The Merry Men...................................................................................................................................................1

Robert Louis Stevenson...........................................................................................................................1

THE MERRY MEN .................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. EILEAN AROS. ................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS.....................................................4

CHAPTER III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY. ........................................................................10

CHAPTER IV. THE GALE. ..................................................................................................................15

CHAPTER V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA. .........................................................................................20

WILL O' THE MILL.............................................................................................................................26

CHAPTER I. THE PLAIN AND THE STARS. ....................................................................................26

CHAPTER II. THE PARSON'S MARJORY. .......................................................................................30

CHAPTER III. DEATH .........................................................................................................................36

MARKHEIM.........................................................................................................................................39

THRAWN JANET .................................................................................................................................48

OLALLA ................................................................................................................................................54

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD..................................................................................................75

CHAPTER I. BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK...............................................................................75

CHAPTER II. MORNING TALK .........................................................................................................77

CHAPTER III. THE ADOPTION.........................................................................................................80

CHAPTER IV. THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER. ...............................................................84

CHAPTER V. TREASURE TROVE....................................................................................................88

CHAPTER VI. A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS. ................................................95

CHAPTER VII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ..........................................................101

CHAPTER VIII. THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY..........................................................................106

IT WAS a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for the last time for Aros. A boat had put

me ashore the night before at Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving all my

baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea, struck right across the promontory with a cheerful

I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle

of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in the

islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and when she died in giving birth to a daughter,

Aros, the seagirt farm, had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I

was well aware; but he was a man whom illfortune had pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the

young child, to make a fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny. Years

passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was

dying out in the lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my father was the luckiest of

all, for not only was he one of the last to die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I

was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own charges, but without kith or kin; when

some news of me found its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held

blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros as my

home. Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society and

comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that now, when I had done with my classes,

The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as rough as God made it to this day; the

deep sea on either hand of it, full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen all overlooked from the

eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben Kyaw. THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MIST, they

say the words signify in the Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill top, which is more than three

thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often

to think that it must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea level, there would ever

be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy (1) to the top in consequence. I have seen

us sitting in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain. But the

wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides,

there were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros, fifteen miles away.

The road that I followed was a cattletrack. It twisted so as nearly to double the length of my journey; it went

over rough boulders so that a man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the moss

came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and not one house in the ten miles from

Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course there were three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the other

that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is covered with big granite

rocks, some of them larger than a two roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in

between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the

gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle

with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have

heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers

Aros itself Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it means THE HOUSE OF GOD Aros

itself was not properly a piece of the Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south west corner of the

land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty

feet across the narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land river; only

there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the water itself was green instead of brown; but when the

tide went out, in the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you could pass dryshod

from Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps

the feed was better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the Ross, but this I am

not skilled enough to settle. The house was a good one for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward

over a bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could watch the vapours blowing on Ben

On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down

together in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world like their

neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and clots of seapink

blooming on their sides instead of heather; and the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead

of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours,

echoes following you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears that

Off the southwest end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much greater in size. Indeed, they must grow

monstrously bigger out to sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick as a

country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships;

so that on a clear, westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great rollers breaking white

and heavy over as many as sixandforty buried reefs. But it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for

the tide, here running like a mill race, makes a long belt of broken water a ROOST we call it at the tail of

the land. I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the

sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little dancing

mutter of sound as though the ROOST were talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above

all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could

either steer or live in such a place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end there

comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big breakers dance together the dance of death, it

may be called that have got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run

fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they

got the name from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they make about the turn

The truth is, that in a southwesterly wind, that part of our archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got

through the reefs, and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south coast of Aros, in

Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these

dangers, in the place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going forward to set

lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of our ironbound, inhospitable islands.

The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from my uncle's man, Rorie, an old

servant of the Macleans, who had transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the

marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some

fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on

Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found

stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in

the original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: 'Ah, the sweet singing out of the sea.' Seals that

haunted on that coast have been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was

here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I

think he had some claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so rough a passage,

and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his

monkish underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and beautiful name, the House of God.

Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined to hear with more credulity. As I was told,

in that tempest which scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of Scotland,

one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of some solitary people on a hilltop, went down

in a moment with all hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There was some likelihood in this tale; for

another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side, twenty miles from Grisapol. It was told, I thought, with more

detail and gravity than its companion stories, and there was one particularity which went far to convince me

of its truth: the name, that is, of the ship was still remembered, and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The

ESPIRITO SANTO they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasure and grandees of

Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in

Sandag bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that tall ship, the 'Holy Spirit,' no more

fair winds or happy ventures; only to rot there deep in the seatangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry

Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger

as I learned the more of Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a company, and King Philip, the

And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the ESPIRITO SANTO was very much in my

reflections. I had been favourably remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer,

Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers of an ancient date to rearrange and sift of

what was worthless; and in one of these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the ESPIRITO

SANTO, with her captain's name, and how she carried a great part of the Spaniard's treasure, and had been

lost upon the Ross of Grisapol; but in what particular spot, the wild tribes of that place and period would give

no information to the king's inquiries. Putting one thing with another, and taking our island tradition together

with this note of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth, it had come strongly on my mind that the spot

for which he sought in vain could be no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a

fellow of a mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh that good ship up again with all her

ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and bring back our house of Darnaway to its longforgotten dignity and

This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind was sharply turned on different reflections;

and since I became the witness of a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's treasures has been

intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit myself of sordid greed; for if I desired

riches, it was not for their own sake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart my uncle's

daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been a time to school upon the mainland; which,

poor girl, she would have been happier without. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the servant,

and her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland, plainly bred up in a country place among

Cameronians, long a skipper sailing out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite discontent,

managing his sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for the necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to

me, who was there but a month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same desert all

the year round, with the sheep and flying sea gulls, and the Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!

IT was halfflood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothing for it but to stand on the far shore and

whistle for Rorie with the boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was at the door

flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old longlegged servingman was shambling down the

gravel to the pier. For all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I observed him several

times to pause, go into the stern, and look over curiously into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me

aged and haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired, with two new thwarts and

several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood, the name of it unknown to me.

'Why, Rorie,' said I, as we began the return voyage, 'this is fine wood. How came you by that?'

'It will be hard to cheesel,' Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then, dropping the oars, he made another of

those dives into the stern which I had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on my

'It will be a great feesh,' said the old man, returning to his oars; and nothing more could I get out of him, but

strange glances and an ominous nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure of

uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was still and transparent, but, out here in the

middle of the bay, exceeding deep. For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if

something dark a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow followed studiously in the track of the moving

coble. And then I remembered one of Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,

exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it unknown in all our waters, followed for some years

Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of Aros. Outside and inside there were

many changes. The garden was fenced with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in

the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from the window; a clock stood silent on

the dresser; a lamp of brass was swinging from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of linen

and silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain old kitchen that I knew so well, with the

highbacked settle, and the stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into,

and the clearsmouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the threecornered spittoons, filled

with seashells instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the

three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in

cities, woven with homespun, and Sunday black, and seacloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room,

like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that countryside, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now,

shamed by these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of anger. In view of the errand

I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first moment, in my

'Mary, girl,' said I, 'this is the place I had learned to call my home, and I do not know it.'

'It is my home by nature, not by the learning,' she replied; 'the place I was born and the place I'm like to die

in; and I neither like these changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would have

liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on

Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared with her father; but the tone with which

'Ay,' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet when my father died, I took his goods without

'They ca'd her the CHRISTANNA,' said a voice behind me; and, turning round, I saw my uncle standing in

He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes; fiftysix years old, sound and active

in body, and with an air somewhat between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never

laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like the Cameronians he had been brought up

among; and indeed, in many ways, used to remind me of one of the hill preachers in the killing times before

the Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He

had his black fits when he was afraid of hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his head and a pipe hanging in his

buttonhole, he seemed, like Rorie, to have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his

face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, or the bones of the dead.

'Ay' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the CHRISTANNA. It's an awfu' name.'

I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health; for I feared he had perhaps been

'I'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the body and the sins of the body, like yoursel'.

Denner,' he said abruptly to Mary, and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten, are

they no? Yon's a bonny knock (2), but it'll no gang; and the napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for

the like o' them folk sells the peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o' them, an' maybe no

even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face and burn in muckle hell; and it's for that reason the

Scripture ca's them, as I read the passage, the accursed thing. Mary, ye girzie,' he interrupted himself to cry

But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. 'We'll bruik (3) them while we may,' he said; and so two

massive candlesticks of wrought silver were added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that rough

'She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht,' he went on to me. 'There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea;

and she was in the sook o' the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beating to the wind.

She wasnae a handy craft, I'm thinking, that CHRISTANNA; for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them.

A sair day they had of it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld ower cauld to snaw; and

aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again, to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a

sair day for the last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashore upon the back o' that.'

I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept my disclaimer with unusual facility,

'We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the inside of her. There's a kittle bit, ye see,

about Sandag; whiles the sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's makin' hard

an' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the farend of Aros, there comes a backspang of current straucht into

Sandag Bay. Weel, there's the thing that got the grip on the CHRISTANNA. She but to have come in

ramstam an' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften under, and the backside of her is clear at hiewater o'

neaps. But, man! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'! but it's an unco life to be a

sailor a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's the gliff I got mysel' in the great deep; and why the Lord should hae

made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand. He made the vales and the pastures, the

as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No that I would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny,

And in Great waters trading be, Within the deep these men God's works And His great wonders see.

Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant wi' the sea. But, troth, if it wasnae prentit

in the Bible, I wad whiles be temp'it to think it wasnae the Lord, but the muckle, black deil that made the sea.

There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' the spentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shure,

whilk would be what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that God showed to the

CHRISTANNA wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather: judgments in the mirk nicht among the

draygons o' the deep. And their souls to think o' that their souls, man, maybe no prepared! The sea a

I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved and his manner unwontedly

demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his

spread fingers, looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that his eyes shone with a

Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not detach him from his train of thought

beyond a moment. He condescended, indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I

thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace, which was, as usual, long and wandering,

I could find the trace of his preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would 'remember in mercy fower

puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their leelane beside the great and dowie waters.'

I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some show of embarrassment, and that Mary

herself appeared to colour, and looked down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the

party from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued the subject.

'Whatten fish?' cried my uncle. 'Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu' o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi'

He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was not very willing to be put down so

shortly, for young men are disputatious. At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish

'And ye come frae the College!' sneered Uncle Gordon. 'Gude kens what they learn folk there; it's no muckle

service onyway. Do ye think, man, that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wast there, wi'

the sea grasses growin', an' the sea beasts fechtin', an' the sun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's

like the land, but fearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea deid they may be, but they're folk

whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that's like the sea deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land deils,

when a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country, I mind there was an auld, bald

bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisk o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as gray's a tombstane.

An', troth, he was a fearsomelike taed. But he steered naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane

the Lord hated, had gane by there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped

upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane

doon wi' the puir lads in the CHRISTANNA, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If ye had sailed it

for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae

learned the wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a' that's in it by the Lord's

permission: labsters an' partans, an' sic like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an' fish

the hale clan o' them cauldwamed, blindeed uncanny ferlies. O, sirs,' he cried, 'the horror the horror o'

We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe,

appeared to sink gloomily into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore, recalled

'No clearly,' replied the other. 'I misdoobt if a mere man could see ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I

hae sailed wi' a lad they ca'd him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shure eneueh, an' shure eneueh it was the end

of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde a sair wark we had had gaun north wi' seeds an' braws

an' things for the Macleod. We had got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by soa, an'

were off on a lang tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune

smoored wi' mist; a fine gaun breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an' what nane o' us likit to hear

anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane craigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was

forrit wi' the jib sheet; we couldnae see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a' at ance he

gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were ower near Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy

Gabart's deid skreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he could tell was that a sea deil, or sea

bogle, or sea spenster, or siclike, had clum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An', or

the life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps

o' the Cutchull'ns; for doon it cam' a wund do I ca' it! it was the wund o' the Lord's anger an' a' that nicht

we foucht like men dementit, and the niest that we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks

'A merman!' screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. 'Auld wives' clavers! There's nae sic things as

'What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had a kind of a heid upon it man could

Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen, mermaids, and seahorses that had

come ashore upon the islands and attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his

'Aweel, aweel,' he said, 'it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae word o' mermen in the Scriptures.'

'And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe,' objected Rorie, and his argument appeared to carry

When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank behind the house. It was a very hot and

quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and

gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsman showed himself more rational and

tranquil than before. He spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a

reference to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I listened to him in a sort of

trance, gazing with all my heart on that remembered scene, and drinking gladly the seaair and the smoke of

Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been covertly gazing on the surface of the

little bay, rose to his feet and bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide at the

southwest end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a

strong current runs at certain periods of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay Aros Bay,

as it is called where the house stands and on which my uncle was now gazing, the only sign of disturbance

is towards the end of the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any swell, nothing

can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is, there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks

searunes, as we may name them on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in a thousand places

on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them some reference to

himself or those he loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention, struggling, as he

'Do ye see yon scart upo' the water?' he inquired; 'yon ane wast the gray stane? Ay? Weel, it'll no be like a

He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then added below his breath: 'Ay, for the

'And so ye saw't afore?', he ran on, not heeding my remark. 'Weel, weel, but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's

been there waitin', as a man wad say, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'.' And then, breaking

'Yes,' said I. 'I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where the road comes down an M.'

'An M,' he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: 'An' what wad ye make o' that?' he

'I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,' I answered, growing somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own

But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of the other's. My uncle once more paid

no attention to my words; only hung his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he

had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo from my own.

'I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary,' he observed, and began to walk forward.

There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay, where walking is easy; and it was along this that I silently

followed my silent kinsman. I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an opportunity to

declare my love; but I was at the same time far more deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my

uncle. He was never an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was nothing in even the

worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to

close the eyes against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his mind; and as I mentally ran

over the different words which might be represented by the letter M misery, mercy, marriage, money, and

the like I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was still considering the ugly sound and

fatal meaning of the word, when the direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be

had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the ocean, dotted to the north with

isles, and lying to the southward blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood staring

'Ye think there's naething there?' he said, pointing with his pipe; and then cried out aloud, with a kind of

He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to the house of Aros.

I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and then but for a short while, that I could

have a word with her. I lost no time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.

'Mary,' I said, 'I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should prove well founded, we may all leave

and go somewhere else, secure of daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,

which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope that lies nearer to my heart than

money.' And at that I paused. 'You can guess fine what that is, Mary,' I said. She looked away from me in

silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off. 'All my days I have thought the world

of you,' I continued; 'the time goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be happy or

hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.' Still she looked away, and said never a word; but

I thought I saw that her hands shook. 'Mary,' I cried in fear, 'do ye no like me?'

'O, Charlie man,' she said, 'is this a time to speak of it? Let me be, a while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be

I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me out of any thought but to compose her.

'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'say no more; I did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;

and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: what ails you?'

She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only shook her head, and said he was not

well and not like himself, and it was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near it,' said

she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls are gone to their account long syne; and I

This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the ESPIRITO SANTO; yet I did so, and at

the very first word she cried out in surprise. 'There was a man at Grisapol,' she said, 'in the month of May a

little, yellow, blackavised body, they tell me, with gold rings upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was

It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came

suddenly back upon my mind that they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling himself

such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal, on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion

of the great Armada. Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor 'with the gold rings upon his

fingers' might be the same with Dr. Robertson's historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more

likely after treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up my mind, I should lose no

time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it

should not be for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself, and for the good, old,

I WAS early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, set forth upon a tour of exploration.

Something in my heart distinctly told me that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not

give way entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very

rough islet, its surface strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fernland heather; and my way lay almost

north and south across the highest knoll; and though the whole distance was inside of two miles it took more

time and exertion than four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not very high not three

hundred feet, as I think it yet outtops all the neighbouring lowlands of the Ross, and commands a great

view of sea and islands. The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot upon my neck; the air was

listless and thundery, although purely clear; away over the northwest, where the isles lie thickliest

congregated, some halfadozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the head of Ben

Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood of vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The

sea, it is true, was smooth like glass: even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror, and the Merry Men

no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to

lie uneasily; a sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet as it was, the Roost itself

appeared to be revolving mischief. For I ought to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not

prescience, at least a quality of warning, to that strange and dangerous creature of the tides.

I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the slope of Aros to the part that we call

Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from all but

the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low sandhills to the west, but to the eastward lying

several fathoms deep along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time each flood, the current

mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an

undertow runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action of this last, as I suppose, that

has scoured that part so deep. Nothing is to be seen out of Sandag Bay, but one small segment of the horizon

From halfway down the hill, I had perceived the wreck of February last, a brig of considerable tonnage,

lying, with her back broken, high and dry on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards

it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of

fern and heather, and marked by one of those long, low, and almost human looking mounds that we see so

commonly in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said to me of any dead man or

interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my uncle had all equally held their peace; of her at least, I was

certain that she must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof indubitable of the fact. Here was a

grave; and I had to ask myself, with a chill, what manner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the signal

of the Lord in that solitary, seabeat restingplace? My mind supplied no answer but what I feared to

entertain. Shipwrecked, at least, he must have been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from some far

and rich land oversea; or perhaps one of my own race, perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home. I

stood awhile uncovered by his side, and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion to put up some

prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic way, outwardly to honour his misfortune. I knew,

although his bones lay there, a part of Aros, till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was forth and far

away, among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell; and yet my mind misgave me even

with a fear, that perhaps he was near me where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and lingering on the scene of

Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat overshadowed that I turned away from the grave to the hardly less

melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a

little abaft the foremast though indeed she had none, both masts having broken short in her disaster; and as

the pitch of the beach was very sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the fracture

gaped widely open, and you could see right through her poor hull upon the farther side. Her name was much

defaced, and I could not make out clearly whether she was called CHRISTIANIA, after the Norwegian city,

or CHRISTIANA, after the good woman, Christian's wife, in that old book the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' By her

build she was a foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been painted green, but the

colour was faded and weathered, and the paint peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,

half buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not look without emotion at the bits of rope

that still hung about her, so often handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where they had

passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless angel of a figurehead that had dipped into so many

I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but I fell into some melancholy scruples,

as I stood there, leaning with one hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men and even of

inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in upon my mind. To make a profit of such

pitiful misadventures seemed an unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of

something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary, I took heart again. My uncle would never

consent to an imprudent marriage, nor would she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full approval. It

behoved me, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh how long it was since that great

seacastle, the ESPIRITO SANTO, had left her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider

rights so long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of time.

I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the current and the soundings both pointed to the

east side of the bay under the ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after these centuries,

any portion of her held together, it was there that I should find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with

great rapidity, and even close alongside the rocks several fathoms may be found. As I walked upon the edge

I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone clear and green and steady in the

deeps; the bay seemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a lapidary's shop; there was

naught to show that it was water but an internal trembling, a hovering within of sunglints and netted

shadows, and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The shadows of the rocks lay out

for some distance at their feet, so that my own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that,

reached sometimes half across the bay. It was above all in this belt of shadows that I hunted for the

ESPIRITO SANTO; since it was there the undertow ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water

seemed this broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler, and had a mysterious invitation for the eyes. Peer

as I pleased, however, I could see nothing but a few fishes or a bush of seatangle, and here and there a lump

of rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor. Twice did I pass from one end to

the other of the rocks, and in the whole distance I could see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one

where it was possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five fathoms of water, raised off the surface of

the sand to a considerable height, and looking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I

walked. It was one mass of great seatangles like a grove, which prevented me judging of its nature, but in

shape and size it bore some likeness to a vessel's hull. At least it was my best chance. If the ESPIRITO

SANTO lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all in Sandag Bay; and I prepared to put the

question to the proof, once and for all, and either go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my dreams

I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my hands clasped, irresolute. The bay at that

time was utterly quiet; there was no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind the

point; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my venture. Sad seafeelings, scraps of my uncle's

superstitions, thoughts of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my mind. But the

strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I stooped forward and plunged into the sea.

It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the seatangle that grew so thickly on the terrace; but once so far

anchored I secured myself by grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting my feet

against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot

of the rocks, scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the tides; and before me, for as

far as I could see, nothing was visible but the same manyfolded sand upon the sun bright bottom of the

bay. Yet the terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong seagrowths as a tuft of heather,

and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped below the waterline with brown lianas. In this complexity of

forms, all swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished; and I was still uncertain

whether my feet were pressed upon the natural rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasureship, when

the whole tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the surface, and the shores of the

I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my feet. Something at the same moment

rang sharply, like a falling coin. I stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an iron

shoebuckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with

a desolate melancholy. I held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like the

presence of an actual man. His weatherbeaten face, his sailor's hands, his seavoice hoarse with singing at

the capstan, the very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving decks the

whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that

sunny, solitary place, not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the great

treasure ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her

decks a garden for the seaweed, her cabin a breeding place for fish, soundless but for the dredging water,

motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her battlements that old, populous, seariding castle, now

a reef in Sandag Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of the foreign brig was

this shoebuckle bought but the other day and worn by a man of my own period in the world's history,

hearing the same news from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the same temple

with myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary thoughts; my uncle's words, 'the dead are down

there,' echoed in my ears; and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strong repugnance that I

A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. It was no more that clear, visible

interior, like a house roofed with glass, where the green, submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I

suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness filled its bosom, where flashes of light

and clouds of shadow tossed confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and quivered. It

seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes; and when I leaped into the sea the second time it

I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All that met my touch was cold and soft and

gluey. The thicket was alive with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to harden my

heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of

hard, living stone; no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the ESPIRITO SANTO was not there. I

remember I had almost a sense of relief in my disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when

something happened that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had already stayed somewhat

late over my explorations; the current was freshening with the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no

longer a safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there came a sudden flush of current,

dredging through the tangles like a wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and, instinctively

grasping for a fresh support, my fingers closed on something hard and cold. I think I knew at that moment

what it was. At least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and clambered out next moment

Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive connections. The grave, the wreck of the

brig, and the rusty shoe buckle were surely plain advertisements. A child might have read their dismal story,

and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst

upon my spirit. I laid the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was along the rocks

towards the human shore. I could not be far enough from the spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me

back again. The bones of the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether on tangle or

minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and had covered my nakedness against the sun, I

knelt down over against the ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and passionately

for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but

the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at least, was lifted from

my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off

homeward up the rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep determination to

I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look behind me. The sight that met my eyes

For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost tropical rapidity. The whole surface

of the sea had been dulled from its conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in the

distance the white waves, the 'skipper's daughters,' had begun to flee before a breeze that was still insensible

on Aros; and already along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I could hear from

where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the

southwest a huge and solid continent of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its contexture, the

sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth

along the yet unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the sun was blotted

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that it was some seconds before they

alighted on the bay, mapped out below my feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had

just surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping towards the sea, and beyond that

the yellow arc of beach and the whole extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked

down, but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but just turned my back upon it and left it

empty, and my wonder may be fancied when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat was

lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves rolled up, and one with a boathook, kept

her with difficulty to her moorings for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little way off upon

the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be superior in rank, laid their heads together over some

task which at first I did not understand, but a second after I had made it out they were taking bearings with

the compass; and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down, as though

identifying features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, polling among the rocks and peering

over the edge into the water. While I was still watching them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind

hardly yet able to work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly stooped and summoned his

companions with a cry so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the

compass in their hurry, and I could see the bone and the shoebuckle going from hand to hand, causing the

most unusual gesticulations of surprise and interest. Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat,

and saw them point westward to that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly unfurling its blackness

over heaven. The others seemed to consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved, and they bundled

into the boat carrying my relies with them, and set forth out of the bay with all speed of oars.

I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house. Whoever these men were, it was fit

my uncle should be instantly informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent of the

Jacobites; and may be Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to detest, was one of the three superiors whom

I had seen upon the rock. Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely in my mind,

this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened

by the buckle, and the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often below him in the

water, all seemed to point to a different explanation of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the

western sea. The Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the bearded stranger with the rings,

my own fruitless search that very morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together, piece by piece, in

my memory, and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient treasure and the lost

ship of the Armada. But the people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are answerable for their own

security; there is none near by to protect or even to help them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew of

foreign adventurers poor, greedy, and most likely lawless filled me with apprehensions for my uncle's

money, and even for the safety of his daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I

came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed over; only in the extreme east, on a

hill of the mainland, one last gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not heavily, but

in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and already a band of white encircled Aros and the

nearer coasts of Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of what had been

hidden from me lower down a large, heavily sparred, handsome schooner, lying to at the south end of Aros.

Since I had not seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the signs of the weather, and

upon these lone waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear she must have lain last night behind the

uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was manned by strangers to our coast, for that

anchorage, though good enough to look at, is little better than a trap for ships. With such ignorant sailors

upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely to bring death upon its wings.

I FOUND my uncle at the gable end, watching the signs of the weather, with a pipe in his fingers.

I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but even my weariness, so strange was the

effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped his pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen,

his eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have looked at one another silently for a

quarter of a minute, before he made answer in this extraordinary fashion: 'Had he a hair kep on?'

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and

that he had come ashore alive. For the first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor

'These were living men,' said I, 'perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French, perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers

come here to seek the Spanish treasure ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your daughter

and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the dead sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood

My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his eyes for a little on the ground, and

pulled his fingers foolishly; but it was plain that he was past the power of speech.

'Come,' said I. 'You must think for others. You must come up the hill with me, and see this ship.'

He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient strides. The spring seemed to have

gone out of his body, and he scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was wont,

from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to make better haste. Only once he replied to

me complainingly, and like one in bodily pain: 'Ay, ay, man, I'm coming.' Long before we had reached the

top, I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime had been monstrous the punishment was in

At last we emerged above the skyline of the hill, and could see around us. All was black and stormy to the

eye; the last gleam of sun had vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to the

point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was the interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than

when I had stood there last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and already it

moaned aloud in the sea caves of Aros. I looked, at first, in vain for the schooner.

'There she is,' I said at last. But her new position, and the course she was now lying, puzzled me. 'They

'That's what they mean,' said my uncle, with something like joy; and just then the schooner went about and

stood upon another tack, which put the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale on

hand, had thought first of searoom. With the wind that threatened, in these reefsown waters and

'Ay,' returned my uncle, 'a' a' lost. They hadnae a chance but to rin for Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the

noo, they couldnae win through an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man,' he continued, touching

me on the sleeve, 'it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance

I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in his right mind. He was peering up to

me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the

'If it were not too late,' I cried with indignation, 'I would take the coble and go out to warn them.'

'Na, na,' he protested, 'ye maunnae interfere; ye maunnae meddle wi' the like o' that. It's His' doffing his

Something like fear began to creep into my soul and, reminding him that I had not yet dined, I proposed we

should return to the house. But no; nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.

