Wilson's Tales of the Borders

AND OF SCOTLAND.

HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.

REVISED BY ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,

One of the Original Editors and Contributors.

VOL. XXI.
LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

1884.

CONTENTS.

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.

THE BURGHER'S TALES.

THE HOUSE IN BELL'S WYND.

Some reference has been made by Mr. Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh, to a story which looks very like fiction, but the foundation of which, I dare to say, is the following, derived at most third-hand, from George Gourlay, a blacksmith, whose shop was in the Luckenbooths, his dwelling-house in Bell's Wynd, and who was himself an actor in the drama.

It is not saying much for the topography of an Edinburgh wynd, to tell that it contained a flat such as that occupied by this blacksmith; but he who would describe one of these peculiar features of the Old Town, would be qualified to come after him who gave a graphic account of the Dædalian Labyrinth, or pictured Menander. Such a wynd has been likened to the vestibule to a certain place, more hot than cozy—at another time, to two long tiers of catacombs with living mummies piled row over row; but, resigning such extravagances, we may be within the bounds of moderation, and not beyond the attributes of fair similitude, when we say that one of these wynds is like a perpendicular town where the long, narrow, dark streets, in place of extending themselves, as they ought, on the earth's surface, proceed upwards to the sky. And which sky is scarcely visible—not that, if the perpendicular line were maintained, the empyrean would be so very much obscured, but that the inhabitants, in proportion as they rise away from mother earth and society, make amends by jutting out their dwellings in the form of Dutch gables, so as to be able to converse with their neighbours opposite on the affairs of the world below—that world above, to which they are so much nearer, being despised, on the principle of familiarity producing contempt. Then the sky-line would so much delight a Gothic architect, composed as it is of a long multiplicity on either side of pointed gables, lum-tops venting reek and smoke, dried women's heads venting something of the same kind. Next, the dark boles of openings to these perpendicular passages—so like entries to coal cellars,—yet where myriads of human beings pass and repass up to and down from these skyward streets, which have no name; being the only streets in the wide world without a nomenclature.

We picture the said George Gourlay and his wife, of an evening, at the time of the history of Bell's Wynd, and other such wynds, when a change was taking place among the masses there. The New Town was beginning to hold out its aristocratic attractions to the grandees and wealthy merchants, who had chosen to live so long in so pent-up a place. Ay, many had left years before, or were leaving their lairs to be occupied by those who never thought they would live in houses with armorial bearings over the door. So it was that flats were shut up, and little wonder was created by the circumstance of windows being closed by inside shutters for years. The explanation simply was, that the good old family would come back to its old lares, or that no tenant could be got for the empty house. And then, of course, the furniture had flitted to the palaces beyond the North Loch; and what interest could there be in an empty house with the bare walls overhung by cobwebs, or gnawed into sinuosities by hungry rats, thus cruelly deserted by the cooks who ought to have fed them? Yet, in that same stair where Gourlay lived, there was a door with a history that could not be explained in that easy way.

"I say it puzzles me, guidwife Christian, and has done for years."

"And mair it should me, George. You have been here only nine years, but 'tis now twenty-one since my father was carried to the West Kirk; and a year afore that I heard him say the house was left o' a morning: nor sound nor sigh o' human being has been heard in't since that hour."

"And then the changes," said Geordie, "hae ta'en awa the auld folk whase gleg een would hae noticed it. As for Bailie or Dean o' Guild, nane o' them hae ever tirled the padlock."

"But the factor, auld Dallas o' Lady Stair's Close, dee'd shortly after my father, and that will partly account for't."

"It accounts for naething, guidwife Christian," rejoined he. "Whar's the laird? Men are sometimes forgetfu'; but what man, or woman either, ever forgets their property or heirlooms? Ye ken, love Christian," he continued, looking askance at her, half in seriousness and half in humour, "I am a blacksmith, and hae routh o' skeleton keys."

"And never ane o' them will touch that padlock while I'm in your keeping, Geordie. I took ye for an honest man."

An opposition or check which Gourlay did not altogether like; for, in secret truth, he had long contemplated an entry by these said skeleton keys, and, like all people who want a justification for some act they wish to perform, not altogether consistent with what is right, he had often in serious playfulness knocked his foot against the old worm-eaten, wood-rusted, dry-rotted door, as if he expected some confined ghost to shriek, like that unhappy spirit of the Buchan Caves, "Let me out, let me out!" whereupon Mr. Gourlay would have been, we doubt not, more humane than his old father-god, who would not let the pretty mother of love out of his iron net.

"Honest! there's twa-three kinds o' honesty, wife Christian. There's the cauld iron or steel kind, that will neither brak nor bend—the lukewarm, that is stiff—and the red hot, which canna be handled, but may be twisted by a bribe o' the hammer, or the cajoling o' the nippers. What kind would ye wish mine to be?"

"The cauld, that winna bend."

"And canna be fashioned to man's purposes, and made a picklock o'? Weel, weel, Christian, I'm content."

But George Gourlay was not content, neither then nor for several nights; nor even in that hour when, having watched guidwife Christian as she lay on the liver side, and heard the "snurr, snurr," of her deepest sleep, and listened to the corresponding knurr of the old timepiece as it beat hoarsely the key-stone hour between the night and the day, he slipt noiselessly out of bed, and listened again to ascertain whether his stealthy movement had disturbed his wife. All safe—nor sound anywhere within the house, or even in the Wynd, where midnight orgies of the new-comers sometimes annoyed the remaining grandees not yet gone over the Loch; no, nor rap, rap, upwards from the spirits in the deserted house right below him, inviting him by the call of "Let me out." Most opportune silence,—not even broken by guidwife Christian's Baudron watching with brain-lighted eyes at some hole in a meat-press. And dark too, not less than Cimmerian, save only for a small rule of moonlight, which, penetrating a circular hole in the shutter, played fitfully, as the clouds went over its source, on a point of the red curtains—sometimes disappearing altogether. By a little groping he got his hose; nor more would he venture to search for, but finding his way by touch of the finger, he reached the kitchen, where he lighted the end of a small dip. A sorry glimmer indeed; but it enabled him to lay his hands on a bunch of crooked instruments, which he lifted so stealthily that even a mouse would have continued nibbling forbidden cheese, and been not a whit alarmed. Then there was the more dangerous opening of the door leading to the tortuous stair—dangerous, for that quick ear ben the house, which knew the creak as well as she did the accents of Geordie Gourlay. Ah, tutum silentii præmium! has he not gone through all this, and reached the stair without a sneeze or sigh of mortal to disturb him!

So far was he fortunate; and slipshod in worsted of wife Christian's own working, who so little thought, as she pleased herself with the reflection of the softness for his feet, that she was to be cheated thereby, he slipped gently down the steps on this enterprise he had revolved in his mind for years and years of bygone time. Come to the identical old door. He had examined it often by candle-light before; and as for the rusty hasp and staple, and appended padlock, he knew them well, with all their difficulties to even smith's hands of his horny manipulation. He laid down the glimmering candle and paused. What a formidable object of occlusion, that door by which no one had entered for twenty years! Geordie knew nothing of the old notion, that time fills secret and vacant recesses with terrified ghosts, frightened away from the haunts of men; yet he had strange misgivings, which, being the instinctive suggestions of a rude mind, had a better chance for being true to nature. Perhaps the cold night air, to which his shirt offered small impediment, helped his tremulousness; and that was not diminished when, on seizing the padlock, a scream from some drunken unfortunate in the Wynd struck on his ear and died away in the midnight silence. Nor was he free from the pangs of conscience, as he thought of the injunctions of guidwife Christian, and, more than these, the sanctions of morality and the laws; but then he was not a thief,—only an antiquary, searching into a dungeon of time-hallowed curiosities and relics. He laid his hard hand on the rusty padlock. He was accustomed to the screech of old bolts, but that now was as if it came from some of Vulcan's chains whereby he caught the old thieves. The key-hole was entirely filled up with red rust, which, like silence stuffing up the mouth, had kept the brain-works unimpaired; so it needed no long time till, through his cunning crooks, he heard the nick of the receding bolt. A tug brought up the hasp, and now all ought to have been clear; but it was otherwise. Time, with his warpings and accumulating glues, had been there too long—the door would not give way, even to a smith's right hand; but Geordie had a potency in his back, before which other unwilling impediments of the same kind, sometimes with a debtor's resistance at the other side, had given way. That potency he applied; and the groan of the hinges responding fearfully to his ears, the vision was at length realized, of that door standing open for the passage of human beings.

So far committed, Geordie's courage came with a drawing up of his muscles; and muttering between his teeth, which risped like files, "I will face any one except the devil," he lifted the candle, the glimmer of which paled in the thick air of the opening. He waved it up and down before he entered; but it seemed as if the weak rays could not find their way in the dense atmosphere—enough, notwithstanding, to show him dimly a long lobby. He snorted as the accumulated must stimulated his nostrils; but there was more than must—the smell was that of an opened grave which had been covered with moil for a century. Yet his step was instinctively forward,—the small light flitting here and there like the fitful gleam of a magic lantern. Half groping with the left hand, as he held the candle with his right, he soon began to discover particulars. There were three doors, opening no doubt to rooms, on his left; and as the light—becoming accustomed, like men's eyes, to the dark—shone forwards towards the end, he saw another door, which was open. Desperate men—and Geordie was now wound up—aim at the farthest extremities. He made his way forward, laying down each stocking-clad foot as if in fear of being heard by the family below, whose hysterics at a tread above them at midnight, and in that house, would lead to inquiry and detection.

