumstance, might succeed to the colonel's estate. The writer of the letter added that, on coming to the knowledge of the singular confession, he had made instant search after the gipsy to whom the child had been given, and had been fortunate enough to find her, after tracing her over half the kingdom, in a cave, near Fortrose, in the north of Scotland. She had confessed all; stating, however, that the lad, who had borne among the tribe the name of Bill Whyte, and had turned out a fine fellow, had been outlawed, for some smuggling feat, about eighteen months before, and had enlisted, with a young man, her son, into a regiment bound for Egypt. You see, master, there couldn't be a shadow of doubt that my comrade, Bill Whyte, was just Henry Westhope, the colonel's son and heir. But the grand matter was where to find him. Search as we might, all search was in vain; we could trace him no further than outside the camp, to where he had met with Captain Turpic. I should tell you, by the way, that the captain was now sent to Coventry, by every one, and that not an officer in the regiment would return his salute.

Well, master, the months passed, and at length the French surrendered; and, having no more to do in Egypt, we all re-embarked, and sailed for England. The short peace had been ratified before our arrival; and I, who had become heartily tired of the life of a soldier, now that I had no one to associate with, was fortunate enough to obtain my discharge. The colonel retired from the service at the same time. He was as kind to me as if he had been my father, and offered to make me his forester, if I would but come and live beside him; but I was too fond of a wandering life for that. He was corresponding, he told me, with every British consul within fifteen hundred miles of the Nile; but he had heard nothing of Bill, master. Well, after seeing the colonel's estate, I parted from him, and came north, to find out my people, which I soon did; and, for a year or so, I lived with them just as I have been doing since. I was led, in the course of my wanderings, to Leith, and was standing, one morning, on the pier among a crowd of people, who had gathered round to see a fine vessel from the Levant, that was coming in at the time, when my eye caught among the sailors a man exceedingly like Bill. He was as tall, and even more robust, and he wrought with all Bill's activity; but, for some time I could not catch a glimpse of his face. At length, however, he turned round, and there, sure enough, was Bill himself. I was afraid to hail him, master, not knowing who among the crowd might also know him, and know him also as a deserter or an outlaw; but you may be sure I wasn't long in leaping aboard and making up to him. And we were soon as happy, master, in one of the cellars of the Coal-hill, as we had been in all our lives before.

Bill told me his history since our parting. He had left the captain lying at his feet, and struck across the sand, in the direction of the Nile, one of the mouths of which he reached next day. He there found some Greek sailors, who were employed in watering; and, assisting them in their work, he was brought aboard their vessel, and engaged as a seaman by the master, who had lost some of his crew by the plague. As you may think, master, he soon became a prime sailor, and continued with the Greeks, trading among the islands of the Archipelago, for about eighteen months, when, growing tired of the service, and meeting with an English vessel, he had taken a passage home. I told him how much ado we had all had about him after he had left us, and how we were to call him Bill Whyte no longer. And so, in short, master, we set out together for Colonel Westhope's.

In our journey, we met with some of our people on a wild moor of Cumberland, and were invited to pass the night with them. They were of the Curlit family; but you will hardly know them as that. Two of them had been with us when Bill swamped the custom-house boat. They were fierce, desperate fellows, and not much to be trusted by their friends even; and I was afraid that they might have somehow come to guess that Bill had brought some clinkers home with him. And so, master, I would fain have dissuaded him from making any stay with them in the night time; for I did not know, you see, in what case we might find our _weasands_ in the morning; but Bill had no fears of any kind, and was, besides, desirous to spend one last night with the gipsies; and so he stayed. The party had taken up their quarters in a waste house on the moor, with no other human dwelling within four miles of it. There was a low, stunted wood on the one side, master, and a rough, sweeping stream on the other: the night, too, was wild and boisterous; and, what between suspicion and discomfort, I felt well nigh as drearily as I did when lying among the dead men in Egypt. We were nobly treated, however, and the whisky flowed like water, but we drank no more than was good for us. Indeed, Bill was never a great drinker; and I kept on my guard, and refused the liquor, on the plea of a bad head. I should have told you that there were but three of the Curlits--all of them raw-boned fellows, however, and all of them of such stamp that the three have since been hung. I saw they were sounding Bill; but he seemed aware of them.

'Ay, ay,' said he, 'I have made something by my voyaging, lads, though, mayhap, not a great deal. What think you of that there now, for instance?'--drawing, as he spoke, a silver-mounted pistol out of each pocket--'these are pretty pops, and as good as they are pretty; the worst of them sends a bullet through an inch board at twenty yards.'

'Are they loaded, Bill?' asked Tom Curlit.

'To be sure,' said Bill, returning them again, each to its own pouch. 'What is the use of an empty pistol?'

