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(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

A RICH MAN'S RELATIVES

PRESS NOTICES

OF

"INCHBRACKEN,"

A NOVEL BY R. CLELAND

Westminster Review, October, 1883.

"Inchbracken" is a clever sketch of Scottish life and manners at the time of the "Disruption," or great secession from the Established Church of Scotland, which resulted in the formation of the Free Church. The scene of the story is a remote country parish in the north of Scotland, within a few miles of the highland line. The main interest centres in the young Free Church minister and his sister and their relations, on the one hand, with the enthusiastic supporters of the Disruption movement, mostly of the peasant or small tradesmen class, with a sprinkling of the smaller landowners; and, on the other hand, with the zealous supporters of the Established Church, represented by the Drysdales of Inchbracken, the great family of the neighbourhood. The story is well and simply told, with many a quiet touch of humour, founded on no inconsiderable knowledge of human nature.

Academy, 27th October, 1883.

There is a great deal of solid writing in "Inchbracken," and they who read it will hardly do so in vain. It is a story of the Disruption; and it sets forth, with much pains and not a little spirit, the humours and scandals of one of the communities affected by the event. The main incident of the story has nothing to do with the Disruption, it is true; but its personages are those of the time, and the uses to which they are put are such as the Disruption made possible. Roderick Brown, the enthusiastic young Free Church minister, finds on the sea-shore after wreck and storm, a poor little human waif which the sea has spared. He takes the baby home, and does his best for it. One of his parishioners has lost her character, however; and as Roderick, at the instigation of his beadle, the real author of her ruin, is good enough to give her money and help, it soon becomes evident to Inchbracken that he is the villain, and that the baby of the wreck is the fruit of an illicit amour. How it ends I shall not say. I shall do no more than note that the story of the minister's trials and the portraitures--of elders and gossips, hags and maids and village notables--with which it is enriched are (especially if you are not afraid of the broadest Scotch, written with the most uncompromising regard for the national honour) amusing and natural in no mean degree.

W. E. Henley.

Athenæum, 17th November, 1883.

"Inchbracken" will be found amusing by those who are familiar with Scotch country life. The period chosen, the "Disruption time," is an epoch in the religious and social life of Scotland, marking a revival, in an extremely modified and not altogether genuine form, of the polemic Puritanism of the early Presbyterians, and so furnishing a subject which lends itself better to literary treatment than most sides of Scottish life in this prosaic century. The author has a good descriptive gift, and makes the most of the picturesque side of the early Free Church meetings at which declaimers against Erastian patronage posed in the attitude of the Covenanters of old. The story opens on a stormy night when Roderick Brown, the young Free Church minister of Kilrundle, is summoned on a ten-mile expedition to attend a dying woman, an expedition which involves him in all the troubles which form the subject of the book. The patient has nothing on her mind of an urgent character. "No, mem! na!" says the messenger.

"My granny's a godly auld wife, tho' maybe she's gye fraxious whiles, an' money's the sair paikin' she's gi'en me; gin there was ocht to confess she kens the road to the Throne better nor maist. But ye see there's a maggit gotten intil her heid an' she says she bent to testifee afore she gangs hence."

The example of Jenny Geddes has been too much for the poor old woman:--

"Ay, an' I'm thinkin' it's that auld carline, Jenny Geddes, 'at's raised a' the fash! My granny gaed to hear Mester Dowlas whan he preached among the whins down by the shore, an' oh, but he was bonny! An' a graand screed o' doctrine he gae us. For twa hale hours he preached an expundet an' never drew breath for a' the wind was skirlin', an' the renn whiles skelpin' like wild. An' I'm thinkin' my granny's gotten her death o' ta'. But oh! an' he was grand on Jenny Geddes! an' hoo she up wi' the creepie am' heved it a the Erastian's heid. An' my granny was just fairly ta'en wi't a', an' she vooed she beut to be a mither in Israel tae, an' whan she gaed hame she out wi' the auld hugger 'at she keeps the bawbees in, aneath the hearthstane, for to buy a creepie o' her ain,--she thocht a new ane wad be best for the Lord's wark,--an' she coupet the chair whaur hung her grave claes,' at she airs fonent the fire ilika Saturday at e'en, 'an out there cam a lowe, an' scorched a hole i' the windin' sheet, an' noo, puir body, we'll hae to hap her in her muckle tartan plaid. An' aiblins she'll be a' the warmer e'y moulds for that. But, however, she says the sheet was weel waur'd, for the guid cause. An' syne she took til her bed, wi' a sair host, an' sma' winder, for there was a weet daub whaur she had been sittin' amang the whins. An' noo the host's settled on her that sair, she whiles canna draw her breath. Sae she says she maun let the creepie birlin' slide, but she beut to testifee afore some godly minister or she gangs hence. An' I'm fear'd, sir, ye maun hurry, for she's real far through."

The excuse for this long extract must be its excellence as a specimen of a long-winded statement, just such as a Scotch fisher boy would make when once the ice was broken. Not less idiomatic is the interview between Mrs. Boague, the shepherd's wife, and Mrs. Sangster "of Auchlippie," the great lady of the congregation, when the latter has had her painful experience of mountain climbing, till rescued by the "lug and the horn" at the hands of her spiritual pastor. Other good scenes are the meeting of the two old wives in mutches an the brae side, and the final discomfiture of the hypocritical scamp Joseph Smiley by his mother-in-law, Tibbie Tirpie, who rights her daughter's wrongs and the minister's reputation by a capital coup de main. Of more serious interest, though full of humour, are the trials the excellent Roderick endures at the hands of his kirk session. Ebenezer Prittie and Peter Malloch are types of many an elder minister and ministers' wives have had to groan under, and the race is not extinct. But all who are interested in such specimens of human nature should refer to Mr. Cleland, who knows his countrymen as well as he can describe his country.

A

RICH MAN'S RELATIVES.

BY

R. CLELAND,

AUTHOR OF "INCHBRACKEN."

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

F. V. WHITE AND CO.,

31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1885.

PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS;
AND MIDDLE MILL KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

CONTENTS

A RICH MAN'S RELATIVES.

CHAPTER I.

[HOW HIS RELATIONS VEXED THE RICH MAN].

One evening early in July, 1858, there might have been seen through the railings of a villa in a suburban street of Montreal, if only the thick shrubbery leaves would have permitted the view, a lady--Miss Judith Herkimer, to wit--seated in a quiet corner of the verandah, and partially concealed by the clusters of a wisteria trained to the pillar against which she leaned. Miss Judith had entered on that uninteresting middle time of life, when, though youth with its graces is undeniably of the past, the grey hairs which may perchance intrude among the brown, are not yet a crown of honour; the bloom and the promise of life are over, but the pathetic dignity of retrospect, with its suggestions of what has or what might have been, which make age beautiful, are not yet arrived. It was the sear and dusty afternoon stage of her pilgrimage and her spinsterhood, and there was a shade of severity in her aspect, as though living had grown into something to be struggled with and endured--the season for duty to a serious mind, seeing that the time for enjoyment is manifestly gone by.

The flatness with which her hair was laid upon her temples, and then drawn back tightly without wave or pad to the apex of her head, and secured in the form of an onion, left no doubt as to the seriousness of Miss Judith's mind, while the severe ungracefulness of her dress argued an ascetic tendency of that aggressive kind which says, "Brother, I would fast, therefore you shall go without your dinner"--a person tiresome rather than bad, but with the long chin of that obstinacy which can be so provoking when the understanding and imagination are too narrow to perceive the true relation of things.

On the lawn before her stood a mulatto lad of about eighteen, dressed in the white linen suit of a house servant, and with a long apron suspended from his neck, as though he had been called from his glass-washing in the pantry.

"You say, Miss Judith," he was saying, while he pulled the apron through his fingers with a puzzled look, "dat I b'long to myself and not to de cu'nel as owns me? Den w'y dis house as you owns not b'long to me too?"

"Because property in our fellow-men is not recognized in this free country, Cato. But you cannot be expected to understand these intricate questions all at once. Patience and humility, Cato! Now for your reading. Have you got your book? Ah! yes. Here is the place. What does r a t read?"

"Cat! Miss Judy."

"Fie! Cato. C a t is cat. That is rat! Begins with an R. You see?"

"'Cep' de cat hab done gone eaten de rat. Den whaar will he be, Miss Judy? All cat after dat! I reckon."

"Cato, you are foolish! Now, attend!"

"Cato," said another voice from the background, "go to your pantry and assist Bridget with her tea-things," and Miss Herkimer stepped out on the verandah from a window not far off. Miss Herkimer was a good many years older than her sister, but she admitted the fact that she was elderly, and did not seem to find it interfere with her comfort. Her hair was white, and hung in curls over her temples, and the folds of her black silk gown had a free and contented swing which refreshed the eye after the pinched exactness of Miss Judith's costume.

"Gerald and his friend have moved into the smoking-room with their cigars, and as the windows are open I was afraid your instructions might be overheard; and then, Judith, there would be a commotion which you would regret."

"We must think what is right, Susan, do it, and never mind the consequences."

"It cannot be right to interfere between our brother Gerald and his servant. If the customs in his country are different from ours, that cannot be helped. He follows his own, and while he is our guest, it is not for us to disturb."

"Think of the iniquity of slavery, Susan--that that young man should be held in bondage, in this free Canada! It seems awful. Look at him, and deny if you can that he is a man and a brother!"

"I have no objection whatever to admit his being a man and brother, but I certainly should not like to have to call him nephew! And that is what it may come to if you provoke Gerald. You know how violent he can be when he is roused, and if he thought we were tampering with his negro, or attempting an abolitionist scheme, he is capable even of--adopting him, we will call it--and leaving him his whole fortune."

"Do you think so? That would be most unprincipled conduct on his part."

"I know he is quite capable of it; and besides, Judith, I think you are unnecessarily scrupulous about that ugly word 'slavery.' It really seems not so bad a thing after all, come to see it in action. Gerald, now, is extremely kind to the boy--spoils him, indeed, with indulgence, and makes him do very little work. How much better he is off than Stephen's foot-boy, with a pony to mind and the garden to weed when he is not splitting wood or acting butler in the house. It is Stephen's boy who is the slave, to my thinking. Again, I heard Gerald say he refused two thousand dollars for him from a barber in New Orleans. He is quite a valuable boy, and you would tempt him to leave his master!"

"Two thousand dollars for a black boy? Why! Stephen's white boy gets only ten dollars a month and some clothes. Does it not seem extravagant, now, to have so much money tied up in one negro?--and sinful? How much good might be done with that money if the boy were realized! One like Stephen's at ten dollars a month could do his work--it seems to be only shaving his master, and after that to do what he is bid--and the rest of the money might do such very great good. Five hundred dollars might be given to African missions to enlighten his pagan fellow-countrymen, and would carry the truth to so many!--and still there would be money over to do much good."

"And how do you propose to realize a negro boy, sister, except by selling him to another slave owner? And what about the man and brother?"

"True, Susan! Quite true. I admit the force of your objection. It is another illustration of the mystery our good rector dwelt upon so touchingly last Sunday, that good and evil walk the earth hand-in-hand. A solemn thought! But in this case it really seems to me that the boy's bondage would be well compensated. He is a slave already, you must remember--has no idea what liberty means--and five hundred dollars would bring so many darkened savages within the influence of gospel light. If the poor ignorant creature knew enough to understand, I am sure he would rejoice to think that so slight a change in his own circumstances would bring so vast a benefit to his benighted brethren."

"And you'd still be fifteen hundred dollars to the good, Judith. Quite an operation in another man's niggers! Ha, ha! Godliness is profitable! That's sound evangelical doctrine! Ha, ha, ha!"

These words rang forth in a discordant voice from a neighbouring window, the Venetians of which were now pushed open.

The ladies gasped and turned round in dismay. As they had grown earnest in their conversation their voices had been rising to the pitch at which they could not but be heard without eaves-dropping, and they had been overheard.

