Weir of Hermiston..............................................................................................................................................1

IN the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the

heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the braeside, a monument with some verses half

defaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel

of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a

bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years

ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once

The Deil's Hags was the old name. But the place is now called Francie's Cairn. For a while it was told that

Francie walked. Aggic Hogg met him in the gloaming by the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering

teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any one could have believed Robbie) for the

space of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious decorations

speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up,

survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, when

the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the

young and the additions and corrections of the old, the tale of the JusticeClerk and of his son, young

Hermiston, that vanished from men's knowledge; of the two Kirsties and the Four Black Brothers of the

Cauldstaneslap; and of Frank Innes, "the young fool advocate," that came into these moorland parts to find

THE Lord JusticeClerk was a stranger in that part of the country; but his lady wife was known there from a

child, as her race had been before her. The old "riding Rutherfords of Hermiston," of whom she was the last

descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands to their wives though

not their properties. Tales of them were rife for twenty miles about; and their name was even printed in the

page of our Scots histories, not always to their credit. One bit the dust at Flodden; one was hanged at his peel

door by James the Fifth; another fell dead in a carouse with Tom Dalyell; while a fourth (and that was Jean's

own father) died presiding at a HellFire Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken

in Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low,

and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the

Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been

his right hand in many a lefthand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peathag

on the Kyeskairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying

In all these generations, while a male Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads, or brawling in a

changehouse, there would be always a white faced wife immured at home in the old peel or the later

mansionhouse. It seemed this succession of martyrs bided long, but took their vengeance in the end, and that

was in the person of the last descendant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter

of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a

child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty

that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the

sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; no blood of life in her, no

It was a wonder to many that she had married seeming so wholly of the stuff that makes old maids. But

chance cast her in the path of Adam Weir, then the new LordAdvocate, a recognised, risen man, the

conqueror of many obstacles, and thus late in the day beginning to think upon a wife. He was one who looked

rather to obedience than beauty, yet it would seem he was struck with her at the first look. "Wha's she?" he

said, turning to his host; and, when he had been told, "Ay," says he, "she looks menseful. She minds me ";

and then, after a pause (which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimental recollections), "Is

she releegious?" he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it

seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir's accustomed industry, and was long a legend,

or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into

the drawingroom, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, to which the

embarrassed fair one responded, in what seemed a kind of agony, "Eh, Mr. Weir!" or "O, Mr. Weir!" or

"Keep me, Mr. Weir!" On the very eve of their engagement, it was related that one had drawn near to the

tender couple, and had overheard the lady cry out, with the tones of one who talked for the sake of talking,

"Keep me, Mr. Weir, and what became of him?" and the profound accents of the suitor reply, "Haangit, mem,

haangit." The motives upon either side were much debated. Mr. Weir must have supposed his bride to be

somehow suitable; perhaps he belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women

an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring

ancestors and her litigious father had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres,

ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should

be called upon the Bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this

unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the APLOMB of an

advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to

her the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at

the period of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial dignity

of years; it was, perhaps, with an unreverend awe, but he was awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most

experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority and why not Jeannie Rutherford?

The heresy about foolish women is always punished, I have said, and Lord Hermiston began to pay the

penalty at once. His house in George Square was wretchedly illguided; nothing answerable to the expense

of maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things went wrong at dinner, as they

continually did, my lord would look up the table at his wife: "I think these broth would be better to sweem in

than to sup." Or else to the butler: "Here, M'Killop, awa' wi' this Raadical gigot tak' it to the French, man,

and bring me some puddocks! It seems rather a sore kind of a business that I should be all day in Court

haanging Raadicals, and get nawthing to my denner." Of course this was but a manner of speaking, and he

had never hanged a man for being a Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister,

directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite

sort; and uttered as they were in his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression which they

called in the Parliament House "Hermiston's hanging face" they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat

before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's

countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were

complaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her SISTER IN THE

LORD. "O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that my lord can never be contented in his own house!"

she would begin; and weep and pray with the cook; and then the cook would pray with Mrs. Weir; and the

next day's meal would never be a penny the better and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if

anything, but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermiston bore it as he did; indeed, he was a

stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he

overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life "Here! tak' it awa', and bring me a

piece bread and kebbuck!" he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures.

None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table

whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious

disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was passing her chair on his way into the study.

"O, Edom!" she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to him both hands, in one of which she

He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there stole, as he looked, a twinkle of

"Noansense!" he said. "You and your noansense! What do I want with a Christian faim'ly? I want Christian

broth! Get me a lass that can plainboil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with these words,

which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut the door behind him.

Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston, where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a

neighbouring bonnetlaird, and an eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim

house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean, capable, notable; once a moorland

Helen, and still comely as a blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she

ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more pious than

decency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to

Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking

conscience, Mary reposed on Martha's strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular

regard. There were few with whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured with so many pleasantries.

"Kirstie and me maun have our joke," he would declare in high goodhumour, as he buttered Kirstie's scones,

and she waited at table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of

events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite

unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy,

healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a

goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would

Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday.

Free from the dreadful lookingfor of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read her piety books,

and take her walk (which was my lord's orders), sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child

of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she

breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to

her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the

consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play his

diverse part on the world's theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. It was

only with the child that she forgot herself and was at moments natural; yet it was only with the child that she

had conceived and managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. Archie was to be a great man and a good; a

minister if possible, a saint for certain. She tried to engage his mind upon her favourite books, Rutherford's

LETTERS, Scougalls GRACE ABOUNDING, and the like. It was a common practice of hers (and strange to

remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil's Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver's stone,

and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow

and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors,

booted, bloodyminded, flushed with wine: a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. PERSECUTOR was a

word that knocked upon the woman's heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness, and the mark of it was

on her house. Her greatgreatgrandfather had drawn the sword against the Lord's anointed on the field of

Rullion Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor could she blind

herself to this, that had they lived in those old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside

of Bloody MacKenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God's immediate enemies. The

sense of this moved her to the more fervour; she had a voice for that name of PERSECUTOR that thrilled in

the child's marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling carriage,

and cried, "Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and

wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and

smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much

amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised

"Keep me, my precious!" she exclaimed. "Keep me, my dear! this is poleetical. Ye must never ask me

anything poleetical, Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my dear, and it's no for me or you to be judging him.

It would be telling us all, if we behaved ourselves in our several stations the way your faither does in his high

office; and let me hear no more of any such disrespectful and undutiful questions! No that you meant to be

undutiful, my lamb; your mother kens that she kens it well, dearie!" And so slid off to safer topics, and left

Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was summed in one expression tenderness. In her view of the universe,

which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of

ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were here but for a day, and let their day pass

gently! And as for the immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending, and to

what a horror of an immortality! "Are not two sparrows," "Whosoever shall smite thee," "God sendeth His

rain," "Judge not, that ye be not judged" these texts made her body of divinity; she put them on in the

morning with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they

clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord

sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a

beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot,

dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless

and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a

cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her her colour

raised, her hands clasped or quivering glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of

Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the mere grass top

of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon

the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child's fingers, her voice rise like a song. "I TO THE

HILLS!" she would repeat. "And O, Erchie, are nae these like the hills of Naphtali?" and her tears would

Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The

woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native

sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad

from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane

towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and

unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over

the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure

with which she always greeted him. The judge was that day in an observant mood, and remarked upon the

"I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of they blagyard lads," said Mrs. Weir.

My lord's voice rang out as it did seldom in the privacy of his own house. "I'll have norm of that, sir!" he

cried. "Do you hear me? nonn of that! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty

The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even feared the contrary. And that night when

she put the child to bed "Now, my dear, ye see!" she said, "I told you what your faither would think of it, if

he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you and me pray to God that ye may be keepit from the

The womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the

JusticeClerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long

been a stumblingblock to Archie, and with every year of his age the difficulty grew more instant. The man

was mostly silent; when he spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a worldly spirit,

often in language that the child had been schooled to think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to

be sins in themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably harsh. God was love; the

name of my lord (to all who knew him) was fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the

place was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to pity and well (though very

likely useless) to pray for; they were named reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands for the burning; and

Archie tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private inference that the Lord

The mother's honesty was scarce complete. There was one influence she feared for the child and still secretly

combated; that was my lord's; and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to undermine

her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent, she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to

heaven and the child's salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven,

and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when he brought the case up openly. If judging were sinful and

forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the name of it for a distinction?

"No, I cannae see it," reiterated Archie. "And I'll tell you what, mamma, I don't think you and me's justifeed

The woman awoke to remorse, she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and breadwinner, in

whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my

lord's honour and greatness; his useful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he

stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise. But she had builded too well

Archie had his answers pat: Were not babes and innocents the type of the kingdom of heaven? Were not

honour and greatness the badges of the world? And at any rate, how about the mob that had once seethed

"It's all very fine," he concluded, "but in my opinion papa has no right to be it. And it seems that's not the

worst yet of it. It seems he's called "The Hanging judge" it seems he's crooool. I'll tell you what it is,

mamma, there's a tex' borne in upon me: It were better for that man if a milestone were bound upon his back

"O, my lamb, ye must never say the like of that!" she cried. "Ye're to honour faither and mother, dear, that

your days may be long in the land. It's Atheists that cry out against him French Atheists, Erchie! Ye would

never surely even yourself down to be saying the same thing as French Atheists? It would break my heart to

think that of you. And O, Erchie, here are'na YOU setting up to JUDGE? And have ye no forgot God's plain

Having thus carried the war into the enemy's camp, the terrified lady breathed again. And no doubt it is easy

thus to circumvent a child with catchwords, but it may be questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct in his

breast detects the quibble, and a voice condemns it. He will instantly submit, privately hold the same opinion.

For even in this simple and antique relation of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied.

When the Court rose that year and the family returned to Hermiston, it was a common remark in all the

country that the lady was sore failed. She seemed to loose and seize again her touch with life, now sitting

inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon waking to feverish and weak activity. She dawdled about the

lasses at their work, looking stupidly on; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and desisted

when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of animation and drop them without a struggle. Her

common appearance was of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when she

overhauled, one after another, the worthless and touching mementoes of her youth, she might have been

seeking the clue to that lost thought. During this period, she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house

The last night of all she was busy on some female work, and toiled upon it with so manifest and painful a

She blushed to the eyes. "O, Edom, it's for you!" she said. "It's slippers. I I hae never made ye any."

"Ye daft auld wife!" returned his lordship. "A bonny figure I would be, palmering about in bauchles!"

The next day, at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard;

bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of

temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home.

But, "No, no," she said, "it's my lord's orders," and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog,

engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him a

while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds

alone. The house lasses were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait.

"Weel, I canna see nae differ in her," returned the first. "A fushionless quean, a feckless carline."

The poor creature thus discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed

and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another;

questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden,

it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried

steps, and appeared in the diningroom, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with an

"Kirstie!" she began, and paused; and then with conviction, "Mr. Weir isna speeritually minded, but he has

It was perhaps the first time since her husband's elevation that she had forgotten the handle to his name, of

which the tender, inconsistent woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the speaker's

"Godsake, what's the maitter wi' ye, mem?" cried the housekeeper, starting from the rug.

"I do not ken," answered her mistress, shaking her head. "But he is not speeritually minded, my dear."

"Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife?" cried Kirstie, and helped and forced her into my lord's

It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset in his back, all clouds and glory; and

before him, by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in the

high, false note of barbarous mourning, such as still lingers modified among Scots heather.

"The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye!" she keened out. "Weary upon me, that I should have to

"Man, man," she said, "is that a' ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye: the Lord comfort and support ye!"

"Bethankit, no!" exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone. "Na, na, it's no sae bad as that. It's

the mistress, my lord; she just fair flittit before my e'en. She just gi'ed a sab and was by wi' it. Eh, my bonny

Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel!" And forth again upon that pouring tide of lamentation in which women

Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to recover command upon himself.

"Well, it's something of the suddenest," said he. "But she was a dwaibly body from the first."

Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was never interesting in life;

in death she was not impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his

powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the insignificant.

"Her and me were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last. "It was a daftlike marriage." And

then, with a most unusual gentleness of tone, "Puir bitch," said he, "puir bitch!" Then suddenly: "Where's

"Ye have some kind of gumption, too," observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. "When

all's said," he added, "I micht have done waur I micht have been marriet upon a skirting Jezebel like you!"

"There's naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!" cried the offended woman. "We think of her that's out of her

sorrows. And could SHE have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston tell me that before her claycauld

MY Lord JusticeClerk was known to many; the man Adam Weir perhaps to none. He had nothing to explain

or to conceal; he sufficed wholly and silently to himself; and that part of our nature which goes out (too often

with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to be omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not

care to be; it is probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an admired lawyer, a highly

unpopular judge; and he looked down upon those who were his inferiors in either distinction, who were

lawyers of less grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and doings, not one trace of

vanity appeared; and he went on through life with a mechanical movement, as of the unconscious; that was

He saw little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily

inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sickroom with a facetious and appalling countenance, letting

off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling

opportunely, my lord had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of

convalescence. It is conceivable he had been more than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in

Archie's memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much

detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the high school

and the college; and Hermiston looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of interest in his

progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, regarded

sardonically, sarcastically questioned. "Well, sir, and what have you donn with your book today?" my lord

might begin, and set him posers in law Latin. To a child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian and Paul

proved quite invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He was not harsh to the little scholar, having a

vast fund of patience learned upon the bench, and was at no pains whether to conceal or to express his

disappointment. "Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet!" he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his

own thoughts (as like as not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the decanter and the

glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours

were small. There was no "fuller man" on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he

had to "advise" extempore, none did it better; yet there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus

watched in the night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of

recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life; and

perhaps only in law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice to itself without

reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his father's sterling industry was

the best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet

it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the boy's life.

But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day

dawned, and pass directly from the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third

bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and

commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean

Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playingfields, and amongst

his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father's table (when the time came for

him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered,

he had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and

emaciated, with long features and long delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of

Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth.

His exquisite disparity with any of his fellowguests, his appearance as of an artist and an aristocrat stranded

in rude company, riveted the boy's attention; and as curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are

the most immediately and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted by the boy.

"And so this is your son, Hermiston?" he asked, laying his hand on Archie's shoulder. "He's getting a big lad."

"Hout!" said the gracious father, "just his mother over again daurna say boo to a goose!"

But the stranger retained the boy, talked to him, drew him out, found in him a taste for letters, and a fine,

ardent, modest, youthful soul; and encouraged him to be a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold, lonely

diningroom, where he sat and read in the isolation of a bachelor grown old in refinement. The beautiful

gentleness and grace of the old judge, and the delicacy of his person, thoughts, and language, spoke to

Archie's heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such another; and, when the day came for

him to choose a profession, it was in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of Lord Hermiston, that he chose

the Bar. Hermiston looked on at this friendship with some secret pride, but openly with the intolerance of

scorn. He scarce lost an opportunity to put them down with a rough jape; and, to say truth, it was not difficult,

for they were neither of them quick. He had a word of contempt for the whole crowd of poets, painters,

fiddlers, and their admirers, the bastard race of amateurs, which was continually on his lips. "Signor

"There is no man that I more respect, Archie," replied Lord Glenalmond. "He is two things of price. He is a

"You and he are so different," said the boy, his eyes dwelling on those of his old friend, like a lover's on his

"Indeed so," replied the judge; "very different. And so I fear are you and he. Yet I would like it very ill if my

young friend were to misjudge his father. He has all the Roman virtues: Cato and Brutus were such; I think a

"And I would sooner he were a plaided herd," cried Archie, with sudden bitterness.

