ROMANCES OF THE OLD TOWN
OF
EDINBURGH.

BY
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
AUTHOR OF “MYSTERIOUS LEGENDS OF EDINBURGH,” “CURIOUS STORIED
TRADITIONS OF SCOTTISH LIFE,” ETC.

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM P. NIMMO.
1867.

PREFACE.

THE stories in this volume owe their publication to the favour extended to my Book of Legends. If I had any apology to make it could only—independently of what is due for demerits which the cultivators of “the gay science” will not fail to notice—consist in an answer to the charge that books of this kind feed a too natural appetite for images and stimulants which tends to voracity, and which again tends to that attenuation of the mental constitution deserving of the name of marasmus. I may be saved the necessity of such an apology by reminding the reader that, although I plead guilty to the charge of invention, I have generally so much of a foundation for these stories as to entitle them to be withdrawn from the category of fiction. On this subject the reader may be inclined to be more particular in his inquiry than suits the possibility of an answer which may at once be safe and satisfactory. I would prefer to repose upon the generous example of that philanthropic showman, who leaves to those who look through his small windows the choice of selecting his great duke out of two personages, both worthy of the honour. The reader may believe, or not believe, but it is not imperative that he should do either; for even at the best—begging pardon of my fair readers for the Latin—fides semper est inevidens in re testificata.

A. L.

York Lodge, Trinity,
January 1867.

CONTENTS.

ROMANCES
OF THE
OLD TOWN OF EDINBURGH.

The Story of the Two Red Slippers.

THE taking down of the old house of four or five flats, called Gowanlock’s Land, in that part of the High Street which used to be called the Luckenbooths, has given rise to various stories connected with the building. Out of these I have selected a very strange legend—so strange, indeed, that, if not true, it must have been the production, quod est in arte summa, of a capital inventor; nor need I say that it is of much importance to talk of the authenticity of these things, for the most authentic are embellished by invention, and it is certainly the best embellished that live the longest; for all which we have very good reasons in human nature.

Gowanlock’s Land, it would seem, merely occupied the site of an older house, which belonged, at the time of Prince Charlie’s occupation of the city, to an old town councillor of the name of Yellowlees. This older house was also one of many stories, an old form in Edinburgh, supposed to have been adopted from the French; but it had, which was not uncommon, an entry from the street running under an arch, and leading to the back of the premises to the lower part of the tenement, that part occupied by the councillor. There was a lower flat, and one above, which thus constituted an entire house; and which, moreover, rejoiced in the privilege of having an extensive garden, running down as far as the sheet of water called the North Loch, that secret “domestic witness,” as the ancients used to say, of many of the dark crimes of the old city. These gardens were the pride of the rich burghers of the time, decorated by Dutch-clipped hollies and trim boxwood walks; and in our special instance of Councillor Yellowlees’s retreat, there was in addition a summer-house, or rustic bower, standing at the bottom; that is, towards the north, and close upon the loch. I may mention also, that in consequence of the damp, this little bower was strewed with rushes for the very special comfort of Miss Annie Yellowlees, the only and much-petted child of the good councillor.

All which you must take as introductory to the important fact that the said Miss Annie, who, as a matter of course, was “very bonnie,” as well as passing rich to be, had been, somewhat previous to the prince’s entry to the town, pledged to be married to no less considerable a personage than Maister John Menelaws, a son of him of the very same name who dealt in pelts in a shop of the Canongate, and a student of medicine in the Edinburgh University; but as the councillor had in his secret soul hankerings after the prince, and the said student, John, was a red-hot royalist, the marriage was suspended, all to the inexpressible grief of our “bonnie Annie,” who would not have given her John for all the Charlies and Geordies to be found from Berwick to Lerwick. On the other hand—while Annie was depressed, and forced to seek relief in solitary musings in her bower by the loch—it is just as true that “it is an ill wind that blaws naebody gude;” nay, the truth of the saying was verified in Richard Templeton, a fellow-student of Menelaws, and a rival, too, in the affections of Annie; who, being a Charlieite as well as an Annieite, rejoiced that his companion was in the meantime foiled and disappointed.

Meanwhile, and, I may say, while the domestic affairs of the councillor’s house were still in this unfortunate position, the prince’s bubble burst in the way which history tells us of, and thereupon out came proscriptions of terrible import, and, as fate would have it, young Templeton’s name was in the bloody register; the more by reason that he had been as noisy as Edinburgh students generally are in the proclamation of his partisanship. He must fly or secrete himself, or perhaps lose a head in which there was concealed a considerable amount of Scotch cunning. He at once thought of the councillor’s house, with that secluded back garden and summer-house, all so convenient for secrecy, and the envied Annie there, too, whom he might by soft wooings detach from the hated Menelaws, and make his own through the medium of the pity that is akin to love. And so, to be sure, he straightway, under the shade of night, repaired to the house of the councillor, who, being a tender-hearted man, could not see a sympathiser with the glorious cause in danger of losing his head. Templeton was received, a report set abroad that he had gone to France, and all proper measures were taken within the house to prevent any domestic from letting out the secret.

In this scheme Annie, we need hardly say, was a favouring party; not that she had any love for the young man, for her heart was still true to Menelaws, (who, however, for safety’s sake, was now excluded from the house,) but that, with a filial obedience to a beloved father, she felt, with a woman’s heart, sympathy for one who was in distress, and a martyr to the cause which her father loved. Need we wonder at an issue which may already be looming on the vision of those who know anything of human nature? The two young folks were thrown together. They were seldom out of each other’s company. Suffering is love’s opportunity, and Templeton had to plead for him not only his misfortune, but a tongue rendered subtle and winning by love’s action in the heart. As the days passed, Annie saw some new qualities in the martyr-prisoner which she had not seen before; nay, the pretty little domestic attentions had the usual reflex effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protégé, until at length she got, as the saying goes, “over head and ears.” Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be applied anywhere but to the feet?

In the midst of all this secluded domesticity, there was all that comfort which is said to come from stolen waters. Then, was there not the prospect of the proscription being taken off, and the two would be made happy? Even in the meantime they made small escapades into free space. When the moon was just so far up as not to be a tell-tale, Templeton would, either with or without Annie, step out into the garden with these very red slippers on his feet. That bower by the loch, too, was favourable to the fondlings of a secret love; nor was it sometimes less to the prisoner a refuge from the eerieness which comes of ennui—if it is not the same thing—under the pressure of which strange feeling he would creep out at times when Annie could not be with him; nay, sometimes when the family had gone to bed.

And now we come to a very wonderful turn in our strange story. One morning Templeton did not make his appearance in the breakfast-parlour, but of course he would when he got up and got his red slippers on. Yet he was so punctual, and Annie, who knew that her father had to go to the council-chamber, would see what was the cause of the young man’s delay. She went to his bed-room door. It was open, but where was Templeton? He was not there. He could not be out in the city; he could not be even in the garden with the full light of a bright morning sun shining on it. He was not in the house; he was not in the garden, as they could see from the windows. He was nowhere to be found, and what added to the wonder, he had taken with him his red slippers, wherever he had gone. The inmates were in wonderment and consternation, and, conduplicated evil! they could make no inquiry for one who lay under the ban of a bloody proscription.

But wonders, as we all know, generally ensconce themselves in some snug theory, and die by a kind of pleasant euthanasia; and so it was with this wonder of ours. The councillor came, as the days passed, to the conclusion that Templeton, wearied out by his long confinement, had become desperate, and had gone abroad. As good a theory as could be got, seeing that he had not trusted himself in going near his friends; and Annie, whose grief was sharp and poignant, came also to settle down with a belief which still promised her her lover, though perhaps at a long date. But, somehow or another, Annie could not explain, why, even with all the fondness he had to the work of her hands, he should have elected to expose himself to damp feet by making the love-token slippers do the duty of the pair of good shoes he had left in the bed-room.

Even this latter wonder wore away, and months and months passed on the revolving wheel which casts months, not less than moments, into that gulf we call eternity. The rigour of the Government prosecutions was relaxed, and timid sympathisers began to show their heads out of doors, but Richard Templeton never returned to claim either immunity or the woman of his affections. Nor within all this time did John Menelaws enter the house of the councillor; so that Annie’s days were renounced to sadness and her nights to reveries. But at last comes the eventful “one day” of the greatest of all storytellers, Time, whereon happen his startling discoveries. Verily one day Annie had wandered disconsolately into the garden, and seated herself on the wooden form in the summer-house, where in the moonlight she had often nestled in the arms of her proscribed lover, who was now gone, it might be, for ever. Objective thought cast her into a reverie, and the reverie brought up again the images of these objects, till her heart beat with an affection renewed through a dream. At length she started up, and wishing to hurry from a place which seemed filled with images at once lovable and terrible, she felt her foot caught by an impediment whereby she stumbled. On looking down she observed some object of a reddish-brown colour, and becoming alarmed lest it might be one of the toads with which the place was sometimes invaded, she started back. Yet curiosity forced her to a closer inspection. She applied her hand to the object, and brought away one of those very slippers which she had made for Templeton. All very strange; but what may be conceived to have been her feelings when she saw, sticking up from beneath the rushes, the white skeleton of a foot which had filled that very slipper! A terrible suspicion shot through her mind. She flew to her father, and, hurrying him to the spot, pointed out to him the grim object, and showed him the slipper which had covered it. Mr Yellowlees was a shrewd man, and soon saw that, the foot being there, the rest of the body was not far away. He saw, too, that his safety might be compromised either as having been concerned in a murder or the harbourage of a rebel; and so, making caution the better part of his policy, he repaired to a sympathiser, and, having told him the story, claimed his assistance. Nor was this refused. That same night, by the light of a lamp, they exhumed the body of Templeton, much reduced, but enveloped with his clothes; only they observed that the other red slipper was wanting. On examining the body, they could trace the evidence of a sword-stab through the heart. All this they kept to themselves, and that same night they contrived to get the sexton of the Canongate to inter the body as that of a rebel who had been killed and left where it was found.

This wonder also passed away, and, as time sped, old things began to get again into their natural order. Menelaws began to come again about the house, and, as an old love, when the impediments are removed, is soon rekindled again, he and Annie became even all that which they had once been to each other. The old vows were repeated without the slightest reference being made by either party to the cause which had interfered to prevent them from having been fulfilled. It was not for Annie to proffer a reason, and it did not seem to be the wish of Menelaws to ask one. In a short time afterwards they were married.

The new-married couple, apparently happy in the enjoyment of an affection which had continued so long, and had survived the crossing of a new love, at least on one side, removed to a separate house farther up in the Lawnmarket. Menelaws had previously graduated as a doctor, and he commenced to practise as such, not without an amount of success. Meanwhile, the councillor died, leaving Annie a considerable fortune. In the course of somewhere about ten years they had five children. They at length resolved on occupying the old house with the garden, for Annie’s reluctance became weakened by time. It was on the occasion of the flitting that Annie had to rummage an old trunk which Menelaws, long after the marriage, had brought from the house of his father, the dealer in pelts. There, at the bottom, covered over by a piece of brown paper, she found—what? The very slipper which matched the one she still secretly retained in her possession. Verbum sapienti. You may now see where the strange land lies; nor was Annie blind. She concluded in an instant, and with a horror that thrilled through her whole body, that Menelaws had murdered his rival. She had lain for ten years in the arms of a murderer. She had borne to him five children. Nay, she loved him with all the force of an ardent temperament. The thought was terrible, and she recoiled from the very possibility of living with him a moment longer. She took the fatal memorial and secreted it along with its neighbour, and having a friend at a little distance from Edinburgh, she hurried thither, taking with her her children. Her father had left in her own power a sufficiency for her support, and she afterwards returned to town. All the requests of her husband for an explanation she resisted, and indeed they were not long persisted in, for Menelaws no doubt gauged the reason of her obduracy—a conclusion the more likely that he subsequently left Scotland. I have reason to believe that some of the existing Menelaws are descended from this strange union.

The Story of the Dead Seal.

AMONG Lord Kames’s session papers there are two informations or written pleadings upon the competency of an action of damages. The law point was strange enough, but the facts set forth in explanation were much more so, amounting indeed to a story so unprecedented, that I cannot help being surprised how they have escaped the curiosity of those who love “to chronicle the strong beer” of human life and action. Mr John Dalrymple, merchant, had passed his honeymoon with his wife (whose maiden name was Jean Bisset) in his house in Warrender’s Close, and was about to proceed next morning to Glasgow, to execute some commission business. They had a cheerful supper; they were both young, both healthy, and both hopeful, and surely if under these conditions they could not extract some sweets out of the orange of life, they might have little chance afterwards, when the pulp would diminish to the bitter skin which is inevitable. But the truth is, they had both very good powers of suction, and will enough to use them; and if it were not that death and life play upon the same string, one might have said that the new-married couple stood no apparent risk of any fatal interruption to their happiness.

It was accordingly in very good spirits that Mr Dalrymple set forth in the morning on his journey. We might perhaps say, that the inspiration of her love lent force to his mercantile enterprise, for somehow it would seem that all the actions of man beyond the purely selfish play round the great passion, just as the gaudy petals of the flowers are a kind of acted marriage-song round what is going on in the core of the plants; and so having arrived in Glasgow, he would be thinking about his Jean, to whom, when he got home again, he would recount the wonderful triumphs he had achieved over his competing worshippers in the Temple of Mammon. He was to be eight days away, and no doubt, according to a moderate calculation, they would appear as so many months, were it not that his business engagements would keep these days to their normal length. He was to write her every day, but as he did not know at what inn he might put up, she was not to write to him until she knew where to address him. On the day after his arrival he accordingly sent her a very loving letter, containing, we presume, as many of those kisses à la distance as is usual in such cases, and which in our day would make some noise in the post-office receiving-box, if they were endowed with sound. Having performed this loving duty, he continued his exertions re-inspired with the hope of receiving an answer on the morning of the day following. Then—as happy people, like the other animals, are playful—he amused himself at intervals, by conjecturing as to what kind of a letter he would get, how endearingly expressed it would be, how many “dears” there would be in it, what warmth of feeling the words would convey, and how many sighs had already been wasted for his return. We might smile at such frivolities if we were not called to remember that the most of our pleasures, if looked at through the spectacle-glass of Reason, would appear to be ridiculous.

The morning came; and, according to the statement of the waiter, the letter would arrive about breakfast time. He would thus have two or three pleasures rolled up in the same hour; he would sip coffee and nectar at the same time; his ham and egg would be sweetened by ambrosia; the pleasures of sense would be heightened by those of the fancy. All which were promises made by himself, and to himself, while he was dressing, and we cannot be sure that he did not make himself more sprightly, that he had to appear before the letter of his dear Jean. Did not Rousseau blush in presence of the great lady’s dog? Do what we may, we cannot get quit of the moral influence exercised over us by even inanimate things having the power of suggesting associations. But the breakfast was set, all the eatables and drinkables were on the table, and the last thing served by the waiter was the communication that the postman had passed and had left no letter.

