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Title: Warlock o' Glenwarlock

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6364]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 2, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARLOCK O' GLENWARLOCK ***




Produced by Robert Prince, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




WARLOCK O' GLENWARLOCK.

A HOMELY ROMANCE.

BY

GEORGE MACDONALD.

AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD", "A SEA-BOARD PARISH",
ETC.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER.

1.   Castle Warlock
2.   The Kitchen
3.   The Drawing-room
4.   An Afternoon Sleep
5.   The School
6.   Grannie's Cottage
7.   Dreams
8.   Home
9.   The Student
10.  Peter Simon
11.  The new Schooling
12.  Grannie's Ghost Story
13.  The Storm-Guest
14.  The Castle Inn
15.  That Night
16.  Through the Day
17.  That same Night
18.  A Winter Idyl
19.  An "Interlunar Cave"
20.  Catch yer Naig
21.  The Watchmaker
22.  That Luminous Night
23.  At College
24.  A Tutorship
25.  The Gardener
26.  Lost and Found
27.  A Transformation
28.  The Story of the Knight who spoke the Truth
29.  New Experience
30.  Charles Jermyn, M. D.
31.  Cosmo and the Doctor
32.  The Naiad
33.  The Garden-House
34.  Catch your Horse
35.  Pull his Tail
36.  The thick Darkness
37.  The Dawn
38.  The Shadow of Death
39.  The Labourer
40.  The Schoolmaster
41   Grannie and the Stick
42.  Obstruction
43.  Grizzle's Rights
44.  Another Harvest
45.  The final Conflict
46.  A Rest
47.  Help
48.  A common Miracle
49.  Defiance
50.  Discovery and Confession
51.  It is Naught saith the Buyer
52.  An old Story
53.  A small Discovery
54.  A greater Discovery
55.  A great Discovery
56.  Mr. Burns
57.  Too Sure comes too late
58.  A little Life well rounded
59.  A Breaking Up
60.  Repose
61.  The third Harvest
62.  A duet, Trio, and Quartette





CHAPTER I.

CASTLE WARLOCK.

A rough, wild glen it was, to which, far back in times unknown to
its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no
small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of
its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and
lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and
there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief
characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The
country produced more barley than wheat, more oats than barley,
more heather than oats, more boulders than trees, and more snow
than anything. It was a solitary, thinly peopled region, mostly of
bare hills, and partially cultivated glens, each with its small
stream, on the banks of which grew here and there a silver birch, a
mountain ash, or an alder tree, but with nothing capable of giving
much shade or shelter, save cliffy banks and big stones. From many
a spot you might look in all directions and not see a sign of human
or any other habitation. Even then however, you might, to be sure,
most likely smell the perfume--to some nostrils it is nothing less
than perfume--of a peat fire, although you might be long in finding
out whence it came; for the houses, if indeed the dwellings could
be called houses, were often so hard to be distinguished from the
ground on which they were built, that except the smoke of fresh
peats were coming pretty freely from the wide-mouthed chimney, it
required an experienced eye to discover the human nest. The valleys
that opened northward produced little; there the snow might some
years be seen lying on patches of oats yet green, destined now only
for fodder; but where the valley ran east and west, and any
tolerable ground looked to the south, there things put on a
different aspect. There the graceful oats would wave and rustle in
the ripening wind, and in the small gardens would lurk a few
cherished strawberries, while potatoes and peas would be tolerably
plentiful in their season.

Upon a natural terrace in such a slope to the south, stood Castle
Warlock. But it turned no smiling face to the region whence came
the warmth and the growth. A more grim, repellant, unlovely
building would be hard to find; and yet, from its extreme
simplicity, its utter indifference to its own looks, its repose,
its weight, and its gray historical consciousness, no one who loved
houses would have thought of calling it ugly. It was like the
hard-featured face of a Scotch matron, suggesting no end of story,
of life, of character: she holds a defensive if not defiant face to
the world, but within she is warm, tending carefully the fires of
life. Summer and winter the chimneys of that desolate-looking house
smoked; for though the country was inclement, and the people that
lived in it were poor, the great, sullen, almost unhappy-looking
hills held clasped to their bare cold bosoms, exposed to all the
bitterness of freezing winds and summer hail, the warmth of
household centuries: their peat-bogs were the store-closets and
wine-cellars of the sun, for the hoarded elixir of physical life.
And although the walls of the castle, as it was called, were so
thick that in winter they kept the warmth generated within them
from wandering out and being lost on the awful wastes of homeless
hillside and moor, they also prevented the brief summer heat of the
wayfaring sun from entering with freedom, and hence the fires were
needful in the summer days as well--at least at the time my story
commences, for then, as generally, there were elderly and aged
people in the house, who had to help their souls to keep their
bodies warm.

The house was very old. It had been built for more kinds of shelter
than need to be thought of in our days. For the enemies of our
ancestors were not only the cold, and the fierce wind, and the
rain, and the snow; they were men also--enemies harder to keep out
than the raging storm or the creeping frost. Hence the more
hospitable a house could be, the less must it look what it was: it
must wear its face haughty, and turn its smiles inward. The house
of Glenwarlock, as it was also sometimes called, consisted of three
massive, narrow, tall blocks of building, which showed little
connection with each other beyond juxtaposition, two of them
standing end to end, with but a few feet of space between, and the
third at right angles to the two. In the two which stood end to
end, and were originally the principal parts, hardly any windows
were to be seen on the side that looked out into the valley; while
in the third, which, though looking much of the same age, was of
later build, were more windows, but none in the lowest story.
Narrow as were these buildings, and four stories high, they had a
solid, ponderous look, suggesting a thickness of the walls such as
to leave little of a hollow within for the indwellers--like great
marine shells for a small mollusk. On the other side was a kind of
a court, completed by the stables and cowhouses, and towards this
court were most of the windows--many of them for size more like
those in the cottages around, than suggestive of a house built by
the lords of the soil. The court was now merely that of a farmyard.

There must have been at one time outer defences to the castle, but
they were no longer to be distinguished by the inexperienced eye;
and indeed the; windowless walls of the house itself seemed strong
enough to repel any attack without artillery--except indeed the
assailants had got into the court. There were however some signs of
the windows there having been enlarged if not increased at a later
period.

In the block that stood angle-wise to the rest, was the kitchen,
the door of which opened immediately on the court; and behind the
kitchen, in that part which had no windows to the valley, was the
milk-cellar, as they called the dairy, and places for household
storage. A rough causeway ran along the foot of the walls,
connecting the doors in the different blocks. Of these, the kitchen
door for the most part stood open: sometimes the snow would be
coming fast down the wide chimney, with little soft hisses in the
fire, and the business of the house going on without a thought of
closing it, though from it you could not have seen across the yard
for the falling flakes.

But when my story opens, the summer held the old house and the
older hills in its embrace. The sun was pouring torrents of light
and heat into the valley, and the slopes of it were covered with
green. The bees were about, contenting themselves with the flowers,
while the heather was getting ready its bloom for them, and a boy
of fourteen was sitting in a little garden that lay like a dropped
belt of beauty about the feet of the grim old walls. This was on
the other side--that to the south, parting the house from the slope
where the corn began--now with the ear half-formed. The boy sat on
a big stone, which once must have had some part in the house
itself, or its defences, but which he had never known except as a
seat for himself. His back leaned against the hoary wall, and he
was in truth meditating, although he did not look as if he were. He
was already more than an incipient philosopher, though he could not
yet have put into recognizable shape the thought that was now
passing through his mind. The bees were the primary but not the
main subject of it. It came thus: he thought how glad the bees
would be when their crop of heather was ripe; then he thought how
they preferred the heather to the flowers; then, that the one must
taste nicer to them than the other; and last awoke the question
whether their taste of sweet was the same as his. "For," said he,
"if their honey is sweet to them with the same sweetness with which
it is sweet to me, then there is something in the make of the bee
that's the same with the make of me; and perhaps then a man might
some day, if he wanted, try the taste of being a bee all out for a
little while." But to see him, nobody would have thought he was
doing anything but basking in the sun. The scents of the flowers
all about his feet came and went on the eddies of the air, paying
my lord many a visit in his antechamber, his brain; the windy
noises of the insects, the watery noises of the pigeons, the noises
from the poultry yard, the song of the mountain river, visited, him
also through the portals of his ears; but at the moment, the boy
seemed lost in the mere fundamental satisfaction of existence.

Neither, although broad summer was on the earth, and all the
hill-tops, and as much of the valleys as their shadows did not
hide, were bathed in sunlight, although the country was his native
land, and he loved it with the love of his country's poets, was the
consciousness of the boy free from a certain strange kind of
trouble connected with, if not resulting from the landscape before
him. A Celt through many of his ancestors, and his mother in
particular, his soul, full of undefined emotion, was aware of an
ever recurring impulse to song, ever checked and broken, ever
thrown back upon itself. There were a few books in the house,
amongst them certain volumes of verse--a copy of Cowly, whose
notable invocation of Light he had instinctively blundered upon;
one of Milton; the translated Ossian; Thomson's Seasons--with a few
more; and from the reading of these, among other results, had
arisen this--that, in the midst of his enjoyment of the world
around him, he found himself every now and then sighing after a
lovelier nature than that before his eyes. There he read of
mountains, if not wilder, yet loftier and more savage than his own,
of skies more glorious, of forests of such trees as he knew only
from one or two old engravings in the house, on which he looked
with a strange, inexplicable reverence: he would sometimes wake
weeping from a dream of mountains, or of tossing waters. Once with
his waking eyes he saw a mist afar off, between the hills that
ramparted the horizon, grow rosy after the sun was down, and his
heart filled as with the joy of a new discovery. Around him, it is
true, the waters rushed well from their hills, but their banks had
little beauty. Not merely did the want of trees distress him, but
the nature of their channel; most of them, instead of rushing
through rocks, cut their way only through beds of rough gravel, and
their bare surroundings were desolate without grandeur--almost mean
to eyes that had not yet pierced to the soul of them. Nor had he
yet learned to admire the lucent brown of the bog waters. There
seemed to be in the boy a strain of some race used to a richer
home; and yet all the time the frozen regions of the north drew his
fancy tenfold more than Italy or Egypt.

His name was Cosmo, a name brought from Italy by one of the line
who had sold his sword and fought for strangers. Not a few of the
younger branches of the family had followed the same evil
profession, and taken foreign pay--chiefly from poverty and
prejudice combined, but not a little in some cases from the inborn
love of fighting that seems to characterize the Celt. The last
soldier of them had served the East India Company both by sea and
land: tradition more than hinted that he had chiefly served
himself. Since then the heads of the house had been peaceful
farmers of their own land, contriving to draw what to many farmers
nowadays would seem but a scanty subsistence from an estate which
had dwindled to the twentieth part of what it had been a few
centuries before, though even then it could never have made its
proprietor rich in anything but the devotion of his retainers.

Growing too hot between the sun and the wall, Cosmo rose, and
passing to the other side of the house beyond the court-yard, and
crossing a certain heave of grass, came upon one unfailing delight
in his lot--a preacher whose voice, inarticulate, it is true, had,
ever since he was born, been at most times louder in his ear than
any other. It was a mountain stream, which, through a channel of
rock, such as nearly satisfied his most fastidious fancy, went
roaring, rushing, and sometimes thundering, with an arrow-like,
foamy swiftness, down to the river in the glen below. The rocks
were very dark, and the foam stood out brilliant against them. From
the hill-top above, it came, sloping steep from far. When you
looked up, it seemed to come flowing from the horizon itself, and
when you looked down, it seemed to have suddenly found it could no
more return to the upper regions it had left too high behind it,
and in disgust to shoot headlong to the abyss. There was not much
water in it now, but plenty to make a joyous white rush through the
deep-worn brown of the rock: in the autumn and spring it came down
gloriously, dark and fierce, as if it sought the very centre, wild
with greed after an absolute rest.

The boy stood and gazed, as was his custom. Always he would seek
this endless water when he grew weary, when the things about him
put on their too ordinary look. Let the aspect of this be what it
might, it seemed still inspired and sent forth by some essence of
mystery and endless possibility. There was in him an unusual
combination of the power to read the hieroglyphic internal aspect
of things, and the scientific nature that bows before fact. He knew
that the stream was in its second stage when it rose from the earth
and rushed past the house, that it was gathered first from the
great ocean, through millions of smallest ducts, up to the
reservoirs of the sky, thence to descend in snows and rains, and
wander down and up through the veins of the earth; but the sense of
its mystery had not hitherto begun to withdraw. Happily for him,
the poetic nature was not merely predominant in him, but dominant,
sending itself, a pervading spirit, through the science that else
would have stifled him. Accepting fact, he found nothing in its
outward relations by which a man can live, any more than by bread;
but this poetic nature, illuminating it as with the polarized ray,
revealed therein more life and richer hope. All this was as yet
however as indefinite as it was operative in him, and I am telling
of him what he could not have told of himself.

He stood gazing now in a different mood from any that had come to
him before: he had begun to find out something fresh about this
same stream, and the life in his own heart to which it served as a
revealing phantasm. He recognized that what in the stream had drawn
him from earliest childhood, with an infinite pleasure, was the
vague sense, for a long time an ever growing one, of its
MYSTERY--the form the infinite first takes to the simplest and
liveliest hearts. It was because it was ALWAYS flowing that he
loved it, because it could not stop: whence it came was utterly
unknown to him, and he did not care to know. And when at length he
learned that it came flowing out of the dark hard earth, the
mystery only grew. He imagined a wondrous cavity below in black
rock, where it gathered and gathered, nobody could think how--not
coming from anywhere else, but beginning just there, and nowhere
beyond. When, later on, he had to shift its source, and carry it
back to the great sky, it was no less marvellous, and more lovely;
it was a closer binding together of the gentle earth and the awful
withdrawing heavens. These were a region of endless hopes, and ever
recurrent despairs: that his beloved, an earthly finite thing,
should rise there, was added joy, and gave a mighty hope with
respect to the unknown and appalling. But from the sky, he was sent
back to the earth in further pursuit; for, whence came the rain,
his books told him, but from the sea? That sea he had read of,
though never yet beheld, and he knew it was magnificent in its
might; gladly would he have hailed it as an intermediate betwixt
the sky and the earth--so to have the sky come first! but, alas!
the ocean came first in order. And then, worse and worse! how was
the ocean fed but from his loved torrent? How was the sky fed but
from the sea? How was the dark fountain fed but from the sky? How
was the torrent fed but from the fountain? As he sat in the hot
garden, with his back against the old gray wall, the nest of his
family for countless generations, with the scent of the flowers in
his nostrils, and the sound of the bees in his ears, it had begun
to dawn upon him that he had lost the stream of his childhood, the
mysterious, infinite idea of endless, inexplicable, original birth,
of outflowing because of essential existence within! There was no
production any more, nothing but a mere rushing around, like the
ring-sea of Saturn, in a never ending circle of formal change! Like
a great dish, the mighty ocean was skimmed in particles invisible,
which were gathered aloft into sponges all water and no sponge; and
from this, through many an airy, many an earthy channel, deflowered
of its mystery, his ancient, self-producing fountain to a holy
merry river, was FED--only FED! He grew very sad, and well he
might. Moved by the spring eternal in himself, of which the love in
his heart was but a river-shape, he turned away from the deathened
stream, and without knowing why, sought the human elements about
the place.



CHAPTER II.

THE KITCHEN.

He entered the wide kitchen, paved with large slabs of slate. One
brilliant gray-blue spot of sunlight lay on the floor. It came
through a small window to the east, and made the peat-fire glow red
by the contrast. Over the fire, from a great chain, hung a
three-legged pot, in which something was slowly cooking. Between
the fire and the sun-spot lay a cat, content with fate and the
world. At the corner of the fire sat an old lady, in a chair
high-backed, thick-padded, and covered with striped stuff. She had
her back to the window that looked into the court, and was knitting
without regarding her needles. This was Cosmo's grandmother. The
daughter of a small laird in the next parish, she had started in
life with an overweening sense of her own importance through that
of her family, nor had she lived long enough to get rid of it. I
fancy she had clung to it the more that from the time of her
marriage nothing had seemed to go well with the family into which
she had married. She and her husband had struggled and striven, but
to no seeming purpose; poverty had drawn its meshes closer and
closer around them. They had but one son, the present laird, and he
had succeeded to an estate yet smaller and more heavily encumbered.
To all appearance he must leave it to Cosmo, if indeed he left it,
in no better condition. From the growing fear of its final loss, he
loved the place more than any of his ancestors had loved it, and
his attachment to it had descended yet stronger to his son.

But although Cosmo the elder wrestled and fought against
encroaching poverty, and with little success, he had never forgot
small rights in anxiety to be rid of large claims. What man could
he did to keep his poverty from bearing hard on his dependents, and
never master or landlord was more beloved. Such being his character
and the condition of his affairs, it is not very surprising that he
should have passed middle age before thinking seriously of
marriage. Nor did he then fall in love, in the ordinary sense of
the phrase; he reflected with himself that it would be cowardice so
far to fear poverty as to run the boat of the Warlocks aground, and
leave the scrag end of a property and a history without a man to
take them up, and possibly bear them on to redemption; for who
could tell what life might be in the stock yet! Anyhow, it would be
better to leave an heir to take the remnant in charge, and at least
carry the name a generation farther, even should it be into yet
deeper poverty than hitherto. A Warlock could face his fate.
Thereupon, with a sense of the fitness of things not always
manifested on such occasions, he had paid his addresses to a woman
of five and thirty, the daughter of the last clergyman of the
parish, and had by her been accepted with little hesitation. She
was a capable and brave woman, and, fully informed of the state of
his affairs, married him in the hope of doing something to help him
out of his difficulties. A few pounds she had saved up, and a
trifle her mother had left her, she placed unreservedly at his
disposal, and he in his abounding honesty spent it on his
creditors, bettering things for a time, and, which was of much more
consequence, greatly relieving his mind, and giving the life in him
a fresh start. His marriage was of infinitely more salvation to the
laird than if it had set him free from all his worldly
embarrassments, for it set him growing again--and that is the only
final path out of oppression.

Whatever were the feelings with which he took his wife home, they
were at least those of a gentleman; and it were a good thing
indeed, if, at the end of five years, the love of most pairs who
marry for love were equal to that of Cosmo Warlock to his
middle-aged wife; and now that she was gone, his reverence for her
memory was something surpassing. From the day almost of his
marriage the miseries of life lost half their bitterness, nor had
it returned at her death. Instinctively he felt that outsiders,
those even who respected him as an honest man, believed that,
somehow or other, they could only conjecture how, he must be to
blame for the circumstances he was in--either this, or providence
did not take care of the just man. Such was virtually the unuttered
conclusion of many, who nevertheless imagined they understood the
Book of Job, and who would have counted Warlock's rare honesty,
pride or fastidiousness or unjustifiable free-handedness. Hence
they came to think and speak of him as a poor creature, and soon
the man, through the keen sensitiveness of his nature, became aware
of the fact. But to his sense of the misprision of neighbours and
friends, came the faith and indignant confidence of his wife like
the closing and binding up and mollifying of a wound with ointment.
The man was of a far finer nature than any of those who thus judged
him, of whom some would doubtless have got out of their
difficulties sooner than he--only he was more honorable in debt
than they were out of it. A woman of strong sense, with an
undeveloped stratum of poetry in the heart of it, his wife was able
to appreciate the finer elements of his nature; and she let him see
very plainly that she did. This was strength and a lifting up of
the head to the husband, who in his youth had been oppressed by the
positiveness, and in his manhood by the opposition, of his mother,
whom the neighbours regarded as a woman of strength and faculty.
And now, although, all his life since, he had had to fight the wolf
as constantly as ever, things, even after his wife's death,
continued very different from what they had been before he married
her; his existence looked a far more acceptable thing seen through
the regard of his wife than through that of his neighbours. They
had been five years married before she brought him an heir to his
poverty, and she lived five years more to train him--then, after a
short illness, departed, and left the now aging man virtually alone
with his little child, coruscating spark of fresh vitality amidst
the ancient surroundings. This was the Cosmo who now, somewhat sore
at heart from the result of his cogitations, entered the kitchen in
search of his kind.

Another woman was sitting on a three-legged stool, just inside the
door, paring potatoes--throwing each, as she cut off what the old
lady, watching, judged a paring far too thick, into a bowl of
water. She looked nearly as old as her mistress, though she was
really ten years younger. She had come with the late mistress from
her father's house, and had always taken, and still took her part
against the opposing faction--namely the grandmother.

A second seat--not over easy, but comfortable enough, being simply
a wide arm-chair of elm, with a cushion covered in horse-hair,
stood at the opposite corner of the fire. This was the laird's
seat, at the moment, as generally all the morning till dinner-time,
empty: Cosmo, not once looking up, walked straight to it,
diagonally across the floor, and seated himself like one verily
lost in thought. Now and then, as she peeled, Grizzie would cast a
keen glance at him out of her bright blue eyes, round whose fire
the wrinkles had gathered like ashes: those eyes were sweet and
pleasant, and the expression of her face was one of lovely
devotion; but otherwise she was far from beautiful. She gave a grim
smile to herself every time she glanced up at him from her
potatoes, as much as to say she knew well enough what he was
thinking, though no one else did. "He'll be a man yet!" she said to
herself.

The old lady also now and then looked over her Stocking at the boy,
where he sat with his back to the white deal dresser, ornate with
homeliest dishes.

"It'll be lang or ye fill that chair, Cossie, my man!" she said at
length,--but not with the smile of play, rather with the look of
admonition, as if it was the boy's first duty to grow in breadth in
order to fill the chair, and restore the symmetry of the world.

Cosmo glanced up, but did not speak, and presently was lost again
in the thoughts from which his grandmother had roused him as one is
roused by a jolt on the road.

"What are you dreaming about, Cossie?" she said again, in a tone
wavering but imperative.

Her speech was that of a gentlewoman of the old time, when the
highest born in Scotland spoke Scotch.

Not yet did Cosmo reply. Reverie does not agree well with manners,
but it would besides have been hard for him to answer the old
lady's question--not that he did not know something at least of
what was going on in his mind, but that, he knew instinctively, it
would have sounded in her ears no hair better than the jabber of
Jule Sandy.

"Mph!" she said, offended at his silence; "Ye'll hae to learn
manners afore ye're laird o' Glenwarlock, young Cosmo!"

A shadow of indignation passed over Grizzie's rippled, rather than
wrinkled face, but she said nothing. There was a time to speak and
a time to be silent; nor was Grizzie indebted to Solomon, but to
her own experience and practice, for the wisdom of the saw. Only
the pared potatoes splashed louder in the water as they fell. And
the old lady knew as well what that meant, as if the splashes had
been articulate sounds from the mouth of the old partisan.

The boy rose, and coming forward, rather like one walking in his
sleep, stood up before his grandmother, and said,

"What was ye sayin', gran'mamma?"

"I was sayin' what ye wadna hearken till, an that's enouch," she
answered, willing to show offence.

"Say 't again, gran'mamma, if you please. I wasna noticin'."

"Na! Is' warran' ye frae noticin'! There ye winna gang, whaur yer
ain fule fancy does na lead the w'y. Cosmo, by gie ower muckle
tether to wull thoucht, an' someday ye'll be laid i' the dub,
followin' what has naither sense intil't, nor this warl's gude.
--What was ye thinkin' aboot the noo?--Tell me that, an' Is' lat ye
gang."

"I was thinkin' aboot the burnie, gran'mamma."

"It wad be tellin' ye to lat the burnie rin, an' stick to yer buik,
laddie!"

"The burnie wull rin, gran'mamma, and the buik 'ill bide," said
Cosmo, perhaps not very clearly understanding himself.

"Ye're gettin' on to be a man, noo," said his grandmother, heedless
of the word of his defence, "an' ye maun learn to put awa' bairnly
things. There's a heap depen'in' upo' ye, Cosmo. Ye'll be the fift
o' the name i' the family, an' I'm feart ye may be the last. It's
but sma' honour, laddie, to ony man to be the last; an' gien ye
dinna gaither the wit ye hae, and du the best ye can, ye winna lang
be laird o' Glenwarlock. Gien it wasna for Grizzie there, wha has
no richt to owerhear the affairs o' the family, I micht think the
time had come for enlichtenin' ye upo' things it's no shuitable ye
should gang ignorant o'. But we'll put it aff till a mair
convenient sizzon, atween oor ain twa lanes."

"An' a mair convanient spokesman, I houp, my leddy," said Grizzie,
deeply offended.

"An' wha sud that be?" rejoined her mistress.

"Ow, wha but the laird himsel'?" answered Grizzie, "Wha's to come
atween father an' son wi' licht upo' family-affairs? No even the
mistress hersel' wad hae prezhunt upo' that?"

"Keep your own place, Grizzie," said the old lady with dignity.

And Grizzie, who, had gone farther in the cause of propriety, than
propriety itself could justify, held her peace. Only the potatoes
splashed yet louder in the bowl. Her mistress sat grimly silent,
for though she had had the last word and had been obeyed, she was
rebuked in herself. Cosmo, judging the specialty of the interview
over, turned and went back to his father's chair; but just as he
was seating himself in it, his father appeared in the doorway.

The form was that of a tall, thin man, a little bent at the knees
and bowed in the back, who yet carried himself with no small
dignity, cloaked in an air of general apology--as if he would have
said, "I am sorry my way is not yours, for I see very well how
wrong you must think it." He wore large strong shoes--I think a
description should begin with the feet rather than the head--fit
for boggy land; blue, ribbed, woollen stockings; knee-breeches of
some home-made stuff: all the coarser cloth they wore, and they
wore little else, was shorn from their own sheep, and spun, woven,
and made at home; an old blue dress coat with bright buttons; a
drab waistcoat which had once been yellow; and to crown all, a red
woollen nightcap, hanging down on one side with a tassel.

"Weel, Grizzie!" he said, in a gentle, rather sad voice, as if the
days of his mourning were not yet ended, "I'm ower sune the day!"

He never passed Grizzie without greeting her, and Grizzie's
devotion to him was like that of slave and sister mingled.

"Na, laird," she answered, "ye can never be ower sune for yer ain
fowk, though ye may be for yer ain stamack. The taties winna be
lang bilin' the day. They're some sma'."

"That's because you pare them so much, Grizzie," said the
grandmother.

Grizzie vouchsafed no reply.

The moment young Cosmo saw whose shadow darkened the doorway, he
rose in haste, and standing with his hand upon the arm of the
chair, waited for his father to seat himself in it. The laird
acknowledged his attention with a smile, sat down, and looked like
the last sitter grown suddenly old. He put out his hand to the boy
across the low arm of the chair, and the boy laid his hand in his
father's, and so they remained, neither saying a word. The laird
leaned back, and sat resting. All were silent.

Notwithstanding the oddity of his dress, no one who had any
knowledge of humanity could have failed to see in Cosmo Warlock,
the elder, a high bred gentleman. His face was small, and the skin
of it was puckered into wrinkles innumerable; his mouth was sweet,
but he had lost his teeth, and the lips had fallen in; his chin,
however, was large and strong; while his blue eyes looked out from
under his narrow high forehead with a softly piercing glance of
great gentleness and benignity. A little gray hair clustered about
his temples and the back of his head--the red nightcap hid the
rest. There was three days' growth of gray beard on his chin, for
NOW THAT HE HAD NOBODY, he would say, he had not the heart to shave
every morning.

For some time he sat looking straight before him, smiling to his
mother's hands as they knitted, she casting on him now and then a
look that seemed to express the consciousness of blame for not
having made a better job of him, or for having given him too much
to do in the care of himself. For neither did his mother believe in
him farther than that he had the best possible intentions in what
he did, or did not do. At the same time she never doubted he was
more of a man than ever his son would be, seeing they had such
different mothers.

"Grizzie," said the laird, "hae ye a drappy o' soor milk? I'm some
dry."

"Ay, that hae I, sir!" answered Grizzie with alacrity, and rising
went into the darker region behind the kitchen, whence presently
she emerged with a white basin full of rich milk--half cream, it
was indeed. Without explanation or apology she handed it to her
master, who received and drank it off.

"Hoots, woman!" he said, "ye wad hae me a shargar (A SKIN-AND-BONE
CALF)! That's no soor milk!"

"I'm vexed it's no to yer taste, laird!" returned Grizzie coolly,
"but I hae nane better."

"Ye tellt me ye had soor milk," said the laird--without a particle
of offence, rather in the tone of apology for having by mistake
made away with something too good for him.

"Weel, laird," replied Grizzie, "it's naething but the guidman's
milk; an' gien ye dinna ken what's guid for ye at your time o'
life, it's weel there sud be anither 'at does. What has a man o'
your 'ears to du drinkin' soor milk--eneuch to turn a' soor
thegither i' the inside o' ye! It's true I win' ye weel a sma'
bairn i' my leddy's airms--

"Ye may weel du that!" interrupted her mistress.

"I wasna weel intil my teens, though, my leddy!" returned Grizzie.
"An' I'm sure," she added, in revenge for the insinuation as to her
age, "it wad ill become ony wuman to grudge a man o' the laird's
stan'in a drap o' the best milk in's ain cellar!"

"Who spoke of refusing it to him?" said his mother.

"Ye spak yersel' sic an' siclike," answered Grizzie.

"Hoots, Grizzie! haud yer tongue, my wuman," said the laird, in the
gentlest tone, yet with reproof in it. "Ye ken weel it's no my
mother wad grudge me the milk ye wad gie me. It was but my'sel' 'at
didna think mysel' worthy o' that same, seein' it's no a week yet
sin' bonny Hawkie dee'd!"

"An' wad ye hae the Lord's anintit depen' upo' Hawkie?" cried
Grizzie with indignation.

The contest went no farther, and Grizzie had had the best of it, as
none knew better than she. In a minute or two the laird rose and
went out, and Cosmo went with him.

Before Cosmo's mother died, old Mrs. Warlock would have been
indignant at the idea of sitting in the kitchen, but things had
combined to bring her to it. She found herself very lonely seated
in state in the drawing-room, where, as there was no longer a
daughter-in-law to go and come, she learned little or nothing of
what was doing about the place, and where few that called cared to
seek her out, for she had never been a favourite with the humbler
neighbours. Also, as time went on, and the sight of money grew
rarer and rarer, it became more desirable to economize light in the
winter. They had not come to that with firing, for, as long as
there were horses and intervals of less labour on the farm, peats
were always to be had--though at the same time, the drawing-room
could not be made so warm as the kitchen. But for light, even for
train-oil to be burned in the simplest of lamps, money had to be
paid--and money was of all ordinary things the seldomest seen at
Castle Warlock. From these operative causes it came by degrees,
that one winter, for the sake of company, of warmth, of economy,
Mistress Warlock had her chair carried to the kitchen; and the
thing once done, it easily and naturally grew to a custom, and
extended itself to the summer as well; for she who had ceased to
stand on ceremony in the winter, could hardly without additional
loss of dignity reascend her pedestal only because it was summer
again. To the laird it was a matter of no consequence where he sat,
ate, or slept. When his wife was alive, wherever she was, that was
the place for him; when she was gone, all places were the same to
him. There was, besides, that in the disposition of the man which
tended to the homely:--any one who imagines that in the least
synonymous with the coarse, or discourteous, or unrefined, has yet
to understand the essentials of good breeding. Hence it came that
the other rooms of the house were by degrees almost neglected. Both
the dining-room and drawing-room grew very cold, cold as with the
coldness of what is dead; and though he slept in the same part of
the house by choice, not often did the young laird enter either.
But he had concerning them, the latter in particular, a notion of
vastness and grandeur; and along with that, a vague sense of
sanctity, which it is not quite easy to define or account for. It
seems however to have the same root with all veneration for
place--for if there were not a natural inclination to venerate
place, would any external reason make men capable of it? I think we
shall come at length to feel all places, as all times and all
spaces, venerable, because they are the outcome of the eternal
nature and the eternal thought. When we have God, all is holy, and
we are at home.



CHAPTER III.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

As soon as they were out of the kitchen-door, the boy pushed his
hand into his father's; the father grasped it, and without a word
spoken, they walked on together. They would often be half a day
together without a word passing between them. To be near, each to
the other, seemed enough for each.

Cosmo had thought his father was going somewhere about the farm, to
see how things were getting on; but, instead of crossing to the
other side of the court, where lay the sheds and stables, etc., or
leaving it by the gate, the laird turned to the left, and led the
way to the next block of building, where he stopped at a door at
the farther end of the front of it. It was a heavy oak door,
studded with great broad iron knobs, arranged in angular patterns.
It was set deep in the thick wall, but there were signs of there
having been a second, doubtless still stronger, flush with the
external surface, for the great hooks of the hinges remained, with
the deep hole in the stone on the opposite side for the bolt. The
key was in the lock, for, except to open the windows, and do other
necessary pieces of occasional tendance, it was seldom anybody
entered the place, and Grizzie generally turned the key, and left
it in the lock. She would have been indignant at the assertion, but
I am positive it was not ALWAYS taken out at night. In this part of
the castle were the dining and drawing rooms, and immediately over
the latter, a state bedroom in which nobody had slept for many
years.

It was into a narrow passage, no wider than itself, the door led.
From this passage a good-sized hall opened to the left--very barely
furnished, but with a huge fireplace, and a great old table, that
often had feasted jubilant companies. The walls were only
plastered, and were stained with damp. Against them were fixed a
few mouldering heads of wild animals--the stag and the fox and the
otter--one ancient wolf's-head also, wherever that had been killed.
But it was not into this room the laird led his son. The passage
ended in a stone stair that went up between containing walls. It
was much worn, and had so little head-room that the laird could not
ascend without stooping. Cosmo was short enough as yet to go erect,
but it gave him always a feeling of imprisonment and choking, a
brief agony of the imagination, to pass through the narrow curve,
though he did so at least twice every day. It was the
oldest-looking thing about the place--that staircase.

At the top of it, the laird turned to the right, and lifted the
latch--all the doors were latched--of a dark-looking door. It
screaked dismally as it opened. He entered and undid a shutter,
letting an abiding flash of the ever young light of the summer day
into the ancient room. It was long since Cosmo had been in it
before. The aspect of it affected him like a withered wall-flower.

It was a well-furnished room. A lady with taste must at one time at
least have presided in it--but then withering does so much for
beauty--and that not of stuffs and THINGS only! The furniture of it
was very modern compared with the house, but not much of it was
younger than the last James, or Queen Anne, and it had all a
stately old-maidish look. Such venerable rooms have been described,
and painted, and put on the stage, and dreamed about, tens of
thousands of times, yet they always draw me afresh as if they were
as young as the new children who keep the world from growing old.
They haunt me, and if I miss them in heaven, I shall have one given
me. On the floor was an old, old carpet, wondrously darned and
skilfully patched, with all its colours faded into a sweet faint
ghost-like harmony. Several spider-legged, inlaid tables stood
about the room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one
or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when
first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it
was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came
through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been
opened, that you could not have said what it was. There were three
or four cabinets--one of them old Japanese; and on a table a case
of gorgeous humming birds. The scarlet cloth that covered the table
was faded to a dirty orange, but the birds were almost as bright as
when they darted like live jewels through the tropical sunlight.
Exquisite as they were however, they had not for the boy half the
interest of a faded old fire-screen, lovelily worked in silks, by
hands to him unknown, long ago returned to the earth of which they
were fashioned. A variety of nick-nacks and ornaments, not a few of
which would have been of value in the eyes of a connoisseur,
crowded the chimney-piece--which stood over an iron grate with
bulging bars, and a tall brass fender. How still and solemn-quiet
it all was in the middle of the great triumphant sunny day--like
some far-down hollow in a rock, the matrix of a gem! It looked as
if it had done with life--as much done with life as if it were a
room in Egyptian rock, yet was it full of the memories of keenest
life, and Cosmo knew there was treasure upon treasure of wonder and
curiosity hid in those cabinets, some of which he had seen, and
more he would like to see. But it was not to show him any of these
that his father had now brought him to the room.

Not once yielding the right hand of the boy which was clasped to
and in his own, the laird closed the door of the room, and
advancing the whole length of it, stopped at a sofa covered with a
rich brocade, and seating himself thereon, slowly, and with a kind
of care, drew him between his thin knees, and began to talk to him.
Now there was this difference between the relation of these two and
that of most fathers and sons, that, thus taken into solemn
solitude by his old father, the boy felt no dismay, no sense of
fault to be found, no troubled expectation of admonition. Reverence
and love held about equal sway in his feeling towards his father.
And while the grandmother looked down on Cosmo as the son of his
mother, for that very reason his father in a strange lovely way
reverenced his boy: the reaction was utter devotion.

Cosmo stood and looked in his father's eyes--their eyes were of the
same colour.--that bright sweet soft Norwegian blue--his right hand
still clasped in his father's left, and his left hand leaning
gently on his father's knee. Then, as I say, the old man began to
talk to the young one. A silent man ordinarily, it was from no lack
of the power of speech, for he had a Celtic gift of simple
eloquence.

"This is your birthday, my son."

"Yes, papa."

"You are now fourteen."

"Yes, papa."

"You are growing quite a man."

"I don't know, papa."

"So much of a man, at least, my Cosmo, that I am going to treat you
like a man this day, and tell you some things that I have never
talked about to any one since your mother's death.--You remember
your mother, Cosmo?"

This question he was scarcely ever alone with the boy without
asking--not from forgetfulness, but from the desire to keep the
boy's remembrance of her fresh, and for the pure pleasure of
talking of her to the only one with whom it did not seem profane to
converse concerning his worshipped wife.

"Yes, papa, I do."

The laird always spoke Scotch to his mother, and to Grizzie also,
who would have thought him seriously offended had he addressed her
in book-English; but to his Marion's son he always spoke in the
best English he had, and Cosmo did his best in the same way in
return.

"Tell me what you remember about her," said the old man.

He had heard the same thing again and again from the boy, yet every
time it was as if he hoped and watched for some fresh revelation
from the lips of the lad--as if, truth being one, memory might go
on recalling, as imagination goes on foreseeing.

"I remember," said the boy, "a tall beautiful woman, with long
hair, which she brushed before a big, big looking-glass."

The love of the son, kept alive by the love of the husband,
glorifying through the mists of his memory the earthly appearance
of the mother, gave to her the form in which he would see her
again, rather than that in which he had actually beheld her. And
indeed the father saw her after the same fashion in the memory of
his love. Tall to the boy of five, she was little above the middle
height, yet the husband saw her stately in his dreams; there was
nothing remarkable in her face except the expression, which after
her marriage had continually gathered tenderness and grace, but the
husband as well as the children called her absolutely beautiful.

"What colour were her eyes, Cosmo?"

"I don't know; I never saw the colour of them; but I remember they
looked at me as if I should run into them."

"She would have died for you, my boy. We must be very good that we
may see her again some day."

"I will try. I do try, papa."

"You see, Cosmo, when a woman like that condescends to be wife to
one of us and mother to the other, the least we can do, when she is
taken from us, is to give her the same love and the same obedience
after she is gone as when she was with us. She is with her own kind
up in heaven now, but she may be looking down and watching us. It
may be God lets her do that, that she may see of the travail of her
soul and be satisfied--who can tell? She can't be very anxious
about me now, for I am getting old, and my warfare is nearly over;
but she may be getting things ready to rest me a bit. She knows I
have for a long time now been trying to keep the straight path, as
far as I could see it, though sometimes the grass and heather has
got the better of it, so that it was hard to find. But YOU must
remember, Cosmo, that it is not enough to be a good boy, as I shall
tell her you have always been: you've got to be a good man, and
that is a rather different and sometimes a harder thing. For, as
soon as a man has to do with other men, he finds they expect him to
do things they ought to be ashamed of doing themselves; and then he
has got to stand on his own honest legs, and not move an inch for
all their pushing and pulling; and especially where a man loves his
fellow man and likes to be on good terms with him, that is not
easy. The thing is just this, Cosmo--when you are a full-grown man,
you must be a good boy still--that's the difficulty. For a man to
be a boy, and a good boy still, he must be a thorough man. The man
that's not manly can never be a good boy to his mother. And you
can't keep true to your mother, except you remember Him who is
father and mother both to all of us. I wish my Marion were here to
teach you as she taught me. She taught me to pray, Cosmo, as I have
tried to teach you--when I was in any trouble, just to go into my
closet, and shut to the door, and pray to my Father who is in
secret--the same Father who loved you so much as to give you my
Marion for a mother. But I am getting old and tired, and shall soon
go where I hope to learn faster. Oh, my boy! hear your father who
loves you, and never do the thing you would be ashamed for your
mother or me to know. Remember, nothing drops out; everything hid
shall be revealed. But of all things, if ever you should fail or
fall, don't lie still because you are down: get up again--for God's
sake, for your mother's sake, for my sake--get up and try again.

"And now it is time you should know a little about the family of
which you come. I don't doubt there have been some in it who would
count me a foolish man for bringing you up as I have done, but
those of them who are up there don't. They see that the business of
life is not to get as much as you can, but to do justly, and love
mercy, and walk humbly with your God--with your mother's God, my
son. They may say I have made a poor thing of it, but I shall not
hang my head before the public of that country, because I've let
the land slip from me that I couldn't keep any more than this weary
old carcase that's now crumbling away from about me. Some would
tell me I ought to shudder at the thought of leaving you to such
poverty, but I am too anxious about yourself, my boy, to think much
about the hardships that may be waiting you. I should be far more
afraid about you if I were leaving you rich. I have seen rich
people do things I never knew a poor gentleman do. I don't mean to
say anything against the rich--there's good and bad of all sorts;
but I just can't be so very sorry that I am leaving you to poverty,
though, if I might have had my way, it wouldn't have been so bad.
But he knows best who loves best. I have struggled hard to keep the
old place for you; but there's hardly an acre outside the garden
and close but was mortgaged before I came into the property. I've
been all my life trying to pay off, but have made little progress.
The house is free, however, and the garden; and don't you part with
the old place, my boy, except you see you OUGHT. But rather than
anything not out and out honest, anything the least doubtful, sell
every stone. Let all go, if you should have to beg your way home to
us. Come clean, my son, as my Marion bore you."

Here Cosmo interrupted his father to ask what MORTGAGED meant. This
led to an attempt on the part of the laird to instruct him in the
whole state of the affairs of the property. He showed him where all
the papers were kept, and directed him to whom to go for any
requisite legal advise. Weary then of business, of which he had all
his life had more than enough, he turned to pleasanter matters, and
began to tell him anecdotes of the family.

"What in mercy can hae come o' the laird, think ye, my leddy?" said
Grizzie to her mistress. "It's the yoong laird's birthday, ye see,
an' they aye haud a colloguin' thegither upo' that same, an' I
kenna whaur to gang to cry them till their denner."

"Run an' ring the great bell," said the grandmother, mindful of old
glories.

"'Deed, Is' du naething o' the kin'," said Grizzie to herself;
"it's eneuch to raise a regiment--gien it camna doon upo' my heid."

But she had her suspicion, and finding the great door open,
ascended the stair.

The two were sitting at a table, with the genealogical tree of the
family spread out before them, the father telling tale after tale,
the son listening in delight. I must confess, however--let it tell
against the laird's honesty as it may--that, his design being
neither to glorify his family, nor to teach records, but to impress
all he could find of ancestral nobility upon his boy, he made a
choice, and both communicated and withheld. So absorbed were they,
that Grizzie's knock startled them both a good deal.

"Yer denners is ready, laird," she said, standing erect in the
doorway.

"Verra weel, Grizzie, I thank ye," returned the laird.--"Cosmo,
we'll take a walk together this evening, and then I'll tell you
more about that brother of my grandfather's. Come along to dinner
now.--I houp ye hae something in honour o' the occasion, Grizzie,"
he added in a whisper when he reached the door, where the old woman
waited to follow them.

"I teuk it upo' me, laird," answered Grizzie in the same tone,
while Cosmo was going down the stair, "to put a cock an' a leek
thegither, an' they'll be nane the waur that ye hae keepit them i'
the pot a whilie langer.--Cosmo," she went on when they had
descended, and overtaken the boy, who was waiting for them at the
foot, "the Lord bless ye upo' this bonnie day! An' may ye be aye a
comfort to them 'at awes ye, as ye hae been up to this present."

"I houp sae, Grizzie," responded Cosmo humbly; and all went
together to the kitchen.

There the table was covered with a clean cloth of the finest of
homespun, and everything set out with the same nicety as if the
meal had been spread in the dining-room. The old lady, who had
sought to please her son by putting on her best cap for the
occasion, but who had in truth forgot what day it was until
reminded by Grizzie, sat already at the head of the table, waiting
their arrival. She made a kind speech to the boy, hoping he would
be master of the place for many years after his father and she had
left him. Then the meal commenced. It did not last long. They had
the soup first, and then the fowl that had been boiled in it, with
a small second dish of potatoes--the year's baby Kidneys, besides
those Grizzie had pared. Delicate pancakes followed--and dinner was
over--except for the laird, who had a little toddy after. But as
yet Cosmo had never even tasted strong drink--and of course he
never desired it. Leaving the table, he wandered out, pondering
some of the things his father had been telling him.



CHAPTER IV.

AN AFTERNOON SLEEP.

Presently, without having thought whither he meant to go, he found
himself out of sight of the house--in a favourite haunt, but one in
which he always had a peculiar feeling of strangeness and even
expatriation. He had descended the stream that rushed past the end
of the house, till it joined the valley river, and followed the
latter up, to where it took a sudden sharp turn, and a little
farther. Then he crossed it, and was in a lonely nook of the glen,
with steep braes about him on all sides, some of them covered with
grass, others rugged and unproductive. He threw himself down in the
clover, a short distance from the stream, and straightway felt as
if he were miles from home. No shadow of life was to be seen.
Cottage-chimney nor any smoke was visible--no human being, no work
of human hands, no sign of cultivation except the grass and clover.

Now whether it was that in childhood he had learned that here he
was beyond his father's land, or that some early sense of
loneliness in the place had been developed by a brooding fancy into
a fixed feeling, I cannot well say; but certainly, as often as he
came--and he liked to visit the spot, and would sometimes spend
hours in it--he felt like a hermit of the wilderness cut off from
human society, and was haunted with a vague sense of neighbouring
hostility. Probably it came of an historical fancy that the nook
ought to be theirs, combined with the sense that it was not. But
there had been no injury done ab extra: the family had suffered
from the inherent moral lack of certain of its individuals.

This sense of away-from-homeness, however, was not strong enough to
keep Cosmo from falling into such a dreamful reverie as by degrees
naturally terminated in slumber. Seldom is sleep far from one who
lies on his back in the grass, with the sound of waters in his
ears. And indeed a sleep in the open air was almost an essential
ingredient of a holiday such as Cosmo had been accustomed to make
of his birthday: constantly active as his mind was, perhaps in part
because of that activity, he was ready to fall asleep any moment
when warm and supine.

When he woke from what seemed a dreamless sleep, his half roused
senses were the same moment called upon to render him account of
something very extraordinary which they could not themselves
immediately lay hold of. Though the sun was yet some distance above
the horizon, it was to him behind one of the hills, as he lay with
his head low in the grass; and what could the strange thing be
which he saw on the crest of the height before him, on the other
side of the water? Was it a fire in a grate, thinned away by the
sunlight? How could there be a grate where there was neither house
nor wall? Even in heraldry the combination he beheld would have
been a strange one. There stood in fact a frightful-looking
creature half consumed in light--yet a pale light, seemingly not
strong enough to burn. It could not be a phoenix, for he saw no
wings, and thought he saw four legs. Suddenly he burst out
laughing, and laughed that the hills echoed. His sleep-blinded eyes
had at length found their focus and clarity.

"I see!" he said, "I see what it is! It's Jeames Grade's coo 'at's
been loupin' ower the mune, an's stucken upo' 't!"

In very truth there was the moon between the legs of the cow! She
did not remain there long however, but was soon on the cow's back,
as she crept up and up in the face of the sun. He bethought him of
a couplet that Grizzie had taught him when he was a child:

Whan the coo loups ower the mune, The reid gowd rains intil men's
shune.

And in after-life he thought not unfrequently of this odd vision he
had had. Often, when, having imagined he had solved some difficulty
of faith or action, presently the same would return in a new shape,
as if it had but taken the time necessary to change its garment, he
would say to himself with a sigh, "The coo's no ower the mune yet!"
and set himself afresh to the task of shaping a handle on the
infinite small enough for a finite to lay hold of. Grizzie, who was
out looking for him, heard the roar of his laughter, and, guided by
the sound, spied him where he lay. He heard her footsteps, but
never stirred till he saw her looking down upon him like a
benevolent gnome that had found a friendless mortal asleep on
ground of danger.

"Eh, Cosmo, laddie, ye'll get yer deid o' caul'!" she cried. "An'
preserve's a'! what set ye lauchin' in sic a fearsome fashion as
yon? Ye're surely no fey!"

"Na, I'm no fey, Grizzle! Ye wad hae lauchen yersel' to see Jeames
Gracie's coo wi' the mune atween the hin' an' the fore legs o' her.
It was terrible funny."

"Hoots! I see naething to lauch at i' that. The puir coo cudna help
whaur the mune wad gang. The haivenly boadies is no to be
restricket."

Again Cosmo burst into a great laugh, and this time Grizzie,
seriously alarmed lest he should be in reality fey, grew angry, and
seizing hold of him by the arm, pulled lustily.

"Get up, I tell ye!" she cried. "Here's the laird speirin' what's
come o' ye,'at ye come na hame to yer tay."

But Cosmo instead of rising only laughed the more, and went on
until at length Grizzie made use of a terrible threat.

"As sure's sowens!" she said, "gien ye dinna haud yer tongue wi'
that menseless-like lauchin', I'll no tell ye anither auld-warld
tale afore Marti'mas."

"Will ye tell me ane the nicht gien I haud my tongue an' gang hame
wi' ye?"

"Ay, that wull I--that's gien I can min' upo' ane."

He rose at once, and laughed no more. They walked home together in
the utmost peace.

After tea, his father went out with him for a stroll, and to call
on Jeames Gracie, the owner of the cow whose inconstellation had so
much amused him. He was an old man, with an elderly wife, and a
granddaughter--a weaver to trade, whose father and grandfather
before him had for many a decade done the weaving work, both in
linen and wool, required by "them at the castle." He had been on
the land, in the person of his ancestors, from time almost
immemorial, though he had only a small cottage, and a little bit of
land, barely enough to feed the translunar cow. But poor little
place as Jeames's was, if the laird would have sold it the price
would have gone a good way towards clearing the rest of his
property of its encumbrances. For the situation of the little spot
was such as to make it specially desirable in the eyes of the next
proprietor, on the border of whose land it lay. He was a lord of
session, and had taken his title from the place, which he inherited
from his father; who, although a laird, had been so little of a
gentleman, that the lordship had not been enough to make one of his
son. He was yet another of those trim, orderly men, who will
sacrifice anything--not to beauty--of that they have in general no
sense--but to tidiness: tidiness in law, in divinity, in morals, in
estate, in garden, in house, in person--tidiness is in their eyes
the first thing--seemingly because it is the highest creative
energy of which they are capable. Naturally the dwelling of James
Gracie was an eyesore to this man, being visible from not a few of
his windows, and from almost anywhere on the private road to his
house; for decidedly it was not tidy. Neither in truth was it
dirty, while to any life--loving nature it was as pleasant to know,
as it was picturesque to look at. But the very appearance of
poverty seems to act as a reproach on some of the rich--at least
why else are they so anxious to get it out of their sight?--and
Lord Lickmyloof--that was not his real title, but he was better
known by it than by the name of his land: it came of a nasty habit
he had, which I need not at present indicate farther--Lord
Lickmyloof could not bear the sight of the cottage which no painter
would have consented to omit from the landscape. It haunted him
like an evil thing.

[Illustration with caption: COSMO ON HIS WAY TO SCHOOL.]




CHAPTER V.

THE SCHOOL.


The next morning, by the steep farm road, and the parish road,
which ran along the border of the river and followed it downward,
Cosmo, on his way to school, with his books in a green baize bag,
hung by the strings over his shoulder, came out from among the
hills upon a comparative plain. But there were hills on all sides
round him yet--not very high--few of them more than a couple of
thousand feet--but bleak and bare, even under the glow of the
summer sun, for the time of heather was not yet, when they would
show warm and rich to the eye of poet and painter. Most of the
farmers there, however, would have felt a little insulted by being
asked to admire them at any time: whatever their colour or shape or
product, they were incapable of yielding crops and money! In truth
many a man who now admires, would be unable to do so, if, like
those farmers, he had to struggle with nature for little more than
a bare living. The struggle there, what with early, long-lasting,
and bitter winters, and the barrenness of the soil in many parts,
was a severe one.

Leaving the river, the road ascended a little, and joined the
highway, which kept along a level, consisting mostly of land lately
redeemed from the peat-moss. It went straight for two miles, fenced
from the fields in many parts by low stone walls without mortar,
abhorrent to the eye of Cosmo; in other parts by walls of earth,
called dykes, which delighted his very soul. These were covered
with grass for the vagrant cow, sprinkled with loveliest little
wild flowers for the poet-peasant, burrowed in by wild bees for the
adventurous delight of the honey-drawn school-boy. Glad I am they
had not quite vanished from Scotland before I was sent thither, but
remained to help me get ready for the kingdom of heaven: those
dykes must still be dear to my brothers who have gone up before me.
Some of the fields had only a small ditch between them and the
road, and some of them had no kind of fence at all. It was a dreary
road even in summer, though not therefore without its loveable
features--amongst which the dykes; and wherever there is anything
to love, there is beauty in some form.