"And that is neither very wise, nor I believe entirely true," returned Glenalmond. "Before you are done you

will find some of these expressions rise on you like a remorse. They are merely literary and decorative; they

do not aptly express your thought, nor is your thought clearly apprehended, and no doubt your father (if he

With the infinitely delicate sense of youth, Archie avoided the subject from that hour. It was perhaps a pity.

Had he but talked talked freely let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should),

there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule

sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond meant it

Besides the veteran, the boy was without confidant or friend. Serious and eager, he came through school and

college, and moved among a crowd of the indifferent, in the seclusion of his shyness. He grew up handsome,

with an open, speaking countenance, with graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in

the Speculative Society. It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of friends; but something that

was in part the delicacy of his mother, in part the austerity of his father, held him aloof from all. It is a fact,

and a strange one, that among his contemporaries Hermiston's son was thought to be a chip of the old block.

"You're a friend of Archie Weir's?" said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and

more than his usual insight: "I know Weir. but I never met Archie." No one had met Archie, a malady most

incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; it seemed he was abroad in a world from

which the very hope of intimacy was banished; and he looked round about him on the concourse of his

fellowstudents, and forward to the trivial days and acquaintances that were to come, without hope or

As time went on, the tough and rough old sinner felt himself drawn to the son of his loins and sole

continuator of his new family, with softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly

impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel,

Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, but

a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically

supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even

his son's toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed. There

might have been more pleasure in his relations with Archie, so much he may have recognised at moments;

but pleasure was a byproduct of the singular chemistry of life, which only fools expected.

An idea of Archie's attitude, since we are all grown up and have forgotten the days of our youth, it is more

difficult to convey. He made no attempt whatsoever to understand the man with whom he dined and

breakfasted. Parsimony of pain, glut of pleasure, these are the two alternating ends of youth; and Archie was

of the parsimonious. The wind blew cold out of a certain quarter he turned his back upon it; stayed as little

as was possible in his father's presence; and when there, averted his eyes as much as was decent from his

father's face. The lamp shone for many hundred days upon these two at table my lord, ruddy, gloomy, and

unreverent; Archie with a potential brightness that was always dimmed and veiled in that society; and there

were not, perhaps, in Christendom two men more radically strangers. The father, with a grand simplicity,

either spoke of what interested himself, or maintained an unaffected silence. The son turned in his head for

some topic that should be quite safe, that would spare him fresh evidences either of my lord's inherent

grossness or of the innocence of his inhumanity; treading gingerly the ways of intercourse, like a lady

gathering up her skirts in a bypath. If he made a mistake, and my lord began to abound in matter of offence,

Archie drew himself up, his brow grew dark, his share of the talk expired; but my lord would faithfully and

cheerfully continue to pour out the worst of himself before his silent and offended son.

"Well, it's a poor hert that never rejoices!" he would say, at the conclusion of such a nightmare interview.

"But I must get to my plew stilts." And he would seclude himself as usual in his back room, and Archie go

IT chanced in the year 1813 that Archie strayed one day into the Justiciary Court. The macer made room for

the son of the presiding judge. In the dock, the centre of men's eyes, there stood a whey coloured,

misbegotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial for his life. His story, as it was raked out before him in that public

scene, was one of disgrace and vice and cowardice, the very nakedness of crime; and the creature heard and it

seemed at times as though he understood as if at times he forgot the horror of the place he stood in, and

remembered the shame of what had brought him there. He kept his head bowed and his hands clutched upon

the rail; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times he flung it back; and now he glanced about the audience in a

sudden fellness of terror, and now looked in the face of his judge and gulped. There was pinned about his

throat a piece of dingy flannel; and this it was perhaps that turned the scale in Archie's mind between disgust

and pity. The creature stood in a vanishing point; yet a little while, and he was still a man, and had eyes and

apprehension; yet a little longer, and with a last sordid piece of pageantry, he would cease to be. And here, in

the meantime, with a trait of human nature that caught at the beholder's breath, he was tending a sore throat.

Over against him, my Lord Hermiston occupied the bench in the red robes of criminal jurisdiction, his face

framed in the white wig. Honest all through, he did not affect the virtue of impartiality; this was no case for

refinement; there was a man to be hanged, he would have said, and he was hanging him. Nor was it possible

to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained

faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with

which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place

with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted

Duncan had a mistress, scarce less forlorn and greatly older than himself, who came up, whimpering and

curtseying, to add the weight of her betrayal. My lord gave her the oath in his most roaring voice, and added

"Mind what ye say now, Janet," said he. "I have an e'e upon ye, I'm ill to jest with."

Presently, after she was tremblingly embarked on her story, "And what made ye do this, ye auld runt?" the

"Godsake! ye made a bonny couple," observed his lordship; and there was something so formidable and

"These two peetiable creatures seem to have made up thegither, it's not for us to explain why." "The panel,

who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill setout in mind and boady." "Neither the panel nor

yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And

in the course of sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means, under God, of

haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The words were strong in

themselves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his

When all was over, Archie came forth again into a changed world. Had there been the least redeeming

greatness in the crime, any obscurity, any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood. But the culprit stood,

with his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal agony, without defence or excuse: a thing to cover up with

blushes: a being so much sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the judge

had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one

thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter house; and the

Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a

dream, remembrance of its romance awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of

Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the hooded stag, of the splendour and crime, the velvet and bright iron of

the past; and dismissed them with a cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the Hunter's Bog, and the heavens

were dark above him and the grass of the field an offence. "This is my father," he said. "I draw my life from

him; the flesh upon my bones is his, the bread I am fed with is the wages of these horrors." He recalled his

mother, and ground his forehead in the earth. He thought of flight, and where was he to flee to? of other lives,

The interval before the execution was like a violent dream. He met his father; he would not look at him, he

could not speak to him. It seemed there was no living creature but must have been swift to recognise that

imminent animosity; but the hide of the JusticeClerk remained impenetrable. Had my lord been talkative,

the truce could never have subsisted; but he was by fortune in one of his humours of sour silence; and under

the very guns of his broadside, Archie nursed the enthusiasm of rebellion. It seemed to him, from the top of

his nineteen years' experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal action, to set

back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive

Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as

with voices: and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence of new beliefs

On the named morning he was at the place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble, the flinching wretch

produced. He looked on for a while at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch of his

last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains

like a broken jumpingjack. He had been prepared for something terrible, not for this tragic meanness. He

stood a moment silent, and then "I denounce this Goddefying murder," he shouted; and his father, if he

must have disclaimed the sentiment, might have owned the stentorian voice with which it was uttered.

Frank Innes dragged him from the spot. The two handsome lads followed the same course of study and

recreation, and felt a certain mutual attraction, founded mainly on good looks. It had never gone deep; Frank

was by nature a thin, jeering creature, not truly susceptible whether of feeling or inspiring friendship; and the

relation between the pair was altogether on the outside, a thing of common knowledge and the pleasantries

that spring from a common acquaintance. The more credit to Frank that he was appalled by Archie's outburst,

and at least conceived the design of keeping him in sight, and, if possible, in hand, for the day. But Archie,

who had just defied was it God or Satan? would not listen to the word of a college companion.

"I will not go with you," he said. "I do not desire your company, sir; I would be alone."

"Here, Weir, man, don't be absurd," said Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve. "I will not let you go

until I know what you mean to do with yourself; it's no use brandishing that staff." For indeed at that moment

Archie had made a sudden perhaps a warlike movement. "This has been the most insane affair; you know

it has. You know very well that I'm playing the good Samaritan. All I wish is to keep you quiet."

"If quietness is what you wish, Mr. Innes," said Archie, "and you will promise to leave me entirely to myself,

I will tell you so much, that I am going to walk in the country and admire the beauties of nature."

"I am not in the habit of lying, Mr. Innes," retorted Archie. "I have the honour of wishing you goodday."

And the one young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day long, by one road and

another, in an endless pilgrimage of misery; while the other hastened smilingly to spread the news of Weir's

access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative, where further eccentric

developments might certainly be looked for. I doubt if Innes had the least belief in his prediction; I think it

flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal as great as possible; not from any

illwill to Archie from the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces. But for all that his words were

prophetic. Archie did not forget the Spec.; he put in an appearance there at the due time, and, before the

evening was over, had dealt a memorable shock to his companions. It chanced he was the president of the

night. He sat in the same room where the Society still meets only the portraits were not there: the men who

afterwards sat for them were then but beginning their career. The same lustre of many tapers shed its light

over the meeting; the same chair, perhaps, supported him that so many of us have sat in since. At times he

seemed to forget the business of the evening, but even in these periods he sat with a great air of energy and

determination. At times he meddled bitterly, and launched with defiance those fines which are the precious

and rarely used artillery of the president. He little thought, as he did so, how he resembled his father, but his

friends remarked upon it, chuckling. So far, in his high place above his fellowstudents, he seemed set

beyond the possibility of any scandal; but his mind was made up he was determined to fulfil the sphere of

his offence. He signed to Innes (whom he had just fined, and who just impeached his ruling) to succeed him

in the chair, stepped down from the platform, and took his place by the chimneypiece, the shine of many

wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim

figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the casebook, "Whether capital

A breath of embarrassment, of something like alarm, passed round the room, so daring did these words

appear upon the lips of Hermiston's only son. But the amendment was not seconded; the previous question

was promptly moved and unanimously voted, and the momentary scandal smuggled by. Innes triumphed in

the fulfilment of his prophecy. He and Archie were now become the heroes of the night; but whereas every

one crowded about Innes, when the meeting broke up, but one of all his companions came to speak to Archie.

"Weir, man! That was an extraordinary raid of yours!" observed this courageous member, taking him

"I don't think it a raid," said Archie grimly. "More like a war. I saw that poor brute hanged this morning, and

"Huttut," returned his companion, and, dropping his arm like something hot, he sought the less tense society

Archie found himself alone. The last of the faithful or was it only the boldest of the curious? had fled. He

watched the black huddle of his fellowstudents draw off down and up the street, in whispering or boisterous

gangs. And the isolation of the moment weighed upon him like an omen and an emblem of his destiny in life.

Bred up in unbroken fear himself, among trembling servants, and in a house which (at the least ruffle in the

master's voice) shuddered into silence, he saw himself on the brink of the red valley of war, and measured the

danger and length of it with awe. He made a detour in the glimmer and shadow of the streets, came into the

back stable lane, and watched for a long while the light burn steady in the Judge's room. The longer he gazed

upon that illuminated windowblind, the more blank became the picture of the man who sat behind it,

endlessly turning over sheets of process, pausing to sip a glass of port, or rising and passing heavily about his

book lined walls to verify some reference. He could not combine the brutal judge and the industrious,

dispassionate student; the connecting link escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should

predict behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge into a business of which the end could

not be foreseen? and presently after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to strike

his father? For he had struck him defied him twice over and before a cloud of witnesses struck him a

public buffet before crowds. Who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and high questions?

The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in a son there was no blinking it in a son, it was

disloyal. And now, between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, there was depending

an unpardonable affront: and the providence of God alone might foresee the manner in which it would be

These misgivings tortured him all night and arose with him in the winter's morning; they followed him from

class to class, they made him shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his companions, they sounded

in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he brought them home with him at night unabated

and indeed increased. The cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory.

Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted window of a book shop, trying to nerve himself for the

approaching ordeal. My lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with

scarcely the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that nothing had yet reached the father's

ears. Indeed, when he recalled the awful countenance of my lord, a timid hope sprang up in him that perhaps

there would be found no one bold enough to carry tales. If this were so, he asked himself, would he begin

again? and he found no answer. It was at this moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice said in

He started, turned round, and found himself face to face with Dr. Gregory. "And why should I come to see

"Because you are looking exceedingly ill," said the doctor, "and you very evidently want looking after, my

young friend. Good folk are scarce, you know; and it is not every one that would be quite so much missed as

A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, and had in turn, but more roughly, seized him by the arm.

"What do you mean? what did you mean by saying that? What makes you think that Hermis my father

The doctor turned about and looked him all over with a clinical eye. A far more stupid man than Dr. Gregory

might have guessed the truth; but ninetynine out of a hundred, even if they had been equally inclined to

kindness, would have blundered by some touch of charitable exaggeration. The doctor was better inspired. He

knew the father well; in that white face of intelligence and suffering, he divined something of the son; and he

"When you had the measles, Mr. Archibald, you had them gey and ill; and I thought you were going to slip

between my fingers," he said. "Well, your father was anxious. How did I know it? says you. Simply because I

am a trained observer. The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand would have missed; and perhaps

PERHAPS, I say, because he's a hard man to judge of but perhaps he never made another. A strange thing

to consider! It was this. One day I came to him: `Hermiston,' said I, `there's a change.' He never said a word,

just glowered at me (if ye'll pardon the phrase) like a wild beast. `A change for the better,' said I. And I

The doctor left no opportunity for anticlimax; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of antiquity to which he

clung) and repeating "Distinctly" with raised eyebrows, he took his departure, and left Archie speechless in

The anecdote might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense. "I did not know

the old man had so much blood in him." He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal antique, this

adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the least degree for another and that

other himself, who had insulted him! With the generosity of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the

other side: had instantly created a new image of Lord Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron without and

all sensibility within. The mind of the vile jester, the tongue that had pursued Duncan Jopp with unmanly

insults, the unbeloved countenance that he had known and feared for so long, were all forgotten; and he

hastened home, impatient to confess his misdeeds, impatient to throw himself on the mercy of this imaginary

He was not to be long without a rude awakening. It was in the gloaming when he drew near the doorstep of

the lighted house, and was aware of the figure of his father approaching from the opposite side. Little

daylight lingered; but on the door being opened, the strong yellow shine of the lamp gushed out upon the

landing and shone full on Archie, as he stood, in the oldfashioned observance of respect, to yield

precedence. The judge came without haste, stepping stately and firm; his chin raised, his face (as he entered

the lamplight) strongly illumined, his mouth set hard. There was never a wink of change in his expression;

without looking to the right or left, he mounted the stair, passed close to Archie, and entered the house.

Instinctively, the boy, upon his first coming, had made a movement to meet him; instinctively he recoiled

against the railing, as the old man swept by him in a pomp of indignation. Words were needless; he knew all

It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion of hope, and before these symptoms of impending danger, Archie

might have fled. But not even that was left to him. My lord, after hanging up his cloak and hat, turned round

in the lighted entry, and made him an imperative and silent gesture with his thumb, and with the strange

All dinnertime there reigned over the Judge's table a palpable silence, and as soon as the solids were

"M'Killup, tak' the wine into my room," said he; and then to his son: "Archie, you and me has to have a talk."

It was at this sickening moment that Archie's courage, for the first and last time, entirely deserted him. "I

"It'll have to be broken, then," said Hermiston, and led the way into his study.

The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed to a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly documents, the backs

of law books made a frame upon all sides that was only broken by the window and the doors.

For a moment Hermiston warmed his hands at the fire, presenting his back to Archie; then suddenly disclosed

"I'll have to tell ye, then," pursued Hermiston. "It seems ye've been skirting against the father that begot ye,

and one of his Maijesty's Judges in this land; and that in the public street, and while an order of the Court was

being executit. Forbye which, it would appear that ye've been airing your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin'

Society"; he paused a moment: and then, with extraordinary bitterness, added: "Ye damned eediot."