The circumstance was rendered more than awkward by his prior hopes and anticipations, and it had the effect, moreover, which it surely ought not to have had upon a sensible man, of taking away his appetite. That it was strange there could be no doubt, for where is the loving wife who at the end of the honeymoon would allow a post to pass without replying to a loving husband’s letter?—but then he contrived to make it more strange by his efforts to satisfy himself that it was not strange at all. His reasons did not satisfy him; the humming of a Scotch air carried no conviction and produced no appetite; and the result was increased anxiety, evidenced by the hanging head and heavy eye. Again the main argument was that his or her letter had miscarried,—how could there be any other mode of accounting for it?—and then he hummed the air again—the breakfast standing all the time. All to be again counter-argued by the fact that during all the period he had corresponded with Glasgow, there had been no miscarriage of a letter, either to or from him. This was the doctrine of chances in the form of a stern logic, and the effect was apparent in another relapse into fear and anxiety. But Mr Dalrymple, though made a moral coward by the intensity of his affection, was withal a sensible man—a fact which he gave a good proof of, by placing more faith in brandy than logic, for having called for a little of that cordial, he put a glassful into his coffee, and thereupon felt, almost as soon as the liquor had got into his stomach, that there was really a great deal less to fear than he had thought, if the whole affair was not a mere bugbear; and what was not less remarkable, if not fortunate, the brandy, by dismissing his fears, brought back his appetite, and although he required a little longer time, he contrived to make nearly as good a breakfast as if he had been favoured with the ambrosial accompaniment which he had so hopefully promised himself.

Nor was this a small matter, for the meal served as ballast to enable him to encounter something very different from the slight adverse wind he had experienced for the last hour. He was still sitting at the table, rather pleased that he had triumphed over morbid fears, and laying out his scheme for the day, when the words, coming from behind, “A letter, sir,” struck his ear as if by a slap. His hand nervously seized the proffered gift, his eyes “flew” as it were to meet the superscription. He did not know the handwriting. It was directed to the care of Messrs Robert Fleming & Co., one of the houses with which he had been doing business. So far he was relieved, even when disappointed by the absence of his wife’s hand on the address. He turned it with the view to break it open, and then stopped and trembled as his eye fixed itself on a large black seal, exhibiting the death’s head and cross-bones of a funeral letter. Even this he soon got over, under the supposition that it was an invitation to some acquaintance’s funeral sent through to him, likely, by the recommendation of his wife before she had received his true address. At length he broke it open, and read the following words:—

“Dear Sir,—I am sorry to be under the necessity of informing you that your wife died this afternoon, between three and four, from the bursting of a blood-vessel in the lungs. You will see the propriety of starting for home as soon as you receive this melancholy intelligence.—Yours,

“A. Morgan, F.R.C.S.”

No sooner had he read this terrible communication than he was rendered as rigid as a statue. The only movement that could have been observed in him was in the fingers of the right hand, as it crumpled up the paper by the spasm of the muscles acting involuntarily. His eye was fixed without an object to claim it, and his teeth were clenched as if he had been seized by lockjaw. Conditions which we use strong words to describe, as we toil in vain after an expression which must always be inadequate, even though the words are furnished by the unhappy victim himself. We try a climax by using such expressions as “palsied brain” and so forth, all the while forgetting that we are essaying to convey a condition of inward feeling by external signs, the thing and the sign being in different categories. As he still sat under the stunning effect of the letter, the waiter entered to clear the table, but when he saw the letter in the clenched hand he retreated from the scene of a private grief, which a foreign interference would only have tended to irritate; but probably the noise of the closing door helped the reaction which comes sooner or later to all victims of moral assaults, and by and by he began to think—to see the whole details of the tragedy—to be conscious of the full extent of his misery. It was not yet time for the beginning of relief, for these conditions are subject to the law of recurrence. Like the attacks of an ague they exhaust themselves by repetition, and Nature’s way is at best but a cruel process of wearing out the sensibility of the palpitating nerve.

How long these oscillations lasted before the unhappy victim was able to leave his seat, we cannot tell. But as all thought is motion, so is all motion action. He could not retreat from the inevitable destiny. He must move on in the maze of the puppets. He must face the dead body of his wife. He must bury her, if he should never be able to lay the haunting spirit of memory. All business must be suspended, to leave the soul to the energies necessary for encountering the ordeal. A certain hardness, which belongs to the last feelings of despair, enabled him, even with something like deliberation, to go through the preparations of departure; but in this he exhibited merely the regularity of a machine, which obeys the imposed power behind. At eleven o’clock he was seated in the coach, as one placed there to be moved on and on, mile by mile, to see the dead body of a wife, whose smiling face, as he had seen it last, was still busy with his fancy, and whose voice, as he had heard her sing at the parting supper, still rang in his ears.

Nor were his feelings ameliorated by the journey, to remove the tediousness of which, at that slow time, the passengers were obliged to talk even against sheer Scotch taciturnity. He sat and heard, whether he would or not, the account of one who was going to bring home a wife; of another who had been away for ten years, and who was to be met at the coach-door by one who was dying to clasp him in her arms. All which were to him as sounds in another world wide apart from that one occupied by him, where he was, as he could not but think, the one solitary inhabitant, with one dead companion by his side. By and by, as the conversation flagged, he fell into that species of monomania where the brooding spirit, doomed to bear a shock, conjures up and holds before its view the principal feature of a tragedy. That feature was the image of his Jean’s face. It was paler than the palest of corpses, to suit the condition of the disease of which she had died. The lips were tinged with the blood of the fatal hemorrhage. The eyes were blank and staring, as if filled with the surprise and terror of the sudden attack. Over all, the fixedness of the muscles,—the contrast of death to the versatile movements, which were obedient to the laugh of pleasure when he last drew indescribable joy from the changes of her humour. No effort could relieve him from that one haunting image. The conversation of the party seemed to render it more steadfast—more bright—more harrowing. Nor when he tried to realise his feelings, in the personal encounter of facing the reality, could he find in himself any promise of a power to enable him to bear up against the terrible sight. It seemed to him, as the coach moved slowly on, as if he were being dragged towards a scaffold draped in black, where he was to suffer death.

When the coach at length stopped in the High Street, he was roused as from a dream, but the consciousness was even worse than the monomaniac condition in which he had been for hours. It was twelve at night; the bell of St Giles’s sounded solemnly in the stillness of the sleeping city. Every one of the passengers hurried off each to his home or inn, all glad of the release. To him it was no release; he would have ridden on and on, for days and weeks, if for nothing else than to prolong the interval, at the end of which the ordeal he feared so much awaited him. Whither now? He stood in the middle of the dark and silent street with his portmanteau in his hand, for he was really uncertain whether to proceed to his sister’s house in Galloway’s Close, and get her to go with him to his own house, as a kind of medium, to break the effect of the vision—or to proceed homewards alone. He turned his steps towards Galloway’s Close, and soon found that the family had gone to bed; at least, all was dark yet. Might not his sister be at his house “sitting up” with the corpse? It was not unlikely, and so he turned and proceeded towards home, his steps being forced, as if his will had no part in his ambulation. Arriving at Warrender’s Close, he stood at the foot of his own stair, and, looking up to the windows, he found here, too, all dark; nor were there any neighbours astir who might address to him some human speech, if not sympathy. The silence was as complete as the darkness, and both seemed to derive the dull charm of their power from the chamber of death. At length he forced himself, step by step, up the stairs, every moment pausing, as well from the exhaustion produced by his moral cowardice, as to listen for a stray sound of the human voice. He had now got to the landing, and, entering the dark passage leading to the door of his own flat, he groped his way along by applying his unoccupied hand to the wall. He now felt his nerves fast giving way, his heart beat audibly, his limbs shook, and though he tried to correct this fear, he felt he had no power, though naturally a man of great physical courage.

He must persevere, and a step or two more brought him to the door, which he found partially open,—a circumstance he thought strange, but could account for by supposing that there were neighbours inside—gossips who meet round death-beds to utter wise saws with dry eyes. Yet, though he listened, he heard no sounds. He now pushed open the door, and so quietly, as if he feared that a grating hinge would break the silence. The lobby was still darker than outside, and his first step was towards the kitchen, the door of which he pushed back. There was no one there,—a cruse which hung upon the wall was giving forth the smallest glimmer of a dying light. There was a red peat in the grate, smouldering into white ashes. Turning to the servant’s bed, he found it unoccupied, with the clothes neatly folded down, no doubt by Peggy’s careful hands, and no doubt, too, Peggy had solemn work to do “ben the house.” He next crossed the lobby, partly by groping, and reached a parlour, the door of which he opened gently. Dark too, and no one within. The same process was gone through with the dining-room, and with the same negative result. The last door was that of the bed-room, where he was to encounter what he feared. It was partially open. He placed his ear to the chink and listened, but he heard nothing. There was no living voice there, and death speaks none. He pushed the door open, and looked fearfully in. A small rushlight on the side-table opposite the bed threw some flickering beams around the room, bringing out indistinctly the white curtains of the bed. He approached a little, and could discover vaguely the form of his wife lying there. Would he take up the rushlight, and, with the necessary courage, go forward and examine the features? He had arrived at the spot, and at the moment, portrayed prospectively in his waking dream during his journey, and a few steps, with the rushlight in his hand, would realise the image he had brooded over so long. He struggled with himself, but without avail. Any little courage he had been for the last few minutes trying to summon up utterly gave way. There rushed into his mind vague fancies and fears,—creatures of the darkness and the death-like stillness around him, which he could neither analyse nor stay. He even thought he heard some sound from the bed where the corpse lay,—the consequence of all which was total loss of self-possession, approaching to something like a panic, and the effect of this, again, was a retreat. He sought the door, groped his way again through the inside lobby, got to the outer door, along the outer passage, down the stair to the street.

Nor when he got there did he pull up and begin to think of the extreme pusillanimity, if not folly, of his conduct. Even if he had tried, he could only have wound up his self-crimination by the ordinary excuse—that he could not help it. The house, with its stretched corpse, deserted rooms, its darkness and silence, was frightful to him. He could not return until he found some one to accompany him; and he satisfied himself of the reasonableness of this condition by the fact that the servant herself had fled in fear from the dismal scene. He began to move, though almost involuntarily, down the Canongate, his step quick and hurried, after the manner of those who are pursued by some danger, the precise nature of which they do not stop to examine. He even found a slight relief in the muscular exertion, and thus hurrying on, he reached the Duke’s Walk, and came to the heap of stones called Muschet’s Cairn, from Nichol Muschet of Boghall, who there murdered his wife. With no object but movement to dispel his misery, it was indifferent to him whither he should go; and hurrying to Arthur’s Seat, he began to climb the hill, regardless of the dangerous characters often encountered there at night, any one of whom he had courage enough to have throttled at the moment he was flying from what was little more than a mere phantom.

Meanwhile the moon had risen, and was illuminating at intervals the north-east side of the hill, leaving all in comparative darkness again as she got behind the thick clouds which hung heavily in the sky; but the light was of no value to one who was moved only by the impulse of a distraction. Yet, as he stood for a moment, and looked back upon the city, with that Warrender’s Close in the heart of it, and that house in the close, and that room with the rushlight within the house, and that bed in the room, and that figure so still and silent in the bed, he became conscious of a circumstance which had escaped him. He found that in his wild wandering, apparently without any other aim than to allay unbearable feelings by exertion, he had been unconsciously following, step by step, the very track which he and his now lost Jean had taken in a walk of the afternoon of the Sunday preceding his departure for Glasgow. The thought thus coming as a discovery was in itself a mystery, and he felt it to be a kind of duty—though with what sanction of a higher power he knew not—to continue that same track of the Sunday walk which had been consecrated by the sweet intercourse of two loving hearts. In execution of which purpose he kept moving towards the east shoulder of the hill, and such hold had this religious fancy taken of him, that he looked about for places in the track where some part of their conversation had occurred, which, from some peculiarity in it, had remained upon his memory. Nay, so weak did he become in his devotion, that he threw himself down on the cold grass at spots where Jean had required a rest, and had leant her head upon his shoulder, and had been repaid by some note of endearment. But in these reclining postures, which assumed the form of a species of worship, he remained only till the terrible thought of his privation again rose uppermost in his mind, forcing him to start to his feet by a sudden spring, and to go on again, and brush through the whins that grew on the hill-side, as if he courted their obstruction as a relief.

It is said that our ideas produce time, and our feelings devour it; and this is true at least where the feelings are of apprehension and fear of some inevitable event to occur in the future. He had still the ordeal to pass through. The sun would rise, in the light of which he would be forced to look on the dead face, and in place of considering the time occupied by these wanderings to and fro long and weary, the moments, minutes, hours, passed with such rapidity that the moon had gone far on in her journey, and the gray streaks of dawn were opening up a view to the east, before he could realise the passage of the time which had been, as it were, swallowed up by his desire to postpone what, by the laws of nature and society, he was bound to endure. How many times he had gone round the hill and up to the top, and down to Duddingstone, and along by the village road, and in through the bog, to begin his rounds again, he could not have told. But at length the sun glared threateningly in his face. Time defied him, and at length he saw the smoke of the chimneys begin to rise from the city. The red peat he had seen in the grate of his own kitchen would at least yield none. The household gods had deserted his hearth. Death and silence now reigned there. He heard eight o’clock sound from St Giles’s. The people were beginning to move in all directions—all in search of pleasure, the ultimate end of all man’s exertions—and he could no longer find a refuge in darkness or distance; so he began to move in the direction of the town with the weariness and lassitude of exhaustion rendering his legs rigid and his feet heavy, in addition to the hopelessness of a stricken heart. When he got to the Watergate, he began to see faces of people whom he knew, and who knew him; but he felt no desire to speak, and they doubtless from delicacy passed, without showing any desire to stop him. At length he arrived at the head of Warrender’s Close, and now he felt as if he were more submissive to the necessity of what seemed to be fate, moving his limbs with more will—even with something like a wish on his mind to put an end to a long agony. Down and down step by step, the drooping head responsive in its nods to the movement of his body; up the stair step after step deliberately, resolutely; along the outer passage; now opposite his own door. That door was now closed, giving indication that the servant, or some friend or neighbour, had been in the house since he left. He tapped gently. The door was opened almost upon the instant, and Mr John Dalrymple was immediately encompassed by the arms of a woman screaming in the exultation of immoderate joy.

“John, dear John, how delighted I am to see you,—for oh, we have been in such dreadful fear about you since Peggy found your portmanteau in the lobby; but, thank God, you are come at last, and just in time for a fine warm breakfast.”

