Chapter VI: Part 6

"And ye come to rouse me to revenge?" added Sir David. "Ye shall have it, man--revenge that shall make the Regent weep--revenge that the four corners of the earth shall hear of, and history record. Ye come to remind me that my father and my brother fell on the field of Flodden, in defence of a foolish king, and that I, too, bled there--that there also lie the bones of my kinsman, Cuthbert of Fastcastle, of my brother Cockburn and his son, and the father and brother of my Alison. Ye come to remind me of this; and that, as a reward for the shedding of our blood, the head of the chief of our house has been fixed upon the gate of Edinburgh as food for the carrion crow and the night owl! Go, get thee refreshment, Trotter; then go to rest, and dream of other heads exalted, as your late master's is, and I will be the interpreter of your visions."

Trotter bowed and withdrew, and Lady Alison entered the apartment.

"Ye are agitated, husband," said the gentle lady, laying her hand upon his; "hath the man brought evil tidings?"

"Can good tidings come to a Home," answered Sir David, "while the tyrant Albany rides rough-shod over the nobility of Scotland, and, like a viper, stings the bosom that nursed him? Away to thy chamber, Alison; leave me, it is no tale for woman's ears."

"Nay, if you love me, tell me," she replied, laying her hand upon his brow, "for since your return from the field of Flodden, I have not seen you look thus."

"This is no time to talk of love, Aley," added he. "But come, leave me, silly one, it concerns not thee; no evil hath overtaken the house of Blackadder, but the Homes have become a mark for the arrows of desolation, and their necks a footstool for tyrants. Away, Alison; to-night I can think of but one word, and that is--vengeance!"

Lady Alison wept, and withdrew in silence; and Wedderburn paced the floor of the gloomy hall, meditating in what manner he should most effectually resent the death of his kinsman.

It was only a few weeks after the execution of the Earl of Home and his brother, that the Regent Albany offered an additional insult to his family by appointing Sir Anthony D'Arcy warden of the east marches, an office which the Homes had held for ages. D'Arcy was a Frenchman, and the favourite of the Regent; and, on account of the comeliness of his person, obtained the appellation of the _Sieur de la Beauté_. The indignation of Wedderburn had not slumbered, and the conferring the honours and the power that had hitherto been held by his family upon a foreigner, incensed him to almost madness. For a time, however, no opportunity offered of causing his resentment to be felt; for D'Arcy was as much admired for the discretion and justice of his government as for the beauty of his person. To his care the Regent had committed young Cockburn, the heir of Langton, who was the nephew of Wedderburn. This the Homes felt as a new indignity, and, together with the Cockburns, they forcibly ejected from Langton Castle the tutors whom D'Arcy had placed over their kinsman. The tidings of this event were brought to the Chevalier while he was holding a court at Kelso; and immediately summoning together his French retainers and a body of yeomen, he proceeded with a gay and a gallant company by way of Fogo to Langton. His troop drew up in front of the castle, and their gay plumes and burnished trappings glittered in the sun. The proud steed of the Frenchman was covered with a panoply of gold and silver, and he himself was decorated as for a bridal. He rode haughtily to the gate, and demanded the inmates of the castle to surrender.

"Surrender! boasting Gaul!" replied William Cockburn, the uncle of the young laird; "that is a word the men of Merse have yet to learn. But yonder comes my brother Wedderburn; speak it to him."

D'Arcy turned round, and beheld Sir David Home and a party of horsemen bearing down upon them at full speed. The Chevalier drew back, and waiting their approach, placed himself at the head of his company.

"By the mass! Sir Warden," said Sir David, riding up to D'Arcy, "and ye have brought a goodly company to visit my nephew. Come ye in peace, or what may be your errand?"

"I wish peace," replied the Chevalier, "and come to enforce the establishment of my rights; why do you interfere between me and my ward?"

"Does a Frenchman talk of his rights upon the lands of Home?" returned Sir David; "or by whose authority is my nephew your ward?"

"By the authority of the Regent, rebel Scot!" retorted D'Arcy.

"By the authority of the Regent!" interrupted Wedderburn; "dare ye, foreign minion, speak of the authority of the murderer of the Earl of Home, while within the reach of the sword of his kinsman?"

"Ay! and in his teeth dare tell him," replied the Chevalier, "that the Home now before me is not less a traitor than he who proved false to his sovereign on the field of Flodden, who conspired against the Regent, and whose head now adorns the port of Edinburgh."

"Wretch!" exclaimed the henchman Trotter, dashing forward, and raising his sword, "said ye that my master proved false at Flodden?"

"Hold!" exclaimed Wedderburn, grasping his arm. "Gramercy, ye uncivilised dog! for the sake of your master's head would ye lift your hand against that face which ladies die to look upon? Pardon me, most beautiful Chevalier! the salutation of my servant may be too rough for your French palate, but you and your master treated my kinsman somewhat more roughly. What say ye, Sir Warden? do ye depart in peace, or wish ye that we should try the temper of our Border steel upon your French bucklers?"

