Chapter IX: An Apparition (5)

The rumours as to the intended marriage of Ashley were indeed true; and they were soon followed by an announcement of a more certain nature, that the marriage was to take place at “The Castle” within a month. The intelligence reached the ears of Mary; but its effect was only to add to the gloom which had apparently taken its eternal seat in her countenance. She spoke to no one of the marriage, and gave no answer when any question regarding it was proposed by the neighbours. Her father, who had watched her conduct, and suspected an undue intimacy between her and Ashley, conjectured the cause of the change that had taken place on his child; but from his knowledge of her peculiar temper, which had uniformly resisted every attempt to draw from her her secrets, or to change the character and hue of her feelings, he despaired of being able to acquire any proof of the reality of his conjecture: so he followed the course suggested by his paternal feelings, and endeavoured to soothe his daughter under her affliction, and soften the obduracy of her apparent misanthropy. His efforts were vain—the change on his daughter’s heart was as complete and lasting as if it had been effected by an organic mal-disposition of its functions; her looks, and short ejaculations of bitter scorn of the higher sanctions of love or marriage, evinced a settled spirit of demoniac frenzy; every indication proved the existence of that extraordinary state of the female mind, produced by a deluded or scorned affection, when the heart, instead of giving way to the revulsion of rejected feeling, and breaking, secretes and nourishes a poison—like the saliva of the serpent which has bit itself—destructive to the destroyer and the victim.

On the day fixed for the marriage of Ashley, there were great preparations made for rejoicings at “The Castle.” A dinner was prepared for the tenents on the lawn, and all males and females residing on the estate were invited to attend, to partake of the liberality of the young laird, and wish him and his lady joy. An immense number of people were collected, and the dinner was pronounced worthy of the spirit of the young bridegroom. The repast being finished, the party were regaled with drinks of various sorts; and Ashley and his bride came down from “The Castle” to witness the gay scene. Then it was resolved that the whole guests should rise with queghs in their hands, and drink to the health and happiness of the young and handsome pair. This was accordingly done; and the shouts of the boisterous labourers of the land rent the welkin in honour of the toast. Ashley rose, as his guests resumed their seats, and returned thanks for the kindness which had been exhibited to him. He made large promises of reductions of rent, when fate should be so unkind as to remove his father from this earthly scene; and told them that the man who had never broken his pledge, had that day a right to demand their faith and trust in a profession which filled the hearts of the poor farmers with joy. These sentiments were responded to by louder shouts, and a scene of joyous uproar was exhibited which had never before been witnessed from the windows of “The Castle.” Ashley sat down; and, nearly opposite to the place he occupied, there was seen to rise a figure wrapped up in a cloak, as if in the attitude of one intending to address the assembly. This person was no other than Mary Lee. Pointing her finger over to Ashley, and fixing her eye with the sternness of one determined not to be shaken from a desperate purpose, she said, in a tone of voice which suited itself with wonderful pathos to the style of her speech—

“I have waited for this, day, Robin-a-Ree, as I would have waited for my ain wedding—and it has come. Ye are richt to believe this man, whom ye have come to meet, and whase bread ye have broken, that he will reduce your rents; for he never broke his word.”

Then there was a cry to put her down, accompanied by shouts—“We do believe our excellent landlord.”

“So did I believe him,” continued she, “when I put my faith and troth in his hands, and yielded to his desires, on condition o’ his promise that I should stand in the place o’ this braw bride. That promise he falsely broke; and will he keep that which he has this day made to ye?”

“Yes, yes!” they shouted again.

“Never!” she screamed. “Believe me, wha stand here a wretched victim o’ his falsehood, whase love he sought and won, whase peace he has destroyed, whase heart he tried to break—tried—ay, but only tried; for he has changed it to the tongue o’ the harry adder that basks i’ the moss on the swamps o’ the Ken. I have hated the yellow-wamed ask that sleeps i’ the mud o’ the lazy Nith, the moon-baying tyke, the charking whutthroat, and the taed that carries its poison on its back amang the seggs o’ the Solway. Ay, sair, sair, have I hated them, wi’ a’ the hate o’ a heart that had only twa pairts—ane for lovin’ and ane for hatin’; but waur—ten thousand times waur, and tens o’ tens, do I hate the vile and loathsome reptile, wha, puttin’ on the appearance o’ man, and coverin’ his lyin’ tongue wi’ the Almighty’s words o’ promised faith, wiles frae the trustin’, lovin’, defenceless woman a’ that she has to care for on earth, and wha yet hasna courage enough to stab her to the heart, and end her misery and her life thegither. But, thanks to the power wha befriends the miserable, and brings oot o’ the destroyed a spirit a thousand times stronger, to feed the heart which love has betrayed!—sweeter to me—ay, hear me, hear the victim o your worshipped idol—sweeter to me is that poison than would be to me his kisses, now sour as the green bullister. But the day lengthens frae the shortest to the longest, and, as the earth turns, they wha, but some hours syne, stood upon oor heads, shall as mony hours after, lie under our feet. So may the day o’ Mary Lee’s joy follow the nicht o’ her grief—and that joy will be revenge!”

