They reached the farm-house of Meikle Farness, and entered the chamber where the maiden lay. A bright fire of brushwood threw a flickering gloom on the floor and rafters, and their shadows, as they advanced, seemed dancing on the walls. Close beside the bed there was a small table, bearing a lighted candle, and with a Bible lying open upon it, at that chapter of Corinthians in which the Apostle assures us that the dead shall rise and the mortal put on immortality. Lillias half sat, half reclined, in the upper part of the bed. Her thin and wasted features had already the stiff rigidity of death, her cheeks and lips were colourless, and, though the blaze seemed to dance and flicker on her half-closed eyes, they served no longer to intimate to the departing spirit the existence of external things.
"Ah, my Lillias!" exclaimed Thomson, as he bent over her, his heart swelling with an intense agony. "Alas! has it come to this!"
His well-known voice served to recall her, as from the precincts of another world. A faint melancholy smile passed over her features, and she held out her hand.
"I was afraid," she said, in a voice sweet and gentle as ever, though scarcely audible through extreme weakness, "I was afraid that I was never to see you more. Draw nearer—there is a darkness coming over me, and I hear but imperfectly. I may now say with a propriety which no one will challenge, what I durst not have said before. Need I tell you that you were the dearest of all my friends—the only man I ever loved—the man whose lot, however low and unprosperous, I would have deemed it a happiness to be invited to share? I do not, however—I cannot reproach you. I depart and for ever; but, oh, let not a single thought of me render you unhappy; my few years of life have not been without their pleasures, and I go to a better and brighter world. I am weak and cannot say more; but let me hear you speak. Read to me the eighth chapter of Romans."
Thomson, with a voice tremulous and faltering through emotion, read the chapter. Ere he had made an end, the maiden had again sunk into the state of apparent insensibility out of which she had been so lately awakened; though, occasionally, a faint pressure of his hand, which she still retained, shewed him that she was not unconscious of his presence. At length, however, there was a total relaxation of the grasp—the cold damp of the stiffening palm struck a chill to his heart—there was a fluttering of the pulse, a glazing of the eye—the breast ceased to heave, the heart to beat—the silver cord parted in twain, and the golden bowl was broken. Thomson contemplated, for a moment, the body of his mistress, and, striking his hand against his forehead, rushed out of the apartment.
He attended her funeral—he heard the earth falling heavy and hollow on the coffin-lid—he saw the green sod placed over her grave—he witnessed the irrepressible anguish of her father, and the sad regret of her friends—and all this without shedding a tear. He was turning to depart, when some one thrust a letter into his hand; he opened it almost mechanically. It contained a considerable sum of money, and a few lines from his agent, stating that, in consequence of a favourable change in his circumstances, he had been enabled to satisfy all his creditors. Thomson crumpled up the bills in his hand. He felt as if his heart stood still in his breast; a noise seemed ringing in his ears; a mist cloud appeared as if rising out of the earth and darkening round him. He was caught, when falling, by old William Stewart, and, on awakening to consciousness and the memory of the past, found himself in his arms. He lived for about ten years after, a laborious and speculative man, ready to oblige, and successful in all his designs. And no one deemed him unhappy. It was observed, however, that his dark brown hair was soon mingled with masses of grey, and that his tread became heavy and his frame bent. It was remarked, too, that, when attacked by a lingering epidemic, which passed over well-nigh the whole country, he of all the people was the only one that sank under it.
THE LINTON LAIRDS, OR EXCLUSIVES AND INCLUSIVES.
In no part of her Majesty's widespread dominions does mighty Aristocracy rear its proud head with greater majesty than at Linton. There are, or were, in the neighbourhood of that ancient borough, no fewer than forty-five lairds, all possessing portions of the soil; and from the soil it is that the big genius of aristocratic pride derives, like the old oak, the pith of her power. It is of no avail to say—and we, being ourselves of an ancient family, as poor as the old dark denizens of the soil who were displaced by the Norwegian brown species, despise the taunt—that fifteen out of the whole number of Linton lairds were, at one period, on the poor's box. Gentry, with old noble blood in their veins, are not a whit less to be valued that they are beggars, for it is the peculiar character of gentle blood, that it never gets thinner by poor meat. A low marriage sometimes deteriorates it; and hence the horror of the privileged species at that kind of degradation; but the tenth cousin of a scurvy baronet will retain the purity of the noble fluid, in spite of husks, acorns, and onions. All the efforts of the patriots called radicals—even if they should have recourse to the starving system, by taking the properties of their masters—will never be able to bring down to a proper popular equal consistency the blood of the old stock; and so long as they dare not, for the spilling of their own thin stuff, let out the life stream of their lords, they must submit to see it running in the old channels as ruby and routhy as it did in the reign of Malcolm Canmore.
But you may say that Laird Geddes of Cauldshouthers was no Linton laird, and was never on the poor's box. Take it as you please, we will not dispute with you if you come from Tweeddale. You are, perhaps, of the old Hamiltons of Cauldcoats, or the Bertrams of Duckpool, or the Hays of Glenmuck, or the old tory lairds of Bogend, Hallmyre, or Windylaws, and may challenge us, like a true knight, for endeavouring to reduce the grandeur of your compeers; and therefore, to keep peace, we will be contented with the admission that Gilbert Geddes was the thane, or, as Miss Joanna Baillie would have it, according to the distinction indicated in the line, "the thanies drinking in the hall," the thanie—that is, the lesser Thane of Cauldshouthers, in the shire of Peebles. True, there was in that county, properly only one thane, viz., he of Drumelzier, whose castle, now in ruins, may still be seen near Powsail; but of the lesser order there were many; and, if any gutter-blooded burgher of Linton had, in his cups at Cantswalls, alleged anything to the contrary, he might have been set down as a leveller. The property of Cauldshouthers was of that kind comprehending a mixture of bog, mire, and moss, which is indicated by its name. Indeed, almost all the estates in that shire bore names no less appropriate; and, though some proprietors, such as Montgomerie, Veitch, Keith, and Kennedy, have endeavoured to impart a gentility to their possessions by rechristening them, they did so, we shrewdly suspect, to conceal the fact that they were new comers, and not of the noble old Hallmyres, Bogends, Blairbogs, and Cauldcoats. Not so, however, Gilbert Geddes, for the laird was of the good ancient stock of Cauldshouthers, and gloried in the name as he did in the old blood that had come down through honourable veins, unadulterated and unobstructed—save probably by a partial congelation, the effect of the cold barren lands—until it landed, with an accumulation of dignity, in his own arteries, and those of his sister, Miss Grizelda.