“I maun gang, dearest; I maun gang,” said Willie, and pressed her to his breast; “but the thocht o’ my ain wifie will mak the months chase ane anither like the moon driving shadows ower the sea. There’s nae danger in the voyage, hinny; no a grain o’ danger; sae dinna greet; but come, kiss me, Tibby, and when I come hame I’ll mak ye leddy o’ them a’.”
“Oh no, no, Willie!” she replied; “I want to be nae leddy; I want naething but my Willie. Only say that ye’ll no gang, and here’s something here, something for ye to look at.” And she hurried to her chest, and took from it a large leathern pocket-book that had been her father’s, and which contained her treasure, now amounting to somewhat more than six hundred pounds. In a moment she returned to her husband; she threw her arms around his neck; she thrust the pocket-book into his bosom. “There, Willie, there!” she exclaimed; “that is yours—my faither placed it in my hand wi’ a blessing, and wi’ the same blessing I transfer it to you; but dinna, dinna leave me.” Thus saying, she hurried out of the room. We will not attempt to describe the astonishment, we may say the joy, of the fond husband, on opening the pocket-book and finding the unlooked-for dowry. However intensely a man may love a woman, there is little chance that her putting an unexpected portion of six hundred pounds into his hands will diminish his attachment; nor did it diminish that of William Gordon. He relinquished his intention of proceeding on the foreign voyage, and purchased a small coasting vessel, of which he was both owner and commander. Five years of unclouded prosperity passed over them, and Tibby had become the mother of three fair children. William sold his small vessel, and purchased a larger one, and in fitting it up all the gains of his five successful years were swallowed up. But trade was good. She was a beautiful brig, and he had her called the Tibby Fowler. He now took a fond farewell of his wife and little ones upon a foreign voyage which was not calculated to exceed four months, and which held out high promise of advantage. But four, eight, twelve months passed away, and there was no tidings of the Tibby Fowler. Britain was then at war; there were enemies’ ships and pirates upon the sea, and there had been fierce storms and hurricanes since her husband left; and Tibby thought of all these things and wept; and her lisping children asked her when their father would return, for he had promised presents to all, and she answered, to-morrow, and to-morrow, and turned from them, and wept again. She began to be in want, and at first she received assistance from some of the friends of their prosperity; but all hope of her husband’s return was now abandoned. The ship was not insured, and the mother and her family were reduced to beggary. In order to support them, she sold one article of furniture after another, until what remained was seized by the landlord in security for his rent. It was then that Tibby and her children, with scarce a blanket to cover them, were cast friendless upon the streets, to die or to beg. To the last resource she could not yet stoop, and from the remnants of former friendship she was furnished with a basket and a few trifling wares, with which, with her children by her side, she set out, with a broken and sorrowful heart, wandering from village to village. She had journeyed in this manner for some months, when she drew near her native glen, and the cottage that had been her father’s—that had been her own—stood before her. She had travelled all the day and sold nothing. Her children were pulling by her tattered gown, weeping and crying, “Bread, mother, give us bread!” and her own heart was sick with hunger.
“Oh, wheesht, my darlings, wheesht!” she exclaimed, and she fell upon her knees, and threw her arms round the necks of all the three, “You will get bread soon; the Almighty will not permit my bairns to perish; no, no, ye shall have bread.”
In despair she hurried to the cottage of her birth. The door was opened by one who had been a rejected suitor. He gazed upon her intently for a few seconds; and she was still young, being scarce more than six-and-twenty, and in the midst of her wretchedness yet lovely.
“Gude gracious, Tibby Fowler!” he exclaimed, “is that you? Poor creature! are ye seeking charity? Weel, I think ye’ll mind what I said to you now, that your pride would have a fa’!”
While the heartless owner of the cottage yet spoke, a voice behind her was heard exclaiming, “It is her! it is her! my ain Tibby and her bairns!”
At the well-known voice, Tibby uttered a wild scream of joy, and fell senseless on the earth; but the next moment her husband, William Gordon, raised her to his breast. Three weeks before, he had returned to Britain, and traced her from village to village, till he found her in the midst of their children, on the threshold of the place of her nativity. His story we need not here tell. He had fallen into the hands of the enemy; he had been retained for months on board of their vessel; and when a storm had arisen, and hope was gone, he had saved her from being lost and her crew from perishing. In reward for his services, his own vessel had been restored to him, and he was returned to his country, after an absence of eighteen months, richer than when he left, and laden with honours. The rest is soon told. After Tibby and her husband had wept upon each other’s neck, and he had kissed his children, and again their mother, with his youngest child on one arm, and his wife resting on the other, he hastened from the spot that had been the scene of such bitterness and transport. In a few years more, William Gordon having obtained a competency, they re-purchased the cottage in the glen, where Tibby Fowler lived to see her children’s children, and died at a good old age in the house in which she had been born—the remains of which, we have only to add, for the edification of the curious, may be seen until this day.
DANIEL CATHIE, TOBACCONIST.
Daniel Cathie was a reputable dealer in snuff, tobacco, and candles, in a considerable market town in Scotland. His shop had, externally, something neat and enticing about it. In the centre of one window glowed a transparency of a ferocious-looking Celt, bonneted, plaided, and kilted, with his unsheathed claymore in one hand, and his ram’s-horn mull in the other; intended, no doubt, to emblem to the spectator, that from thence he recruited his animal spirits, drawing courage from the titillation of every pinch. Around him were tastefully distributed jars of different dimensions, bearing each the appropriate title of the various compounds within, from Maccuba and Lundy Foot down to Beggar’s Brown and Irish Blackguard. In the other, one half was allotted to tobacco pipes of all dimensions, tastefully arranged, so as to form a variety of figures, such as crosses, triangles, and squares; decorated at intervals with rolls of twist, serpentinings of pigtail, and monticuli of shag. The upper half displayed candles, distributed with equal exhibition of taste, from the prime four in the pound down to the halfpenny dip; some of a snowy whiteness, and others of an aged and delicate yellow tinge; enticing to the eyes of experienced housewives and spectacled cognoscenti. Over the door rode a swarthy son of Congo, with broad nostrils, and eyes whose whites were fearfully dilated,—astride on a tobacco hogshead,—his woolly head bound with a coronal of feathers, a quiver peeping over his shoulder, and a pipe in his cheeks blown up for the eternity of his wooden existence, in the ecstasy of inhalation.
Daniel himself, the autocrat of this domicile, was a little squat fellow, five feet and upwards, of a rosy complexion, with broad shoulders, and no inconsiderable rotundity of paunch. His eye was quick and sparkling, with something of an archness in its twinkle, as if he loved a joke occasionally, and could wink at any one who presumed so far in tampering with his shrewdness. His forehead was bald, as well as no small portion of either temple; and the black curls, which projected above his ears, gave to his face the appearance of more than its actual breadth, which was scantily relieved by a slight blue spotted handkerchief, loosely tied around a rather apoplectic neck.