As the last word, “revenge,” (says our legend) rang round the silent scene, the excited damsel waved her hand and disappeared. The effect of her speech was electric. Every one looked at his neighbour, mutterings and whisperings ran round the company, and glances of a suspicious nature were thrown upon Ashley. Some of his friends, for the sake of saving him, suggested that the woman was insane; and the company, glad to find a pretext for disbelieving the charge brought in so extraordinary a manner against their landlord, adopted the suggestion. Ashley, however, was struck deeper than he would avow, or than might have been expected, in the case of a man dead to ordinary pity, and to the moral sense. Rising from his seat, he again thanked the company for their attention, and retired.

Next day a messenger called at the house of Mary’s father, and requested to see her. He was commissioned, he said, to give her—provided she would receive it with grace and favour—renouncing the ill-will she bore to Ashley—a considerable sum of money, amounting to two hundred merks. Contrary to the man’s own expectation, the girl seized the money with the greatest avidity; but without uttering a syllable wherefrom he might draw an inference that she was placated in any degree by the gift. As soon as he retired, she locked the money in her trunk, apostrophising the despised and worshipped dust, with the spirit of an enraptured Mammon—“Lie there till vengeance needs ye.”

Time rolled on without producing any change on Mary Lee. At “The Castle,” things were different. The old man died, and Robert succeeded to the estates. He gradually softened down to the condition of a sober-minded husband, and experienced the ordinary effects of early ribaldry and dissipation, in a deep, heart-felt regret, and a wish to make amends to heaven and earth for an abuse of the gifts of both. He had one son, whose name was Hector, whom he loved with all the devotion of a father. Being an only son, the boy was, as usual, spoiled, both by his father and mother; having concentrated on himself affections which, in other circumstances, might have been, with advantage to parents and child, spread over a family of sons and daughters. To such an extent was affection carried, in the case of this spoiled child, that the mother would scarcely let him out of her sight. With his heart also garnered up in his son, and happy in the possession of a kind, gentle, though constitutionally weak wife, Robert Ashley might have been pronounced as happy as the regret produced by the loss of the best part of his life would permit him to be.

Meanwhile, as regarded the victim of his seduction, Ashley conceived he had now little to fear, seeing she had received his peace-offering, and had, it was reported, contracted an intimacy with Hans Gerstendorf, a German smuggler, who had been in the practice of running his good frau, _Unsere Mutter_, an old lugger, into the port of Fairhaven, with contraband goods. The report was, to a certain extent, true. Hans had conceived an affection for the still beautiful Mary, and it was certain that she had, in some degree, unbent her stern misanthropy in favour of the German, though with what aim, or for what object, the gossips of Fairhaven knew not. It was not without credence among some, that Hans, whose appearance justified the suspicion, had used some unlawful means—and fancy supplied German charms—to open the heart which all supposed shut against human efforts. Speculation, however, might rack itself with curiosity—Mary’s attentions to the foreigner remained unaccounted for. She often visited his craft, and this supplied others, less indulgent, with the idea that the German charm was nothing else than good Hollands; yet those who knew Mary Lee better ridiculed the suspicion as unworthy of her character; for her sobriety, in the midst of her unearthly feelings, was never questioned. One thing, amidst all this doubt, remained certain, and that was that, whatever favour Hans Gerstendorf had in the eyes of the relentless fair one, no other person ever saw her smile, and few heard her speak. The same gloomy melancholy haunted her, the same bitterness of scorn of all social relations, was observable in her eye, and trembled on her lip.

On a day, a horseman, well-mounted, arrived in Fairhaven, in a state of breathless anxiety and haste. He called for a number of the fishermen of the village, and requested them to fly with him to the Fisher’s Cairn, a mile beyond the village, to give them assistance in searching for the body of Hector Ashley, who, he said, had fallen into the Solway, and was supposed to have perished. Then the fishermen seized their dead drags, and ran with their greatest speed to the place pointed out. On arriving there, they found a number of persons collected, among whom was Robert Ashley, apparently occupied in searching for the body of the drowned youth. The clothes of the boy lay on the top of the cairn, from whence it was supposed and reported that he had been bathing, at that part of the Solway which was full of dangerous eddies, and had perished. The father stood in a state bordering on despair, witnessing the unavailable efforts, on the part of the people, to recover his son. Every exertion was used—the dead drags applied in every direction—and the fatal announcement made, that the body was irrecoverable. The tide was receding, and it was the opinion of the fishermen, that the body must have been carried, by the eddies, into some of the deep clefts of the rock, from which it was, in all likelihood, impossible to extricate it. The people gradually disappeared, with the exception of one or two, who undertook to wait the receding of the tide; and Robert Ashley, the disconsolate parent, was conveyed home, in a state of insensibility, to witness the second grief of a mother wailing for the loss of her only child. As the carriage which conveyed Ashley home passed through the village, Mary Lee was sitting, in her usual melancholy mood, at her father’s door. On observing the crowd, she suddenly started up, and, with a loud laugh, pointed to Ashley, and retreated into the house. The circumstance caught the attention of the crowd, and formed a part of the melancholy theme which fate had supplied to the evening gossips of Fairhaven. Some hours afterwards, it was reported that the tide had receded to its utmost extent, and no trace could be found of the lost heir of “The Castle.”