'Ah,' replied Tom, 'I smell a rat, Bill. You have given over making war on the king's account, and have taken the road to make war on your own. Bold enough, to be sure.'

From the moment, they saw the pistols, the brothers seemed to have changed their plan regarding us--for some plan I am certain they had. They would now fain have taken us into partnership with them; but their trade was a woundy bad one, master, with a world more of risk than profit.

'Why lads,' said Tom Curlit to Bill and me, 'hadn't you better stay with us altogether? The road won't do in these days at all. No, no, the law is a vast deal over strong for that; and you will be tucked up like dogs for your very first affair. But, if you stay with us, you will get on in a much quieter way on this wild moor here. Plenty of game, Bill; and, sometimes, when the nights are long, we contrive to take a purse with as little trouble as may be. We had an old pedlar, only three weeks ago, that brought us sixty good pounds.--By the way, brothers, we must throw a few more sods over him, for I nosed him this morning as I went by.--And, lads, we have something in hand just now that, with to be sure a little more risk, will pay better still. Two hundred yellow boys in hand, and five hundred more when our work is done. Better that, Bill, than standing to be shot at, for a shilling per day.'

'Two hundred in hand, and five hundred more when you have done your work!' exclaimed Bill. 'Why, that is sure enough princely pay, unless the work be very bad indeed. But, come, tell us what you propose. You can't expect us to make it a leap in the dark matter.'

'The work is certainly a little dangerous,' said Tom, 'and we of ourselves are rather few; but, if you both join with us, there would be a vast deal less of danger indeed. The matter is just this. A young fellow, like ourselves, has a rich old uncle, who has made his will in his favour; but then he threatens to make another will that won't be so favourable to him by half; and you see the drawing across of a knife--so--would keep the first one in force. And that is all we have to do before pocketing the blunt. But, then, the old fellow is as brave as a lion; and there are two servants with him, worn-out soldiers like himself, that would, I am sure, be rough customers. With your help, however, we shall get on primely. The old boy's house stands much alone; and we shall be five to three.'

'Well, well,' said Bill, 'we shall give your proposal a night's thought, and tell you what we think of it in the morning. But, remember, no tricks, Tom! If we engage in the work, we must go share and share alike in the booty.'

'To be sure,' said Tom; and so the conversation closed.

About eight o'clock, or so, master, I stepped out to the door. The night was dark and boisterous as ever, and there had come on a heavy rain. But I could see that, dark and boisterous as it was, some one was approaching the house with a dark lanthern. I lost no time in telling the Curlits so.

'It must be the captain,' said they; 'though it seems strange that he should come here to-night. You must away, Jack and Bill, to the loft, for it mayn't do for the captain to find you here; but you can lend us a hand afterwards, should need require it.'

There was no time for asking explanations, master; and so up we climbed to the loft, and had got snugly concealed among some old hay, when in came the captain. But what captain, think you? Why, just our old acquaintance, Captain Turpic!

'Lads,' he said to the Curlits, 'make yourselves ready; get your pistols. Our old scheme is blown; for the colonel has left his house at Olney, on a journey to Scotland; but he passes here to-night, and you must find means to stop him--now or never!'

'What force and what arms has he with him, captain?' asked Tom.

'The coachman, his body servant, and himself,' said the captain; 'but only the servant and himself are armed. The stream outside is high to-night; you must take them just as they are crossing it, and thinking of only the water; and, whatever else you may mind, make sure of the colonel.'

'Sure as I live,' said Bill to me, in a low whisper, ''tis a plan to murder Colonel Westhope! And, good Heavens!' he continued, pointing through an opening in the gable, 'yonder is his carriage, not a mile away. You may see the lantherns, like two fiery eyes, coming sweeping along the moor. We have no time to lose; let us slide down through the opening, and meet with it.'

As soon done as said, master; we slid down along the turf gable, crossed the stream, which had risen high on its banks, by a plank bridge for foot passengers, and then dashed along the broken road in the direction of the carriage. We came up to it, as it was slowly crossing an open drain.

'Colonel Westhope!' I cried, 'Colonel Westhope!--stop! stop!--turn back! You are waylaid by a party of ruffians, who will murder you if you go on.'

The door opened and the colonel stepped out, with his sword under his left arm, and a cocked pistol in his hand.

'Is not that Jack Whyte?' he asked.

'The same, noble colonel,' I said; 'and here is Henry, your son.'

It was no place or time, master, for long explanations; there was one hearty congratulation, and one hurried embrace; and the colonel, after learning from Bill the number of the assailants, and the plan of the attack, ordered the carriage to drive on slowly before, and followed, with us and his servant, on foot, behind.

'The rascals,' he said, 'will be so dazzled with the flare of the lantherns in front, that we will escape notice till they have fired, and then we shall have them for the picking down.'