'I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie,' he explained and then as the schooner went about a second time,

'Eh, but they han'le her bonny!' he cried. 'The CHRISTANNA was naething to this.'

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some part, but not yet the twentieth, of the

dangers that environed their doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast

the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment

the rising swell began to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker would fall

in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of

the wave. I tell you, they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle men aboard that ship, God knows. It

was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any humanhearted man that my misguided uncle now pored

and gloated like a connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly on the summit, with

his hands stretched forth and clutching in the heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.

When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still more sadly downcast at the sight of Mary.

She had her sleeves rolled up over her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock from the

'I am not so much wearied, Mary,' I replied, getting on my feet, 'as I am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros

too. You know me well enough to judge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this: you

'Ay, man?' she replied, pounding at the dough; 'will you have found that in the Bible, now?'

'Mary,' I said solemnly, 'you must not laugh at me just now. God knows I am in no heart for laughing. If we

could get your father with us, it would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from here,

my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father's too, I want you far far away from here. I

came with other thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I have no desire nor

hope but to flee for that's the word flee, like a bird out of the fowler's snare, from this accursed island.'

'And do you think, now,' said she, 'do you think, now, I have neither eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havenae

broken my heart to have these braws (as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I

have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an hour or two? No,' she said, 'I know

there's wrong in it; what wrong, I neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made better by

meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to leave my father. While the breath is in

his body, I'll be with him. And he's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie he's not long for

I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head at last to speak, she got before me.

'Charlie,' she said, 'what's right for me, neednae be right for you. There's sin upon this house and trouble; you

are a stranger; take your things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better folk, and if

you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty years syne, you would find me aye waiting.'

'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good as yes. That's done for good. Wherever

As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed to stand still and shudder round the

house of Aros. It was the first squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked about

us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had settled round the house.

'God pity all poor folks at sea!' she said. 'We'll see no more of my father till the morrow's morning.'

And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising gusts, of how this change had fallen

upon my uncle. All last winter he had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or, as

Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for hours together on the Head, if it were

at night, or on the top of Aros by day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail.

After February the tenth, when the wealthbringing wreck was cast ashore at Sandag, he had been at first

unnaturally gay, and his excitement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from dark to darker.

He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two would speak together by the hour at the gable end, in

guarded tones and with an air of secrecy and almost of guilt; and if she questioned either, as at first she

sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with confusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung

about the ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of the Ross. That once it was in

the height of the springs he had passed dryshod while the tide was out; but, having lingered overlong on the

far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It was with a shriek of agony that he had

leaped across the gut, and he had reached home thereafter in a feverfit of fear. A fear of the sea, a constant

haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in his looks when he was silent.

Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared, took a bottle under his arm, put some

bread in his pocket, and set forth again to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the schooner

was losing ground, but the crew were still fighting every inch with hopeless ingenuity and course; and the

A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor,

seeing how swiftly it had come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, the

tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the

poor fellows on the schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and yet ever and

again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or

suddenly fall and draw away, so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our sides. Now the

storm in its might would seize and shake the four corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon,

in a lull, cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair upon our heads and passing

between us as we sat. And again the wind would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low

It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it

appeared, had frightened even his constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to

come out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the more readily as, what with fear and horror,

and the electrical tension of the night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told Mary to be under

no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie

The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight

alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the

flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man's nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder

overhead like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally

sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the

open sea; and God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled

spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering

thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the

combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud

above all this hurlyburly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the

Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the

noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it outtopped the other noises of the night; or if not mirthful, yet

instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed even human. As when savage men have drunk away

their reason, and, discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my ears, these deadly

Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard of ground with conscious effort.

We slipped on the wet sod, we fell together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and breathless,

it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost.

There, it seemed, was my uncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the cliff is highest and

most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man

may sit in quiet and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might look down from the

window of a house upon some street disturbance, so, from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the

Merry Men. On such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the waters wheel and boil,

where the waves joust together with the noise of an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the

twinkling of an eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury, height, and transiency of

their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white

columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time

would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a

wave. And yet the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was

beaten down by the confounding uproar a gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to

madness; and I found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of twilight

that chequered the pitch darkness of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown back

and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,' returned Rorie in the same high key, and it was all that I could

Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was

an act of madness no more to be condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you

will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice,

was this that the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure,

rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff

above that hell of waters, the man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of death, his

ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it were credible in any one, was morally impossible

in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest

superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man's

'Eh, Charlie, man, it's grand!' he cried. 'See to them!' he continued, dragging me to the edge of the abyss from

whence arose that deafening clamour and those clouds of spray; 'see to them dancin', man! Is that no wicked?'

'They're yowlin' for thon schooner,' he went on, his thin, insane voice clearly audible in the shelter of the

bank, 'an' she's comin' aye nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't, the folk kens it,

they ken wool it's by wi' them. Charlie, lad, they're a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were

a' drunk in the CHRISTANNA, at the hinder end. There's nane could droon at sea wantin' the brandy. Hoot

awa, what do you ken?' with a sudden blast of anger. 'I tell ye, it cannae be; they droon withoot it. Ha'e,'

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed I had already thought better of the

movement. I took the bottle, therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even more as I

was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss,

but, once more throwing back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud laugh, he cast

the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap up, shouting to receive it.

'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel. Ye'll get bonnier nor that, or morning.'

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment when the

wind was silent, the clear note of a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and

the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had heard the sound, and we knew,

with agony, that this was the doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her

master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we waited, straining every sense, for the

inevitable end. It was long, however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for

one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose,

as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can

distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than

lightning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled cry of many voices at the

point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at an

end. The strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin, the lives of so many

men, precious surely to others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone

down into the surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still ran and shouted, and the

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is more than I can tell, but it must have

been for long. At length, one by one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the bank.

As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman

maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin

iteration, 'Sic a fecht as they had sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!' and anon he would bewail

that 'a' the gear was as gude's tint,' because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of

stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name the CHRISTANNA would come and go in his

divagations, pronounced with shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an hour the

wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain.

I must then have fallen asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day had already

broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost

was at its lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros remained to witness of the

Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my uncle was bent upon examining the

shores of Aros, and I felt it a part of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but

tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his

exploration. He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The

merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see

him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of

the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to support him, my hand clutched him by

the skirt, I helped him to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night before, the passions that smouldered

in his nature were those of a strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment, was still

undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he could not have shrunk more panically from its

touch; and once, when his foot slipped and he plunged to the midleg into a pool of water, the shriek that came

up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire

for the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more he tottered among the curded

foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed

to be set on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire. Pleased as he was with what he

'Aros,' he said, 'is no a place for wrecks ava' no ava'. A' the years I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second;

'Uncle,' said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there was nothing to divert his mind, 'I saw

'Na, na,' he said, 'no as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I

cannae mend. There's nae soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my lug, it's

'Ou,' he returned, 'if it wasnae sin, I dinnae ken that I would care for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a

sair spang o' the auld sin o' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't; an' whiles when it

gets up, an' the wind skreights the wind an' her are a kind of sib, I'm thinkin' an' thae Merry Men, the daft

callants, blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' the leelang nicht wi' their bit ships

weel, it comes ower me like a glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'm wi'

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me towards the sea; the surf was running gaily,

wave after wave, with their manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach, towering,

curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand. Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread

army of the seachargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the assault of Aros; and close

before us, that line on the flat sands that, with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.

'Thus far shalt thou go,' said I, 'and no farther.' And then I quoted as solemnly as I was able a verse that I had

But yet the Lord that is on high, Is more of might by far, Than noise of many waters is, As great sea billows

'Ay,' said my kinsinan, 'at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I dinnae misdoobt that. But here on earth,

even silly menfolk daur Him to His face. It is nae wise; I am nae sayin' that it's wise; but it's the pride of the

I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay between us and Sandag; and I withheld

my last appeal to the man's better reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor did

he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step. The call that I had made upon his mind

acted like a stimulant, and I could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a profound,

gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or four minutes we had topped the brae and begun to go

down upon Sandag. The wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round and

dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a little higher, for the two parts now lay

entirely separate on the beach. When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain,

'A man,' said I, 'was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortal dangers; he was poor, he was naked,

he was wet, he was weary, he was a stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may

be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be he was a man laden with iniquities to

whom death was the beginning of torment. I ask you in the sight of heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the

He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his face expressed no feeling but a vague

'You were my father's brother,' I continued; 'You, have taught me to count your house as if it were my father's

house; and we are both sinful men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. It is by

our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by His temptation, but I must say with His

consent; and to any but the brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by this

crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and if there shall follow no repentance, no

improvement, no return to Him, what can we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?'

Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face. A change fell upon his looks that

cannot be described; his features seemed to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose

waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the oftrepeated name fell once more from

I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I

was still startled by the sight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the cabinhutch of the

wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his

figure was relieved to its full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky. I have said a

thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at that moment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the

unexplained appearance of a stranger on that seagirt, solitary island filled me with a surprise that bordered

close on terror. It seemed scarce possible that any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as

had rated last night along the coasts of Aros; and the only vessel within miles had gone down before our eyes

among the Merry Men. I was assailed with doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put the matter to

He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us. At this my courage instantly revived, and I called and

signed to him to draw near, and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly to

approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark of the man's uneasiness I grew the more

confident myself; and I advanced another step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand. It was

plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the

And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have recognised, my kinsman began swearing and

praying in a mingled stream. I looked at him; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step

of the castaway's the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of his utterance and the fervour of his language

redoubled. I call it prayer, for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting incongruities were ever

before addressed to the Creator by a creature: surely if prayer can be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran

'Silence, man,' said I, 'respect your God in words, if not in action. Here, on the very scene of your

transgressions, He sends you an occasion of atonement. Forward and embrace it; welcome like a father yon

With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me to the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving

the shoulder of his jacket, and fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I staggered to my feet

again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused in surprise, perhaps in terror, some halfway

between me and the wreck; my uncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I thus found

myself torn for a time between two duties. But I judged, and I pray Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of

the poor wretch upon the sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation; it was one,

besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by that time to regard my uncle as an incurable and

dismal lunatic. I advanced accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach with folded arms,

like one prepared for either destiny. As I came nearer, he reached forth his hand with a great gesture, such as

I had seen from the pulpit, and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not a word was

comprehensible. I tried him first in English, then in Gaelic, both in vain; so that it was clear we must rely

upon the tongue of looks and gestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily and

with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while there had come no shade of alteration in his face,

neither of anxiety while he was still waiting, nor of relief now that he was reassured; if he were a slave, as I

supposed, I could not but judge he must have fallen from some high place in his own country, and fallen as he

was, I could not but admire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I paused and raised my hands and eyes to

heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead; and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his hands

abroad; it was a strange motion, but done like a thing of common custom; and I supposed it was ceremonial

in the land from which he came. At the same time he pointed to my uncle, whom we could just see perched

We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle if we struck across the island; and as

we walked, I had time enough to mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my doubts.

Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before the negro the action of the man whom I had

seen the day before taking bearings with the compass at Sandag. He understood me at once, and, taking the

imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was, pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position

of the schooner, and then down along the edge of the rock with the words 'Espirito Santo,' strangely

pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been right in my conjecture; the pretended historical

inquiry had been but a cloak for treasurehunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was the same as

the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros:

there had their greed brought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore. In the meantime the

black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking up skyward as though watching the approach of the

storm now, in the character of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an officer, running along the

rock and entering the boat; and anon bending over imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all

with the same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile. Lastly, he indicated to me, by a

pantomime not to be described in words, how he himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to

his grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon folded his arms once more, and

The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to him by means of a sketch the fate of the

vessel and of all aboard her. He showed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his open hand,

seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they had been) into God's pleasure. Respect came

upon me and grew stronger, the more I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and severe

character, such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached the house of Aros I had almost forgotten,

To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own my heart failed me; but I did wrong to

'You did the right,' she said. 'God's will be done.' And she set out meat for us at once.

As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway, who was still eating, and set forth

again myself to find my uncle. I had not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the very

topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had last observed him. From that point, as I have

said, the most of Aros and the neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it was plain

that he kept a bright lookout in all directions, for my head had scarcely risen above the summit of the first

ascent before he had leaped to his feet and turned as if to face me. I hailed him at once, as well as I was able,

in the same tones and words as I had often used before, when I had come to summon him to dinner. He made

not so much as a movement in reply. I passed on a little farther, and again tried parley, with the same result.

But when I began a second time to advance, his insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence, but

with incredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky summit of the hill. An hour before, he

had been dead weary, and I had been comparatively active. But now his strength was recruited by the fervour

of insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit. Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might

have inflamed his terrors, and thus increased the miseries of our position. And I had nothing left but to turn

She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure, and, bidding me lie down and take that

rest of which I stood so much in need, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age it would

have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep; I slept long and deep; and it was already long

past noon before I awoke and came downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the black castaway were

seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that Mary had been weeping. There was cause enough, as I

soon learned, for tears. First she, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle; each in turn had found him

perched upon the hilltop, and from each in turn he had silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase

him, but in vain; madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from rock to rock over the widest

gullies; he scoured like the wind along the hilltops; he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and

Rorie at length gave in; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated as before upon the crest of Aros. Even

during the hottest excitement of the chase, even when the fleetfooted servant had come, for a moment, very

near to capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound. He fled, and he was silent, like a beast; and this

There was something heartbreaking in the situation. How to capture the madman, how to feed him in the

meanwhile, and what to do with him when he was captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve.

'The black,' said I, 'is the cause of this attack. It may even be his presence in the house that keeps my uncle on

the hill. We have done the fair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose that Rorie

put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through the Ross as far as Grisapol.'

In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black follow us, we all three descended to the pier.

Certainly, Heaven's will was declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled

before in Aros; during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and, striking on the rough splinters of the pier,

now lay in four feet of water with one side stove in. Three days of work at least would be required to make

her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led the whole party round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the

other side, and called to the black to follow me. He signed, with the same clearness and quiet as before, that

he knew not the art; and there was truth apparent in his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to doubt

his truth; and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we came to the house of Aros, the negro

All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate with the unhappy madman. Again

he was visible on his perch; again he fled in silence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his

comfort; the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to be even warm. We might compose

ourselves, we thought, until the morrow; rest was the chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for

I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow. I was to place the black on the side of Sandag,

whence he should head my uncle towards the house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the

cordon, as best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of the island, that it should

be possible, though hard, to force him down upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with

the strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It was on his terror of the black that I

relied; for I made sure, however he might run, it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed

to have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the compass at least would be secure.

When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by a dream of wrecks, black men, and

submarine adventure; and I found myself so shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped

out before the house. Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together in the kitchen; outside was a

wonderful clear night of stars, with here and there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was

near the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless quiet of the night. Never, not even

in the height of the tempest, had I heard their song with greater awe. Now, when the winds were gathered

home, when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber, and when the stars rained their gentle

light over land and sea, the voice of these tidebreakers was still raised for havoc. They seemed, indeed, to be

a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life. Nor were their meaningless vociferations the only sounds

that broke the silence of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and thrilling and now almost drowned, the

note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of the Roost. I knew it for my kinsman's; and a great fear

fell upon me of God's judgments, and the evil in the world. I went back again into the darkness of the house

as into a place of shelter, and lay long upon my bed, pondering these mysteries.

It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into my clothes and hurried to the kitchen. No one was there;

Rorie and the black had both stealthily departed long before; and my heart stood still at the discovery. I could

rely on Rorie's heart, but I placed no trust in his discretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he was

plainly bent upon some service to my uncle. But what service could he hope to render even alone, far less in

the company of the man in whom my uncle found his fears incarnated? Even if I were not already too late to

prevent some deadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer. With the thought I was out of the house;

and often as I have run on the rough sides of Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not believe I

My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had indeed been torn open and the meat scattered on the turf;

but, as we found afterwards, no mouthful had been tasted; and there was not another trace of human existence

in that wide field of view. Day had already filled the clear heavens; the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom

upon the crest of Ben Kyaw; but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea lay steeped in the

'Rorie!' I cried; and again 'Rorie!' My voice died in the silence, but there came no answer back. If there were

indeed an enterprise afoot to catch my uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in dexterity of

stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran on farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right and

left, nor did I pause again till I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the wreck, the uncovered belt of

sand, the waves idly beating, the long ledge of rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders, and

At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows and colours leaped into being. Not half a moment later,

below me to the west, sheep began to scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle running. I saw

the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had time to understand, Rorie also had appeared, calling

I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had done better to have waited where I was, for I was the means

of cutting off the madman's last escape. There was nothing before him from that moment but the grave, the

wreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven knows that what I did was for the best.

My uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to him, the chase was driving him. He doubled, darting to

the right and left; but high as the fever ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where he would,

he was still forestalled, still driven toward the scene of his crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that

the coast reechoed; and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all was vain, for it was

written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave,

and skimmed close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the sand; and still my kinsman

did not pause, but dashed straight into the surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly

behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond the hands of men, and these were the

decrees of God that came to pass before our eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach they

were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black rose once for a moment with a throttling

cry; but the current had them, racing seaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can tell, it

would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where the seabirds hover fishing.

THE Mill here Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pinewoods and great

mountains. Above, hill after hill, soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber, and

stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey village lay like a seam or a ray of vapour on a wooded

hillside; and when the wind was favourable, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin and silvery,

to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and at the same time widened out on either hand;

and from an eminence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it over a wide

plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on from city to city on its voyage towards the sea. It

chanced that over this valley there lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom; so that, quiet and rural as it was,

the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful societies.

All through the summer, travellingcarriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly downwards past the

mill; and as it happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented,

except by people going in one direction; and of all the carriages that Will saw go by, fivesixths were

plunging briskly downwards and only onesixth crawling up. Much more was this the case with

footpassengers. All the lightfooted tourists, all the pedlars laden with strange wares, were tending

downward like the river that accompanied their path. Nor was this all; for when Will was yet a child a

disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the

earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the coil of battle terrified

good people from their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at

last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and

foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child stood

and watched them on their passage the rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven faces tanned about the eyes,

the discoloured regimentals and the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and

all night long, after he was in bed, he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet trampling, and the great

armament sweeping onward and downward past the mill. No one in the valley ever heard the fate of the

expedition, for they lay out of the way of gossip in those troublous times; but Will saw one thing plainly, that

not a man returned. Whither had they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and pedlars with strange wares?

whither all the brisk barouches with servants in the dicky? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing

downward and ever renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, and carried the dead

leaves along with it in the fall. It seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they all

went downward, fleetly and gaily downward, and only he, it seemed, remained behind, like a stock upon the

wayside. It sometimes made him glad when he noticed how the fishes kept their heads up stream. They, at

least, stood faithfully by him, while all else were posting downward to the unknown world.

'It goes down the valley,' answered he, 'and turns a power of mills six score mills, they say, from here to

Unterdeck and is none the wearier after all. And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters the great

corn country, and runs through a sight of fine cities (so they say) where kings live all alone in great palaces,

with a sentry walling up and down before the door. And it goes under bridges with stone men upon them,

looking down and smiling so curious it the water, and living folks leaning their elbows on the wall and

looking over too. And then it goes on and on, and down through marshes and sands, until at last it falls into

the sea, where the ships are that bring parrots and tobacco from the Indies. Ay, it has a long trot before it as it

'The sea!' cried the miller. 'Lord help us all, it is the greatest thing God made! That is where all the water in

the world runs down into a great salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as innocentlike as a child; but

they do say when the wind blows it gets up into watermountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows

down great ships bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can hear it miles away upon the

land. There are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as lone as our river and as old

Will thought he had never heard anything like this, and he kept on asking question after question about the

world that lay away down the river, with all its perils and marvels, until the old miller became quite interested

himself, and at last took him by the hand and led him to the hilltop that overlooks the valley and the plain.

The sun was near setting, and hung low down in a cloudless sky. Everything was defined and glorified in

golden light. Will had never seen so great an expanse of country in his life; he stood and gazed with all his

eyes. He could see the cities, and the woods and fields, and the bright curves of the river, and far away to

where the rim of the plain trenched along the shining heavens. An overmastering emotion seized upon the

boy, soul and body; his heart beat so thickly that he could not breathe; the scene swam before his eyes; the

sun seemed to wheel round and round, and throw off, as it turned, strange shapes which disappeared with the

rapidity of thought, and were succeeded by others. Will covered his face with his hands, and burst into a

violent fit of tears; and the poor miller, sadly disappointed and perplexed, saw nothing better for it than to

From that day forward Will was full of new hopes and longings. Something kept tugging at his heartstrings;

the running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface; the wind, as it ran

over innumerable treetops, hailed him with encouraging words; branches beckoned downward; the open

road, as it shouldered round the angles and went turning and vanishing fast and faster down the valley,

tortured him with its solicitations. He spent long whiles on the eminence, looking down the rivershed and

abroad on the fat lowlands, and watched the clouds that travelled forth upon the sluggish wind and trailed

their purple shadows on the plain; or he would linger by the wayside, and follow the carriages with his eyes

as they rattled downward by the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that went that way, were it

cloud or carriage, bird or brown water in the stream, he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing.

We are told by men of science that all the ventures of mariners on the sea, all that countermarching of tribes

and races that confounds old history with its dust and rumour, sprang from nothing more abstruse than the

laws of supply and demand, and a certain natural instinct for cheap rations. To any one thinking deeply, this

will seem a dull and pitiful explanation. The tribes that came swarming out of the North and East, if they

were indeed pressed onward from behind by others, were drawn at the same time by the magnetic influence

of the South and West. The fame of other lands had reached them; the name of the eternal city rang in their

ears; they were not colonists, but pilgrims; they travelled towards wine and gold and sunshine, but their

hearts were set on something higher. That divine unrest, that old stinging trouble of humanity that makes all

high achievements and all miserable failure, the same that spread wings with Icarus, the same that sent

Columbus into the desolate Atlantic, inspired and supported these barbarians on their perilous march. There is

one legend which profoundly represents their spirit, of how a flying party of these wanderers encountered a

very old man shod with iron. The old man asked them whither they were going; and they answered with one

voice: 'To the Eternal City!' He looked upon them gravely. 'I have sought it,' he said, 'over the most part of

the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon this pilgrimage, and now the

fourth is growing slender underneath my steps. And all this while I have not found the city.' And he turned

And yet this would scarcely parallel the intensity of Will's feeling for the plain. If he could only go far

enough out there, he felt as if his eyesight would be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would grow more

delicate, and his very breath would come and go with luxury. He was transplanted and withering where he

was; he lay in a strange country and was sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken notions of the

world below: of the river, ever moving and growing until it sailed forth into the majestic ocean; of the cities,

full of brisk and beautiful people, playing fountains, bands of music and marble palaces, and lighted up at

night from end to end with artificial stars of gold; of the great churches, wise universities, brave armies, and

untold money lying stored in vaults; of the highflying vice that moved in the sunshine, and the stealth and

swiftness of midnight murder. I have said he was sick as if for home: the figure halts. He was like some one

lying in twilit, formless preexistence, and stretching out his hands lovingly towards manycoloured,

manysounding life. It was no wonder he was unhappy, he would go and tell the fish: they were made for

their life, wished for no more than worms and running water, and a hole below a falling bank; but he was

differently designed, full of desires and aspirations, itching at the fingers, lusting with the eyes, whom the

whole variegated world could not satisfy with aspects. The true life, the true bright sunshine, lay far out upon

the plain. And O! to see this sunlight once before he died! to move with a jocund spirit in a golden land! to

hear the trained singers and sweet church bells, and see the holiday gardens! 'And O fish!' he would cry, 'if

you would only turn your noses down stream, you could swim so easily into the fabled waters and see the

vast ships passing over your head like clouds, and hear the great waterhills making music over you all day

long!' But the fish kept looking patiently in their own direction, until Will hardly knew whether to laugh or

Hitherto the traffic on the road had passed by Will, like something seen in a picture: he had perhaps

exchanged salutations with a tourist, or caught sight of an old gentleman in a travelling cap at a carriage

window; but for the most part it had been a mere symbol, which he contemplated from apart and with

something of a superstitious feeling. A time came at last when this was to be changed. The miller, who was a

greedy man in his way, and never forewent an opportunity of honest profit, turned the millhouse into a little

wayside inn, and, several pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely, built stables and got the position of

post master on the road. It now became Will's duty to wait upon people, as they sat to break their fasts in the

little arbour at the top of the mill garden; and you may be sure that he kept his ears open, and learned many

new things about the outside world as he brought the omelette or the wine. Nay, he would often get into

conversation with single guests, and by adroit questions and polite attention, not only gratify his own

curiosity, but win the goodwill of the travellers. Many complimented the old couple on their servingboy;

and a professor was eager to take him away with him, and have him properly educated in the plain. The

miller and his wife were mightily astonished and even more pleased. They thought it a very good thing that

they should have opened their inn. 'You see,' the old man would remark, 'he has a kind of talent for a

publican; he never would have made anything else!' And so life wagged on in the valley, with high

satisfaction to all concerned but Will. Every carriage that left the inndoor seemed to take a part of him away

with it; and when people jestingly offered him a lift, he could with difficulty command his emotion. Night

after night he would dream that he was awakened by flustered servants, and that a splendid equipage waited

at the door to carry him down into the plain; night after night; until the dream, which had seemed all jollity to

him at first, began to take on a colour of gravity, and the nocturnal summons and waiting equipage occupied a

One day, when Will was about sixteen, a fat young man arrived at sunset to pass the night. He was a

contentedlooking fellow, with a jolly eye, and carried a knapsack. While dinner was preparing, he sat in the

arbour to read a book; but as soon as he had begun to observe Will, the book was laid aside; he was plainly

one of those who prefer living people to people made of ink and paper. Will, on his part, although he had not

been much interested in the stranger at first sight, soon began to take a great deal of pleasure in his talk,

which was full of good nature and good sense, and at last conceived a great respect for his character and

wisdom. They sat far into the night; and about two in the morning Will opened his heart to the young man,

and told him how he longed to leave the valley and what bright hopes he had connected with the cities of the

'My young friend,' he remarked, 'you are a very curious little fellow to be sure, and wish a great many things

which you will never get. Why, you would feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little fellows in these

fairy cities of yours are all after the same sort of nonsense, and keep breaking their hearts to get up into the

mountains. And let me tell you, those who go down into the plains are a very short while there before they

wish themselves heartily back again. The air is not so light nor so pure; nor is the sun any brighter. As for the

beautiful men and women, you would see many of them in rags and many of them deformed with horrible

disorders; and a city is so hard a place for people who are poor and sensitive that many choose to die by their

'You must think me very simple,' answered Will. 'Although I have never been out of this valley, believe me, I

have used my eyes. I know how one thing lives on another; for instance, how the fish hangs in the eddy to

catch his fellows; and the shepherd, who makes so pretty a picture carrying home the lamb, is only carrying it

home for dinner. I do not expect to find all things right in your cities. That is not what troubles me; it might

have been that once upon a time; but although I live here always, I have asked many questions and learned a

great deal in these last years, and certainly enough to cure me of my old fancies. But you would not have me

die like a dog and not see all that is to be seen, and do all that a man can do, let it be good or evil? you would

not have me spend all my days between this road here and the river, and not so much as make a motion to be

up and live my life? I would rather die out of hand,' he cried, 'than linger on as I am doing.'