He came at length to the open door at the end of the lobby, and ventured in. He was presently in the middle of the kitchen, holding the candle up to see as far around him as he could. Geordie had never read of those scenes of enchantment where veritable men and women, with warm blood in their veins, were, on being touched by a wand, changed into statues with the very smile on their faces which they wore at the moment of transmutation; in which state they were to remain for a hundred years, till the wand was broken by a fairy, when they would all start into their old life. No matter if he had not, for here there was no change: the kitchen was as it had been left, twenty years before. The plate-rack, with the china set all along in regular order—no change there; nor on the row of pewter jugs, one of which stood on the dresser, with a bottle alongside, and a screw with the cork still on its spiral end. No doubt some one had been drinking just on the eve of the cessation of the living economy. A square fir-table stood in the middle, supplied with plates ready to be carried to the dining-room; and these plates were certainly not to have been supplied with imaginary meals, like those in the Eastern tale, for, as he held the candle down towards the grate, yet half filled with cinders, he saw the horizontal spit with the skeleton of a goose stuck on it. The motion of the spit had been suspended when the works ran out, and Baudron had feasted upon the flesh when it became cold. Nay, that cat, no doubt cherished, lay extended in anatomy before the fireplace. Nor could it be doubted that the roast had not been ready; for the axe lay beside a piece of coal half splintered, for the necessities of the diminished fire. An industrious house too, wherein the birr of the wheel and the sneck of the reel had sounded: the pirn was half filled, and the wisp, from which the thread had been drawn, lay over the back of a chair, as it had been taken from the waist of the servant maid. But why should not the sluttish girl's bed have been made at a time of the day when a goose was roasting for dinner? Nor did Geordie try to answer, because the question was as far from his wondering mind, as the time when he stood there himself enchanted was from the period of that marvellous dereliction.

With eyes rounder, and wider, and considerably glegger, than when he left goodwife Christian snoring in her bed, so unconscious of what her husband was to see, he retraced his steps to the kitchen-door, and turning to the right, opened that next to him. It was the dining-room. He peered about as his wonder still grew. The long oak-table, in place of the modern sideboard, ran along the farther end, whereon were decanters and two silver cups; and not far from these a salver, with a shrivelled lump, hard as whinstone, and of the form of a loaf, with a knife lying alongside. The very cushion of the settee opposite to the fireplace had preserved upon it the indentation of a human head. But much less wonderful was the cloth-covered table, with salt-cellars and spice-boxes, and plates, with knives and forks appropriated to each; for had not Geordie seen the goose at the fire in the kitchen! The indispensable pictures, too, were all round on the dingy walls—every one a portrait—staring through dust; and a special one of a female, with voluminous silks, and a high flour-starched toupee, claimed the charmed eye of the blacksmith. Even in the vertigo of his wonder, he looked stedfastly at that beautiful face; nor did the painted eye look less stedfastly at him, as if, after twenty years, it was again charmed by the vision of a living man, to the withdrawing of that eye from the figure alongside of her, so clearly that of her husband. That they were master and mistress of this very house he would have concluded, if he had been calm enough to think; but he was, alas, still under the soufflé of the bellows of romantic wonder.

Where next, if he could take his eye off that beautiful countenance? There was a middle door leading into another room: he would persevere and still explore. Holding up the fast-diminishing candle, he looked in. There was a female figure there, standing in the dark, beside a bed. It was arrayed in a long gown, reaching to the feet, of pure white (as accords). It moved. Geordie could see it plainly: it was the only thing with living motion in all that still and dreary habitation. Hitherto his hair had kept wonderfully flat and sleek, but now it began to crisp, and swirm, and rise on end; while his legs shook, and the trembling had made the glimmer oscillate in every direction, whereby sometimes it turned away from the figure, again to illuminate it sparingly, and again to vibrate off. He could not, notwithstanding his terror, recede; nay, he tried ineffectually to fix the ray on the very thing that thrilled him through every nerve. Verily, he would even go forward, under the charm of his fear, which, like other morbid feelings, would feed on the object which produced it. First a step, and then a step. The glimmer was again off the mark; and when he got to the bed, the figure was gone—according to the old law.

But the bed was too certainly there, with its deep green curtains, which were drawn close, indicating midnight; and yet the goose at the fire, and the table laid! Nor could Geordie explain the physical anomaly, probably for the reason that he did not try. His candle was wasting away with those endless oscillations: the figure in white itself had run off with the half of the short stump; and he feared again to be left in the dark, where he would have a difficulty in finding his way out. Yet he felt he must draw these deep green curtains: the broad hand of Fate was upon his shoulders. He seized them hysterically, and pulled them aside far enough to let in his head and the candle hand. A dark counterpane was covered quarter-inch thick with dust; but the odour was not now of must, it was a choking flesh and bone rot, scarcely bearable; even the light felt the heaviness, and almost died away in his tremulous fingers. There were clothes beneath the counterpane, and a long, narrow tumulus down the middle, as if a body were there, of half its usual size; but little more was visible, till the eye was turned to the top where the pillow lay, half up which the dark counterpane was drawn. There was a head on the pillow, partly covered by the coverlet, partly by a round-eared mutch—once, no doubt, white as snow, now brown as a Norway rat's back; yet Geordie would peer, and peer, till he saw an orbless socket of pure white bone, and a portion of two rows of white teeth clenched. An undoing of the clothes would have shown him—how much more? But his shaking was now a palsy of the brain, and he could not undo the suspected horror. He turned suddenly; and, as the green curtain fell with a flap, the dip lost its flame, and a black reek vied with that heavy cadaverousness. He was in the dark.

Such is the effect of degrees, that, as he groped and groped in a place where he had lost all landmarks, and the topography had become a confusion, he could have wished to see again the figure in white; which, from its own light, could surely, as a spirit, lead him out. His brain got into a swirl. If the white figure was the spirit of that thing which he had seen so partially in the bed, would it not return to flit about its own old tenement? yet not a trail of that white light cast a glance anywhere. Groping and groping, knocking his head against unknown things, he turned and turned, but could not find the lobby. He had got through another door, but not that leading outwards. He must have got into another room; for he felt and grasped things he had not heretofore seen. Then the noise he had made had such a dreary sound, falling on his strained, nerve-strung ear! His hand shrunk at everything he touched, as if it had been a deaf adder, or deadly nag—above all, a shock of hair, from which he recoiled more than ever yet, till the devious turns round and round obliterated every recollection of what he had understood of localities. So far he must have retraced his steps; for he had again the green curtain in his left hand without knowing it, and the right went slap upon that round-eared mutch, and the bone that was under the same. Recalled a little to his senses, he got at length to the kitchen, circumambulated and circummanipulated the table, and groped his way to the door in the end of the lobby, through which he had first entered. All safe now by the lines of the two walls, he hugged the outer door as if it had been a twenty years' absent friend, a father, or a wife.

Nor did he take time to relock the padlock. He had, besides, lost his crooked instruments. Ah! how sweet to get into a warm bed safe and sound, after having fancied that from such a white figure hovering round dry bones he had heard—for Geordie had read plays—

"I am that body's spirit,
Doomed for a certain time to walk the night;
And for the day confined, to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away."

How delightful to Geordie was that snore of wife Christian, as she still lay on the liver side, perhaps dreaming of seraphim!

The adventure of that midnight hour dated the beginning of a change on George Gourlay. One might have said of him, with the older playwright who never pictured a ghost, quod scis nescis; for then never a word scarcely would he speak to man or beast, nay, not even to a woman, who has a power of breaking the charm of that silence in others of which their sex are themselves incapable—even, we say, wife Christian. There are many Trophonian caves in the world about us, only known to ourselves, out of which, when we come, we are mute, because we have seen something different from the objects of the sunlight; yea, if, as the Indians say, the animals are the dumb of earth, these are the dumb of heaven. Certain at least it is, that while Geordie did not hesitate before that night to use his voice in asking an extravagant price for an old lock, or even damning him who below made more noise than nails, he never now used that tongue in such dishonesties and irreverences. But, what was even more strange, wife Christian did not seem to have any inclination to break his silent mood; nay, if he was moody, so was she. Then her eyelight was so changed to him, that he could not thereby, as formerly, read her thoughts. Perhaps she took all this on from imitation; but she was not one of the imitative children of genius—rather a hard-grained Cameronian, to whom others' thoughts are only as a snare; yet, might she not have had suspicions of her husband's silence? All facts were against such a supposition, except one: that, on the following morning, she observed dryly, that the dip she had left in the kitchen had burnt away of its own special accord. Vain thoughts all. Geordie was simply "born again;" and old women do not speak to infants, until, at least, they can hear.

Nor did this mood promise amendment even up to that night, when a rap having come to the door, Geordie started, while guidwife Christian went undismayed to open the same; for, moody as she was, she was not affected by evening raps as he was, and had been since that eventful midnight. But if the sturdy blacksmith was afraid before she obeyed the call, he was greatly more so after she had opened the door, and when she led into the parlour an old man, with hair more than usually grey even for his years, with a staff in his hand, bearing up, as he came in, a tall, wasted body—so wasted, that he might have been supposed to have waited all this time for a leg of that goose which had been so very long at the fire. The grief of years had eaten up his face, and only left untouched the corrugations itself had made. Yet withal he was a gentleman; for his bow to Geordie was just that which the grandees of the Wynd made to each other as they passed and repassed. No sooner was he seated, holding his cane between his shrivelled legs, and his sharp grey eye fixed on the blacksmith, than the latter became as one enchanted for a second time, with all the horrors of the first catalepsy upon him, by the process of the double sense insisted for by Abercromby, but thus known in Bell's Wynd before his day. Yes, Geordie was entranced again, nor less guidwife Christian—both staring at the stranger, as if their minds had gone back through long bygone years to catch the features of a prototype for comparison with that long, withered face, so yellow and grave-like; then Christian looked stealthily, and concealed her face.

"You are a blacksmith, Mr. Gourlay?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long have you been here in Bell's Wynd?"

"Nine years, come Beltane Feast."

"Not so much as the half of twenty," said the stranger, more inwards than outwards.

"Twenty!" ejaculated Christian, as if she could not just help herself.

And Geordie searched her rigid face for a stray sympathy, repeating within the teeth that very same word—"Twenty."

"Then," continued the old man, "you cannot tell who occupied the flat below at that long period back?"

"No."

"And who occupies it now?"

Geordie was as dumb as the white figure, or as the head on the pillow with the rat-brown mutch; and this time Christian answered for him:

"It hasna been occupied for twenty years, sir; and it has been shut up a' that lang time."

"Twenty years!" ejaculated the old man, pondering deeply, and sighing heavily and painfully.