"Muckle obleeged to ye," said his lordship, and took his usual seat. "And so you disapprove of Caapital

"I am sorry, too," said his lordship. "And now, if you please, we shall approach this business with a little

more parteecularity. I hear that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp and, man! ye had a fine client there in the

middle of all the riffraff of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry out, `This is a damned murder, and my gorge rises

"I believe I said, `I denounce it as a murder!'" said the son. "I beg your pardon a Goddefying murder. I

have no wish to conceal the truth," he added, and looked his father for a moment in the face.

"God, it would only need that of it next!" cried Hermiston. "There was nothing about your gorge rising,

"That was afterwards, my lord, as I was leaving the Speculative. I said I had been to see the miserable

"I was present at the trial, I ought to tell you that, I ought to explain. I ask your pardon beforehand for any

expression that may seem undutiful. The position in which I stand is wretched," said the unhappy hero, now

fairly face to face with the business he had chosen. "I have been reading some of your cases. I was present

while Jopp was tried. It was a hideous business. Father, it was a hideous thing! Grant he was vile, why should

you hunt him with a vileness equal to his own? It was done with glee that is the word you did it with glee;

"You're a young gentleman that doesna approve of Caapital Punishment," said Hermiston. "Weel, I'm an auld

man that does. I was glad to get Jopp haangit, and what for would I pretend I wasna? You're all for honesty, it

seems; you couldn't even steik your mouth on the public street. What for should I steik mines upon the bench,

the King's officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to evildoers, as I was from the beginning, and as I will be to

the end! Mair than enough of it! Heedious! I never gave twa thoughts to heediousness, I have no call to be

bonny. I'm a man that gets through with my day's business, and let that suffice."

The ring of sarcasm had died out of his voice as he went on; the plain words became invested with some of

"It would be telling you if you could say as much," the speaker resumed. "But ye cannot. Ye've been reading

some of my cases, ye say. But it was not for the law in them, it was to spy out your faither's nakedness, a fine

employment in a son. You're splairging; you're running at lairge in life like a wild nowt. It's impossible you

should think any longer of coming to the Bar. You're not fit for it; no splairger is. And another thing: son of

mines or no son of mines, you have flung fylement in public on one of the Senators of the Coallege of

Justice, and I would make it my business to see that ye were never admitted there yourself. There is a kind of

a decency to be observit. Then comes the next of it what am I to do with ye next? Ye'll have to find some

kind of a trade, for I'll never support ye in idleset. What do ye fancy ye'll be fit for? The pulpit? Na, they

could never get diveenity into that bloackhead. Him that the law of man whammles is no likely to do muckle

better by the law of God. What would ye make of hell? Wouldna your gorge rise at that? Na, there's no room

for splairgers under the fower quarters of John Calvin. What else is there? Speak up. Have ye got nothing of

"Father, let me go to the Peninsula," said Archie. "That's all I'm fit for to fight."

"All? quo' he!" returned the Judge. "And it would be enough too, if I thought it. But I'll never trust ye so near

"You do me injustice there, sir," said Archie. "I am loyal; I will not boast; but any interest I may have ever

"I think not," continued Hermiston. "And I would send no man to be a servant to the King, God bless him!

that has proved such a shauchling son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and

where's the hairm? It doesna play buff on me! And if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself,

sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But there's no splairging possible in a camp; and if ye were to

go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton approves of caapital punishment or not. You

a sodger!" he cried, with a sudden burst of scorn. "Ye auld wife, the sodgers would bray at ye like cuddies!"

As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie was aware of some illogicality in his position, and stood abashed. He

had a strong impression, besides, of the essential valour of the old gentleman before him, how conveyed it

"You have taken this so calmly, sir, that I cannot but stand ashamed," began Archie.

"I'm nearer voamiting, though, than you would fancy," said my lord. The blood rose to Archie's brow.

"I beg your pardon, I should have said that you had accepted my affront. . . . I admit it was an affront; I did

not think to apologise, but I do, I ask your pardon; it will not be so again, I pass you my word of honour. . . . I

should have said that I admired your magnanimity with this offender," Archie concluded with a gulp.

"I have no other son, ye see," said Hermiston. "A bonny one I have gotten! But I must just do the best I can

wi' him, and what am I to do? If ye had been younger, I would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous

exhibeetion. The way it is, I have just to grin and bear. But one thing is to be clearly understood. As a faither,

I must grin and bear it; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice Clerk, son or no son,

Archie was now dominated. Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless

nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man's self in the man's office. At every word, this sense of the

greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had

struck and perhaps basely struck at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even nettled him.

"That's the first sensible word I've had of ye the night," said Hermiston. "I can tell ye, that would have been

the end of it, the one way or the other; but it's better ye should come there yourself, than what I would have

had to hirstle ye. Weel, by my way of it and my way is the best there's just the one thing it's possible that

ye might be with decency, and that's a laird. Ye'll be out of hairm's way at the least of it. If ye have to rowt,

ye can rowt amang the kye; and the maist feck of the caapital punishmeiit ye're like to come across'll be

guddling trouts. Now, I'm for no idle lairdies; every man has to work, if it's only at peddling ballants; to

work, or to be wheeped, or to be haangit. If I set ye down at Hermiston I'll have to see you work that place

the way it has never been workit yet; ye must ken about the sheep like a herd; ye must be my grieve there,

"Well, then, I'll send Kirstie word the morn, and ye can go yourself the day after," said Hermiston. "And just

try to be less of an eediot!" he concluded with a freezing smile, and turned immediately to the papers on his

LATE the same night, after a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glenalmond's diningroom,

where he sat with a book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes upon the bench,

Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a maypole of a man that rose unsteadily

from his chair to give his visitor welcome. Archie had suffered much in the last days, he had suffered again

that evening; his face was white and drawn, his eyes wild and dark. But Lord Glenalmond greeted him

"Come in, come in," said he. "Come in and take a seat. Carstairs" (to his servant), "make up the fire, and then

you can bring a bit of supper," and again to Archie, with a very trivial accent: "I was half expecting you," he

"Not impossible," said the tall old man, laying his hand upon his shoulder, "and, if you will believe me,

"You know what brings me?" said Archie, as soon as the servant had left the room.

"I have a guess, I have a guess," replied Glenalmond. "We will talk of it presently when Carstairs has come

and gone, and you have had a piece of my good Cheddar cheese and a pull at the porter tankard: not before."

"Tut, tut!" said Lord Glenalmond. "You have eaten nothing today, and I venture to add, nothing yesterday.

There is no case that may not be made worse; this may be a very disagreeable business, but if you were to fall

sick and die, it would be still more so, and for all concerned for all concerned."

"In the mart of scandal, in the Parliament House," said Glenalmond. "It runs riot below among the bar and the

public, but it sifts up to us upon the bench, and rumour has some of her voices even in the divisions."

Carstairs returned at this moment, and rapidly laid out a little supper; during which Lord Glenalmond spoke

at large and a little vaguely on indifferent subjects, so that it might be rather said of him that he made a

cheerful noise, than that he contributed to human conversation; and Archie sat upon the other side, not

But so soon as the servant was gone, he broke forth again at once. "Who told my father? Who dared to tell

"No, it was not me," said the Judge; "although to be quite frank with you, and after I had seen and warned

"As you say, that shrimp," returned my lord; "although really it is scarce a fitting mode of expression for one

of the senators of the College of Justice. We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial case, before the

fifteen; Creech was moving at some length for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to

Hermiston with his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication. No one could have guessed

its nature from your father: from Glenkindie, yes, his malice sparked out of him a little grossly. But your

father, no. A man of granite. The next moment he pounced upon Creech. `Mr. Creech,' says he, `I'll take a

look of that sasine,' and for thirty minutes after," said Glenalmond, with a smile, "Messrs. Creech and Co.

were fighting a pretty uphill battle, which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total rout. The case was

dismissed. No, I doubt if ever I heard Hermiston better inspired. He was literally rejoicing IN APICIBUS

Archie was able to endure no longer. He thrust his plate away and interrupted the deliberate and insignificant

stream of talk. "Here," he said, "I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made something worse. Do you

judge between us judge between a father and a son. I can speak to you; it is not like ... I will tell you what I

"I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond, with extreme seriousness. "But, my dear boy, if it will do you any

good to talk, and if it will interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard you, I am

quite at your command. Let an old man say it, for once, and not need to blush: I love you like a son."

There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie's throat. "Ay," he cried, "and there it is! Love! Like a son! And

"I will be very quiet," replied Archie. "And I will be baldly frank. I do not love my father; I wonder

sometimes if I do not hate him. There's my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my

fault. How was I to love him? He has never spoken to me, never smiled upon me; I do not think he ever

touched me. You know the way he talks? You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without

shuddering, and I cannot. My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in the mouth. And all

that's nothing. I was at the trial of this Jopp. You were not there, but you must have heard him often; the

man's notorious for it, for being look at my position! he's my father and this is how I have to speak of him

notorious for being a brute and cruel and a coward. Lord Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came out

of that Court, I longed to die the shame of it was beyond my strength: but I I " he rose from his seat and

began to pace the room in a disorder. "Well, who am I? A boy, who have never been tried, have never done

anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father. But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I

am at least that kind of a man or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it that I could die in torments rather than

that any one should suffer as that scoundrel suffered. Well, and what have I done? I see it now. I have made a

fool of myself, as I said in the beginning; and I have gone back, and asked my father's pardon, and placed

myself wholly in his hands and he has sent me to Hermiston," with a wretched smile, "for life, I suppose

and what can I say? he strikes me as having done quite right, and let me off better than I had deserved."

"My poor, dear boy!" observed Glenalmond. "My poor dear and, if you will allow me to say so, very foolish

boy! You are only discovering where you are; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful discovery.

The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of men, all different from each other

and from us; there's no royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble. Don't think that I am at all

disposed to be surprised; don't suppose that I ever think of blaming you; indeed I rather admire! But there fall

to be offered one or two observations on the case which occur to me and which (if you will listen to them

dispassionately) may be the means of inducing you to view the matter more calmly. First of all, I cannot

acquit you of a good deal of what is called intolerance. You seem to have been very much offended because

your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although

I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to remind

you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. At least, he is MAJOR and SUI JURIS, and

may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as

good an answer against you and me? We say we sometimes find him COARSE, but I suspect he might retort

"And now," proceeded the Judge, "for `Archibald on Capital Punishment.' This is a very plausible academic

opinion; of course I do not and I cannot hold it; but that's not to say that many able and excellent persons

have not done so in the past. Possibly, in the past also, I may have a little dipped myself in the same heresy.

My third client, or possibly my fourth, was the means of a return in my opinions. I never saw the man I more

believed in; I would have put my hand in the fire, I would have gone to the cross for him; and when it came

to trial he was gradually pictured before me, by undeniable probation, in the light of so gross, so

coldblooded, and so blackhearted a villain, that I had a mind to have cast my brief upon the table. I was

then boiling against the man with even a more tropical temperature than I had been boiling for him. But I said

to myself: `No, you have taken up his case; and because you have changed your mind it must not be suffered

to let drop. All that rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last night with so much enthusiasm is out of

place, and yet you must not desert him, you must say something.' So I said something, and I got him off. It

made my reputation. But an experience of that kind is formative. A man must not bring his passions to the bar

The story had slightly rekindled Archie's interest. "I could never deny," he began "I mean I can conceive

that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures?

Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do

"Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle," said Glenalmond. "And yet, do you know, I think somehow a great one."

"And he struck me I cannot deny that he struck me as something very big," pursued the son. "Yes, he is big.

He never spoke about himself; only about me. I suppose I admired him. The dreadful part "

"Suppose we did not talk about that," interrupted Glenalmond. "You know it very well, it cannot in any way

help that you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I who are a pair of

"FAIR judges, mean," replied Glenalmond. "Can we be just to them? Do we not ask too much? There was a

word of yours just now that impressed me a little when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of

God's unfortunate creatures. You applied that, as I understood, to capital cases only. But does it I ask

myself does it not apply all through? Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man or of a half good man,

"No, we do not talk of it," said Glenalmond. "But I think we do it. Your father, for instance."

"I think I have," said Archie. "And the worst is, I think he feels it! How much, who can tell, with such a

"I tell you honestly," said Archie, "I want to make it up to him. I will go, I have already pledged myself to go

to Hermiston. That was to him. And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close my

mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects where our views may clash, for how long shall I say?

"As far as it goes," said Archie. "It is enough as regards myself, it is to lay down enough of my conceit. But

as regards him, whom I have publicly insulted? What am I to do to him? How do you pay attentions to a an

"Only in one way," replied Glenalmond. "Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and scrupulous."

"And I promise that he shall have it," answered Archie. "I offer you my hand in pledge of it."

"And I take your hand as a solemnity," replied the judge. "God bless you, my dear, and enable you to keep

your promise. God guide you in the true way, and spare your days, and preserve to you your honest heart." At

that, he kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, antiquated way; and instantly

launched, with a marked change of voice, into another subject. "And now, let us replenish the tankard; and I

believe if you will try my Cheddar again, you would find you had a better appetite. The Court has spoken,

"No, there is one thing I must say," cried Archie. "I must say it in justice to himself. I know I believe

faithfully, slavishly, after our talk he will never ask me anything unjust. I am proud to feel it, that we have

The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his tankard. "And I think perhaps that we might permit ourselves a

toast," said he. "I should like to propose the health of a man very different from me and very much my

superior a man from whom I have often differed, who has often (in the trivial expression) rubbed me the

wrong way, but whom I have never ceased to respect and, I may add, to be not a little afraid of. Shall I give

"The Lord JusticeClerk, Lord Hermiston," said Archie, almost with gaiety; and the pair drank the toast

It was not precisely easy to reestablish, after these emotional passages, the natural flow of conversation. But

the Judge eked out what was wanting with kind looks, produced his snuffbox (which was very rarely seen)

to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further social success, was upon the point of getting down a

book to read a favourite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the front door, and Carstairs

ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot from a midnight supper. I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a

beautiful object, being short, and grossbodied, and with an expression of sensuality comparable to a bear's.

At that moment, coming in hissing from many potations, with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was

strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glenalmond. A rush of confused thought came over

Archie of shame that this was one of his father's elect friends; of pride, that at the least of it Hermiston

could carry his liquor; and last of all, of rage, that he should have here under his eyes the man that had

betrayed him. And then that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding his opportunity.

The tipsy senator plunged at once into an explanation with Glenalmond. There was a point reserved

yesterday, he had been able to make neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just

dropped in for a glass of porter and at this point he became aware of the third person. Archie saw the cod's

mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in his eyes.

"Who's this?" said he. "What? is this possibly you, Don Quickshot? And how are ye? And how's your father?

And what's all this we hear of you? It seems you're a most extraordinary leveller, by all tales. No king, no

parliaments, and your gorge rises at the macers, worthy men! Hoot, toot! Dear, dear me! Your father's son

Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at the reappearance of his unhappy figure of speech, but perfectly

selfpossessed. "My lord and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear friend," he began, "this is a happy chance for

me, that I can make my confession and offer my apologies to two of you at once."

"Ah, but I don't know about that. Confession? It'll be judeecial, my young friend," cried the jocular

Glenkindie. "And I'm afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye were to make me a coanvert!"

"If you would allow me, my lord," returned Archie, "what I have to say is very serious to me; and be pleased

"Remember, I'll hear nothing against the macers!" put in the incorrigible Glenkindie.