The ejaculation, or rather screaming of which words was very easy, because very natural, to Mrs Jean Dalrymple, in the happy circumstances in which she found herself after so much apprehension produced by the mystery connected with the portmanteau, but as for Mr John Dalrymple speaking even to the extent of a single syllable was out of the question, unless some angel other than she of the house had touched his lips with the fire of inspiration, in place of his receiving the kisses of his wife. And this was so far well, for he certainly would have made a bungle of any attempt at the moment to express his feelings, besides laying himself open to a heavier charge of folly than that which already stood at the wrong side of his account of wisdom, or even common sense. So quietly taking off his hat he led the way into the breakfast-parlour, where he saw the breakfast things all neatly laid, beside a glowing fire, before which lay his brindled cat, not the least happy of the three; whilst Peggy, who had some forgotten thing to put on the table, had a pleasant smile on her face, just modified in a slight degree with a little apprehension which probably neither the master nor mistress could comprehend.

“I will tell you, Jeannie, all about the portmanteau, and perhaps something more, when we sit down to breakfast,” words which in the meantime were satisfactory to Mrs Jean; and the event they conditioned for soon arrived, for the wife was all curiosity and despatch, and Peggy all duty and attention.

The story was very soon told, nor did Mrs Jean interrupt the narrative by a single word as she sat with staring eyes and open mouth listening to the strange tale.

“There is the letter with the dead seal,” said he, as he handed it over to her.

Mrs Jean read it, and then began to examine it as if she was scrutinising the form of the written words.

“That is the handwriting of Bob Balfour, my old admirer,” said she, at length, with animation. “I know his hand as well as I know yours, and he has done this in revenge for your having taken me from him. I will show you proof.”

And going to a cabinet she took therefrom some letters, which she handed to her husband. These proved two things: first, that the letter with the black seal, purporting to be signed by Surgeon Morgan, was in the handwriting of Balfour, though considerably disguised; and secondly, that he had been an ardent lover of Jean, and, perhaps, on that account an enemy to the man who had been fortunate enough to secure her affections and her hand.

“All clear enough; but I shall have my revenge, too!” cried the husband. “In the meantime there are some things to be explained. Why did you not write?”

“I wrote to you last night,” said Jean. “You had posted your letter too late.”

“And why was not Peggy in the house last night at twelve, when I came home?”

“Peggy must answer that herself,” answered Mrs Jean, smiling, and looking from her husband to Peggy, and from Peggy to her husband, as she spoke; “but I think I know what her answer will be.”

And that answer was indeed very simple, amounting to no more than the very natural fact that Peggy, after her mistress had retired to rest, had gone up the common stair to Widow Henderson’s, whose son Jock was courting Peggy at the time with all commendable assiduity, and considerable chance of success.

But our story, though thus so satisfactorily explained, is not yet done. Nay, as we have said, its termination was in the court, where Mr Dalrymple sued Balfour for damages and solatium for his cowardly and cruel act. Nor was this action itself an ordinary matter, for it interested the lawyers of the day, not by the romantic facts which led to it, but the legal principles which flowed out of it. Balfour’s counsel objected to the relevancy, that is, denied there was in a lie or practical joke any cause of action. This defence gave rise to the informations we have mentioned, for the point raised was new and difficult. It was argued by Balfour that lies in the form of hoaxes are told every day, some good and some bad. Men know this, and ought to be upon their guard, which can be their only security,—for if such lies were actionable, one-half of society would be at law with the other. And as for any injury inflicted on Mr Dalrymple, it was doubtful whether the pleasure he experienced that morning when enclosed in the arms of his wife, did not more than compensate for his prior sufferings. On the other hand the pursuer argued, that by the law of Scotland there is no wrong without a legal remedy, and that having suffered by the cruel deceit both in his feelings and in his purse, (for he left his business unfinished,) he was entitled to recover. We have been unable to find the judgment.

The Story of Mrs Halliday.

THERE are little bits of romance spread here and there in the routine of ordinary life, but for which we should be like the fairy Aline, somewhat weary of always the same flowers blooming, and the same birds singing, and the same play of human motives and passions. They are something of the nature of episodes which, as in the case of epic poems, are often the most touching and beautiful in the whole work. Yet the beauty is seldom felt by the actors themselves, who are frequently unfortunate; and so it is that they suffer that we may enjoy the pathos of their suffering, after it has gone through the hands of art. We are led to say this as a kind of prelude to one of those episodical dramas which occurred some eighty years ago, and for twenty of them formed a household story, as well from the singularity of the principal circumstances as from the devotion of the personages. But we must go back a little from the main incidents to introduce to the reader a certain Patrick Halliday, a general agent for the sale of English broadcloth, whose place of business was in the Lawnmarket, and dwelling-house in a tenement long called Peddie’s Land, situated near the Old Assembly Close. It belongs not much to our story to say that Mr Halliday was pretty well-to-do in the world, though probably even with youth and fair looks, if he had been a poor man, he would not have secured as he did the hand of a certain young lady, at that time more remarkable than he. Her name was Julia Vallance. We know no more of her except one particular, which many people would rather be known by than by wealth, or even family honours, and that was personal beauty—not of that kind which catches the eye of the common people, and which is of ordinary occurrence, but of that superior order which, addressing itself to a cultivated taste, secures an admiration which can be justified by principles. And so it came to pass that Julia had before her marriage attained to the reputation—probably not a matter of great ambition to herself, certainly not at all times very enviable—of being the belle of the old city. Nor is this saying little, when we claim it in the face of the world as a truth that Edinburgh, in spite of its smoke, has at all times been remarkable for many varieties, dark and fair, of fine women. A result this which, perhaps, we owe to a more equal mixture of the two fine races, the Celt and Saxon, than ever took place in England. But Julia had brought her price, and her market having been made, she could afford to renounce the admiration of a gaping public in consideration of the love of a husband who was as kind to her as he was true. As regards their happiness as man and wife, we will take that in the meantime as admitted, the more by reason that in due time after the marriage they had a child; and, no doubt, they would have had many in succession had it not been for the strange occurrence which forms the fulcrum of our tale.

Apart from the family in Peddie’s Land, and in no manner connected with it, either by blood or favour, was that of Mr Archibald Blair, a young man living in Writers’ Court, of whom we can say little more than that he was connected with the Borgue family in the Stewartry, an advocate, and also married. We are not informed of either the name or lineage of his young wife, and far less can we say aught of the perfections or imperfections she derived from nature. We are only left to presume that if there had been no love, there would probably have been no marriage, and in this case, also, we have the fact of a child having been born to help the presumption of that which, naturally enough, may be taken as granted.

The two families, far asunder in point of grade, and equally far from any chance of acquaintanceship, went on in their several walks; nor are we entitled to say, from anything previously known of them, that they even knew of each other’s existence—unless, to be sure, the reputation of Julia for her personal perfections might have come to Blair’s ears as it did to many who had perhaps never seen her; but, then, the marriage of a beauty is generally the end of her fame, as it is of her maiden career; and those who, before that event, are entitled to look and admire, and, perhaps, wish to whisper their aspirations, not less than to gaze on her beauty, leave the fair one to the happy man to whom the gods have assigned her.

We must now allow four years to have passed, during all which time Patrick Halliday and his wife—still, we presume, retaining her beauty, at least in the matronly form—were happy as the day is long, or, rather we should say, as the day is short, for night is more propitious to love than day. Nothing was known to have occurred to break the harmony which had begun in love, and surely when we have, as there appeared to be here, the three requisites of happiness mentioned by the ancients—health, beauty, and wealth, there was no room for any suspicion that the good deities repented of their gifts. But all this only tended to deepen the shadows of a mystery which we are about to revive at this late period.

One day, when Patrick Halliday returned from a journey to Carlisle, he was thunderstruck by the intelligence communicated to him by his servant, that his wife had disappeared two days before, and no one could tell whither she had gone. The servant, by her own report, had been sent to Leith on a message, and had taken the daughter, little Julia, with her; and when she came back, she found the door unlocked, and her mistress gone. She had made inquiries among the neighbours, she had gone to the acquaintances of the family, she had had recourse to every one and every place where it was likely she would get intelligence of her—all to no effect. Not a single individual could even say so much as that he or she had seen her that day, and at length, wearied out by her inquiries, she had had recourse to the supposition that she had followed her husband to Carlisle.

The effect of this strange intelligence was simply stupifying. Halliday dropt into a chair, and, compressing his temples with his trembling hands, seemed to try to retain his consciousness against the echoes of words which threatened to take it away. For a time he had no power of thought, and even when the ideas began again to resume their train, their efforts were broken and wild, tending to nothing but confusion.

He put question after question to the servant, every answer throwing him back upon new suppositions, all equally fruitless. The only notion that seemed to give him any relief was, that she had gone to a distance, to some of her friends—wild enough, yet better than blank despair; and as for infidelity, the thought never once occurred to him, where there was no ground on which to rear even a doubt.

At length, on regaining something like composure, he rose from his seat, and began to walk drearily through the house. He opened his desk and found that a considerable sum of money he had left there was untouched. He next opened the press in the wall, where she kept her clothes. He could not see anything wanting—the gown was there which latterly she had been in the habit of putting on when she went out to walk with little Julia; her two bonnets, the good and the better—the one for everyday and the one for Sunday—hung upon their pegs. Her jewels, too, which were in a drawer of her cabinet, were all there, with the exception of the marriage-ring she was in the habit of wearing every day. There was nothing wanting, save her ordinary body clothes, including the fringed yellow wrapper in which, during the forenoon, she used to perform her domestic duties, and which he had often thought became her better than even her silks. Wherever she had gone, she must have departed in her undress and bareheaded—nay, her slippers must have been on her feet, for not only were they away, but the high-heeled shoes by which she replaced them when she went to walk were in the place where they usually lay.

In the midst of all this mystery, the relations and others, who had been quickened into a high-wrought curiosity by the inquiries made by the servant, dropt in one after another in the expectation that the missing wife would have returned with her husband, but they went away more astonished than before, and leaving the almost frantic husband to an increase of his apprehension and fears.

The dark night came on, and he retired to bed, there to have the horrors of a roused fancy added to the deductions of a hapless and demented reason.

In the morning he rose after a sleepless and miserable night, tried to eat a little breakfast with the playful little Julia, the image of her mother, by his side, asking him every now and then, in the midst of her prattle, what had become of mammy, rose and went forth, scarcely knowing whither to go. Directing his steps almost mechanically towards his place of business, he ascertained that his clerk knew no more of the missing wife than the others. On emerging again from his office, he was doomed to run the ordinary gauntlet of inquiries, and not less of strange looks where the inquirers seemed afraid to put the question. Others tried to read him by a furtive glance, and went away with their construction. No one could give him a word of comfort, if, indeed, he had not sometimes reason to suspect that there were of his anxious friends some who were not ill pleased that he had lost, no doubt by elopement, a wife who outshone theirs.

At length he found his way to the bailie’s office, where he got some of the town constables to institute a secret search among the closes, and thus the day passed resultless and weary, leaving him to another night of misery.

Next day brought scarcely any change, except in the wider spread throughout the city of the news, which, in the circumstances, degenerated into the ordinary scandal. Nor did the husband make any endeavour to check this, by stating to any one the part of the mystery connected with the clothes—a secret which he kept to himself, and brooded over with a morbid feeling he perhaps could not have explained to himself. And that day passed also, leaving at its close an increased curiosity on the part of the public, but with no change in the conviction that the lady had merely played her husband false.

The next day was not so barren—nay, it was pregnant with a fact calculated to increase the excitement without ameliorating the scandal. On going up the High Street, Halliday met one of the officers who had been engaged in the search, and who told him that another citizen had disappeared in a not less mysterious way. The question, “Who is it?” was put, but not answered, except by another question.

“Was Mrs Halliday acquainted with Mr Archibald Blair, advocate, in Writers’ Court?”

“No,” was the answer of the husband; “and why do you put the question?”

“Because Mrs Blair requested me,” replied the officer. “She is in great distress about her husband, and I think you had better see her.”

And so thought Patrick Halliday, as he hurried away to Writers’ Court, much in the condition of one who would rush into the flames to avoid the waves; for, dreadful as the death of his beloved wife would be to him, more dreadful still was the thought that she had eloped with another man, and that man might be Archibald Blair. On reaching the house, where he was admitted upon the instant, he found a counterpart of his own domestic tragedy—everything telling the tale of weariness, anxiety, and fear; comers and goers with lugubrious countenances; and Mrs Blair herself in a chair the picture of that very misery he had himself endured, and was at that very moment enduring.

“Who are you?” she cried, as he approached her. “Are you come with good news or bad?”

“My name is Halliday, madam,” replied he. “I understand you wish to see me.”

“As much as you may perhaps wish to see me,” answered the lady. “The town has been ringing for days with the news of the sudden disappearance of your wife, who is said to be——,” and she faltered at the word, “very beautiful. Is it true, and on what day did she disappear?”

“Too true, madam,” groaned the unhappy man. “Tuesday was the day on which she was found amissing.”

“Tuesday! Oh, unfortunate day!” rejoined she. “The very one, sir, when my Archibald left me, perhaps never to return. Can you tell me,” she continued, as she sobbed hysterically, “whether your wife and my husband were ever at any time acquainted? Oh, I fear your answer, but I must hear it.”

“I don’t think,” replied he, “that my wife ever knew of the existence of your husband. Even I never heard of his name, though I now understand he was a promising advocate. I can, therefore, give you small satisfaction; and, I presume, I can get as little from you when I ask you, what I presume is unnecessary, whether you ever heard that my wife was in any way acquainted with Mr Blair?”

“No,” replied she; “neither he nor I ever mentioned her name, nor did it once come to my ears that Archibald was ever seen in the company of any woman answering to the description of your wife.”

“Most wonderful circumstance, madam,” replied Halliday, into whose mind a thought at the moment came, suggested by the mystery of the left clothes. “Pray, madam,” he continued, “can you draw no conclusion from Mr Blair’s desk or wardrobe whether or not he had provided himself for the necessities of a journey?”

“That is the very wonder of all the wonders about this strange case, sir,” she answered. “I have made a careful search, knowing the money that was in the house, and having sent and inquired whether he had drawn any from the bank, I am satisfied that he had not a penny of money upon him. As for his wardrobe, every article is there, with the exception of what he used when he went to take a walk in the morning—a light dress, with a round felt hat in place of the square one. Even his cane stands there in the lobby. Where could he have gone in such an undress, and without money?”

A pertinent question, which was just the counterpart of that which Patrick Halliday had put to himself. The resemblance between the two cases struck him as wonderful, and no doubt if he had stated to Mrs Blair the analogous facts connected with his wife’s wardrobe, the untouched money, and the missing slippers, that lady would have shared in his wonder; but he felt disinclined to add to her apprehensions by acquainting her with facts which could lead to no practical use. There was sufficient community of feeling between them without going into further minutiæ, and the conversation ended with looks of fearful foreboding.