"Depart ye in peace, vain boaster," replied D'Arcy, "lest a worse thing befall you."

"Then on, my merry men!" cried Wedderburn, "and to-day the head of the Regent's favourite, the Chevalier of Beauty, for the head of the Earl of Home!"

"The house of Home and revenge!" shouted his followers, and rushed upon the armed band of D'Arcy. At first the numbers were nearly equal, and the contest was terrible. Each man fought hand to hand, and the ground was contested inch by inch. The gilded ornaments of the French horses were covered with blood, and their movements were encumbered by their weight. The sword of Wedderburn had already smitten three of the Chevalier's followers to the ground, and the two chiefs now contended in single combat. D'Arcy fought with the fury of despair, but Home continued to bear upon him as a tiger that has been robbed of its cubs. Every moment the force of the Chevalier was thinned, and every instant the number of his enemies increased, as the neighbouring peasantry rallied round the standard of their chief. Finding the most faithful of his followers stretched upon the earth, D'Arcy sought safety in flight. Dashing his silver spurs into the sides of his noble steed, he turned his back upon his desperate enemy, and rushed along in the direction of Pouterleiny, and through Dunse, with the hope of gaining the road to Dunbar, of which town he was governor. Fiercely Wedderburn followed at his heels, with his naked sword uplifted, and ready to strike; immediately behind him rode Trotter, the henchman of the late earl, and another of Home's followers named Dickson. It was a fearful sight as they rushed through Dunse, their horses striking fire from their heels in the light of the very sunbeams, and the sword of the pursuer within a few feet of the fugitive. Still the Chevalier rode furiously, urging on the gallant animal that bore him, which seemed conscious that the life of its rider depended upon its speed. His flaxen locks waived behind him in the wind, and the voice of his pursuers ever and anon fell upon his ear, like a dagger of death thrust into his bosom. The horse upon which Wedderburn rode had been wounded in the conflict, and, as they drew near Broomhouse, its speed slackened, and his followers, Trotter and Dickson, took the lead in the pursuit. The Chevalier had reached a spot on the right bank of the Whitadder, which is now in a field of the farm of Swallowdean, when his noble steed, becoming entangled with its cumbrous trappings, stumbled, and hurled its rider to the earth. The next moment the swords of Trotter and Dickson were through the body of the unfortunate Chevalier.

"Off with his head!" exclaimed Wedderburn, who at the same instant reached the spot. The bloody mandate was readily obeyed; and Home, taking the bleeding head in his hand, cut off the flaxen tresses, and tied them as a trophy to his saddle-bow. The body of the _Chevalier de la Beauté_ was rudely buried on the spot where he fell. A humble stone marks out the scene of the tragedy, and the people in the neighbourhood yet call it "_Bawty's Grave_." The head of the Chevalier was carried to Dunse, where it was fixed upon a spear at the cross, and Wedderburn exclaimed, "Thus be exalted the enemies of the house of Home!"

The bloody relic was then borne in triumph to Home Castle, and placed upon the battlements. "There," said Sir David, "let the Regent climb when he returns from France for the head of his favourite; it is thus that Home of Wedderburn revenges the murder of his kindred."

THE STORY OF THE PELICAN.

Though not so much a tradition as a memory still fresh probably in the minds of some of the good old Edinburgh folks, we here offer, chiefly for the benefit of our young female readers who are fond of a story wherein little heroines figure, as in Béranger's _Sylphide_, an account of a very famous adventure of a certain little Jeannie Deans in our city--the more like the elder Jeannie, inasmuch as they both were concerned in a loving effort to save the life of a sister. Whereunto, as a very necessary introduction, it behoves us to set forth that there was, some sixty years ago, more or less, a certain Mr. William Maconie, who was a merchant on the South Bridge of Edinburgh, but who, for the sake of exercise and fresh air--a commodity this last he need not have gone so far from the Calton Hill to seek--resided at Juniper Green, a little village three or four miles from St. Giles's. Nor did this distance incommode him much, seeing that he had the attraction to quicken his steps homewards of a pretty young wife and two little twin daughters, Mary and Annie, as like each other as two rosebuds partially opened, and as like their mother, too, as the objects of our simile are to themselves when full blown.

Peculiar in this respect of having twins at the outset, and sisters too--a good beginning of a contract to perpetuate the species--Mr. Maconie was destined to be even more so, inasmuch as there came no more of these pleasant _deliciae domi_, at least up to the time of our curious story--a circumstance the more to be regretted by the father, in consequence of a strange fancy (never told to his wife) that possessed him of wishing to insure the lives of his children as they came into the world, or at least after they had got through the rather uninsurable period of mere infant life. And in execution of this fancy--a very fair and reasonable one, and not uncommon at that time, whatever it may be now, when people are not so provident--he had got an insurance to the extent of five hundred pounds effected in the Pelican Office--perhaps the most famous at that time--on the lives of the said twins, Mary and Annie, who were, no doubt, altogether unconscious of the importance they were thus made to hold in the world.