"Do any of you know Mr. Thomas Dallas, the Clerk to the Signet, who lived once in Lady Stair's Close?"

"Dead eighteen years since," replied the wife.

"Ah, I see," rejoined the stranger; "and so the house has been thus long closed!" Then musingly, "But then it will be empty—no furniture, nothing but bare walls."

"Naebody kens," replied George, still busy examining the face of the questioner, as if he could not get it to be steady alongside the image in his own mind.

"You can, of course, open a padlock?"

"Ou ay, when it's no owre auld, and the brass slide has been well kept on the key-hole." Then, as if recollecting himself, "I hinna tried an auld ane for years."

"One twenty years unopened?" rejoined the stranger.

Geordie was again dumb and rigid.

"Indeed, sir," replied Christian, who saw that her husband was under some strong feeling, "he can pick ony lock."

"The very man," said the mysterious visitor. "And now, madam, will you allow me to take the liberty of requesting to be for a few moments the only one present in this room with your husband, as I have some business of a very secret nature to transact with him, which it would not be proper for a woman, even of your evident discretion and confidence, to be acquainted with?"

"I dinna want ye to gang," whispered George.

"And what for no?" muttered she. "Let evil-doers dree the shame o' their deeds. Didna ye say to me ye were an honest man, ay, even as cauld iron or steel, and what ought ye to hae to fear? And now, sir," turning round, "I will e'en tak me to the kitchen, that what ye want wi' George Gourlay you may do in secret, even as he has been secret wi' me."

Then guidwife Christian went out, casting, as she went, a look of something like triumph at her husband.

"And now, George Gourlay," said the stranger, "the secret thing I have to transact with you, and for which I have come three thousand miles, is to ask you to go with me this night and open the padlock of the door of that house below, which has not been opened for twenty years."

"I winna, I canna, I daurna, sir. Gang to the Dean o' Guild. There's a dead body in the green bed, and there's a spirit in a lang white goun that watches it."

The hand of the stranger shook, as he grasped spasmodically his staff; his teeth for a moment were clenched; and he plainly showed a resolution not to seem moved by that which as clearly did move him to the innermost parts of his being. Nor did it now escape Gourlay, as he sat and gazed at him, that he was the original of that picture in the dining-room, which hung by the side of the beautiful lady.

"Then you must have been in?"

Geordie was silent, meditating on some new light gradually breaking in upon him.

"You must have been in, and—and—know the secret?"

"I ken nae secret, except it be that the goose which has been at the fire for twenty years is no roasted yet."

"That goose at the fire even yet!" ejaculated the stranger.

"Ay, and the thread still on the pirn."

"Pirn!" responded he mechanically.

"Ay, and the bottle standing on the dresser along by the pewter mug."

"Mug!"

"Ay, and the half-cut loaf on the oaken table, with alongside o't the knife."

"Knife!"

"Ay, and to cap a', the green bed with the dark red counterpane, and in it still the corpse."

"Corpse!"

"So, so," continued the stranger, "I have been wandering the wide world for twenty years to escape from myself, as if a man could leave his shadow in the east when he has gone to the west, and all that time found the vanity of a forced forgetfulness where the touch of God's finger still burned in the heart. Ay, nor long prairies, nor savannahs where objects are cast behind and not seen, nor thick woods which exclude the sun, nor rocky caves by the sea-shore, where there is only heard the roaring of the waves, could untwine the dark soul from its recollections. But other things of earth and human workmanship rot and pass away, as if all were vanity, but man's spirit; and yet here it has been decreed by Heaven, and wrought by miracle, that things of flesh, and bone, and wood, and dried grass should be enchanted for duration, yea, kept in the very place, and form, and lineaments they possessed in a terrible hour, the memory of which they must conserve for a purpose. Speak man: Have those sights and things taught you aught of a purpose? Why look ye at me as if you saw into my heart, and grin as if you were gifted with the right of revenge? What thoughts have you—what wishes? What do you premeditate?"

"Just nae mair than that you'll no get me to enter that house again."

The stranger's head was bent down in heavy sorrow; and, after being silent for a while, he rose, and bidding Gourlay good night, went away, saying he would get another locksmith. The strange manner of Christian was now made even more remarkable, as, taking her bonnet and cloak, she sallied forth, late as the hour was, proceeding up the Wynd, and muttering as she went, "The very man, the very man," she made direct for Blackfriars Wynd, where she stopt, and looked up to a small window on the right hand. There was light in it; and ascending a narrow stair she reached a door, which she quietly opened. A woman was there, busily spinning. The birr ceased as the door opened.

"Ann Hall," cried Christian, as she entered, "he is come, he is come! I kent his face the moment I saw it."

"Patience, patience, Christian," replied the woman, "what are you to do?"

"There maun be nae patience, when God says haste."

"Canny, canny. The wa's are thin and ears are gleg. I can hear a whisper frae the next room. Now, I'll spin and you'll speak."

And so she began to produce the dirl by turning the wheel and plying the thread.

"What although ye hae seen him? that maks nae difference. Your aith is still afore the Lord; and though we are forbidden to swear, when we hae sworn we hae nae right to brak that aith, as if it were a silly wand, to be broken and cast awa' at the end o' our journey. And then ye maun keep in mind, if you brak your word, ye stretch his neck."

"I carena," replied Christian. "The Lord maun hae His ain for reward, and Satan maun hae his ain, too, for punishment. Sin' ever that eery night when in my night-shirt I followed George into the house, and saw what I saw, the Spirit o' the Lord has been busy in my heart; and my aith has been to me nae mair than a windlestrae in the east wind, to be blawn awa' where it listeth. Ye are, like mysel', o' the Auld Light, and ken what it is to hae the finger o' command laid upon ye."

"We maun obey; but we maun ken whether the finger is for the will o' the auld rebel o' pride, wha rebelled in heaven, or Him wha says to the murderer, Get ye among the rocks or caves o' secrecy, and I will search ye out, and rug ye into the licht."

"And what for should I no ken whase finger it is?" said wife Christian. "Have I no seen what I have seen? For what are a' thae things keepit, as man keeps the apple o' his e'e? Is na the rust and the worm, ay, and Time's teeth, aye eating, and gnawing, and tearing, so that everything passes awa' to make room for others, as if the hail warld were a whirligig turning round like your ain wheel there for ever and ever?"

"Ay, the Lord's hand, na doubt. The deil doesna keep the instruments and signs o' his evil, but shuffles them awa' in nooks and corners to be out o' the een o' his victims."

"But hae I no laid my very hand on the fleshless head o' the bonny misguided creature? Wae tak the man wha brought sae muckle beauty to the earth to rot, and yet hae nae grave to cover it!"

"Weel mind I o' her," said Ann, as she still made the wheel go round. "How she sailed up the Wynd wi' her load o' silks and satins, and the ribbons that waved in the wind, as if to say, Look here; saw ye ever the like among the daughters o' men?"

"It was left to testify, woman, naething else; but the glimmer o' Geordie's candle showed me a' the lave. Ay, the very goose I plucked, and drew, and singed, and put on the spit—what for is it there, think ye, cummer, but to testify? and the pewter jug I drank out o' that forenoon, and my ain bed I hadna time to mak—what for but to testify?"

"And punish. But oh, woman, he had sair provocations. Wha was that goose for?"

"For her lover, nae doubt; for my master wasna expected hame for a week. And was I no guilty mysel', wha played into her hands, and was fause to him wha fed me?"

"Haud your peace, then, and say naething. The Lord will forgi'e you."

"Oh God, hae mercy on me, a sinner; and tak awa' frae me this transgression, that I may lift up my voice in the tabernacle without fear or trembling!"

The wheel turned with greater celerity and more noise, and wife Christian was on her knees, beating her bosom and crying for mercy.

"Say nae mair, woman," cried the spinner, "and do nae mair. Let the corpse lie in the green bed, and a' thing be in the wud-dream o' that dreary house; do nae mair."

"But the Lord drives me."

"Just sae; and he wham you would hang on the wuddy will stand up against ye, and swear ye were the cause o' the death o' his braw leddie, for that ye concealed her trothlessness, and winked at her wickedness."

"Haud your tongue, cummer," cried the Old Light Sinner; "haud your tongue, or you'll drive me mad. Is my heart no like aneugh to brak its strings, but ye maun tug at them? Is my brain no het aneugh, but ye maun set lowe to it, and burn it? And my conscience, ken ye na what it is to hae that terrible thing within ye, when it's waukened up like a fiend o' hell, chasing ye wi' a red-het brand, and nae escape, for the angel o' the Lord hauds ye agen? Ann Hall, my auldest friend, will ye do this thing for me?"

"What is it?"

"Gang to Mr B——, the fiscal, and tell him that the corpse is there, and that the man is here, and say naething o' me; do this, or I'll never haud up my hands again for grace and mercy."

Ann was silent, only driving the wheel, the sound of which in the silent house—dark enough, too, in the small light of the oil cruise over the fireplace—was all that was heard, save the occasional sobs of the unhappy victim of conscience.

"I canna, Christian; I canna, lass. I'll hang nae man for the death o' a light-o'-love limmer, and to save the conscience o' ane wha, if she didna see something wrang when it was wrang, ought to hae seen it."

"I repent and am sair in the spirit," replied Christian; "but if I had tauld him what I suspected was wrang between Spynie—and ye ken he was a lord, and titles cast glamour ower the een o' maidens—and my mistress, it would hae been a' the same. But wae's me!" she added, as she sighed from the depths of the heart, and wrung her hands, "I had a lichtness about me myself. A woman's no in her ain keeping at wild happy nineteen. The heart is aye jumping against the head. But oh, how changed when the Auld Licht shone ower me! And hae I no been a guid wife to Geordie Gourlay? Will you no help me, woman?"

"I hae said it," replied Mrs Hall, as the energy of her resolution passed into the moving power of the wheel, and the revolutions became quicker and quicker.

The Cameronian stood for a moment looking at her—the lips compressed, the brow knit, the hand firmly bound up, and striking it upon the wall.