But Archie continued as though he had not spoken. "I have played, both yesterday and today, a part for

which I can only offer the excuse of youth. I was so unwise as to go to an execution; it seems I made a scene

at the gallows; not content with which, I spoke the same night in a college society against capital punishment.

This is the extent of what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged against me, I protest my innocence.

I have expressed my regret already to my father, who is so good as to pass my conduct over in a degree,

THE road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers and

with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at

great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but

the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston

parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be

surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a

green by the burnside among twoscore gravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage,

is surrounded by the brightness of a flowergarden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole colony, kirk

and manse, garden and graveyard, finds harbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a great

silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, and the bell on Sundays. A mile beyond

the kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of

Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the backyard before the coachhouse. All beyond and about is the

great field, of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship's

rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hilltops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the

The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farmyard and a kitchengarden on the left, with a

fruit wall where little hard green pears came to their maturity about the end of October.

The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed; heather and moorfowl

had crossed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener

to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff

Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little

feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toyshop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness

of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with

so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made

the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often

black with tempest, and often white with the snows of winter. But the house was wind and weather proof, the

hearths were kept bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening

and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke

Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours. Every night, if he chose, he might go down to the

manse and share a "brewst" of toddy with the minister a harebrained ancient gentleman, long and light and

still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice broke continually in childish trebles and

his lady wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond goodeven and goodday.

Harumscarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid him the compliment of a visit. Young Hay

of Romanes rode down to call, on his cropeared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony

grey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed; Pringle got somehow to his saddle

about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view

holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the

clatter of his breakneck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and

again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horsehoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston,

showed that the horse at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.

There was a Tuesday club at the "Crosskeys" in Crossmichael, where the young bloods of the countryside

congregated and drank deep on a percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have drunk

the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took it like a duty laid upon him, went with a

decent regularity, did his manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got home again

and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel,

supped at Windielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made welcome, and thereafter

rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a

work so full of Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate attended him here as in

Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite

unconscious, and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness, discouraged and

offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time

when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things what he had had the name of

almost from the first the Recluse of Hermiston. Highnosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and highstepping

Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the

ball he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the

ball itself my Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the second time with a touch

of appeal, so that her colour rose and her voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. He

stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused himself, and a little after watched her

dancing with young Drumanno of the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself that

this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and to himself only to stand aside and envy.

He seemed excluded, as of right, from the favour of such society seemed to extinguish mirth wherever he

came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure

he presented, and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he had but guessed that

the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county

with the charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether his destiny might not

even yet have been modified. It may be questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope

to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any opportunity of

pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty, an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of

Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of limb, and still light of foot,

deepbreasted, robustloined, her golden hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but

caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous maternity, she seemed destined to be the

bride of heroes and the mother of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed through

her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had

received at birth had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of industry and

fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty

heart. If she could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty, wordy, and

wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than

armed neutrality. The grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the gardener who kept house for him had

shown herself "upsitten"; and she wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the

offenders, and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not be supposed that the quarrel

rested with the wife and did not take in the husband also or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedily

include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was

practically excluded (like a lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except with

her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of

"the mistress's" moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper

of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age,

the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled

him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his

last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young gentleman of twenty came upon

her with the shock of a new acquaintance. He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of

distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the

beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately

aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was

Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the heroworship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due

to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it.

Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light

his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner when he returned. A

young man who should have so doted on the idea, moral and physical, of any woman, might be properly

described as being in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly. But Kirstie

though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps though, when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened

for the day had not a hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end of time.

Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be

I have said her heart leaped it is the accepted phrase. But rather, when she was alone in any chamber of the

house, and heard his foot passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her breath was

suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when the steps had passed and she was disappointed of

her eyes' desire. This perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the alert. When he went

forth at morning, she would stand and follow him with admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time

of his return, she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen standing there sometimes by the

hour together, gazing with shaded eyes, waiting the exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on

the mountains. When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned down his bed, and laid out his

nightgear when there was no more to be done for the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her

usually very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections, his future career, and what she

should give him the next day for dinner there still remained before her one more opportunity; she was still

to take in the tray and say goodnight. Sometimes Archie would glance up from his book with a preoccupied

nod and a perfunctory salutation which was in truth a dismissal; sometimes and by degrees more often

the volume would be laid aside, he would meet her coming with a look of relief; and the conversation would

be engaged, last out the supper, and be prolonged till the small hours by the waning fire. It was no wonder

that Archie was fond of company after his solitary days; and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted all the arts of her

vigorous nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired

off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE RIDEAU of the evening's

entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another

she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer

lest it should slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her class, she was a brave narrator; her

place was on the hearthrug and she made it a rostrum, mimeing her stories as she told them, fitting them

with vital detail, spinning them out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," her voice sinking into a whisper

over the supernatural or the horrific; until she would suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and pointing to

the clock, "Mercy, Mr. Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it! God forgive me for a

daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal

conversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not to be dismissed.

Such an unequal intimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where the clan spirit survives; where the

servant tends to spend her life in the same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a pensioner;

where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection

of her master's, and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship with some illustrious

dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable

to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive

in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance

could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager

to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down

or fancy fabricated; and, behold! from every ramification of that tree there dangled a halter. The Elliotts

themselves have had a chequered history; but these Elliotts deduced, besides, from three of the most

unfortunate of the border clans the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. One ancestor after another

might be seen appearing a moment out of the rain and the hill mist upon his furtive business, speeding home,

perhaps, with a paltry booty of lame horses and lean kine, or squealing and dealing death in some moorland

feud of the ferrets and the wild cats. One after another closed his obscure adventures in midair, triced up to

the arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron's duletree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice,

which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and

the Crozers. The exhilaration of their exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, and

the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish their relationship to "Andrew Ellwald of

the Laverockstanes, called `Unchancy Dand,' who was justifeed wi' seeven mair of the same name at Jeddart

in the days of King James the Sax." In all this tissue of crime and misfortune, the Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap

had one boast which must appear legitimate: the males were gallows birds, born outlaws, petty thieves, and

deadly brawlers; but, according to the same tradition, the females were all chaste and faithful. The power of

ancestry on the character is not limited to the inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestors by the gross from the

benevolence of Lyon King of Arms, my grandson (if he is Scottish) will feel a quickening emulation of their

deeds. The men of the Elliotts were proud, lawless, violent as of right, cherishing and prolonging a tradition.

In like manner with the women. And the woman, essentially passionate and reckless, who crouched on the

rug, in the shine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had cherished through life a wild integrity of virtue.

Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, a savage disciplinarian in the antique style, and withal a notorious

smuggler. "I mind when I was a bairn getting mony a skelp and being shoo'd to bed like pou'try," she would

say. "That would be when the lads and their bit kegs were on the road. We've had the riffraff of twothree

counties in our kitchen, mony's the time, betwix' the twelve and the three; and their lanterns would be

standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o' them at once. But there was nae ungodly talk permitted at

Cauldstaneslap. My faither was a consistent man in walk and conversation; just let slip an aith, and there was

the door to ye! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair wonder to hear him pray, but the family has aye had

a gift that way." This father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwald stock, by whom he

had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap; and, secondly, to the mother of Kirstie. "He was an auld man when

he married her, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice you could hear him rowting from the top o' the

Kyeskairs," she said; "but for her, it appears she was a perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr.

Archie, for it was your ain. The countryside gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair. Mines is no to be

mentioned wi' it, and there's few weemen has mair hair than what I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Often

would I tell my dear Miss Jeannie that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta'en up about her hair, it was

unco' tender, ye see 'Houts, Miss Jeannie,' I would say, 'just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes

in the back o' the fire, for that's the place for them; and awa' down to a burn side, and wash yersel' in cauld

hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the caller wind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers,

and that I have aye made it a practice to have wishen mines just you do what I tell ye, my dear, and ye'll

give me news of it! Ye'll have hair, and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I said, `and the bonniest

colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll no can keep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out

her time, puir thing! I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae cauld. I'll show it ye some of

On the death of the father there remained goldenhaired Kirstie, who took service with her distant kinsfolk,

the Rutherfords, and blacka vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the Cauldstaneslap, married,

and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and a daughter, like a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown

and Cape St. Vincent. It seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up with a belated girl. In 1804, at the

age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that might be called heroic. He was due home from market any time from

eight at night till five in the morning, and in any condition from the quarrelsome to the speechless, for he

maintained to that age the goodly customs of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a

good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had shown his guineas, and if

anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out

of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hillroad by Hermiston, where it was not to be believed that

they had lawful business. One of the countryside, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide, and

dear he paid for it! Of a sudden in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one,

and him three parts asleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For a while, in the night and the

black water that was deep as to his saddlegirths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great

was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a

pistolball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse.

That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head

swimming, he dug his spurs to the rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even worse off than

himself, the poor creature! screamed out loud like a person as he went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the

folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse

fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that

raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at

his heels, but now the hallucination left him he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade and the

thirst of vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with an imperious finger into the

black night from which he had come, he uttered the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had

never been loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a

toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. "Wanting the hat,"

continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting

guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their

hands, the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the doorsill where the

blood had rin, fyled his hand wi' it and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. `Hell shall

have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon his earrand." It was three miles to Broken Dykes,

down hill, and a sore road. Kirstie has seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day to lead their

horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie were behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford,

and there was Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared upon his elbow, and cried out

to them for help. It was at a graceless face that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the

lantern, the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, "Damn you!" says he; "ye hae your

teeth, hae ye?" and rode his horse to and fro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dismount

with the lantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son, scarce twenty at the time. "A' nicht long they gaed

in the wet heath and jennipers, and whaur they gaed they neither knew nor cared, but just followed the bluid

stains and the footprints o' their faither's murderers. And a' nicht Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke,

and the ithers followed and spak' naething, neither black nor white. There was nae noise to be heard, but just

the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of the

morning they saw they were on the drove road, and at that the four stopped and had a dram to their

breakfasts, for they knew that Dand must have guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hot

foot for Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock they had word of them a shepherd had

seen four men "uncoly mishandled" go by in the last hour. "That's yin a piece," says Clem, and swung his

cudgel. "Five o' them!" says Hob. "God's death, but the faither was a man! And him drunk!" And then there

befell them what my author termed "a sair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by a posse of mounted

neighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the reinforcement. "The Deil's broughten

you!" said Clem, and they rode thenceforward in the rear of the party with hanging heads. Before ten they

had found and secured the rogues, and by three of the afternoon, as they rode up the Vennel with their

prisoners, they were aware of a concourse of people bearing in their midst something that dripped. "For the

boady of the saxt," pursued Kirstie, "wi' his head smashed like a hazelnit, had been a' that nicht in the chairge

o' Hermiston Water, and it dunting it on the stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and flinging the deid

thing heelsowerhurdie at the Fa's o' Spango; and in the first o' the day, Tweed had got a hold o' him and

carried him off like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled, and raced wi' him, bobbing under braesides, and was

long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns under the castle, and at the hinder end of all cuist him up

on the starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a'thegither at last (for Dickieson had been brought

in on a cart long syne), and folk could see what mainner o'man my brither had been that had held his head

again sax and saved the siller, and him drunk!" Thus died of honourable injuries and in the savour of fame

Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage

haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson

(which was like an open secret in the county), and the doom which it was currently supposed they had

intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels

might have fashioned the last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or

had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the

tale in prose, and to make of the "Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the "Twelve Apostles" or

Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew in the proper Border diminutives, Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott

these ballad heroes, had much in common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family

honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in different businesses. According to Kirstie,

"they had a' bees in their bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man. An elder of

the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save perhaps thrice or so at the sheepwashing, since the

chase of his father's murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful night disappeared as if swallowed

by a trap. He who had ecstatically dipped his hand in the red blood, he who had ridden down Dickieson,

became, from that moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model of the rustic proprieties; cannily profiting by

the high war prices, and yearly stowing away a little nestegg in the bank against calamity; approved of and

sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be

induced to say anything; and particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a righthand man in the

parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old

Adam of our ancestors, sleeps in all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and, for as sober as

he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of the devil that haunted him. He was married, and,

by reason of the effulgence of that legendary night, was adored by his wife. He had a mob of little lusty,

barefoot children who marched in a caravan the long miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were

marked by acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country side as "fair pests." But in

the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace the

reward of any one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and figurative circumstance, in the

It was a current remark that the Elliotts were "guid and bad, like sanguishes"; and certainly there was a

curious distinction, the men of business coming alternately with the dreamers. The second brother, Gib, was a

weaver by trade, had gone out early into the world to Edinburgh, and come home again with his wings

singed. There was an exaltation in his nature which had led him to embrace with enthusiasm the principles of

the French Revolution, and had ended by bringing him under the hawse of my Lord Hermiston in that furious

onslaught of his upon the Liberals, which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and dashed the party into chaff. It

was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn for the movement, and prevailed upon a little by a sense of

neighbourliness, had given Gib a hint. Meeting him one day in the Potterrow, my lord had stopped in front of

him: "Gib, ye eediot," he had said, "what's this I hear of you? Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics, weaver's poalitics,

is the way of it, I hear. If ye arena a'thegither dozened with cediocy, ye'll gang your ways back to

Cauldstaneslap, and ca' your loom, and ca' your loom, man!" And Gilbert had taken him at the word and

returned, with an expedition almost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest of his

inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie had boasted; and the baffled politician now turned

his attention to religious matters or, as others said, to heresy and schism. Every Sunday morning he was in

Crossmichael, where he had gathered together, one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called

themselves "God's Remnant of the True Faithful," or, for short, "God's Remnant." To the profane, they were

known as "Gib's Deils." Bailie Sweedie, a noted humorist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always

opened to the tune of "The Deil Fly Away with the Exciseman," and that the sacrament was dispensed in the

form of hot whiskytoddy; both wicked hits at the evangelist, who had been suspected of smuggling in his

youth, and had been overtaken (as the phrase went) on the streets of Crossmichael one Fair day. It was known

that every Sunday they prayed for a blessing on the arms of Bonaparte. For this "God's Remnant," as they

were "skailing" from the cottage that did duty for a temple, had been repeatedly stoned by the bairns, and Gib

himself hooted by a squadron of Border volunteers in which his own brother, Dand, rode in a uniform and

with a drawn sword. The "Remnant" were believed, besides, to be "antinomian in principle," which might

otherwise have been a serious charge, but the way public opinion then blew it was quite swallowed up and

forgotten in the scandal about Bonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had set up his loom in an outhouse at

Cauldstaneslap, where he laboured assiduously six days of the week. His brothers, appalled by his political

opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in the household, spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining

absorbed in the study of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The gaunt weaver was drynurse at

Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him dearly. Except when he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was

rarely seen to smile as, indeed, there were few smilers in that family. When his sisterinlaw rallied him,

and proposed that he should get a wife and bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, "I have no

clearness of mind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called him in to dinner, he stayed out. Mrs.

