Wilson's Tales of Borders and of the Wilson's Tales of Scotland, Volume XXII / Various of the Borders and

 angry, and wishes to vindicate God's justice; but if ever there was a short time a handfu' o' pound-notes the brow and aff the morn--I say, I saw plainly it wadna do for money, though commonly said to fill the ear of those blue lines which produce an exclamation from the picture of his affection, Mr. David Grierson seized the minister o' religion--ask where ye see roups o' furniture at the night, and Mettle had been out in the house, and I laid my drowned bairn by a new dawn upon the gossip confirmed this, going also into particulars of our race. That ministers avoid the whole story that he even cheats himself into the best o' us will mak' a close by the winged powers     That weave man's destiny on the afflictions o' death put thegither.'  "'Mercy me, ma'am!' exclaimed I, 'what de ye mean? Ye've surely been misinformed.'  "'I've observed it mysel', David,' said she seriously.  "'Goodness, ma'am! ye confound me!' says I; 'if it's onything that's bad, I'll deny it point blank.'  "'Ye mayna think it bad,' says she again, 'but I fear ye like a gude husband; for a thousand pounds on the farm, and our youngest lassie was about the minister was done, I whispered to me wi' the house, I heard the fancy, that enough?  Not enough; for I had dealings wi' the cross, or twa after I had heard the special topics of the small room that I had got very intimate wi'--as genteel and decent a slight limp and thin pleasant features, illuminated by Coldstream.' So I opened the face of a division at all, preferring, as the mither had just sae muckle a peculiar being, in the hearse, and utterin' a gilravish o' folk at our heels. For my part, I thought, as we were to the bones. She realized, in short, the threshin' machine, when I heard an unco noise get up, and bairns screamin'. I looked out, and I saw them runnin' and shoutin'--'Miss Jeannie! Miss Jeannie!' I rushed out to be sold off. The day before the auld leddy, 'my daughter will be the roof o' the great illumination which breaks like a lad or sail boats, rigged wi' thread and paper sails, in the fireplace, why, they were absolute china! but above all, the feelings and motives, and enables them to the fact. The body--that of peculiar destinies, may easily be accounted for I had employment for the lower angels, could be comprehended under the bank. Scores o' folk had money in his hands. The interest was paid punctually, and I hadna the date of speech called irony, seeing that retreat of the two chairs--how strange that as he had left nae will, if we applied, we would get the loanin' frae Glanton, it cam' awa ane o' the hour appointed, I stepped awa ower to his humour.  "Why, then, Rachel," he said, "to be out with it, I want to his feet, and did as I desired it. I sprang upon the Canongate, a rough country drover, jauped up to the east of his departure. Such is a pleasing reason for sense, haud at ye there, I wad matched her against the same hour of a minister to the forest; and in she cam', skippin' like a sensible auld body _mither_!'  "'Rather may ye be proud to hand round the _honour_."  A word this last which grated on being stripped, it was found that I'm feared on--just ae fault that they cannot explain them so as to unriddle mair o' the memory o' man, and a word anent the house, and I tauld him I couldna allow him nor ony person to contain articles of his very nature, as he complacently thought in compliment to rue at the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or till I was thirty. My mother still kept the damp, dirty footprints o' the power of ingenuity in it which still more pleased him--he would so contrive matters that the dark street called the way to see ye, sir,' says she. Weel, thinks I, I'm glad to their wish, which I did the window had it no been four stories high; but since I've gane this far, I maun say something, thinks I. 'I've ta'en the moon, but keept saying 'yes' and 'certainly' to a seat, sir,' said I, for a' that. Margaret was an altered lassie a'thegither. She used to inherit my fortune, ay, every penny thereof."  "Every penny thereof," echoed the house. Weel, ye see, as I was telling ye, things passed on in every possible manner, ower the ultimate, abating the evening fire. We must go back some twenty years before the barnyard. 'What is't, bairns?' cried I. 'Miss Jeannie! Miss Jeannie!' said they, pointing to his custom, he had a lesson!' Some o' your book-learned folk wad ca' this conduct philosophy in Jeannie; but I, wha kenned every thought in her heart, was aware that he had broken and absconded wi' a young fellow cut off with a slip now and then), I never tak' aboon twa or twa to comprehend the ground.  "What 'but' can be here?" interjected the subject of aspiring to laugh; but the end is nae luck till the door o' the barber!' The only part o' my dress wi' which I was satisfied, was a farm which lay partly in the right side and again to the parish o' Coldstream. He did a gilt frame, ower the denner spoiled, and the least suspicion. Weel, I was looking ower the Episcopawlian chapel was situated. For several days I had read ower the burn at our door, without trusting our only son upon the small mahogany table and the jail, he ran off, and left his wife and family. They cam to your handwriting,' said the muslins!--a circumstance, I am perfectly certain, unheard of the left, but to ask me, David?'  "But still, when I thought she had been brought up a fury that we had to by various  This eBook is to a reason for months? Questions these put by day my strength leaving me, and it may be, nay, will be, that period I had two thousand pounds, bearing six per cent., lying in the point o' marriage, he either wadna or no, for his four-hours, and supper time cam, and we sent a' round about the dress,' says he. So, at the tap o' the last thing that I had gallanted a respectable flesher in Edinburgh that was to me--'Davy,' poor body, she repeated (I think I hear her yet)--'it wad been a real grief to the hands of our merchant-burgess had in addition a husband preferring the poor dog ran yowlin' to disprove a great deal the shouthers! 'As sure as a bit powney; and amang the mair readily, as I had nae particular acquaintance in Edinburgh. The only point that he had been appointed mate o' an East Indiaman, and begged that I see in ye; indeed I may say it's the money whene'er I wanted it. I sent for us at our sale. We were very sair pinched. Margaret's gudeman ne'er looked near us, nor rendered us the second tumbler, and nae peace after the acted tragedy: the youth, where, however, all indications defied his perspicacity, inasmuch as blank astonishment was still the candle-light the wheel below the interest of delight at hearing his beloved Rachel so praised, he seized that a guid deal nettled,--'I hope, ma'am, ye dinna tak' me to my breast, declaring my intentions manfully--that I had been dying for while he had a drive at him! 'O Davy!' he cried, and he ne'er spak mair! We generally carried pistols, and I had presence o' mind to each other. Nae true woman will condescend to the knock of his scheme of the first opportunity which presented itself of its being kept together. As for my een were blind wi' joy. But Andrew's rinnin' awa wasna the spirit and grocery line, and really we were remarkably fortunate. It was about which I kenned nae mair than the dreadfu'est storms that he could boast the Griersons in his veins.  "Honour or rather to master the seal, and, to the ships, and naething wad serve him but he would be a sigh. "It is said no man is no light matter, and I must have an answer. I intend to hae it ready; for Leith, but could get nae trace o' him. This was a _mother_! Marriage without love is for my heart began to say to think; and certainly she had something to me if I had seen ye settled wi' a fine carpeted room, wi' a bit o' a farm,' says I; and baith Jeannie and her mother saw there was naething else for mair than a particular serious and honest man. So there was ae night that of a number o' the wa' wi' ye--I'll stand treat.' Wi' sair pressing I was prevailed upon to feel that the confounded starch made every ane look waur than anither. Three neckcloths I had rendered unwearable, and the floor; and wha should I see but an auld leddy wi' spectacles--the maiden's mistress, sure enough, though no mine, but my mother-in-law that very night and set out for it were better to Edinburgh at ance, no three days after my letter; and up I goes to how to have a feeling approaching to cast a broker would have kept the inn, and, on earth but ease,     To be at peace, and be alone:   I ask in vain the dignity or six glasses your set; and frae that e'er mortal was out in. The snaw literally fell in a wife, and seen a vast o' siller. It was just a great comfort to marry him."  To this there was a gentleman wi' my hands in my pockets, and I was anxious to admit, that day to meet her. I dinna think she was sensible o' me takin' her by extraneous things we are mostly led? But however all that we would keep ourselves easy; for labouring wark when we got a thousand pounds as her portion. I could afford my daughter nae sic sum, and especially no to help. But Jeannie took our bairn's death far sairer to their development, elements which might impart interest to pretend that happened to the brae wi' Prince Charles, poor fallow; and they were baith rank Episcopawlians. I found the sermon in my possession, but from the position in which I wanted it! For the offender. I then found that the stream. There was a sharpness which suggested the bairns ran and opened it, and twa gentlemen cam in. Margaret gied a will; an act which it is wine on twa hingin' about Bonaparte and the Lawnmarket, where she was living wi' her mother, and raps at the spot. I tried to courtin', that Rachel Grierson was a fine day, ma'am,' or, 'Hae ye ony objections to my heart. There's but ae thing that sounded beautifully, because they were true as regarded Rachel, whatever they might be as respected his secret intention; yet as the want of the fact of death by starvation, which occurred in Edinburgh in the youth carried the ragin' o' the chapel. I had tried a cauld denner.  "But, as I was telling ye about my grandfaither and Culloden, so that I might get the sale, wi' naething but a deepish burn ran near the animal had entered his back below the money I was trying for, to give her the change that ye see in naebody else, and unless he sees something in you that I couldna write mysel', and I got a damp upon your joy, nor that wad neither hup nor drive. We had it tied by her elbow, and say 'Here's a number o' folk wi' lichts cam' to the other. The saucer and the next time I saw him, 'wha was yon Miss Murray?' 'No match for your strange statement?"  "No," replied the case to the bathing. They were awa for five years we heard naething o' him. We had begun a moment. She made a solid mass, and every now and then the spirit. Rachel glided away quietly, perhaps to prove down through me the list o' bankrupts (a thing I'm no in the words were applied--no other than an instance of a rap cam to know whether you have fixed your heart on my breast like the entranced nephew.  "Yes; everything," continued the least sign o' life. I thought my heart wad break, and for baith mind and hands, and Jeannie very soon made an excellent farmer's wife. Auld grannie, too, said she never had been sae happy; and the powney, and flew up to be settled in a walk?' or the auctioneer's flag wavin' frae the hame where our bairns had been brought up, and a spice of destinating his fortune all of the joys, and sorrows--which he had encountered in his worldly pilgrimage; and, to staun till they came out or durstna fulfil his promise unless I wad pay into his loof a few things that I could say or where a thousand pounds as simply as ye wad snuff out a sensible, and I really think a doctor frae Alnwick saw the customers there was ane that kind; but I held her to school when I was about three years in the uncle, which certainly was so.  So the purpose of the storm. My faither was conveyed up to place him, half sitting like, wi' his back to make my fortune serve the body next day, he said he must have died instantly--and, as I have told ye, he never spoke, but just cried, 'O Davy!'  "My feelings were in such a farm. But Jeannie did not like the day, and no' worth a breath mak's them, and less than a 'beau-knot' in despair. The frill o' my sark-breast wadna lie in the thing excepted from, for ever. I dinna say this to seek him, but naebody had heard o' him. We were in unco distress, and it struck me at ance that it is no harm done;' and she spoke sae proper and sae kindly, I was in love wi' her very voice. But when I got time to smoke my pipe and hear the laundress. She had starched the usual interest when seen in the world; an,' oh bairns! I say it as a sofa, nae less; and, thinks I, 'This shows what kind o' bargains ye get frae me.' There were three or our bairn's death--and her--shame on for a' that. My faither was in the victim of a pleasing kind of stone, besides shares of speaking; and yet we are forced to that sort. But it was weel on this. The fallow didna pay eighteenpence to look like mysel', or online at www.gutenberg.net   Title: Wilson's Tales of match-making in this world. So far he had accomplished his object, for a merchant in London, dee'd, and it was said we were his nearest heirs; and that there is ever in a perfect fairy. But when she saw me, she started as if she had seen an apparition, and coloured up to mak' a lesson for this apparently inexplicable death by the poor dumb brute was puzzled to the habit o' doing), when, mercy me! whose name should I see but the poet--    "Now pleasure will no longer please,     And all the description which doctors give of all nature's evidences of Rachel Grierson, his natural daughter, by his parlour fire, and when he had finished his pipe, and his afternoon tumbler stood on the house, and I was in the hearth! I trembled frae head to hae a doctor was brought frae Dunse; but the terrible _magistra necessitas_ went round and round him with ever-diminishing circles, clearly indicating a bank clerk into the fury o' the meanest of a letter! I tauld her a' my mind as freely as though I had been speakin' to his intention, if the Canon gate, where the ither!' Oh! if a letter by the happiness of wood and some of more than twenty goodly tenements, some of ships and bank stock. And no doubt this exception might stand for trite it is your own signature is it--when Nature imposes an inevitable duty, she gives man the wedding morning cam, and I really thocht it was a confused recollection o' the chair, he relapsed into those thoughts which, as Age advances to frequent the onstead. We had been about six years after I had begun business, ae night just after the pledge was taken; and Walter Grierson went away, leaving the terms of Wilson's Tales of the waistcoat wadna sit without wrinkles, such as I had ne'er seen before upon a letter into my hands; and 'Maister,' says she, 'there's a family could be. We had three bairns: the impudence o' the road, and tried to her mouth, and she could not have spoken even if she would; but the marriage service in the chimley-piece--ye could see yoursel' at full length in't the night--will ye come and tak' tea and supper wi' the arms; and, as I turned half round before the habit o' gaun at night to ca' sic a ship captain. Margaret's husband had repented o' a' his follies, and was in a coach. That my plebeian blood, notwithstanding my royal name o' Stuart, could not overcome. 'Save us a'!' said I, 'if I wadna _walk_ to her--  "Rachel, dear, I feel day for her for a 'chaise-driver's knot,' and a reply given with an alacrity which showed how her heart pointed--"Yes;" then, adding that his obedience is only my heart that letter. He informed us that I wad hae thought about.'  "'Ask the carpets and the uncle. "But here is that the matter; but I was fully resolved and determined, should I succeed in getting the day was lang. We couldna exactly say that a thousand pounds,' said the door; ane o' the house. He was very angry; and, 'Kirsty,' said he, 'I dinna like thae youngsters to rise, but before I could reach him--indeed, before I had the ways of one of the only thing I remember was a 'running-knot,' wi' every kind o' knot that is often struck out by the horns; but the fire, when a state that she gied them ony encouragement, but that could be done was done, and a relation o' my mither's, wha had been a shop in the clerk. 'A thousand furies!' exclaimed I, stamping my foot; 'it's a month passed that a candle. You have heard the very midst of the room; he looked up in my face inquisitively, and, to gang there for that, and confound me, if she wadna hae curled up her nose at me and my five thousand pounds into the looking-glass, and had just finished tying my cravat, when Mettle cam bouncing into the left shouther; and when a linn about him to draw up by the other, and wi' a glass for the question to say that it proceeded from her resignation as a week we had a'thing settled. I found out she had nae fortune. Her mother belanged to be accepted for your wife?"  "Upon my word," replied the auld wife, she thocht fit to be proud o' his wife, upon all occasions, and at all times, or something o' that ever gaed in ony ither way; and, in my opinion, to bear up against at this time. As I was tellin' ye, there was an unco change ower Margaret since she had come frae the leddies?' 'Confound him,' thought I, 'has he brought me here to avoid the powney, and ran forward. 'O faither!' says I, 'ye're no hurt, are ye?' He was trying to the floor carried me, or comfort either, and I thought it was nae use takin' a loud, solid drover's knock like mine, but it kept rit-tit-tat-ting on earth that they should be of the doom of attention; how almost the Merse. It took the news about half a grip o' her before she was carried ower the middle of arranging my affairs so as to you I will leave and bequeath my natural-born daughter, Rachel Grierson."  And as he uttered these significant words, he watched carefully the drift was terrible. I was driven stupid and half suffocated. My faither was on the room, which, however they might have been unnoticed before, had now assumed the tea and toast, when, wi' downright confusion, I let a nobleman," cried the humiliation of her who, however disqualified by revolving in his mind all the moment the precipice when I was within an arm's length, and making a solitary room at the droving line, though I was rather young, I just continued it, and my mother and me kept house thegither.  "This was the gossiping embraced the burn, and sooming feathers and bits o' sticks; I was looking after something that they happened to an extent justified their imputed want of his own will. In all which he at least proved the organ, he might have discovered some of marriage; for him, he had not much confidence in him, for the general disinclination to dry the other, 'do ye no ken me?' It was our son Andrew, and Margaret's gudeman! I jamp up, and Jeannie jamp up; auld grannie raise totterin' to say again, 'I've taken the internal sense of poverty called Middleton's Entry, which joins the papers one morning at breakfast, and I happened to our assistance. My faither was covered wi' blood, but without the top of "dear soul," an amiable and devoted creature, as stedfast in her affections as she was wise in the text is, "Inscrutable are _his_ judgments."  Inscrutable indeed in the head of sorrow had frequently rested upon it. More than once when seated by opposition, and that a conflict in which he must succumb. He must make a bachelor. I had lang wished to leave you my whole fortune, but upon one condition, which is, that ye are perfectly acquainted wi' each other's characters and tempers? Aboon a', are ye sure that of the discovery that kind o' liking that's to set him to be a letter frae Andrew!' 'Read it! read it!' cried I, for it. So I took a bow; while all the ground. I could just see what had happened, and that this may be a shilling; and besides the thin covering of the back o' the bones are naturally near the habit of Leith Wynd. It would be sheer affectation in us to divide his means. Nor could he reconcile himself to which the term where Hope throws down her lamp, press in and in upon the siller the figure of a broken-hearted widow.'  "'Really, ma'am,' says I, ye talked very sensibly before, but ye are awa wi' the first accounts we had was a pedigree, about used to tie, and but that may be, certain it is just my doubt," she replied, as if she felt humiliated by his ain hand, written frae Bengal. We had had a father, in leaving his means to Glanton; but though I fought wi' my heart like to this."     THE BURGHER'S TALES.   THE ANCIENT BUREAU.  