Chapter II: Part 2

"I again sprang to my feet, with the undetermined and confused wildness of despair. The mournful howlings of the assassin continued to render the horrid sepulchre still more horrible, and gave to its darkness a deeper ghostliness. Dead to every emotion of sympathy, stricken with dismal realities, and more terrible imaginations, yet burning for revenge, directed by the howlings of the miserable man, and hesitating to distinguish between them and their incessant echoes, stretching my hands before me, I again approached him, to extort a confession of the cause and place of my imprisonment, or rather living burial. Vainly I raised him from the ground--threatening, soothing, and expostulation were alike unavailing. On hearing my voice, the miserable being shrieked with redoubled bitterness, plunged furiously, and gnashed his teeth, fastening them, in the extremity of his frenzy, in his own flesh. His fierce agony recalled to my bosom an emotion of pity; and, for a moment, forgetful of my own injuries and condition, I thought only of relieving his suffering; but my presence seemed to add new madness to his tortures; and he tore himself from my hold with the lamentable yells of a tormented mastiff, and the strength of a giant who, in the last throe of expiring nature, grapples with his conqueror. He reeled wildly a few paces, and fell, with a crash, upon the earth.

"Slowly and dismally the hours moved on, with no sound to measure their progress, save the audible beating of my own heart, and the death-like howling moan of my companion. As I leaned against the wall, counting these dismal divisions of time, which appeared thus fearfully to mete out the duration of my existence, through the black darkness, whose weight had become oppressive to my eyeballs, I beheld, far above me, on the opposite wall, a faint shadow, like the ghost of light, streaking its side, but so indistinct and imperfect, I knew not whether it was fancy or reality. With the earnestness of death, my eyes remained fixed on the 'gloomy light;' and it threw upon my bosom a hope dim as itself. Again I doubted its existence--deemed it a creation of my brain; and groping along the damp floor, where my hand seemed passing over the ribs of a skeleton, I threw a loose fragment in the air, towards the point from whence the doubted glimmering proceeded; and perceived, for a moment, as it fell, the shadow of a substance. Then, springing forward to the spot, I gasped to inhale, with its feeble ray, one breath that was not agony.

"Thirst burned my lips, and, to cool them, they were pressed against the damp walls of the prison; but my tongue was still dry--my throat parched--and hunger began to prey upon me. While thus suffering, a faint light streamed from a narrow opening in the roof of the vault. Slowly a feeble lamp was lowered through the aperture, and descended within two or three feet of my head. A small basket, containing a portion of bread and a pitcher of water, suspended by a cord, was let down into the vault. I seized the pitcher, as I would have rushed upon liberty; and raising it to my lips, as the pure, grateful beverage allayed the fever of my thirst, I shed a solitary tear, and, in the midst of my misery, that tear was a tear of joy--like the morning-star gilding the horizon, when the surrounding heavens are wrapped in tempest. With it the feelings of the Christian and the man met in my bosom; and, bending over my fellow-sufferer, I applied the water to his lips. The poor wretch devoured the draught to its last drop with greediness.

"The presence and the unceasing groans of my companion--yea, the dungeon and darkness themselves--were forgotten in the one deadening and bitter idea, that my wife and child were also captives, and in the power of ruffians. If any other thought was indulged a moment, it was longing for liberty, that I might fly to their rescue--and it was then only that I became again sensible of captivity; and my eyes once more sought the dubious gleam that stretched fitfully across the wall, becoming more evident to perception as I became inured to the surrounding blackness. Hope burned and brightened, as I traced the source of its dreamy shadows; and from thence weaved plans of escape, which, in the calculation of fancy, were already as performed; though, before reason and common possibilities, they would have perished as the dewy nets that, with the damps of an autumnal morning, overspread the hawthorn with their spangled lacework, and, before the rising sunbeam, shrink into nothing.

"But gradually my grief and despair subsided, and gave place to the cheering influence of hope, and the resolution of attempting my escape; and I rose to eat the bread and drink the water of captivity, to strengthen me for the task. For many hours, the presence of my companion had been forgotten; he still continued to howl, as one whom the horrors of an accusing conscience were withholding from the grasp of death; and I, roused from the reverie of my feelings and projects at the sound of his sufferings, hastened to apply water and morsels of bread to the lips of my perishing fellow-prisoner; for bread and water had been lowered into the vault.

"In order to carry my plan of escape into effect, for the first time, aided by the lamp that was suspended over me, I gazed inquisitively, and with a feeling of dismay, around the Golgotha in which I was immured. There lay my hideous companion, the foam of pain and insanity gurgling from his mouth; beside him the skeleton of a mailed warrior, and around, the uncoffined bones of four others, partly covered with their armour, and

'The brands yet rusted in their bony hands.'

