Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 13

by Unknown

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

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THE UNKNOWN.

In the year 1785, a young and beautiful woman, whose dress and features bespoke her to be a native of Spain, was observed a few miles beyond Ponteland, on the road which leads to Rothbury. She appeared faint and weary; dimness was deepening over the lustre of her dark eyes, and their glance bespoke anxious misery. Her raiment was of the finest silk; but time had caused its colour to fade; and it hung around her a tattered robe—an ensign of present poverty and wretchedness, a ruined remnant of prouder days that were past. She walked feebly and slowly along, bearing in her arms an infant boy; and she was observed, at intervals, to sit down, press her pale lips to her child's cheek, and weep. Several peasants, who were returning from their labours in the fields, stood and spoke to her; but she gazed on them with wild looks of despair, and she answered them in a strange language, which they did not understand.

"She has been a lady, poor thing," said some of them.

"Ha!" said others, who had less charity in their breasts, "they have not all been ladies that wear tattered silk in strange fashions."

Some inquired at her if she were hungry; if she wanted a lodging; or where she was going. But, like the mother of Thomas à Beckett, to all their inquiries she answered them but one word that they understood, and that word was "Edinburgh!"

Some said, "the poor creature is crazed;" and when she perceived that they comprehended her not, she waved her hand impatiently for them to depart, and pressing her child closer to her bosom, she bent her head over him, and sighed. The peasants, believing from her gestures that she desired not their presence, left her, some pitying, all wondering. Within an hour, some of them returned to the place where they had seen her, with the intent of offering her shelter for the night; but she was not to be found.

On the following morning, one Peter Thornton, a farmer, went into his stackyard before his servants were astir, and his attention being aroused by the weeping and wailing of a child, he hastened toward the spot from whence the sound proceeded. In a secluded corner of the yard, he beheld a woman lying, as if asleep, upon some loose straw; and a child was weeping and uttering strange sounds of lamentation on her bosom. It was the lovely, but wretched-looking foreigner whom the peasants had seen on the evening before. Peter was a blunt, kind-hearted Englishman; he resembled a piece of rich though unpolished metal. He approached the forlorn stranger; and her strange dress, her youth, the stamp of misery that surrounded her, and the death-like expression of her features, moved him, as he gazed upon her and her child, almost to tears.

"Get up, woman," said he; "why do you lie there? Get up, and come wi' me; ye seem to be ill, and my wife will get ye something comfortable."

But she spoke not, she moved not, though the child screamed louder at his presence. He called to her again; but still she remained motionless.

"Preserve us!" said he, somewhat alarmed, "what can have come owre the woman? I daresay she is in a trance! She sleeps sounder there in the open air, and upon the bare straw, wi' her poor bairn crying like to brak its heart upon her breast, than I could do on a feather-bed, wi' everything peace and quietness around me. Come, waken, woman," he added; and he bent down, and took her by the hand. But her fingers were stiff and cold—there was no sign of life upon her lips, neither was there breath in her nostrils.

"What is this?" exclaimed Peter, in a tone of horror—"a dead woman in my stackyard! Has there been a murder at my door through the night? I'll gie a' that I am worth as a reward to find it out!" And, leaving the child screaming by the side of its dead mother, he rushed breathless into the house, exclaiming, "Oh, wife! wife!—Jenny, woman!—I say, Jenny, get up! Here has been bloody wark at our door! What do ye think?—a dead woman lying in our stackyard, wi' a bonny bairn screaming on her breast!"

"What's that ye say, Peter!" cried his wife, starting up in terror; "a dead woman! Ye're dreaming—ye're not in earnest!"

"Haste ye! haste ye, Jenny!" he added; "it's as true as that my name is Peter Thornton."

She arose, and, with her household servants, accompanied him to where the dead body lay.

"Now," added Peter, with a look which bespoke the troubled state of his feelings, "this will be a job for the crowner, and we'll a' have to be examined and cross-examined, backward and forward, just as if we had killed the woman, or had onything to do wi' her death. I would rather have lost five hundred pounds, than that she had been found dead upon my stackyard."

"But see," said Jenny, after she had ascertained that the mother was really dead, and as she took up the child in her arms, and kissed it—"see what a sweet, bonny, innocent-looking creature this is! And, poor thing, only to think that it should be left an orphan, and apparently in a foreign land, for I dinna understand a word that it greets and says!"

A coroner's inquest was accordingly held upon the body, and a verdict of "Found dead" returned. Nothing was discovered about the person of the deceased which could throw light upon who she was. All the money she had had with her consisted of a small Spanish coin; but on her hand she wore a gemmed ring, of curious workmanship and considerable value, and also a plain marriage-ring. On the inside of the former were engraven the characters of C. F. et M. V.; and within the latter, C. et M. F. The fashion of her dress was Spanish, and the few words of lamentation which her poor child could imperfectly utter were discovered to be in that language. There being small likelihood of discovering who the stranger had been, her orphan boy was about to be committed to the workhouse; but Mrs Thornton had no children of her own, the motherless little one had been three days under her care, and already her heart began to feel for him a mother's fondness.

"Peter," said she unto her husband, "I am not happy at the thought o' this poor bairn being sent to the workhouse. I'm sure he was born above such a condition. Death, in taking his mother, left him helpless and crying for help at our door, and I think it would be unnatural in us to withhold it. Now, as we have nae family o' our own, if ye'll bear the expense, I'm sure I'm willing to tak the trouble, o' bringing him up."

"Wi' a' my heart, Jenny, my dow," said Peter; "it was me that found the bairn, and if ye say, keep it, I say, keep it, too. His meat will never be missed; and it will be a worse year wi' us than ony we hae seen, when we canna get claes to his back."

"Peter," replied she, "I always said ye had a good heart; and by this action ye prove it to the world."

"I care not that," said he, snapping the nail of his thumb upwards from his forefinger, "what the world may say or think about me, provided you and my conscience say that it is right that I hae done."

They therefore, from that hour, took the orphan as the child of their adoption; and they were most puzzled to decide by what name he should be called.

"It is perfectly evident to me," said the farmer, "from the letters on the rings, that his faither's first name has begun wi' a C, and his second wi' an F; but we could never be able to find out the outlandish foreign words that they may stand for. We shall therefore just give him some decent Christian name."

"And what name more decent or respectable could we gie him than our own?" said Jenny. "Suppose we just call him Thornton—Peter Thornton?"

"No, no, good wife," said he, "there must twa words go to the making o' that bargain; for, though nobody would charge you wi' being his mother, the time may come when folk would be wicked enough to hint that I was his faither; therefore, I do not think it proper that he should tak my name. What say ye, now, as it is probable that his faither's name began wi' a C, if we were to call him Christopher? and, as we found him in the month o' May, we should gie him a surname after the month, and call him Christopher May? That, in my opinion, is a very bonny name; and I hae nae doubt that, if he be spared till those dark een o' his begin to look after the lasses, mony a ane o' them will be o' the same way o' thinking."

The child soon became reconciled to the change in his situation, and returned the kindness of his foster-mother with affection. She rejoiced as he gradually forgot the few words of Spanish which he at first lisped, and in their stead began to speak the language of the Borders. With delight in her eyes, she declared that "she had learned him his mother tongue, which he now spoke as natural as life, though, when she took him under her care, he could say nothing but some heathenish kind o' sounds, which nobody could mak ony mair sense o' than it was possible to do out o' the yaumerin o' an infant o' six months old."

As the orphan grew up, he became noted as the liveliest boy in the neighbourhood. He was the tallest of his age, and the most fearless. About three years after Peter Thornton had taken him under his protection, he sent him to school. But, lively as the orphan Christopher May was (for so we shall now call him), he by no means showed an aptness to learn. For five years, and he never rose higher than the middle of the class. The teacher was often wroth with the thoughtlessness of his pupil; and in his displeasure said, "It is nonsense, sirrah, to say that ye was ever a Spaniard. There is something like sense and stability o' character about the people o' Spain; but you—ye're a Frenchman!—a thoughtless, dancing, settle-to-nothing fool. Or, if ever ye were a Spaniard, ye belong to the family o' Don Quixote; his name would be found in the catalogue o' your great-grandfathers." Even Peter Thornton, though no scholar, was grieved when the teacher called upon him, and complained of the giddiness of his adopted son, and of the little progress which he made under his care.

"Christie, ye rascal ye," said Peter, stamping his foot, "what news are these your master tells o' ye? He says he's ashamed o' ye, and that ye'll never learn."

But even for his thoughtlessness the kind heart of Jenny found an excuse.

"Dear me, goodman," said she, "I wonder to hear the master and ye talk; I am surprised that both o' ye haena mair sense. Do ye not tak into consideration that the bairn is learning in a foreign language? Had his mother lived, he would hae spoken Spanish; and how can ye expect him to be as glib at the English language as those that were learned—born, I may say—to speak it from the breast?" "True, Jenny," answered Peter, sagely, "I wasna thinking o' that; but there may be something in't. Maister," added he, addressing the teacher, "ye mustna, therefore, be owre hard wi' the laddie. He is a fine bairn, though he may be dull—and dull I canna think it possible he could be, if he would determine to learn."

Christopher, however, was as wild on the play-ground as he was dull and thoughtless in the school-room. Every person admired the happy-hearted orphan. Good Jenny Thornton said that he had been a great comfort to her; and that all the care she had taken over him was more than repaid by the kindness and gratitude of his heart. They were evident in all he said, and all that he did. Peter also loved the boy; he said, "Kit was an excellent laddie—for his part, indeed, he never saw his equal. He had now brought him up for nine years, and he could safely say that he never had occasion to raise a hand to him—indeed he did not remember the time that ever he had had occasion to speak an angry word to him; and he declared that he should inherit all that he possessed, as though he had been his own son."

Mrs Thornton often showed to him the rings which had been taken from his mother's fingers, with the inscriptions thereon; and on such occasions she would say, "Weel do I remember, hinny, when our goodman came running into the house one morning, shaking as though he had seen an apparition at midnight, and crying to me, quite out o' breath, 'Rise—rise, Jenny!—here is the dead body o' a woman in our stackyard!' I canna tell ye what my feelings were when he said so. I wished not to believe him. But had I wakened, and found myself in a grave, I could not have gotten a greater fricht. My heart louped to my throat, just as if it had gotten a sudden jerk with a person's whole might and strength! I dinna ken how I got my gown thrown on, for my teeth were chattering in my head—I shaked like a 'natomy! And when we did get to the stackyard, there was ye, like a dear wee lammie, mourning owre the breast o' yer dead mother, wi' yer bits o' handies pulling impatiently at yer bonny black hair, kissing her cold lips, or pulling her by the gown, and crying and uttering words which we didna understand. And oh, hinny, but your mother had been a weel-faured woman in her day!—I never saw her but a cold corpse, and I thought, even then, that I had never looked upon a bonnier face. She had evidently been a genteel person, but was sore, sore dejected. But she had two rings upon her fingers; one of them was a ring such as married women wear—the other was set wi' precious stones, which those who have seen them say, none but a duchess in this country could wear. Ye must examine them."—And here Mrs Thornton was in the habit of producing the rings, which she had carefully locked away, wrapped up in twenty folds of paper, and secured in a housewife which folded together within all. Then she would point out to him the initial letters, the C. F. and the M. V., and would add, "That has been your faither and your mother's name when they were sweethearts—at least so our Peter says (and he is seldom wrong); but the little e t between them—I canna think what it stands for. O Christopher, my canny laddie, it is a pity but that ye would only endeavour to be a scholar, as ye are good otherwise, and then ye might be able to tell what the e t means. Who kens but it may throw some light upon your parentage; for, if ever ye discover who your parents were, it will be through the instrumentality o' these rings. Peter always says that (and, as I say, he is seldom wrong) and therefore I always keep them locked away, lest onythin should come owre them; and when they are out o' the drawer, I never suffer them to be out o' my sight."

In the fulness of her heart Mrs Thornton told this story at least four times in the year, almost in the same words, and always exhibiting the rings. Her kindly counsels, and the cogent reasons which she urged to Christopher why he should become a scholar, at length awoke his slumbering energies. For the first time, he stood dux of his class, and once there, he stood like a nail driven into a wall, which might not be removed. His teacher, who was a man of considerable knowledge and reading (though perhaps not what those calling themselves learned would call a man of learning—for learned is a very vague word, and is as frequently applied where real ignorance exists, as to real knowledge)—that teacher who had formerly said that Christopher could not be a Spaniard, because that he had not solidity enough within him—now said that he believed he was one, and not a descendant of Don Quixote; but, if of anybody, a descendant of him who gave the immortal Don "a local habitation and a name;" for he now predicted that Christopher May would be a genius.

But, though the orphan at length rose to the head of his class, and though he passed from one class to another, he was still the same wild, boisterous, and daring boy, when they ran shouting from the school, cap in hand, and waving it over their heads, like prisoners relieved from confinement. If there was a quarrel to decide in the whole school, the orphan Christopher was the umpire. If a weak boy, or a cowardly boy, was threatened by another, Christopher became his champion. If a sparrow's nest was to be robbed, to achieve which a tottering gable was to be climbed, he did the deed; yea, or when a football match was to be played on Eastern E'en (or, as it was there called, Pancake Tuesday), if the orphan once got the ball at his foot, no man could again touch it.