Patrick Halliday left the house of the advocate only to saunter like one broke loose from Bedlam, going hither and thither without aim; learning, as he went, that the absence of Mr Blair had got abroad abreast of his own evil, and that the public had adopted the theory that his wife and the advocate had gone off together. The conclusion was only too natural, nor would it in all likelihood have been much modified even though all the facts inferring some other solution had come to be known. Even he himself was coming gradually to see that the disappearance of the two occurring at the same time, almost at the same hour, could not be countervailed by the other facts. But behind all this there was the apparent difficulty to be overcome that two individuals so well known in a news-loving city should have been in the habit of meeting, wherever the place might be, without any one having ever seen them—nay, the almost impossible thing that a woman without a bonnet, arrayed in a yellow wrapper, and with coloured slippers on her feet, could have passed through any of the streets without being recognised, and that the same immunity from all observation should have been enjoyed by a public man so well known—dressed, too, in a manner calculated to attract notice. There was certainly another theory, and some people entertained the possibility, if not the reasonableness of it, that the two clandestine lovers might have concealed themselves for an obvious purpose in some of those houses whose keepers have an interest in the concealment of their guilty lodgers. But this theory must have appeared a very dubious one, for it involved a degree of imprudence, if not recklessness, amounting to voluntary ruin, where a little foresight might have secured their object without further sacrifice than the care required in the preservation of their guilty secret. But, unlikely as this theory was, it was not left untested, for special visits and inquiries were made in all places known as likely to offer refuge to persons in their circumstances and condition.

All was still in vain; another day passed, and another, till the entire week proved the inutility of both search and inquiry. The ordinary age of a wonder was attained, with the usual consequence of the beginning of that decay which is inherent in all things. Yet it is with these moral organisms as with the physical—they cast their seeds to come up again as memories. A month elapsed, and then another, and another, till these periods carried the mere diluted interest of the early days. So it is that the big animal, the world, on which man is one of the small parasites, supplies the sap as the desires require, and changes it as the appetite changes, with that variety which is the law of nature. Even as regarded Patrick Halliday and Mrs Blair, the moral granulation began gradually and silently to fill up the excavated sores in their hearts, and by and by it ought by rule to have come about that the cicatrices would follow, and then the smoothing of the covering, even to the pellucid skin. And as for the public, new wonders, from the ever-discharging womb of events, were rising up every day, so that the story of the once famed Julia Halliday and the advocate Blair was at length assuming the sombre colours of one of the acted romances of life. But it takes long to make a complete romance. There is a vitality in moral events as in some physical ones which revives in overt symptoms, and so it was in the case we are concerned with. A whole year had at length passed, and brooding silence had waxed thick over the now comparatively-old event; but the silence was to be broken by the speaking of an inanimate thing as strange in itself as the old mystery.

One day, when Patrick Halliday had returned from his office in the upper part of the city to Peddie’s Land for the purpose of getting a letter which he had by mistake left on the table in the morning, he found that the servant had gone out as usual for the purpose of taking little Julia for an airing; but, getting entrance by his own key, he proceeded along the lobby to the parlour, on opening the door of which, and entering, his eye was attracted to something on the floor. The room was at the time shaded by the hangings drawn together to keep out the rays of the sun, and, not distinguishing the object very well, he thought it was some plaything of Julia’s. On taking it up he found, to his amazement, that it was one of the slippers of his wife. It had a damp musty smell, which he found so unpleasant that he threw it down on the floor again, and then began to think where in the world it had come from, or how it came to be there. The servant might explain it when she came in; but why she should have gone out with that remaining to be explained he could not understand. Meanwhile his only conclusion was, that sufficient search had not been made for the slippers, and that the dog, which was out with the maid, had dragged the article from some nook or corner which had escaped observation. Under this impression he felt inclined to seek for the neighbour of that which had been so strangely found, altogether oblivious of the fact that, if the slipper had been left by the runaway, she must have departed either bare-footed or in her stocking-soles; for her shoes, so far as he could know, had been accounted for.

But he was not to be called upon to make this search; something else awaited him; for, as he sat enveloped in the darkness of this new mystery, his eye, wandering about in the shaded room, was attracted by another object. Rising, as if by a start, he proceeded to the spot, and took up, to his further amazement, a man’s shoe. He at first supposed that it was one of his own; but on looking at the silver buckle, on which were engraved—not an uncommon thing at the time—two initial letters, (these were “A. B.,”) he was at no loss for the name. It was that of the missing advocate. This shoe, like the slipper, was covered with white mould, and smelt of an odour different from and more disagreeable than mere must. He was now in more perplexity than ever, nor could he bring his mind to a supposition of how these things came to be there. It was the time of popular superstitions, when intelligences in the shape of ghosts and hobgoblins, and all forms of good and devilish beings, seemed to have nothing else to do than to entertain themselves with the fancies, feelings, and passions of men, and we might not be surprised to find that Patrick Halliday was brought under the feeling of an indescribable awe—nay, it is doubtful if even the veritable spirits of his wife and her paramour, if they had then and there appeared in that shaded room before him, would have produced a stronger impression upon him than did those speechless yet eloquent things. A moral vertigo was on him; he threw himself again into a chair, and felt his knees knocking against each other, as if the nerves, paralysed by the deep impression upon the brain, were no longer under the influence of the will.

After sitting for a time in this state of perplexity and awe, from which he could not extricate himself, the servant, with his daughter, returned. He called her to his presence, and asked her, pointing to the shoe and the slipper, “how those things came to be there?”

The girl was seized with as great wonder as he himself had been, and there was even a greater cause for astonishment on her part, insomuch as, according to her declaration, she had cleaned out and dusted the parlour within half an hour of going forth, and these articles were certainly not in the room then. As for the outer door, she had left it fastened in the usual way, and the windows were carefully drawn down before her departure. Where could they have come from, she questioned both her master and herself, with an equal chance of a satisfactory answer from either. Then she would not have been a woman if she could have resisted the claims of superstition in a case so inexplicable, so extraordinary, so unparalleled even in winter fireside stories. And so she looked at her master, and he looked at her, in blank wonder, without either of them having the power of venturing even a surmise as to how or by what earthly or unearthly means those ominous things, so terrible in the associations by which they were linked to their owners, came to be where they were.

After some longer time uselessly occupied, Patrick Halliday bethought himself of going to Writers’ Court, so taking up the silver-buckled shoe, and putting it into his large coat pocket, he proceeded to Mrs Blair’s. He found her in that state of reconciled despondency to which she had been reduced for more than two months; but the moment she saw Patrick Halliday enter, she sprang up as if she had been quickened by the impulse of a new-born hope rising amidst the clouds of a long-settled despair. The movement was soon stayed when her keenness scanned the face of the man; but a new feeling took possession of her when she saw him draw out of his pocket the silver-buckled shoe with which she had been as familiar as with her own.

“Where, in the Lord’s name!—” she cried, without being able to say more, while she seized spasmodically the strange object, still covered as it was with the mould, and with the silver obscured by the passage of time. And, gazing at it, she heard Halliday’s account of how he came to be in possession of it, along with the slipper.

“Have you the neighbour in the house?” he inquired.

“No, no,” said she; “but I am certain that that is one of the shoes Archibald had on the day he disappeared. Oh, sir, I can scarcely look at these initials; and there is such a death-like odour about it that it sickens me.”

“It is the same with the slipper,” said he. “It would seem that both of them had been taken off the feet of corpses.”

“Strange mystery altogether,” added she, with a deep sigh. “Oh, I could have wished I had not seen these—it only serves to renew my care, without satisfying my natural desire to know the fate of one I loved so dearly.”

“It is so with me as well, madam,” rejoined Mr Patrick; “but the finding of this shoe and slipper may satisfy us of the connexion between your husband and my wife.”

“Yes, yes,” ejaculated she; “but oh, merciful God! what a wretched satisfaction to the bereaved wife and the deserted child. You are a man, and can bear up. A poor woman must sit in solitude and mourn, while the flesh wastes day by day under the weary spirit.”

“And you can suggest nothing to help me to an explanation of this new mystery?” said he.

“Nothing; all is darker than ever,” replied she. “But, sir, you have got the only trace that for a long year has been found of this most unfortunate—I fear, unhappy pair, and it will be for you to improve it in some way. Something more will follow. I will go over with you myself to your house. A woman’s eyes are sharper than a man’s. I would like to examine the house, and judge for myself.”

And the lady, rising, went and dressed herself. In a few minutes more they were on the way to Peddie’s Land; probably, as they went along, objects of speculation to those who knew the strange link by which their fortunes were joined. Nor was it unlikely that evil tongues might suggest that as their partners had played them false, they intended to make amends by a kind of poetical retribution. Alas! how different from their thoughts, how unlike their feelings, how far distant from their object!

On arriving at the house, a new wonder was to meet them, almost upon the threshold. The servant ran forward to Halliday, holding in her hand the partner of the silver-buckled shoe which her master had in his pocket. She was utterly unable to say a word, her eyes were strained not less in width than in intensity, her mouth was open like that of an idiot, and motioning and muttering, “Come, come,” she led her master and Mrs Blair on through two or three rooms till she came to a small closet, at the back of which there was a door, now for the first time in Patrick Halliday’s experience found open. In explanation of which peculiarity we require to suspend our narrative for a minute or two, to enable us to inform the reader, that the house then occupied by Halliday had, five years before, and immediately preceding his marriage, been in possession of George Morgan, a wool-dealer.

Morgan’s warehouse, where he stored his wool, entered from a close to the west, through a pend, between Peddie’s Land and the large tenement adjoining. The run of the warehouse was thus at right angles to that of the dwelling-house, and Morgan was thereby enabled to knock out a small door at the back of a press, through which he could conveniently pass to his place of business without being at the trouble of going down the close to the main entry. After Morgan’s death, the house and warehouse went to his heirs, from whom Halliday rented the former, the other having been let to some other person for three years, after which it had been without a tenant. We may state also that Halliday was at first quite aware of the existence of the door at the back of the press, and had even taken the precaution of getting it locked; but as no requisition had been made by the tenant of the warehouse to have the communication more securely barred, the door had been left in the condition we have described.

Resuming our story: the servant, when she came to the point where we left her, stopped and trembled; but by this time Halliday had begun to see whither these pointings tended, and pushing the girl aside with a view to examine the door, he was astonished to find that it opened to his touch—a fact better known by Nettle, his dog, who had, as the shoes testified, been there before.

On entering the warehouse, all the windows of which were shut except one, through which a ray of light struggled to illuminate merely a part of the room, the party beheld a sight which in all likelihood would retain a vividness in their memories after all other images of earthly things had passed away. Right in the middle of the partial light admitted by the solitary window lay the bodies of two persons—a man and a woman. The latter had on her a yellow morning gown trimmed with green. One slipper was on, the other off; her head, which was uncovered, was surmounted by the high toupee of the times, which consisted of the collected hair brushed up and supported by a concealed cushion. The man had on a morning dress, with a round felt hat, which still retained its place on his head. There was no corruption in the bodies of that kind called moist. They were nearly shrivelled, but that to an extent which reduced them to little other than skeletons covered with a brown skin—a state of the bodies which probably resulted from the dry air of the wareroom, heated as it was by a smithy being immediately below it, the smoke of which was conveyed by a flue up the side of the tenement. The two bodies lay clasped in each other’s arms, the faces were so close that the noses almost met; the eyes were open, and though the balls were shrunk so much that they could not be seen, the lids, which had shrunk also, were considerably apart. These were the bodies of Julia Halliday and Archibald Blair.

There was not a word spoken by the searchers. Their eyes told them all that was necessary to convince them of the identity of those who lay before them. Nor, when Halliday took up a paper which lay at the head of Blair, did he think it necessary to make any observation of surprise at what was in keeping with what they saw.

“Oh, read,” said Mrs Blair, as she gasped in the midst of her agony.

Halliday, holding up the paper so as to receive the light, read as follows:—

“Whoever you may be, man or woman, who first discovers the bodies of me and her who lies by my side will please, as he or she hopes for mercy, deliver this paper either to Mr Patrick Halliday of Peddie’s Land, or Mrs Archibald Blair in Writers’ Court, that they may take the means of getting us decently interred. Julia Halliday and I, Archibald Blair, met and looked and loved. These few words contain the secret of our misfortune, and must be the excuse of our crime in taking away our lives. Our love was too strong to be quelled by resolution, too sacred to be corrupted by coarse enjoyment of the senses, too hopeless to be borne amidst the impediments of our mutual obligations to our spouses. We felt and believed that it was only our mortal bodies that belonged to our partners, our spirits were ours and ours alone by that decree which made the soul, with its sympathies and its elections, before ever the world was, or marriage, which is only a convention of man’s making. We loved, we sinned not, yet we were unhappy, because we could not fulfil the obligations of affection to those we had sworn at the altar to love and honour. Often have we torn ourselves from each other with vows on our lips of mutual avoidance, but these efforts were vain. We could not live estranged, and we flew again to each other’s arms, again to vow, again to meet, again to be blessed, again to be tortured. This life was unendurable; and, left to the alternative of parting or dying, we selected the latter. The poison was bought by me in two separate vials. As I write, Julia holds hers in her hands, and smiles as she is about to swallow the drug. We have resolved to lie down face to face, so as to be able to look into each other’s eyes and watch jealously Death as he drags us slowly from each other. I have now swallowed my draft, smiling the while in Julia’s face. She does the same. The pen trembles in my hand. Farewell, my wife: Julia mutters, ‘Farewell, my husband.’ Against neither have we ever sinned.

“Archibald Blair.”

The Story of Mary Brown.

IF the reader of what I am going to relate for his or her edification, or for perhaps a greater luxury, viz., wonder, should be so unreasonable as to ask for my authority, I shall be tempted, because a little piqued, to say that no one should be too particular about the source of pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing but what you can prove to be a reality, you will, under good philosophical leadership, have no great faith in the sun—a thing which you never saw, the existence of which you are only assured of by a round figure of light on the back of your eye, and which may be likened to tradition; so all you have to do is to believe like a good Catholic, and be contented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an Arab of the City—a poor street boy, who didn’t know who his father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her by a pretty sharp experience, insomuch as she took from him every penny he made by holding horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in return. But Bill got out of this bondage by the mere chance of having been taken a fancy to by Mr Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St Mary’s Wynd, (an ancestor, we suspect, of the Ramsays of Barnton,) who thought he saw in the City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs to the Bedouin, and who accordingly elevated him to the position of a stable-boy, with board and as many shillings a week as there are days in that subdivision of time.