'Thousands of people,' said the young man, 'live and die like you, and are none the less happy.'

'Ah!' said Will, 'if there are thousands who would like, why should not one of them have my place?'

It was quite dark; there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit up the table and the faces of the speakers;

and along the arch, the leaves upon the trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky, a pattern of

transparent green upon a dusky purple. The fat young man rose, and, taking Will by the arm, led him out

'They are worlds like ours,' said the young man. 'Some of them less; many of them a million times greater;

and some of the least sparkles that you see are not only worlds, but whole clusters of worlds turning about

each other in the midst of space. We do not know what there may be in any of them; perhaps the answer to all

our difficulties or the cure of all our sufferings: and yet we can never reach them; not all the skill of the

craftiest of men can fit out a ship for the nearest of these our neighbours, nor would the life of the most aged

suffice for such a journey. When a great battle has been lost or a dear friend is dead, when we are hipped or in

high spirits, there they are unweariedly shining overhead. We may stand down here, a whole army of us

together, and shout until we break our hearts, and not a whisper reaches them. We may climb the highest

mountain, and we are no nearer them. All we can do is to stand down here in the garden and take off our hats;

the starshine lights upon our heads, and where mine is a little bald, I dare say you can see it glisten in the

darkness. The mountain and the mouse. That is like to be all we shall ever have to do with Arcturus or

Aldebaran. Can you apply a parable?' he added, laying his hand upon Will's shoulder. 'It is not the same thing

Will hung his head a little, and then raised it once more to heaven. The stars seemed to expand and emit a

sharper brilliancy; and as he kept turning his eyes higher and higher, they seemed to increase in multitude

'Something of that size. Did you ever see a squirrel turning in a cage? and another squirrel sitting

philosophically over his nuts? I needn't ask you which of them looked more of a fool.'

After some years the old people died, both in one winter, very carefully tended by their adopted son, and very

quietly mourned when they were gone. People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he would hasten

to sell the property, and go down the river to push his fortunes. But there was never any sign of such in

intention on the part of Will. On the contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and hired a couple of

servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there he settled down, a kind, talkative, inscrutable young man,

six feet three in his stockings, with an iron constitution and a friendly voice. He soon began to take rank in

the district as a bit of an oddity: it was not much to be wondered at from the first, for he was always full of

notions, and kept calling the plainest commonsense in question; but what most raised the report upon him

The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be about thirty; well enough looking, and

much better educated than any other girl in that part of the country, as became her parentage. She held her

head very high, and had already refused several offers of marriage with a grand air, which had got her hard

names among the neighbours. For all that she was a good girl, and one that would have made any man well

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonage were only two miles from his own

door, he was never known to go there but on Sundays. It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into

disrepair, and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter took lodgings for a month or so, on very

much reduced terms, at Will's inn. Now, what with the inn, and the mill, and the old miller's savings, our

friend was a man of substance; and besides that, he had a name for good temper and shrewdness, which make

a capital portion in marriage; and so it was currently gossiped, among their illwishers, that the parson and

his daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging with their eyes shut. Will was about the last man in the

world to be cajoled or frightened into marriage. You had only to look into his eyes, limpid and still like pools

of water, and yet with a sort of clear light that seemed to come from within, and you would understand at

once that here was one who knew his own mind, and would stand to it immovably. Marjory herself was no

weakling by her looks, with strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing. It might be a question

whether she was not Will's match in stedfastness, after all, or which of them would rule the roast in marriage.

But Marjory had never given it a thought, and accompanied her father with the most unshaken innocence and

The season was still so early that Will's customers were few and far between; but the lilacs were already

flowering, and the weather was so mild that the party took dinner under the trellice, with the noise of the river

in their ears and the woods ringing about them with the songs of birds. Will soon began to take a particular

pleasure in these dinners. The parson was rather a dull companion, with a habit of dozing at table; but nothing

rude or cruel ever fell from his lips. And as for the parson's daughter, she suited her surroundings with the

best grace imaginable; and whatever she said seemed so pat and pretty that Will conceived a great idea of her

talents. He could see her face, as she leaned forward, against a background of rising pinewoods; her eyes

shone peaceably; the light lay around her hair like a kerchief; something that was hardly a smile rippled her

pale cheeks, and Will could not contain himself from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay. She looked, even

in her quietest moments, so complete in herself, and so quick with life down to her finger tips and the very

skirts of her dress, that the remainder of created things became no more than a blot by comparison; and if

Will glanced away from her to her surroundings, the trees looked inanimate and senseless, the clouds hung in

heaven like dead things, and even the mountain tops were disenchanted. The whole valley could not compare

Will was always observant in the society of his fellowcreatures; but his observation became almost

painfully eager in the case of Marjory. He listened to all she uttered, and read her eyes, at the same time, for

the unspoken commentary. Many kind, simple, and sincere speeches found an echo in his heart. He became

conscious of a soul beautifully poised upon itself, nothing doubting, nothing desiring, clothed in peace. It was

not possible to separate her thoughts from her appearance. The turn of her wrist, the still sound of her voice,

the light in her eyes, the lines of her body, fell in tune with her grave and gentle words, like the

accompaniment that sustains and harmonises the voice of the singer. Her influence was one thing, not to be

divided or discussed, only to he felt with gratitude and joy. To Will, her presence recalled something of his

childhood, and the thought of her took its place in his mind beside that of dawn, of running water, and of the

earliest violets and lilacs. It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like

the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness

which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs; a grave beatitude possessed him from top to toe, and

he kept smiling to himself and the landscape as he went. The river ran between the steppingstones with a

pretty wimple; a bird sang loudly in the wood; the hilltops looked immeasurably high, and as he glanced at

them from time to time seemed to contemplate his movements with a beneficent but awful curiosity. His way

took him to the eminence which overlooked the plain; and there he sat down upon a stone, and fell into deep

and pleasant thought. The plain lay abroad with its cities and silver river; everything was asleep, except a

great eddy of birds which kept rising and falling and going round and round in the blue air. He repeated

Marjory's name aloud, and the sound of it gratified his ear. He shut his eyes, and her image sprang up before

him, quietly luminous and attended with good thoughts. The river might run for ever; the birds fly higher and

higher till they touched the stars. He saw it was empty bustle after all; for here, without stirring a feet, waiting

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner table, while the parson was filling his pipe.

'Miss Marjory,' he said, 'I never knew any one I liked so well as you. I am mostly a cold, unkindly sort of

man; not from want of heart, but out of strangeness in my way of thinking; and people seem far away from

me. 'Tis as if there were a circle round me, which kept every one out but you; I can hear the others talking

and laughing; but you come quite close. Maybe, this is disagreeable to you?' he asked.

'Nay, now,' returned Will, 'I wouldn't press her, parson. I feel tonguetied myself, who am not used to it; and

she's a woman, and little more than a child, when all is said. But for my part, as far as I can understand what

people mean by it, I fancy I must be what they call in love. I do not wish to be held as committing myself; for

I may be wrong; but that is how I believe things are with me. And if Miss Marjory should feel any otherwise

'The girl must speak,' replied the parson, laying down his pipe. 'Here's our neighbour who says he loves you,

'Well then, that's all that could be wished!' cried Will, heartily. And he took her hand across the table, and

Two or three days passed away with great delight to Will, although a bystander might scarce have found it

out. He continued to take his meals opposite Marjory, and to talk with her and gaze upon her in her father's

presence; but he made no attempt to see her alone, nor in any other way changed his conduct towards her

from what it had been since the beginning. Perhaps the girl was a little disappointed, and perhaps not

unjustly; and yet if it had been enough to be always in the thoughts of another person, and so pervade and

alter his whole life, she might have been thoroughly contented. For she was never out of Will's mind for an

instant. He sat over the stream, and watched the dust of the eddy, and the poised fish, and straining weeds; he

wandered out alone into the purple even, with all the blackbirds piping round him in the wood; he rose early

in the morning, and saw the sky turn from grey to gold, and the light leap upon the hilltops; and all the while

he kept wondering if he had never seen such things before, or how it was that they should look so different

now. The sound of his own millwheel, or of the wind among the trees, confounded and charmed his heart.

The most enchanting thoughts presented themselves unbidden in his mind. He was so happy that he could not

sleep at night, and so restless, that he could hardly sit still out of her company. And yet it seemed as if he

One day, as he was coming home from a ramble, Will found Marjory in the garden picking flowers, and as he

'Why, no,' said he, 'not so much. They are a very small affair, when all is done. I can fancy people caring for

'Plucking them,' said he. 'They are a deal better off where they are, and look a deal prettier, if you go to that.'

'I wish to have them for my own,' she answered, 'to carry them near my heart, and keep them in my room.

They tempt me when they grow here; they seem to say, "Come and do something with us;" but once I have

cut them and put them by, the charm is laid, and I can look at them with quite an easy heart.'

'You wish to possess them,' replied Will, 'in order to think no more about them. It's a bit like killing the goose

with the golden eggs. It's a bit like what I wished to do when I was a boy. Because I had a fancy for looking

out over the plain, I wished to go down there where I couldn't look out over it any longer. Was not that fine

reasoning? Dear, dear, if they only thought of it, all the world would do like me; and you would let your

flowers alone, just as I stay up here in the mountains.' Suddenly he broke off sharp. 'By the Lord!' he cried.

And when she asked him what was wrong, he turned the question off and walked away into the house with

He was silent at table; and after the night hid fallen and the stars had come out overhead, he walked up and

down for hours in the courtyard and garden with an uneven pace. There was still a light in the window of

Marjory's room: one little oblong patch of orange in a world of dark blue hills and silver starlight. Will's mind

ran a great deal on the window; but his thoughts were not very loverlike. 'There she is in her room,' he

thought, 'and there are the stars overhead: a blessing upon both!' Both were good influences in his life; both

soothed and braced him in his profound contentment with the world. And what more should he desire with

either? The fat young man and his councils were so present to his mind, that he threw back his head, and,

putting his hands before his mouth, shouted aloud to the populous heavens. Whether from the position of his

head or the sudden strain of the exertion, he seemed to see a momentary shock among the stars, and a

diffusion of frosty light pass from one to another along the sky. At the same instant, a corner of the blind was

lifted and lowered again at once. He laughed a loud hoho! 'One and another!' thought Will. 'The stars

tremble, and the blind goes up. Why, before Heaven, what a great magician I must be! Now if I were only a

fool, should not I be in a pretty way?' And he went off to bed, chuckling to himself: 'If I were only a fool!'

The next morning, pretty early, he saw her once more in the garden, and sought her out.

'I have been thinking about getting married,' he began abruptly; 'and after having turned it all over, I have

She turned upon him for a single moment; but his radiant, kindly appearance would, under the circumstances,

have disconcerted an angel, and she looked down again upon the ground in silence. He could see her tremble.

'I hope you don't mind,' he went on, a little taken aback. 'You ought not. I have turned it all over, and upon

my soul there's nothing in it. We should never be one whit nearer than we are just now, and, if I am a wise

'It is unnecessary to go round about with me,' she said. 'I very well remember that you refused to commit

yourself; and now that I see you were mistaken, and in reality have never cared for me, I can only feel sad

'I ask your pardon,' said Will stoutly; 'you do not understand my meaning. As to whether I have ever loved

you or not, I must leave that to others. But for one thing, my feeling is not changed; and for another, you may

make it your boast that you have made my whole life and character something different from what they were.

I mean what I say; no less. I do not think getting married is worth while. I would rather you went on living

with your father, so that I could walk over and see you once, or maybe twice a week, as people go to church,

and then we should both be all the happier between whiles. That's my notion. But I'll marry you if you will,'

'Not I, Marjory,' said he; 'if there is anything in a clear conscience, not I. I offer all my heart's best affection;

you can take it or want it, though I suspect it's beyond either your power or mine to change what has once

been done, and set me fancyfree. I'll marry you, if you like; but I tell you again and again, it's not worth

while, and we had best stay friends. Though I am a quiet man I have noticed a heap of things in my life. Trust

in me, and take things as I propose; or, if you don't like that, say the word, and I'll marry you out of hand.'

There was a considerable pause, and Will, who began to feel uneasy, began to grow angry in consequence.

'It seems you are too proud to say your mind,' he said. 'Believe me that's a pity. A clean shrift makes simple

living. Can a man be more downright or honourable, to a woman than I have been? I have said my say, and

given you your choice. Do you want me to marry you? or will you take my friendship, as I think best? or

have you had enough of me for good? Speak out for the dear God's sake! You know your father told you a

She seemed to recover herself at that, turned without a word, walked rapidly through the garden, and

disappeared into the house, leaving Will in some confusion as to the result. He walked up and down the

garden, whistling softly to himself. Sometimes he stopped and contemplated the sky and hilltops; sometimes

he went down to the tail of the weir and sat there, looking foolishly in the water. All this dubiety and

perturbation was so foreign to his nature and the life which he had resolutely chosen for himself, that he

began to regret Marjory's arrival. 'After all,' he thought, 'I was as happy as a man need be. I could come down

here and watch my fishes all day long if I wanted: I was as settled and contented as my old mill.'

Marjory came down to dinner, looking very trim and quiet; and no sooner were all three at table than she

made her father a speech, with her eyes fixed upon her plate, but showing no other sign of embarrassment or

'Father,' she began, 'Mr. Will and I have been talking things over. We see that we have each made a mistake

about our feelings, and he has agreed, at my request, to give up all idea of marriage, and be no more than my

very good friend, as in the past. You see, there is no shadow of a quarrel, and indeed I hope we shall see a

great deal of him in the future, for his visits will always be welcome in our house. Of course, father, you will

know best, but perhaps we should do better to leave Mr. Will's house for the present. I believe, after what has

Will, who had commanded himself with difficulty from the first, broke out upon this into an inarticulate

noise, and raised one hand with an appearance of real dismay, as if he were about to interfere and contradict.

But she checked him at once looking up at him with a swift glance and an angry flush upon her cheek.

'You will perhaps have the good grace,' she said, 'to let me explain these matters for myself.'

Will was put entirely out of countenance by her expression and the ring of her voice. He held his peace,

concluding that there were some things about this girl beyond his comprehension, in which he was exactly

The poor parson was quite crestfallen. He tried to prove that this was no more than a true lovers' tiff, which

would pass off before night; and when he was dislodged from that position, he went on to argue that where

there was no quarrel there could be no call for a separation; for the good man liked both his entertainment and

his host. It was curious to see how the girl managed them, saying little all the time, and that very quietly, and

yet twisting them round her finger and insensibly leading them wherever she would by feminine tact and

generalship. It scarcely seemed to have been her doing it seemed as if things had merely so fallen out that

she and her father took their departure that same afternoon in a farm cart, and went farther down the valley,

to wait, until their own house was ready for them, in another hamlet. But Will had been observing closely,

and was well aware of her dexterity and resolution. When he found himself alone he had a great many

curious matters to turn over in his mind. He was very sad and solitary, to begin with. All the interest had gone

out of his life, and he might look up at the stars as long as he pleased, he somehow failed to find support or

consolation. And then he was in such a turmoil of spirit about Marjory. He had been puzzled and irritated at

her behaviour, and yet he could not keep himself from admiring it. He thought he recognised a fine, perverse

angel in that still soul which he had never hitherto suspected; and though he saw it was an influence that

would fit but ill with his own life of artificial calm, he could not keep himself from ardently desiring to

possess it. Like a man who has lived among shadows and now meets the sun, he was both pained and

As the days went forward he passed from one extreme to another; now pluming himself on the strength of his

determination, now despising his timid and silly caution. The former was, perhaps, the true thought of his

heart, and represented the regular tenor of the man's reflections; but the latter burst forth from time to time

with an unruly violence, and then he would forget all consideration, and go up and down his house and

garden or walk among the firwoods like one who is beside himself with remorse. To equable,

steadyminded Will this state of matters was intolerable; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bring it to

an end. So, one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes, took a thorn switch in his hand, and set

out down the valley by the river. As soon as he had taken his determination, he had regained at a bound his

customary peace of heart, and he enjoyed the bright weather and the variety of the scene without any

admixture of alarm or unpleasant eagerness. It was nearly the same to him how the matter turned out. If she

accepted him he would have to marry her this time, which perhaps was, all for the best. If she refused him, he

would have done his utmost, and might follow his own way in the future with an untroubled conscience. He

hoped, on the whole, she would refuse him; and then, again, as he saw the brown roof which sheltered her,

peeping through some willows at an angle of the stream, he was half inclined to reverse the wish, and more

Marjory seemed glad to see him, and gave him her hand without affectation or delay.

'So have I,' she answered. 'And I respect you more and more for a very wise man. You understood me better

than I understood myself; and I am now quite certain that things are all for the best as they are.'

'You must be tired,' she interrupted. 'Take a seat and let me fetch you a glass of wine. The afternoon is so

warm; and I wish you not to be displeased with your visit. You must come quite often; once a week, if you

'O, very well,' thought Will to himself. 'It appears I was right after all.' And he paid a very agreeable visit,

walked home again in capital spirits, and gave himself no further concern about the matter.

For nearly three years Will and Marjory continued on these terms, seeing each other once or twice a week

without any word of love between them; and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can

be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk halfway over to the

parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he

could see the churchspire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular

snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before

returning homewards; and the peasants got so much into the habit of finding him there in the twilight that

At the end of the three years Marjory played him a sad trick by suddenly marrying somebody else. Will kept

his countenance bravely, and merely remarked that, for as little as he knew of women, he had acted very

prudently in not marrying her himself three years before. She plainly knew very little of her own mind, and,

in spite of a deceptive manner, was as fickle and flighty as the rest of them. He had to congratulate himself on

an escape, he said, and would take a higher opinion of his own wisdom in consequence. But at heart, he was

reasonably displeased, moped a good deal for a month or two, and fell away in flesh, to the astonishment of

It was perhaps a year after this marriage that Will was awakened late one night by the sound of a horse

galloping on the road, followed by precipitate knocking at the inndoor. He opened his window and saw a

farm servant, mounted and holding a led horse by the bridle, who told him to make what haste he could and

go along with him; for Marjory was dying, and had sent urgently to fetch him to her bedside. Will was no

horseman, and made so little speed upon the way that the poor young wife was very near her end before he

arrived. But they had some minutes' talk in private, and he was present and wept very bitterly while she

Year after year went away into nothing, with great explosions and outcries in the cities on the plain: red

revolt springing up and being suppressed in blood, battle swaying hither and thither, patient astronomers in

observatory towers picking out and christening new stars, plays being performed in lighted theatres, people

being carried into hospital on stretchers, and all the usual turmoil and agitation of men's lives in crowded

centres. Up in Will's valley only the winds and seasons made an epoch; the fish hung in the swift stream, the

birds circled overhead, the pinetops rustled underneath the stars, the tall hills stood over all; and Will went

to and fro, minding his wayside inn, until the snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young and

vigorous; and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat strong and steady in his wrists. He carried a ruddy

stain on either cheek, like a ripe apple; he stooped a little, but his step was still firm; and his sinewy hands

were reached out to all men with a friendly pressure. His face was covered with those wrinkles which are got

in open air, and which rightly looked at, are no more than a sort of permanent sunburning; such wrinkles

heighten the stupidity of stupid faces; but to a person like Will, with his clear eyes and smiling mouth, only

give another charm by testifying to a simple and easy life. His talk was full of wise sayings. He had a taste for

other people; and other people had a taste for him. When the valley was full of tourists in the season, there

were merry nights in Will's arbour; and his views, which seemed whimsical to his neighbours, were often

enough admired by learned people out of towns and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble old age, and grew

daily better known; so that his fame was heard of in the cities of the plain; and young men who had been

summer travellers spoke together in CAFES of Will o' the Mill and his rough philosophy. Many and many an

invitation, you may be sure, he had; but nothing could tempt him from his upland valley. He would shake his

head and smile over his tobaccopipe with a deal of meaning. 'You come too late,' he would answer. 'I am a

dead man now: I have lived and died already. Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into my

mouth; and now you do not even tempt me. But that is the object of long living, that man should cease to care

about life.' And again: 'There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner,

the sweets come last.' Or once more: 'When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and hardly knew whether it was

myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that.'

He never showed any symptom of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm to the last; but they say he grew less

talkative towards the end, and would listen to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic silence.

Only, when he did speak, it was more to the point and more charged with old experience. He drank a bottle of

wine gladly; above all, at sunset on the hilltop or quite late at night under the stars in the arbour. The sight

of something attractive and unatttainable seasoned his enjoyment, he would say; and he professed he had

lived long enough to admire a candle all the more when he could compare it with a planet.

One night, in his seventysecond year, he awoke in bed in such uneasiness of body and mind that he arose

and dressed himself and went out to meditate in the arbour. It was pitch dark, without a star; the river was

swollen, and the wet woods and meadows loaded the air with perfume. It had thundered during the day, and it

promised more thunder for the morrow. A murky, stifling night for a man of seventytwo! Whether it was the

weather or the wakefulness, or some little touch of fever in his old limbs, Will's mind was besieged by

tumultuous and crying memories. His boyhood, the night with the fat young man, the death of his adopted

parents, the summer days with Marjory, and many of those small circumstances, which seem nothing to

another, and are yet the very gist of a man's own life to himself things seen, words heard, looks

misconstrued arose from their forgotten corners and usurped his attention. The dead themselves were with

him, not merely taking part in this thin show of memory that defiled before his brain, but revisiting his bodily

senses as they do in profound and vivid dreams. The fat young man leaned his elbows on the table opposite;

Marjory came and went with an apronful of flowers between the garden and the arbour; he could hear the old

parson knocking out his pipe or blowing his resonant nose. The tide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed:

he was sometimes halfasleep and drowned in his recollections of the past; and sometimes he was broad

awake, wondering at himself. But about the middle of the night he was startled by the voice of the dead miller

calling to him out of the house as he used to do on the arrival of custom. The hallucination was so perfect that

Will sprang from his seat and stood listening for the summons to be repeated; and as he listened he became

conscious of another noise besides the brawling of the river and the ringing in his feverish ears. It was like the

stir of horses and the creaking of harness, as though a carriage with an impatient team had been brought up

upon the road before the courtyard gate. At such an hour, upon this rough and dangerous pass, the supposition

was no better than absurd; and Will dismissed it from his mind, and resumed his seat upon the arbour chair;

and sleep closed over him again like running water. He was once again awakened by the dead miller's call,

thinner and more spectral than before; and once again he heard the noise of an equipage upon the road. And

so thrice and four times, the same dream, or the same fancy, presented itself to his senses: until at length,

smiling to himself as when one humours a nervous child, he proceeded towards the gate to set his uncertainty

From the arbour to the gate was no great distance, and yet it took Will some time; it seemed as if the dead

thickened around him in the court, and crossed his path at every step. For, first, he was suddenly surprised by

an overpowering sweetness of heliotropes; it was as if his garden had been planted with this flower from end

to end, and the hot, damp night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath. Now the heliotrope had been

Marjory's favourite flower, and since her death not one of them had ever been planted in Will's ground.

And with that he raised his eyes towards the window that had once been hers. If he had been bewildered

before, he was now almost terrified; for there was a light in the room; the window was an orange oblong as of

yore; and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the night when he stood and shouted to the stars

in his perplexity. The illusion only endured an instant; but it left him somewhat unmanned, rubbing his eyes

and staring at the outline of the house and the black night behind it. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if

he must have stood there quite a long time, there came a renewal of the noises on the road: and he turned in

time to meet a stranger, who was advancing to meet him across the court. There was something like the

outline of a great carriage discernible on the road behind the stranger, and, above that, a few black pinetops,

'I have heard you much spoken of, Master Will,' returned the other; 'much spoken of, and well. And though I

have both hands full of business, I wish to drink a bottle of wine with you in your arbour. Before I go, I shall

Will led the way to the trellis, and got a lamp lighted and a bottle uncorked. He was not altogether unused to

such complimentary interviews, and hoped little enough from this one, being schooled by many

disappointments. A sort of cloud had settled on his wits and prevented him from remembering the

strangeness of the hour. He moved like a person in his sleep; and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire and the

bottle came uncorked with the facility of thought. Still, he had some curiosity about the appearance of his

visitor, and tried in vain to turn the light into his face; either he handled the lamp clumsily, or there was a

dimness over his eyes; but he could make out little more than a shadow at table with him. He stared and

stared at this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the heart. The

silence weighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now, not even the river, but the drumming of his own

'Here is my service, sir,' replied Will, sipping his wine, which somehow tasted oddly.

'So am I,' continued the other; 'and it is the delight of my heart to tramp on people's corns. I will have nobody

positive but myself; not one. I have crossed the whims, in my time, of kings and generals and great artists.

And what would you say,' he went on, 'if I had come up here on purpose to cross yours?'

Will had it on his tongue to make a sharp rejoinder; but the politeness of an old innkeeper prevailed; and he

'I have,' said the stranger. 'And if I did not hold you in a particular esteem, I should make no words about the

matter. It appears you pride yourself on staying where you are. You mean to stick by your inn. Now I mean

you shall come for a turn with me in my barouche; and before this bottle's empty, so you shall.'

'That would be an odd thing, to be sure,' replied Will, with a chuckle. 'Why, sir, I have grown here like an old

oaktree; the Devil himself could hardly root me up: and for all I perceive you are a very entertaining old

The dimness of Will's eyesight had been increasing all this while; but he was somehow conscious of a sharp

'You need not think,' he broke out suddenly, in an explosive, febrile manner that startled and alarmed himself,

'that I am a stayathome, because I fear anything under God. God knows I am tired enough of it all; and

when the time comes for a longer journey than ever you dream of, I reckon I shall find myself prepared.'

The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away from him. He looked down for a little, and then, leaning

over the table, tapped Will three times upon the forearm with a single finger. 'The time has come!' he said

An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched. The tones of his voice were dull and startling, and echoed

'Look at me, and you will find your eyesight swim. Raise your hand; it is deadheavy. This is your last bottle

'The best that ever was,' replied the other; 'for I cure both mind and body with the same prescription. I take

away all plain and I forgive all sins; and where my patients have gone wrong in life, I smooth out all

'A time comes for all men, Master Will,' replied the doctor, 'when the helm is taken out of their hands. For

you, because you were prudent and quiet, it has been long of coming, and you have had long to discipline

yourself for its reception. You have seen what is to be seen about your mill; you have sat close all your days

like a hare in its form; but now that is at an end; and,' added the doctor, getting on his feet, 'you must arise

'Why did you not tell me so at first?' cried Will. 'I have been waiting for you these many years. Give me your

'Lean upon my arm,' said the stranger, 'for already your strength abates. Lean on me as heavily as you need;

for though I am old, I am very strong. It is but three steps to my carriage, and there all your trouble ends.