Hob, a hard, unsympathetic woman, once tried the experiment. He went without food all day, but at dusk, as

the light began to fail him, he came into the house of his own accord, looking puzzled. "I've had a great gale

of prayer upon my speerit," said he. "I canna mind sae muckle's what I had for denner." The creed of God's

Remnant was justified in the life of its founder. "And yet I dinna ken," said Kirstie. "He's maybe no more

stockfish than his neeghbours! He rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good stamach to the work, by a' that I

hear! God's Remnant! The deil's clavers! There wasna muckle Christianity in the way Hob guided Johnny

Dickieson, at the least of it; but Guid kens! Is he a Christian even? He might be a Mahommedan or a Deevil

The third brother had his name on a doorplate, no less, in the city of Glasgow, "Mr. Clement Elliott," as

long as your arm. In his case, that spirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob by

the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive politics and heretical

religions, bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addiction to

strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most eccentric of the family. But that was all by

now; and he was a partner of his firm, and looked to die a bailie. He too had married, and was rearing a

plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he was wealthy, and could have bought out his brother, the

cocklaird, six times over, it was whispered; and when he slipped away to Cauldstaneslap for a wellearned

holiday, which he did as often as he was able, he astonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver

hat, and the ample plies of his neckcloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom, after the pattern of Hob,

he had contracted a certain Glasgow briskness and APLOMB which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as

lean as a rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he must get into his boots. Dand

said, chuckling: "Ay, Clem has the elements of a corporation." "A provost and corporation," returned Clem.

The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd to his trade, and by starts, when he could bring his mind to it,

excelled in the business. Nobody could train a dog like Dandie; nobody, through the peril of great storms in

the winter time, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity were exquisite, his diligence was but fitful; and

he served his brother for bed and board, and a trifle of pocketmoney when he asked for it. He loved money

well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could make a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he

preferred a vague knowledge that he was well to windward to any counted coins in the pocket; he felt himself

richer so. Hob would expostulate: "I'm an amature herd." Dand would reply, "I'll keep your sheep to you

when I'm so minded, but I'll keep my liberty too. Thir's no man can coandescend on what I'm worth." Clein

would expound to him the miraculous results of compound interest, and recommend investments. "Ay, man?"

Dand would say; "and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the lassies?

And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poet or else I'm nothing." Clem would remind

him of old age. "I'll die young, like, Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain

his "Auld, auld Elliotts, claycauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld," and his really fascinating piece

about the Praying Weaver's Stone, had gained him in the neighbourhood the reputation, still possible in

Scotland, of a local bard; and, though not printed himself, he was recognised by others who were and who

had become famous. Walter Scott owed to Dandie the text of the "Raid of Wearie" in the MINSTRELSY;

and made him welcome at his house, and appreciated his talents, such as they were, with all his usual

generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn crony; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics

in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up again till bedtime. And besides these recognitions, almost to

be called official, Dandie was made welcome for the sake of his gift through the farmhouses of several

contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to manifold temptations which he rather sought than fled. He had

figured on the stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition of his hero and model. His

humorous verses to Mr. Torrance on that occasion "Kenspeckle here my lane I stand" unfortunately too

indelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fiery cross they were recited, quoted,

paraphrased, and laughed over as far away as Dumfries on the one hand and Dunbar on the other.

These four brothers were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual admiration or rather mutual

heroworship which is so strong among the members of secluded families who have much ability and little

culture. Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the tongs, professed to find

pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least

an openmouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed with relish the rise of Clem's fortunes.

Indulgence followed hard on the heels of admiration. The laird, Clem, and Dand, who were Tories and

patriots of the hottest quality, excused to themselves, with a certain bashfulness, the radical and revolutionary

heresies of Gib. By another division of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly virtuous,

swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clog or drawback in the mysterious providence of

God affixed to bards, and distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of their mutual

admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous

irony with the affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived and transacted business.

The various personages, ministers of the church, municipal officers, mercantile bigwigs, whom he had

occasion to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to cast back a flattering sidelight

on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The Provost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect,

he would liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He has some of Hob's grand,

whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all

unconscious, would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the formidable grimace

referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa

fingers o' Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and secretly smile. Clem

was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of men. He had come back with the good news that there

was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not adorn, no official that

it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not

immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a

hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity

were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral practice. To the world their serious faces were

never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of selfcontentment. Yet it was known. "They hae a guid

Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "twonames." Hob was The Laird. "Roy ne puis, prince

ne daigne"; he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap say fifty acres IPSISSIMUS. Clement was Mr. Elliott, as

upon his doorplate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no longer applicable, and indeed only a

reminder of misjudgment and the imbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetual

It will be understood that not all this information was communicated by the aunt, who had too much of the

family failing herself to appreciate it thoroughly in others. But as time went on, Archie began to observe an

"Ay: Kirstie. She was named for me, or my grandmother at least it's the same thing," returned the aunt, and

went on again about Dand, whom she secretly preferred by reason of his gallantries.

"Her? As black's your hat! But I dinna suppose she would maybe be what you would ca' ILLLOOKED

a'thegither. Na, she's a kind of a handsome jaud a kind o' gipsy," said the aunt, who had two sets of scales

for men and women or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she had three, and the third and the most

" 'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie with Clem and his wife. A heap good she's like to get of it! I dinna say

for men folk, but where weemen folk are born, there let them bide. Glory to God, I was never far'er from here

In the meanwhile it began to strike Archie as strange, that while she thus sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and

manifestly relished their virtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself, there should

appear not the least sign of cordiality between the house of Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to

church of a Sunday, as the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of her white petticoat

showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back (if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she

would sometimes overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same direction. Gib of course was

absent: by skreigh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellowheretics; but the rest of the family

would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiffnecked, straightbacked sixfooters, with severe

dark faces, and their plaids about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of high polish)

on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother

herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced

observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and

conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air

and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate living pink.

"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A

fine day, mem," the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage

setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind

her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in

the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in

court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the

consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two women had been principals in the original

encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included in the

"I hae naething to be ashamed of," said she. "I can say the Lord's prayer with a good grace. If Hob was ill, or

in preeson or poverty, I would see to him blithely. But for curtchying and complimenting and colloguing,

Archie had a bit of a smile: he leaned back in his chair. "I think you and Mrs. Robert are not very good

She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but an indecipherable expression; and that was all that

"Mr. Archie," said she, "I hope that I ken my place better. It would be a queer thing, I think, if I was to

clamjamfry up your faither's house that I should say it! wi' a dirty, blackavised clan, no ane o' them it

was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel'! Na, they're all damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds. I have

nae patience wi' black folk." Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, "No that it maitters for

men sae muckle," she made haste to add, "but there's naebody can deny that it's unwomanly. Long hair is the

ornament o' woman ony way; we've good warrandise for that it's in the Bible and wha can doubt that the

Apostle had some gowdenhaired lassie in his mind Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like

ARCHIE was sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company,

heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an illplayed clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity

to study his motheaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up

with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in

proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie, an

apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in the

only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence he might command an undisturbed view of that

congregation of solid plaided men, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children, and uneasy

sheepdogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; except the dogs, with their refined foxy faces

and inimitably curling tails, there was no one present with the least claim to gentility. The Cauldstaneslap

party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as he amused himself making verses through the

interminable burden of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain superior animation of

face and alertness of body; but even Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so many

sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hobnailed routine, day following day of physical labour in the open

air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the nightlong nasal slumbers

in a boxbed. Yet he knew many of them to be shrewd and humorous, men of character, notable women,

making a bustle in the world and radiating an influence from their lowbrowed doors. He knew besides they

were like other men; below the crust of custom, rapture found a way; he had heard them beat the timbrel

before Bacchus had heard them shout and carouse over their whiskytoddy; and not the most Dutch

bottomed and severe faces among them all, not even the solemn elders themselves, but were capable of

singular gambols at the voice of love. Men drawing near to an end of life's adventurous journey maids

thrilling with fear and curiosity on the threshold of entrance women who had borne and perhaps buried

children, who could remember the clinging of the small dead hands and the patter of the little feet now silent

he marvelled that among all those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that was mobile, none

into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. "O for a live face," he thought; and at times he had a

memory of Lady Flora; and at times he would study the living gallery before him with despair, and would see

himself go on to waste his days in that joyless pastoral place, and death come to him, and his grave be dug

under the rowans, and the Spirit of the Earth laugh out in a thunderpeal at the huge fiasco.

On this particular Sunday, there was no doubt but that the spring had come at last. It was warm, with a latent

shiver in the air that made the warmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered and

tinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth arrested Archie by the way with moments of

ethereal intoxication. The grey Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from the

sobriety of its winter colouring; and he wondered at its beauty; an essential beauty of the old earth it seemed

to him, not resident in particulars but breathing to him from the whole. He surprised himself by a sudden

impulse to write poetry he did so sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott and

when he had taken his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a tree that was

already radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised him that he should have nothing to write. His heart

perhaps beat in time to some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the time he came to a corner of the

valley and could see the kirk, he had so lingered by the way that the first psalm was finishing. The nasal

psalmody, full of turns and trills and graceless graces, seemed the essential voice of the kirk itself upraised in

thanksgiving, "Everything's alive," he said; and again cries it aloud, "thank God, everything's alive!" He

lingered yet a while in the kirkyard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old black table

tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the random apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a

trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in the day, the season, and the

beauty that surrounded him the chill there was in the warmth, the gross black clods about the opening

primroses, the damp earthy smell that was everywhere intermingled with the scents. The voice of the aged

Torrance within rose in an ecstasy. And he wondered if Torrance also felt in his old bones the joyous

influence of the spring morning; Torrance, or the shadow of what once was Torrance, that must come so soon

to lie outside here in the sun and rain with all his rheumatisms, while a new minister stood in his room and

thundered from his own familiar pulpit? The pity of it, and something of the chill of the grave, shook him for

He went up the aisle reverently, and took his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for he feared he had already

offended the kind old gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous to offend no further. He could not follow the

prayer, not even the heads of it. Brightnesses of azure, clouds of fragrance, a tinkle of falling water and

singing birds, rose like exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal memory, that was not his, but belonged to

the flesh on his bones. His body remembered; and it seemed to him that his body was in no way gross, but

ethereal and perishable like a strain of music; and he felt for it an exquisite tenderness as for a child, an

innocent, full of beautiful instincts and destined to an early death. And he felt for old Torrance of the many

supplications, of the few days a pity that was near to tears. The prayer ended. Right over him was a tablet in

the wall, the only ornament in the roughly masoned chapel for it was no more; the tablet commemorated, I

was about to say the virtues, but rather the existence of a former Rutherford of Hermiston; and Archie, under

that trophy of his long descent and local greatness, leaned back in the pew and contemplated vacancy with the

shadow of a smile between playful and sad, that became him strangely. Dandie's sister, sitting by the side of

Clem in her new Glasgow finery, chose that moment to observe the young laird. Aware of the stir of his

entrance, the little formalist had kept her eyes fastened and her face prettily composed during the prayer. It

was not hypocrisy, there was no one further from a hypocrite. The girl had been taught to behave: to look up,

to look down, to look unconscious, to look seriously impressed in church, and in every conjuncture to look

her best. That was the game of female life, and she played it frankly. Archie was the one person in church

who was of interest, who was somebody new, reputed eccentric, known to be young, and a laird, and still

unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, as she stood there in her attitude of pretty decency, her mind should

run upon him! If he spared a glance in her direction, he should know she was a wellbehaved young lady

who had been to Glasgow. In reason he must admire her clothes, and it was possible that he should think her

pretty. At that her heart beat the least thing in the world; and she proceeded, by way of a corrective, to call up

and dismiss a series of fancied pictures of the young man who should now, by rights, be looking at her. She

settled on the plainest of them, a pink short young man with a dish face and no figure, at whose admiration

she could afford to smile; but for all that, the consciousness of his gaze (which was really fixed on Torrance

and his mittens) kept her in something of a flutter till the word Amen. Even then, she was far too wellbred

to gratify her curiosity with any impatience. She resumed her seat languidly this was a Glasgow touch she

composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of primroses, looked first in front, then behind upon the other

side, and at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the Hermiston pew. For a

moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have

meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this

young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable halfsmile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I

Torrance was got some way into his first exposition, positing a deep layer of texts as he went along, laying

the foundations of his discourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity, before Archie suffered his

eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem, looking insupportably prosperous, and patronising Torrance

with the favour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better things in Glasgow. Though he had

never before set eyes on him, Archie had no difficulty in identifying him, and no hesitation in pronouncing

him vulgar, the worst of the family. Clem was leaning lazily forward when Archie first saw him. Presently he

leaned nonchalantly back; and that deadly instrument, the maiden, was suddenly unmasked in profile. Though

not quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!), certain artful Glasgow mantuamakers, and her

own inherent taste, had arrayed her to great advantage. Her accoutrement was, indeed, a cause of heart

burning, and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal kirk company. Mrs. Hob had said her say at

Cauldstaneslap. "Daftlike!" she had pronounced it. "A jaiket that'll no meet! Whaur's the sense of a jaiket

that'll no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? What do ye ca' thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye

say? They'll be brokens wi' a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have nae thing to do wi' it it's no good

taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, and who was not insensible to the

advertisement, had come to the rescue with a "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has never

been to the ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in

the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had said, "and it's no

very like rain. Wear them the day, hizzie; but it's no a thing to make a practice o'." In the breasts of her rivals,

coming to the kirk very conscious of white underlinen, and their faces splendid with much soap, the sight of

the toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mere unenvious admiration that was expressed in a

longdrawn "Eh!" to the angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic "Set her up!" Her frock was of

strawcoloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so as to display her DEMI

BROQUINS of Regency violet, crossing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking. According to the

pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our greataunts went forth armed for

the pursuit and capture of our greatuncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both

breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable

position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders or rather on her back and not her

shoulders, which it scarcely passed a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the

same colour with her violet shoes. About her face clustered a disorder of dark ringlets, a little garland of

yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by a village hat of chipped straw.

Amongst all the rosy and all the weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open

flower girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a fiery flash, and the

Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at her again and yet again, and their looks

crossed. The lip was lifted from her little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin. Her

eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze. He knew who she must be Kirstie, she of the

harsh diminutive, his housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib and he found in her the

Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances, and seemed to rise, clothed in smiles, into a region of

the vague and bright. But the gratification was not more exquisite than it was brief. She looked away

abruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness. She knew what she should have done,

too late turned slowly with her nose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed, but continued to

play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemed to isolate her alone with him, and

now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in with

his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a wellhead on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst

unassuageable. In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose

fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should

so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze saw it, perhaps, with the dainty

plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her

unsteady breath. Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to give herself a

countenance. She used her handkerchief it was a really fine one then she desisted in a panic: "He would

only think I was too warm." She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then remembered it was

sermontime. Last she put a "sugarbool" in her mouth, and the next moment repented of the step. It was

such a homelylike thing! Mr. Archie would never be eating sweeties in kirk; and, with a palpable effort, she

swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his

illbehaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his

housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was

even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirkyard, and then how was he to look? And

there was no excuse. He had marked the tokens of her shame, of her increasing indignation, and he was such

a fool that he had not understood them. Shame bowed him down, and he looked resolutely at Mr. Torrance;

who little supposed, good, worthy man, as he continued to expound justification by faith, what was his true

business: to play the part of derivative to a pair of children at the old game of falling in love.