Nor did William Halket—to whom for his merits we accord the full Christian name—do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything that came in his way. Then, to render the connexion reciprocal, William was gratefully alive to the conviction that if he had not been, as it were, taken from the street, the street might have been taken from him, by his being locked up some day in the Heart of Midlothian. So things went on in St Mary’s Wynd for five or six years, and might have gone on for twice that period, had it not been that at a certain hour of a certain day William fell in love with a certain Mary Brown, who had come on that very day to be an under-housemaid in the inn; and strange enough, it was a case of “love at first sight,” the more by token that it took effect the moment that Mary entered the stable with a glass of whisky in her hand sent to him by Mrs Ramsay. No doubt it is seldom that a fine blooming young girl, with very pretty brown hair and very blue eyes, appears to a young man with such a recommendation in her hand, but we are free to say that the whisky had nothing to do with an effect which is well known to be the pure result of the physical attributes of the individual. Nay, our statement might have been proved by the counterpart effect produced upon Mary herself, for she was struck by William at the same moment when she handed him the glass; and we are not to assume that the giving of a pleasant boon is always attended with the same effect as the receiving of it.

But, as our story requires, it is the love itself between these two young persons whose fates were so remarkable we have to do with—not the causes, which are a mystery in all cases. Sure it is, humble in position as they were, they could love as strongly, as fervently, perhaps as ecstatically, as great people—nay, probably more so, for education has a greater chance of moderating the passion than increasing it; and so, notwithstanding of what Plutarch says of the awfully consuming love between Phrygius and Picrea, and also what Shakespeare has sung or said about a certain Romeo and a lady called Juliet, we are certain that the affection between these grand personages was not more genuine, tender, and true than that which bound the simple and unsophisticated hearts of Will Halket and Mary Brown. But at best we merely play on the surface of a deep subject when we try with a pen to describe feelings, and especially the feelings of love. We doubt, if even the said pen were plucked from Cupid’s wing, it would help us much. We are at best only left to a choice of expressions, and perhaps the strongest we could use are those which have already been used a thousand times—the two were all the world to each other, the world outside nothing at all to them; so that they could have been as happy on the top of Mount Ararat, or on the island of Juan Fernandez, provided they should be always in each other’s company, as they were in St Mary’s Wynd. And as for whispered protestations and chaste kisses—for really their love had a touch of romance about it you could hardly have expected, but which yet kept it pure, if not in some degree elevated above the loves of common people—these were repeated so often about the quiet parts of Arthur’s Seat and the Queen’s Park, and the fields about the Dumbiedykes and Duddingstone Loch, that they were the very moral aliments on which they lived. In short, to Mary Brown the great Duke of Buccleuch was as nothing compared to Willie Halket, and to Willie Halket the beautiful Duchess of Grammont would have been as nothing compared to simple Mary Brown. All which is very amiable and very necessary, for if it had been so ordained that people should feel the exquisite sensations of love in proportion as they were beautiful, or rich, or endowed with talent, (according to a standard,) our world would have been even more queer than that kingdom described by Gulliver, where the ugliest individual is made king or queen.

Things continued in this very comfortable state at the old inn in St Mary’s Wynd for about a year, and it had come to enter into the contemplation of Will that upon getting an increase of his wages he would marry Mary and send her to live with her mother, a poor hard-working washerwoman, in Big Lochend Close; whereunto Mary was so much inclined, that she looked forward to the day as the one that promised to be the happiest that she had yet seen, or would ever see. But, as an ancient saying runs, the good hour is in no man’s choice; and about this time it so happened that Mr Peter Ramsay, having had a commission from an old city man, a Mr Dreghorn, located as a planter in Virginia, to send him out a number of Scottish horses, suggested to William that he would do well to act as supercargo and groom. Mr Dreghorn had offered to pay a good sum to the man who should bring them out safe, besides paying his passage over and home. And Mr Ramsay would be ready to receive Will into his old place again on his return. As for Mary, with regard to whom the master knew his man’s intentions, she would remain where she was, safe from all temptation, and true to the choice of her heart. This offer pleased William, because he saw that he could make some money out of the adventure, whereby he would be the better able to marry, and make a home for the object of his affections; but he was by no means sure that Mary would consent; for women, by some natural divining of the heart, look upon delays in affairs of love as ominous and dangerous. And so it turned out that one Sabbath evening, when they were seated beneath a tree in the King’s Park, and William had cautiously introduced the subject to her, she was like other women.

“The bird that gets into the bush,” she said, as the tears fell upon her cheeks, “sometimes forgets to come back to the cage again. I would rather hae the lean lintie in the hand than the fat finch on the wand.”

“But you forget, Mary, love,” was the answer of Will, “that you can feed the lean bird, but you can’t feed me. It is I who must support you. It is to enable me to do that which induces me to go. I will come with guineas in my pocket where there are now only pennies and placks, and you know, Mary, the Scotch saying, ‘A heavy purse makes a light heart.’”

“And an unsteady one,” rejoined Mary. “And you may bring something else wi’ you besides the guineas; may be, a wife.”

“One of Mr Dreghorn’s black beauties,” said Will, laughing. “No, no, Mary, I am too fond of the flaxen ringlets, the rosy cheeks, and the blue eyes, and you know, Mary, you have all these, so you have me in your power. But to calm your fears and stop your tears I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

“Stay at hame, Will, and we’ll live and dee thegither.”

“No,” replied Will, “but, like the genteel lover I have read of, I will swear on your Bible that I will return to you within the year, and marry you at the Tron Kirk, and throw my guineas into the lap of your marriage-gown, and live with you until I die.”

For all which and some more we may draw upon our fancy, but certain it is, as the strange story goes, that Will did actually then and there—for Mary had been at the Tron Kirk and had her Bible in her pocket, (an article the want of which is not well supplied by the scent-bottle of our modern Marys,)—swear to do all he had said, whereupon Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up murmuring—perhaps no more than that. Certain also it is that before the month was done, Will, with his living kicking charges, and after more of these said tears from Mary than either of them had arithmetic enough to enable them to count, embarked at Leith for Richmond, at which place the sugar-planter had undertaken to meet him.

We need say nothing of the voyage across the Atlantic—somewhat arduous at that period—nor need we pick up Will again till we find him in Richmond with his horses all safe, and as fat and sleek as if they had been fed by Neptune’s wife, and had drawn her across in place of her own steeds. There he found directions waiting from Mr Dreghorn to the effect that he was to proceed with the horses to Peach Grove, his plantation, a place far into the heart of the country; but Will was content, for had he not time and to spare within the year, and he would see some more of the new world, which, so far as his experience yet went, seemed to him to be a good place for a freeman to live in. So off he went, putting up at inns by the way as well supplied with food and fodder as Mr Peter Ramsay’s, in St Mary’s Wynd, and showing off his nags to the planters, who wondered at their bone and muscle, the more by reason they had never seen Scotch horses before. As he progressed, the country seemed to Will more and more beautiful, and by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest country in the world.

Nor when the Scotsman reached Peach Grove did the rosy side of matters recede into the shady, for he was received in a great house by Mr Dreghorn with so much kindness, that, if the horses rejoiced in maize and oats, Will found himself, as the saying goes, in five-bladed clover. But more awaited him, even thus much more, that the planter, and his fine lady of a wife as well, urged him to remain on the plantation, where he would be well paid and well fed; and when Will pleaded his engagement to return to Scotland within the year, the answer was ready that he might spend eight months in Virginia at least, which would enable him to take home more money—an answer that seemed so very reasonable, if not prudent, that “Sawny” saw the advantage thereof and agreed. But we need hardly say that this was conceded upon the condition made with himself, that he would write to Mary all the particulars, and also upon the condition acceded to by Mr Dreghorn, that he would take the charge of getting the letter sent to Scotland.

All which having been arranged, Mr Halket—for we cannot now continue to take the liberty of calling him Will—was forthwith elevated to the position of driving negroes in place of horses, an occupation which he did not much relish, insomuch that he was expected to use the lash, an instrument of which he had been very chary in his treatment of four-legged chattels, and which he could not bring himself to apply with anything but a sham force in reference to the two-legged species. But this objection he thought to get over by using the sharp crack of his Jehu-voice, as a substitute for that of the whip; and in this he persevered, in spite of the jeers of the other drivers, who told him the thing had been tried often, but that the self-conceit of the negro met the stimulant and choked it at the very entrance to the ear; and this he soon found to be true. So he began to do as others did, and he was the sooner reconciled to the strange life into which he had been precipitated by the happy condition of the slaves themselves, who, when their work was over, and at all holiday hours, dressed themselves in the brightest colours of red and blue and white, danced, sang, ate corn-cakes and bacon, and drank coffee with a zest which would have done a Scotch mechanic, with his liberty to produce a lock-out, much good to see. True, indeed, the white element of the population was at a discount at Peach Grove. But in addition to the above source of reconciliation, Halket became day by day more captivated by the beauty of the country, with its undulating surface, its wooded clumps, its magnolias, tulip-trees, camellias, laurels, passion-flowers, and palms, its bright-coloured birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it is famous all over the world. But nature might charm as it might—Mary Brown was three thousand miles away.

Meanwhile the time passed pleasantly, for he was accumulating money, Mary’s letter would be on the way, and the hope of seeing her within the appointed time was dominant over all the fascinations which charmed the senses. But when the month came in which he ought to have received a letter, no letter came—not much this to be thought of, though Mr Dreghorn tried to impress him with the idea that there must be some change of sentiment in the person from whom he expected the much-desired answer. So Halket wrote again, giving the letter, as before, to his master, who assured him it was sent carefully away, and while it was crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improving his penmanship and arithmetic, under the hope held out to him by his master that he would, if he remained, be raised to a book-keeper’s desk; for the planter had seen early that he had got hold of a long-headed, honest, sagacious “Sawny,” who would be of use to him. On with still lighter wing the intermediate time sped again, but with no better result in the shape of an answer from her who was still the object of his day fancies and his midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. A third letter was despatched, but the returning period was equally a blank. We have been counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the termination of his year, and with growing changes too in himself, for as the notion began to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary was either dead or faithless, another power was quietly assailing him from within, no other than ambition in the most captivating of all shapes, Mammon. We all know the manner in which the golden deity acquires his authority, nor do we need to have recourse to the conceit of the old writer who tells us that the reason why gold has such an influence upon man lies in the fact that it is of the colour of the sun, which is the fountain of light, and life, and joy. Certain it is, at least, that Halket having been taken into the counting-house on a raised salary, began “to lay by,” as the Scotch call it, and by and by, with the help of a little money lent to him by his master, he began by purchasing produce from the neighbouring plantations, and selling it where he might, all which he did with advantage, yet with the ordinary result to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good account the king’s head, the king’s head began to turn his own.

And now in place of months we must begin to count by lustrums, and the first five years, even with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least, lost Mary, proved in Halket’s case the truth of the book written by a Frenchman, to prove that a man is a plant, for he had already thrown out from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and if that bore golden blossoms, so did he; yet, true to his first love, there was not among all these flowers one so fair as the fair-haired Mary. Nay, with all hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end of the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, when strangely enough, and sadly too, he was told by Mr Dreghorn that having had occasion to hear from Mr Peter Ramsay on the subject of some more horse dealings, that person had reported to him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old stable-boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it had been made at an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of the said god, Mammon, for as to the notion of putting any of those beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter’s house at Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power of the god increased with the offerings, one of which was his large salary as manager, a station to which he was elevated shortly after he had received the doleful tidings of Mary’s death. Another lustrum is added, and we arrive at ten years, and yet another, and we come to fifteen; at the end of which time Mr Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested. If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot—fortunate, save for one misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold—purchasing from the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under the condition of an annuity.

And Halket was now rich, even beyond what he had ever wished, but the chariot-wheels of Time would not go any slower—nay, they moved faster, and every year more silently, as if the old Father had intended to cheat the votary of Mammon into a belief that he would live for ever. The lustrums still passed: another five, another, and another, till there was scope for all the world being changed, and a new generation taking the place of that with which William Halket and Mary Brown began; and he was changed too, for he began to take on those signs of age which make the old man a painted character; but in one thing he was not changed, and that was the worshipful steadfastness, the sacred fidelity, with which he still treasured in his mind the form and face, the words and the smiles, the nice and refined peculiarities that feed love as with nectared sweets, which once belonged to Mary Brown, the first creature that had moved his affections, and the last to hold them, as the object of a cherished memory for ever. Nor with time so deceptive, need we be so sparing in dealing out those periods of five years, but say at once that at last William Halket could count twelve of them since first he set his foot on Virginian soil: yea, he had been there for sixty summers, and he had now been a denizen of the world for seventy-eight years. In all which our narrative has been strange, but we have still the stranger fact to set forth, that at this late period he was seized with that moral disease (becoming physical in time) which the French call mal du pays, the love of the country where one was born and first enjoyed the fresh springs that gush from the young heart. Nor was it the mere love of country, as such, for he was seized with a particular wish to be where Mary lay in the churchyard of the Canongate, to erect a tombstone over her, to seek out her relations and enrich them, to make a worship out of a disappointed love, to dedicate the last of his thoughts to the small souvenirs of her humble life. Within a month this old man was on his way to Scotland, having sold the plantation, and taken bills with him to an amount of little less than a hundred thousand pounds.

In the course of five weeks William Halket put his foot on the old pier of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been urchins when he went away. The look of the old harbour revived the image which had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the running of the one image into the other produced the ordinary illusion of all that long interval appearing as a day; but there was no illusion in the change, that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and there was no Mary Brown there now. Having called a coach he told the driver to proceed up Leith Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay’s Inn, in St Mary’s Wynd; but the man told him there was no inn there, nor had been in his memory. The man added that he would take him to the White Horse in the Canongate, and thither accordingly he drove him. On arriving at the inn he required the assistance of the waiter to enable him to get out of the coach, nor probably did the latter think this any marvel, after looking into a face so furrowed with years, so pale with the weakness of a languid circulation, so saddened with care. The rich man had only an inn for a home, nor in all his native country was there one friend whom he hoped to find alive. Neither would a search help him, as he found on the succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures, and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years—a similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him as he was indeed strange to them. True, too, as the coachman said, Peter Ramsay’s Inn, where he had heard Mary singing at her work, and the stable where he had whistled blithely among his favourite horses, were no longer to be seen—etiam cineres perierunt—their very sites were occupied by modern dwellings. What of that small half-sunk lodging in Big Lochend Close, where Mary’s mother lived, and where Mary had been brought up, where perhaps Mary had died. Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to hobble down the Canongate to that little lodging, and might there not be for him a sad pleasure even to enter and sit down by the same fireplace where he had seen the dearly-beloved face, and listened to her voice, to him more musical than the melody of angels?

