"Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death. "Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae stuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"
Hannah started up from her swoon—and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh! the Bird—the Bird!—the Eagle—the Eagle!—the Eagle has carried off my bonny wee Walter—is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken—oh! tell me if I'm wauken—or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever."
Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a mother—and you may guess what a mother—yet—frown not, fair and gentle reader—frown not, pure and stainless as thou art—to her belonged not the sacred name of wife—and that baby was the child of sin and of shame—yes—"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She had loved—trusted—been betrayed—and deserted. In sorrow and solitude—uncomforted and despised—she bore her burden. Dismal had been the hour of travail—and she feared her mother's heart would have broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is forgiveness—alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not such as her fellow-creatures deemed it—for there were dreadful secrets which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of repentance—walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the kirk—yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity—she was excluded from no house she had heart to visit—no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice people took of her baby—no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, forbade all such approach—and an universal sentiment of indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled seducer—if all had been known, too weak word for his crime—who left thus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who till her unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to her daughters.
Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer—but she had striven—and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so—to think not of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image, as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart—but she closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the love towards him that slept—but was not dead—arose in yearnings of still more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gathered all hope of comfort—of peace—of reward of her repentance. One of its smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her breast—on her knee—in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the hour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like a corpse.
The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange story without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there was in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd, went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined, and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side.
His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm he felt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, to escape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slime into some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his in forgiveness—an un-upbraiding tear—a faint smile of love. All his better nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes, good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her—but here I am—not to offer retribution—for that may not—will not—must not be—guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder—I call on you to seize your prisoner."
The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their anger subsided into a stern satisfaction—and that soon softened, in sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness, into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been, had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness. The old clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers, whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger never became altogether a saint—nor acquired the edifying habit of pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his eyes—yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very serious laid to his prejudice—that he became in due time an elder of the Kirk—gave his children a religious education—erring only in making rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.