The conduct of Mary Lee had given rise to suspicions of her being in some way, connected with the death of Hector Ashley; and an investigation was, by the orders of the father, set about, with the view of ascertaining what grounds there existed for these suspicions. It was, however, clearly ascertained that Mary Lee had not been out of her father’s house for hours preceding the disappearance of the unfortunate boy, and the inquiry was relinquished. No hope was now entertained that any less disastrous fate had befallen him than being drowned, while in the act of bathing, a recreation he had been in the habit of indulging in unknown to his mother, who had enjoined the strictest prohibition against it.

The effect of this calamity, on the mind of Mrs Ashley, was such as to produce strong apprehensions of the most dangerous consequences. No consolation could be administered to her with the slightest chance of abating a grief which had sunk too deep for human aid to relieve. After some months, it was discovered that a hereditary tendency to consumption had received a fatal increase of strength, from the decayed state of her constitution; and the disease having progressed with that rapidity so often observed to be one of its most appalling symptoms, the bereaved mother breathed her last in the arms of the fate-stricken and inconsolable husband.

It was on a rainy day, in December, that the remains of Mrs Ashley were to be conveyed to her father’s vault, a few miles distant from “The Castle;” a large cavalcade of mourners attended; the funeral was conducted with a state and pomposity suited to the rank of the deceased; the procession glided silently along, by a road passing through the dark forests of “The Castle,” and by that spot where the unhappy victim of Ashley’s perfidy resigned her honour and her peace for ever. The trysting-tree was still there, with its branches bending under a load of December snows, which the thaw had not yet been able to dissolve. There Mary Lee took her station; and, as the mournful procession passed, the woods resounded with the same wild laugh that had met the ear of Ashley, on the disappearance of his son.

Years rolled on, but the bereaved husband and father finds little assuasive power in the effects of time. Robert Ashley experienced this melancholy truth, and sought assistance from a fountain, the perennial consolations of which flow over the hearts of the rich and the poor. The extraordinary manner in which the early victim of his heartless seduction had triumphed over his misfortunes, appeared to him as the supernatural effect of Divine retribution. The idea haunted him like the invertible companions of Orestes. A deep melancholy took possession of his spirits, and made its usual inroads upon a constitution which early vices and unprecedented bereavements had made susceptible of the despoiling ravages of disease. His mind became occupied with a presentiment that the death of every member of his family would alone atone for the ruin he had brought on that individual, whose fate seemed to have constituted her an avenger of wrongs, only to be expiated by the greatest of misfortunes, visited on the head of him who had blasted the prospects of one of God’s creatures, and expelled his victim from the sanctuary of grace.

It was in these states of bodily disease and mental dejection, that the proud lord of “The Castle” was brought to feel not only what it is to be a man, but a sinner. He felt how vain were all the advantages of fortune when they are not accompanied by peace of mind. The woods around the Castle used to afford him a retreat from the fevered excitements of gay life. The song of the blackbird, full, mellow, and sorrowful, soothed the ear which had been poisoned by the flatteries incident to favoured sons of fortune. The merry _reveillé_ of the lark banished unpleasant recollections; many a sigh was drowned in the rich flow of the music of the thrush. All these things were experienced with joy and satisfaction, when the silent energies of health and youth made his muscular limbs jump with the exuberance of animal spirits. They were welcomed as good tidings when no pang of aroused conscience stung him with its peculiar pain, and no morbid fancy made to dance in the green woods the images of misery he had brought on the hearts of unsuspecting victims.

Now, all was changed when he rode out in those beautiful retreats—the pleasure he formerly derived from them was the parent of the evil he now felt. The contrast was itself a grievous pain; he would have been happier in the abodes of sorrow. Pleasure is not the soother of griefs, that ask the nourishment of a morbid appetite for an accession of woe. It is a cataplasm applied to a sore, under the mistaken idea that its softness will atone for the pungency produced, not from its own asperity, but the tenderness of the part diseased. The joys of “The Castle” were now dead to its lord. If the soothing influences of rural scenery, with its rough hills and soft valleys; its trees, plants, flowers, and tuneful birds, could not assuage the pangs of a diseased body, a bereaved heart, and an awakened conscience—what could be expected from the entertainments of the Castle? Ashley knew too well the vanity of these, even in the heyday of youth, health, and pleasure, to have recourse to them when his views were blasted, and his hopes had fallen. All company he avoided; and no attempt, on the part of the surrounding gentry, or his old friends, was available in getting him to relax the rigid discipline of sorrow which he had, in his despair, imposed on himself.

As he rode out, for the benefit of the air, he was always under an apprehension. Vague fears, the result of an evil conscience, haunted him. The rustle of a leaf disturbed him, and the slouching, fearful look he threw on intruders on his solitary walk, were in sad contrast with the proud bearing of the once eagle-eyed lord of the proudest castle on the western marches. His timidity rendered him incapable of managing his horse—a proud creature, which vindicated the untainted character of its stock, under the crestfallen demeanour of its once haughty master. In going over a small fence, he one day fell into an old ditch, and the weakness to which he was reduced prevented him from rising. In this condition, Mary Lee, in one of her wandering fits, came upon him.

“I wish ye joy,” she commenced, “o’ the elevated position ye occupy in the heart o’ yer ain wuds.”

“Away, woman!” cried Ashley, “art thou not already avenged?” and, trying to raise himself, he fell back with his eye still fixed on the fury.