Within the window, which was open, stood the "Gerald" of whom they had been discoursing--a tall square-framed man, but sadly wasted and collapsed under prolonged attacks of malarial fever. He was between fifty and sixty years of age, with features which had once been stern and resolute, but now, under the stress of continued ill-health, had grown querulous and peevish in their expression. He had gone to Louisiana some thirty years before to push his fortune. From French-speaking Lower Canada to French-understanding Louisiana seemed less of an expatriation than to English New York or California, and such Frenchness as he was able to bring--he was English-born after all, and only Canadian by education--had prepossessed the Louisianians in his favour. He had pushed his fortune--married the heiress of a valuable plantation near Natchez, where he had resided ever since--and amassed wealth. He had lost, however, his wife, his child, and latterly his good-health; and at last had been compelled to return to his friends in the North to give his shattered constitution a last chance to shake off the creeping agues which were dragging him to the grave. He had been a year already under his sisters' roof, greatly to his own worriment; for between his fever fits and the prostration which followed them, there would intervene hours of restless irritability, when it seemed to him that his affairs were entangling themselves into a knot of hopeless confusion, deprived as they were of the master's eye which alone sees clearly.

"What do you think of that, major?" Gerald continued, turning to his companion who was gnawing the end of a very large cigar--a tall sallow man with a much waxed and pointed black moustache and goatee, and an exuberant display of jewellery in his shirt front. "Who in Natchez would expect to find me summering in a nest of blazing abolitionists? Better say nothing when you get home, or I may have to settle with the vigilance committee when I go back."

"I did not expect it, colonel," said the major, pulling down his waistcoat and looking dignified. "Among fanatical Yankees I reckon on hearing the institootions of my country vilified, and so I give sech cattle a wide berth; but here, on British terri-tory, I expected some liberality. Bless my soul! trying to corrupt your servant under your very nose!"

The ladies had withdrawn in confusion under their brother's first attack, or civility to his hostesses must have kept the major silent. At the same time he felt outraged. To think that he, one of the most "high-toned" men of his neighbourhood, and with the very soundest Southern principles, should have been trapped into a den of lowlived--it was always "lowlived"--abolitionism! His friend Herkimer too, had always passed for a "high-toned gentleman" of sound principles when in Natchez, and to find him the member of such a family was inexpressibly shocking.

"Yes," said Herkimer, "it is bad--shows what fools women can be when they don't know, and swallow all the rant that gets into print. After that they think they know so much that they won't believe a word those who could tell them can say. If my boy, Cato, now, had not been an extra good nigger, these sisters of mine would have made him leave me long ago. When his mother, Amanda, died, I promised her I would always keep him about myself--and he does, I will say, understand my little ways--or I never would have ventured to bring him to Canada; but the fact is, the boy's fond of me, and won't leave me, say what they like. Still it provokes a man to see his property being tampered with. Then, too, my sister Judith feels it her dooty, she says, to speak to me about the sinfulness of having property in human beings. I ask her to prove that they are human, but she just rolls her eyes and looks solemn. She calls her talk 'a word in season,' but she chooses the most unseasonable times to hold forth; generally when my chill is coming on, and the long yawn creeping up my back that we all know, when I don't feel man enough to say 'bo' to a goose. My wig! If I could I'd say more than 'bo' to Judith. She holds on steady till I begin to grow blue and my teeth chatter, then I pull the bell for Cato to bring more blankets, and he--good lad--always sends her away, first tiling. Susan bothers too--money, generally--but I'm free to allow she has more gumption than Judith. Old maids both. That's a sort of critter we don't have down Natchez way. There they marry. Reckon you never saw any before, major? Pecoolier, ain't they?"

"The ladies are your sisters, colonel. Estimable, I doubt not; but they do not understand our Southern institootions."

"Talking of understanding, major, do you see much of my nephew, Ralph? When he went down to the plantation I gave him a letter to you, as being my nearest neighbour, and a good friend. I told him he might place implicit reliance on your opinion in any case of doubt which might arise. The overseers are men whom I could trust to make a crop if I was on the spot myself; but of course the young man had to learn, and circumstances were sure to arise in which your advice would be most val'able. Do you see him often?"

Major Considine--I omitted to mention his name earlier, and I may now add by way of making amends for the neglect, that the "major" was a prefix of courtesy conferred by his neighbours to describe his social status and the extent of his possessions; Herkimer's colonelcy was of the same kind, but the higher rank implied a larger holding in land and negroes--Major Considine coughed dryly, drew himself up, and looked sallower if possible than his wont, while his eyes sought the ground.

"I have seen your nephew, sir," he said, "frequently. When he came down first I invited him to come and see me, and treated him in all respects as I would any other gentleman, your friend; but I am bound to own that lately we have not met;" and he gave the waxed points of his moustache a further twirl with something of an aggrieved air, as if to intimate that while he had done his part unimpeachably, he had reason to complain of the way in which his advances had been met.

Herkimer frowned and threw away his cigar. "Fact is, major," he said, "I have a letter from Taine. Taine has been my overseer for a good many years, as you know, and I have found him a good man. He talks of leaving my employment at the end of the year, and asks me to send him a letter stating my satisfaction with him during the years he has been overseeing for me. I can well do that, but I'd hate to lose him. Good overseers are scarce. He complains that Ralph has discharged one of the assistant overseers against his wish, that he interferes with the field work, and has damaged ten of the hands to the extent of two or three hundred dollars apiece, and the crop prospect is reduced by forty or fifty bales. He says that his character for getting more bales to the hand than any other overseer in the section is at stake, and he has concluded, if I feel unable to return to the plantation, that he will leave. What do you think of it?"

"Not at all surprised, sir; Taine is not to be blamed. Mr. Ralph Herkimer came to me shortly after he had discharged that assistant you mention, to ask my advice. It seems they had met accidentally immediately after the discharge, in some saloon, and Mister Ralph Herkimer being ignorant, it appears, that in our glorious land of freedom all white men are equal, had put on some of his plantation airs. He has those plantation airs mighty strong, having, as you say yourself, knocked three or four thousand dollars off the value of your field gangs, by nothing but whipping--clear unmerciful whipping, they do say around Natchez. Waal, his tale was a good deal mixed, and I don't pretend to know the rights, but it seems the discharged overseer asked him to drink, to show he bore no spite. Mr. Ralph Herkimer refused, said something about white trash, and flung the liquor in his face. The overseer drew his pistol, and would have fired, but the folks in the bar-room interfered to protect an unarmed man, and so Mr. Ralph Herkimer rode safe home, and shortly after arriving there received a hostile message. He rode over to see me with the letter in his hand, and that is how I come to know the circumstance, colonel. And let me add, sir, that though I fear no man living, I would not have pained your feelin's by alluding to it, if you had not made it necessary yourself, by bringing up the subject. The young man showed me his letter of defiance, and I spoke to him, as an older man and a gentleman, I hope, colonel, should speak to your nephew on such an occasion. He said he was indignant at being addressed in that style by a common fellow, and that where there was no equality there could be no claim to satisfaction. I pointed out to him that under the constitootion of our State all white men are equal, and that we, the first families, were always scrupulously courteous to our poorer neighbours, that being the only way to hold the community together. We want their help often, I told him, as at election times, in case of jury trials, when their goodwill goes farther to gain a verdict than all the blathering of the lawyers; and in case of serious trouble with the hands we can always depend on a white man, and it is well worth our while to accord him such equality as he can understand. Our first families, I told him, yield all that cheerfully, and find they can still be exclusive enough. As he had gone so far, I assured him he must fight, which after all would be a high compliment to the poor devil, and would make him--your nephew--popular with the meaner sort, which he would find profitable at an election, if by-and-by he were to naturalize and go into politics. I offered to undertake the management of the whole affair, and you are aware, colonel, I have some experience. I even showed him my French case of spring triggers, and my new patent Colt's revolvers, in case he had any preference as to arms, the choice resting with him; and--would you believe it, sir?--but really, really I dare not call up the blush of shame on your honourable features. The--this young man--declined my offer with thanks! He said it did not become him as a gentleman to go cut-throating with common fellows. I suggested that it was often nothing but a reverse of fortune which turned a gentleman into an assistant overseer. Then he said that bloodshed on account of a trifling misunderstanding was against his principles, when I replied that he must have mistaken Mississippi for Pennsylvania, and warned him that if he did not fight when it was put upon him, he would be insulted every time he appeared outside his own plantation. Then he asked me to use my good offices to accommodate things, but I explained to him that I could only meet the class to which his adversary belonged, either to fight them or to order them what they should do. After that Mr. Ralph Herkimer grew sulky--I thought at one time he was going to be offensive--but the pistol cases stood open on the table, and the gentleman don't like firearms I think; anyhow, he simmered down. I believe he ended by apologizing to the assistant overseer for not drinking his liquor; but I do know, I have never spoken to Mr. Ralph Herkimer since."

"I don't blame you, major," said Herkimer. "The young man is not what my father's grandson ought to be. He won't do for Mississippi, that's clear; and I ain't going to let Taine leave me on account of him. I was wise to let him go down for the first year alone, leaving his wife and child here till he knew how he liked it. He had better come home again, for I don't like it, whether he does or no. I had meant him to succeed me down there, major; but the man who first pays off overseers and then apologizes to them cannot do that. He is my only brother Stephen's only son. It is disappointing. My two sisters, whom you have seen, would not do for planteresses in Mississippi; but I have another sister yet--young, major, and handsome--my half-sister; just about the age of Ralph. She might be made my heiress, and if she marries as I would wish, she shall! I need not conceal the truth from myself, major. The doctors have as good as told me I shall never return to Mississippi. You have not seen her yet, Considine, this sister of mine, Mary. She is just about the age of Jeanne de Beaulieu when I married her--poor Jeanne!--not unlike her, and quite as handsome. Strange, would it not be, if Beaulieu went with an heiress again? Here comes Cato to call us into the drawing-room for tea. We'll go, Considine, if you have finished your cigar; and--who knows?--we may see Mary."

CHAPTER II.

[STEADFAST MARY].

It was late in November. The screen of foliage which hid the villa from the road had grown thin, changing to all gay colours, and dropping leaf by leaf. Old Gerald's health had not improved. The clear autumnal airs had failed to invigorate his fever-worn system, or brace it into vigour. They only chilled him, and forced him to keep his room.

The light was fading out of a grey and lifeless afternoon--one of those days when all things are possible, rain, frost, snow, or even a revulsion into the sunshine of a last brief remnant of St. Martin's summer, and yet nothing happens. Gerald sat by the window in his easy chair, wrapped in a thick dressing-gown and buried under many rugs. His letters lay at his elbow unread, and the New Orleans Picayune was on his lap, but he was too listless to look into its contents. His eyes were turned towards the road, and he watched with as much impatience as his torpid faculties were capable of feeling.

"There she is at last!" he muttered after a while. "Glad! She is all the company I have now, or can expect while I am kept indoors. Susan and Judith don't count in that way, even if they tried to be agreeable, which they don't. The one is for ever bothering about my negroes and my soul, the other about my money. What have I done that they should imagine they may puzzle their foolish heads over me and my affairs, or wag their cackling tongues. I am sick, and want nursing, so they take me for a child? Think of me, who consult no one, being advised by them! But never mind, here is little Mary. She is always good company, and she never bothers."

"But who is the fellow walking with her? Big and strapping. Fair hair, whiskers and moustache--not bad to look at, but seems most unnecessarily eager in his attentions. Wonder who he is. Carrying her music? Very proper; but he need not linger so long before letting go her hand. Mary shouldn't let him--looks particular--the major would not like that."

Presently Mary entered the room. She was flushed, or perhaps the air had heightened her complexion and brightened her eyes, which shone like stars; and there were smiles lingering about her lips, in wait, as it were, to break forth again on the first pretext.

"Your walk has done you good," said Gerald. "Where have you been? I have been wearying for you to come home; but now one sees you, it is impossible to grudge your short constitutional, you are so brightened up by it. I wish Considine was here to see you."

"I have been at choir-practising. I promised to take the solo in Sunday's anthem, and have been trying it over. The booming of the organ through the empty church rouses, one, I think. I generally feel brighter after it, and that may account for my looking so cheerful as you say."