A short way past the second milestone, he came to the first
straggling houses of the village. It was called Muir of Warlock,
after the moor on which it stood, as the moor was called after the
river that ran through it, and that named after the glen, which
took its name from the family--so that the Warlocks had scattered
their cognomen all around them. A somewhat dismal-looking village
it was--except to those that knew its people: to some of such it
was beautiful--as the plainest face is beautiful to him who knows a
sweet soul inside it. The highway ran through it--a broad fine
road, fit for the richest country under the sun; but the causeway
along its edges, making of it for the space a street, was of the
poorest and narrowest. Some of the cottages stood immediately upon
the path, some of them receded a little. They were almost all of
one story, built of stone, and rough-cast-harled, they called it
there, with roofs of thick thatch, in which a half smothered pane
of glass might hint at some sort of room beneath. As Cosmo walked
along, he saw all the trades at work; from blacksmith to tailor,
everybody was busy. Now and then he was met by a strong scent, as
of burning leather, from the oak-bark which some of the housewives
used for fuel, after its essence had been exhausted in the tan-pit,
but mostly the air was filled with the odour of burning peat. Cosmo
knew almost everybody, and was kindly greeted as he went
along--none the less that some of them, hearing from their children
that he had not been to school the day before, had remarked that
his birthday hardly brought him enough to keep it with. The
vulgarity belonging to the worship of Mammon, is by no means
confined to the rich; many of these, having next to nothing, yet
thought profession the one thing, money, houses, lands the only
inheritances. It is a marvel that even world-loving people should
never see with what a load they oppress the lives of the children
to whom, instead of bringing them up to earn their own living, and
thus enjoy at least THE GAME of life, they leave a fortune enough
to sink a devil yet deeper in hell. Was it nothing to Cosmo to
inherit a long line of ancestors whose story he knew--their
virtues, their faults, their wickedness, their humiliation?--to
inherit the nobility of a father such as his? the graciousness of a
mother such as that father caused him to remember her? Was there no
occasion for the laird to rejoice in the birth of a boy whom he
believed to have inherited all the virtues of his race, and left
all their vices behind? But none of the villagers forgot, however
they might regard the holiday, that Cosmo was the "yoong laird"
notwithstanding the poverty of his house; and they all knew that in
old time the birthday of the heir had been a holiday to the school
as well as to himself, and remembered the introduction of the
change by the present master. Indeed, throughout the village,
although there were not a few landed proprietors in the
neighbourhood whose lands came nearer, all of whom of course were
lairds, and although the village itself had ceased to belong to the
family, Glenwarlock was always called _the_ laird; and the better part
in the hearts of even the money-loving and money-trusting among its
inhabitants, honoured him as the best man in the country, "thof he hed
sae little skeel at haudin' his ain nest thegither;" and though,
besides, there is scarce a money-making man who does not believe
poverty the cousin, if not the child of fault; and the more
unscrupulous, _within the law_, a man has been in making his money,
the more he regards the man who seems to have lost the race he has
won, as somehow or other to blame: "People with naught are naughty."
Nor is this judgment confined to the morally unscrupulous. Few who
are themselves permitted to be successful, care to conjecture that it
may be the will of the power, that in part through their affairs,
rules men, that some should be, in that way, unsuccessful: better
can be made of them by preventing the so-called success. Some men
rise with the treatment under which others would sink. But of the
inhabitants of Muir of Warlock, only a rather larger proportion
than of the inhabitants of Mayfair would have taken interest in
such a theory of results.

They all liked, and those who knew him best, loved the young laird;
for if he had no lands, neither had he any pride, they said, and
was as happy sitting with any old woman, and sharing her tea, as at
a lord's table. Nor was he less of a favourite at school, though,
being incapable of self-assertion, his inborn consciousness of
essential humanity rendering it next to impossible for him to
_claim_ anything, some of the bigger boys were less than friendly with
him. One point in his conduct was in particular distasteful to them:
he seemed to scorn even an honest advantage. For in truth he never
could bring himself, in the small matters of dealing that pass between
boys at school, to make the least profit. He had a passion for fair
play, which, combined with love to his neighbour, made of an
advantage, though perfectly understood and recognized, almost a
physical pain: he shrank from it with something like disgust. I may
not, however, conceal my belief, that there was in it a rudimentary
tinge of the pride of those of his ancestors who looked down upon
commerce, though not upon oppression, or even on robbery. But the true
man will change to nobility even the instincts derived from strains of
inferior moral development in his race--as the oyster makes, they say,
of the sand-grain a pearl.

Greeting the tailor through his open window, where he sat
cross-legged on his table, the shoemaker on his stool, which, this
lovely summer morning, he had brought to the door of his cottage,
and the smith in his nimbus of sparks, through the half-door of his
smithy, and receiving from each a kindly response, the boy walked
steadily on till he came to the school. There, on the heels of the
master, the boys and girls were already crowding in, and he entered
along with them. The religious preliminaries over, consisting in a
dry and apparently grudging recognition of a sovereignty that
required the homage, and the reading of a chapter of the Bible in
class, the SECULAR business was proceeded with; and Cosmo was
sitting with his books before him, occupied with a hard passage in
Caesar, when the master left his desk and came to him.

"You'll have to make up for lost time to-day, Cosmo," he said.

Now if anything was certain to make Cosmo angry, it was the
appearance, however slight, or however merely implied, of
disapproval of anything his father thought, or did, or sanctioned.
His face flushed, and he answered quickly,

"The time wasn't lost, sir."

This reply made the master in his turn angry, but he restrained
himself.

"I'm glad of that! I may then expect to find you prepared with your
lessons for to-day."

"I learned my lessons for yesterday," Cosmo answered; "but my
father says it's no play to learn lessons."

"Your father's not master of this school."

"He's maister o' me," returned the boy, relapsing into the
mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, always
sounds rude.

The master took the youth's devotion to his father for insolence to
himself.

"I shall say no more," he rejoined, still using the self-command
which of all men an autocrat requires, "till I find how you do in
your class. That you are the best scholar in it, is no reason why
you should be allowed to idle away hours in which you might have
been laying up store for the time to come."--It was a phrase much
favoured by the master--in present application foolish.--"But
perhaps your father does not mean to send you to college?"

"My father hasna said, an' I haena speirt," answered Cosmo, with
his eyes on his book.

Still misinterpreting the boy, the conceit and ill-temper of the
master now overcame him, and caused him to forget the proprieties
altogether.

"Haud on that gait, laddie, an' ye'll be as great a fule as yer
father himsel'," he said.

Cosmo rose from his seat, white as the wall behind him, looked in
the master's eyes, caught up his Caesar, and dashed the book in his
face. Most boys would then have made for the door, but that was not
Cosmo's idea of bearing witness. The moment the book left his hand,
he drew himself up, stood still as a statue, looked full at the
master, and waited. Not by a motion would he avoid any consequence
of his act.

He had not long to wait. A corner of the book had gone into the
master's eye; he clapped his hand to it, and for a moment seemed
lost in suffering. The next, he clenched for the boy a man's fist,
and knocked him down. Cosmo fell backward over the form, struck his
head hard on the foot of the next desk, and lay where he fell.

A shriek arose, and a girl about sixteen came rushing up. She was
the grand-daughter of James Grade, befriended of the laird.

"Go to your seat, Agnes!" shouted the master, and turning from her,
stood, with his handkerchief to one eye, looking down on the boy.
So little did he know him, he suspected him of pretending to be
more hurt than he was.

"Touch me gien ye daur," cried Agnes, as she stooped to remove his
legs from the form.

"Leave him alone," shouted the master, and seizing her, pulled her
away, and flung her from him that she almost fell.

But by this time the pain in his eye had subsided a little, and he
began to doubt whether indeed the boy was pretending as he had
imagined. He began also to feel not a little uneasy as to the
possible consequences of his hasty act--not half so uneasy,
however, as he would have felt, had the laird been as well-to-do as
his neighbour, Lord Lickmyloof--who would be rather pleased than
otherwise, the master thought, at any grief that might befall
either Cosmo or the lass Gracie. Therefore, although he would have
been ready to sink had the door then opened and the laird entered,
he did not much fear any consequences to be counted serious from
the unexpected failure of his self-command. He dragged the boy up
by the arm, and set him on his seat, before Agnes could return; but
his face was as that of one dead, and he fell forward on the desk.
With a second great cry, Agnes again sprang forward. She was a
strong girl, accustomed to all kinds of work, out-door and in-door.
She caught Cosmo round the waist from behind, pulled him from the
seat, and drew him to the door, which because of the heat stood
open. The master had had enough of it, and did not attempt to
hinder her. There she took him in her arms, and literally ran with
him along the street.




CHAPTER XVI.

GRANNIE'S COTTAGE.


But she had not to pass many houses before she came to that of her
grandfather's mother, an aged woman, I need not say, but in very
tolerable health and strength nevertheless. She sat at her spinning
wheel, with her door wide open. Suddenly, and, to her dulled sense,
noiselessly, Aggie came staggering in with her burden. She dropped
him on the old woman's bed, and herself on the floor, her heart and
lungs going wildly.

"I' the name o' a'!" cried her great-grandmother, stopping her
wheel, breaking her thread, and letting the end twist madly up
amongst the revolving iron teeth, emerging from the mist of their
own speed, in which a moment before they had looked ethereal as the
vibration-film of an insect's wings.

She rose with a haste marvellous for her years, and approaching,
looked down on the prostrate form of the girl.

"It can never be my ain Aggie," she faltered, "to rush intil my
quaiet hoose that gait, fling a man upo' my bed, an' fa' her len'th
upo' my flure!"

But Agnes was not yet able to reply. She could only sign with her
hand to the bed, which she did with such energy that her
great-grandmother--GRANNIE, she called her, as did the whole of the
village--turned at once thitherward. She could not see well, and
the box-bed was dark, so she did not at first recognize Cosmo, but
the moment she suspected who it was, she too uttered a cry--the cry
of old age, feeble and wailful.

"The michty be ower's! what's come to my bairn?" she said.

"The maister knockit him doon," gasped Agnes.

"Eh, lassie! rin for the doctor."

"No," came feebly from the bed. "I dinna want ony notice ta'en o'
the business."

"Are ye sair hurtit, my bairn?" asked the old woman.

"My heid's some sair an' throughither-like; but I'll just lie still
a wee, and syne I'll be able to gang hame. I'm some sick. I winna
gang back to the school the day."

"Na, my bonnie man, that ye sanna!" cried Grannie, in a tone
mingled of pity and indignation.

A moment more, and Agnes rose from the earth, for earth it was,
quite fresh; and the two did all they could to make him
comfortable. Aggie would have gone at once to let his father know;
she was perfectly able, she said, and in truth seemed nothing the
worse for her fierce exertion. But Cosmo said, "Bide a wee, Aggie,
an' we'll gang hame thegither. I'll be better in twa or three
minutes." But he did not get better so fast as he expected, and the
only condition on which Grannie would consent not to send for the
doctor, was, that Agnes should go and tell his father.

"But eh, Aggie!" said Cosmo, "dinna lat him think there's onything
to be fleyt aboot. It's naething but a gey knap o' the heid; an'
I'm sure the maister didna inten' duin me ony sarious hurt.--But my
father's sure to gie him fair play!--he gies a' body fair play."

Agnes set out, and Cosmo fell asleep.

He slept a long time, and woke better. She hurried to Glenwarlock,
and in the yard found the laird.

"Weel, lassie!" he said, "what brings ye here this time o' day?
What for are ye no at the school? Ye'll hae little eneuch o' 't by
an' by, whan the hairst 's come."

"It's the yoong laird!" said Aggie, and stopped.

"What's come till 'im?" asked the laird, in the sharpened tone of
anxiety.

"It's no muckle, he says himsel'. But his heid's some sair yet."

"What maks his heid sair? He was weel eneuch whan he gaed this
mornin'."

"The maister knockit 'im doon."

The laird started as if one had struck him in the face. The blood
reddened his forehead, and his old eyes flashed like two stars. All
the battle-fury of the old fighting race seemed to swell up from
ancient fountains amongst the unnumbered roots of his being, and
rush to his throbbing brain. He clenched his withered fist, drew
himself up straight, and made his knees strong. For a moment he
felt as in the prime of life and its pride. The next his fist
relaxed, his hand fell by his side, and he bowed his head.

"The Lord hae mercy upo' me!" he murmured. "I was near takin' the
affairs o' ane o' his into MY han's!"

He covered his face with his wrinkled hands, and the girl stood
beside him in awe-filled silence. But she did not quite comprehend,
and was troubled at seeing him stand thus motionless. In the
trembling voice of one who would comfort her superior, she said,

"Dinna greit, laird. He'll be better, I'm thinkin', afore ye win
till 'im. It was Grannie gart me come--no him."

Speechless the laird turned, and without even entering the house,
walked away to go to the village. He had reached the valley-road
before he discovered that Agnes was behind him.

"Dinna ye come, Aggie," he said; "ye may be wantit at hame."

"Ye dinna think I wad ley ye, laird!--'cep' ye was to think fit to
sen' me frea ye. I'm maist as guid's a man to gang wi' ye--wi' the
advantage o' bein' a wuman, as my mither tells me:"--She called her
grandmother, MOTHER.--"ye see we can daur mair nor ony man--but,
Guid forgie me!--no mair nor the yoong laird whan he flang his
CAESAR straucht i' the maister's face this verra mornin'."

The laird stopped, turned sharply round, and looked at her.

"What did he that for?" he said.

"'Cause he ca'd yersel' a fule," answered the girl, with the utmost
simplicity, and no less reverence.

The laird drew himself up once more, and looked twenty years
younger. But it was not pride that inspired him, nor indignation,
but the father's joy at finding in his son his champion.

"Mony ane's ca'd me that, I weel believe, lassie, though no to my
ain face or that a' my bairn. But whether I deserve't or no, nane
but ane kens. It's no by the word o' man I stan' or fa'; but it's
hoo my maister luiks upo' my puir endeevour to gang by the thing he
says. Min' this, lassie--lat fowk say as they like, but du ye as HE
likes, an', or a' be dune, they'll be upo' their k-nees to ye. An'
sae they'll be yet to my bairn--though I'm some tribbled he sud hae
saired the maister--e'en as he deserved."

"What cud he du, sir? It was na for himsel' he strack! An' syne he
never muved an inch, but stud there like a rock, an' liftit no a
han' to defen' himsel', but jist loot the maister tak his wull o'
'im."

The pair tramped swiftly along the road, heeding nothing on either
hand as they went, Aggie lithe and active, the laird stooping
greatly in his forward anxiety to see his injured boy, but walking
much faster "than his age afforded." Before they reached the
village, the mid-day recess had come, and everybody knew what had
happened. Loud were most in praise of the boy's behaviour, and many
were the eyes that from window and door watched the laird, as he
hurried down the street to "Grannie's," where all had learned the
young laird was lying. But no one spoke, or showed that he was
looking, and the laird walked straight on with his eyes to the
ground, glancing neither to the right hand nor the left; and as did
the laird, so did Aggie.

The door of the cottage stood open. There was a step down, but the
laird knew it well. Turning to the left through a short passage, in
the window of which stood a large hydrangea, over two wooden pails
of water, he lifted the latch of the inner door, bowed his tall
head, and entered the room where lay his darling. With a bow to
Grannie, he went straight up to the bed, speedily discovered that
Cosmo slept, and stood regarding him with a full heart. Who can
tell but him who knows it, how much more it is to be understood by
one's own, than by all the world beside! By one's own one learns to
love all God's creatures, and from one's own one gets strength to
meet the misprision of the world.

The room was dark though it was summer, and although it had two
windows, one to the street, and one to the garden behind: both
ceiling and floor were of a dark brown, for the beams and boards of
the one were old and interpenetrated with smoke, and the other was
of hard-beaten clay, into which also was wrought much smoke and an
undefinable blackness, while the windows were occupied with
different plants favoured of Grannie, so that little light could
get in, and that little was half-swallowed by the general
brownness. A tall eight-day clock stood in one corner, up to which,
whoever would learn from it the time, had to advance
confidentially, and consult its face on tip-toe, with peering eyes.
Beside it was a beautifully polished chest of drawers; a nice
tea-table stood in the centre, and some dark-shiny wooden chairs
against the walls. A closet opened at the head of the bed, and at
the foot of it was the door of the room and the passage, so that it
stood in a recess, to which were wooden doors, seldom closed. A
fire partly of peat, partly of tan, burned on the little hearth.

Cosmo opened his eyes, and saw those of his father looking down
upon him. He stretched out his arms, and drew the aged head upon
his bosom. His heart was too full to speak.

"How do you find yourself, my boy?" said the father, gently
releasing himself. "I know all about it; you need not trouble
yourself to tell me more than just how you are."

"Better, father, much better," answered Cosmo. "But there is one
thing I must tell you. Just before it happened we were reading in
the Bible-class about Samson--how the spirit of the Lord came upon
him, and with the jaw-bone of an ass he slew ever so many of the
Philistines; and when the master said that bad word about you, it
seemed as if the spirit of the Lord came upon me; for I was not in
a rage, but filled with what seemed a holy indignation; and as I
had no ass's jaw-bone handy, I took my Caesar, and flung it as hard
and as straight, as I could in the master's face. But I am not so
sure about it now."

"Tak ye nae thoucht anent it, Cosmo, my bairn," said the old woman,
taking up the word; "it's no a hair ayont what he deserved 'at
daured put sic a word to the best man in a' the country. By the
han' o' a babe, as he did Goliah o' Gath, heth the Lord rebuked the
enemy.--The Lord himsel' 's upo' your side, laird, to gie ye siccan
a brave son."

"I never kent him lift his han' afore," said the laird, as if he
would fain mitigate judgment on youthful indiscretion,--"excep' it
was to the Kirkmalloch bull, when he ran at him an' me as gien he
wad hae pitcht 's ower the wa' o' the warl'."

"The mair like it WAS the speerit o' the Lord, as the bairn himsel'
was jaloosin," remarked Grannie, in a tone of confidence to which
the laird was ready enough to yield;--"an' whaur the speerit o' the
Lord is, there's leeberty," she added, thinking less of the
suitableness of the quotation, than of the aptness of words in it.
Glenwarlock stooped and kissed the face of his son, and went to
fetch the doctor. Before he returned, Cosmo was asleep again. The
doctor would not have him waked. From his pulse and the character
of his sleep he judged he was doing well. He had heard all about
the affair before, but heard all now as for the first time, assured
the laird there was no danger, said he would call again, and
recommended him to go home. The boy must remain where he was for
the night, he said, and if the least ground for uneasiness should
show itself, he would ride over, and make his report.

"I don't know what to think," returned the laird: "it would be
trouble and inconvenience to Grannie."

"'Deed, laird, ye sud be ashamt to say sic a thing: it'll be
naething o' the kin'!" cried the old woman." Here he s' bide--wi'
yer leave, sir, an' no muv frae whaur he lies! There's anither bed
i' the cloaset there. But, troth, what wi' the rheumatics,
an'--an'--the din o' the rottans, we s' ca' 't, mony's the nicht I
gang to nae bed ava'; an' to hae the yoong laird sleepin' i' my
bed, an' me keepin' watch ower 'im,'ill be jist like haein' an
angel i' the hoose to luik efter. I'll be somebody again for ae
nicht, I can tell ye! An' oh! it's a lang time, sir, sin' I was
onybody i' this warl'! I houp sair they'll hae something for auldfowk
to du i' the neist."

"Hoots, mistress Forsyth," returned the laird, "the' 'll be naebody
auld there!"

"Hoo am I to win in than, sir? I'm auld, gien onybody ever was
auld! An' hoo's yersel' to win in, sir--for ye maun be some auld
yersel' by this time, thof I min' weel yer father a bit loonie in a
tartan kilt."

"What wad ye say to be made yoong again, auld frien'?" suggested
the laird, with a smile of wonderful sweetness.

"Eh, sir! there's naething to that effec' i' the word."

"Hoot!" rejoined the laird, "wad ye hae me plaguit to tell the
laddie there a' thing I wad du for him, as gien he hadna a hert o'
his ain to tell 'im a score o'things--ay, hun'ers o' things? Dinna
ye ken 'at the speerit o' man's the can'le o' the Lord?"

"But sae mony for a' that follows but their ain fancies!--That ye
maun alloo, laird; an' what comes o' yer can'le than?"

"That' sic as never luik whaur the licht fa's, but aye some ither
gait, for they carena to walk by the same. But them 'at orders
their wy's by what licht they hae, there's no fear o' them. Even
sud they stummle, they sanna fa'."

"'Deed, laird, I'm thinkin' ye may be richt. I hae stummlet mony's
the time, but I'm no doon yet; an' I hae a guid houp 'at maybe,
puir dissiple as I am, the Maister may lat on 'at he kens me, whan
that great and terrible day o' the Lord comes."

Cosmo began to stir. His father went to the bed-side, and saw at a
glance that the boy was better. He told him what the doctor had
decreed. Cosmo said he was quite able to get up and go home that
minute. But his father would not hear of it.

"I can't bear to think of you walking back all that way alone,
papa," objected Cosmo.

"Ye dinna think, Cosmo," interposed Aggie, "'at I'm gauin to lat the
laird gang hame himlane, an' me here to be his body-gaird! I ken my
duty better nor that."

But the laird did not go till they had all had tea together, and
the doctor had again come and gone, and given his decided opinion
that all Cosmo needed was a little rest, and that he would be quite
well in a day or two. Then at length his father left him, and,
comforted, set out with Aggie for Glenwarlock.




CHAPTER VII.

DREAMS.


The gloamin' came down much sooner in Grannie's cottage than on the
sides of the eastward hills, but the old woman made up her little
fire, and it glowed a bright heart to the shadowy place. Though the
room was always dusky, it was never at this season quite dark any
time of the night. It was not absolutely needful, except for the
little cooking required by the invalid--for as such, in her pride
of being his nurse, Grannie regarded him--but she welcomed the
excuse for a little extra warmth to her old limbs during the night
watches. Then she sat down in her great chair, and all was still.

"What for arena ye spinnin', Grannie?" said Cosmo. "I like fine to
hear the wheel singin' like a muckle flee upo' the winnock. It
spins i' my heid lang lingles o' thouchts, an' dreams, an'
wad-be's. Neist to hearin' yersel' tell a tale, I like to hear yer
wheel gauin'. It has a w'y o' 'ts ain wi' me!"

"I was feart it micht vex ye wi' the soomin' o' 't," answered
Grannie, and as she spoke she rose, and lighted her little lamp,
though she scarcely needed light for her spinning, and sat down to
her wheel.

For a long unweary time Cosmo lay and listened, an aerial Amphion,
building castles in the air to its music, which was so monotonous
that, like the drone of the bag-pipes, he could use it for
accompaniment to any dream-time of his own.

When a man comes to trust in God thoroughly, he shrinks from
castle-building, lest his faintest fancy should run counter to that
loveliest Will; but a boy's dreams are nevertheless a part of his
education. And the true heart will not leave the blessed conscience
out, even in its dreams.

Those of Cosmo were mostly of a lovely woman, much older than
himself, who was kind to him, and whom he obeyed and was ready to
serve like a slave. These came, of course, first of all, from the
heart that needed and delighted in the thought of a mother, but
they were bodied out from the memory, faint, far-off, and dim, of
his own mother, and the imaginations of her roused by his father's
many talks with him concerning her. He dreamed now of one, now of
another beneficent power, of the fire, the air, the earth, or the
water--each of them a gracious woman, who favoured, helped, and
protected him, through dangers and trials innumerable. Such
imaginings may be--nay must be unhealthy for those who will not
attempt the right in the face of loss and pain and shame; but to
those who labour in the direction of their own ideal, dreams will
do no hurt, but foster rather the ideal.

When at length the spinning-wheel ceased with its hum, the silence
was to Cosmo like the silence after a song, and his thoughts
refused to do their humming alone. The same moment he fell--from a
wondrous region where he dwelt with sylphs in a great palace, built
on the tree-tops of a forest ages old; where the buxom air bathed
every limb, and was to his ethereal body as water--sensible as a
liquid; whose every room rocked like the baby's cradle of the
nursery rime, but equilibrium was the merest motion of the will;
where the birds nested in its cellars, and the squirrels ran up and
down its stairs, and the woodpeckers pulled themselves along its
columns and rails by their beaks; where the winds swung the whole
city with a rhythmic roll, and the sway as of tempest waves,
music-ruled to ordered cadences; where, far below, lower than the
cellars, the deer, and the mice, and the dormice, and the foxes,
and all the wild things of the forest, ran in its caves--from this
high city of the sylphs, watched and loved and taught by the most
gracious and graceful and tenderly ethereal and powerful of beings,
he fell supine into Grannie's box-bed, with the departed hum of her
wheel spinning out its last thread of sound in his disappointed
brain.

In after years when he remembered the enchanting dreams of his
boyhood, instead of sighing after them as something gone for ever,
he would say to himself, "what matter they are gone? In the
heavenly kingdom my own mother is waiting me, fairer and stronger
and real. I imagined the elves; God imagined my mother."

The unconscious magician of the whole mystery, who had seemed to
the boy to be spinning his very brain into dreams, rose, and,
drawing near the bed, as if to finish the ruthless destruction, and
with her long witch-broom sweep down the very cobwebs of his airy
phantasy, said,

"Is ye waukin', Cosmo my bairn?"

"Ay am I," answered Cosmo, with a faint pang, and a strange sense
of loss: when should he dream its like again!

"Soon, soon, Cosmo," he might have heard, could he have interpreted
the telephonic signals from the depths of his own being; "wherever
the creative pneuma can enter, there it enters, and no door stands
so wide to it as that of the obedient heart."

"Weel, ye maun hae yer supper, an' syne ye maun say yer prayers,
an' hae dune wi' Tyseday, an' gang on til' Wudens-day."

"I'm nae wantin' ony supper, thank ye," said the boy.

"Ye maun hae something, my bonny man; for them 'at aits ower
little, as weel's them 'at aits ower muckle, the night-mear
rides--an' she's a fearsome horse. Ye can never win upo' the back
o' her, for as guid a rider as ye're weel kent to be, my bairn. Sae
wull ye hae a drappy parritch an' ream? or wad ye prefar a sup of
fine gruel, sic as yer mother used to like weel frae my han', whan
it sae happent I was i' the hoose?" The offer seemed to the boy to
bring him a little nearer the mother whose memory he worshipped,
and on the point of saying, for the sake of saving her trouble,
that he would have the porridge, he chose the gruel.

He watched from his nest the whole process of its making. It took a
time of its own, for one of the secrets of good gruel is a long
acquaintance with the fire.--Many a time the picture of that room
returned to him in far different circumstances, like a dream of
quiet and self-sustained delight--though his one companion was an
aged woman.

When he had taken it, he fell asleep once more, and when he woke
again, it was in the middle of the night. The lamp was nearly
burned out: it had a long, red, disreputable nose, that spoke of
midnight hours and exhausted oil. The old lady was dozing in her
chair. The clock had just struck something, for the sound of its
bell was yet faintly pulsing in the air. He sat up, and looked out
into the room. Something seemed upon him--he could not tell what.
He felt as if something had been going on besides the striking of
the clock, and were not yet over--as if something was even now
being done in the room. But there the old woman slept, motionless,
and apparently in perfect calm! It could not, however, have been
perfect as it seemed, for presently she began to talk. At first
came only broken sentences, occasionally with a long pause; and
just as he had concluded she would say nothing more, she would
begin again. There was something awful to the fancy of the youth in
the issuing of words from the lips of one apparently unconscious of
surrounding things; her voice was like the voice of one speaking
from another world. Cosmo was a brave boy where duty was concerned,
but conscience and imagination were each able to make him tremble.
To tremble, and to turn the back, are, however, very different
things: of the latter, the thing deserving to be called cowardice,
Cosmo knew nothing; his hair began to rise upon his head, but that
head he never hid beneath the bed-clothes. He sat and stared into
the gloom, where the old woman lay in her huge chair, muttering at
irregular intervals.

Presently she began to talk a little more continuously. And now
also Cosmo's heart had got a little quieter, and no longer making
such a noise in his ears, allowed him to hear better. After a few
words seemingly unconnected, though probably with a perfect
dependence of their own, she began to murmur something that sounded
like verses. Cosmo soon perceived that she was saying the same
thing over and over, and at length he had not only made out every
word of the few lines, but was able to remember them. This was what
he afterwards recalled--by that time uncertain whether the whole
thing had not been a dream:

Catch yer naig an' pu' his tail: In his hin' heel ca' a nail; Rug
his lugs frae ane anither--Stan' up, an' ca' the king yer brither.

When first he repeated them entire to himself, the old woman still
muttering them, he could not help laughing, and the noise, though
repressed, yet roused her. She woke, not, like most young people,
with slow gradation of consciousness, but all at once was wide
awake. She sat up in her chair.

"Was I snorin', laddie,'at ye leuch?" she asked, in a tone of
slight offence.

"Eh, na!" replied Cosmo. "It was only 'at ye was sayin' something
rale funny--i' yer sleep, ye ken--a queer jingle o' poetry it was."

Therewith he repeated the rime, and Grannie burst into a merry
laugh--which however sobered rather suddenly.

"I dinna won'er I was sayin' ower thae fule words," she said, "for
'deed I was dreamin' o' the only ane I ever h'ard say them, an'
that was whan I was a lass--maybe aboot thirty. Onybody nicht hae
h'ard him sayin' them--ower and ower til himsel', as gien he cudna
weary o' them, but naebody but mysel' seemed to hae ta'en ony
notice o' the same. I used whiles to won'er whether he fully
un'erstude what he was sayin'--but troth! hoo cud there be ony
sense in sic havers?"

"Was there ony mair o' the ballant?" asked Cosmo.

"Gien there was mair; I h'ard na't," replied Grannie. "An' weel I
wat! he was na ane to sing, the auld captain.--Did ye never hear
tell o' 'im, laddie?"

"Gien ye mean the auld brither o' the laird o' that time, him 'at
cam hame frae his sea-farin' to the East Indies--"

"Ay, ay; that's him! Ye hae h'ard tell o' 'im! He hed a ship o' 's
ain, an' made mony a voyage afore ony o' 's was born, an' was an
auld man whan at len'th hame cam he, as the sang says--ower auld to
haud by the sea ony more. I'll never forget the lulk o' the man
whan first I saw him, nor the hurry an' the scurry, the rinnin'
here, an' the routin' there,'at there was whan the face o' 'm came
in at the gett! Ye see they a' thoucht he was hame wi' a walth
ayout figures--stowed awa' somewhaur--naebody kent whaur. Eh, but
he was no a bonny man, an' fowk said he dee'd na a fairstrae deith:
hoo that may be, I dinna weel ken: there WAR unco things aboot the
affair--things 'at winna weel bide speykin' o'. Ae thing's certain,
an' that is,'at the place has never thriven sin syne. But, for that
maitter, it hedna thriven for mony a lang afore. An' there was a
fowth o' awfu' stories reengin' the country, like ghaists 'at
naebody cud get a grip o'--as to hoo he had gotten the said siller,
an' sic like--the siller 'at naebody ever saw; for upo' that
siller, as I tell ye, naebody ever cuist an e'e. Some said he had
been a pirate upo' the hie seas, an' had ta'en the siller in lumps
o' gowd frae puir ships 'at hadna men eneuch to hand the grip o'
't; some said he had been a privateer; an' ither some said there
was sma' differ atween the twa. An' some wad hae't he was ane o'
them 'at tuik an' sauld the puir black fowk,'at cudna help bein'
black, for as ootlandish as it maun luik--I never saw nane o' the
nation mysel'--ony mair nor a corbie can help his feathers no bein'
like a doo's; an' gien they turnt black for ony deevilry o' them
'at was their forbeirs, I kenna an' it maks naething to me or mine,
--I wad fain an' far raither du them a guid turn nor tak an' sell
them; for gien their parents had sinned, the mair war they to be
pitied. But as I was sayin', naebody kent hoo he had gethert his
siller, the mair by token 'at maybe there was nane, for naebody, as
I was tellin' ye, ever had the sma'est glimp o' siller aboot 'im.
For a close-loofed near kin o' man he was, gien ever ony! Aye ready
was he to borrow a shillin' frae ony fule 'at wad len' him ane, an'
lang had him 'at len't it forgotten to luik for 't, er' he thoucht
o' peyin' the same. It was mair nor ae year or twa 'at he leeved
aboot the place, an' naebody cared muckle for his company, though
a' body was ower feart to lat him ken he was na welcome here or
there; for wha cud tell he micht oot wi' the swoord he aye carriet,
an' mak an' en' o' 'im! For 'deed he fearna God nor man, ony mair
nor the jeedge i' the Scriptur'. He drank a heap--as for a' body at
he ca'd upo' aye hed oot the whisky-bottle well willun' to please
the man they war feart at."

The voice of the old woman went sounding in the ears of the boy, on
and on in the gloom, and through it, possibly from the still
confused condition of his head, he kept constantly hearing the
rimes she had repeated to him. They seemed to have laid hold of him
as of her, perhaps from their very foolishness, in an odd
inexplicable way:--

Catch yer naig an' pu' his tail; In his hin' heel ca' a nail;
Rughis lugs frae ane anither--Stan' up, an' ca' the king yer
brither.

On and on went the rime, and on and on went the old woman's voice.

"Weel, there cam' a time whan an English lord begud to be seen
aboot the place, an' that was nae comon sicht i' oor puir country.
He was a frien' fowk said, o' the yoong Markis o' Lossie, an' that
was hoo 'he cam to sicht. He gaed fleein' aboot, luikin' at this,
an' luikin' at that; an' whaur or hoo he fell in wi' HIM, I dinna
ken, but or lang the twa o' them was a heap thegither. They playt
cairts thegither, they drank thegither, they drave oot
thegither--for the auld captain never crossed beast's back--an'
what made sic frien's o' them nobody could imaigine. For the tane
was a rouch sailor chield, an' the tither was a yoong lad, little
mair, an' a fine gentleman as weel's a bonny man. But the upshot o'
't a' was an ill ane; for, efter maybe aboot a month or sae o' sic
friendship as was atween them, there cam a nicht 'at brouchtna the
captain hame; for ye maun un'erstan', wi' a' his rouch w'ys, an'
his drinkin', an' his cairt-playin', he was aye hame at nicht, an'
safe intil's bed, whaur he sleepit i' the best chaumer i' the
castle. Ay, he wad come hame, aften as drunk as man cud be, but
hame he cam. Sleep intil the efternune o' the neist day he wad, but
never oot o' 's nain bed--or if no aye in his ain nakit BED, for I
fan' him ance mysel' lyin' snorin' upo' the flure, it was aye intil
's ain room, as I say, an' no in ony strange place drunk or sober.
Sae there was some surprise at his no appearin', an' fowk spak o'
't, but no that muckle, for naebody cared i' their hert what cam o'
the man. Still whan the men gaed oot to their wark, they bude to
gie a luik gien there was ony sign o' 'm. It was easy to think 'at
he micht hae been at last ower sair owertaen to be able to win
hame. But that wasna it, though whan they cam upo' 'm lyin' on's
back i' the howe you'er 'at luiks up to my daughter's bit gerse for
her coo', they thoucht he bude to hae sleepit there a' nicht. Sae
he had, but it was the sleep 'at kens no waukin--at least no the
kin' o' waukin' 'at comes wi' the mornin'!"

Cosmo recognized with a shudder his favourite spot, where on his
birthday, as on many a day before, he had fallen asleep. But the
old woman went on with her story.

"Deid was the auld captain--as deid as ever was man 'at had nane
left to greit for him. But thof there was nae greitin', no but sic
a hullabaloo as rase upo' the discovery! They rade an' they ran;
the doctor cam', an' the minister, an' the lawyer, an' the
grave-digger. But whan a man's deid, what can a' the warl' du for
'im but berry 'im? puir hin'er en' thof it be to him' at draws
himsel' up, an' blaws himsel' oot! There was mony a conjectur as to
hoo he cam by his deith, an' mony a doobt it wasna by fair play.
Some said he dee'd by his ain han', driven on til't by the enemy;
an' it was true the blade he cairriet was lyin' upo' the grass
aside 'im; but ither some 'at exem't him, said the hole i' the side
o' 'im was na made wi' that. But o' a' 'at cam to speir efter 'im,
the English lord was nane. He hed vainished the country. The
general opinyon sattled doon to this,'at they twa bude till hae
fa'en oot at cairts, an' fouchten it oot, an' the auld captain, for
a' his skeel an' exparience, had had the warst o' 't, an' so there
they faun' 'im.--But I reckon, Cosmo, yer father 'ill hae tellt ye
a' aboot the thing, mony's the time, or noo, an' I'm jist deivin'
ye wi' my clavers, an haudin 'ye ohn sleepit!"

"Na, Grannie," answered Cosmo, "he never tellt me what ye hae tellt
me noo. He did tell me 'at there was sic a man, an' the ill en' he
cam til; an' I think he was jist gaein' on to tell me mair, whan
Grizzie cam to say the denner was ready. That was only
yesterday--or the day afore, I'm thinkin', by this time.--But what
think ye could hae been in's held wi' yon jingle aboot the horsie?"

"Ow! what wad be intil't but jist fulish nonsense? Ye ken some fowk
has a queer trick o' sayin' the same thing ower an' ower again to
themsel's, wi'oot ony sense intil't. There was the auld laird
himsel'; he was ane o' sic. Aye an' ower again he wad be sayin' til
himsel','A hun'er poun'! Ay, a hun'er poun'!' It maittered na what
he wad be speikin' aboot, or wha til, in it wad come!--i' the
middle o' onything, ye cudna tell whan or whaur,--'A hun'er poun'!'
says he;'Ay, a hun'er poun'!' Fowk leuch at the first, but sune gat
used til't, an' cam hardly to ken 'at he said it, for what has nae
sense has little hearin'. An' I doobtna thae rimes wasna even a
verse o' an auld ballant, but jist a cletter o' clinkin' styte
(_nonsense_),'at he had learnt frae some blackamore bairn, maybe, an'
cudna get oot o' 's heid ony ither gait, but bude to say't to hae dune
wi' 't--jist like a cat whan it gangs scrattin' at the door, ye hae to
get up, whether ye wull or no, an' lat the cratur oot."

Cosmo did not feel quite satisfied with the explanation, but he
made no objection to it.

"I maun alloo, hooever," the old woman went on, "'at ance ye get a
haud o' THEM, they tak a grip o' YOU, an' hae a queer w'y o'
hauntin' ye like, as they did the man himsel', sae 'at ye canna yet
rid o' them. It comes only at noos an' thans, but whan the fit's
upo' me, I canna get them oot o' my heid. The verse gangs on
tum'lin' ower an' ower intil 't, till I'm jist scunnert wi' 't.
Awa' it wanna gang, maybe for a haill day, an' syne it mayna come
again for months."

True enough, the rime was already running about in Cosmo's head
like a mouse, and he fell asleep with it ringing in the ears of his
mind.

Before he woke again, which was in the broad daylight, he had a
curious dream.

He dreamed that he was out in the moonlight. It was a summer
night--late. But there was something very strange about the night:
right up in the top of it was the moon, looking down as if she knew
all about it, and something was going to happen. He did not like
the look of her--he had never seen her look like that before! and
he went home just to get away from her. As he was going up the
stairs to his chamber, something moved him--he could not tell
what--to stop at the door of the drawing-room, and go in. It was
flooded with moonlight, but he did not mind that, so long as he
could keep out of her sight. Still it had a strange, eerie look,
with its various pieces of furniture casting different shadows from
those that by rights belonged to them. He gazed at this thing and
that, as if he had never seen it before. The place seemed to cast a
spell over him, so that he could not leave it. He seated himself on
the ancient brocaded couch, and sat staring, with a sense, which by
degrees grew dreadful, that he was where he would not be, and that
if he did not get up and go, something would happen. But he could
not rise--not that he felt any physical impediment, but that he
could not make a resolve strong enough--like one in irksome
company, who wants to leave, but waits in vain a fit opportunity.
Delay grew to agony, but still he sat.

He became aware that he was not alone. His whole skin seemed to
contract with a shuddering sense of presence. Gradually, as he
gazed straight in front of him, slowly, in the chair on the
opposite side of the fire-place, grew visible the form of a man,
until he saw it quite plainly--that of a seafaring man, in a blue
coat, with a red sash round his waist, in which were pistols, and a
dagger. He too sat motionless, fixing on him the stare of fierce
eyes, black, yet glowing, as if set on fire of hell. They filled
him with fear, but something seemed to sustain him under it. He
almost fancied, when first on waking he thought over it, that a
third must have been in the room--for his protection. The face that
stared at him was a brown and red and weather--beaten face, cut
across with a great scar, and wearing an expression of horror
trying not to look horrible. His fear threatened to turn him into
clay, but he met it with scorn, strove against it, would not and
did not yield. Still the figure stared, as if it would fascinate
him into limpest submission. Slowly at length it rose, and with a
look that seemed meant to rivet the foregone stare--a look of
mingled pain and fierceness, turned, and led the way from the room,
whereupon the spell was so far broken or changed, that he was able
to rise and follow him: even in his dreams he was a boy of courage,
and feared nothing so much as yielding to fear. The figure went on,
nor ever turned its head, up the stair to the room over that they
had left--the best bedroom, the guest-chamber of the house--not
often visited, and there it entered. Still following, Cosmo entered
also. The figure walked across the room, as if making for the bed,
but in the middle of the floor suddenly turned, and went round by
the foot of the bed to the other side of it, where the curtains hid
it. Cosmo followed, but when he reached the other side, the shade
was nowhere to be seen, and he woke, his heart beating terribly.

By this time Grannie was snoring in her chair, or very likely, in
his desire to emerge from its atmosphere, he would have told her
his dream. For a while he lay looking at the dying fire, and the
streak from the setting moon, that stole in at the window, and lay
weary at the foot of the wall. Slowly he fell fast asleep, and
slept far into the morning: long after lessons were begun in the
school, and village-affairs were in the full swing of their daily
routine, he slept; nor had he finished his breakfast, when his
father entered.

"I'm quite well, papa," answered the boy to his gentle yet eager
inquiry;--"perfectly able to go to school in the afternoon."

"I don't mean you to go again, Cosmo," replied his father gravely.
"It could not be pleasant either for yourself or for the master.
The proper relation between you is destroyed."

[Illustration: COSMO'S DREAM.]

"If you think I was wrong, papa, I will make an apology."

"If you had done it for yourself, I should unhesitatingly say you
must. But as it was, I am not prepared to say so."

"What am I to do then? How am I to get ready for college?"

The laird gave a sigh, and made no answer. Alas! there were more
difficulties than that in the path to college.

He turned away, and went to call on the minister, while Cosmo got
up and dressed: except a little singing in his head when he
stooped, he was aware of no consequences of the double blow.

Grannie was again at her wheel, and Cosmo sat down in her chair to
await his father's return.

"Whaur said ye the captain sleepit whan he was at the castle?" he
inquired across the buzz and whiz and hum of the wheel. Through the
low window, betwixt the leaves of the many plants that shaded it,
he could see the sun shining hot upon the bare street; but inside
was soft gloom filled with murmurous sound.

"Whaur but i' the best bedroom?" answered Grannie. "Naething less
wad hae pleased HIM, I can assure ye. For ance 'at there cam the
markis to the hoose--whan things warna freely sae scant aboot the
place as they hae been sin' yer father cam to the throne--there cam
at his back a fearsome storm, sic as comes but seldom in a life
lang as mine, an' sic 'at his lordship cudna win awa'. Thereupon
yer father, that is, yer gran'father,--or it wad be yer
grit-gran'father--I'm turnin' some confused amo' ye: ye aye keep
comin'!--onyhoo, he gae the captain a kent like,'at he wad du weel
to offer his room til's lordship. But wad he, think ye? Na, no him!
He grew reid, an' syne as white's the aisse, an' luikit to be i'
the awfu'est inside rage 'at mortal wessel cud weel hand. Sae yer
gran'father, no 'at he was feart at 'im, for Is' be bun' he never
was feart afore the face o' man, but jest no wullin' to anger his
ain kin, an' maybe no willin' onybody sud say he was a respecter o'
persons, heeld his tongue an' said nae mair, an' the markis hed the
second best bed, for he sleepit in Glenwarlock's ain."

Cosmo then told her the dream he had had in the night, describing
the person he had seen in it as closely as he could. Now all the
time Grannie had been speaking, it was to the accompaniment of her
wheel, but Cosmo had not got far with his narrative when she ceased
spinning, and sat absorbed--listening as to a real occurrence, not
the feverish dream of a boy. When he ended,

"It maun hae been the auld captain himself!" she said under her
breath, and with a sigh; then shut up her mouth, and remained
silent, leaving Cosmo in doubt whether it was that she would take
no interest in such a foolish thing, or found in it something to
set her thinking; but he could not help noting that there seemed a
strangeness about her silence; nor did she break it until his
father returned.




CHAPTER VIII.

HOME.


Cosmo was not particularly fond of school, and he was particularly
fond of holidays; hence his father's resolve that he should go to
school no more, seemed to him the promise of an endless joy. The
very sun seemed swelling in his heart as he walked home with his
father. A whole day of home and its pleasures was before him--only
the more welcome that he had had a holiday so lately, and that so
many more lay behind it. Every shadow about the old place was a
delight to him. Never human being loved more the things into which
he had been born than did Cosmo. The whole surrounding had to him a
sacred look, such as Jerusalem, the temple, and its vessels, bore
to the Jews, even those of them who were capable of loving little
else. There was hardly anything that could be called beauty about
the building--strength and gloom were its main characteristics--but
its very stones were dear to the boy. There never were such bees,
there never were such thick walls, there never were such storms,
never such a rushing river, as those about his beloved home! And
this although, all the time, as I have said, he longed for more
beauty of mountain and wood than the country around could afford
him. Then there were the books belonging to the house!--was there
any such a collection in the world besides! They were in truth very
few--all contained in a closet opening out of his father's bedroom;
but Cosmo had a feeling of inexhaustible wealth in them--partly
because his father had not yet allowed him to read everything
there, but restricted him to certain of the shelves--as much to
cultivate self-restraint in him as to keep one or two of the books
from him,--partly because he read books so that they remained books
to him, and he believed in them after he had read them, nor
imagined himself capable of exhausting them. But the range of his
taste was certainly not a limited one. While he revelled in The
Arabian Nights, he read also, and with no small enjoyment, the
Night Thoughts--books, it will be confessed, considerably apart
both in scope and in style. But while thus, for purest pleasure,
fond of reading, to enjoy life it was to him enough to lie in the
grass; in certain moods, the smell of the commonest flower would
drive him half crazy with delight. On a holiday his head would be
haunted with old ballads like a sunflower with bees: on other days
they would only come and go. He rejoiced even in nursery rimes,
only in his head somehow or other they got glorified. The swing and
hum and BIZZ of a line, one that might have to him no discoverable
meaning, would play its tune in him as well as any mountain-stream
its infinite water-jumble melody. One of those that this day
kept--not coming and going, but coming and coming, just as Grannie
said his foolish rime haunted the old captain, was that which two
days before came into his head when first he caught sight of the
moon playing bo-peep with him betwixt the cows legs:

Whan the coo loups ower the mune, The reid gowd rains intil men's
shune.

I think there must at one time have been a poet in the Glenwarlock
nursery, for there were rimes, and modifications of rimes, floating
about the family, for which nobody could account. Cosmo's mother
too had been, in a fragmentary way, fond of verse; and although he
could not remember many of her favourite rimes, his father did, and
delighted in saying them over and over to her child--and that long
before he was capable of understanding them. Here is one:

Make not of thy heart a casket, Opening seldom, quick to close; But
of bread a wide-mouthed basket, And a cup that overflows.

Here is another:

The gadfly makes the horse run swift: "Speed," quoth the gadfly,
"is my gift."

One more, and it shall be the last for the present: They serve as
dim lights on the all but vanished mother, of whom the boy himself
knew so little.

In God alone, the perfect end, Wilt thou find thyself or friend.
Cosmo's dream of life was, to live all his days in the house of his
forefathers--or at least and worst, to return to it at last, how
long soever he might have been compelled to be away from it. In his
castle--building, next to that of the fairy-mother-lady, his
fondest fancy was--not the making of a fortune, but the returning
home with one, to make the house of his fathers beautiful, and the
heart of his father glad. About the land he did not think so much
yet: the country was open to him as if it had been all his own.
Still, he had quite a different feeling for that portion which yet
lay within the sorely contracted marches; to have seen any smallest
nook of that sold, would have been like to break his heart. In him
the love of place was in danger of becoming a disease. There was in
it something, I fear, of the nature, if not of the avarice that
grasps, yet of the avarice that clings. He was generous as few in
the matter of money, but then he had had so little--not half enough
to learn to love it! Nor had he the slightest idea of any mode in
which to make it. Most of the methods he had come in contact with,
except that of manual labour, in which work was done and money paid
immediately for it, repelled him, as having elements of the
unhandsome where not the dishonest: he was not yet able to
distinguish between substance and mode in such matters. The only
way in which he ever dreamed of coming into possession of money--it
was another of his favourite castles--was finding in the old house
a room he had never seen or heard of before, and therein a hoard of
riches incredible. Such things had been--why might it not be?

As they walked, his father told him he had been thinking all night
what it would be best to do with him, now that the school was
closed against him; and that he had come to the conclusion to ask
his friend Peter Simon--the wits of the neighbourhood called him
Simon Peter--to take charge of his education.

"He is a man of peculiar opinions," he said, "as I daresay you may
have heard; but everything in him is, practice and theory, on a
scale so grand, that to fear harm from him would be to sin against
the truth. A man must learn to judge for himself, and he will teach
you that. I have seen in him so much that I recognize as good and
great, that I am compelled to believe in him where the things he
believes appear to me out of the way, or even extravagant."

"I have heard that he believes in ghosts, papa!" said Cosmo.

His father smiled, and made him no answer. He had been born into an
age whose incredulity, taking active form, was now fast approaching
its extreme, and becoming superstition; and the denial of many
things that had long been believed in the country had penetrated at
last even to the remote region where his property lay: like that
property, his mind, because of the age, lay also in a sort of
border-land, An active believer in the care and providence of God,
with no conscious difficulty in accepting any miracle recorded in
the Bible, he was, where the oracles were dumb, in a measure
inclined to a scepticism, which yet was limited to the region of
his intellect;--his imagination turned from its conclusions, and
cherished not a little so-called weakness for the so-called
supernatural--so far as any glimmer of sense or meaning or reason
would show itself therein. And in the history of the world, the
imagination has, I fancy, been quite as often right as the
intellect, and the things in which it has been right, have been of
much the greater importance. Only, unhappily, wherever Pegasus has
shown the way through a bog the pack-horse which follows gets the
praise of crossing it; while the blunders with which the pack-horse
is burdened, are, the moment each is discovered, by the plodding
leaders of the pair transferred to the space betwixt the wings of
Pegasus, without regard to the beauty of his feathers. The laird
was therefore unable to speak with authority respecting such
things, and was not particularly anxious to influence the mind of
his son concerning them. Happily, in those days the platitudes and
weary vulgarities of what they call SPIRITUALISM, had not been
heard of in those quarters, and the soft light of imagination yet
lingered about the borders of that wide region of mingled false and
true, commonly called Superstition. It seems to me the most killing
poison to the imagination must be a strong course of "spiritualism."
For myself, I am not so set upon entering the unknown, as,
instead of encouraging what holy visitations faith, not in the
spiritual or the immortal, but in the living God, may bring, to
creep through the sewers of it to get in. I care not to encounter
its mud-larkes, and lovers of garbage, its thieves, impostors,
liars, and canaille, in general. That they are on the other side,
that they are what men call dead, does not seem to me sufficient
reason for taking them into my confidence, courting their company,
asking their advice. A well-attested old-fashion ghost story, where
such is to be had, is worth a thousand seances.

"Do YOU believe in ghosts, papa?" resumed Cosmo, noting his
father's silence, and remembering that he had never heard him utter
an opinion on the subject.

"The master says none but fools believe in them now; and he makes
such a face at anything he calls superstition, that you would think
it must be somewhere in the commandments."

"Mr. Simon remarked the other day in my hearing," answered his
father, "that the dread of superstition might amount to
superstition, and become the most dangerous superstition of all."

"Do you think so, papa?"

"I could well believe it. Besides, I have always found Mr. Simon so
reasonable, even where I could not follow him, that I am prejudiced
in favor of anything he thinks."

The boy rejoiced to hear his father talk thus, for he, had a strong
leaning to the marvellous, and hitherto, from the schoolmaster's
assertion and his father's silence, had supposed nothing was to be
accepted for belief but what was scientifically probable, or was
told in the bible. That we live in a universe of marvels of which
we know only the outsides,--and which we turn into the incredible
by taking the mere outsides for all, even while we know the roots
of the seen remain unseen--these spiritual facts now began to dawn
upon him, and fell in most naturally with those his mind had
already conceived and entertained. He was therefore delighted at
the thought of making the closer acquaintance of a man like Mr.
Simon--a man of whose peculiarities even, his father could speak in
such terms. All day long he brooded on the prospect, and in the
twilight went out wandering over the hills.

There was no night there at this season, any more than all the year
through in heaven. Indeed we have seldom real positive night in
this world--so many provisions have been made against it. Every
time we say, "What a lovely night!" we speak of a breach, a rift in
the old night. There is light more or less, positive light, else
were there no beauty. Many a night is but a low starry day, a day
with a softened background against which the far-off suns of
millions of other days show themselves: when the near vision
vanishes the farther hope awakes. It is nowhere said of heaven,
there shall be no twilight there,




CHAPTER IX.

THE STUDENT.


The twilight had not yet reached the depth of its mysteriousness,
when Cosmo, returning home from casting a large loop of wandering
over several hills, walked up to James Gracie's cottage, thinking
whether they would not all be in bed.

But as he passed the window, he saw a little light, and went on to
the door and knocked: had it been the daytime, he would have gone
straight in. Agnes came, and opened cautiously, for there were
occasionally such beings as tramps about.

"Eh! it's you?" she cried with a glad voice, when she saw the shape
of Cosmo in the dimness. "There's naething wrang I houp," she
added, changing her tone.

"Na, naething," answered Cosmo. "I only wantit to lat ye ken 'at I
wasna gaein' back to the schuil ony mair."

"Weel, I dinna won'er at that!" returned Agnes with a little sigh.
"Efter the w'y the maister behaved til ye, the laird cud ill lat ye
gang there again. But what's he gaein' to du wi' ye, Maister Cosmo,
gien a body micht speir 'at has nae richt to be keerious?"

"He's sen'in' me to maister Simon," answered Cosmo.

"I wuss I was gaein' tu," sighed Aggie. "I'm jist feart 'at I come
to hate the maister efter ye're no to be seen there, Cosmo. An' we
maunna hate, for that, ye ken,'s the hin 'er en' o' a' thing. But
it wad be a heap easier no to hate him, gien I had naething tu du
wi' him."

"That maun be confest," answered Cosmo.--"But," he added, "the
hairst-play 'ill be here sune, an' syne the hairst itsel'; an' whan
ye gang back ye'll hae won ower't."