Why, Will,' he added, 'I have been yearning for you as if you were my own son; and of all the men that ever I

came for in my long days, I have come for you most gladly. I am caustic, and sometimes offend people at

'Since Marjory was taken,' returned Will, 'I declare before God you were the only friend I had to look for.' So

One of the servants awoke about this time and heard the noise of horses pawing before he dropped asleep

again; all down the valley that night there was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind descending towards

the plain; and when the world rose next morning, sure enough Will o' the Mill had gone at last upon his

'YES,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a

dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell

strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case,' he continued, 'I profit by my virtue.'

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the

mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he

The dealer chuckled. 'You come to me on Christmas Day,' he resumed, 'when you know that I am alone in my

house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will

have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a

kind of manner that I remark in you today very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward

questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it.' The dealer once more

chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, 'You can give, as

usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?' he continued. 'Still your uncle's

And the little pale, roundshouldered dealer stood almost on tip toe, looking over the top of his gold

spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of

'This time,' said he, 'you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my

uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and

should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand today is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas

present for a lady,' he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; 'and

certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected

yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of

many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare,

'Well, sir,' said the dealer, 'be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance

of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,' he went on, 'this

hand glass fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the

interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stooped to take the object from its place; and,

as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of

many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain

'A glass,' he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. 'A glass? For Christmas? Surely

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. 'You ask me why not?' he said. 'Why, look

here look in it look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor I nor any man.'

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now,

perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. 'Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard

'I ask you,' said Markheim, 'for a Christmas present, and you give me this this damned reminder of years,

and sins and follies this handconscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It

will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there

'Not charitable?' returned the other, gloomily. Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved;

a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?'

'I will tell you what it is,' began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. 'But

I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health.'

'Ah!' cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. 'Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that.'

'I,' cried the dealer. 'I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time today for all this nonsense. Will you

'Where is the hurry?' returned Markheim. 'It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and

insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should

rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think

upon it a cliff a mile high high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is

best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other: why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who

'I have just one word to say to you,' said the dealer. 'Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop!'

'True true,' said Markheim. 'Enough, fooling. To business. Show me something else.'

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his

eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew

himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face

terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip,

'This, perhaps, may suit,' observed the dealer: and then, as he began to rearise, Markheim bounded from

behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking

Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age;

others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate, chorus of tickings. Then the

passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled

Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the

counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was

filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness

swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and

wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long

From these fearstricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both

humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in

that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was

nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices.

There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion there it

must lie till it was found. Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over

England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. 'Time was

that when the brains were out,' he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed

was accomplished time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice one

deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltzthe clocks

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself,

going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance

reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face

repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his

own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as he continued to fill his pockets, his

mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a

more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more

cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and

killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of

the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the

irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted

attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his

shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison,

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he

thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity;

and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear solitary

people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startingly recalled

from that tender exercise; happy family parties struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised

finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving

the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall

Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to

stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a

source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passerby; and he would step more boldly, and bustle

aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and

cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his

credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passerby arrested by a horrible

surmise on the pavement these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the brick walls and

shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was;

he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, 'out for the day' written in every ribbon

and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear

a stir of delicate footing he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to

every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had

eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer,

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The

house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the

ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat with a staff on the shopdoor,

accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.

Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond

earshot of these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once

have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to

plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and

apparent innocence his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another might follow and be more

obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money,

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with

no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The

human character had quite departed. Like a suit halfstuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk

doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he

feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its

back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest

postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with

blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon

the instant, to a certain fairday in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the

blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried

over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of

concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured:

Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the deathgrip of

Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that

little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he

was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and at

that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the

dead face, bending his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had

moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with

governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with

interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful

consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality

unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that

can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open

door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had

banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant

echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the

door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the

stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs; on the bright suit of armour posted,

halbert in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark woodcarvings, and framed pictures that hung against the

yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's

ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments

marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar,

appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The

sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt

by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to

his legs; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed

stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again,

and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the outposts

and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed

starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were halfrewarded as with the tail of

something nameless vanishing. The fourandtwenty steps to the first floor were fourandtwenty agonies.

On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats

of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observing eyes, he

longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that

thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of

heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and

immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more,

with a slavish, superstitions terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality

of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if

nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of their succession? The

like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like

might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a

glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and

there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him

beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all

sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth

against sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses,

When he had got safe into the drawingroom, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from

alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous

furniture; several great pierglasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage;

many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a

cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by

great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the

neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the

keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be

nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the

tail of his eye he saw the door even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander

pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street

sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of

a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the

melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his

mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church going children and the pealing of the high

organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite flyers in the windy

and cloudnavigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the

somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall)

and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a

bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair

slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the official

ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But

when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in

friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his

'Did you call me?' he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines

of the new comer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle light of the

shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always,

like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile;

and when he added: 'You are looking for the money, I believe?' it was in the tones of everyday politeness.

'I should warn you,' resumed the other, 'that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon

be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences.'

The visitor smiled. 'You have long been a favourite of mine,' he said; 'and I have long observed and often

'What I may be,' returned the other, 'cannot affect the service I propose to render you.'

'It can,' cried Markheim; 'it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet; thank

'I know you,' replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. 'I know you to the soul.'

'Know me!' cried Markheim. 'Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to

belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see

each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own

control if you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and

saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the

'To you before all,' returned the murderer. 'I supposed you were intelligent. I thought since you exist you

would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it; my acts! I

was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my

mother the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can

you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience,

never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that

'All this is very feelingly expressed,' was the reply, 'but it regards me not. These points of consistency are

beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as

you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd

and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows

itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. 'No,' said he, 'I will take nothing at

your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the

courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil.'

'I do not say so,' returned the other; 'but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done

my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to sow

tares in the wheatfield, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to

his deliverance, he can add but one act of service to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in

confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept

my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows at

the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort,

that you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace

with God. I came but now from such a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the

man's last words: and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it

'And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?' asked Markheim. 'Do you think I have no more generous

aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is

this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such

baseness? and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?'

'Murder is to me no special category,' replied the other. 'All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold

your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each

other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death;

and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips

no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues

also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for

which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits,

if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed

than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim,

'I will lay my heart open to you,' answered Markheim. 'This crime on which you find me is my last. On my

way to it I have learned many lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been driven

with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond slave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues

that can stand in these temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But today, and out of this

deed, I pluck both warning and riches both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all

things a free actor in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this heart at

peace. Something comes over me out of the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to

the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent

child, with my mother. There lies my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of

'You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?' remarked the visitor; 'and there, if I mistake not,

The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. 'Well, then, what matter?' he exclaimed. 'Say it be lost, say I am

plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the

better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can

conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no

stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I

prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart.

And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the

But the visitant raised his finger. 'For sixandthirty years that you have been in this world,' said be, 'through

many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you

would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any

crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil? five years from now I shall detect you

in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you.'

'It is true,' Markheim said huskily, 'I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very

saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.'

'I will propound to you one simple question,' said the other; 'and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral

horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so and at any account, it

is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to

'In any one?' repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. 'No,' he added, with despair, 'in none! I

'Then,' said the visitor, 'content yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence. 'That being

'Have you not tried it?' returned the other. 'Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of

'It is true,' said Markheim; 'and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these

lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.'

At this moment, the sharp note of the doorbell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were

some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

'The maid!' he cried. 'She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult

passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance

no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same

dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path.

Thenceforward you have the whole evening the whole night, if needful to ransack the treasures of the

house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!' he cried;

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. 'If I be condemned to evil acts,' he said, 'there is still one door of

freedom open I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say

truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach

of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and

from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.'

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened

with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to

watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to

himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as

chancemedley a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the further

side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the

candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as

THE Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A

severe, bleakfaced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or

servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron

composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private

admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the

terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy

Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on lst Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a

roaring lion,' on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself

upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The

children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full

of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some

thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising

towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by

all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their

heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more

particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the high road and the water of

Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towards the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front

of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The house was two

stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or

passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that

bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of

Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in

the instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more

daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to 'follow my leader' across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy, was a

common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business

into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange

events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better

informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of

the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's strange

Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam first into Ba'weary, he was still a young man a callant, the folk said

fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin'

experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned,

serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a

selfdeceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae illsupplied. It was before the days o' the moderates

weary fa' them; but ill things are like guid they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time; and there were folk

even then that said the Lord had left the college professors to their ain devices, an' the lads that went to study

wi' them wad hae done mair and better sittin' in a peatbog, like their forbears of the persecution, wi' a Bible

under their oxter and a speerit o' prayer in their heart. There was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had

been ower lang at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He

had a feck o' books wi' him mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the

carrier had wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie.

They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little

service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the

day and half the nicht forbye, which was scant decent writin', nae less; and first, they were feared he wad

read his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin' a book himsel', which was surely no fittin' for ane of his

Onyway it behoved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for him an' see to his bit denners; and

he was recommended to an auld limmer Janet M'Clour, they ca'd her and sae far left to himsel' as to be

ower persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar, for Janet was mair than suspeckit by the best

folk in Ba'weary. Lang or that, she had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit (4) for maybe thretty

year; and bairns had seen her mumblin' to hersel' up on Key's Loan in the gloamin', whilk was an unco time

an' place for a Godfearin' woman. Howsoever, it was the laird himsel' that had first tauld the minister o'

Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was

sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of

Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and the deil was mercifully

Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was to be servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad

wi' her an' him thegether; and some o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door cheeks and

chairge her wi' a' that was ken't again her, frae the sodger's bairn to John Tamson's twa kye. She was nae

great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an' she let them gang theirs, wi', neither Fairguideen

nor Fairguidday; but when she buckled to, she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she got, an' there

wasnae an auld story in Ba'weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but

she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the guidwives up and claught haud of her, and clawed the coats

aff her back, and pu'd her doun the clachan to the water o' Dule, to see if she were a witch or no, soum or

droun. The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin' Shaw, and she focht like ten; there was mony a

guidwife bure the mark of her neist day an' mony a lang day after; and just in the hettest o' the collieshangie,

'Women,' said he (and he had a grand voice), 'I charge you in the Lord's name to let her go.'

Janet ran to him she was fair wud wi' terror an' clang to him, an' prayed him, for Christ's sake, save her

frae the cummers; an' they, for their pairt, tauld him a' that was ken't, and maybe mair.

'As the Lord sees me,' says she, 'as the Lord made me, no a word o't. Forbye the bairn,' says she, 'I've been a

'Will you,' says Mr. Soulis, 'in the name of God, and before me, His unworthy minister, renounce the devil

Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that fairly frichtit them that saw her, an' they

could hear her teeth play dirl thegether in her chafts; but there was naething for it but the ae way or the ither;

'And now,' says Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, 'home with ye, one and all, and pray to God for His forgiveness.'

And he gied Janet his arm, though she had little on her but a sark, and took her up the clachan to her ain door

like a leddy of the land; an' her scrieghin' and laughin' as was a scandal to be heard.

There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht; but when the morn cam' there was sic a fear

fell upon a' Ba'weary that the bairns hid theirsels, and even the men folk stood and keekit frae their doors. For

there was Janet comin' doun the clachan her or her likeness, nane could tell wi' her neck thrawn, and her

heid on ae side, like a body that has been hangit, and a girn on her face like an unstreakit corp. By an' by they

got used wi' it, and even speered at her to ken what was wrang; but frae that day forth she couldnae speak like

a Christian woman, but slavered and played click wi' her teeth like a pair o' shears; and frae that day forth the

name o' God cam never on her lips. Whiles she wad try to say it, but it michtnae be. Them that kenned best

said least; but they never gied that Thing the name o' Janet M'Clour; for the auld Janet, by their way o't, was

in muckle hell that day. But the minister was neither to haud nor to bind; he preached about naething but the

folk's cruelty that had gi'en her a stroke of the palsy; he skelpt the bairns that meddled her; and he had her up

to the manse that same nicht, and dwalled there a' his lane wi' her under the Hangin' Shaw.

Weel, time gaed by: and the idler sort commenced to think mair lichtly o' that black business. The minister

was weel thocht o'; he was aye late at the writing, folk wad see his can'le doon by the Dule water after twal' at

e'en; and he seemed pleased wi' himsel' and upsitten as at first, though a' body could see that he was dwining.

As for Janet she cam an' she gaed; if she didnae speak muckle afore, it was reason she should speak less then;

she meddled naebody; but she was an eldritch thing to see, an' nane wad hae mistrysted wi' her for Ba'weary

About the end o' July there cam' a spell o' weather, the like o't never was in that country side; it was lown an'

het an' heartless; the herds couldnae win up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to play; an' yet it was

gousty too, wi' claps o' het wund that rumm'led in the glens, and bits o' shouers that slockened naething. We

aye thocht it but to thun'er on the morn; but the morn cam, an' the morn's morning, and it was aye the same

uncanny weather, sair on folks and bestial. Of a' that were the waur, nane suffered like Mr. Soulis; he could

neither sleep nor eat, he tauld his elders; an' when he wasnae writin' at his weary book, he wad be stravaguin'

ower a' the countryside like a man possessed, when a' body else was blythe to keep caller ben the house.

Abune Hangin' Shaw, in the bield o' the Black Hill, there's a bit enclosed grund wi' an iron yett; and it seems,

in the auld days, that was the kirkyaird o' Ba'weary, and consecrated by the Papists before the blessed licht

shone upon the kingdom. It was a great howff o' Mr. Soulis's, onyway; there he would sit an' consider his

sermons; and indeed it's a bieldy bit. Weel, as he cam ower the wast end o' the Black Hill, ae day, he saw first

twa, an syne fower, an' syne seeven corbie craws fleein' round an' round abune the auld kirkyaird. They flew

laigh and heavy, an' squawked to ither as they gaed; and it was clear to Mr. Soulis that something had put

them frae their ordinar. He wasnae easy fleyed, an' gaed straucht up to the wa's; an' what suld he find there

but a man, or the appearance of a man, sittin' in the inside upon a grave. He was of a great stature, an' black as

hell, and his e'en were singular to see. (5) Mr. Soulis had heard tell o' black men, mony's the time; but there

was something unco about this black man that daunted him. Het as he was, he took a kind o' cauld grue in the

marrow o' his banes; but up he spak for a' that; an' says he: 'My friend, are you a stranger in this place?' The

black man answered never a word; he got upon his feet, an' begude to hirsle to the wa' on the far side; but he

aye lookit at the minister; an' the minister stood an' lookit back; till a' in a meenute the black man was ower

the wa' an' rinnin' for the bield o' the trees. Mr. Soulis, he hardly kenned why, ran after him; but he was sair

forjaskit wi' his walk an' the het, unhalesome weather; and rin as he likit, he got nae mair than a glisk o' the

black man amang the birks, till he won doun to the foot o' the hillside, an' there he saw him ance mair, gaun,

Mr. Soulis wasnae weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak' sae free wi' Ba'weary manse; an' he ran

the harder, an', wet shoon, ower the burn, an' up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to see. He

stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a' ower the gairden, but na, nae black man.

At the hinder end, and a bit feared as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and there was

Janet M'Clour before his een, wi' her thrawn craig, and nane sae pleased to see him. And he aye minded

sinsyne, when first he set his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue.

'A black man?' quo' she. 'Save us a'! Ye're no wise, minister. There's nae black man in a Ba'weary.'

But she didnae speak plain, ye maun understand; but yamyammered, like a powney wi' the bit in its moo.

'Weel,' says he, 'Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken with the Accuser of the Brethren.'

'Hoots,' says she, 'think shame to yoursel', minister;' an' gied him a drap brandy that she keept aye by her.

Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a' his books. It's a lang, laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin' cauld in

winter, an' no very dry even in the tap o' the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae doun he sat, and

thocht of a' that had come an' gane since he was in Ba'weary, an' his hame, an' the days when he was a bairn

an' ran daffin' on the braes; and that black man aye ran in his heid like the owercome of a sang. Aye the

mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o' the black man. He tried the prayer, an' the words wouldnae come to him;

an' he tried, they say, to write at his book, but he could nae mak' nae mair o' that. There was whiles he thocht

the black man was at his oxter, an' the swat stood upon him cauld as wellwater; and there was other whiles,

The upshot was that he gaed to the window an' stood glowrin' at Dule water. The trees are unco thick, an' the

water lies deep an' black under the manse; an' there was Janct washin' the cla'es wi' her coats kilted. She had

her back to the minister, an' he, for his pairt, hardly kenned what he was lookin' at. Syne she turned round, an'

shawed her face; Mr. Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore, an' it was borne in upon him

what folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne, an' this was a bogle in her clay cauld flesh. He drew back a

pickle and he scanned her narrowly. She was tramptrampin' in the cla'es, croonin' to hersel'; and eh! Gude

guide us, but it was a fearsome face. Whiles she sang louder, but there was nae man born o' woman that could

tell the words o' her sang; an' whiles she lookit sidelang doun, but there was naething there for her to look

at. There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon his banes; and that was Heeven's advertisement. But Mr.

Soulis just blamed himsel', he said, to think sae ill of a puir, auld afflicted wife that hadnae a freend forbye

himsel'; an' he put up a bit prayer for him and her, an' drank a little caller water for his heart rose again the

That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary, the nicht o' the seeventeenth of August, seventeen

hun'er' an twal'. It had been het afore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was hetter than ever. The sun gaed doun

amang uncolookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no a star, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han'

afore your face, and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin' for their breath. Wi' a'

that he had upon his mind, it was gey and unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he tummled;

the gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept, and whiles he waukened; whiles he

heard the time o' nicht, and whiles a tyke yowlin' up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he

heard bogles claverin' in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the room. He behoved, he judged, to be sick;

At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark on the bedside, and fell thinkin' ance

mair o' the black man an' Janet. He couldnae weel tell how maybe it was the cauld to his feet but it cam'

in upon him wi' a spate that there was some connection between thir twa, an' that either or baith o' them were

bogles. And just at that moment, in Janet's room, which was neist to his, there cam' a stramp o' feet as if men

were wars'lin', an' then a loud bang; an' then a wund gaed reishling round the fower quarters of the house; an'

Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinderbox, an' lit a can'le, an' made three steps

o't ower to Janet's door. It was on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keeked bauldly in. It was a big room, as

big as the minister's ain, an' plenished wi' grand, auld, solid gear, for he had naething else. There was a

fowerposted bed wi' auld tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that was fu' o' the minister's divinity books, an'

put there to be out o' the gate; an' a wheen duds o' Janet's lying here and there about the floor. But nae Janet

could Mr. Soulis see; nor ony sign of a contention. In he gaed (an' there's few that wad ha'e followed him) an'

lookit a' round, an' listened. But there was naethin' to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in a' Ba'weary

parish, an' naethin' to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin' round the can'le. An' then a' at aince, the

minister's heart played dunt an' stood stockstill; an' a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o' his heid. Whaten a

weary sicht was that for the puir man's een! For there was Janat hangin' frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet:

her heid aye lay on her shoother, her een were steeked, the tongue projekit frae her mouth, and her heels were

He cam' a step nearer to the corp; an' then his heart fair whammled in his inside. For by what cantrip it wad

illbeseem a man to judge, she was hingin' frae a single nail an' by a single wursted thread for darnin' hose.

It's an awfu' thing to be your lane at nicht wi' siccan prodigies o' darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the

Lord. He turned an' gaed his ways oot o' that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by step, doon the

stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can'le on the table at the stairfoot. He couldnae pray, he couldnae

think, he was dreepin' wi' caul' swat, an' naething could he hear but the duntduntduntin' o' his ain heart. He

micht maybe have stood there an hour, or maybe twa, he minded sae little; when a' o' a sudden, he heard a

laigh, uncanny steer upstairs; a foot gaed to an' fro in the cha'mer whaur the corp was hingin'; syne the door

was opened, though he minded weel that he had lockit it; an' syne there was a step upon the landin', an' it

seemed to him as if the corp was lookin' ower the rail and doun upon him whaur he stood.

He took up the can'le again (for he couldnae want the licht), and as saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out

o' the manse an' to the far end o' the causeway. It was aye pitmirk; the flame o' the can'le, when he set it on

the grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a room; naething moved, but the Dule water seepin' and sabbin' doon

the glen, an' yon unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse. He kenned the foot over

weel, for it was Janet's; and at ilka step that cam' a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals. He

commanded his soul to Him that made an' keepit him; 'and O Lord,' said he, 'give me strength this night to

By this time the foot was comin' through the passage for the door; he could hear a hand skirt alang the wa', as

if the fearsome thing was feelin' for its way. The saughs tossed an' maned thegether, a lang sigh cam' ower

the hills, the flame o' the can'le was blawn aboot; an' there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram

goun an' her black mutch, wi' the heid aye upon the shouther, an' the girn still upon the face o't leevin', ye

It's a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into his perishable body; but the minister saw

She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an' cam' slowly towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood

under the saughs. A' the life o' his body, a' the strength o' his speerit, were glowerin' frae his een. It seemed

she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an' made a sign wi' the left hand. There cam' a clap o' wund, like a

cat's fuff; oot gaed the can'le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an' Mr. Soulis kenned that, live or die, this was

'Witch, beldame, devil!' he cried, 'I charge you, by the power of God, begone if you be dead, to the grave

An' at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o' the Heevens struck the Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid,

desecrated corp o' the witchwife, sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils, lowed up like a

brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the grund; the thunder followed, peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain

upon the back o' that; and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden hedge, and ran, wi' skelloch upon skelloch,

That same mornin', John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn as it was chappin' six; before

eicht, he gaed by the change house at Knockdow; an' no lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw him gaun linkin'

doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie. There's little doubt but it was him that dwalled sae lang in Janet's body; but

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay ravin' in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he

'Now,' said the doctor, 'my part is done, and, I may say, with some vanity, well done. It remains only to get

you out of this cold and poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy conscience. The

last is your affair. To the first I think I can help you. It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the

Padre came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of contrary professions, he applied

to me in a matter of distress among some of his parishioners. This was a family but you are ignorant of

Spain, and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it, then, that they were once great

people, and are now fallen to the brink of destitution. Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, and

certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not even a goat could support life. But the

house is a fine old place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and most salubriously; and I had no

sooner heard my friend's tale, than I remembered you. I told him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the

good cause, who was now able to make a change; and I proposed that his friends should take you for a lodger.

Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the question, he

said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride. Thereupon we

separated, not very content with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made a

submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in other

words, these proud people had put their pride in their pocket. I closed with the offer; and, subject to your

approval, I have taken rooms for you in the residencia. The air of these mountains will renew your blood; and

the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the medicines in the world.'

'Doctor,' said I, 'you have been throughout my good angel, and your advice is a command. But tell me, if you

'I am coming to that,' replied my friend; 'and, indeed, there is a difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I

have said, of very high descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for some

generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand, from the rich who had now become too

high for them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even today, when poverty forces

them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are to

remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea of the

I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened my desire to go, for I was confident

that I could break down that barrier if I desired. 'There is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,' said I; 'and I

'It is true they have never seen you,' returned the doctor politely; 'and if they knew you were the handsomest

and the most pleasant man that ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common,

but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome with a better grace. But since

you take the thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the

gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be

halfwitted, a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore,'

chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not much in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'

'Well, as to that, I should distinguish,' returned the doctor. 'The mother is; not so the children. The mother

was the last representative of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father was not only

poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having

died with him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever, until at last she married,

Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was

no marriage at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it was, was tragically dissolved

some years ago; but they live in such seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much disorder, that the

'I would not romance, if I were you,' replied the doctor; 'you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and

commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very cunning,

very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably to match. No, no, senor commandante,

you must seek congenial society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least, if you are at

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a mule; and a little before the stroke of

noon, after I had said farewell to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had befriended me

during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the Eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had

been so long a prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the convoy, that the mere smell of

the earth set me smiling. The country through which we went was wild and rocky, partially covered with

rough woods, now of the corktree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and frequently intersected by the

beds of mountain torrents. The sun shone, the wind rustled joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and

the city had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us, before my attention began

to be diverted to the companion of my drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, wellmade

country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture; and this

first impression was with most observers final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering talk; so

strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect

enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult to follow clearly without an

effort of the mind. It is true I had before talked with persons of a similar mental constitution; persons who

seemed to live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the visual object of the moment and unable

to discharge their minds of that impression. His seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of

conversation proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the intellect and threading

the sights of a familiar country. But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home

keeper; 'I wish I was there now,' he said; and then, spying a tree by the wayside, he broke off to tell me that

'A crow?' I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and thinking I had heard imperfectly.

But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head on one

side, his face puckered; and he struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook his

'O, it is all right,' he said; and began encouraging his mule with cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain

I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively wellbuilt, light, and lithe and strong; he was

wellfeatured; his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he

was a pleasantlooking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and

inclined to hairyness; two characteristics that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me.

The doctor's phrase an innocent came back to me; and I was wondering if that were, after all, the true

description, when the road began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters

thundered tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound, the thin spray, and the claps

of wind, that accompanied their descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part

very securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of

terror in the face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in

weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down

the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to

the clamour, that my driver more particularly winced and blanched. Some thoughts of Scottish superstition

and the river Kelpie, passed across my mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of

'Of what are you afraid?' I returned. 'This seems one of the safest places on this very dangerous road.'

'It makes a noise,' he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my doubts at rest.

The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body, active and swift, but stunted in development;

and I began from that time forth to regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first with indulgence,

By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountain line, said farewell to the western

sunshine, and began to go down upon the other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through

the shadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice of falling water, not condensed and

formidable as in the gorge of the river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen.

Here, too, the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular

bluntness of musical perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow

with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and

more under the spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air, and still

disappointed; and when at last I asked him what it was he sang 'O,' cried he, 'I am just singing!' Above all, I

was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at little intervals; it was not so

monotonous as you would think, or, at least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful

contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of trees, or the quiescence of a pool.

Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a little after, before a certain lump of

superior blackness which I could only conjecture to be the residencia. Here, my guide, getting down from the

cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an old peasant man came towards us from

somewhere in the surrounding dark, carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able to perceive a

great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by ironstudded gates, in one of the leaves of

which Felipe opened a wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to some outbuilding; but my guide and I

passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us; and by the glimmer of the candle, passed

through a court, up a stone stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up more stairs again, until we came at

last to the door of a great and somewhat bare apartment. This room, which I understood was to be mine, was

pierced by three windows, lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and carpeted with the skins of

many savage animals. A bright fire burned in the chimney, and shed abroad a changeful flicker; close up to

the blaze there was drawn a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood ready. I was pleased by these

preparations, and said so to Felipe; and he, with the same simplicity of disposition that I held already

remarked in him, warmly reechoed my praises. 'A fine room,' he said; 'a very fine room. And fire, too; fire is

good; it melts out the pleasure in your bones. And the bed,' he continued, carrying over the candle in that

direction 'see what fine sheets how soft, how smooth, smooth;' and he passed his hand again and again

over their texture, and then laid down his head and rubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content

that somehow offended me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared he would set the bed on fire) and

walked back to the suppertable, where, perceiving a measure of wine, I poured out a cup and called to him

to come and drink of it. He started to his feet at once and ran to me with a strong expression of hope; but

'Very well, Senor,' said I; 'then I will drink to your good health, and to the prosperity of your house and

family. Speaking of which,' I added, after I had drunk, 'shall I not have the pleasure of laying my salutations

But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and was succeeded by a look of indescribable

cunning and secrecy. He backed away from me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap or

some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door, glowered at me sullenly with

contracted pupils. 'No,' he said at last, and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard

his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed over the house.

After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began to prepare for rest; but in the new position

of the light, I was struck by a picture on the wall. It represented a woman, still young. To judge by her

costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she had long been dead; to judge by the

vivacity of the attitude, the eyes and the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.

Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her

eyes, of a very golden brown, held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped, was yet

marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in both face and figure, something exquisitely

intangible, like the echo of an echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood awhile,

unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that

race, which had been originally designed for such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas,

had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart, to

bring home a lodger. Perhaps an actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of the delicate flesh that was

once clothed upon with the satin and brocade of the dead lady, now winced at the rude contact of Felipe's

The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell

upon it with growing complacency; its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one

after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign and seal one's own sentence of

degeneration, I still knew that, if she were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of her

wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine of many daydreams, in which her

eyes led on to, and sufficiently rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on my fancy; and when I was out in

the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and healthily renewing the current of my blood, it was often a

glad thought to me that my enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken, her lips closed in

silence, her philtre spilt. And yet I had a halflingering terror that she might not be dead after all, but

Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to the portrait haunted me. At times it was

not; at times, upon some change of attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost. It

was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. He certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice,

which he sought to engage by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my fire, talking

his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes

with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was

ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word

of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with

defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place and

surrounded by string people; but at the shadow of a question, he shrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then

it was that, for a fraction of a second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in the frame. But

In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless the portrait is to be counted; and since the lad

was plainly of weak mind, and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous

neighbourhood with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was for some time irksome; but it happened before

long that I obtained over him so complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.

It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond, and yet he kept by the house, and not

only waited upon my wants, but laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the residencia.

Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far

end of the enclosure, about half a mile away, in a rude out house; but it was plain to me that, of these two, it

was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes see him throw down his spade and go to sleep

among the very plants he had been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves, and still

more so since I was well assured they were foreign to his disposition and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But

while I admired, I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttlewitted this enduring sense of duty. How

was it sustained? I asked myself, and to what length did it prevail over his instincts? The priest was possibly

his inspirer; but the priest came one day to the residencia. I saw him both come and go after an interval of

close upon an hour, from a knoll where I was sketching, and all that time Felipe continued to labour

At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad from his good resolutions, and, waylaying

him at the gate, easily pursuaded him to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which I led

him were green and pleasant and sweetsmelling and alive with the hum of insects. Here he discovered

himself in a fresh character, mounting up to heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an energy and

grace of movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran round me in mere glee; he would stop, and look

and listen, and seem to drink in the world like a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring into a tree with

one bound, and hang and gambol there like one at home. Little as he said to me, and that of not much import,

I have rarely enjoyed more stirring company; the sight of his delight was a continual feast; the speed and

accuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart; and I might have been so thoughtlessly unkind as to

make a habit of these wants, had not chance prepared a very rude conclusion to my pleasure. By some

swiftness or dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top. He was then some way ahead of me, but I saw

him drop to the ground and crouch there, crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The sound stirred my

sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the squirrel

knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen much of the cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but

what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, plucked the poor brute out of

his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then I turned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of

my indignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and at length, pointing toward the

residencia, bade him begone and leave me, for I chose to walk with men, not with vermin. He fell upon his

knees, and, the words coming to him with more cleanness than usual, poured out a stream of the most

touching supplications, begging me in mercy to forgive him, to forget what he had done, to look to the future.

'O, I try so hard,' he said. 'O, commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he will never be a brute again!'

Thereupon, much more affected than I cared to show, I suffered myself to be persuaded, and at last shook

hands with him and made it up. But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury; speaking of the poor

thing's beauty, telling him what pains it had suffered, and how base a thing was the abuse of strength. 'See,

Felipe,' said I, 'you are strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless as that poor thing of the trees. Give

me your hand in mine. You cannot remove it. Now suppose that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasure in

pain. I only tighten my hold, and see how you suffer.' He screamed aloud, his face stricken ashy and dotted

with needle points of sweat; and when I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moaned over

it like a baby. But he took the lesson in good part; and whether from that, or from what I had said to him, or

the higher notion he now had of my bodily strength, his original affection was changed into a doglike,

Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crown of a stony plateau; on every side the

mountains hemmed it about; only from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen between two

peaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air in these altitudes moved freely and

largely; great clouds congregated there, and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the hilltops; a

hoarse, and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round; and one could there study all the ruder and

more ancient characters of nature in something of their pristine force. I delighted from the first in the

vigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less in the antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This

was a large oblong, flanked at two opposite corners by bastionlike projections, one of which commanded

the door, while both were loopholed for musketry. The lower storey was, besides, naked of windows, so that

the building, if garrisoned, could not be carried without artillery. It enclosed an open court planted with

pomegranate trees. From this a broad flight of marble stairs ascended to an open gallery, running all round

and resting, towards the court, on slender pillars. Thence again, several enclosed stairs led to the upper

storeys of the house, which were thus broken up into distinct divisions. The windows, both within and

without, were closely shuttered; some of the stonework in the upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place,

had been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in these mountains; and the whole

house, in the strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted cork trees, thickly laden

and discoloured with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in particular, seemed the

very home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when

they blew outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates;

shuttered windows and the closed doors of numerous cellars, and the vacant, arches of the gallery, enclosed

it; and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides, and paraded the shadow of the pillars on

the gallery floor. At the ground level there was, however, a certain pillared recess, which bore the marks of

human habitation. Though it was open in front upon the court, it was yet provided with a chimney, where a

wood fire would he always prettily blazing; and the tile floor was littered with the skins of animals.

It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one of the skins forward and sat in the sun,

leaning against a pillar. It was her dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly coloured, and

shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of the same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a

second look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back watching me, I thought,

though with invisible eyes and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile goodhumour

and contentment, she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a

statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a

pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a trifle

daunted, her idollike impassivity haunting me; and when I returned, although she was still in much the same

posture, I was half surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine. This

time, however, she addressed me with some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the

same deepchested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already baffled the utmost niceness of my

hearing from her son. I answered rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with precision,

but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's,

but the pupil at that moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me was not so

much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the singular insignificance of their regard. A look

more blankly stupid I have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went on my way

upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet, when I came there and saw the face of the

portrait, I was again reminded of the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older and fuller

in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides, was not only free from the illsignificance

that offended and attracted me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad a moral blank expressing

literally naught. And yet there was a likeness, not so much speaking as immanent, not so much in any

particular feature as upon the whole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set his signature to that

grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of one smiling and falseeyed woman, but stamped the

From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the Senora seated in the sun against a pillar,

or stretched on a rug before the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of the stone

staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right across my path. In all these days, I never knew her

to display the least spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and rebrushing her copious

coppercoloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle

salutations to myself. These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere quiescence. She

seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had been witticisms: and, indeed, though they were

empty enough, like the conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow range of

subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they had a certain beauty of their own, breathing,

as they did, of her entire contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son) she

greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and now of the white doves and longwinged

swallows that fanned the air of the court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in their swift flight,

or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to

awaken from her doze of satisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on herself and

sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in

the spectacle, until at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the day, both coming and

going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew of what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal

neighbourhood; her beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I began to find a kind of transcendental

good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable good nature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking

was returned; she enjoyed my presence halfunconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may enjoy the

babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when I came, for satisfaction was written on her face

eternally, as on some foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more intimate

communication than the sight. And one day, as I set within reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot

forth one of her hands and patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her accustomed attitude,

before my mind had received intelligence of the caress; and when I turned to look her in the face I could

perceive no answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act, and I blamed myself for

The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother confirmed the view I had already taken of

the son. The family blood had been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a common

error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was to be traced in the body, which had been

handed down unimpaired in shapeliness and strength; and the faces of today were struck as sharply from the

mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait. But the intelligence (that more

precious heirloom) was degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had required the potent,

plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista to raise, what approached hebetude in the mother,

into the active oddity of the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful and

placable, full of starts and shyings, inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious.

Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are apt ignorantly to take

sides, I grew something of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder between them. True, it

seemed mostly on the mother's part. She would sometimes draw in her breath as he came near, and the pupils

of her vacant eyes would contract as if with horror or fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were much upon

the surface and readily shared; and this latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept me wondering on what

I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a high and harsh wind, carrying clouds of

dust. It came out of malarious lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it blew

were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; their legs ached under the burthen of their body;

and the touch of one hand upon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the gullies of the

hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing and whistling that was wearisome to the ear

and dismally depressing to the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of a waterfall,

so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew. But higher upon the mountain, it was probably of

a more variable strength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a faroff wailing, infinitely

grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the high shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse,

I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension and depression of the weather, and the

effect grew stronger as the day proceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth upon my

customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the storm had soon beat down my strength and

wrecked my temper; and I returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty with dust.

The court had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of sun fled over it; now and then the wind

swooped down upon the pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms, and set the window shutters clapping on

the wall. In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro with a flushed countenance and bright eyes; I thought,

too, she was speaking to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her with my customary salutation,

she only replied by a sharp gesture and continued her walk. The weather had distempered even this impassive

creature; and as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.

All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of reading, or walked up and down, and

listened to the riot overhead. Night fell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for some society,

and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue of the first darkness; but the recess was redly

lighted by the fire. The wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which the draught

of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from

wall to wall with disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms, throwing back her head

as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more

clearly; but there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I had looked on awhile in

silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned tail as I had come, and groped my way back again to my own

By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly gone; and, had the lad been such as I

was used to seeing him, I should have kept him (even by force had that been necessary) to take off the edge

from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind had exercised its influence. He had been feverish

all day; now that the night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that reacted on my own.

The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors and sudden harkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped

'It is the black wind,' he replied dolefully. 'You feel as if you must do something, and you don't know what it

I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into

words the sensations of the body. 'And your mother, too,' said I; 'she seems to feel this weather much. Do you

He stared at me a little, and then said, 'No,' almost defiantly; and the next moment, carrying his hand to his

brow, cried out lamentably on the wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. 'Who can

be well?' he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, for I was disturbed enough myself.

I went to bed early, wearied with daylong restlessness, but the poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly

and unintermittent uproar, would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves and senses on the

stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me

as to time. But it must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by an outbreak of pitiable

and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the

house, cries of pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and discordant that they shocked the

heart. It was no illusion; some living thing, some lunatic or some wild animal, was being foully tortured. The

thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to the door, but it had been locked from the

outside; and I might shake it as I pleased, I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued. Now they would

dwindle down into a moaning that seemed to be articulate, and at these times I made sure they must be

human; and again they would break forth and fill the house with ravings worthy of hell. I stood at the door

and gave ear to them, till at, last they died away. Long after that, I still lingered and still continued to hear

them mingle in fancy with the storming of the wind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it was with a deadly

It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What had passed? Who was the author of

these indescribable and shocking cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were scarce

quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia?

And while I was thus turning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I had not yet set

eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more probable than that the daughter of the Senora, and the

sister of Felipe, should be herself insane? Or, what more likely than that these ignorant and half witted

people should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by violence? Here was a solution; and yet when I

called to mind the cries (which I never did without a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether insufficient: not

even cruelty could wring such cries from madness. But of one thing I was sure: I could not live in a house

where such a thing was half conceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if necessary, interfere.

The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothing to remind me of the business of the

night. Felipe came to my bedside with obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court, the Senora was

sunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued from the gateway, I found the whole face

of nature austerely smiling, the heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the

mountainsides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short walk restored me to myself, and

renewed within me the resolve to plumb this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen

Felipe pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the residencia to put my design in practice.

The Senora appeared plunged in slumber; I stood awhile and marked her, but she did not stir; even if my

design were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian; and turning away, I mounted to the gallery

All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious and faded chambers, some rudely

shuttered, some receiving their full charge of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which

Time had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider swung there; the bloated tarantula

scampered on the cornices; ants had their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and

foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork,

and buzzed heavily about the rooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved chair

remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify of man's bygone habitation; and everywhere the

walls were set with the portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in the house of what a

great and what a handsome race I was then wandering. Many of the men wore orders on their breasts and had

the port of noble offices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases most of them by famous hands. But

it was not so much these evidences of greatness that took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were,

with the present depopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the parable of family life that I read

in this succession of fair faces and shapely bodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continued

race, the creation and recreation, the weaving and changing and handing down of fleshly elements. That a

child should be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity,

and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the

gesture of another, are wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look, in the common

features and common bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls of the residencia, the miracle

started out and looked me in the face. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way, I stood and read

my own features a long while, tracing out on either hand the filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me

At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of a chamber that bore the marks of habitation.

It was of large proportions and faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured. The embers

of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect

of the chamber was ascetic to the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor and walls were

naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in some confusion, there was no instrument of either

work or pleasure. The sight of books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and I began with

a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go from one to another and hastily inspect their

character. They were of all sorts, devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great age and in the

Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of constant study; others had been torn across and tossed

aside as if in petulance or disapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber, I espied some papers

written upon with pencil on a table near the window. An unthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a

copy of verses, very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may render somewhat thus

Pleasure approached with pain and shame, Grief with a wreath of lilies came. Pleasure showed the lovely sun;

Jesu dear, how sweet it shone! Grief with her worn hand pointed on, Jesu dear, to thee!

Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, I beat an immediate retreat from the

apartment. Neither Felipe nor his mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling

verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the room of the daughter of the house. God

knows, my own heart most sharply punished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly

pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, and the fear that she might somehow come

to hear of it, oppressed me like guilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;

wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to one of whom I now conceived as of a

saint, spectral of mien, wasted with maceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, and

dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives; and as I leaned on the balustrade of the

gallery and looked down into the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent

woman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips as in the very sensuality of sloth, my

mind swiftly compared the scene with the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the

That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter the gates of the residencia. The revelation

of the daughter's character had struck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the night

before; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I descended, then, from the knoll, and making a

circuit among the woods, posted myself by the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he appeared I

stepped forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the residencia. He had a very strong, honest

countenance, on which it was easy to read the mingled emotions with which he regarded me, as a foreigner, a

heretic, and yet one who had been wounded for the good cause. Of the family at the residencia he spoke with

reserve, and yet with respect. I mentioned that I had not yet seen the daughter, whereupon he remarked that

that was as it should be, and looked at me a little askance. Lastly, I plucked up courage to refer to the cries

that had disturbed me in the night. He heard me out in silence, and then stopped and partly turned about, as

'Do you take tobacco powder?' said he, offering his snuffbox; and then, when I had refused, 'I am an old

'I have, then, your authority,' I returned, firmly enough, although I flushed at the implied reproof, 'to let things

He said 'yes,' and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me where I was. But he had done two things:

he had set my conscience at rest, and he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more

dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding on my saintly poetess. At the same

time, I could not quite forget that I had been locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I

'Oh, no,' said he; 'she is a good, good girl,' and his mind instantly veered to something else.

'Oh!' he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, 'a saint; it is she that keeps me up.'

'You are very fortunate,' said I, 'for the most of us, I am afraid, and myself among the number, are better at

'Senor,' said Felipe earnestly, 'I would not say that. You should not tempt your angel. If one goes down,

'Why, Felipe,' said I, 'I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may say a good one; but I suppose that is

'Well, then,' I continued, 'she has doubtless reproved you for your sin of cruelty?'

'Twelve times!' he cried; for this was the phrase by which the odd creature expressed the sense of frequency.

'And I told her you had done so I remembered that,' he added proudly 'and she was pleased.'

'Then, Felipe,' said I, 'what were those cries that I heard last night? for surely they were cries of some creature

I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he smiled with a brightness of pleasure that came

near disarming my resolve. But I trod the weakness down. 'The wind,' I repeated; 'and yet I think it was this

hand,' holding it up, 'that had first locked me in.' The lad shook visibly, but answered never a word. 'Well,'

said I, 'I am a stranger and a guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your affairs; in these you

shall take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to be excellent. But in so far as concerns my own I will

be no man's prisoner, and I demand that key.' Half an hour later my door was suddenly thrown open, and the

A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of noon. The Senora was lying lapped in

slumber on the threshold of the recess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house was

under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentle wind from the mountain stole round the

galleries, rustled among the pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in the stillness

moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on

the topmost round, when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla. Surprise transfixed me;

her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes

took hold upon mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands; and the moments we

thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, were sacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how

long it was before I awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into the upper stair. She did

not move, but followed me with her great, thirsting eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she

In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not think what change had come upon that

austere field of mountains that it should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her Olalla!

And the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azure answered, Olalla! The pale saint of

my dreams had vanished for ever; and in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the

richest colours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom he had made active as a deer, slender as a reed,

and in whose great eyes he had lighted the torches of the soul. The thrill of her young life, strung like a wild

animal's, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out from her eyes and conquered mine,

mantled about my heart and sprang to my lips in singing. She passed through my veins: she was one with me.

I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out in its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and

was there besieged by cold and sorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her at first sight,

and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my experience. What then was to follow? She was the

child of an afflicted house, the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even in her beauty. She had

the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale

background of the world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the name of brother that

halfwitted lad, nor by the name of mother that immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and

perpetual simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could not marry, what then? She

was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single and long glance which had been all our intercourse, had

confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the cold northern

chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more

than I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.

As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise;

it followed me with eyes of paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining

race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I remembered how it had seemed to me a thing

unapproachable in the life, a creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, and I

marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed,

and I had been often drawn to women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that I desired

I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed for her, as men long for morning. But

the day after, when I returned, about my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks once

more met and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near to her; but strongly as she plucked at

my heart, drawing me like a magnet, something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow and

pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me with her noble eyes.

I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She

was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I know

she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that

country, besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the poverty of the

house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown bosom. These were proofs, had any been needed,

of her inborn delight in life and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hung upon mine, I

could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness, lights of poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and

thoughts that were above the earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul, was more than worthy of

that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains? Should I

despise the great gift offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a soul immured; should I not

burst its prison? All side considerations fell off from me; were she the child of Herod I swore I should make

her mine; and that very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace, to captivate the

brother. Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned up

the better qualities of that imperfect soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and his very likeness to

A third day passed in vain an empty desert of hours. I would not lose a chance, and loitered all afternoon in

the court where (to give myself a countenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows it was

with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and even as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I

was conscious of a growing warmth of toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her, she

would doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again without embarrassment; and this composure

staggered me. And again, as I marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and lingering

on the bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder at this depth of passive sensuality. She lived

in her body; and her consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members, where it

luxuriously dwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her eyes. Each time she turned on me these great

beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to the day, but closed against human inquiry each time I had

occasion to observe the lively changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted in a breath I know not

what it was came over me, I can find no name for the mingled feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and

distaste that jarred along my nerves. I tried her on a variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at last led the talk

to her daughter. But even there she proved indifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was her

highest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked that

Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had

nothing to say. 'People speak much, very much,' she added, looking at me with expanded pupils; and then

again yawned and again showed me a mouth that was as dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and,

leaving her to her repose, went up into my own chamber to sit by the open window, looking on the hills and

not beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a voice that I

I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of

myself, light of heart and foot, and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. It should

lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by the eye only, like the love of beasts; but

should now put on the spirit, and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of it with

wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown and lovely country of her soul, I no longer

trembled to adventure. Yet when I did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me and

at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a childish habit; and I but drew near

to her as the giddy man draws near to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but her

eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last, when I was already within reach of her, I

stopped. Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that was

sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thought of such an accost. So we stood for a

second, all our life in our eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then, with a great

effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned and went

What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also silent? Why did she draw away

before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes? Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and

inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken, we were wholly strangers: and yet an

influence, strong as the grasp of a giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me with impatience;

and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the

soul of my mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew nothing but my bodily

favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her,

unconsenting, to my arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be jealous for myself.

It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I

thought how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintly monitress,

should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word.

And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and console and

reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love was returned on my side, and how her choice, even if blindly

The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blue overcanopied the mountains; the sun shone

wide; and the wind in the trees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air with delicate and

haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. My heart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for

its mother. I sat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the plateau to the north. Thence I

looked down into the wooded valley of a stream, where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even

touching to behold the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of the delight and glory of a life

passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a

whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemed to grow in strength and stature, like

And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared out of a grove of corktrees, and came

straight towards me; and I stood up and waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire and

lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energy was in the slowness; but for inimitable

strength, I felt she would have run, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her eyes

lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was without one glance that she addressed me.

At the first note of her voice I started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test of my love. And

lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping and incomplete like that of her family; and the voice,

though deeper than usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in a rich chord;

golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the red threads were mingled with the brown among her

tresses. It was not only a voice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her. And yet her words

Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of a weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved.

I know not in what words I answered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the whole ardour of

my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her, slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would

gladly forswear my country, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side. And then, strongly

commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, I comforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious

and heroic spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to share and lighten. 'Nature,' I

told her, 'was the voice of God, which men disobey at peril; and if we were thus humbly drawn together, ay,

even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our souls; we must be made,' I said 'made for

one another. We should be mad rebels,' I cried out 'mad rebels against God, not to obey this instinct.'

She shook her head. 'You will go today,' she repeated, and then with a gesture, and in a sudden, sharp note

But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. I stretched out my arms and called upon her

name; and she leaped to me and clung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as of a

blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next moment she had thrust me back, broken

I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards the residencia, waltzing upon air. She

sent me away, and yet I had but to call upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses of

girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not exempted. Go? Not I, Olalla O, not I, Olalla,

my Olalla! A bird sang near by; and in that season, birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. And once

more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and

the smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments of

life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the

hills shook; the earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woods smouldered in the

blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight run through the earth. Something elemental, something rude,

violent, and savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature's secrets; and the very stones

that rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and

strung me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling of the soul that men learn to

forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I

pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in with dead things on the one hand, and

with our pure and pitying God upon the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence and

My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and the sight of the mother struck me like a

revelation. She sat there, all sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with a

passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed. I

stopped a moment, and, commanding such shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me

with her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of peace in which she

slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for the first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and

happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should be so much disquieted.

On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the north room; it was written on with

pencil in the same hand, Olalla's hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, 'If you

have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a creature sorely wrought, go from here today; in

pity, in honour, for the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go.' I looked at this awhile in mere

stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare

hills, and I began to shake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me

like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not my happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could

not lose her. I said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a dream, I moved to the window, put forth

my hand to open the casement, and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and with an

instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain, and

reflected what to do. In that empty room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required

assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be my helper, and I turned and went

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to the recess, whither the Senora had

now drawn quite back and sat dozing close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words I thought she drew in her breath

'I have cut myself,' I said, 'and rather badly. See!' And I held out my two hands from which the blood was

Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed to fall from her face, and leave it

sharply expressive and yet inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her disturbance, she came

swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth,

and she had bitten me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and the monstrous

horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again,

with bestial cries, cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of the high wind. Her

strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was

whirling with the abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against the wall, when

Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound, pinned down his mother on the floor.

A trancelike weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was incapable of movement. I heard the

struggle roll to and fro upon the floor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she strove to reach

me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and

half drag, half carry me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then I saw her

hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening to the savage cries that shook the residencia. And

then, swift and light as a thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in her bosom,

moaning and mourning over it with dovelike sounds. They were not words that came to her, they were

sounds more beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there, a thought

stung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned the

holiness of my love. Yes, they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness; but was

All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless female thing, as she struggled with her

halfwitted whelp, resounded through the house, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They

were the deathcry of my love; my love was murdered; was not only dead, but an offence to me; and yet,

think as I pleased, feel as I must, it still swelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at

her looks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon Olalla, this savage and bestial strain that

ran not only through the whole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very foundations and story of

our love though it appalled, though it shocked and sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot of

When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which I knew Felipe was without; and

Olalla went and spoke to him I know not what. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now

kneeling by my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. So then, for these six hours I

drank in her beauty, and silently perused the story in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I

saw her eyes darken and brighter, and still speak no language but that of an unfathomable kindness; I saw the

faultless face, and, through the robe, the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the growing

darkness of the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted; but even then the touch of her smooth hand lingered

in mine and talked with me. To lie thus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, is to

reawake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I reasoned with myself; and I shut my eyes on horrors,

and again I was very bold to accept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious sentiment survived; if her

eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now, even as before, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned

She knelt down awhile and prayed, and I devoutly respected her devotions. The moon had begun to shine in

upon one side of each of the three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw her

'It is for me to speak,' she said, 'and for you to listen. I know; you can but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for

you to leave this place. I begged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or if not, O let

'And yet you have lived in the world,' she said; after a pause, 'you are a man and wise; and I am but a child.

Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do

but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design the horror of

the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, and are

warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So I shall have a life in the cherished places of

'I love you,' I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed

it. Nor did she resist, but winced a little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was not

unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call upon her resolution; plucked my hand

towards her, herself at the same time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart.

'There,' she cried, 'you feel the very footfall of my life. It only moves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine?

It is mine indeed to offer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a live branch from a

tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or I think I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an

impotent prisoner, and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This capsule, such as throbs

against the sides of animals, knows you at a touch for its master; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul?

I think not; I know not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me your words were of the soul; it is of the

'Olalla,' I said, 'the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love. What the body chooses, the soul loves;

where the body clings, the soul cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's signal; and

the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the footstool and foundation of the highest.'

'Have you,' she said, 'seen the portraits in the house of my fathers? Have you looked at my mother or at

Felipe? Have your eyes never rested on that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died ages ago;

and she did evil in her life. But, look again: there is my hand to the least line, there are my eyes and my hair.

What is mine, then, and what am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, and for the sake

of which you dotingly dream that you love me) not a gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any

look from my eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others? Others, ages

dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men have heard the pleading of the same voice that now

sounds in your ears. The hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, they guide me; I

am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform features and attributes that have long been laid aside from

evil in the quiet of the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me? The girl who does not know

and cannot answer for the least portion of herself? or the stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of

which she is the passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is ever young, it carries its eternal destiny in its

bosom; upon it, like waves upon the sea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of

selfcontrol, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul is in the race.'