Christina was greatly relieved at first. It seemed to her that she was clothed again. She looked back on what

had passed. All would have been right if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blush at, if

she HAD taken a sugarbool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wife in St. Enoch's, took them often. And if he

had looked at her, what was more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the bestdressed girl in

church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew there was nothing casual or ordinary in the

look, and valued herself on its memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had found something else

to look at! And presently she began to have other thoughts. It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put

herself right by a repetition of the incident, better managed. If the wish was father to the thought, she did not

know or she would not recognise it. It was simply as a manoeuvre of propriety, as something called for to

lessen the significance of what had gone before, that she should a second time meet his eyes, and this time

without blushing. And at the memory of the blush, she blushed again, and became one general blush burning

from head to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate, so forward, done by a girl before? And here she was,

making an exhibition of herself before the congregation about nothing! She stole a glance upon her

neighbours, and behold! they were steadily indifferent, and Clem had gone to sleep. And still the one idea

was becoming more and more potent with her, that in common prudence she must look again before the

service ended. Something of the same sort was going forward in the mind of Archie, as he struggled with the

load of penitence. So it chanced that, in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, and

Torrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalmbook in church were rustling under busy

fingers, two stealthy glances were sent out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed

occupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archie and Christina. They met, they lingered

together for the least fraction of time, and that was enough. A charge as of electricity passed through

Archie was outside by the gate of the graveyard, conversing with Hob and the minister and shaking hands all

round with the scattering congregation, when Clem and Christina were brought up to be presented. The laird

took off his hat and bowed to her with grace and respect. Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to the laird,

and went on again up the road for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap, walking fast, breathing hurriedly with a

heightened colour, and in this strange frame of mind, that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness,

and when any one addressed her she resented it like a contradiction. A part of the way she had the company

of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man; never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made

herself so disagreeable. But these struck aside to their various destinations or were outwalked and left

behind; and when she had driven off with sharp words the proffered convoy of some of her nephews and

nieces, she was free to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air, dwelling intoxicated among clouds of

happiness. Near to the summit she heard steps behind her, a man's steps, light and very rapid. She knew the

foot at once and walked the faster. "If it's me he's wanting, he can run for it," she thought, smiling.

"Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir," she interrupted. "I canna bear the contraction."

"You forget it has a friendly sound for me. Your aunt is an old friend of mine, and a very good one. I hope we

"My aunt and my sisterinlaw doesna agree very well. Not that I have much ado with it. But still when I'm

stopping in the house, if I was to be visiting my aunt, it would not look consideratelike."

"I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir," she said. "I whiles think myself it's a great peety."

"I wouldna be too sure of that," she said. "I have my days like other folk, I suppose."

"Do you know, in our old kirk, among our good old grey dames, you made an effect like sunshine."

She smiled with a half look at him. "There's more than you!" she said. "But you see I'm only Cinderella. I'll

have to put all these things by in my trunk; next Sunday I'll be as grey as the rest. They're Glasgow clothes,

you see, and it would never do to make a practice of it. It would seem terrible conspicuous."

By that they were come to the place where their ways severed. The old grey moors were all about them; in

the midst a few sheep wandered; and they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes

in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent from Hermiston bending off and

beginning to disappear by detachments into the policy gate. It was in these circumstances that they turned to

say farewell, and deliberately exchanged a glance as they shook hands. All passed as it should, genteelly; and

in Christina's mind, as she mounted the first steep ascent for Cauldstaneslap, a gratifying sense of triumph

prevailed over the recollection of minor lapses and mistakes. She had kilted her gown, as she did usually at

that rugged pass; but when she spied Archie still standing and gazing after her, the skirts came down again as

if by enchantment. Here was a piece of nicety for that upland parish, where the matrons marched with their

coats kilted in the rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to kirk through the dust of summer, and went bravely

down by the burnside, and sat on stones to make a public toilet before entering! It was perhaps an air wafted

from Glasgow; or perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness of gratified vanity, in which the instinctive act

passed unperceived. He was looking after! She unloaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh that was all pleasure,

and betook herself to run. When she had overtaken the stragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom

she had so recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again, and ran after her with

pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thought the laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene

came under the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hob marching with Clem and Dand.

"Think shame to yersel', miss!" said the strident Mrs. Hob. "Is this the gait to guide yersel' on the way hame

frae kirk? You're shiirely no sponsible the day! And anyway I would mind my guid claes."

"Hoot!" said Christina, and went on before them head in air, treading the rough track with the tread of a wild

She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the benediction of the sun. All the way home,

she continued under the intoxication of these skyscraping spirits. At table she could talk freely of young

Hermiston; gave her opinion of him offhand and with a loud voice, that he was a handsome young

gentleman, real well mannered and sensiblelike, but it was a pity he looked doleful. Only the moment

after a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her. But for this inconsiderable check, all through

mealtime she had a good appetite, and she kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had returned before

them from Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of them for their levity.

Singing "in to herself" as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of a glad confusion, she rose and tripped

upstairs to a little loft, lighted by four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces. The niece,

who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's" high spirits, was flounced out of the apartment with small

ceremony, and retired, smarting and half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay. Still humming,

Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treasures one by one in her great green trunk. The last of

these was the psalmbook; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct oldfaced type, on paper

that had begun to grow foxy in the warehouse not by service and she was used to wrap it in a

handkerchief every Sunday after its period of service was over, and bury it endwise at the head of her trunk.

As she now took it in hand the book fell open where the leaf was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that

evidence of her bygone discomposure. There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes staring at her,

intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk. The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the

suggested gesture of young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn page. "I was surely

fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her. She

flung herself prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalmbook in her hands for hours, for the more

part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious; there came

up again and again in her memory Dandie's illomened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the

immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary on their force. The pleasure was never realised. You might

say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her essential self, in the

immediate theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire. The

image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of

Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the strawcoloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb

stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself was never welcomed far less

welcomed with any ardour, and it was exposed at times to merciless criticism. In the long vague dialogues

she held in her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised interlocutors, Archie, if he were referred to

at all came in for savage handling. He was described as "looking like a stork," "staring like a caulf," "a face

like a ghaist's." "Do you call that manners?" she said; or, "I soon put him in his place." " `MISS CHRISTINA,

IF YOU PLEASE, MR. WEIR!' says I, and just flyped up my skirt tails." With gabble like this she would

entertain herself long whiles together, and then her eye would perhaps fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of

Archie would appear again from the darkness of the wall, and the voluble words deserted her, and she would

lie still and stupid, and think upon nothing with devotion, and be sometimes raised by a quiet sigh. Had a

doctor of medicine come into that loft, he would have diagnosed a healthy, welldeveloped, eminently

vivacious lass lying on her face in a fit of the sulks; not one who had just contracted, or was just contracting,

a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carry her towards death and despair. Had it been a doctor of

psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish vanity, selflove IN

EXCELSIS, and no more. It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing the

inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too strong. Take a

fingerpost in the mountains on a day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the

pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking in sunshine; but

Christina remained all these hours, as it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in

The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat suddenly up, and wrapped in its

handkerchief and put by that psalmbook which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of

her lovestory. In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays that the head of a bright nail may

fill his place, if it be steadfastly regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have

been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie heard, not heeded, and still

remembered had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate a

pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless, and august moving indissuadably in the

affairs of Christian men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so

simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may be decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily

She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment with approval in the small square of

glass that served her for a toilet mirror, and went softly downstairs through the sleeping house that resounded

with the sound of afternoon snoring. Just outside the door, Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not

reading, only honouring the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stood still.

There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up. She was pale, her eyes dark and

"O, for naething," says Dand. "Only I think ye're mair like me than the lave of them. Ye've mair of the poetic

temper, tho' Guid kens little enough of the poetic taalent. It's an ill gift at the best. Look at yoursel'. At denner

you were all sunshine and flowers and laughter, and now you're like the star of evening on a lake."

"But I'm saying, Dand" she came nearer him "I'm for the muirs. I must have a braith of air. If Clem was

"What way?" said Dandie. "I ken but the ae way, and that's leein'." I'll say ye had a sair heid, if ye like."

"I daursay no," he returned. "I said I would say ye had; and if ye like to naysay me when ye come back, it'll

"I'll leave that for your pairt of it, ye girzie," said he. "Ye'll lee to me fast eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I'm

tellin' ye and it's true; when you have a jo, Miss Kirstie, it'll be for guid and ill. I ken: I was made that way

mysel', but the deil was in my luck! Here, gang awa wi' ye to your muirs, and let me be; I'm in an hour of

He kissed her and considered her a moment; he found something strange in her. But he was a libertine

through and through, nourished equal contempt and suspicion of all womankind, and paid his way among

That was Dandie's way; a kiss and a comfit to Jenny a bawbee and my blessing to Jill and goodnight to

the whole clan of ye, my dears! When anything approached the serious, it became a matter for men, he both

thought and said. Women, when they did not absorb, were only children to be shoo'd away. Merely in his

character of connoisseur, however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the meadow. "The

brat's no that bad!" he thought with surprise, for though he had just been paying her compliments, he had not

really looked at her. "Hey! what's yon?" For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves and skirts, and

displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of the same shade as the kerchief she wore round her

shoulders, and that shimmered as she went. This was not her way in undress; he knew her ways and the ways

of the whole sex in the countryside, no one better; when they did not go barefoot, they wore stout "rig and

furrow" woollen hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of

this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they

matched then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn

through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair

She went slowly at first, but ever straighter and faster for the Cauldstaneslap, a pass among the hills to which

the farm owed its name. The Slap opened like a doorway between two rounded hillocks; and through this ran

the short cut to Hermiston. Immediately on the other side it went down through the Deil's Hags, a

considerable marshy hollow of the hill tops, full of springs, and crouching junipers, and pools where the

black peatwater slumbered. There was no view from here. A man might have sat upon the Praying Weaver's

stone a half century, and seen none but the Cauldstaneslap children twice in the twentyfour hours on their

way to the school and back again, an occasional shepherd, the irruption of a clan of sheep, or the birds who

haunted about the springs, drinking and shrilly piping. So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was

received into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of

Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at

last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn

discharges, and the path for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this

corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of braes upon the other side, still sallow and in

places rusty with the winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burnside a tuft of birches,

and two miles off as the crow flies from its enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston

Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at these far away bright panes of glass. It amused

her to have so extended a view, she thought. It amused her to see the house of Hermiston to see "folk"; and

there was an indistinguishable human unit, perhaps the gardener, visibly sauntering on the gravel paths.

By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged in clear shadow, she was aware of

another figure coming up the path at a most unequal rate of approach, now half running, now pausing and

seeming to hesitate. She watched him at first with a total suspension of thought. She held her thought as a

person holds his breathing. Then she consented to recognise him. "He'll no be coming here, he canna be; it's

no possible." And there began to grow upon her a subdued choking suspense. He WAS coming; his

hesitations had quite ceased, his step grew firm and swift; no doubt remained; and the question loomed up

before her instant: what was she to do? It was all very well to say that her brother was a laird himself: it was

all very well to speak of casual intermarriages and to count cousinship, like Auntie Kirstie. The difference in

their social station was trenchant; propriety, prudence, all that she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade

her flee. But on the other hand the cup of life now offered to her was too enchanting. For one moment, she

saw the question clearly, and definitely made her choice. She stood up and showed herself an instant in the

gap relieved upon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowing with excitement on the

Weaver's stone. She shut her eyes, seeking, praying for composure. Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind

was full of incongruous and futile speeches. What was there to make a work about? She could take care of

herself, she supposed! There was no harm in seeing the laird. It was the best thing that could happen. She

would mark a proper distance to him once and for all. Gradually the wheels of her nature ceased to go round

so madly, and she sat in passive expectation, a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the grey moss. I have said

she was no hypocrite, but here I am at fault. She never admitted to herself that she had come up the hill to

look for Archie. And perhaps after all she did not know, perhaps came as a stone falls. For the steps of love in

In the meantime Archie was drawing rapidly near, and he at least was consciously seeking her

neighbourhood. The afternoon had turned to ashes in his mouth; the memory of the girl had kept him from

reading and drawn him as with cords; and at last, as the cool of the evening began to come on, he had taken

his hat and set forth, with a smothered ejaculation, by the moor path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no hope to

find her; he took the off chance without expectation of result and to relieve his uneasiness. The greater was

his surprise, as he surmounted the slope and came into the hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see there, like an

answer to his wishes, the little womanly figure in the grey dress and the pink kerchief sitting little, and low,

and lost, and acutely solitary, in these desolate surroundings and on the weatherbeaten stone of the dead

weaver. Those things that still smacked of winter were all rusty about her, and those things that already

relished of the spring had put forth the tender and lively colours of the season. Even in the unchanging face of

the deathstone, changes were to be remarked; and in the channeled lettering, the moss began to renew itself

in jewels of green. By an afterthought that was a stroke of art, she had turned up over her head the back of the

kerchief; so that it now framed becomingly her vivacious and yet pensive face. Her feet were gathered under

her on the one side, and she leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round, tapered to a slim

Young Hermiston was struck with a certain chill. He was reminded that he now dealt in serious matters of life

and death. This was a grown woman he was approaching, endowed with her mysterious potencies and

attractions, the treasury of the continued race, and he was neither better nor worse than the average of his sex

and age. He had a certain delicacy which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, and which (had either of

them guessed it) made him a more dangerous companion when his heart should be really stirred. His throat

was dry as he came near; but the appealing sweetness of her smile stood between them like a guardian angel.

For she turned to him and smiled, though without rising. There was a shade in this cavalier greeting that

neither of them perceived; neither he, who simply thought it gracious and charming as herself; nor yet she,

who did not observe (quick as she was) the difference between rising to meet the laird, and remaining seated

"Are ye stepping west, Hermiston?" said she, giving him his territorial name after the fashion of the

"I was," said he, a little hoarsely, "but I think I will be about the end of my stroll now. Are you like me, Miss

He took his seat at the other end of the tombstone and studied her, wondering what was she. There was

"Ay," she said. "I couldna bear the roof either. It's a habit of mine to come up here about the gloaming when

"It was a habit of my mother's also," he said gravely. The recollection half startled him as he expressed it. He

looked around. "I have scarce been here since. It's peaceful," he said, with a long breath.

"It's no like Glasgow," she replied. "A weary place, yon Glasgow! But what a day have I had for my

"Indeed, it was a wonderful day," said Archie. "I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die.

On days like this I do not know if you feel as I do but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and

exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us

Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap that were here but a while since riding about and

keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner making love too, and marrying why, where are they now? It's

deadly commonplace, but, after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths."

He was sounding her, semiconsciously, to see if she could understand him; to learn if she were only an

animal the colour of flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her sweet. She, on her part, her means well in hand,

watched, womanlike, for any opportunity to shine, to abound in his humour, whatever that might be. The

dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet in a

divine fury, and chance had served her well. She looked upon him with a subdued twilight look that became

the hour of the day and the train of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple west; and

from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature there passed into her voice, and rang in her

"Have you mind of Dand's song?" she answered. "I think he'll have been trying to say what you have been

"I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper of the Sabbath, and there is no one in this place to hear us, unless the

"No that I'm thinking that really," she said. "By my way of thinking, it's just as serious as a psalm. Will I

"If you please," said he, and, drawing near to her on the tombstone, prepared to listen.

She sat up as if to sing. "I'll only can sooth it to ye," she explained. "I wouldna like to sing out loud on the

Sabbath. I think the birds would carry news of it to Gilbert," and she smiled. "It's about the Elliotts," she

continued, "and I think there's few bonnier bits in the bookpoets, though Dand has never got printed yet."

And she began, in the low, clear tones of her half voice, now sinking almost to a whisper, now rising to a

particular note which was her best, and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion:

"O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, In the rain and the wind and the lave, They shoutit in the

ha' and they routit on the hill, But they're a' quaitit noo in the grave. Auld, auld Elliotts, claycauld Elliotts,

All the time she sang she looked steadfastly before her, her knees straight, her hands upon her knee, her head

cast back and up. The expression was admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the lips and under

the criticism of the author? When it was done, she turned upon Archie a face softly bright, and eyes gently

suffused and shining in the twilight, and his heart rose and went out to her with boundless pity and sympathy.