"Although prepared for such a scene, I placed my hands before my eyes, shuddering at the thought of becoming as one of those--of being their companion while I lived--of lying down by the side of a skeleton to die! The horror of the idea fired anew my resolution, and added more than human strength to my arm. I again eagerly sought the direction of the doubtful gleam, which formerly filled me with hope; and was convinced that from thence an opening might be effected, if not to perfect liberty, to a sight of the blessed light of heaven, where freedom, I dreaded not, would easily be found. Filled with determination, which no obstacle could impede, I took one of the swords, which had lain by the side of its owner untouched for ages, and with this instrument commenced the laborious and seemingly impossible task of cutting out a flight of steps in the rude wall, and thereby gaining the invisible aperture from which something like light was seen to emanate. The ray proceeded from an extreme angle of the dungeon, and apparently at its utmost height. The materials on which I had to work were chiefly a hard granite rock, and other lighter, but scarce more manageable strata.

"Several anxious and miserable weeks thus passed in sluggish succession. Half of my task was accomplished; and hope, with impatience, looked forward to its completion. I still divided my scanty meals with my companion, who, although recovered from the bruises occasioned by his fall, was become more horrible and fiend-like than before. As his body resumed its functions, his mind became the terrible imaginings of a guilty conscience. He had either lost, or forgotten, the power of walking upright, and prowled, howling round the dungeon, on his hands and feet; while his dark bushy beard and revolting aspect gave him more the manner and appearance of a wild beast than a human being.

"Our portion of food being barely sufficient for the sustenance of one, hunger had long been added to the list of our sufferings; but particularly to those of the maniac. And, with the cunning peculiar to such unfortunates, he watched the return of the basket, which was daily lowered with provisions, and frequently before I--who, absorbed in the completion of my task, forgot or heeded not my jailer's being within hearing--could descend to the ground, he would grasp the basket, swallow off the water at a draught, and hurry with the bread to a corner of a dungeon; thus leaving me without food for the next twenty-four hours.

"It was at the period when I had half completed my object, that my companion, springing, as was his wont, upon the basket, before I could approach to withhold him, succeeded in draining off the contents of a goblet, in which a few drops of a dark-coloured liquid still remained; and the pitcher of water was untouched. The wretched maniac had swallowed the draught but a few minutes, when, rolling himself together, his screams and contortions became more frightful than before, and increased in virulence for an hour. He lay motionless a few seconds, gasping for breath; then, springing suddenly to his feet, he gazed wistfully above and around him, with a look of extreme agony, and exclaiming, 'Heaven help me!' he rushed fiercely towards the wall in the opposite direction to where I was attempting to effect my escape, gave one furious pull at what appeared the solid rock, and, with a groan, fell back, and expired.

"When the horror occasioned by his death in some degree abated, the singularity of the manner in which he tore at the wall of the dungeon, fixed my attention; and, with almost frantic joy, I perceived that a portion of the hitherto thought impenetrable rock, had yielded several inches to his dying grasp. I hastily removed the body, and pulling eagerly at the unloosed fragment, it fell upon the ground, a rough unhewn lump of granite, leaving an opening of about two feet square in the rude rocky wall, from which it was so cut, as to seem to feeling and almost appearance a solid part of it.

"My task was now abandoned. The gleam of light, which for weeks was to me an object of such intense interest, proceeded from a mere hairbreadth cleft in the rock. Taking up a sword which lay upon the ground, I drew my body into the aperture formed by the removal of the piece of rock; and creeping slowly on my hands and knees, groping with the weapon before me, I at length found the winding and dismal passage sufficiently lofty to permit me to stand erect. I seemed enveloped in an interminable cavern, now opening into spacious chambers, clothed with crystal; again losing itself in low passages, or narrow chinks of the rock, and suddenly terminating in a slippery precipice, beneath which gurgling waters were heard to run. Hours and hours passed; still I was groping onward; when I suddenly found my hopes cut off, by the interposition of a precipice. I probed fearfully forward with the sword, but all was an unsubstantial void; I drew it on each side, and then it met but the solid walls. I knelt, and reached down the sword to the length of my arm, but it touched nothing. In agony, I dropped the weapon, by its sound to ascertain the depth; and, delighted, found it did not exceed eight or ten feet. I cautiously slid down, and groping around, again placed my hand upon the sword. Though my heart occasionally sank within me, yet the overcoming of each difficulty lent its inspiring aid to overcome its successor. Often every hope appeared extinct. Now I ascended, or again descended the dropping and crystalled rocks; now crept into openings, which suddenly terminated, and turning again, anxiously listened to the sound of the rippling water as my only guide. Often, in spite of every precaution, I was stunned with a blow from the abrupt lowness of the roof, or suddenly plunged to the arms in the numerous pools, whose waters had been dark from their birth.

"Language cannot convey an idea of the accumulating horrors of my situation. Struggling with suffocation, with a feeling more awful than terror, and with despair, the agony of darkness must be _experienced_ to be imagined.

"Still I moved on; and suddenly, when ready to sink, wearied, fainting, hopeless, the glorious light of day streamed upon my sight. I bounded forward with a wild shout; but the magnificent sun, bursting from the eastern heavens, blinded my unaccustomed gaze.

"I again found that I was free: but my wife--my child--where were they? It was many years before I learned that the nephew of the inquisitor, who had sought her hand, having died, she regained her liberty, and fled with our infant son to Scotland, to seek the home of her lost husband. Since then I have never heard of them again."