'You fret against the common law,' I said. 'You rebel against the voice of God, which he has made so winning

to convince, so imperious to command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to mine,

your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we are compounded awake and run together at

a look; the clay of the earth remembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawn together as

the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb and flow, by things older and greater than we

'Alas!' she said, 'what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundred years ago, ruled all this province: they were

wise, great, cunning, and cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war; the king called

them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung for them or when they returned and found their hovels

smoking, blasphemed their name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes,

he can descend again to the same level. The breath of weariness blew on their humanity and the cords

relaxed; they began to go down; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady and senseless

like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was still handed down, but no longer the guiding wit nor

the human heart; the seed passed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the bones, but they were the

bones and the flesh of brutes, and their mind was as the mind of flies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have

seen for yourself how the wheel has gone backward with my doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon a little

rising ground in this desperate descent, and see both before and behind, both what we have lost and to what

we are condemned to go farther downward. And shall I I that dwell apart in the house of the dead, my

body, loathing its ways shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind another spirit, reluctant as my own, into this

bewitched and tempestbroken tenement that I now suffer in? Shall I hand down this cursed vessel of

humanity, charge it with fresh life as with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in the faces of posterity? But

my vow has been given; the race shall cease from off the earth. At this hour my brother is making ready; his

foot will soon be on the stair; and you will go with him and pass out of my sight for ever. Think of me

sometimes as one to whom the lesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with courage; as one

who loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her love was hateful to her; as one who sent you

away and yet would have longed to keep you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and no

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice sounding softer and farther away; and with the

last word she was gone, and I lay alone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lain bound

by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was there fell upon me a great and blank despair. It was not

long before there shone in at the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe coming, charged me without

a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate, where the cart was waiting. In the

moonlight the hills stood out sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the plateau,

and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled in the wind, the great black cube of the

residencia stood out bulkily, its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern front above

the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till,

where the road dipped into a valley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe walked in silence beside the

shafts, but from time to time he would cheek the mule and seem to look back upon me; and at length drew

quite near and laid his hand upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such a simplicity, as of

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end, retraced some part of the way we had gone,

and, striking into another path, led me to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirkton

of that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell in my mind of the day breaking over the plain,

of the cart stopping, of arms that helped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and of a swoon

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my side with his snuffbox and prayer book,

and after a while, when I began to pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery, and

must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without naming any reason, he took snuff and

looked at me sideways. I did not affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. 'Sir,' said I, 'you know

He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, and that they were very poor and had

'But she has not,' I said. 'Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is instructed and wise beyond the use of women.'

'Yes,' he said; 'the Senorita is wellinformed. But the family has been neglected.'

'Yes, the mother too,' said the Padre, taking snuff. 'But Felipe is a wellintentioned lad.'

'I think, sir, we beat about the bush,' said I. 'You must know more of my affairs than you allow. You must

know my curiosity to be justified on many grounds. Will you not be frank with me?'

'My son,' said the old gentleman, 'I will be very frank with you on matters within my competence; on those of

which I know nothing it does not require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, I take your

meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all in God's hands, and that His ways are not as our

ways? I have even advised with my superiors in the church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a great mystery.'

'I will answer you according to my belief. She is not,' returned the Padre, 'or she was not. When she was

young God help me, I fear I neglected that wild lamb she was surely sane; and yet, although it did not run

to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had been so before her in her father, ay, and before

him, and this inclined me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on growing, not only in the

'When she was young,' I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, and it was only with a great effort that

'Now God forbid!' exclaimed the Padre. 'God forbid that any man should think so slightingly of my favourite

penitent. No, no; the Senorita (but for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not a hair's

resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I could not bear to have you think so; though, Heaven

At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man; telling him of our love and of her

decision, owning my own horrors, my own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done, he sat for some time silent. Then he

began: 'The church,' and instantly broke off again to apologise. 'I had forgotten, my child, that you were not a

Christian,' said he. 'And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual, even the church can scarce be said to have

decided. But would you have my opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; I would

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous in his visits; indeed, even when I

began to get about again, he plainly feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a man

might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx. The villagers, too, avoided me; they were unwilling to be

my guides upon the mountain. I thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more

superstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this down to my heretical opinions; but it

began at length to dawn upon me that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the residencia.

All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed

to fall and dwell upon my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deify that it restrained my ardour.

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from which the eye plunged direct upon the

residencia; and thither it became my daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where the

pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelf of rock, and that, in its turn, was

surmounted by a crucifix of the size of life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;

thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old house, and could see Felipe, no

bigger than a fly, going to and fro about the garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be

broken up again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me in unbroken sunshine; it

would sometimes be all blotted out by rain. This distant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my

life had been so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour. I passed whole days there, debating

with myself the various elements of our position; now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear to

One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhat gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle.

He was a stranger, and plainly did not know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he

drew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Among other things he told me he had

been a muleteer, and in former years had much frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the

army with his mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with his family.

'Do you know that house?' I inquired, at last, pointing to the residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that

'Too well,' he said, 'it was there that one of my comrades sold himself to Satan; the Virgin shield us from

temptations! He has paid the price; he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!'

A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the man resumed, as if to himself: 'Yes,' he said,

'O yes, I know it. I have passed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it; sure enough

there was death that night upon the mountains, but there was worse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm,

Senor, and dragged him to the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forth with me; I went

on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see he was moved by my entreaty. And just then she came

out on the gallery, and called him by his name; and he turned, and there was she standing with a lamp in her

hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud to God, and threw my arms about him, but he put

me by, and left me alone. He had made his choice; God help us. I would pray for him, but to what end? there

'Nay, God knows,' said the muleteer. 'If all be true that we hear, his end was like his sin, a thing to raise the

'Sure enough, he was killed,' returned the man. 'But how? Ay, how? But these are things that it is sin to speak

But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. 'The people?' he cried. 'What people? There are neither men

nor women in that house of Satan's! What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?' And here he put

his mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain might have overheard and been

What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed, but a new edition, vamped up again by

village ignorance and superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was rather the application

that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the church would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm

of the church was now shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men, and left to the

more awful judgment of an offended God. This was wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk

in age; he was even bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to their own danger; and

He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not; whether first to warn the Padre, or to

carry my illnews direct to the threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me; for, while

I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could

deceive my penetration; by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden behind a

corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did

not speak; I, too, remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other with a passionate

'I thought you had gone,' she said at length. 'It is all that you can do for me to go. It is all I ever asked of

you. And you still stay. But do you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your head,

but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought you love me, and the people will not suffer

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it. 'Olalla,' I said, 'I am ready to go this day,

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I stood by and looked now at her and now

at the object of her adoration, now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed

countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image. The silence was only broken by the

wailing of some large birds that circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the hills.

Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil, and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of

'I have laid my hand upon the cross,' she said. 'The Padre says you are no Christian; but look up for a moment

with my eyes, and behold the face of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was the inheritors of sin;

we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all of us ay, even in me a sparkle of the

divine. Like Him, we must endure for a little while, until morning returns bringing peace. Suffer me to pass

on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely, counting for my friend Him who is the friend of

all the distressed; it is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of earthly happiness, and

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to images, and despised that imitative and

grimacing art of which it was a rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to my

intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly contraction; but the rays of a glory

encircled it, and reminded me that the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it still

stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passersby, an emblem of sad and noble truths; that

pleasure is not an end, but an accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to suffer all

things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain in silence; and when I looked back for the last time

before the wood closed about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.

They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six. About eight some villagers came round for the

performance, and were told how matters stood. It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill like real

people, and they made off again in dudgeon. By ten Madame Tentaillon was gravely alarmed, and had sent

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the little diningroom, and his wife was asleep

'Sapristi!' said the Doctor, 'you should have sent for me before. It was a case for hurry.' And he followed the

The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop there; he went in at one door and out by

another into the court, and then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the loft where the

mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live a thousand years, he would never forget his arrival in

that room; for not only was the scene picturesque, but the moment made a date in his existence. We reckon

our lives, I hardly know why, from the date of our first sorry appearance in society, as if from a first

humiliation; for no actor can come upon the stage with a worse grace. Not to go further back, which would be

judged too curious, there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in the lives of all, which

would make as logical a period as this of birth. And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty, who

had made what is called a failure in life, and was moreover married, found himself at a new point of

It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon

a pallet; a large man, with a Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon stooped over him,

applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to his feet; and on a chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven

or twelve, with his feet dangling. These three were the only occupants, except the shadows. But the shadows

were a company in themselves; the extent of the room exaggerated them to a gigantic size, and from the low

position of the candle the light struck upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings. The mountebank's

profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and it was strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the

flame was blown about by draughts. As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no more than a gross hump

of shoulders, with now and again a hemisphere of head. The chair legs were spindled out as long as stilts, and

It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy. He had a great arched skull, the forehead and the hands of a

musician, and a pair of haunting eyes. It was not merely that these eyes were large, or steady, or the softest

ruddy brown. There was a look in them, besides, which thrilled the Doctor, and made him half uneasy. He

was sure he had seen such a look before, and yet he could not remember how or where. It was as if this boy,

who was quite a stranger to him, had the eyes of an old friend or an old enemy. And the boy would give him

no peace; he seemed profoundly indifferent to what was going on, or rather abstracted from it in a superior

contemplation, beating gently with his feet against the bars of the chair, and holding his hands folded on his

lap. But, for all that, his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room with a thoughtful fixity of gaze.

Desprez could not tell whether he was fascinating the boy, or the boy was fascinating him. He busied himself

over the sick man: he put questions, he felt the pulse, he jested, he grew a little hot and swore: and still,

whenever he looked round, there were the brown eyes waiting for his with the same inquiring, melancholy

At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap. He remembered the look now. The little fellow, although he

was as straight as a dart, had the eyes that go usually with a crooked back; he was not at all deformed, and yet

a deformed person seemed to be looking at you from below his brows. The Doctor drew a long breath, he was

so much relieved to find a theory (for he loved theories) and to explain away his interest.

For all that, he despatched the invalid with unusual haste, and, still kneeling with one knee on the floor,

turned a little round and looked the boy over at his leisure. The boy was not in the least put out, but looked

'That is bad, my man,' resumed the latter, with a shade of sternness. 'Every one should be fond of the dying,

or conceal their sentiments; and your master here is dying. If I have watched a bird a little while stealing my

cherries, I have a thought of disappointment when he flies away over my garden wall, and I see him steer for

the forest and vanish. How much more a creature such as this, so strong, so astute, so richly endowed with

faculties! When I think that, in a few hours, the speech will be silenced, the breath extinct, and even the

shadow vanished from the wall, I who never saw him, this lady who knew him only as a guest, are touched

'He is a little pagan,' said the landlady. 'For that matter, they are all the same, these mountebanks, tumblers,

But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little pagan, his eyebrows knotted and uplifted.

Desprez leaped upon him with one of his sudden flashes of excitement, and felt his head all over from an

'Celtic!' cried Madame Tentaillon, who had perhaps confounded the word with hydrocephalous. 'Poor lad! is

'That depends,' returned the Doctor grimly. And then once more addressing the boy: 'And what do you do for

'So! Tumble?' repeated Desprez. 'Probably healthful. I hazard the guess, Madame Tentaillon, that tumbling is

'Upon my word!' cried the doctor. 'You are a nice little man for your age. Madame, when my CONFRERE

comes from Bourron, you will communicate my unfavourable opinion. I leave the case in his hands; but of

course, on any alarming symptom, above all if there should be a sign of rally, do not hesitate to knock me up.

I am a doctor no longer, I thank God; but I have been one. Good night, madame. Good sleep to you,

DOCTOR DESPREZ always rose early. Before the smoke arose, before the first cart rattled over the bridge

to the day's labour in the fields, he was to be found wandering in his garden. Now he would pick a bunch of

grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellice; now he would draw all sorts of fancies on the path

with the end of his cane; now he would go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber

landingplace at which he moored his boat. There was no time, he used to say, for making theories like the

early morning. 'I rise earlier than any one else in the village,' he once boasted. 'It is a fair consequence that I

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical effect to usher in the day. He had a

theory of dew, by which he could predict the weather. Indeed, most things served him to that end: the sound

of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of the forest, the visits and the behaviour of both

birds and fishes, the look of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of the light, and last,

although not least, the arsenal of meteorological instruments in a louvre boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever

since he had settled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the local meteorologist, the unpaid

champion of the local climate. He thought at first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By

the end of the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the whole department. And for some

time before he met JeanMarie he had been prepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for

'Doctor,' he would say 'doctor is a foul word. It should not be used to ladies. It implies disease. I remark it,

as a flaw in our civilisation, that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, have washed

my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; I am only a worshipper of the true goddess

Hygieia. Ah, believe me, it is she who has the cestus! And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has she placed her

shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walk with her in the early morning, and she shows me

how strong she has made the peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow up tall and

comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become clean and agile at her presence. Rheumatism!' he

would cry, on some malapert interruption, 'O, yes, I believe we do have a little rheumatism. That could hardly

be avoided, you know, on a river. And of course the place stands a little low; and the meadows are marshy,

there's no doubt. But, my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands high. Bourron is close to the forest; plenty

of ozone there, you would say. Well, compared with Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles.'

The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of

his garden, and had a long look at the running water. This he called prayer; but whether his adorations were

addressed to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity, never plainly appeared. For he had uttered

doubtful oracles, sometimes declaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes extolling it as the

great moral preacher, continually preaching peace, continuity, and diligence to man's tormented spirits. After

he had watched a mile or so of the clear water running by before his eyes, seen a fish or two come to the

surface with a gleam of silver, and sufficiently admired the long shadows of the trees falling half across the

river from the opposite bank, with patches of moving sunlight in between, he strolled once more up the

The sound of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day; for the village was still sound asleep.

The church tower looked very airy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it, seemed to swim in an

atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in long transparent shadows, filled his lungs

On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a meditative

'Aha!' he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on either knee. 'So we rise early in the morning,

'You hardly know?' repeated Desprez. 'We hardly know anything, my man, until we try to learn. Interrogate

'And why do you like it?' continued the Doctor. '(We are now pursuing the Socratic method.) Why do you

'It is quiet,' answered JeanMarie; 'and I have nothing to do; and then I feel as if I were good.'

Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side. He was beginning to take an interest in the talk,

for the boy plainly thought before he spoke, and tried to answer truly. 'It appears you have a taste for feeling

good,' said the Doctor. 'Now, there you puzzle me extremely; for I thought you said you were a thief; and the

'No; but I mean as I stole,' explained the other. 'For I had no choice. I think it is surely right to have bread; it

must be right to have bread, there comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat me cruelly if I returned with

nothing,' he added. 'I was not ignorant of right and wrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest,

who was very kind to me.' (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word 'priest.') 'But it seemed to me,

when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it was a different affair. I would not have stolen for tartlets, I

'And so I suppose,' said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, 'you prayed God to forgive you, and explained the

'Would he?' asked the boy, troubled for the first time. 'I should have thought God would have known.'

'I should have thought God would have understood me,' replied the other. 'You do not, I see; but then it was

'Little boy, little boy,' said Dr. Desprez, 'I told you already you had the vices of philosophy; if you display the

virtues also, I must go. I am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain and temperate nature

in her common walks; and I cannot preserve my equanimity in presence of a monster. Do you understand?'

'I will make my meaning clear to you,' replied the doctor. 'Look there at the sky behind the belfry first,

where it is so light, and then up and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it is

already as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful colour? Does it not please the heart? We have seen it all our

lives, until it has grown in with our familiar thoughts. Now,' changing his tone, 'suppose that sky to become

suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the colour of clear coals, and growing scarlet towards the top I do

'Neither do I like you,' returned the Doctor, roughly. 'I hate all odd people, and you are the most curious little

JeanMarie seemed to ponder for a while, and then he raised his head again and looked over at the Doctor

with an air of candid inquiry. 'But are not you a very curious gentleman?' he asked.

The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him on both

cheeks. 'Admirable, admirable imp!' he cried. 'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of fortytwo! No,'

he continued, apostrophising heaven, 'I did not know such boys existed; I was ignorant they made them so; I

had doubted of my race; and now! It is like,' he added, picking up his stick, 'like a lovers' meeting. I have

bruised my favourite staff in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury, however, is not grave.' He caught the

boy looking at him in obvious wonder, embarrassment, and alarm. 'Hullo!' said he, 'why do you look at me

'You must excuse me, sir,' returned the Doctor, with gravity; 'I am still so young. O, hang him!' he added to

himself. And he took his seat again and observed the boy sardonically. 'He has spoiled the quiet of my

morning,' thought he. 'I shall be nervous all day, and have a febricule when I digest. Let me compose myself.'

And so he dismissed his preoccupations by an effort of the will which he had long practised, and let his soul

roam abroad in the contemplation of the morning. He inhaled the air, tasting it critically as a connoisseur

tastes a vintage, and prolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto. He counted the little flecks of cloud along

the sky. He followed the movements of the birds round the church tower making long sweeps, hanging

poised, or turning airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the wind with imaginary pinions. And in this way he

regained peace of mind and animal composure, conscious of his limbs, conscious of the sight of his eyes,

conscious that the air had a cool taste, like a fruit, at the top of his throat; and at last, in complete abstraction,

he began to sing. The Doctor had but one air , 'Malbrouck s'en vaten guerre;' even with that he was on

terms of mere politeness; and his musical exploits were always reserved for moments when he was alone and

He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face. 'What do you think of my singing?'

he inquired, stopping in the middle of a note; and then, after he had waited some little while and received no

The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction. He was aware that he was angry, and blushed for

himself in consequence, which made him angrier. 'If this is how you address your master!' he said at last, with

The Doctor rose. 'I shall wish you a good morning,' he said. 'You are too much for me. Perhaps you have

blood in your veins, perhaps celestial ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;

but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured: that you are no human being. No, boy' shaking his stick at

him 'you are not a human being. Write, write it in your memory "I am not a human being I have no

pretension to be a human being I am a dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, an illusion what you please,

And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, and the boy stood, mentally gaping,

MADAME DESPREZ, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie, presented an agreeable type of her

sex; exceedingly wholesome to look upon, a stout BRUNE, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and

hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort of person over whom adversity passes like a

summer cloud; she might, in the worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a moment,

but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity of a contented nun; with little of her piety,

however; for Anastasie was of a very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold

pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than for his. She was imperturbably

goodnatured, but had no idea of selfsacrifice. To live in that pleasant old house, with a green garden

behind and bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best, to gossip with a neighbour for a

quarter of an hour, never to wear stays or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept

in a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy,

filled the cup of her nature to the brim. Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired

quite as many theories, but of a different order, attributed his present philosophy to the study of Anastasie. It

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with

which she had infected the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously;

and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the world

but to scour and burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf, warmed and cosseted to his

The midday meal was excellent. There was a ripe melon, a fish from the river in a memorable Bearnaise

sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and a dish of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The Doctor drank half a

bottle PLUS one glass, the wife half a bottle MINUS the same quantity, which was a marital privilege, of an

excellent CoteRotie, seven years old. Then the coffee was brought, and a flask of Chartreuse for madame,

for the Doctor despised and distrusted such decoctions; and then Aline left the wedded pair to the pleasures of

'It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished one,' observed the Doctor 'this coffee is adorable a very

fortunate circumstance upon the whole Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that poison for today; only

'What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?' inquired Anastasie, not heeding his protest, which was of

'That we have no children, my beautiful,' replied the Doctor. 'I think of it more and more as the years go on,

and with more and more gratitude towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions. Your health, my darling,

my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they would all have suffered, how they would all have

been sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health flees before their

face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated,

to have their noses blown; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break this piece of

sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid offspring, like an infidelity.'

'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed. 'Now, that is like you to take credit for the thing you could not help.'

'Never!' cried madame. 'Never, Doctor, with my consent. If the child were my own flesh and blood, I would

not say no. But to take another person's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I have too much sense.'

'Precisely,' replied the Doctor. 'We both had. And I am all the better pleased with our wisdom, because

'Because I have found the right person,' said the Doctor firmly, 'and shall adopt him this afternoon.'

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. 'You have lost your reason,' she said; and there was a clang in her

'Not so, my dear,' he replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To the proof: instead of attempting to cloak my

inconsistency, I have, by way of preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I think, recognise

the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife. The fact is, I have been reckoning all this while without

an accident. I never thought to find a son of my own. Now, last night, I found one. Do not unnecessarily

alarm yourself, my dear; he is not a drop of blood to me that I know. It is his mind, darling, his mind that

'His mind!' she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics. 'His mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic

'Truly,' replied the Doctor with a shrug, 'you have your finger on the hitch. He will be strikingly antipathetic

to my ever beautiful Anastasie. She will never understand him; he will never understand her. You married the

animal side of my nature, dear and it is on the spiritual side that I find my affinity for JeanMarie. So much

so, that, to be perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself. You will easily perceive that I am

announcing a calamity for you. Do not,' he broke out in tones of real solicitude 'do not give way to tears

Anastasie controlled herself. 'You know how willing I am to humour you,' she said, 'in all reasonable matters.

'My dear love,' interrupted the Doctor, eager to prevent a refusal, 'who wished to leave Paris? Who made me

give up cards, and the opera, and the boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was my life before I

knew you? Have I been faithful? Have I been obedient? Have I not borne my doom with cheerfulness? In all

honesty, Anastasie, have I not a right to a stipulation on my side? I have, and you know it. I stipulate my son.'

Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colours instantly. 'You will break my heart,' she sighed.

'Not in the least,' said he. 'You will feel a trifling inconvenience for a month, just as I did when I was first

brought to this vile hamlet; then your admirable sense and temper will prevail, and I see you already as

'You know I can refuse you nothing,' she said, with a last flicker of resistance; 'nothing that will make you

truly happier. But will this? Are you sure, my husband? Last night, you say, you found him! He may be the

'I think not,' replied the Doctor. 'But do not suppose me so unwary as to adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter

myself, a finished man of the world; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to meet them

all. I take the lad as stable boy. If he pilfer, if he grumble, if he desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I

'You will never do so when the time comes,' said his wife; 'I know your good heart.'

She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh; the Doctor smiled as he took it and carried it to his lips; he had

gained his point with greater ease than he had dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth time he had proved the

efficacy of his trusty argument, his Excalibur, the hint of a return to Paris. Six months in the capital, for a

man of the Doctor's antecedents and relations, implied no less a calamity than total ruin. Anastasie had saved

the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictly in the country. The very name of Paris put her in a blue

fear; and she would have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the back garden, let alone adopting a

About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost; he had never been conscious since his

seizure. Doctor Desprez was present at his last passage, and declared the farce over. Then he took

JeanMarie by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where there was a convenient bench beside

'JeanMarie,' he said very gravely, 'this world is exceedingly vast; and even France, which is only a small

corner of it, is a great place for a little lad like you. Unfortunately it is full of eager, shouldering people

moving on; and there are very few bakers' shops for so many eaters. Your master is dead; you are not fit to

gain a living by yourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your situation then is undesirable; it is, for the

moment, critical. On the other hand, you behold in me a man not old, though elderly, still enjoying the youth

of the heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated in this world's affairs; keeping a good

table: a man, neither as friend nor host, to be despised. I offer you your food and clothes, and to teach you

lessons in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the purpose for a lad of your stamp than those of all

the priests in Europe. I propose no wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me, the door shall be open,

and I will give you a hundred francs to start the world upon. In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which

you would very speedily learn to clean and keep in order. Do not hurry yourself to answer, and take it or

leave it as you judge aright. Only remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person, but a man

who lives rigorously to himself; and that if I make the proposal, it is for my own ends it is because I

'I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I can do. I thank you, sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful,'

'Thank you,' said the Doctor warmly, rising at the same time and wiping his brow, for he had suffered agonies

while the thing hung in the wind. A refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed him in a ridiculous

light before Anastasie. 'How hot and heavy is the evening, to be sure! I have always had a fancy to be a fish

in summer, JeanMarie, here in the Loing beside Gretz. I should lie under a waterlily and listen to the bells,

which must sound most delicately down below. That would be a life do you not think so too?'

'Thank God you have imagination!' cried the Doctor, embracing the boy with his usual effusive warmth,

though it was a proceeding that seemed to disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an English

Madame Desprez sat in the diningroom in a cool wrapper. All the blinds were down, and the tile floor had

been recently sprinkled with water; her eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a novel as the they

entered. Though she was a bustling woman, she enjoyed repose between whiles and had a remarkable

The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for the benefit of both parties, 'You must try

'He is very pretty,' said Anastasie. 'Will you kiss me, my pretty little fellow?'

The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the passage. 'Are you a fool, Anastasie?' he said. 'What is all

this I hear about the tact of women? Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my experience. You address my

little philosopher as if he were an infant. He must be spoken to with more respect, I tell you; he must not be

'I only did it to please you, I am sure,' replied Anastasie; 'but I will try to do better.'

The Doctor apologised for his warmth. 'But I do wish him,' he continued, 'to feel at home among us. And

really your conduct was so idiotic, my cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of place, that a saint

might have been pardoned a little vehemence in disapproval. Do, do try if it is possible for a woman to

understand young people but of course it is not, and I waste my breath. Hold your tongue as much as

possible at least, and observe my conduct narrowly; it will serve you for a model.'

Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor's behaviour. She observed that he embraced the

boy three times in the course of the evening, and managed generally to confound and abash the little fellow

out of speech and appetite. But she had the true womanly heroism in little affairs. Not only did she refrain

from the cheap revenge of exposing the Doctor's errors to himself, but she did her best to remove their

illeffect on Jean Marie. When Desprez went out for his last breath of air before retiring for the night, she

'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners,' she said. 'He is the kindest of men, but

so clever that he is sometimes difficult to understand. You will soon grow used to him, and then you will love

him, for that nobody can help. As for me, you may be sure, I shall try to make you happy, and will not bother

you at all. I think we should be excellent friends, you and I. I am not clever, but I am very goodnatured.

He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to cry. The woman had spoken in

complaisance; but she had warmed to her own words, and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering, found

them enlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he was just beginning, in an awful voice,

'Anastasie ,' when she looked up at him, smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his peace, wondering,

THE installation of the adopted stableboy was thus happily effected, and the wheels of life continued to run

smoothly in the Doctor's house. JeanMarie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes

helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdom from the

fountainhead; and was introduced at night to the sciences and the dead tongues. He retained his singular

placidity of mind and manner; he was rarely in fault; but he made only a very partial progress in his studies,

The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All forenoon he worked on his great book, the 'Comparative

Pharmacopoeia, or Historical Dictionary of all Medicines,' which as yet consisted principally of slips of paper

and pins. When finished, it was to fill many personable volumes, and to combine antiquarian interest with

professional utility. But the Doctor was studious of literary graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a touch

of manners, a moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to be preferred before a piece of science; a

little more, and he would have written the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia' in verse! The article 'Mummia,' for

instance, was already complete, though the remainder of the work had not progressed beyond the letter A. It

was exceedingly copious and entertaining, written with quaintness and colour, exact, erudite, a literary

article; but it would hardly have afforded guidance to a practising physician of today. The feminine good

sense of his wife had led her to point this out with uncompromising sincerity; for the Dictionary was duly

read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and waning, as it proceeded towards an infinitely distant completion; and the

Doctor was a little sore on the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusion with asperity.