"Na, I doobt no," Cosmo; for, ye sae, as I hae h'ard my father say,
the Gracies are a' terrible for min'in'. Na, there's no forgettin'
o' naething. What for sud onything be forgotten? It's a cooardly
kin' o' a' w'y, to forget."

"Some things, I doobt, hae to be forgotten," returned Cosmo,
thoughtfully. "Gien ye forgie a body for enstance, ye maun forget
tu--no sae muckle, I'm thinkin', for the sake o' them 'at did ye
the wrang, for wha wad tak up again a fool (foul) thing ance it was
drappit?--but for yer ain sake; for what ye hae dune richt, my
father says, maun be forgotten oot 'o sight for fear o' corruption,
for naething comes to stink waur nor a guid deed hung up i' the
munelicht o' the memory.

"Eh!" exclaimed Aggie, "but ye're unco wice for a lad o' yer
'ears."

"I wad be an nuco gowk," remarked Cosmo, "gien I kent naething, wi'
sic a father as yon o' mine. What wad ye think o' yersel' gien the
dochter o' Jeames Gracie war nae mair wice-like nor Meg Scroggie?"

Agnes laughed, but made no reply, for the voice of her mother came
out of the dark:

"Wha's that, Aggie, ye're haudin' sic a confab wi' in the middle o'
the night? Ye tellt me ye had to sit up to yer lessons!"

"I was busy at them, mither, whan Maister Cosmo chappit at the
door."

"Weel, what for lat ye him stan' there? Ye may hae yer crack wi'
HIM as lang's ye like--in rizzon, that is. Gar him come in."

"Na, na, mistress Gracie," answered Cosmo; "I maun awa' hame; I hae
had a gey long walk. It's no 'at I'm tired, but I'm gey and sleepy.
Only I was sae pleased 'at I was gaein' to learn my lessons wi'
Maister Simon,'at I bude to tell Aggie. She micht ha' been
won'erin', an' thinkin' I wasna better, gien she hadna seen me at
the schuil the morn."

"Is' warran' her ohn gane to the schuil ohn speirt in at the Castle
the first thing i' the mornin', an' seein' gien the laird had ony
eeran' to the toon. Little cares she for the maister, gien onybody
at the Hoose be in want o' her!"

"Is there naething I cud help ye wi', Aggie, afore I gang?" asked
Cosmo. "Somebody tellt me ye was tryin' yer han' at algebra."

"Naebody had ony business to tell ye ony sic a thing," returned
Aggie, rather angrily. "It's no at the schuil I wad think o' sic a
ploy. They wad a' lauch fine! But I WAD fain ken what's intil the
thing. I canNOT un'erstan' hoo fowk can coont wi' letters an'
crosses an' strokes in place o' figgers. I hae been at it a
haillook noo--by mysel', ye ken--an' I'm nane nearer til 't yet. I
can add an' subtrac', accordin' to the rules gien, but that's no
un'erstan'in', an' un'erstan' I canna."

"I'm thinkin' it's something as gien x was a horse, an' y was a
coo, an' z was a cairt, or onything ither ye micht hae to ca' 't;
an' ye bargain awa' aboot the x an' the y and the z, an' ley the
horse i' the stable, the coo i' the byre, an' the cairt i' the
shed, till ye hae sattlet a'."

"But ye ken aboot algebra"--she pronounced the word with the accent
on the second syllable--"divna ye, maister Cosmo?"

"Na, no the haif, nor the hun'ert pairt. I only ken eneuch to haud
me gaein' on to mair. A body maun hae learnt a heap o' onything
afore the licht breaks oot o' 't. Ye maun win throuw the wa' first.
I doobt gien onybody un'erstan's a thing oot an' oot, sae lang's
he's no ready at a moment's notice to gar anither see intil the
hert o' 't; an' I canna gar ye see what's intil 't the minute ye
speir't at me!"

"I'm thinkin', hooever, Cosmo, a body maun be nearhan' seein' o'
himsel' afore anither can lat him see onything."

"Ye may be richt there," yielded Cosmo."--But jist lat me see whaur
ye are," he went on. "I may be able to help ye, though I canna lat
ye see a' at once. It wad be an ill job for them 'at needs help,
gien naebody could help them but them 'at kent a' aboot a thing."

[Illustration: no title]

Without a word, Aggie turned and led the way to the "but-end." An
iron lamp, burning the coarsest of train oil, hung against the
wall, and under that she had placed the one movable table in the
kitchen, which was white as scouring could make it. Upon it lay a
slate and a book of algebra.

"My cousin Willie lent me the buik," said Aggie.

"What for didna ye come to me to len'ye ane? I could hae gien ye a
better nor that," expostulated Cosmo.

Aggie hesitated, but, open as the day, she did not hesitate long.
She turned her face from him, and answered,

"I wantit to gie ye a surprise, Maister Cosmo. Divna ye min'
tellin' me ance 'at ye saw no rizzon hoo a lassie sudna un'erstan'
jist as weel's a laddie. I wantit to see whether ye was richt or
wrang; an' as algebra luiket the maist oonlikly thing, I thoucht I
wad taikle that, an' sae sattle the queston at ance. But, eh me!
I'm sair feart ye was i' the wrang, Cosmo!"

"I maun du my best to pruv mysel' i' the richt," returned Cosmo. "I
never said onybody cud learn a' o' themsel's, wantin' help, ye ken.
There's nae mony laddies cud du that, an' feower still wad try."

They sat down together at the table, and in half an hour or so,
Aggie had begun to see the faint light of at least the false dawn,
as they call it, through the thickets of algebra. It was nearly
midnight when Cosmo rose, and then Aggie would not let him go
alone, but insisted on accompanying him to the gate of the court.

It was a curious relation between the two. While Agnes looked up to
Cosmo, about two years her junior, as immeasurably her superior in
all that pertained to the intellect and its range, she assumed over
him a sort of general human superiority, something like that a
mother will assert over the most gifted of sons. One has seen, with
a kind of sacred amusement, the high priest of many literary and
artistic circles, set down with rebuke by his mother, as if he had
been still a boy! And I have heard the children of this world speak
with like superiority of the child of light whom they
loved--allowing him wondrous good, but regarding him as a kind of
God's chicken: nothing is so mysterious to the children of this
world as the ways of the children of light, though to themselves
they seem simple enough. That Agnes never treated Cosmo with this
degree of protective condescension, arose from the fact that she
was very nearly as much a child of light as he; only, being a
woman, she was keener of perception, and being older, felt the more
of the mother that every woman feels, and made the most of it. It
was to her therefore a merely natural thing to act his protector.
Indeed with respect to the Warlock family in general, she counted
herself possessed of the right to serve any one of them to the last
drop of her blood. From infancy she had heard the laird spoken
of--without definite distinction between the present and the
last--as the noblest, best, and kindest of men, as the power which
had been for generations over the family of the Gracies, for their
help and healing; and hence it was impressed upon her deepest
consciousness, that one of the main reasons of her existence was
her relation to the family of Glenwarlock.

Notwithstanding the familiarity I have shown between them--Agnes
had but lately begun to put the MASTER before Cosmo's name, and as
often forgot it--the girl, as they went towards the castle,
although they were walking in deep dusk, and entirely alone, kept a
little behind the boy--not behind his back, but on his left hand in
the next rank. No spy most curious could have detected the least
love-making between them, and their talk, in the still, dark air,
sounded loud all the way as they went. Strange talk it would have
been counted by many, and indeed unintelligible, for it ranged over
a vast surface, and was the talk of two wise children, wise not
above their own years only, but immeasurably above those of the
prudent. Riches indubitably favour stupidity; poverty, where the
heart is right, favours mental and moral development. They parted
at the gate, and Cosmo went to bed.

But, although his father allowed him such plentiful liberty, and
would fain have the boy feel the night holy as the day--so that no
one ever asked where he had been, or at what hour he had come
home--a question which, having no watch, he would have found it
hard to answer--not an eye was closed in the house until his
entering footsteps were heard. The grandmother lay angry at the
unheard of liberty her son gave his son; it was neither decent nor
in order; it was against all ancient rule of family life; she must
speak about it! But she never did speak about it, for she was now
in her turn afraid of the son who, without a particle of obstinacy
in his composition, yet took what she called his own way. Grizzie
kept grumbling to herself that the laddie was sure to come to
"mischief;" but the main forms of "mischief" that ruled in her
imagination were tramps, precipices, and spates. The laird, for his
part, spent most of the time his son's absence kept him awake, in
praying for him--not that he might be the restorer of the family,
but that he might be able to accept the will of God as the best
thing for family as for individual. If his boy might but reach the
spirit-land unsoiled and noble, his prayers were ended.

In such experiences, the laird learned to understand how the
catholics come to pray to their saints, and the Chinese to their
parents and ancestors; for he frequently found himself, more
especially as drowsiness began to steal upon his praying soul,
seeming to hold council with his wife concerning their boy, and
asking her help towards such strength for him as human beings may
minister to each other.

But Cosmo went up to bed without a suspicion that the air around
him was full of such holy messengers heavenward for his sake. He
imagined none anxious about him--either with the anxiety of
grandmother or of servant-friend or of great-hearted father.

As he passed the door of the spare room, immediately above which
was his own, his dream, preceded by a cold shiver, came to his
memory. But he scorned to quicken his pace, or to glance over his
shoulder, as he ascended the second stair. Without any need of a
candle, in the still faint twilight which is the ghosts' day, he
threw off his clothes, and was presently buried in the grave of his
bed, under the sod of the blankets, lapt in the death of sleep.

The moment he woke, he jumped out of bed: a new era in his life was
at hand, the thought of which had been subjacently present in his
dreams, and was operative the instant he became conscious of waking
life. He hurried on his clothes without care, for this dressing was
but temporary. Going down the stairs like a cataract, for not a
soul slept in that part but himself, and there was no fear of
waking any one, then in like manner down the hill, he reached the
place where, with a final dart, the torrent shot into the quiet
stream of the valley, in whose channel of rock and gravel it had
hollowed a deep basin. This was Cosmo's bath--and a splendid one.
His clothes were off again more quickly than he put them on, and
head foremost he shot like the torrent into the boiling mass, where
for a few moments he yielded himself the sport of the frothy water,
and was tossed and tumbled about like a dead thing. Soon however,
down in the heart of the boil, he struck out, and shooting from
under the fall, rose to the surface beyond it, panting and blowing.
To get out on the bank was then the work of one moment, and to
plunge in again that of the next. Half a dozen times, with scarce a
pause between, he thus plunged, was tossed and overwhelmed,
struggled, escaped, and plunged again. Then he ran for a few
moments up and down the bank to dry himself--he counted the use of
a towel effeminacy, and dressing again, ran home to finish his
simple toilet. If after that he read a chapter of his Bible, it was
no more than was required by many a parent of many a boy who got
little good of the task; but Cosmo's father had never enjoined it,
on him; and when next he knelt down at his bedside, he did not
merely "say his prayers." Then he took his slate, to try after
something Aggie had made him know he did not understand:--for the
finding of our own intellectual defects, nothing is like trying to
teach another. But before long, certain sensations began, to warn
him there was an invention in the world called breakfast, and
laying his slate aside, he went to the kitchen, where he found
Grizzie making the porridge.

"Min' ye pit saut eneuch in't the day, Grizzie," he said. "It was
unco wersh yesterday."

"An' what was't like thestreen (yestere'en), Cosmo?" asked the old
woman, irritated at being found fault with in a matter wherein she
counted herself as near perfection as ever mortal could come.

"I had nane last nicht, ye min'," answered Cosmo, "I was oot a' the
evenin'."

"An' whaur got ye yer supper?"

"Ow, I didna want nane. Hoot! I'm forgettin'! Aggie gied me a
quarter o' breid as I cam by, or rather as I cam awa', efter giein'
her a han' wi' her algebra."

"What ca' ye that for a lass bairn to be takin' up her time wi'! I
never h'ard o' sic a thing! What's the natur' o' 't, Cosmo?"

He tried to give her some far-off idea of the sort of thing algebra
was, but apparently without success, for she cried at length,

"Na, sirs! I hae h'ard o' cairts, an' bogles, an' witchcraft, an'
astronomy, but sic a thing as this ye bring me noo, I never did
hear tell o'! What can the warl' be comin' till!--An' dis the
father o' ye, laddie, ken what ye spen' yer midnicht hoors gangin'
teachin' to the lass-bairns o' the country roon'?"

She was interrupted by the entrance of the laird, and they sat down
to breakfast. The grandmother within the last year had begun to
take hers in her own room.

Grizzie was full of anxiety to know what the laird would say to the
discovery she had just made, but she dared not hazard allusion to
the CONDUCT of his son, and must therefore be content to lead the
conversation in the direction of it, hoping it might naturally
appear. So, about the middle of Cosmo's breakfast, that is about
two minutes after he had attacked his porridge, she approached her
design, if not exactly the object she desired, with the remark,

"Did ye never hear the auld saw, sir--

"Whaur's neither sun nor mune, Laich things come abune--?"

"I 'maist think I have, Grizzie," answered the laird.
"But what garsye come ower 't noo?"

"I canna but think, sir," returned Grizzie, "as I lie i' the mirk,
o' the heap o' things 'at gang to nae kirk, oot an' aboot as sharp
as a gled, whan the young laird is no in his bed--oot wi' 's
algibbry an' astronomy, an' a' that kin' o' thing!'Deed, sir, it
wadna be canny gien they cam to ken o' 't."

"Wha come to ken o' what, Grizzie?" asked the laird with a twinkle
in his eye, and a glance at Cosmo, who sat gazing curiously at the
old woman.

"Them 'at the saw speyks o', sir," said Grizzie, answering the
first part of the double question, as she placed two boiled eggs
before her master.

The laird smiled: he was too kind to laugh. Not a few laughed at
old Grizzie, but never the laird.

"Did YE never hear the auld saw, Grizzie," he said:


   "Throu the heather an' how gaed the creepin' thing,
   But abune was the waught o' an angel's wing--?"

"Ay, I hae h'ard it--naegait 'cep' here i' this hoose," answered
Grizzie: she would disparage the authority of the saying by a doubt
as to its genuineness. "But, sir, ye sud never temp' providence.
Wha kens what may be oot i' the nicht?"

"To HIM, Grizzie, the nicht shineth as the day."

"Weel, sir," cried Grizzie, "Ye jist pit me 'at I dinna ken mysel'!
Is't poassible ye hae forgotten what's sae weel kent to a' the
cuintry roon'?--the auld captain,'at canna lie still in's grave,
because o'--because o' whatever the rizzon may be? Onygait he's no
laid yet; an' some thinks he's doomed to haunt the hoose till the
day o' jeedgment."

"I suspec' there winna be muckle o' the hoose left for him to haunt
'gen that time, Grizzie," said the laird. "But what for sud ye put
sic fule things intil the bairn's heid? An' gien the ghaist haunt
the hoose, isna he better oot o' 't? Wad ye hae him come hame to
sic company?"

This posed Grizzie, and she held her peace for the time.

"Come, Cosmo," said the laird rising; and they set out together for
Mr. Simon's cottage.




CHAPTER X.

PETER SIMON.


This man was not a native of the district, but had for some two
years now been a dweller in it. Report said he was the son of a
small tradesman in a city at no great distance, but, to those who
knew him, he made no secret of the fact, that he had been found by
such a man, a child of a few months, lying on a pavement of that
city, one stormy, desolate Christmas-eve, when it was now dark,
with the wind blowing bitterly from the north, and the said
tradesman seemingly the one inhabitant of the coldest city in
Scotland who dared face it. He had just closed his shop, had
carried home to one of his customers a forgotten order, and was
returning to his wife and a childless hearth, when he all but
stumbled over the infant. Before stooping to lift him, he looked
all about to see if there was nobody to do it instead. There was
not a human being, or even what comes next to one, a dog in sight,
and the wind was blowing like a blast from a frozen hell. There was
no help for it: he must take up the child! He did, and carried it
home, grumbling all the way. What right had the morsel to be lying
there, a trap and a gin for his character, in the dark and the
cold? What would his wife say? And what would the neighbours think?
All the way home he grumbled.

[Illustration:  HE CARRIED IT HOME.]

What happened there, how his wife received him with his burden, how
she scolded and he grumbled, how it needed but the one day--the
Christmas Day, in which nothing could well be done--to reconcile
them to the gift, and how they brought him up, blessing the day
when they found him, would be a story fit to make the truehearted
of my readers both laugh and cry; but I have not room or time for
it.

Of course, as they were in poor circumstances, hardly able indeed,
not merely to make both ends meet, but to bring them far enough
round the parcel of their necessities to let them see each other,
their friends called their behaviour in refusing to hand over the
brat to the parish authorities--which they felt as a reflection
upon all who in similar circumstances would have done so--utter
folly. But when the moon-struck pair was foolish enough to say they
did not know that he might not have been sent them instead of the
still-born child that had hitherto been all their offspring, this
was entirely too much for the nerves of the neighbours in
general--that peculiar people always better acquainted with one's
affairs, down to his faults and up to his duties, than he is
himself. It was rank superstition! It was a flying in the face of
Providence! How could they expect to prosper, when they acted with
so little foresight, rendering the struggle for existence severer
still! They did not reckon what strength the additional motive,
what heart the new love, what uplifting the hope of help from on
high, kindled by their righteous deed, might give them--for God
likes far better to help people from the inside than from the
outside. They did not think that this might be just the fresh sting
of life that the fainting pair required. To mark their disapproval,
some of them immediately withdrew what little custom they had given
them: one who had given them none, promised them the whole of hers,
the moment they sent the child away; while others, with equal
inconsistency, doubled theirs, and did what they could to send them
fresh customers: they were a pair of good-natured fools, but they
ought not to be let starve! From that time they began to get on a
little better. And still as the boy grew, and wanted more, they had
the little more. For it so happened that the boy turned out to be
one of God's creatures, and it looked as if the Maker of him, who
happened also to be the ruler of the world, was not altogether
displeased with those who had taken him to their hearts, instead of
leaving him to the parish. The child was the light of the house and
of the shop, a beauty to the eyes, and a joy in the heart of both.
But perhaps the best proof that they had done right, lay in the
fact that they began to love each other better from the very next
day after they took him in, for, to tell the truth, one cause of
their not getting on well, had been that they did not pull well
together. Thus we can explain the improvement in their
circumstances by reference to merest "natural causes," without
having recourse to the distasteful idea that a power in the land of
superstition, with a weakness called a special providence, was
interested in the matter.

But foolishness such as theirs is apt to increase with years; and
so they sent the foundling to the grammar-school, and thence to
college--not a very difficult affair in that city. At college he
did not greatly distinguish himself, for his special gifts, though
peculiar enough, were not of a kind to DISTINGUISH a man much,
either in that city or in this world. But he grew and prospered
nevertheless, and became a master in one of the schools. His father
and mother, as he called them, would gladly have made a minister of
him, but of that he would never hear. He lived with them till they
died, always bringing home to them his salary, minus only the
little that he spent on books. His life, his devotion and loving
gratitude, so wrought upon them, that the kingdom of heaven opened
its doors to them, and they were the happiest old couple in that
city. Of course this was all an accident, for the kingdom of heaven
being but a dream, the dignity of natural cause can scarcely
consent to work to the end of delusion; but the good natured pair
were foolish enough to look upon their miserable foundling as a
divine messenger, an angel entertained not for long unawares, and
the cause of all the good luck that followed his entrance. They
never spent a penny of his salary, but added to it, and saved it
up, and when they went, very strangely left all they had to this
same angel of a beggar, instead of to their own relations, who
would have been very glad of it, for they had a good deal more of
their own.

The foundling did not care to live longer in any city, but sought a
place as librarian, and was successful. In the family of an English
lord he lived many years, and when time's changes rendered it
necessary he should depart, he retired to the cottage on the
Warlock. There he was now living the quietest of quiet lives,
cultivating the acquaintance of but a few--chiefly that of the
laird, James Gracie, and the minister of the parish. Among the
people of the neighbourhood he was regarded as "no a'thegither
there." This judgment possibly arose in part from the fact that he
not unfrequently wandered about the fields from morning to night,
and sometimes from night to morning. Then he never drank anything
worthy of the name of drink--seldom anything but water or milk!
That he never ate animal food was not so notable where many never
did so from one year's end to another's. As he was no propagandist,
few had any notion of his opinions, beyond a general impression
that they were unsound.

Cosmo had heard some of the peculiarities attributed to him, and
was filled with curious expectation as to the manner of man he was
about to meet, for, oddly enough, he had never yet seen him except
at a distance; but anxiety, not untinged with awe, was mingled with
his curiosity.

Mr. Simon's cottage was some distance up the valley, at an angle
where it turned westward. It stood on the left bank of the Warlock,
at the foot of a small cliff that sheltered it from the north,
while in front the stream came galloping down to it from the
sunset. The immediate bank between the cottage and the water was
rocky and dry, but the ground on which the cottage stood was soil
washed from the hills. There Mr. Simon had a little garden for
flowers and vegetables, with a summer seat in which he smoked his
pipe of an evening--for, however inconsistent the habit may seem
with the rest of the man, smoke he did: slowly and gently and
broodingly did the man smoke, thinking a great deal more than he
smoked, and making his one pipe last a long time. His garden was
full of flowers, but of the most ordinary kinds; rarity was no
recommendation to him. Some may think that herein he was unlike
himself, seeing his opinions were of the rarest; but in truth never
once did Peter Simon, all his life, adopt an opinion because of its
strangeness. He never ADOPTED an opinion at all; he believed--he
loved what seemed to him true: how it looked to others he concerned
himself little.

The cottage was of stone and lime, nowise the less thoroughly built
that the stones were unhewn. It was HARLED, that is rough-cast, and
shone very white both in sun and moon. It contained but two rooms
and a closet between, with one under the thatch for the old woman
who kept house for him. Altogether it was a very ordinary, and not
very promising abode.

But when they were shown BEN to the parlour, Cosmo was struck with
nothing less than astonishment: the walls from floor to ceiling
were covered with books. Not a square foot all over was vacant.
Even the chimney-piece was absorbed, assimilated, turned into a
book-shelf, and so obliterated. Mr. Simon's pipe lay on the hob;
and there was not another spot where it could have lain. There was
not a shelf, a cupboard to be seen. Books, books everywhere, and
nothing but books! Even the door that led to the closet where he
slept, was covered over, and, like the mantleshelf, obliterated
with books. They were but about twelve hundred in all; to the eyes
of Cosmo it seemed a mighty library--a treasure-house for a royal
sage.

There was no one in the room when they entered, and Cosmo was yet
staring in mute astonishment, when suddenly Mr. Simon was
addressing his father. But the door had not opened, and how he came
in seemed inexplicable. To the eyes of the boy the small man before
him assumed gigantic proportions.

But he was in truth below the middle height, somewhat
round-shouldered, with long arms, and small, well-shaped hands. His
hair was plentiful, grizzled, and cut short. His head was large and
his forehead wide, with overhanging brows; his eyes were small,
dark, and brilliant; his nose had a certain look of decision--but a
nose is a creature beyond description; his mouth was large, and his
chin strong; his complexion dark, and his skin rugged. The only
FINE features about him were his two ears, which were delicate
enough for a lady. His face was not at first sight particularly
attractive; indeed it was rather gloomy--till he smiled, not a
moment after; for that smile was the true interpreter of the mouth,
and, through the mouth, of the face, which was never the same as
before to one that had seen it. After a word or two about the book
he had borrowed, the laird took his departure, saying the sooner he
left master and pupil to themselves the better. Mr. Simon
acquiesced with a smile, and presently Cosmo was facing his near
future, not without some anxiety.




CHAPTER XI.

THE NEW SCHOOLING.


Without a word, Mr. Simon opened a drawer, and taking from it about
a score of leaves of paper, handed one of them to Cosmo. Upon it,
in print, was a stanza--one, and no more.

"Read that," he said, with a glance that showed through his eyes
the light burning inside him, "and tell me if you understand it. I
don't want you to ponder over it, but to say at a reading whether
you know what it means."

Cosmo obeyed and read.

"I dinna mak heid nor tail o' 't, sir," he answered, looking over
the top of the paper like a prisoned sheep.

Mr. Simon took it from him, and handed him another.

"Try that," he said.

Cosmo read, put his hand to his head, and looked troubled.
"Don't distress yourself," said Mr. Simon. "The thing is of no
consequence for judgment; it is only for discovery."

The remark conveyed but little consolation to the pupil, who would
gladly have stood well in his own eyes before his new master.

One after another Mr. Simon handed him the papers he held. About
the fifth or sixth, Cosmo exclaimed,

"I do understand that, sir."

"Very well," returned Mr. Simon, without showing any special
satisfaction, and immediately handed him another.

This was again a non-luminous body, and indeed cast a shadow over
the face of the embryo student. One by one Mr. Simon handed him all
he held. Out of the score there were three Cosmo said he
understood, and four he thought he should understand if he were
allowed to read them over two or three times. But Mr. Simon laid
them all together again, and back into the drawer.

"Now I shall know what I am about," he said. "Tell me what you have
been doing at school."

Were my book a treatise on education, it might be worth while to
give some account of Peter Simon's ways of furthering human growth.
But intellectual development is not my main business or interest,
and I mean to say little more concerning Cosmo's than that, after
about six weeks' work, the boy one day begged Mr. Simon to let him
look at those papers again, and found to his delight that he
understood all but three or four of them.

That first day, Mr. Simon gave him an ode of Horace, and a poem by
Wordsworth to copy--telling him to put in every point as it was in
the book exactly, but to note any improvement he thought might be
made in the pointing. He told him also to look whether he could see
any resemblance between the two poems.

As he sat surrounded by the many books, Cosmo felt as if he were in
the heart of a cloud of witnesses.

That first day was sufficient to make the heart of the boy cleave
to his new master. For one thing Mr. Simon always, in anything
done, took note first of the things that pleased him, and only
after that proceeded to remark on the faults--most of which he
treated as imperfections, letting Cosmo see plainly that he
understood how he had come to go wrong.

Such an education as Mr. Simon was thus attempting with Cosmo, is
hardly to be given to more than one at a time; and indeed there are
not a great many boys on whom it would be much better than lost
labour. Cosmo, however, was now almost as eager to go to his
lessons, as before to spend a holiday. Mr. Simon never gave him
anything to do at home, heartily believing it the imperative duty
of a teacher to leave room for the scholar to grow after the
fashion in which he is made, and that what a boy does by himself is
of greater import than what he does with any master. Such leisure
may indeed be of comparatively small consequence with regard to the
multitude of boys, but it is absolutely necessary wherever one is
born with his individuality so far determined, as to be on the
point of beginning to develop itself. When Cosmo therefore went
home, he read or wrote what he pleased, wandered about at his will,
and dreamed to his heart's content. Nor was it long before he
discovered that his dreams themselves were becoming of greater
import to him--that they also were being influenced by Mr. Simon.
And there were other witnesses there, quite as silent as those
around him in the library, and more unseen, who would not remain
speechless or invisible always.

One day Cosmo came late, and to say there were traces of tears on
his cheeks would hardly be correct, for his eyes were swollen with
weeping. His master looked at him almost wistfully, but said
nothing until he had settled for a while to his work, and was a
little composed. He asked him then what was amiss, and the boy told
him. To most boys it would have seemed small ground for such
heart-breaking sorrow.

Amongst the horses on the farm, was a certain small mare, which,
although she worked as hard as any, was yet an excellent one to
ride, and Cosmo, as often as there was not much work doing, rode
her where he would, and boy and mare were much attached to each
other. Sometimes he would have her every day for several weeks, and
that would be in the prime of the summer weather, when the harvest
was drawing nigh, and the school had its long yearly holiday.
Summer, the harvest--"play," and Linty!--oh, large bliss! my heart
swells at the thought. They would be out for hours together,
perhaps not far from home all the time--on the top of a hill it
might be, whence Cosmo could see when he would the castle below.
There, the whole sleepy afternoon, he would lie in the heather,
with Linty, the mare, feeding amongst it, ready to come at his
call, receive him on her back, and carry him where he would!

But alas! though supple and active, Linty was old, and the day
could not be distant when they must part company: she was then nine
and twenty. And now--the night before, she had been taken ill:
there was a disease about amongst the horses. The men had been up
with her all night, and Grizzie too: she had fetched her own pillow
and put under her head, then sat by it for hours. When Cosmo left,
she was a little better, but great fears were entertained as to the
possibility of her recovery.

"She's sae terrible aul'! ye see, sir," said Cosmo, as he ended his
tale of woe, and burst out crying afresh.

"Cosmo," said Mr. Simon,--and to a southern ear the issuing of such
sweet solemn thoughts in such rough northern speech, might have
seemed strange, though, to be sure, the vowels were finely sonorous
if the consonants were harsh,--"Cosmo, your heart is faithful to
your mare, but is it equally faithful to him that made your mare?"

"I ken it's his wull," answered Cosmo:--his master never took
notice whether he spoke in broad Scotch or bastard English--"I ken
mears maun dee, but eh! SHE was sic a guid ane!--Sir! I canna bide
it."

"Ye ken wha sits by the deein' sparrow?" said Mr. Simon, himself
taking to the dialect. "Cosmo there was a better nor Grizzie, an'
nearer to Linty a' the lang nicht. Things warna gangin' sae ill wi'
her as ye thoucht. Life's an awfu' mystery, Cosmo, but it's jist
the ae thing the maker o' 't can haud nearest til, for it's nearest
til himsel' i' the mak o' 't.--Fowk may tell me," he went on, more
now as if he were talking to himself than to the boy, "'at I sud
content mysel' wi' what I see an' hear, an' lat alane sic eeseless
speculations! wi' deein' men an' mears a' aboot me, hoo can I!
They're onything but eeseless to me, for gien I had naething but
what I see an' hear, gran' an' bonny as a heap o' 't is, I wad jist
smore for want o' room."

"But what's the guid o' 't a', whan I'll never see her again?"
sobbed Cosmo.

"Wha says sic a thing, laddie?"

"A' body," answered Cosmo, a good deal astonished at the question.

"Maister A' body has a heap o' the gawk in him yet, Cosmo," replied
his master. "Infac' he's scarce mair nor an infant yet, though he
wull speyk as gien the haill universe o' wisdom an' knowledge war
open til 'im! There's no a word o' the kin' i' the haill Bible, nor
i' the hert o' man--nor i' the hert o' the Maker, do I, i' the hert
o' me, believe Cosmo, can YE believe 'at that wee bit foal o' an
ass 'at carriet the maister o' 's, a' alang yon hill-road frae
Bethany to Jerus'lem, cam to sic an ill hin 'er en' as to be
forgotten by him he cairriet? No more can I believe that jist
'cause it carriet him it was ae hair better luiket efter nor ony
ither bit assie foalt i' the lan' o' Isr'el."

"The disciples micht hae min't it til the cratur, an' liukit efter
him for't," suggested Cosmo. His master looked pleased.

"They could but work the will o' him that made the ass," he said,
"an does the best for a' thing an' a' body. Na, na, my son! gien I
hae ony pooer to read the trowth o' things, the life 'at's gien is
no taen; an' whatever come o' the cratur, the love it waukent in a
human breist,'ill no more be lost than the objec' o' the same. That
a thing can love an' be loved--an' that's yer bonnie mearie,
Cosmo--is jist a' ane to savin' 'at it's immortal, for God is love,
an' whatever partakes o' the essence o' God canna dee, but maun
gang on livin' till it please him to say haud, an' that he'll never
say."

By this time the face of the man was glowing like an altar on which
had descended the fire of the highest heaven. His confidence
entered the heart of Cosmo, and when the master ceased, he turned,
with a sigh of gladness and relief, to his work, and wept no more.
The possible entrance of Linty to an enlarged existence, widened
the whole heaven of his conscious being; the well-spring of
personal life within him seemed to rush forth in mighty volume; and
through that grief and its consolation, the boy made a great stride
towards manhood.

One day in the first week of his new schooling, Cosmo took occasion
to mention Aggie's difficulty with her algebra, and her anxiety to
find whether it was true that a girl could do as well as a boy. Mr.
Simon was much interested, and with the instinct of the true hunter,
whose business it is to hunt death for the sake of life,
began to think whether here might not be another prepared to
receive. He knew her father well, but had made no acquaintance with
Agnes yet, who indeed was not a little afraid of him, for he looked
as if he were always thinking about things nobody else knew of,
although, in common with every woman who saw it, she did find his
smile reassuring. No doubt the peculiar feeling of the neighbours
concerning him had caused her involuntarily to associate with him
the idea of something "no canny." Not the less, when she heard from
Cosmo what sort of man his new master was, would she have given all
she possessed to learn of him. And before long, she had her chance.
Old Dorothy, Mr. Simon's servant and housekeeper was one day taken
ill, and Cosmo mentioning the fact in Aggie's hearing, she ran,
with a mere word to her mother, and not a moments' cogitation, to
offer her assistance till she was better.

It turned out that "auld Dorty," as the neighbours called her, not
without some hint askance at the quality of her temper, was not
very seriously ailing, yet sufficiently so to accept a little help
for the rougher work of the house; and while Aggie was on her knees
washing the slabs of the passage that led through to the back door,
the master, as she always called him now that Cosmo was his pupil,
happened to come from his room, and saw and addressed her. She rose
in haste, mechanically drying her hands in her apron.

"How's the algebra getting on, Agnes?" he said.

"Naething's gettin' on verra weel sin' maister Cosmo gaed frae the
schuil, sir. I dinna seem to hae the hert for the learnin' 'at I
had sae lang as he was there, sae far aheid o' me, but no
a'thegither oot 'o my sicht, like.--It soon's a conceitit kin' o' a
thing to say, but I'm no meanin' onything o' that natur', sir."

"I understand you very well, Agnes," returned the master. "Would
you like to have some lessons with me? I don't say along with
Cosmo; you would hardly be able for that at present, I fancy--but
at such times as you could manage to come--odd times, when you were
not wanted."

"There's naething upo' the airth, sir," said Aggie, "'at I wad like
half sae weel. Thae jist a kin' o' a hoonger upo' me forun'erstan'in'
things. Its frae bein' sae muckle wi' Maister Cosmo,
I'm thinkin'--ever sin' he was a bairn, ye ken, sir; for bein' twa
year aul'er nor him, I was a kin' o' a wee nursie til him; an' ever
sin' syne we hae had nae secrets frae ane anither; an' ye ken what
he's like--aye wantin' to win at the boddom o' things, an' that's
infeckit me, sae 'at I canna rist whan I see onybody un'erstan'in'
a thing, till I set aboot gettin' a grip o' 't mysel'."

"A very good infection to take, Agnes," replied the master, with a
smile of thorough pleasure, "and one that will do more for you than
the cow-pox. Come to me as often as you can--and as you like. I
think I shall be able to tell you some things to make you happier."

"'Deed, sir. I'm in no want o' happiness! O' that I hae full mair
nor I deserve; but I want a heap for a' that. I canna say what it
is, for the hoonger is for what I haena."

"Another of God's children!" said the master to himself, "and full
of the groanings of the spirit! The wilderness and the solitary
place shall be glad for them."

He often quoted scripture as the people of the New Testament
did--not much minding the original application of the words. Those
that are filled with the spirit, have always taken liberties with
the letter.

That very evening before she went home, they had a talk about
algebra, and several other things. Agnes went no more to school,
but almost every day to see the master, avoiding the hours when
Cosmo would be there.




CHAPTER XII.

GRANNIE'S GHOST STORY.


Things went on very quietly. The glorious days of harvest came and
went, and left the fields bare for the wintry revelling of great
blasts. The potatoes were all dug up, and again buried--deeper than
before, in pits, with sheets of straw and blankets of earth to
protect them from the biting of the frost. Their stalks and many
weeds with them were burned, and their ashes scattered. Some of the
land was ploughed, and some left till the spring. Before the autumn
rains the stock of peats was brought from the hill, where they had
been drying through the hot weather, and a splendid stack they
made. Coal was carted from the nearest sea-port, though not in such
quantity as the laird would have liked, for money was as scarce as
ever, and that is to put its lack pretty strongly. Everything
available for firewood was collected, and, if of any size, put
under saw and axe, then stored in the house. Good preparation was
thus made for the siege of the winter.

In their poverty, partly no doubt from consideration, they seemed
to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head,
withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the
summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept
in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to
desert-haunting Abraham. The human heart, like the human body, can
live without much variety to feed on, but its house is built on a
lordly scale for hospitality, and is capable of welcoming every new
face as a new revelation. Steadily Cosmo went to his day's work
with the master, steadily returned to his home; saw nothing new,
yet learned day by day, as he went and came, to love yet more, not
the faces of the men and women only, but the aspects of the country
in which he was born, to read the lines and shades of its varying
beauty: if it was not luxuriant enough to satisfy his ideal, it had
yet endless loveliness to disclose to him who already loved enough
to care to understand it. When the autumn came, it made him sad,
for it was not in harmony with the forward look of his young life,
which, though not ambitious, was vaguely expectant. But when the
hoar frosts appeared, when the clouds gathered, when the winds
began to wail, and the snows to fall, then his spirits rose to meet
the invading death. The old castle grew grayer and grayer outside,
but ruddier and merrier within. Oh, that awful gray and white
Scottish winter--dear to my heart as I sit and write with window
wide open to the blue skies of Italy's December!

Cosmo kept up his morning bath in "the pot" as long as he could,
but when sleet and rain came, and he could no longer dry himself by
running about, he did not care for it longer, but waited for the
snow to come in plenty, which was a sure thing, for then he had a
substitute. It came of the ambition of hardy endurance, and will
scarcely seem credible to some of my readers. In the depth of the
winter, when the cold was at its strongest, provided only the snow
lay pretty deep, he would jump from his warm bed with the first
glimmer of the morning, and running out, in a light gray with the
grayness of what is frozen, to a hollow on the hillside a few yards
from the house, there pull off his night-garment, and roll in the
snow, kneading handfuls of it, and rubbing himself with it all
over. Thus he believed he strengthened himself to stand the cold of
the day; and happily he was strong enough to stand the
strengthening, and so increased his hardihood: what would have been
death to many was to him invigoration. He knew nothing of boxing,
or rowing, or billiards, but he could run and jump well, and ride
very fairly, and, above all, he could endure. In the last harvest
he had for the first time wielded a scythe, and had held his own
with the rest, though, it must be allowed, with a fierce struggle.
The next spring--I may mention it here--he not only held the
plough, but by patient persistence and fearless compulsion trained
two young bulls to go in it, saving many weeks' labour of a pair of
horses. It filled his father with pride, and hope for his boy's
coming fight with the world. Even the eyes of his grandmother would
after that brighten at mention of him; she began to feel proud that
she had a share in the existence of the lad: if he did so well when
a hobbledehoy, he might be something by the time he was a man! But
one thing troubled her: he was no sportsman; he never went out to
hunt the otter, or to shoot hares or rabbits or grouse or
partridges! and that was unnatural! The fact was, ever since that
talk with the master about Linty, he could not bear to kill
anything, and was now and then haunted by the dying eyes of the
pigeon he shot the first time he handled a gun. The grandmother
thought it a defect in his manhood that he did not like shooting;
but, woman, and old woman as she was, his heart was larger and
tenderer than hers, and got in the way of the killing.

His father had never troubled his young life with details
concerning the family affairs; he had only let him know that, for
many years, through extravagance and carelessness in those who
preceded his father, things had been going from bad to worse. But
this was enough to wake in the boy the desire, and it grew in him
as he grew, to rescue what was left of the estate from its burdens,
and restore it to independence and so to honour. He said nothing of
it, however, to his father, feeling the presumption of proposing to
himself what his father had been unable to effect.

He went oftener to the village this winter than before, and rarely
without going to see Mistress Forsyth, whom he, like the rest,
always called Grannie. She suffered much from rheumatism, which she
described as a sorrow in her bones. But she never lost her
patience, and so got the good of a trouble which would seem
specially sent as the concluding discipline of old people for this
world, that they may start well in the next. Before the winter set
in, the laird had seen that she was provided with peats--that much
he could do, because it cost him nothing but labour; and indeed
each of the several cart-loads Cosmo himself had taken, with mare
Linty between the shafts. But no amount of fire could keep the
frost out of the old woman's body, or the sorrow out of her bones.
Hence she had to be a good deal in bed, and needed her
great-grandchild, Agnes, to help her to bear her burden. When the
bitter weather came, soon after Christmas, Agnes had to be with her
almost constantly. She had grown a little graver, but was always
cheerful, and, except for anxiety lest her mother should be
overworked, or her father take cold, seemed as happy with her
grandmother as at home.

One afternoon, when the clouds were rising, and the wind blew keen
from the north, Cosmo left Glenwarlock to go to the village--mainly
to see Grannie. He tramped the two miles and a half in all the joy
of youthful conflict with wind and weather, and reached the old
woman's cottage radiant. The snow lay deep and powdery with frost,
and the struggle with space from a bad footing on the world had
brought the blood to his cheeks and the sparkle to his eyes. He
found Grannie sitting up in bed, and Aggie getting her tea--to
which Cosmo contributed a bottle of milk he had carried her--an
article rare enough in the winter when there was so little grass
for the cows. Aggie drew the old woman's chair to the fire for him,
and he sat down and ate barley-meal scons, and drank tea with them.
Grannie was a little better than usual, for every disease has its
inconsistencies, and pain will abate before an access; and so, with
storm at hand, threaded with fiery flying serpents for her bones,
she was talking more than for days previous. Her voice came feebly
from the bed to Cosmo's ears, while he leaned back in her great
chair, and Aggie was removing the tea-things.

"Did ye ever dream ony mair aboot the auld captain, Cosmo?" she
asked: from her tone he could not tell whether she spoke seriously,
or was amusing herself with the idea.

"No ance," he answered. "What gars ye speir, Grannie?"

She said nothing for a few minutes, and Cosmo thought she had
dismissed the subject. Aggie had returned to her seat, and he was
talking with her about Euclid, when she began again; and this time
her voice revealed that she was quite in earnest.

"Ye're weel nigh a man noo, Cosmo," she said. "A body may daur
speyk to ye aboot things a body wadna be wullin' to say till a
bairn for fear o' frichtin' o' 'im mair nor the bit hert o' 'm cud
stan'. Whan a lad can warstle wi' a pair o' bills, an' get the
upper han' o' them, an' gar them du his biddin', he wadna need to
tak fricht at--" There she paused.

This preamble was enough in itself--not exactly to bring Cosmo's
heart into his mouth, but to send a little more of his blood from
his brain to his heart than was altogether welcome there. His
imagination, however, was more eager than apprehensive, and his
desire to hear far greater than his dread of the possible
disclosure. Neither would he have turned his back on any terror,
though he knew well enough what fear was. He looked at Aggie as
much as to say, "What can be coming?" and she stared at him in turn
with dilated pupils, as if something dreadful were about to be
evoked by the threatened narrative. Neither spoke a word, but their
souls got into their ears, and there sat listening. The hearing was
likely to be frightful when so prefaced by Grannie.

"There's no guid ever cam' o' ca'in' things oot o' their ain
names," she began, "an" it's my min' 'at gien ever ae man was a
willain, an' gien ever ae man had rizzon no to lie quaiet whan he
was doon, that man was your father's uncle--his gran' uncle, that
is, the auld captain, as we ca'd him. Fowk said he saul' his sowl
to the ill ane: hoo that may be, I wadna care to be able to tell;
but sure I am 'at his was a sowl ill at ease,--baith here an'
herefter. Them 'at sleepit aneth me, for there was twa men-servan's
aboot the hoose that time--an' troth there was need o' them an'
mair, sic war the gangin's on! an' they sleepit whaur I'm tauld ye
sleep noo, Cosmo--them 'at sleepit there tellt me 'at never a nicht
passed 'at they h'ardna soons 'aneth them 'at there was no mainner
o' accoontin' for nor explainin', as fowks sae set upo' duin'
nooadays wi' a'thing. That explainin' I canna bide: it's jist a
love o' leasin', an' taks the bluid oot o' a'thing, lea'in' life as
wersh an' fusionless as kail wantin' saut. Them 'at h'ard it tellt
me 'at there was NO accoontin', as I tell you, for the reemish they
baith h'ard--whiles douf-like dunts, an' whiles speech o' mou',
beggin' an' groanin' as gien the enemy war bodily present to the
puir sinner."

"He micht hae been but jabberin' in's sleep," Cosmo, with his love
of truth, ventured to suggest: Aggie gave him a nudge of warning.

"Ay micht it," returned the old woman with calm scorn; "an' it
micht nae doobt hae been snorin', or a cat speykin' wi' man's
tongue, or ony ane o' mony things 'cep' the trowth 'at ye're no
wullin' to hear."

"I AM wullin'--to hear the warst trowth ye daur tell me, Grannie,"
cried Cosmo, terrified lest he had choked the fountain. He was more
afraid of losing the story than of hearing the worst tale that
could be told even about the room he slept in last night, and must
go back to sleep in again to-night.

Grannie was mollified, and went on.

"As I was sayin', he micht weel be ill at ease, the auld captain,
gien ae half was true 'at was said o' 'im; but I 'maist think yer
father coontit it priven 'at he had led a deevilich life amo' the
pirates. Only, gien he did, whaur was the wauges o' his ineequity?
Nae doobt he got the wauges 'at the apostle speyks o', whilk is, as
ye well ken, deith--'the wauges o' sin is deith.' But, maistly,
sic-like sinners get first wauges o' anither speckle frae the
maister o' them. For troth! he has no need to be near in's dealin's
wi' them, seein' there's nae buyin' nor sellin' whaur he is, an' a'
the gowd he has doon yon'er i' the booels o' the yird, wad jist lie
there duin' naething, gien he sent na 't up abune, whaur maist
pairt it works his wull. Na, he seldom scrimps 't to them 'at
follows his biddin'. But i' this case, whaur, I say, was the
wauges? Natheless, he aye carriet himsel' like ane 'at cud lay doon
the law o' this warl', an cleemt no sma' consideration; yet was
there never sign or mark o' the proper fundation for sic assumption
o' the richt to respec'.

"It turnt oot, or cam to be said,'at the Englishman 'at fowk
believed to hae killt him, was far-awa' sib to the faimily, an' the
twa had come thegither afore, somewhaur i' foreign pairts. But
that's naither here nor there, nor what for he killed him, or wha's
faut was that same: aboot a' that, naething was ever kent for
certain.

"Weel, it was an awfu' like thing, ye may be sure, to quaiet fowk,
sic as we was a'--'cep' for the drinkin' an' sic like, sin' ever
the auld captain cam, wi' his reprobat w'ys--it was a sair thing,
I'm sayin', to hae a deid man a' at ance upo' oor han's; for, lat
the men du 'at they like, the warst o' 't aye comes upo' the women.
Lat a bairn come to mischance, or the guidman turn ower the kettle,
an' it's aye,'Rin for Jean this, or Bauby that,' to set richt what
they hae set wrang. Even whan a man kills a body, it's the women
hae to mak the best o' 't, an' the corp luik dacent. An' there's
some o' them no that easy to mak luik dacent! Troth, there's mony
ane luiks bonnier deid nor alive, but that wasna the case wi' the
auld captain, for he luikit as gien he had dee'd cursin', as he
bude to du, gien he dee'd as he lived. His moo' was drawn fearfu',
as gien his last aith had chokit him. Nae doobt they said 'at wad
hae't they kent,'at hoo that's the w'y wi' deith frae slayin' wi'
the swoord; but I wadna hear o' 't; I kenned better. An' whether he
had fair play or no, the deith he dee'd was a just ane; for them
'at draws the swoord maun periss by the swoord. Whan they faun'
'im, the richt ban' o' the corp was streekit oot, as gien he was
cryin' to somebody rinnin' awa' to bide an' tak 'im wi' 'im. But
there was anither at han' to tak 'im wi' 'im. Only, gien he tuik
'im that same nicht, he cudna hae carried him far.'Deed, maybe, the
auld sinner was ower muckle aven for HIM.

"They brocht him hame, an' laid the corp o' him upo' his ain bed,
whaur, I reckon, up til this nicht, he had tried mair nor he had
sleepit. An' that verra nicht, wha sud I see--but I'm jist gaein'
to tell ye a' aboot it, an' hoo it was, an' syne ye can say
yersel's. Sin' my ain auld mither dee'd, I haena opent my moo' to
mortal upo' the subjec'."

The eyes of the two listeners were fixed upon the narrator in the
acme of expectation. A real ghost-story, from the lips of one they
knew, and must believe in, was a thing of dread delight. Like
ghosts themselves, they were all-unconscious of body, rapt in
listening.

"Ye may weel believe," resumed the old woman after a short pause,
"at nane o' 's was ower wullin' to sit wi' the corp oor lane, for,
as I say, he wasna a comely corp to be a body's lane wi'. Sae auld
auntie Jean an' mysel', we agreed 'at we wad tak the thing upo'
oorsel's, for, huz twa, we cud lippen til ane anither no to be ower
feart to min' 'at there was twa o' 's. There hadna been time yet
for the corp to be laid intil the coffin, though, i' the quaiet o'
the mirk, we thoucht, as we sat, we cud hear the tap-tappin' as
they cawed the braiss nails intil't, awa' ower in Geordie Lumsden's
chop, at the Muir o' Warlock, a twa mile, it wad be. We war
sittin', auntie Jean an' mysel', i' the mids o' the room, no wi'
oor backs til the bed, nor yet wi' oor faces, for we daurna turn
aither o' them til't. I' the ae case, wha cud tell what we micht
see, an' i' the ither, wha cud tell what micht be luikin' at hiz!
We war sittin', I say, wi' oor faces to the door o' the room, an'
auntie was noddin' a wee, for she was turnin' gey an' auld, but _I_
was as wide waukin' an ony baudrins by a moose-hole, whan suddent
there came a kin' o' a dirlin' at the sneck,'at sent the verra sowl
o' me up intil the garret o' my heid; an' afore I had time to ken
hoo sair frichtit I was, the door begud to open; an', glower as I
wad, no believin' my ain e'en, open that door did, langsome,
langsome, quaiet, quaiet, jist as my auld Grannie used to tell o'
the deid man comin' doon the lum, bit an' bit, an' jinin' thegither
upo' the flure. I was turnt to stane, like,'at I didna believe I
cud hae fa'en frae the cheir gien I had swarfed clean awa'. An' eh
but it tuik a time to open that door! But at last, as sure as ye
sit there, you twa, an' no anither,--"--At the word, Cosmo's heart
came swelling up into his throat, but he dared not look round to
assure himself that they were indeed two sitting there and not
another--"in cam the auld captain, ae fit efter anither! Speir
gien I was sure o' 'im! Didna I ken him as weel as my ain
father--as weel's my ain minister--as weel as my ain man? He cam
in, I say, the auld captain himsel'--an' eh, sic an evil luik!--the
verra luik deith--frozen upo' the face o' the corp! The live bluid
turned to dubs i' my inside. He cam on an' on, but no straucht for
whaur we sat, or I dinna think the sma' rizzon I had left wad hae
bidden wi' me, but as gien he war haudin' for 's bed. To tell God's
trowth, for I daurna lee, for fear o' haein' to luik upo' 's like
again, my auld auntie declaret efterhin 'at she saw naething. She
bude til hae been asleep, an' a mercifu' thing it was for her, puir
body! but she didna live lang efter. He made straucht for the bed,
as I thoucht.' The Lord preserve's!' thoucht I,' is he gaein to lie
doon wi' 's ain corp?' but he turnt awa', an' roon' the fit o' the
bed to the ither side o' 't, an' I saw nae mair; an' for a while,
auntie Jean sat her lane wi' the deid, for I lay upo' the flure,
an' naither h'ard nor saw. But whan I came to mysel', wasna I
thankfu' 'at I wasna deid, for he micht hae gotten me than, an'
there was nae sayin' what he micht hae dune til me! But, think ye,
wad auntie Jean believe 'at I had seen him, or that it was onything
but a dream 'at had come ower me, atween waukin' an' sleepin'! Na,
no she! for she had sleepit throu' 't hersel'!"

For some time silence reigned, as befitted the close of such a
story. Nothing but the solemn tick of the tall clock was to be
heard. On and on it went, as steady as before. Ghosts were nothing
special to the clock: it had to measure out the time both for
ghosts and unghosts.

"But what cud the ghaist hae been wantin'? No the corp, for he
turnt awa', ye tell me, frae hit," Cosmo ventured at length to
remark.

"Wha can say what ghaists may be efter, laddie! But, troth to tell,
whan ye see live fowk sae gien ower to the boady,'at they're never
happy but whan they're aitin' or drinkin' or sic like--an' the auld
captain was seldom throu' wi' his glaiss,'at he wasna cryin' for
the whisky or the het watter for the neist--whan the boady's the
best half o' them, like, an' they maun aye be duin' something wi'
't, ye needna won'er 'at the ghaist o' ane sic like sud fin'
himsel' geyan eerie an' lonesome like, wantin' his seck to fill,
an' sae try to win back to hae a luik hoo it was weirin'."

"But he gaed na to the corp," Cosmo insisted.

"'Cause he wasna alloot," said Grannie. "He wad hae been intil't
again in a moment, ye may be certain, gien it had been in his
pooer. But the deevils cudna gang intil the swine wantin' leave."

"Ay, I see," said Cosmo.

"But jist ye speir at yer new maister," Grannie went on, "what he
thinks aboot it, for I ance h'ard him speyk richt wise words to my
gudeson, James Gracie, anent sic things. I min' weel 'at he said
the only thing 'at made agen the viouw I tiuk--though I spakna o'
the partic'lar occasion--was,'at naebody ever h'ard tell o' the
ghaist o' an alderman, wha they say's some grit Lon'on man, sair
gien to the fillin' o' the seck."




CHAPTER XIII.

THE STORM-GUEST.


Again a deep silence descended on the room. The twilight had long
fallen, and settled down into the dark. The only thing that
acknowledged and answered the clock was the red glow of the peats
on the hearth. To Cosmo, as he sat sunk in thought, the clock and
the fire seemed to be holding a silent talk. Presently came a great
and sudden blast of wind, which roused Cosmo, and made him bethink
himself that it was time to be going home. And for this there was
another reason besides the threatening storm: he had the night
before begun to read aloud one of Sir Walter's novels to the
assembled family, and Grizzie would be getting anxious for another
portion of it before she went to bed.