“No,” she replied; “he who exalteth himself shall be debased, and he who humbleth himself shall be raised. Ye have lang inhabited a proud castle; but fate, wha richts the oppressed, can mak the craven-hearted, dastardly betrayer o’ woman’s troth, lie whar the meg-o’-mony-feet crawls, and the green and yellow carrion courts the slimy mouth o’ the adder. A short distance frae this, ye lay wi’ me on a green bank, whar roses encircled us wi’ their sweet-scented flavours, and poured into my credulous ear the poison o’ your love. A stagnant ditch now contains your diseased body, and the hisses o’ the vengeance o’ a ruined woman pierce and wound the ear that was ance charmed wi’ her honied love.”

She paused, as if to gloat her eyes with the writhings of her victim—then resumed:

“Twice have I lauched o’er your misfortunes; a third opportunity has gratified a heart only prevented frae breaking by the wish I hae lang nourished, to see the auld taff o’ the kirkyard cover the moil that will keep ye frae the sicht o’ her ye hae ruined. Mary Lee has naething now but the wishes o’ a revengeful heart, and this spittle she throws on the reptile that stung her honour, and made her fame bleed and perish, to show that a woman is no without a part o’ that power that is vouchsafed to the trampled worm.”

As the infuriated creature finished these words, she spat on the poor victim of her hatred, now unable even to reply to her dreadful expressions of a morbid thirst for revenge. Having thus gratified her passion, she disappeared among the woods. Ashley lay for a considerable time, before assistance came to him. His feelings may be conceived—they cannot be expressed. His conscience was enough for him, without the exhibition of so deadly a hatred in her whom he now pitied. The reaction of injured virtue overcame him. He groaned in the depth of his agony; burning tears of remorse flowed down his cheeks; the pains and penalties of vice stung him in mind and body, with the malignity of demons; he would have given the proud domains of his forefathers, for one drop of mercy to his burning soul. He tried to pray; he was unable. The fiends still clung to him. The Almighty did not think it time to pluck them away. In his struggles, he fainted, and lay on the cold earth for several hours.

The servants of the Castle came out to seek their master. They searched the woods, and found the horse which had strayed away from him. His groans attracted their notice; and, in the plight we have described, they found their unhappy lord. When taken home, he was put to bed, where he lay for some months. The aids of ministers of religion afforded him consolation, but were ineffectual in banishing the presentiment which had taken so firm a hold of his imagination. They recommended to him travel; and he consented to remove to France, where the change of scene might produce its accustomed effects, in withdrawing his mind from the contemplation of a subject which preyed on his vitals. Arrangements were made for the journey, and everything was ready for his departure; but the journey which was destined for the unhappy victim of his own crimes, was of a different kind from that he had in view. On the day on which he was to depart, he was seized with a hæmorrhage from the lungs, and died before any medical advice could be afforded him.

In a moonlight night, some weeks after the interment, Mary Lee stood upon the grave of Robert Ashley.

“The proud Eagle,” she soliloquized, “wha condescended to come to earth only for garbage, now lies whar I have lang wished him to be. Robert Ashley has met his deserts, an’ nae tear has wet the cheek o’ Mary Lee. Na—that tear shall only be the clammy rheum that oozes frae the closing ee o’ death, and only maks the cheek o’ the heart-broken mair dry. Did I no say, that I hated the connach worm? Ay, but I, wha have nae love for mortal on earth, could love that creature now, for it will nestle in the heart o’ my destroyer e’en whar I have nestled. Fear nae guile now, ye brawnet reptile—that was a’ wasted in my ruin; an’ bluid will be your repast as it has been my vengeance. Thrice have I lauched in triumph; an’ I would lauch my loud lauch again, if Robin’s ears war open to hear’t; but I have yet anither victim, and my last shout shall be o’er the fate o’ the remainin’ rafter o’ the ruif tree o’ the auld Castle. Then shall be the weird o’ my hatred fulfilled, and the staff o’ the stern wizard, wha guides me on through the dark ways o’ revenge, be broken an’ cast on the waters of the Solway.”

As Mary was in the act of pronouncing the last words of her speech, she was interrupted by a voice, apparently that of a man. It was Gerstendorf, who had not been in these parts for many years. He seemed in great agitation, and spoke confusedly, and as if in fear of being overheard.

“What brings ye here, man, wi’ that craven look, and these broken sounds?” inquired Mary.

“What may that be to you, mein gut child? Donner! have I no power left to look after mein safety, and by returning the knabe, Hector Ashley, to the house of his vater, get a riddence of the outlawry against me and mein crew?”

“Hans Gerstendorf,” replied Mary, “is this the faith pledged to me langsyne, when I put into your hand twa hunder siller merks, as the apprentice fee o’ Hector Ashley, and the reward o’ eternal silence as to his birth and lineage? This may be German troth, but it belangs na to the honour o’ Galloway.”

“The faith, and the promise, and the covenant,” replied the German, “belong to the men who live under the laws—Teufel! are not the sharks and the hounds, by the sea and by the land, smelling for us and baying for us?—and doesna the hang-tief stand on the lang sands o’ Leith to mak langer, by twa inches, the craigs o’ the pirate and his gang? Ha! mein gut Maria, what is the troth to the life, the breath, and the soul that kensna repentance for ten thousand crimes?—One chance is left, and that is, to tell Peter Fleming the secret o’ his parentage, and his history, from that day when I kidnapped him at the Fisherman’s Cairn, and left his cla’es on the stones to beguile his father. Once in the Castle and we are safe.”