His birth-day was not known; but he could scarce have completed his thirteenth year when his best friend died. Good, kind-hearted Jenny Thornton—than whom a better woman never breathed—was gathered with the dead; and her last request to her husband was, that he would continue to be the friend and protector of the poor orphan, and especially that he would take care of the rings which had been found upon his mother's hand. Now Peter was so overwhelmed with grief at the idea of being parted from her who, for twenty years, had been dearer to him than his own existence, that he could scarce hear her dying words. He followed her coffin like a broken-hearted man; and he sobbed over her grave like a weaned child on the lap of its mother. But many months had not passed when it was evident that the orphan Christopher was the only sincere mourner for Jenny Thornton. The widower was still in the prime and strength of his days, being not more than two-and-forty. He was a prosperous man—one who had had a cheap farm and a good one; and it was believed that Peter was able to purchase the land which he rented. Many, indeed, said that the tenant was a better man than his master—by a "better man," meaning a richer man.

Fair maidens, therefore, and widows to boot, were anxious to obtain the vacant hand of the wealthy widower. Some said that Peter would never forget Jenny, and that he would never marry again, for that she had been to him a wife amongst a thousand: and they spoke of the bitterness of his grief.

"Ay," said others, "but we ne'er like to see the tears run owre fast down the cheeks of a man. They show that the heart will soon drown its sorrow. Human nature is very frail; and a thing that we thought we would love for ever last year, we find that we only occasionally remember that we loved it this. If there be a real mourner for the loss of Mrs Thornton, it's the poor, foreign orphan laddie. Peter, notwithstanding all his greeting at the grave, will get another wife before twelve months go round."

They who said so were in the right. Poor Jenny had not been in her grave eleven months and twenty days, when Peter led another Mrs Thornton from the altar. When he had brought her home, he introduced to her the orphan Christopher.

"Now, dear," said he, "here is a laddie—none know whom he belongs to. I found him one morning, when he was a mere infant, screaming on the breast o' his dead mother. Since then I have brought him up. My late wife was very fond o' him—so, indeed, was I; and it is my request that ye will be kind to him. Here," added he, "are two rings which his mother had upon her fingers when I found her a cold corpse. Poor fellow, if anything ever enable him to discover who his parents were, it will be them, though there is but little chance that he ever will. However, I have been as a father to him for more than ten years, and I trust, love, that ye will act towards him as a mother. Come forward, Christopher," continued he, "and welcome your new mother."

The boy came forward, hanging his head, and bashfully stretched out his hand towards her; but the new-made Mrs Thornton had his mother's jewelled ring in her hand, and she observed him not. He stood with his eyes now bent upon the ground, now upon her, and again upon his mother's ring, as she turned it round and round.

"Well," said she, addressing her husband, and still turning it round as she spoke, "it is, indeed, a beautiful ring—a very beautiful ring!"

"I am glad ye think so," said he; "she had been a bonny woman that wore it."

She placed the ring upon her finger, she turned it round again, and gazed on it with admiration. "I should like to wear such a ring," she added.

"Why, hinny, and ye may wear it," said Peter; "for the ring is mine twenty times owre, whatever its value may be, considering what I have done for the laddie."

With an expression of countenance which might be described as something between a smile and a blush, or, as the people north the Tweed very aptly express it, with a "smirk," she slipped the ring upon her finger, saying that it fitted as well as though it had been made for her.

Passion flashed in the eyes of the orphan. His "new mother," as Peter styled her, had done what poor Jenny never ventured to do. He withdrew his hand which he had extended to greet her, and he was turning away sullenly, when his foster-father said, "Stop, Christopher, ye must not go away until you have shaken hands with your mother." And he turned again, and once more extended to her his hand.

"Well," said she, addressing her husband, and putting forth two of her fingers to Christopher, "is it really possible that you have brought up this great boy! What a trouble he must have been—and expense too!"

"Oh, you are quite mistaken," said Peter; "Christopher never cost us the smallest trouble. I have been proud of him and pleased with him, since ever I took him under my roof; and, poor fellow, as to the expense that he has cost me, if I never had seen his face, I wouldna hae been a penny richer to-day, but very possibly poorer; for he has very often amused me wi' his drollery, and keepit me in the house, when, but for him, I would have been down at Ponteland, or somewhere else, getting a glass wi' my neighbours."

Many weeks had not elapsed ere Christopher discovered that his protector who was dead had been succeeded by a living persecutor. A month had not passed when he was not permitted to enter the room where the second Mrs Thornton sat. Before two went round, he was ordered to take his meals with the servants; and he could do nothing with which a fault was not found. He had often, after scraping his shoes for five minutes together, to take them off and examine them, before he durst venture into the passage leading to the kitchen, which was now the only apartment in the house to which he had access.

Peter Thornton beheld the persecution which his adopted son endured; and he expostulated with his better half, that she would treat him more kindly. But she answered him, that he might have children enough of his own to provide for, without becoming a father to those of other people. Now, a stripling that is in love generally says and does many foolish things which he does not wish to have recalled to his recollection after he has turned thirty; but the middle-aged man who is so smitten invariably acts much more foolishly than the stripling. I have smiled to see them combing up their few remaining locks to cover their bald forehead, or carefully pulling away the grey hairs which appeared about their temples, and all to appear young in the eyes of some widowed or matronly divinity. I do not exactly agree with the poet who says—

"Love never strikes but once, that strikes at all!"

for I think, from nineteen to five-and-twenty, there are few men (or women either) who have not felt a peculiar sensation about their hearts which they took to be love, and felt it more than once too, and which ultimately would have become love, but for particular circumstances which broke off the acquaintanceship; and, before five-and-thirty, we forget that such a feeling had existed, and laugh at, or profess to have no patience with, those who are its victims. We should always remember, however, that it is not easy to put an old head upon young shoulders, and think of how we once felt and acted ourselves; and to recollect, also, how happy, how miserable, we were in those days. Love is an abused word. Elderly people turn up their nostrils when they see it in print. They will hardly read a book where the word occurs. They will fling it away, and cry "stuff!" But, if they would look back upon their days of old, they would treat it with more respect. But the second love of your middle-aged men and women—call it doting, or call it by any other name, but do not call it love, for that it is not, and cannot be. Man never knows what love is, until he has experienced the worth of an affectionate wife, who for his sake would suffer all that the world's ills can inflict.

Now, Peter Thornton, though not an old man, and although his first wife had certainly been dear unto him, yet he had a doting fondness for his second spouse, who obtained an ascendency over him, and, to his surprise, left him no longer master of his own house.

But she bore to him a son; and, after the birth of the child, his care over Christopher every day diminished. The orphan was given over to persecution—the hand of every one was raised against him—and, finding that he had now no one to whom he could apply for redress, he lifted up his own hand in his defence. The serving-maids who ill-treated him soon found him more than their equal; and to the men-servants, when they used him roughly, he shook his head, threatening that he would soon be a match for them.

The coldness which Mrs Thornton had at first manifested towards him soon relapsed into perfect hatred. He was taken from the school; and she hourly forced upon him the most menial offices. For hours together he was doomed to rock the cradle of her child, and was sure of being beaten the moment it awoke. Nor was this all—but, when friends visited her, poor Christopher was compelled to wait at the table, at which he had once sat by the side of Jenny Thornton, and whoever might be the guests, he was first served. She even provoked her husband, until he lifted his hand and struck the orphan violently—forgetting the proverb, that "they should have light hands who strike other people's bairns." The boy looked upbraidingly in Peter's face as he struck him for the first time, though he uttered no complaint; but that very look whispered to his heart, "What would Jenny have said, had she seen this?" And Peter, repenting of what he did, turned away and wept. Yet a sin that is once committed is less difficult to commit again, and remorse becomes as an echo that is sinking faint. Having, therefore, once lifted his hand against the orphan—though he then wept for having done so—it was not long until the blows were repeated without compunction.

Christopher, however, was a strange boy—perhaps what some would call a provoking one—and often, when Mrs Thornton pursued him from the house to chastise him, he would hastily climb upon the tops of the houses of the farm-servants, and sitting astride upon them, nod down to her triumphantly, as with threats she shook her hand in his face; and, smiling, sing

"Loudon's bonny woods and braes."

But his favourite song, on such occasions, was the following, which, if it be not the exact words that he sang, embodies the sentiment—

"'Can I forget the woody braes
Where love and innocence foregather;
Where aft, in early summer days,
I've croon'd a sang among the heather?
Can I forget my father's hearth—
My mother by the ingle spinnin—
Their weel-pleased look to see the mirth
O' a' their bairnies round them rinnin?

'It was a waefu hour to me,
When I frae them and love departed:
The tear was in my mother's ee—
My father blest me—broken-hearted;
My aulder brithers took my hand—
The younkers a' ran frae me greetin!
But, waur than this—I couldna stand
My faithfu lassie's fareweel meetin!

'Can I forget her partin kiss,
Her last fond look, and true love token?
Forget an hour sae dear as this!
Forget!—the word shall ne'er be spoken!
Forget!—na, though the foamin sea,
High hills, and mony a sweepin river,
May lie between their hearth and me,
My heart shall be at hame for ever.'"

Now, when Christopher was pursued by his persecutor, and sought refuge on the house-tops, sitting upon them much after the fashion of a tailor, he carolled the song we have just quoted most merrily. Many, indeed, wondered that he, never having known the hearth of either a father or a mother, should have sung such a song; but it was so, and the orphan delighted to sing it. Yet we often do many things for which we find it difficult to assign a reason. There was one amusing trait in the character of Christopher; and that was, that the more vehemently Mrs Thornton scolded him, and the more bitter her imprecations against him became, so, while he sat as a tailor on the house-top, did his song wax louder and more loud, and his strain become merrier. We have heard women talk of being ready to eat the nails from their fingers with vexation, and on such occasions Mrs Thornton was so. But her anger did not amend the disposition of Christopher, though it often drew down upon him the indignation of her husband.

It has already been mentioned that he struck him once; and, having done so, he felt no repugnance to do it frequently. For it is only the first time that we commit a sin that we have the horror of its commission before us. The orphan now became like unto Ishmael; for every man's hand was against him, and I might say every woman's too. Now, during the lifetime of Jenny, he had had everything his own way, and whatsoever he said was done; some said that he was a spoiled child, and it was at least evident that his humour was never thwarted. This caused him to have the more enemies now; and every menial on the farm of Peter Thornton became his persecutor. It is the common fate of all favourites—to-day they are treated with abject adulation, and to-morrow, if the sun which shone on them be clouded, no one thinks him too low to look on them with disdain.

For more than three years, Christopher's life became a scene of continual martyrdom. He was now, however, a tall and powerful young man of seventeen; and many who had been in the habit of raising their hands against him found it discreet to do so no more. But Mrs Thornton was not of this number; she found some cause to lift her hand and strike the orphan, as often as he came into her presence. Even Peter, kind as he had once been, treated him almost as cruelly as his wife. It was not that he disliked him as she did; but she had soured and fretted his disposition; and, unconsciously to himself, from being the orphan's friend, he became his terror and tormentor.

But one day, when the violence of Mrs Thornton far exceeded the bounds of endurance, Christopher turned upon her, and, with the revenge of a Spaniard glistening in his eyes, grasped her by the throat. She screamed aloud for help, and her husband and the farm-servants rushed to her assistance.

"Back, back!" exclaimed Christopher. "Woman, give me the rings—give me the rings!—they are mine—they were my mother's!"

Peter sprang forward, and grasped hold of him.

"Touch me not!" exclaimed the orphan; "I will be your slave no longer! Give me the rings—my mother's rings!"

Peter stood aghast at the manner of the boy. His every look, his every action, bespoke desperation. He thrust his clenched hand towards Mr Thornton, exclaiming, "Touch me not!—the rings are mine!—I will have them!"

"The muckle mischief confound ye!" exclaimed Peter, with a look of half fear and bewilderment; "what in a' the world is the matter wi' ye, Christopher? Is the laddie out o' his head?"

"The rings—my mother's rings!" cried the orphan; and, as he spoke, he grasped more violently the hand of Mrs Thornton.

"The like o' that," said Peter, "I never saw in my existence. In my opinion, the laddie is no in his right judgment."

But Christopher tore the rings from the hands of Mrs Thornton, exclaiming, "Farewell—farewell!"

"The like o' that!" said Peter, in amazement, holding up his hands; "the laddie is surely daft. Follow him, some o' ye."

Mrs Thornton sank down in hysterics. Her husband endeavoured to soothe and restore her; and the men-servants followed Christopher. But it was an idle task. No one had rivalled him in speed of foot, and they could not overtake him.

"The time will come," he cried, as he ran, "when Peter Thornton will repent his conduct towards me. Follow me not; for the first who shall lay a hand upon me shall die."

The farm-servants who pursued him were awed by his manner, and, after following him about a mile, turned back.