And so after he had walked about till he was wearied, and his steps became more unsteady and slow, and as yet without having seen a face which he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big Close. There was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often been responded to by Mary’s finger on the glass, as a token that he would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to enter that house rose again like a yearning, and what more in the world than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of seeing the room where she was born—yea, where probably she had died. In as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair, which, in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he was at the foot of it; there was there the old familiar dark passage, with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any interest to him. Arrived at it he stood in doubt. He would knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him, and yet, what had he to fear, for half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown? At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see more of him, for the lobby was still darker.

“Who may live here?” said he, in the expectation of hearing some name unknown to him.

The answer, in a broken cracked voice, was not slow—

“Mary Brown; and what may you want of her?”

“Mary Brown!” but not a word more could he say, and he stood as still as a post, not a movement of any kind did he show for so long a time that the woman might have been justified in her fear of a very spirit.

“And can ye say nae mair, sir?” rejoined she. “Is my name a bogle to terrify human beings?”

But still he was silent, for the reason that he could not think—far less speak, nor even for some minutes could he achieve more than the repetition of the words, “Mary Brown.”

“But hadna ye better come in, good sir?” said she. “Ye may ken our auld saying: ‘They that speak in the dark may miss their mark;’ for words carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, to say the truth, I am old and blind.”

And, moving more as an automaton than as one under a will, Halket was seated on a chair with this said old and blind woman by his side, who sat silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger to explain what he wanted. Nor was the opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in the obscure light of the room, to scrutinise her form and features, and in doing this he went upon the presumption that this second Mary Brown only carried the name of the first; but as he looked he began to detect features which riveted his eyes; where the re-agent was so sharp and penetrating, the analysis was rapid—it was also hopeful—it was also fearful. Yes, it was true that that woman was his Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the blue eyes were gray, without light and without speculation; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet withal he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic of the idol he had worshipped through life; it was the only remnant in the world which had any interest for him; and he could on the instant have clasped her to his breast, and covered her pale face with his tears. But how was he to act? A sudden announcement might startle and distress her.

“There was a Mary Brown,” said he, “who was once a housemaid in Mr Peter Ramsay’s Inn in St Mary’s Wynd.”

“And who can it be that can recollect that?” was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. “Ye maun be full o’ years. Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever had in this world.”

“And there was one William Halket there at that time also,” he continued.

Words which, as they fell upon the ear, seemed to be a stimulant so powerful as to produce a jerk in the organ; the dulness of the eyes seemed penetrated with something like light, and a tremor passed over her entire frame.

“That name is no to be mentioned, sir,” she said, nervously, “except aince, and nae mair; he was my ruin; for he pledged his troth to me, and promised to come back and marry me, but he never came.”

“Nor wrote you?” said Halket.

“No, never,” replied she; “I would hae gien the world for a scrape o’ the pen o’ Will Halket; but it’s a’ past now, and I fancy he is dead and gone to whaur there is neither plighted troth, nor marriage, nor giving in marriage; and my time, too, will be short.”

A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, carrying the suspicion that Mr Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never forwarded the letters, whereto many circumstances tended.

“And what did you do when you found Will had proved false?” inquired Halket. “Why should that have been your ruin?”

“Because my puir heart was bound up in him,” said she, “and I never could look upon another man. Then what could a puir woman do? My mother died, and I came here to work as she wrought: ay, fifty years ago, and my reward has been the puir boon o’ the parish bread; ay, and, waur than a’ the rest, blindness.”

“Mary,” said Halket, as he took her emaciated hand into his, scarcely less emaciated, and divested of the genial warmth of life.

The words carried the old sound, and she started and shook.

“Mary!” he continued, “Will Halket still lives. He was betrayed, as you have been betrayed. He wrote three letters to you, all of which were kept back by his master, for fear of losing one who he saw would be useful to him; and, to complete the conspiracy, he reported you dead upon the authority of Peter Ramsay. Whereupon Will betook himself to the making of money, but he never forgot his Mary, whose name has been heard as often as the song of the birds in the groves of Virginia.”

“Ah, you are Will himself!” cried she. “I ken now the sound o’ your voice in the word ‘Mary,’ even as you used to whisper it in my ear in the fields at St Leonard’s. Let me put my hand upon your head, and move my fingers ower your face. Yes, yes; oh, mercy, merciful God, how can my poor worn heart bear a’ this!”

“Mary, my dear Mary!” ejaculated the moved man, “come to my bosom and let me press you to my heart; for this is the only blissful moment I have enjoyed for sixty years.”

Nor was Mary deaf to his entreaties, for she resigned herself as in a swoon to an embrace, which an excess of emotion, working on the shrivelled heart and the wasted form, probably prevented her from feeling.

“But, O Willie!” she cried, “a life’s love lost; a lost life on both our sides.”

“Not altogether,” rejoined he, in the midst of their mutual sobs. “It may be—nay, it is—that our sands are nearly run. Yea, a rude shake would empty the glass, so weak and wasted are both of us; but still there are a few grains to pass, and they shall be made golden. You are the only living creature in all this world I have any care for. More thousands of pounds than you ever dreamt of are mine, and will be yours. We will be married even yet, not as the young marry, but as those marry who may look to their knowing each other as husband and wife in heaven, where there are no cruel interested men to keep them asunder; and for the short time we are here you shall ride in your carriage as a lady, and be attended by servants; nor shall a rude breath of wind blow upon you which it is in the power of man to save you from.”

“Ower late, Willie; ower late,” sighed the exhausted woman, as she still lay in his arms. “But if all this should please my Will—I canna use another name, though you are now a gentleman—I will do even as you list, and that which has been by a cruel fate denied us here we may share in heaven.”

“And who shall witness this strange marriage?” said he. “There is no one in Edinburgh now that I know or knows me. Has any one ever been kind to you?”

“Few, few indeed,” answered she. “I can count only three.”

“I must know these wonderful exceptions,” said he, as he made an attempt at a grim smile; “for those who have done a service to Mary Brown have done a double service to me. I will make every shilling they have given you a hundred pounds. Tell me their names.”

“There is John Gilmour, my landlord,” continued she, “who, though he needed a’ his rents for a big family, passed me many a term, and forbye brought me often, when I was ill and couldna work, many a bottle o’ wine; there is Mrs Paterson o’ the Watergate, too, who aince when I gaed to her in sair need gave me a shilling out o’ three that she needed for her bairns; and Mrs Galloway o’ Little Lochend, slipt in to me a peck o’ meal ae morning when I had naething for breakfast.”

“And these shall be at our marriage, Mary,” said he. “They shall be dressed to make their eyes doubtful if they are themselves. John Gilmour will wonder how these pounds of his rent he passed you from have grown to hundreds. Mrs Paterson’s shilling will have grown as the widow’s mite never grew, even in heaven; and Mrs Galloway’s peck of meal will be made like the widow’s cruse of oil—it will never be finished while she is on earth.”

Whereupon Mary raised her head. The blank eyes were turned upon him, and something like a smile played over the thin and wasted face. At the same moment a fair-haired girl of twelve years came jumping into the room, and only stopped when she saw a stranger.

“That is Helen Kemp,” said Mary, who knew her movements. “I forgot Helen; she lights my fire, and when I was able to gae out used to lead me to the park.”

“And she shall be one of the favoured ones of the earth,” said he, as he took by the hand the girl, whom the few words from Mary had made sacred to him, adding, “Helen, dear, you are to be kinder to Mary than you have ever been;” and, slipping into the girl’s hand a guinea, he whispered, “You shall have as many of these as will be a bigger tocher to you than you ever dreamed of, for what you have done for Mary Brown.”

And thus progressed to a termination a scene perhaps more extraordinary than ever entered into the head of a writer of natural things and events not beyond the sphere of the probable. Nor did what afterwards took place fall short of the intentions of a man whose intense yearnings to make up for what had been lost led him into the extravagance of a vain fancy. He next day took a great house and forthwith furnished it in proportion to his wealth. He hired servants in accordance, and made all the necessary arrangements for the marriage. Time which had been so cruel to him and his sacred Mary was put under the obligation of retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs Paterson, Mrs Galloway, and Helen Kemp were those, and those alone, privileged to witness the ceremony. We would not like to describe how they were decked out, nor shall we try to describe the ceremony itself. But vain are the aspirations of man when he tries to cope with the Fates! The changed fortune was too much for the frail and wasted bride to bear. She swooned at the conclusion of the ceremony, and was put into a silk-curtained bed. Even the first glimpse of grandeur was too much for the spirit whose sigh was vanity, all is vanity, and, with the words on her lips, “A life’s love lost,” she died.

The Story of the Merrillygoes.

THE world has been compared to many things,—a playhouse, a madhouse, a penitentiary, a caravanserai, and so forth; but I think a show-box wherein all, including man, is turned by machinery, is better than any of them. And every one looks through his own little round hole at all the rest, he being both object and subject. How the scenes shift too! the belief of one age being the laughing-stock of the next. Witches and brownies and fairies and ghosts and bogles have lost their quiddity, and given birth to quips and laughs; but I have here, as a simple storyteller, to do with one example of these vanished beliefs, what was in folk-lore called the “Merrillygoes,” sometimes in the old Scotch dictionaries spelled “Mirrligoes.” It was a supposed affection of the eyes, in which the victim or patient, as you suppose the visitation brought on by natural or supernatural powers, fancied he saw men and women and inanimate things which were not at the time before him. I think the affection was different from the “glamour” which was generally attributed to the wrath of fairies; and both indeed might, after all, be resolved into the pseudoblepsy of the old, and the monomania of the new nosologies. But dismissing all learning—which, however potent to puff up man’s pride, and then prick the bladder of his conceit, has no concern with a story—I at once introduce to you Mr David Tweedie. He was one of those Davids who, for some Scotch reason, are called Dauvit; and, like other simple men, he had a wife, whose name, I think, was Semple, Robina Semple, certainly not Simple. These worthies figured in Berenger’s Close of Edinburgh some time about the provostship of the unfortunate Alexander Wilson; and were not only man and wife by holy Kirk, but a copartnership, insomuch as, Dauvit being a tailor, she after marriage, and having no children to “fash her,” became a tailor also, sitting on the same board with him, using the same goose, yea, pricking the same flea with emulous needle.

Yet our couple were in some respects the most unlike each other in the world; Robina being a sharp, clear-witted, nay, ingenious woman—Dauvit a mere big boy. I do not know if I could give the reader a better explanation of the expression I have used than by referring him to the notion he might form of Holbein’s picture of his son, whom he quaintly and humorously painted as a man, but retaining all the features, except size, of a boy: the chubby cheeks, small snub nose, pinking eyes, and delicate colours. Nor was Dauvit a big chubby man merely as respected the body, for he was also little better than chubby in mind; at least in so far as regards credulity, passiveness, and softness. He had a marvellous appetite for worldly wonders, the belief being in the direct ratio of the wonderfulness, and he gave credit to the last thing he heard, for no other reason than that it was the last thing; one impression thus effacing another, so that the soft round lump remained always much the same. All which peculiarities were, it may easily be supposed, not only known to, but very well appreciated by, his loving, but perhaps not over-faithful, Binny.

If you keep these things in your mind, you will be able the better to estimate the value of the facts as I proceed to tell you that one morning Dauvit was a little later in getting out of bed than was usual with him, by reason that he had on the previous night been occupied with a suit of those sacredly-imperative things called in Scotland “blacks,” that is, mourning. But then the time was not lost; for Robina was up and active, very busily engaged in preparing breakfast. Not that Dauvit condescended to take much notice of these domestic duties of Binny, because he had ample faith not only in her housewifery, but the wonderful extent of her understanding; only it just happened, as indeed anything may happen in a world where we do not know why anything does happen, that as he lay very comfortably under the welcome pressure of the soft blankets, with his eyes looking as it were out of a hole, he heard a tap at the door, which tap was just as like that of the letter-carrier as any two blunts of exactly the same length could possibly be. Nor did his observation stop here; for he saw with these same eyes, as if confirming his ears, Binny go to the door and open it; then came the words of doubtless the said letter-carrier, “That’s for Dauvit;” and at the same instant a letter was put into his wife’s hands, and thereafter disappeared at the hole of her pocket, where there were many things that David knew nothing about.

Strange as this seemed to Mr Tweedie, even the last act of pocketing would not have appeared to him so very curious if at the moment of secreting the letter she had not very boldly, and even with a kind of smile upon her face, looked fully into the open eyes of her husband. But more still, this sagacious and honest woman immediately thereafter retired into the inner room, where, no doubt, she made herself acquainted with the contents of the communication, whatever it might be, and from which she came again to resume, as she did resume, her preparations for breakfast just as if nothing had happened beyond what was common. Of course I need not say that Dauvit was astonished; but his astonishment was an increasing quantity in proportion to the time that now passed without her going forward to the bedside and reading the letter to him, as she had often done before; and if we might be entitled to wonder why he didn’t at once put the question, “What letter was that, Binny?” perhaps the answer which would have been given by David himself might have been that his very wonder prevented him from asking for an explanation of the wonder—just as miracles shut people’s mouths at the same moment that they make them open their eyes.

However this might be—and who knows but that David might have a pawky curiosity to try Binny?—the never a word did he say; but, rising slowly and quietly, he dressed himself, in that loose way in which of all tradesmen the tailors most excel, for a reason of which I am entirely ignorant. He then sat down by the fire; and Binny having seated herself on the other side, the operation of breakfast began without a word being said on either part, but with mutual looks, which on the one side, viz., Robina’s, were very well understood, but on the other not at all. A piece of pantomime all this which could not last very long, for the good reason that impatience is the handmaiden of curiosity; and David at length, in spite of a bit of bread which almost closed up his mouth, got out the words—

“What letter was that, Binny, which the letter-carrier handed in this mornin’?”

“Letter! there was nae letter, man,” was the answer of Binny, accompanied with a look of surprise, which might in vain compete with the wonder immediately called up in the eyes of her simple husband.

“Did I no see it with my ain een?” was the very natural ejaculation.

“No, you didn’t; you only thought ye saw it,” said the wife; “and thae twa things have a gey difference between them.”

“What do ye mean, Robina, woman?”

“The merrillygoes!”

“The merrillygoes,” rejoined the wondering David; “my een niver were in that condition.”

“You may think sae, Dauvit,” rejoined Binny; “but I happen to ken better. On Wednesday night, when we were in bed, and the moon shining in at the window, did I no hear you say, ‘Binny, woman, what are ye doing up at this eery hour?’ It was just about twelve; and upon lifting my head and looking ower at ye, I saw your een staring out as gleg as a hawk’s after a sparrow. It had begun then.”

“Ou, I had been dreaming,” said David.

“Dreaming with your een open!”

“That is indeed strange enough,” rejoined David. “Did ye really see my een open?”