"And who is the gentleman who carried home your music?"

"That is Mr. Selby, our organist. A splendid player. If you had not been such an invalid, you would have known both his playing and himself ere now."

"It would seem that you know him very well; and to see you walking together one would have said that he knows you very well too. You appear quite intimate, and yet I have never seen him here."

"No. Susan will not let him be invited to the house. She says his is not a recognized profession. As if a successful musician were not better than a bungling doctor or notary! It has something to do with the line which she says must be drawn--between wholesale and retail, for instance--if Montreal is to have a Society. A ridiculous line, it seems to me, which excludes many wealthy and accomplished people as traders, while it lets in poor Stephen and his wife, with her superfluous h's, because his little business in needles and pins is wholesale, seeing that he never sells less than a thousand at a time."

"Mrs. Stephen is my sister-in-law, and may do with her h's what she pleases. It is not her fault if she was born in the British metropolis, and if Stephen is not in opulent circumstances, it is just because it has so happened. I have known many high-toned families who were but in a small way pecooniarily speaking. I am surprised to hear you run Stephen and his family down, though I confess I have been disappointed myself in his son Ralph."

"I don't run them down; but why should they be so particular about others? It was Mrs. Stephen who said to Susan that an organist wasn't 'genteel,'--Mrs. Stephen, who doesn't know one tune from another--and so Mr. Selby has never been asked to the house. And then Judith chimed in with her 'higher grounds.' She says that good music is a snare and device of the High Church party, and that you got on very well without it long ago in the old church at Stoke-upon-Severn. A funny church it must have been."

"So it was, and I reckon you would not have liked it. The village joiner and the bellows mender played the clarionet and the bassoon in a little loft over the squire's pew, while the blacksmith's daughter sang the hymns, and the schoolmaster as clerk said the responses out loud before the people. But the world has changed since then. Yes! I daresay an organist might do as well to invite as anybody else. But what does it matter? What do you want with an organist? You have no organ."

"I like to be able to invite my friends just as other people do. If you knew him, Gerald, you would like him."

"I dare say. There are many people one would like if one knew them. Yet if one does not, it seems of little consequence, there are so many others. If you lived in Natchez, now, you would not see much of your Canadian friends. You would make friends down there, and very high-toned and elegant you would find them."

"Natchez, Gerald? What should I be doing there?"

"Doing? Living, of course; surrounded by every elegance that money and the best society can secure. If I live and get well, it is my intention to carry you back with me, and make you mistress of the Beaulieu estate--de Bully they call it for short. In case I do not, and I can see the doctor has not much hope of my recovery, I have willed the place and all my property to you. Don't stare, Mary. It is so. I feel it a duty to provide a good mistress for those helpless creatures who are dependent on me, and you, I am satisfied, will be that. I have tried Ralph, as you know, and have found him unfit to take my place. You are the only other member of the family who could go there. You will marry, and the plantation will prosper. Treat the poor creatures kindly, Mary. But I know you will, and Considine is an excellent manager. His place adjoins ours. You will have the finest estate for miles on that part of the river."

"Oh! This seems very strange to me."

"You will get used to it in time. But to tell you the truth, I did not think the idea would be altogether new to you. I did not think Considine would have been so backward. He must be hard hit to be so diffident of his success in taking a girl's fancy. Has he said nothing to you?"

"It would have been strange in Major Considine to have divulged your testamentary intentions. You surely do not think he would speculate to me about your chances of recovery, or what you would do with your property. I should have stopped him at once if he had mooted the subject, you may be sure."

"I did not suppose that he had divulged my intentions, but I think it is about time that he had declared his own. After visiting here so constantly all through the summer, and keeping you singing by the hour to him downstairs in the drawing-room, he has surely made himself understood. Still, I wonder he has not spoken. Not that I have a right to complain, he has declared himself plainly enough to me, or you may be sure I would have put a stop to his visits long ago. Still I wonder at his backwardness. Where are you running to, Mary? Has he said nothing?"

"I want to take off my things," said Mary, her face aflame with blushes.

"Tell me before you go. What has he said? Tell me! There is his ring at the front door. I must speak to him."

"I don't know. But better say nothing," cried Mary in evident confusion, escaping from the room.

Gerald would have recalled her, but the major's heavy step was already audible on the stairs. He could only throw himself back in his chair with an impatient snort.

"Colonel!" said Considine, entering, "I come to make you my adieux"--'adoos' is how he pronounced it, the Major was certainly not French. "What orders for Taine at the plantation? Any commands for any one down there? I shall be pleased to be your messenger. I see by the Memphis paper there was a slight touch of frost the other night, so the sickly season is over, and I can safely go home to look after my affairs. They want looking into, I reckon, after five months' absence. I have to thank you for the very pleasant summer I have put in here."

"Do you mean it, major? Going right off? I have reckoned on your being here till the New Year."

"The call to go home has come sudden, colonel, but I reckon I had best obey it."

"And what about our plan to join the plantations?"

"I'm agreeable, colonel--anxious I should say; but if the lady ain't, what can I do?"

"You don't know, major, till you try. I reckon a sister of mine ain't just like a ripe persimmon, to drop in a man's mouth before he shakes the tree."

"Shakes the tree, colonel? There ain't no man ever shook the tree harder than I did. I shook in both my shoes for a mortal hour before I could steady my voice--that shook too--enough to say what I wanted. All the time I was trying, the lady was diverting herself with her singing. French songs, and I-talian songs, full of all kind of rare fandangoes, like a mocking bird in a cherry tree. I couldn't get a word in endways for ever so long, and when I did, at last, she just stopped and looked at me out of her eyes. And when I got through, she said 'Oh! Mr. Considine, it's all a mistake. You have misunderstood, and I don't understand. I am quite sure I cannot say what you desire, so we will suppose that you have not asked me to, and that nothing has been said at all, and we will agree never to recur to the subject.' And then she asked me if I did not think the last movement in the song she had been singing very effective, and the bravura passage at the end powerfully written. By-and-by I got away. You may suppose she did not play a great deal more music, and that I had got about enough for that time. I ain't a widower, colonel, as you know; I never was refused before, and I never backed out of an engagement, so you may say that I have no experience in these matters; but it appears to me that the young lady knows her own mind, and there is no use in my speaking to her again."

"But she didn't know about the joining our plantations then. I had only just done explaining that to her when you came in, and she ran out, which shows that she ain't indifferent to the idea, as who in their senses could be? The two will make a mighty pretty property, and you and Mary will look well at the head of it, and raise a fine family to come after you. She did not know she was heir to my property when she took you down that time. Ha, ha, major! It makes me laugh to think of it. You that so long have been boss of the range, and had only to beckon to fetch any gal in all the country--you to come all the way to Canada to be took down by a gal that didn't know she had a dollar to her name!"

"Sir, the subject of your jests is not a pleasant one. Let us pass on."

"I ask your pardon, major. No offence was intended; but if you will speak to Mary now, I am willing to bet any money her answer will be different. A man of experience should not mind every word a young woman says, when it is about marrying. It is the one time in life she is let have her head, and we must not blame her for taking it, just at first. Trust me, she has thought better of it already. Try again."

"It would be useless, colonel."

"Don't give in, sir! If the gal and the plantation are to your liking, that is."

"I think a mighty deal of the lady, sir; and would be fain to repeat my offer, even if she were as much without fortune as she believed herself to be last night; but I do not see my way to doing so after what has passed between us, the more so that now my fortune--a mighty neat one though it be--will count for less than before, seeing she knows now how well you have provided for her."

"I believe that will influence her the other way. However, it is reasonable you should want to halt and take breath before returning to the attack. This is a disappointment to me, but I won't cry beat yet, if you are still minded to persevere. Let me speak to her, and I will write to you. Now the ice has been broken between you, you will be able to take up the subject by letter." Considine shortly took his leave, and Gerald awaited the return of Mary, who did not appear till Cato had been sent to hammer on her chamber door and request her presence.

"Is this true," said Gerald, when she at length entered the room, "which I hear of you? Have you really gone and said 'No' to Considine's proposal? Do you know that he owns a hundred and fifty head of the likeliest niggers in all the Mississippi Valley, besides land and sundries?--nigh on two hundred thousand dollars, and no debts. What do you expect to be able to catch if Considine ain't good enough for you?"

"I didn't say he was not good enough. He deserves a better wife than I could make him, and I believe he will have no difficulty in finding her."

"But it is in you he thinks he has found her, Mary! Don't be foolish, you are not likely ever to get a better offer, or another half as good. The man is steady and well off, a kind man and a perfect gentleman. What more would you have?"

"I do not want more, Gerald! But then I do not want--him."

"What is your objection to him? Is it his appearance, or his temper, or what? Is he not passably well-looking?"

"I would almost call him handsome."

"Does he not succeed in making himself sufficiently agreeable to you? I can assure you, at any rate, that you have succeeded in being agreeable to him. He says he would be fain to get you if you had not a cent to your name. Can a man say more than that?"

"I do not know that he can."

"Then what is your fault to him?"

"I find no fault with him. On the contrary----"

"Then why won't you marry him?"

"Because I could not like him in that way."

"What can a girl like you know about the marrying way?"

"I know that I could not marry Mr. Considine."

"Why? Is there some one else?"

Mary's face flushed hotly and her eyes fell.

"Ha! Have I caught you? You are engaged already? Why did you never tell? Surely you might have trusted your big brother. You never saw me till the other day, it is true, but we have been fast friends for twelve months now, have we not, Mary? Why did you never tell me?" And he drew her towards him as he spoke, and kissed her on the forehead. "Think I feel no interest in my future heir?"

"Because, Gerald, you do not know him. How could I tell you?"

"Tell me now, then, dear. Who is he?"

"You must find out," she answered with a watery smile and changing colour. "Girls are not expected to say such things, because they cannot."

"You say I do not know him? Have I seen him?"

"Yes."

"Do I know him by sight? Or have I seen him recently?"

"Yes, very recently indeed--as recently as could be."

"What? Then--you do not say? But it cannot be, Mary?"

There was a self-convicted look in Mary's face which pleaded guilty to the unspoken indictment.

"Do you really mean--but no, you cannot mean your friend the organist?"

Mary bowed her head in silence and looked expectantly in her brother's face, till his rising colour and the gathering frown left no doubt as to his reception of her tidings; then she removed her eyes with a heavy sigh and let them fall on the carpet.

"You cannot mean it, Mary? You!--my father's daughter!--my sister!--to engage yourself to marry a kind of fiddler!"

"He is not a fiddler, in your sense, Gerald, although he can play the violin, and indeed most other instruments. He is a cultured person, and has his university degree--Bachelor of Music--while few of those who try to look down on him have had the chance even to get plucked for one, having never gone to college at all."

"He plays tunes at any rate in a church loft on Sundays for a living. Is that a fit occupation for the man who would marry my sister?"

"Remember the great composers, Gerald. More than one of them was a chapelmaster, which is just an organist."

"The great fiddlesticks! If you had seen them in their lifetime in their frowzy little German houses and dirty linen, with their wives cooking their dinner, such as it was, for there was little enough at times to put in the pot, you would think less of their greatness. What good is the greatness which is not found out till after you are dead? A great fortune! That is the only greatness a sensible woman will marry to."

"Shame, Gerald! You do not mean what you say. You have been married yourself, and I know you loved and honoured your wife. Do you mean now to say that your wife was a fool because she married you when you were not rich? Or is it that she was mercenary and married you for your money?"

"Tush! Mary. You never saw poor Jeanne, so you cannot speak about her. The beautiful darling!" Gerald's voice grew husky here, and there was some coughing before he could resume.

"No! She was not mercenary, and she was not a fool. She married me when I was a poor man because we loved one another, and she did not think about money. But if she had, it was not an unwise thing, as it turned out, which she did in marrying me, for I managed her property successfully, and more than doubled its value."

"Then why will you doubt that another woman--and she your own sister--may love as well, or that the man she intrusts her future to, may be as well able as you were to take care of it? Mr. Selby has a great many pupils, and can very well maintain a wife."