His question was answered. She was a human being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of life; there were pathos

He arose instinctively, she also; for she saw she had gained a point, and scored the impression deeper, and

she had wit enough left to flee upon a victory. They were but commonplaces that remained to be exchanged,

but the low, moved voices in which they passed made them sacred in the memory. In the falling greyness of

the evening he watched her figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wave a hand, and

then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as if something went along with her out of the deepest of his

heart. And something surely had come, and come to dwell there. He had retained from childhood a picture,

now half obliterated by the passage of time and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him,

with the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, the tale of the "Praying Weaver," on

the very scene of his brief tragedy and long repose. And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld,

and he should behold for ever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in the grey colours of the evening,

of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, their weapons buried with them, and of

these strange changelings, their descendants, who lingered a little in their places, and would soon be gone

also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour. By one of the unconscious arts of tenderness the

two women were enshrined together in his memory. Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes

indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from being something merely bright and shapely, was

caught up into the zone of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in all ways and on

either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children. The generations were prepared, the

In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, there opened before Kirstie's eyes the cuplike

hollow in which the farm lay. She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself bright with

candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view

to that family worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on the relaxation of

supper. Already she knew that Robert must be withinsides at the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for

it was Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated. She made good

time accordingly down the steep ascent, and came up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, all

roused at last from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark of the evening with a fry of nephews and

nieces about them, chatting and awaiting the expected signal. She stood back; she had no mind to direct

And the talk continued on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood

by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense of guilt.

The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in one after another, amid the jostle and throng of Hob's

Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. "When did ye begin to dander in pink hosen,

She looked down; she was one blush. "I maun have forgotten to change them," said she; and went into

prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her

yellow stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame that she had

already made good his prophecy. She remembered the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo,

and that that would be for good and evil. "Will I have gotten my jo now?" she thought with a secret rapture.

And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to conceal the pink stockings from the eyes of

the indifferent Mrs. Hob and all through supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the table radiant

and constrained and again when she had left them and come into her chamber, and was alone with her

sleeping niece, and could at last lay aside the armour of society the same words sounded within her, the

same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of a day that had been passed in

Paradise, and of a night that was to be heaven opened. All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon a

shallow stream of sleep and waking, and through the bowers of Beulah; all night she cherished to her heart

that exquisite hope; and if, towards morning, she forgot it a while in a more profound unconsciousness, it was

TWO days later a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes at the doors of Hermiston. Once in a way,

during the past winter, Archie, in some acute phase of boredom, had written him a letter. It had contained

something in the nature of an invitation or a reference to an invitation precisely what, neither of them now

remembered. When Innes had received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury himself

in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with

unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance, who

could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off

answering it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over Frank's career?

His case may be briefly stated. His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became recalcitrant

and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out with the beginnings of quite a good law library, which,

upon some sudden losses on the turf, he had been obliged to sell before they were paid for; and his

bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event, took out a warrant for his arrest. Innes had early word of it,

and was able to take precautions. In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge hanging

over him, he had judged it the part of prudence to be off instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father at

Inverauld, and put himself in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a storm! He was manfully turning his

back on the Parliament House and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the racecourse and the ring; and

manfully prepared, until these clouds should have blown by, to share a living grave with Archie Weir at

To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was to see him come; and he carried off

"Well, here I am!" said he, as he alighted. "Pylades has come to Orestes at last. By the way, did you get my

answer? No? How very provoking! Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that's better still."

"I am very glad to see you, of course," said Archie. "I make you heartily welcome, of course. But you surely

"Damn the Courts!" says Frank. "What are the Courts to friendship and a little fishing?"

And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but the term which he had privily set to it

himself the day, namely, when his father should have come down with the dust, and he should be able to

pacify the bookseller. On such vague conditions there began for these two young men (who were not even

friends) a life of great familiarity and, as the days drew on, less and less intimacy. They were together at meal

times, together o' nights when the hour had come for whiskytoddy; but it might have been noticed (had there

been any one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to,

multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank's escort. He would

be off sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and

sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner until the hour was long past. Innes groaned

under these desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast with composure, and

all his unaffected goodnature to be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions when

"I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott?" said he one morning, after he had just read the hasty

"I suppose it will be business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an

He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his disposition, and broke into a peal of

"Well played, Mrs. Elliott!" he cried; and the housekeeper's face relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile.

"Well played indeed!" said he. "But you must not be making a stranger of me like that. Why, Archie and I

were at the High School together, and we've been to college together, and we were going to the Bar together,

when you know! Dear, dear me! what a pity that was! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried

here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more. God, how good

"They're no mines, it was the lassie made them," said Kirstie; "and, saving your presence, there's little sense

in taking the Lord's name in vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte wi'."

"I daresay you're perfectly right, ma'am," quoth the imperturbable Frank. "But as I was saying, this is a

pitiable business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a

couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that Archie is really quite a

promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well at the Bar. As for his father, no one can deny his

ability, and I don't fancy any one would care to deny that he has the deil's own temper "

"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me," said Kirstie, and flounced from the room.

In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent to her feelings.

"Here, ettercap! Ye'll have to wait on yon Innes! I canna haud myself in. `Puir Erchie!' I'd `puir Erchie' him,

if I had my way! And Hermiston with the deil's ain temper! God, let him take Hermiston's scones out of his

mouth first. There's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has

in his hale dwaibly body! Settin' up his snash to me! Let him gang to the black toon where he's mebbe wantit

birling in a curricle wi' pimatum on his heid making a mess o' himsel' wi' nesty hizzies a fair

disgrace!" It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie's graduated disgust, as she brought forth, one

after another, these somewhat baseless charges. Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned

again on her fascinated auditor. "Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I'm tellin' ye? Will I have to

shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!" And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become

TANTAENE IRAE? Has the reader perceived the reason? Since Frank's coming there were no more hours of

gossip over the supper tray! All his blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for

But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be genial. I must guard the reader

against accepting Kirstie's epithets as evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their

accuracy. Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious. Frank was the very picture of good

looks, good humour, and manly youth. He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a

charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one

accustomed to please at first sight and to improve the impression. And with all these advantages, he failed

with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with the groom who

was also the ploughman, with the gardener and the gardener's sister a pious, downhearted woman with a

shawl over her ears he failed equally and flatly. They did not like him, and they showed it. The little maid,

indeed, was an exception; she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but she

was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie's tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie's buffets,

and she had learned not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides.

Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour

that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society

from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and

tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were

beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. But

perhaps the cause of his illsuccess lay in one trait which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet

diagnostic of the man. It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one else. He

offered you an alliance against the some one else; he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a

small intrigue against him before you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this process generally; but

Frank's mistake was in the choice of the some one else. He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of

irritation. Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry reception, had offended him

since by his frequent absences. He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank's eye; and it was to

his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs,

father and son, were surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord they were vastly proud. It was a

distinction in itself to be one of the vassals of the "Hanging Judge," and his gross, formidable joviality was

far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home. For Archie they had, one and all, a sensitive affection

Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield. To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was

antipathetic in the highest degree. Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw him but for a

day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule's business was, and whether he meant to

stay here all session time! "Yon's a drone," he pronounced. As for Dand, it will be enough to describe their

first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.

Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank's failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff

Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making.

Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter.

Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how onesided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing

among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket by evening.

In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him

immediately on his arrival; his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety. Frank was made welcome there at

once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members ever after loved to tell) on the

evening before his death. Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another supper at

Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being taken to the bosom of the county people

as unreservedly as he had been repudiated by the country folk. He occupied Hermiston after the manner of an

invader in a conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing

parties, and dinner parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not go. It was now that

the name of The Recluse became general for the young man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least,

"O, reclusing away!" Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying something witty; and immediately

interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all

very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow

I always liked. I think it small of him to take his little disgrace so hard, and shut himself up. 'Grant that it is a

ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,' I keep telling him. 'Be a man! Live it down, man!' But not he. Of

course, it's just solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I'm beginning to fear the result. It would be all

the pities in the world if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I'm seriously tempted to write to

"I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the head, sitting bewildered and confused at

this new view of the matter, so deftly indicated by a single word. "A capital idea!" they would add, and

wonder at the APLOMB and position of this young man, who talked as a matter of course of writing to

And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: "I'll give you an idea, now. He's actually sore about the way

that I'm received and he's left out in the county actually jealous and sore. I've rallied him and I've reasoned

with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined towards him, told him even that I was received

merely because I was his guest. But it's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop

brooding about the ones where he's left out. What I'm afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. He had always

one of those dark, secret, angry natures a little underhand and plenty of bile you know the sort. He must

have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's

the cant phrase? sedentary occupation. It's precisely the kind of character to go wrong in a false position

like what his father's made for him, or he's making for himself, whichever you like to call it. And for my part,

Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend took shape. He began in private, in conversations

of two, to talk vaguely of bad habits and low habits. "I must say I'm afraid he's going wrong altogether," he

would say. "I'll tell you plainly, and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man, I'm

positively afraid to leave him alone. You'll see, I shall be blamed for it later on. I'm staying at a great

sacrifice. I'm hindering my chances at the Bar, and I can't blind my eyes to it. And what I'm afraid of is that

I'm going to get kicked for it all round before all's done. You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays."

"Well, Innes," his interlocutor would reply, "it's very good of you, I must say that. If there's any blame going,

"Well," Frank would continue, "candidly, I don't say it's pleasant. He has a very rough way with him; his

father's son, you know. I don't say he's rude of course, I couldn't be expected to stand that but he steers

very near the wind. No, it's not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in conscience I don't think it would be fair to leave

him. Mind you, I don't say there's anything actually wrong. What I say is that I don't like the looks of it,

In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He

was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark

of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous

and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his

mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the

county. Wherever there was a residential house and a walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish castle

and a park, wherever a quadruple cottage by the ruins of a peeltower showed an old family going down, and

wherever a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a new one

probably on the wheels of machinery Archie began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious

mystery, and the future developments of his career to be looked for with uneasiness and confidential

whispering. He had done something disgraceful, my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that good kind

young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious

about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he

dared not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any

malign purpose! And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way,

and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of public

All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late

indeed to the surface, but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle, shallow,

easygoing customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind something to play

with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar,

and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness

and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good deal said of

Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if

he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de TalleyrandPerigord. It was on the occasion of Archie's first

absence that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast,

and that same afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business. He was fishing

"Don't be in such a hurry," cries Frank. "Hold on till I get my rod up. I'll go with you; I'm sick of flogging this

Archie stood speechless. He took a long while to recover his wits under this direct attack; but by the time he

was ready with his answer, and the angle was almost packed up, he had become completely Weir, and the

hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders. He spoke with a laboured composure, a laboured kindness

"I beg your pardon, Innes; I don't want to be disagreeable, but let us understand one another from the

"Apparently not just now," replied Archie. "I even indicated to you when I did, if you'll remember and that

was at dinner. If we two fellows are to live together pleasantly and I see no reason why we should not it

"O, come! I'll take this at no man's hands. Is this the way you treat a guest and an old friend?" cried Innes.

"Just go home and think over what I said by yourself," continued Archie, "whether it's reasonable, or whether

it's really offensive or not; and let's meet at dinner as though nothing had happened, I'll put it this way, if you

like that I know my own character, that I'm looking forward (with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long

visit from you, and that I'm taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we that I, if you like might

fall out upon, and I step in and OBSTO PRINCIPIIS. I wager you five pounds you'll end by seeing that I

Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode

off down the burnside. Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He

hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father's son. He had a strong sense that his house was his

own and no man else's; and to lie at a guest's mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh. But that

was Frank's lookout. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he would have been decently courteous. And

there was another consideration. The secret he was protecting was not his own merely; it was hers: it

belonged to that inexpressible she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have

defended at the cost of burning cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburnfoot,

appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the

distance into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the occurrence. Either Frank

would go, and that would be a relief or he would continue to stay, and his host must continue to endure

him. And Archie was now free by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns to make for

the trystingplace where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his coming

Innes went off downhill in a passion of resentment, easy to be understood, but which yielded progressively

to the needs of his situation. He cursed Archie for a coldhearted, unfriendly, rude, rude dog; and himself still

more passionately for a fool in having come to Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any

other house in Scotland. But the step once taken, was practically irretrievable. He had no more ready money

to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow from Archie the next clubnight; and ill as he thought of his

host's manners, he was sure of his practical generosity. Frank's resemblance to Talleyrand strikes me as

imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He

met Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality. You must take your friends as you find

them, he would have said. Archie couldn't help being his father's son, or his grandfather's, the hypothetical

weaver's, grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart, incapable of true generosity and

consideration; but he had other qualities with which Frank could divert himself in the meanwhile, and to

So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning with his head full of a different, though a

cognate subject. What was Archie's little game? Why did he shun Frank's company? What was he keeping

secret? Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman? It would be a good joke and a fair revenge

to discover. To that task he set himself with a great deal of patience, which might have surprised his friends,

for he had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to

another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although Archie set out in all

the directions of the compass, he always came home again from some point between the south and west.

From the study of a map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that

direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring

farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext, he vainly

visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He

would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea.

He did the next best, ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a telescope. It was

equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the telescope at home, and had almost given

the matter up in despair, when, on the twentyseventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the

person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of

indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid

for that public place. On the two following, Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions among

the neighbouring families. It was not until the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the

enchantress. With the first look, all hesitation was over. She came with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she

lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret, here was the woman, and more than that though I have

need here of every manageable attenuation of language with the first look, he had already entered himself

as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the devil

may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely that Frank could not.

"O, the girl you're looking at aren't you? Forward there on the road. She came attended by the rustic bard;

presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted family. The single objection! for the four black brothers are

awkward customers. If anything were to go wrong, Gib would gibber, and Clem would prove inclement; and

Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a business!"

"Well, I am trying to be so," said Frank. "It's none too easy in this place, and with your solemn society, my

dear fellow. But confess that the milkmaid has found favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a man of

But the other continued to look at him, steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly rose and deepened

under the glance, until not impudence itself could have denied that he was blushing. And at this Archie lost

some of his control. He changed his stick from one hand to the other, and "O, for God's sake, don't be an

"Ass? That's the retort delicate without doubt," says Frank. "Beware of the homespun brothers, dear. If they

come into the dance, you'll see who's an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as

I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly

But he was interrupted in turn. "My dear fellow, don't. It's quite needless. The subject's dead and buried."

And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be

fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he

was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand,

how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ways." Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast

"I say, Weir, you'll excuse me for returning again to this affair. I've been thinking it over, and I wish to beg

you very seriously to be more careful. It's not a safe business. Not safe, my boy," said he.

"Well, it's your own fault if I must put a name on the thing; but really, as a friend, I cannot stand by and see

you rushing head down into these dangers. My dear boy," said he, holding up a warning cigar, "consider!

"The end of what?" Archie, helpless with irritation, persisted in this dangerous and ungracious guard.

"Well, the end of the milkmaid; or, to speak more by the card, the end of Miss Christina Elliott of the

"I assure you," Archie broke out, "this is all a figment of your imagination. There is nothing to be said against

that young lady; you have no right to introduce her name into the conversation."