Yet, unfortunately for the far-seeing and provident father, this scheme threatened to fructify sooner than he wished, if indeed it could ever have fructified to his satisfaction; for the grisly spectre of typhus laid his relentless hand upon Mary when she--and of a consequence Annie--was somewhere about eight years old. And surely, being as we are very hopeful optimists in the cause of human nature, we need not say that the father, as he and his wife watched the suffering invalid on through the weary days and nights of the progress towards the crisis of that dangerous ailment, never once thought of the Pelican, except as a bird that feeds its young with the warm blood of its breast. But, sorrowful as they were, their grief was nothing in comparison with the distress of little Annie, who slipped about listening and making all manner of anxious inquiries about her sick sister, whom she was prohibited from seeing for fear of her being touched by the said spectre; nor was her heart the less troubled with fears for her life, that all things seemed so quiet and mysterious about the house--the doctor coming and going, and the father and mother whispering to each other, but never to her, and their faces so sad-like and mournful, in place of being, as was their wont, so cheerful and happy.

And surely all this solicitude on the part of Annie Maconie need not excite our wonder, when we consider that, from the time of their birth, the twin sisters had never been separated, but that, from the moment they had made their entrance on this world's stage, they had been always each where the other was, and had run each where the other ran, wished each what the other wished, and wept and laughed each when the other wept or laughed. Nature indeed, before it came into her fickle head to make two of them, had in all probability intended these little sisters--"little cherries on one stalk"--to be but one; and they could only be said not to be _one_, because of their bodies being two--a circumstance of no great importance, for, in spite of the duality of body, the spirit that animated them was a unity, and as we know from an old philosopher called Plato, the spirit is really the human creature, the flesh and bones constituting the body being nothing more than a mere husk intended at the end to feed worms. And then the mother helped this sameness by dressing them so like each other, as if she wanted to make a _Comedy of Errors_ out of the two little female Dromios.

But in the middle of this mystery and solicitude, it happened that Annie was to get some light; for, at breakfast one morning--not yet that of the expected crisis--when her father and mother were talking earnestly in an undertone to each other, all unaware that the child, as she was moving about, was watching their words and looks, much as an older victim of credulity may be supposed to hang on the cabbalistic movements and incantations of a sibyl, the attentive little listener eagerly drank in every word of the following conversation:--

"The doctor is so doubtful," said the anxious mother, with a tear in her eye, "that I have scarcely any hope; and if she is taken away, the very look of Annie, left alone 'bleating for her sister lamb,' will break my heart altogether."

"Yes," rejoined Mr. Maconie, "it would be hard to bear; but"--and it was the first time since Mary's illness he had ever remembered the insurance--"it was wise that I insured poor Mary's life in the Pelican."

"Insured her life in the Pelican!" echoed the wife in a higher tone. "That was at least lucky; but, oh! I hope we will not need to have our grief solaced by that comfort in affliction for many a day."

And this colloquy had scarcely been finished when the doctor entered, having gone previously into the invalid's room, with a very mournful expression upon his face; nor did his words make that expression any more bearable, as he said--

"I am sorry to say I do not like Mary's appearance so well to-day. I fear it is to be one of those cases where we cannot discover anything like a crisis at all; indeed I have doubts about this old theory being applicable to this kind of fever, where the virus goes on gradually working to the end."

"The end!" echoed Mrs. Maconie; "then, doctor, I fear you see what that will be."

"I would not like to say," added he; "but I fear you must make up your mind for the worst."

Now, all this was overheard by Annie, who, we may here seize the opportunity of saying, was, in addition to being a sensitive creature, one of those precocious little philosophers thinly spread in the female world, and made what they are often by delicate health, which reduces them to a habit of thinking much before their time. Not that she wanted the vivacity of her age, but that it was tempered by periods of serious musing, when all kinds of what the Scotch call "auld farrant" (far yont) thoughts come to be where they should not be, the consequence being a weird-like kind of wisdom, very like that of the aged; so the effect on a creature so constituted was just equal to the cause. Annie ran out of the room with her face concealed in her hands, and got into a small bedroom darkened by the window-blind, and there, in an obscurity and solitude suited to her mind and feelings, she resigned herself to the grief of the young heart. It was now clear to her that her dear Mary was to be taken from her; had not the doctor said as much? And then she had never seen death, of which she had read and heard and thought so much, that she looked upon it as a thing altogether mysterious and terrible. But had she not overheard her father say that he had insured poor dear Mary's life with the Pelican? and had she not heard of the pelican--yea, the pelican of the wilderness--as a creature of a most mythical kind, though she knew not aught of its nature, whether bird or beast, or man or woman, or angel? But whatever it might be, certain it was that her father would never have got this wonderful creature to insure Mary's life if it was not possessed of the power to bring about so great a result. So she cogitated and mused and philosophized in her small way, till she came to the conclusion that the pelican not only had the destiny of Mary in its hands, but was under an obligation to save her from that death which was so terrible to her. Nor had she done yet with the all-important subject; for all at once it came into her head as a faint memory, that one day, when her father was taking her along with her mother through the city, he pointed to a gilded sign, with a large bird represented thereon, tearing its breast with its long beak, and letting out the blood to its young, who were holding their mouths open to drink it in. "There," said he, "is the Pelican;" words she remembered even to that hour, for they were imprinted upon her mind by the formidable appearance of the wonderful-looking creature feeding its young with the very blood of its bosom. But withal she had sense enough to know--being, as we have said, a small philosopher--that a mere bird, however endowed with the power of sustaining the lives of its offspring, could not save that of her sister, and therefore it behoved to be only the symbol of some power within the office over the door of which the said sign was suspended. Nor in all this was Annie Maconie more extravagant than are nineteen-twentieths of the thousand millions in the world who still cling to occult causes.