"Where can the laddie have gone to?" said Peter; "he never took ony o' those fits in Jenny's time. I hope, wife, that ye have done nothing to him that ye ought not to have done."

"Me done to him!" she cried; "ye will bring up your beggars, and this is your reward."

"Mrs Thornton," answered he, "I am amazed and astonished to behold this conduct in Christopher. For more than fourteen years he has been an inmate beneath my roof; seldom have I had to quarrel him, and never until you became my wife."

The words between Peter and his better half grew loud and angry; but, instead of describing their matrimonial altercations, we shall follow the orphan Christopher.

But, before accompanying him in his flight from the house of Peter Thornton, we shall go back a few years, and take up another part of his history.

There resided in the neighbourhood in which Christopher had been brought up one George Wilkinson, who had a daughter named Jessie. Christopher and Jessie were school-mates together; and when the other children ran hallooing from the school, they walked together, whispering, smiling at each other. It was strange that affection should have sprung up in such young hearts. But it was so.

Christopher became the one absorbing thought upon which the mind of Jessie dwelt; and she became the day-dream of his being. She was comparatively a child when he left the house of his foster-father—so was he; yet, although they became thus early parted, they forgot not each other. Young as she was, Jessie Wilkinson lay on her bed and wept for the sake of poor Christopher. They indeed might be said to be but the tears of a child; yet they were tears which we can shed but once. Young as Jessie was, Christopher became the dream of her future existence. She remembered the happy days that they had passed together, when the hawthorn was in blossom or the bean was in the bloom, when they loitered together, side by side, and the air was pregnant with fragrance, while his hand would touch hers, and he would say, "Jessie!" and look in her face and wonder what he meant to have said; and she would answer him, "Christopher!" Still did those days haunt the recollection of the simple girl; and as she grew in years and stature, his remembrance became the more entwined around her heart. When she had reached the age of womanhood, other wooers offered her their hand; but she thought of the boy that had first loved her; and to him her memory clung, as the evening dawn falleth on the hills. Her father was but a poor man; and when many perceived the liking which Christopher May, the adopted son and supposed heir of the rich Peter Thornton, entertained for her, they said that nothing, or at least no good, would proceed from their acquaintance. But they who so said did not truly judge of the heart of Jessie. She was one of those who can love but once, and that once must be for ever. In their early childhood, Christopher had become a part of her earliest affection, and she now found it impossible to forget him, or shake his remembrance from her bosom. It was certainly a girl's love, and elderly people will laugh at it; but why should they laugh? They were the feelings which they once cherished—the feelings which were once dearest to them—the feelings without which they believed they could not exist—and wherefore could they blame poor Jessie for remembering what they had forgot?

Many years passed, and no one heard of Christopher. Even Peter Thornton knew nothing of where he was, or what had become of him—the child of his adoption was lost to him. He heard his neighbours upbraid him with having treated the boy with cruelty; and Peter's heart was troubled. He reflected upon his wife for her conduct towards the orphan, and it gave rise to bickerings between them.

Hitherto we have spoken of the unknown orphan—we must now speak of an unknown soldier. At the battle of Salamanca, amongst the men who there distinguished themselves, there was a young serjeant whose feats of valour attracted the notice of his superiors. Where the battle raged fiercest, there were the effects of his arm made visible; his impetuosity over all his enemies had attracted the notice of his superior officers. But, in the moment of victory, when the streets were lined with dead, the young hero fell, covered with bayonet wounds. A field-officer, who had been an observer of his conduct, ordered a party of his men to attempt his rescue. The life of the young hero was long despaired of; and when he recovered, several officers, in admiration of his courage, agreed to present him with a sword. It was beautifully ornamented, and bore the inscription—

"Presented to Christopher May, serjeant in the —— regiment of infantry, by several officers who were witnesses of the heroism he displayed at the battle of Salamanca."

The sword was presented to him at the head of his regiment, and the officer who placed it in his hand addressed him, saying, "Young soldier, the gallant bearing which you exhibited at Salamanca has excited the admiration of all who beheld it. The officers of your own regiment, therefore, and others, have deemed it their duty to present you with this sword, as a reward of merit, and a testimony of the admiration with which your heroism has inspired them. I have now the gratification of placing it in the hands of a brave man. Take it, and if your parents yet live, it will be a trophy of which they will be proud, and which your posterity will exhibit with admiration."

"My parents!" said the young soldier, with a sigh; "alas, sir! I never knew one whom I could call by the endearing name of father or of mother. I am an orphan—an unknown one. I believe I am not even an Englishman, but a native of the land for the freedom of which we now fight!"

"You a Spaniard!" said the officer, with surprise; "it is impossible—neither your name nor features bespeak you to belong to this nation. But you say that you never knew your parents—what know you of your history?"

"Little, indeed," he replied; and as he spoke, the officers gathered around him, and he continued—"I have been told that in the month of May, four-and-twenty years ago, the dead body of a woman was found in a farm-yard, about fifteen miles north of Newcastle. She was dressed in Spanish costume, and a child of about three years of age hung weeping on her bosom. I was that child; and I have been told that the few words I could then lisp were Spanish. The kind-hearted wife of the honest Northumbrian who found me brought me up as her own child; and while she lived, I might almost have said I had a mother. But at her death, I found indeed that I had neither parent, kindred, nor country, but that I was in truth, what some called me in derision, 'The Unknown.' I entered the army, and have fought in defence of the land to which I believe I belong. This only do I know of my history, or of who or what I am."

While the young serjeant spoke, every eye was bent upon him interestedly; but there was one who was moved even to tears. He was an officer of middle age, named Major Ferguson. He approached the gallant youth, he gazed earnestly in his face.

"You say that you were about three years old," he said, "when you were found clinging to the breast of your mother; have you no remembrance of her—no recollection of the name by which you were then called?"

"None! none!" answered the other. "I sometimes fancy that, as the vague remembrance of a dream, I recollect clinging around my mother's neck, and kissing her cold lips; but whether it indeed be remembrance, or merely the tale that has been often told me, I am uncertain. I often imagine, also, that her beautiful features yet live in my memory, though with the indistinctness of an ethereal being—like a vapour that is dying away on the far horizon; and I am uncertain, also, whether the fair vision that haunts me be indeed a dim remembrance of what my mother was, or a creation of my brain."

The interest of the scene was heightened by the resemblance which Major Ferguson and the young serjeant bore to each other. All observed it—all expressed their surprise—and the major, in his turn, began his tale.

"Your features, young man," said he, "and your story, have drawn tears to the eyes of an old soldier. Thirty years ago I was in this country, and became an inmate in the house of a rich merchant in Madrid. His name was Valdez, and he had an only daughter called Maria. When I first beheld her, she was about nineteen, and a being more beautiful I had never seen—I have not seen. Affection sprang up between us; for it was impossible to look on her and not love. Her father, though he at first expressed some opposition to our wishes, on the ground of my being a Protestant, at length gave his consent, and Maria became my wife. For several months our happiness was as a dream—as a summer sky where there is no cloud. But our days of felicity were of short continuance. We have all heard of the revengeful disposition of the Spanish people, and it was our lot to be its victims. I have said that it was impossible to look upon the face of Maria, and not love; and many of the grandees and wealthiest citizens of Madrid sought her hand. Amongst the former was a nephew of an Inquisitor. He vowed to have his revenge—and he has had it. In the dead of night, a band of ruffians burst into the bedchamber of Maria's father, and dragged him to the dungeons of the Inquisition. For several weeks, and we could learn nothing of what had become of him; but his property was seized and confiscated, as though he had been a common felon. My wife was then the mother of an infant son, and I endeavoured to effect our concealment, until an opportunity of escaping to England might be found. We had approached within a hundred yards of the vessel, when a band of armed men rushed upon us. They overpowered me; and while one party bore away my wife and child, others dragged me into a carriage, one holding a pistol to my breast, while another tied a bandage over my eyes. They continued to drive with furious rapidity for about six hours, when I was torn from the carriage, and dragged between the ruffians through numerous winding passages. I heard the grating of locks and the creaking of bolts, as they proceeded. Door succeeded door, groaning on their unwilling hinges, as they ascended stairs, and descended others, in an interminable labyrinth. Still the men who hurried me onward maintained a sullen silence; and no sound was heard, save the clashing of prison doors, and the sepulchral echo of their footsteps ringing through the surrounding dungeons. They at length stopped. A cord, suspended from a block in the roof was fastened round my waist; and, when one, turning a sort of windlass, which communicated with the other end of the cord, raised me several feet from the ground, his comrade drew a knife, and cut asunder the fastenings that bound my arms. While one, holding the handle of the machine, kept me hanging in the air, other two applied a key to a large, square stone in the floor, which, aided by a spring, they with some difficulty raised, and revealed a yawning opening to a dungeon, yet deeper and more dismal than that which formed its entrance. The moment my hands were at liberty, I tore the bandage from my eyes, and perceiving, through the aid of a dim lamp that flickered in a corner of the vault, the horror of my situation, I struggled in desperation. But my threatenings and my groans were answered only by their hollow echoes, or the more dismal laughter of my assassins.

"Down—down!" vociferated both voices to their companion, as the stone was raised; and, in a moment, I was plunged into the dark mouth of the dungeon. I uttered a cry of agony louder and longer than the rest; and, as my body sunk into the abyss, I clutched its edge in despair. One of the ruffians sprang forward, and, blaspheming as he raised his foot, dashed his iron heels upon my fingers. Mine was the grasp of a dying man; and, thrusting forward my right hand, I seized the ankle of the monster, who attempted to kick me in the face. With my left I strengthened my hold, and my body plunging downward with the movement, dragged after me the wretch, who, uttering a piercing shriek, as his head dashed on the brink of the fearful dungeon, escaped instantly from my grasp, and with an imprecation on his tongue, he was plunged headlong into darkness many fathoms deep. Startled by the cry of his comrade, the other sprang from the machine by which he was lowering me into the vault, and I in consequence descended with the violence of a stone driven from a strong arm. But, before I reached the bottom, the cord by which I hung was expended, and I swung in torture between the sides of the dungeon. In this state of agony I remained for several minutes, till one of the miscreants cutting the rope, I fell with my face upon the bloody and mangled body of their accomplice; and the huge stone was placed over us, enveloping both in darkness, solid and substantial as the pit of wrath itself.

"A paralysing feeling of horror and surprise, and the violence with which I fell upon the mangled body of my victim, for a time deprived me of all consciousness of my situation; nor was it until the convulsive groans of the bleeding wretch beneath me recalled me in some measure to a sense of other miseries than my own, that a remembrance of the past, and a feeling of the present, opened upon my mind, like the confused terror of a dismal dream. I rose slowly to my feet, and, disengaging myself from the rope by which I was suspended into the vault, endeavoured to look around the walls of my prison-house—but all was dark as the grave. Recollecting the part sustained in seizing me by the wounded man, who still groaned and writhed at my feet, I darted fiercely upon him; and hurling him from the ground, exclaimed, 'Villain!—tell me or die!—where am I? or by whom am I brought here?' A loud, long yell of terror, accompanied by violent and despairing struggles, like a wild beast tearing from the paws of a lion, was the only answer returned by the miserable being. And as the piteous and heart-piercing yell rang round the cavern, and its echoes, multiplying in darkness, at length died away, leaving silence more dolorous than ourselves, I felt as a man from the midst of a marriage-feast, suddenly thrust into the cells of Bedlam; where, instead of the music of the harp and the lute, was the shriek and the clanking chains of insanity; for bridal ornaments, the madman's straw; and for the gay dance, the convulsions of the maniac, and the sorrowful gestures of idiocy. Every feeling of indignation passed away—my blood grew cold—the skin moved upon my flesh—I again laid the wretched man on the damp earth, and fearfully groped to the opposite side of the dungeon.

"As I moved around, feeling through the dense darkness of my prison, I found it a vast square, its sides composed merely of the rude strata of earth or rock; and measuring nearly six times the length of my extended arms. As often as I moved, bones seemed to crackle beneath my feet; and a noise, like the falling of armour and the sounding of steel, accompanied the crumbling fragments. Once I stooped to ascertain the cause, and raising a heavy body, a part of it fell with a loud, hollow crash among my feet, leaving the lighter portion in my hands. It was a round bony substance, covered, and partly filled, with damp, cold dust. I was neither superstitious nor a coward; but, as I drew my hand around it, my body quivered, the hair upon my head moved, and my heart felt heavy. It was the form of a human skull. The damp dust had once been the temple of a living soul. My fingers entered the sockets of the eyes—the teeth fell in my hands—and the still fresh and dewy hair twined around it. I shuddered—it fell from my grasp—the chill of death passed over me. The horrid conviction that I was immured in a living grave absorbed every other feeling; and smiting my brow in horror, I threw myself, with a groan, amidst the dead of other years.