"A wife, I dare say, but not my sister. It is true my property which I intend you to have is far more than Jeanne had when she married me; but I was able to take care of her and of what she had, and the property throve in my hands. An organist is different. What could such as he do with a gang of unruly niggers? It needs a clear business head and a strong arm to make plantation property pay."

"He does not aspire to your property, Gerald. He does not know of it, and with his feelings I am not sure that he would consent to become a slave-owner."

"Not consent, eh? Never fear. His consent will not be asked, for mine shall never be given to his owning my negroes. Slave-owning forsooth! No. Let him manage his chest of whistles. I have no right and no wish to dictate to you, though I would dearly like to see you marry Considine; but at least I can make sure, and I will, that your insidious organ-grinder shall never benefit a cent by my money, I promise you that, and I shall alter my will accordingly."

CHAPTER III.

[LITTLE ARCADIA].

Four years later, and summer once more. Again it is in a suburban garden, not a very extensive one, but nicety kept; inclosed by tall trees and dense shrubbery on every side, and disclosing nothing of what may stand beyond, but here and there the corner of a chimney intruding its morsel of red amongst the sunny green of the tree-tops, and the golden cross on the neighbouring steeple soaring over all, and shining down its benediction on the peace below.

The grass is as short, soft, and green as constant mowing and sprinkling and warmth can make it. The flower-beds are masses of brilliant colour, and in the centre stands the house, a tin-roofed wooden cottage painted in the whitest white, relieved by vividly green Venetians; a broad verandah round the whole, windows descending to the floor, and above, small casements peering out through the shining tin, each with its Venetian thrown open to admit the breeze which comes up at the decline of day. The effect is cool, and home-like, notwithstanding the keenness of the colours, and quite other than that of the raw-toned packing-boxes in which so many an American is condemned to pass the night, and from which he is in so great a hurry to escape in the morning. It may be merely a peculiarity in the pitch of a French Canadian roof, or it may be some spiritual association which lingers about the work of these first settlers and oldest inhabitants; but there is a personality, permanence, and history about the newest and frailest of their structures which is wanting in the buildings of their English speaking neighbours, even when they give permanence to vulgar commonplace by embodying it in brick or stone.

The pillars of the verandah are garlanded with roses--pink, crimson, white, and creamy yellow--blooming profusely, but, to judge from the ruin of shed petals scattered on the ground, soon to cease. Already, however, clematis--white, purple, blue--has begun to appear and will be ready to catch up the song of the roses, though in a minor key, so soon as their colour harmonies shall fade out. Butterflies are fluttering in the scented air, and a humming bird flits here and there where the flowers are thickest.

In a garden seat is Mary--no longer Herkimer, but Selby, now--and at her feet is a child, something more than a year old, who rolls and kicks upon the grass, crowing and babbling the while in a language which only mothers understand. Mary looks no older than she did in her brother's sick-room; fresher, perhaps, and fuller of harmonious life, as well may happen where the desires were reasonable and are all fulfilled. She is mistress of her own life, and of his in whom she trusts, as well as of that other at her feet, in whom his and hers are united and bloom anew; and as for the life, she would not wish it to be other than it is, even if it were in her power to change it. She is at work upon some small matter of muslin and lace which busies her fingers, while it leaves her thoughts free to wander; and their wanderings are among pleasant places, to judge by her smile and the big full breath of utter content.

The winter which was coming on when we saw Gerald last proved more than his enfeebled system could bear up against; he died before it was out; and Mary, feeling that her duty at home was accomplished, and seeing no good reason to sacrifice herself to the family prejudices, took her fate in her own hands and married the man of her choice.

"And it has all turned out so beautifully," she was saying to herself with a well-pleased sigh, when the click of the gate latch roused her from her reverie. It was Selby with his roll of music. She rose to meet him, and they made the round of their domain together, observing what new buds had opened since yesterday, and telling each other the events of the day.

"I heard a man down town say that your nephew Ralph is succeeding most wonderfully since he dropped the law and turned broker."

"I am glad of that, George. Poor Ralph! It was hard upon him the way Gerald seemed to take him up at first--sending him down to live upon the property at Natchez, and letting him expect to inherit it--and then to recall him and drop him so suddenly. He refused to see him even, when he came home. Judith says it was Colonel Considine set him against Ralph, to make him leave everything to me. But I do not think that. I always found Colonel Considine 'very much of a gentleman,' to use his own expression--a little high-backed and tiresome, no doubt, but incapable of a shabbiness like that. What good would it have done him my getting everything, considering how little we saw or cared for each other?"

"Speak for yourself, Mary. I am not so sure that Considine's interest in you was slight. From little things you have said I suspect--Nay, never blush for that, dearest, though the crimson is infinitely becoming--Having gained the prize I am not churl enough to resent another's having wished for it. Indeed, knowing as I do now how much he has missed, I could feel sorry for him, and I cannot but respect his good taste. I really could not believe that he attempted to undermine Ralph in his uncle's favour; a thing, by-the-way, which Ralph, according to those who know him best, is well able to do for himself; he has so many crooked little ways, and is proud of them, and careless about concealment, because I suppose it does not strike him that they can shock people, or are at all out of the way--obtuseness of moral perception, I fancy, it might be called."

"And yet, George, he was the only one of the family who did not oppose our marriage, and who has not given me up utterly, even since. Surely that shows a good heart. I, at least, shall always think kindly of Ralph for that, if for nothing else."

"My good innocent darling! Do you not see that that manœuvre alone, if there were nothing else, would stamp the man as selfish and a schemer? Remember the terms of your brother's will. He names you as his heiress, but he provides against contingencies which he fears may arise. He does not leave the property to you, but to Jordan the notary, and Considine, as trustees. In case you married Considine the trust was at an end, and everything passed to you at once. If you did not, all was to be sold and the money invested in Canada bank-stock and other securities which he named. You were to have the interest while you remained single or married with the approval of Mr. Jordan, in accordance with written instructions left in his hands. If you married contrary to these instructions, however, you were to receive nothing. The interest and dividends were to be re-invested as they fell due, and at the end of twenty years from your brother's death the whole is to be divided among your children, share and share alike; and in case you have none it is to go to Ralph's boy. Everything is tied up with only an annuity of a thousand dollars each to his three sisters and his brother. Now! Do you recognize the true inwardness of Ralph's amiability?"

"And pray, sir," cried Mary, drawing back with eyes wide open, "How come you to know all this? I would have bitten my tongue out sooner than tell you. It seems so ungenerous in Gerald to have treated you so."

"It shows the generosity of Gerald's sister, and that is all I care for. But often, I will own it, my conscience has reproached me with depriving you of your splendid inheritance; only, we are so happy here; and if love can make up for money--if my love----"

"Hush, George! I have all I want--more, I think sometimes, than should fall to one woman's share--and I wonder if it can last. But who told you about the will?"

"Who but your sister Judith!"

"She? I did not think you knew her; and she spoke so unkindly when I proposed to bring and introduce you. You surprise me."

"Ah! Miss Judy is a woman of surprises--a woman of energy who does not stick at trifles; and she is a diplomatist. She would not let you introduce me, that would have been yielding you a point; but she could find me out for herself when she wished to speak to me. That was on what she considered business, and did not oblige her to know me next time we met. It would have forced me to know her afterwards, if she had wished it; but that is nothing. Where would be the gain in being a lady, if rules worked both ways? Miss Judy found me out, and requested a few minutes' private conversation in the most gracious way possible. She apologized profusely for the intrusion, with quite a pretty warming of the complexion and an engaging little twitter behind her glove tips. Ass that I was, I grew red like a lobster all over my face, and my heart thumped against my ribs like a smithy hammer. I imagined your family were relenting towards me--that piety and true principle had overcome in the second Miss Herkimer her disapproval of our attachment, and that she had come to tell me so. I could have knelt down and kissed her hand, so overcome was I with grateful joy. It was well I did not. The group would have been too ridiculous. Miss Judy appealed to my feelings as a gentleman and a man of honour 'not to ruin the prospects of her sweet young sister;' that was her phrase, and she rendered it in a fine adagio manner, accompanied by a tremolo of her crumpled pocket-handkerchief, which did her artistic instinct the greatest credit, and really made the little petition seem both reasonable and affecting. Judy would have succeeded on the stage, Mary, I do believe, if they had put her in training early."

"George, you are profane. It sounds ribald to speak of serious people in that way."

"Judy and the playhouse, eh? It is a little incongruous, I admit; but which has most right to resent the juxtaposition we need not stop to inquire. Miss Judith told me you had come into a large fortune, and your family were anxious about your matrimonial prospects, so many swells were your friends, and you were so highly connected. There was at least one general officer and a captain of dragoons, besides many more; but whether they wanted to marry you, or were only your grandfather's cousins, I did not quite catch. You see my feelings were a little tumultuous, like those of the man stepping on board a steamboat to meet his sweetheart, when he misses the plank and drops into the water. I had a feeling of cold bath all over, and was cross, I dare say; at least I did not respond to Miss Judy's condescensions as she had expected. At once she changed her tone, drawing herself up and looking severely superior. It was scarcely conceivable, she told me with dignified coldness, that I could seriously have expected anything more than a little notoriety would result from my appearing in public conversing with her sister, but if I cherished any delusion on the subject, it was for my good that she should speak plainly, and as a Christian she saw it her duty to do so. It was out of the question, she told me, that you should marry a man in my position, and one who was not a gentleman. This to me, whose gentlemanly feelings she had just been appealing to! It sent the blood tingling down to my fingertips, and revived me after the douche of what she had been saying before. I told her these were matters I declined to discuss with a lady whom I had not the honour of being acquainted with, and that while I enjoyed the privilege of your friendship, none but yourself should dictate to me the terms. Then she pulled out a paper which she said was a copy of your brother Gerald's will, and another, the private instructions he had left with Jordan. She insisted on reading them both to me, word by word, and was especially emphatic in her rendering of the instructions in which I am mentioned by name as a person you were not to marry."

"I know, George; and I think it was cruel in Gerald to make such a stipulation. However, it does not matter. I did not want the money, and you do not grudge to earn money for us both; and what do we want which we have not got?"

"True, my darling; and after all, your dividends which fell due before you disobeyed your kinsman's commands by marrying me have bought us this cosey little home, so you did not come to me a penniless bride after all. Talking of these things, by-the-way, reminds me--Did you observe Considine's name in the war news this morning? He is a general now. Why, Mary, you might have been one of their great ladies down there, if you had chosen!"

"But I did not choose; and I question if a general's lady down there has much to congratulate herself on. Grant is in Memphis, I see, and steadily working southwards. The negroes on the plantations are in a ferment, and Mrs. Dunwiddie, the refugee who is staying with Mrs. Brown, and called here to-day, says the boxes of silver spoons and candlesticks the Yankee officers are sending home to their friends by express are more than the Express Company's car will carry, and they talk of requisitioning a gunboat to carry their loot North to Cincinnati. I should not have liked to ride with my plate and valuables in an ambulance in the rear of even a husband's column. But is it not fortunate that Gerald's property was realized, and the money received safely in Canada before these troubles began? You and I may not be the richer for it, but think of Edith, the little elf; what a sum it will be when she is old enough to receive it!"

"Over a million of dollars. Far too much for a girl to have. Let us hope she may have brothers and sisters to share it with. But where, at the same time, have you left this great heiress? I have not had a chance yet to give her a kiss."

"I called Lisette to come for her when you came in. Ah! There she is, among the raspberry bushes--ruining her white frock with berry juice, I'll be bound, for it is Cato who is carrying her. See how she clutches his curly wool while he picks fruit for her. Her tugging must be quite sore, but he seems positively to enjoy it, he is so fond of her."

"And well he may. Have you forgot Judith's and Ralph's attempt to 'realize' him when his master died?--to huddle him over to Buffalo and sell him into slavery again. Miss Judith thought she could do so much good with the money, and Ralph encouraged her, and undertook to arrange the transaction on the American side, when he would quietly have pocketed the money, I make no doubt. If you had not interfered and explained things to the poor boy he certainly would have fallen into their trap, and been disposed of for cash down. He is the only decent nigger I ever saw, and the only one who could have been so imposed on. Oh, yes! He would do anything for you or the child."