After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked, sometimes alone, sometimes

accompanied by JeanMarie; for madame would have preferred any hardship rather than walk.

She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied about material comforts, and ready to drop

asleep over a novel the instant she was disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as she never snored or

grew distempered in complexion when she slept. On the contrary, she looked the very picture of luxurious

and appetising ease, and woke without a start to the perfect possession of her faculties. I am afraid she was

greatly an animal, but she was a very nice animal to have about. In this way, she had little to do with

JeanMarie; but the sympathy which had been established between them on the first night remained

unbroken; they held occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to the extreme disappointment of

the Doctor, they occasionally sallied off together to that temple of debasing superstition, the village church;

madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a month to Fontainebleau and returned laden with

purchases; and in short, although the Doctor still continued to regard them as irreconcilably antipathetic,

their relation was as intimate, friendly, and confidential as their natures suffered.

I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly despised and pitied the boy. She had no admiration

for his class of virtues; she liked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in hand, light of foot,

meeting the eye; she liked volubility, charm, a little vice the promise of a second Doctor Desprez. And it

was her indefeasible belief that JeanMarie was dull. 'Poor dear boy,' she had said once, 'how sad it is that he

should be so stupid!' She had never repeated that remark, for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull,

denouncing the brutal bluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated with an ass,

and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table china by the fury of his gesticulations. But she

adhered silently to her opinion; and when JeanMarie was sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his

unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity in the Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms

about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy with his distress. 'Do not mind,' she

would say; 'I, too, am not at all clever, and I can assure you that it makes no difference in life.'

The Doctor's view was naturally different. That gentleman never wearied of the sound of his own voice,

which was, to say the truth, agreeable enough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so cynically

indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides,

was he not educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties.

What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State? Then,

indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more

content with his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so agile a dialectician that

he could trace his nonsense, when challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort of flower

upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a fish, and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.

Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with the illsuccess of his more formal

education. A boy, chosen by so acute an observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learning by so

philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature of the universe, to make a more obvious and lasting

advance. Now JeanMarie was slow in all things, impenetrable in others; and his power of forgetting was

fully on a level with his power to learn. Therefore the Doctor cherished his peripatetic lectures, to which the

boy attended, which he generally appeared to enjoy, and by which he often profited.

Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and moderation proved the subject of the

'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, my beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one

phrase to avoid excess. Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates excess. Human

law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance her provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of

the law. Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and for our neighbours lex armata

armed, emphatic, tyrannous law. If you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box! The

judge, though in a way an admission of disease, is less offensive to me than either the doctor or the priest.

Above all the doctor the doctor and the purulent trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air from

the neighbourhood of a pinetum for the sake of the turpentine unadulterated wine, and the reflections of an

unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of nature these, my boy, are the best medical appliances

and the best religious comforts. Devote yourself to these. Hark! there are the bells of Bourron (the wind is in

the north, it will be fair). How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are harmonised and quieted; the mind

attuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart! Your unenlightened doctor would

see nothing in these sensations; and yet you yourself perceive they are a part of health. Did you remember

your cinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona also is a work of nature; it is, after all, only the bark of a tree

which we might gather for ourselves if we lived in the locality. What a world is this! Though a professed

atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures that

surround our path! The river runs by the garden end, our bath, our fishpond, our natural system of drainage.

There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling water from the earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with

a little wine, most wholesome. The district is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is the only prevalent

complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I tell you and my opinion is based upon the coldest,

clearest processes of reason if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, it would be the duty, it

One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village. The river, as blue as heaven, shone here and

there among the foliage. The indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower. A healthy

wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerable thousands of treetops and innumerable

millions on millions of green leaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something between

whispered speech and singing. It seemed as if every blade of grass must hide a cigale; and the fields rang

merrily with their music, jingling far and near as with the sleighbells of the fairy queen. From their station

on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the one hand, the waving hilltops of the

forest on the other, and Gretz itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding arch of the blue

heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemed incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to

turn or air to breathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came home to the boy, perhaps for the first

'Ay,' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now. Yet it was once a walled city; thriving, full of furred burgesses

and men in armour, humming with affairs; with tall spires, for aught that I know, and portly towers along

the battlements. A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the curfew bell. There were gibbets at the gate as

thick as scarecrows. In time of war, the assault swarmed against it with ladders, the arrows fell like leaves,

the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each side uttered its cry as they plied their weapons. Do you

know that the walls extended as far as the Commanderie? Tradition so reports. Alas, what a long way off is

all this confusion nothing left of it but my quiet words spoken in your ear and the town itself shrunk to

the hamlet underneath us! Byandby came the English wars you shall hear more of the English, a stupid

people, who sometimes blundered into good and Gretz was taken, sacked, and burned. It is the history of

many towns; but Gretz never rose again; it was never rebuilt; its ruins were a quarry to serve the growth of

rivals; and the stones of Gretz are now erect along the streets of Nemours. It gratifies me that our old house

was the first to rise after the calamity; when the town had come to an end, it inaugurated the hamlet.'

'It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,' responded the Doctor with a savoury gusto. 'Perhaps one of

the reasons why I love my little hamlet as I do, is that we have a similar history, she and I. Have I told you

'I do not think so,' answered JeanMarie. 'I do not think I should have forgotten. I am sorry you should have

'Sorry?' cried the Doctor. 'Why, I find I have scarce begun your education after all. Listen to me! Would you

rather live in the old Gretz or in the new, free from the alarms of war, with the green country at the door,

without noise, passports, the exactions of the soldiery, or the jangle of the curfewbell to send us off to bed

'Precisely,' returned the Doctor; 'so do I. And, in the same way, I prefer my present moderate fortune to my

former wealth. Golden mediocrity! cried the adorable ancients; and I subscribe to their enthusiasm. Have I

not good wine, good food, good air, the fields and the forest for my walk, a house, an admirable wife, a boy

whom I protest I cherish like a son? Now, if I were still rich, I should indubitably make my residence in Paris

you know Paris Paris and Paradise are not convertible terms. This pleasant noise of the wind streaming

among leaves changed into the grinding Babel of the street, the stupid glare of plaster substituted for this

quiet pattern of greens and greys, the nerves shattered, the digestion falsified picture the fall! Already you

perceive the consequences; the mind is stimulated, the heart steps to a different measure, and the man is

himself no longer. I have passionately studied myself the true business of philosophy. I know my character

as the musician knows the ventages of his flute. Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself gambling; nay,

This was too much for JeanMarie. That a place should so transform the most excellent of men transcended

his belief. Paris, he protested, was even an agreeable place of residence. 'Nor when I lived in that city did I

But the boy could never be brought to see that he had done anything wrong when he stole. Nor, indeed, did

the Doctor think he had; but that gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort.

'And now,' he concluded, 'do you begin to understand? My only friends were those who ruined me. Gretz has

been my academy, my sanatorium, my heaven of innocent pleasures. If millions are offered me, I wave them

back: RETRO, SATHANAS! Evil one, begone! Fix your mind on my example; despise riches, avoid the

debasing influence of cities. Hygiene hygiene and mediocrity of fortune these be your watchwords during

The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coincided with his tastes; and his picture of the perfect life was a

faithful description of the one he was leading at the time. But it is easy to convince a boy, whom you supply

with all the facts for the discussion. And besides, there was one thing admirable in the philosophy, and that

was the enthusiasm of the philosopher. There was never any one more vigorously determined to be pleased;

and if he was not a great logician, and so had no right to convince the intellect, he was certainly something of

a poet, and had a fascination to seduce the heart. What he could not achieve in his customary humour of a

radiant admiration of himself and his circumstances, he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.

'Boy,' he would say, 'avoid me today. If I were superstitious, I should even beg for an interest in your

prayers. I am in the black fit; the evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the personal devil

of the mediaeval monk, is with me is in me,' tapping on his breast. 'The vices of my nature are now

uppermost; innocent pleasures woo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the mire. See,' he would

continue, producing a handful of silver, 'I denude myself, I am not to be trusted with the price of a fare. Take

it, keep it for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river I will homologate

your action. Save me from that part of myself which I disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if

necessary, wreck the train! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any extremity were better than for me to reach

Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes, as a variation in his part; they represented the Byronic

element in the somewhat artificial poetry of his existence; but to the boy, though he was dimly aware of their

theatricality, they represented more. The Doctor made perhaps too little, the boy possibly too much, of the

One day a great light shone for JeanMarie. 'Could not riches be used well?' he asked.

'In theory, yes,' replied the Doctor. 'But it is found in experience that no one does so. All the world imagine

they will be exceptional when they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring up; and the

Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment; the stable universe appeared to be about

capsizing with him. 'Because,' said he affecting deliberation after an obvious pause 'because I have

formed my life for my present income. It is not good for men of my years to be violently dissevered from

That was a sharp brush. The Doctor breathed hard, and fell into taciturnity for the afternoon. As for the boy,

he was delighted with the resolution of his doubts; even wondered that he had not foreseen the obvious and

conclusive answer. His faith in the Doctor was a stout piece of goods. Desprez was inclined to be a sheet in

the wind's eye after dinner, especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness. He would then remark on the

warmth of his feeling for Anastasie, and with inflamed cheeks and a loose, flustered smile, debate upon all

sorts of topics, and be feebly and indiscreetly witty. But the adopted stableboy would not permit himself to

entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude. It is quite true that a man may be a second father to you, and

yet take too much to drink; but the best natures are ever slow to accept such truths.

The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but perhaps he exaggerated his influence over his mind. Certainly

JeanMarie adopted some of his master's opinions, but I have yet to learn that he ever surrendered one of his

own. Convictions existed in him by divine right; they were virgin, unwrought, the brute metal of decision. He

could add others indeed, but he could not put away; neither did he care if they were perfectly agreed among

themselves; and his spiritual pleasures had nothing to do with turning them over or justifying them in words.

Words were with him a mere accomplishment, like dancing. When he was by himself, his pleasures were

almost vegetable. He would slip into the woods towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey

birches. His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think; sunlight, thin shadows moving in

the wind, the edge of firs against the sky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a spirit wholly

abstracted. A single mood filled him, to which all the objects of sense contributed, as the colours of the

So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted stableboy bemused himself with silence.

THE Doctor's carriage was a twowheeled gig with a hood; a kind of vehicle in much favour among country

doctors. On how many roads has one not seen it, a great way off between the poplars! in how many village

streets, tied to a gatepost! This sort of chariot is affected particularly at the trot by a kind of pitching

movement to and fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy. The hood describes a

considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnly absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride

in such a carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; but I have no doubt it may be

useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, its wide popularity among physicians.

One morning early, JeanMarie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened the gate, and mounted to the

drivingseat. The Doctor followed, arrayed from top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense

fleshcoloured umbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a baldric; and the equipage drove off smartly in a

breeze of its own provocation. They were bound for Franchard, to collect plants, with an eye to the

A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders of the forest and struck into an unfrequented

track; the noddy yawed softly over the sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs. There was a great,

green, softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead. In the arcades of the forest the air retained

the freshness of the night. The athletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleased the mind

like so many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eye admiringly upward to where the extreme leaves

sparkled in a patch of azure. Squirrels leaped in mid air. It was a proper spot for a devotee of the goddess

'It is ruin in a gorge,' continued Desprez, adopting his expository voice; 'the ruin of a hermitage and chapel.

History tells us much of Franchard; how the recluse was often slain by robbers; how he lived on a most

insufficient diet; how he was expected to pass his days in prayer. A letter is preserved, addressed to one of

these solitaries by the superior of his order, full of admirable hygienic advice; bidding him go from his book

to praying, and so back again, for variety's sake, and when he was weary of both to stroll about his garden

and observe the honey bees. It is to this day my own system. You must often have remarked me leaving the

"Pharmacopoeia" often even in the middle of a phrase to come forth into the sun and air. I admire the

writer of that letter from my heart; he was a man of thought on the most important subjects. But, indeed, had I

lived in the Middle Ages (I am heartily glad that I did not) I should have been an eremite myself if I had not

been a professed buffoon, that is. These were the only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or prayer; sneers,

we might say, and tears. Until the sun of the Positive arose, the wise man had to make his choice between

'I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your profession,' said the Doctor, admiring the boy's gravity. 'Do

'Singular being!' said Desprez. 'But I divagate (I perceive in a thousand ways that I grow old). Franchard was

at length destroyed in the English wars, the same that levelled Gretz. But here is the point the hermits (for

there were already more than one) had foreseen the danger and carefully concealed the sacrificial vessels.

These vessels were of monstrous value, JeanMarie monstrous value priceless, we may say; exquisitely

worked, of exquisite material. And now, mark me, they have never been found. In the reign of Louis

Quatorze some fellows were digging hard by the ruins. Suddenly tock! the spade hit upon an obstacle.

Imagine the men fooling one to another; imagine how their hearts bounded, how their colour came and went.

It was a coffer, and in Franchard the place of buried treasure! They tore it open like famished beasts. Alas! it

was not the treasure; only some priestly robes, which, at the touch of the eating air, fell upon themselves and

instantly wasted into dust. The perspiration of these good fellows turned cold upon them, JeanMarie. I will

pledge my reputation, if there was anything like a cutting wind, one or other had a pneumonia for his trouble.'

'I should like to have seen them turning into dust,' said Jean Marie. 'Otherwise, I should not have cared so

'You have no imagination,' cried the Doctor. 'Picture to yourself the scene. Dwell on the idea a great

treasure lying in the earth for centuries: the material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence not employed;

dresses and exquisite pictures unseen; the swiftest galloping horses not stirring a hoof, arrested by a spell;

women with the beautiful faculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice, opera singing, orchestras, castles,

beautiful parks and gardens, big ships with a tower of sailcloth, all lying unborn in a coffin and the stupid

trees growing overhead in the sunlight, year after year. The thought drives one frantic.'

'O, come!' cried Desprez, 'that is philosophy; it is all very fine, but not to the point just now. And besides, it is

not "only money," as you call it; there are works of art in the question; the vessels were carved. You speak

like a child. You weary me exceedingly, quoting my words out of all logical connection, like a parroquet.'

'And at any rate, we have nothing to do with it,' returned the boy submissively.

They struck the Route Ronde at that moment; and the sudden change to the rattling causeway combined, with

the Doctor's irritation, to keep him silent. The noddy jigged along; the trees went by, looking on silently, as if

they had something on their minds. The Quadrilateral was passed; then came Franchard. They put up the

horse at the little solitary inn, and went forth strolling. The gorge was dyed deeply with heather; the rocks and

birches standing luminous in the sun. A great humming of bees about the flowers disposed JeanMarie to

sleep, and he sat down against a clump of heather, while the Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quick turns,

The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his eyes were closed, his fingers had fallen lax about his knees,

when a sudden cry called him to his feet. It was a strange sound, thin and brief; it fell dead, and silence

returned as though it had never been interrupted. He had not recognised the Doctor's voice; but, as there was

no one else in all the valley, it was plainly the Doctor who had given utterance to the sound. He looked right

and left, and there was Desprez, standing in a niche between two boulders, and looking round on his adopted

The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, and, advanced in silence to meet the boy, whom he took

Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up and mimicked. 'A plant!' he repeated

scornfully. 'Well yes a plant. And here,' he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he had hitherto

'It is a coach and horses,' cried the Doctor. 'Boy,' he continued, growing warmer, 'I plucked away a great pad

of moss from between these boulders, and disclosed a crevice; and when I looked in, what do you suppose I

saw? I saw a house in Paris with a court and garden, I saw my wife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a

deputy, I saw you well, I I saw your future,' he concluded, rather feebly. 'I have just discovered America,'

'The Treasure of Franchard,' cried the Doctor; and, throwing his brown straw hat upon the ground, he

whooped like an Indian and sprang upon JeanMarie, whom he suffocated with embraces and bedewed with

tears. Then he flung himself down among the heather and once more laughed until the valley rang.

But the boy had now an interest of his own, a boy's interest. No sooner was he released from the Doctor's

accolade than he ran to the boulders, sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into the crevice, drew forth

one after another, encrusted with the earth of ages, the flagons, candlesticks, and patens of the hermitage of

But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had followed close behind and was silently observing, the words

died from his lips. Desprez was once more the colour of ashes; his lip worked and trembled; a sort of bestial

'This is childish,' he said. 'We lose precious time. Back to the inn, harness the trap, and bring it to yon bank.

JeanMarie did as he was bid, though not without surprise. The noddy was brought round to the spot

indicated; and the two gradually transported the treasure from its place of concealment to the boot below the

'I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this dell,' he said. 'O, for a live coal, a heifer, and a jar of country

wine! I am in the vein for sacrifice, for a superb libation. Well, and why not? We are at Franchard. English

pale ale is to be had not classical, indeed, but excellent. Boy, we shall drink ale.'

And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head, with an elastic, youthful air. The horse was turned, and in a

'Here,' said Desprez 'here, near the table, so that we may keep an eye upon things.'

They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now in fantastic high notes, now producing

deep reverberations from his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with

witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far more charged with gas than the most

delirious champagne, he filled out a long glassful of froth and pushed it over to JeanMarie. 'Drink,' he said;

'Take it or leave it,' interrupted Desprez fiercely; 'but understand it once for all there is nothing so

Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass but not tasting it, while the Doctor emptied

and refilled his own, at first with clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the heady, prickling

'Once in a way,' he said at last, by way of a concession to the boy's more rigorous attitude, 'once in a way, and

at so critical a moment, this ale is a nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is debasing; wine, the juice of the

grape, is the true drink of the Frenchman, as I have often had occasion to point out; and I do not know that I

can blame you for refusing this outlandish stimulant. You can have some wine and cakes. Is the bottle empty?

The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while JeanMarie finished his cakes. 'I burn to be gone,' he

said, looking at his watch. 'Good God, how slow you eat!' And yet to eat slowly was his own particular

His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed their places in the buggy, and Desprez,

leaning luxuriously back, announced his intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.

The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the light, the shining leaves, the very

movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall in tune with his golden meditations; with his head thrown back, he

dreamed a series of sunny visions, ale and pleasure dancing in his veins. At last he spoke.

'I shall telegraph for Casimir,' he said. 'Good Casimir! a fellow of the lower order of intelligence, JeanMarie,

distinctly not creative, not poetic; and yet he will repay your study; his fortune is vast, and is entirely due to

his own exertions. He is the very fellow to help us to dispose of our trinkets, find us a suitable house in Paris,

and manage the details of our installation. Admirable Casimir, one of my oldest comrades! It was on his

advice, I may add, that I invested my little fortune in Turkish bonds; when we have added these spoils of the

mediaeval church to our stake in the Mahometan empire, little boy, we shall positively roll among doubloons,

positively roll! Beautiful forest,' he cried, 'farewell! Though called to other scenes, I will not forget thee. Thy

name is graven in my heart. Under the influence of prosperity I become dithyrambic, JeanMarie. Such is the

impulse of the natural soul; such was the constitution of primaeval man. And I well, I will not refuse the

credit I have preserved my youth like a virginity; another, who should have led the same snoozing,

countryfied existence for these years, another had become rusted, become stereotype; but I, I praise my happy

constitution, retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a new sphere of duties find me unabated in

ardour and only more mature by knowledge. For this prospective change, JeanMarie it may probably have

shocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike you as an inconsistency? Confess it is useless to dissemble it

'You see,' returned the Doctor, with sublime fatuity, 'I read your thoughts! Nor am I surprised your

education is not yet complete; the higher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully. A hint till

we have leisure must suffice. Now that I am once more in possession of a modest competence; now that I

have so long prepared myself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty to proceed to Paris. My

scientific training, my undoubted command of language, mark me out for the service of my country. Modesty

in such a case would be a snare. If sin were a philosophical expression, I should call it sinful. A man must not

deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations. I must be up and doing; I must be no skulker in

So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency with words; while the boy listened silently,

his eyes fixed on the horse, his mind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array of words could unsettle a

belief of JeanMarie's; and he drove into Fontainebleau filled with pity, horror, indignation, and despair.

In the town JeanMarie was kept a fixture on the drivingseat, to guard the treasure; while the Doctor, with a

singular, slightly tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with garrison

officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned

laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself,

and a kepi of the newest fashion for the boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his

telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow; and generally

The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the forest trees extended across the broad

white road that led them home; the penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a cloud of

incense, from that broad field of treetops; and even in the streets of the town, where the air had been baked

all day between white walls, it came in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. Halfway home, the last gold

flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left; and when they came forth beyond the borders of the wood,

the plain was already sunken in pearly greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through the

The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked. He spoke of the woods, and the wars, and the

deposition of dew; he brightened and babbled of Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the

political arena. All was to be changed; as the day departed, it took with it the vestiges of an outworn

existence, and tomorrow's sun was to inaugurate the new. 'Enough,' he cried, 'of this life of maceration!' His

wife (still beautiful, or he was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried; she should now shine before society.

JeanMarie would find the world at his feet; the roads open to success, wealth, honour, and posthumous

renown. 'And O, by the way,' said he, 'for God's sake keep your tongue quiet! You are, of course, a very silent

fellow; it is a quality I gladly recognise in you silence, golden silence! But this is a matter of gravity. No

word must get abroad; none but the good Casimir is to be trusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels in

'But are they not even ours?' the boy said, almost with a sob it was the only time he had spoken.

'Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's,' replied the Doctor. 'But the State would have some claim. If

they were stolen, for instance, we should be unable to demand their restitution; we should have no title; we

should be unable even to communicate with the police. Such is the monstrous condition of the law. (6) It is a

mere instance of what remains to be done, of the injustices that may yet be righted by an ardent, active, and

JeanMarie put his faith in Madame Desprez; and as they drove forward down the road from Bourron,

between the rustling poplars, he prayed in his teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual speed. Surely, as

soon as they arrived, madame would assert her character, and bring this waking nightmare to an end.

Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most furious barking; all the dogs in the village

seemed to smell the treasure in the noddy. But there was no one in the street, save three lounging landscape

painters at Tentaillon's door. JeanMarie opened the green gate and led in the horse and carriage; and almost

at the same moment Madame Desprez came to the kitchen threshold with a lighted lantern; for the moon was

'Close the gates, JeanMarie!' cried the Doctor, somewhat unsteadily alighting. 'Anastasie, where is Aline?'

'All is for the best!' exclaimed the Doctor fervently. 'Here, quick, come near to me; I do not wish to speak too

'I have found the treasure of Franchard,' replied her husband. 'See, here are the first fruits; a pineapple, a dress

for my ever beautiful it will suit her trust a husband's, trust a lover's, taste! Embrace me, darling! This

grimy episode is over; the butterfly unfolds its painted wings. Tomorrow Casimir will come; in a week we

may be in Paris happy at last! You shall have diamonds. JeanMarie, take it out of the boot, with religious

care, and bring it piece by piece into the diningroom. We shall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and

prepare this turtle; it will be a whet it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will proceed to

the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are

'The turtle, my adored, the turtle!' cried the doctor; and he pushed her towards the kitchen, lantern and all.

JeanMarie stood dumfounded. He had pictured to himself a different scene a more immediate protest, and

The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on his legs, perhaps, and now and then taking the wall with his

shoulder; for it was long since he had tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that the absinthe had

been a misconception. Not that he regretted excess on such a glorious day, but he made a mental

memorandum to beware; he must not, a second time, become the victim of a deleterious habit. He had his

wine out of the cellar in a twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels, some on the white tablecloth, some

on the sideboard, still crusted with historic earth. He was in and out of the kitchen, plying Anastasie with

vermouth, heating her with glimpses of the future, estimating their new wealth at ever larger figures; and

before they sat down to supper, the lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity had

disappeared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly of the life at Gretz; and as she took her place and

All through the meal, she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy plans. They bobbed and bowed and pledged

each other. Their faces ran over with smiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they projected the Doctor's

'Madame Gastein will present us we shall find ourselves forgotten,' said the lady.

'But your success to see you appreciated, honoured, your name in all the papers, that will be more than

'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scanning the syllables, 'once a week one good little game of

JeanMarie escaped into the night. The moon swung high over Gretz. He went down to the garden end and

sat on the jetty. The river ran by with eddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song. Faint veils of mist

moved among the poplars on the farther side. The reeds were quietly nodding. A hundred times already had

the boy sat, on such a night, and watched the streaming river with untroubled fancy. And this perhaps was to

be the last. He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this green, rustling country, this bright and quiet stream; he

was to pass into the great city; his dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; his good, garrulous,

kindhearted master to become a brawling deputy; and both be lost for ever to JeanMarie and their better

selves. He knew his own defects; he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in the turmoil of a

city life, sink more and more from the child into the servant. And he began dimly to believe the Doctor's

prophecies of evil. He could see a change in both. His generous incredulity failed him for this once; a child

must have perceived that the Hermitage had completed what the absinthe had begun. If this were the first day,

what would be the last? 'If necessary, wreck the train,' thought he, remembering the Doctor's parable. He

looked round on the delightful scene; he drank deep of the charmed night air, laden with the scent of hay. 'If

necessary, wreck the train,' he repeated. And he rose and returned to the house.

THE next morning there was a most unusual outcry, in the Doctor's house. The last thing before going to bed,

the Doctor had locked up some valuables in the diningroom cupboard; and behold, when he rose again, as

he did about four o'clock, the cupboard had been broken open, and the valuables in question had disappeared.