“Did ye ever hear me tell ye a lee, man? Am I no as true as the Bible? and think ye I dinna ken the strange light o’ the merrillygoes, when I have seen it in the een o’ my ain father?”

“Is that really true, Binny? I’m beginnin’ to get fear’d. But what o’ your father, lass?”

“Ye may weel ask,” said the wife. “He had been awa’ at Falkirk Tryst with his ewes, and it was about seven o’clock when he cam’ hame. We were then in the farm o’ Kimmergame. Weel, he was coming up the lang loan, and it was gloaming; and just when he was about twenty yards from his ain door, he saw twa men hurrying along with a coffin a’ studded with white nails. They were only a yard or twa before him, and the moment he saw them he stopped till he saw where they were going; and yet where could they be going but to his ain house; and nae doubt his wife would be dead, for the lang coffin couldna have fitted any other person in the house; but he was soon made sure enough, for he saw the men with the coffin enter into his ain door, and there he stood in a swither o’ fear; but he was a brave man, and in he went, never stopping till he got into his ain parlour, where my mother was sitting at her tea, and nae sooner did she see him than she broke out in a laugh o’ perfect joy at his hamecome. But the never a word he ever said about the coffin, because he didn’t wish to terrify his wife with evil omens; and besides, he understood the vision perfectly. And, Dauvit, if ye’re a wise man ye will submit to the hand o’ God, wha sees fit to bring thae visitations upon us for some wise end.”

“Very true,” said David, to whom the affair of the letter was rather much even for his credulity; “but still, Binny, lass, I canna just come to it that I was deceived.”

“Weel, weel, stick to it, my man, and mak me, your ain wife, a leear.”

“That canna be either,” rejoined David; “and by my faith, I’m at a loss what to think or what to do; for if it really be that the infliction’s upon me, how, in the Lord’s name, am I to ken the real thing from the fause? My head rins right round at the very thought o’t. And then I fancy there’s nae remedy in the power o’ man.”

“I fear no,” replied Binny. “Ye maun just pray; but I have heard my father say that it came on him after he had been confined with an ill-working stomach to the house, and exercise drove it away. Ye’ve been sitting ower close. Take scouth for a day. Awa’ ower to Burntisland, and get payment from John Sprunt o’ the three pounds he owes for his last suit. Stay ower the night. I say nothing about the jolly boose ye’ll have thegither, but it may drive thae fumes and fancies out o’ your head. Come ower with the first boat in the morning, and I will have your breakfast ready for you.”

The prudence of this advice David was not slow to see, though he had, maugre his simplicity, considerable misgivings about the affair of the letter; nor did he altogether feel the absolute conviction that he was under the influence of the foresaid mysterious power. But independently of the prudence of her counsel, he felt it as a command, and therefore behoved to obey. For we may as well admit that David might doubt of the eternal obligation of a certain decalogue by reason of its being abrogated; but as for the commands of Mrs Robina, they were subject to no abrogation, and certainly no denial whatever. So David went and dressed himself in his “second-best”—a particular mentioned here with an after-view—and having got from the hands of her, who was thus both wife and medical adviser, a drop of spirits to help him on, and the merrillygoes off, he set forth on his journey.

Proceeding down Leith Wynd, he found himself in Leith Walk; but however active his limbs, thus relieved on so short a warning from “the board,” and however keen and far-sighted his eyes, as they scanned all the people he met, he could not shake off certain doubts whether the individuals he met were in reality creatures of flesh and blood, or mere visions. The sacred words of Mrs Robina were a kind of winged beliefs, which, by merely striking on the ear, performed for him what many a man has much trouble in doing for himself—that is, thinking; so that upon the whole the tendency of his thoughts was in a great degree favourable to sadness and terror. The sigh was heaved again and again; being sometimes for a longer period delayed, as the hope of a jolly boose with his friend Sprunt held a partial sway in his troubled mind. But by and by the activity required by his search for a boat, the getting on board, the novelty of the sail, the undulating movements, and all the interests which belong to a “traveller by sea and land,” drove away the cobwebs that hung about the brain; and by the time he got to Burntisland he was much as he used to be. But, alas, he little knew that this journey, propitious as it appeared, was not calculated to produce the wonderful effects expected from it.

No sooner had he landed on the pier than he made straight for the house of his friend, which stood by the roadside, a little removed from the village. He saw it in the distance; and quickening his steps, came to an angle which enabled him to see into Mr Sprunt’s garden; and we may, considering how much the three pounds, the boose, the fun, the cure was associated with the figure of that individual, imagine the satisfaction felt by Mr Tweedie when he saw the true body of John Sprunt in that very garden, busily engaged, too, in the delightful occupation of garden-work, and animated, we may add of our own supposition, with a mind totally oblivious of the three pounds he owed to the Edinburgh tailor. But well and truly may we speak of the uncertainty of mundane things. David had only turned away his eyes for an instant, and yet in that short period, as he found when he again turned his head, the well-known figure of his old friend, pot-companion, and debtor in three pounds, had totally disappeared. The thing looked like what learned people call a phenomenon. How could Sprunt have disappeared so soon? Where could he have gone to be invisible, where there was no summer-house to receive him, and where the time did not permit of a retreat into his own dwelling? David stood, and began to think of the words of Robina. There could be no doubt that his eyes had been at fault again; it was not John Sprunt he had seen—merely a lying image. And so even on the instant the old sadness came over him again, with more than one long sigh; nor in his depression and simplicity was he able to bring up any such recondite thing as a thought suggesting the connexion between John’s disappearance and the fact that he owed Mr David Tweedie—whom he could have seen in the road—the sum of three pounds.

In which depressed and surely uncomfortable condition our traveller proceeded towards the house, more anxious, indeed, to disprove his terrors than to get his money. He knocked at the door, which, by the by, was at the end of the house; and his knock was answered by Mrs Sprunt herself, a woman who could have acted Bellona in an old Greek piece.

“I am glad John is at hame,” were David’s first words.

“And I would be glad if that were true, Mr Dauvit,” replied she; “but it just happens no to be true. John went off to Kirkaldy at six o’clock this morning to try and get some siller that’s due him there.”

“Let me in to sit down,” muttered David, with a kind of choking in his voice.

And following the good dame into the parlour, Mr Tweedie threw himself into the arm-chair in a condition of great fear and perturbation. Having sat mute for a minute or two, probably to the wonderment of the dame, he began to rub his brow with his handkerchief, as if taking off a little perspiration could help him in his distress.

“Mrs Sprunt,” said he, “I could have sworn that I saw John working in the yard.”

Whereat Mrs Sprunt broke out into a loud laugh, which somehow or another seemed to David as ghostly as his visions; and when she had finished she added, “Something wrong, Dauvit, with your een.”

“Gudeness gracious and ungracious!” said David. “Is this possible? Can it really be? Whaur, in the name o’ Heeven, am I to look for a real flesh-and-blood certainty?”

“And yet ye seem to be sober, Dauvit.”

“As a judge,” replied he. But, after a pause, “Can I be sure even o’ you?” he cried, as he started up; the while his eyes rolled in a manner altogether very unlike the douce quiet character he bore. “Let me satisfy mysel that you are really Mrs Janet Sprunt in the real body.”

And making a sudden movement, with his arms extended towards the woman, he tried to grip her; but it was a mere futile effort. Mrs Sprunt was gone through the open door in an instant, and David was left alone with another confirmation of his dreaded suspicion, muttering to himself, “There too, there too,—a’ alike; may the Lord have mercy upon His afflicted servant! Robina Tweedie, ye were right after a’, and that letter was a delusion like the rest—a mere eemage—a’ eemages thegither.”

After which soliloquy he again sat down in the easy-chair, held his hands to his face, and groaned in the pain of a wounded spirit. But even in the midst of this solemn conviction that the Lord had laid His hand upon him, he could see that sitting there could do him no good; and, rising up, he made for the kitchen. There was no one there; he tried another room, which he also found empty; and issuing forth from the unlucky house, he encountered an old witch-looking woman who was turning the corner, as if going in the direction of another dwelling.

“Did you see Mrs Sprunt even now?” said he.

“No likely,” answered the woman; “when she tauld me this mornin’ she was going to Petticur. She has a daughter there, ye ken.”

Melancholy intelligence which seemed to have a logical consistency with the other parts of that day’s remarkable experiences; nor did David seem to think that anything more was necessary for the entire satisfaction of even a man considerably sceptical, and then who in those days doubted the merrillygoes?

“What poor creatures we are!” said he. “I came here for a perfect cure, and I gae hame with a heavy care.”

And with these words, which were in reality an articulated groan, Mr David Tweedie made his way back towards the pier, under an apprehension that as he went along he would meet with some verification of a suspicion which, having already become a conviction, not only required no more proof, but was strong enough to battle all opposing facts and arguments; so he went along with his chin upon his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the ground, as if he were afraid to trust them with a survey of living beings, lest they might cheat him as they had already done. It was about half-past twelve when he got to the boat; and he was further disconcerted by finding that the wind, which had brought him so cleverly over, would repay itself, like over-generous givers, who take back by one hand what they give by the other. And so it turned out; for he was fully two hours on the passage, all of which time was occupied by a reverie as to the extraordinary calamity that had befallen him. And how much more dreary his cogitations as he thought of the increased unhappiness of Robina, when she ascertained not only the failure of getting payment of his debt, but the total wreck of her means of cure!

At length he got to Leith pier; but his landing gave him no pleasure: he was still haunted with the notion that he would encounter more mischances; and he hurried up Leith Walk, passing old friends whom he was afraid to speak to. Arrived at the foot of Leith Wynd, he made a detour which brought him to the foot of Halkerston’s Wynd, up which he ascended, debouching into the High Street. And here our story becomes so incredible, that we are almost afraid to trust our faithful pen to write what David Tweedie saw on his emerging from the entry. There, coming up the High Street, was Mrs Robina Tweedie herself, marching along steadily, dressed in David’s best suit. He stood and stared with goggle eyes, as if he felt some strange pleasure in the fascination. The vision was so concrete, that he could identify his own green coat made by his own artistic fingers. There were the white metal buttons, the broadest he could get in the whole city—nay, one of them on the back had been scarcely a match, and he recognised the defect; his knee-breeches too, so easily detected by their having been made out of a large remnant of a colour (purple) whereof there was not another bit either to be bought or “cabbaged,”—nay, the very brass knee-buckles of which he was so proud; the “rig-and-fur” stockings of dark brown; the shoe-buckles furbished up the last Sunday; the square hat he had bought from Pringle; and, to crown all, his walking-stick with the ivory top. So perfect indeed was the “get-up” of his lying eyes, that, if he had not been under the saddening impression of his great visitation, he would have been well amused by the wonderful delusion. Even as it was, he could not help following the phantom, as it went so proudly and jantily along the street. And what was still more extraordinary, he saw Mucklewham, the city guardsman, meet her and speak to her in a private kind of way, and then go away with her. But David had a trace of sense in his soft nature. He saw that it was vain as well as hurtful to gratify what was so clearly a delusion; it would only deepen the false images in eyes already sufficiently “glamoured;” and so he stopped suddenly short and let them go—that is, he would cease to look,—and they, the visions, would cease to be. In all which how little did he know that he was prefiguring a philosophy which was some time afterwards to become so famous! Nay, are we not all under the merrillygoes in this world of phantoms?

“You say you see the things that be:

I say you only think you see.

Not even that. It seems to me

You only think you think you see.

Then thinking weaves so many a lie,

Methinks this world is ‘all my eye.’”

But even in his grief and sacred fear he could not help saying to himself, “Gude Lord! if that eemage werena frightfu’, would it no be funny? And what will Robina say? Nae doubt she is at this very moment sitting at her tea in Berenger’s Close, thinking upon my calamity. What will she say when I tell her that I saw her in the High Street dressed in my Sunday suit, walking just as if she were Provost Wilson himsel? I wouldna wonder if she should get into ane o’ her laughing fits, even in very spite o’ her grief for the awful condition of her loving husband. At any rate, it’s time I were hame, when I canna tell what I am to see next, nor can even say which end o’ me is uppermost.”

Nor scarcely had he finished his characteristic soliloquy, when a hand was laid on his shoulder. It was that of the corporal; but how was David to know that? Why, he felt Bill’s hand; and to make things more certain, he even laid his own hand upon the solid shoulder of the sturdy city guardsman; adding, for still greater proof—

“Did you meet and speak to any one up the street there?”

“The niver a living soul,” said the corporal, “as I’m a sinner; but come along, man, to the Prophet Amos’s,” (a well-known tavern in the Canongate,) “and let us have a jolly jug, for I’m to be on duty to-night, and need something to cheer me up; and the colour of ale will sit better on your cheeks when you go home to Robina than that saffron. Are you well enough, David? I think I might as well ask the question of a half-hanged dog.”

“Half or hale hanged,” replied David, as he eyed his friend suspiciously, “I canna be the waur o’ a jug o’ ale.”

An answer which was perhaps the result of sheer despair, for the conviction of the “real unreality” of what he had seen was now so much beyond doubt that he began to submit to it as a doom; and what is irremediable becomes, like death, to be bearable, nay, even accommodating to the routine of life; and so the two jogged along till they came to the Prophet’s, where they sat down to their liquor and, we may add, loquacity, of which latter Mucklewham was so profuse, that any other less simple person than David might have thought that the guardsman wanted to speak against time. But David suspected nothing, and he was the more inclined to be patient that his friend had promised to pay the score.

“And when saw ye Robina?” said David.

“Not for a good round year, my bairn,” said the big corporal.

“Gude Lord, did ye no see her and speak to her even this day?”

Whereupon the big guardsman laughed a horse (guardsman’s) laugh; and pointing his finger to his eye he twirled the same, that is the finger, merrily round. A movement which David too well understood; and after heaving a deep sigh, he took a deep pull at the ale, as if in a paroxysm of despair.

And so they drank on, till David having risen and left the room for a breath of fresh air, found on his return that his generous friend had vanished. Very wonderful, no doubt. But, then, had he not taken his jug with him?—no doubt to get it replenished—and he would return with a filled tankard. Vain expectation! Mucklewham was only another Sprunt, another lie of the visual sense. Did David Tweedie really need this new proof? David knew he didn’t; neither did he require the additional certainty of his calamity by having to pay only for his own “shot.” The Prophet did not ask for more, nor did he think it necessary to say why; perhaps he would make the corporal pay his own share afterwards. The whole thing was as clear as noon: David had been drinking with one who had no stomach wherein to put his liquor, and for the good reason that he had no body to hold that stomach.

“Waur than the case o’ the letter, or Sprunt, (hiccup,) or Robina dressed in my claes,” said he lugubriously, “for I only saw them, but I handled the corporal, sat with him, drank with him, heard him speak; yet baith he and the pewter jug were off in a moment, and I hae paid (hic) only for ae man’s drink. But is it no a’ a dream thegither? I wouldna wonder I am at this very moment in my bed wi’ Robina lying at my back.”