"Dinner will be on the table almost at once, George. Come in and get ready."

"Ah, yes! Dinner and something cool, after the long broiling day. By-and-by, when the candles are lit, and the moths and beetles come droning in from the darkness to singe their wings in the flame, we will have music and a little singing. Some of those dear old songs by the masters we used to revel in long ago. Haydn and the rest. Such as 'Gra-a-aceful partner.'"

"Quite so, your highness. That I may have to respond 'Spouse adorèd,' my most sovereign lord and master! Ha, ha, ha! What it is to be a lord of creation! Meanwhile, there is the bell. Hurry to your room."

CHAPTER IV.

["OUFF."]

The hour which saw Mary Selby thus lapping herself in her simple joys, was the same which witnessed the brewing of the storm destined to wreck and scatter them. A premonition must have been upon her spirits--that impalpable tremor and exhilaration preceding a catastrophe which whets the perceptions to intenser enjoyment before the destroying assault, like advancing fire which illumines, expands, and glorifies ere it leaps on its prey and turns it into smoke and ashes. It is certain at least that her spirits overstepped the limit of their tranquil wont. She turned over the piles of music with her husband in search of something to sing, but the measured graces of the older works were all too serious for her mood.

"Your masters are prosy, George," she cried; "I could not settle down to sing them to-night. Let us have that new duet from the 'Grand Duchesse.'"

"From Bach to Offenbach," he answered. "What a leap! You really are exuberant to-night. What next?"

Five or six miles away, on the lake-like broadening of the river which stretches upward from Lachine, a canoe was drifting under the lee of the wooded islands, and in it sat Ralph Herkimer. Remaining in town through the summer to watch the fluctuations of the gold-room--it was during the American war--he betook himself each afternoon to Lachine, to exchange the dust of streets for the breezy coolness of the water. He had been fishing, and Paul, an Indian from the Indian village of Caughnawaga near by, managed the canoe. His fishing had not prospered. It seemed indifferent to him, indeed, whether he got "bites" or not, but still from time to time he made a cast of the line, with his eyes brooding on the water where the slackened current drifted lazily by, with its rhythmic ripples flickering in the reddening light. The sun went down behind heavy banks of cloud, and the grey twilight stole silently up with that listening stillness which makes audible the murmur of the stream, a sound unnoticed in the garish hurry of noon when the world is vocal with a hundred noises, but heard at eve when other things with life have sunk to sleep.

The canoe hung idly among the gathering shadows of the shore where the waters were black and oily in the shelter of the wooded islands; but Ralph took no heed of the twilight closing in. The coolness, the drowsy movement, and the murmur soothed him, and his thoughts flowed freely in their wonted channels. They were like the streams we read of which run over golden sands, for they were all about money, shares, stocks, margins, shorts, longs, bulling and bearing the market, with sunny visions of a hundred per cent. glittering remotely, like islands of the blest, and with banks of contingency drifting in between. Then his memory wandered to the fortune he had missed, and which should surely have been left to him, his father's only son, and the only male shoot of the family tree. To think of so much money being deliberately left past him!---tied up for twenty years to wait for heirs unborn at the time of Gerald's death. He snorted and moved restlessly in his seat as he thought of it, till the jerking of his limbs disturbed the unstable equilibrium of the canoe, and he only composed and controlled himself in time to avoid a ducking from the rolling over of the lightly-poised craft. Paul raised his hand and caught the water with his paddle at the same instant, relapsing into his impassive wont so soon as the accident was averted.

"Too bad!" muttered Ralph, when the disturbance of his nerves had subsided, and his thoughts fell back into their channel. "If the old man would none of me personally, there was my boy, and he bears his name and is a Herkimer--nearer to him, surely, than the music master's brat; and she a girl, too, as it turns out!" Then his thoughts grew deep again--sank into silence, as the rivers in a limestone country disappear into the ground, and thread mysterious miles through caves of night and blackness.

He whipped the waters with his line, letting it drift anon and forgetting to draw it in even when an infatuated bass caught hold and jerked and struggled till he got away again, and even the apathetic Paul looked up surprised; but then, the ways of the pale faces are not as those of the red man, so he merely grunted, and became quiescent again as before.

"Too bad!" Ralph muttered again. "Only a life between my boy and a million!--it will be nearer three millions by the end of the twenty years--just one life between my Gerald and all that; and what a life! Only a year old--incapable of knowing anything about it, or taking any satisfaction out of it. A girl, too, at that. Child of an organ-grinder. Nobody worth knowing will ever care to know her. Of what use can a million of dollars be to such as she?" Here with a groan and a snort the black waters of unwholesome thought sunk down again out of sight, and out of ken of the thinker, if that were possible, for--under the devil's guidance shall we call it?--one will sometimes avert the eyes from the working and festering of his own soul with a sense of conventional shame (hypocrisy is like the polar frosts which strike a yard or two down into the ground), and still with the back turned as it were to the evil thought, as a man must continue to do within himself if he would retain his own good opinion, there will be a furtive peering glance cast down and backward into the deeper depths, awaiting till some deeper down conscience is overcome, which is not the admitted self at all, yet the vanquishment of which will be so good an excuse for dropping the moral barriers in the upper stratum of admitted consciousness. To that wave of unstemmable temptation, a cyclone as it were to which nature in her strength succumbs, and the best of men may yield, lifting their heads again after it, like palm trees when the tempest has passed over, and saying, "A storm; a convulsion beyond human might to withstand; for yielding to that, who can be blamed? Let us spread our draggled plumage wide to dry. The gale is over, and we shall soon be as honorable as before."

Not that Ralph could be called a hypocrite in the vulgar sense. For why? He troubled himself little about morals of any kind, that not being, as he said, his particular "fad." But there is a righteousness which is not ecclesiastical. There are decencies of life for us all, and a standard of right and wrong, which it is base to contravene even when we put on speculative airs and question the Church's teachings. Right is always right, and wrong wrong, decency decent, and baseness contemptible, even if there were no God in heaven, and no account to render at the last day; and there are thoughts which a man must turn his back on when they pass through his mind, if he would continue to enjoy his own respect.

There is a way of seeing sidewise, however, when the eyes are averted--a policy of reconciliation between doing and eschewing, when deeds at once vile and profitable are under consideration--and I fear me much this luckless Ralph Herkimer had found out the trick of it.

His thoughts, at all events, sank down deep into those sunless channels where even he himself declined wittingly to follow them though keeping watch. He whipped the water more briskly than before, and stared intently at the end of his line; but somehow he did not lose the thread of his reflections; he kept on thinking all the time and even with more and more intentness, though still he made pretence to himself of ignoring the whole of the deep-down discussion--till it was finished, that is--then he succumbed, as who may not, under sufficient temptation? It is a question of price or number. Ralph yielded before the flashing glory of millions of dollars! So Danæ may have stretched her arms, erewhile so chaste and cold, to welcome Jove when drest in that disguise he sought the mercenary maid. Was not gold divine? And has it not continued ever since to be the same? Even Miss Judy can appraise to a cent the good to be achieved with part in saving souls, and still leave unexpressed the balance--the pride and finery which what remains will bring the priests and priestesses of Goody.

Millions of dollars! That was the burden and refrain which repeated itself over and over in Ralph's mind; and it ought by right to be his. Was not he grandson of the father of this childless Gerald who had made the money? The only grandson too, and the only person through whom future generations of Herkimers could connect themselves with this fortune? And Gerald to pass him over! Gerald who talked so much about Shropshire, and all the rest of it, things of which he (Ralph) knew nothing--old Uncle Gerald who would not hear, even, of Aunt Mary's marrying a music master. That the old man's money should be tied up for twenty years and then handed over to this very music master's brats. Gerald could not have meant it; notwithstanding the little unpleasantness which occurred when he (Ralph) returned from Natchez, and Gerald refused to admit him to his presence. The bequest must have been merely a threat which the imprudent old man had supposed so terrible that nobody would brave it. If he could have dreamed that Mary would defy him, and marry all the same, he would have made a different disposition of his property altogether. What he meant was to go on governing his relations after death as he had ruled them while in life.

There seemed at the moment a pathos to this hard and worldly-minded Ralph, swinging and oscillating silently in the fading light, with air and tinted greyness all around, and only the heaving, quivering reflections upon which he swung beneath; there seemed a pathos in it, and he felt a sympathy with the vanished and disappointed maker of the fortune, or rather with the straying misdirected wealth. If he had lived, how different all would have been; and Ralph looked out into the empty evening air, feeling as if he might catch some shadowy glimpse of a disembodied presence, which would look on him friendly-wise, and which he would have greeted--oh, so reverently!--the revisiting shadow of a millionaire, come back regretfully to make amends to an ill-used relative whom the glamour of life and the flesh had led him to misjudge. Ralph felt he could meet his uncle in a fitting spirit, friendly, forgiving, and open to any suggestions the other state might have enlightened him to make; for was he not doing his best to remedy the unfortunate and injudicious dispositions of the will? Had he not already taken the best advice in the province to remedy them, and been told that the will was good, sure, fast, and without flaw--that it would stand, and there was no remedy?

He peered far off into the shadows, and around on either hand. There was nothing but a gradual failing in the light--neither sound nor vision--only, over against him, let the canoe turn as it might, there sat the Indian Paul, an image brown and still, with dull, quiescent eyes, gazing into nowhere, ready at a moment to flash into fire and life, but absent until wanted; plainer than the unseen vision in his thoughts, yet less to be understood--a mute and dusky image of the unknowable. The dark unwinking eyes gleamed with no thought or intelligence; they looked out seemingly beyond, and burned, or rather smouldered, like coals abstracted from the nether fire, awaiting the gust of passion to rouse the slumbering blaze. Black like the mirrors used by necromancers, they showed back, when he looked in them, his own soul stripped of conventional trappings, looking out of them into himself, and seeming to have gathered active evil in their dusky depths--a wish to guide the dubious hand of Fate which deals the cards promiscuously as though her eyes were bandaged, and influence the falling of the aces and kings, just one place now and then to the right or left. We would all like to do that, if we could--just a little--and bring out more clearly as we think, the poetical justice of Time; but it comes right in the end, of itself, without our help, and "if it tarry," as the Prophet says, "wait for it;" it is for the best.

Ralph is impatient, however; and it is not, besides, poetic justice that he is thinking of. Nothing so abstract. It is money, good and lawful coin of the realm, and it is himself and his children, he thinks, who should have it. Gerald, too, he takes it, having attained to that clearer insight which is gained beyond the grave, must wish it likewise, and if the inheritance under that most pernicious will can be turned aside, he feels that he will be fulfilling the present and maturer wishes of the testator. The law may say otherwise; but what of the law? There is a higher law! We have all heard of it, though generally, let us hope, when the issue was unconnected with the possession of dollars. Gerald must have heard of the higher law. Here was a case involving money, and when one comes to money what is more sacred? The forger "gets twenty years" for his crime against property; the culpable homicide five. His fault is only against life, and by good fortune he may escape with a rebuke from the court.

Ralph had been meditating and considering, calmly, earnestly, and at length, in a way he was not accustomed to consider, and out here amid evening's impressive silence, where the brooding peace suggested presences far enough removed at other times in the common hubbub of life; and he felt--what? That he must not give in, or acquiesce in a fiddler's children getting all that money!

"The higher fitness" was he to call it?--and old Gerald himself, who must be near, he was sure, though he could not gain speech of him--must disapprove the misapplication of so many dollars. But how to remedy that ill-judged will? If Mary Herkimer, it said, should so far forget herself as to marry the organist, then the money was to remain accumulating in Jordan's hands for twenty years, and after that was to be paid to her children, secured only against the organist by the provision that in case they died unmarried it should come to the children of Ralph. And Mary had a child. But the child might die. A tremor passed through him at the idea. Or how would it be, he set himself to consider, if the child were lost? Children do get lost sometimes, and he raised himself in the canoe to shake off any oppressiveness that might attach to the idea. Suppose the child were lost--one may innocently suppose anything--suppose it could not be found, and never were found. What then? After a time it would be unreasonable to keep the next in succession out of his property; and this next--his blood tingled to think of it--was his own boy Gerald, a quiet, gentle little boy, such as strangely sometimes is given to an unscrupulous father, as if to try how far he will venture to use the facile tool. If ever his Gerald fell heir to property, Ralph made sure of being able to dispose of it; it seemed to him that it would be like money settled on his wife, which he could still use, though no creditor could lay hands on--a cake quite different from that in the children's proverb, which one can both eat and have at the same time.