"I'm glaid to see ye sae muckle better, Grannie," he said. "I'll
say gude nicht noo, an' luik in again the morn."

"Weel, I'm obleeged to ye," replied the old woman. "There's been
but feow o' yer kin, be their fau'ts what they micht, wad forget
ony 'at luikit for a kin' word or a kin' deed!--Aggie, lass, ye'll
convoy him a bittock, willna ye?"

All the few in whom yet lingered any shadow of retainership towards
the fast-fading chieftainship of Glenwarlock, seemed to cherish the
notion that the heir of the house had to be tended and cared for
like a child--that was what they were in the world for. Doubtless a
pitying sense of the misfortunes of the family had much to do with
the feeling.

"There's nae occasion," and "I'll du that," said the two young
people in a breath.

Cosmo rose, and began to put on his plaid, crossing it over back
and chest to leave his arms free: that way the wind would get least
hold on him. Agnes went to the closet for her plaid also--of the
same tartan, and drawing it over her head and pinning it under her
chin, was presently ready for the stormy way. Then she turned to
Cosmo, and was pinning his plaid together at the throat, when the
wind came with a sudden howl, rushed down the chimney, and drove
the level smoke into the middle of the room. It could not shake the
cottage--it was too lowly: neither could it rattle its
windows--they were not made to open; but it bellowed over it like a
wave over a rock, and as in contempt blew its smoke back into its
throat.

"It'll be a wull nicht, I'm doobtin', Cosmo," said Agnes; "an' I
wuss ye safe i' the ingle-neak wi' yer fowk."

Cosmo laughed. "The win' kens me," he said.

"Guid farbid!" cried the old woman from the bed.

[Illustration: THE CLOCK AND THE PIPE SEEMED TO BE HOLDING A SILENT
TALK.]

"Kenna ye wha's the prence o' 't, laddie? Makna a jeist o' the
pooers 'at be."

"Gien they binna ordeent o' God, what are they but a jeist?"
returned Cosmo. "Eh, but ye wad mak a bonny munsie o' me, Grannie,
to hae me feart at the deil an' a'! I canna a' thegither help it
wi' the ghaists, an' I'm ashamed o' mysel' for that; but I AM NOT
gaein to heed the deil. I defy him an' a' his works. He's but a
cooerd, ye ken, Grannie, for whan ye resist him, he rins."

She made no answer. Cosmo shook hands with her, and went, followed
by Agnes, who locked the door behind her, and put the key in her
pocket.

It was indeed a wild night. The wind was rushing from the north,
full of sharp stinging pellicles, something between snow-flakes and
hail-stones. Down the wide village street it came right in their
faces. Through it, as through a thin shifting sheet, they saw on
both sides the flickering lights of the many homes, but before them
lay darkness, and the moor, a chaos, a carnival of wind and snow.
Worst of all the snow on the road was not BINDING, and their feet
felt as if walking on sand. As long as the footing is good, one can
get on even in the face of a northerly storm; but to heave with a
shifting fulcrum is hard. Nevertheless Cosmo, beholding with his
mind's eye the wide waste around him, rejoiced; invisible through
the snow, it was not the less a presence, and his young heart
rushed to the contest. There was no fear of ghosts in such a storm!
The ghosts might be there, but there was no time to heed them, and
that was as good as their absence--perhaps better, if we knew all.

"Bide a wee, Cosmo," cried Agnes, and leaving him in the middle of
the street where they were walking, she ran across to one of the
houses, and entered--lifting the latch without ceremony. No
neighbour troubled another to come and open the door; if there was
no one at home, the key in the lock outside showed it.

Cosmo turned his back to the wind, and stood waiting. From the door
which Aggie opened, came through the wind and snow the sound of the
shoemaker's hammer on his lapstone.

"Cud ye spare the mistress for an hoor, or maybe twa an' a half, to
haud Grannie company, John Nauchty?" said Agnes.

"Weel that," answered the SUTOR, hammering away. He intended no
reflection on the bond that bound the mistress and himself.

"I dinna see her," said Aggie.

"She'll be in in a minute. She's run ower the ro'd to get a doup o'
a can'le," returned the man.

"Gien she dinna the speedier, she'll hae to licht it to fin' her
ain door," said Agnes merrily, to whom the approaching fight with
the elements was as welcome as to Cosmo. She had made up her mind
to go with him all the way, let him protest as he might.

"Ow na! she'll hearken, an' hear the hemmer," replied the
shoemaker.

"Weel, tak the key, an' ye winna forget, John?" said Aggie, laying
the key amongst his tools. "Grannie's lyin' there her lee-lane, an'
gien the hoose was to tak fire, what wad come o' her?"

"Guid forbid onybody sud forget Grannie!" rejoined the man
heartily; "but fire wad hae a sma' chance the nicht."

Agnes thanked and left him. All the time he had not missed a single
stroke of his hammer on the benleather between it and his lapstone.

When she rejoined Cosmo, where he stood leaning his back against
the wind in the middle of the road,

"Come nae farther, Aggie," he said. "It's an ill nicht, an' grows
waur. There's nae guid in't naither, for we winna hear ane anither
speyk ohn stoppit, an' turnt oor backs til't. Gang to yer Grannie;
she'll be feart aboot ye."

"Nae a bit. I maun see ye oot o' the toon."

They fought their way along the street, and out on the open moor,
the greater part of which was still heather and swamp. Peat-bog and
ploughed land was all one waste of snow. Creation seemed but the
snow that had fallen, the snow that was falling, and the snow that
had yet to fall; or, to put it otherwise, a fall of snow between
two outspread worlds of snow.

"Gang back, noo, Aggie," said Cosmo again. "What's the guid o' twa
whaur ane only need be, an' baith hae to fecht for themsel's?"

"I'm no gaein' back yet," persisted Aggie. "Twa's better at
onything nor ane himblane. The sutor's wife's gaein' in to see
Grannie, an' Grannie 'll like her cracks a heap better nor mine.
She thinks I hae nae mair brains nor a hen,'cause I canna min' upo'
things at war nearhan' forgotten or I was born."

Cosmo desisted from useless persuasion, and they struggled on
together, through the snow above and the snow beneath. At this
Aggie was more than a match for Cosmo. Lighter and smaller, and
perhaps with larger lungs in proportion, she bored her way through
the blast better than he, and the moment he began to expostulate,
would increase the distance between them, and go on in front where
he knew she could not hear a word he said.

At last, being then a little ahead, she turned her back to the
wind, and waited for him to come up.

"Noo, ye've had eneuch o' 't!" he said. "An' I maun turn an' gang
back wi' you, or ye'll never win hame."

Aggie broke into a loud laugh that rang like music through the
storm.

"A likly thing!" she cried; "an' me wi' my back a' the ro'd to the
win'! Gang back yersel', Cosmo, an' sit by Grannie's fire, an' I'll
gang on to the castle, an' lat them ken whaur ye are. Gien ye dinna
that, I tell ye ance for a', I'm no gaein' to lea' ye till I see ye
safe inside yer ain wa's."

"But Aggie," reasoned Cosmo, with yet greater earnestness, "what'll
ye gar fowk think o' me,'at wad hae a lassie to gang hame wi' me,
for fear the win' micht blaw me intil the sea? Ye'll bring me to
shame, Aggie."

"A lassie! say ye?" cried Aggie,--"I think I hear ye!--an' me auld
eneuch to be yer mither! Is' tak guid care there s' be nae affront
intil 't. Haud yer hert quaiet, Cosmo; ye'll hae need o' a' yer
breath afore ye win to yer ain fireside."

As she spoke, the wind pounced upon them with a fiercer gust than
any that had preceded. Instinctively they grasped each other, as if
from the wish, if they should be blown away, to be blown away
together.

"Eh, that's a rouch ane!" said Cosmo, and again Aggie laughed
merrily.

While they stood thus, with their backs to the wind, the moon rose.
Far indeed from being visible, she yet shed a little glimmer of
light over the plain, revealing a world as wild as ever the frozen
north outspread--as wild as ever poet's despairing vision of
desolation. I see it! I see it! but how shall I make my reader see
it with me? It was ghastly. The only similitude of life was the
perplexed and multitudinous motion of the drifting, falling flakes.
No shape was to be seen, no sound but that of the wind to be heard.
It was like the dream of a delirious child after reading the
ancient theory of the existence of the world by the rushing
together of fortuitous atoms. Wan and thick, tumultuous,
innumerable to millions of angels, an interminable tempest of
intermingling and indistinguishable vortices, it stretched on and
on, a boundless hell of cold and shapelessness--white thinned with
gray, and fading into gray blackness, into tangible darkness.

The moment the fury of the blast abated, Agnes turned, and without
a word, began again her boring march, forcing her way through the
palpable obstructions of wind and snow. Unable to prevent her,
Cosmo followed. But he comforted himself with the thought, that, if
the storm continued he would get his father to use his authority
against her attempting a return before the morning. The sutor's
wife was one of Grannie's best cronies, and there was no fear of
her being deserted through the night.

Aggie kept the lead she had taken, till there could be no more
question of going on, and they were now drawing near the road that
struck off to the left, along the bank of the Warlock river,
leading up among the vallies and low hills, most of which had once
been the property of the house of Warlock, when she stopped
suddenly, this time without turning her back to the wind, and Cosmo
was immediately beside her.

"What's yon, Cosmo?" she said--and Cosmo fancied consternation in
the tone. He looked sharply forward, and saw what seemed a glimmer,
but might be only something whiter in the whiteness. No! it was
certainly a light--but whether on the road he could not tell. There
was no house in that direction! It moved!--yet not as if carried in
human hand! Now it was gone! There it was again! There were two of
them--two huge pale eyes, rolling from side to side. Grannie's
warning about the Prince of the power of the air, darted into
Cosmo's mind. It was awful! But anyhow the devil was not to be run
from! That was the easiest measure, no doubt, yet not the less the
one impossible to take. And now it was plain that the something was
not away on the moor, but on the road in front of them, and coming
towards them. It came nearer and nearer, and grew vaguely
visible--a huge blundering mass--animal or what, they could not
tell, but on the wind came sounds that might be human--or animal
human--the sounds of encouragement and incitation to horses. And
now it approached no more. With common impulse they hastened
towards it.

It was a travelling carriage--a rare sight in those parts at any
time, and rarer still in winter. Both of them had certainly seen
one before, but as certainly, never a pair of lighted
carriage-lamps, with reflectors to make of them fiendish eyes. It
had but two horses, and, do what the driver could, which was not
much, they persisted in standing stock-still, refusing to take a
single step farther. Indeed they could not. They had tried and
tried, and done their best, but finding themselves unable to move
the carriage an inch, preferred standing still to spending
themselves in vain struggles, for all their eight legs went
slipping about under them.

Cosmo looked up to the box. The driver was little more than a boy,
and nearly dead with cold. Already Aggie had a forefoot of the near
horse in her hand. Cosmo ran to the other.

"Their feet's fu' o' snaw," said Aggie.

"Ay; it's ba'd hard," said Cosmo. "They maun hae come ower a saft
place: it wadna ba' the nicht upo' the muir."

"Hae ye yer knife, Cosmo?" asked Aggie.

Here a head was put out of the carriage-window. It was that of a
lady in a swansdown travelling-hood. She had heard an
unintelligible conversation--and one intelligible word. They must
be robbers! How else should they want a knife in a snowstorm? Why
else should they have stopped the carriage? She gave a little cry
of alarm. Aggie dropped the hoof she held, and went to the window.

"What's yer wull, mem?" she asked.

"What's the matter?" the lady returned in a trembling voice, but
not a little reassured at the sight, as she crossed the range of
one of the lamps, of the face of a young girl. "Why doesn't the
coachman go on?"

"He canna, mem. The horse canna win throu the snaw. They hae ba's
o' 't i' their feet, an' they canna get a grip wi' them, nae mair
nor ye cud yersel', mem, gien the soles o' yer shune war roon' an'
made o'ice. But we'll sune set that richt.--Hoo far hae ye come,
mem, gien I may speir? Aigh, mem, its an unco nicht!"

The lady did not understand much of what Aggie said, for she was
English, returning from her first visit to Scotland, but, half
guessing at her question, replied, that they had come from
Cairntod, and were going on to Howglen. She told her also, now
entirely reassured by Aggie's voice, that they had been much longeron
the way than they had expected, and were now getting anxious.

"I doobt sair gien ye'll win to Howglen the nicht," said Aggie.--
"But ye're not yer lone? "she added, trying to summon her English,
of which she had plenty of a sort, though not always at hand.

"My father is with me," said the lady, looking back into the dark
carriage, "but I think he is asleep, and I don't want to wake him
while we are standing still."

Peeping in, Aggie caught sight of somebody muffled, leaning back in
the other corner of the carriage, and breathing heavily.

To Aggie's not altogether unaccustomed eye, it seemed he might have
had more than was good for him in the way of refreshment.

Cosmo was busy clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The
driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on a
swinging perch.

"You'll never win to Howglen to-night, mem," said Aggie.

"We must put up where we can, then," answered the lady.

"I dinna know of a place nearer, fit for gentlefowk, mem."
"What are we to do then?" asked the lady, with subdued, but evident
anxiety.

"What's the guid o' haein' a father like that--sleepin' and snorin'
whan maist ye're in want o' 'im!" thought Aggie to herself; but
what she replied was, "Bide, mem, till we hear what Cosmo has to
say til't."

"That is a peculiar name!" remarked the lady, brightening at the
sound of it, for it could, she thought, hardly belong to a peasant.

"It's the name the lairds o' Glenwarlock hae borne for
generations," answered Aggie; "though doobtless it's no a name, as
the maister wad say, indigenous to the country. Ane o' them broucht
it frae Italy, the place whaur the Pop' o' Rom' bides."

"And who is this Cosmo whose advice you would have me ask?"

"He's the yoong laird himsel', mem:--eh! but ye maun be a stranger
no to ken the name o' Warlock."

"Indeed I am a stranger--and I can't help wishing, if there is much
more of this weather between us and England, that I had been more
of a stranger still."

"'Deed, mem, we hae a heap o' weather up here as like this as ae
snow-flake is til anither. But we tak what's sent, an' makna mony
remarks. Though to be sure the thing's different whan it's o' a
body's ain seekin'."

This speech--my reader may naturally think it not over-polite--was
happily not over-intelligible to the lady. Aggie, a little wounded
by the reflection on the weather of her country, had in her emotion
aggravated her Scottish tone.

"And where is this Cosmo? How are we to find him?"

"He'll come onsoucht, mem. It's only 'at he's busy cleanin' oot yer
puir horse' hivs 'at hedisna p'y his respec's to ye. But he'll be
blythe eneuch!"

"I thought you said he was a lord!" remarked the lady.

"Na, I saidna that, mem. He's nae lord. But he's a laird, an' some
lairds is better nor 'maist ony lords--an' HE'S Warlock o'
Glenwarlock--at least he wull be--an' may it be lang or come the
day."

Hard as the snow was packed in them, all the eight hoofs were now
cleared out with Cosmo's busy knife, which he had had to use
carefully lest he should hurt the frog. The next moment his head
appeared, a little behind that of Aggie, and in the light of the
lamp the lady saw the handsome face of a lad seemingly about
sixteen.

"Here he is, mem! This is the yoong laird. Ye speir at HIM what
ye're to du, and du jist as he tells ye," said Aggie, and drew
back, that Cosmo might take her place.

"Is that girl your sister?" asked the lady, with not a little
abruptness, for the _best bred_ are not always the most polite.

"No, my lady," answered Cosmo, who had learned from the lad on the
box her name and rank; "she is the daughter of one of my father's
tenants."

Lady Joan Scudamore thought it very odd that the youth should be on
such familiar terms with the daughter of one of his father's
tenants--out alone with her in the heart of a hideous storm! No
doubt the girl looked up to him, but apparently from the same
level, as one sharing in the pride of the family! Should she take
her advice, and seek his? or should she press on for Howglen? There
was, alas! no counsel to be had from her father just at present: if
she woke him, he would but mutter something not so much unlike an
oath as it ought to be, and go to sleep again!

"We want very much to reach Howglen--I think that is what you call
the place," she said.

"You can't get there tonight, I'm afraid," returned Cosmo. "The
road is, as you see, no road at all. The horses would do better if
you took their shoes off, I think--only then, if they came on a bit
of frozen dub, it might knock their hoofs to pieces in, such a
frost."

The lady glanced round at her sleeping companion with a look
expressive of no small perplexity.

"My father will make you welcome, my lady," continued Cosmo, "if
you will come with us. We can give you only what English people
must think poor fare, for we're not--"

She interrupted him.

"I should be glad to sit anywhere all night, where there was a
fire. I am nearly frozen."

"We can do a little better for you than that, though not so well as
we should like. Perhaps, as we can't make any show, we are the more
likely to do our best for your comfort."

Their pinched circumstances had at one time and another given rise
to conversation in which the laird and his son sought together to
sound the abysses of hospitality: the old-fashioned sententiousness
of the boy had in it nothing of the prig.

"You are very kind. I will promise to be comfortable," said the
lady.

She began to be a trifle interested in this odd specimen of the
Scotch calf.

"Welcome then to Glenwarlock!" said Cosmo. "Come, Aggie; tak ane o'
them by the heid: they're gaein' wi' 's.--We must turn the horses'
heads, my lady. I fear they won't like to face the wind they've
only had their backs to yet. I can't make out whether your driver
is half dead or half drunk or more than half frozen; but Aggie and
I will take care of them, and if he tumble off, nobody will be the
worse."

"What a terrible country!" said the lady to herself. "The coachmen
get drunk! the boys are prigs! there is no distinction between the
owners of the soil and the tenants who farm it! and it snows from
morning to night, and from one week's end to another!"

Aggie had taken the head of the near horse, and Cosmo took that of
the off one. Their driver said nothing, letting them do as they
pleased. With some difficulty, for they had to be more than
ordinarily cautious, the road being indistinguishable from the
ditches they knew here bounded it on both sides, they got the
carriage round. But when the weary animals received the tempest in
their faces, instead of pulling they backed, would have turned
again, and for some time were not to be induced to front it. Agnes
and Cosmo had to employ all their powers of persuasion, first to
get them to stand still, and then to advance a little. Gradually,
by leading, and patting, and continuous encouraging in language
they understood, they were coaxed as far as the parish road, and
there turning their sides to the wind, and no longer their eyes and
noses, they began to move with a little will of their own; for
horses have so much hope, that the mere fact of having made a turn
is enough to revive them with the expectation of cover and food and
repose. They reached presently a more sheltered part of the road,
and if now and then they had to drag the carriage through deeper
snow, they were no longer buffeted by the cruel wind or stung by
its frost-arrows.

All this time the gentleman inside slept--nor was it surprising;
for, lunching at the last town, and not finding the wine fit to
drink, he had fallen back upon an accomplishment of his youth, and
betaken himself to toddy. That he had found that at least fit to
drink was proved by the state in which he was now carried along.

They reached at last the steep ascent from the parish road to
Castle Warlock. The two conductors, though they had no leisure to
confer on the subject, were equally anxious as to whether the
horses would face it; but the moment their heads came round,
whether only that it was another turn with its fresh hope, or that
the wind brought some stray odour of hay or oats to their wide
nostrils, I cannot tell, but finding the ground tolerably clear,
they took to it with a will, and tore up with the last efforts of
all but exhausted strength, Cosmo and Aggie running along beside
them, and talking to them all the way. The only difficulty was to
get the lad on the box to give them their heads.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE CASTLE INN.


The noise of their approach, heard from the bottom of the ascent,
within the lonely winter castle, awoke profound conjecture, and
Grizzie proceeded to light the lanthern that she might learn the
sooner what catastrophe could cause such a phenomenon: something
awful must have taken place! Perhaps they had cut off the king's
head as they did in France! But such was the rapidity of the
horses' ascent in the hope of rest, and warmth, and supper, that
the carriage was in the close, and rattling up to the door, ere she
had got the long wick of the tallow candle to acknowledge the
dominion of fire. The laird rose in haste from his arm-chair, and
went to the door. There stood the chaise, in the cloud of steam
that rose from the quick-heaving sides of the horses. And there
were Cosmo and Agnes at the door of it, assisting somebody to
descend. The laird was never in a hurry. He was too thorough a
gentleman to trouble approach by uneasy advance, and he had no fear
of anything Cosmo had done. He stood therefore in the kitchen door,
calmly expectant.

A long-cloaked lady got down, and, turning from the assistant hand
of his son, came towards him--a handsome lady, tall and somewhat
stately, but weary, and probably in want of food as well as rest.
He bowed with old-fashioned worship, and held out his hand to
welcome her. She gave him hers graciously, and thanked him for the
hospitality his son had offered them.

"Come in, come in, madam," said the old man. "The fireside is the
best place for explanations. Welcome to a poor house but a warm
hearth! So much we can yet offer stranger-friends."

He led the way, and she followed him into the kitchen. On a small
piece of carpet before the fire, stood the two chairs of state,
each protected by a large antique screen. From hers the grandmother
rose with dignified difficulty, when she perceived the quality of
the entering stranger.

"Mother," said the laird, "it is not often we have the pleasure of
visitors at this time of the year!"

"The more is the rare foot welcome," answered she, and made Lady
Joan as low a courtesy as she dared: she could not quite reckon on
her power of recovery.

Lady Joan returned her salute, little impressed with the honour
done her, but recognizing that she was in the presence of a
gentlewoman. She took the laird's seat at his invitation, and,
leaning forward, gazed wearily at the fire.

The next moment, a not very pleasant-looking old man entered,
supported on one side by Cosmo and on the other by Agnes. They had
had no little difficulty in waking him up, and he entered vaguely
supposing they had arrived at an inn where they were to spend the
night. If his grumbling and swearing as he advanced was SOTTO VOCE,
the assuagement was owing merely to his not being sufficiently
awake to use more vigour. The laird left the lady and advanced to
meet him, but he took no notice of him, regarding his welcome as
the obsequiousness of a landlord, and turned shivering towards the
fire, where Grizzie was hastening to set him a chair.

"The fire's the best flooer i' the gairden, an' the pig's the best
coo i' the herdin', my lord," she said--an old saw to which his
lordship might have been readier to respond, had he remembered that
the PIG sometimes meant the stone jar that held the whisky.

As soon as Lord Mergwain was seated, Cosmo drew his father aside,
told him the names of their guests, and in what difficulty he had
found them, and added that the lady and the horses were sober
enough, but for the other two he would not answer.

"We have been spending some weeks at Canmore Castle in Ross-shire,
and are now on our way home," said Lady Joan to Mistress Warlock.

"You have come a long way round," remarked the old lady, not so
pleased with the manners of her male visitor, on whom she kept
casting, every now and then, a full glance.

"We have," replied Lady Joan. "We turned out of our way to visit an
old friend of papa's, and have been storm-bound till he--I mean
papa--could bear it no longer. We sent our servants on this
morning. They are, I hope, by this time, waiting us at Howglen."

The fire had been thawing the sleep out of Lord Mergwain, and now
at length he was sufficiently awake to be annoyed that his daughter
should hold so much converse with the folk of the inn.

"Can't you show us to a room?" he said gruffly, "and get us
something to eat?"

"We are doing the best we can for your lordship," replied the
laird. "But we were not expecting visitors, and one of the rooms
you will have to occupy, has not been in use for some time. In such
weather as this, it will take two or three hours of a good fire to
render it fit to sleep in. But I will go myself, and see that the
servant is making what haste she can."

He put on his hat over his night-cap, and made for the door.

"That's right, landlord," cried his lordship; "al--ways see to the
comfort of your guests yourself--But bless me! you don't mean we
have to go out of doors to reach our bedrooms?"

"I am afraid we cannot help it," returned the laird, arresting his
step. "There used to be a passage con--necting the two houses, but
for some reason or other--I never heard what--it was closed in my
father's time."

"He must have been an old fool!" remarked the visitor.

"My lord!"

"I said your father must have been an old fool," repeated his
lordship testily.

"You speak of my husband!" said Mistress Warlock, drawing herself
up with dignity.

"I can't help that. _I_ didn't give you away. Let's have some supper,
will you? I want a tumbler of toddy, and without something to eat it
might make me drunk."

Lady Joan sat silent, with a look half of contempt, half of
mischievous enjoyment on her handsome face. She had too often to
suffer from her father's rudeness not to enjoy its bringing him
into a scrape. But the laird was sharper than she thought him, and
seeing both the old man's condition and his mistake, humoured the
joke. His mother rose, trembling with indignation. He gave her his
arm, and conducted her to a stair which ascended immediately from
the kitchen, whispering to her on the way, that the man was the
worse of drink, and he must not quarrel with him. She retired
without leave-taking. He then called Cosmo and Agnes, who were
talking together in a low voice at the other end of the kitchen,
and taking them to Grizzie in the spare room, told them to help
her, that she might the sooner come and get the supper ready.

"I am afraid, my lord," he said, returning, "we are but poorly
provided for such guests as your lordship, but we will do what we
can."

"A horrible country!" growled his lordship; "but look you, I don't
want jaw--I want drink."

"What drink would your lordship have? If it be in my power--"

"I doubt, for all your talk, if you've got anything but your
miserable whisky!" interrupted Lord Mergwain.

Now the laird had some remnants of old wine in the once well stored
cellar, and, thankless as his visitor seemed likely to turn out,
his hospitality would not allow him to withhold what he had.

"I have a few bottles of claret," he said, "--if it should not be
over-old!--I do not understand much about wine myself."

"Let's have it up," cried his lordship. "We'll see. If you don't
know good wine, I do. I'm old enough for any wine."

The laird would have had more confidence in recommending his port,
which he had been told was as fine as any in Scotland, but he
thought claret safer for one in his lordship's condition--one who
having drunk would drink again. He went therefore to the wine
cellar, which had once been the dungeon of the castle, and brought
thence a most respectable-looking magnum, dirty as a burrowing
terrier, and to the eye of the imagination hoary with age. The eyes
of the toper glistened at the sight. Eagerly he stretched out both
hands towards it. They actually trembled with desire. Hardly could
he endure the delay of its uncorking. No sooner did the fine
promissory note of the discharge of its tompion reach his ear, than
he cried out, with the authority of a field-officer at least:

"Decant it. Leave the last glass in the bottom."

The laird filled a decanter, and set it before him.

"Haven't you a mangum-jug?"

"No, my lord."

"Then fill another decanter, and mind the last glass."

"I have not another decanter, my lord."

"Not got two decanters, you fool?" sneered his lordship, enraged at
not having the whole bottle set down to him at once. "But after
all," he resumed, "it mayn't be worth a rush, not to say a
decanter. Bring the bottle. Set it down. Here!--Carefully! Bring a
glass. You should have brought the glasses first. Bring three; I
like to change my glass. Make haste, will you!"

The laird did make haste, smiling at the exigence of his visitor.
Lord Mergwain listened to the glug-glug in the long neck of the
decanter as if it had been a song of love, and the moment it was
over, was holding the glass to his nose.

"Humph! Not much aroma here!" he growled, "I ought to have made the
old fool"--the laird must have been some fifteen years younger than
he.--"set it down before the fire--only what would have become of
me while it was thawing? It's no wonder though! By the time I've
been buried as long, I shall want thawing too!"

The wine, however, turned out more satisfactory to the palate of
the toper than to his nostrils--which in truth, so much had he
drunk that day, were at present incapable of doing it justice--and
he set himself to enjoy it. How that should be possible to a man
for whom the accompanying dried olives of memory could do so
little, I find it difficult to understand. One would think, to
enjoy his wine alone, a man must have either good memories or good
hopes: Lord Mergwain had forgotten the taste of hope; and most men
would shrink from touching the spring that would set a single scene
of such a panorama unrolling itself, as made up the past of Lord
Mergwain. However there he sat, and there he drank, and, truth to
tell, now and then smiled grimly.

The laird set a pair of brass candlesticks on the table--there were
no silver utensils any more in the house of Glenwarlock; years ago
the last of them had vanished--and retired to a wooden chair at the
end of the hearth, under the lamp that hung on the wall. But on his
way he had taken from a shelf an old, much-thumbed folio which Mr.
Simon had lent him--the journal of George Fox, and the panorama
which then for a while kept passing before his mind's eye, was not
a little different from that passing before Lord Mergwain's. What a
study to a spirit able to watch the unrolling of the two side by
side!

In a few minutes Grizzie entered, carrying a fowl newly killed, its
head almost touching the ground at the end of its long, limp neck.
She seated herself on a stool, somewhere about the middle of the
large space, and proceeded to pluck, and otherwise prepare it for
the fire. Having, last of all, split it open from end to end,
turning it into something like an illegible heraldic crest, she
approached the fire, the fowl in one hand, the gridiron in the
other.

"I doobt I maun get his lordship to sit a wee back frae the fire,"
she said. "I maun jist bran'er this chuckie for his supper."

Lady Joan had taken Mrs. Warlock's chair, and her father had taken
the laird's, and pulled it right in front of the fire, where a
small deal table supported his bottle, his decanter, and his three
glasses.

"What does the woman mean?" said his lordship. "--Oh! I see; a
spread-eagle!--But is my room not ready yet? Or haven't you one to
sit in? I don't relish feasting my nose so much in advance of my
other senses."

"Ow! nae fear o' yer lordship's nose,'cep' it be frae yer
lordship's hose, my lord!" said Grizzie, "for I doobt ye're
birstlin' yer lordship's shins! I'll tak the cratur oot to the
cairt-shed, an' sing' 't there first. But 'deed I wadna advise ye
to gang to yer room a minute afore ye need, for it winna be that
warm the nicht. I hae made a fire 'at's baith big an' bricht, an'
fit to ro'st Belzebub--an' I beg your pardon, laird--but it's some
days--I micht say ooks--sin' there was a fire intil 't, an' the
place needs time to tak the heat intil its auld neuks."

She might have said years not a few, instead of some weeks, but her
truthfulness did not drive her so far. She turned, and left the
house, carrying with her the fowl to singe.

"Here," said his lordship to his host, "move back this table and
chair a bit, will you? I don't relish having the old witch fussing
about my knees. What a mistake it is not to have rooms ready for
whoever may come!"

The laird rose, laid his book down, and moved the table, then
helped his guest to rise, moved his chair, and placed the screen
again betwixt him and the door. Lord Mergwain re-settled himself to
his bottle.

In the meantime, in the guest-chamber, which had for so long
entertained neither friend nor stranger, Cosmo and Aggie were
busy--too busy to talk much--airing the linen, dusting the
furniture, setting things tidy, and keeping up a roaring fire. For
this purpose the remnants of an old broken-down cart, of which the
axle was anciently greasy, had been fetched from the winter-store,
and the wood and peats together, with a shovelful of coal to give
the composition a little body, had made a glorious glow. But the
heat had hardly yet begun to affect sensibly the general atmosphere
of the place. It was a large room, the same size as the
drawing-room immediately under it, and still less familiar to
Cosmo. For, if the latter filled him with a kind of loving awe, the
former caused him a kind of faint terror, so that, in truth, even
in broad daylight, at no time was he willing to enter it. Now and
then he would open the door in passing, and for a moment stand
peering in, with a stricken, breath-bating enjoyment of the vague
atmosphere of dread, which, issuing, seemed to envelope him in its
folds; but to go in was too much, and he neither desired nor
endured even the looking in for more than a few seconds. For so
long it was to him like a page in a book of horrors: to go to the
other end of it, and in particular to approach the heavily
curtained bed, was more than he cared to do without cogent reason.
At the same time he rejoiced to think there was such a room in the
house, and attached to it an idea of measureless value--almost as
if it had a mysterious window that looked out upon the infinite.
The cause of this feeling was not to himself traceable. Until old
Grannie's story, he had heard no tale concerning it that he
remembered: he may have heard hints--a word dropped may have made
its impression, and roused fancies outlasting the memory of their
origin; for feelings, like memories of scents and sounds, remain,
when the related facts have vanished. What it was about the room
that scared him, he could not tell, but the scare was there. With a
companion like Aggie, however, even after hearing Grannie's
terrible reminiscence, he was able to be in the room without
experiencing worse than that same milder, almost pleasant degree of
dread, caused by the mere looking through the door into the strange
brooding silence of the place. But, I must confess, this applies
only to the space on the side of the bed next the fire. The bed
itself--not to mention the shadowy region beyond it--on which the
body of the pirate had lain, he could not regard without a sense of
the awfully gruesome: itself looked scared at its own consciousness
of the fact, and of the feeling it caused in the beholder.

[Illustration: Cosmo and Aggie Dusting]

In the strength of Aggie's presence, he was now able to take a
survey of the room such as never before. Over walls, floor, and
ceiling, his eyes were wandering, when suddenly a question arose on
which he desired certainty: "Is there," he said to himself, "a door
upo' the ither side o' the bed?"

"Did Grannie mak mention o' sic a door?" he asked himself next, and
could not be certain of the answer. He gazed around him, and saw no
door other than that by which they had entered, but at the head of
the bed, on the other side, was a space hidden by the curtain: it
might be there! When they went to put the sheets on the bed, he
would learn! He dared not go till then! "Dare not!" he repeated to
himself--and went at once.

He saw and trembled. It was the strangest feeling. If it was not
fear, it was something very like it, but with a mixture of wondrous
pleasure: there was the door! The curtains hid Aggie, and for a
moment he felt as if he were miles alone, and must rush back to the
refuge of her presence. But he would not yield to the
folly--compelled himself to walk to the door.

Whether he was more disappointed or relieved, he could not, the
first instant, have told: instead of a door, scarcely leaning
against the wall, was an old dark screen, in stamped leather, from
which the gilding was long faded. Disappointment and not relief was
then his only sense.

"Aggie," he called, still on the farther side of the bed--he called
gently, but trembled at the sound of his own voice--"did ye ever
hear--did Grannie mak mention o' a door 'at the auld captain gaed
oot at?"

"Whisht, whisht!" cried Aggie, in a loud hissing whisper, which
seemed to pierce the marrow of Cosmo's bones, "I rede ye say nae
thing aboot that i' this chaumer. Bide till we're oot o' 't: I hae
near dune. Syne we'll steek the door, an' lat the fire work. It'll
hae eneuch adu afore it mak the place warm; the cauld intil this
room's no a coamon ane. There's something by ord'nar intil 't."

Cosmo could no longer endure having the great, old, hearse-like bed
between him and Aggie. With a shiver in the very middle of his
body, he hastened to the other side: there lay the country of air,
and fire, and safe earthly homeliness: the side he left was the
dank region of the unknown, whose march-ditch was the grave.

They hurried with the rest of their work. Aggie insisted on being
at the farther side of the bed when they made it. Not another word
was spoken between them, till they were safe from the room, and had
closed its door behind them.

They went up to Cosmo's room, to make it something fitter for a
lady's bower. Opening a certain chest, they took from it--stored
there by his mother, Cosmo loved to think--another set of curtains,
clean blankets, fine sheets, and a counterpane of silk patchwork,
and put them all on the bed. With these, a white toilet-cover, and
a chair or two from the drawing-room, they so changed the room that
Cosmo declared he would not have known it. They then filled the
grate with as much fuel as it would hold, and running fast down the
two stairs, went again to the kitchen. At the door of it, however,
Aggie gave her companion the slip, and set out to go back to her
grannie at Muir o' Warlock.

Cosmo found the table spread for supper, the English lord sitting
with his wine before him, and the lady in his grandmother's chair,
leaning back, and yawning wearily. Lord Mergwain looked muddled,
and his daughter cast on him now and then a look that had in it
more of annoyance than affection. He was not now a very pleasant
lord to look on, whatever he might once have been. He was red-faced
and blear-eyed, and his nose, partly from the snuff which he took
in large quantity, was much injured in shape and colour: a closer
description the historical muse declines. His eyes had once been
blue, but tobacco, potations, revellings day and night--everything
but tears, had washed from them almost all the colour. It added
much to the strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore
a jet-black wig, so that to the unnatural came the untimely, and
enhanced the withered. His mouth, which was full of false teeth,
very white, and ill-fitting, had a cruel expression, and Death
seemed to look out every time he grinned.

As soon as he and Lady Joan were seated at the supper-table, with
Grizzie to wait upon them, the laird and Cosmo left the kitchen,
and went to the spare-room, for the laird judged that, in the
temper and mistake her father was in, the lady would be more
comfortable in their absence.

"Cosmo," he said, standing with his back to the fire, when he had
again made it up, "I cannot help feeling as if I had known that man
before. But I can recall no circumstances, and it may be a mere
fancy. YOU have never seen him before, my boy, have you?"

"I don't think I have, papa; and I don't care if I never see him
again," answered Cosmo. "The lady is pretty, but not very pleasant,
I think, though she is a lord's daughter."

"Ah, but such a lord, Cosmo!" returned his father. "When a man goes
on drinking like that, he is no better than a cheese under the
spigot of a wine-cask; he lives to keep his body well soaked--that
it may be the nicer, or the nastier for the worms. Cosmo, my son,
don't you learn to drown your soul in your body, like the poor Duke
of Clarence in the wine-butt."

The material part of us ought to keep growing gradually thinner, to
let the soul out when its time comes, and the soul to keep growing
bigger and stronger every day, until it bursts the body at length,
as a growing nut does its shell; when, instead, the body grows
thicker and thicker, lessening the room within, it squeezes the
life out of the soul, and when such a man's body dies, his soul is
found a shrivelled thing, too poor to be a comfort to itself or to
anybody else. Cosmo, to see that man drink, makes me ashamed of my
tumbler of toddy. And now I think of it, I don't believe it does me
any good; and, just to make sure that I am in earnest, from this
hour I will take no more.--"Then," he added, after a short pause,
"I shall be pretty sure you will not take it."

"Oh, papa!" cried Cosmo, "take your toddy all the same: I promise
you--and a Warlock will not break his word--never to taste strong
drink while I live."

"I should prefer the word of a man to that of a Warlock," said his
father. "A Warlock is nothing except he be a man. Some Warlocks
have been men."

From that day, I may here mention, the laird drank nothing but
water, much to the pleasure of Peter Simon, who was from choice a
water-drinker.

"What a howling night it is, Cosmo!" he resumed. "If that poor old
drinker had tried to get on to Howglen, he would have been frozen
to death; when the drink is out of the drunkard, he has nothing to
resist with."

By this time Lord Mergwain had had his supper, and had begun to
drink again. Grizzie wanted to get rid of him, that she might "redd
up" her kitchen. But he would not move. He was quite comfortable
where he was, he said, and though it was the kitchen! he wouldn't
stir a peg till he had finished the magnum. My lady might go when
she pleased; the magnum was better company than the whole houseful!

Grizzie was on the point of losing her temper with him altogether,
when the laird returned to the kitchen. He found her standing
before him with her two hands on her two hips, and lingered a
moment at the door to hear what she was saying.

"Na, na, my lord!" expostulated Grizzie, "I canna lea' ye here. Yer
lordship'll sune be past takin' care o' yersel--no 'at ye wad be a
witch at it this present! Ye wad be thinkin' ye was i' yer bed whan
ye was i' the mids' o' the middin', or pu'in' the blankets o' the
denk dub ower yer heid! Lord! my lord, yet micht set the hoose o'
fire, an' burn a', baith stable an' byre, an' horses an' cairts,
an' cairt-sheds, an' hiz a' to white aisse in oor nakit beds!"

"Hold your outlandish gibberish," returned his lordship. "Go and
fetch me some whisky. This stuff is too cold to go to sleep on in
such weather."

"Deil a drap or drap o' whusky, or oucht else, yer lordship's hae
fra my han' this nicht--nae mair nor gien ye war a bairn 'at wantit
poother to blaw himsel' up wi'! Ye hae had ower muckle a'ready,
gien ye war but cawpable o' un'erstan'in', or failin' that, o'
believin' an honest wuman 'at kens what state ye are in better nor
ye du yersel'.--A bonny lordship!" she muttered to herself as she
turned from him.

The laird thought it time to show himself, and went forward. Lord
Mergwain had understood not the half of what Grizzie said; but had
found sufficient provocation in the tone, and was much too angry
for any articulate attempt at speech beyond swearing.

"My lord," said the laird, "I think you will find your room
tolerably comfortable now: shall I have the pleasure of showing you
the way?"

"No, indeed! I'm not going to stir. Fetch me a bottle of your
whisky--that's pretty safe to be good."

"Indeed, my lord, you shall have no more drink to-night," said the
laird, and taking the bottle, which was nearly empty, carried it
from the table.

Though nearly past everything else, his guest was not yet too far
gone to swear with vigour, and the volley that now came pouring
from his outraged heart was such, that, for the sake of Grizzie and
Cosmo, the laird took the bottle again in his hand, and said, that,
if his lordship would drink it in his own room, he should have what
was left of it.

Not too drunk to see where his advantage lay, Lord Mergwain
yielded; the thunder of imprecation from bellowing sank to
growling, then to muttering, and the storm gradually subsided. The
laird gave him one arm, Cosmo another, and Grizzie came behind,
ready to support or push, and so in procession they moved from the
kitchen along the causeway, his lordship grumbling and slipping,
hauled, carried, and shoved--through the great door, as they called
it, up the stairs, past the drawing-room, and into "the muckle
chaumer." There he was deposited in an easy chair, before the huge
fire, and was fast asleep in a moment. Lady Joan had followed them,
and while they were in her father's room, had passed 'up to her
own, so that when they re-entered the kitchen, there was nobody
there. With a sigh of relief the laird sank into his mother's.
chair. After a little while, he sent Cosmo to bed, and, rejoicing
in the quiet, got again the journal of George Fox, and began to
read. When Grizzie had pottered about for a while, she too went to
bed, and the laird was alone.

When he had read about an hour, he thought it time to see after his
guest, and went to his room. He found him still asleep in his chair
before the fire; but he could not be left there through such a
night, for the fire would go out, and then a pack of wolves would
hardly be worse than the invading cold. It was by no means an easy
task to rouse him, however, and indeed remained in large measure
unaccomplished--so far so, that, after with much labour and
contrivance relieving him of his coat and boots, the laird had to
satisfy his hospitality with getting him into bed in the remainder
of his clothes. He then heaped fresh fuel on the fire, put out the
candles, and left him to what repose there might be for him.
Returning to his chair and his book, the laird read for another
hour, and then went to bed. His room was in the same block, above
that of his mother.




CHAPTER XV.

THAT NIGHT.


Cosmo's temporary quarters were in one of two or three chambers
above his own, formerly occupied by domestics, when there were many
more of them about the place. He went to bed, but, after about
three hours, woke very cold--so cold that he could not go to sleep
again. He got up, heaped on his bed everything protective he could
find, and tried again. But it was of no avail. Cosmo could keep
himself warm enough in the open air, or if he could not, he did not
mind; but to be cold in bed was more than he would willingly
endure. He got up again--with an idea. Why should he not amuse
himself, rather than lie shivering on couch inhospitable? When
anything disturbed him of a summer night, as a matter of course he
got up and went out; and although naturally he was less inclined on
such a night as this, when the rooks would be tumbling dead from
the boughs of the fir-trees, he yet would, rather than lie
sleepless with cold.

On the opposite side of the court, in a gap between the stable and
the byre, the men had heaped up the snow from the rest of the yard,
and in the heap Cosmo had been excavating. For snow-balling he had
little inclination, but the snow as a plastic substance, a thing
that could be compelled into shapes, was an endless delight to him,
and in connection with this mound he had conceived a new fancy,
which, this very night, but for the interruption of their visitors,
he would already have put to the test.

Into the middle of the mound he had bored a tunnel, and then
hollowed out what I may call a negative human shape--the mould, as
it were, of a man, of life-size, with his arms thrown out, and his
feet stretched straight, like one that had fallen, and lay in
weariness. His object was to illuminate it, in the hope of "a man
all light, a seraph man," shining through the snow. That very night
he had intended, on his return from Muir of Warlock, to light him
up; and now that he was driven out by the cold, he would brave, in his
own den, in the heart of the snow, the enemy that had roused
him, and make his experiment.

He dressed himself, crept softly out, and, for a preparation, would
have a good run. He trotted down the hill, beating his feet hard,
until he reached the more level road, where he set out at full
speed, and soon was warm as any boy need care to be.

About three o'clock in the morning, the laird woke suddenly,
without knowing why. But he was not long without knowing why he
should not go to sleep again. From a distance, as it seemed,
through the stillness of the night, in rapid succession, came three
distinct shrieks, one close on the other, as from the throat of a
human being in mortal terror. Never had such shrieks invaded his
ears. Whether or not they came from some part of his own house, he
could not tell. He sprung upon the floor, thinking first of his
boy, and next of the old man whom he had left drunk in his bed, and
dressed as fast as he could, expecting every moment a fresh assault
of horrible sound. But all he heard was the hasty running of far
off feet. He hurried down, passing carefully his mother's door, but
listening as he passed, in the hope of finding she had not been
disturbed. He heard nothing, and went on. But in truth the old lady
lay trembling, too terrified to move or utter a sound. In the next
room he heard Grizzie moving, as if, like himself, getting up with
all speed. Down to the kitchen he ran, in haste to get out and
reach the great door. But when he opened the kitchen door, a
strange sight met his eyes, and for a moment arrested him.

The night was dark as pitch, for, though the snow had ceased to
fall, great clouds of it yet filled the vault of the sky, and
behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come
soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap
of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint,
phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was
plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the
light had a vague SHADOWY resemblance--if one may use the word of a
shape of LIGHT--to the form of a man. There were the body and
out-stretched limbs of one who had cast himself supine in sorest
weariness, ready for the grave which had found him. The vision
flickered, and faded and revived, and faded again, while, in his
wonder forgetting for one brief moment the cries that had roused
him, the laird stood and gazed. It was the strangest, ghostliest
thing he had ever seen! Surely he was on the point of discovering
some phenomenon hitherto unknown! What Grizzie would have taken it
for, unhappily we do not know, for, just as the laird heard her
footsteps on the stair, and he was himself starting to cross the
frozen space between, the light, which had been gradually paling,
suddenly went out. With its disappearance he bethought himself, and
hurried towards the great door, with Grizzie now at his heels.

He opened it. All was still. Feeling his way in the thick darkness, he
went softly up the stair.

Cosmo had but just left the last remnants of his candle-ends
burning, and climbed glowing to his room, delighted with the
success of his experiment, when those quick-following, hideous
sounds rent the night, like flashes from some cloud of hellish
torture. His heart seemed to stand still. Without knowing why,
involuntarily he associated them with what he had been last about,
and for a moment felt like a murderer. The next he caught up his
light, and rushed from the room, to seek, like his father, that of
their guest.

As he reached the bottom of the first stair, the door of his own
room opened, and out came Lady Joan, with a cloak thrown over her
night-gown, and looking like marble, with wide eyes. But Cosmo felt it
was not she who had shrieked, and passing her without a second
look, led the way down, and she followed.

When the laird opened the door of the guest--chamber, there was his
boy in his clothes, with a candle in his hand, and the lady in her
night-gown, standing in the middle of the floor, and looking down
with dismayed countenances. There lay Lord Mergwain!--or was it but
a thing of nought--the deserted house, of a living soul? The face
was drawn a little to one side, and had a mingled expression, of
horror--which came from within, and of ludicrousness, which had an
outside formal cause. Upon closer investigation, the laird almost
concluded he was dead; but on the merest chance something must be
done. Cosmo seemed dazed, and Lady Joan stood staring with lost
look, more of fright than of sorrow, but there was Grizzle, peeping
through between them, with bright searching eyes! On her
countenance was neither dismay, anxiety, nor distraction. She
nodded her head now and then as she gazed, looking as if she had
expected it all, and here it was.

"Rin an' fess het watter as fest's ye can, Grizzie," said the
laird. "My dear Lady Joan, go and dress, or you will be frozen to
death. We will do all we can. Cosmo, get the fire up as quickly as
possible--it is not quite out. But first you and I must get him
into bed, and cover him up warm, and I will rub his hands and feet
till the hot water comes."

As the laird said, everyone did. A pail of hot water was soon
brought, the fire was soon lighted, and the lady soon returned more
warmly clad. He made Grizzie put the pail on a chair by the
bed-side, and they got his feet in without raising him, or taking
him out of the blankets. Before long he gave a deep sigh, and
presently showed other signs of revival. When at length he opened
his eyes, he stared around him wildly, and for a moment it seemed
to all of them he had lost his reason. But the laird said he might
not yet have got over the drink he had taken, and if he could be
got to sleep, he would probably wake better. They therefore removed
some more of his clothes, laid him down again, and made him as
comfortable as they could, with hot bottles about him. The laird
said he would sit with him, and call Lady Joan if needful. To judge
by her behaviour, he conjectured such a catastrophe was not
altogether strange to her. She went away readily, more like one
relieved than anxious.

But there had arisen in the mind of the laird a fear: might not
Cosmo unwittingly have had some share in the frightful event? When
first he entered the room, there was Cosmo, dressed, and with a
light in his hand: the seeming phosphorescence in the snow must
have been one of his PLOYS, and might not that have been the source
of the shock to the dazed brain of the drinker?

His lordship was breathing more softly and regularly, though every
now and then half waking with a cry--a dreadful thing to hear from
a sleeping OLD MAN. They drew their chairs close to the fire and to
each other, and Cosmo, as was usual with him, laid his hand on his
father's knee.

"Did you observe that peculiar appearance in the snow-heap, on the
other side of the court, Cosmo?" asked the laird.

"Yes, papa," replied the boy: "I made it myself." And therewith he
told him all about it. "You're not vexed with me, are you, papa?"
he added, seeing the laird look grave.

"No, my son," answered his father; "I am only uneasy lest that
should have had anything to do with this sad affair."

"How could that be, papa?" asked Cosmo.
"He may have looked out of the window and seen it, and, in the
half-foolish state he was in, taken it for something supernatural."

"But why should that have done him any harm?"

"It may have terrified him."

"Why should it terrify him?" said Cosmo.

"There may be things we know nothing of," replied his father, "to
answer that question. I cannot help feeling rather uneasy about
it."

"Did YOU see anything frightful about my man of light, papa?"
inquired Cosmo.

"No," answered his father, thoughtfully; "but the thing, you see,
was in the shape of a man--a man lying at full length as if he were
dead, and indeed in his grave: he might take it for his wraith--an
omen of his coming end."

"But he is an Englishman, papa, and the English don't believe in
the second sight."

"That does make it less likely.--Few lowlanders do."

"Do you believe in it, papa?"

"Well, you see," returned the laird, with a small smile, "I, like
yourself, am neither pure highlander nor pure lowlander, and the
natural consequence is, I am not very sure whether I believe in it
or not. I have heard stories difficult to explain."

"Still," said Cosmo, "my lord would be more to blame than me, for
no man with a good conscience would have been so frightened as that,
even if it had been his wraith."

"That may be true;--still, a man cannot help being especially sorry
anything should happen to a stranger in his house. You and I,
Cosmo, would have our house a place of refuge.--But you had better
go to bed now. There is no reason in tiring two people, when one is
enough."

"But, papa, I got up because I was so cold I could not sleep. If
you will let me, I would much rather sit with you. I shall be much
more comfortable here."

That his son should have been cold in the night distressed the
laird. He felt as if, for the sake of strangers, he had neglected
his own--the specially sent. He would have persuaded Cosmo to go to
his father's bed, which was in a warmer room, but the boy begged so
to be allowed to remain that he yielded.

They had talked in a low voice for fear of disturbing the sleeper,
and now were silent. Cosmo rolled himself in his plaid, lay down at
his father's feet, and was soon fast asleep: with his father there,
the chamber had lost all its terrors, and was just like any other
home-feeling room of the house. Many a time in after years did that
night, that room, that fire, and the feeling of his father over his
head, while the bad lord lay snoring within the dark curtains, rise
before him; and from the memory he would try to teach himself,
that, if he were towards his great Father in his house as he was
then towards his earthly father in his, he would never fear
anything.

To know one's-self as safe amid storm and darkness, amid fire and
water, amid disease and pain, even during the felt approach of
death, is to be a Christian, for that is how the Master felt in the
hour of darkness, because he knew it a fact.

All night long, at intervals, the old man moaned, and every now and
then would mutter sentences unintelligible to the laird, but sown
with ugly, sometimes fearful words. In the gray of the morning he
woke.

"Bring me brandy," he cried in a voice of discontent.

The laird rose and went to him. When he saw the face above him, a
horror came upon his--a look like that they found frozen on it.

"Who are you?" he gasped. "Where am I?"

"You came here in the storm last night, my lord," said the laird.

"Cursed place! I never had such horrible dreams in my life. Where
am I--do you hear? Why don't you answer me?"

"You are at Castle Warlock, my lord," replied the laird.

At this he shrieked, and, throwing off the clothes, sprung from the
bed.

"I entreat you, my lord, to lie down again. You were very ill in
the night," expostulated the laird.

"I don't stop another hour in the blasted hole!" roared his guest,
in a fierce quaver. Out of my way you fool! Where's Joan? Tell her
to get up and come directly. I'm off, tell her. I'd as soon go to
bed in the drifts as stop another hour in this abominable old
lime-kiln.

The laird let him rave on: it was useless to oppose him. He flew at
his clothes to dress himself, but his poor old hands trembled with
rage, fear, drink, and eagerness. The laird did his best to help
him, but he seemed nowise recognizant.

"I will get you some hot water, my lord," he said at length, and
was moving towards the door.

"No,--you!--everybody!" shrieked the old man. "If you go out of
that door, I will throw myself out of this window."

The laird turned at once, and in silence waited on him like a
servant. "He must be in a fit of delirium tremens!" he said to
himself. He poured him out some cold water, but he would not use
it. He would neither eat nor drink nor wash till he was out of the
horrible dungeon, he said. The next moment he cried for water,
drank three mouthfuls eagerly, threw the tumbler from him, and
broke it on the hearth.

The instant he was dressed, he dropped into the great chair and
closed his eyes.

"Your lordship must allow me to fetch some fuel," said the laird;
"the room is growing cold."

"No, I tell you!" cried Lord Mergwain, opening his eyes and sitting
up. "When I'm cold I'll go to If you attempt to leave the room,
I'll send a bullet after you.--God have mercy! what's that at my
feet?"

"It is only my son," replied the laird gently. "We have been with
you all night--since you were taken ill, that is."