And rising up, he discovered that he was not very well able to keep his legs, the more by reason that he had poured the ale into an empty stomach; there was, besides, a new confusion in his brain, as if that organ had not already enough to do with any small powers of maintaining itself in equilibrium which it possessed. But he behoved to get home; and to Berenger’s Close he accordingly went, making sure as he progressed of at least one truth in nature, amidst all the dubieties and delusions of that most eventful day: that the shortest way between two points is the deflecting one. And what was Binny about when he entered his own house? Working the button-holes of a vest which had been left by David unfinished. No sooner did she see David staggering in than she threw the work aside.

“Hame already? and in that state too!” she cried. “You must have been seeing strange ferlies in the High Street, while I was sitting here busy at my wark.”

“Strange enough, lass; but if you can tell me whether or no I am Dauvit Tweedie, your lawfu’ husband or the Prophet Moses, or the Apostle Aaron, or (hic) the disciple Deuteronomy, or the deevil, it’s mair than I can.”

Whereupon David dropt his uncertain body in a chair, doubting perhaps if even the chair was really a chair.

“And it wasna just enough,” rejoined she, “that you had an attack of the merrillygoes, but you must add pints o’ ale to make your poor wits mair confounded.”

A remark which Robina thought herself entitled to make, irrespective of the question which for a hundred years has been disputed, viz., whether she had sent the corporal to take David to Prophet Amos’s and fill him drunk with ale, and then shirk the score?

“But haste ye to bed, my man,” she added, “that’s the place for you, where you may snore awa’ the fumes o’ Prophet Amos’s ale, and the whimwhams o’ your addled brain.”

An advice which David took kindly, though he did not need it; for, educated as he may be said to have been by the clever Robina, he was fortunately one of those favoured beings pointed at in the wise saying that the power of education is seldom effectual except in those happy cases where it is superfluous. So it was the ale that sent him to bed and to sleep as well—a condition into which he sunk very soon. And it was kindly granted to him, insomuch as it was a kind of recompense for what he had suffered during that day of wonders: it saved him from the possibility of hearing a conversation in the other room between Robina and the corporal, in the course of which it was asked and answered whether David had recognised Robina in her male decorations; and whether he had any suspicions as to the true character of the deep plot they were engaged in working out.

What further took place in the house of Mr Tweedie that night we have not been able, notwithstanding adequate inquiry, to ascertain; but of this important fact we are well assured, that next morning David awoke in a much improved condition. To account for this we must remember his peculiar nature, for to him “the yesterday,” whatever yesterday it might be, was always a dies non; it had done its duty and was gone, and it had no business here any more than an impudent fellow who tries to live too long after the world is sick of him. Indeed, we know that he ate such a breakfast, and with such satisfaction, that no ideas of a yesterday had any chance of resisting the feelings of the moment; and once gone, they had too much difficulty to get into the dark chamber again to think of trying it. He was “on the board” by ten o’clock. For he had work to do, and as Robina’s purpose was in the meantime served, she said no more of the merrillygoes. She had perhaps something else to do; for shortly after eleven she went out, perhaps to report to the corporal the sequel to that which he already knew. But whatever her object, her absence was not destined to be so fruitful of good to her as her presence wherever she might go; for it so happened that as David was sitting working, and sometimes with his face overcast with a passing terror of a return of his calamity, he found he required a piece of cloth of a size and colour whereof there were some specimens in an old trunk. To that repository of cabbage, as it is vulgarly called, he went; and in rummaging through the piebald contents he came upon a parcel in a corner. On opening it, he found to his great wonderment no fewer than a hundred guineas of pure gold. The rays from the shiny pieces seemed to enter his eyes like spikes, and fix the balls in the sockets; if he felt a kind of fascination yesterday as he looked at his wife in male attire, though a mere vision, he experienced the influence now even more, however doubtful he was of the reality of the glittering objects. He seized, he clutched them, he shut his eyes, and opened them again as he opened his hands; they did not disappear; but then Robina herself might appear, and under this apprehension, which put to flight his doubts, he carried them off, and secreted them in a private drawer of which he had the key; whereupon he betook himself again to the board. By and by Robina returned; but the never a word David said of the guineas, because he had still doubts of the veracity of his eyes.

And so the day passed without anything occurring to suggest either inquiry or answer. During the night David slept so soundly that he was even oblivious of his prize; and it was not till eleven next forenoon, when his wife went out, that he ventured to look into the drawer; but now the terrible truth was revealed to him: the guineas were gone, and he had been again under delusion. The merrillygoes once more! and how was he to admit the fact to Robina, after his attempted appropriation!

But, happily, there was no necessity for admitting his own shame, for about four o’clock John Jardine the letter-carrier called and told him that his wife had eloped with the corporal. The intelligence was no doubt very dreadful to David, who loved his wife so dearly that he could have subscribed to the saying “that the husband will always be deceived when the wife condescends to dissemble;” but Mrs Robina Tweedie did not so condescend; and David now began to see certain things and to recollect certain circumstances which, when put together, appeared even to his mind more strange than the merrillygoes. And his eyes were opened still further by a letter from Kirkcudbright from a Mr Gordon, wishing to be informed why he had not acknowledged the receipt of the hundred guineas left him by his uncle, and which had been sent in a prior letter in the form of a draft on the Bank of Scotland. Mr David Tweedie now went to the bank, and was told that the money had been paid to a man in a green coat and white metal buttons, square hat, and walking-stick, who represented himself as David Tweedie.

Our story, it will be seen, has pretty nearly explained itself; yet something remains to be told. A whole year elapsed, when one morning Mrs Robina Tweedie appeared before honest David, with a lugubrious face and a lugubrious tale, to the effect that although she had been tempted to run away with the corporal, she had almost immediately left him—a pure, bright, unsullied wife; but during all this intermediate time she had felt so ashamed and conscience-stricken, that she could not return and ask forgiveness. All which David heard, and to all which he answered—

“Robina—nae mair Tweedie, lass—ye ken I was afflicted with a strange calamity when ye left me. I thought I saw what wasna to be seen. It comes aye back upon me now and then; and I ken it’s on me this mornin’. I may think I see you there standin’ before me, even as I saw you in my broad-tailed coat that day in the High Street; but I ken it’s a’ a delusion. In fact, my dear Robina, I dinna see you, I dinna even feel your body,” (pushing her out by the cuff of the neck;) “the merrillygoes, lass! the merrillygoes!”

And David shut the door on the ejected Robina—thereafter living a very quiet and comparatively happy life, free from all glamour or any other affection of the eyes, and seeing just as other people see. Yea, with his old friend Sprunt and his wife he had many a joke on the subject, forgiving John for running away that morning to shirk his creditor, as well as Mrs Janet for being terrified out of the house by the wild rolling eyes of the unhappy David.

The Story of the Six Toes.

A MAN who makes a will generally knows pretty well the person to whom he leaves a legacy, but it does not follow that other people are to have the same enlightenment as to the identity of the legatee. I make the remark in reference to a common story connected with the will of honest Andrew Gebbie, who officiated once as a ruling elder in the Church of Trinity College, Edinburgh, and was supposed to have done so much good to the people by his prayers, exhortations and psalm-singing, that it was utterly unnecessary for his getting to heaven, where he had sent so many others, that he should bequeath a single plack or bawbee to the poor when he died. Yet whether it was that the good man Andrew determined to make sure work of his salvation, or that he had any less ambitious object in view, certain it is that some time before he died he made a will by his own hand, and without the help of a man of the law, in spite of the Scotch adage—

“Who saves a fee and writes his will

Is friendly to the lawyers still;

For these take all the will contains,

And give the heir all that remains.”

And by this said will honest Andrew bequeathed the sum of three hundred pounds sterling money to “Mistress Helen Grey, residing in that street of the old town called Leith Wynd,” without any further identification or particularisation whatsoever, nor did he say a single word about the cause of making this somewhat generous bequest, or anything about the merits or services of the legatee. A strange circumstance, seeing that the individual being a “Nelly Grey” had long been a favourite of the poets, (and, therefore, rather indefinite,) as she indeed still figures in more than one very popular song, wherein she is even called bonny Nelly Grey.

Then, to keep all matters in harmony, he appointed three clergymen—the minister of his own church, the minister of the Tolbooth, and the minister of the Tron—as his executors for carrying his said will into execution, probably thinking that Nelly Grey’s three hundred, and her soul to boot, could not be in better hands than those of such godly men. So, after living three weeks longer in a very bad world, the worthy testator was gathered to his fathers, and it might perhaps have been as well that his said will had been gathered along with him,—as indeed happened in a recent case, where a sensible man, probably in fear of the lawyers, got his will placed in the same coffin with him,—though no doubt he forgot that worms, if not moths, do corrupt there also, and sometimes thieves, in the shape of body-snatchers, do break through and steal. Passing all which we proceed to say that the executors entered upon their duties. As regards the other legatees they found no difficulty whatever, most probably because legatees are a kind of persons who are seldom out of the way when they are wanted. They accordingly made their appearance, and without a smile, which would have been unbecoming, got payment of their legacies. But as for this Helen Grey, with so large a sum standing at her credit, she made no token of any kind, nor did any of the relations know aught concerning her, though they wondered exceedingly who she could be, and how she came to be in so strange a place as their kinsman’s testament. Not that the three executors, the ministers, shared very deeply in this wondering, because they knew that their elder, honest Andrew, was a good and godly man, and had had good and godly, and therefore sufficient reasons, (probably in the poverty and piety of Helen,) for doing what he had done.

If indeed these gentlemen wondered at all, it was simply that any poor person living in such a place as Leith Wynd should be so regardless of money, as to fail to make her appearance among the grave and happy legatees. The question, who can she be, passed from the one to the other like a bad shilling. Not one of them could answer. Father Tron, and Father Tolbooth, and Father Trinity, were all at fault; the noses of their ingenuity could not smell out the object of their wish. But then they had been trusting so far as yet to the relatives, and had not made personal inquiry in Leith Wynd, which, if they had been men of business, they would have done at once.

“Oh,” said Father Trinity at length, “I think I have it now when I recollect there was an honest woman of that name who was a member of my congregation some years ago, and, if I am not mistaken, she was in honest Andrew Gebbie’s visiting district, and he took an interest in her soul.”

“The thing is patent,” rejoined Father Tron. “Our lamented elder hath done this good thing out of the holy charity that cometh of piety.”

“And a most beautiful example of the fruits of godliness,” added Father Tolbooth.

“Beautiful indeed!” said Trinity. “For we have here to keep in view that Elder Andrew had many poor friends, but he hath chosen to prefer the relationship of the spirit to that of mere earthly connexion. And his reward will verily be reaped in heaven.”

“We must give the good man a paragraph in the Mercury,” resumed Father Tolbooth. “And now, brother of Trinity, it will be for you to find Helen Grey out, and carry to her the glad tidings.”

“A pleasant commission,” rejoined Father Trinity, as he rose to depart.

And taking his way to Leith Wynd, he soon reached that celebrated street, nor was it long till he passed “The Happy Land,” that dreaded den of burglars, thieves, and profligate women, which the Scotch, according to their peculiar humour, had so named. That large building he behoved to pass with a sigh as the great forlorn hope of the city, and coming to some of the brokers whose shops were farther down, he procured some information which sent him up a dark close, to the end of which having got, he ascended to a garret in a back tenement, and, knocking at the door, was answered by an aged woman.

“Does Helen Grey live here?”

“Ay, sir!” replied she. “If ye ca’ living the breathing awa o’ the breath o’ life. It’s a sad thing when auld age and poverty come thegither.”

“An old saying, Helen,” replied the father. “Yet there is a third one which sanctifieth the other two, and bringeth all into harmony, peace, and love, and that is religion. But do you not know your old minister?”

“Brawly, brawly, sir,” replied she; “but the truth is, I didna like to speak first; and now, sir, I’m as proud as if I had got a fortune.”

“And so perhaps you have,” added the father. “But come, sit down. I’ve got something to say;” and having seated himself he continued. “Was Maister Andrew Gebbie, our worthy elder, in the habit of visiting you?”

“Indeed, and he did aince or twice come and see me; but never mair,” replied she. “Yet he was sae kind as to bring me the last time this book o’ psalms and paraphrases, and there’s some writing in’t which I couldna read.”

“Let me see it,” he said.

And the woman having handed him the book—

“To Mrs Janet Grey,” said the minister, as he read the inscription.

“A mistake, for my name is Helen,” said she. “But it was weel meant in Mr Gebbie, and it’s a’ the same.”

“A staff to help her on to the happy land,” continued the reverend doctor, reading.

“No ‘The Happy Land’ near bye?” interjected Helen.

“Not likely,” continued the doctor with a smile. “But I have good news for you, Helen.”

“Good news for me!” said the woman. “That must come frae an airth no within the four quarters o’ the earthly compass. I thought a’ gude news for me had ta’en wings, and floun awa to the young and the happy.”

“It seems not,” said he; “for Elder Andrew has left you a legacy of three hundred pounds.”

“Stop, stop, sir!” ejaculated the frightened legatee. “It canna be, and though it was sae, I couldna bear the grandeur. It would put out the sma’ spark o’ life that’s left in my auld heart.”

“No, no!” said he. “It is only an earthly inheritance, Helen, to keep you in ease and comfort in your declining years, till you succeed to that inheritance which knoweth no decay, and fadeth not away.”

“But is it really possible, good sir?” she continued, a little reconciled to that whereunto there is a pretty natural predisposition in human nature. “But I havena blessed Elder Andrew yet. May the Lord receive Andrew Gebbie’s soul into endless glory!”

“Amen!” said the reverend doctor. “I will speak of this again to you, Helen.”

And with these words he left the still confused woman, who would very likely still feel a difficulty in comprehending the length and breadth of the goodness of a man who had seen her only a few times, and given her a psalm-book, and called her Janet in place of Helen—a mistake he must have rectified before he made his will.

Next day the reverend doctor of Trinity had another meeting in the office of the law-agent to the trust, Mr George Crawford, whereat he recounted how he had found out the legatee; how strange it was that the poor woman was entirely ignorant of her good fortune; how grateful she was; and, above all, how strange that the saintly elder had only seen her a few times, and knew so little of her that he had made the foresaid mistake in her name. All which did seem strange to the brethren, not any one of whom would even have thought of giving more than perhaps a pound to such a person. But as the motives of men are hidden from the eyes of their fellows, and are indeed like the skins of onions, placed one above another, so they considered that all they had to do was to walk by the will.

“We have no alternative,” said Father Tron; “nor should we wish any, seeing that the money could not be better applied; for has not the son of Sirach said, ‘Give unto a godly man, and not unto a sinner.’”