"I again sprang to my feet, with the undetermined and confused wildness of despair. The mournful howlings of the assassin continued to render the horrid sepulchre still more horrible, and gave to its darkness a deeper ghostliness. Dead to every emotion of sympathy, stricken with dismal realities, and more terrible imaginations, yet burning for revenge, directed by the howlings of the miserable man, and hesitating to distinguish between them and their incessant echoes, stretching my hands before me, I again approached him, to extort a confession of the cause and place of my imprisonment, or rather living burial. Vainly I raised him from the ground—threatening, soothing, and expostulation were alike unavailing. On hearing my voice, the miserable being shrieked with redoubled bitterness, plunged furiously, and gnashed his teeth, fastening them, in the extremity of his frenzy, in his own flesh. His fierce agony recalled to my bosom an emotion of pity; and, for a moment, forgetful of my own injuries and condition, I thought only of relieving his suffering; but my presence seemed to add new madness to his tortures; and he tore himself from my hold with the lamentable yells of a tormented mastiff, and the strength of a giant who, in the last throe of expiring nature, grapples with his conqueror. He reeled wildly a few paces, and fell, with a crash, upon the earth.

"Slowly and dismally the hours moved on, with no sound to measure their progress, save the audible beating of my own heart, and the death-like howling moan of my companion. As I leaned against the wall, counting these dismal divisions of time, which appeared thus fearfully to mete out the duration of my existence, through the black darkness, whose weight had become oppressive to my eyeballs, I beheld, far above me, on the opposite wall, a faint shadow, like the ghost of light, streaking its side, but so indistinct and imperfect, I knew not whether it was fancy or reality. With the earnestness of death, my eyes remained fixed on the 'gloomy light;' and it threw upon my bosom a hope dim as itself. Again I doubted its existence—deemed it a creation of my brain; and groping along the damp floor, where my hand seemed passing over the ribs of a skeleton, I threw a loose fragment in the air, towards the point from whence the doubted glimmering proceeded; and perceived, for a moment, as it fell, the shadow of a substance. Then, springing forward to the spot, I gasped to inhale, with its feeble ray, one breath that was not agony.

"Thirst burned my lips, and, to cool them, they were pressed against the damp walls of the prison; but my tongue was still dry—my throat parched—and hunger began to prey upon me. While thus suffering, a faint light streamed from a narrow opening in the roof of the vault. Slowly a feeble lamp was lowered through the aperture, and descended within two or three feet of my head. A small basket, containing a portion of bread and a pitcher of water, suspended by a cord, was let down into the vault. I seized the pitcher, as I would have rushed upon liberty; and raising it to my lips, as the pure, grateful beverage allayed the fever of my thirst, I shed a solitary tear, and, in the midst of my misery, that tear was a tear of joy—like the morning-star gilding the horizon, when the surrounding heavens are wrapped in tempest. With it the feelings of the Christian and the man met in my bosom; and, bending over my fellow-sufferer, I applied the water to his lips. The poor wretch devoured the draught to its last drop with greediness.

"The presence and the unceasing groans of my companion—yea, the dungeon and darkness themselves—were forgotten in the one deadening and bitter idea, that my wife and child were also captives, and in the power of ruffians. If any other thought was indulged a moment, it was longing for liberty, that I might fly to their rescue—and it was then only that I became again sensible of captivity; and my eyes once more sought the dubious gleam that stretched fitfully across the wall, becoming more evident to perception as I became inured to the surrounding blackness. Hope burned and brightened, as I traced the source of its dreamy shadows; and from thence weaved plans of escape, which, in the calculation of fancy, were already as performed; though, before reason and common possibilities, they would have perished as the dewy nets that, with the damps of an autumnal morning, overspread the hawthorn with their spangled lacework, and, before the rising sunbeam, shrink into nothing.

"But gradually my grief and despair subsided, and gave place to the cheering influence of hope, and the resolution of attempting my escape; and I rose to eat the bread and drink the water of captivity, to strengthen me for the task. For many hours, the presence of my companion had been forgotten; he still continued to howl, as one whom the horrors of an accusing conscience were withholding from the grasp of death; and I, roused from the reverie of my feelings and projects at the sound of his sufferings, hastened to apply water and morsels of bread to the lips of my perishing fellow-prisoner; for bread and water had been lowered into the vault.

"In order to carry my plan of escape into effect, for the first time, aided by the lamp that was suspended over me, I gazed inquisitively, and with a feeling of dismay, around the Golgotha in which I was immured. There lay my hideous companion, the foam of pain and insanity gurgling from his mouth; beside him the skeleton of a mailed warrior, and around, the uncoffined bones of four others, partly covered with their armour, and

'The brands yet rusted in their bony hands.'

"Although prepared for such a scene, I placed my hands before my eyes, shuddering at the thought of becoming as one of those—of being their companion while I lived—of lying down by the side of a skeleton to die! The horror of the idea fired anew my resolution, and added more than human strength to my arm. I again eagerly sought the direction of the doubtful gleam, which formerly filled me with hope; and was convinced that from thence an opening might be effected, if not to perfect liberty, to a sight of the blessed light of heaven, where freedom, I dreaded not, would easily be found. Filled with determination, which no obstacle could impede, I took one of the swords, which had lain by the side of its owner untouched for ages, and with this instrument commenced the laborious and seemingly impossible task of cutting out a flight of steps in the rude wall, and thereby gaining the invisible aperture from which something like light was seen to emanate. The ray proceeded from an extreme angle of the dungeon, and apparently at its utmost height. The materials on which I had to work were chiefly a hard granite rock, and other lighter, but scarce more manageable strata.

"Several anxious and miserable weeks thus passed in sluggish succession. Half of my task was accomplished; and hope, with impatience, looked forward to its completion. I still divided my scanty meals with my companion, who, although recovered from the bruises occasioned by his fall, was become more horrible and fiend-like than before. As his body resumed its functions, his mind became the terrible imaginings of a guilty conscience. He had either lost, or forgotten, the power of walking upright, and prowled, howling round the dungeon, on his hands and feet; while his dark bushy beard and revolting aspect gave him more the manner and appearance of a wild beast than a human being.

"Our portion of food being barely sufficient for the sustenance of one, hunger had long been added to the list of our sufferings; but particularly to those of the maniac. And, with the cunning peculiar to such unfortunates, he watched the return of the basket, which was daily lowered with provisions, and frequently before I—who, absorbed in the completion of my task, forgot or heeded not my jailer's being within hearing—could descend to the ground, he would grasp the basket, swallow off the water at a draught, and hurry with the bread to a corner of a dungeon; thus leaving me without food for the next twenty-four hours.

"It was at the period when I had half completed my object, that my companion, springing, as was his wont, upon the basket, before I could approach to withhold him, succeeded in draining off the contents of a goblet, in which a few drops of a dark-coloured liquid still remained; and the pitcher of water was untouched. The wretched maniac had swallowed the draught but a few minutes, when, rolling himself together, his screams and contortions became more frightful than before, and increased in virulence for an hour. He lay motionless a few seconds, gasping for breath; then, springing suddenly to his feet, he gazed wistfully above and around him, with a look of extreme agony, and exclaiming, 'Heaven help me!' he rushed fiercely towards the wall in the opposite direction to where I was attempting to effect my escape, gave one furious pull at what appeared the solid rock, and, with a groan, fell back, and expired.

"When the horror occasioned by his death in some degree abated, the singularity of the manner in which he tore at the wall of the dungeon, fixed my attention; and, with almost frantic joy, I perceived that a portion of the hitherto thought impenetrable rock, had yielded several inches to his dying grasp. I hastily removed the body, and pulling eagerly at the unloosed fragment, it fell upon the ground, a rough unhewn lump of granite, leaving an opening of about two feet square in the rude rocky wall, from which it was so cut, as to seem to feeling and almost appearance a solid part of it.

"My task was now abandoned. The gleam of light, which for weeks was to me an object of such intense interest, proceeded from a mere hairbreadth cleft in the rock. Taking up a sword which lay upon the ground, I drew my body into the aperture formed by the removal of the piece of rock; and creeping slowly on my hands and knees, groping with the weapon before me, I at length found the winding and dismal passage sufficiently lofty to permit me to stand erect. I seemed enveloped in an interminable cavern, now opening into spacious chambers, clothed with crystal; again losing itself in low passages, or narrow chinks of the rock, and suddenly terminating in a slippery precipice, beneath which gurgling waters were heard to run. Hours and hours passed; still I was groping onward; when I suddenly found my hopes cut off, by the interposition of a precipice. I probed fearfully forward with the sword, but all was an unsubstantial void; I drew it on each side, and then it met but the solid walls. I knelt, and reached down the sword to the length of my arm, but it touched nothing. In agony, I dropped the weapon, by its sound to ascertain the depth; and, delighted, found it did not exceed eight or ten feet. I cautiously slid down, and groping around, again placed my hand upon the sword. Though my heart occasionally sank within me, yet the overcoming of each difficulty lent its inspiring aid to overcome its successor. Often every hope appeared extinct. Now I ascended, or again descended the dropping and crystalled rocks; now crept into openings, which suddenly terminated, and turning again, anxiously listened to the sound of the rippling water as my only guide. Often, in spite of every precaution, I was stunned with a blow from the abrupt lowness of the roof, or suddenly plunged to the arms in the numerous pools, whose waters had been dark from their birth.

"Language cannot convey an idea of the accumulating horrors of my situation. Struggling with suffocation, with a feeling more awful than terror, and with despair, the agony of darkness must be experienced to be imagined.

"Still I moved on; and suddenly, when ready to sink, wearied, fainting, hopeless, the glorious light of day streamed upon my sight. I bounded forward with a wild shout; but the magnificent sun, bursting from the eastern heavens, blinded my unaccustomed gaze.

"I again found that I was free: but my wife—my child—where were they? It was many years before I learned that the nephew of the inquisitor, who had sought her hand, having died, she regained her liberty, and fled with our infant son to Scotland, to seek the home of her lost husband. Since then I have never heard of them again."

When the major had thus concluded his narrative,

"Here," said Christopher, "are two rings which were taken from the fingers of my mother—both bear inscriptions."

The old officer gazed upon them.

"They were hers—my Maria's!" he exclaimed; "I myself placed them upon her fingers. Son of my Maria, thou art mine!"

The major purchased a commission for his long-lost son; and when peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, they returned to Northumberland together, where Christopher gave his sword as a memorial to his foster-father, Peter Thornton, and his hand to Jessie Wilkinson.

---

THE TRIALS OF MENIE DEMPSTER.

In the contemplation of the affairs of the world, there is perhaps nothing that strikes a philosophical observer with more wonder than what has been quaintly called the mutability of truth. With the exception of some of the best ascertained laws of matter, and the evidences and sanctions of our holy religion, there is scarcely anything around us that can be said to be absolutely determined and ascertained in all its bearings—including the influential cause, in a chain extending its unseen links through many minds; the proximate cause, involved in the dark recesses of the soul of the actor; and the effects, spread forth in endless ramification through society. Men are judged of, condemned, hanged, reviled, ruined, elevated, applauded, and rewarded upon less than a thousandth part of the real moral truth that is evident to the eye of the Almighty; and it too often happens, that what seems to be best ascertained by the united testimony of many soothfast witnesses, is after all little better than a lie, or an invention of men's minds, rolled up in the clouds of prejudice, selfishness, or hallucination. This truth, of no truth, is apparent to all thinking men; and yet how melancholy is it to reflect that we are so constructed that we cannot but live and act upon the principle and practice that we see the whole, when we see only an insignificant part, that, if observed in the midst of the general array brought out by divine light, would appear not only a speck, but by the influence of surrounding evidence, changed in its nature, and reversed in its object and bearing! It was but a partial, though a striking illustration of this fact, that the murder which Sir Walter Raleigh saw committed with his own eyes from the Tower window came to him so distorted and changed, through the medium of public and judicial report, that he could scarcely recognise in it the lineaments of the vision of his senses; for if the act he witnessed performed in the streets of London were falsified by the errors or inventions of man, how little could have been known of the motives that led to its commission! This subject, if carried out, might open up a dreadful array of the effects of man's conceit and blindness, exhibiting innocent individuals paying the penalty of death for the crimes of others; characters without a stain immolated at the shrine of public prejudice; and innocence suffering in ten thousand different ways under the cruel scorn of the bloodthirsty Chiun of a blind yet self-sufficient public. We are led into these observations by the facts of a curious case of false implication that occurred near Edinburgh many years ago, from which, besides the interest it may inspire, we may learn the lesson of that charity which our blessed Saviour laboured so much to make a ruling principle in the men of the world, but with a success that might form a melancholy theme for the fair investigations of philanthropists.