And with those there came other equally strange thoughts; but beyond all she could not for the very life of her comprehend that most inexcusable apathy of her father, who, though he had heard with his own ears, from good authority, that her beloved Mary was lying in the next bedroom dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to town--even to that very Pelican who had so generously undertaken to insure Mary's life. It was an apathy unbecoming a father; and the blood of her little heart warmed with indignation at the very time that the said heart was down in sorrow as far as its loose strings would enable it to go. But was there no remedy? To be sure there was, and Annie knew, moreover, what it was; but then it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that sacrifice she also knew, though it must of necessity be kept in the meantime as secret as the wonderful doings in the death-chamber of the palace of a certain Bluebeard.

Great thoughts these for so little a woman as Annie Maconie; and no doubt the greatness and the weight of them were the cause why, for all that day--every hour of which her father was allowing to pass--she was more melancholy and thoughtful than she had ever been since Mary began to be ill. But, somehow, there was a peculiar change which even her mother could observe in her; for while she had been in the habit of weeping for her sister, yea, and sobbing very piteously, she was all this day apparently in a reverie. Nor even up to the time of her going to bed was she less thoughtful and abstracted, even as if she had been engaged in solving some problem great to her, however small it might seem to grown-up infants. As for sleeping under the weight of so much responsibility, it might seem to be out of the question; and so, verily, it was; for her little body, acted on by the big thoughts, was moved from one side to another all night, so that she never slept a wink, still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, of poor Mary, her father's criminal passiveness, and that most occult remedy which so completely engrossed her mind.

But certainly it was the light of morning for which sister Annie sighed; and when it came glinting in at the small window, she was up and beginning to dress, all the while listening lest the servant or any other one in the house should know she was up at that hour. Having completed her toilet, she slipped down stairs, and having got to the lobby, she was provident enough to lay hold of an umbrella, for she suspected the elements as being in league against her. Thus equipped, she crept out by the back door, and having got thus free, she hurried along, never looking behind her till she came to the main road to Edinburgh, when she mounted the umbrella--one used by her father, and so large that it was more like a main-sheet than a covering suitable to so small a personage; so it behoved, that if she met any other "travellers on purpose bent," the moving body must have appeared to be some small tent on its way to a fair, carried by the proprietor thereof, of whom no more could be seen but the two short toddling legs, and the hem of the black riding-hood. But what cared Annie? She toiled along; the miles were long in comparison of the short legs, but then there was a large purpose in that little body, in the view of which miles were of small account, however long a time it might take those steps to go over them. Nor was it any drawback to all this energy, concentrated in so small a bulk, that she had had no breakfast. Was the dying sister Mary able to take any breakfast? and why should Annie eat when Mary, who did all she did--and she always did everything that sister Mary did--could not? The argument was enough for our little logician.

By the time she reached, by those short steps of hers, the great city, it was half-past eleven, and she had before her still a great deal to accomplish. She made out, after considerable wanderings, the street signalized above all streets by that wonderful bird; but after she got into it, the greater difficulty remained of finding the figure itself, whereto there was this untoward obstacle, that it was still drizzling in the thick Scotch way of concrete drops of mist, and the umbrella which she held over her head was so large that no turning it aside would enable her to see under the rim at such an angle as would permit her scanning so elevated a position, and so there was nothing for it but to draw it down. But even this was a task--heavy as the mainsheet was with rain, and rattling in a considerable wind--almost beyond her strength; and if it hadn't been that a kindly personage who saw the little maid's difficulty gave her assistance, she might not have been able to accomplish it. And now, with the heavy article in her hand, she peered about for another half-hour, till at length her gladdened eye fell upon the mystic symbol.

And no sooner had she made sure of the object than she found her way into the office, asking the porter as well as a clerk where the pelican was to be found,--questions that produced a smile; but smile here or smile there, Annie was not to be beat; nor did she stop in her progress until at last she was shown into a room where she saw, perched on a high stool, with three (of course) long legs, a strange-looking personage with a curled wig and a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room with the umbrella, not much shorter or less in circumference than herself, the gentleman looked curiously at her, wondering no doubt what the errand of so strange a little customer could be.

"Well, my little lady," said he, "what may be your pleasure?"