The resolution, intention, or wish, thus expressed by the German, deeply affected Mary. For some time she replied not—her hand was on her forehead, and she was apparently musing in deep thought; at last she started.

“Weel, weel,” she said, in a choked voice—“weel, since it is as ye say, that your lives are in danger, let your way be as ye wish. But whar are ye concealed?”

And, as she put the question, her eye watched the looks of the German.

“My men are amang the high bent that grows on the drifted sand, twa miles doun the coast. But wha is now the proprietor o’ ‘The Castle?’ for I maun tell Peter the name of the man wha is to be his enemy; and we may hae to fecht our way to head-quarters.”

“There is naebody in the House,” answered Mary.

“Blut! that is the good tidings,” ejaculated Hans, in joy. “Hurra, then, for the Castle!” And he dashed through the willows that overhung the burial-ground, where they stood.

On that night, three hours after, intelligence was said to have been given by Mary Lee to the procurator-fiscal of the stewartry, that the outlawed pirates lay in the sea bent at the banks of the Solway. A band of armed men repaired to the place, and Hans Gerstendorf and his men, among whom was Peter Fleming, no other than Hector Ashley, were seized and put in irons, and carried to the jail of Dumfries. The unhappy men were afterwards removed to the jail of Edinburgh, tried, and four of them, including Fleming, condemned to be executed on the sands of Leith, for the crime of piracy on the high seas. They were executed accordingly.

A new family came to occupy “The Castle”—far removed in relationship to the Ashleys. Mary Lee continued to live on, for many years, exhibiting the same peculiarities of character—the same silence—the same scorn of social relations. Her desire of revenge was satisfied—but that satisfaction was no more effectual, in its assuaging consequences, than revenge is generally found to be. It even added to her moroseness; for the evil which she had removed, had been the only good she ever enjoyed, and the thirst for revenge which she had indulged, when slaked by the blood of all her enemies, left her nothing to wish for in the world. She took no interest in passing events, and as she increased in years, her faculties decayed. Latterly, and towards the termination of her life, she fell into temporary fits of insanity—which, however, did not conceal from her all her sorrows, for her lucid intervals were periods of misery; all her recollections seemed painful as the searing-iron of a roused conscience; she never displayed a symptom of remorse for the dreadful vengeance she had taken on the head and house of her seducer; but the wild laugh would break out only to settle again in the stare of idiotcy. So much for our legend.

THE LORD OF HERMITAGE.

Great was the surprise of the peaceful congregation assembled in the little church of Ettleton, in Liddisdale, on a Sunday forenoon, somewhere about one hundred and fifty years since, to see the Lord of Hermitage come in amongst them, just as the service of the day had begun. A surprise this, not without good and sufficient cause; for, although the patron of the parish, and living in the immediate neighbourhood of the church just named, the Lord of Hermitage had not entered it for many a long year. Some of those present thought it not unlikely, that he had begun to repent of his ways, which were, indeed, evil—for a vicious, dissolute, and tyrannical man was he—dreaded and detested by all who knew him; and that his coming to church, on this occasion, was not improbably meant as a public intimation of his having commenced the work of reformation; and that it might, therefore, be looked upon as the first overt act of contrition. Others, incredulous of so sudden a conversion in a man so notorious for his wickedness, dreaded that his appearance, on this occasion, boded no good; although they could not conjecture, either, how any evil should arise from it.

In the meantime, while all eyes were fixed on him, the dreaded Lord of Hermitage, slightly bowing to the officiating clergyman, took a seat and seemed to listen for some time, with decent attention, to his discourse. But it was only for a short time that he continued to exhibit this becoming respect for the devotional proceedings that were going forward. His eye was soon observed wandering over the assembly, as if in search of some object, and was at length seen fixed, with a steady and insolent gaze, on the beautiful countenance of Isabella Foster, the daughter of a respectable farmer, and one of his own tenants, who resided in the lower part of Liddisdale. In this circumstance, simple as it was, or rather would have been, but for the well-known character of the Lord of Hermitage, some of the congregation felt assured that they had discovered the secret of his appearance amongst them on this occasion, while all considered it matter for strong suspicion of evil intentions.

Isabella Foster was, on this occasion, accompanied by her father and her acknowledged lover—a young man of considerable property, but who was, nevertheless, much better known in the country by the familiar, Border-like soubriquet of “Jock o’ the Syde,” than by his real name, which was Armstrong. Isabella herself marked, and she did so with fear and trembling, the ominous gaze of the unprincipled Lord of Hermitage; and she clung closer and closer to her father and her lover, both of whom were also aware of the circumstance at which she was so much alarmed. Her father saw it with a feeling of dread and horror; for he knew well the infamous character of the man, and he knew, too, that he would perpetrate any villany, and have recourse, without the smallest hesitation or compunction, to any measures, however violent or atrocious, to accomplish the gratification of his passions; and he felt how vain would be all his precautions, how unavailing all the means he could employ, to defeat the designs of a man at once so determined, so unprincipled, and so powerful.