But at present, to arrange for Mary's child getting--lost, seemed the pressing question. There would be time enough to influence his boy's plastic mind afterwards.

The infant's plastic mind need not be taken into account, the infant being only a year old. There were no impressions inscribed on it so far, and it would be some time yet before it acquired any. "Get it away now," he told himself, "and it can do nothing for its own restoration. In a week or two it will have forgotten its mother and there will be no troublesome memories in after life tempting it to suspect and try to unravel a mystery in its fate. Yet how, and through whom, to manage it?" His eyes wandered questioningly over the extent of waters, heaving with regulated swell, suggestive of life and personality and thought; but never an answer came back to him out of the sullen grey. His eye swept the horizon and the distant shore, and at last it rested on the apathetic face of his companion; Still as a mask, and showing not a sign of what might be behind, any more than the swaying tide on which they hung betrayed the mysteries of the pool beneath. The man's long straight hair, and the swarthy skin suggestive of a life apart from civilization, could not but call up the wish that the child could become of these. Wooden, hard, and cold, with his bead-like eyes half closed, were the little one in hands like his it would be as safe as if it were in another planet; thinking such thoughts as it must, in Iroquois, understanding Canadian French, and with only enough English to beg or trade with strangers. Paul he knew as restless, and in some sort a vagabond, attending those who hired him on fishing or hunting expeditions, at times joining the Governor of Hudson's Bay as a canoe-man, on his journeys to Fort William, or wandering on the Ottawa from one Indian settlement to another. If he would only undertake to superintend the fortunes of this inconvenient infant, it would become a waif indeed, and lost beyond restoration.

Ralph sighed with profound relief as the idea passed through his mind. There had been another shadowy suggestion present there all the afternoon, which he had been contemplating as it were with averted eyes, shuddering to consider or reduce to shape, yet refusing to dismiss it, harbouring it as one may an outlaw, whom it would be confusion to acknowledge as a guest. If Paul would undertake the business, the child might live out its life as a squaw among the wigwams of the upper Ottawa, without troubling any one. Exposure to the weather would bronze her to the hue of the other children of the wilderness; and if not, there are few bands now-a-days in which there are not half-breeds, proving that all men are of one blood, and that time and circumstances alone are needed to blend the races into a common stream. How infinitely more satisfactory this would be than any fatal accident which could be devised! Yes! it must be done, and Ralph looked up to his companion and in his most friendly tone said,--"Paul."

Instantly the bead-like eyes awoke and turned upon him, sharp and interrogative. The propitiatory modulation had not escaped the delicate ear, bred from infancy to catch and interpret the faintest whisper of the forest--the rustle of a leaf disturbed by passing game, or the stroke of a wing raising eddies in the stagnant air. Since Paul had grown to be a man whiskey and dollars had become the game of his eagerest pursuit, and the mood of the white man he served for the time was the hunting ground where these were to be run down. That something was wanted of him he knew by the extra friendliness of tone. What Englishman having hired him would speak so softly if he did not want something beyond the stipulated services, something of value, and something which he wished to gain cheaply?

"Ouff," was his answer, dubiously interrogative, and altogether non-committal as to whether he would be interested in what was to follow.

"Have you got children?"

"No," with a slight head-shake.

"Would you not like to have one?"

"Papoose come plenty soon."

"Then you have a wife."

"Got squaw;" but still he looked out impassively over the water.

"Would she like to keep a child for me? do you think?--good pay, you know."

"Pay-Ouff?" The words was clearly interrogative now, and the beady eyes returned from their wandering, and settled on the speaker.

"A healthy child twelve months old--would make a lusty squaw. She can make anything of it she likes. No questions will be asked, you know."

"Yours?"

"Not exactly. But I have an interest in the child."

"How much money?"

"Fifty dollars, as soon as she has done the job."

The beady eyes kindled into animation, and the lips grew moist, but the Indian sat motionless as before, and waited in silence for what was to come.

"She will have to take the child, you know. It will not be hard for her to get it at this time of year, when the nurse is out of doors with it most of the time; on the steps, at the garden gate, or down the street. She can easily take it away from the nurse, a little slip of a French girl. A strong Indian woman could easily knock her down and run away with the child under her blanket. Only she must not be caught or the child brought back. You must send her to some reservation far away--up West, say--the farther West the better. I will pay as soon as she gets clear off. But you must not mix me up in the thing, mind that! That is why I offer to pay so much for the job."

"Much for job? Ouff. Le Père Théophile--the judge court--prison long time. Ouff!" and he shook his head slowly.

"You must send her where the curé's admonitions will not reach her. Send her to Brantford, or up the Ottawa; you know better than I do where. You can do a good deal with fifty dollars, you know, Paul."

"Ouff. And send 'way my squaw. Fidèle good squaw."

"Chut! Paul, you rascal! You have plenty more sweethearts you know; and they do not marry you so tight as us white men."

Paul grunted. "The Père Théophile very strict. Make squaw confess right up. Poor Fidèle go to prison--all found out. Paul sent to Isle aux Noix--you too, then."

"Stuff, man! No fear of your letting yourself be caught. Send your squaw away at once, before she has time to go near her priest."

"Police?"

"Not much fear of them, if you are half sharp. But, let me see. It might not be a bad idea if she changed clothes with some other girl before she started West. One squaw is so like another in white folks' eyes. It might turn pursuit in a wrong direction while she is getting away."

"Ouff," Paul grunted again, but nothing more. The two dusky shadows swung silently on the dim bosom of the waters, whitening now beneath the glimmer of the rising moon.

"See here, Paul," Ralph said at last; "I shall be better than my word after all. Here are ten dollars in hand, for you. Come round to my office as soon as the work is done and your squaw safely off, and I will pay you your fifty dollars. Now land us. We shall take first train to the city. We must not be seen together, so will take different cars. Wait for me in the shadow of the cabstand, and I will go up town with you and point out the house."

"Ouff," again was the only answer, but as Paul's long arm stretched out to snatch the money, and under a deft stroke or two of the paddle the canoe shot swiftly down stream to the landing, Ralph understood that the bargain was struck.

CHAPTER V.

[FIDÈLE].

It was a day or two later, in the early forenoon. The air was stagnant, breathlessly awaiting the thunderstorm whose cumulus vapour masses were already drifting up from the distant horizon; though as yet the sun blazed in cloudless fervour overhead, and the world lay panting in the intolerable heat. The very light was sultry, and Mary Selby had drawn close the blinds, to shut it out where she lay on a sofa trying to stir the thick stillness into motion with her fan; but the air was heavy with heat and she felt too faint for the exertion.

She was dropping asleep when Lisette entered with a basket of May apples. They looked so cool in their green pith-like husks that she could not refrain from pulling one or two asunder to reach the blob of fragrant pulp within, tasting and awakening from her langour, before she asked where they had come from. The maid answered that a squaw without was offering them for sale, and the mistress had then to rise and go into an adjoining room to find her purse.

She took the basket in her lap and began to pull open the fruit, separating the small eatable portions from the pod-like rind. "What a feast for Edith!" she said, when she had done; and she called to Lisette to bring the baby.

Lisette appeared looking hot and troubled. "She had not seen Miss Edith," she said, since she brought the fruit to her mistress--"supposed Cato must have got her. She had been looking for the squaw to give her her money, but could not find her. She thought at first she might be prowling round the house looking for something to steal, but she had looked everywhere now, even in the wood shed and coal cellar, but could not see a sign."

Mary rose to join in the search, running out with the maid to question Cato. Cato was in the far-off corner of the garden, delving with a will. The sultry fervour of the air, stifling to men of another race, was like wine to him, recalling the torrid country of his birth, and he tossed the spadefuls gleefully, perspiring and singing as he worked. He had been there all the morning, and knew nothing of Edith or the vanished squaw; but he threw down his spade at once and joined the searchers. The cook came running from her kitchen to assist, and the little band now quickening each other's alarm ran hither and thither over the small domain, peering under every bush, pulling about melon frames and empty boxes, dropping stones down the well, looking under all the beds in the house and even up the chimney. By-and-by they were out of breath and began to think. Then Lisette was sent for a policeman, and Cato to fetch a cab to carry his mistress in search of her husband, and to the police-station in case he could not be found.

The policeman arrived first with grave importance and a note-book. He questioned Lisette, but being an Irishman while she was French, he soon lost himself amongst her voluble but not very lucid English, emphasized with frequent "mon Dieux," and much gesticulation. She was the only one who had seen the squaw, and the last to see the child, but what of that? "Them furreigners were of no account, and nobody could tell what they might be afther intending to mane:" so he turned to the cook, a countrywoman of his own, and from her got ample satisfaction. It is true she had seen nothing, and only knew what she had heard Lisette say, but then she had thought a great deal since; and the thoughts and the hearsay flowed in a mixed and copious, if not too coherent stream, which Paddy could readily follow, it was so much like the meanderings of his own mind. He opened his book and proceeded to write it all down--how she had just finished washing up her morning dishes, and the pan of water was in her hands to empty down the sink at that very moment "whin who should come trapezin' into moy kitchen but the gurrl, all brithless loike, an' hur hair flyin' ivery way at wanst. An' thinks oi to meself, 'whativer's the matther wid the omadhaun?' An' sorr if I was to take me boible oath this moment, thim's the very worrds that passed through me moind whin I seed hur, an' ye may safely write them down, for oi'll stand boy thim before all the judges and juries in the land."

"Oi'll wroite thim down, mum, ye may depind; an' be me troth, it's moighty remarkable them worrds are; an' they do ye credit, mum, though it's me that says it," answered the policeman, relaxing the crooks in his shoulder and elbow, and the frown on his brow, which were with him the concomitants of penmanship. He had not in truth the pen of a ready writer, and it was only by pushing his tongue into one cheek and closing an eye, that he was able to construct the letters at all. That was of little consequence, however; the notebook was solely for his own private eye, or rather for the eye of the public, which could not but respect a policeman who wrote everything down.

It impressed the cook immensely, and flattered her too, for never before had she seen her words put down on paper, and she resolved in her mind there should be a smoking hot morsel for this "supayrior" man, whenever he came round to see her of a winter's afternoon. The man perfectly understood. There were several kitchens on his beat where he was wont to visit, and the cook before him smiled so hospitably that he promised himself not to forget her.

Cato now arrived with the cab for his mistress, and the guardian of the peace, hitherto engrossed with a more important person, turned to the poor lady to favour her with a few words at parting.

"You're purfecly right, ma'am," he said, "to make ivery exurtion. An' if ye call at the station, ye'll foind the jintlemen there both poloite an' accommodatin'. An' ye may go wid an aisy mind, for well be havin' your intherests under consideration all the same as if ye was here. An' ye may rest assured that the sthrong arrum of the law will be laid on the aivil doer sooner or later. An' as for the choild, ma'am, oi'm bound to sthop ivery choild of a year old that's carried through my bait; but ye must give me marks, ye see, or they would soon be complainin' of me at head quarthers. Did the choild squint, now, maybe, ma'am, the purty angel? An' it's moighty becomin' some says that same is; an' kinvanient too, whin they gits older, an' can look both ways at wanst. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Or maybe there was something crooked about wan of its legs, or an arrum, or who knows but there might be something wrong wid its face. A hare lip, now, would be a sure mark, and oi'd arrist the first wan I met. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Oi cuddn't arrest all the childer I moight meet, ye see, an' bring thim here for you to oidintifee. How many teeth, thin, moight your purty darlin' have, ma'am?--though it's misdoubtin' I am if the law gives me power to open the childher's mouths an' look down their throats. But we'll do our best, ye may depind on that. An' it's wishin' ye a plisant dhroive, ma'am, an' thank ye keoindly," as Mary, driven desperate by his gabble, pushed a dollar into his hand and hurried to her cab.