"When was that? What do you mean by that?" he said, looking up
sharply, with a face of more intelligence than he had yet shown.

"Your lordship had some sort of fit in the night, and if you do not
compose yourself, I dread a return of it."

"You well may, if I stop here," he returned--then, after a pause,
"Did I talk?" he asked.

"Yes, my lord--a good deal."

"What did I say?"

"Nothing I could understand, my lord."

"And you did your best, I don't doubt!" rejoined his lordship with
a sneer. "But you know nothing is to be made of what a man says in
a fit."

"I have told your lordship I heard nothing."

"No matter; I don't sleep another night under your roof."

"That will be as it may, my lord."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the weather, my lord.--Cosmo!"

The boy was still asleep, but at the sound of his name from his
father's lips, he started at once to his feet.

"Go and wake Grizzie," said the laird, "and tell her to get
breakfast ready as fast as she can. Then bring some peat for the
fire, and some hot water for his lordship."

Cosmo ran to obey. Grizzie had been up for more than an hour, and
was going about with the look of one absorbed in a tale of magic
and devilry. Her mouth was pursed up close, as if worlds should not
make her speak, but her eyes were wide and flashing, and now and
then she would nod her head, as for the Q. E. D. to some unheard
argument. Whatever Cosmo required, she attended to at once, but not
one solitary word did she utter.

He went back with the fuel, and they made up the fire. Lord
Mergwain was again lying back exhausted in his chair, with his eyes
closed.

"Why don't you give me my brandy--do you hear?" all at once he
cried. "--Oh, I thought it was my own rascal! Get me some brandy,
will you?"

"There is none in the house, my lord," said his host.

"What a miserable sort of public to keep! No brandy!"

"My lord, you are at Castle Warlock--not so good a place for your
lordship's needs."

"Oh, that's it, yes! I remember! I knew your father, or your
grandfather, or your grandson, or somebody--the more's my curse!
Out of this I must be gone, and that at once! Tell them to put the
horses to. Little I thought when I left Cairntod where I was going
to find myself! I would rather be in--and have done with it! Lord!
Lord! to think of a trifle like that not being forgotten yet! Are
there no doors out? Give me brandy, I say. There's some in my
pocket somewhere. Look you! I don't know what coat I had on
yesterday! or where it is!"

He threw himself back in his chair. The laird set about looking if
he had brought the brandy of which he spoke; it might be well to
let him have some. Not finding it, he would have gone to search the
outer garments his lordship had put off in the kitchen; but he
burst out afresh:

"I tell you--and confound you, I say that you have to be told
twice--I will not be left alone with that child! He's as good as
nobody! What could HE do if--" Here he left the sentence
unfinished.

"Very well, my lord," responded the laird, "I will not leave you.
Cosmo shall go and look for the brandy-flask in your lordship's
greatcoat."

"Yes, yes, good boy! you go and look for it. You're all Cosmos, are
you? Will the line never come to an end! A cursed line for me--if
it shouldn't be a rope-line! But I had the best of the game after
all!--though I did lose my two rings. Confounded old cheating son
of a porpus! It was doing the world a good turn, and Glenwarlock a
better to--Look you! what are you listening there for!--Ha! ha! ha!
I say, now--would you hang a man, laird--I mean, when you could get
no good out of it--not a ha'p'orth for yourself or your family?"

"I've never had occasion to consider the question," answered the
laird.

"Ho! ho! haven't you? Let me tell you it's quite time you
considered it. It's no joke when a man has to decide without time
to think. He's pretty sure to decide wrong."

"That depends, I should think, my lord, on the way in which he has
been in the habit of deciding."

"Come now! none of your Scotch sermons to me! You Scotch always
were a set a down-brown hypocrites! Confound the whole nation!"

"To judge by your last speech, my lord,--"

"Oh, by my last speech, eh? By my dying declaration? Then I tell
you 'tis fairer to judge a man by anything sooner than his speech.
That only serves to hide what he's thinking. I wish I might be
judged by mine, though, and not by my deeds. I've done a good many
things in my time I would rather forget, now age has clawed me in
his clutch. So have you; so has everybody. I don't see why I should
fare worse than the rest."

Here Cosmo returned with the brandy-flask, which he had found in
his greatcoat. His lordship stretched out both hands to it, more
eagerly even than when he welcomed the cob-webbed magnum of
claret--hands trembling with feebleness and hunger for strength.
Heedless of his host's offer of water and a glass, he put it to his
mouth, and swallowed three great gulps hurriedly. Then he breathed
a deep breath, seemed to say with Macbeth, "Ourselves again!" drew
himself up in a chair, and glanced around him with a look of
gathering arrogance. A kind of truculent question was in his
eyes--as much as to say, "Now then, what do you make of it all?
What's your candid notion about me and my extraordinary behaviour?"
After a moment's silence,--

"What puzzles me is this," he said, "how the deuce I came, of all
places, to come just here! I don't believe, in all my wicked
life, I ever made such a fool of myself before--and I've made many
a fool of myself too!"

Receiving no answer, he took another pull at his flask. The laird
stood a little behind and watched him, harking back upon old
stories, putting this and that together, and resolving to have a
talk with old Grannie.

A minute or two more, and his lordship got up, and proceeded to
wash his face and hands, ordering Cosmo about after the things he
wanted, as if he had been his valet.

"Richard's himself again!" he said in a would-be jaunty voice, the
moment he had finished his toilet, and looked in a crow-cocky kind
of a way at the laird. But the latter thought he saw trouble still
underneath the look.

"Now, then, Mr. Warlock, where's this breakfast of yours?" he said.

"For that, my lord," replied the laird, "I must beg you to come to
the kitchen. The dining-room in this weather would freeze the very
marrow of your bones."

"And look you! it don't want freezing," said his lordship, with a
shudder. "The kitchen to be sure!--I don't desire a better place.
I'll be hanged if I enter this room again!" he muttered to
himself--not too low to be heard. "My tastes are quite as simple as
yours, Mr. Warlock, though I have not had the same opportunity of
indulging them."

He seemed rapidly returning to the semblance of what he would have
called a gentleman.

He rose, and the laird led the way. Lord Mergwain followed; and
Cosmo, coming immediately behind, heard him muttering to himself
all down the stairs: "Mere confounded nonsense! Nothing whatever
but the drink!--I must say I prefer the day--light after all.--Yes!
that's the drawing-room.--What's done's done--and more than done,
for it can't be done again!"

It was a nipping and an eager air into which they stepped from the
great door. The storm had ceased, but the snow lay much deeper, and
all the world seemed folded in a lucent death, of which the white
mounds were the graves. All the morning it had been snowing busily,
for no footsteps were between the two doors but those of Cosmo.

When they reached the kitchen, there was a grand fire on the
hearth, and a great pot on the fire, in which the porridge Grizzie
had just made was swelling in huge bubbles that burst in sighs. Old
Grizzie was bright as the new day, bustling and deedy. Her sense of
the awful was nowise to be measured by the degree of her dread: she
believed and did not fear--much. She had an instinctive
consciousness that a woman ought to be, and might be, and was a
match for the devil.

"I am sorry we have no coffee for your lordship," said the laird,
"To tell the truth, we seldom take anything more than our country's
porridge. I hope you can take tea? Our Grizzie's scons are good,
with plenty of butter."

His lordship had in the meantime taken another pull at the
brandy-flask, and was growing more and more polite.

"The man would be hard to please," he said, "who would not be
enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals. Tea for me,
before everything!--How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff?" he
murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.--"But," he went on
aloud, "didn't that cheating rascal leave you--"

He stopped abruptly, and the laird saw his eyes fixed upon
something on the table, and following their look, saw it was a
certain pepper-pot, of odd device--a piece of old china, in the
shape of a clumsily made horse, with holes between the ears for the
issue of the pepper.

"I see, my lord," he said, "you are amused with the pepper-pot. It
is a curious utensil, is it not? It has been in the house a long
time--longer than anybody knows. Which of my great-grandmothers let
it take her fancy, it is impossible to say; but I suppose the
reason for its purchase, if not its manufacture, was, that a horse
passant has been the crest of our family from time immemorial."

"Curse the crest, and the horse too!" said his lordship.

The laird started. His guest had for the last few minutes been
behaving so much like a civilized being, that he was not prepared
for such a sudden relapse into barbarity. But the entrance of Lady
Joan, looking radiant, diverted the current of things.

The fact was, that, like not a few old people, Lord Mergwain had
fallen into such a habit of speaking in his worse moods without the
least restraint, that in his better moods, which were indeed only
good by comparison, he spoke in the same way, without being aware
of it, and of himself seldom discovering that he had spoken.

The rest of the breakfast passed in peace. The visitors had tea,
oatcake, and scons, with fresh butter and jam; and Lady Joan, for
all the frost and snow, had yet a new-laid egg--the only one; while
the laird and Cosmo ate their porridge and milk--the latter very
scanty at this season of the year, and tasting not a little of
turnip--and Grizzie, seated on a stool at some distance from the
table, took her porridge with treacle. Mrs. Warlock had not yet
left her room.

When the meal was over, Lord Mergwain turned to his host, and said,

"Will you oblige me, Mr. Warlock, by sending orders to my coachman
to have the horses put to as quickly as possible: we must not
trespass more on your hospitality.--Confound me if I stop an hour
longer in this hole of a place, though it be daylight!"

"Papa!" cried Lady Joan.

His lordship understood, looked a little confused, and with much
readiness sought to put the best face on his blunder.

"Pardon me, Mr. Warlock," he said; "I have always had a bad habit
of speech, and now that I am an old man, I don't improve on it."

"Don't mention it, my lord," returned the laird. "I will go and see
about the carriage; but I am more than doubtful."

He left the kitchen, and Cosmo followed him. Lord Mergwain turned
to his daughter and said,

"What does the man mean? I tell you, Joan, I am going at once. So
don't you side with him if he wants us to stop. He may have his
reasons. I knew this confounded place before you were born, and I
hate it."

"Very good, papa!" replied Lady Joan, with a slight curl of her
lip. "I don't see why you should fancy I should like to stop."

They had spoken aloud, regardless of the presence of Grizzie.

"May it be lang afore ye're in a waun an' a warmer place, my lord
an' my lady," said the old woman, with the greatest politeness of
manner she knew how to assume. When people were rude, she thought
she had a right to be rude in return. But they took no more notice
than if they had not heard.




CHAPTER XVI.

THROUGH THE DAY.


It was a glorious morning. The wind had fallen quite, and the sun
was shining as if he would say, "Keep up your hearts; I am up here
still. I have not forgotten you. By and by you shall see more of
me." But Nature lay dead, with a great white sheet cast over face
and form. Not dead?--Just as much dead as ever was man, save for
the inner death with which he kills himself, and which she cannot
die. It is only to the eyes of his neighbours that the just man
dies: to himself, and to those on the other side, he does not die,
but is born instead: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall
never die." But the poor old lord felt the approaching dank and
cold of the sepulchre as the end of all things to him--if indeed he
would be permitted to lie there, and not have to get up and go to
worse quarters still.

"I am sorry to have to tell you, my lord," said the laird,
re-entering, "that both our roads and your horses are in such a
state that it is impossible you should proceed today."

His guest turned white through all the discoloration of his
countenance. His very soul grew too white to swear. He stood
silent, his pendulous under lip trembling.

"Though the wind fell last night," resumed the laird, "the snow
came on again before the morning, and it seems impossible you
should get through. To attempt it would be to run no small risk of
your lives."

"Joan," said Lord Mergwain, "go and tell the rascal to put the
horses to."

Lady Joan rose at once, took her shawl, put it over her head, and
went. Cosmo ran to open the door for her. The laird looked on, and
said not a word: the headstrong old man would find the thing could
not be done!

"Will you come and find the coachman for me, Cosmo?" said Lady Joan
when they reached the door--with a flash of her white teeth and her
dark eyes that bewitched the boy. Then first, in the morning light,
and the brilliance of the snow-glare, he saw that she was
beautiful. When the shadows were dark about her, the darkness of
her complexion obscured itself; against the white sheen she stood
out darkly radiant. Specially he noted the long eyelashes that made
a softening twilight round the low horizon-like luminousness of her
eyes.

Through the deep snow between the kitchen and the stable, were none
but his father's footsteps. He cast a glance at her small feet,
daintily shod in little more than sandals: she could not put down
one of them anywhere without sinking beyond her ankle!

"My lady," he said, "you'll get your feet soaking wet! They're so
small, they'll just dibble the snow! Please ask your papa if I
mayn't go and give his message. It will do just as well."

"I must go myself," she answered. "Sometimes he will trust nobody
but me."

"Stop then a moment," said Cosmo. "Just come to the drawing-room. I
won't keep you more than two minutes. The path there, you see, is
pretty well trodden."

He led the way, and she followed.

The fire was alight, and burning well; for Grizzie, foreseeing how
it must be, and determined she would not have strangers in the
kitchen all day, had lighted it early. Lady Joan walked straight to
it, and dropped, with a little shiver, into a chair beside it. To
Cosmo the sight of the blaze brought a strange delight, like the
discover of a new loveliness in an old friend. To Lady Joan the
room looked old--fashioned dreariness itself, to Cosmo an ancient
marvel, ever fresh.

He left her, and ran to his own room, whence presently he returned
with a pair of thick woollen stockings, knitted in green and red by
the hands of his grandmother. These he carried to Lady Joan, where
she sat on the low chair, and kneeling before her, began, without
apology or explanation, to draw one of them over the dainty foot
placed on the top of the other in front of the fire. She gave a
little start, and half withdrew her foot; then looking down at the
kneeling figure of service before her, recognized at once the
utterly honest and self-forgetful earnestness of the boy, and
submitted. Carefully he drew the stockings on, and she neither
opposed nor assisted him. When he had done, he looked up in her
face with an expression that seemed to say--"There now! can't I do
it properly?" but did not speak. She thanked him, rose, and went
out, and Cosmo conducted her to the stable, where he heard the
coachman, as she called him, not much better than a stable-boy,
whistling. She gave him her father's order. . .

[Illustration: "COSMO CONDUCTED HER TO THE STABLE."]

The lad stared with open mouth, and pointed toone of the stalls.
There stood an utterly wretched horse, swathed in a cloth, with his
head hanging down, heedless of the food before him. It was clear no
hope lay there. She turned and looked at Cosmo.

"The better for us, my lady!" replied Cosmo to her look; "we shall
have your beautiful eyes the longer! They were lost in the dark
last night, because they are made out of it, but now we see them,
we don't want to part with them."

She looked at him and smiled, saying to herself the boy would be
dangerous by and by, and together they went back to the kitchen,
where since they left not a word had been spoken. Grizzle was
removing the breakfast things; Lord Mergwain was seated by the
fire, staring into it; and the laird had got his Journal of George
Fox, and was reading diligently: when nothing was to be done, the
deeper mind of the laird grew immediately active.

When Lady Joan entered, her father sat up straight in his chair: he
expected opposition!

"One of the horses, my lord, is quite unfit," she said.

"Then, by my soul! we'll start with the other," he replied, in a
tone that sounded defiance to heaven or earth or whatever said him
nay.

"As your lordship pleases," returned Joan.

"My lord," said the laird, lowering his book to his knee, "if I
thought four cart-horses would pull you through to Howglen
to-night, you should have them; but you would simply stick fast,
horses and all, in the snow-wreaths."

The old man uttered an exclamation with an awful solemnity, and
said no more, but collapsed, and sat huddled up, staring into the
fire.

"You must just make the best of your quarters here; they are
entirely at your service, my lord," said the laird. "We shall not
starve. There are sheep on the place, pigs and poultry, and plenty
of oatmeal, though very little flour. There is milk too--and a
little wine, and I think we shall do well enough."

Lord Mergwain made no answer, but in his silence seemed to be
making up his mind to the ineludible.

"Have you any more of that claret?" he asked.

"Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the laird, "but it is your
lordship's while it lasts."

"If this lasts, I shall drink your cellar dry," rejoined his
lordship with a feeble grin. "I may as well make a clean breast of
it. From my childhood I have never known what it was not to be
thirsty. I believe thirst to be the one unfailing birth-mark of the
family. I was what the methodists call a drunkard before I was
born. My father died of drink. So did my grandfather. You must have
some pity on me, if I should want more than seems reasonable. The
only faculty ever cultivated in our strain was drinking, and I am
sorry to say it has not been brought to perfection yet. Perfection
is to get drunk and never know it; but I have bad dreams, sir! I
have bad dreams! And the worst of it is, if once I have a bad
dream, I am sure to have it again; and if it come first in a
strange place, it will come every night until I leave that place. I
had a very bad one last night, as you know. I grant it came because
I drank too much yesterday, but that won't keep it from coming
again to-night."

He started to his feet, the muscles of his face working frightfully.

"Send for your horses, Mr. Warlock," he cried. "Have them put to at
once. Four of them, you said. At once--at once! Out of this I must
go. If it be to--itself, go I must and will."

"My lord," said the laird, "I cannot send you from my house in this
weather. As my guest, I am bound to do my best for you; especially
as I understand the country, and you do not. I said you should have
my horses if I thought they could take you through, but I do not
think it. Besides, the change, in my judgment, is a deceitful one,
and this night may be worse than the last. Poor as your
accommodation is, it is better than the open road between this and
Howglen; though, doubtless, before to-morrow morning you would be
snug in the heart of a snow--wreath."

"Look here, sir," said Lord Mergwain, and rising, he went up to the
laird, and laid his hand on his shoulder; "if I stop, will you give
me another room, and promise to share it with me to-night? I am
aware it is an odd request to make, but, as I tell you, we have
been drinking for generations, and my nerves are the worse for it.
It's rather hard that the sins of the fathers should be visited on
the children! Before God, I have enough to do with my own, let
alone my fathers'! Every one should bear his own burden. I can't
bear mine. If I could, it's not much my fathers' would trouble me!"

"My lord, I will do anything I can for you--anything but consent to
your leaving Castle Warlock to-day."

"You will spend the night with me then?"

"I will."

"But not in that room, you know."

"Anywhere you please in the house, my lord, except my mother's
room."

"Then I'll stop.--Joan, you may amuse yourself; we are not going
till to-morrow."

The laird smiled; he could not flatter himself with the hope of so
speedy a departure. Joan turned to Cosmo.

"Will you take me about the place?" she said.

"If you mean in-doors," interposed the laird. "It is a curious old
house, and might interest you a little."

"I should like nothing better. May I go with Cosmo?"

"Certainly: he will be delighted to attend your ladyship.--Here are
the keys of the cabinets in the drawing-room, Cosmo. Her ladyship
may like to look at some of their contents."

"I hardly know enough about them," returned Cosmo. "Won't you come
yourself, father, and show them to us?"

It was the first time the boy used the appellation.

"If they are not worth looking at in themselves, the facts about
them cannot be of much consequence, my boy," answered the laird.

He was unwilling to leave Lord Mergwain. Lady Joan and Cosmo went
without him.

"Perhaps we may follow you by and by," said the laird.

"Is the place very old, Cosmo?" asked Lady Joan on their way.

"Nobody knows how old the oldest part of it is," answered Cosmo,
"though dates are assigned to the most of what you will see to-day.
But you must ask my father; I do not know much of the history of
it. I know the place itself, though, as well as he does. I fancy I
know nearly every visible stone of it."

"You are very fond of it, then?"

"There never could be any place like it to me, my lady. I know it
is not very beautiful, but I love it none the less for that. I
sometimes think I love it the more for its ruggedness--ugliness, if
you please to call it so. If my mother had not been beautiful, I
should love her all the same."--"and think there wasn't anybody
like her," he was going to add, but checked himself, remembering
that of course there was not.

Arrived in the drawing-room, whither Cosmo led her first, Lady Joan
took her former place by the fire, and sat staring into it. She did
not know what to make of what she saw and heard. How COULD people
be happy, she thought, in such a dreary, cold, wretched country,
with such poverty-stricken home-surroundings, and nothing to amuse
them from one week's end to another? Yet they seemed to be happy to
a degree she knew nothing of! For alas, her home was far from a
blessed one; and as she had no fountain open in herself, but looked
entirely to foreign supply for her life-necessities, and as such
never can be so supplied, her life was not a flourishing one.

There are souls innumerable in the world, as dry as the Sahara
desert--souls which, when they look most gay and summer-like, are
only flaunting the flowers gathered from other people's gardens,
stuck without roots into their own unproducing soil. Oh, the
dreariness, the sandy sadness of such poor arid souls! They are
hungry, and eat husks; they are thirsty, and drink hot wine; their
sleep is a stupor, and their life, if not an unrest, then a yielded
decay. Only when praised or admired do they feel as if they lived!
But Joan was not yet of such. She had had too much discomfort to
have entered yet into their number. There was water not yet far
from the surface of her consciousness.

With no little pleasure and some pride, Cosmo proceeded to take the
family treasures from their shelves; but, alas! most of them were
common to the eyes of one who also had a family and a history,
lived in a much larger, if not half so old a house, and had had
amongst her ancestors more than one with a liking for antiquities,
oddities, and bibelots. Lady Joan regarded them listlessly, willing
to seem to attend to the boy, but, with her thoughts far away,
while now and then she turned a weary gaze towards the next window:
all she saw thence was a great, mounded country, dreary as sunshine
and white cold could make it. Storm, driving endless whirls of
spectral snow, would have been less dreary to her than the smiling
of this cold antagonism. It was a picture of her own life. Evil
greater than she knew had spread a winter around her. If her father
suffered for the sins of his fathers, she suffered for his, and had
for them to dwell in desolation and loneliness.

One thing after another Cosmo brought her, but none of them seemed
much to interest her. She knew the sort of most of them.

"This is said to be solid silver," he remarked, as he laid on a
chair beside her a curious little statuette of a horse, trapped and
decorated in Indian graving, and having its whole surface covered
with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or
seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded
with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the
engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a
strange look in them.

"That is the only thing they say the old captain ever gave his
brother, my great-grand-father," said Cosmo. "But I beg your
pardon," he added, "I have never told you the story of the old
captain!"

The boy already felt as if he had known their guest of a night for
years; the hearts of the young are divinely hospitable, which is
one of the things that make children the SUCH of the kingdom of
heaven.

Lady Joan took the horse in her hand, and looked at it more
closely.

"It is very heavy!" she remarked.

"It is said to be solid silver," repeated Cosmo.

She laid it down, and put her hand to her forehead, but said
nothing.

They heard the steps and voices of the two gentlemen ascending the
stair. Lady Joan caught up the horse, rose hastily, and holding it
out to Cosmo, said,

"Quick! quick! put it away. Don't let my father see it."

Cosmo cast on her one look of surprise, and obeyed at once,
restored it to its place, and had just closed the doors of the
cabinet, when Lord Mergwain and his father entered the room.

They, were a peculiar-looking pair--Lord Mergwain in antiquated
dress, not a little worn, and neither very clean nor in very good
condition--a snuffy, dilapidated, miserable, feeble old man, with a
carriage where doubt seemed rooted in apprehension, every other
moment casting about him a glance of enquiry, as if an evil spirit
came running to the mouth of his eye-caves, looked out, and
retreated; and the laird behind him, a head higher, crowned with
his red night-cap, and dressed as I have already described, looking
older than his years, but bearing on his face the repose of
discomfort accepted, his eye keen and clear, and, when turned on
his guest, filled with compassion rather than hospitality. He was
walking more erect than usual, either in recognition of the lady's
presence, or from a feeling of protection towards her father.

"Now, my lord," he said, as they advanced from the door, "we will
set you in a warm corner by the fire, and you must make the best of
it. We can't have things all as we should like them. That is not
what the world was made for."

His lordship returned him no answer, but threw a queer look from
under his black wig--a look of superior knowledge--of the wisdom of
this world.

"You are an old fool," it said; "but you are master here! Ah! how
little you know!"

He walked tottering to the fire where Cosmo had already set for him
a chair. Something in the look of it displeased him. He glanced
round the room.

"Fetch me that chair, my boy," he said, not unkindly, and Cosmo
hastened to substitute the one he indicated. The laird placed a
tall screen behind it. His lordship dropped into the chair, and
began to rub his knees with his hands, and gaze into the fire. Lady
Joan rearranged her skirts, and for a moment the little circle
looked as if each was about to settle down to some mild enjoyment
of the others. Cosmo drew a chair as near Lady Joan as he judged
politeness would permit. The laird made up the fire, and turned
away, saying he must go and see the sick horse.

"Mr. Warlock!" said Lord Mergwain, and spoke with a snarl, "you
will not deprive us of the only pleasure we have--that of your
company?"

"I shall be back in a few minutes, my lord," replied his host; and
added, "I must see about lunch too."

"That was wonderful claret!" said his lordship, thoughtfully.

"I shall see to the claret, my lord."

"If I MIGHT suggest, let it be brought here. A gentle airing under
my own eye, just an introduction to the fire, would improve what is
otherwise perfect.--And look here," he added, as, with a kindly bow
of assent, the laird was going, "--you haven't got a pack of cards,
have you?"

"I believe there is a pack somewhere in the house," replied the
laird, "but it is very old, and I fear too much soiled for your
lordship's hands."

"Oh, confound the dirt!" said his lordship. "Let us have them.
They're the only thing to make the time pass."

"Have you a library?" asked Lady Joan--mainly to say something, for
she was not particularly fond of books; like most people she had
not yet learned to read.

"What do you want with a library?" growled her father. "Books are
nothing but a pack of lies, not half so good for killing time as a
pack of cards. You're going to play a rubber, not to read books!"

"With pleasure, papa," responded Lady Joan.

"_I_ don't want to kill the time. I should like to keep it alive
for ever," said Cosmo, with a worshipping look at the beautiful
lady--a summer-bird of heaven that had strayed into their lonely
winter.

"Hold your tongue; you are an idiot!" said his lordship angrily.
"--Old and young," he went on, unaware of utterance, "the breed is
idiotic. 'Tis time it were played out."

Cosmo's eyes flashed. But the rudesby was too old to be served as
he had served the schoolmaster! He was their guest too, and the
father of the lady by his side!

The hand of the lady stole to his, and patting it gently, said, as
plainly as if it had been her mouth, "Don't mind him; he is an old
man, and does not know what he is saying." He looked up in her
face, and his anger was gone.

"Come with me," he said, rising; "I will show you what books we
have. There may be one you would like another time. We shall be
back before the cards come."

"Joan!" cried her father, "sit still."

She glanced an appeal for consideration to Cosmo, and did not move.
Cosmo sat down again. A few minutes passed in silence. Father and
daughter stared into the fire. So did Cosmo. But into what
different three worlds did the fire stare! The old man rose and
went to the window.

"I MUST get away from this abominable place," he said, "if it cost
me my life."

He looked out and shuddered. The world seemed impassable as a dead
world on which the foot of the living could take no hold, could
measure no distance, make no progress. Not a print of man or of
beast was visible. It was like a world not yet discovered.

"I am tied to the stake; I hear the fire roaring!" he muttered. "My
fate has found me--caught me like a rat, and is going to make an
end of me! In my time nobody believed such things! Now they seem to
be coming into fashion again!"

Whoever would represent what is passing in a mind, must say more
than the man himself knows how to say.

The laird re-entered.

"Well, have you brought the cards?" said Lord Mergwain, turning
from the window.

"I have, my lord. I am sorry it is such a poor pack, but we never
play.--I think, Cosmo, you had better come with me."

"Hold you, laird, we're going to have a rubber!"

"Cosmo does not understand the game."

"I will teach him," said Lady Joan. "He shall be live dummy for a
few rounds; that will be enough."

"My lord will not care to play for counters," persisted the laird,
"and we cannot play for money."

"I don't care what the points are," said Lord Mergwain, "--sixpence,
if you like--so long as it is money. None but a fool cares for
victory where nothing is to be got by it."

"I am sorry to disappoint your lordship," returned the laird, "but
play for money neither my son nor myself will. But perhaps you
would like a game of draughts, or backgammon?"

"Will you bet on the game or the gammon?"

"On nothing, my lord."

"Oh, confound you!"

He turned again and went to the window.

"This is frightful!" he said to himself. "Nothing whatever to help
one to forget! If the day goes on like this, I shall out with
everything.--Maybe I had better!--How the clodpoles would stare! I
believe I should laugh in the middle of it.--And that fellow
lurking somewhere all the time about the place, watching his chance
when the night comes!--It's horrible. I shall go mad!" This last he
spoke aloud.

"Papa!" said his daughter sharply.

Lord Mergwain started, and looked troubled. What he might have
uttered, he could not tell.

"A rubber, then," he said, approaching the fire again, "--on any
terms, or no terms at all!"

He took up the cards.

"Ha, there's blood on them," he cried, and dashing them on the
table, turned once more to the window.

He was like a bird in a cage that knows he cannot get out, and yet
keeps trying, as if he dared not admit the impossibility. Twenty
times that morning he went to the window, saying, "I must get out
of this!" and returned again to his seat by the fire. The laird had
removed the pack, and he said nothing more about a rubber. Lady
Joan tried to talk, and Cosmo did his best to amuse her. The laird
did his endeavour with his lordship, but with small success. And so
the morning crept away. It might have been a pleasant one to the
rest, but for the caged lord's misery. At last came Grizzie.

"Sir, an' my lord," she said, "come ye doon the stair. The kail's
het, an' the cheirs is set, an' yer denner's waitin' ye there."

It may have been already observed, that to Grizzie came not
unfrequently an odd way of riming what she said. She was unaware of
this peculiarity. The suggestion of sound by sound was as hidden
from her as it was deep-seated in her and strong. And this was not
all: the riming might have passed unperceived by others too, but
for the accompanying tendency to rhythm as well. Nor was this by
any means all yet: there was in her a great leaning to poetic
utterance generally, and that arising from a poetic habit of
thought. She had in her everything essential to the making of a
poetess; yet of the whole she was profoundly ignorant; and had any
one sought to develop the general gift, I believe all would have
shrunk back into her being.

The laird rose and offered his arm to Lady Joan. Lord Mergwain gave
a grunt, and looked only a little pleased at the news: no
discomfort or suffering, mental or spiritual, made him indifferent
to luncheon or dinner--for after each came the bottle; but the
claret had not been brought to the drawing-room as he had
requested!

When they reached the kitchen, he looked first eagerly, then
uneasily round him: no bottle, quart or magnum was to be seen! A
cloud gathered, lowering and heavy, on the face of the toper. The
laird saw it, remembered that, in his anxiety to amuse him, he had
forgotten his dearest delight, and vanished in the region behind.

Mrs. Warlock, according to her custom, was already seated at the
head of the table. She bowed just her head to his lordship, and
motioned him to a chair on her right hand. He took it with a
courteous acknowledgment, of which he would hardly have been
capable, had he not guessed on what errand his host was gone: he
had no recollection of having given her offence.

"I hope your ladyship is well this morning?" he said.

"Ye revive an auld custom, my lord," returned his hostess, not
without sign of gratification, "--clean oot o' fashion noo-a-days,
excep' amang the semple. A laird's wife has no richt to be ca'd MY
LEDDY,'cep' by auncient custom."

"Oh, if you come to that," returned his lordship, "three fourths of
the titles in use are merely of courtesy. Joan there has no more
right than yourself to be called MY LADY. Neither has my son
Borland the smallest right to the title; it is mine, and mine only,
as much as Mergwain."

The old lady turned her head, and fixed a stolen but searching gaze
on her guest, and to the end of the meal took every opportunity of
regarding him unobserved. Her son from the other end of the table
saw her looks, and guessed her suspicions; saw also that she did
not abate her courtesy, but little thought to what her calmness was
owing.

Mrs. Warlock, ready to welcome anything marvellous, had held with
Grizzie much conference concerning what had passed in the
night--one accidental result of which was the disappearance for the
time of all little rivalries and offences between them in the
common interest of an awful impending denouement. She had never
heard, or had forgotten the title to which Lord Borland of the old
time was heir; and now that all doubt as to the identity of the man
was over, although, let her strain her vision as she might, she
could not, through the deformation of years, descry the youthful
visage, she felt that all action on the part of the generation in
possession was none the less forestalled and precluded by the
presence of one in the house who had evidently long waited his
arrival, and had certainly but begun his reprisals. More would be
heard ere the next dawn, she said to herself; and with things in
such a train she would not interfere by the smallest show of feud
or offence. Who could tell how much that certain inmate of the
house--she hesitated to call him a member of the family--and, in
all righteous probability, of a worse place as well, had to do with
the storm that drove Borland thither, and the storms that might
detain him there! already there were signs of a fresh onset of the
elements! the wind was rising; it had begun to moan in the wide
chimney; and from the quarter whence it now blew, it was certain to
bring more storm, that is snow!

The dinner went on. The great magnum before the fire was gathering
genial might from the soft insinuation of limpid warmth, renewing
as much of its youth as was to be desired in wine; and redeveloping
relations, somewhat suppressed, with the slackening nerves and
untwisting fibres of an old man's earthly being!

But there was not a drop to drink on the table, except water; and
the toper found it hard to lay solid foundation enough for the wine
that was to follow, and grumbled inwardly. The sight of the bottle
before the fire, however, did much to enable him, not to be
patient, but to suppress the shows of impatience. He eyed it, and
loved it, and held his peace. He saw the water at his elbow, and
hated it the worse that it was within his reach--hated its cold
staring rebuke as he hated virtue--hated it as if its well were in
the churchyard where the old captain was buried sixty years ago.
--Confound him! why wouldn't he lie still? He made some effort to
be polite to the old hag, as he called her, in that not very secret
chamber of his soul, whose door was but too ready to fall ajar, and
allow its evil things to issue. He searched his lumber-room for old
stories to tell, but found it difficult to lay hold on any fit for
the ears present, though one of the ladies was an old woman--old
enough, he judged, not to be startled at anything, and the other
his own daughter, who ought to see no harm when her father made the
company laugh! It was a miserable time for him, but, like a much
enduring magician awaiting the moment of power, he kept eying the
bottle, and gathering comfort.

Grizzie eyed him from behind, almost as he eyed the bottle. She
eyed him as she might the devil caught in the toils of the
arch-angel; and if she did not bring against him a railing
accusation, it was more from cunning than politeness. "Ah, my fine
fellow!" her eyes said, "he is after you! he will be here
presently!"

Grizzie afforded a wonderfully perfect instance of a relation which
is one of the loveliest in humanity--absolute service without a
shade of servility. She would have died for her master, but even to
him she must speak her mind. Her own affairs were nothing to her,
and those of her master as those of the universe, but she was
vitally one of his family, as the toes belong to the head! In
truth, she was of the family like a poor relation, with few
privileges, and no end of duties; and she thought ten times more of
her duties than her privileges. She would have fed, and sometimes
did feed with perfect satisfaction on the poorest scraps remaining
from meals, but a doubt of the laird's preference of her porridge
to that of any maker in broad Scotland, would have given her a sore
heart. She would have wept bitter tears had the privilege of
washing the laird's feet been taken from her. If reverence for the
human is an essential element of greatness, then at least greatness
was possible to Grizzie. She dealt with no abstractions; she
worshipped one living man, and that is the first step toward the
love of all men; while some will talk glowingly about humanity, and
be scornful as a lap-dog to the next needy embodiment of it that
comes in their way. Such as Grizzie will perhaps prove to be of
those last foredoomed to be first. With the tenderness of a
ministering angel and mother combined, her eyes waited upon her
master. She took her return beforehand in the assurance that the
laird would follow her to the grave, would miss her, and at times
think nobody could do something or other so much to his mind as old
Grizzie. And if, like the old captain, she might be permitted to
creep about the place after night-fall, she desired nothing better
than the chance of serving him still, if but by rolling a stone out
of his way. The angels might bear him in their hands--she could not
aspire to that, but it would be much the same whether she got the
stone out of the way of his foot, or they lifted his foot above the
stone!

Dinner over, the laird asked his guest whether he would take his
wine where he was, or have it carried to the drawing-room. The
offering of this alternative the old lady, to use an Elizabethan
phrase, took in snuff; for although she never now sat in the
drawing--room, and indeed rarely crossed its threshold, it was HER
room; and, ladies having been banished from the dining-room while
men drank, what would be left them if next, bottle in hand, the men
invaded the drawing--room? But happily their guest declined the
proposal, and that on the very ground of respect for her ladyship's
apartment; the consequence of which was that she very nearly
forgave him the murder of which she never doubted him guilty,
saying to herself that, whatever he might be when disguised, poor
man--and we all had our failings--he knew how to behave when sober,
and that was more than could be said for everybody! So the old lord
sat in the kitchen and drank his wine; and the old lady sat by the
fire and knitted her stocking, went to sleep, and woke up, and went
to sleep again a score of times, and enjoyed her afternoon. Not a
word passed between the two: now, in his old age, Lord Mergwain
never talked over his bottle; he gave his mind to it. The laird
went and came, unconsciously anxious to be out of the way of his
guest, and consciously anxious not to neglect him, but nothing was
said on either side. The old lady knitted and dozed, and his
lordship sat and drank, now and then mingling the aesthetic with
the sensual, and holding his glass to the light to enjoy its colour
and brilliancy,--doing his poor best to encourage the presence of
what ideas he counted agreeable, and prevent the intrusion of their
opposites. And still as he drank, the braver he grew, and the more
confident that the events of the past night were but the foolish
consequences of having mingled so many liquors, which, from the
state of the thermometer, had grown cold in his very stomach, and
bred rank fancies! "With two bottles like this under my belt," he
said to himself, "I would defy them all, but this wretched
night-capped curmudgeon of a host will never fetch me a second! If
he had not been so niggardly last night, I should have got through
well enough!"

Lady Joan and Cosmo had been all over the house, and were now
sitting in the drawing-room, silent in the firelight. Lady Joan did
not yet find Cosmo much of a companion, though she liked to have
him beside her, and would have felt the dreariness more penetrating
without him. But to Cosmo her presence was an experience as
marvellous and lovely as it was new and strange. He had never save
in his dreams before been with one who influenced him with beauty;
and never one of his dreams came up to the dream--like reality that
now folded him about with bliss. For he sat, an isolating winter
stretched miles and miles around him, in the old paradise of his
mother's drawing-room, in the glorious twilight of a peat and wood
fire, the shadows flickering about at their own wild will over all
the magic room, at the feet of a lady, whose eyes were black as the
night, but alive with a radiance such as no sun could kindle, whose
hand was like warm snow, whose garments were lovely as the clouds
that clothe a sunset, and who inhabited an atmosphere of evanescent
odours that were themselves dreams from a region beyond the stars,
while the darkness that danced with the firelight played all sorts
of variations on the theme of her beauty.

How long he had sat lost in the dream-haunted gorgeous silence he
did not know, when suddenly he bethought himself that he ought to
be doing something to serve or amuse, or at least interest the
heavenly visitant. Strangers and angels must be entertained, nor
must the shadow of loneliness fall upon them. Now to that end he
knew one thing always good, always at hand, and specially fitting
the time.

"Shall I tell you a story, my lady?" he said, looking up to her
from the low stool on which he had taken his place at her feet.

"Yes, if you please," she answered, finding herself in a shoal of
sad thoughts, and willing to let them drift.

"Then I will try. But I am sorry I cannot tell it so well as
Grizzie told it me. Her old-fashioned way suits the story. And then
I must make English of it for your ladyship, and that goes still
worse with it."

Alas! alas! the speech of every succeeding generation is a falling
away from the pith and pathos of the preceding. Speech gains in
scope, but loses in intensity.

"There was once a girl in the Highlands," began Cosmo, "--not very
far from here it was, who was very beautiful, so that every young
man in the neighbourhood fell in love with her. She was as good as
she was beautiful, and of course would not let more than one be her
lover, and said no to every one else; and if after that they would
go on loving her, she could not help it. She was the daughter of a
sheep--farmer, who had a great many sheep that fed about over the
hills, and she helped her father to look after them, and was as
good and obedient as any lamb of his flock. And her name was Mary.
Her other name I do not know.

"Now her father had a young shepherd, only a year or two older than
Mary, and he of course was in love with her as well as the rest,
and more in love with her than any of them, because he was the most
to be trusted of all in that country-side. He was very strong and
very handsome, and a good shepherd. He was out on the hills all
day, from morning to night, seeing that the sheep did their duty,
and ate the best grass, so as to give plenty of good wool, and good
mutton when it was wanted.--That's the way Grizzie tells the story,
my lady, though not so that you would understand her.--When any of
the lambs were weakly or ill, they were brought home for Mary to
nurse, and that was how the young shepherd came to know Mary, and
Mary to know him. And so it came to pass that they grew fond of
each other, and saw each other as often as they could; and Mary
promised, if her father would let her, she would marry Alister. But
her father was too well-off to show favour to a poor shepherd lad,
for his heart had got so full of his money that there was not room
enough for the blood in it. If Alister had had land and sheep like
himself, he would have had no objection to giving him Mary; but a
poor son-in-law, however good he might be, would make him feel
poor, whereas a rich son-in-law, if he were nothing but an old
miser, would make him feel rich! He told Alister, therefore, that
he had nothing to say to him, and he and Mary must have nothing to
say to each other. Mary felt obliged to do what her father told
her, but in her heart she did not give up Alister, and felt sure
Alister did not give up her, for he was a brave and honest youth.

"Of course Alister was always wanting to see Mary, and often he saw
her when nobody, not even Mary herself, knew it. One day she was
out rather late on the hill, and when the gloaming came down, sat
wishing in her heart that out of it Alister would come, that she
might see him, though she would not speak to him. She was sitting
on a stone, Grizzle says, with the gloamin' coming down like a gray
frost about her; and by the time it grew to a black frost, out of
it came some one running towards her.

"But it was not Alister; it was a farmer who wanted to marry her.
He was a big, strong man, rich and good-looking, though twice
Mary's age. Her father was very friendly to him. But people said he
was a coward.

"Now just at that time, only it had not yet reached the glen, a
terrible story was going about the country, of a beast in the
hills, that went biting every living thing he could get at, and
whatever he bit went raving-mad. He never ate any creature he
attacked, never staid to kill it, but just came up with a rush, bit
it, and was out of sight in a moment. It was generally in the
twilight he came. He appeared--nobody ever saw from where--made his
gnash, and was gone. There was great terror and dismay wherever the
story was heard, so that people would hardly venture across their
thresholds after sun-down, for terror lest the beast should dash
out of the borders of the dark upon them, and leave his madness in
them. Some'said it was a sheep-dog, but some who thought they had
seen it, said it was too large for any collie, and was, they
believed, a mad wolf; for though there are no wolves in Scotland
now, my lady, there were at one time, and this is a very old
story."

Lady Joan gaped audibly.

"I am wearying you, my lady!" said Cosmo, penitently.

"No, no! dear boy," answered Lady Joan, sorry, and a little
ashamed. "It is only that I am very weary. I think the cold tires
one."

"I will tell you the rest another time," said Cosmo cheerily. "You
must lie down on the sofa, and I will cover you up warm."

"No, no; please go on. Indeed I want to hear the rest of it."

"Well," resumed Cosmo, "the news of this wolf, or whatever it was,
had come to the ears of the farmer for the first time that day at a
fair, and he was hurrying home with his head and his heart and his
heels full of it, when he saw Mary sitting on the white stone by
the track, feeling as safe as if she were in paradise, and as sad
as if she were in purgatory.--That's how Grizzie tells it--I
suppose because some of her people are papists.--But, for as much
as he wanted to marry her, you could hardly say he was in love with
her--could you, Lady Joan?--when I tell you that, instead of
stopping and taking her and her sheep home, he hurried past her,
crying out, 'Gang hame, Mary. There's a mad beast on the hill. Rin,
rin--a' 't ye can. Never min' yer sheep.' His last words came from
the distance, for he never stayed a step while he spoke.

"Mary got up at once. But you may be sure, my lady, a girl like
that was not going to leave her sheep where she dared not stop
herself. She began to gather them together to take them out of
harm's way, and was just setting out with them for home, when a
creature like a huge dog came bounding upon her out of the edge of
the night. The same instant, up from behind a rock, a few yards
away, jumped Alister, and made at the beast with his crook; and
just as the wolf was upon Mary, for Alister was not near enough to
get between the beast and her, he heaved a great blow at him, which
would have knocked him down anyhow. But that instant Mary threw
herself towards Alister, and his terrible blow came down upon her,
and not upon the wolf, and she fell dead in his arms--that's what
Grizzie says--and away went the wolf, leaping and bounding, and
never uttering a cry.

"What Alister did next, Grizzie never says--only that he came
staggering up to her father's door with dead Mary in his arms,
carried her in, laid her on the bed, and went out again. They found
the blow on on her head, and when they undressed her, they found
also the bite of the wolf; and they soon guessed how it had been,
and said it was well she had died so, for it was much better than
going mad first: it was kind of Death, they said, to come and
snatch her away out of the arms of Madness. But the farmer, because
he hated Alister, and knew that Alister must have seen him running
away, gave it out, that he himself was rushing to defend Mary, and
that the blow that killed her was meant for him. Nobody however
believed him.

"What people might think, was, however, a matter of little
consequence to Alister, for from that day he never spoke to human
being, never slept under a roof. He left his shepherding, and gave
himself to the hunting of the mad wolf: such a creature should not
be allowed to live, and he must do some good thing for Mary's sake.
Mary was so good, that any good thing done would be a thing done
for her. So he followed and followed, hunting the horrible creature
to destroy him. Some said he lived on his hate of the wolf, and
never ate anything at all. But some of the people on the hills,
when they heard he had been seen, set out of their doors at night
milk and cakes; and in the morning, sometimes, they would be gone,
and taken as if by a human being, and not an animal.

"By and by came a strange story abroad. For a certain old woman,
whom some called a witch, and whom all allowed to have the second
sight, told that, one night late, as she was coming home from her
daughter's house, she saw Alister lying in the heather, and another
sitting with him; Alister she saw plainly with her first or bodily
eyes; but with her second eyes, in which lay the second sight, she
saw his head lying on a woman's lap--and that woman was Mary, whom
he had killed. He was fast asleep, and whether he knew what pillow
he had, she could not tell; but she saw the woman as plainly as if
with her bodily eyes,--only with the difference which there always
was, she said, and which she did not know how to describe, between
the things seen by the one pair of eyes, and the things seen by the
other. She stood and regarded them for some time, but neither
moved. It was in the twilight, and as it grew darker she could see
Alister less and less clearly, but always Mary better and
better--till at last the moon rose, and then she saw Alister again,
and Mary no more. But, through the moonlight, three times she heard
a little moan, half very glad, and half a little sad.

"Now the people had mostly a horror of Alister, and had shunned
him--even those who did not believe him to blame for what he had
done--because of his having killed a human being, one made like
himself, and in the image of God; but when they heard the wise
woman's story, they began to feel differently towards Alister, and
to look askance upon Mary's father, whose unkindness had kept them
asunder. They said now it had all come through him, and that God
had sent the wolf to fetch Mary, that he might give her and Alister
to each other in spite of him--for God had many a way of doing a
thing, every one better than another.

"But that did not help Alister to find the wolf. The winter came,
however, and that did help him, for the snow let him see the trail,
and follow faster. The wonder was that the animal, being mad, lived
so long; but some said that, although the wolf was mad, he was not
mad in any ordinary way--if he had been, he would indeed have been
dead long ago; he was a wolf into which an evil spirit had entered;
and had he been a domestic animal, or one for the use of man, he
would immediately have destroyed himself; but, being a wild and
blood-thirsty animal, he went on very much like his natural self,
without knowing what sort of a fellow-tenant he had with him in the
house.

"At last, one morning in the month of December, when the snow lay
heavy on the ground, some men came upon a track which they all
agreed must be that of the wolf. They went and got their weapons,
and set out in chase. They followed, and followed, and better than
followed, and the trail led them high into the hills, wondering
much at the huge bounds with which the beast had galloped up the
steepest places. They concluded that Alister had been after him,
and that the beast knew it, and had made for the most inaccessible
spot he was acquainted with. They came at length to a point where a
bare-foot human track joined that of the wolf for a little way, and
after that they came upon it again and again. Up and up the
mountain they went--sometimes losing the track from the great
springs the wolf took--now across a great chasm which they had to
go round the head of, now up the face of a rock too steep for the
snow to lie upon, so that there was no print of his horrid feet.

"But at last, almost at the top of the mountain, they saw before
them two dark spots in a little hollow, and when they reached it,
there was the wolf, dead in a mass of frozen blood and trampled
snow. It was a huge, gaunt, gray, meagre carcass, with the foam
frozen about its jaws, and stabbed in many places, which showed the
fight had been a close one. All the snow was beaten about, as if
with many feet, which showed still more plainly what a tussle it
had been. A little farther on lay Alister, as if asleep, stretched
at full length, with his face to the sky. He had been dead for many
hours, they thought, but the smile had not faded which his spirit
left behind as it went. All about his body were the marks of the
brute's teeth--everywhere almost except on his face. That had been
bespattered with blood, but it had been wiped away. His dirk was
lying not far off, and his skene dhu close by his hand.

"There is but one thing more--and I think that is just the thing
that made me want to tell you the story. The men who found Alister
declared when they came home, and ever after when they told the
story--Grizzie says her grandmother used always to say so--that,
when they lifted him to bring him away, they saw in the snow the
mark of the body, deep--pressed, but only as far as the shoulders;
there was no mark of his head whatever. And when they told this to
the wise woman, she answered only,'Of coorse! of coorse!--Gien I
had been wi' ye, lads, I wad hae seen mair.' When they pressed her
to speak more plainly, she only shook her head, and muttered,
'Dull--hertit gowks!'--That's all, my lady."

In the kitchen, things were going on even more quietly than in the
drawing-room. In front of the fire sat the English lord over his
wine; Mistress Warlock sat in her arm-chair, knitting and
dozing--between her evanescent naps wide awake, and ever and anon
sliding her eyes from the stocking which did not need her attention
to the guest who little desired it; the laird had taken his place
at the other corner, and was reading the Journal of George Fox; and
Grizzie was bustling about with less noise than she liked, and
wishing heartily she were free of his lordship, that she might get
on with her work. Scarcely a word was spoken.

It began to grow dark; the lid of the night was closing upon them
ere half a summer-day would have been over. But it mattered little:
the snow had stayed the work of the world. Grizzie put on the
kettle for her mistress's tea. The old lady turned her forty winks
into four hundred, and slept outright, curtained in the shadows.
All at once his lordship became alive to the fact that the day was
gone, shifted uneasily in his chair, poured out a bumper of claret,
drank it off hurriedly, and hitched his chair a little nearer to
the fire. His hostess saw these movements with satisfaction: he had
appeased her personal indignation, but her soul was not hospitable
towards him, and the devil in her was gratified with the sight of
his discomposure: she hankered after talion, not waited on
penitence. Her eyes sought those of Grizzie.

"Gang to the door, Grizzie," she said, "an' see what the nicht's
like. I'm thinkin' by the cry o' the win', it 'll be a wull mirk
again.--What think ye, laird?"

Her son looked up from his book, where he had been beholding a
large breadth of light on the spiritual sky, and answered, somewhat
abstractedly, but with the gentle politeness he always showed her.

"I should not wonder if it came on to snow again!" Lord Mergwain
shifted uneasily. Grizzie returned from her inspection of the
weather.

"It's black theroot, an' dingin' 'oot, wi' great thuds o' win',"
she said, quite unaware as usual of the style of her utterance.

"God bless me!" murmured his lordship, "what an abominable
country!"

"Had we not better go to the drawing-room, my lord?" said the
laird. "I think, Grizzie," he went on, "you must get supper early.
--And, Grizzie," he added, rising, "mind you bring Lady Joan a cup
of tea--if your mistress will excuse her," he concluded, with a
glance to his mother.

Mistress Warlock was longing for a talk with Grizzie, and had no
wish for Lady Joan's presence at tea.

"An old woman is bare company for a young one, Cosmo," she said.

His lordship sat as if he did not mean to move.

"Will you not come, Lord Mergwain?" said the laird. "We had better
go before the night gets worse."

"I will stay where I am."

"Excuse me, my lord, that can hardly be. Come, I will carry your
wine. You will finish your bottle more at your ease there, knowing
you have not to move again."

"The bottle is empty," replied his lordship, gruffly, as if
reproaching his host for not being aware of the fact, and having
another at hand to follow.

"Then--" said the laird, and hesitated.

"Then you'll fetch me another!" adjoined his lordship, as if
answering an unpropounded question that ought not to be put.
Seeing, however, that the laird stood in some hesitation still, he
added definitively, "I don't stir a peg without it. Get me another
bottle--another MAGNUM, I mean, and I will go at once."

Yet a moment the laird reflected. He said to himself that the
wretched man had not had nearly so much to drink that day as he had
the day before; that he was used to soaking, and a great diminution
of his customary quantity might in its way be dangerous; and that
anyhow it was not for him to order the regimen of a passing guest,
to whom first of all he owed hospitality.

"I will fetch it, my lord," he said, and disappeared in the
milk-cellar, from which a steep stone-stair led down to the ancient
dungeon.

"The maister's gane wantin' a licht," muttered Grizzie; "I houp he
winna see onything."

It was an enigmatical utterance, and angered Lord Mergwain.

"What the deuce should he see, when he has got to feel his way with
his hands?" he snarled.

"There's some things, my lord,'at can better affoord to come oot i'
the dark nor the licht," replied Grizzle.

His lordship said nothing in rejoinder, but kept looking every now
and then towards the door of the milk-cellar--whether solely in
anxiety for the appearance of the magnum, may be doubtful. The
moment the laird emerged from his dive into darkness, bearing with
him the pearl-oyster of its deep, his lordship rose, proud that for
an old man he could stand so steady, and straightened himself up to
his full height, which was not great. The laird set down the bottle
on the table, and proceeded to wrap him in a plaid, that he might
not get a chill, nor heeded that his lordship, instead of showing
recognition of his care, conducted himself like an ill-conditioned
child, to whom his mother's ministrations are unwelcome. But he did
not resist, he only grumbled. As soon as the process was finished,
he caught up the first bottle, in which, notwithstanding his
assertion, he knew there was yet a glass or two, while the laird
resumed the greater burden of the second, and gave his guest an
arm, and Grizzle, leaving the door open to cast a little light on
their way, followed close behind, to see them safe in.