In the village of Old Broughton, situated on the north of the old town of Edinburgh, and now nearly swallowed up by the surrounding masses of architectural grandeur that compose the new town of that proud city, there lived (we love the good old style of beginning a story) the old widow of William Dempster, who long officiated in the capacity of precentor in the ancient kirk of the Tron; where his voice, loud as that of Cycloborus, stirred the sleeping power of vocal worship in the breasts of the good citizens. His voice had long been mute, not as that of Elihu, who trembled to speak to the Lord, but as that of those who lie in the mould till that day when there shall be no hindrance by the chilling hand of death, to sing the praises of the King of heaven and earth. Yet the voice of thanksgiving was not silent in the house of the widow and fatherless, where old Euphan, as she was styled, and her pretty daughter Menie, lived that life whose enjoyments the proud may despise, but whose end and reward they may envy in vain. It may not be that it was their choice (as whose choice is it?) to be poor; but it was their wisdom to know, as expressed by old Boston, that it may be more pleasant to live in a palace, but it is more easy to die in a cottage. The characters of these individuals, who happily never dreamed of forming heroines in the "Border Tales," can be best appreciated by those who lived in the last century; for in these jaunty days, when the sun of perfectibility is beginning to dawn on the moral horizon of a once sinful world, the contentment that is derived from a trust in heaven, and the pride that is begotten of a virtue that rejoices in itself, are more often pictured by the pen of the fictioneer than found in the place and personages that be. The representations of our old painter, George Jamesone, would be true as applied to Euphan Dempster and her daughter; for the dresses of the women of Scotland underwent small change until the eventful era of the nineteenth century; but we need them not—for our faithful memory has treasured the description of our parent, who lived to set forth the old representative of the Covenanters, sitting with her linsey-woolsey gown, of green or cramosie, made close in the sleeves—the body tight, and peaked in the form of the old separate bodice—the huge swelling skirt of many folds, twined out at the pocket-holes, and open in front, to show the bright-coloured petticoat of callimankey—her round-eared mutch that served the purpose of bonnet and coif—her clear-bleached tuck, with its row of mother-of-pearl buttons running down the front—and her hose of white woollen, that disappeared at the extremities in the shoe, whose high-turned heels gave a kind of dignity to the step of the poor. The dress of the mother in those days was almost that of the daughter, with the exception of the head-gear, which, in the latter, was limited to a band of black velvet (the bandeau), to restrain the flowing locks; and, high as the word velvet may sound, there were few maidens, however poor, that wanted the small strip of the costly material that now is seen covering the whole persons of the wives of rich tradesmen.

Such were the external characteristics of the inhabitants of the old red-tiled dwelling, so long known by the name of Dominie Dempster's House, in the village of Old Broughton; and, if we will form a character out of a combination of the virtues that dignified and graced the wives and daughters of the old Cameronians, we might make a fair approach to the dispositions and habits of this solitary pair, whose earthly stay and support being gone, trusted implicitly to Heaven, for what Heaven has seldom denied to the good. The mother was one of those happily-constituted beings, whose minds are so completely formed, as it were, upon the Bible, that not only were her actions regulated by the precepts of the holy book, but her thoughts were naturally and almost unconsciously expressed in Scripture language; nor could it be said that, dearly as she loved the old defenders of our faith, who reared their temples among the mountains, and died on the altars, she imitated their speech and manners merely because she loved their virtues—she only drew from the same fountain from which they drew; and the water that slaked their thirst in the wilderness of their persecution sustained her in the hour of her privation. Obeying the holy behest, "Let thine heart retain my words," she made the religion of Christ "the life of her soul;" and that which was a part of her spirit could not fail to regulate her conversation. An heir of an ever-blessed eternity, in which she believed soon to enter, the only worldly feeling that bound her to life was her desire to see her beloved Menie exhibit the fruits of her parental culture as fair to the eye of virtue, as the many simple beauties of her person—her blooming Scotch face, with the blue eye, and cheek that rivalled the peach in softness and colour; her mermaiden hair, and the graces of an almost perfect harmony of proportions—were to the eye of the admirer of female loveliness. And this the mother had already in part seen in the evolution of all those estimable qualities of the heart, that, when joined to physical beauty, form the fairest object among all the fair creatures of this fair but fleeting world.

It is a trite saying, that female beauty seldom brings happiness to the possessor, even when it is combined with that goodness that ought to guard the children of virtue from the evils of life; and this was to some extent verified by almost the first of the acts of our younger heroine's intercourse with the world; for she secured the heart of a lover even against her own will, and, with the unsought-for boon, got unwittingly the envy, and deep but concealed hatred, of her earliest friend and companion. The son of the farmer of the Mains of Inverleith, a property in the neighbourhood, George Wallace, had for some time been paying his addresses to Margaret Grierson, the daughter of the occupant of one of the small cottages of Broughton; and his success was in proportion to the attractions of a fine manly figure, and considerable power of that species of conversation which, with love ever on its wings, finds a ready access to the hearts of women. Though his passion had not been declared, it had, by the anticipative selfishness of the sex, been assumed and claimed by the object of his attentions; and Menie had been so far made a confidant of her companion, as to be intrusted with the secret of a love which had as yet been declared only on one side. The communication was sufficient to prevent the simple friend, even if there had been in her disposition any spirit of rivalship—a feeling which found no place in her breast—from presenting even an opportunity for Wallace discovering in her qualities with which her companion could not have competed; and she uniformly maintained, in the presence of the lovers, a quiet reserve, which afforded pleasure to the one, but, perhaps, only tended to quicken in the other a comparison that operated in a manner contrary to the wishes of the confidant. Time, and the frequent meetings and wanderings by the banks of the Leith—then comparatively a sweet and rural stream, especially about the low grounds of Warriston and Inverleith—soon elicited the merits of the two companions; and Wallace was not slow to perceive that, fair and interesting as his first object had appeared to him, she was eclipsed in all the finest attributes of woman by her who had never taken the trouble to display her estimable properties. The reserve of the one—the result of a natural modesty, and of a strict training according to the rules of the wisest of men—set off the freedom of the other as little better than forwardness; while her excellent sense, and an inborn susceptibility of the finest and purest feelings of the sex, whether stirred by the flowers of the field arrayed in their simple beauties, or the heaven-born genius of virtue working its pleasant ways in the hearts of man, brought out, by a contrast dangerous to her friend, the defects of a character that Wallace, in his first blindness, had taken for perfections. The result might have been anticipated by all but the unwitting possessor herself of virtues of which she was unconscious; and it was with no affected surprise that, one night, when walking by the moonlight along the brattling Leith, she heard poured into her ear a strain of impassioned sentiments that ought to have been reserved for another, who had a prior and a better right to them.

The startled girl flew home to her mother, and narrated, as nearly as she could recollect, the high-flown expressions of Wallace's changed love; not forgetting to add, that the young man had declared upon his honour that he had never declared any affection for her companion. Overpowered with sorrow for her friend, the tear glistened in her eye as she sat and told her simple tale to her mother, who lifted up her face from the open book, to observe in the delicate workings of a well-trained heart the fruits of her maternal care.

"Your sorrow for Margaret Grierson, child," she said, "is a scented offering to auld friendships; but 'when thou wilt do good, know to whom thou doest it, so shalt thou be thanked for thy benefits.' I like not the bearing and manners o' yer companion, for I hae seen in her the office o' whisperer, and the fascinations o' the singer, wha would kindle love by her smiles, and unholy discord by her wiles. Her vanity, like the gaudy streamers o' her head-gear, winnows wi' every wind but that which comes frae the airth, whar God's chastening tribulations hae their holy birth. Ye may be surprised to hear me speak thus o' ane wha has sae lang enjoyed the first place in your young affections; but my auld een hae a quick turn in them when vanity rideth abroad. She has other lovers than George Wallace, and other places and other trystin-trees than the banks o' Leith, or the auld willow that grows by the horse's pool, at the foot o' the bonny brae o' Warriston. Sorrows she for George Wallace, think ye, when she sits amang the ruins o' the hospital o' Greenside, and hears the love tale o' vanities frae the lips o' secret lovers?"

"A' that's new to me, mother," answered the daughter. "I never dreamed that Peggy had ony ither than George. Wha are they, and how cam ye by the knowledge?"

"Never mind, Menie," said the mother, "how I cam by the knowledge. Though my eyes, like Jeremiah's, are auld, and do fail with tears, I hae neither the blindness o' the mole nor the deafness o' the adder. But let thae things alone; we hae nae right to pry into the secrets o' our neighbours' ways, albeit they may savour o' the vanities o' Baal. It is enough for me that I warn ye against the 'lamps o' fire' that scorch as well as light. George Wallace is a rich and an honest man's son; and if, as I believe, he has plighted nae troth with the follower o' vanities and double-loves, ye're no bound to reject his affections. Can your heart receive him, Menie?"

"Ou ay," replied the maiden, as she held down her head, and seemed afraid of the strange sounds of her own words. "I hae seen nae man yet like George Wallace, and I hae chided my puir heart for sometimes envying Peggy o' his affections. But are we not told to change not a freend for the gold of Ophir?"

"Surely, child," responded the mother—"a true freend o' God's election is better than fine gold; but she who seeketh vanity understands not the name o' freendship, and her kisses are as those o' the serpent. Seek nae mair the society o' Margaret Grierson; leave her to her secret thoughts and secret lovers, and turn your heart to him wha has routh o' means to support ye, and whase love is the love o' the heart that kens nae guile."

The counsel of her parent was ever a law to the daughter; but there was something in the advice she now gave that exercised an influence over Menie's heart, or rather there was something in the heart itself, of a nature hitherto unknown to its possessor, that acknowledged and recognised the influence as more congenial to her feelings than any authority of spoken wisdom (though founded on the words of the son of Sirach) she had yet submitted to. The secret of this feeling lay in the well-springs of an affection that had been pent up by her sense of honour; but now, when she found that she was justified in giving her heart its natural freedom to love the choice of her judgment, she lent in aid of its operations the creations of a young and glowing fancy, which soon pictured so many exquisite forms of beauty, both of mind and person, in the object of her rising affection, that, before another morning had dawned on her, she had become versant in the secret and sweet mystery of sighs and throbbings, hopes, fears, and aspirations, of experienced lovers. She now wished as ardently for another meeting with Wallace, as she had done for a separation on the occasion of their last interview. Nor did she wish in vain; for he, with a passion roused into a warmer flame by her resisting coyness and startled apprehension, sought her anxiously, to renew his suit, and remove all the scruples of conscience that lay in the way of a passion to be, as he hoped, returned. He little knew that part of the work had been already done to his hand by a mother's cherished counsel; and his joy may be more easily conceived than expressed, even by the electric words of love's inspired power, when he found that Menie not only loved him, but conceived she had a good title to repay him with a warmth of affection equal to that of his own. He was now a frequent visiter at her mother's house; and though he knew that all his motions were watched by her whom he had thus abruptly, though, perhaps, not without just cause, forsaken, he kept steady in his new attachment, and avowed openly a love of which the best man of his station in Scotland might have been proud.

The affection that is hallowed by the blessing of such a parent as Menie's possessed a good title to be excepted from the ordinary proverbial fate of the loves of the humble; but, unfortunately, the adverse circumstances, that, like harpies, follow the victims of the tender passion, acknowledged no limit to the sources from which they spring. The rejected maiden pursued her successful rival with all the bitterness of disappointment and envy; odious calumnies were fabricated, given to the tongue of inveterate scandal, and found their way to the sensitive ear of her whom they were intended to ruin. Unacquainted with the ways of a bad world, every individual in which she judged by the test of her own pure feeling—the universal error of young and unchilled hearts—her pain was equalled by her surprise, and she sought consolation on the breast of her lover, as they reclined upon the sloping and wood-covered banks of Inverleith.

"I hae bought ye dearly," said she, as she looked up in his face through her tears, "when, for your love, I paid the peace o' mind that was never troubled with the breath o' a dishonourable suspicion. The hail o' Broughton rings with the report that I betrayed my freend to secure your affections, and that I am unworthy o' them, as being a follower o' unlawful loves. My eyes hae never been dry since my heart was struck with the false charge. I hae looked to heaven, and found nae relief. My mother has tried to comfort me, by telling me o' the waes o' Ane higher than mortal man, wha was pursued to the death by envy and malice, and wha yet triumphed. You, George, hae alane the power to comfort me. Tell me that ye heed them not, and I will yet try to hold up my head among the honest daughters o' men."

"If ye heed them as little's I heed them, Menie," replied he, "there will be sma skaith though muckle scorn. Dry up your tears, love, and tell me if it is true" (and he laughed in playful mockery of her fears) "that you keep the weekly tryst, by the elm in Leith Loan, with the notorious Mike M'Intyre, the city guardsman?"

"George, George!—Oh man, how can ye mak light o' the sorrows o' yer ain Menie?" said the girl, as she heard the calumny come from the lips of her lover. "That is Margaret Grierson's charge against me; and, if ye knew that every word o' the falsehood gaes to my heart like the tongue o' the deaf adder—ay, even though they come on the wings o' yer playfu laugh—ye wad rather gie me the tears o' your pity than the consolation o' your mirth."

"And what better way, Menie, could I tak to prove my faith in my love's honesty," said he, as he clasped her in his arms, "than by dispersing the poisoned lie by the breath o' a hearty laugh. Nae mair o't—nae mair o't, Menie—I believe it not; and that ye may hae some faith in my statement, I'll put a question to ye. Will ye answer me fairly, wi' the truth and sincerity that your mother draws frae the fountain o' a' guidness—her auld Bible—and pours into yer heart in the dreary hour o' late, even as ye retire into the keepin o' Him who looks down on sleepin' innocence with the eye of love?"