When the major had thus concluded his narrative,

"Here," said Christopher, "are two rings which were taken from the fingers of my mother--both bear inscriptions."

The old officer gazed upon them.

"They were hers--my Maria's!" he exclaimed; "I myself placed them upon her fingers. Son of my Maria, thou art mine!"

The major purchased a commission for his long-lost son; and when peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, they returned to Northumberland together, where Christopher gave his sword as a memorial to his foster-father, Peter Thornton, and his hand to Jessie Wilkinson.

THE TRIALS OF MENIE DEMPSTER.

In the contemplation of the affairs of the world, there is perhaps nothing that strikes a philosophical observer with more wonder than what has been quaintly called the mutability of truth. With the exception of some of the best ascertained laws of matter, and the evidences and sanctions of our holy religion, there is scarcely anything around us that can be said to be absolutely determined and ascertained in all its bearings--including the influential cause, in a chain extending its unseen links through many minds; the proximate cause, involved in the dark recesses of the soul of the actor; and the effects, spread forth in endless ramification through society. Men are judged of, condemned, hanged, reviled, ruined, elevated, applauded, and rewarded upon less than a thousandth part of the real moral truth that is evident to the eye of the Almighty; and it too often happens, that what seems to be best ascertained by the united testimony of many soothfast witnesses, is after all little better than a lie, or an invention of men's minds, rolled up in the clouds of prejudice, selfishness, or hallucination. This truth, of no truth, is apparent to all thinking men; and yet how melancholy is it to reflect that we are so constructed that we cannot but live and act upon the principle and practice that we see the whole, when we see only an insignificant part, that, if observed in the midst of the general array brought out by divine light, would appear not only a speck, but by the influence of surrounding evidence, changed in its nature, and reversed in its object and bearing! It was but a partial, though a striking illustration of this fact, that the murder which Sir Walter Raleigh saw committed with his own eyes from the Tower window came to him so distorted and changed, through the medium of public and judicial report, that he could scarcely recognise in it the lineaments of the vision of his senses; for if the act he witnessed performed in the streets of London were falsified by the errors or inventions of man, how little could have been known of the motives that led to its commission! This subject, if carried out, might open up a dreadful array of the effects of man's conceit and blindness, exhibiting innocent individuals paying the penalty of death for the crimes of others; characters without a stain immolated at the shrine of public prejudice; and innocence suffering in ten thousand different ways under the cruel scorn of the bloodthirsty Chiun of a blind yet self-sufficient public. We are led into these observations by the facts of a curious case of false implication that occurred near Edinburgh many years ago, from which, besides the interest it may inspire, we may learn the lesson of that charity which our blessed Saviour laboured so much to make a ruling principle in the men of the world, but with a success that might form a melancholy theme for the fair investigations of philanthropists.

In the village of Old Broughton, situated on the north of the old town of Edinburgh, and now nearly swallowed up by the surrounding masses of architectural grandeur that compose the new town of that proud city, there lived (we love the good old style of beginning a story) the old widow of William Dempster, who long officiated in the capacity of precentor in the ancient kirk of the Tron; where his voice, loud as that of Cycloborus, stirred the sleeping power of vocal worship in the breasts of the good citizens. His voice had long been mute, not as that of Elihu, who trembled to speak to the Lord, but as that of those who lie in the mould till that day when there shall be no hindrance by the chilling hand of death, to sing the praises of the King of heaven and earth. Yet the voice of thanksgiving was not silent in the house of the widow and fatherless, where old Euphan, as she was styled, and her pretty daughter Menie, lived that life whose enjoyments the proud may despise, but whose end and reward they may envy in vain. It may not be that it was their choice (as whose choice is it?) to be poor; but it was their wisdom to know, as expressed by old Boston, that it may be more pleasant to live in a palace, but it is more easy to die in a cottage. The characters of these individuals, who happily never dreamed of forming heroines in the "Border Tales," can be best appreciated by those who lived in the last century; for in these jaunty days, when the sun of perfectibility is beginning to dawn on the moral horizon of a once sinful world, the contentment that is derived from a trust in heaven, and the pride that is begotten of a virtue that rejoices in itself, are more often pictured by the pen of the fictioneer than found in the place and personages that be. The representations of our old painter, George Jamesone, would be true as applied to Euphan Dempster and her daughter; for the dresses of the women of Scotland underwent small change until the eventful era of the nineteenth century; but we need them not--for our faithful memory has treasured the description of our parent, who lived to set forth the old representative of the Covenanters, sitting with her linsey-woolsey gown, of green or cramosie, made close in the sleeves--the body tight, and peaked in the form of the old separate bodice--the huge swelling skirt of many folds, twined out at the pocket-holes, and open in front, to show the bright-coloured petticoat of callimankey--her round-eared mutch that served the purpose of bonnet and coif--her clear-bleached tuck, with its row of mother-of-pearl buttons running down the front--and her hose of white woollen, that disappeared at the extremities in the shoe, whose high-turned heels gave a kind of dignity to the step of the poor. The dress of the mother in those days was almost that of the daughter, with the exception of the head-gear, which, in the latter, was limited to a band of black velvet (the _bandeau_), to restrain the flowing locks; and, high as the word velvet may sound, there were few maidens, however poor, that wanted the small strip of the costly material that now is seen covering the whole persons of the wives of rich tradesmen.