"Ye're o' my faith," said she bitterly; "and may the Evil One help ye when ye're in need o' the Lord!"

And with these words she left her old friend, drawing the door after her with a clang, which shook the crazy tenement. In a moment she was in the street, now beginning to be deserted. The wooden-pillared lamps, so thinly distributed, and their small dreary spunk of life, showed only the darkness they were perhaps intended to illumine; and here and there was seen a gay-dressed sprig of aristocracy, with his gold-headed cane, cocked hat, and braided vest, strolling unsteadily home, after having drunk his couple of claret. Solitary city guardsmen were lounging about, as if waiting for the peace being broken, when an encounter occurred between some such ornamented braggadocio and a low Wynd blackguard—ready to use his quarter-staff against the silver-handled sword of the aristocrat; and here and there the high-pattened, short-gowned light-o'-love, regardless of the loud-screamed "gardy-loo," frolicked with "gold lace and wine," or swore the Edinburgh oaths at untrue and discarded lovers of their own degree. But guidwife Christian saw none of all these things; only one engrossing vision was in her mind, that of the sleeping scene of enchantment in the old flat, associated with the figure of the stranger;—one feeling only was paramount in her heart, the inspired awe of the conviction that these petrified relics of another time, so long back, were there waiting for her to touch them, that they should be disenchanted, and speak and tell their tale, and then rot and depart, according to the usual law of change, and corruption, and decay.

In this mood she got to the top of the Wynd, and was hurrying along the first or covered portion, overspread by the front lands, and therefore dark, when she encountered a man rolled up in a cloak. Even in the dim light coming from the street lamp on the main pavement, she recognised him in a moment. He was slouching down by the side of the wall, and did not seem to notice her. So Christian held back, until he had got farther on. She felt herself concentrated upon his movements, and observed that he hung about her own stair, standing in the middle of the close, with his eye fixed on the dark windows of the deserted flat. There was no meaning in his action. It seemed simply that his eye was bound to that house. So far Christian understood the ways of the world; but there are deeper mysteries there than she wotted of or dreamed just then. A man will examine a gangrene if it is hopeful; and will hope, and shrink, and be alarmed, when the hope fails only but a little; nay, he will dread the undoing of the bandages, lest the hope of the prior undoing should be changed by the new aspect into a conviction of aggravation; but there is a state of that ailment, as of moral ills, where all hope having vanished, despair comes to be reconciled to its own terrors, and the eye will peer into the hopeless thing, ay, and be charmed with it, and dally with it, as an irremediable condition, which is his own peculium, a part of his nature, so far changed. He then becomes a lover of pity, as before he was a seeker for hope; and, like a desperate bankrupt, will hawk the balance-sheet of his ills, to make up for the subtraction from his credit by the sympathy of the world. So did that man look upon that house, a hopeless sore, after twenty years pain and agony, with these green spots, and the caustic-defying "proud flesh." Was not the fleshless corpse of his dead wife still there? She was a skeleton; but he could only fancy her as he had seen her twenty years before, a young and beautiful woman. Nor was he alarmed as Christian, weary of waiting but not unsteeled now for a recognition, stept forward and confronted him.

"Mrs. Gourlay!" he said, as he peered into her hard face.

"Ay, guidwife Christian, as my husband says. Christian Gourlay that is—Christian Dempster that was."

"Dempster!" ejaculated he, as he staggered and sustained himself against the side of the close.

"Yes, sir—Patrick Guthrie that was when I was Dempster, and is—ay, and will be till you are born again, and baptized with fire."

"Patrick Guthrie!" he repeated. "Yes, the man, the very man. And here, too, is the evidence kept and preserved, perhaps more than once snatched from death, to be here at this hour to see me, and lay your hand on me, and be certain that I am the man, the very man. And," after a pause, "you have kept your sworn promise?"

"Till this day. Look up there, and see thae closed shutters; go in, and behold, and say whether or not."

"Too faithful!" groaned he.

"To an aith wrung out o' me by a money-bribe and terror."

"And to be repaid by a money-reward and penitence."

"The ane, sir, but never the other. Another day—another day," she repeated, "will try a'."

"What mean you, Christian?"

"Mean I? Why are you here?"

"Because I am weary wandering over the face of the earth, an exile and a criminal, for twenty long—oh long years!"

"And now want rest and peace! And how can ye get them but through the fire of the law, and the waters of the gospel? Where are you living?"

"Why should I conceal from you, Christian?" said he, thoughtfully. "No—at the White Horse in the Canongate, under the name of Douglas."

"Her name! Then look ye to it; for there will be human voices where none have been for twenty years, and cries o' wonder, and tears o' pity. Yes, yes, the long sleep is ended, for the charm is broken. Good night."

And hurrying away, she mounted the stair, leaving the man even more amazed than he was heart-broken and miserable. Nor will we be far wrong in supposing that Patrick Guthrie sought the White Horse probably not to sleep, but if to sleep, as probably to dream. As for guidwife Christian, she was soon on that side so propitious to her snoring; and as for her dreams, they were not more of seraphim, nor of Urim and Thummim, than they were on that night when she was the disembodied spirit of her who had lain so long in the bed with green curtains. Yet, no doubt, Geordie was just as certain that she slept as he was on that same night when he saw the said disembodied spirit; and as for himself, there could be little doubt that, sleeping or waking, his mind was occupied in tracing the marked resemblance of the stranger to the picture on the wall, which would lead him again to the beautiful lady, and which, again, would remind him of the bones below the red coverlet; and then there is as little doubt as there is about all these wonderful things, that he would fancy himself beridden with a terrible nightmare. Oppressed and tortured by thoughts which he could not bring to bear on any probable event, he turned and turned; but all his restlessness would produce no effect on guidwife Christian, who seemed as dead asleep as ever was he of the Cretan cave in the middle of the seventy years. Nor could he understand this: heretofore a slight cough, even slighter than that which brought the Doctor in the "Devil on Two Sticks," used to awaken the faithful wife; and now nothing would awaken her. He dodged, he cried; but she wouldn't help to take off the nightmare, which, with its old characteristic of tailor-folded legs and grinning aspect, sat upon his chest, as it heaved, but could not throw off the imp. But what was more extraordinary, this strange conduct of Christian was the continuation of—nay, a climax to—her inexplicable conduct since ever that night when he caught up in his mind, as in a prism, that midnight vision which he had seen, and the fiery coruscations of which still careered through his brain. Honest Geordie had no guile; and if he had had any, the new birth he had undergone, with the consequent baptism, would have taken it clean away, so that there was no chance of a suspicion of the part which guidwife Christian had played on the said occasion. Yet, wonder as he might, if he had known all, he would have wondered more how any woman, even with the advantage of a "New Light," could have snored under the purpose she had revolved in her mind, and which she had so darkly revealed to her old master. Ah yes, that female member, of which so much has been said—even that it contains on the subtle point thereof a little nerve which anatomists cannot find in the corresponding organ in man—can swim lightly tanquam suber, and yet never give an indication of the depths below. But Geordie became wild;—was she dead outright? Dead people do not snore, but the dying do in apoplexy. He took her by the shoulders, and shook her.

"Christian, woman, will ye no speak, when I can get nae rest? Wha was that man wha called here yestreen?"

No, she wouldn't.

"And did I no see you look at him as ye never looked at man before?"

No avail.

"And what took ye out so soon after he was awa'?"

No reply.

"And what's mair"—the murder was now out,—"did ye no meet him secretly at the stair-foot, and stand and speak to him in strange words and strange signs?"

Not yet.

"And what, in the name o' Heaven, and a' the ither powers up and down and round and round, was the aith that ye swore to him?"

Another pause.

"And what money-bribe was it ye spak o' sae secretly and darkly?"

All in vain. At length the knurr of the clock, and the most solemn of all the hours, "one," sounded hoarsely. Wearied, exhausted, and sorely troubled, Geordie fell asleep, greatly aided thereto by the eternal oscillation of that little tongue at the back of the greater and mute one, the sound of which ceased when the blacksmith was fairly and certainly over, just as if its services had been no longer needed that night.

Surely the next of these eventful days was destined, either by the Furies or the good goddess, to be that day that "would try a'." Even these words Geordie had heard, if he had not caught up many other broken sentences, which showed to his distracted mind that guidwife Christian was in some mysterious way mixed up with the events and things of the charmed house. The comparatively sleepless night induced a later than usual rising; but with what wonder did Geordie Gourlay ascertain, that late as Christian had been out on the previous night, she was already again forth of the house, leaving him to the bachelor work of making his own breakfast! Where she had gone he could not even venture to suppose; but certain he was that her absence was in some way connected with that stranger with whom he had seen her in communication the night before. The business did not admit of his waiting; so he took his morning meal of porridge and milk, and with thoughts anxious and deep, yet deeper in mere feeling than portrayment of outward coming events, he sallied forth for the Luckenbooths. On descending the stair, he found to his dire amazement the door of the portentous flat—that grave above ground of so many things that should have been either under the earth, in the sinless regions of mortality, or in the mendicant bag of Time, rolled away beyond the ken of mortal—open. Yes, that door, with the rusty padlock, and the creaking hinge, and the worm-eaten panels, was open. He shuddered: yet he looked ben into the old dark lobby, where he had groped and so nearly lost himself; and what did he see? His wife, guidwife Christian, standing in the middle thereof in her white short-gown, so like, to his imperfect vision, that spirit he had encountered in that house before! There seemed to be others there also; for he heard inside doors creaking, and by and by saw come out of the far-end door that very man—yea, the very man. The reflection of a light shone out upon him. To escape observation, he slipt to a side; and when he peered in again, no one was to be seen. They had passed together into some of the rooms, probably that bedroom where stood the bed with the green curtains. Resolved as he had been never to enter that door-way again, he would have rushed forward, had not a hand been laid on his shoulder.

"George Gourlay," said a voice behind him.

"Ay, nae doubt I'm weel kenned."

"You are in the meantime my prisoner," said an officer, with the indispensable blue coat, and the red collar, and the cocked hat.

"For what?" said Geordie.