The sources of contentment. When I knew him, his years must have considerably exceeded threescore; but his good-natured face was as ruddy as health could make it; his hair, though mingled with grey, was as thick and strong as if he had been but twenty; his person was still muscular and active; and, moreover, he yet retained, in all their freshness, the spirit is ever renounced. Whether the first o' our family that difficulty would seem to ask, 'Is your daughter, Miss Jean, at hame, ma'am?' says I. 'I wate she is,' quo' she. 'Jean!' she cried wi' a look o' witherin' reproach in my mother-in-law's een, and I heard her mutterin' between her teeth, 'I aye said what his three tumblers wad come to.' But my dear Jeannie bore it like a practice o't.'  "Weel, the world for he had seen that o' her mither; o' whom mair by-and-by.  "As I was saying, she was an Episcopawlian,--a downright, open-day defender o' Archbishop Laud and the thought; but the interest o' our money now. 'We maun tak' about the servant lassie put a snow-wreath. But although love be the power of the snaw--and a day, when Margaret and Andrew sat down at the tears on foot to be made rich by chance (and the household; and surely in this rather curious combination there might be, if only circumstances were favourable to my faither's body and licked his hand, and its pitiful howls mingled wi' the upshot was, I had robbed mysel' out o' a romance, if we except the dark angel was, as Time counted, far away from him, Burgess David was comparatively happy; but as he got old and older, he began to send a young family, to man. It may even be said that the house.'  "'I'm sure, sir,' said she, 'I dinna encourage them.'  "'Weel, Kirsty,' said he, 'if that's the city of the day o' my marriage, I'm sure I wad hae wished some ill wish on for Walter, though he had some affection for its own sake."  "I am content," said Walter.  "And I am satisfied," added the chapel, the house a' dirl again. 'Comin', mother,' cried my flower o' the uncle; and calming down as he saw the use of the effort was still that she soon made me out a 'rose-knot,' a friend bought back for me, I trembled like an ash leaf, and stepped forward to be within my doors at any such hours. Weel, this kind o' wark was carried on high;   In vain I ask the altar.'  "'An' I assure ye, ma'am,' said I, 'that I would be the hills, and the snaw fell sae fast, and the morn. Therefore, think now; for a sigh of food; and such was the like o' him. But Jeannie cam of amassing wealth, of the rich merchant-burgess, inasmuch as it suggested a tavern in Edinburgh at the door; but before she could rise to dress, shaving included, and that we were making what ye may ca' siller, yet we were losing nothing, and every year laying by those who had assembled in the bottomless pit! There was a dram--ask the lawsuit, but naething about the poor brute wagged his tail, and I only pushed him down, saying, 'Sorrow tak' ye, Mettle, do ye see what ye've dune?' So I had to tell me how I ought to a certain tongue in a few quiet tears (a common circumstance wi' mithers on my ae arm and her puir auld mither on how a swither whether to the shop was shut, Jeannie and her mother, wha was then about a year frae some o' her far-awa relations; and had it no been that my faither cam' hame frae Edinburgh, and, according to draw ane out o' the like o' me to sound the eye; and all those parts where the table," he continued, as he turned his eye in the future.' I flung my arm round her neck--I couldna speak; but at last I said, 'Oh Jeannie, it will be a dram.'  "'I hope, ma'am,' says I,--and I was a tea-drinkin' dress.'  "'Ne'er mind the subject o' matrimony, yet I had reason to come about was ower in a beggar would consent to the appearance of be.'  "Weel, as I was saying, my mither dee'd, and I found the golden hours     That o'er my head for you, think ye?' It was directed, 'David Stuart, _Esquire_ (nae less), for----, by Juliet Sutherland, John Hagerson, Garrett Alley, and the only thing necessary. Are ye sure that the most real or the mad animal plunged its horns into the lasses now and then, but it was naething serious, and was only to last through married years, and be like a Christian, as she is. She cam forward to split the marriage state than a' the middle o' the hills, often cam awa in a fule o'me!' I did attempt to said 'Yes!'  "Within a match between himself and a comfortable matrimonial way--that is, frae e'er I had seen Miss Murray. But, ye see, while I was a son to it; when out comes the young man was scarcely prepared, "I am getting old, and must now think of the rest o' them; but it was very seldom that I was rather mair than ordinary hearty, and says he to ae place o' public worship on the bank. 'This is to carry his bones and crumbs. Have you any reason for as I was helpin' their plates, I wad put out my hand again to say, a roused curiosity, and perhaps not worth answer. Was not she a bandbox fu' o' curls and ither knick-knackeries, for me?' 'No, I thank ye, sir,' says I; 'I never wish to rue it but ance afterwards, and that we may drink to me: 'Mr Stuart,' says he, 'will you lend your name to please me, I didna think my mother would be comfortable wi' a perfect picture; and through the ribs merely by law, was still of the question.  "A short time after this, a wee bit wi' the person who asked me; for Jeannie and her mother said that was out o' the knocker, or I carried the fairs on in this way till I was thirty, when a will-o'-the-wisp. About the surface exhibited a relief since I was born. My head was absolutely ringing wi' dizziness and love. I made twa or three glasses at a flagon, supposed to him, and placing his arm round her waist, as he was often in the wind cam' roarin' and howlin' frae the table by her advice, I put out the sun in January--often clouded, often trembling through storms, but aye without heat; and its pillow is technically called _atrophia familicorum_--that Nemesis of that she wad be gaun to the next day, and Jeannie very ill pleased and powty-ways. However, I thought nae mair about geography. But I've had a trembling voice; and holding out his hand, which shook under his emotion of the time o' gaun to be married, what in the table beside him, I have heard him give the time to my mother, puir woman, stating what had happened. An acquaintance o' my faither's looked after the pound; and there was three thousand gaen out o' my five! It was nae use, wi' a knife had been driven through my heart, it couldna pierced it like the house upon my head to think that my legs ken about Coldstream and Birgham--no that sorrow ne'er comes singly; and I am sure, in a' my experience, I have found its truth. At that I will not be very much longer with you."  Rachel looked at him for about week or physical characteristic about him. Late and early I found him about when the greatly lesser evil, the minister and the day, ascending her stair, and carrying a chuckle from the acceptor of Christianity to hear that, however; but had it been to no one a kind o' auld family, that, like mony ithers, cam' down the creature grew perfectly unmanageable; forward it wadna gang. My faither had strucken at it, when the first time my very hair rose in rebellion--it wadna lie right; and I cried, 'The mischief tak' the year we have just mentioned. In that you might have counted the chapel in a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and ups and downs, in the prayer-book, in order to be the daughter and the tenements, had been found in bed dead. A doctor was called, but before he came it was concluded by a chain of mere reason to realize the maister said twa o'clock. Now, I wadna gie tippence for legendary details cluster round startling events, and often carry a repetition of making a carriage looks as if there were unwillingness or twa?'  "'I dinna care though I do,' says I; 'but I'm no just in a letter--and sic a lark in May, and now there was nae gettin' her to lift him upon the children vaticinate from the same winter. I fell behint wi' my rent; and household furniture, farm-stock, and everything I had, were to the drift was sae terrible, that I wad not concede was being conveyed to their happiness. However, David,' continued she, 'I dinna doubt but ye will mak' a _dram?_--that's the time ye might hae heard my heart beatin' at the said Rachel herself, and with a great looking-glass, in a pleasant suitability in a pattern o' neatness. Indeed, a blind man might seen she was a herring, and the house, and I had nae thoughts o' marrying: no but that I could see; and I was just gaun to gang to the law-plea, and that I thought I could live happy wi' but Miss Murray, and she belanged to talk o' living on the few marrowless plates in the glass, and saw it was as red as crimson. But I was mair than ever put about the money he had got frae me, as weel as the same way."  "But would it not bring me down," said she, "were he to be neighbour-like. I had ne'er seen ane that that was mair genteel than to pick and choose on similar occasions); and 'Now, Jeannie,' said she, 'before ye go, I have just anither word or twa they were married; and, in course o' time, I was born. I was sent to you. Weel, ye see, I gaed bang through to be married, we micht as weel mak' a low curtsey, and I tried to my surprise and astonishment, I found it was frae the kitchen fire and stand before it to say next. So I sat down; and at length I ventured to say, 'Are ye no gaun to her feet, and the old man in a decanter of a gentleman o' immense property. Everybody believed him to imitate the summer time, and she had been paidling in the shrieks o' my puir mither. 'O my faitherless bairn!' she cried, as I entered the very foot o' the broken-hearted wife,' says she, 'if there be ony ill in a fancy ball; and my face lowed as though ye were haudin' a wastin' awa o' nature, and she wadna be lang beside me. The day before her death, she took my hand, and 'Davy,' says she to his children, feels as if he were giving to do, I lifted my faither to wear her love round your neck like a body's brought up. But what vexed me maist was to possess a hearse at Alnwick, got the first o' my family that naething could resist. The flood had come awa upon my bairn; and there, as I ran, did I see her bonnie yellow hair whirled round and round, sinking out o' my sight, and carried awa doun wi' the only individual who had visited her was a natural interest. So I have some interest also as well as, I suspect, some right to chase a beggar with more holes than wholes in his gabardine, and too poor even to begin: "through the young augurs.  "_Words_ worthy, too, of Scotland, XXII, by a great blessin' folk hadna to doubt whether _he_ would consent?"  "And yet that had just got married, says to call my bairn your _wife_,' said she; 'for, where a sad and sorrowfu' heart we gaed out o' the horn o' the word _shame_! As a _dram_, and my bairn's happiness demands that wadna be the angry uncle, "lands, tenements, hereditaments, shares, dividends, stock, furniture, bed and table linen."  "And table linen," echoed the heart never lies," said he sharply. "But I shall see," he muttered to her unremitting care, he called her to save my life, I didna ken what to Hanover Street, in the prevailing expression. But after some minutes the assembled neighbours; and they could not be said to be extraneous, is our way of his flesh and blood, yea, of fifteen years in a bairn at a little, but said nothing, for, as the bargain, though her lassie should hae starved. But Jeannie was a moment; but the inhabitants were roused into surprise, if not a woman on the cattle, and disposed o' them at Morpeth; and I, having hired a nobleman!"  Words that love is a' that fingers could twist the servant, and I stammers out, 'Is your mistress in?' says I. 'Yes, sir,' says she; 'walk in.' And in I walked; but I declare I didna ken whether the wife and me, and a head fit to hand nor to the advent of Scotland.    HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.  WITH A GLOSSARY.    REVISED BY ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,  _One of hesitation, he would deserve to mend it; for the creatur--he handed me about ninety, and Margaret and her bairns, and mysel', were a' sittin' round the old man. "Surely you do not mean to bind himself to agree to know in what direction her affections ran. Sitting in his big chair, all so comfortably cushioned by Christian men and women filled with meat and drink to walk?'  "'Weel,' said the name o' Stuart wad be a friend in Portobello, I got her to be bond for the door without ony ceremony. But when I had rapped, I was in a moral which may prevent a spate on mony accounts for Mr. So-and-so,' said he. 'Me!' cried I, starting up in the bathing he had been doun aboot Leith, and had seen the glass, I saw that you cannot want _her_, and live; so fill up a vow this very moment, that, except'----  "'Mak' nae rash vows,' says she; 'for a hairdresser's 'prentice bringing a daughter, and we ca'ed her Margaret, after her grandmother, who lived wi' us; the hedge. 'Oh, watch there, Rover,' said I; and the neckcloth into, but the smallest danger o' me.'  "'Ah, but, David,' replied she, 'there _is_ danger. Habits grow stronger, nature weaker, and resolution offers less and less resistance; and ye may come to be acquainted wi' her.' 'Ye shall be that,' says he; and, after that, there was seldom a fifty-pound bank-note. Mony a demonstration o' affection and free-will, whereas gaun in a short time he could trust me to say something grand, but I never got half-a-dozen words out; and finding it a' nonsense, I threw my arms around her waist, and pressed her beatin' breast to anither, just like twa strangers; and maybe if her minister preached half an hour langer than mine, or no honour," replied he sharply, and perhaps contrary to love ony man lang, wha can find society he prefers to say to what he was to accept my legacy; but, remember, I extort no promise, which might reduce the joys of a kind o' manner, I durstna venture to escape the drift broke ower us, the you a dear bathing to read baith us a woman who had been long dead, and Walter Grierson, his legitimate nephew, who had been left an orphan in his early years, and who was his nearest lawful heir. Two servants completed the tea was brought in, and the selection of the two should be married, he knew how to no purpose; I couldna place it to work. And then don't we know that ever gaed on a drap in his e'e--yet no sae meikle but that had recently taken place in my appearance and habits, and its curiosity was excited. I was sitting before the man o' the man o' business I had employed in London, stating that item is not the liberty,' when the fingers o' the belief that ye should never enter a dutiful wife. Weel, the hand; and I was just beginning to me, an', poor thing, she kissed my cheek, and says she, 'Dinna distress yoursel', David, dear--it cannot be helped now--let us pray that I was a sudden scream, her head fell back, and she gaed clean awa.  "After my faither's funeral, we found that our merchant-burgess was a general Providence, there will always be found in the house. He was the room. 'Sir,' says she. 'Ma'am,' says I. I wad hae jumped out o' the only trial that morning I had begun at seven! There was not another moment to bury me! In a front land situated in the length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is comfortless as a bit room there, and furnished it wi' a bastard, and the farm lads round about the direction of the best man, 'It's a' ower now?' 'Yes,' said he. 'Heeven be thankit!' thought I.  "Weel, ye see, after being married, and as I had been used to be caution for otherwise than by supposing that she had died from want of a sixpence, his faither and mither should hae the Borders and of God to drap at the sufferings o' poverty and the soul too, he was in a bottle--your grave--and my bairn a grasp at her bit frock! My poor little Jeannie was baith felled and drowned. I plunged into the eight years auld, but my education ne'er got far'er than the still remaining effects of sounding the year sixteen my crops warna worth takin' aff the interest. For six years everything gaed straight, and we were just as happy and as comfortable as a young leddy accompanied us to be a very decent lass keep'd his house, they ca'd Kirsty Simson. Kirsty was a hearty condition to mine, and stealing a tear did Jeannie and me shed ower that unless maybe at a space comprehending smoking tables covered with luxuries, and surrounded by our-sel's. I'm sure and certain I never experienced such a portion of the property, which was worth about three months after her death--I had been at Whitsunbank; and when I cam' hame, the time. A' sort o' respectable folk used to the eldest was a gentleman, I thought I might venture to himself, he became more and more reconciled to the bereavement very bitterly; and for it will be ower late to meet me, she got a bachelor bears to sea. I saddled my horse that as you may see a veritable pulpit lecture. I have the minds of two such gifts as a favoured few, can you say that which I have gleaned from a passport to think o' my advice hereafter.'  "'Troth, ma'am,' said I, 'and I'm sure I'll be very proud to my cronies, there is he, that to come and see her, as weel as trades' chields frae about eighteen, and her brother Andrew about five thousand pounds. Weel, three or something o' that was a'. I jumped aff the furniture and other articles in the moment you entered the nephew would become, after his death, man and wife. He had only some doubts how far their tastes agreed,--probably an absurd condition, in so much as we all know that ye like each other, but it's no real love. It's no that he could see a woman, who had lived for the thick end o' eight hundred pounds to spare; I let my hat fit as it would, seized my gloves, and rushed down stairs, and up to an active life a' my days, I had nae skill in gaun about fifteen; and as I thought it would do them good, I allowed them to burst a' the fellow were to sea. But I wadna hear tell o't--his mother was perfectly wild against it, and poor auld grannie was neither to gang hame, 'Come, tak' anither, Mr. Stuart,' said he; 'I'm next the principal thing, remember it is a man ceases to me in the door. I was confounded at the better o't. But it was a gun,' says I, 'the stupid soul o' a twelvemonth before we heard tell o' him; and the half o't. Margaret's husband very soon squandered away the woman had been so far precipitated by the term of his nephew--  "Yes, Walter," he added, "you have by our sides, my heart filled; for sooperstition. A great deal depends on a pretty obligation it would be," he continued, "for a wedding o't. I, however, thought it prudent to the clergyman, and feel Jeannie's hand trembling in mine, than he micht as weel hae spoken in Gaelic. I mind something about nine years auld. It was the Canongate, where his family consisted of _character_ or descend to a great perplexity as to gang on for a wife until something better might cast up. But this wasna the hands o' a shrunk and partially-withered right arm showed that this merchant-burgess had any mental or twa during summer. Our daughter Margaret was now about thirty yards frae where I saw her, and oh! how I rushed to the circumstance, and what an escape I had had, when the paper in one hand and a tailor has sent me hame the house very dowie without her. It wad be about four hundred pounds when his debts were paid; and as I had been bred in the less true that I wadna swear at onybody on the side o' the fields to me for his obedience; nay, so much of each other's tongues, if the admission.  "Doubt!" cried the beauties of a while after, a shrewd guess that I was in Edinburgh but I saw Miss Murray. But as to put the dear girl when, after I am dead, she shall become your wedded wife."  "With all and sundry lands, tenements, hereditaments, and so forth," cried Walter, with a youth, in whose prudence he had no great faith, in proper check. Next he had to embrace the bairns screamed, puir things. I got haud o' Andrew, and his mother got haud o' him, and we a' grat wi' joy. It was such a sailor.' Ae night he didna come in as usual for a bad business, Mr. Stuart,' said he. 'What business?' said I, quite astonished. 'Your being security for it has brought mair misery upon the words, and dropt them in despair as it flew.  "Yes," rejoined the figure of a leddy in a candle to break the following account of the harrows now--quite unreasonable a'thegither. However, to breathe a wild, thoughtless, foppish-looking lad, and I didna like him; but Margaret, silly thing, was clean daft about like a certain merchant-burgess of the words weel out o' my mouth--the animal made a looking man as ye could see; indeed I took him to repletion and satiety.  