When they reached the drawing-room, his lordship out of breath with
the long stair, they found Lady Joan teaching and Cosmo learning
backgammon, which they immediately abandoned until they had him in
his former chair, with a small table by him, on it the first
bottle, and the fresh one at his feet before the fire: with the
contents of one such inside him, and another coming on, he looked
more cheerful than since first he entered the house. But a
fluctuating trouble was very visible in his countenance
notwithstanding.

A few poverty-stricken attempts at conversation followed, to which
Lord Mergwain contributed nothing. Lost in himself, he kept his
eyes fixed on the ripening bottle, waiting with heroic self-denial,
nor uttering a single audible oath, until the sound of its opening
should herald the outbursting blossom of the nightly flower of
existence. The thing hard to bear was, that there were no fresh
wine-glasses on the table--only the one he had taken care to bring
with the old bottle.

Presently Grizzle came with the tea-things, and as she set them
down, remarked, with cunningly devised look of unconsciousness:

"It's a gurly nicht; no a pinch o' licht; an' the win' blawin' like
deevils; the Pooer o' the air, he's oot wi' a rair, an' the snaw
rins roon' upo' sweevils."

"What do you mean, woman? Would you drive me mad with your
gibberish?" cried his lordship, getting up, and going to the
window.

"Ow, na, my lord!" returned Grizzie quietly; "mad's mad, but
there's waur nor mad."

"Grizzie!" said the laird, and she did not speak again.

Lurking in Grizzie was the suspicion, less than latent in the minds
of the few who had any memory of the old captain, that he had been
robbed as well as murdered--though nothing had ever been missed
that was known to belong to him, except indeed an odd walking-stick
he used to carry; and if so, then the property, whatever it was,
had been taken to the loss of his rightful heir, Warlock o'
Glenwarlock. Hence mainly arose Grizzie's desire to play upon the
fears of the English lord; for might he not be driven by terror to
make restitution? Therefore, although, obedient to the will of her
master, she left the room in silence, she cast on the old man, as
she turned away, a look, which, in spite of the wine he had drunk,
and the wine he hoped to drink, he felt freeze his very vitals--a
look it was of inexplicable triumph, and inarticulate doom.

The final effect of it on her victim, however, was different from
what she intended. For it roused suspicion. What if, he thought
with himself, he was the victim of a conspiracy? What if the
something frightful that befell him the night before, of which he
had but a vague recollection, had been contrived and executed by
the people of the house? This horrible old hag might remember
else-forgotten things? What if they had drugged his wine? the first
half of the bottle he had yesterday was decanted!--But the one he
had just drunk had not been touched! and this fresh one before the
fire should not be carried from his sight! he would not take his
eyes off it for a moment! he was safe so far as these were
concerned! only if after all--if there should be no difference--if
something were to happen again all the same--ah, then indeed!--then
it would only be so much the worse!--Better let them decant the
bottle, and then he would have the drug to fall back upon!
Just as he heard the loud bang of Grizzie's closure of the great
door, the wind rushed all at once against the house, with a
tremendous bellow, that threatened to drive the windows into the
room. An immediate lull followed, through which as instantly came
strange sounds, as of a distant staccato thunder. The moment the
laird heard the douf thuds, he started to his feet, and made for
the door, and Cosmo rose to follow.

"Stop! stop!" shouted Lord Mergwain, in a quavering, yet, through
terror, imperative voice, and looked as if his hair would have
stood on end, only that it was a wig.

Lady Joan gave Cosmo a glance of entreaty: the shout was
ineffectual, the glance was not. The laird scarcely heard his
visitor's cry, and hastened from the room, taking huge strides with
his long thin legs; but Cosmo resumed his seat as if nothing were
the matter.

Lord Mergwain was trembling visibly; his jaw shook, and seemed
ready to drop.

"Don't be alarmed, my lord," said Cosmo; "it is only one of the
horses kicking against his stall."

"But why should the brute kick?" said his lorship, putting his hand
to his chin, and doing his best to hide his agitation.

"My father will tell us. He will soon set things right. He knows
all about horses. Jolly may have thrown his leg over his halter,
and got furious. He's rather an ill-tempered horse."

Lord Mergwain swallowed a great glass of wine, the last of the
first bottle, and gave a little shiver.

"It's cold! cold!" he said.

The wine did not seem to be itself somehow this evening!

The game interrupted, Lady Joan forgot it, and stared into the
fire. Cosmo gave his eyes a glorious holiday on her beautiful face.

It was some time before the laird returned. He brought the news
that one of the strange horses was very ill.

"I thought he looked bad this morning," said Cosmo.

"Only it's not the same horse, my boy," answered his father. "I
believe he has been ill all day; the state of the other has
prevented its being noticed. He was taken suddenly with violent
pain; and now he lies groaning. They are doing what they can for
him, but I fear, in this weather, he will not recover. Evidently he
has severe inflammation; the symptoms are those of the worst form
of the disease now about."

"Hustled here in the dark to die like a rat!" muttered his
lordship.

"Don't make a trap of the old place, my lord," said the laird
cheerily. "The moment the roads will permit, I will see that you
have horses."

"I don't doubt you'll be glad enough to get rid of me."

"We shall not regret your departure so much, my lord, as if we had
been able to make your lordship comfortable," said the laird.

With that there came another great howling onset of wind. Lord
Mergwain started almost to his feet, but sat down instantly, and
said with some calmness,

"I should be obliged, Mr. Warlock, if you would order a wine-glass
or two for me. I am troublesome, I know, but I like to change my
glass; and the wine will be the worse every moment more it stands
there.--I wish you would drink! We should make a night of it."

"I beg your pardon, my lord," said the laird. "What was I thinking
of!--Cosmo, run and fetch wine-glasses--and the cock-screw."

But while Cosmo was returning, he heard the battery of iron shoes
recommence, and ran to the stable. Just as he reached the door of
it, the horse half reared, and cast himself against the side of his
stall. With a great crash it gave way, and he fell upon it, and lay
motionless.

"He's deid!" cried one of the men, and Cosmo ran to tell his
father.

While he was gone, the time seemed to the toper endless. But the
longer he could be kept from his second magnum, the laird thought
it the better, and was not troubled at Cosmo's delay.

A third terrible blast, fiercer and more imperious than those that
preceded it, shook the windows as a dog shakes a rat: the house
itself it could shake no more than a primeval rock. The next minute
Cosmo entered, saying the horse was dead.

"What a beastly country!" growled his lordship.

But the wine that was presently gurgling from the short neck of the
apoplectic magnum, soon began to console him. He liked this bottle
better than the last, and some composure returned to him.

The laird fetched a book of old ballads, and offered to read one or
two to make the time pass. Lord Mergwain gave a scornful grunt; but
Lady Joan welcomed the proposal: the silent worship of the boy,
again at her feet, was not enough to make her less than very weary.
For more than an hour, the laird read ballad after ballad; but
nobody, not even himself, attended much--the old lord not at all.
But the time passed. His lordship grew sleepy, began to nod, and
seemed to forget his wine. At length he fell asleep. But when the
laird would have made him more comfortable, with a yell of defiance
he started to his feet wide awake. Coming to himself at once, he
tried to laugh, and said from a child he had been furious when
waked suddenly. Then he settled himself in the chair, and fell fast
asleep.

Still the night wore on, and supper-time came. His lordship woke,
but would have no supper, and took to his bottle again. Lady Joan
and Cosmo went to the kitchen, and the laird had his porridge
brought to the drawing-room.

At length it was time to go to bed. Lady Joan retired. The laird
would not allow Cosmo to sit up another night, and he went also.
The lord and the laird were left together, the one again asleep,
and dreaming who knows what! the other wide awake, but absorbed in
the story of a man whose thoughts, fresh from above, were life to
himself, and a mockery to his generation.




CHAPTER XVII.

THAT SAME NIGHT.


The wind had now risen to a hurricane--a rage of swiftness. The
house was like a rock assaulted by the waves of an ocean-tempest.
The laird had closed all the shutters, and drawn the old curtains
across them: through windows and shutters, the curtains waved in
the penetrating blasts. The sturdy old house did not shake, for
nothing under an earthquake could have made it tremble. The snow
was fast gathering in sloped heaps on the window-sills, on the
frames, on every smallest ledge where it could lie. In the midst of
the blackness and the roaring wind, the house was being covered
with spots of silent whiteness, resting on every projection, every
roughness even, of the building. In his own house as he was, a
sense of fierce desolation, of foreign invasion and siege, took
possession of the soul of the laird. He had made a huge fire, and
had heaped up beside it great store of fuel, but, though his body
was warm and likely to be warm, his soul inside it felt the
ravaging cold outside--remorseless, and full of mock, the ghastly
power of negation and unmaking. He had got together all the screens
he could find, and with them inclosed the fireplace, so that they
sat in a citadel within a fortress. By the fire he had placed for
his lordship the antique brocade-covered sofa, that he might lie
down when he pleased, and himself occupied the great chair on the
other side. From the centre of this fire-defended heart, the room
itself outside looked cold and waste: it demanded almost courage to
leave the stockade of the screens, and venture into the campaign of
the floor beyond. And then the hell of wind and snow that raved
outside that! and the desert of air surrounding it, in which the
clouds that garnered the snow were shaken by mad winds, whirled and
tossed and buffeted, to make them yield their treasures! Lord
Mergwain heard it, and drank. The laird listened, and lifted up his
heart. Not much passed between them. The memories of the English
lord were not such as he felt it fit to share with the dull old
Scotchman beside him, who knew nothing of the world--knew neither
how pitilessly selfish, nor how meanly clever a man of this world
might be, and bate not a jot of his self admiration! Men who salute
a neighbour as a man of the world, paying him the greatest
compliment they know in acknowledging him of their kind, recoil
with a sort of fear from the man alien to their thoughts, and
impracticable for their purposes. They say "He is beyond me," and
despise him. So is there a great world beyond them with which they
hold a frightful relationship--that of unrecognized, unattempted
duty! Lord Mergwain regarded the odd-looking laird as a fool; the
laird looked on him with something of the pity an angel must feel
for the wretch to whom he is sent to give his last chance, ere
sorer measures be taken in which angels are not the ministers.

But the wine was at last beginning to work its too oft repeated and
now nearly exhausted influence on the sagging and much frayed
nerves of the old man. A yellowish remnant of withered rose began
to smear his far-off west: he dared not look to the east; that lay
terribly cold and gray; and he smiled with a little curl of his lip
now and then, as he thought of this and that advantage he had had
in the game of life, for alas! it had never with him risen to the
dignity of a battle. He was as proud of a successful ruse, as a
hero of a well fought and well won field. "I had him there!" stood
with him for the joy of work done and salvation wrought. It was a
repulsive smile--one that might move even to hatred the onlooker
who was not yet divine enough to let the outrushing waves of pity
swamp his human judgment. It only curled the cruel-looking upper
lip, while the lower continued to hang thick, and sensual, and
drawn into a protuberance in the middle.

Gradually he seemed to himself, as he drank, to be recovering the
common sense of his self-vaunted, vigorous nature. He assured
himself that now he saw plainly the truth and fact of things--that
his present outlook and vision were the true, and the horrors of
the foregone night the weak soul-gnawing fancies bred of a
disordered stomach. He was a man once more, and beyond the sport of
a foolish imagination.

Alas for the man who draws his courage from wine! the same ALAS for
the man whose health is its buttress! the touch of a pin on this or
that spot of his mortal house, will change him from a leader of
armies, or a hunter of tigers in the jungle, to one who shudders at
a centipede! That courage also which is mere insensibility crumbles
at once before any object of terror able to stir the sluggish
imagination. There is a fear, this for one, that for another, which
can appall the stoutest who is not one with the essential.

Lord Mergwain emerged from the influence of his imagination and his
fears, and went under that of his senses and himself. He took his
place beside the Christian in his low, common moods, when the
world, with its laws and its material insistence, presses upon him,
and he does not believe that God cares for the sparrow, or can
possibly count the hairs of his head; when the divine power, and
rule, and means to help, seem nowhere but in a passed-away fancy of
the hour of prayer. Only the Christian is then miserable, and Lord
Mergwain was relieved; for did he not then come to himself? and did
he know anything better to arrive at than just that wretched self
of his?

A glass or two more, and he laughed at the terror by night. He had
been a thorough fool not to go to bed like other people, instead of
sitting by the fire with a porridge-eating Scotchman, who regarded
him as one of the wicked, afraid of the darkness. The thought may
have passed from his mind to that of his host, for the self-same
moment the laird spoke:

"Don't you think you had better go to bed when you have finished
your bottle, my lord?"

With the words, a cold swell, as from the returning tide of some
dead sea, so long ebbed that men had ploughed and sown and built
within its bed, stole in, swift and black, filling every cranny of
the old man's conscious being.

"My God!" he cried; "I thought better of you than that, laird! I
took you for a man of your word! You promised to sit up with me!"

"I did, my lord, and am ready to keep my promise. I only thought
you looked as if you might have changed your mind; and in such a
night as this, beyond a doubt, bed is the best place for everybody
that has got one to go to."

"That depends," answered his lordship, and drank.

The laird held his peace for a time, then spoke again:

"Would your lordship think me rude if I were to take a book?"

"I don't want a noise. It don't go well with old wine like this:
such wine wants attention! It would spoil it. No, thank you."

"I did not propose to read aloud, my lord--only to myself."

"Oh! That alters the matter! That I would by no means object to. I
am but poor company!"

The laird got his "Journal," and was soon lost in the communion of
a kindred soul.

By and by, the boat of his lordship's brain was again drifting
towards the side of such imagination as was in him. The half-tide
restoring the physical mean was past, and intoxication was setting
in. He began to cast uneasy glances towards the book the laird was
reading. The old folio had a look of venerable significance about
it, and whether it called up some association of childhood,
concerned in some fearful fancy, or dreamfully he dreaded the
necromancer's art, suggested by late experience, made him uneasy.

"What's that you are reading?" he said at length. "It looks like a
book of magic."

"On the contrary," replied the laird, "it is a religious book of
the very best sort."

"Oh, indeed! Ah! I have no objection to a little religion--in its
own place. There it is all right. I never was one of those
mockers--those Jacobins, those sans-culottes! Arrogant fools they
always seemed to me!"

"Would your lordship like to hear a little of the book, then?"

"No, no; by no means! Things sacred ought not to be mixed up with
things common--with such an uncommon bottle of wine, for instance.
I dictate to no one, but for my own part I keep my religion for
church. That is the proper place for it, and there you are in the
mood for it. Do not mistake me; it is out of respect I decline."

He drank, and the laird dropt back into the depths of his volume.
The night wore on. His lordship did not drink fast. There was no
hope of another bottle, and the wine must cover the period of his
necessity: he dared not encounter the night without the sustaining
knowledge of its presence. At last he began to nod, and by slow
degrees sank on the sofa. Very softly the laird covered him, and
went back to his book.

The storm went raging on, as if it would never cease. The sense of
desolation it produced in the heart of the laird when he listened
to it was such, that with an inward shudder he closed his mind
against it, and gave all his attention to George Fox, and the
thoughts he roused. The minutes crawled slowly along. He lost all
measure of time, because he read with delight, and at last he found
himself invaded by that soft physical peace which heralds the
approach of sleep. He roused himself; he wanted to read: he was in
one of the most interesting passages he had yet come to. But
presently the sweet enemy was again within his outworks. Once more
he roused himself, heard the storm raving on--over buried graves
and curtained beds, heedless of human heeding--fell a-listening to
its shriek-broken roar, and so into a soundless and dreamless
sleep.

He woke so suddenly that for a moment he knew himself only for
somebody he knew. There lay upon him the weight of an indefinable
oppression--the horror of a darkness too vague to be combated. The
fire had burned low, and his very bones seemed to shiver. The
candle-flames were down in the sockets of the candlesticks, and the
voice of the storm was like a scream of victory. Had the cold then
won its way into the house? Was it having its deathly will of them
all? He cast his eyes on his guest. Sleeping still, he half lay,
half leaned in the corner of the sofa, breathing heavily. His face
was not to be well seen, because of the flapping and flickering of
the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all,
like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the
shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without
opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting
posture--all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind.
The laird then saw his face, and upon it the expression as of one
suffering from some horrible nightmare--so terrified was it, so
wrathful, so disgusted, all in one--and rose in haste to rouse him
from a drunken dream. But ere he reached him he opened his eyes,
and his expression changed--not to one of relief, but to utter
collapse, as if the sleep-dulled horrors of the dream had but grown
real to him as he woke. His under lip trembled like a dry yellow
leaf in a small wind; his right arm rose slowly from the shoulder
and stuck straight out in the direction of his host, while his hand
hung from the wrist; and he stared as upon one loosed from hell to
speak of horrors. But it did not seem to the laird that, although
turned straight towards him, his eyes rested on him; they did not
appear to be focused for him, but for something beyond him. It was
like the stare of one demented, and it invaded--possessed the
laird. A physical terror seized him. He felt his gaze returning
that of the man before him, like to like, as from a mirror. He felt
the skin of his head contracting; his hair was about to stand on
end! The spell must be broken! He forced himself forward a step to
lay his hand on Lord Mergwain, and bring him to himself. But his
lordship uttered a terrible cry, betwixt a scream and a yell, and
sank back on the sofa. The same instant the laird was himself
again, and sprang to him.

Lord Mergwain lay with his mouth wide open, and the same look with
which they found him the night before prostrate in the
guest-chamber. His arm stuck straight out from his body. The laird
pressed it down, but it rose again as soon as he left it. He could
not for a moment doubt the man was dead; there was that about him
that assured him of it, but what it was he could not have told.

The first thought that came to him was, that his daughter must not
see him so. He tied up his jaw, laid him straight on the sofa,
lighted fresh candles, left them burning by the dead, and went to
call Grizzie: a doctor was out of the question.

He felt his way down the dark stair, and fought it through the wind
to the kitchen, whence he climbed to Grizzie's room. He found she
was already out of bed, and putting on her clothes. She had not
been asleep, she said, and added something obscure, which the laird
took to mean that she had been expecting a summons.

"Whan Ane's oot, there's nane in!" she said. "Hoo's the auld
reprobat, laird--an' I beg yer pardon?"

"He's gane til's accoont, Grizzie," answered the laird, in a
trembling voice.

"Say ye sae, laird?" returned Grizzie with perfect calmness. "Oh,
sirs!"

Not a single remark did she then offer. If she was cool, she was
not irreverent before the thought of the awful thing that lay
waiting her.

"Ye winna wauk the hoose, will ye, sir?" she added presently. "I
dinna think it wad be ony service to died or livin'."

"I'll no du that, Grizzie; but come ye an' luik at him," said the
laird, "an' tell me what ye think. I makna a doobt he's deid, but
gien ye hae ony, we'll du what we can; an' we'll sit up wi' the
corp thegither, an' lat yoong an' auld tak the rist they hae mair
need o' nor the likes o' you an' me."

It was a proud moment in Grizzle's life, one never forgotten, when
the laird addressed her thus. She was ready in a moment, and they
went together.

"The prince is haein' his ain w'y the nicht!" she murmured to
herself, as they bored their way through the wind to the great
door.

When she came where the corpse lay, she stood for some moments
looking down upon it without uttering a sound, nor was there any
emotion in the fixed gaze of her eye. She had been brought up in a
stern and nowise pitiful school. She made neither solemn
reflection, nor uttered hope which her theology forbade her to
cherish.

"Ye think wi' me 'at he's deid--dinna ye, Grizzie?" said the laird,
in a voice that seemed to himself to intrude on the solemn silence.

She removed the handkerchief, and the jaw fell.

"He's gane til's accoont," she said. "It's a great amoont; an' mair
on ae side nor he'll weel bide. It's sair eneuch, laird, whan we
hae to gang at the Lord's call, but whan the messenger comes frae
the laich yett (low gate), we maun jist lat gang an' forget. But
sae lang's he's a man, we maun do what we can--an' that's what we
did last nicht; sae I'll rin an' get het watter."

She did so, and they used every means they could think of for his
recovery, but at length gave it up, heaped him over with blankets,
for the last chance of spontaneous revival, and sitting down,
awaited the slow-travelling, feeble dawn.

After they had sat in silence for nearly an hour, the laird spoke:

"We'll read a psalm thegither, Grizzie," he said.

"Ay, du ye that, laird. It'll haud them awa' for the time bein',
though it can profit but little i' the him 'er en'."

The laird drew from his pocket a small, much worn bible which had
been his Marion's, and by the body of the dead sinner, in the heart
of the howling storm and the waste of the night, his voice,
trembling with a strange emotion, rose upborne upon the glorious
words of the ninety-first psalm.

When he ended, they were aware that the storm had begun to yield,
and by slow degrees it sank as the morning came on. Till the first
faintest glimmer of dawn began to appear nothing more was said
between them. But then Grizzie rose in haste, like one that had
overslept herself, and said:

"I maun to my wark, laird--what think ye?"

The laird rose also, and by a common impulse they went and looked
at the corpse--for corpse it now was, beyond all question, cold as
the snow without. After a brief, low-voiced conference, they
proceeded to carry it to the guest-chamber, where they laid it upon
the bed, and when Grizzie had done all that custom required, left
it covered with a sheet, dead in the room where it dared not sleep,
a mound cold and white as any snow-wreath outside. It looked as if
Winter had forced his way into the house, and left this one drift,
in signal of his capture. Grizzie went about her duties, and the
laird back to his book.

A great awe fell upon Cosmo when he heard what visit and what
departure had taken place in the midst of the storm and darkness.
Lady Joan turned white as the dead, and spoke not a word. A few
tears rolled from the luminous dark of her eyes, like the dew
slow-gathering in a night of stars, but she was very still. The
bond between her and her father had not been a pleasant one; she
had not towards him that reverence which so grandly heightens love.
She had loved him pitifully--perhaps, dreadful thought! a little
contemptuously. The laird persuaded her not to see the body; taking
every charge concerning it.

All that day things went on in the house much as usual, with a
little more silence where had been much. The wind lay moveless on
the frozen earth; the sun shone cold as a diamond; and the fresh
snow glittered and gleamed and sparkled like a dead sea of
lightning.

The laird was just thinking which of his men to send to the
village, when the door opened and in came Agnes. Grannie had sent
her, she said, to enquire after them. Grannie had had a troubled
night, and the moment she woke began to talk about the laird, and
his visitors, and what the storm must have been round lonely Castle
Warlock. The drifts were tremendous, she said, but she had made her
way without much difficulty. So the laird, partly to send Cosmo
from the house of death into the world of life, told him to go with
Aggie, and give directions to the carpenter, for the making of a
coffin.

How long the body might have to lie with them, no one could tell,
for the storm had ceased in a hard frost, and there could be no
postal communication for many days. The laird judged it better,
therefore, as soon as the shell arrived, to place the body in a
death-chapel prepared for it by nature herself. With their spades
he and Cosmo fashioned the mound, already hollowed in sport, into
the shape of a hugh sarcophagus, then opened wide the side of it,
to receive the coffin as into a sepulchre in a rock. The men
brought it, laid it in, and closed the entrance again with snow.
Where Cosmo's hollow man of light had shone, lay the body of the
wicked old nobleman.




CHAPTER XVIII.

A WINTER IDYLL.


Lady Joan the same day wrote to her brother Borland, now Mergwain,
telling him what had taken place. But it must be some time before
she received his answer, for the post from England reached the
neighbouring city but intermittently, and was there altogether
arrested, so far as Howglen and Muir o' Warlock were concerned. The
laird told her she must have patience, and assured her that to them
her presence was welcome.

And now began for Cosmo an episode of enchantment, as wondrous as
any dream of tree-top, or summer wave city--for if it was not so
full of lighter marvel around, it had at the heart of it a deeper
marvel, namely a live and beautiful lady.

She was a girl of nearly eighteen, but looked older--shapely,
strong, and graceful. But both her life-consciousness and her
spirits--in some only do the words mean the same thing--had been
kept down by the family relations in which she found herself. Her
father loved her with what love was in him, and therefore was
jealous; trusted, and therefore enslaved her; could make her
useful, and therefore oppressed her. Since his health began to
decline he would go nowhere without her, though he spoke seldom a
pleasant, and often a very unpleasant word to her. He never praised
her to her face, but swore deeply to her excellence in ears that
cared little to hear of it. When at home she must always be within
his reach, if not within his call; but he was far from slow to
anger with her, and she dreaded his anger, not so much from love or
fear as from nicety, because of the ugly things he would say when
he was offended with her. One hears of ruling by love and ruling by
fear, but this man ruled by disgust. At home he lived much as we
have seen him in the house of another, cared for nobody's comfort
but his own, and was hard to keep in good humour--such good humour
as was possible to him. He paid no attention to business or
management: his estates had long been under trustees; lolled about
in his room, diverting himself with a horrible monkey which he
taught ugly tricks; drank almost constantly; and would throw dice
by himself for an hour together--doing what he could, which was
little, towards the poor object of killing Time. He kept a poor
larder but a rich cellar; almost always without money, he yet
contrived to hold his bins replenished, and that from the farther
end: he might have been expecting to live to a hundred and twenty
for of visitors he had none, except an occasional time-belated
companion of his youth, whom the faint, muddled memories of old
sins would bring to his door, when they would spend a day or two
together, soaking, and telling bad stories, at times hardly
restrained until Joan left the room--that is, if her brother was
not present, before whom her father was on his good behaviour.

The old man was in bad repute with the neighbours, and they never
called upon him--which they would have found it hard to justify,
seeing some who were not better were quite respectable. No doubt he
was the dilapidated old reprobate they counted him, but if he had
not made himself poor, they would have found his morals no business
of theirs. They pitied the daughter, or at least spoke pityingly of
her, but could not for her sake countenance the father! Neglecting
their duty towards her, they began to regard her with a blame which
was the shadow of their neglect, thinking of her as defiled in her
father's defilement. The creeping things--those which God hath not
yet cleansed--call the pure things unclean. But it was better to be
so judged than to run the risk of growing after the pattern of her
judges. I suspect the man who leads a dissolute, and the man who
leads a commonly selfish life, will land from the great jump pretty
nearly in the same spot. What if those who have despised each the
other's sins, are set down to stare at them together, until each
finds his own iniquity to be hateful.

Of the latter, the respectably selfish class, was Borland her
brother. He knew his presence a protection to his sister, yet gave
himself no trouble to look after her. As the apple of his eye would
he cherish the fluid in which he hoped to discover some secret
process of nature; but he was not his sister's keeper, and a drop
of mud more or less cast into her spirit was to him of no
consequence. Yet he would as soon have left a woman he wanted to
marry within reach of the miasms that now and then surrounded Joan,
as unwarned in the dark by the cage of a tiger.

At home, therefore, because of the poverty of the family, the
ill-repute of her father, and the pride and self-withdrawal of her
brother, she led a lonely life where everything around her was left
to run wild. The lawn was more of a meadow than a lawn, and the
park a mere pasture for cattle. The shrubbery was an impassable
tangle, and the flower garden a wilderness. She could do nothing to
set things right, and lived about the place like a poor relation.
At school, which she left at fifteen, she had learned nothing so as
to be of any vital use to her--possibly left it a little less
capable than she went. For some of her natural perceptions could
hardly fail to be blunted by the artificial, false, and selfish
judgments and regards which had there surrounded her. Without a
mother, without a companion, she had to find what solace, what
pastime she could. In the huge house there was not a piano fit to
play upon; and her only source of in-door amusement was a library
containing a large disproportion of books in old French bindings,
with much tarnished gilding on the backs. But a native purity of
soul kept her lovely, and capable of becoming lovelier.

[Illustration: COSMO AND LADY JOAN CLIMBING.]

The mystery of all mysteries is the upward tendency of so many
souls through so much that clogs and would defile their wings,
while so many others SEEM never even to look up. Then, having so
begun with the dust, how do these ever come to raise their eyes to
the hills? The keenest of us moral philosophers are but poor,
mole-eyed creatures! One day, I trust, we shall laugh at many a
difficulty that now seems insurmountable, but others will keep
rising behind them. Lady Joan did not like ugly things, and so
shrank from evil things. She was the less in danger from liberty,
because of the disgust which certain tones and words of her father
had repeatedly occasioned her. She learned self-defence early--and
alone, without even a dog to keep her company, and help her to the
laws of the world outside herself.

With none of the conventionalities of society, Lady Joan saw no
reason for making a difficulty when, the day after that on which
her father died, Cosmo proposed a walk in the snow. He saw her
properly provided for what seemed to her an adventure--with short
skirts, and stockings over her shoes--and they set out together, in
the brilliant light of a sun rapidly declining toward the western
horizon, though it had but just passed the low noon. The moment she
stepped from the threshold, Joan was invaded by an almost giddy
sense of freedom. The keen air and the impeding snow sent the warm
blood to her cheeks, and her heart beat as if new-born into a
better world. She was annoyed with herself, but in vain she called
herself heartless; in vain she accused herself of indifference to
the loss of her father, said to herself she was a worthless girl:
there was the sun in the sky--not warm, but dazzling-bright and
shining straight into her very being! while the air, instinct with
life, was filling her lungs like water drunk by a thirsty soul, and
making her heart beat like the heart of Eve when first she woke
alive, and felt what her Maker had willed! Life indeed was good! it
was a blessed thing for the eyes to behold the sun!--Let death do
what it can, there is just one thing it cannot destroy, and that is
life. Never in itself, only in the unfaith of man, does life
recognize any sway of death.--A fresh burst of healthy vigour
seemed born to answer each fresh effort. Over the torrent they
walked on a bridge of snow, and listening could hear, far down,
below the thick white blanket, the noise of its hidden rushing.
Away and up the hill they went; the hidden torrent of Joan's blood
flowed clearer; her heart sang to her soul; and everything began to
look like a thing in a story--herself a princess, and her attendant
a younger brother, travelling with her to meet the tide of
in-flowing lovely adventure. Such a brother was a luxury she had
never had--very different from an older one. He talked so strangely
too--now like a child, now like an old man! She felt a charm in
both, but understood neither. Capable, through confidence in his
father, of receiving wisdom far beyond what he could have thought
out for himself, he sometimes said things because he understood
them, which seemed to most who heard them beyond his years. Some
people only understand enough of a truth to reject it, but Cosmo's
reception by faith turned to sight, as all true faith does at last,
and formed a soil for thought more immediately his own.

They had been climbing a steep ascent, very difficult in the snow,
and had at length reached the top, where they stood for a moment
panting, with another ascent beyond them.

"Aren't you always wanting to climb and climb, Lady Joan?" said the
boy.

"Call me Joan, and I will answer you."

"Then, Joan,--how kind you are! Don't you always want to be getting
up?--up higher than you are?"

"No; I don't think I do."

"I believe you do, only you don't know it. When I get on the top of
yon hill there, it always seems to me such a little way up!--and
Mr. Simon tells me I should feel much the same, if it were the top
of the highest peak in the Himmalays."

Lady Joan did not reply, and Cosmo too was silent for a time.

"Don't you think," he began again, "though life is so very good--to
me especially with you here--you would get very tired if you
thought you had to live in this world always--for ever and ever and
ever, and never, never get out of it?"

"No, I don't," said Joan. "I can't say I find life so nice as you
think it, but one keeps hoping it may turn to something better."

She was amused with what she counted childish talk for a boy of his
years--so manly too beyond his years!

"That is very curious!" he returned. "Now I am quite happy; but
this moment I should feel just in a prison, if I thought I should
never get to another world; for what you can never get out of, is
your prison--isn't it?"

"Yes--but if you don't want to get out?"

"Ah, that is true! but as soon as that comes to a prisoner, it is a
sign that he is worn out, and has not life enough in him to look
the world in the face. I was talking about it the other day with
Mr. Simon, else I shouldn't have got it so plain. The blue roof so
high above us there, is indeed very different from the stone vault
of a prison, for there is no stop or end to it. But if you can
never get away from under it, never get off the floor at the bottom
of it, I feel as if it might almost as well be something solid that
held me in. There would be no promise in the stars then: they look
now like promises, don't they? I do not believe God would ever show
us a thing he did not mean to give us."

"You are a very odd boy, Cosmo. I am almost afraid to listen to
you. You say such presumptuous things!"

Cosmo laughed a little gentle laugh.

"How can you love God, Joan, and be afraid to speak before him? I
should no more dream of his being angry with me for thinking he
made me for great and glad things, and was altogether generous
towards me, than I could imagine my father angry with me for
wishing to be as wise and as good as he is, when I know it is wise
and good he most wants me to be."

"Ah, but he is your father, you know, and that is very different!"

"I know it is very different--God is so much, much more my father
than is the laird of Glenwarlock! He is so much more to me, and so
much nearer to me, though my father is the best father that ever
lived! God, you know, Joan, God is more than anybody knows what to
say about. Sometimes, when I am lying in my bed at night, my heart
swells and swells in me, that I hardly know how to bear it, with
the thought that here I am, come out of God, and yet not OUT of
him--close to the very life that said to everything BE, and it was!
--you think it strange that I talk so?"

"Rather, I must confess! I don't believe it can be a good thing at
your age to think so much about religion. There is a time for
everything. You talk like one of those good little children in
books that always die--at least I have heard of such books--I never
saw any of them."

Cosmo laughed again.

"Which of us is the merrier--you or me? Which of us is the
stronger, Joan? The moment I saw you, I thought you looked like one
that hadn't enough of something--as if you weren't happy; but if
you knew that the great beautiful person we call God, was always
near you, it would be impossible for you to go on being sad."

Joan gave a great sigh: her heart knew its own bitterness, and
there was little joy in it for a stranger to intermeddle with. But
she said to herself the boy would be a gray-haired man before he
was twenty, and began to imagine a mission to help him out of these
morbid fancies.

"You must surely understand, Cosmo," she said, "that, while we are
in this world, we must live as people of this world, not of
another."

"But you can't mean that the people of this world are banished from
Him who put them in it! He is all the same, in this world and in
every other. If anything makes us happy, it must make us much
happier to know it for a bit of frozen love--for the love that
gives is to the gift as water is to snow. Ah, you should hear our
torrent sing in summer, and shout in the spring! The thought of God
fills me so full of life that I want to go and do something for
everybody. I am never miserable. I don't think I shall be when my
father dies."

"Oh, Cosmo!--with such a good father as yours! I am shocked."

Her words struck a pang into her own heart, for she felt as if she
had compared his father and hers, over whom she was not miserable.
Cosmo turned, and looked at her. The sun was close upon the
horizon, and his level rays shone full on the face of the boy.

"Lady Joan," he said slowly, and with a tremble in his voice, "I
should just laugh with delight to have to die for my father. But if
he were taken from me now, I should be so proud of him, I should
have no room to be miserable. As God makes me glad though I cannot
see him, so my father would make me glad though I could not see
him. I cannot see him now, and yet I am glad because my father
IS--away down there in the old castle; and when he is gone from me,
I shall be glad still, for he will be SOMEWHERE all the same--with
God as he is now. We shall meet again one day, and run at each
other."

It was an odd phrase with which he ended, but Lady Joan did not
laugh.

The sun was down, and the cold, blue gray twilight came creeping
from the east. They turned and walked home, through a luminous
dusk. It would not be dark all night, though the moon did not rise
till late, for the snow gave out a ghostly radiance. Surely it must
be one of those substances that have the power of drinking and
hoarding the light of the sun, that with their memories of it they
may thin the darkness! I suspect everything does it more or less.
Far below were the lights of the castle, and across an unbroken
waste of whiteness the gleams of the village. The air was keen as
an essence of points and edges, and the thought of the kitchen fire
grew pleasant. Cosmo took Joan's hand, and down the hill they ran,
swiftly descending what they had toilsomely climbed.

As she ran, the thought that one of those lights was burning by the
body of her father, rebuked Joan afresh. She was not glad, and she
could not be sorry! If Cosmo's father were to die, Cosmo would be
both sorry and glad! But the boy turned his face, ever and again as
they ran, up to hers--she was a little taller than he--and his
every look comforted her. An attendant boy-angel he seemed, whose
business it was to rebuke and console her. If he were her brother,
she would be well content never more to leave the savage place! For
the strange old man in the red night-cap was such a gentleman! and
this odd boy, absolutely unnatural in his goodness, was
nevertheless charming! She did not yet know that goodness is the
only nature. She regarded it as a noble sort of disease--as
something at least which it was possible to have too much of. She
had not a suspicion that goodness and nothing else is life and
health--that what the universe demands of us is to be good boys and
girls.

To judge religion we must have it--not stare at it from the bottom
of a seeming interminable ladder. When she reached the door, she
felt as if waking out of a dream, in which she had been led along
strange paths by a curious angel. But not to himself was Cosmo like
an angel! For indeed he was a strong, viguorous, hopeful, trusting
boy of God's in this world, and would be just such a boy in the
next--one namely who did his work, and was ready for whatever was
meant to come.

When, from all that world of snow outside, Joan entered the kitchen
with its red heart of fire, she knew for a moment how a little bird
feels when creeping under the wing of his mother. Those old
Hebrews--what poets they were! Holy and homely and daring, they
delighted in the wings of the Almighty; but the Son of the Father
made the lovely image more homely still, likening himself to the
hen under whose wings the chickens would not creep for all her
crying and calling. Then first was Joan aware of simple confidence,
of safety and satisfaction and loss of care; for the old man in the
red nightcap would see to everything! Nought would go amiss where
he was at the head of affairs! And hardly was she seated when she
felt a new fold of his protection about her: he told her he had had
her room changed, that she might be near his mother and Grizzie,
and not have to go out to reach it.

Cosmo heard with delight that his father had given up his room to
Lady Joan, and would share his. To sleep with his father was one of
the greatest joys the world held for him. Such a sense of safety
and comfort--of hen's wings--was nowhere else to be had on the face
of the great world! It was the full type of conscious well-being,
of softness and warmth and peace in the heart of strength. His
father was to him a downy nest inside a stone-castle.

They all sat together round the kitchen fire. The laird fell into a
gentle monologue, in which, to Joan's thinking, he talked even more
strangely than Cosmo. Things born in the fire and the smoke, like
the song of the three holy children, issued from the furnace
clothed in softest moonlight. Joan said to herself it was plain
where the boy got his oddity; but what she called oddity was but
sense from a deeper source than she knew the existence of. He read
them also passages of the book then occupying him so much: Joan
wondered what attraction such a jumble of good words and no sense
could have for a man so capable in ordinary affairs. Then came
supper; and after that, for the first time in her life, Joan was
present when a man had the presumption to speak to his Maker direct
from his own heart, without the mediation of a book. This she found
odder than all the rest; she had never even heard of such a thing!
So peculiar, so unfathomable were his utterances, that it never
occurred to her the man might be meaning something; farther from
her still was the thought, that perhaps God liked to hear him, was
listening to him and understanding him, and would give him the
things he asked. She heard only an extraordinary gibberish,
supposed suitable to a religious observance--family prayers, she
thought it must be! She felt confused, troubled, ashamed--so
grievously out of her element that she never knew until they rose,
that the rest were kneeling while she sat staring into the fire.
Then she felt guilty and shy, but as nobody took any notice,
persuaded herself they had not observed. The unpleasantness of all
this, however, did not prevent her from saying to herself as she
went to bed, "Oh, how delightful it would be to live in a house
where everybody understood, and loved, and thought about everybody
else!" She did not know that she was wishing for nothing more, and
something a little less, than the kingdom of heaven--the very thing
she thought the laird and Cosmo so strange for troubling their
heads about. If men's wishes are not always for what the kingdom of
heaven would bring them, their miseries at least are all for the
lack of that kingdom.

That night Joan dreamed herself in a desert island, where she had
to go through great hardships, but where everybody was good to
everybody, and never thought of taking care except of each other;
and that, when a beautiful ship came to carry her away, she cried,
and would not go.

Three weeks of all kinds of weather, except warm, followed, ending
with torrents of rain, and a rapid thaw; but before that time Joan
had got as careless of the weather as Cosmo, and nothing delighted
her more than to encounter any sort of it with him. Nothing kept
her in-doors, and as she always attended to Grizzie's injunctions
the moment she returned, she took no harm, and grew much stronger.
It is not encountering the weather that is dangerous, but
encountering it when the strength is not equal to the encounter.
These two would come in wet from head to foot, change their
clothes, have a good meal, sleep well, and wake in the morning
without the least cold. They would spend the hours between
breakfast and dinner ascending the bank of a hill-stream, dammed by
the snow, swollen by the thaw, and now rushing with a roar to the
valley; or fighting their way through wind and sleet to the top of
some wild expanse of hill-moorland, houseless for miles and
miles--waste bog, and dry stony soil, as far as eye could reach,
with here and there a solitary stock or bush, bending low to the
ground in the steady bitter wind--a hopeless region, save that it
made the hope in their hearts glow the redder; or climbing a gully,
deep-worn by the few wheels of a month but the many of centuries,
and more by the torrents that rushed always down its trench when it
rained heavily, or thawed after snow--hearing the wind sweep across
it above their heads, but feeling no breath of its pres--ence, till
emerging suddenly upon its plane, they had to struggle with it for
very foot-hold upon the round earth. In such contests Lady Joan
delighted. It was so nice, she said, to have a downright good
fight, and nobody out of temper! She would come home from the windy
war with her face glowing, her eyes flashing, her hair challenging
storm from every point of the compass, and her heart merry with
very peacefulness. Her only thoughts of trouble were, that her
father's body lay unburied, and that Borland would come and take
her away.

When the thaw came at last, the laird had the coffin brought again
into the guest-chamber, and there placed on trestles, to wait the
coming of the new Lord Mergwain.

Outstripping the letter that announced his departure, he arrived at
length, and with him his man of business. Lady Joan's heart gave a
small beat of pleasure at sight of him, then lay quiet, sad, and
apprehensive: the cold proper salute he gave her seemed, after the
life she had of late been living, to belong rather to some sunless
world than the realms of humanity. He uttered one commonplace
concerning his father's death, and never alluded to it again;
behaved in a dignified, recognizant manner to the laird, as to an
inferior to whom he was under more obligation than he saw how to
wipe out; and, after the snub with which he met the boy's friendly
approach, took no farther notice of Cosmo. Seated three minutes, he
began to require the laird's assistance towards the removal of the
body; could not be prevailed upon to accept refreshment; had a
messenger dispatched instantly to procure the nearest hearse and
four horses; and that same afternoon started for England, following
the body, and taking his sister with him.




CHAPTER XIX.

AN "INTERLUNAR CAVE."


And so the moon died out of Cosmo's heaven. But it was only the
moon. The sun remained to him--his father--visible type of the
great sun, whose light is too keen for souls, and heart and spirit
only can bear. But when he had received Joan's last smile, when she
turned away her face, and the Ungenial, who had spoiled everything
at Glenwarlock, carried her away, then indeed for a moment a great
cloud came over the light of his life, and he sought where to hide
his tears. It was a sickening time, for suddenly she had come,
suddenly entered his heart, and suddenly departed. But such things
are but clouds, and cannot but pass. Ah, reader! it may be your
cloud has not yet passed, and you scorn to hear it called one,
priding yourself that your trouble is eternal. But just because you
are eternal, your trouble cannot be. You may cling to it, and brood
over it, but you cannot keep it from either blossoming into a
bliss, or crumbling to dust. Be such while it lasts, that, when it
passes, it shall leave you loving more, not less.

There was this difference between Cosmo and most young men of clay
finer than ordinary, that, after the first few moments of the
seemingly unendurable, he did not wander about moody, nursing his
sorrow, and making everybody uncomfortable because he was
uncomfortable; but sought the more the company of his father, and
of Mr. Simon, from whom he had been much separated while Lady Joan
was with them. For such a visit was an opportunity most precious in
the eyes of the laird. With the sacred instinct of a father he
divined what the society of a lady would do for his boy--for the
ripening of his bloom, and the strengthening of his volition. Two
days had not passed before he began to be aware of a softening and
clearing of his speech; of greater readiness and directness in his
replies; of an indescribable sweetening of the address, that had
been sweet, with a rose-shadow of gentle apology cast over every
approach; of a deepening of the atmosphere of his reverence, which
yet as it deepened grew more diaphanous. And when now the episode
of angelic visitation was over, with his usual wisdom he understood
the wrench her abrupt departure must have given his whole being,
and allowed him plenty of time to recover himself from it. Once he
came upon him weeping: not with faintest overshadowing did he
rebuke him, not with farthest hint suggest weakness in his tears.
He went up to him, laid his hand gently on his head, stood thus a
moment, then turned without a word, and left him. Nowise because of
his sorrow did he regret the freedom he had granted their
intercourse. He knew what the sharp things of life are to the human
plant; that its frosts are as needful as its sunshine, its great
passion-winds as its gentle rains; that a divine result is
required, and that his son was being made divinely human; that in
aid of this end the hand of man must humbly follow the great lines
of Nature, ready to withhold itself, anxious not to interfere. Most
people resist the marvellous process; call in the aid of worldly
wisdom for low ends; and bring the experience of their own failures
to bear for the production of worse. But there is no escaping the
mill that grinds slowly and grinds small; and those who refuse to
be living stones in the living temple, must be ground into mortar
for it.

The next day, of his own choice, Cosmo went to Mr. Simon. He also
knew how to treat the growing plant. He set him such work as should
in a measure harmonize with his late experience, and so drew him
gently from his past: mere labour would have but driven him deeper
into it. Yesterday is as much our past as the bygone century, and
sheltering in it from an uncongenial present, we are lost to our
morrow. Thus things slid gently back with him into their old
grooves. An era of blessedness had vanished, but was not lost; it
was added to his life, gathered up into his being; it was dissolved
into his consciousness, and interpenetrated his activity. Where
there is no ground of regret, or shame, or self-reproach, new joy
casts not out the old; and now that the new joy was old, the older
joys came softly trooping back to their attendance. Nor was this
all. The departing woman left behind her a gift that had never been
hers--the power of verse: he began to be a poet. The older I grow
the more am I filled with marvel at the divine idea of the mutual
development of the man and the woman. Many a woman has made of a
man, for the time at least, and sometimes for ever, a poet, caring
for his verses never a cambric handkerchief or pair of gloves! A
wretched man to whom a poem is not worth a sneer, may set a woman
singing to the centuries!

Any gift of the nature of poetry, however poor or small, is of
value inestimable to the development of the individual, ludicrous
even though it may show itself, should conceit clothe it in print.
The desire of fame, so vaunted, is the ruin of the small, sometimes
of the great poet. The next evil to doing anything for love of
money, is doing it for the love of fame. A man may have a wife who
is all the world to him, but must he therefore set her on a throne?
Cosmo, essentially and peculiarly practical, never thought of the
world and his verses together, but gathered life for himself in the
making of them.

These children of his, like all real children, strengthened his
heart, and upheld his hands. In them Truth took to him shape; in
them she submitted herself to his contemplation. He grew faster,
and from the days of his mourning emerged more of a man, and abler
to look the world in the face.

From that time also he learned and understood more rapidly, though
he never came to show any great superiority in the faculties most
prized of this world, whose judgment differs from that of God's
kingdom in regard to the comparative value of intellectual gifts
almost as much as it does in regard to the relative value of the
moral and the intellectual. Not the less desirable however did it
seem in the eyes of both his father and his tutor, that, if it
could anyhow be managed, he should go the next winter to college.
As to how it could be managed, the laird took much serious thought,
but saw no glimmer of light in the darkness of apparent
impossibility. An unsuspected oracle was however at hand.

Old servants of the true sort, have, I fancy, a kind of family
instinct. From the air about them almost, from the personal
carriage, from words dropped that were never meant for them, from
the thoughtful, troubled, or eager look, and the sought or avoided
conference, they get possessed by a notion both of how the wind is
blowing, and of how the ship wants to sail. But Grizzie was capable
of reasoning from what she saw. She marked the increase of care on
the brow of her master; noted that it was always greater after he
and Mr. Simon had had a talk at which Cosmo, the beloved of both,
was not present; and concluded that their talk, and the laird's
trouble, must be about Cosmo. She noted also that both were as much
pleased with him as ever, and concluded therefore it was his
prospects and not his behaviour that caused the uneasiness. Then
again she noted how fervently at prayers her master entreated
guidance to do neither more nor less than the right thing; and from
all put together, and considered in the light of a tolerably
accurate idea of the laird's circumstances, Grizzie was able not
only to arrive at a final conclusion, but to come to the resolution
of offering--not advice--that she would never have presumed
upon--but a suggestion.




CHAPTER XX

CATCH YER NAIG.


One night the laird sat in the kitchen revolving in his mind the
whole affair for the many hundredth time. Was it right to spend on
his son's education what might go to the creditors? Was it not
better for the world, for the creditors, and for all, that one of
Cosmo's vigour should be educated? Was it not the best possible
investment of any money he could lay hold of? As to the creditors,
there was the land! the worst for him was the best for them; and
for the boy it was infinitely better he should go without land than
without education! But, all this granted and settled, WHERE WAS THE
MONEY TO COME FROM? That the amount required was small, made no
difference, when it was neither in hand, nor, so far as he could
see, anywhere near his hand.

He sat in his great chair, with his book open upon his knees. His
mother and Cosmo were gone to bed, and Grizzie was preparing to
follow them: the laird was generally the last to go. But Grizzie,
who had been eying him at intervals for the last half hour, having
now finished her preparations for the morning, drew near, and stood
before him, with her hands and bare arms under her apron. Her
master taking no notice of her, she stood thus in silence for a
moment, then began. It may have been noted that the riming tendency
appeared mostly in the start of a speech, and mostly vanished
afterwards.

"Laird," she said, "ye're in trouble, for ye're sittin' double, an'
castna a leuk upo' yer buik. Gien ye wad lat a body speyk 'at kens
naething,'cep' 'at oot o' the moo' o' babes an' sucklin's--an'troth
I'm naither babe nor sucklin' this mony a lang, but I'm a
muckle eneuch gowk to be ane o' the Lord's innocents, an' hae him
perfec' praise oot o' the moo' o' me!--"

She paused a moment, feeling it was time the laird should say
something-which immediately he did.

"Say awa', Grizzie," he answered; "I'm hearin' ye. There's nane has
a better richt to say her say i' this hoose; what ither hae ye to
say't intil!"

"I hae no richt," retorted Grizzie, almost angrily, "but what ye
alloo me', laird; and I wadna wuss the Lord to gie me ony mair. But
whan I see ye in tribble--eh, mony's the time I haud my tongue till
my hert's that grit it's jist swallin' in blobs an' blawin' like
the parritch whan its dune makin', afore tak it frae the fire! for
I hae naething to say, an' naither coonsel nor help intil me. But
last nicht, whan I leukit na for't, there cam a thoucht intil my
heid, an' seein' it was a stranger, I bad it walcome. It micht hae
come til a far wysser heid nor mine, but seein' it did come to
mine, it wad luik as gien the Lord micht hae pitten' t' there--to
the comfort an' consolation o' ane,'at, gien she be a gowk, is
muckle the same as the Lord made her wi' 's ain bliss-it han'. Sae,
quo' I, Is' jist submit the thing to the laird. He'll sune discern
whether it be frae the Lord or mysel'!"

"Say on, Grizzie," returned the laird, when again she paused. "It
sud surprise nane to get a message frae the Lord by the mou' o' ane
o' his handmaidens."

"Weel, it's this, laird.--I hae often been i' the gran' drawin'
room, when ye wad be lattin' the yoong laird, or somebody or
anither ye wantit to be special til, see the bonny things ye hae
sic a fouth o' i' the caibnets again the wa's; an' I hae aye h'ard
ye say o' ane o' them--yon bonny little horsie, ye ken,'at they say
the auld captain,'at 's no laid yet, gied to yer gran'father--I hae
aye h'ard ye say o' that,'at hoo it was solid silver--'SAID TO BE,'
ye wad aye tack to the tail o' 't."

"True! true!" said the laird, a hopeful gleam beginning to break
upon his darkness.

"We'll, ye see, laird," Grizzie went on, "I'm no sic a born idiot
as think ye wad set the possession o' sic a playock again the yoong
laird's edication; sae ye maun hae some rizzon for no meltin' 't
doon--seem' siller maun aye be worth siller,--an' gowd, gien there
be eneuch o' 't. Sae, like the minister, I come to the
conclusion--But I hae yer leave, laird, to speyk?"

"Gang on, gang on, Grizzie," said the laird, almost eagerly.

"Weel, laird--I winna say FEART, for I never saw yer lairdship"
--she had got into the way of saying LORDSHIP, and now not
unfrequently said LAIRDSHIP!--"feart afore bull or bully, but I
cud weel believe ye wadna willin'ly anger ane 'at the Lord lats
gang up and doon upo' the earth, whan he wad be far better intil't,
ristin' in 's grave till the resurrection--only he was never ane o'
the sancts! But anent that, michtna ye jist ca' to min', laird,'at
a gi'en gift's yer ain, to du wi' what ye like; an' I wad na heed
man, no to say a cratur 'at belangs richtly to nae warl' ava','at
wad play the bairn, an' want back what he had gi'en. For him, he's
a mere deid man 'at winna lie still. Mony a bairn canna sleep,
'cause he's behavet himsel' ill the day afore! But gi'en, by
coortesy like, he hed a word i' the case, he cudna objec'--that is,
gien he hae onything o' the gentleman left intil him, which nae
doobt may weel be doobtfu'--for wasna he a byous expense wi' his
drink an' the gran' ootlandish dishes he bude to hae! Aften hae I
h'ard auld Grannie say as muckle, an' she kens mair aboot that
portion o' oor history nor ony ither, for, ye see, I cam raither
late intil the faimily mysel'. Sae, as I say, it wad be but fair
the auld captain sud contreebit something to the needcessities o'
the hoose, war it his to withhaud, which I mainteen it is not."

"Weel rizzont, Grizzie!" cried the laird. "An' I thank ye mair for
yer thoucht nor yer rizzons; the tane I was in want o', the tither
I was na. The thing sall be luikit intil, an' that the first thing
the morn's mornin'! The bit playock cam never i' my heid! I maun be
growin' auld, Grizzie, no to hae thoucht o' a thing sae plain! But
it's the w'y wi' a' the best things! They're sae guid whan ye get a
grip o' them,'at ye canna un'erstan' hoo ye never thoucht o' them
afore."

"I'm aul'er nor you, sir; sae it maun hae been the Lord himsel' 'at
pat it intil me."

"We'll see the morn, Grizzie. I'm no that sure there's onything
mair intil't nor a mere fule word. For onything I ken, the thing
may be nae better nor a bit o' braiss. I hae thoucht mony a time it
luikit, in places, unco like braiss. But Is' tak it the morn's
mornin' to Jeemie Merson. We'll see what he says til 't. Gien ony
body i' these pairts hae ony authority in sic maitters, it's
Jeemie. An' I thank ye hertily, Grizzie."