"Ye'll ken that by and by," replied the officer; "the fiscal will tell ye. Awa' wi' me to the office."

"Humph! for picking a lock," said the blacksmith. "The deil put my left fingers between my hammer and the stiddy when I meddle again wi' rusty padlocks."

"There's naething dune on earth but what is seen," said the man, as with something like a smile on his left cheek, the other retaining its gravity, he held up his finger as if pointing to heaven.

"Ay, ay, there's an e'e there."

"And to break open a house," continued the officer, "is death en the wuddy up yonder at the 'Auld Heart.'"

"But wha, in God's name, is the witness against me?"

"Guidwife Christian," said the officer again, seriously enough at least for Geordie's belief of his sincerity.

"And the woman has turned against her husband! This is the warst blow ava. But, Lord, man, I stowe naething."

"Thieves are no generally at the trouble of picking locks, rummaging a house, and going away empty-handed, as if out o' a kirk. But come, you can tell the Lord Advocate's deputy a' that."

And George Gourlay was taken away, muttering to himself, as he went, "This explains a'. Nae wonder she wadna speak to the man she intended to hang. Woman, woman, verily from the beginning hae ye been we to man, and will be to the end."

Led up the High Street, yet in such a way as to avoid any suspicion that he was in the hands of an officer, George Gourlay was placed safely in the room of Mr. B——, the procurator-fiscal of that time, for reasons unknown to us, in the Old Tolbooth. The entry through the thick iron-knobbed door to the inside of this dark and dreary pile, which borrowed its light only through openings left by the irregularities of the high masses of St. Giles, and the parallel rows of overshadowing houses, flanked by the booths and the Crames, was enough to vanquish the heart of the strongest and the most innocent. Nor was it the darkness and the squalor alone that were so formidable. Thick air, loaded with the breath and exhalations from unhealthiness and disease itself, had made livid faces and bloodshot eyes; drunken, uproarious voices, and bacchanalian songs, oaths, denunciations, and peals of laughter, mixed with groans. Only awanting that inscription seen by the Hermet shadow who led the Florentine. Up a stair—through the midst of these children of evil or victims of misfortune, the innocent rendered guilty by infection, the condemned to death made drearily jolly by despair, imitating the recklessness of mirth,—and now the unfortunate George Gourlay is before his examinator.

"Mr. Gourlay," said the officer.

"Sit down, sir," said Mr. B——, "and wait till the others come. We cannot want Mrs. Gourlay, though no doubt you can swear to the man. In the meantime, hold your peace, lest you commit yourself. Say nothing till you are asked. Most strange affair."

Thus at once doomed to silence, George sat and listened to the mixed buzz of this misery become ludibund. Nor was his unhappiness thus limited: a fearful conviction seized him, that long before he was hanged he would take on the likeness of the wretches he had passed through;—he would become sleazy; his eyes would be red, fiery, or bleared with tears, dried up in the heat of his fevered blood; his cheeks would be pale-yellow or blue, his voice husky, and his nose red; he would sing, swear, dance—ay, douce Geordie would sing even as they. Better be hanged at once than sent hence thus deteriorated,—an unpleasant customer in the other world. Nay, one half of them had greasy, furzy, red nightcaps; and the chance was therefore a half that he would be thrown off in one of these, to the eternal disgrace of the Gourlays of Gersholm, from whom he was descended.

A full hour passed, bringing no comfort on its heavy wings. At length another red-necked official entered, and introduced guidwife Christian herself, and—Patrick Guthrie.

When these parties entered, Geordie's eyes and mouth had relapsed into that condition they presented on that occasion when he saw the wraith by the bed with the green curtains.

"Mrs. Gourlay," said Mr. B——, "you are the wife of George Gourlay, blacksmith?"

"Ay, and have been for nine years, come the time, the day, and the hour."

"Please throw your mind back twenty years."

"It ower aften gaes back to that time o' its ain accord, sir."

"Well, tell us where you lived, and what you did about that time."

"I was servant to Mr. Patrick Guthrie,—this gentleman sitting at my right hand."

"Was Mr. Guthrie a married man?"

"Ay, sir, he was married to a young lady, whose maiden name was Henrietta Douglas, ane o' the Brigstons, as I hae heard."

"What kind of woman was she?"

"Bonny, sir, as ony that ever walked the High Street or the Canongate; and the mair wae, sir. Cheerfu', too, and light-hearted and merry as the lavrock when it rises in the morning; ay, and the mair wae!"

"Why do you add these words?" continued Mr. B——. "What do you mean?"

"Because thae things brought gay gallants about the house when master was awa' in Angus, whaur he had a property near Gaigie; but he was nane, I think, o' the four Guthries."

"Then you knew that they came without the knowledge and against the wishes of your master?"

"Ower weel, sir, for my peace these twenty years bygane."

"Then you think there was more than indiscretion in Mrs. Guthrie?"

"Muckle mair, I doubt."

"Do you recollect the names of any of these gay gallants?"

"There was Lord Spynie, a wild dare-the-deil; but sae merry, and jovial, and pleasant, that his very een were nets to catch women's hearts."

"Do you remember anything happening when Lord Spynie was in the house in Bell's Wynd?"

"Ay; on the last day o' my service, yea, the last day o' my leddie's life. My maister had gane to Gaigie, as I thought; but I aye doubted if he had been farther than the White Horse. He wouldna return for a week, not he; and so my leddie thought, for the next day she ordered me to get a goose, and roast it on the spit; and weel I kenned wha the goose was for. But I didna like the business, for I had my pirns to finish—no, gude forgie me, that I was against this deception o' my master. The goose was bought, and plucket, and singed, and put to the fire. The dinner was to be at twa o'clock, and Lord Spynie was there by ane. In half an hour after, wha comes rushing in but my master? And the moment he saw Spynie, he drew his sword, and so did his lordship his. My mistress screamed, and ran between them; and oh! sir, the sword that was thrust at Spynie gaed clean through my mistress's fair body. She was dead. Then Lord Spynie lost a' his courage, and flew out o' the house; and just as he was passing through the door, my master thrust at him, and his bluidy sword snapt and was broken clean through. He came back and looked on my leddy, and kissed her, ay, and grat like a bairn; but oh! he was composed too. 'Christy,' said he, 'lay your mistress on the green bed.' And so I did, and streeked her, and drew the coverlet over her, and put a mutch upon her head. Oh how fair she was in death! 'Christy,' said master, 'come hither.' I obeyed. 'Get the Bible,' he said. I got it. 'Get on your knees,' he said. I knelt. 'Here,' said he, 'is twenty gowden guineas; and now swear upon the Laws and the Prophets, and the four Gospels, that you will never, by word, or look, or pen, reveal to man, or woman, or wean what has been done—in this house this day.' I swore. 'Now go,' said he; 'for I am to lock up the house, and go far away, where no man can know me.' So I took my little trunk, and went away sobbing. Nor was he a moment after me. I saw him shut the shutters and lock the door, and walk quickly away. Nor was he ever heard of more till yesterday; and there he is."

"Is all this true, Mr. Guthrie?"

"All true as God's word."

"And all this happened twenty years ago?"

"Yes."

"Then by the law of Scotland you are a free man, even were this murder or homicide; for twenty years is the period of our prescription. You may all go."

Then they rose to depart.

"Mr. Guthrie," cried Mr. B——, "bury your wife. And, hark ye, the goose has been at the fire for twenty years, and must now, I think, be roasted."

THE PRODIGAL SON.

The early sun was melting away the coronets of grey clouds on the brows of the mountains, and the lark, as if proud of its plumage, and surveying itself in an illuminated mirror, carolled over the bright water of Keswick, when two strangers met upon the side of the lofty Skiddaw. Each carried a small bag and a hammer, betokening that their common errand was to search for objects of geological interest. The one appeared about fifty, the other some twenty years younger. There is something in the solitude of the everlasting hills, which makes men who are strangers to each other despise the ceremonious introductions of the drawing-room. So it was with our geologists—their place of meeting, their common pursuit, produced an instantaneous familiarity. They spent the day, and dined on the mountain-side together. They shared the contents of their flasks with each other; and, ere they began to descend the hill, they felt, the one towards the other, as though they had been old friends. They had begun to take the road towards Keswick, when the elder said to the younger, "My meeting with you to-day recalls to my recollection a singular meeting which took place between a friend of mine and a stranger, about seven years ago, upon the same mountain. But, sir, I will relate to you the circumstances connected with it; and they might be called the History of the Prodigal Son."

He paused for a few moments, and proceeded:—About thirty years ago a Mr. Fen-wick was possessed of property in Bamboroughshire worth about three hundred per annum. He had married while young, and seven fair children cheered the hearth of a glad father and a happy mother. Many years of joy and of peace had flown over them, when Death visited their domestic circle, and passed his icy hand over the cheek of the first-born; and, for five successive years, as their children opened into manhood and womanhood, the unwelcome visitor entered their dwelling, till of their little flock there was but one, the youngest, left. And O, sir, in the leaving of that one, lay the cruelty of Death—to have taken him, too, would have been an act of mercy. His name was Edward; and the love, the fondness, and the care which his parents had borne for all their children, were concentrated on him. His father, whose soul was stricken with affliction, yielded to his every wish; and his poor mother

"Would not permit
The winds of heaven to visit his cheek too roughly."

But you shall hear how cruelly he repaid their love—how murderously he returned their kindness. He was headstrong and wayward; and though the small still voice of affection was never wholly silent in his breast, it was stifled by the storm of his passions and propensities. His first manifestation of open viciousness was a delight in the brutal practice of cock-fighting; and he became a constant attender at every "main" that took place at Northumberland. He was a habitual "bettor," and his losses were frequent; but hitherto his father, partly through fear, and partly from a too tender affection, had supplied him with money. A "main" was to take place in the neighbourhood of Morpeth, and he was present. Two noble birds were disfigured, the savage instruments of death were fixed upon them, and they were pitted against each other. "A hundred to one on the Felton Grey!" shouted Fen-wick. "Done! for guineas!" replied another. "Done! for guineas!—done!" repeated the prodigal—and the next moment the Felton Grey lay dead on the ground, pierced through the skull with the spur of the other. He rushed out of the cockpit—"I shall expect payment to-morrow, Fen-wick," cried the other. The prodigal mounted his horse, and rode homeward with the fury of a madman. Kind as his father was, and had been, he feared to meet him or tell him the amount of his loss. His mother perceived his agony, and strove to soothe him.