Madame and JeanMarie were summoned from their rooms, and appeared in hasty toilets; they found the

Doctor raving, calling the heavens to witness and avenge his injury, pacing the room barefooted, with the

'Gone!' he said; 'the things are gone, the fortune gone! We are paupers once more. Boy! what do you know of

this? Speak up, sir, speak up. Do you know of it? Where are they?' He had him by the arm, shaking him like a

bag, and the boy's words, if he had any, were jolted forth in inarticulate murmurs. The Doctor, with a

revulsion from his own violence, set him down again. He observed Anastasie in tears. 'Anastasie,' he said, in

quite an altered voice, 'compose yourself, command your feelings. I would not have you give way to passion

like the vulgar. This this trifling accident must be lived down. JeanMarie, bring me my smaller medicine

And he dosed the family all round, leading the way himself with a double quantity. The wretched Anastasie,

who had never been ill in the whole course of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from remedies, wept

floods of tears as she sipped, and shuddered, and protested, and then was bullied and shouted at until she

'I have given him a less amount,' observed the Doctor, 'his youth protecting him against emotion. And now

'Cold!' cried the Doctor. 'I give thanks to God that I am made of fierier material. Why, madam, a blow like

this would set a frog into a transpiration. If you are cold, you can retire; and, by the way, you might throw me

'Nay, madam, you shall not suffer for your devotion,' said the Doctor. 'I will myself fetch you a shawl.' And

he went upstairs and returned more fully clad and with an armful of wraps for the shivering Anastasie. 'And

now,' he resumed, 'to investigate this crime. Let us proceed by induction. Anastasie, do you know anything

'Good,' returned the Doctor. 'We shall now turn our attention to the material evidences. (I was born to be a

detective; I have the eye and the systematic spirit.) First, violence has been employed. The door was broken

open; and it may be observed, in passing, that the lock was dear indeed at what I paid for it: a crow to pluck

with Master Goguelat. Second, here is the instrument employed, one of our own tableknives, one of our

best, my dear; which seems to indicate no preparation on the part of the gang if gang it was. Thirdly, I

observe that nothing has been removed except the Franchard dishes and the casket; our own silver has been

minutely respected. This is wily; it shows intelligence, a knowledge of the code, a desire to avoid legal

consequences. I argue from this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability outward, of course,

and merely outward, as the robbery proves. But I argue, second, that we must have been observed at

Franchard itself by some occult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and patience that I

venture to qualify as consummate. No ordinary man, no occasional criminal, would have shown himself

capable of this combination. We have in our neighbourhood, it is far from improbable, a retired bandit of the

'My cherished one, this is a process of induction,' said the Doctor. 'If any of my steps are unsound, correct

me. You are silent? Then do not, I beseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my conclusion. We

have now arrived,' he resumed, 'at some idea of the composition of the gang for I incline to the hypothesis

of more than one and we now leave this room, which can disclose no more, and turn our attention to the

court and garden. (JeanMarie, I trust you are observantly following my various steps; this is an excellent

piece of education for you.) Come with me to the door. No steps on the court; it is unfortunate our court

should be paved. On what small matters hang the destiny of these delicate investigations! Hey! What have we

here? I have led on to the very spot,' he said, standing grandly backward and indicating the green gate. 'An

Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and broken; and one of the panels preserved the

print of a nailed shoe. The foot had slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the size of the shoe, and

'The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has been reconstituted. Inductive science can no

'It is wonderful,' said his wife. 'You should indeed have been a detective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents.'

'My dear,' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientific imagination combines the lesser faculties;

he is a detective just as he is a publicist or a general; these are but local applications of his special talent. But

now,' he continued, 'would you have me go further? Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits or

rather, for I cannot promise quite so much, point out to you the very house where they consort? It may be a

satisfaction, at least it is all we are likely to get, since we are denied the remedy of law. I reach the further

stage in this way. In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I require a man likely to be in the forest idling, I

require a man of education, I require a man superior to considerations of morality. The three requisites all

centre in Tentaillon's boarders. They are painters, therefore they are continually lounging in the forest. They

are painters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering of education. Lastly, because they are

painters, they are probably immoral. And this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merely

addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common

with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he

outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious

'But you always say at least, so I understood you' said madame, 'that these lads display no imagination

'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic order, too,' returned the Doctor, 'when they

embraced their beggarly profession. Besides and this is an argument exactly suited to your intellectual level

many of them are English and American. Where else should we expect to find a thief? And now you had

better get your coffee. Because we have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving. For my part, I shall

break my fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and thirsty to day. I can only attribute it to the

shock of the discovery. And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly.'

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour; and as he sat in the arbour and slowly

imbibed a large allowance of white wine and picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous

appetite, if a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other twothirds were more

About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train to Fontainebleau, and driven over to save time;

and now his cab was stabled at Tentaillon's, and he remarked, studying his watch, that he could spare an hour

and a half. He was much the man of business, decisively spoken, given to frowning in an intellectual manner.

Anastasie's born brother, he did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her an English family kiss, and

'You can tell me your story while we eat,' he observed. 'Anything good today, Stasie?'

He was promised something good. The trio sat down to table in the arbour, JeanMarie waiting as well as

eating, and the Doctor recounted what had happened in his richest narrative manner. Casimir heard it with

'What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,' he observed, when the tale was over. 'If you had gone to

Paris, you would have played dickduckdrake with the whole consignment in three months. Your own

would have followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like the last time. But I give you

warning Stasie may weep and Henri ratiocinate it will not serve you twice. Your next collapse will be

The Doctor winced and looked furtively at JeanMarie; but the boy seemed apathetic.

'And then again,' broke out Casimir, 'what children you are vicious children, my faith! How could you tell

'Pardon me,' said the Doctor. 'You have your usual flow of spirits, I perceive, but even less than your usual

'Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of,' interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a

'At least,' resumed the Doctor, 'I gave my mind to the subject that you may be willing to believe and I

estimated that our capital would be doubled.' And he described the nature of the find.

'My word of honour!' said Casimir, 'I half believe you! But much would depend on the quality of the gold.'

'The quality, my dear Casimir, was ' And the Doctor, in default of language, kissed his fingertips.

'I would not take your word for it, my good friend,' retorted the man of business. 'You are a man of very rosy

views. But this robbery,' he continued 'this robbery is an odd thing. Of course I pass over your nonsense

about gangs and landscapepainters. For me, that is a dream. Who was in the house last night?'

'And this young gentleman?' asked Casimir, jerking a nod in the direction of JeanMarie.

'JeanMarie,' answered the Doctor, 'combines the functions of a son and stableboy. He began as the latter,

but he rose rapidly to the more honourable rank in our affections. He is, I may say, the greatest comfort in our

'JeanMarie has lived a remarkable existence; his experience his been eminently formative,' replied Desprez.

'If I had had to choose an education for my son, I should have chosen such another. Beginning life with

mountebanks and thieves, passing onward to the society and friendship of philosophers, he may be said to

The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out. He foresaw what was coming, and prepared his mind for a

'Did you ever steal yourself?' asked Casimir, turning suddenly on JeanMarie, and for the first time

Casimir turned to the others with pursed lips, and nodded to them meaningly. 'Hey?' said he; 'how is that?'

'JeanMarie is a teller of the truth,' returned the Doctor, throwing out his bust.

'Never told a lie, has he not?' reflected Casimir. 'Strange, very strange. Give me your attention, my young

'Desprez, I ask you nothing but to hold your tongue,' returned Casimir. 'I mean to question this stableboy of

yours; and if you are so certain of his innocence, you can afford to let him answer for himself. Now, sir,' he

resumed, pointing his eyeglass straight at JeanMarie. 'You knew it could be stolen with impunity? You

'I did,' answered JeanMarie, in a miserable whisper. He sat there changing colour like a revolving pharos,

'You say you have been a thief before,' continued Casimir. 'Now how am I to know that you are not one still?

'Well, then, it was you who stole these things. You know it, and you dare not deny it. Look me in the face!

But in place of anything of that sort JeanMarie broke into a dismal howl and fled from the arbour.

Anastasie, as she pursued to capture and reassure the victim, found time to send one Parthian arrow

'My brother,' said Desprez, with the greatest dignity, 'you take upon yourself a licence '

'Desprez,' interrupted Casimir, 'for Heaven's sake be a man of the world. You telegraph me to leave my

business and come down here on yours. I come, I ask the business, you say "Find me this thief!" Well, I find

him; I say "There he is! You need not like it, but you have no manner of right to take offence.'

'Well,' returned the Doctor, 'I grant that; I will even thank you for your mistaken zeal. But your hypothesis

'Very well; then it was the boy. Say no more about it,' said the brotherinlaw, and he produced his

'I will say this much more,' returned Desprez: 'if that boy came and told me so himself, I should not believe

him; and if I did believe him, so implicit is my trust, I should conclude that he had acted for the best.'

'Well, well,' said Casimir, indulgently. 'Have you a light? I must be going. And by the way, I wish you would

let me sell your Turks for you. I always told you, it meant smash. I tell you so again. Indeed, it was partly that

that brought me down. You never acknowledge my letters a most unpardonable habit.'

'My good brother,' replied the Doctor blandly, 'I have never denied your ability in business; but I can perceive

'Egad, my friend, I can return the compliment,' observed the man of business. 'Your limitation is to be

'Observe the relative position,' returned the Doctor with a smile. 'It is your attitude to believe through thick

and thin in one man's judgment your own. I follow the same opinion, but critically and with open eyes.

'O, my dear fellow!' cried Casimir, 'stick to your Turks, stick to your stableboy, go to the devil in general in

your own way and be done with it. But don't ratiocinate with me I cannot bear it. And so, tata. I might as

well have stayed away for any good I've done. Say goodbye from me to Stasie, and to the sullen hangdog

And Casimir departed. The Doctor, that night, dissected his character before Anastasie. 'One thing, my

beautiful,' he said, 'he has learned one thing from his lifelong acquaintance with your husband: the word

RATIOCINATE. It shines in his vocabulary, like a jewel in a muckheap. And, even so, he continually

misapplies it. For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the sense of to ERGOTISE,

implying, as it were the poor, dear fellow! a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to JeanMarie, it must

be forgiven him it is not his nature, it is the nature of his life. A man who deals with money, my dear, is a

With JeanMarie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat slow. At first he was inconsolable,

insisted on leaving the family, went from paroxysm to paroxysm of tears; and it was only after Anastasie had

been closeted for an hour with him, alone, that she came forth, sought out the Doctor, and, with tears in her

'At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing,' she said. 'Imagine! if he had left us! what would the treasure

be to that? Horrible treasure, it has brought all this about! At last, after he has sobbed his very heart out, he

agrees to stay on a condition we are not to mention this matter, this infamous suspicion, not even to

mention the robbery. On that agreement only, the poor, cruel boy will consent to remain among his friends.'

'But this inhibition,' said the Doctor, 'this embargo it cannot possibly apply to me?'

'My cherished one,' Desprez protested, 'you must have misunderstood. It cannot apply to me. He would

'This is a painful, a very painful circumstance,' the Doctor said, looking a little black. 'I cannot affect,

Anastasie, to be anything but justly wounded. I feel this, I feel it, my wife, acutely.'

'I knew you would,' she said. 'But if you had seen his distress! We must make allowances, we must sacrifice

'I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices,' returned the Doctor very stiffly.

'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed? It will be like your noble nature,' she cried.

So it would, he perceived it would be like his noble nature! Up jumped his spirits, triumphant at the

thought. 'Go, darling,' he said nobly, 'reassure him. The subject is buried; more I make an effort, I have

A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortally sheepish, JeanMarie reappeared and went

ostentatiously about his business. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat down that night to

supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He thus sang the requiem of the treasure:

'This has been, on the whole, a most amusing episode,' he said. 'We are not a penny the worse nay, we are

immensely gainers. Our philosophy has been exercised; some of the turtle is still left the most wholesome

of delicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has her new dress, JeanMarie is the proud possessor of a

fashionable kepi. Besides, we had a glass of Hermitage last night; the glow still suffuses my memory. I was

growing positively niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had one

bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune; let us have a second to console us for its

THE Doctor's house has not yet received the compliment of a description, and it is now high time that the

omission were supplied, for the house is itself an actor in the story, and one whose part is nearly at an end.

Two stories in height, walls of a warm yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified with moss and

lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and

inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and patterns; the handrail of the

stair was carved in countrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the diningroom

roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he

ran over the legendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell upon the Scandinavian scholar who

had left them. Floors, doors, and rafters made a great variety of angles; every room had a particular

inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former

proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane.

Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent

brightness the windowglass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop

all wreathed about with climbing flowers nothing but its air of a welltended, smiling veteran, sitting,

crutch and all, in the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor

or idle management it would soon have hurried into the blackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole

family loved it, and the Doctor was never better inspired than when he narrated its imaginary story and drew

the character of its successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had reedified its walls after the sack

of the town, and past the mysterious engraver of the runes, down to the longheaded, dirtyhanded boor from

whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any alarm about its security, the idea had never

presented itself. What had stood four centuries might well endure a little longer.

Indeed, in this particular winter, after the finding and losing of the treasure, the Desprez' had an anxiety of a

very different order, and one which lay nearer their hearts. JeanMarie was plainly not himself. He had fits of

hectic activity, when he made unusual exertions to please, spoke more and faster, and redoubled in attention

to his lessons. But these were interrupted by spells of melancholia and brooding silence, when the boy was

'Silence,' the Doctor moralised 'you see, Anastasie, what comes of silence. Had the boy properly

unbosomed himself, the little disappointment about the treasure, the little annoyance about Casimir's

incivility, would long ago have been forgotten. As it is, they prey upon him like a disease. He loses flesh, his

appetite is variable and, on the whole, impaired. I keep him on the strictest regimen, I exhibit the most

'Don't you think you drug him too much?' asked madame, with an irrepressible shudder.

Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly declined. The Doctor blamed the weather, which was cold and

boisterous. He called in his CONFRERE from Bourron, took a fancy for him, magnified his capacity, and

was pretty soon under treatment himself it scarcely appeared for what complaint. He and JeanMarie had

each medicine to take at different periods of the day. The Doctor used to lie in wait for the exact moment,

watch in hand. 'There is nothing like regularity,' he would say, fill out the doses, and dilate on the virtues of

the draught; and if the boy seemed none the better, the Doctor was not at all the worse.

Gunpowder Day, the boy was particularly low. It was scowling, squally weather. Huge broken companies of

cloud sailed swiftly overhead; raking gleams of sunlight swept the village, and were followed by intervals of

darkness and white, flying rain. At times the wind lifted up its voice and bellowed. The trees were all

The Doctor, between the boy and the weather, was in his element; he had a theory to prove. He sat with his

watch out and a barometer in front of him, waiting for the squalls and noting their effect upon the human

pulse. 'For the true philosopher,' he remarked delightedly, 'every fact in nature is a toy.' A letter came to him;

but, as its arrival coincided with the approach of another gust, he merely crammed it into his pocket, gave the

time to Jean Marie, and the next moment they were both counting their pulses as if for a wager.

At nightfall the wind rose into a tempest. It besieged the hamlet, apparently from every side, as if with

batteries of cannon; the houses shook and groaned; live coals were blown upon the floor. The uproar and

terror of the night kept people long awake, sitting with pallid faces giving ear.

It was twelve before the Desprez family retired. By halfpast one, when the storm was already somewhat

past its height, the Doctor was awakened from a troubled slumber, and sat up. A noise still rang in his ears,

but whether of this world or the world of dreams he was not certain. Another clap of wind followed. It was

accompanied by a sickening movement of the whole house, and in the subsequent lull Desprez could hear the

tiles pouring like a cataract into the loft above his head. He plucked Anastasie bodily out of bed.

'Run!' he cried, thrusting some wearing apparel into her hands; 'the house is falling! To the garden!'

She did not pause to be twice bidden; she was down the stair in an instant. She had never before suspected

herself of such activity. The Doctor meanwhile, with the speed of a piece of pantomime business, and

undeterred by broken shins, proceeded to rout out JeanMarie, tore Aline from her virgin slumbers, seized

her by the hand, and tumbled downstairs and into the garden, with the girl tumbling behind him, still not half

The fugitives rendezvous'd in the arbour by some common instinct. Then came a bull'seye flash of

struggling moonshine, which disclosed their four figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle of flying

drapery, and not without a considerable need for more. At the humiliating spectacle Anastasie clutched her

nightdress desperately about her and burst loudly into tears. The Doctor flew to console her; but she elbowed

him away. She suspected everybody of being the general public, and thought the darkness was alive with

Another gleam and another violent gust arrived together; the house was seen to rock on its foundation, and,

just as the light was once more eclipsed, a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the wind announced its

fall, and for a moment the whole garden was alive with skipping tiles and brickbats. One such missile grazed

the Doctor's ear; another descended on the bare foot of Aline, who instantly made night hideous with her

By this time the hamlet was alarmed, lights flashed from the windows, hails reached the party, and the Doctor

answered, nobly contending against Aline and the tempest. But this prospect of help only awakened

'My dear,' said the Doctor reprovingly, 'you are excited. I gave you some clothes. What have you done with

Desprez groped about in the darkness. 'Admirable!' he remarked; 'my grey velveteen trousers! This will

'Give them to me!' she cried fiercely; but as soon as she had them in her hands her mood appeared to alter

she stood silent for a moment, and then pressed the garment back upon the Doctor. 'Give it to Aline,' she said

'Nonsense!' said the Doctor. 'Aline does not know what she is about. Aline is beside herself with terror; and at

any rate, she is a peasant. Now I am really concerned at this exposure for a person of your housekeeping

habits; my solicitude and your fantastic modesty both point to the same remedy the pantaloons.' He held

By this time rescue was at hand. It had been found impracticable to enter by the street, for the gate was

blocked with masonry, and the nodding ruin still threatened further avalanches. But between the Doctor's

garden and the one on the right hand there was that very picturesque contrivance a common well; the door

on the Desprez' side had chanced to be unbolted, and now, through the arched aperture a man's bearded face

and an arm supporting a lantern were introduced into the world of windy darkness, where Anastasie

concealed her woes. The light struck here and there among the tossing apple boughs, it glinted on the grass;

but the lantern and the glowing face became the centre of the world. Anastasie crouched back from the

'This way!' shouted the man. 'Are you all safe?' Aline, still screaming, ran to the new comer, and was

She took the detested lendings in her hand once more; but her repulsion was stronger than shame. 'Never!' she

Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the well. The man was there and the lantern; Anastasie closed her

eyes and appeared to herself to be about to die. How she was transported through the arch she knew not; but

once on the other side she was received by the neighbour's wife, and enveloped in a friendly blanket.

Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes of very various sizes for the Doctor and JeanMarie; and

for the remainder of the night, while madame dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics, her husband sat

beside the fire and held forth to the admiring neighbours. He showed them, at length, the causes of the

accident; for years, he explained, the fall had been impending; one sign had followed another, the joints had

opened, the plaster had cracked, the old walls bowed inward; last, not three weeks ago, the cellar door had

begun to work with difficulty in its grooves. 'The cellar!' he said, gravely shaking his head over a glass of

mulled wine. 'That reminds me of my poor vintages. By a manifest providence the Hermitage was nearly at

an end. One bottle I lose but one bottle of that incomparable wine. It had been set apart against

JeanMarie's wedding. Well, I must lay down some more; it will be an interest in life. I am, however, a man

somewhat advanced in years. My great work is now buried in the fall of my humble roof; it will never be

completed my name will have been writ in water. And yet you find me calm I would say cheerful. Can

By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the fireside into the street. The wind had fallen, but

still charioted a world of troubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party, as they stood about the ruins in

the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had

entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn

spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to

Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they

For three days the snow continued to fall, and the ruins, covered with tarpaulin and watched by sentries, were

left undisturbed. The Desprez' meanwhile had taken up their abode at Tentaillon's. Madame spent her time in

the kitchen, concocting little delicacies, with the admiring aid of Madame Tentaillon, or sitting by the fire in

thoughtful abstraction. The fall of the house affected her wonderfully little; that blow had been parried by

another; and in her mind she was continually fighting over again the battle of the trousers. Had she done

right? Had she done wrong? And now she would applaud her determination; and anon, with a horrid flush of

unavailing penitence, she would regret the trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exercised her

judgment. In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of the summer

boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of a remittance; they were both English, but one of

them spoke French pretty fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agileminded fellow, with whom the

Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of comprehension. Many were the glasses they emptied, many the

'Anastasie,' the Doctor said on the third morning, 'take an example from your husband, from JeanMarie! The

excitement has done more for the boy than all my tonics, he takes his turn as sentry with positive gusto. As

for me, you behold me. I have made friends with the Egyptians; and my Pharaoh is, I swear it, a most

agreeable companion. You alone are hipped. About a house a few dresses? What are they in comparison to

the "Pharmacopoeia" the labour of years lying buried below stones and sticks in this depressing hamlet?

The snow falls; I shake it from my cloak! Imitate me. Our income will be impaired, I grant it, since we must

rebuild; but moderation, patience, and philosophy will gather about the hearth. In the meanwhile, the

Tentaillons are obliging; the table, with your additions, will pass; only the wine is execrable well, I shall

send for some today. My Pharaoh will be gratified to drink a decent glass; aha! and I shall see if he

possesses that acme of organisation a palate. If he has a palate, he is perfect.'

'Henri,' she said, shaking her head, 'you are a man; you cannot understand my feelings; no woman could

shake off the memory of so public a humiliation.' The Doctor could not restrain a titter. 'Pardon me, darling,'

he said; 'but really, to the philosophical intelligence, the incident appears so small a trifle. You looked

'Well, well, I will say no more,' he replied. 'Though, to be sure, if you had consented to indue A PROPOS,'

he broke off, 'and my trousers! They are lying in the snow my favourite trousers!' And he dashed in quest

Two hours afterwards the boy returned to the inn with a spade under one arm and a curious sop of clothing

The Doctor ruefully took it in his hands. 'They have been!' he said. 'Their tense is past. Excellent pantaloons,

you are no more! Stay, something in the pocket,' and he produced a piece of paper. 'A letter! ay, now I mind

me; it was received on the morning of the gale, when I was absorbed in delicate investigations. It is still

legible. From poor, dear Casimir! It is as well,' he chuckled, 'that I have educated him to patience. Poor

Casimir and his correspondence his infinitesimal, timorous, idiotic correspondence!'

He had by this time cautiously unfolded the wet letter; but, as he bent himself to decipher the writing, a cloud

And then the letter was whipped into the fire, and the Doctor's cap was on his head in the turn of a hand.

'Ten minutes! I can catch it, if I run,' he cried. 'It is always late. I go to Paris. I shall telegraph.'

'Ottoman Bonds!' came from the disappearing Doctor; and Anastasie and JeanMarie were left face to face

with the wet trousers. Desprez had gone to Paris, for the second time in seven years; he had gone to Paris

with a pair of wooden shoes, a knitted spencer, a black blouse, a country nightcap, and twenty francs in his

pocket. The fall of the house was but a secondary marvel; the whole world might have fallen and scarce left

ON the morning of the next day, the Doctor, a mere spectre of himself, was brought back in the custody of

Casimir. They found Anastasie and the boy sitting together by the fire; and Desprez, who had exchanged his

toilette for a readymade rigout of poor materials, waved his hand as he entered, and sank speechless on the

'Well,' replied Casimir, 'what have I told you all along? It has come. It is a clean shave, this time; so you may

as well bear up and make the best of it. House down, too, eh? Bad luck, upon my soul.'

The Doctor stretched out his arms to her. 'Ruined,' he replied, 'you are ruined by your sinister husband.'

Casimir observed the consequent embrace through his eyeglass; then he turned to JeanMarie. 'You hear?' he

said. 'They are ruined; no more pickings, no more house, no more fat cutlets. It strikes me, my friend, that

you had best be packing; the present speculation is about worked out.' And he nodded to him meaningly.

'Never!' cried Desprez, springing up. 'JeanMarie, if you prefer to leave me, now that I am poor, you can go;

you shall receive your hundred francs, if so much remains to me. But if you will consent to stay ' the Doctor

wept a little 'Casimir offers me a place as clerk,' he resumed. 'The emoluments are slender, but they will

be enough for three. It is too much already to have lost my fortune; must I lose my son?'

'I don't like boys who cry,' observed Casimir. 'This one is always crying. Here! you clear out of this for a

little; I have business with your master and mistress, and these domestic feelings may be settled after I am

'I do not, I confess,' said Desprez, 'I do not seek to excuse his absence. It speaks a want of heart that

'Want of manners,' corrected Casimir. 'Heart, he never had. Why, Desprez, for a clever fellow, you are the

most gullible mortal in creation. Your ignorance of human nature and human business is beyond belief. You

are swindled by heathen Turks, swindled by vagabond children, swindled right and left, upstairs and

'Pardon me,' replied Desprez, still humbly, but with a return of spirit at sight of a distinction to be drawn;

'pardon me, Casimir. You possess, even to an eminent degree, the commercial imagination. It was the lack of

that in me it appears it is my weak point that has led to these repeated shocks. By the commercial

imagination the financier forecasts the destiny of his investments, marks the falling house '

'Egad,' interrupted Casimir: 'our friend the stableboy appears to have his share of it.'

The Doctor was silenced; and the meal was continued and finished principally to the tune of the

brotherinlaw's not very consolatory conversation. He entirely ignored the two young English painters,

turning a blind eyeglass to their salutations, and continuing his remarks as if he were alone in the bosom of

his family; and with every second word he ripped another stitch out of the air balloon of Desprez's vanity. By

They strolled forth into the street. The fall of the house, like the loss of a front tooth, had quite transformed

the village. Through the gap the eye commanded a great stretch of open snowy country, and the place shrank

in comparison. It was like a room with an open door. The sentinel stood by the green gate, looking very red

Casimir looked at the mound of ruins, he tried the quality of the tarpaulin. 'H'm,' he said, 'I hope the cellar

arch has stood. If it has, my good brother, I will give you a good price for the wines.'

'We shall start digging tomorrow,' said the sentry. 'There is no more fear of snow.'

'My friend,' returned Casimir sententiously, 'you had better wait till you get paid.'

The Doctor winced, and began dragging his offensive brotherinlaw towards Tentaillon's. In the house there

'Hullo!' cried Casimir, 'there goes the stableboy with his luggage; no, egad, he is taking it into the inn.'

And sure enough, JeanMarie was seen to cross the snowy street and enter Tentaillon's, staggering under a

'His luggage, to be sure,' answered Casimir. 'He is on the move thanks to the commercial imagination.'

'Nor will you see it much longer,' chuckled Casimir; 'unless, indeed, we interfere. And by the way, I insist on

'You will not require,' said Desprez, positively with a sob; and, casting a moist, triumphant glance at Casimir,

'What the devil is up with him, I wonder?' Casimir reflected; and then, curiosity taking the upper hand, he

The hamper was so heavy and large, and JeanMarie himself so little and so weary, that it had taken him a

great while to bundle it upstairs to the Desprez' private room; and he had just set it down on the floor in front

of Anastasie, when the Doctor arrived, and was closely followed by the man of business. Boy and hamper

were both in a most sorry plight; for the one had passed four months underground in a certain cave on the

way to Acheres, and the other had run about five miles as hard as his legs would carry him, half that distance

'JeanMarie,' cried the Doctor, in a voice that was only too seraphic to be called hysterical, 'is it ? It is!' he

cried. 'O, my son, my son!' And he sat down upon the hamper and sobbed like a little child.

'Casimir,' said Desprez, raising his wet face, 'do you see that boy, that angel boy? He is the thief; he took the

treasure from a man unfit to be entrusted with its use; he brings it back to me when I am sobered and

humbled. These, Casimir, are the Fruits of my Teaching, and this moment is the Reward of my Life.'

(5) It was a common belief in Scotland that the devil appeared as a black man. This appears in several witch

trials and I think in Law's MEMORIALS, that delightful storehouse of the quaint and grisly.