"I want the pelican," said Annie.

The gentleman was still more astonished, even to the extent that he laid down his pen and looked at her again.

"The pelican, dear?"

"Ay, just the pelican," answered she deliberately, and even a little indignantly. "Are you the pelican?"

"Why, yes, dear; all that is for it below the figure," said he, smiling, and wondering what the next question would be.

"I am so glad I have found you," said she; "because sister Mary is dying."

"And who is sister Mary?"

"My sister, Mary Maconie, at Juniper Green."

Whereupon the gentleman began to remember that the name of William Maconie was in his books as holder of a policy.

"And what more?"

"My father says the pelican insured Mary's life; and I want you to come direct and do it, because I couldn't live if Mary were to die; and there's no time to be lost."

"Oh! I see, dear. And who sent you?"

"Nobody," answered Annie. "My father wouldn't come to you; and I have come from Juniper Green myself without telling my father or mother."

"Oh yes, dear! I understand you."

"But you must do it quick," continued she, "because the doctor says she's in great danger; so you must come with me and save her immediately."

"I am sorry, my dear little lady," rejoined he, "that I cannot go with you; but I will set about it immediately, and I have no doubt, being able to go faster than you, that I will get there before you, so that all will be right before you arrive."

"See that you do it, then," said she; "because I can't live if Mary dies. Are you quite sure you will do it?"

"Perfectly sure, my little dear," added he. "Go away home, and all will be right; the pelican will do his duty."

And Annie being thus satisfied, went away, dragging the main-sheet after her, and having upon her face a look of contentment, if not absolute happiness, in place of the sorrow which had occupied it during all the time of her toilsome journey. The same road is to be retraced; and if she had an object before which nerved her little limbs, she had now the delightful consciousness of that object having been effected--a feeling of inspiration which enabled her, hungry as she was, to overcome all the toil of the return. Another two hours, with that heavy umbrella over head as well as body, brought her at length home, where she found that people had been sent out in various directions to find the missing Annie. The mother was in tears, and the father in great anxiety; and no sooner had she entered and laid down her burden, than she was clasped to the bosom, first of one parent, and then of the other.

"But where is the pelican?" said the anxious little maid.

"The pelican, my darling!" cried the mother; "what do you mean?"

"Oh! I have been to him at his own office at Edinburgh to get him to come and save Mary's life, and he said he would be here before me."

"And what in the world put it in your head to go there?" again asked the mother.

"Because I heard my father say yesterday that the pelican had insured dear sister Mary's life, and I went to tell him to come and do it immediately; because if Mary were to die, I couldn't live, you know. That's the reason, dear mother."

"Yes, yes," said the father, scarcely able to repress a smile which rose in spite of his grief. "I see it all. You did a very right thing, my love. The pelican has been here, and Mary is better."

"Oh! I am so glad," rejoined Annie; "for I wasn't sure whether he had come or not; because, though I looked for him on the road, I couldn't see him."

At the same moment the doctor came in, with a blithe face.

"Mary is safe now," said he. "There has been a crisis, after all. The sweat has broken out upon her dry skin, and she will be well in a very short time."

"And there's no thanks to you," said Annie, "because it was I who went for the pelican."

Whereupon the doctor looked to the father, who, taking him aside, narrated to him the story, at which the doctor was so pleased that he laughed right out.

"You're the noblest little heroine I ever heard of," said he.

"But have you had anything to eat, dear, in this long journey?" said the mother.

"No, I didn't want," was the answer; "all I wanted was to save Mary's life, and I am glad I have done it."

And glad would we be if, by the laws of historical truth, our stranger story could have ended here; but, alas! we are obliged to pain the good reader's heart by saying that the demon who had left the troubled little breast of Mary Maconie took possession of Annie's. The very next day she lay extended on the bed, panting under the fell embrace of the relentless foe. As Mary got better, Annie grew worse; and her case was so far unlike Mary's, that there was more a tendency to a fevered state of the brain. The little sufferer watched with curious eyes the anxious faces of her parents, and seemed conscious that she was in a dangerous condition. Nor did it fail to occur to her as a great mystery as well as wonder, why they did not send for the wonderful being who had so promptly saved the life of her sister. The thought haunted her, yet she was afraid to mention it to her mother, because it implied a sense of danger--a fear which one evening she overcame. Fixing her eyes, now every moment waxing less clear, on the face of her mother--

"Oh mother, dear," she whispered, "why do you not send for the pelican?"

In other circumstances the mother would have smiled; but, alas, no smile could be seen on that pale face. Whether the pelican was sent for we know not, but certain it is, that he had no power to save poor Annie, and she died within the week. But she did not die in vain, for the large sum insured upon her life eventually came to Mary, whom she loved so dearly.

THE WIDOW'S AE SON.

