"A barber-guse! did I not tell ye to pass that afflicted bairn three times through a blackberry bush, whilk is an infallible remedy—but I'll see after it mysel to-morrow."
Lilian wept and laughed, and gave her hands to the servants to kiss, for her heart beat as joyously to find herself under the old ancestral roof, as if she had doubled Cape Horn since she last saw it. She kissed grand-aunt Grizel, and rushed from one dark and silent apartment to another, as if to gladden them by her happy presence, and looked forth with beaming eyes on the waving woods and the long expanse of the placid lake, whose dark bosom gave back the light of a thousand stars, and anon she paused to listen to that old familiar sound, the cawing of the rooks amid those great hereditary oaks, the remnants of the vast forest of Drumsheugh, which, in the days of St. David, surrounded the city and its castle on every side.
Meantime, standing under the old velvet canopy, and leaning on her walking-cane, Lady Grizel was listening with a kindling eye and glowing cheek to her ground-baillie, who poured forth a dismal and exaggerated report of the extortions and outrages committed on her tenantry by Capt. Crichton's troop of the Grey Dragoons, who had carried off all the baillie's own grain, "whilk he had laid up for seed; they had taken the best cow, and a notable nowte from the gudeman of Netherdurdie, and nae less than three bonnie servitor lassies frae the farmtoun of Drumdryan; they had toomed every corn-ark, meal-girnel, and beer-barrel in the barony, forby and attour, extorting riding-money three times owre wi' cockit carbines!" It was a lamentable story, and three energetic taps from the Lady Grizel's cane closed the tale.
She, however, found her own mansion scatheless, save where several drawers and lock-fast places had been forced and damaged during the search of Macer Maclutchy and other underlings in authority, for treasonable papers (and more especially loose cash), while in the cellars an empty runlet or two, and empty flasks in such number that Drouthy the butler surveyed them in silence for ten minutes before he began to swear and count them—bore evidence of the strict search which Sergeant Wemyss and his musqueteers had prosecuted in the lower regions of the house. The news of their lady's return spread to the Home-grange and neighbouring cottages like wildfire, and, half dressed, the good people came crowding to the mansion testifying by repeated acclamations their joy at her return and restoration to rank; for, save the honoured, envied (and, from that moment, hated) Elsie Elshender, none knew where she had been concealed for the past month. It was generally thought that she had fled to England, to the "Lowlands of Holland," or some other "far awa place." The affection which the Scottish tenantry ever manifested for the old families on whose lands they dwelled, whose banner their ancestors had followed, with whose name and fame, and hope, and happiness, or misfortune, their own were so interwoven, and under the wing of whose protection so many generations of their race had lived and died, was a noble sentiment of the purest love peculiar to the nation. It knit together in a manner which we cannot now conceive, the interests of the highest and the lowest—a remnant of the good old patriarchal times, which strongly marked the character of the people, and, like the endearing ties of clanship, was very different from the feudal tyranny that existed in other lands.
Late though the hour, the old house was crowded with glad faces; casks of ale were set abroach by Mr. Drouthy, and every ruddy cheek became flushed with joy and the brown October beverage; every eye was bright and moist; a buzz of happiness pervaded the spacious mansion, and rang in the dark woods around it. But midnight passed; the morning waxed apace, and now the baillie rang the household bell, as a warning for all to retire, and, making an obeisance, bonnet in hand, he set the example by trotting away on his plump Galloway cob.
Walter Fenton, as he had no excuse, (though every wish,) to stay, would have retired with the rest; but this Lady Grizel's hospitality would by no means permit; he remained without much pressing, and after the parting or sleeping cup had been passed round, they separated for the night, and Walter, in the same apartment which had witnessed his combat with Captain Napier, lay down on his couch, not to sleep, but to brood over bright and joyous visions of the future that were never to be realised. One moment his heart glowed with unalloyed rapture and unclouded hope; and the next he was half despairing when he compared his humble fortune with that of Lilian. His whole inheritance was military service: of his family he knew nothing but their name. He was a child of war and misfortune; and these, more than he could foresee, were to be his companions through life. He was poor and obscure; while Lilian, with her artless beauty and girlish sweetness of manner, inherited the name and blood of one of the oldest and proudest houses in the Lowlands—barons to whom the Prestons of Gourton, the Kincaids of Warriston, and the Toweris of that ilk, were but mushroom citizens; and when he pictured the grey old mansion which sheltered him, so tall, so grim, and aristocratic in aspect and association, and the many acres of fertile field, of grassy pasture, and bosky wood that stretched around it, and weighed in the balance his half-pike......
Lovers are the most able of all self-tormentors. His horizon became fearfully overcast, and his bright visions seemed to end in smoke, till hope came again to his aid. Poor Walter! he was now fairly in love, and for the first time; his heart was unhackneyed in the ways of the world, and he knew not that the time might come when, with an inward smile, he would wonder that he ever thought so. But between his own anxious fears, the cawing of the rooks and creaking of the turret vanes, grey morning began to brighten the far off east before he slept.
With the first blush of dawn, old Elspat Elshender arrived with a confused but lamentable history of the disasters and terrors of the night—of how she had been carried away by the devil and Major Weir on a high trotting horse—how claps of thunder had rung around her cottage, and lightning consumed it—and that it was not until she was able to repeat the Lord's Prayer that they assumed the forms of Lord Clermistonlee and his hellicate butler, Juden Stenton, and thereafter vanished in a flash of fire, leaving Elsie among the nettles and whins at the avenue gate.
Lady Bruntisfield, who, seated in her arm-chair, cane in hand, had listened to this wonderful narrative with great gravity, was at no loss to attribute the enterprise to the proper personages, and though the indignation she felt was very great, her alarm and uneasiness were greater. She now saw to what lengths the passion and daring of this rash and profligate suitor might carry him. In consequence of his rank and power, (which the complaints of a hundred old women could never shake,) it was deemed expedient to commit the affair to silence, but to be on their guard, and in future never to go abroad without an armed escort—composed of old Syme the baillie and his sons, or some such stout fellows, with sword and pistol. Meantime, the burning of the cottage (a loss which Elsie deeply mourned, for there she had dwelt a wife and widow for more than forty years,) was attributed by some to the outcast Cameronians who lurked among the whins of Braid, and by others to certain malicious spunkies who then inhabited the morasses to the westward.
At a late hour next morning Walter awoke. It was now the month of April. The sun shone warmly from a bright blue sky streaked with fleecy clouds that gleamed like masses of gilded snow, as his radiance streamed aslant between them. The grass and the budding trees were heavy with dew, and the merry birds were chirruping and hopping from branch to branch, as if their little hearts rejoiced at the approach of summer. The ravenous gled and the ominous rook were soaring on their dark wings into the azure sky, and their light shadows floated over the still bosom of the loch, scaring the lonely heron that waded in its waters, till piercing up, and farther up they grew mere specks in the welkin, as they flew towards the rising sun. The old mansion, with its tall smoky chimneys and projecting turrets, gleamed cheerily in the red sunlight that streamed down the long shady avenue, where myriads of gad-flies wheeled and revolved in the golden beams as they pierced and shot through the thickening foliage—thickening and expanding under the warm showers and warmer sun of April, the balmy month of fresh leaves and opening flowers, of fleecy clouds and bright blue skies.