"What is't that troubles thee, my bird?" inquired she. "Come, tell thy mother, darling."

With an oath he cursed the mention of birds, and threatened to destroy himself.

"O Edward, love! thou wilt kill thy poor mother. What can I do for thee?"

"Do for me!" he exclaimed, wildly tearing his hair as he spoke—"do for me, mother. Get me a hundred pounds, or my heart's blood shall flow at your feet."

"Child! child!" said she, "thou hast been at thy black trade of betting again. Thou wilt ruin thy father, Edward, and break thy mother's heart. But give me thy hand on't, dear, that thou'lt bet no more, and I'll get thy father to give thee the money."

"My father must not know," he exclaimed; "I will die rather."

"Love! love!" replied she; "but, without asking thy father, where could I get thee a hundred pounds?"

"You have some money, mother," added he; "and you have trinkets—jewellery!" he gasped, and hid his face as he spoke.

"Thou shalt have them!—thou shalt have them, child!" said she, "and all the money thy mother has—only say thou wilt bet no more. Dost thou promise, Edward—oh, dost thou promise thy poor mother this?"

"Yes, yes!" he cried. And he burst into tears as he spoke.

He received the money, and the trinkets, which his mother had not worn for thirty years, and hurried from the house, and with them discharged a portion of his dishonourable debt.

He, however, did bet again; and I might tell you how he became a horse-racer also; but you shall hear that too. He was now about two-and-twenty, and for several years he had been acquainted with Eleanor Robinson—a fair being, made up of gentleness and love, if ever woman was. She was an orphan, and had a fortune at her own disposal of three thousand pounds. Her friends had often warned her against the dangerous habits of Edward Fen-wick. But she had given him her young heart—to him she had plighted her first vow—and, though she beheld his follies, she trusted that time and affection would wean him from them; and, with a heart full of hope and love, she bestowed on him her hand and fortune. Poor Eleanor! her hopes were vain, her love unworthily bestowed. Marriage produced no change on the habits of the prodigal son and thoughtless husband. For weeks he was absent from his own house, betting and carousing with his companions of the turf; while one vice led the way to another, and, by almost imperceptible degrees, he unconsciously sunk into all the habits of a profligate.

It was about four years after his marriage, when, according to his custom, he took leave of his wife for a few days, to attend the meeting at Doncaster.

"Good-bye, Eleanor, dear," he said gaily, as he rose to depart, and kissed her cheek; "I shall be back within five days."

"Well, Edward," said she, tenderly, "if you will go, you must; but think of me, and think of these our little ones." And, with a tear in her eye, she desired a lovely boy and girl to kiss their father. "Now, think of us, Edward," she added; "and do not bet, dearest, do not bet!"

"Nonsense, duck! nonsense!" said he; "did you ever see me lose?—do you suppose that Ned Fen-wick is not 'wide awake?' I know my horse, and its rider too—Barrymore's Highlander can distance everything. But, if it could not, I have it from a sure hand—the other horses are all 'safe.' Do you understand that—eh?"

"No, I do not understand it, Edward, nor do I wish to understand it," added she; "but, dearest, as you love me—as you love our children—risk nothing."

"Love you, little gipsy! you know I'd die for you," said he—and, with all his sins, the prodigal spoke the truth. "Come, Nell, kiss me again, my dear—no long faces—don't take a leaf out of my old mother's book; you know the saying, 'Never venture, never win—faint heart never won fair ladye!' Good-bye, love—'bye, Ned—good-bye, mother's darling," said he, addressing the children as he left the house.

He reached Doncaster; he had paid his guinea for admission to the betting-rooms; he had whispered with, and slipped a fee to all the shrivelled, skin-and-bone, half-melted little manikins, called jockeys, to ascertain the secrets of their horses. "All's safe!" said the prodigal to himself, rejoicing in his heart. The great day of the festival—the important St. Leger—arrived. Hundreds were ready to back Highlander against the field: amongst them was Edward Fen-wick; he would take any odds—he did take them—he staked his all. "A thousand to five hundred on Highlander against the field," he cried, as he stood near a betting-post. "Done!" shouted a mustachioed peer of the realm, in a barouche by his side. "Done!" cried Fen-wick, "for the double, if you like, my lord." "Done!" added the peer; "and I'll treble it if you dare!" "Done!" rejoined the prodigal, in the confidence and excitement of the moment—"Done! my lord." The eventful hour arrived. There was not a false start. The horses took the ground beautifully. Highlander led the way at his ease; and his rider, in a tartan jacket and mazarine cap, looked confident. Fen-wick stood near the winning-post, grasping the rails with his hands; he was still confident, but he could not chase the admonition of his wife from his mind. The horses were not to be seen. His very soul became like a solid and sharp-edged substance within his breast. Of the twenty horses that started, four again appeared in sight. "The tartan yet! the tartan yet!" shouted the crowd. Fen-wick raised his eyes—he was blind with anxiety—he could not discern them; still he heard the cry of "The tartan! the tartan!" and his heart sprang to his mouth. "Well done, orange!—the orange will have it!" was the next cry. He again looked up, but he was more blind than before. "Beautiful!—beautiful! Go it, tartan! Well done, orange!" shouted the spectators; "a noble race!—neck and neck; six to five on the orange!" He became almost deaf as well as blind. "Now for it!—now for it!—it won't do, tartan!—hurrah!—hurrah!—orange has it!"

"Liar!" exclaimed Fen-wick, starting as if from a trance, and grasping the spectator who stood next him by the throat—"I am not ruined!"—In a moment he dropped his hands by his side, he leaned over the railing, and gazed vacantly on the ground. His flesh writhed, and his soul groaned in agony. "Eleanor!—my poor Eleanor!" cried the prodigal. The crowd hurried towards the winning-post—he was left alone. The peer with whom he had betted, came behind him; he touched him on the shoulder with his whip—"Well, my covey," said the nobleman, "you have lost it."

Fen-wick gazed on him with a look of fury and despair, and repeated—"Lost it!—I am ruined—soul and body!—wife and children ruined!"

"Well, Mr. Fen-wick," said the sporting peer, "I suppose, if that be the case, you won't come to Doncaster again in a hurry. But my settling day is to-morrow—you know I keep sharp accounts; and if you have not the 'ready' at hand, I shall expect an equivalent—you understand me."

So saying, he rode off, leaving the prodigal to commit suicide if he chose. It is enough for me to tell you that, in his madness and his misery, and from the influence of what he called his sense of honour, he gave the winner a bill for the money—payable at sight. My feelings will not permit me to tell you how the poor infatuated madman more than once made attempts upon his own life; but the latent love of his wife and of his children prevailed over the rash thought, and, in a state bordering on insanity, he presented himself before the beings he had so deeply injured.

I might describe to you how poor Eleanor was sitting in their little parlour, with her boy upon a stool by her side, and her little girl on her knee, telling them fondly that their father would be home soon, and anon singing to them the simple nursery rhyme—

"Hush, my babe, baby bunting,
Your father's at the hunting," etc.;

when the door opened, and the guilty father entered, his hair clotted, his eyes rolling with the wildness of despair, and the cold sweat running down his pale cheeks.

"Eleanor! Eleanor!" he cried, as he flung himself upon a sofa.

She placed her little daughter on the floor—she flew towards him—"My Edward!—oh my Edward!" she cried—"what is it, love?—something troubles you."

"Curse me, Eleanor!" exclaimed the wretched prodigal, turning his face from her. "I have ruined you I—I have ruined my children!—I am lost for ever!"

"No, my husband!" exclaimed the best of wives; "your Eleanor will not curse you. Tell me the worst, and I will bear it—cheerfully bear it, for my Edward's sake."

"You will not—you cannot," cried he; "I have sinned against you as never man sinned against woman. Oh! if you would spit upon the very ground where I tread, I would feel it as an alleviation of my sufferings; but your sympathy, your affection, makes my very soul destroy itself! Eleanor!—Eleanor-!—if you have mercy, hate me—tell me—show me that you do!"

"O Edward!" said she, imploringly, "was it thus when your Eleanor spurned every offer for your sake, when you pledged to her everlasting love? She has none but you, and can you speak thus? O husband! if you will forsake me, forsake not my poor children—tell me! only tell me the worst—and I will rejoice to endure it with my Edward!"

"Then," cried Fen-wick, "if you will add to my misery by professing to love a wretch like me—know you are a beggar!—and I have made you one! Now, can you share beggary with me?"

She repeated the word "Beggary!"—she clasped her hands together—for a few moments she stood in silent anguish—her bosom heaved—the tears gushed forth—she flung her arms around her husband's neck—"Yes!" she cried, "I can meet even beggary with my Edward!"

"O Heaven!" cried the prodigal, "would that the earth would swallow me! I cannot stand this!"

I will not dwell upon the endeavours of the fond, forgiving wife, to soothe and to comfort her unworthy husband; nor yet will I describe to you the anguish of the prodigal's father and of his mother, when they heard the extent of his folly and of his guilt. Already he had cost the old man much, and, with a heavy and sorrowful heart, he proceeded to his son's house to comfort his daughter-in-law. When he entered, she was endeavouring to cheer her husband with a tune upon the harpsichord—though, Heaven knows, there was no music in her breast, save that of love—enduring love!

"Well, Edward," said the old man, as he took a seat, "what is this that thou hast done now?"

The prodigal was silent.

"Edward," continued the grey-haired parent, "I have had deaths in my family—many deaths, and thou knowest it—but I never had to blush for a child but thee! I have felt sorrow, but thou hast added shame to sorrow—"

"O father!" cried Eleanor, imploringly, "do not upbraid my poor husband."

