"Take my word and honour, as an Irishwoman," says Peggy, in Hibernian warmth, "you'll bring the shame of the world on yoursilf, and ye will, ye will. I thought once you could not live after my mistress Susan; but she's lost to you, anyhow, the jewel, and I only know you will never have it in your power to get a glance of love from such two swate eyes again."
"There are better fish in the sea," says I, "than ever came out o' it."
"Don't attimpt to say so," says she; "for, though many a nate, dacent girl is to the fore, 'tis a silfish cratur they wish bad luck to; and maybe your honour will let me tell you the iligant ould story of the 'Crooked Stick' for your idification. Well, then," she went on, "you must know there was a whimsical young woman sent into a green lane, having on either side tall and beautiful trees; and she was tould to pick out and bring away the straightest and purtiest branch she could find. She was left at liberty to go to the end, if she plased; but she was not, by any means, to be allowed to retrace her steps, to make choice of a stick she had already slighted. Beautiful and tall were the boughs of the trees, and swate to look upon; and each in its turn was decaived in not being preferred; for the silly maiden went on and on, without any rason, vainly expecting to get a more perfect stick than those that courted her two eyes. At long and last, the trees became smaller, while blurs and warts disfigured their crooked boughs. She could not, she thought within hersilf, choose such rubbitch. But what was she to do?—for lo! she had arrived at the ind of her journey, and, instead of a nate young branch from a stately tree, an ould deformed bough was all that remained within her reach. So the silly maiden had to take the crooked stick at last, and return with it in her hand, amidst the jeering of the beautiful trees which she had formerly despised. And now," said Peggy Byrne, in conclusion, "remember the crooked stick, your honour, and give over your dilly-dallying, or sure enough you'll get it—you will."
I laughed heartily at the Irish nurse's foolery; and that very night, I mind, I had as queer a dream as mortal ever dreamed. I thought I was out on a fine summer's day in the month o' June, fishing in the stream a little below Selkirk, where the Tweed is augmented by the Ettrick. I was angling, I thought, with the artificial fly in the manner o' worm; and, though the water was very turbid, trouts, like silly women, are so apt to be taken with appearances, that that day multitudes o' them eagerly seized the deadly barb, and only found out the deceit at the precious cost o' their lives! I imagined I was particularly nice, however, in choosing the fish I raised; for, as I drew them ashore upon the nearest channel, instead o' rinning forward with alacrity and seizing them, I thought I stood like an innocent, turning owre in my mind whether the trouts were o' such a quality as to repay me for the trouble o' stooping to take them up. Presently the fish, not being properly banked, would have broken the gut and torn themselves from the hook, leaving me in bewilderment and shame, to execrate my ain stupid indecision. But this was not the worst o' it; for in some cases I actually fancied I saw the same bonny detached trouts taken further down the stream by other anglers, while a number, after a fierce struggle to get free, would have been seen pining, with wounded hearts, at the bottom o' the water, unable apparently either to feed or spawn. To add to my vexation, Maister Brown, the stream began suddenly to clear, while the fish, from the quantity o' food that covered the water, grew lazy, and would not so muckle as move. At last I thought I threw in, for the last time, in a fit o' desperation, and what should I do but hook a huge salmon by the side fin! He immediately started in beautiful style for his far hame, the sea; and as a fish so fastened was no better secured than a young bluid-horse bridled by the middle instead o' the mouth, I saw there was nothing for it but following him, and using my legs as weel as my line. Away we accordingly went, at a dead heat, down the Tweed—starting from about Ettrick foot, while the fish every now and then would have sprung furiously out o' the water in his attempts to shiver the line with his tail. It would not a' do, however; and, after a great many hours' play, I thought we landed at "Coldstream Brig-end," where, finding him greatly exhausted, I drew him closer and closer to the edge, whiles giving him a brattle out into the deep water, till seeing him unable to give any further resistance, I gaffed and secured him. But, judge o' my mortification, when, instead o' a bonny plump salmon, a lean, deformed skate lay in the dead-thraws upon the white gravel, to mock me for my pains! The bairns, at this moment, whom I thought I saw distinctly on the bridge, setting up a wicked shout o' derision, I awoke with the noise. Nor will I ever forget the agony that I was in—the sweat ran from my body like a planet shower; and do what I liked, I could not get the disagreeable image o' the ill-coloured toom skate from my mind; for aye, as I dovered owre again, I was as suddenly started by the presence o' the hateful fish laying itsel cheek by jowl alongside o' me.
You may laugh as ye like, Maister Brown, at this strange dream; but, when you hear how significantly the crowning event in the after-history o' my life was prefigured by it, you'll see less cause for laughter, I'm thinking. It might be half-a-year subsequent to the dream, or thereabouts, that I happened to be in Wooler on a jaunt; and as the place and the folk about it were muckle to my mind, I was induced to protract my stay for several weeks. I soon made the acquaintance o' several o' the young leddies o' the same caste as mysel; and, among others, I got uncommonly intimate with a Miss Cochrane, and her sister Arabella. The former, I was told, had a hantle o' siller, besides rich expectations from some auld aunt in Newcastle; while stories were whispered o' the prodigious number o' offers she had refused, and that he would be considered a lucky man who should make off with such a capital prize! Here, thinks I, I've fallen on my feet at last; and, if I do not impove the golden opportunity to my advantage, blame me. Miss Cochrane continued shy, however; and I was beginning to despair o' making any impression, when, one night, being at a party with her and her sister, at the house o' a Mrs Cavendish, we a' three grew so delighted with each other, that it was agreed, before parting, that, as neither Arabella nor hersel had ever seen Coldstream, and as they had a genteel cousin there, we should take a trip to it the next day in a post-chaise. Off we accordingly went on the ensuing morning; and, as soon as we reached the town, a messenger was despatched for the genteel cousin, when presently a little dissipated-looking creature made his appearance, who, at the sight o' his dear Sophia and Arabella, was like to go into ecstatics. He did not need to be asked twice to join us at dinner; for he moved about as if the inn had been his ain, and he fell to the dainties we had ordered as greedily as a half-famished cur. The wine and brandy, too, were sent down his throat as if his stomach had been a sand-bed, and he kept drinking glasses with us every whip-touch, first asking me to join him, and then his "dear cousins," till, long before the dinner was owre, I had got so completely rosined, that I could not weel make out where I was, or satisfactorily account for the appearance o' the two strange women that sat on each side o' me. The haze, however, that hung owre me began to go off in the course o' the evening; and, when I cleared up sufficiently, the Coldstream birkie proposed that we should sally out and get a sight o' the famed "Brig-end," where the well-known Peter Moodie celebrated clandestine marriages.
"I'm yer man for a spree," says I—for the brandy, by this time, had flown to my head. And, starting to my feet, and seizing Miss Cochrane by the arm—"Come, my dawty," cries I, "let us away down to the brig and see Hymen's Altar!"
"Oh, Master Blackwell!" says madam, in girlish bashfulness, allowing hersel at the same time to be led off "only think what our friends will say, should they hear of us being there! I would not for ten thousand worlds they should know."
"Fiddledee, fiddledum!" shouted I; and off we strutted, uttering a' the balderdash, and foolery in the world on our way down; and, when we came to the Brig-end, I began to sing, at the very top o' my lungs,
"There's naebody coming to marry me."
But I had scarcely finished the first line o' the sang, when forward stepped an auld man, with a snuffy white napkin round his neck, and with a head as white as the driven snaw; and says he, touching his hat with his hand—