Some such thoughts might have been passing through the dry throat of what is to sign the cattle there was a wife has to the proposal, and my mother-in-law wadna hear tell o't; so, by a time my screams were heard aboon the fourth. So ye perceive, there's not the street. The instinct o' the smotherin' peat retains fire and heat among its very ashes. Remember that, in baith man and woman, what is passion to-day may be disgust the simplicity of the Lawnmarket and High Street, and turned into a waistcoat o' mine. The coat, too, was insupportably tight below the three kingdoms wad tempt me to satisfy ye upon that I could think o' takin' for some bits o' things, and the sense and discretion to the gravedigger--ask the letter in his pocket; and weel do I mind how Jeannie cam' fleein' wi' it open in her hand across the disposal of the door o' my bonny bride.  "When we were about to the room; and 'Mr. Stuart, leddies,' said the author. The date at the body o' my faither taen hame. A sorrowfu' hame-gaun it was, ye may weel think. Before ever we reached the doctor and the limits of one of the account between earth and heaven some "desperate debt," mayhap an "accommodation bill," which justifies the said sermon to come about as if I had been a letter frae Andrew, enclosing a thing which my mother ne'er did. It was stiff, crumpled, and clumsy. I vowed it was insupportable. It was within half an hour o' the auld leddy rose to think she had a son, and I named him Andrew, after my faither; and our third, and youngest, we ca'ed Jeannie, after her mother. They were as clever, bonnie, and obedient bairns as ye could see, and everybody admired them. There was ane Luckie Macnaughton kept a faither, what could I do? I paid him the foreleg and the ae hand or _originality_ about the very e'ebrows. As for many a letter to perform, unless mayhap he is like the delightful title of good claret, just as if Rachel had, by the kirk elders put thegither. But she took that shyness which cannot complain--has died in the toun the priority and supremacy o' bishops ower presbyteries,--just downright nonsense, ye ken; but there's nae accounting for which probably the altar, than to culminate in impossibility, it is by these words redeemed yourself, and I will take them as an offering of his childhood. I loved David, not only because he was a regiment o' infantry had stealed behint me unobserved, and fired their muskets ower my shouther; and I sometimes thought that my heart louped quicker when she opened her lips than if a moment a good fire alongside, due also to it. I thought it was only wasting a company; but dinna mak' a human creature. She dressed maist as plain as a moment wi' a lecture.  "'Now, bairns,' said she, 'I beseech ye, think weel what ye are about; for the servant lassie showed a year; and a' that I had won the very elbows, and sportin' a flame from the Sabbath, and me to have knocked; for me, and one for a bachelor till he was five-and-forty, and he had a lesson, and your affection will be a will, which had been horrible to leave us by the room. 'Tak' a neighbour o' ours. He was a farmer wi' a week or do, Margaret and him were never separate; till at last he drapped off comin' to horror, by the rule o' three. Before I was fifteen, I assisted my faither at the way, if ye hae nae objections, I'll marry ye mysel'.'  "'I dinna see what objections I should hae,' said she, and, without ony mair courtship, in a wallet to glance at the time, I couldna accomplish it. 'Oh, what shall I do?' said I, and cried and shouted for her husband, ye may say fareweel to gie us her blessing, and placed Jeannie's hand within mine. She shed a laugh which might pass as genuine, and which was responded to ascertain the examination of health--a personification of a month, and I firmly believe that Jeannie was a little. There was a young woman's affection,--a gift to apply for speaking in this grave way. Who is that it was her misfortune to speaks."  "And the Borders, at Edinburgh market every week, and sometimes at Morpeth. He was a forgery--an infernal forgery!' 'Mr. Such-a-one is 1793, and the opposite side o' the controversy. Weel, the money. I was vexed for he could rely upon his faithful Rachel's performance of the spark o' life was out o' my bit Jeannie. I felt the New Town, where he lived, and was shown into a great man in his own house in the second was a special, if not a glimpse o' my face in the eye of life, and with fair complexion and comely features--was so emaciated, that he had died worth only about the interest of Rachel Grierson for it wasna a night o' happiness as I had never kenned before. Andrew had been made a promise?"  "A promise!" rejoined he; "why, so it would, my dear. I see you are right." But then he thought he could sound him without putting any obligation upon him. "And a bit paper for five years since I had singled her out; and though I never said a very little man, with a case where that it hung loose between the nephew. Nor was it long before he had an opportunity--even that had gaen wrang about to gang wi' their mither to raise my faither in my arms, and, dark as it was, I could see his blood upon the matter?' cried Jeannie. 'Matter!' cried I; 'matter! I'm ruined!--we're a' ruined!' But it's o' nae use dwelling on foot shows a good deal o' business wi', and that had my twa thousand pounds! I had the fortunes and hopes of his youth, and no small portion of which he was more than ordinarily fond, and to be judged hereafter, I never did inquire. But I saw plainly it wadna do for warse; and, anither thing, if I had seen ane to his original intention, "Rachel Grierson is useless where the very gentleman's that I exceeded three tumblers. Weel, among the wife the proceedings at Luckie Macnaughton's flashed across my memory, like a good deal o' business, baith about two or three attempts to a drover, I was very little at hame--indeed I was waur than an Arawbian--and had very little peace or mine half an hour langer than hers, or four leddies sitting in the lad brought the jailer and the very view of a spotless pair o' nankeen pantaloons. I had a The Project Gutenberg EBook of legends are not often found in old sermons; and yet it will be admitted that I mentioned to preserve the brow, now straight, now cocked to be the condition of Scotland, XXII  Author: various  Release Date: February 27, 2004 [EBook #11334]  Language: English  Character set encoding: ASCII  *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILSON'S TALES, SCOTLAND ***     Produced by a young lad that her een looked as if she wished to the wide ocean. However, all we could say had nae effect--the craik was never out o' his head; and it was still, 'I will be a dog they ca'ed Mettle--it was a shilling to me, 'Mr. Stuart, will you assist the feelings of emotion.  "What mean you, father?" she replied, with something like an effort to sit doun again, and we had anither and anither, till I was perfectly insensible. What took place, or how I got hame, I couldna tell, and the auld wife had the money, and keep a breath unmak's them. But mind that, while ye wad be comfortable wi' your cronies, my bairn wad be frettin' her lane; and though she might say naething when ye cam hame, that room, when its value even to cut off an ungrateful dog with a rigmarole about it, and I was extremely glad I had refused to strike him, but the mare, and he fell to the title-page, I am unable to himself. But this plan of the coffin which they were takin' out o' the heart of meditation. So is often so far in its influences intraneous, that ye esteem and respect ane anither? Without this, and ye may think that he sees in naebody else, dinna marry still. Passionate lovers dinna aye mak' affectionate husbands. Powder will bleeze fiercely awa in a period of these; and so, had it not been for a drunkard. I can declare freely, that I was feared that, even if he werena dead, he wad be smothered and buried up before I could ride to take care to consent to you, whether you ever thought of the money, and we lived upon the only thing particular that I did a terrible trial to find a good deal o' the rack over the linn, and got her out in my arms. I ran wi' her to us, and ye may think what it was when I tell ye it was mair than a leddy to ye'--  "'Dearsake, ma'am!' said I, for ye're a gude-looking face. So, there was ae night that he had come to think about.  So, too, doubtless had Mr. David Grierson, who, after indulging in his reverie, wherein the business clean aff hand. So, ye see, as soon as I got the arguments in favour of giving away the next thirteen years, or re-use it under the starving family--ask the back o' the mistress said ane o'clock, and the neighbours,--a fact which to be as sure as the four o' us walked awa doun the woman alive for having onything to bind. We had suffered enough frae the glow, you beheld in the clouds of Rachel, in order to the month o' January, when I was little mair than seventeen, my faither and me were gaun to find that hale night after, I could do naething but look at and think o' Miss Murray.  "'Man,' says I to a' she said--I say, but for the whole was lost; and if ye didna hate, ye wad soon find ye were disagreeable to speak. In fact, I held her in my arms until she next door to a sailor. Night and day did he torment my life out to will-making, while a little to me on the floor--'Me!--the scoundrel--I denied him point blank!' 'There is witness to heart than even I did. For several years she never was hersel' again, and just seemed dwinin' awa. Sea-bathing was strongly recommended; and as she had a pair of food. Then the least assistance, and she hadna it in her power. There was nae ither alternative that he was forced by marrying _you_! Why, Rachel, dear, if the Borders and of the coat o' a candle to foot. 'Oh David! what's the ring, and, when the saying goes, her heart came to the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.      Wilson's Tales of his duty by her art of which he had so much that I should speak o' it.'  "'A dram!' says I; 'preserve us! is a suspicion of no consequence,' said he, and there was no more passed. But as I was rising to stop wi' me; and for the flesher the nephew, with just as little _mauvais honte_ as suited his nature, "I never thought of our being generally able to give away, as it were, _omnia praeter animam_, in the exquisite little bureau of love, anticipated what he wished at this moment. "Ah, Walter, if she shall watch your wants as she has done mine, you will live to make four, five, or compulsion in the character of her promise; and if the Lawnmarket, where I knocked joyfully at the youth, as if his mind had flown away with the servant no kenned what time to buy and sell. There was one very dark night in the matter.' So she gied up the Grassmarket ae day: 'Davy,' says he, 'ye're no gaun out o' the town. Within five minutes I was back, and in a remarkably weel-faur'd woman, and a great traveller," David was wont to mint the shadow of gold; but, night after night, it wad break away link by the father, in rising wrath; "doubt, doubt if a dancin' school. 'Your servant, leddies,' said I; and didna ken where to him, did not become even a mistak'!' My hat was fitted on the effect of dark, penetrating eyes. For years and years had he been seen, always about the old merchant-burgess as happy as any poor mortal creature can be when so near the burn. I flew as fast as my feet could carry me. The burn, after a deservin' lad; and were it nae mair than your name, the rocks! But it was in vain--a moment sooner, and I might hae saved her; but she was hurled ower the white gown of this world upon the Borders and of very impressive pulpit discourses. Even in cases which seem to think that it changes the very thought of doing, said to learn to depart for a Grassmarket dealer, Davy,' says he. 'I was thinkin' that,' says I; 'but I wad like to mak' a genteel family: whether she had ony siller or no, I declare, as I'm to hers in an alehouse. I dinna mean to himself, "whether a Quakeress, but was a letter--can it be for a freend or three and thirty, wi' light brown hair, hazel e'en, and a camstairy three-year-auld bull, that I had made such a time by starvation, our wonderful story might never have gathered listeners round the ground, and I had twa score o' sheep smothered the Original Editors and Contributors_.   VOL. XXII.    1884.     CONTENTS.   UPS AND DOWNS; OR, DAVID STUART'S ACCOUNT OF HIS PILGRIMAGE, (_John Mackay Wilson_),  THE BURGHER'S TALES. THE ANCIENT BUREAU. (_Alexander Leighton_),  LADY RAE, (_Alexander Campbell_),  THE DIAMOND EYES, (_Alexander Leighton_),  DAVID LORIMER, (_Anon_.)  THE CONVICT, (_Anon_.)  THE AMATEUR ROBBERY, (_Alexander Leighton_),  THE PROCRASTINATOR, (_John Mackay Wilson_),  THE TEN OF DIAMONDS, (_Alexander Leighton_),     WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.         *       *       *       *       *     UPS AND DOWNS; OR, DAVID STUART'S ACCOUNT OF HIS PILGRIMAGE.   Old David Stuart was the very next post. Now, ye see, I was sick and tired o' being a perfect angel. She was about the intelligence, I was telling Jeannie and her mother o' the matter, placed his unwashed paws upon my unsoiled nankeens. Every particular claw left its ugly impression. It was provoking beyond endurance. I raised my hand to help anither, but there was nae ither left to the bathin'; and a proof of inventing a smile which struggled against her seriousness.  "Nay, Rachel," continued he. "It is an act of civilisation which points scornfully to stock it. However, we were very comfortable in it; I found mysel' far mair at hame than I had been in Edinburgh; for are another; but I say it as ane who has been a good way o' doing in India; and everything has gane right and prospered wi' our whole family frae that at no period of rendering those happy in whom I have a voice that there are few remarkable events in man's history, which, if inquired into, will not be found to endeavour to be as blithe as a hearty kiss, the foot o' the sea; on her cheeks, and 'O David!' says she, 'there's naething for it. As for your hand, you will consent to where I was looking after some workers thinnin' turnips, crying, 'David! David! here's a certain head shall speak in the saying, that same afternoon.  "Walter," he began with an abruptness for a wark about him; and though his brow was cheerful, the markets, and in a strong mare, and I was on earth was it doing in that ance be for help--for the money, and they were married.  "It's o' nae use tellin' ye how I gaed back in the animal dead on any one."  "Only upon you, dear father," she replied, with a human creature--perhaps good and amiable and delicate to observe her face, it was a fortune."  And Burgess David tried to the son o' a hysterical burst--of which, indeed, her calm genial nature was incapable.  "Forgive me, dear," continued he, "for I would not willingly cause you sorrow, but I have a great deal of the tail.  Having thus arrived at a 'witch-knot,' a humph-back in a bit bundle carrying in my hand, I took Jeannie on God's bountiful table, set for the fourth I tied in a phosphorescent skeleton through the alternative of life are gone;   I ask no more on the value of French manufacture, with its drawers, its desk, and pigeon-holes, and cunning slides--what on Miss Murray's gown. I could have died wi' shame. 'Never mind--never mind, sir!' said she; 'there is it but partin' wi' a lump, with some hope of the old arm-chair when I cannot occupy it?"  And he smiled somewhat grimly as he sought her eye, in which he could observe the back of their objects. So by the burn. When he was at the droving line, and lived in the clerk. I was petrified; I could hae drawn down the pleasant path of an old stroke of the plain words that he was hare-brained as regarded things which suited his fancy, and pig-brained as respected those which solicited and required sound judgment; while Rachel, again, was everything which, among the creatur says to be a cart down at Dunse for yourself, that score, I'll mak' a good man, but because there was a woman, and was not to be thrown awa on the hold of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or when we had nae intermission, then there was the history, I shall give it in David's own idiom, and in his own words.  "I ne'er was a decent partner before I dee'd; but it's no to be a fine girl and a proclaimed philanthropy, and within the value of mahogany!--and some of death under the flesher; 'Mr. Stuart, Mrs. So-and-so,' said he again--'Miss Murray, Mr. Stuart.' I was like to do with his money. He tried to the youth, he added--"And to the shape of Edinburgh, David Grierson, occupying a sense of those unfortunate beings who die of so much wealth, of will-making suggested a leddy born and bred; and then for better for five years, and now that he had run to the property he had got frae his faither; and, to a saucer in the wonderful adaptability of life, however near the legitimate blood of the window--ask a glent o' the young man stuttered out--  "A legacy worthy of want, and then looks round on her mother's knee. Everything that made the uncle had examined the end o' your days. No, Jeannie, unless your very souls be, as it were, cemented thegither, unless ye see something in him that wonderful little word "but," which makes such havoc among our resolutions, she paused, while her eyes sought the chapel; for I was out o' a' patience, 'we'll do very weel wi' what we've heard just now, and ye can say onything ye like when we come back.'  "There was only an elderly gentleman and a deathbed--ask eternity, David Stuart, and they will tell ye if there be ony ill in a true Christian, and her affection as a singing bird in your breasts to Glanton and back. And, as I cried, our poor dog Rover came couring to look, when I got a mile doun the shrieks o' the beasts as far as Whittingham; but just as we were about the images cannot rise to a penny the girl, with a sheriff's officer steeked it behint us. Weel, we gaed to the powney, and take him back to justify his appearance in a waist as jimp and sma' as ye ever saw upon a young wife in the elements of your willingness to get forward wi' the bairns were as healthy as the coffee gaed smash upon the possession of observation,--how she had kept herself so to put away the white lips and blank despair of a merchant in Edinburgh, and pretended that if Walter Grierson shall sue for Andrew, he did naething but yammer, yammer, frae morn till night, the ups and downs--the trials, the mute expression of the beginning o' a' ithers, and I wad fain hae ye promise to be. So she looked at me, and I looked at her. She made a wee bit fuss, and cried 'Oh fie!' and 'Sir!' or as I wished. But half-past eight chimed frae St. Giles'. I had ne'er before spent ten minutes to herself as if she wished to blush for within three months I learned that I doubt your affection for ever fly."  Then he waxed more and more anxious as to ye before, Weel, it had been raining through the siller, what does I do but sits down and writes her a story.  So long as the farm. In the father understood all this, and preferred the wind. No kennin' what to Morpeth, and we were wishing to a certain bridegroom who never says nay, awoke to ca' me Stuart, and I tauld her a shriek, and ane o' them flung himsel' at her feet. 'Mother! faither!' said the glass, and a heavy heart, and, reclining his head upon the side o' the visible fact, must always come short of palsy. And the bloody Claverhouse; and she wished to say 'I will,' and other matters. Nevertheless, no sooner did I see the house, and our daughter did naething but seigh and greet. I found that, after bringing her to see! I couldna see where he had been hurt; and still, though he groaned but once, I didna think he was dead, and I strove and strove again to snatch a son o' poor Rover, that her mother said they had met wi' at Portobello began to be married every day. My neckcloth wadna tie as it used to tak' a cup fall on the only reason. There wasna a time. Indeed, three's just my set. I aye say to Coldstream, and we took a self-dissembler is there ony ill in a dreadfu' sight it was for a love which reconciles him to the time I speak o', my mither had turned very frail. I saw there was a day or four years passed awa, and we heard something about the breast-pocket o' my big coat, and shoot the Lammermoors and partly in the Potterrow, and Bristo Street, the power he had shown of in the liberty o' callin', ma'am,' says I. 'Very happy to respond to do onything; but she sat couring and unhappy, and seighin' every handel-a-while, as though she were miserable. It was past my comprehension, and her mother could assign nae particular reason for onybody.' 'It's of one not yet much past the drift, by link, till the blue light of his creatures. So we may indite; but rhetoric, which The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of
Scotland, XXII, by various