We will not name the village where the actors in the following incidents resided; and it is sufficient for our purpose to say that it lay in the county of Berwick, and within the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Dunse. Eternity has gathered forty winters into its bosom since the principal events took place. Janet Jeffrey was left a widow before her only child had completed his tenth year. While her husband lay upon his deathbed, he called her to his bedside, and, taking her hand within his, he groaned, gazed on her face, and said, "Now, Janet, I'm gaun a lang and a dark journey; but ye winna forget, Janet--ye winna forget--for ye ken it has aye been uppermost in my thoughts and first in my desires, to mak Thamas a minister; promise me that ae thing, Janet, that, if it be HIS will, ye will see it performed, an' I will die in peace." In sorrow the pledge was given, and in joy performed. Her life became wrapt up in her son's life; and it was her morning and her evening prayer that she might live to see her "dear Thamas a shining light in the kirk." Often she declared that he was an "auld farrant bairn, and could ask a blessing like ony minister." Our wishes and affections, however, often blind our judgment. Nobody but the mother thought the son fitted for the kirk, nor the kirk fitted for him. There was always something original, almost poetical about him; but still Thomas was "no orator as Brutus was." His mother had few means beyond the labour of her hands for their support. She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings of his field labour and occasional teaching, she was enabled to make preparation for sending him to Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to her neighbours her double spinel yarn--observing, "It's nae finer than he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended the classes regularly and faithfully; and truly as St. Giles's marked the hour, the long, lean figure of Thomas Jeffrey, in a suit of shabby black, and half a dozen volumes under his arm, was seen issuing from his garret in the West Bow, darting down the frail stair with the velocity of a shadow, measuring the Lawnmarket and High Street with gigantic strides, gliding like a ghost up the South Bridge, and sailing through the Gothic archway of the College, till the punctual student was lost in its inner chambers. Years rolled by, and at length the great, the awful day arrived--

"Big with the fate of Thomas and his mother."

He was to preach his trial sermon; and where? In his own parish--in his native village! It was summer, but his mother rose by daybreak. Her son, however, was at his studies before her; and when she entered his bedroom with a swimming heart and swimming eyes, Thomas was stalking across the floor, swinging his arms, stamping his feet, and shouting his sermon to the trembling curtains of a four-post bed, which she had purchased in honour of him alone. "Oh, my bairn! my matchless bairn!" cried she, "what a day o' joy is this for your poor mother! But oh, hinny, hae ye it weel aff? I hope there's nae fears o' ye stickin' or using notes!" "Dinna fret, mother--dinna fret," replied the young divine; "stickin' and notes are out o' the question. I hae every word o' it as clink as the A B C." The appointed hour arrived. She was first at the kirk. Her heart felt too big for her bosom. She could not sit--she walked again to the air--she trembled back--she gazed restless on the pulpit. The parish minister gave out the psalm--the book shook while she held it. The minister prayed, again gave out a psalm, and left the pulpit. The book fell from Mrs. Jeffrey's hand. A tall figure paced along the passage. He reached the pulpit stairs--took two steps at once. It was a bad omen; but arose from the length of his limbs--not levity. He opened the door--his knees smote upon one another. He sat down--he was paler than death. He rose--his bones were paralytic. The Bible was opened--his mouth opened at the same time, and remained open, but said nothing. His large eyes stared wildly around. At length his teeth chattered, and the text was announced, though half the congregation disputed it. "My brethren!" said he once, and the whiteness of his countenance increased; but he said no more. "My bre--thren!" responded he a second time; his teeth chattered louder; his cheeks became clammy and death-like. "My brethren!" stammered he a third time emphatically, and his knees fell together. A deep groan echoed from his mother's pew. His wildness increased. "My mother!" exclaimed the preacher. They were the last words he ever uttered in a pulpit. The shaking and the agony began in his heart, and his body caught the contagion. He covered his face with his hands, fell back, and wept. His mother screamed aloud, and fell back also; and thus perished her toils, her husband's prayer, her fond anticipations, and the pulpit oratory of her son. A few neighbours crowded round her to console her and render her assistance. They led her to the door. She gazed upon them with a look of vacancy--thrice sorrowfully waved her hand, in token that they should leave her; for their words fell upon her heart like dew upon a furnace. Silently she arose and left them, and reaching her cottage, threw herself upon her bed in bitterness. She shed no tears; neither did she groan, but her bosom heaved with burning agony. Sickness smote Thomas to his very heart; yea, even unto blindness he was sick. His tongue was like heated iron in his mouth, and his throat like a parched land. He was led from the pulpit. But he escaped not the persecution of the unfeeling titter, and the expressions of shallow pity. He would have rejoiced to have dwelt in darkness for ever, but there was no escape from the eyes of his tormentors. The congregation stood in groups in the kirkyard, "just," as they said, "to hae anither look at the orator;" and he must pass through the midst of them. With his very soul steeped in shame, and his cheeks covered with confusion, he stepped from the kirk door. A humming noise issued through the crowd, and every one turned their faces towards him. His misery was greater than he could bear. "Yon was oratory for ye!" said one. "Poor deevil!" added another, "I'm sorry for him; but it was as guid as a play." "Was it tragedy or comedy?" inquired a third, laughing as he spoke. The remarks fell upon his ear--he grated his teeth in madness, but he could endure no more; and, covering his face with his hands, he bounded off like a wounded deer to his mother's cottage. In despair he entered the house, scarce knowing what he did. He beheld her where she had fallen upon the bed, dead to all but misery. "Oh mother, mother!" he cried, "dinna ye be angry--dinna ye add to the afflictions of your son! Will ye no, mother?--will ye no?" A low groan was the only answer. He hurried to and fro across the room, wringing his hands. "Mother," he again exclaimed, "will ye no speak ae word? Oh, woman! ye wadna be angry if ye kenned what an awfu' thing it is to see a thousan' een below ye, and aboon ye, and round about ye, a' staring upon ye like condemning judges, an' looking into your very soul--ye hae nae idea o' it, mother; I tell ye, ye hae nae idea o't, or ye wadna be angry. The very pulpit floor gaed down wi' me, the kirk wa's gaed round about, and I thought the very crown o' my head wad pitch on the top o' the precentor. The very een o' the multitude soomed round me like fishes!--an' oh, woman! are ye dumb? will ye torment me mair? can ye no speak, mother?" But he spoke to one who never spoke again. Her reason departed, and her speech failed, but grief remained. She had lived upon one hope, and that hope was destroyed. Her round ruddy cheeks and portly form wasted away, and within a few weeks the neighbours, who performed the last office of humanity, declared that a thinner corpse was never wrapt in a winding sheet than Mrs. Jeffrey. Time soothed, but did not heal the sorrows, the shame, and the disappointment of the son. He sank into a village teacher, and often, in the midst of his little school, he would quote his first, his only text--imagine the children to be his congregation--attempt to proceed--gaze wildly round for a moment, and sit down and weep. Through these aberrations his school dwindled into nothingness, and poverty increased his delirium. Once, in the midst of the remaining few, he gave forth the fatal text. "My brethren!" he exclaimed, and smiting his hand upon his forehead, cried, "Speak, mother!--speak now!" and fell with his face upon the floor. The children rushed screaming from the school, and when the villagers entered, the troubled spirit had fled for ever.