"Ay will I, George," answered the maiden, "with the openness and sincerity with which I lay my sins on the footstool o' Heaven's mercy."

"Will ye consent to be George Wallace's wife on Fastern's E'en, and leave the city guardsman to your rival?"

"I am already yours, George," answered she, as she buried her head in his bosom, to conceal her blushes—"I am already yours, by a plighted faith that never will be broken; and it may be even as you say; but I wish nae ill to my enemies, and will spae nae waur fortune to Margaret Grierson, wha has injured me, than that she may get as guid a husband as you will, I trust, be to me."

"Kind, guid creature!" responded Wallace. "If the first part o' yer answer maks ye mine for life, the ither proves that ye are worthy o' me; for she wha wishes nae ill to her enemies will never do wrang by her freends. Gae and report to your mother what I hae said. The time is yet distant: but hope gies light wings to the hours o' lovers."

The two parted; and Menie, seeking the nearest way to her home, hurried along, her heart beating high with unutterable emotions, and with all the pain she had felt from the evil reports of her rival drowned in the intoxicating pleasure of being the betrothed of the man she loved. The moon, which had been throwing her silver light o'er the dark foliage that overhung the Leith, and catching a look of her own face in the waters through the opening branches, was now half-concealed behind a cloud; and as the maiden passed along by the side of the stream, she required to restrain the flutter of her spirits, to enable her to thread her way by the narrow footpath. The ecstatic emotions of her novel situation, and the hurry of her progress, made her breathless, and she paused to recover herself, when she observed two individuals sitting by the side of the water. A loud laugh struck her ear; and she did not require to speculate as to the individuals from whom it came—for a voice she too well knew followed, with words of reproach that shook her to the heart. It was that of her former companion; and a glance satisfied her that she was in the society of that very individual, M'Intyre, the city guardsman, with whose name her own had been so cruelly and invidiously connected. In an instant the notorious individual was by her side.

"I've waited for ye, Menie," he began, "till the mune has waned and sunk behind the Pentlands. How hae ye been sae lang, woman, when ye ken sae weel the impatience o' a true lover, and that I maun be on the city watch on the morrow, and canna meet ye? Mak amends, and let us roam a wee amang the birken woods, whar the absence o' the mune will be nae hindrance to our loves."

And before she could reply, he had his arms round her neck, and was pulling her away among the trees. The apparition of the very individual of whom she had been conversing with Wallace, and whose name was a terror to her, with the fearful consciousness of the pollution of his embrace, took away from her all power of resistance; her knees trembled; she tried to reply to him, but could not; and a weak scream, that almost died in her throat, was the only show of ineffectual resistance she could oppose to his efforts. A few minutes enabled her to rally her powers; and she had turned to wrest herself from his arms, when she saw Wallace standing at a little distance among the trees. He had that very instant come up; and there was something in the cool, piercing look he threw at her, that repressed the inchoate scream for relief that she struggled to utter; and the hands she held out to him imploring his succour fell nerveless within the grasp of the man who held her. Upon the point of fainting, she would have sunk to the ground, had she not been upheld by the force of her tormentor; and, in turning her eyes again in the direction of Wallace, she observed he had vanished. The scream, no longer restrained, burst forth; but it came too late; for, if Wallace heard it in his retreat, he might justly attribute it to his own appearance at a time when he might suppose himself an unwelcome intruder. At that moment two men came in sight; and the city guardsman, probably afraid of being recognised, released her from his grasp, and retreated to the position he had left by the side of her who sat awaiting in laughter for his arrival.

The instant she was liberated, the frightened maiden flew with the speed of terror homewards—all her energies wound up in the mere effort to increase her irregular progress, and without the capability of feeling the true and fearful circumstances of her position. Arrived at her mother's house, she sprang forward in a state bordering on despair, and threw herself on a chair by the side of the fire, opposite to her parent, who was engaged in her usual evening exercise of searching the inspired volume for the balm of the consolation of age and poverty.

"What is this, Menie?" cried the mother, as she saw her daughter trembling under the influence of nervous terror. "Has yer enemy been at her auld wark again? and have a' yer mother's injunctions failed to get ye to rest on the sure foundation o' conscious innocence? It canna be that George Wallace has listened to the poisoned breath o' scandal and envy. Speak, child; and frae this book shall ye get the support that no son or daughter of Adam can lend to the children o' sorrow."

"Let me think, mother—let me collect mysel!" responded the girl, as she raised her hand to her head, and threw back her locks. "Whar am I? what spell is on me? Am I to be a bride on Fastern's E'en, or a disowned and heart-broken maiden? Why did he no speak to me—or why did I no speak to him? I will to him yet, and explain a', and the men will speak for me; but wha were they? Ah, they were strangers! and there's nane to warrant the words o' truth."

And rising, she made again towards the door, apparently with the confused intention of hurrying to Inverleith Mains; but her mother rose and restrained her, and she again sat down to collect her thoughts. It was some time before she could give so connected an account of the strange circumstances that had occurred within the space of a short hour, as to be understood by the mother; but, by questioning and cross-questioning, the latter came to the truth—and a truth of dangerous import she soon observed it to be. She had already, in her own person, suffered from the blighting effects of prejudice, and she trembled as she surveyed the difficulties that lay in the way of a proper explanation. The poison of a false conviction had too certainly already entered the breast of Wallace, and she knew that its workings might be made only the more inveterate, the greater the efforts resorted to for eradicating it. In all her trials, however, her refuge was the book that supported her fathers in the mountain glens, when the storm of persecution raged over a struggling land; and, enjoining her daughter to offer up with her their prayers to the throne of grace, she sought from the true fountain the means of relieving them from the danger which threatened innocence and poverty. The night passed, and the morning came, when it was resolved that they both together should repair to the residence of Wallace, and openly declare to him the truth of the perplexed appearances which had too evidently operated on his mind to their disadvantage; but a little farther consideration showed them the inexpediency of thus assuming that the conduct of Menie required explanation; and the resolution that at last prevailed was, to wait for some time to ascertain what might be the intentions and motions of Wallace, whom they expected to call at the house, according to his wont, as he passed to the city. The day passed away, but there was no appearance of him; and, on the day following, it was ascertained, from one of his father's servants, who was passing with grain to the market, that he had gone to the borders of England to bury a relation, where, it was expected, he would remain for a considerable time, to arrange the affairs of the deceased, to whom his father was nearest heir-at-law. This intelligence made it only more certain that the prejudice had taken root; because, otherwise, both duty and inclination would have forced him to pay a visit to his betrothed before his departure, however sudden or unexpected that might have been.

A month passed, and Wallace had not yet returned; but Fastern's Even was still a month distant, and every day brought the hope of a letter, at least, to explain the cause of his conduct, and point out his future proceedings, whether "for feid or favour." But no letter came; and all their inquiries ended in the intelligence that his relative's affairs were not yet wound up, and that some weeks yet would elapse before he could return. The situation, meanwhile, of the victim of prejudice was painful, and gradually becoming hopeless. Her prior sufferings from the stings of calumny were alleviated by the expectation that the generous mind of Wallace would scorn the schemes of her enemy, and her marriage would refute the aspersions, and place her beyond the reach of their poison; but now her relief was not only apparently cut off, but changed, by some adverse fate, into a proof—a confirmation of what had been alleged against her character. Every day found her a mourner; and it was only after nightfall that she could summon up resolution to go abroad on the small messages that domestic wants rendered necessary. Involved in mystery as were both mother and daughter, and pained as the latter was beyond endurance, there yet hung over them a still darker cloud of misfortune, equally mysteriously and fortuitously collected and formed, and equally cruel in its unmerited discharge on the heads of innocent victims. Misery of the deepest and most complicated kind seems often to be evolved from the most trifling causes, as if to show the proud sons of men, by a lesson that pains while it mocks them, the utter darkness of that blindness which they mistake for the light of a concealed reason. One evening, Menie had occasion to proceed to the small village of Canonmills, on a message to a friend; and, as usual, she waited till nightfall, to avoid the gaze of the neighbours, whom her fevered fancy exhibited to her (to a great extent untruly) as participators in the circulation of the calumnies under which she suffered. Wrapped up in a cloak, she hurried out, and proceeded down the narrow loan that then led to the village she intended to visit. Her step was stealthy, and her eye filled with secret shame, even among the shades of night. She reached the house, where she staid for a short time, and then set out on return, which she was inclined to accomplish as quickly and stealthily as she had done her progress forth; but she had not proceeded many paces from the village, when she observed a small wicker corban or basket lying by the side of a hedgerow that then ran along the lower part of the loan. There appeared to be no one near it; and, impelled by a natural curiosity, she proceeded forward and inspected it. There was on it, she observed, a bundle, so carefully pinned up, that, though she applied her fingers hastily to it, she could not penetrate its folds. On lifting up the strange deposit, she found that it felt heavy. She stood irresolute, and again looked around her, but saw no one. She was flurried; and her desire to get home urged her to take it up, and proceed hurriedly along the road, with the view of taking it to the house with her, to examine it leisurely, and restore it to the owner, in the event of his casting up. She obeyed the natural impulse; and, as she ran home with the unknown charge, she repeatedly cast her eyes about, to see if any one appeared to claim it; but she still saw no one; and, in the space of a few minutes, she reached the door of the house, and hurried in. She placed the burden upon the floor—telling her mother, at the same time, that she had found it on the road, and brought it home to see what it contained, as the bundle was so carefully tied up that she could not unfold it on the highway. Her mother put on her spectacles; and, bending down, proceeded, with the aid of Menie, to undo the cloth, when, to their surprise, they evolved from the many foldings of an envelope the dead body (still warm) of a new-born babe. Menie fainted at the grim spectacle, and the mother ran for hartshorn, to recover her daughter. In a little time she revived, but it was only to shudder again at the strange sight; while the sagacious mind of Euphan was busy with the divinations of a sad experience, that pointed to some new calamity to result from this new turn of their adverse fate. She saw, at once, that if she called in her envious neighbours, that had been already busy with the character of her daughter, the unlikely story of the finding and bringing home of a dead child would be scorned and laughed at, while the circumstance of the child being found in the house would be laid hold of as a handle for corroborating and confirming the already circulated calumnies, if, indeed, it might not form a subject for judicial examination and exposure, that might end in the ruin of one already too much persecuted. These cogitations led to a sudden resolution. Rolling up the body hastily in the envelope—

"Hie ye quickly, Menie," she said, "to the place whar ye fand this dangerous burden, and lay it in the precise position in which ye first saw it. The shafts o' envy are already thick round innocence, and we need not for sorrow to prick our own eyes that tears may fall. There is a knowledge that is for guid, and ane that is for evil; but 'the work of all flesh is before Him, and nothing can be hid from his eyes,' so shall this shame be made manifest in his own way. Haste, child, and obey the behest o' your mother."

The trembling girl started back at the mention of again bearing the unholy load; but she was impelled by the strange looks of her parent; and, like an automaton, she hurriedly snatched up the corb, and hastened with it to the place where she found it. She was wrapped up in her cloak, which she threw over the charge, and, after the manner of a thief, or a worker of secret iniquity, she slouched along the loan, trembling and stumbling at every step, till she came to the precise spot, and there she looked several times around her, before she ventured to deposit her burden. She thought she perceived some one behind her, who passed into an opening in the hedge, and she felt irresolute whether to lay down the corban at that moment, or ascertain first whether there was really any one behind the fence; but her mind again recurring to the contents of her burden, a feeling of horripilation crept over her, and, gently crouching down, as if terrified to behold her own act, she withdrew the cloak, left the charge, and fled precipitately along the dark side of the loan. Curiosity impelled her, as she fled, to turn her head, and she saw, with terror, some one issue from the opening in the hedge, and proceed, as she thought, to the identical spot which she had just left. It struck her forcibly, and she shuddered at the thought, that the figure she saw resembled that of Wallace; and the suspicion arose, that he had been watching about the cottage, had followed her, and observed her motions, and would now examine the burden she had so stealthily and mysteriously deposited by the side of the hedge. A strong paroxysm of hysterical emotion seized her, as the full consequences of a realisation of the conjecture were arrayed before her by the conjuring power of her terrors. The prior unexplained suspicion under which she yet lay rose to swell the tumult of her thoughts. She thought her God had deserted her, and that the destiny of her miserable life was placed under the charge of evil spirits, who gloried in her utter ruin. She grew faint, and was scarcely able to walk; and before she again reached the house, the choking effects of the hysterical spasm had almost deprived her of breath. The door was open for her reception; and the moment she entered, she fell upon the floor, panting for air, the blood streaming from her nostrils, and shrill, broken screams, like the sounds that issue from the victims of Cynanche, bursting from her labouring throat.

The alarmed mother again applied restoratives to her suffering daughter, who, in a few minutes, opened her eyes, and became sensible.

"Were you seen, Menie?" whispered the mother, anxiously, in her ear. "Speak, love. 'Blessed is he that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.' Fear not, child; tell me, were ye seen by the eyes o' mortal?"