On her lover, however, the discovery that his Isabella had attracted the special notice of the Lord of Hermitage had a different effect. It roused his young blood; and in the look with which he contemplated him, as he gazed upon her, there was plainly to be read a proud defiance at once of his personal prowess and his power. Armstrong felt, at that moment, that his single arm, furnished with his own good sword, was alone sufficient to protect his lover from all the Lords of Hermitage that ever existed, although they all came upon him in a bundle.

With more experience of the world, Isabella’s father, as we have shown, thought and reasoned differently. He feared the worst; and these fears were much increased when, on the dismissal of the congregation, the Lord of Hermitage rode up to him, complimented him on the beauty of his daughter, and he told him that he meant to do himself the pleasure of paying him a visit soon, when he hoped, he said—at the same time turning towards and bowing to Isabella—that the fair Lily of Liddisdale would not be absent.

Isabella’s father made no further reply to this remark, than by bowing politely, and saying, with equivocal hospitality, that his house should always be open to the Lord of Hermitage.

Isabella’s lover, who was also of the party on this occasion, mechanically felt for the hilt of his sword, while this conversation was passing—a motion which did not escape the notice of him who had excited such an evidence of hostile feeling; neither did the stern look, with which he contemplated the speaker, pass unobserved.

“What chafes thee so much, young man?” said the Lord of Hermitage, turning to the person whom he addressed, with a contemptuous smile. “Is yon fair maiden your sweetheart, my flint-spark; and are you afraid I shall run away with her?”

“No names, if you please, my Lord Hermitage,” replied Armstrong; “I take no by-names but one—that by which everybody knows me. All others I am apt to acknowledge in a way that is pretty generally allowed to be disagreeable. And as to this lady being my sweetheart,” he went on—“perhaps she is, and perhaps not; but whether she be or no, should you entertain any thoughts of running away with her, take my word for it—take the word of ‘Jock o the Syde’—that you’ll run pretty fast, and pretty far, too, if I don’t overtake you.”

To this blunt language, the Lord of Hermitage merely replied, evidently desirous of giving the whole matter the turn of a joke, “that he was glad to find the young lady had such a redoubtable guardian.” Having said this, and made his obeisance to Isabella, bowed to her father, and waved his hand slightly and coldly to Armstrong, the Lord of Hermitage rode off towards his own residence, whither we shall take the liberty of accompanying him.

On entering the gate of his castle, the Lord of Hermitage was met by a person who seemed to be a retainer—for such his dress bespoke him; but there was a familiarity in his manner, mingled with a sort of careless respect, that at once shewed that his lord and he were upon a much more intimate footing than is usually displayed between master and servant.

“Well, my lord,” said this person, as he assisted his master to dismount, “have you seen her?”

“I have, Maxwell,” replied the Lord of Hermitage; “and, on my soul, a most lovely creature it is. Strange that I should not have heard of her before. Thou hast an admirable taste, Maxwell,” he went on; “and I owe thee something for this scent, which thou shalt forthwith have. ’Tis a rare prize, Maxwell, I assure thee, and does thy diligence infinite credit.”

“I guessed as much,” replied the person addressed, and who was, if such an official can be recognised, the confidential villain of the Lord of Hermitage, in the shape of a domestic servant or personal attendant—“I guessed as much, my lord,” he said, with a fiendish smile; “I felt assured that I had at last caught something worth looking at.”

Here the conversation dropped for a time. The Lord of Hermitage being now dismounted from his horse, proceeded into the castle, whither he was followed by Maxwell; when the two, having shut themselves up in a small retired apartment, resumed the discourse which the movement just spoken of had interrupted; and proceeded to discuss the question as to which was the best method of getting Isabella Foster into their power.

“Carry her off, to be sure—carry her off bodily,” was the reply of Maxwell to this query—“why should there be any hesitation?”

“Why, I don’t know, Maxwell,” replied the Lord of Hermitage, musingly. “It would make a stir in the country, and set the fools a-talking. I’d rather it were quietly done, if at all possible. I have told Foster,” he added, after a pause of some minutes, “that I would pay him a visit one of these days.”

“Then, my lord, excuse me, you were wrong,” said Maxwell, interrupting him—“you were wrong. He’ll bundle the girl out of the way directly; and, if he does, we may look long enough ere we find her again.”

“Faith! I dare say, thou’rt right, Maxwell,” replied the Lord of Hermitage; “although I scarcely think the scoundrel would dare to do that either. I should have a right to consider such a proceeding as a personal insult, and feel myself warranted in resenting it accordingly.”

“No doubt, no doubt, my lord,” said Maxwell; “but, in the meantime, observe you, the girl may be gone—a loss, this, for which the satisfaction of running her father through the body, would be but an indifferent compensation.”

“Right again, Maxwell, right again,” replied his master; “why, then, suppose after all, we do the thing boldly and at once.” A proposition, this, which ended in an arrangement that the Lord of Hermitage, accompanied by Maxwell, and other three or four trusty knaves, well armed with concealed weapons, should, on the following day, set out for Foster’s residence, and, seizing a fit opportunity, carry off his daughter.

On the day following, accordingly, a party of five horsemen were seen, towards evening, riding up the avenue, at the head of which Foster’s house was situated; when the latter, having observed them approaching, and recognising the Lord of Hermitage amongst them, hastened out to receive them. On their coming up—

“I promised you a visit, Foster,” said the leader of the party, at the same time flinging himself from his horse; “and I am now come to redeem my promise.”

