"Fear not, ma'am," he replied; "he is an innocent creature. He does not rave now; and but that there is an occasional wildness in his language, he is as well as you are. Enter and converse with him, ma'am; he is a great speaker, and to much purpose, too, as visiters tell me."
She entered the arbour. The cripple's eyes met hers—he threw down the book.
"Maria—Maria!" he exclaimed, "this is kind! this is kind, indeed! But do not pity me—do not pity me again! Hate me, Maria! you saw me slay my brother!"
She informed him that his brother was not dead—that he had recovered within a few weeks.
"Not dead!" replied the cripple. "Thank Heaven! Ebenezer is not a murderer! But I am well now—the fever of my brain is passed. Go, Maria, do this for me—it is all I now ask—inquire why I am here immured, and by whose authority. Suffer not my reason to be buried in reason's tomb, and crushed among its wrecks. Your smile, your words of kindness, your tears of gratitude, caused me to dream once, and its remembrance is still as a speck of light amidst the darkness of my bosom; but these grey hairs have broken the dream." And Ebenezer bent his head upon his breast, and sighed.
Maria and her friend left the asylum, but in a few weeks they returned, and when they again departed, Ebenezer Baird went with them. He now sought not Maria's love, but he was gratified with her esteem, and that of her friends. He outlived the persecution of his kindred and the derision of the world; and in the forty-sixth year of his age he died in peace, and bequeathed his property to Maria Bradbury—the first of the human race that had looked on him with kindness, or cheered him with a smile.
[A] The water-ouzel, the kingfisher, and the crested wren, abound in the vicinity of the Cheviots, though the latter beautiful little creature is generally considered as quite a rara avis; and last year one being shot about Cumberland, the circumstance went the round of the newspapers! But the bird is not rare, it is only difficult to be seen, and generally flutters among the leaves and near the top branches.
[THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN OF KIRCONNEL.]
The seat of a branch of the Dumfries-shire Maxwells—Kirconnel—a property lying not far distant from Dumfries, and surrounded by the little pastoral stream, Kirtle—is one of the most beautiful that ever gratified the taste or inspired the pride of a high family. It was not until about the beginning of the seventeenth century that it came into the possession of the Maxwells; for, during a long period, it belonged to the old, though never illustrious, family of the Bells, who, amidst all the turmoil and strife of the March territories, had the good sense to prefer the quiet pleasures of the retreats of their own pure Kirtle, to the tumultuous and cruel scenes which boasted no streamlet but the heart's blood of contending foes. The power of Lord Maxwell, or the threat of Douglas, were equally unavailing to force the old proprietor of Kirconnel—though he ranked as a lesser baron, and might command retainers to fight for his plea—to sacrifice the pleasures of domestic peace on the altars of Laverna or Bellona: these conjunct goddesses who, hand in hand, swayed the destinies of Border men, and regulated the Border rights of mine and thine. He held his fine property directly of the crown; and, so long as he fulfilled the conditions of his right, he conceived himself entitled to the enjoyment of what had been fairly got and honourably retained. One strong element in Kirconnel's determination to live at home, in the enjoyment of what home may produce to a mind capable of appreciating its sweets, was the fear of interrupting the happiness of his lady—one of the family of Irvings in that quarter, who latterly came to possess his property—and of one child, a daughter, the Maid of Kirconnel, concerning whom, as all our readers know, more has been said and sung by antiquarian minstrel than ever fell to the hapless fame or treasured memory of fair woman. Ah, we need scarcely say, that this young heiress of Kirconnel's name was Helen; for who that has read the touching lines of Pinkerton can ever forget the appellation of one whose fate has drawn more tears than ever did that of the heroine Lady Margaret, in the old ballad of "Douglas' Tragedy?" The disasters of ordinary women, though hallowed by the sanctifying power of love, have seldom in this country inspired the harp of the minstrel; so far we are forced to admit the power of beauty, abstracted from the qualities of the mind and heart, that it has been a talisman to bardic genius in every age; yet it is honourable to the character of our nation, that the soul which illumines the "face divine" has called forth strains as melting and triumphant as ever resulted from the effects of physical beauty. It is, however, when the two qualities have been found combined in a favoured daughter of Scotland, that an unhappy fate has called forth a sympathy which has left no harp to sound fitfully in the willow-tree, no heart in our true land untouched, no eye destitute of sympathetic tears. Such has truly been the effect produced by the fortune of Helen of Kirconnel—a fortune which came up on the revolving wheel of the mutable goddess, notwithstanding all the efforts of her father to make the course of her life happy, and its termination blessed. Abstracted as the thoughts were of the three inhabitants of Kirconnel—the lady, the laird, and the daughter—from the scenes that were ever changing in the warlike world around them, so much greater was the necessity for cultivating the opportunities of enjoyment that nature and fortune had awarded to them; and so much greater also was the relish for that enjoyment which has ever been found in minds and hearts properly constituted and tuned to the harp of goodness, to increase with possession as much as the false taste for stimulating avocations cloys with the easy surfeit. It is not often, even in our virtuous land, and even in these days when the blessings of a high civilisation have inclined mankind to the cultivation of the social affections, that a family is found with its different members so predisposed for the harmony of exclusively domestic joys, that some chord does not occasionally give forth a discordant sound when touched by an external impulse; but, in the times of which we speak, and in the district where the individuals resided, "the happy family" was a group that was more often found in the lyrics of the poet or the creations of hope deferred than in the real existences of the troubled and vexed world.