Such were the external characteristics of the inhabitants of the old red-tiled dwelling, so long known by the name of Dominie Dempster's House, in the village of Old Broughton; and, if we will form a character out of a combination of the virtues that dignified and graced the wives and daughters of the old Cameronians, we might make a fair approach to the dispositions and habits of this solitary pair, whose earthly stay and support being gone, trusted implicitly to Heaven, for what Heaven has seldom denied to the good. The mother was one of those happily-constituted beings, whose minds are so completely formed, as it were, upon the Bible, that not only were her actions regulated by the precepts of the holy book, but her thoughts were naturally and almost unconsciously expressed in Scripture language; nor could it be said that, dearly as she loved the old defenders of our faith, who reared their temples among the mountains, and died on the altars, she imitated their speech and manners merely because she loved their virtues--she only drew from the same fountain from which they drew; and the water that slaked their thirst in the wilderness of their persecution sustained her in the hour of her privation. Obeying the holy behest, "Let thine heart retain my words," she made the religion of Christ "the life of her soul;" and that which was a part of her spirit could not fail to regulate her conversation. An heir of an ever-blessed eternity, in which she believed soon to enter, the only worldly feeling that bound her to life was her desire to see her beloved Menie exhibit the fruits of her parental culture as fair to the eye of virtue, as the many simple beauties of her person--her blooming Scotch face, with the blue eye, and cheek that rivalled the peach in softness and colour; her mermaiden hair, and the graces of an almost perfect harmony of proportions--were to the eye of the admirer of female loveliness. And this the mother had already in part seen in the evolution of all those estimable qualities of the heart, that, when joined to physical beauty, form the fairest object among all the fair creatures of this fair but fleeting world.

It is a trite saying, that female beauty seldom brings happiness to the possessor, even when it is combined with that goodness that ought to guard the children of virtue from the evils of life; and this was to some extent verified by almost the first of the acts of our younger heroine's intercourse with the world; for she secured the heart of a lover even against her own will, and, with the unsought-for boon, got unwittingly the envy, and deep but concealed hatred, of her earliest friend and companion. The son of the farmer of the Mains of Inverleith, a property in the neighbourhood, George Wallace, had for some time been paying his addresses to Margaret Grierson, the daughter of the occupant of one of the small cottages of Broughton; and his success was in proportion to the attractions of a fine manly figure, and considerable power of that species of conversation which, with love ever on its wings, finds a ready access to the hearts of women. Though his passion had not been declared, it had, by the anticipative selfishness of the sex, been assumed and claimed by the object of his attentions; and Menie had been so far made a confidant of her companion, as to be intrusted with the secret of a love which had as yet been declared only on one side. The communication was sufficient to prevent the simple friend, even if there had been in her disposition any spirit of rivalship--a feeling which found no place in her breast--from presenting even an opportunity for Wallace discovering in her qualities with which her companion could not have competed; and she uniformly maintained, in the presence of the lovers, a quiet reserve, which afforded pleasure to the one, but, perhaps, only tended to quicken in the other a comparison that operated in a manner contrary to the wishes of the confidant. Time, and the frequent meetings and wanderings by the banks of the Leith--then comparatively a sweet and rural stream, especially about the low grounds of Warriston and Inverleith--soon elicited the merits of the two companions; and Wallace was not slow to perceive that, fair and interesting as his first object had appeared to him, she was eclipsed in all the finest attributes of woman by her who had never taken the trouble to display her estimable properties. The reserve of the one--the result of a natural modesty, and of a strict training according to the rules of the wisest of men--set off the freedom of the other as little better than forwardness; while her excellent sense, and an inborn susceptibility of the finest and purest feelings of the sex, whether stirred by the flowers of the field arrayed in their simple beauties, or the heaven-born genius of virtue working its pleasant ways in the hearts of man, brought out, by a contrast dangerous to her friend, the defects of a character that Wallace, in his first blindness, had taken for perfections. The result might have been anticipated by all but the unwitting possessor herself of virtues of which she was unconscious; and it was with no affected surprise that, one night, when walking by the moonlight along the brattling Leith, she heard poured into her ear a strain of impassioned sentiments that ought to have been reserved for another, who had a prior and a better right to them.

The startled girl flew home to her mother, and narrated, as nearly as she could recollect, the high-flown expressions of Wallace's changed love; not forgetting to add, that the young man had declared upon his honour that he had never declared any affection for her companion. Overpowered with sorrow for her friend, the tear glistened in her eye as she sat and told her simple tale to her mother, who lifted up her face from the open book, to observe in the delicate workings of a well-trained heart the fruits of her maternal care.