Foster made no reply, but bowed and requested his visitor to walk in, an invitation with which he immediately complied; but when a similar one was extended to his followers, they, one and all, declined, saying that their master intended staying so short a time, that it was not worth their while dismounting—an apology with which Foster was, at the time, satisfied, although some circumstances soon afterwards occurred that made him doubt its sincerity. One of them was, his observing two of the horsemen who _had_ dismounted, notwithstanding what they had said just a moment before, skulking about the door of the apartment in which he and his guest were.

After the latter had sat for some time, and had partaken of some refreshment that had been introduced, he inquired of his entertainer, with affected carelessness, what had become of his “fair daughter.” Foster replied that she was unwell, and confined to her own apartment; which was, indeed, true.

“Unwell!” exclaimed his guest, starting to his feet; “you do not say so! Ha! unwell!—I must see her, then. Perhaps I may be able to restore her to health. I have some skill in the healing art. Come, Foster,” he added, with a sudden ferocity and determination of manner, which contrasted strongly with the benevolent purpose he affected, “conduct me to her this instant—this instant, I say, Foster.” And he drew a sword from beneath the cloak in which he was enveloped.

“What means this conduct, my lord?” inquired his amazed and alarmed host.

“Mean, sirrah! mean!” replied the Lord of Hermitage—“why, it means that I am about to do your daughter an honour.” And, without waiting for the guidance he had demanded, he rushed out of the apartment—when he was instantly joined by two of his followers, with drawn swords in their hands—and proceeded to search for the chamber in which the object of his villany was confined. Having quickly found the apartment, the ruffians, after in vain soliciting admittance from its inmate, whom the previous noise had alarmed, began to force the doors. While they were thus employed, Foster, who had, in the meantime, armed himself, and brought two or three of his men to his assistance, suddenly rushed in amongst the assailants, and a close and sanguinary contest immediately ensued.

At this moment, the unfortunate young lady, hearing her father’s voice raised in anger, and the clashing of swords in the passage which led to her apartment, undid the door, and frantically rushed into the midst of the conflict. Fatal indiscretion! She had scarcely stepped from her room, when the thrust of a sword (not, however, meant for her) reached her heart, and she fell, lifeless, amongst the feet of the combatants.

In a few seconds afterwards, her unhappy father also fell, mortally wounded; when the fiends, perceiving the purposes of their villany thus fearfully frustrated, instantly quitted the house, mounted their horses, and fled.

This new atrocity of the Lord of Hermitage—for he had been guilty of many, although, perhaps, this was the most hideous of all—excited, when it became known, such a universal feeling of horror throughout the country, that the miscreant, powerful as he was, was obliged to fly the kingdom, and betake himself to a foreign land, to avoid the popular vengeance with which he was threatened. But his crime was of too deep a dye to escape due punishment, even on earth. There was one whose fierce and enduring thirst for revenge he could not evade—one to escape whom all his windings and doublings were vain, and from whose arm, neither distance of place or time could ultimately protect him.

On hearing of the dreadful catastrophe, Isabella’s lover, Armstrong, vowed he would have a deadly revenge, and that he would never cease from the pursuit of the Lord of Hermitage, while both remained in life, till he had accomplished his destruction; and, in pursuance of this oath (which he swore on the grave of his lover), he abandoned home and friends, assumed the habit of a palmer, and set out in quest of the murderer of Isabella Foster and her father.

On leaving the country, the infamous Lord of Hermitage directed his steps to London, where he remained for some time in concealment; for the singular atrocity of his crime, which he had no doubt would soon be known far and wide, made him consider himself unsafe, even in the heart of the English capital; and unsafe, even here, he certainly was, although unaware of the particular character of the danger that threatened him; for Armstrong had traced him, and he only escaped him by the chance circumstance of his leaving London for the Continent, one single day before his pursuer had discovered his retreat. Similar fortuitous circumstances saved him, at various subsequent terms in the chase; but the bloodhound that tracked him, though often thrown out, kept steadily to his purpose, and as often regained as he lost the scent of his victim.

For two full years, the lover of Isabella Foster pursued her murderer with unabated eagerness and unflagging zeal; and, for two full years, the former, from various accidental circumstances, escaped the vengeance that was thus, although unknown to him, so closely pursuing him.

At the expiry of these two years, however, the Lord of Hermitage, guided, in some measure, we suppose, by a similar instinct with that which directs the hare back to her form, however wide and numerous may have been the evolutions of her intermediate career, sought his own castle again; entertaining also, doubtless, a hope that his atrocious crime, though it could not possibly be forgotten, would now be contemplated with less intensity of feeling than on its first occurrence.

It was on a dark and stormy night in November, that he arrived at his own gate on horseback, and alone. Their lord’s return being wholly unexpected by his domestics, he had some difficulty in gaining admittance; but having at length satisfied the porter who kept the gate, that he was indeed his master, the former was thrown open; and, all dripping with wet, and perishing with cold, the Lord of Hermitage once more entered his own castle, where, in the enjoyment of the luxuries of a blazing fire and an ample repast, he quickly forgot the sufferings to which, for the last ten or twelve hours, he had been exposed.