THE LAWYER'S TALES.

THE STORY OF MYSIE CRAIG.

In detailing the curious circumstances of the following story, I am again only reporting a real law case to be found in the Court of Session Records, the turning-point of which was as invisible to the judges as to the parties themselves--that is, until the end came; a circumstance again which made the case a kind of developed romance. But as an end implies a beginning, and the one is certainly as necessary as the other, we request you to accompany us--taking care of your feet--up the narrow spiral staircase of a tenement called Corbet's Land, in the same old town where so many wonderful things in the complicated drama--or dream, if you are a Marphurius--of human life have occurred. Up which spiral stair having got by the help of our hands, almost as indispensable as that of the feet, we find ourselves in a little human dovecot of two small rooms, occupied by two persons not unlike, in many respects, two doves--Widow Craig and her daughter, called May, euphuized by the Scotch into Mysie. The chief respects in which they might be likened, without much stress, to the harmless creatures we have mentioned, were their love for each other, together with their total inoffensiveness as regarded the outside world; and we are delighted to say this, for we see so many of the multitudinous sides of human nature dark and depraved, that we are apt to think there is no bright side at all. Nor shall we let slip the opportunity of saying, at the risk of being considered very simple, that of all the gifts of felicity bestowed, as the Pagan Homer tells, upon mankind by the gods, no one is so perfect and beautiful as the love that exists between a good mother and a good daughter.

For so much we may be safe by having recourse to instinct, which is deeper than any secondary causes we poor mortals can see. But beyond this, there were special reasons tending to this same result of mutual affection, which come more within the scope of our observation. In explanation of which, we may say that the mother, having something in her power during her husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an art of far more importance then than now--that of artistic, needlework. Nay, of so much importance was this beautiful art, and to such perfection was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, embroidered by the hand, with its profuse imitations of natural objects, flowers, and birds, and strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds Scots, that a sight of one of those operose achievements of genius would make us blush for our time and the labours of our women. Nor was the perfection in this ornamental industry a new thing, for the daughters of the Pictish kings confined in the castle were adepts in it; neither was it left altogether to paid sempstresses, for great ladies spent their time in it, and emulation quickened both the genius and the diligence. So we need hardly say it became to the mother a thing to be proud of, that her daughter Mysie proved herself so apt a scholar that she became an adept, and was soon known as one of the finest embroideresses in the great city. So, too, as a consequence, it came to pass that great ladies employed her; and often the narrow spiral staircase of Corbet's Land was brushed on either side by the huge masses of quilted and emblazoned silk that, enveloping the belles of the day, were with difficulty forced up to and down from the small room of the industrious Mysie.