"God be merciful to me!" answered the girl. "If my eyes deceived me not, George Wallace cam behind me, and saw me lay down that evidence o' anither's shame. I am lost for ever!"

The mother was silent, and lifted up her eyes in an attitude of prayer to Heaven. The nervous symptoms still clung to the daughter, and shiverings and spasms succeeded each other, till she grew so weak that she was unable to undress herself to retire to bed. The office was performed by the kindly hands of the parent, who, still overcome by the workings of fearful anticipations, sat down by the fire, and, fixing her eyes on the red embers, seemed for a time lost in the meditations of a heart that, filled with the spirit of God, felt that, as Esdras sayeth, "life is astonishment and fear," and that we cannot comprehend the things that are promised to the righteous in this world, nor those that are given to the wicked to destroy the happiness of the good.

The night was passed in anxiety and fearful forebodings; and the beam of the morning was dreaded by the daughter, as if it were the blaze of evidence that was to bring to light some crime she had committed. She was unable to rise; the small domestic duties of the morning were performed by the mother, pensively, and under the burden of the prospect of coming ill. About ten o'clock, a slight knock was heard at the door; Euphan cried, in a weak voice, "Come in." She heard a whispering and rustling of clothes, as if the visitors were deciding, by expostulations and pushings, which of them should enter first. At last two neighbours, who had been known to be active in circulation of reports against the daughter, made their appearance. On the usual salutation, expressed, as Euphan thought, in a strange voice, and accompanied by stranger looks—

"Is Menie ill the day?" said one of them, as she cast her eye obliquely upon the bed. "Has she nae doctor, puir thing?"

"I haena seen her for mony weeks," said the other. "Why do ye conceal her illness, Euphan, woman? The lassie may dee, when a helpin hand micht save her."

"Yet I hae heard that she was seen on the road to Canonmills last nicht in the darkenin," rejoined the first, with an oblique glance at the other.

The words reached Menie in the bed, and the clothes shook above her.

"God be praised, my bairn is weel!" said Euphan, who understood the import of their speech; "but, though 'affliction cometh not forth from the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground,' yet are we all born unto grief. We hae our ain sorrows, and never pry into those o' our neighbours."

The conversation continued for some time, and the women departed, leaving the inmates to the certainty that the village had got hold of the dreaded topic of calumny against the miserable victim of prejudice. The shock had not expended its strength upon their already racked nerves, when the door was opened by a rude hand, and two men entered, dressed in the garb of officers of the Sheriff Court. An involuntary scream was uttered by Menie, as her eyes met the uniform of red facings of the harsh-looking men. Euphan was silent; but her eyes were filled with the eloquence of fear.

"Is your daughter at home, good woman?" said one of the men, while he cast his eye on the bed from which the weak scream issued.

"Ay," answered the mother. "What is your pleasure wi' her or wi' me?"

"Where is she?" added the same person.

"There," answered the mother. "She is weakly this morning, and hasna yet risen."

"No doubt—no doubt," said the man. "She cannot be weel. I understand she has been confined to the house for six weeks, with the exception of some night wanderings; but she must this day face the light of the sun. We have a warrant of apprehension against her, proceeding on a charge of child-murder. She must up and dress, sick or well, and go with us. The body of the child lies in the sheriff's office; and it is right that the mother should be there also."

The words, which had an ironical virulence in them, unbecoming the station of the man, wrung a wail from the accused maiden, which, muffled by the bedclothes she had wrapped round her head, sounded like the waning voice of the departing spirit; and the mother, overcome by the accumulation of ills crowned by this consummation, flung herself at the feet of the speaker, and grasped his legs with her fleshless arm.

"God hath spoken once; but I have heard it many times that power belongeth unto him, and not to those wha whet their tongues like swords, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows at the innocent. My dochter is as guiltless o' this crime as the babe she is accused o' murderin. Let her remain, if ye hae in ye the heart that travaileth with pity, and I will awa to them that sent ye, and satisfy them, as never suspicion was satisfied, that Menie Dempster is nae mair capable o' committin this crime against God and his laws, than is she wha is sanctified by the holiest spirit that ever warmed the breast or filled with tears the een o' the mercifu. Grant me this ae request, and it will be a' that Euphan Dempster may ever ask o' man."

"We cannot," replied the officer; "all we can do is to retire for a moment, till your daughter dress herself; but we cannot wait long—so, quick—quick."

And the two men retired to the door, where their appearance had already collected a crowd of curious inquirers. The behests of necessity overcome the strongest feelings of mortals, and even impart to weakness a morbid strength. The unhappy maiden rose, and put on her clothes in the midst of the outpourings of her mother's religious inspirations; but her sobs and suppressed wailings bore evidence to a sorrow that would not be comforted, even by the assurances of the mercy that endureth for ever. The men again entered; and Menie, accompanied by her mother, was led away to the hall of the Sheriff's Court, to undergo an examination, which, of itself, might operate as their utter ruin in this world.

They arrived at the court-room about eleven o'clock. An examination of witnesses had already been begun. As they entered the door of the room where they were to be placed, Menie saw passing through the lobby several neighbours; and between two men, in the act of taking him to be examined, she observed George Wallace, whose eyes seemed red and inflamed, and who exhibited a strong reluctance to proceed forward, requiring the efforts of the men to drag him before the examinator. The whole scene seemed nothing but a dream; and the trifling circumstance from which it originated invested it with a character strange and unnatural. It was nearly four o'clock before Menie was called in to be examined. When led before the judge, she looked wildly around her. A chair was set for her, and she sat down. The usual questions as to her name, and other matters, were put, and the more important part of the examination proceeded. She was asked whether she had at one time been on terms of intimacy with Michael M'Intyre, the city guardsman; whether she had not been in his society among the trees of Inverleith, on a night mentioned; whether she had not been courted by George Wallace of Inverleith Mains; whether she had not been renounced by him; whether the reason of such renouncement was not her prior intimacy with M'Intyre; whether she had not been confined to the house for a considerable period, and what was the reason of such confinement; whether she had not deposited a basket containing the dead child near the hedgerow in the loan leading to Canonmills; and whether she was not the mother of the child. Every question was answered according to her simple ideas of innocence and truth; but when she came to state that she found the basket on the road, carried it home without looking at it, and then replaced it in the situation in which she found it, and all this without being able properly to account for so unlikely and extraordinary a proceeding, the sheriff, prejudiced as he was against her, from her previous admission that she had been seen in the society of M'Intyre, a man of dissolute habits—that Wallace had not visited her for many weeks, in consequence, as she supposed, of that circumstance—and that she had not been in the habit of going out for a considerable period—viewed her statement as false, and entertained the strongest suspicions of her being guilty of the crime laid to her charge. She was accordingly committed to prison until further evidence might be procured, to throw more light on the mysterious transaction.

In the meantime, the circumstances of the case being of that inexplicable kind that stirs the curiosity of a prying public, the results of the precognition got abroad, and it was ascertained that a considerable part of the information afforded to the sheriff had been procured from Elspeth Grierson, the mother of Margaret Grierson, and from one of the men who had seen Menie in the arms of the city guardsman. The manner in which Wallace became implicated as an unwilling witness against his betrothed, was also a curious feature in the case. He had not been absent in the south so long as it had been represented, but had concealed his arrival at home with a view to watch the motions of her whom he yet loved, in spite of the suspicions he entertained against her; and having, on that eventful evening, seen Menie hurrying along with a basket in her hand, he had followed her, and seen her deposit the charge in the manner already mentioned. At the very moment when he was in the act of examining it, Elspeth Grierson came up, as if she had been returning from Canonmills, and helped him to undo the cloth in which the dead body of the child was wrapped; and thus was he painfully committed as a witness of what he had seen. The authorities soon after got intelligence of the circumstance; the child was taken to the office, and a great number of witnesses, chiefly pointed out by Elspeth Grierson (among the rest, George Wallace), were examined, previous to the interrogation of the supposed culprit herself.

The unhappy situation of the girl, and the apparently conflicting testimony of the witnesses, roused a sympathetic interest in many of her acquaintances, who, having set on foot a system of inquiry, induced or persuaded the fiscal to seek for the truth, rather than for an unilateral array of inculpative testimony. It was impossible, even on the part of the authorities, to deny the force of the facts, that Menie had been often seen by the neighbours during their visits, though she had kept the house in the day-time, in consequence of the shame produced by the reports circulated against her; that she had been on a visit to Canonmills on that evening when the child was exposed; that the rumours against her (with the exception of the facts attending the depositing of the corb) proceeded mainly from one source, which was a poisoned one; and that, in place of denying, as she might have done, all knowledge of the transaction, she had explained everything with a simplicity that was seldom exhibited by the votaries of vice. These things made a suitable impression, and the crown authorities were obliged to stop short in their proceedings, from the circumstance that they could find no proof of gravidity, and only one witness, Wallace himself—whose reluctance to give his testimony was looked upon, when contrasted with his ascertained inimical feelings towards her, as an affected exhibition of leniency to cover concealed hatred—could speak to the fact of the depositation of the child. All seemed enveloped in doubt; and, if there was a glimpse of certainty in regard to any part of the inexplicable case, it was that, that doubt itself would effectuate the ruin of the unfortunate prisoner, who could never claim again the respect that is due to innocence.

For six months she was confined within the narrow cells of a jail, and during every day of that period she was visited by her mother, whose endeavours to support the young and breaking heart of the victim, by the application of the balm that God has sent to the miserable, only tended to calm the spirit as it sunk in the ruins of a decaying constitution. She was at last liberated; but the freedom of the body only made more manifest the effects of the blasting power of prejudice and suspicion; and the intelligence, that was communicated to her some time afterwards, that Wallace had married Margaret Grierson, crowned the misery that enslaved her, and seemed to cut off all hope that she could ever again hold up her head among the daughters of men. Time passed, and realised that inherent condition of his power, which, as his progress continues, brings to the miserable the sad consolation of the woes of their enemies. The marriage of Wallace with Margaret Grierson was an unhappy one. The collision of adverse sentiments produced in the wife an infirmity of temper, which, in its exasperated moods, sought for relief in intoxication; and the domestic feuds at Inverleith Mains became a common topic of conversation among the inhabitants of Broughton. Such are the turns of fate that acknowledge the influence of a power whose ways we cannot comprehend; yet a still more extraordinary discovery was to be manifested to the child of misfortune. One night Menie and her mother were engaged in their evening exercise, heedless of the concerns of a world from which they were excluded, when the door opened with a loud noise, and George Wallace stood before them. His eyes were wild and bloodshot, a fever was in his blood, and his nerves, excited by some maniac passion, shook till his frame seemed convulsed, and the powers of judgment and will lay prostrate before the fiend that ruled his heart. Menie started up affrighted, and the mother laid her hand upon the book.

"I am compelled to be here," he cried, with a choking, unnatural voice, as he held forth his hands to the maiden; "and it is well I have come, for the quiet air o' this house o' innocence already quells the fever o' my heart. I have this moment left my wife; and I had a struggle to pass the water-dam, that shone in the mune to invite me to bury mysel and my grief in its still breast. But there is a God in heaven; and He it is wha has brought me here, to look ance mair on her I loved and ruined, and now can only save by my ain endless misery and shame. She lies yonder steeped in drink; but the power o' conscience has repelled the subtle poison, and she could speak in burnin words her crime and my eternal shame. Margaret Grierson it was—my wife—the mother o' my child—O God, help my words!—she has confessed, in her drunken madness, and my heart tells me it is the confession o' God's eternal truth, that the babe was hers—that her mother laid it by the hedgerow, a breathin victim, to hide her daughter's dishonour—and that it died there by suffocation. Let me speak it out, that this throbbin heart may be stilled. But it cannot—it never can be in this world—no—no—nor in the next."

And, groaning deeply, he threw himself on a chair, and rugged his hair like a maniac in the highest paroxysm of his disease. The unexpected and extraordinary statement rendered the women speechless. They looked at him, and at each other. Mutterings of prayer escaped from the lips of Euphan, and surprise and pity divided the empire of the heart of the daughter, who had never thought to see misery that equalled her own. There was no reason for the feeling of triumph, where the melancholy relief came from the ruins of one whom they had both loved and respected. He had been the only individual that ever influenced the heart of the one, and the other had fondly looked forward to him as the support and solace of her old age. Now he was a ruined, miserable man, and had no power to make amends for the wrong he had unintentionally committed. The calmness of the silence, and the relief that came from the unburdening of a secret that had been wrung from him by the pangs of conscience, brought him to a sense of the position in which he had placed himself. He had put himself and his wife in the power of those he had wronged, and returning reason brought with it the fears of self-preservation.

"What hae I done?" he again exclaimed, as he took his hand from his forehead, and looked into the face of Menie. "I hae condemned mysel and the wife o' my bosom—my conscience and a burnin revenge hae wrought this out o' me; but what shall be the consequence thereof? Will ye bring her to justice, the gallows—and me to a still deeper ruin and desolation than that which hang over this house o' innocent suffering? Say, Menie; speak, guid mother; our doom is in your hands. What says that blessed book on the merits o' forgiveness and the crime o' revenge?"