"Your sorrow for Margaret Grierson, child," she said, "is a scented offering to auld friendships; but 'when thou wilt do good, know to whom thou doest it, so shalt thou be thanked for thy benefits.' I like not the bearing and manners o' yer companion, for I hae seen in her the office o' whisperer, and the fascinations o' the singer, wha would kindle love by her smiles, and unholy discord by her wiles. Her vanity, like the gaudy streamers o' her head-gear, winnows wi' every wind but that which comes frae the airth, whar God's chastening tribulations hae their holy birth. Ye may be surprised to hear me speak thus o' ane wha has sae lang enjoyed the first place in your young affections; but my auld een hae a quick turn in them when vanity rideth abroad. She has other lovers than George Wallace, and other places and other trystin-trees than the banks o' Leith, or the auld willow that grows by the horse's pool, at the foot o' the bonny brae o' Warriston. Sorrows she for George Wallace, think ye, when she sits amang the ruins o' the hospital o' Greenside, and hears the love tale o' vanities frae the lips o' secret lovers?"

"A' that's new to me, mother," answered the daughter. "I never dreamed that Peggy had ony ither than George. Wha are they, and how cam ye by the knowledge?"

"Never mind, Menie," said the mother, "how I cam by the knowledge. Though my eyes, like Jeremiah's, are auld, and do fail with tears, I hae neither the blindness o' the mole nor the deafness o' the adder. But let thae things alone; we hae nae right to pry into the secrets o' our neighbours' ways, albeit they may savour o' the vanities o' Baal. It is enough for me that I warn ye against the 'lamps o' fire' that scorch as well as light. George Wallace is a rich and an honest man's son; and if, as I believe, he has plighted nae troth with the follower o' vanities and double-loves, ye're no bound to reject his affections. Can your heart receive him, Menie?"

"Ou ay," replied the maiden, as she held down her head, and seemed afraid of the strange sounds of her own words. "I hae seen nae man yet like George Wallace, and I hae chided my puir heart for sometimes envying Peggy o' his affections. But are we not told to change not a freend for the gold of Ophir?"

"Surely, child," responded the mother--"a true freend o' God's election is better than fine gold; but she who seeketh vanity understands not the name o' freendship, and her kisses are as those o' the serpent. Seek nae mair the society o' Margaret Grierson; leave her to her secret thoughts and secret lovers, and turn your heart to him wha has routh o' means to support ye, and whase love is the love o' the heart that kens nae guile."

The counsel of her parent was ever a law to the daughter; but there was something in the advice she now gave that exercised an influence over Menie's heart, or rather there was something in the heart itself, of a nature hitherto unknown to its possessor, that acknowledged and recognised the influence as more congenial to her feelings than any authority of spoken wisdom (though founded on the words of the son of Sirach) she had yet submitted to. The secret of this feeling lay in the well-springs of an affection that had been pent up by her sense of honour; but now, when she found that she was justified in giving her heart its natural freedom to love the choice of her judgment, she lent in aid of its operations the creations of a young and glowing fancy, which soon pictured so many exquisite forms of beauty, both of mind and person, in the object of her rising affection, that, before another morning had dawned on her, she had become versant in the secret and sweet mystery of sighs and throbbings, hopes, fears, and aspirations, of experienced lovers. She now wished as ardently for another meeting with Wallace, as she had done for a separation on the occasion of their last interview. Nor did she wish in vain; for he, with a passion roused into a warmer flame by her resisting coyness and startled apprehension, sought her anxiously, to renew his suit, and remove all the scruples of conscience that lay in the way of a passion to be, as he hoped, returned. He little knew that part of the work had been already done to his hand by a mother's cherished counsel; and his joy may be more easily conceived than expressed, even by the electric words of love's inspired power, when he found that Menie not only loved him, but conceived she had a good title to repay him with a warmth of affection equal to that of his own. He was now a frequent visiter at her mother's house; and though he knew that all his motions were watched by her whom he had thus abruptly, though, perhaps, not without just cause, forsaken, he kept steady in his new attachment, and avowed openly a love of which the best man of his station in Scotland might have been proud.

The affection that is hallowed by the blessing of such a parent as Menie's possessed a good title to be excepted from the ordinary proverbial fate of the loves of the humble; but, unfortunately, the adverse circumstances, that, like harpies, follow the victims of the tender passion, acknowledged no limit to the sources from which they spring. The rejected maiden pursued her successful rival with all the bitterness of disappointment and envy; odious calumnies were fabricated, given to the tongue of inveterate scandal, and found their way to the sensitive ear of her whom they were intended to ruin. Unacquainted with the ways of a bad world, every individual in which she judged by the test of her own pure feeling--the universal error of young and unchilled hearts--her pain was equalled by her surprise, and she sought consolation on the breast of her lover, as they reclined upon the sloping and wood-covered banks of Inverleith.