But we are now speaking of art, while we should have more to say (for it concerns us more) of the character of the young woman who was destined to figure in a stranger way than in making beautiful figures on silk. Mysie was one of a class: few in number they are indeed, but on that account more to be prized. Her taste and fine manipulations were but counterparts of qualities of the heart--an organ to which the pale face, with its delicate lines and the clear liquid eyes, was a suitable index. The refinement which enabled her to make her imitation of beautiful objects on the delicate material of her work was only another form of a sensibility which pervaded her whole nature--that gift which is only conceded to peculiar organizations, and is such a doubtful one, too, if we go, as we cannot help doing, with the poet, when he sings that "chords that vibrate sweetest pleasures," often also "thrill the deepest notes of woe." Nay, we might say that the creatures themselves seem to fear the gift, for they shrink from the touch of the rough world, and retire within themselves as if to avoid it, while they are only courting its effects in the play of an imagination much too ardent for the duties of life; and, as a consequence, how they seek secretly the support of stronger natures, clinging to them as do those strange plants called parasites, which, with their tender arms and something so like fingers, cling to the nearest stem of a stouter neighbour, and embracing it, even though hollow and rotten, cover it, and choke it with a flood of flowers. So true is it that woman, like the generous vine, lives by being supported and held up; yet equally true that the strength she gains is from the embrace she gives; and so it is also that goodness, as our Scottish poet Home says, often wounds itself, and affection proves the spring of sorrow.

All which might truly be applied to Mysie Craig; but as yet the stronger stem to which she clung was her mother, and it was not likely, nor was it in reality, that that affection would prove to her anything but the spring of happiness, for it was ripened by love; and the earnings of the nimble fingers, moving often into the still hours of the night, not only kept the wolf from the door, but let in the lambs of domestic harmony and peace. Would that these things had so continued! But there are other wolves than those of poverty, and the "ae lamb o' the fauld" cannot be always under the protection of the ewe; and it so happened on a certain night, not particularized in the calendar, that our Mysie, having finished one of these floral petticoats on which she had been engaged for many weeks, went forth with her precious burden to deliver the same to its impatient owner, no other than the then famous Anabella Gilroy, who resided in Advocate's Close--of which fine lady, by the way, we may say, that of all the gay creatures who paraded between "the twa Bows," no one displayed such ample folds of brocaded silk, nodded her pon-pons more jauntily, or napped with a sharper crack her high-heeled shoes, all to approve herself to "the bucks" of the time, with their square coats brocaded with lace, their three-cornered hats on the top of their bob-wigs, their knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. And certainly not the least important of those, both in his own estimation and that of the sprightly Anabella, was George Balgarnie, a young man who had only a year before succeeded to the property of Balgruddery, somewhere in the north, and of whom we might say that, in forming him, Nature had taken so much pains with the building up of the body, that she had forgotten the mind, so that he had no more spiritual matter in him than sufficed to keep his blood hot, and enable his sensual organs to work out their own selfish gratifications; or, to perpetrate a metaphor, he was all the polished mahogany of a piano, without any more musical springs than might respond to one keynote of selfishness. And surely Anabella had approved herself to the fop to some purpose; for when our sempstress with her bundle had got into the parlour of the fine lady, she encountered no other than Balgarnie--a circumstance apparently of very small importance; but we know that a moment of time is sometimes like a small seed, which contains the nucleus of a great tree--perhaps a poisonous one. And so it turned out that, while Anabella was gloating over the beautiful work of the timid embroideress, Balgarnie was busy admiring the artist, but not merely--perhaps not at all--as an artist, only as an object over whom he wished to exercise power.

This circumstance was not unobserved by the little embroideress, but it was only observed to be shrunk from in her own timid way; and probably it would soon have passed from her mind, if it had not been followed up by something more direct and dangerous. And it was; for no sooner had Mysie got to the foot of the stairs than she encountered Balgarnie, who had gone out before her; and now began one of those romances in daily life of which the world is full, and of which the world is sick. Balgarnie, in short, commenced that kind of suit which is nearly as old as the serpent, and therefore not to be wondered at; neither are we to wonder that Mysie listened to it, because we have heard so much about "lovely woman stooping to folly," that we are content to put it to the large account of natural miracles. And not very miraculous either, when we remember that if the low-breathed accents of tenderness awaken the germ of love, they awaken at the same time faith and trust. And such was the beginning of the romance which was to go through the normal stages,--the appointment to meet again, the meeting itself, the others that followed, the extension of the moonlight walks, sometimes to the Hunter's Bog between Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, and sometimes to the song-famed "Wells o' Weary,"--all which were just as sun and shower to the germ of the plant. The love grew and grew, and the faith grew and grew also which saw in him that which it felt in itself. Nay, if any of those moonlight-loving elves that have left their foot-marks in the fairy rings to be seen near St. Anthony's Well had whispered in Mysie's ear, "Balgarnie will never make you his wife," she would have believed the words as readily as if they had impugned the sincerity of her own heart. In short, we have again the analogue of the parasitic plant. The very fragility and timidity of Mysie were at once the cause and consequence of her confidence. She would cling to him and cover him with the blossoms of her affection; nay, if there were unsoundness in the stem, these very blossoms would cover the rottenness.