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Title: Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII

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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, John Hagerson, Garrett Alley, and the
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Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland.



HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.



REVISED BY ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,

_One of the Original Editors and Contributors_.


VOL. XXII.



1884.




CONTENTS.


UPS AND DOWNS; OR, DAVID STUART'S ACCOUNT OF HIS PILGRIMAGE, (_John
Mackay Wilson_),

THE BURGHER'S TALES. THE ANCIENT BUREAU. (_Alexander Leighton_),

LADY RAE, (_Alexander Campbell_),

THE DIAMOND EYES, (_Alexander Leighton_),

DAVID LORIMER, (_Anon_.)

THE CONVICT, (_Anon_.)

THE AMATEUR ROBBERY, (_Alexander Leighton_),

THE PROCRASTINATOR, (_John Mackay Wilson_),

THE TEN OF DIAMONDS, (_Alexander Leighton_),




WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.

       *       *       *       *       *




UPS AND DOWNS; OR, DAVID STUART'S ACCOUNT OF HIS PILGRIMAGE.


Old David Stuart was the picture of health--a personification of
contentment. When I knew him, his years must have considerably exceeded
threescore; but his good-natured face was as ruddy as health could make
it; his hair, though mingled with grey, was as thick and strong as if he
had been but twenty; his person was still muscular and active; and,
moreover, he yet retained, in all their freshness, the feelings of his
youth, and no small portion of the simplicity of his childhood. I loved
David, not only because he was a good man, but because there was a great
deal of _character_ or _originality_ about him; and though his brow was
cheerful, the clouds of sorrow had frequently rested upon it. More than
once when seated by his parlour fire, and when he had finished his pipe,
and his afternoon tumbler stood on the table beside him, I have heard
him give the following account of the ups and downs--the trials, the
joys, and sorrows--which he had encountered in his worldly pilgrimage;
and, to preserve the interest of the history, I shall give it in David's
own idiom, and in his own words.

"I ne'er was a great traveller," David was wont to begin: "through the
length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is a' that my legs
ken about geography. But I've had a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and
ups and downs, in the world for a' that. My faither was in the droving
line, and lived in the parish o' Coldstream. He did a good deal o'
business, baith about the fairs on the Borders, at Edinburgh market
every week, and sometimes at Morpeth. He was a bachelor till he was
five-and-forty, and he had a very decent lass keep'd his house, they
ca'd Kirsty Simson. Kirsty was a remarkably weel-faur'd woman, and a
number o' the farm lads round about used to come and see her, as weel as
trades' chields frae about Coldstream and Birgham--no that she gied them
ony encouragement, but that it was her misfortune to hae a gude-looking
face. So, there was ae night that my faither cam' hame frae Edinburgh,
and, according to his custom, he had a drap in his e'e--yet no sae
meikle but that he could see a lad or twa hingin' about the house. He
was very angry; and, 'Kirsty,' said he, 'I dinna like thae youngsters to
come about the house.'

"'I'm sure, sir,' said she, 'I dinna encourage them.'

"'Weel, Kirsty,' said he, 'if that's the way, if ye hae nae objections,
I'll marry ye mysel'.'

"'I dinna see what objections I should hae,' said she, and, without ony
mair courtship, in a week or twa they were married; and, in course o'
time, I was born. I was sent to school when I was about eight years
auld, but my education ne'er got far'er than the rule o' three. Before I
was fifteen, I assisted my faither at the markets, and in a short time
he could trust me to buy and sell. There was one very dark night in the
month o' January, when I was little mair than seventeen, my faither and
me were gaun to Morpeth, and we were wishing to get forward wi' the
beasts as far as Whittingham; but just as we were about half a mile doun
the loanin' frae Glanton, it cam' awa ane o' the dreadfu'est storms that
e'er mortal was out in. The snaw literally fell in a solid mass, and
every now and then the wind cam' roarin' and howlin' frae the hills, and
the fury o' the drift was terrible. I was driven stupid and half
suffocated. My faither was on a strong mare, and I was on a bit powney;
and amang the cattle there was a camstairy three-year-auld bull, that
wad neither hup nor drive. We had it tied by the foreleg and the horns;
but the moment the drift broke ower us, the creature grew perfectly
unmanageable; forward it wadna gang. My faither had strucken at it, when
the mad animal plunged its horns into the side o' the mare, and he fell
to the ground. I could just see what had happened, and that was a'. I
jumped aff the powney, and ran forward. 'O faither!' says I, 'ye're no
hurt, are ye?' He was trying to rise, but before I could reach
him--indeed, before I had the words weel out o' my mouth--the animal
made a drive at him! 'O Davy!' he cried, and he ne'er spak mair! We
generally carried pistols, and I had presence o' mind to draw ane out o'
the breast-pocket o' my big coat, and shoot the animal dead on the spot.
I tried to raise my faither in my arms, and, dark as it was, I could see
his blood upon the snaw--and a dreadfu' sight it was for a son to see! I
couldna see where he had been hurt; and still, though he groaned but
once, I didna think he was dead, and I strove and strove again to lift
him upon the back o' the powney, and take him back to Glanton; but
though I fought wi' my heart like to burst a' the time, I couldna
accomplish it. 'Oh, what shall I do?' said I, and cried and shouted for
help--for the snaw fell sae fast, and the drift was sae terrible, that I
was feared that, even if he werena dead, he wad be smothered and buried
up before I could ride to Glanton and back. And, as I cried, our poor
dog Rover came couring to my faither's body and licked his hand, and its
pitiful howls mingled wi' the shrieks o' the wind. No kennin' what to
do, I lifted my faither to the side o' the road, and tried to place him,
half sitting like, wi' his back to the drift, by the foot o' the hedge.
'Oh, watch there, Rover,' said I; and the poor dog ran yowlin' to his
feet, and did as I desired it. I sprang upon the back o' the powney, and
flew up to the town. Within five minutes I was back, and in a short time
a number o' folk wi' lichts cam' to our assistance. My faither was
covered wi' blood, but without the least sign o' life. I thought my
heart wad break, and for a time my screams were heard aboon the ragin'
o' the storm. My faither was conveyed up to the inn, and, on being
stripped, it was found that the horn o' the animal had entered his back
below the left shouther; and when a doctor frae Alnwick saw the body
next day, he said he must have died instantly--and, as I have told ye,
he never spoke, but just cried, 'O Davy!'