"I hae bought ye dearly," said she, as she looked up in his face through her tears, "when, for your love, I paid the peace o' mind that was never troubled with the breath o' a dishonourable suspicion. The hail o' Broughton rings with the report that I betrayed my freend to secure your affections, and that I am unworthy o' them, as being a follower o' unlawful loves. My eyes hae never been dry since my heart was struck with the false charge. I hae looked to heaven, and found nae relief. My mother has tried to comfort me, by telling me o' the waes o' Ane higher than mortal man, wha was pursued to the death by envy and malice, and wha yet triumphed. You, George, hae alane the power to comfort me. Tell me that ye heed them not, and I will yet try to hold up my head among the honest daughters o' men."

"If ye heed them as little's I heed them, Menie," replied he, "there will be sma skaith though muckle scorn. Dry up your tears, love, and tell me if it is true" (and he laughed in playful mockery of her fears) "that you keep the weekly tryst, by the elm in Leith Loan, with the notorious Mike M'Intyre, the city guardsman?"

"George, George!--Oh man, how can ye mak light o' the sorrows o' yer ain Menie?" said the girl, as she heard the calumny come from the lips of her lover. "That is Margaret Grierson's charge against me; and, if ye knew that every word o' the falsehood gaes to my heart like the tongue o' the deaf adder--ay, even though they come on the wings o' yer playfu laugh--ye wad rather gie me the tears o' your pity than the consolation o' your mirth."

"And what better way, Menie, could I tak to prove my faith in my love's honesty," said he, as he clasped her in his arms, "than by dispersing the poisoned lie by the breath o' a hearty laugh. Nae mair o't--nae mair o't, Menie--I believe it not; and that ye may hae some faith in my statement, I'll put a question to ye. Will ye answer me fairly, wi' the truth and sincerity that your mother draws frae the fountain o' a' guidness--her auld Bible--and pours into yer heart in the dreary hour o' late, even as ye retire into the keepin o' Him who looks down on sleepin' innocence with the eye of love?"

"Ay will I, George," answered the maiden, "with the openness and sincerity with which I lay my sins on the footstool o' Heaven's mercy."

"Will ye consent to be George Wallace's wife on Fastern's E'en, and leave the city guardsman to your rival?"

"I am already yours, George," answered she, as she buried her head in his bosom, to conceal her blushes--"I am already yours, by a plighted faith that never will be broken; and it may be even as you say; but I wish nae ill to my enemies, and will spae nae waur fortune to Margaret Grierson, wha has injured me, than that she may get as guid a husband as you will, I trust, be to me."

"Kind, guid creature!" responded Wallace. "If the first part o' yer answer maks ye mine for life, the ither proves that ye are worthy o' me; for she wha wishes nae ill to her enemies will never do wrang by her freends. Gae and report to your mother what I hae said. The time is yet distant: but hope gies light wings to the hours o' lovers."

The two parted; and Menie, seeking the nearest way to her home, hurried along, her heart beating high with unutterable emotions, and with all the pain she had felt from the evil reports of her rival drowned in the intoxicating pleasure of being the betrothed of the man she loved. The moon, which had been throwing her silver light o'er the dark foliage that overhung the Leith, and catching a look of her own face in the waters through the opening branches, was now half-concealed behind a cloud; and as the maiden passed along by the side of the stream, she required to restrain the flutter of her spirits, to enable her to thread her way by the narrow footpath. The ecstatic emotions of her novel situation, and the hurry of her progress, made her breathless, and she paused to recover herself, when she observed two individuals sitting by the side of the water. A loud laugh struck her ear; and she did not require to speculate as to the individuals from whom it came--for a voice she too well knew followed, with words of reproach that shook her to the heart. It was that of her former companion; and a glance satisfied her that she was in the society of that very individual, M'Intyre, the city guardsman, with whose name her own had been so cruelly and invidiously connected. In an instant the notorious individual was by her side.

"I've waited for ye, Menie," he began, "till the mune has waned and sunk behind the Pentlands. How hae ye been sae lang, woman, when ye ken sae weel the impatience o' a true lover, and that I maun be on the city watch on the morrow, and canna meet ye? Mak amends, and let us roam a wee amang the birken woods, whar the absence o' the mune will be nae hindrance to our loves."

And before she could reply, he had his arms round her neck, and was pulling her away among the trees. The apparition of the very individual of whom she had been conversing with Wallace, and whose name was a terror to her, with the fearful consciousness of the pollution of his embrace, took away from her all power of resistance; her knees trembled; she tried to reply to him, but could not; and a weak scream, that almost died in her throat, was the only show of ineffectual resistance she could oppose to his efforts. A few minutes enabled her to rally her powers; and she had turned to wrest herself from his arms, when she saw Wallace standing at a little distance among the trees. He had that very instant come up; and there was something in the cool, piercing look he threw at her, that repressed the inchoate scream for relief that she struggled to utter; and the hands she held out to him imploring his succour fell nerveless within the grasp of the man who held her. Upon the point of fainting, she would have sunk to the ground, had she not been upheld by the force of her tormentor; and, in turning her eyes again in the direction of Wallace, she observed he had vanished. The scream, no longer restrained, burst forth; but it came too late; for, if Wallace heard it in his retreat, he might justly attribute it to his own appearance at a time when he might suppose himself an unwelcome intruder. At that moment two men came in sight; and the city guardsman, probably afraid of being recognised, released her from his grasp, and retreated to the position he had left by the side of her who sat awaiting in laughter for his arrival.