The old man wept—he pressed her hand, and, with a groan, said, "I am ashamed that thou shouldst call me father, sweetest; but if thou canst forgive him, I should. He is all that is left to me—all that the hand of death has spared me in this world! Yet, Eleanor, his conduct is a living death to me—it is worse than all that I have suffered. When affliction pressed heavily upon me, and, year after year, I followed my dear children to the grave, my neighbours sympathized with me—they mingled their tears with mine; but now, child—oh, now, I am ashamed to hold up my head amongst them! O Edward, man! if thou hast no regard for thy father or thy heart-broken mother, hast thou no affection for thy poor wife?—canst thou bring her and thy helpless children to ruin? But that, I may say, thou hast done already! Son! son! if thou wilt murder thy parents, hast thou no mercy for thine own flesh and blood?—wilt thou destroy thine own offspring? O Edward! if there be any sin that I will repent upon my death-bed, it will be that I have been a too indulgent father to thee—that I am the author of thy crimes!"

"No, father! no!" cried the prodigal; "my sins are my own! I am their author, and my soul carries its own punishment! Spurn me! cast me off!—disown me for ever!—it is all I ask of you! You despise me—hate me too, and I will be less miserable!"

"O Edward!" said the old man, "thou art a father, but little dost thou know a father's heart! Disown thee! Cast thee off, sayest thou! As soon could the graves of thy brothers give up their dead! Never, Edward! never! O son, wouldst thou but reform thy ways—wouldst thou but become a husband worthy of our dear Eleanor; and, after all the suffering thou hast brought upon her, and the shame thou hast brought upon thy family, I would part with my last shilling for thee, Edward, though I should go into the workhouse myself."

You are affected, sir—I will not harrow up your feelings by further describing the interview between the father and his son. The misery of the prodigal was remorse, not penitence. It is sufficient for me to say, that the old man took a heavy mortgage on his property, and Edward Fen-wick commenced business as a wine and spirit merchant in Newcastle. But, sir, he did not attend upon business; and I need not tell you that such being the case, business was too proud a customer to attend upon him. Neither did he forsake his old habits, and, within two years, he became involved—deeply involved. Already, to sustain his tottering credit, his father had been brought to the verge of ruin. During his residence in Bamboroughshire, he had become acquainted with many individuals carrying on a contraband trade with Holland. To amend his desperate fortunes, he recklessly embarked in it. In order to obtain a part in the ownership of a lugger, he used his father's name! This was the crowning evil in the prodigal's drama. He made the voyage himself. They were pursued and overtaken when attempting to effect a landing near the Coquet. He escaped. But the papers of the vessel bespoke her as being chiefly the property of his father. Need I tell you that this was a finishing blow to the old man?

Edward Fen-wick had ruined his wife and family—he had brought ruin upon his father, and was himself a fugitive. He was pursued by the law; he fled from them; and he would have fled from their remembrance if he could. It was now, sir, that the wrath of Heaven was showered upon the head, and began to touch the heart of the prodigal: Like Cain, he was a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth. For many months he wandered in a distant part of the country; his body was emaciated and clothed with rags, and hunger preyed upon his very heart-strings. It is a vulgar thing, sir, to talk of hunger; but they who have never felt it know not what it means. He was fainting by the wayside, his teeth were grating together, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. "The servants of my father's house," he cried, "have bread enough and to spare, while I perish with hunger;" and continuing the language of the prodigal in the Scriptures, he said, "I will arise and go unto my father, and say, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight."

With a slow and tottering step, he arose to proceed on his journey to his father's house. A month had passed—for every day he made less progress—ere the home of his infancy appeared in sight. It was noon, and, when he saw it, he sat down in a little wood by a hill-side and wept, until it had become dusk; for he was ashamed of his rags. He drew near the house, but none came forth to welcome him. With a timid hand he rapped at the door, but none answered him. A stranger came from one of the outhouses and inquired, "What dost thou want, man?"

"Mr Fen-wick," feebly answered the prodigal.

"Why, naebody lives there," said the other; "and auld Fen-wick died in Morpeth jail mair than three months sin'!"

"Died in Morpeth jail!" groaned the miserable being, and fell against the door of the house that had been his father's.

"I tell ye, ye cannot get in there," continued the other.

"Sir," replied Edward, "pity me; and, oh, tell me is Mrs Fen-wick here—or her daughter-in-law?"

"I know nought about them," said the stranger. "I'm put in charge here by the trustees."

Want and misery kindled all their fires in the breast of the fugitive. He groaned, and, partly from exhaustion, partly from agony, sank upon the ground. The other lifted him to a shed, where cattle were wont to be fed. His lips were parched, his languid eyes rolled vacantly. "Water! give me water!" he muttered in a feeble voice; and a cup of water was brought to him. He gazed wistfully in the face of the person who stood over him—he would have asked for bread; but, in the midst of his sufferings, pride was yet strong in his heart, and he could not. The stranger, however, was not wholly destitute of humanity.

"Poor wretch!" said he, "ye look very fatigued; dow ye think ye cud eat a bit bread, if I were gi'en it to thee?"

Tears gathered in the lustreless eyes of the prodigal; but he could not speak. The stranger left him, and returning, placed a piece of coarse bread in his hand. He ate a morsel; but his very soul was sick, and his heart loathed to receive the food for lack of which he was perishing.

Vain, sir, were the inquiries after his wife, his children, and his mother; all that he could learn was, that they had kept their sorrow and their shame to themselves, and had left Northumberland together, but where, none knew. He also learned that it was understood amongst his acquaintances that he had put a period to his existence, and that this belief was entertained by his family. Months of wretchedness followed, and Fen-wick, in despair, enlisted into a foot regiment, which, within twelve months, was ordered to embark for Egypt. At that period the British were anxious to hide the remembrance of their unsuccessful attack upon Cadiz, and resolved to wrench the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs from the grasp of the proud armies of Napoleon. The Cabinet, therefore, on the surrender of Malta, having seconded the views of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, several transports were fitted out to join the squadron under Lord Keith. In one of those transports the penitent prodigal embarked. You are too young to remember it, sir; but at that period a love of country was more widely than ever becoming the ruling passion of every man in Britain; and, with all his sins, his follies, and his miseries, such a feeling glowed in the breast of Edward Fen-wick. He was weary of existence, and he longed to listen to the neighing of the war-horse, and the shout of its rider, and as they might rush on the invulnerable phalanx, and its breastwork of bayonets, to mingle in the rank of heroes; and, rather than pine in inglorious grief, to sell his life for the welfare of his country; or, like the gallant Graham, amidst the din of war, and the confusion of glory, to forget his sorrows. The regiment to which he belonged joined the main army off the Bay of Marmorice, and was the first that, with the gallant Moore at its head, on the memorable seventh of March, raised the shout of victory on the shores of Aboukir.

In the moment of victory, Fen-wick fell wounded on the field, and his comrades, in their triumph, passed over him. He had some skill in surgery, and he was enabled to bind up his wound. He was fainting upon the burning sand, and he was creeping amongst the bodies of the slain, for a drop of moisture to cool his parched tongue, when he perceived a small bottle in the hands of a dead officer. It was half-filled with wine—he eagerly raised it to his lips—"Englishman!" cried a feeble voice, "for the love of Heaven! give me one drop—only one!—or I die!" He looked around—a French officer, apparently in the agonies of death, was vainly endeavouring to raise himself on his side, and stretching his hand towards him. "Why should I live?" cried the wretched prodigal; "take it, take it, and live, if you desire life!" He raised the wounded Frenchman's head from the sand—he placed the bottle to his lips—he untied his sash, and bound up his wounds. The other pressed his hand in gratitude. They were conveyed from the field together. Fen-wick was unable to follow the army, and he was disabled from continuing in the service. The French officer recovered, and he was grateful for the poor service that had been rendered to him; and, previous to his being sent off with other prisoners, he gave a present of a thousand francs to the joyless being whom he called his deliverer.

I have told you that Fen-wick had some skill in surgery; he had studied some years for the medical profession, but abandoned it for the turf and its vices. He proceeded to Alexandria, where he began to practise as a surgeon, and, amongst an ignorant people, gained reputation. Many years passed, and he had acquired, if not riches, at least an independency. Repentance also had penetrated his soul. He had inquired long and anxiously after his family. He had but few other relatives; and to all of them he had anxiously written, imploring them to acquaint him with the residence of the beings whom he had brought to ruin, but whom he still loved. Some returned no answer to his applications, and others only said that they knew nothing of his wife, or his mother, or of his children, nor whether they yet lived; all they knew was, that they had endeavoured to hide the shame he had brought upon them from the world. These words were daggers to his bruised spirit; but he knew he deserved them, and he prayed that Heaven would grant him the consolation and the mercy that were denied him on earth.

Somewhat more than seven years ago he returned to his native country, and he was wandering on the very mountain where, to-day, I met you, when he entered into conversation with a youth apparently about three or four and twenty years of age; and they spent the day together as we have done. Fen-wick was lodging in Keswick, and as, towards evening, they proceeded along the road together, they were overtaken by a storm. "You must accompany me home," said the young man, "until the storm be passed; my mother's house is at hand,"—and he conducted him to yonder lonely cottage, whose white walls you perceive peering through the trees by the water-side. It was dusk when the youth ushered him into a little parlour where two ladies sat; the one appeared about forty, the other threescore and ten. They welcomed the stranger graciously. He ascertained that they let out the rooms of their cottage to visitors to the lakes during the summer season. He expressed a wish to become their lodger, and made some observations on the beauty of the situation.

"Yes, sir," said the younger lady, "the situation is indeed beautiful; but I have seen it when the water, and the mountains around it, could impart no charm to its dwellers. Providence has, indeed, been kind to us, and our lodgings have seldom been empty; but, sir, when we entered it, it was a sad house indeed. My poor mother-in-law and myself had experienced many sorrows; yet my poor fatherless children—for I might call them fatherless"—and she wept as she spoke—"with their innocent prattle, soothed our affliction. But my little Eleanor, who was loved by every one, began to droop day by day. It was a winter night—the snow was on the ground—I heard my little darling give a deep sigh upon my bosom. I started up. I called to my poor mother. She brought a light to the bedside—and I found my sweet child dead upon my breast. It was a long and sad night, as we sat by the dead body of my Eleanor, with no one near us; and after she was buried, my poor Edward there, as he sat by our side at night, would draw forward to his knee the stool on which his sister sat—while his grandmother would glance at him fondly, and push aside the stool with her foot, that I might not see it;—but I saw it all."