In this way "the law's delays" left the coast clear for the escape of the kidnapper. It was an hour or two before the police throughout the city became aware that a squaw had run away with an infant, and by the time they had begun to be on the alert, the thief had made good her retreat. Wrapped in her bright blue blanket and broad-leafed straw hat, she passed swiftly along, as might any of her fellows who hawk their beadwork and like wares about the streets. A lump of fat, rubbed in the juice of some narcotic herb, pushed into the little mouth had stilled the child's cries and made it sleep as though in its nurse's arms--evidence of the practical wisdom of the wilderness still lingering among its erewhile people, as yet but partially elevated to our higher plane of life. Our women may become doctors of divinity, law, or physic; they can play the piano, or stand in the front rank of culture; but can they handle a baby like the artless daughters of the North-West, whose charges, packed in moss and fur, strapped upon a board and suspended from a branch, sway gently in the breeze, watching and growing silently, like the plants, for hours together, with never a cry to disturb the resting sire or the laborious mother? In the march of improvement some useful knowledge has been dropped by the way, and there are regrettable losses to set off against the manifest gains.

The thunder which had been threatening all the morning began to rumble, the sky darkened, and soon the rain came down in torrents. The ferry-boat between Lachine and Caughnawaga had whistled, and was throwing loose from the wharf, when a squaw--it was Fidèle, Paul's squaw, of course--rain-soaked and draggled, leaped on board. She squatted on the deck beside the three or four others who were the only passengers, cowering over the bundle under her blanket, but not uncovering its face as did the mothers near her.

"She has stolen something," the purser observed to the mate, "and is passing it off for a child. She don't behave to it as the others do. If there is a constable on the pier, I'll give her in charge. But there won't be in this heavy rain, and there would be a row if we attempted to stop her. Best take no notice, I guess; 'taint no business of ours."

On reaching the pier, Fidèle was the first to land and flit away through the village. "I told you so," said the purser, looking wise. "You just see if we don't hear more about that one. Blue blanket, with a tear in one corner; straw hat--brim badly broken; face, like they all have--broad and brown as a butternut; red cheeks--must be young--and real spry on the pins. Guess I'd know her again--know the clothes, any way. Injuns are as like one another as copper cents."

Fidèle reached a cabin in the outskirts, of square logs, whitewashed, one window and a door, with a "lean-to" addition of boards in the rear, where the cooking-stove stood in the warm weather. Entering, she found her sister Thérèse awaiting her, who with very few words proceeded to strip off her own brightly printed cotton gown. Fidèle carried the child into the room behind, and returning, removed her blanket and dripping headgear.

"Ouff," said Thérèse, undoing the gay handkerchief from her head and picking up the hat in evident disgust. "No good."

There was a small silver cross hanging from her neck by a black riband, to which Fidèle stretched out her hand expecting it to be taken off likewise. But no. Thérèse drew back with a head-shake, explaining that that belonged to the ladies of the Convent school, adding, that it was bad enough to give up the smart frock and kerchief in exchange for such a hat and a damp blanket. Fidèle reminded her of the new ones she was to receive from Paul, after she had worn the blanket for a week, and again snatched at the nuns' silver badge of merit. Thérèse caught the hand and bit it. Fidèle screamed, and a battle was imminent, when Paul's growl from the back room, threatening violence, restored calm, and Thérèse sulkily took up the blanket and drew it over her head. Presently, Paul looked out to bid her begone, and Thérèse, through the open door, saw enough to silence remonstrance, and send her trembling away.

Paul entered as Thérèse went out, and stood before his squaw. He spoke in Iroquois, briefly, and in the conclusive tone which admits neither of question nor reply. Another, Messieurs the Benedicts, of those natural gifts dropped by the way in the march of improvement. The squaw never "speaks back," but the "last word" belongs of right to every self-respecting Christian woman, and she takes it. Ask the ladies!

"To work at once," was the purport of Paul's orders, "then sweep up. Put on your sister's gown, and that black blanket over all. Go out by the back, into the bush. Hide in the old roothouse by the corner of the clearing till sundown; then away, across the reservation. Take care you are not seen. Travel all night, going west. Stay in the woods to-morrow till dusk. Travel your quickest till you reach Ogdensburg. Cross the river there, and go west to Brantford, taking your own time. Go to your brother, and tell him to expect me next winter." And so saying, he went out by the front of the house, locking the door behind him.

Fidèle set her teeth and proceeded to obey. It was a repulsive sight which she beheld on entering the inner room, and the work set her to do was horrible. A board or two of the flooring had been pulled up, and there was a sack filled with the earth brought up through the opening. The hole was a foot or two deep, and it was shaped like a grave. Paul must have been terribly in earnest to have it rightly done, seeing he had dug it himself. There was a box--a soap-box seemingly, from the village store--hammer and nails, a bundle of withered grass, and the baby asleep lying on it. The sight of the baby must have been too much for Paul, for part of an old buffalo robe had been thrown over it. He had his design fixed and firm, but having also a squaw why should he likewise discompose himself? Civilization had at least eaten so far into his nature that to extinguish a helpless and unresisting life was no longer delightful enough to compensate the risk--and he had the squaw.

Fidèle sat down on the ground with the poor little thing in her lap. How peacefully it slept! Was it angels whispering in those little ears which made it smile in its sleep, as the ladies of the Convent had said? Could viewless spirits be hovering around, seeing and noting all that passed? Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder expecting almost to behold a presence. Then she shook herself and snorted. Why should she call up shadowy fears to make harder for herself the work she had to do? If she failed to do it she knew full surely the terrors would be all too real--bruises, wounds, possibly death by violence; assuredly violence in any less degree.

The child lay sleeping on her lap, so fair and soft of skin, rounded and dainty in every joint. She could not but recall the picture in the church, of the Holy Mother with her ever Blessed Son, high up above the altar, amid the star-like twinkling of the tapers and the cloudy incense ascending before it in solemn fragrance, while holy nuns and innocent choristers sang hymns of adoration; and all she had learned to think of blessedness beyond the grave, attainable only by more than common goodness, was that it would be like that. The little rings of hair that framed the face were bright and shining like burnished gold, a glory like the gilded halos about the heads in that sacred picture; and the long eyelashes laid peacefully upon the reddening cheeks, like clouds at daybreak, promising so enhanced a brightness at the awakening. Fidèle laid her fingers on the little neck. How dark and evil they looked upon its creamy whiteness! How could she ever grasp it hard and cruelly, till the heaving bosom grew convulsed to bursting at the interrupted breath, and the sweet face grew black and distorted in fruitless gaspings? Her fingers lay more heavily as she thought, and the slight pressure disturbed the sleeper. The plump round shoulder and cheek were drawn together as if tickling were the subject of her dreams; the lips parted in a smile, the eyes unclosed, and the child awoke with a low and merry laugh. She looked so fearless and trustful out of her blue eyes and crowed so gleefully, caressing with her own tiny palms the dusky fingers so near her throat, and with such fell intent, that surely a fiend must have abandoned the thought of doing her harm. And Fidèle was no fiend at all. Ignorance and a narrow horizon had left her sympathies to slumber, but, so far as she could see or know, she was true and good. To serve her man had seemed the chief if not the only end of her being, and she had done it blindly hitherto; but it appeared to her now that to do this thing was more than she ought, or could.

The little hands were stretched up now to her face and the lips strained up to kiss her, and the clear blue light of the eyes penetrated the blackness of her own with a cooling purifying influence which made evil intent like a shadow slink away. She stooped and pressed the little pink lips to her own, and to her forehead and to her breast, and then with a big breath of resolution she got up and set the little one down in a corner while she fulfilled in seeming the orders she had received. She took the dried grass and laid it in the box which she then closed and placed in the bottom of the little grave. The grave she then filled up with earth from the sack, tramping it down tightly, and making the top level with the adjacent soil, and strewing what earth was left in the rain pools outside the house. She then nailed down the flooring as before, and swept the house, making it appear again as it had always been. No one could now suspect that there was a grave beneath his feet, nor could Paul that that grave was empty. Then concealing the child under her blanket she stole into the bush as she had been instructed to do, an instance of how the scrupulously obedient wife, even while obeying, may contrive to effect the exact opposite of her instructions; and showing, perhaps, that the equality and sympathy of the civilized home may secure a man the fulfilment of his wishes no less, at least, than the despotism of the barbarian plan.

In the twilight Fidèle left her place of concealment and stole away under the dripping-trees. The storm was over, and as the light died out of the heavens the stars came twinkling forth, awaiting the rising moon. It was a long and toilsome tramp across the reservation, through wet and tangled herbage, with many a slough and flooded brook, for she had been bidden to avoid observation and dared not avail herself of such paths and rude bridges as suffice the Indians on their own domain. At length when night had fully come, and home-going stragglers were no longer likely to be met, she reached a country road. The march of the stars pointed her way and further she knew not, for she had never been there before. She hurried along clasping her burden, which grew heavier as she went, for she had been travelling for hours. It was late and she had spent a long and a busy day, a day of hard work and much excitement. The child grew heavier, and as her own strength grew less, she clasped it the more tightly. Since she had saved the little one's life, something of a mother's feeling for it had stolen into her heart. It seemed dependent on her, and her very own; and were not the tiny fingers even then spreading themselves against her breast to gather warmth? The night seemed very long, and yet she feared to stop and rest. A pursuer might be on her track even now to seize her for child-stealing. And the child in her arms! She could not but be taken and punished, and the child given back. And even when her punishment was over, and she let out of jail, there would still be Paul to reckon with. And what might he not do? Her heart died within her at the thought, her limbs grew feeble, and the child heavier than lead. She staggered along looking behind her and before, but all was still, no one to be seen. And now she was approaching a village. The moonlight glittered on the tin belfry of the church, and there were houses, low-browed habitant houses, with deep projecting eaves and great black shadows lurking under the stoops and porches. Not a soul was stirring, but from those coverts of obscurity what or who might not rush forth on her as she went by? The law in some mysterious way might be lying in wait for her among the dusky shadows, or Paul himself might be in hiding to watch her pass, and see that he was obeyed. It would be bad for her if she were to meet him now, and bad for the child as well. She stopped, faltering as she thought of it, unable to go on. Ah! there stood one small house at a forking of the road, where one branch ran uphill through well-fenced woods, surrounding a mansion, doubtless, for the moonlight glistened on the tin of the roof; and the other branch ran downward to the village and the church, and there was a broad river beyond, with perhaps no bridge, and she might have to wait for morning to be ferried across. There might be a magistrate in the mansion, she would avoid that, and down in the village the child might be seen. No! she dared not carry it in either direction, but here in the corner of the ways stood the little habitant house, a good half-mile from both. Yet there was no light visible in the window; the house might be uninhabited; not a dog or pig was to be seen around. But then it was late. The voiceless stars and the silent sailing moon were whitening the slumbering world with dim and hazy dreams. Nothing was awake or moving but the vagrant breeze which rustled drowsily among the poplar leaves; and--yes, that decided her--the loose casement of the one window in the roof swaying back and forth against the flapping curtains within. There must be people in the house, people asleep, who would not awake till she had time to escape. She stepped on the little porch, laid down her burden, knocked, and fled into a neighbouring bank of shadow, where her dark blanketed figure was swallowed up in the gloom and she could wait and watch. Her moccasined feet made no sound, but the knock awoke a dog within. The dog barked, and presently a head looked out of the open casement. The baby, uncovered to the night air and laid on the hard boards, began to cry, and the head--it was a woman's and a mother's--recognized the voice of a bébé. The door was opened, the woman came out and took up the child.

"Holy Madaleine!--it is a child! And whose? Another, when there are already six, and the loaf so small, and the sous so hard to come by!"