The instant she was liberated, the frightened maiden flew with the speed of terror homewards--all her energies wound up in the mere effort to increase her irregular progress, and without the capability of feeling the true and fearful circumstances of her position. Arrived at her mother's house, she sprang forward in a state bordering on despair, and threw herself on a chair by the side of the fire, opposite to her parent, who was engaged in her usual evening exercise of searching the inspired volume for the balm of the consolation of age and poverty.

"What is this, Menie?" cried the mother, as she saw her daughter trembling under the influence of nervous terror. "Has yer enemy been at her auld wark again? and have a' yer mother's injunctions failed to get ye to rest on the sure foundation o' conscious innocence? It canna be that George Wallace has listened to the poisoned breath o' scandal and envy. Speak, child; and frae this book shall ye get the support that no son or daughter of Adam can lend to the children o' sorrow."

"Let me think, mother--let me collect mysel!" responded the girl, as she raised her hand to her head, and threw back her locks. "Whar am I? what spell is on me? Am I to be a bride on Fastern's E'en, or a disowned and heart-broken maiden? Why did he no speak to me--or why did I no speak to him? I will to him yet, and explain a', and the men will speak for me; but wha were they? Ah, they were strangers! and there's nane to warrant the words o' truth."

And rising, she made again towards the door, apparently with the confused intention of hurrying to Inverleith Mains; but her mother rose and restrained her, and she again sat down to collect her thoughts. It was some time before she could give so connected an account of the strange circumstances that had occurred within the space of a short hour, as to be understood by the mother; but, by questioning and cross-questioning, the latter came to the truth--and a truth of dangerous import she soon observed it to be. She had already, in her own person, suffered from the blighting effects of prejudice, and she trembled as she surveyed the difficulties that lay in the way of a proper explanation. The poison of a false conviction had too certainly already entered the breast of Wallace, and she knew that its workings might be made only the more inveterate, the greater the efforts resorted to for eradicating it. In all her trials, however, her refuge was the book that supported her fathers in the mountain glens, when the storm of persecution raged over a struggling land; and, enjoining her daughter to offer up with her their prayers to the throne of grace, she sought from the true fountain the means of relieving them from the danger which threatened innocence and poverty. The night passed, and the morning came, when it was resolved that they both together should repair to the residence of Wallace, and openly declare to him the truth of the perplexed appearances which had too evidently operated on his mind to their disadvantage; but a little farther consideration showed them the inexpediency of thus assuming that the conduct of Menie required explanation; and the resolution that at last prevailed was, to wait for some time to ascertain what might be the intentions and motions of Wallace, whom they expected to call at the house, according to his wont, as he passed to the city. The day passed away, but there was no appearance of him; and, on the day following, it was ascertained, from one of his father's servants, who was passing with grain to the market, that he had gone to the borders of England to bury a relation, where, it was expected, he would remain for a considerable time, to arrange the affairs of the deceased, to whom his father was nearest heir-at-law. This intelligence made it only more certain that the prejudice had taken root; because, otherwise, both duty and inclination would have forced him to pay a visit to his betrothed before his departure, however sudden or unexpected that might have been.