The twilight had deepened in the little parlour, and its inmates could not perfectly distinguish the features of each other; but as the lady spoke, the soul of Edward Fen-wick glowed within him—his heart throbbed—his breathing became thick—the sweat burst upon his brow. "Pardon me, lady!" he cried, in agony; "but, oh! tell me your name?"

"Fen-wick, sir," replied she.

"Eleanor! my injured Eleanor!" he exclaimed, flinging himself at her feet. "I am Edward, your guilty husband! Mother! can you forgive me? My son! my son! intercede for your guilty father!"

Ah, sir, there needed no intercession—their arms were around his neck—the prodigal was forgiven! "Behold," continued the narrator, "yonder from the cottage comes the mother, the wife, and the son of whom I have spoken! I will introduce you to them—you shall witness the happiness and the penitence of the prodigal—you must stop with me to-night. Start not, sir—I am Edward Fen-wick the Prodigal Son!"

THE LAWYER'S TALES.

THE WOMAN WITH THE WHITE MICE.

Many have, doubtless, both heard and read of the case of murder in which Jeffrey performed his greatest feat of oratory and power over a jury, and in which, while engaged in his grand speech of more than six hours, he caught, from an open window, the aphony which threatened to close up his voice for ever afterwards. I have had occasion to notice the wants in reported cases tried before courts; and in reference to the one I have now mentioned, I have reason, from my inquiries, to know that the most curious details of the transaction are not only not to be found in the report, but not even suggested, if they do not, in some particulars, appear to be opposed to the public testimony. The agent of the panel sits behind the counsel, delivering to him sometimes very crude materials for the defence, and the counsel sifts that matter; sometimes taking a handful of the chaff to blind a juryman or a judge, but more often casting it away as either useless or dangerous. In that unused chaff there are often pickles not of the kind put into the sack, and again laid as an offering before the blind goddess, but of a different kind of grain—nor often less pleasant, or, if applied, less acceptable to justice.

In a certain month in the year 18—, a writer in Dundee, of the name of David M——, was busy in his office, in a dark street off the High Street—busy, no doubt, in discharging the functions of that office represented by Æsop as occupied by a monkey, holding the scales between the litigating cats. He heard a horse stop at his office door, as if brought suddenly up by a jerk of the rein.

"There is haste here," he thought; "what is up?"

And presently the door opened, and there came, or rather rushed, in a man, of the appearance of a country farmer, greatly more excited than these douce men generally are—except, perhaps, in the midst of a plentiful harvest-home—splashed up with mud to the back of the neck, and breathing as hard as, no doubt, the horse was that carried him.

"What is it, Mr. S——?" inquired the writer, as he looked at his client.

"A dreadful business!" replied he; and he turned, went back to the door, shut it, and tested the hold of the lock; then laying down his hat and whip, and pulling off his big-coat, he drew a chair so near the writer, that the man of law, brusque and even jolly as he was, instinctively withdrew his, as if he feared an appeal for money.

"What is the business?" again asked the writer, as he saw the man in a spasmodic difficulty to begin.

"We are all ruined at D——!" he at length said; "Mrs. S—— is in your jail, hard by, on a charge of murder."

"Mrs. S——! of all the women in the world!" ejaculated the writer in unfeigned amazement: "murder of whom?"

"Of a servant at D——," replied Mr. S——; "one of our own women."

"And what could be the motive?"

"The young woman," continued S——, "had been observed to be pregnant, and the report was got up that my son was the party responsible and blameable. Then the charge is, that my wife gave the girl poison, either to procure abortion, or to take away her life. The woman is dead and buried; but, I believe, her body has been taken up out of the grave and examined, and poison found in the stomach."

"An ugly account," said the writer. "I mean not ugly as regards the evidence, of which, as yet, I have heard nothing. I could say beforehand that I don't believe the authorities will be able to bring home an act of this kind to so rational and respectable a woman, as I have known Mrs. S——to be; but if you wish me to get her off, you must allow me to look at the case as if she were guilty."

"Guilty!" echoed the man, with a shudder.

"Yes. Were I to go fumbling about in an affair of this kind, acting upon a notion—whatever I may think or feel—that Mrs. S——, though your wife, could not possibly do an act of that kind, I would neither hound up, as I ought, the investigations of the prosecutor, nor get up proper evidence—not to meet their proofs only, but to overturn them."

"I would have thought you would have been keener to get off an innocent person—a wife, and the mother of a family, too—than a guilty one," said S——.

"We cannot get you people to understand these things," replied the writer; "but so it is, at least with me, and I rather think a good number of my brethren. We have a pride in getting off a guilty person; whereas we have only a spice of satisfaction in saving an innocent one. Perhaps I have an object, for your own sake, in speaking thus frankly to you; and I tell you at once, that if you intend to help me to get off your wife, you must, as soon as you can—even here, at this moment—renounce all blind confidence in her innocence."

"Terrible condition!" said the farmer.

"Not pleasant, but useful. How, in God's name, am I to know how to doctor, purge, or scarify, or anoint a testimony against you, unless I know that it exists, and where to find it?"

"Very true," rejoined the farmer, trying to follow the clever "limb."

"Don't hesitate. I will have more pleasure, and not, maybe, much less hope, in hearing you detail all the grounds of your suspicion against your wife, than in listening to your nasaling and canting about her innocence. All this is for your good, my dear sir, take it as you will."

"I believe it," said the farmer, "and will try to act up to what you say; but I cannot, of my own knowledge, say much, as yet. These things are done privately, within the house, and a farmer is mostly out of doors."

"Well, away, get access to your wife, ferret everything out of her, as well for her as against her. If she bought poison, where she bought it, what rats were to be poisoned, how it was applied, how she communicated with the girl, and where, and all, and everything you can gather. Question your servants all they saw or heard; your son, what he has to say; ascertain who came about the house, how affected towards the girl, whether there were more lovers than your son, whether the girl was melancholy, or hopeful, and likely to do the thing or not; but, above all, keep it ever in view that your wife is in prison, and suspected, and let me know every item you can bring against her. Away, and lose no time, for I see it's a matter of neck and neck between her and the prosecutor, and, consequently, neck and noose, or neck and no noose, between her and the hangman."

Utterly confounded by this array of instructions, the poor farmer sat and looked blank. It was impossible he could remember all he had been requested to do; and the duty of finding out facts to criminate the wife who had lived with him so long in love and confidence, bore down upon him with a weight he could hardly sustain.

"I will do what I can," he said.

"You must do more than you can," said the writer; "but, again I say, let me know every, the smallest item you can discover against your wife."

And, thus charged, Mr. S—— mounted his horse, and rode home to a miserable house with a miserable heart.

Extraordinary as the case was, it was entrusted to the charge of an extraordinary man, well remembered yet throughout that county, and much beyond it. In personal respects he was strong, broad, and muscular, with a florid countenance never out of humour, and an eye that flashed in so many different directions, that it was impossible to arrest it for two moments at a time. All action, nothing resisted him; all impulse and sensibility, nothing escaped his observation; yet no one could say that any subject retained his mind for more time than would have sufficed another merely to glance at it. He could speak to a hundred men in a day upon a hundred topics, and sit down and run off twenty pages of a paper without an hour of previous meditation; break off at a pronoun, at a call to the further end of the town; drink as much in a few minutes' conversation with a client as would have taken another an hour to enjoy, and return and finish his paper in less time than another would take to think of it. Always, to appearance, off his guard, he was always master of his position, nor could any obstacle make him stand and calculate its dimensions—it must be surmounted or broken, if his head or the laws should be broken with it; always pressing, he never seemed to be impressed, and the gain or loss of a case was equally indifferent to him. His passion was action, his desire money; but the money went as it came—made without effort and spent without reason. Yet no man hated him; most loved him; few admired him; and even those he might injure by his apparent recklessness could not resist the good nature by which he warded off every attack.

He saw at once, after he had dismissed S——, that he had got hold of a desperate case, and also that he behoved to have recourse to desperate means; but it seemed to take no grip of his mind for more than a few minutes, by the end of which he was full swing in some other matter of business, to be followed with the same rapidity by something else, and, probably, after that, pleasure till three in the morning, when he would be carried home to an elegant house in a certain species of carriage with one wheel. Nor had even that consummation any effect on to-morrow's avocations, for which he would be ready at the earliest hour; and in this case he was ready. He set about his inquiries, first proceeded to D—— to get a view of the premises—the room where the young woman lay, where the son slept, and the bedroom of the mother—and ascertain whether the premises permitted of intercourse with the servants unknown to the farmer and his wife. He next began his precognition of those connected with the house, and, on returning to town, procured access to Mrs. S——.

The jail of Dundee was at that time over the courthouse, a miserable den of a few dark rooms, presenting the appearance of displenished garrets, with small grated windows and a few benches. Here the woman sat revolving, no doubt, in her mind all the events of a life of comfort and respectability, and now under the risk of being brought to a termination by her body being suspended in the front of that building where she had seen before this terrible consummation of justice enacted with the familiar and dismal forms of the tragedy of the gallows. We write of these things as parrots gabble, we read of them as monkeys ogle the, to them, strange actions of human beings; but what is all that comes by the eye or the ear of the experiences of an exterior spirit to the workings of that spirit in its own interior world, where thought follows thought with endless ramifications, weaving and interweaving scenes of love and joy and pain, contrasting and mixing, dissolving and remixing—bright lights and dark shadows—all seen through the blue-tinged and distorting lens of present shame? We cannot realize these things, nor did the writer try. He had only the practical work to do—if possible, to get this woman's neck kept out of a kench; nor did it signify much to him how that was effected; but effected it would be, if the invention of one man could do it, and if that failed, and the woman was suspended, it would trouble him no more than would the loss of a small-debt case.