Fidèle saw, and she may have heard; but she could not understand or enter into the white woman's troubled feelings. Sous scarce and loaves small were just as she knew them, when she knew them at all, which was not always. At least it was better, both for herself and the child, that it should not be with her. She waited till the woman had carried it indoors, and then, like a wandering shadow, she went her way, westward, with the stars and moon. Her friends, her home, her man, were all behind her, and she must not return to them. She must go forward and westward to Upper Canada, a wanderer and alone, with nothing but the stolid patience of her unawakened mind to bear her up. But at least her hands were untainted with the stain of blood, and she could look forward to the long dark winter nights and their howling winds without fear. There would be no voices in them to make her tremble, no cry of a murdered child--no image in the darkness of gasping lips and eyes rolled back in the death-struggle. She could sleep in peace and still ask God and His saints to shelter her.

CHAPTER VI.

[THE MISSES STANLEY].

The Misses Stanley were sitting up far into the night. They had been prostrated in the morning by the sultry oppression of the coming storm. Later, when it burst, and the blackened sky grew ablaze with lightning, and the very earth was trembling at the deafening thunder-claps, they fled to the cellar, closing and bolting the door, in that unreasoning panic which seizes even very sensible people when the heavens begin to utter their terrible voices; and there they gasped, and sighed, and panted, and listened, forgetting even the headache which a while before had nailed their heads to the pillow. "Ah!" they would whisper to each other, "did you hear that?--and that?--One of the chimneys has surely been struck! Can that be the rattle of the falling bricks? Is the roof coming down, do you think? Are we safe here?" and they caught each other's hands and pressed them tightly, and leaned against the door with all their might, to keep it shut against the danger.

"Do you hear that hissing? Has the house taken fire? Do you smell smoke?" It was only the first heavy downpour of the rain upon the resounding tin roof. The steady continuance of the monotone assured them of that in time, as the thunder grew intermittent and less loud. Even the hissing of the rain grew faint after a while, and there came a breath of cooler air down even into the locked-up cellar.

The terror was past, and they crept out of their hole again into the light, like the mice and the spiders and other timid folk. The storm was over and they were happy and safe. They had been able to eat no breakfast; dinner had been standing on the table cooling and getting spoiled while they were trembling in the cellar. So they had tea, and partook of it with relish. The air was purified by the storm; it was reviving to breathe it, and the world, seen through the open windows, though wet, was brightened and refreshed by the rain, like a young girl fresh from the luxury of a good cry.

It was sweet to be alive now, and drink in the scented air, so crisp and fresh, yet without a suspicion of cold; and a while since life had been a burden. The ladies sat and breathed, and sighed, and toyed with existence, and spoke softly to one another, and were silent; and evening wore on and night came, and still it was too pleasant to move. Their lamp was lighted--a dim one, with no garish gleam to disturb enjoyment within, or lure the flapping night-moths and beetles from without--and feeling hungry they thought they would have supper, a most unusual thing. It was but strawberries and cakes with lemonade and cold tea, but for them it was a carouse; they sat picking and sipping for very long, forgetful of time, and most other things, and bathed by gentle stirrings of the soothing air, restful and in soft shadow, while in the moonlit garden without, the white radiance was reflected and broken into a hundred glittering sparkles from every dripping leaf.

"I declare," said the younger sister, "midnight is decidedly the most enjoyable part of the day, at this time of year."

"It is long past midnight, Matilda," her sister answered, "I am afraid to look what hour of the morning it must be."

"Morning? To-morrow morning? This is to-morrow then! I like it; and if we go to bed it will be to-day when we get up again. I prefer to-morrow myself. Let's sit up all night, Tookey dear, and remain in the future 'till daylight does appear,' and turns it into to-day again. Commonplace affair that sun, compared to the moon, and disagreeably hot at this season, besides. I envy the owls, and mice, and bats, and things, coming out at night and sleeping all day. I can't sleep in the daytime."

"The more need to go to bed at night. Come, Tilly!--or how shall we get up in the morning? Late rising puts everything out of joint for all day, and bothers the poor servants sadly."

"Bother the servants! By all means, say I. 'Never do to-morrow what should be done to-day.' You know that is a proverb! And this is to-morrow. It was you who said so; so let us sit still. I think I have proved my case."

"Pshaw, Matilda! don't be childish. And the downstairs windows still to shut up! Bring the light, dear. We'll make the round, and see that all is fast."

It was a nightly procession in which these two ladies walked through all the rooms on the ground floor. Miss Penelope the elder--called Tookey for short by her sister--went first, trying the locked doors, closing and bolting the windows, while Matilda with a candle held aloft, kept close beside her. It fluttered her heart to go into an empty room after dark, and it caught her breath to remain alone in the drawing-room while her sister made the rounds, so she accompanied her close, always within touching distance, and ready to scream should occasion arise. Last of all they closed the drawing-room windows, and barred the heavy inside shutters, provided with bells, so that no housebreaker should be able to enter without ringing; and then with their candlesticks in their hands, having extinguished the lamp, they stood taking a last look, as it were, on the scene of their waking existence, before wending upstairs to sleep and forgetfulness, when----

Bang! The sound seemed deafening, coming as it did so unexpectedly, in the night stillness, with all the world slumbering save themselves. Again! Not so loud this time, it seemed, with the ear already attentive. It was a knock at the hall door. And now the bell was rung, a jangling peal resounding through the house, and under cover of the uproar there was a crunching on the gravel as of hasty steps.

The sisters looked at one another with parted lips, and eyes that sought help and counsel and assurance each in the other's. Matilda assuredly had neither strength nor wisdom for their joint support, but her need was so great and she looked with such fervent trustfulness at her sister, that Penelope felt she must brace herself up and take courage for both, though her heart was faint within her. She was the object of a faith which supported by its helpless reliance, and stimulated her to effort that it might not prove misplaced. So strength ere now has been bred of double weakness, though in this case it was put forth but falteringly at first.

There was a shuffling now and a whispering in the lobby. Penelope held the door handle and listened. Matilda threw her weight against the door, expecting it would be burst open; but it was not, and thus they stood breathlessly awaiting some unspecified terror which did not arrive, till doubt grew too painful, and Penelope in very desperation flung wide the door. Three pale faces were disclosed blinking at the gleam of the ladies' candles, and Matilda screamed. An answering scream was raised by the three pale faces startled by the sudden flash of light in the darkened passage, and already prepared to be frightened by anything which might happen.

"How very foolish!" said Miss Penelope, who, having wrought herself up to do battle of some kind, had her nerves better in hand. "Do you not see it is the servants? Awakened by the noise, they have come downstairs, and seeing light in here at such an hour, supposed it was a thief. Now we must see who is at the front door."

"No, Penelope! I implore you, do not!"

"Oh, ma'am," said the cook, "if anything happens to you what will become of us?" and the other maids looked deprecating in concert, while even Miss Matilda ejaculated, "What, indeed?"

"We cannot stand here all night! And we could not go to bed with burglars perhaps waiting on the doorstep till we are asleep."

"Think, Penelope, if they should burst in when we unbar the door!"

"They had better not. Is there not my father's gun?" and so saying she stepped on a chair to reach down that redoubtable weapon from where it rested on two brass hooks, high up over the fireplace in the hall. There it had rested ever since the decease of the late lamented Deputy Assistant Commissary General--called General for short, or perhaps for honour--the parent of the Misses Stanley.

"Oh, Tookey! don't!" cried Miss Matilda. "It might go off and hurt some one," and the maids drew up their shoulders to their ears, and looked apprehensive in chorus.

"Nonsense!" answered Miss Stanley severely. "Do you not see I am pointing it to the ceiling?"

"One never knows, such strange things happen with guns. The barrels burst, they say, or else they go off, and shoot the people they have no business to touch, and let others escape who really ought to have been hit. Remember how poor Major Hopkins' gun went off, nobody knew how, and killed papa's spaniel, and let the duck fly away. I shall never forget how cross poor papa was when he came home, and he never asked Major Hopkins to come again." And Miss Matilda looked regretful, as does the Historic Muse when she registers the might-have-beens. "Pray point the muzzle up the chimney, dear; it is safer."

Penelope, with a disdainful shrug, moved to the door, raised her firearm to her shoulder, and motioned the maids to undo the fastenings and open. They obeyed, and as the door flew back there entered a puff of wind which blew out the candles and made everybody scream--everybody except Miss Stanley. She, like a hero, stood to her gun, and pulled the trigger--she pulled it frequently, in fact, but as the piece was not loaded, that made no difference. Indeed, it was much better, her timid companions were saved the dreadful bang, while she herself had the heroic feeling of having shot a gang of burglars; that is, she would have shot them if her gun had been loaded, and they had been there to be shot. But they were not, fortunately for themselves. There was no one there at all. The band of affrighted females came slowly to realize the fact, as their panic subsided, and they re-lit the candles. "But who," they began to inquire, "could it be, who had knocked so loudly and rung the bell?" As their tremors abated they ventured out upon the verandah, which ran round the house, to reconnoitre. There was no one there, and again they grew uneasy. The visitant must have concealed himself in the shrubbery, and if so, he must certainly be evil-disposed. Miss Stanley took up her gun again; she had no misgiving about handling it now, and it looked as formidable as ever, for of course the man in the shrubbery could not know that it was unloaded, and she made sure he would not put its being so to the test.

"Here is a large parcel, ma'am!" cried the parlour-maid, "shall I bring it in? It is covered with old matting and tied with a shoe-string."

"Take care, Rhoda!" said Matilda. "Let us look at it first. I have heard of thieves tying themselves up in parcels in order to be taken into the houses they intended to rob. Perhaps you had better fire your gun into this, Penelope; I have known that to be done in a story with the best effects."

Miss Penelope came to look. "I think we may take this one in, Tilly, without fear. If it contains a man he cannot be very big. See! I can lift the bundle myself. Bring it in, Rhoda; we will examine it in the dining-room."

"It must be living, ma'am! I see it moving. Will it bite?" and she took it up suspiciously and with precaution.

A cry, small and plaintive, was now heard.

"Do you hear that?" said Miss Matilda, "mewing--I think. Can anybody have brought us a cat and kittens? A practical joke I suppose they think it. Yet I like kittens,--soft little balls of fluff and fun," she went on, putting on her gloves at the same time, "but strange cats may bite or scratch. Very impertinent, was it not, of the senders? They mean, I suppose, that we are old maids. Well! If we are, at least it is from choice, and I venture to say we are more comfortably situated than the husband or wife of this impertinent."

"Tush! sister," said Penelope, glancing to the servants standing at the lower end of the table and full of curiosity. "Have you a penknife? Quick! No cat ever mewed like that."

And now indeed it was a lusty cry, distinctly human and articulating mamma. The string was cut, the wrappings were kicked away by the struggling contents of the parcel, and a good-sized, healthy infant, well nourished, well clad, flushing red in the opening paroxysm of a big cry on waking, was disclosed to view.

"A little child!" cried Miss Matilda in transports.

"What a frightful din!" said Miss Stanley, putting her fingers in her ears. "To think that anything so small should make so much noise! What ever shall we do with it?"

"Give it some milk, of course; bathe it, put it to bed. That is what they always do with babies, I believe. Cook! get hot water at once--and a large basin--and some milk--and--and--everything else that is necessary. Quick! you others, and help her," she added, observing the lingering steps of the maids, yawning now, and utterly disgusted and wishing themselves back in bed, though a moment ago they had been all wakefulness and interest.

It was curious to see how Matilda took the lead, now that her sympathies were appealed to, while her practical sister, the mistress and manager of the establishment, stood aside bewildered and confused. She took the child in her arms and walked up and down, dandling it, singing, and purring forth floods of baby talk, till the little one stopped short in the middle of its lament to look at her, and ascertain who this voluble person might be. Then, finding she could make out nothing by her scrutiny, she prepared to resume with augmented vigour, but Matilda would not have it. She sat down with the doubter in her lap, bent over it, and made a bower for it with her curls, crooning more volubly than ever, and tickling it with the ringlet points, till the astonished infant grew confused, forgot that it had intended to scream, and presently was smiling and crowing and pulling the ringlets like bell-ropes.