A month passed, and Wallace had not yet returned; but Fastern's Even was still a month distant, and every day brought the hope of a letter, at least, to explain the cause of his conduct, and point out his future proceedings, whether "for feid or favour." But no letter came; and all their inquiries ended in the intelligence that his relative's affairs were not yet wound up, and that some weeks yet would elapse before he could return. The situation, meanwhile, of the victim of prejudice was painful, and gradually becoming hopeless. Her prior sufferings from the stings of calumny were alleviated by the expectation that the generous mind of Wallace would scorn the schemes of her enemy, and her marriage would refute the aspersions, and place her beyond the reach of their poison; but now her relief was not only apparently cut off, but changed, by some adverse fate, into a proof--a confirmation of what had been alleged against her character. Every day found her a mourner; and it was only after nightfall that she could summon up resolution to go abroad on the small messages that domestic wants rendered necessary. Involved in mystery as were both mother and daughter, and pained as the latter was beyond endurance, there yet hung over them a still darker cloud of misfortune, equally mysteriously and fortuitously collected and formed, and equally cruel in its unmerited discharge on the heads of innocent victims. Misery of the deepest and most complicated kind seems often to be evolved from the most trifling causes, as if to show the proud sons of men, by a lesson that pains while it mocks them, the utter darkness of that blindness which they mistake for the light of a concealed reason. One evening, Menie had occasion to proceed to the small village of Canonmills, on a message to a friend; and, as usual, she waited till nightfall, to avoid the gaze of the neighbours, whom her fevered fancy exhibited to her (to a great extent untruly) as participators in the circulation of the calumnies under which she suffered. Wrapped up in a cloak, she hurried out, and proceeded down the narrow loan that then led to the village she intended to visit. Her step was stealthy, and her eye filled with secret shame, even among the shades of night. She reached the house, where she staid for a short time, and then set out on return, which she was inclined to accomplish as quickly and stealthily as she had done her progress forth; but she had not proceeded many paces from the village, when she observed a small wicker corban or basket lying by the side of a hedgerow that then ran along the lower part of the loan. There appeared to be no one near it; and, impelled by a natural curiosity, she proceeded forward and inspected it. There was on it, she observed, a bundle, so carefully pinned up, that, though she applied her fingers hastily to it, she could not penetrate its folds. On lifting up the strange deposit, she found that it felt heavy. She stood irresolute, and again looked around her, but saw no one. She was flurried; and her desire to get home urged her to take it up, and proceed hurriedly along the road, with the view of taking it to the house with her, to examine it leisurely, and restore it to the owner, in the event of his casting up. She obeyed the natural impulse; and, as she ran home with the unknown charge, she repeatedly cast her eyes about, to see if any one appeared to claim it; but she still saw no one; and, in the space of a few minutes, she reached the door of the house, and hurried in. She placed the burden upon the floor--telling her mother, at the same time, that she had found it on the road, and brought it home to see what it contained, as the bundle was so carefully tied up that she could not unfold it on the highway. Her mother put on her spectacles; and, bending down, proceeded, with the aid of Menie, to undo the cloth, when, to their surprise, they evolved from the many foldings of an envelope the dead body (still warm) of a new-born babe. Menie fainted at the grim spectacle, and the mother ran for hartshorn, to recover her daughter. In a little time she revived, but it was only to shudder again at the strange sight; while the sagacious mind of Euphan was busy with the divinations of a sad experience, that pointed to some new calamity to result from this new turn of their adverse fate. She saw, at once, that if she called in her envious neighbours, that had been already busy with the character of her daughter, the unlikely story of the finding and bringing home of a dead child would be scorned and laughed at, while the circumstance of the child being found in the house would be laid hold of as a handle for corroborating and confirming the already circulated calumnies, if, indeed, it might not form a subject for judicial examination and exposure, that might end in the ruin of one already too much persecuted. These cogitations led to a sudden resolution. Rolling up the body hastily in the envelope--

"Hie ye quickly, Menie," she said, "to the place whar ye fand this dangerous burden, and lay it in the precise position in which ye first saw it. The shafts o' envy are already thick round innocence, and we need not for sorrow to prick our own eyes that tears may fall. There is a knowledge that is for guid, and ane that is for evil; but 'the work of all flesh is before Him, and nothing can be hid from his eyes,' so shall this shame be made manifest in his own way. Haste, child, and obey the behest o' your mother."

The trembling girl started back at the mention of again bearing the unholy load; but she was impelled by the strange looks of her parent; and, like an automaton, she hurriedly snatched up the corb, and hastened with it to the place where she found it. She was wrapped up in her cloak, which she threw over the charge, and, after the manner of a thief, or a worker of secret iniquity, she slouched along the loan, trembling and stumbling at every step, till she came to the precise spot, and there she looked several times around her, before she ventured to deposit her burden. She thought she perceived some one behind her, who passed into an opening in the hedge, and she felt irresolute whether to lay down the corban at that moment, or ascertain first whether there was really any one behind the fence; but her mind again recurring to the contents of her burden, a feeling of horripilation crept over her, and, gently crouching down, as if terrified to behold her own act, she withdrew the cloak, left the charge, and fled precipitately along the dark side of the loan. Curiosity impelled her, as she fled, to turn her head, and she saw, with terror, some one issue from the opening in the hedge, and proceed, as she thought, to the identical spot which she had just left. It struck her forcibly, and she shuddered at the thought, that the figure she saw resembled that of Wallace; and the suspicion arose, that he had been watching about the cottage, had followed her, and observed her motions, and would now examine the burden she had so stealthily and mysteriously deposited by the side of the hedge. A strong paroxysm of hysterical emotion seized her, as the full consequences of a realisation of the conjecture were arrayed before her by the conjuring power of her terrors. The prior unexplained suspicion under which she yet lay rose to swell the tumult of her thoughts. She thought her God had deserted her, and that the destiny of her miserable life was placed under the charge of evil spirits, who gloried in her utter ruin. She grew faint, and was scarcely able to walk; and before she again reached the house, the choking effects of the hysterical spasm had almost deprived her of breath. The door was open for her reception; and the moment she entered, she fell upon the floor, panting for air, the blood streaming from her nostrils, and shrill, broken screams, like the sounds that issue from the victims of Cynanche, bursting from her labouring throat.

The alarmed mother again applied restoratives to her suffering daughter, who, in a few minutes, opened her eyes, and became sensible.

"Were you seen, Menie?" whispered the mother, anxiously, in her ear. "Speak, love. 'Blessed is he that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.' Fear not, child; tell me, were ye seen by the eyes o' mortal?"

"God be merciful to me!" answered the girl. "If my eyes deceived me not, George Wallace cam behind me, and saw me lay down that evidence o' anither's shame. I am lost for ever!"