Euphan Dempster fixed her eyes on him calmly.

"Sair, sair hae ye wranged me, and that puir child o' misfortune, wha stands there unable to reply to ye, though the tears o' her grief and her pity speak in strange language the waes o' a broken heart. But sairer, far sairer, hae ye wranged yersel; for, though we 'have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons and daughters o' men,' we have been answered in the dark nights in which we cried and wept, by Him who 'maintains the cause o' the afflicted, and the right o' the poor;' but ye are left to the wrath o' yer ain spirit, that burns in yer heart, and even now lights up your eyes wi' a strange licht. Vainly would my daughter and I hae read this book, if we hadna learned to forgive our enemies. You hae naething to fear from us."

"And are thae the sentiments o' her wha was ance the life and light o' this stricken heart!" said Wallace, as he turned mournfully to Menie, who, pale and emaciated from her sorrow, stood before him, the ghost of what she was. "O God! can this be my Menie? Is a' that ruin o' health and beauty the doin o' him wha loved her as nae man ever loved woman? Are thae your sentiments, Menie? and am I, and is my miserable wife, safe in the keepin o' your forgiveness?"

"Ay, George," answered the maiden, as she burst into tears at the recollection of her former love, and the sight of her unhappy lover. "I hae been sair dealt wi'; but I forgie ye; and I forgie also your wife. I will dree the scorn o' an ill warld; but till you and she are dead, my lips will never mention the wrangs I hae suffered from my auld freend, and him I could hae dee'd to serve."

"Miserable man that I am!" exclaimed the youth. "How much do your generosity and kindness show me I have lost, and lost for ever? Whither now shall I fly!—to the arms o' a murderer, the wife o' my bosom—or to the wide world, to roam, a houseless man, to whom there is nae city o' refuge on earth?"

Unable longer to bear the poignancy of his feelings, he rushed out of the house.

For several years after the scene we have now described, Wallace was not heard of. None but his father knew whither he had gone. His wife was absolutely discarded from the farmhouse; and, her habits getting gradually worse, she became a street vagrant, and renounced herself to the dominion of the evil power that had, from an early period, ruled her, but whose workings she had so artfully, for a time, attempted to conceal. She paid many visits to Inverleith Mains, but was rejected by the old farmer, who attributed to her the ruin of his son. On these occasions, she broke forth in wild execrations; and, on her return, did not fail to assail the widow and her daughter as the instruments of her ruin. The old story of the child was published at the door in the words of drunken delirium; and often mixed with stray sentences of triumph that, to any one possessed of the secret, would have appeared a sufficient condemnation of herself. Yet the construction was all the other way; for Menie had never been cleared by evidence, and the virulent expressions of the vagabond were, according to the laws which too often regulate mundane belief, taken as inculpation; and hence the prejudice against the innocent victim was kept up, and the lives of her and her mother embittered to a degree that called for all the aids of their "sacred remeid" to ameliorate sufferings that seemed destined to have no end upon earth. But the ways of Heaven are wonderful. A boisterous sea may wreck, but the sufferer may be carried to the shore by a wave which, if less impetuous, might have been his grave. Wallace's wife at last died from the effects of that dissipation that had opened the evil heart to give forth the confession of her own shame; and, after this relief, the husband's father paid regular visits to Menie and her mother. He never spoke of the secret that had driven his son away, nor of the place to which he had fled; but he showed sufficiently, by his attentions and kindness, that he knew all. The house of the widow and her daughter was now kept full by supplies from the farm; money, too, was given to them in abundance, and, in so far as regarded worldly means, the two inmates had, at no period of their lives, been so well provided for.

Five years had now elapsed since the disappearance of Wallace. One night, as Menie and her mother were sitting by the fire, the door was opened, and Wallace stood before them. His manner was now very different from what it was on that day when he rushed like a madman from the house. He stood for a moment, looking at the couple who had suffered so much from his wrongs; and the first words he uttered were—

"Menie Dempster, ye have been true to your promise, and ye have been rewarded. That woman is gone to her trial, and yours is ended. Now shall truth triumph."

Menie was unable to utter a word. Her eyes were alternately turned to Wallace and to the fire. The mother laid her hand solemnly on the Bible, and addressing the inspired volume—

"Thus are yer secrets brought to light—ay, even out o' darkness. They wha trust in ye shall not fail in the end, though they should stumble seven times, yea, seven times seven."

"If I had trusted mair to that," said Wallace, "than to the whisperins o' my ain heart, I might never have been a miserable husband, or a banished man. But it's no yet owre late. I am resolved. Menie, will ye now consent to be the wife o' him wha wrought, maybe unwittingly, to your ruin?"

Menie was yet silent.

"I will publish your innocence," rejoined he. "There is mair evidence than my word against her wha is dead. It shall be known far and wide, and you will be the innocent and respected wife o' George Wallace."

"I will speak for her," said the mother; "she will consent. It is asked of her by Him wha has brought good out o' evil, and whase mercies, bein the reward o' the patience o' trial, are as a command that shall not be disobeyed."

Wallace drew near to Menie, and took her hand. Her face was still turned away, but he felt the trembling pressure, that got sooner to the heart than the sounds of the voice.

"It is enough, Menie," he whispered. "Come, the mune is again shinin amang the trees o' Warriston."

The couple proceeded to their old haunts. They passed the hedgerow where the child had been deposited. Menie's step was quick as they approached it, her eyes were averted from the spot, and they passed it in silence. We need not record the spoken sentiments of lovers in the situation of this couple. They parted, after it was arranged that their marriage should take place in the following week.

In the interval, the most prudent and effectual means were taken to clear up the mystery of the old story. The written statements of several individuals, who had heard the broken confessions of the woman, were taken. Wallace and his father added theirs, and there was soon a reaction in favour of Menie, much stronger than the original imputation. Every one believed her innocent; and the marriage, which took place a short time after, confirmed all.

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THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.

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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IDIOTS.

The very foundation of idiocy is peculiarity; whatever this unfortunate class may want, they do not want those features by which they are distinguishable from the ordinary ranks of mankind. Hence the interest which idiocy has ever exerted, and the splendid creations which, under the name of asylums, quiet, country residences, &c., have been made for their accommodation. The great mass of society—with the exception, perhaps, of a kingdom, which shall, for the present, be nameless—have nothing idiotical, that is, peculiar, belonging to them exclusively. They move as others move, dress as others dress, think as others think, and worship God as others do and as others did. Were it not for idiots, in the extended sense of the word, there were an end of plays, novels, and all works of fiction. Very few women, if we may credit Pope, are idiots: for he says—

"Nothing so true as what you once let fall—
Most women have no character at all;
Matter too soft a standing mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair."

But, although the original meaning and enlarged sense of the term might carry us into a field thus almost boundless, we shall at the present limit ourselves to two classes of idiots, comprehending, as they do, a great variety of species. First, the natural idiot, or the simply fatuous: of these there are two varieties—the peaceable and the frantic. Secondly, the unnatural or rational idiot; of these the varieties are infinite, and a selection only is in the present instance either desirable or attainable.

We return then to the purely fatuous, or peaceable idiot.

Poor innocent! as he is uniformly and kindly named by the neighbourhood. There he walks about, along that stream, or across that meadow, from morn to night, and from night to morning, his hand at his cheek, and his lips muttering incoherence, such as, "Johnnie, quo' he, lad; ah, ha, Willie lad, Willie lad, Willie lad." He is so biddable, that a child may make him lie down, or rise up, enlarge or shorten his step. He will carry a peat-barrow when peats are a-casting, ted hay, or lift a child safely over a fence; yet, for all that, he is not always to be trusted—for there are times when his countenance gets flushed, his frame nervously convulsed, and then he utters dreadful things, and becomes violent and unmanageable. These are, however, only aberrations, not continued character; and, by watching the symptoms of the approaching storm, the effects may be easily avoided. Idiots, even of this peaceable and innocuous kind, are now abstracted from their natural and kindly hearths, and concealed in asylums and private residences. Not so—it was not indeed so—in the olden times. The hereditary possession of at least one "innocent" in a family was deemed a blessing. "There never will be wanting," said the pious parent, "a bit for thy helplessness, poor Johnnie." Good luck took up her residence under the roof where such a one resided; and the parent was doubly attached to the object, as he was sometimes called. To hurt him, or injure him in any manner of way, was domestic treason; and even the schoolboy, on his harvest rambles, only pelted him with nuts and brambleberries. Poor Johnnie! he was missed one day; he had wandered beyond his ordinary reach, and all the town was in motion searching for him. The night came on, dark, and even drifty; and the poor helpless object could nowhere be found. Shouts were raised, dogs were dismissed on errands of inquiry, herd-boys ran, and servant lads greatly hastened their pace. At last, he was discovered on the brink of a precipice, over which he was suspended, by the coat-tails, which a strong shepherd's dog was holding fast in its teeth. But for the powerful sagacity of this brute, the helpless being had been dashed to pieces. When he was rescued from his dangerous position, he was repeating, in his usual manner, "Johnnie's a-caul quo' he, lad." He was never suffered to be in such danger again. These eyes saw him on his death-bed; and, at the instant of his departure, it was indeed a most affecting scene.

"The soul's dark cottage, shatter'd and decay'd,
Let in new light through chinks which time had made."

As the pulse ebbed and the feet swelled, reason seemed to resume her long-deserted seat. He actually raised himself upon his elbow, drew the back of his hand twice across his brow, as if clearing away some obstruction from his eyes, and, looking around with an eye unusually bright and beaming, lambent like an expiring taper—

"Oh, what a dream! what a dream! But I see you all now; yes—yes—I see my kind mother, my dear father, my sister! Yes—yes—I am now well. I am awake—I live." Hereupon the fatal and well-known struggle in the throat stopped his speech; he fell back, gave one deep sigh, and was at rest. Poor Johnnie! if a tear of gratitude can gratify anything that lives, bearing the most distant relationship to thee, that tear has now been shed. Heaven has long been merciful to the poor Innocent.

But the frantic idiot who now struggles against the chain and the strait-waistcoat in yonder cell. He too, at one time, roamed at large, to the great alarm, but seldom to the injury, of the lieges. "His bark," as the people said, "was waur than his bite;" and, if at any time he required to be confined by force, a few kindly words and soothing accents threw oil on the troubled sea, and restored comparative serenity. Daft Will Gibson rises before me; his long rung or kent by way of staff, his Kilmarnock night-cap, and shoes of many patches, his aversion to all manner of trick or nickname, and his furious onset when pursued by schoolboys: all these circumstances rise again from the dark past, and glare before me like the shades in "Macbeth." Yet, though occasionally furious, and even dangerous, he was kind-hearted, and not unobservant of character. The timid he rejoiced to terrify, whilst he passed by the bold and firm unmolested. Though he often threw large stones at those who assailed him, he took special care always to throw short of his object. But one day a little child, unobserved by him, had crossed the pathway of his missile after it had been delivered, altogether unobserved by poor Will. The child was knocked down and greatly injured—it bled profusely. Will seemed horrorstruck, and roared aloud—

"It was I! It was me! It was daft Will Gibson!"

From that day he never lifted another stone, but always exhibited the greatest liking for this child—of which the following anecdote is sufficient proof. A little boy was playing in the channel of a mountain torrent, then almost dry. There was thunder in the distance, and Queensberry had put on her inky robe of darkness. All at once, the burns began to emit a loud, roaring, rattling sound, and down came the Caple Water—as my informant, who witnessed the scene, said—like "corn sacks." The boy, owing to his eagerness in pursuing a trout (which he was endeavouring to catch) from stone to stone, did not hear or see the approaching danger, till the mighty flood was upon him. My informant—a shepherd—threw aside plaid and staff, and ran to the rescue; but the red and roaring flood was before him; and a fine boy of seven or eight years old would undoubtedly have lost his life, had it not been for the poor maniac, who chanced to be pulling rushes hard by. He rushed into the flood just as it was oversetting the helpless victim, and, with a tremendous jerk, threw him clean upon the green bank of the torrent. He then endeavoured himself to clear the bank; but the treacherous and hollow earth, under the pressure of the water, gave way, and down tumbled brow and man into the raging whirlpool—the man underneath, the brow above him. The boy, by means of his heels, escaped; but poor Will Gibson's body was next day found some miles lower down, sadly disfigured and mangled. Thus did this grateful maniac expiate the inadvertent injury which he had done this very boy when a mere child, by saving his life at the expense of his own.

We now pass, in prosecution of our history, from darkness into light, from the irresponsible and irrational agent, to the responsible and foolish. Our guide here, in this mare magnum of idiocy, shall be the use of language in discussing the various merits of the different classes. We shall make use of no new phraseology, but be guided to our purpose by the acknowledged and recognised use and meaning of terms. Why the word "idiot" is retained in conversational language in particular, when its original and more legitimate meaning is lost, we have already pointed at; it is owing to analogy and resemblance that in this case, as in many others, such terms are legitimate and expressive.

There is, then, in the first place, to come at once to the point—there is