And so it was, master. Just as the carriage was entering the stream, the coachman was pulled down by Tom Curlit; at the same instant, three bullets went whizzing through the glasses, and two fellows came leaping out from behind some furze to the carriage door. A third, whom I knew to be the captain, lagged behind. I marked him, however; and when the colonel and Bill were disposing of the other two--and they took them so sadly by surprise, master, that they had but little difficulty in throwing them down, and binding them--I was lucky enough to send a piece of lead through the captain. He ran about twenty yards, and then dropped down, stone dead. Tom escaped us; but he cut a throat some months after, and suffered for it at Carlisle. And his two brothers, after making a clean breast, and confessing all, were transported for life. But they found means to return in a few years after, and were both hung on the gallows on which Tom had suffered before them.

I have not a great deal more to tell you, master. The colonel has been dead for the last twelve years, and his son has succeeded him in his estate. There is not a completer gentleman in England than Henry Westhope, master, nor a finer fellow. I call on him every time I go round, and never miss a hearty welcome; though, by the by, I am quite as sure of a hearty scold. He still keeps a snug little house empty for me, and offers to settle on me fifty pounds a-year, whenever I choose to give up my wandering life, and go and live with him. But what's bred in the bone won't come out of the flesh, master, and I have not yet closed with his offer. And, really, to tell you my mind, I don't think it quite respectable. Here I am, at present, a free, independent tinker--no man more respectable than a tinker, master--all allow that; whereas, if I go and live with Bill, on an unwrought-for fifty pounds a-year, I will be hardly better than a mere master tailor or shoemaker. No, no, that would never do! Nothing like respectability, master, let a man fare as hard as he may.

I thanked the gipsy for his story, and told him I thought it almost worth while putting it in print. He thanked me, in turn, for liking it so well, and assured me I was quite at liberty to put it in print as soon as I choose. And so I took him at his word.

"But yonder," said he, "is the moon rising, red and huge over the three tops of Belrinnes, and throwing, as it brightens, its long strip of fire across the Frith. Take care of your footing, just as you reach the top of the crag; there is an awkward gap there on the rock edge that reminds me of an Indian trap; but, as for the rest of the path, you will find it quite as safe as by day. Good-by!"

I left him, and made the best of my way home; where, while the facts were fresh in my mind, I committed to paper (for the express purpose of having it inserted among the Border Tales) the gipsy's story.

THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.

THE LAST OF THE PEDLARS.

"Atlas was so exceeding strong,
He bore the skies upon his back,
Just as a pedlar does his pack."--SWIFT.

The whole framework of society has been so much altered within these last sixty years, that a person who has been born within that period, unless from tradition, must remain entirely ignorant of the manners and habits of his immediate predecessors. _Now_, highroads, carriages by land and water, with all manner of facilities of intercourse, have brought every part of the country, even the most remote corners, into contact, as it were, with every other part. Any great or engrossing fact or feeling flies immediately, on wings of paper, and in characters of ink, from land's-end to land's-end. But, formerly, this was very far from being the case. The press, as a vehicle of public news, was altogether in its infancy. Roads _were_ not, or they were all _but_ impassable; and the one end of the island might be sunk into the sea, without the other extremity having any immediate perception of the loss. But we must not conclude, on this account, that our forefathers were without curiosity, or without the means of gratifying that passion for news which is deeply seated in our nature. Not at all; the very inconveniences of their position produced, in a great measure, the means of reciprocal intelligence.

There were the tailor and the trogger, but, above and beyond all, the pedlar, the most respected and interesting of all walking and migrating gazettes, who, in the non-existence of woollen-drapers and haberdashers, nailed, like bad silver, to a locality, wandered from Dan to Beersheba--in other words, from Glasgow to Manchester, and _vice versa_--carrying all manner of fashionable clothing on their backs, and a vast assortment of fore-night gabble in their heads. As these itinerant merchants behoved to be young and strong, so they were generally unmarried, and kept up a kind of running fire with the lasses. Their opportunities of observing the characteristics of the farmer's fireside were unbounded, as they not unfrequently remained stationary for two or three days in one place. After several years of laborious travel, and enormous profits, at little or no expense in point of diet, such individuals generally purchased a stout horse, to carry the increased load of goods. The horse, again, was ultimately attached to a waggon, and the waggon, at last, stuck in the midst of some flourishing village or town, and became a regular haberdashery shop. Thus, through industry, all but dishonest parsimony, prudence, and perseverance, a comfortable independence often crowned the old age of the packman; and he was not unfrequently found with a fishing-rod by the mountain-stream, or with a book in the corner of his snug little garden, towards the close of his varied and eventful history. It was but the other day that we attended the sale of an old bachelor of this description--the last, we believe, of the race--and that, amidst a parcel of old books and papers, which we purchased _en masse_, we discovered a well written and somewhat extended manuscript, from which we intend to cull a few chapters for the amusement of our readers.