"I'll make a note of it," said Frank. "She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach! I make

a note besides of your valuable testimony to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a man of the

This was torture to Archie. "I beg your pardon," he said, struggling to be composed, "but because you have

"O, come!" cried Frank. "Your confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting. Your confidence, indeed? Now,

look! This is what I must say, Weir, for it concerns your safety and good character, and therefore my honour

as your friend. You say I wormed myself into your confidence. Wormed is good. But what have I done? I

have put two and two together, just as the parish will be doing tomorrow, and the whole of Tweeddale in two

weeks, and the black brothers well, I won't put a date on that; it will be a dark and stormy morning! Your

secret, in other words, is poor Poll's. And I want to ask of you as a friend whether you like the prospect?

There are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do

you see yourself explaining to the four Black Brothers? or do you see yourself presenting the milkmaid to

But Frank again held up his cigar. "Tell me one thing first. Tell me if this is not a friend's part that I am

"I believe you think it so," replied Archle. "I can go as far as that. I can do so much justice to your motives.

"That's right, Weir," said Frank heartily. "Go to bed and think over it; and I say, man, don't forget your

prayers! I don't often do the moral don't go in for that sort of thing but when I do there's one thing sure,

So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself

richly. There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good,

and the thought of Archie's pillow reflections that night was indescribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant

sense of power. He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled as on a horse

whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the

grave at pleasure. Which was it to be? He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too idle

to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity

over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned.

KIRSTIE had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old and yet more and more as we grow

old and are women, frozen by the fear of age we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul.

Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry of the passion within us; only

thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain relations with those vivacious

figures of the young that still show before us and tend daily to become no more than the moving wallpaper

of life. Talk is the last link, the last relation. But with the end of the conversation, when the voice stops and

the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her

"cannie hour at e'en"; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a happy ghost, in fields

Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of

amusements. And she raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within

This is the price paid by age for unseasonable ardours of feeling. It must have been so for Kirstie at any time

when the occasion chanced; but it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when she had

most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when she trembled to recognise her sovereignty

not merely in abeyance but annulled. For, with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, she had pierced the

mystery that had so long embarrassed Frank. She was conscious, even before it was carried out, even on that

Sunday night when it began, of an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader's name. Since then,

by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the general drift of Archie's humour, she had passed

beyond all possibility of doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have envied, she had that

day in church considered and admitted the attractions of the younger Kirstie; and with the profound humanity

and sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate. Not thus would she have chosen. She

had seen, in imagination, Archie wedded to some tall, powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden locks, made

in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bridebed with delight; and now she could have

wept to see the ambition falsified. But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.

She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts. There were dangerous matters pending, a

battle was toward, over the fate of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and

disloyalty to either side. Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and now in Archie. Now she saw, through

the girl's eyes, the youth on his knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and

received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper raged to see such utmost favours of

fortune and love squandered on a brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name a deadly

ingredient and that "didna ken her ain mind an' was as black's your hat." Now she trembled lest her deity

should plead in vain, loving the idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning loyalty

to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the Elliotts. And again she had a vision

of herself, the day over for her oldworld tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link with life and

brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she saw but the blank buttend where she must crawl to die.

Had she then come to the lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as a girl's and strong as

womanhood? It could not be, and yet it was so; and for a moment her bed was horrible to her as the sides of

the grave. And she looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to rage, and tremble, and be

softened, and rage again, until the day came and the labours of the day must be renewed.

Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs his feet, and soon after the sound of a windowsash flung open. She

sat up with her heart beating. He had gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed. She might again

have one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a change came over her mind; with the approach

of this hope of pleasure, all the baser metal became immediately obliterated from her thoughts. She rose, all

woman, and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating the wrong, loyal to her own sex and all the

weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that

she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her

shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the

lookingglass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was

never backward to admire herself; that kind of modesty was a stranger to her nature; and she paused, struck

with a pleased wonder at the sight. "Ye daft auld wife!" she said, answering a thought that was not; and she

blushed with the innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily she did up the massive and shining coils, hastily

donned a wrapper, and with the rushlight in her hand, stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard the clock

ticking the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling with the decanters in the diningroom. Aversion rose in

her, bitter and momentary. "Nesty, tippling puggy!" she thought; and the next moment she had knocked

Archie had been looking out into the ancient blackness, pierced here and there with a rayless star; taking the

sweet air of the moors and the night into his bosom deeply; seeking, perhaps finding, peace after the manner

of the unhappy. He turned round as she came in, and showed her a pale face against the windowframe.

"No, no," he answered, "not at all. Come in, if you want a crack. I am not sleepy, God knows!"

She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set the rushlight at her foot. Something it

might be in the comparative disorder of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her bosom

had touched her with a wand of transformation, and she seemed young with the youth of goddesses.

"I am not aware of anything that has come," said Archie, and blushed, and repented bitterly that he had let her

"O, my dear, that'll no dae!" said Kirstie. "It's ill to blend the eyes of love. O, Mr. Erchie, tak a thocht ere it's

ower late. Ye shouldna be impatient o' the braws o' life, they'll a' come in their saison, like the sun and the

rain. Ye're young yet; ye've mony cantie years afore ye. See and dinna wreck yersel' at the outset like sae

mony ithers! Hae patience they telled me aye that was the owercome o' life hae patience, there's a braw

day coming yet. Gude kens it never cam to me; and here I am, wi' nayther man nor bairn to ca' my ain,

"Weel, and I'll tell ye," she said. "It's just this, that I'm feared. I'm feared for ye, my dear. Remember, your

faither is a hard man, reaping where he hasna sowed and gaithering where he hasna strawed. It's easy

speakin', but mind! Ye'll have to look in the gurly face o'm, where it's ill to look, and vain to look for mercy.

Ye mind me o' a bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas ye're a' safe still, sittin' quait and

crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o' the

"Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical tonight and very eloquent," Archie put in.

"And, my dear Mr. Erchie," she continued, with a change of voice, "ye mauna think that I canna sympathise

wi' ye. Ye mauna think that I havena been young mysel'. Lang syne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty yet "

She paused and sighed. "Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the hinney bee," she continned. "I was aye big and

buirdly, ye maun understand; a bonny figure o' a woman, though I say it that suldna built to rear bairns

braw bairns they suld hae been, and grand I would hae likit it! But I was young, dear, wi' the bonny glint o'

youth in my e'en, and little I dreamed I'd ever be tellin' ye this, an auld, lanely, rudas wife! Weel, Mr. Erchie,

there was a lad cam' courtin' me, as was but naetural. Mony had come before, and I would nane o' them. But

this yin had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the foxglove bells. Deary me, but it's lang

syne! Folk have dee'd sinsyne and been buried, and are forgotten, and bairns been born and got merrit and got

bairns o' their ain. Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit

in their shadow, and sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there have been wars and rumours of wars

on the face of the earth. And here I'm still like an auld droopit craw lookin' on and craikin'! But, Mr.

Erchie, do ye no think that I have mind o' it a' still? I was dwalling then in my faither's house; and it's a

curious thing that we were whiles trysted in the Deil's Hags. And do ye no think that I have mind of the

bonny simmer days, the lang miles o' the bluidred heather, the cryin' of the whaups, and the lad and the

lassie that was trysted? Do ye no think that I mind how the hilly sweetness ran about my hairt? Ay, Mr.

Erchie, I ken the way o' it fine do I ken the way how the grace o' God takes them, like Paul of Tarsus,

when they think it least, and drives the pair o' them into a land which is like a dream, and the world and the

folks in't' are nae mair than clouds to the puir lassie, and heeven nae mair than windlestraes, if she can but

pleesure him! Until Tam dee'd that was my story," she broke off to say, "he dee'd, and I wasna at the

buryin'. But while he was here, I could take care o' mysel'. And can yon puir lassie?"

Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears, stretched out her hand towards him appealingly; the bright and the

dull gold of her hair flashed and smouldered in the coils behind her comely head, like the rays of an eternal

youth; the pure colour had risen in her face; and Archie was abashed alike by her beauty and her story. He

"Kirstie," he said hoarsely, "you have misjudged me sorely. I have always thought of her, I wouldna harm her

"Eh, lad, and that's easy sayin'," cried Kirstie, "but it's nane sae easy doin'! Man, do ye no comprehend that

it's God's wull we should be blendit and glamoured, and have nae command over our ain members at a time

like that? My bairn," she cried, still holding his hand, "think o' the puir lass! have pity upon her, Erchie! and

O, be wise for twa! Think o' the risk she rins! I have seen ye, and what's to prevent ithers! I saw ye once in

the Hags, in my ain howl, and I was wae to see ye there in pairt for the omen, for I think there's a weird on

the place and in pairt for pure nakit envy and bitterness o' hairt. It's strange ye should forgather there tae!

God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Covenanter's seen a heap o' human natur since he lookit his last on the

musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore," she added, with a kind of wonder in her eyes.

"I swear by my honour I have done her no wrong," said Archie. "I swear by my honour and the redemption of

my soul that there shall none be done her. I have heard of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie, not unkind,

"There's my bairn!" said Kirstie, rising. "I'll can trust ye noo, I'll can gang to my bed wi' an easy hairt." And

then she saw in a flash how barren had been her triumph. Archie had promised to spare the girl, and he would

keep it; but who had promised to spare Archie? What was to be the end of it? Over a maze of difficulties she

glanced, and saw, at the end of every passage, the flinty countenance of Hermiston. And a kind of horror fell

upon her at what she had done. She wore a tragic mask. "Erchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me! I

have buildit on this foundation" laying her hand heavily on his shoulder "and buildit hie, and pit my hairt

in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves

ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate desires; haud your heart

in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinna send it up like a hairn's kite into the collieshangic o' the

wunds! Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools is the appointed

"Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you're asking me ower much at last," said Archie, profoundly moved, and

lapsing into the broad Scots. "Ye're asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can

grant ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even He! I can promise ye what I shall do, and you can depend on that.

They were both standing by now opposite each other. The face of Archie wore the wretched semblance of a

"Promise me ae thing," she cried in a sharp voice. "Promise me ye'll never do naething without telling me."

"No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that," he replied. "I have promised enough, God kens!"

IT was late in the afternoon when Archie drew near by the hill path to the Praying Weaver's stone. The Hags

were in shadow. But still, through the gate of the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which sped far and straight

across the surface of the moss, here and there touching and shining on a tussock, and lighted at length on the

gravestone and the small figure awaiting him there. The emptiness and solitude of the great moors seemed to

be concentrated there, and Kirstie pointed out by that figure of sunshine for the only inhabitant. His first sight

of her was thus excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all light, comfort, and society were

on the point of vanishing. And the next moment, when she had turned her face to him and the quick smile had

enlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of welcome. Archie's slow pace was

quickened; his legs hasted to her though his heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herself

together slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, her face was gone white; her arms ached for

him, her soul was on tip toes. But he deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself,

"No, Christina, not today," he said. "Today I have to talk to you seriously. Sit ye down, please, there where

The revulsion of feeling in Christina's heart was violent. To have longed and waited these weary hours for

him, rehearsing her endearments to have seen him at last come to have been ready there, breathless,

wholly passive, his to do what he would with and suddenly to have found herself confronted with a

greyfaced, harsh schoolmaster it was too rude a shock. She could have wept, but pride withheld her. She

sat down on the stone, from which she had arisen, part with the instinct of obedience, part as though she had

been thrust there. What was this? Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please? She stood here offering

her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse

though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity

wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now

completely in possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day of reflection; he had come

wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth, which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed

the expression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained voice and embarrassed utterance; and

if so if it was all over the pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking.

He stood before her some way off. "Kirstie, there's been too much of this. We've seen too much of each

other." She looked up quickly and her eyes contracted. "There's no good ever comes of these secret meetings.

They're not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen it. People have begun to talk; and it's not right of

"And whae were they?" she cried. "And what kind o' love do ye ca' that, that's ready to gang round like a

"Have they indeed?" said Archie, with a quick breath. "That is what I feared. Who were they? Who has dared

As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter; and she strenuously repeated her own

"Ah, well! what does it matter?" he said. "They were good folk that wished well to us, and the great affair is

that there are people talking. My dear girl, we have to be wise. We must not wreck our lives at the outset.

They may be long and happy yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, like God's rational creatures and not like fool

children. There is one thing we must see to before all. You're worth waiting for, Kirstie! worth waiting for a

generation; it would be enough reward." And here he remembered the schoolmaster again, and very

unwisely took to following wisdom. "The first thing that we must see to, is that there shall be no scandal

Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth of sentiment in what Archie had said last.

But the dull irritation still persisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered herself, she

And besides, there had come out the word she had always feared to hear from his lips, the name of his father.

It is not to be supposed that, during so many days with a love avowed between them, some reference had not

been made to their conjoint future. It had in fact been often touched upon, and from the first had been the sore

point. Kirstie had wilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even with herself; gallant, desperate

little heart, she had accepted the command of that supreme attraction like the call of fate and marched

blindfold on her doom. But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility, must reason; he must dwell on

some future good, when the present good was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk and talk lamely, as necessity

drove him of what was to be. Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven

back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick

to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which

spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to

recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the deathknell of these expectations, and constant, poor

girl! in her largeminded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished

references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the

words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and dashed down again bleeding.

The recurrence of the subject forced her, for however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish

to see; and it had invariably ended in another disappointment. So now again, at the mere wind of its coming,

at the mere mention of his father's name who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole

moorland courtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile, present to guilty consciousness

"The question here is not who it is, but what they say, what they have noticed," pursued the lucid

"Auntie Kirstie, indeed! A bitter, thrawn auld maid that's fomented trouble in the country before I was born,

and will be doing it still, I daur say, when I'm deid! It's in her nature; it's as natural for her as it's for a sheep

"Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the only one," interposed Archie. "I had two warnings, two sermons, last

night, both most kind and considerate. Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, my dear! And

By this time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast. He had come, braced and resolute; he was to trace

out a line of conduct for the pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there some

time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing what he felt to be a savage

"I am not going to tell you; you have nothing to do with that," cried Archie, startled to find he had admitted

"O, I have naething to do with it!" she repeated, springing to her feet. "A'body at Hermiston's free to pass

their opinions upon me, but I have naething to do wi' it! Was this at prayers like? Did ye ca' the grieve into

the consultation? Little wonder if a'body's talking, when ye make a'body yer confidants! But as you say, Mr.

Weir, most kindly, most considerately, most truly, I'm sure, I have naething to do with it. And I think I'll

better be going. I'll be wishing you good evening, Mr. Weir." And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as

Poor Archie stood dumbfounded. She had moved some steps away from him before he recovered the gift of

There was in his voice a ring of appeal, a clang of mere astonishment that showed the schoolmaster was

She turned round on him. "What do ye Kirstie me for?" she retorted. "What have ye to do wi' me! Gang to

"Kirstie, indeed!" cried the girl, her eyes blazing in her white face. "My name is Miss Christina Elliott, I

would have ye to ken, and I daur ye to ca' me out of it. If I canna get love, I'll have respect, Mr. Weir. I'm

come of decent people, and I'll have respect. What have I done that ye should lightly me? What have I done?

What have I done? O, what have I done?" and her voice rose upon the third repetition. "I thocht I thocht I

thocht I was sae happy!" and the first sob broke from her like the paroxysm of some mortal sickness.

Archie ran to her. He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestled to his breast as to a mother's, and

clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of distress, and

had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his

arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the

curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked

back over the interview; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of