In little more than an hour afterwards, however, the Lord of Hermitage’s arrival was followed by that of another person, who rode furiously up to the gate, and inquired, in an eager and anxious tone, if he had yet appeared. Being answered in the affirmative, the stranger called on the porter to open the gate, saying that he was an attendant of his master’s, whom the latter had hired some days previously, and that he had lost both him and his way in the dark, being a stranger in that part of the country. The man’s story was plausible; and he was instantly admitted. On entering the court-yard, and seeing some lights in the windows that overlooked it, the stranger inquired of the person who admitted him, whether any one, and which of these windows belonged to his master’s sleeping apartment. The porter, naturally thinking that the question was put by the stranger with the view of affording his master his services, pointed out the apartment he inquired after, and gave him particular directions how to find it. Desiring his informant now to hold his horse for a few minutes, till he should have informed his master of his arrival, when he would return, he said, to take charge of the animal himself, the stranger disappeared. In an instant after, the door of the Lord of Hermitage’s apartment was suddenly opened, and “Jock o’ the Syde” stood before its horror-struck inmate, who at once guessed the intentions of the intruder. What followed was the work of a moment. Armstrong—his eyes dilated with a fearful joy, and with a deadly smile playing on his haggard countenance, seized the unhappy Lord of Hermitage by the throat; and, as he struck a dagger to his heart, exclaimed—“Villain! most atrocious of villains! the hour of vengeance is come. I have caught thee at last. This, and this, and this,” he said, as he repeated his stabs, “is for Isabella Foster and her murdered father!”

Elated beyond bounds at this successful termination to all his weary toils and watchings, and gratified to think that his vengeance had been, after all, consummated in the very stronghold of the murderer, Armstrong flew to the court-yard, leaped on his horse, and having called to the porter, in a voice of fierce exultation, to open the gate, as his master had ordered him on a pressing and important mission, “Jock o’ the Syde” galloped out of the castle; and his loud and triumphant, but most appalling laugh, as he cleared the gate-way, rang wildly through the darkness and solitude of the night, and struck those who heard it with awe and dismay; for it was, indeed, unearthly.

GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.

XVIII.—KINALDY.

Kinaldy is now the property of Mr Purves—an excellent country gentleman who has made an ample fortune in America; but the period to which my narrative refers, was long prior to this. The property is poor and moorish though now covered with wood, sheltered, and highly cultivated. In the days of Andrew Watson, it bore a very different appearance: in fact, Andrew was not the proprietor, but only the farmer; whilst a nephew of Archbishop Sharp, long resident in an asylum, was the nominal proprietor, under various trustees, of whom the famous Archbishop was one.

Farm houses in those days were very different from those of the present. A thatched and patched roof, with walls of alternate layers of turf and stone, and mid-walls or hallens of clay and straw, quite Egyptian manufacture, were all the go; and if any one, more advanced and uppish than his neighbours, got the length of a stone and clay wall, with a wooden partition within, he was deemed uncommonly appointed, as times went. Through these stone and turf walls there was free ingress and egress to the wind, as well as a plentiful allotment of rats, and the light infantry, the mice; and holes capable of admitting even the cat in full chase of her prey, perforated the clayey hallen in particular. Thus, by little and little, the frail separation betwixt but and ben—the house and the cha’mer—was in a manner undermined; and even the pressure of a little urchin’s elbow, of eight or ten years of age, was sufficient to shake it to its foundation. It is of one such as I am describing, that the author of Maggy Lauder speaks, when he makes his jolly heroine contemptuously exclaim—

“Begone ye hallenshauker,”

in other words, ye puir contemptible body, whom no respectable person will permit to advance further into their house than the hallen, against which ye loiter and lean till it shakes.

The fire, in these times, occupied, like the sun, the centre of the system, around which, at various distances, revolved, the Venus guidwife, the Mars guidman, the Juno Jenny, the Jupiter Jock, the Saturn Sandy, and a vast number of satellites, in the shape of half-clad, bare-footed, uncombed, squalling brats. Pocket handkerchiefs there were none; but coat-sleeves and petticoat tails did just as well; and though the Kenley Burn ran past, pure and pellucid, its waters were seldom defiled—unless perhaps, on a church-going Sunday—with the ablution of hands and faces. There was a byre covered with heath, and with rafters fixed in the earth, without the advantage of walls, from which issued, in their season, cows, stirks, and calves, all covered over, like the Dacians, in scaly armour, rattling as they went in hardened shairn, and sometimes carrying a considerable fragment of the door-head of their cabin along with them; ducks swattered in a Glenburnie midden dub; and an assortment of hens, over whom presided a most dignified cock in full feather, giving an air of extreme liveliness and stir to the whole. But although the outside of things was, comparatively with modern manners and improvements, somewhat rude and forbidding, there were warm hearts and tender consciences within. There literature was indeed but limited; but, limited as it was, it comprehended the Bible, the Confession of Faith, and “Knox’s History of the Church of Scotland.” Well acquainted was Andrew Watson, and so was his wife, Janet Morrison, with the grievous defections and oppressions of the times. And never did Andrew bend his knees in family worship, but he prayed the Lord in behoof of the poor persecuted remnant, of the good and faithful Mr Alexander Wilson, the ousted minister of Cameron, and of a’ those that opposed Prelacy and conformity, and supported Presbytery, in thae sairly afflicted lands.