But Grizzie was not well pleased that her master should so lightly
pass the reasoned portion of her utterance; like many another
prophet, she prized more the part of her prophecy that came from
herself, than the part that came from the Lord.

"Sae plain as he cam an' gaed, laird, I thoucht ye micht hae been
considerin' him."

The laird replied to her tone rather than her words.

"Hoots, Grizzie, wuman!" he said, "was na ye jist tellin' me no to
heed him a hair? An' no ae hair wad I heed him,'cep' it wad gie ony
rist til's puir wan'erin' sowl."

"I but thoucht the thing worth a thoucht, laird," said Grizzie,
humbly and apologetically; and with a kind "Guid nicht to ye,
laird," turned away, and went up the stairs to her room.

The moment she was gone, the laird fell on his knees, and gave God
thanks for the word he had received by his messenger--if indeed it
pleased him that such Grizzie should prove to be.

"O Lord," he said, "with thee the future is as the present, and the
past as the future. In the long past it may be thou didst provide
this supply for my present need--didst even then prepare the answer
to the prayers with which thou knewest I should assail thine ear.
Never in all my need have I so much desired money as now for the
good of my boy. But if this be but one of my hopes, not one of thy
intents, give me the patience of a son, O Father."

With these words he rose from his knees, and taking his book, read
and enjoyed into the dead of the night.

That same night, Cosmo, who, again in his own chamber, was the more
troubled with the trouble of his father that he was no longer with
him in his room, dreamed a very odd, confused dream, of which he
could give himself but little account in the morning--something
about horses shod with shoes of gold, which they cast from their
heels in a shoe-storm as they ran, and which anybody might have for
the picking up. And throughout the dream was diffused an
unaccountable flavour of the old villain, the sea-captain, although
nowhere did he come into the story.




CHAPTER XXI

THE WATCMAKER


When he came down to breakfast, his father told him, to his
delight, that he was going to Muir of Warlock, and would like him
to go with him. He ran like a hare up the waterside to let Mr.
Simon know, and was back by the time his father was ready.

It was a lovely day. There would be plenty of cold and rough
weather yet, but the winter was over and gone, and even to that
late region of the north, the time of the singing of birds was
come. The air was soft, with streaks of cold in it. The fields lay
about all wet, but there was the sun above them, whose business it
was to dry them. There were no leaves yet on the few trees and
hedges, but preparations had long been made, and the sap was now
rising in their many stems, like the mercury in all the
thermometers. Up also rose the larks, joy fluttering their wings,
and quivering their throats. They always know when the time to
praise God is come, for it is when they begin to feel happy: more
cannot be expected of them. And are they not therein already on the
level of most of us Christians who in this mood and that praise
God? And indeed are not the birds and the rest of the creatures
Christians in the same way as the vast mass of those that call
themselves such? Do they not belong to the creation groaning after
a redemption they do not know? Men and women groan in misery from
not being yet the sons and daughters of God, who regard nothing
else as redemption, but the getting of their own way, which the
devil only would care to give them.

As they went, the laird told Cosmo what was taking him to the
village, and the boy walked by his father's side as in a fairy
tale; for had they not with them a strange thing that might prove
the talismanic opener of many doors to treasure-caves?

They went straight to the shop, if shop it could be called, of
Jeames Merson, the watchmaker of the village. There all its little
ornamental business was done--a silver spoon might be engraved, a
new pin put to a brooch, a wedding ring of sterling gold purchased,
or a pair of earings of lovely glass, representing amethyst or
topaz. There a second-hand watch might be had, with choice amongst
a score, taken in exchange from ploughmen or craftsmen. Jeames was
poor, for there was not much trade in his line, and so was never
able to have much of a stock; but he was an excellent
watchmaker--none better in the great city--so at least his
town-folk believed, and in a village it soon appears whether a
watchmaker has got it in him.

He was a thin, pale man, with a mixed look of rabbit and ferret, a
high narrow forehead, and keen gray eyes. His work-shop and
show-room was the kitchen, partly for the sake of his wife's
company, partly because there was the largest window the cottage
could boast. In this window was hung almost his whole stock, and a
table before it was covered with his work and tools. He was
stooping over it, his lens in his eye, busy with a watch, of which
several portions lay beside him protected from the dust by footless
wine-glasses, when the laird and Cosmo entered. He put down pinion
and file, pushed back his chair, and rose to receive them.

"A fine mornin', Jeames!" said the laird. "I houp ye're weel, and
duin' weel."

"Muckle the same as usual, laird, an' I thank ye," answered Jeames,
with a large smile. "I'm no jist upo' the ro'd to be what they ca'
a millionaire, an' I'm no jist upon the perris--something atween
the twa, I'm thinkin'."

"I doobt there's mair o' ane's in like condition, Jeames,"
responded the laird, "or we wad na be comin' to tax yer skeel at
this present."

"Use yer freedom, laird; I'm yer heumble servan'. It wadna be a
watch for the yoong laird? I kenna--"

He stopped, and cast an anxious eye towards the window.

"Na, na," interrupted the laird, sorry to have raised even so much
of a vain hope in the mind of the man, "I'm as farfrae a watch as
ye are frae the bank. But I hae here i' my pooch a bit silly
playock,'at's been i' the hoose this mony a lang; an' jist this
last nicht it was pitten intil my heid there micht be some guid
intl the chattel, seein' i' the tradition o' the faimily it's aye
been hauden for siller. For my ain pairt I hae my doobts; but gien
onybody here aboot can tell the trowth on't, yersel' maun be the
man; an' sae I hae brought it, to ken what ye wad say til 't."

"I'll du my best to lowse yer doobt, laird," returned Jeames.
"Lat's hae a luik at the article."

The laird took the horse from his pocket, and handed it to him.
Jeames regarded it for some time with interest, and examined it
with care.

"It's a bonny bit o' carved work," he said; "--a bairnly kin' o' a
thing for shape--mair like a timmer horsie; but whan ye come to the
ornamentation o' the same, it's o' anither character frae the roon'
spots o' reid paint--an' sae's the sma' rubies an' stanes intil 't.
This has taen a heap o' time, an' painsfu' labour--a deal mair nor
some o' 's wad think it worth, I doobt! It's the w'y o' the
haithens wi' their graven eemages, but what for a horsie like this,
I dinna ken. Hooever, that's naither here nor there: ye didna come
to me to speir hoo or what for it was made; it's what is 't made o'
's the question. It's some yallow-like for siller; an' it's unco
black, which is mair like it--but that may be wi' dirt.--An' dirt
I'm thinkin' it maun be, barkit intil the gravin'," he went on,
taking a tool and running the point of it along one of the fine
lines. "Troth ohn testit, I wadna like to say what it was. But it's
an unco weicht!--I doobt--na, I mair nor doobt it canna be siller."

So saying he carried it to his table, put it down, and went to a
corner-cupboard. Thence he brought a small stoppered phial. He gave
it a little shake, and took out the stopper. It was followed by a
dense white fume. With the stopper he touched the horse underneath,
and looked closely at the spot. He then replaced the stopper and
the bottle, and stood by the cupboard, gazing at nothing for a
moment. Then turning to the laird, he said, with a peculiar look
and a hesitating expression:

"Na, laird, it's no siller. Aquafortis winna bite up' 't. I wad mix
't wi' muriatic, an' try that, but I hae nane handy, an' forby it
wad tak time to tell. Ken ye whaur it cam frae?--Ae thing I'm sure
o'--it's no siller!"

"I'm sorry to hear it," rejoined the laird, with a faint smile and
a little sigh.--"Well, we're no worse off than we were, Cosmo!--But
poor Grizzle! she'll be dreadfully disappointed.--Gie me the bit
horsie, Jeames; we'll e'en tak' him hame again. It's no his fau't,
puir thing,'at he 's no better nor he was made!"

"Wad ye no tell me whaur the bit thing cam frae, or is supposit to
hae come frae, sir; H'ard ye it ever said, for enstance,'at the
auld captain they tell o' had broucht it?"

"That's what I hae h'ard said," answered the laird.

"Weel, sir," returned Jeames, "gien ye had nae objection, I wad
fain mak' oot what the thing _is_ made o'."

"It matters little," said the laird, "seein' we ken what it 's
_no_ made o'; but tak' yer wull o' 't, Jeames."

"Sit ye doon than, laird, gien ye hae naething mair pressin', an'
see what I mak' o' 't," said the watchmaker, setting him a chair.

"Wullin'ly," replied the laird, "--but I dinna like takin' up yer
time."

"Ow, my time's no sae dooms precious! I can aye win throu' wi' my
work ohn swatten," said Jeames, with a smile in which mingled a
half comical sadness. "An' it wad set me to waur't (PUZZLE ME TO
SPEND IT) better to my ain min' nor servin' yersel', i' the
sma'est, sir."

The laird thanked him, and sat down. Cosmo placed himself on a
stool beside him.

"I hae naething upo' han' the day," Jeames Merson went on, "but a
watch o' Jeames Gracie's, up at the Know--ane o' yer ain fowk,
laird. He tells me it was your gran'father, sir, gied it til his
gran'father. It's a queer auld-fashiont kin' o' a thing--some
complicat; an'whiles it's 'maist ower muckle for me. Ye see auld
age is aboot the warst disease horses an' watches can be ta'en wi':
there's sae little left to come an' gang upo'!"

While the homely assayer thus spoke, he was making his
preparations.

"What for no men as weel's horses an' watches?" suggested the
laird.

"I wadna meddle wi' men. I lea' them to the doctors an' the
ministers," replied Jeames, with another wide, silent laugh.

By this time he had got a pair of scales carefully adjusted, a
small tin vessel in one of them, and balancing weights in the
other. Then he went to the rack over the dresser, and mildly
lamenting his wife's absence and his own inability to lay his hand
on the precise vessels he wanted, brought thence a dish and a
basin. The dish he placed on the table with the basin in it and
filled the latter with water to the very brim. He then took the
horse, placed it gently in the basin, which was large enough to
receive it entirely, and set basin and horse aside. Taking then
the'dish into which the water had overflowed, he poured its
contents into the tin vessel in the one scale, and added weights to
the opposite until they balanced each other, upon which he made a
note with a piece of chalk on the table. Next, he removed
everything from the scales, took the horse, wiped it in his apron,
and weighed it carefully. That done, he sat down, and leaning back
in his chair, seemed to his visitors to be making a calculation,
only the conjecture did not quite fit the strange, inscrutable
expression of his countenance. The laird began to think he must be
one of those who delight to plaster knowledge with mystery.

"Weel, laird," said Jeames at length, "the weicbt o' what ye hae
laid upo' me, maks me doobtfu' whaur nae doobt sud be. But I'mb'un' to
say, ootside the risk o' some mistak, o' the gr'un's o'
which I can ken naething, for else I wadna hae made it,'at this bit
horsie o' yours, by a' 'at my knowledge or skeel, which is naither
o' them muckle, can tell me--this bit horsie--an' gien it binna as
I say, I canNOT see what for it sudna be sae--only, ye see, laird,
whan we think we ken a'thing, there's a heap ahint oor A'THING; an'
feow ken better, at least feow hae a richt to ken better, nor I du
mysel', what a puir cratur is man, an hoo liable to mak mistaks,
e'en whan he's duin' his best to be i' the richt; an for oucht 'at
I ken, there may hae been grit discoveries made, ohn ever come to
my hearin','at upsets a'thing I ever was gien to tak, an' haud by
for true; an' yet I daurna withhaud the conclusion I'm driven til,
for maybe whiles the hert o' man may gang the wrang. gait by bein'
ower wise in its ain conceit o' expeckin' ower little, jist as
weel's in expeckin' ower muckle, an' sae I'm b'un' to tell ye,
laird,'at yer expectations frae this knot o'metal,--for metal we
maun alloo it to be, whatever else it be or bena--yer expectations,
I say, are a'thegither wrang, for it's no more siller nor my wife's
kitchie-poker."

"Weel, man!" said the laird, with a laugh that had in it just a
touch of scorn, "gien the thing be sae plain, what gars ye gang
that gait aboot the buss to say't? Du ye tak me and Cosmo here for
bairns 'at wad fa' a greetin' gien ye tellt them their ba-lamb
wasna a leevin' ane-naething but a fussock o' cotton-'oo', rowed
roon' a bit stick? We're naither o' 's complimentit.--Come, Cosmo.
--I'm nane the less obleeged to ye, Jeames," he added as he rose,
"though I cud weel wuss yer opingon had been sic as wad hae
pitten't 'i my pooer to offer ye a fee for't."

"The less said aboot that the better, laird.'" replied Jeames with
imperturbability, and his large, silent smile; "the trowth's the
trowth, whether it's paid for or no. But afore ye gang it's but
fair to tell ye--only I wadna like to be hauden ower strickly
accoontable for the opingon, seein' its no my profession, as they
ca' 't, but I hae dune my best, an gien I be i' the wrang, I
naither hae nor had ony ill design intil' 't.--"

"Bless my soul!" cried the laird, with more impatience than Cosmo
had ever seen him show, "is the man mad, or does he take me for a
fool?"

"There's some things, laird," resumed Jeames, "that hae to be
approcht oontil, wi' circumspection an' a proaper regaird to the
impression they may mak. Noo, disclaimin' ony desire to luik like
an ill-bred scoon'rel, whilk I wad raither luik to onybody nor to
yersel', laird, I ventur to jaloose 'at maybe the maitter o' a feow
poun's micht be o' some consequence to ye,-"

"Ilka fule i' the country kens that 'at kens Glenwarlock,"
interrupted the laird, and turned hastily. "Come, Cosmo."

Cosmo went to open the door, troubled to see his father annoyed
with the unintelligibility of the man.

"Weel, gien ye WELL gang," said Jeames, "I maun jist tak my life i'
my ban', an'--"

"Hoot, man! tak yer tongue i' yer teeth; it'll be mair to the
purpose," cried the laird laughing, for he had got over his ill
humour already. "My life i' my han', quo' he!-Man, I haena carriet
a dirk this mony a day! I laid it aff wi' the kilt."

"Weel, it micht be the better 'at ye hadna, gien ye binna gaein
hame afore nicht, for I saw some cairds o' the ro'd the day.--Ance
mair, gien ye wad but hearken til ane 'at confesses he oucht to
ken, even sud he be i' the wrang, I tell ye that horsie is NOT
siller--na, nor naething like it."

"Plague take the man!--what is it, then?" cried the laird.

"What for didna ye speir that at me afore?" rejoined Jeames. "It
wad hae gien me leeberty to tell ye--to the best o' my abeelity
that is. Whan I'm no cocksure--an' its ower muckle a thing to be
cocksure aboot--I wadna volunteer onything. I wadna say naething
till I was adjured like an evil speerit."

"Weel," quoth the laird, entering now into the humour of the thing,
"herewith I adjure thee, thou contrairy and inarticulate speerit,
that thou tell me whereof and of what substance this same toy-horse
is composed, manufactured, or made up."

"Toy here, toy there!" returned Jeames; "sae far as ony
cawpabeelity o' mine, or ony puir skeel I hae, will alloo o'
testimony--though min' ye, laird, I winna tak the consequences o'
bein' i' the wrang--though I wad raither tak them, an' ower again,
nor be i' the wrang,--"

The laird turned and went out, followed by Cosmo. He began to think
the man must have lost his reason. But when the watchmaker saw them
walking steadily along the street in the direction of home, he
darted out of the cloor and ran after them.

"Gien ye wad gang, laird," he said, in an injured tone, "ye mecht
hae jist latten me en' the sentence I had begun!"

"There's nae en' to ony o' yer sentences, man!" said the laird;
"that's the only thing i' them 'at was forgotten,'cep' it was the
sense."

"Weel, guid day to ye laird!" returned Jeames. "Only," he added,
drawing a step nearer, and speaking in a subdued confidential
voice, "dinna lat yer harsie rin awa' upo' the ro'd hame, for I
sweir til ye, gien there be only trowth i' the laws o' natur, he's
no siller, nor onything like it--"

"Hoots!" said the laird, and turning away, walked off with great
strides.

"But," the watchmaker continued, almost running to keep up with
him, and speaking in a low, harsh, hurried voice, as if thrusting
the words into his ears, "naither mair nor less nor solid
gowd--pure gowd, no a grain o' alloy!"

That said, he turned, went back at the same speed, shot himself
into his cottage, and closed the door.

The father and son stopped, and looked at each other for a moment.
Then the laird walked slowly on. After a minute or two, Cosmo
glanced up in his face, but his father did not return the glance,
and the boy saw that he was talking to another. By and by he heard
him murmur to himself, "The gifts of God are without repentance."

Not a word passed between them as they went home, though all the
time it seemed to both father and son that they were holding
closest converse. The moment they reached the castle, the laird
went to his room--to the closet where his few books lay, and got
out a volume of an old cyclopaedia, where he read all he could find
about gold. Thence descending to the kitchen, he rummaged out a
rusty old pair of scales, and with their help arrived at the
conclusion that the horse weighed about three pounds avoirdupois:
it might be worth about a hundred and fifty pounds. Ready money,
this was a treasure in the eyes of one whose hand had seldom indeed
closed upon more than ten pounds at once. Here was large provision
for the four years of his boy's college life! Nor was the margin it
would leave for his creditors by any means too small for
consideration! It is true the golden horse, hoofs, and skin, and
hair of jewels, could do but little towards the carting away of the
barrow of debt that crushed Glenwarlock; but not the less was it a
heavenly messenger of good will to the laird. There are who are so
pitiful over the poor man, that, finding they cannot lift him
beyond the reach of the providence which intends there shall always
be the poor on the earth, will do for him nothing at all.

"Where is the use?" they say. They treat their money like their
children, and would not send it into a sad house. If they had
themselves no joys but their permanent ones, where would the hearts
of them be? Can such have a notion of the relief, the glad rebound
of the heart of the poor man, the in-burst of light, the
re-creation of the world, when help, however temporary, reaches
him? A man like the laird of Glenwarlock, capable of a large
outlook, one that reaches beyond the wide-spread skirts of his
poverty, sees in it an arc of the mighty rainbow that circles the
world, a well in the desert he is crossing to the pastures of red
kine and woolly sheep. It is to him a foretaste of the final
deliverance. While the rich giver is saying, "Poor fellow, he will
be just as bad next month again!" the poor fellow is breathing the
airs of paradise, reaping more joy of life in half a day than his
benefactor in half a year, for help is a quick seed and of rapid
growth, and bourgeons in a moment into the infinite aeons.
Everything in this world is but temporary: why should temporary
help be undervalued? Would you not pull out a drowning bather
because he will bathe again to-morrow? The only question is--DOES
IT HELP? Jonah might grumble at the withering of his gourd, but if
it had not grown at all, would he ever have preached to Nineveh? It
set the laird on a Pisgah-rock, whence he gazed into the promised
land.

The rich, so far as money-needs are concerned, live under a
cloudless sky of summer--dreary rather and shallow, it seems to me,
however lovely its blue light; when for the poor man a breach is
made through a vaporous firmament, he sees deeper into the blue
because of the framing clouds--sees up to worlds invisible in the
broad glare. I know not how the born-rich, still less those who
have given themselves with success to the making of money, can
learn that God is the all in all of men, for this world's needs as
well as for the eternal needs. I know they may learn it, for the
Lord has said that God can even teach the rich, and I have known of
them who seemed to know it as well as any poor man; but speaking
generally, the rich have not the same opportunity of knowing
God--nor the same conscious need of him--that the poor man has. And
when, after a few years, all, so far as things to have and to hold
are concerned, are alike poor, and all, as far as any need of them
is concerned, are alike rich, the advantage will all be on the side
of such as, neither having nor needing, do not desire them. In the
meantime, the rich man who, without pitying his friend that he is
not rich also, cheerfully helps him over a stone where he cannot
carry him up the hill of his difficulty, rejoicing to do for him
what God allows, is like God himself, the great lover of his
children, who gives a man infinitely, though he will not take from
him his suffering until strength is perfected in his weakness.

The laird called Cosmo, and they went out together for a walk in
the fields, where they might commune in quiet. There they talked
over the calculation the laird had made of the probable worth of
the horse; and the father, unlike most prudent men, did not think
it necessary to warn his son against too sure an expectation, and
so prepare him for the consequence of a possible mistake; he did
not imagine that disappointment, like the small-pox, requires the
vaccination of apprehension--that a man, lest he should be more
miserable afterwards, must make himself miserable now. In matters
of hope as well as fear, he judged the morrow must look after
itself; believed the God who to-day is alive in to-morrow, looks
after our affairs there where we cannot be. I am far from sure that
the best preparation for a disappointment is not the hope that
precedes it.

Friends, let us hold by our hopes. All colours are shreds of the
rainbow. There is a rainbow of the cataract, of the paddle-wheel,
of the falling wave: none of them is the rainbow, yet they are all
of it; and if they vanish, so does the first, the arch-rainbow, the
bow set in the cloud, while that which set it there, and will set
it again, vanishes never. All things here pass; yet say not they
are but hopes. It is because they are not the thing hoped for that
they are precious--the very opals of the soul. By our hopes are we
saved. There is many a thing we could do better without than the
hope of it, for our hopes ever point beyond the thing hoped for.
The bow is the damask flower on the woven tear-drops of the world;
hope is the shimmer on the dingy warp of trouble shot with the
golden woof of God's intent. Nothing almost sees miracles but
misery.

Cosmo never forgot that walk in the fields with his father. When
the money was long gone after the melted horse, that hour spent
chiefly amongst the great horse-gowans that adorned the thin soil
of one of the few fields yet in some poor sense their own, remained
with him--to be his for ever--a portion of the inheritance of the
meek. The joy had brought their hearts yet closer to each other, for
one of the lovelinesses of true love is that it may and must
always be more. In a gravelly hollow, around which rose hillocks,
heaped by far off tides in times afar, they knelt together on the
thin grass, among the ox-eyes, and gave God thanks for the golden
horse on which Cosmo was to ride to the temple of knowledge.

After, they sat a long time talking over the strange thing. All
these years had the lump of gold been lying in the house, ready for
their great need! For what was lands, or family, or ancient name,
to the learning that opens doors, the hand-maiden of the
understanding, which is the servant of wisdom, who reads in the
heart of him who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and the
fountains of water and the conscience of man! Then they began to
imagine together how the thing had come to pass. It could hardly be
that the old captain did not know what a thing he gave! Doubtless
he had intended sometime, perhaps in the knowledge of approaching
death, to say something concerning it, and in the meantime,
probably, with cunning for its better safety, had treated it as a
thing of value, but of value comparatively slight! How had it come
into existence, they next asked each other. Either it had belonged
to some wealthy prince, they concluded, or the old captain had got
it made for himself, as a convenient shape in which to carry with
him, if not ready money, yet available wealth. Cosmo suggested that
possibly, for better concealment, it had been silvered; and the
laird afterwards learned from the jeweller to whom he sold it, that
such was indeed the case. I may mention also that its worth
exceeded the laird's calculation, chiefly because of the tiny
jewels with which it was studded.

Cosmo repeated to his father the rime he had learned from dreaming
Grannie, and told him how he heard it that time he lay a night in
her house, and what Grannie herself said about it, and now the
laird smiled, and now he looked grave; but neither of them saw how
to connect the rime with the horse of gold. For one thing, great as
was the wealth it brought them, the old captain could hardly have
expected it to embolden any one to the degree of arrogance
specified. What man would call the king his brother on the strength
of a hundred and fifty pounds?

When Grizzie learned the result of her advice, she said "Praise be
thankit!" and turned away. The next moment Cosmo heard her
murmuring to herself,


     "Whan the coo loups ower the mune,
     The reid gowd rains intil men's shune."




CHAPTER XXII.

THE LUMINOUS NIGHT.


That night Cosmo could not sleep. It was a warm summer night,
though not yet summer--a soft dewy night, full of genial magic and
growth--as if some fire-bergs of summer had drifted away out into
the spring, and got melted up in it. He dressed himself, and went
out. It was cool, deliciously cool, and damp, but with no shiver.
The stars were bright-eyed as if they had been weeping, and were so
joyously consoled that they forgot to wipe away their tears. They
were bright but not clear--large and shimmering, as if reflected
from some invisible sea, not immediately present to his eyes. The
gulfs in which they floated were black blue with profundity. There
was no moon, but the night was yet so far from dark, that it seemed
conscious throughout of some distant light that illumined it
without shine. And his heart felt like the night, as if it held a
deeper life than he could ever know. He wandered on till he came to
the field where he had so lately been with his father. He was not
thinking; any effort would break the world-mirror in which he
moved! For the moment he would be but a human plant, gathering
comfort from the soft coolness and the dew, when the sun had ceased
his demands. The coolness and the dew sank into him, and made his
soul long for the thing that waits the asking. He came to the spot
where his father and he had prayed together, and there kneeling
lifted up his face to the stars. Oh mighty, only church! whose roof
is a vaulted infinitude! whose lights come burning from the heart
of the Maker! church of all churches--where the Son of Man prayed!
In the narrow temple of Herod he taught the people, and from it
drove the dishonest traders; but here, under the starry roof, was
his house of prayer! church where not a mark is to be seen of human
hand! church that is all church, and nothing but church, built
without hands, despised and desecrated through unbelief! church of
God's building! thou alone in thy grandeur art fitting type of a
yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes
of unutterable, self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless
ministration of self-forgetting deeds--the one real ideal church,
the body of the living Christ, built of the hearts and souls of men
and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and
over all the world, redeemed alike from Judaism, paganism, and all
the false Christianities that darken and dishonor the true.

Cosmo, I say, knelt, and looked up. Then will awoke, and he lifted
up his heart, sending aloft his soul on every holy sail it could
spread, on all the wings it could put forth, as if, through the
visible, he would force his way to the invisible.

Softly through the blue night came a gentle call:

"Cosmo."

He started, not with fear, looked round, but saw no one.

"Cosmo!" came the call again.

The sky was shining with the stars, and that other light that might
be its own; other than the stars and the sky he saw nothing. He
looked all round his narrow horizon, the edge of the hollow between
him and the sky, where the heaven and the earth met among the stars
and the grass, and the stars shimmered like glow-worms among the
thin stalks: nothing was there; its edge was unbroken by other
shape than grass, daisies, ox-eyes, and stars. A soft dreamy wind
came over the edge, and breathed once on his cheek. The voice came
again--

"Cosmo!"

It seemed to come from far away, so soft and gentle was it,
and yet it seemed near.

"It has called me three times!" said Cosmo, and rose to his feet.

There was the head of Simon Peter, as some called him, rising like
a dark sun over the top of the hollow! In the faint light Cosmo
knew him at once, gave a cry of pleasure, and ran to meet him.

"You called so softly," said Cosmo, "I did not know your voice."

"And you are disappointed! You thought it was a voice from some
region beyond this world! I am sorry. I called softly, because I
wanted to let you know I was coming, and was afraid of startling
you."

[Illustration: A VAULTED INFINITUDE]

"I confess," replied Cosmo, "a little hope was beginning to
flutter, that, perhaps I was called from somewhere in the
unseen--like Samuel, you know; but I was too glad to see you to be
much disappointed. I do sometimes wonder though, that, if there is
such a world beyond as we sometime talk about, there should be so
little communication between it and us. When I am out in the still
time of this world, and there is nothing to interfere,--when I am
not even thinking, so as to close my doors, why should never
anything come? Never in my life have I had one whisper from that
world."

"You are saying a great deal more than you can possibly know,
Cosmo," answered Mr. Simon. "You have had no communication
recognized by you as such, I grant. And I, who am so much older
than you, must say the same. If there be any special fitness in the
night, in its absorbing dimness, and isolating silence, for such
communication--and who can well doubt it?--I have put myself in the
heart of it a thousand times, when, longing after an open vision, I
should have counted but the glimpse of a ghostly garment the
mightiest boon, but never therefrom has the shadow of a feather
fallen upon me. Yet here I am, hoping no less, and believing no
less! The air around me may be full of ghosts--I do not know; I
delight to think they may somehow be with us, for all they are so
unseen; but so long as I am able to believe and hope in the one
great ghost, the Holy Ghost that fills all, it would trouble me
little to learn that betwixt me and the visible centre was nothing
but what the senses of men may take account of. If there be a God,
he is all in all, and filleth all things, and all is well. What
matter where the region of the dead may be? Nowhere but here are
they called the dead. When, of all paths, that to God is alone
always open, and alone can lead the wayfarer to the end of his
journey, why should I stop to peer through the fence either side of
that path? If he does not care to reveal, is it well I should make
haste to know? I shall know one day, why should I be eager to know
now?"

"But why might not something show itself once--just for once, if
only to give one a start in the right direction?" said Cosmo.

"I will tell you one reason," returned Mr. Simon, "--the same why
everything is as it is, and neither this nor that other
way--namely, that it is best for us it should be as it is. But I
think I can see a little way into it. Suppose you saw something
strange--a sign or a wonder--one of two things, it seems tome
likely, would follow:--you would either doubt it the moment it had
vanished, or it would grow to you as one of the common things of
your daily life--which are indeed in themselves equally wonderful.
Evidently, if visions would make us sure, God does not care about
the kind of sureness they can give, or for our being made sure in
that way. A thing that gained in one way, might be of less than no
value to us, gained in another, might, as a vital part of the
process, be invaluable. God will have us sure of a thing by knowing
the heart whence it comes; that is the only worthy assurance. To
know, he will have us go in at the great door of obedient faith;
and if anybody thinks he has found a backstair, he will find it
land him at a doorless wall. It is the assurance that comes of
inmost beholding of himself, of seeing what he is, that God cares
to produce in us. Nor would he have us think we know him before we
do, for thereby thousands walk in a vain show. At the same time I
am free to imagine if I imagine holily--that is, as his child. And
I imagine space full of life invisible; imagine that the young man
needed but the opening of his eyes to see the horses and chariots
of fire around his master, an inner circle to the horses and
chariots that encompassed the city to take him. As I came now
through the fields, I lost myself for a time in the feeling that I
was walking in the midst of lovely people I have known, some in
person, some by their books. Perhaps they were with me--are with
me--are speaking to me now. For if all our thoughts, from whatever
source, whether immediately from God, or through ourselves, seem to
enter the chamber of our consciousness by the same door, why may it
not be so with some that come to us from other beings? Why may not
the dead speak to me, and I be unable to distinguish their words
from my thoughts? The moment a thought is given me, my own thought
rushes to mingle with it, and I can no more part them. Some stray
hints from the world beyond may mingle even with the folly and
stupidity of my dreams."

"But if you cannot distinguish, where is the good?" Cosmo ventured
to ask.

"Nowhere for deductive certainty. Nor, if the things themselves are
not worth remembering, or worthy of influencing us, is there any
good in enquiring concerning them? Shall I mind a thing that is not
worth minding, because it came to me in a dream, or was told me by
a ghost? It is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is
the point. But true things are often mingled with things grotesque.
For aught I know, at one and the same time, a spirit may be taking
advantage of the door set ajar by sleep, to whisper a message of
love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may
be sending forth fumes that cloud the vision, and cause evil echoes
to mingle with the hearing. When you look at any bright thing for a
time, and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but
in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside
world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is
reproduced with but partial accuracy: some imperfection in the
recipient sense, or in the receptacle, sends imperfection into the
presentation. In a way something similar may our contact with the
dwellers beyond fare in our dreams. My unknown mother may be
talking to me in my sleep, and up rises some responsive but stupid
dream-cloud of my own, and mingles with and ruins the descended
grace. But it is well to remind you again that the things around us
are just as full of marvel as those into which you are so anxious
to look. Our people in the other world, although they have proved
these earthly things before, probably now feel them strange, and
full of a marvel the things about them have lost."

"All is well. The only thing worth a man's care is the will of God,
and that will is the same whether in this world or in the next.
That will has made this world ours, not the next; for nothing can
be ours until God has given it to us. Curiosity is but the
contemptible human shadow of the holy thing wonder. No, my son, let
us make the best we can of this life, that we may become able to
make the best of the next also."

"And how make the best of this?" asked Cosmo.

"Simply by falling in with God's design in the making of you. That
design must be worked out--cannot be worked out without you. You
must walk in the front of things with the will of God--not be
dragged in the sweep of his garment that makes the storm behind
him! To walk with God is to go hand in hand with him, like a boy
with his father. Then, as to the other world, or any world, as to
the past sorrow, the vanished joy, the coming fear, all is well;
for the design of the making, the loving, the pitiful, the
beautiful God, is marching on towards divine completion, that is, a
never ending one. Yea, if it please my sire that his infinite be
awful to me, yet will I face it, for it is his. Let your prayer, my
son, be like this:'O Maker of me, go on making me, and let me help
thee. Come, O Father! here I am; let us go on. I know that my words
are those of a child, but it is thy child who prays to thee. It is
thy dark I walk in; it is thy hand I hold.'"

The words of his teacher sank into the heart of Cosmo, for his
spirit was already in the lofty condition of capacity for receiving
wisdom direct from another.

It is a lofty condition, and they who scorn it but show they have
not reached it--nor are likely to reach it soon. Such as will not
be taught through eye or ear, must be taught through the skin, and
that is generally a long as well as a painful process. All Cosmo's
superiority came of his having faith in those who were higher than
he. True, he had not yet been tried; but the trials of a pure,
honest, teachable youth, must, however severe, be very different
from those of one unteachable. The former are for growth, the
latter for change.




CHAPTER XXIII.

AT COLLEGE.


The summer and autumn had yet to pass before he left home for the
university of the north. He spent them in steady work with Mr.
Simon. But the steadier his work, and the greater his enjoyment of
it, the dearer was his liberty, and the keener his delight in the
world around him. He worked so well that he could afford to dream
too; and his excursions and his imaginings alike took wide and
wider sweeps; while for both, ever in the near or far distance, lay
the harbour, the nest of his home. It drew him even when it lay
behind him, and he returned to it as the goal he had set out to
seek. It was as if, in every excursion or flight, he had but sought
to find his home afresh, to approach it by a new path. But--the
wind-fall?--nay, the God-send of the golden horse, gave him such a
feeling of wealth and freedom, that he now began to dream in a
fresh direction, namely, of things he would do if he were rich; and
as he was of a constructive disposition, his fancies in this
direction turned chiefly on the enlarging and beautifying of the
castle--but always with the impossibility understood of destroying
a feature of its ancient dignity and historic worth.

A portion of the early summer he spent in enlarging the garden on
the south side or back of the house. One portion of the ground
there seemed to him to have been neglected--the part which lay
between the block in which was the kitchen, and that in which was
the drawing-room. These stood at right angles to each other, their
gables making two sides of a square. But he found the rock so near
the surface, that he could not utilize much of it. This set him
planning how the space might be used for building. In the angle,
the rock came above ground entirely, and had been made the
foundation of a wall connecting the two corners, to defend the
court--a thick strong wall of huge stones, that seemed as solid as
the rock. He grew fond of the spot, almost forsaking for it his
formerly favoured stone, and in the pauses of his gardening would
sit with his back against this wall, dreaming of the days to come.
Here also he would bring his book, and read or write for hours,
sometimes drawing plans of the changes and additions he would make,
of the passages and galleries that might be contrived to connect
the various portions of the house, and of the restoration of old
defences. The whole thing was about as visionary as his dream of
Tree-top-city, but it exercised his constructive faculty, and
exercise is growth, and growth in any direction, if the heart be
true, is growth in all directions.

The days glided by. The fervid Summer slid away round the shoulder
of the world, and made room for her dignified matron sister; my
lady Autumn swept her frayed and discoloured train out of the great
hall-door of the world, and old brother Winter, who so assiduously
waits upon the house, and cleans its innermost recesses, was
creeping around it, biding his time, but eager to get to his work.
The day drew near when Cosmo must leave the house of his fathers,
the walls that framed almost all his fancies, the home where it was
his unchanging dream to spend his life, until he went to his mother
in heaven.

I will not follow his intellectual development. The REAL education
of the youth is enough for my narrative.

His mind was too much filled with high hopes and lofty judgments,
to be tempted like a common nature in the new circumstances in
which he found himself. There are not a few who, believing of
others as they are themselves, and teaching as they practise,
represent the youth of the nation as necessarily vile; but let not
the pure thence imagine there is no one pure but himself. There is
life in our nation yet, and a future for her yet, none the less
that the weak and cowardly and self-indulgent neither enter into
the kingdom of God, nor work any salvation in the earth. Cosmo left
the university at least as clean as he went to it.

He had few companions. Those whom he liked best could not give him
much. They looked up to him far more than he knew, for they had avague
suspicion that he was a genius; but they ministered almost
only to his heart. The unworthy amongst his fellow-students scorned
him with looks askance, and called him Baby Warlock--for on more
than one of them he had literally turned his back when his
conversation displeased him. None of them however cared to pick a
quarrel with him. The devil finds it easier to persuade fools that
there is dignity in the knowledge of evil, and that ignorance of it
is contemptible, than to give them courage. Truly, if ignorance is
the foundation of any man's goodness, it is not worth the wind that
upsets it, but in its mere self, ignorance of evil is a negative
good. It is those who do not love good that require to be handed
over to evil. The grinders did not care about Cosmo, for neither
was he of their sort. Now and then, however, one of them would be
mildly startled by a request from him for assistance in some
passage, which, because he did not GO IN for what they counted
scholarship, they could hardly believe him interested. Cosmo
regarded everything from amidst associations of which they had
none. In his instinctive reach after life, he assimilated all food
that came in his way. His growing life was his sole impulsive after
knowledge. And already he saw a glimmer here and there in regions
of mathematics from which had never fallen a ray into the corner of
an eye of those grinding men. That was because he read books of
poetry and philosophy of which they had never heard. For the rest,
he passed his examinations creditably, and indeed, in more than one
case, with unexpected as unsought distinction. I must mention,
however, that he did all his set work first, and thoroughly, before
giving himself what he hungered after.

Of society in the city he had no knowledge. Amongst the
tradespeople he made one or two acquaintances.

His father had been so much pleased with the jeweller to whom he
parted with the golden horse, that he requested Cosmo to call upon
him as soon as he was settled. Cosmo found him a dignified old
gentleman--none the less of a gentleman, and all the more of a man,
that he had in his youth worked with his own hands. He took a
liking to Cosmo, and, much pleased with his ready interest in
whatever he told him, for Cosmo was never tired of listening to
anyone who talked of what he knew, made him acquainted with many
things belonging to his trade, and communicated many of his
experiences. Indifferent to the opinion of any to whom he had not
first learned to look up, nobody ever listened better than Cosmo to
any story of human life, however humble. Everybody seemed to him of
his own family. The greater was the revulsion of his feeling when
he came upon anything false in character or low in behaviour. He
was then severe, even to utter breach. Incapable of excusing
himself, he was incapable also of excusing others. But though
gentleness towards the faults of others is an indispensable fruit
of life, it is perhaps well it should be a comparatively late one:
there is danger of foreign excuse reacting on home conduct. Excuse
ought to be rooted in profoundest obedience, and outgoing love. To
say ANYTHING is too small to matter, is of the devil; to say
anything is too great to forgive, is not of God. He who would
soonest die to divide evil and his fellows, will be the readiest to
make for them all HONEST excuse.

Cosmo liked best to hear Mr. Burns talk about precious stones.
There he was great, for he had a passion for them, and Cosmo was
more than ready to be infected with it. By the hour together would
he discourse of them; now on the different and comparative merits
of individual stones which had at one time and another passed
through his hands, and on the way they were cut, or ought to have
been cut; now on the conditions of size, shape, and water, as
indicating the special best way of cutting them; now on the various
settings, as bringing out the qualities of different kinds and
differing stones.

One day he came upon the subject of the weather in relation to
stones: on such a sort of day you ought to buy this or that kind of
stone; on such another you must avoid buying this or that kind, and
seek rather to sell.

Up to this moment, and the mention of this last point, Cosmo had
believed Mr. Burns an immaculate tradesman, but here the human gem
was turned at that angle to the light which revealed the flaw in
it. There are tradesmen not a few, irreproachable in regard to
money, who are not so in regard to the quality of their wares in
relation to the price: they take and do not give the advantage of
their superior knowledge; and well can I imagine how such a one
will laugh at the idea that he ought not: to him every customer is
more or less of a pigeon.

"If I could but buy plenty of such sapphires," said Mr. Burns, "on
a foggy afternoon like this, when the air is as yellow as a
cairngorm, and sell them the first summer-like day of spring, I
should make a fortune in a very few years."

"But you wouldn't do it, Mr. Burns?" Cosmo ventured to suggest, in
some foreboding anxiety, caused by the tone in which the man had
spoken: he would fain have an express repudiation of the advantage
thus to be obtained.

"Why not?" rejoined Mr. Burns, lifting his keen gray eyes, with
some wonder in them, and looking Cosmo straight in the face. His
mind also was crossed by a painful doubt: was the young man a mere
innocent? was he "NO A' THERE?"

"Because it is not honest," replied Cosmo.

"Not honest!" exclaimed the jeweller, in a tone loud with anger,
and deep with a sense of injury--whether at the idea that he should
be capable of a dishonest thing, or at the possibility of having,
for honesty's sake, to yield a money-making principle, I do not
know; "I present the thing as it is, and leave my customer to judge
according to his knowledge. Is mine to be worth nothing to me?
There is no deception in the affair. A jeweller's business is not
like a horse-dealer's. The stone is as God made it, and the day is
as God made it, only my knowledge enables me to use both to better
purpose than my neighbour can."

"Then a man's knowledge is for himself alone--for his own behoof
exclusively--not for the common advantage of himself and his
neighbour?" said Cosmo.

"Mine is so far for my neighbour, that I never offer him a stone
that is not all I say it is. He gets the advantage of his
knowledge, let us say, in selling me wine, which he understands to
fit my taste with; and I get the advantage of my knowledge in
selling him the ring that pleases him. Both are satisfied. Neither
asks the other what he paid for this or that. But why make any
bones about it; the first acknowledged principle in business is, to
buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest."

"Where does the love of your neighbour come in then?"

"That has nothing to do with business; it belongs to the relations
of social life. No command must be interpreted so as to make it
impossible to obey it. Business would come to a stand-still--no man
could make a fortune that way."

"You think then that what we are sent here for is to make a
fortune?"

"Most people do. I don't know about SENT FOR. That's what, I fancy,
I find myself behind this counter for. Anyhow the world would
hardly go on upon any other supposition."

"Then the world had better stop. It wasn't worth making," said
Cosmo.

"Young man," rejoined Mr. Burns, "if you are going to speak
blasphemy, it shall not be on my premises."

Bewildered and unhappy, Cosmo turned away, left the shop, and for
years never entered it again.

Mr. Burns had been scrupulous to half a grain in giving Mr. Warlock
the full value of his gold and of his stones. Nor was this because
of the liking he had taken to the old gentleman. There are not a
few who will be carefully honest, to a greater or less compass,
with persons they like, but leave those they do not like to protect
themselves. But Mr. Burns was not of their sort. His interest in
the laird, and his wounded liking for Cosmo, did, however, cause
him to take some real concern in the moral condition of the latter;
while, at the same time, he was willing enough to think evil of him
who had denounced as dishonest one of his main principles in the
conduct of affairs. It but added venom to the sting of Cosmo's
words that although the jeweller was scarcely yet conscious of the
fact, he was more unwilling to regard as wrong the mode he had
defended, than capable of justifying it to himself. That same
evening he wrote to the laird that he feared his son must have
taken to keeping bad company, for he had that day spoken in his
shop in a manner most irreverent and indeed wicked--so as he would
never, he was certain, have dared to speak in his father's hearing.
But college was a terrible place for ruining the good principles
learned at home. He hoped Mr. Warlock would excuse the interest he
took in his son's welfare. Nothing was more sad than to see the
seed of the righteous turning from the path of righteousness--and
so on.

The laird made reply that he was obliged to Mr. Burns for his
communication and the interest he took in his boy, but could only
believe there had been some mistake, for it was impossible his boy
should have been guilty of anything to which his father would apply
the epithets used by Mr. Burns. And so little did the thing trouble
the laird, that he never troubled Cosmo with a word on the
matter--only, when he came, home asked him what it meant.

But in after days Cosmo repented of having so completely dropped
the old gentleman's acquaintance; he was under obligation to him;
and if a man will have to do only with the perfect, he must needs
cut himself first, and go out of the world. He had learned a good
deal from him, but nothing of art: his settings were good, but of
the commonest ideas. In the kingdom of heaven tradesmen will be
teachers, but on earth it is their business to make fortunes! But a
stone, its colour, light, quality, he enjoyed like a poet. Many
with a child's delight in pure colours, have no feeling for the
melodies of their arrangement, or the harmonies of their mingling.
So are there some capable of delight in a single musical tone, who
have but little reception for melody or complicate harmony. Whether
a condition analogical might not be found in the moral world, and
contribute to the explanation of such as Mr. Burns, I may not now
enquire.

The very rainbow was lovelier to Cosmo after learning some of the
secrets of precious stones. Their study served also his
metaphysico-poetic nature, by rousing questions of the relations
between beauty fixed and beauty evanescent; between the beauty of
stones and the beauty of flowers; between the beauties of art, and
the beauties of sunsets and faces. He saw that where life entered,
it brought greater beauty, with evanescence and reproduction,--an
endless fountain flow and fall. Many were the strange, gladsome,
hopeful, corrective thoughts born in him of the gems in Mr. Burns's
shop, and he owed the reform much to the man whose friendship he
had cast from him. For every question is a door-handle.

Cosmo lived as simply as at home--in some respects more hardly,
costing a sum for his maintenance incredibly small. Some may hint
that the education was on a par with the expense; and, if education
consists in the amount and accuracy of facts learned, and the worth
of money in that poor country be taken into the account, the hint
might be allowed to pass. But if education is the supply of
material to a growing manhood, the education there provided was all
a man needed who was man enough to aid his own growth; and for
those who have not already reached that point, it is matter of
infinite inconsequence what they or their parents find or miss. But
I am writing of a period long gone by.

In his second year, willing to ease his father how--ever little, he
sought engagements in teaching; and was soon so far successful that
he had two hours every day occupied--one with a private pupil, and
the other in a public school. The master of that school used
afterwards to say that the laird of Glenwarlock had in him the
elements of a real teacher. But indeed Cosmo had more teaching
power than the master knew, for not in vain had he been the pupil
of Peter Simon--whose perfection stood in this, that he not only
taught, but taught to teach. Life is propagation. The perfect
thing, from the Spirit of God downwards sends ITSELF onward, not
its work only, but its life. And in the reaction Cosmo soon found
that, for making a man accurate, there is nothing like having to
impart what he possesses. He learned more by trying to teach what
he thought he knew, than by trying to learn what he was sure he did
not know.

In his third year it was yet more necessary he should gain what
money he could. For the laird found that his neighbour, Lord
Lick-my-loof, had been straining every means in his power to get
his liabilities all into his own hands, and had in great part
succeeded. The discovery sent a pang to the heart of the laird, for
he could hardly doubt his lordship's desire was to foreclose every
mortgage, and compel him to yield the last remnant of the
possessions of his ancestors. He had refused him James Grade's
cottage, and he would have his castle! But the day was not yet
come; and as no one knew what was best for his boy, no one could
foretell what would come to pass, or say what deliverance might not
be in store for them! The clouds must break somehow, and then there
was the sun! So, as a hundred times before, he gathered heart, and
went on, doing his best, and trusting his hardest.

The summers at home between the sessions, were times of paradise to
Cosmo. Now first he seemed to himself to begin to understand the
simple greatness of his father, and appreciate the teaching of Mr.
Simon. He seemed to descry the outlines of the bases on which they
stood so far above him.

And now the question came up, what was Cosmo to do after he had
taken his degree. It was impossible he should remain at home. There
was nothing for him to do there, except the work of a farm
labourer. That he would have undertaken gladly, had the property
been secure, for the sake of being with his father; but the only
chance of relieving the land was to take up some profession. The
only one he had a leaning to was that of chemistry. This science
was at the time beginning to receive so much attention in view of
agricultural and manufacturing purposes, that it promised a sure
source of income to the man who was borne well in front upon its
rising tide. But alas, to this hope, money was yet required! A
large sum must yet be spent on education in that direction, before
his knowledge would be of money-value, fit for offer in the
scientific market! He must go to Germany to Liebig, or to Edinburgh
to Gregory! There was no money, and the plan was not, at least for
the present, to be entertained. There was nothing left but go on
teaching.




CHAPTER XXIV.

A TUTORSHIP.


It cannot but be an unpleasant change for a youth, to pass from a
house and lands where he is son--ah, how much better than master!
and take a subordinate position in another; but the discipline is
invaluable. To meet what but for dignity would be humiliation, to
do one's work in spite of misunderstanding, and accept one's
position thoroughly, entrenching it with recognized duty, is no
easy matter. As to how Cosmo stood this ordeal of honesty, I will
only say that he never gave up trying to do better.

His great delight and consolation were his father's letters, which
he treasured as if they had been a lover's, as indeed they were in
a much deeper and truer sense than most love-letters. The two wrote
regularly, and shared their best and deepest with each other. The
letters also of Mr. Simon did much to uplift him, and enable him to
endure and strive.

Nobody knows what the relation of father and son may yet come to.
Those who accept the Christian revelation are bound to recognize
that there must be in it depths infinite, ages off being fathomed
yet. For is it not a reproduction in small of the loftiest mystery
in human ken--that of the infinite Father and infinite Son? If man
be made in the image of God, then is the human fatherhood and
sonship the image of the eternal relation between God and Jesus.

One happy thing was that he had a good deal of time to himself. He
set his face against being with the children beyond school hours,
telling their parents it would be impossible for him otherwise to
do his work with that freshness which was as desirable for them as
for him.

The situation his friends of the university had succeeded in
finding for him, was in the south of Scotland, almost on the
borders. His employers were neither pleasant nor interesting--but
more from stupidity than anything worse. Had they had some
knowledge of Cosmo's history, they would have taken pains to be
agreeable to him, for, having themselves nothing else, they made
much of birth and family. But Cosmo had no desire to come nearer
where it was impossible to be near, and was content with what they
accorded him as a poor student and careful teacher. They lived in
the quietest way; for the heir of the house, by a former marriage,
was a bad subject, and kept them drained of more than the
superfluous money about the place.

Cosmo remained with them two years, and during that time did not go
home, for so there was the more money to send; but as he entered
his third year, he began to feel life growing heavy upon him, and
longed unspeakably after his father.

One day, the last of the first quarter, Mr. Baird sent a message,
desiring his presence, and with some hesitation and difficulty
informed him that, because of certain circumstances over which
unhappily he had no control, he was compelled to dispense with his
services. He regretted the necessity much, he said, for the
children were doing well with him. He would always be glad to hear
from him, and know that he was getting on. A little indignant, for
his father's sake more than his own, Cosmo remarked that it was
customary, he believed, to give a tutor a quarter's notice, which
brought the reply, that nothing would please Mr. Baird better than
that he should remain another quarter--if it was any convenience to
him; but he had had great misfortunes within the last month, and
had no choice but beg him to excuse some delay in the payment of
his quarter's salary now due. In these circumstances he had thought
it the kindest thing to let him look out for another situation.

Hearing this, Cosmo was sorry, and said what he could to make the
trouble, so far as he was concerned, weigh lightly. He did not know
that what he had fairly earned went to save a rascal from the
punishment he deserved--the best thing man could give him. Mr.
Baird judged it more for the honour of his family to come betweenthe
wicked and his deserts, than to pay the workman his wages. Of
that money Cosmo never received a farthing. The worst of it to to
him was, that he had almost come to the bottom of his purse--had
not nearly enough to take him home.

[Illustration]

He went to his room in no small perplexity. He could not, would not
trouble his father. There are not a few sons, I think, who would be
more considerate, were they trusted like Cosmo from the first, and
allowed to know thoroughly the circumstances of their parents. The
sooner mutual confidence is initiated the better. A servant knocked
at the door, and, true to the day, came the expected letter from
his father--this time enclosing one from Lady Joan.

The Warlocks and she had never had sight of each other since the
dreary day she left them, but they had never lost hearing of each
other. Lady Joan retained a lively remembrance of her visit, and to
both father and son the occasional letter from her was a rare
pleasure. Some impression of the dignity and end of life had been
left with Joan from their influences, old man as was the one, and
child as was the other; and to the imagination of Cosmo she was
still the type of all beauty--such as his boyish eyes had seen her,
and his boyish heart received her. But from her letters seemed to
issue to the inner ear of the laird a tone of oppression for which
they gave him no means of accounting; while she said so little
concerning her outward circumstances, hardly ever even alluding to
her brother, that he could not but fear things did not go well with
her at home. The one he had now sent was even sad, and had so
touched his heart, that in his own he suggested the idea of Cosmo's
paying her a visit in his coming holidays. It might comfort her a
little, he said, to see one who cared so much, though he could do
so little for her.

Cosmo jumped up, and paced about the room. What better could he do
than go at once! He had not known what to do next, and here was
direction! He was much more likely to find a situation in England
than in Scotland! And for his travelling expenses, he knew well how
to make a little go a great way! He wrote therefore to his father
telling him what had occurred, and saying he would go at once. The
moment he had dispatched his letter, he set about his preparations.
Like a bird the door of whose cage had been opened, he could hardly
endure his captivity one instant longer. To write and wait a reply
from Joan was simply impossible. He must start the very next
morning. Alas, he had no wings either real or symbolic, and must
foot it! It would take him days to reach Yorkshire, on the northern
border of which she lived, but the idea of such a journey, with
such a goal before him, not to mention absolute release from books
and boys, was entrancing. To set out free, to walk on and on for
days, not knowing what next would appear at any turn of the
road--it was like reading a story that came to life as you read it!
And then in the last chapter of it to arrive at the loveliest lady
in the world, the same whose form and face mingled with his every
day-dream--it was a chain of gold with a sapphire at the end of
it--a flowery path to the gate of heaven!

That night he took his leave of the family, to start early in the
morning. The father and mother were plainly sorry; the children
looked grave, and one of them cried. He wrote to Mr. Baird once
after, but had no answer--nor ever heard anything of them but that
they had to part with everything, and retire into poverty.
It was a lovely spring morning when with his stick and his knapsack
he set out, his heart as light as that of the sky-lark that seemed
for a long way to accompany him. It was one after another of them
that took up the song of his heart and made it audible to his ears.
Better convoy in such mood no man could desire. He walked twenty
miles that day for a beginning, and slept in a little village,
whose cocks that woke him in the morning seemed all to have throats
of silver, and hearts of golden light. He increased his distance
walked every day, and felt as if he could go on so for years.

But before he reached his destination, what people call a
misfortune befell him. I do not myself believe there is any
misfortune; what men call such is merely the shadow-side of a good.

He had one day passed through a lovely country, and in the evening
found himself upon a dreary moorland. As night overtook him, it
came on to rain, and grew very cold. He resolved therefore to seek
shelter at the first house he came to; and just ere it was quite
dark, arrived at some not very inviting abodes on the brow of the
descent from the moor, the first of which was an inn. The landlady
received him, and made him as comfortable as she could, but as he
did not find his quarters to his taste, he rose even earlier than
he had intended, and started in a pouring rain. He had paid his
bill the night before, intending to break his fast at the first
shop where he could buy a loaf.

The clouds were sweeping along in great gray masses, with yellow
lights between, and every now and then they would let the sun look
out for a moment, and the valley would send up the loveliest smile
from sweetest grass or growing corn, all wet with the rain that
made it strong for the sun. He saw a river, and bridges, and
houses, and in the distance the ugly chimneys of a manufacturing
town. Still it rained and still the sun would shine out. He had
grown very hungry before at length he reached a tiny hamlet, and in
it a cottage with a window that displayed loaves. He went in, took
the largest he saw, and was on the point of tearing a great piece
out of it, when he thought, it would be but polite to pay for it
first, and put his hand in his pocket. It was well he did so, for
in his pocket was no purse! Either it had been stolen at the inn,
or he had lost it on the way. He put down the loaf.

"I am very sorry," he said, "but I find I have lost my purse."

The woman looked him in the face with keen enquiring eyes; then
apparently satisfied with her scrutiny, smiled, and said,

"Ne'er trouble yoursel', sir. Yo can pey mo as yo coom back. Awhope
you 'n lost noan so mich?"

"Not much, but all I had," answered Cosmo. "I am much obliged to
you, but I'm not likely ever to be this way again, so I can't
accept your kindness. I am sorry to have troubled you, but after
all, I have the worst of it," he added, smiling, "for I am very
hungry."

[Illustration: COSMO PROPOSES TO WORK FOR HIS DINNER.]

As he spoke, he turned away, and had laid his hand on the latch of
the door, when the woman spoke again.

"Tak th' loaf," she said; "it'll be aw the same in less than a
hunder year."

She spoke crossly, almost angrily. Cosmo seemed to himself to
understand her entirely. Had she looked well-to-do, he would have
taken the loaf, promising to send the money; but he could not bring
himself to trouble the thoughts of a poor woman, possibly with a
large family, to whom the price of such a loaf must be of no small
consequence. He thanked her again, but shook his head. The woman
looked more angry than before: having constrained herself to give,
it was hard to be refused.

"Yo micht tak what's offered yo!" she said.

Cosmo stood thinking: was there any way out of the difficulty?
Almost mechanically he began searching his pockets: he had very few
THINGS either in his pockets or anywhere else. All his fingers
encountered was a penknife too old and worn to represent any value,
a stump of cedar-pencil, and an ancient family-seal his father had
given him when he left home. This last he took out, glanced at it,
felt that only the duty of saving his life could make him part with
it, put it back, turned once more, said "Good morning," and left
the shop.

He had not gone many steps when he heard the shop-bell ring; the
woman came running after him. Her eyes were full of tears. What
fountain had been opened, I cannot tell; perhaps only that of
sympathy with the hungry youth.

"Tak th' loaf," she said again, but in a very different voice this
time, and held it out to him. "Dunnot be vexed with a poor woman.
Sometimes hoo dunnot knaw wheer to get the bread for her own."

"That's why I wouldn't take it," rejoined Cosmo. "If I had thought
you were well off, I would not have hesitated."

"Oh! aw'm noan so pinched at present," she answered with a smile.
"Tak th' loaf, an' welcome, an' pey mo when yo' can."

Cosmo put down her name and address in his pocket-book, and as he
took the loaf, kissed the toil-worn hand that gave it him. She
uttered a little cry of remonstrance, threw her apron over her
head, and went back to the house, sobbing.

The tide rose in Cosmo's heart too, but he left the hamlet eating
almost ravenously. Another might have asked himself where dinner
was to come from, and spared a portion; but that was not Cosmo's
way. He would have given half his loaf to any hungry man he met,
but he would not save the half of it in view of a possible need
that might never come. Every minute is a to-morrow to the minute
that goes before it, and is bound to it by the same duty-roots that
make every moment one with eternity; but there is no more occasion
to bind minute to minute with the knot-grass of anxiety, than to
ruin both to-day and the grand future with the cares of a poor
imaginary tomorrow. To-day's duty is the only true provision for
to-morrow; and those who are careful about the morrow are but the
more likely to bring its troubles upon them by the neglect of duty
which care brings. Some say that care for the morrow is what
distinguishes the man from the beast; certainly it is one of the
many things that distinguish the slave of Nature from the child of
God.

Cosmo ate his loaf with as hearty a relish as ever Grizzle's
porridge, and that is saying as much for his appetite, if not
necessarily for the bread, as words can. He had swallowed it almost
before he knew, and felt at first as if he could eat another, but
after a drink of water from a well by the road-side, found that he
had had enough, and strode on his way, as strong and able as if he
had had coffee and eggs and a cutlet, and a dozen things besides.

He was passing the outskirts of the large manufacturing town he had
seen in the distance, leaving it on one hand, when he became again
aware of the approach of hunger. One of the distinguishing features
of Cosmo's character, was a sort of childlike boldness towards his
fellow-men; and coming presently to a villa with a smooth-shaven
lawn, and seeing a man leaning over the gate that opened from the
road, he went up to him and said,

"Do you happen to have anything you want done about the place, sir?
I want my dinner and have no money."

The man, one with whom the world seemed to have gone to his wish,
looked him all over.

"A fellow like you ought to be ashamed to beg," he said.

"That is precisely what I was not doing," returned Cosmo, "--except
as everybody more or less must be a beggar. It is one thing to beg
for work, and another to beg for food. I didn't ask you to make a
job for me; I asked if there was any work about the place you
wanted done. Good morning, sir."

He turned, and the second time that day was stopped as he went.

"I say!--if you can be as sharp with your work min' as you are with
your tongue, I don't care if I give you a job. Look here: my
coachman left me in a huff this morning, and it was time too, as I
find now he is gone. The stable is in a shocking mess: if you clean
it out, and set things to rights--but I don't believe you can--I
will give you your dinner."

"Very well, sir," returned Cosmo. "I give you warning I'm very
hungry; only on the other hand, I don't care what I have to eat."

"Look here," said the man: "your hands look a precious sight more
like loafing than work! I don't believe your work will be worth
your dinner."

"Then don't give me any," rejoined Cosmo, laughing. "If the proof
of the pudding be in the eating, the proof of the stable must be in
the cleaning. Let me see the place."

Much pondering what a fellow scouring the country with a decent
coat and no money could be, the dweller in the villa led the way to
his stable.

In a mess that stable certainly was.

"The new man is coming this evening," said the man, "and I would
rather he didn't see things in such a state. He might think
anything good enough after this! The rascal took to drink--and
that, young man," he added in a monitory tone, "is the end of all
things."

"I'll soon set the place to rights," said Cosmo. "Let's see--where
shall I find a graip?"

"A grape? what the deuce do you want with grapes in a stable?"

"I forgot where I was, sir," answered Cosmo, laughing. "I am a
Scotchman, and so I call things by old-fashioned names. That is
what we call a three or four-pronged fork in my country. The word
comes from the same root as the German greifen, and our own grip,
and gripe, and grope, and grab--and grub too!" he added, "which in
the present case is significant."

"Oh, you are a scholar--are you? Then you are either a Scotch
gardener on the tramp after a situation, or a young gentleman who
has made a bad use of his privileges!"

"Do you found that conclusion on my having no money, or on my
readiness to do the first honest piece of work that comes to my
hand?" asked Cosmo, who having lighted on a tool to serve his
purpose, was already at work. "--But never mind! here goes for a
clean stable and a good dinner."

"How do you know your dinner will be good?"

"Because I am so ready for it."

"If you're so sharp set, I don't mind letting you have a snack
before you go further," said his employer.

"No, thank you, sir," replied Cosmo; "I am too self-indulgent to
enjoy my food before I have finished my work."

"Not a bad way of being self-indulgent, that!" said the man. "--But
what puzzles me is, that a young fellow with such good principles
should be going about the country like--"

"Like a tinker--would you say, sir--or like Abraham of old when he
had no abiding city?"

"You seem to know your Bible too!--Come now, there must be some
reason for your being adrift like this!"

"Of course there is, sir; and if I were sure you would believe me,
I would tell you enough to make you understand it."

"A cautious Scotchman!"

"Yes. Whatever I told you, you would doubt; therefore I tell you
nothing."

"You have been doing something wrong!" said the man.

"You are rude," returned Cosmo quietly, without stopping his work.
--"But," he resumed, "were YOU never in any difficulty? Have you
always had your pockets full when you were doing right? It is not
just to suspect a man because he is poor. The best men have rarely
been rich."

Receiving no reply, Cosmo raised his head. The man was gone.

"Somebody has been telling him about me!" he said to himself, and
went. For the stable Cosmo was then cleaning out, the horses that
lived in it, and the house to which it belonged, were the proceeds
of a late judicious failure.

He finished his job, set everything right as far as he could, and
going to the kitchen door, requested the master might be invited to
inspect his work. But the master only sent orders to the cook to
give the young man his dinner, and let him go about his business.

Cosmo ate none the less heartily, for it was his own; and cook and
maid were more polite than their master. He thanked them and went
his way, and in the strength of that food walked many miles into
the night--for now he set no goal before him but the last.

It was a clear, moonless, starry night, cold after the rain, but
the easier to walk in. The wind now and then breathed a single
breath and ceased; but that breath was piercing. He buttoned his
coat, and trudged on. The hours went and went. He could not be far
from Cairncarque, and hoped by break of day to be, if not within
sight of it, at least within accurate hearing of it.

Midnight was not long past when a pale old moon came up, and looked
drearily at him. For some time he had been as if walking in a
dream; and now the moon mingled with the dream right strangely.
Scarce was she above the hill when an odd-shaped cloud came upon
her; and Cosmo's sleep-bewildered eyes saw in the cloud the body
and legs of James Gracie's cow, straddling across the poor,
withered heel-rind of the moon. Then another cloud, high among the
stars, began to drop large drops of rain upon his head. "That's the
reid gowd rainin'," he said to himself. He was gradually sinking
under the power of invading sleep. Every now and then he would come
to himself for the briefest instant, and say he must seek some
shelter. The next moment he was asleep again. He had often wondered
that horses could get over the road and sleep: here he was doing it
himself and not wondering at all! The wind rose, and blew sharp
stings of rain in his face, which woke him up a little. He looked
about him. Had he been going through a town, who would have taken
him in at that time of the midnight-morning? and here he was in a
long lane without sign of turning! To him it had neither beginning
nor end, like a lane in a dream. It might be a lane in a dream! He
could remember feeling overwhelmed with sleep in a dream! Still he
did not think he was dreaming: for one thing, he had never been so
uncomfortable in a dream!

The lane at last opened on a triangular piece of sward, looking
like a village green. In the middle of it stood a great old tree,
with a bench round it. He dropped on the bench and was asleep in a
moment.

The wind blew, and the rain fell. Cold and discomfort ruled his dim
consciousness, but he slept like one of the dead. When the sun
rose, it found him at full length on the bare-worn earth at the
foot of the tree. But, shining full upon him, it did not for a long
time break his sleep. When at last it yielded and he came to
himself, it was to the consciousness of a body that was a burden,
of a tabernacle that ached as if all its cords were strained, yet
all its stakes loosened. With nightmare difficulty he compelled his
limbs to raise him, and then was so ill able to govern them, that
he staggered like a drunken man, and again and again all but
dropped. Such a night's-rest after such a day's-weariness had all
but mastered him.

[Illustration: "He dropped on the bench."]

Seeing a pond in the green, he made for it, and having washed his
face, felt a little revived. On the other side of the green, he saw
a little shop, in the unshuttered window of which was bread.
Mechanically he put his hand in his pocket. To his surprise, he
found there sixpence: the maid that waited on him at dinner had
dropped it in. Rejoiced by the gift, he tried to run, to get some
warmth into his limbs, but had no great success. The moment the
shop was opened, he spent his sixpence, and learned that he was but
about three miles off the end of his journey. He set out again
therefore with good courage; but alas! the moment he tried to eat,
mouth and throat and all refused their office. He had no
recollection of any illness, but this was so unlike his usual self,
that he could not help some apprehension. As he walked he got a
little better, however, and trudged manfully on. By and by he was
able to eat a bit of bread, and felt better still. But as he
recovered, he became aware that with fatigue and dirt his
appearance must be disreputable in the extreme. How was he to
approach Lady Joan in such a plight? If she recognized him at once,
he would but be the more ashamed! What could she take him for but a
ne'er-do-weel, whose character had given way the moment he left the
guardianship of home, and who now came to sponge upon her! And if
he should be ill! He would rather lie down and die on the roadside
than present himself dirty and ill at Cairncarque!--rather go to
the workhouse, than encounter even the momentary danger of such a
misunderstanding! These reflections were hardly worthy of the faith
he had hitherto shown, but he was not yet perfect, and unproved
illness had clouded his judgment.

Coming to a watering-place for horses on the roadside, he sat down
by it, and opening his bag, was about to make what little of a
toilet was possible to him--was thinking whether he might venture,
as it seemed such a lonely road, to change his shirt, when round a
near corner came a lady, walking slowly, and reading as she came.
It was she! And there he stood without coat or waistcoat! To speak
to her thus would be to alarm her! He turned his back, and began to
wash in the pool, nor once dared look round. He heard her slowly
pass, fancied he heard her stop one step, felt her presence from
head to foot, and washed the harder. When he thought she was far
enough off, he put on the garments he had removed, and hastened
away, drying himself as he went.

At the turn of the road, all at once rose the towers of
Cairncarque. There was a castle indeed!--something to call a
castle!--with its huge square tower at every corner, and its still
huger two towers in the middle of its front, its moat, and the
causeway where once had been its drawbridge!--Yes! there were the
spikes of the portcullis, sticking down from the top of the
gateway, like the long upper teeth of a giant or ogre! That was a
real castle--such as he had read of in books, such as he had seen
in pictures!

Castle Warlock would go bodily into half a quarter of it--would be
swallowed up like a mouthful, and never seen again! Castle Warlock
was twice as old--that was something! but why had not Lady Joan
told him hundreds of stories about Cairncarque, instead of letting
him gabble on about their little place? But she could not love her
castle as he did his, for she had no such father in it! That must
be what made the difference! That was why she did not care to talk
about it! Was he actually going to see her again? and would she be
to him the same as before? For him, the years between had vanished;
the entrancing shadows of years far away folded him round, and he
was no more a man, but the boy who had climbed the wintry hills
with her, and run down them again over the snow hand in hand with
her. But as he drew nigh the great pile, which grew as he
approached it, his heart sank within him. His head began to ache: a
strange diffidence seized him; he could not go up to the door. He
would not mind, he said to himself, if Joan would be there the
moment the door opened. But would any servant in England admit a
fellow like him to the presence of a grand lady? How could he walk
up to the great door in the guise of one who had all night had his
lodging on the cold ground! He would reconnoitre a little, find
some quiet way of approaching the house, perhaps discover some
shelter where he might rectify what was worst in his personal
appearance! He turned away therefore from the front of the castle,
and following the road that skirted the dilapidated remnants of
fortification, passed several farmlike sheds, and arrived at a door
in a brick wall, apparently that of a garden--ancient, and green
and gray with lichens. Looking through it with the eyes of his
imagination, he saw on the other side the loveliest picture of
warmth, order, care, and ancient peace,--regions stately with yews
and cedars, fruit-trees and fountains, clean-swept walks and shady
alleys. The red wall, mottled and clouded with its lichens, and
ruffed with many a thready weed, looked like the reverse of some
bit of gorgeous brocade, on the sunny side of which must hang
blossoming peaches and pears, nectarines and apricots and apples,
on net-like trees, that spread out great obedient arms and
multitudinous twigs against it, holding on by it, and drinking in
the hot sunshine it gathered behind them. Ah, what it would be to
have such a garden at Glenwarlock!

He turned to the door, with difficulty opened it, and the vision
vanished. Not a few visions vanish when one takes them for fact,
and not for the vision of fact that has to be wrought out with the
energy of a God-born life.

[Illustration: 'He Turned to the Door']




CHAPTER XXV.

THE GARDENER.


There was a garden indeed, but a garden whose ragged, ugly,
degraded desolation looked as if the devil had taken to gardening
in it. Rather than a grief, it was a pain and disgust to see.
Fruit-trees there were on the wall, but run wild with endless
shoots, which stuck like a hog's mane over the top of it, and out
in every direction from the face of it with a look of impertinent
daring. All the fastenings were broken away, and only the old
branches, from habit, kept their places against it. Everything all
about seemed striving back to a dear disorder and salvage liberty.
The walks were covered with weeds, and almost impassable with
unpruned branches, while here lay a heap of rubbish, there a
smashed flower-pot, here a crushed water-pot, there a broken
dinner-plate. Following a path that led away from the wall, he came
upon a fountain without any water, in a cracked basin dry as a
lizard-haunted wall, a sundial without a gnomon, leaning wearily
away from the sun, a marble statue without a nose, and streaked
about with green: like an army of desolation in single file, they
revealed to Cosmo the age-long neglect of the place. Next appeared
a wing built out from the back of the inner court of the castle--in
a dilapidated, almost dangerous condition. Then he came to a great
hedge of yew, very lofty, but very thin, like a fence of old wire
that had caught cart-loads of withered rubbish in its meshes. Here
he heard the sound of a spade, and by the accompanying sounds
judged the implement was handled by an old man. He peeped through
the hedge, and caught sight of him. Old he was--bent with years,
but tough, wiry, and sound, and it seemed to Cosmo that the sighs
and groans, or rather grunts, which he uttered, were more of
impatience and discontent than oppression or weakness. As he stood
regarding him for a moment, anxious to discover with what sort of
man he had to deal, he began to mutter. Presently he ceased
digging, drew himself up as straight as he could, and, leaning on
his spade, went on, as if addressing his congregation of cabbages
over the book-board of a pulpit. And now his muttering took, to the
ears of Cosmo, an indistinct shape like this:

"Wha cares for an auld man like me? I kenna what for there sud be
auld men made! The banes o' me micht melt i' the inside o' me, an'
never a sowl alive du mair for me nor berry me to get rid o' the
stink! No 'at I'm that dooms auld i' mysel' them 'at wad hae my
place wad hae me!"

Here was a chance for him, Cosmo thought; for at least here was a
fellow-countryman. He went along the hedge therefore until he found
a place where he could get through, and approached the man, who had
by this time resumed his work, though after a listless fashion,
turning over spadeful after spadeful, as if neither he nor the
cabbages cared much, and all would be in good time if done by the
end of the world. As he came nearer, Cosmo read peevishness and
ill-temper in every line of his countryman's countenance, yet he
approached him with confidence, for Scotchmen out of their own
country are of good report for hospitality to each other.

"Hoo's a' wi' ye?" he cried, sending his mother-tongue as a
pursuivant in advance.

"Wha's speirin? an' what richt hae ye to speir?" returned the old
man in an angry voice, and lifting himself quickly, though with an
aching sigh, looked at him with hard blue eyes.

"A countryman o' yer ain," answered Cosmo.

"Mony ane's that 'at's naething the better nor the walcomer. Gie an
accoont o' yersel', or the doags'll be lowsed upo' ye here in a
jiffey. Haith, this is no the place for lan'loupers!"

"Hae ye been lang aboot the place?" asked Cosmo.

"Langer nor ye're like to be, I'm thinkin', gien ye keep na the
ceeviler tongue i' yer heid, my man--Whaur come ye frae?"

The old man had dropt his spade; Cosmo took it up, and began to
dig.

"Lay doon that spaud," cried its owner, and would have taken it
from him, but Cosmo delayed rendition.

"Hoot, man!" he said, "I wad but lat ye see I'm nae lan'louper, an'
can weel han'le a spaud. Stan' ye by a bit, an' rist yer banes,
till I caw throuw a trifle o' yer wark."

"An' what du ye expec' to come o' that? Ye're efter something, as
sure's the deevil at the back yelt, though ye're nae freely sae
sure to win at it."

"What I expec,' it wad be ill to say; but what I dinna expec' is to
be traitit like a vaggabon. Come, I'll gie ye a guid hoor's wark
for a place to wash mysel', an' put on a clean sark."

"Hae ye the sark?"

"_I_ HAE't here i' my bag."

"An' what du ye want to put on a clean sark for? What'll ye du whan
ye hae't on?"

"Gie ye anither hoor's wark for the heel o' a loaf an' a drink o'
watter."

"Ye'll be wantin' to be taen on, I s' wad (WAGER) ye a worm!"

"Gien ye cud gie me a day's wark, or maybe twa,--" began Cosmo,
thinking how much rather he would fall in with Lady Joan about the
garden than go up to the house.

"I weel thoucht there sud be mair intil't nor appeart! Ye wad fain
hae the auld man's shune, an' mak sur o' them afore he kickit them
frae him! Ay! It's jist like the likes o' ye! Mine's a place the
like o' you's keen set efter! Ye think it's a' ait an' play! Gang
awa' wi' ye, an' latna me see the face o' ye again, or I s' ca' to
them 'at 'll tak accoont o' ye."

"Hoot, man!" returned Cosmo, and went on turning the ground over,
"ye're unco hard upon a neebor!"

"Neebor! ye're no neebor o' mine! Gang awa' wi' ye, I tell ye!"

"Did naebody never gie' YOU a helpin' han','at ye're sae dooms hard
upo' ane 'at needs ane?"

"Gien onybody ever did, it wasna you."

"But dinna ye think ye're a kin' o' b'un' to du the like again?"

"Ay, to him 'at did it--but I tell ye ye're no the man; sae gang
aboot yer business."

"Someday ye may want somebody ance mair to du ye a guid turn!"

"I hae dune a heap to gie me a claim on consideration. I hae grown
auld upo' the place. What hae YE dune, my man?"

"I wadna hae muckle chance o' duin' onything, gien a' body was like
you. But did ye never hear tell o' ane 'at said:'Ye wad du naething
for nane o' mine, sae ye refeesed mysel'?"

"Deed, an' I wull refeese yersel'," returned the old man. "Sic a
chield for jaw an'cheek--saw I never nane--as the auld sang says!
Whaur on this earth cam ye frae?"

As he spoke, he gave Cosmo a round punch on the shoulder next him
that made him look from his work, and then began eying him up and
down in the most supercilious manner. He was a small, withered,
bowed man, with a thin wizened face, crowned by a much worn fur
cap. His mouth had been so long drawn down at each corner as by
weights of discontent, that it formed nearly a half-circle. His
eyebrows were lifted as far as they would go above his red-lidded
blue eyes, and there was a succession of ripply wrinkles over each
of them, which met in the middle of his forehead, so that he was
all over arches. Under his cap stuck out enormous ears, much too
large for his face. Huge veiny hands hung trembling by his sides,
but they trembled more from anger than from age.

"I tellt ye a'ready," answered Cosmo; "I come frae the auld
country."

"Deil tak the auld country! What care I for the auld country! It's
a braid place, an' langer nor it's braid, an' there's mony ane
intil't an' oot on't 'at's no warth the parritch his mither pat
intil 'im. Eh, the fowth o' fushionless beggars I hae seen come to
me like yersel'!--Ow ay! it was aye wark they wad hae!--an' cudna
du mair nor a flee amo' triacle!--What coonty are ye frae, wi' the
lang legs an' the lang back-bane o' ye?"

Cosmo told him. The hands of the old man rose from his sides, and
made right angles of his elbows.

"Weel," he said slowly, "that's no an ill coonty to come frae. I
may say THAT, for I belang til't my--sel'. But what pairt o' 't ran
ye frae whan ye cam awa'?"

"I ran frae nae pairt, but I cam frae hame i' the north pairt o'
that same," answered Cosmo, and bent again to his work.

The man came a step nearer, and Cosmo, without looking up, was
aware he was regarding him intently.

"Ay! ay!" he said at last, in a tone of reflection mingled with
dawning interest, "I ance kent a terrible rascal cam frae owerby
that gait: what ca' they the perris ye're frae?"

Cosmo told him.

"Lord bless me!" cried the old man, and came close up to him.--"But
na!" he resumed, and stepped a pace back, "somebody's been tellin
ye!"

Cosmo gave him no answer. He stood a moment expecting one, then
broke out in a rage.

"What for mak ye nae answer whan a body speirs ye a queston? That
wasna mainners whan I was a bairn. Lord! ye micht as weel be
ceevil! Isna it easy eneuch to lee?"

"I would answer no man who was not prepared to believe me," said
Cosmo quietly.

The dignity of his English had far more effect on the man than the
friendliness of their mother-tongue.

"Maybe ye wadna objec' to mak mention by name o' the toon nearest
to ye whan ye was at hame?" said the old man, and from his altered
manner and tone Cosmo felt he might reply.

"It was ca'd Muir o' Warlock," he answered.

"Lord, man! come into the hoose. Ye maun be sair in need o'
something to put intil ye! A' the gait frae Muir o' Warlock! A
toonsman o' my ain! Scot--lan' 's a muckle place--but Muir o'
Warlock! Guid guide's! Come in, man; come in!"

So saying he took the spade from Cosmo's hands, threw it down with
a contemptuous cast, and led the way towards the house.

The old man had a heart after all! Strange the power of that
comparatively poor thing, local association, to bring to light the
eternal love at the root of the being! Wonderful sign also of the
presence of God wherever a child may open eyes! This man's heart
was not yet big enough to love a Scotsman, but it was big enough to
love a Muir-o'-Warlock-man; and was not that a precious beginning?
--a beginning as good as any? It matters nothing where or how one
begins, if only one does begin! There are many, doubtless, who have
not yet got farther in love than their own family; but there are
others who have learned that for the true heart there is neither
Frenchman nor Englishman, neither Jew nor Greek, neither white nor
black--only the sons and daughters of God, only the brothers and
sisters of the one elder brother. There may be some who have
learned to love all the people of their own planet, but have not
yet learned to look with patience upon those of Saturn or Mercury;
while others there must be, who, wherever there is a creature of
God's making, love each in its capacity for love--from the
arch-angel before God's throne, to the creeping thing he may be
compelled to destroy--from the man of this earth to the man of some
system of worlds which no human telescope has yet brought within
the ken of heaven-poring sage. And to that it must come with every
one of us, for not until then are we true men, true women--the
children, that is, of him in whose image we are made.

Cosmo followed very willingly, longing for water and a
clothes-brush rather than for food. The cold and damp, fatigue and
exposure of the night were telling upon him more than he knew, and
all the time he was at work, he had been cramped by hitherto
unknown pains in his limbs.

The gardener brought him to the half-ruinous wing already
mentioned, to a small kitchen, opening under a great sloping
buttress, and presented him to his wife, an English woman, some ten
years younger than himself. She received him with a dignified
retraction of the feelers, but the moment she understood his needs,
ministered to them, and had some breakfast ready for him by the
time he had made his toilet. He sat down by her little fire, and
drank some tea, but felt shivery, and could not eat. In dread lest,
if he yielded a moment to the invading sickness, it should at once
overpower him, he made haste to get out again into the sun, and
rejoined the old man, who had gone back to his cabbage-ground.
There he pulled off his coat, and once more seized the spade, for
work seemed the only way of meeting his enemy hand to hand. But the
moment he began, he was too hot, and the moment he took breath he
was ready to shiver. As long as he could stand, however, he would
not give in.

"How many years have you been gardener here?" he asked, forcing
himself to talk.

"Five an' forty year, an' I'm nearhan' tired o' 't."

"The present lord is a young man, is he not?"

"Ay; he canna be muckle ayont five an' thirty."

"What sort of a man is he?"

"Weel, it's hard to say. He's ane o' them 'at naebody says weel o',
an' naebody's begud to say ill o'--yet."

"There can't be much amiss with him then, surely!"'

"Weel, I wadna gang freely sae far as say that, You 'at's a man o'
sense, maun weel un'erstan', gien it was only frae yer carritchis
(catechism), 'at there's baith sins o' o-mission, an' sins o'
co-mission. Noo, what sins o' co-mission may lie at my lord's door,
I dinna ken, an' feow can ken, an' we're no to jeedge; but for the
o-mission, ye hae but to see hoo he neglects that bonny sister o'
his, to be far eneuch frae thinkin' a sant o' 'im."

Silence followed. Cosmo would go no farther in that direction: it
would be fair neither to Lady Joan nor the gardener, who spoke as
to one who knew nothing of the family.

"Noo the father," resumed his new friend, "--puir man, he's deid an'
damned this mony a day!--an' eh, but he was an ill ane!--but as to
Leddy Joan, he wad hardly bide her oot o' his sicht. He cudna be
jist that agreeable company to the likes o' her, puir leddy! for he
was a rouch-spoken, sweirin' auld sinner as ever lived, but sic as
he had he gae her, an' was said to hae been a fine gentleman in's
yoong days. Some wad hae 't he cheenged a' thegither o' a suddent.
An' they wad hae 't it cam o' bluid-guiltiness--for they said he
had liftit the reid han' agen his neebor. An' they warnt me, lang
as it was sin' I left it, no to lat 'im ken I cam frae yon pairt o'
the country, or he wad be rid o' me in a jiffey, ae w'y or anither.
--Ay, it was a gran' name that o' Warlock i' thae pairts! though
they tell me it gangs na for sae muckle noo. I hae h'ard said,'at
ever sin' the auld lord here made awa' wi' the laird o'
Glen--warlock, the faimily there never had ony luck. I wad like to
ken what you, as a man o' sense, think o' that same. It appears to
me a' some queer kin' o' justice! No' 'at I'm daurin' or wad daur
to say a word agen the w'y 'at the warl's goverrnt, but there's
some things 'at naebody can un'erstan'--I defy them!--an' yon's ane
o' them--what for, cause oor graceless auld lord--he was yoong
than--tuik the life o' the laird o' Glenwarlock, the faimily o'
Warlock sud never thrive frae that day to this!--Read me that
riddle, yoong man, gien ye can."

"Maybe it was to haud them 'at cam efter frae ony mair keepin' o'
sic ill company," Cosmo ventured to suggest; for, knowing what his
father was, and something also of what most of those who preceded
him were, he could see no such inscrutable dispensation in the fact
mentioned.

"That wad be hard lines, though," insisted the gardener, unwilling
to yield the unintelligibility of the ways of providence.

"But," said Cosmo, "they say doon there, it was a brither o' the
laird, no the laird himsel','at the English lord killt."

"Na, na; they're a' wrang there, whaever says that. For auld Jean,
wham I min' a weel faured wuman, though doobtless no sae bonny as
whan he broucht her wi' 'im a yoong lass--maybe to gar her haud her
tongue--auld Jean said as I say. But that was lang efter the thing
was ower auld to be ta'en ony notice o' mair. Forby, you 'at's a
man o' sense, gien it wasna the laird himsel' 'at he killt, hoo wad
there, i' that case, be onything worthy o' remark i' their no
thrivin' efter't? I' that case, the no thrivin' cud hae had
naething ava to du wi' the killin'. Na, na, it was the laird
himsel' 'at the maisier killt--the father o' the present laird, I'm
thinkin'. What aged-man micht he be--did ye ever hear tell?"

"He's a man well on to seventy," answered Cosmo, with a pang at the
thought.

"Ay; that'll be aboot it! There can be no doobt it was his father
oor lord killt--an' as little 'at efter he did it he gaed doon the
braid ro'd to the deevil as fest's ever he cud rin. It was jist
like as wi' Judas--he maun gang till's ain. Some said he had sellt
himsel' to the deevil, but I'm thinkin' that wasna necessar'. He
was to get him ony gait! An' wad ye believe't, it's baith said and
believt--'at he cam by's deith i' some exterordnar w'y, no
accoontable for, but plainly no canny. Ae thing's sure as deith
itsel', he was ta'en suddent, an' i' the verra hoose whaur, mony a
lang year afore, he commitit the deed o' darkness!"

A pause followed, and then the narrator, or rather commentator,
resumed.

"I'm thinkin' whan he begud to ken himsel' growin' auld, his deed
cam back upon 'im fresh-like, an' that wad be hoo he cudna bide to
hae my lady oot o' the sicht o' his een, or at least ayont the cry
o' his tongue. Troth! he wad whiles come aboot the place efter her,
whaur I wad be at my wark, as it micht be the day, cursin' an'
sweirin' as gien he had sellt his sowl to a' the deevils thegither,
an' sae micht tak his wull o' onything he cud get his tongue roon'!
But I never heedit him that muckle, for ye see it wasna him 'at
peyt me--the mair by token 'at gien it had been him 'at had the
peyin' o' me, it's never a baubee wad I hae seen o' my ain siller;
but the trustees peyt me, ilka plack, an' sae I was indepen'ent
like, an' luit him say his say. But it was aye an oonsaitisfactory
kin' o' a thing, for the trustees they caredna a bodle aboot
keepin' the place dacent, an' tuik sae sma' delicht in ony
pleesurin' o' the auld lord,'at they jist allooed him me, an' no a
man mair nor less--to the gairden, that is. That's hoo the place
comes to be in sic a disgracefu' condeetion. Gien it hadna been for
rizzons o' my ain, I wad hae gane, mony's the time, for the sicht
o' the ruin o' things was beyon' beirin'. But I bude to beir't; sae
I bore't an' bore't till I cam by beirin' o' 't to tak it verra
quaiet, an' luik upo' the thing as the wull o' a Providence 'at
sudna be meddlet wi'. I broucht mysel' in fac' to that degree o'
submission,'at I gae mysel' no trouble more, but jist confint my
ainergies to the raisin' o' the kail an' cabbage, the ingons an'
pitawtas wantit aboot the place."

"And are things no better," asked Cosmo, "since the present lord
succeeded?"

"No a hair--'cep' it be 'at there's no sae mony ill words fleein'
aboot the place. My lord never sets his nose intil the gairden, or
speirs--no ance in a twal--month, hoo's things gangin' on. He does
naething but rowt aboot in 's boaratory as he ca's 't--bore-a-whig,
or bore-a-tory, it's little to me--makin' stinks there fit to
scomfish a whaul, an' gar 'im stick his nose aneth the watter for a
glamp o' fresh air. He's that hard-hertit 'at he never sae muckle
as aits his denner alongside o' his ain sister,'cep' it be whan he
has company, an' wad luik like ither fowk. Gien it gaedna ower weel
wi' her i' the auld man's time, it gangs waur wi' her noo; for sae
lang as he was abune the yird there was aye somebody to ken whether
she was livin' or deid. To see a bonnie lass like her strayin'
aboot the place nae better companied nor wi' an auld buik--it's
jist eneuch to brak a man's hert, but that age kills rage."

"Do the neighbours take no notice of her?"

"Nane o' her ain dignity, like. Ye see she's naething but bonny.
She HAS naething. An' though she's as guid a cratur as ever lived,
the cauld grun' o' her poverty gaithers the fog o' an ill report.
Troth, for her faimily, the ill's there, report or no report; but,
a' the same, gien she had been rich, an' her father--I'll no say
the hangman, but him 'at he last hangt, there wad be fowth (PLENTY)
o' coonty-fowk wad hae her til her denner wi' them. An' I'm
thinkin' maybe she's the prooder for her poverty, an' winna gang
til her inferriors sae lang as her aiquals dinna invete her. She
gangs whiles to the doctor's--but he's a kin' o' a freen' o' the
yerl's,'cause he likes stinks--but that's the yoong doctor."

"Does her brother never go out to dinner anywhere, and take her
with him?"

"Naebody cares a bodle aboot his lordship i' the haill
country-side, sae far as I can learn. There's ane or twa--great
men, I daursay--whiles comes doon frea Lon'on, to smell hoo he's
gettin' on wi' 's stinks, but deil a neebor comes nigh the hoose.
Ow, he's a great man, I mak nae doobt, awa' frae hame! He's aye
writin' letters to the newspapers, an' they prent them--aboot this
an' aboot that--aboot beasties i' the watter, an' lectreesity, an'
I kenna what a'; an' some says 'at hoo he'll be a rich man some
day, the moment he's dune fin'in' oot something or ither he's
beenwarslin' at for the feck o' a ten year or sae; but the gentry
never thinks naething o' a man sae lang as he's only duin' his
best--or his warst, as the case may be--to lay his han' upo' the
siller 'at's fleein' aboot him like a snaw-drift. Bide ye a bit,
though! WHAN he's gotten't, it's doon they're a' upo' their k-nees
til 'im thegither. But gien they be prood, he's prooder, an' lat
him ance get his heid up, an' rid o' the trustees, an' fowk upo'
their marrow--banes til 'im, haith, he'll lat them sit there, or
I'm mistaen in 'im."

"Then has my lady no companions at all?"

"She gangs whiles to see the doctor's lass, an' whiles she comes
here an' has her denner wi' her, themsel's twa: never anither comes
near the place."

All this time, Cosmo had been turning over the cabbage-ground,
working the harder that he still hoped to work off the sickness
that yet kept growing upon him. The sun was hot, and his head,
which had been aching more or less all day, now began to throb
violently.

The spade dropt from his hands, and he fell on his face in the soft
mould.

"What's this o' 't?" cried the old man, going up to him in a fright.

He caught hold of him by an arm, and turned him on his back. His
face was colourless, and the life seemed to have gone out of him.




CHAPTER XXVI.

LOST AND FOUND.


When Cosmo came to himself, he had not a notion where he was,
hardly indeed knew what he was. His chief consciousness was of an
emptiness and a weight combined, that seemed to paralyze him. He
would have turned on his side, but felt as if a ponderous heap of
bed-clothes prevented him from even raising an arm--and yet he was
cold. He tried to think back, to find what he knew of himself last,
but could for a long time recall only a confused dream of
multitudinous discomfort and painful effort. At last, however, came
the garden, the spade-work, and the old man's talk; and then it
seemed as if the cracked complaining voice had never left his ears.

"I've been ill!" he said to himself. "Perhaps I dropped down. I
hope they haven't buried me!"

With a straining agony of will he got in motion an arm, which was
lying like that of another man outside the coverlid, and felt
feebly about him. His hand struck against something solid, and what
seemed a handful of earth fell with a hollow rumble. Alas, this
seemed ominous! Where could he be but in his coffin? The thought
was not a pleasant one, certainly, but he was too weak, and had
been wandering too long in the miserable limbo of vain fancies, to
be much dismayed. He said to himself he would not have to suffer
long--he must soon go to sleep, and so die.

Fatigued with that one movement, he lay for some time motionless.
His eyes were open, though he did not know it, and by and by he
became aware of light. Thin, dim, darkly gray, a particle at a
time, it grew about him. For some minutes his eyes seemed of
themselves, without any commission from him, to make inquiry of his
surroundings. They discovered that, if he was in a coffin, or even
in a sepulchre without a coffin, it was a large one: there was a
wall--miles away! The light grew, and with it the conviction that
he was in no sepulchre. But there the consolation ceased, for the
still growing light revealed no sign of ministration or comfort.
Above him was a bare, dirty, stained ceiling, with a hole in it,
through which stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare,
dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a
wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two
slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of
drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's
boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre--ferred to
Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen
in great patches from the walls as well as the ceiling, and surely
no workhouse would be allowed to get into such a disrepair! He
tried again, and this time succeeded in turning on his side,
discovering in the process how hard the bed was, and how sharp his
bones. A wooden chair stood a little beyond his reach, and upon it
a bottle and teacup. Not another article could he discover. Right
under the hole in the ceiling a board was partly rotted away in the
floor, and a cold, damp air, smelling of earth, and decaying wood,
seemed to come steaming up through it. A few minutes more, he said
to himself, and he would get up, and out of the hideous place, but
he must lie a little longer first, just to come to himself!--Now he
would try!--What had become of his strength? Was it gone utterly?
Could one night's illness have reduced him thus?

He seemed to himself unable to think, yet the profoundest thought
went on as if thinking itself in him. Where had his strength lain
before he lost it? Could that ever have been HIS which he could not
keep? If a thing were ours, nothing could ever take it from us! Was
his strength ever his then? Yes, for God had given it him. Then he
could not have lost it! He had it still! The branches of it were
gone, but the root remained, hid in God. All was well. If God chose
that his child should lie there, for this day, and to-morrow, or
till the next year, or if it pleased him that he should never rise
again with the same body, was that a thing to trouble him? He
turned his back on the ugly room, and was presently fast asleep
again.

Not a few read the poems of a certain king brought up a shepherd
lad. From Sunday to Sunday they read them. Amongst them, in their
turn, they read these: "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep,
for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety." Yet not only do
these readers never have such a feeling in their own hearts in
consequence, but they never even imagine that David really had it
in his. Deeper and grander things still, uttered by this same
shepherd-warrior, do they read, and yet in their wisdom will
declare it preposterous that any Scotch lad should have such a
feeling towards God as I have represented! "Doth God care for
oxen?" says St. Paul. Doth God care for kings? I ask, or for
Jew-shepherds? Or does he not care all over for all of us--oxen and
kings and sparrows and Scotch lairds? According to such blind
seers, less is to be expected of humanity since the son of David
came, than it was capable of in his father David. Such men build
stone houses, but never a spiritual nest. They cannot believe the
thing possible which yet another man DOES. Nor ever may they
believe it before they begin to do it. I wonder little at so many
rejecting Christianity, while so many would-be champions of it hold
theirs at arm's length--in their bibles, in their theories, in
their church, in their clergyman, in their prayer-books, in the
last devotional page they have read--a separable thing--not in
their hearts on their beds in the stillness; not their comfort in
the night-watches; not the strength of their days, the hope and joy
of their conscious being! God is nearer to me than the air I
breathe, nearer to me than the heart of wife or child, nearer to me
than my own consciousness of myself, nearer to me than the words in
which I speak to him, nearer than the thought roused in me by the
story of his perfect son--or he is no God at all. The unbelievers
might well rejoice in the loss of such a God as many Chris--tians
would make of him. But if he be indeed the Father of our Lord
Christ, of that Jew who lived and died doing the will of his
Father, and nothing but that will, then, to all eternity, "Amen,
thy will be done, O God! and nothing but thy will, in or through
me!"

Cosmo had been ill a whole week--in fever and pain, and was now
helpless almost as an infant. The old man had gone for his wife,
and between them they had persuaded him, though all but
unconscious, to exert himself sufficiently to reach the house. This
effort he could recall, in the shape of an intermina--ble season
during which he supported the world for Atlas, that he might get a
little sleep; but it was only the aching weight of his own
microcosm that he urged Atlanlean force to carry. They took him
direct to the room where he now lay, for they had them--selves but
one chamber, and if they took him there, what would become of the
old bones to which the gardener was so fond of referring in his
colloquies with himself? Also, it might be some fever he had taken,
and their own lives were so much the more precious that so much of
them was gone! Like most of us, they were ready to do THEIR NEXT
BEST for him. They spared some of their own poor comforts to
furnish the skeleton bed for him; and there he lay, like one adrift
in a rotten boat on the ebbing ocean of life, while the old woman
trudged away to the village to tell the doctor that there was a
young Scotch gardener taken suddenly ill at their quarters in the
castle.

The doctor sent his son, a man about thirty, who after travelling
some years as medical attendant to a nobleman, had settled in his
native village as his father's partner. He prescribed for Cosmo,
and gave hope that there was nothing infectious about the case.
Every day during the week he had come to see him, and the night
before had been with him from dark to dawn.

The gardener's wife had informed Lady Joan that a young Scotchman
who had come to her husband seeking employment, had been taken
suddenly ill, and was lying in a room in the old wing; and Lady
Joan had said she would speak to the housekeeper to let her have
whatever she wanted for him. The doctor saw Lady Joan most every
time he came to see Cosmo, and she would enquire how his patient
was going on; she would also hear the housekeeper's complaints of
the difficulty she had in getting wine from the butler--of which
there was no lack, only he grudged it, for he was doing his best to
drink up the stock the old lord had left behind him, intending to
take his departure with the last bottle--but she took no farther
interest in the affair. The castle was like a small deserted
village, and there was no necessity for a person in one part of it
knowing what was taking place in another.

But that same morning she had a letter from the laird, saying he
was uneasy about his boy. He had been so inconsiderate, he informed
her, as to set out to visit her without asking her leave, or even
warning her of his intent; and since the letter announcing his
immediate departure, received a fortnight before, he had not heard
of or from him. This set Joan thinking. And the immediate result
was, that she went to the gardener's wife, and questioned her
concerning the appearance of her patient. In the old woman's
answers she certainly could recognize no likeness to Cosmo; but he
must have altered much in seven years, and she could not be
satisfied without seeing the young man.

Cosmo lay fast asleep, and dreaming--but pleasant dreams now, for
the fever gone, life was free to build its own castles. He thought
he was dead, and floating through the air at his will, volition all
that was necessary to propel him like a dragon-fly, in any
direction he desired to take. He was about to go to his father, to
receive his congratulations on his death, and to say to him that
now the sooner he too died the better, that the creditors might
have the property, everybody be paid, and they two and his mother
be together for always. But first, before he set out, he must have
one sight of Lady Joan, and in that hope was now hovering about the
towers of the castle. He was slowly circling the two great ones of
the gateway, crossing a figure of eight over the gallery where
stood the machinery of the portcullis, when down he dropped, and
lay bruised and heavy, unable by fiercest effort of the will to
move an inch from the spot. He was making the reflection how
foolish it was to begin to fly before assuring himself that he was
dead, and was resolving to be quite prudent another time, when he
felt as if a warm sunny cloud came over him, which made him open
his eyes. They gradually cleared, and above him he saw the face of
his many dreams--a little sadder than it was in them, but more
beautiful.

Cosmo had so much of the childlike in him that illness made him
almost a very child again, and when he saw Joan's face bending over
him like a living sky, just as any child might have done, he put
his arms round her neck, and drew her face down to his. Hearts get
uppermost in illness, and people then behave as they would not in
health. More is in it than is easily found. There is such a dumb
prayer in the spirit to be _taken_!

Till he opened his eyes Lady Joan had been unable to satisfy
herself whether the pale, worn, yet grand-looking youth could
indeed be the lad Cosmo, and was not at all prepared for such
precipitate familiarity: the moment she was released, she drew back
with some feeling, if not of offence, yet of annoyance. But such a
smile flooded Cosmo's face, mingled with such a pleading look of
apology and excuse, which seemed to say, "How _could_ I help
it?" that she was ashamed of herself. It was the same true face as
the boy's, with its old look of devotion and gentle worship! To
make all right she stooped of her own accord, and kissed his
forehead.

"Thank you," murmured Cosmo, his own voice sounding to him like
that of another. "Don't be vexed with me. I am but a baby, and have
no mother. When I saw you, it was as if heaven had come down into
hell, and I did not think to help it. How beautiful you are! How
good of you to come to me!"

"Oh, Cosmo!" cried Lady Joan--and now large silent tears were
running down her cheeks--"to think of the way you and your father
took me and mine in, and here you have been lying ill--I don't know
how long--in a place not fit for a beggar!"

"That's just what I am!" returned Cosmo with a smile, feeling
already almost well. "I have such a long story to tell you, Joan! I
remember all about it now."

"Why didn't you write,--?" said Joan, and checked herself, for
alas! if he had written, what would she not have found herself
compelled to do!--"Why didn't you send for me at once? They told me
there was a young gardener lying ill, and of course I never dreamed
it could be you. But I know if you had heard at Castle Warlock that
a stranger was lying ill somewhere about the place, you would have
gone to him at once! It was very wrong of me, and I am sorely
punished!"

"Never mind," said Cosmo; "it's all right now. I have you, and it
makes me well again all at once. When I see you standing there,
looking just as you used, all the time between is shrivelled up to
nothing, and the present joins right on to the past. But you look
sad, Joan!--I MAY call you Joan still, mayn't I?"

"Surely, Cosmo. What else? I haven't too many to call me Joan!"

"But what makes you look sad?"

"Isn't it enough to think how I have treated you?"

"You didn't know it was me," said Cosmo.

"That is true. But if, as your father taught you, I had done it to
HIM--"

"Well, there's one thing, Joan--you'll do differently another
time."

"I can't be sure of that, for my very heart grows stupid, living
here all alone."

"Anyhow, you will have trouble enough with me for awhile, fast as
your eyes can heal me," said Cosmo, who began to be aware of a
reaction.

Lady Joan's face flushed with pleasure, but the next moment grew
pale again at the thought of how little she could do for him.

"The first thing," she said, "is to write to your father. When he
knows I have got you, he won't be uneasy. I will go and do it at
once."

Almost the moment she left him, Cosmo fell fast asleep again.

But now was Lady Joan, if not in perplexity, yet in no small
discomfort. It made her miserable to think of Cosmo in such a
place, yet she could not help saying to herself it was well he had
not written, for she must then have asked him not to come: now that
he was in the house, she dared not tell her brother; and were she
to move him to any comfortable room in the castle, he would be sure
to hear of it from the butler, for the less faith carried, the more
favour curried! One thing only was in her power: she could make the
room he was in comparatively comfortable. As soon, therefore, as
she had written a hurried letter to the laird, she went hastily
through some of the rooms nearest the part in which Cosmo lay,
making choice of this and of that for her purpose: in the great,
all but uninhabited place there were naturally many available
pieces of stuff and of furniture. These she then proceeded, with
her own hands, and the assistance of the gardener and his wife, to
carry to his room; and when she found he was asleep, she put forth
every energy to get the aspect of the place altered before he
should wake. With noiseless steps she entered and left the room
fifty times; and by making use of a door which had not been opened
for perhaps a hundred years, she avoided attracting the least
attention.




CHAPTER XXVII.

A TRANSFORMATION.


When Cosmo the second time opened his eyes, he was afresh
bewildered. Which was the dream--that vision of wretchedness, or
this of luxury? If it was not a dream, how had they moved him
without once disturbing his sleep? It was as marvellous as anything
in the Arabian Nights! Could it be the same chamber? Not a thing
seemed the same, yet in him was a doubtful denial of transportance.
Yes, the ceiling was the same! The power of the good fairy had not
reached to the transformation of that! But the walls! Instead of
the great hole in the plaster close by the bed, his eyes fell on a
piece of rich old tapestry! Curtains of silk damask, all bespotted
with quaintest flowers, each like a page of Chaucer's poetry, hung
round his bed, quite other than fit sails for the Stygian boat.
They had made the bed as different as the vine in summer from the
vine in winter. A quilt of red satin lay in the place of the
patchwork coverlid. Everything had been changed. He thought the
mattress felt soft under him--but that was only a fancy, for he saw
before the fire the feather-bed intended to lie between him and it.
He felt like a tended child, in absolute peace and bliss--or like
one just dead, while yet weary with the struggle to break free. He
seemed to recall the content, of which some few vaguest filaments,
a glance and no more, still float in the summer-air of many a
memory, wherein the child lies, but just awaked to consciousness
and the mere bliss of being, before wrong has begun to cloud its
pure atmosphere. For Cosmo had nothing on his conscience to trouble
it; his mind was stored with lovely images and was fruitful in
fancies, because in temperament, faith, and use, he was a poet; the
evil vapours of fever had just lifted from his brain, and were
floating away, in the light of the sun of life; he felt the
pressure of no duty--was like a bird of the air lying under its
mother's wing, and dreaming of flight; his childhood's most
cherished dream had grown fact: there was the sylph, the oriad, the
naiad of all his dreams, a living lady before his eyes--nor the
less a creature of his imagination's heart; from her, as the centre
of power, had all the marvellous transformation proceeded; and the
lovely strength had kissed him on the forehead! The soul of Cosmo
floated in rapturous quiet, like the evening star in a rosy cloud.

But I return to the earthly shore that bordered this heavenly sea.
The old-fashioned, out-swelling grate, loose and awry in its
setting, had a keen little fire burning in it, of which, summer as
it was, the mustiness of the atmosphere, and the damp of the walls,
more than merely admitted. The hole in the floor had vanished under
a richly faded Turkey carpet; and a luxurious sofa, in blue damask,
faded almost to yellow, stood before the fire, to receive him the
moment he should cease to be a chrysalis. And there in an easy
chair by the corner of the hearth, wonder of all loveliest wonders,
sat the fairy-godmother herself, as if she had but just waved her
wand, and everything had come to her will!--the fact being,
however, that the poor fairy was not a little tired in legs and
arms and feet and hands and head, and preferred contemplating what
she had already done, to doing anything more for the immediate
present.

Cosmo lay watching her. He dared not move a hand, lest she should
move; for, though it might be to rise and come to him, would it not
be to change what he saw?--and what he saw was so much enough, that
he would see it forever, and desired nothing else. She turned her
eyes, and seeing the large orbs of the youth fixed upon her, smiled
as she had not smiled before, for a great weight was off her heart
now that the room gave him a little welcome. True, it was after all
but a hypocrite of a room,--a hypocrite, however, whose meaning was
better than its looks!

He put out his hand, and she rose and came and laid hers in it.
Suddenly he let it go.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I don't know when my hands were
washed! The last I remember is digging in the garden. I wish I
might wash my face and hands!"

"You mustn't think of it! you can't sit up yet," said Lady Joan.
"But never mind: some people are always clean. You should see my
brother's hands sometimes! I will, if you like, bring you a towel
with a wet corner. I dare say that will do you good."

She poured water into a basin from a kettle on the hob, and dipping
the corner of a towel in it, brought it to him. He tried to use it,
but his hands obeyed him so ill that she took it from him, and
herself wiped with it his face and hands, and then dried them--so
gently, so softly, he thought that must be how his mother did with
him when he was a baby. All the time, he lay looking up at her with
a grateful smile. She then set about preparing him some tea and
toast, during which he watched her every motion. When he had had
the tea, he fell asle