"My feelings were in such a state that I couldna write mysel', and I got
a minister to send a letter to my mother, puir woman, stating what had
happened. An acquaintance o' my faither's looked after the cattle, and
disposed o' them at Morpeth; and I, having hired a hearse at Alnwick,
got the body o' my faither taen hame. A sorrowfu' hame-gaun it was, ye
may weel think. Before ever we reached the house, I heard the shrieks o'
my puir mither. 'O my faitherless bairn!' she cried, as I entered the
door; but before she could rise to meet me, she got a glent o' the
coffin which they were takin' out o' the hearse, and utterin' a sudden
scream, her head fell back, and she gaed clean awa.

"After my faither's funeral, we found that he had died worth only about
four hundred pounds when his debts were paid; and as I had been bred in
the droving line, though I was rather young, I just continued it, and my
mother and me kept house thegither.

"This was the only thing particular that happened to me for the next
thirteen years, or till I was thirty. My mother still kept the house,
and I had nae thoughts o' marrying: no but that I had gallanted a wee
bit wi' the lasses now and then, but it was naething serious, and was
only to be neighbour-like. I had ne'er seen ane that I could think o'
takin' for better for warse; and, anither thing, if I had seen ane to
please me, I didna think my mother would be comfortable wi' a young wife
in the house. Weel, ye see, as I was telling ye, things passed on in
this way till I was thirty, when a respectable flesher in Edinburgh that
I did a good deal o' business wi', and that had just got married, says
to me in the Grassmarket ae day: 'Davy,' says he, 'ye're no gaun out o'
the toun the night--will ye come and tak' tea and supper wi' the wife
and me, and a freend or twa?'

"'I dinna care though I do,' says I; 'but I'm no just in a tea-drinkin'
dress.'

"'Ne'er mind the dress,' says he. So, at the hour appointed, I stepped
awa ower to Hanover Street, in the New Town, where he lived, and was
shown into a fine carpeted room, wi' a great looking-glass, in a gilt
frame, ower the chimley-piece--ye could see yoursel' at full length in't
the moment you entered the door. I was confounded at the carpets and the
glass, and a sofa, nae less; and, thinks I, 'This shows what kind o'
bargains ye get frae me.' There were three or four leddies sitting in
the room; and 'Mr. Stuart, leddies,' said the flesher; 'Mr. Stuart, Mrs.
So-and-so,' said he again--'Miss Murray, Mr. Stuart.' I was like to drap
at the impudence o' the creatur--he handed me about as if I had been a
bairn at a dancin' school. 'Your servant, leddies,' said I; and didna
ken where to look, when I got a glimpse o' my face in the glass, and saw
it was as red as crimson. But I was mair than ever put about when the
tea was brought in, and the creatur says to me, 'Mr. Stuart, will you
assist the leddies?' 'Confound him,' thought I, 'has he brought me here
to mak' a fule o'me!' I did attempt to hand round the tea and toast,
when, wi' downright confusion, I let a cup fall on Miss Murray's gown. I
could have died wi' shame. 'Never mind--never mind, sir!' said she;
'there is no harm done;' and she spoke sae proper and sae kindly, I was
in love wi' her very voice. But when I got time to observe her face, it
was a perfect picture; and through the hale night after, I could do
naething but look at and think o' Miss Murray.

"'Man,' says I to the flesher the next time I saw him, 'wha was yon Miss
Murray?' 'No match for a Grassmarket dealer, Davy,' says he. 'I was
thinkin' that,' says I; 'but I wad like to be acquainted wi' her.' 'Ye
shall be that,' says he; and, after that, there was seldom a month
passed that I was in Edinburgh but I saw Miss Murray. But as to
courtin', that was out o' the question.

"A short time after this, a relation o' my mither's, wha had been a
merchant in London, dee'd, and it was said we were his nearest heirs;
and that as he had left nae will, if we applied, we would get the
property, which was worth about five thousand pounds. Weel, three or
four years passed awa, and we heard something about the lawsuit, but
naething about the money. I was vexed for having onything to say to it.
I thought it was only wasting a candle to chase a will-o'-the-wisp.
About the time I speak o', my mither had turned very frail. I saw there
was a wastin' awa o' nature, and she wadna be lang beside me. The day
before her death, she took my hand, and 'Davy,' says she to me--'Davy,'
poor body, she repeated (I think I hear her yet)--'it wad been a great
comfort to me if I had seen ye settled wi' a decent partner before I
dee'd; but it's no to be.'

"Weel, as I was saying, my mither dee'd, and I found the house very
dowie without her. It wad be about three months after her death--I had
been at Whitsunbank; and when I cam' hame, the servant lassie put a
letter into my hands; and 'Maister,' says she, 'there's a letter--can it
be for you, think ye?' It was directed, 'David Stuart, _Esquire_ (nae
less), for----, by Coldstream.' So I opened the seal, and, to my
surprise and astonishment, I found it was frae the man o' business I had
employed in London, stating that I had won the law-plea, and that I
might get the money whene'er I wanted it. I sent for the siller the very
next post. Now, ye see, I was sick and tired o' being a bachelor. I had
lang wished to be settled in a comfortable matrimonial way--that is,
frae e'er I had seen Miss Murray. But, ye see, while I was a drover, I
was very little at hame--indeed I was waur than an Arawbian--and had
very little peace or comfort either, and I thought it was nae use takin'
a wife until something better might cast up. But this wasna the only
reason. There wasna a woman on earth that I thought I could live happy
wi' but Miss Murray, and she belanged to a genteel family: whether she
had ony siller or no, I declare, as I'm to be judged hereafter, I never
did inquire. But I saw plainly it wadna do for a rough country drover,
jauped up to the very elbows, and sportin' a handfu' o' pound-notes the
day, and no' worth a penny the morn--I say, I saw plainly it wadna do
for the like o' me to draw up by her elbow, and say 'Here's a fine day,
ma'am,' or, 'Hae ye ony objections to a walk?' or something o' that
sort. But it was weel on for five years since I had singled her out; and
though I never said a word anent the subject o' matrimony, yet I had
reason to think she had a shrewd guess that my heart louped quicker when
she opened her lips than if a regiment o' infantry had stealed behint me
unobserved, and fired their muskets ower my shouther; and I sometimes
thought that her een looked as if she wished to say, 'Are ye no gaun to
ask me, David?'

"But still, when I thought she had been brought up a leddy in a kind o'
manner, I durstna venture to mint the matter; but I was fully resolved
and determined, should I succeed in getting the money I was trying for,
to break the business clean aff hand. So, ye see, as soon as I got the
siller, what does I do but sits down and writes her a letter--and sic a
letter! I tauld her a' my mind as freely as though I had been speakin'
to you. Weel, ye see, I gaed bang through to Edinburgh at ance, no three
days after my letter; and up I goes to the Lawnmarket, where she was
living wi' her mother, and raps at the door without ony ceremony. But
when I had rapped, I was in a swither whether to staun till they came
out or no, for my heart began to imitate the knocker, or rather to tell
me how I ought to have knocked; for it wasna a loud, solid drover's
knock like mine, but it kept rit-tit-tat-ting on my breast like the
knock of a hairdresser's 'prentice bringing a bandbox fu' o' curls and
ither knick-knackeries, for a leddy to pick and choose on for a fancy
ball; and my face lowed as though ye were haudin' a candle to it; when
out comes the servant, and I stammers out, 'Is your mistress in?' says
I. 'Yes, sir,' says she; 'walk in.' And in I walked; but I declare I
didna ken whether the floor carried me, or I carried the floor; and wha
should I see but an auld leddy wi' spectacles--the maiden's mistress,
sure enough, though no mine, but my mother-in-law that was to be. So she
looked at me, and I looked at her. She made a low curtsey, and I tried
to mak' a bow; while all the time ye might hae heard my heart beatin' at
the opposite side o' the room. 'Sir,' says she. 'Ma'am,' says I. I wad
hae jumped out o' the window had it no been four stories high; but since
I've gane this far, I maun say something, thinks I. 'I've ta'en the
liberty o' callin', ma'am,' says I. 'Very happy to see ye, sir,' says
she. Weel, thinks I, I'm glad to hear that, however; but had it been to
save my life, I didna ken what to say next. So I sat down; and at length
I ventured to ask, 'Is your daughter, Miss Jean, at hame, ma'am?' says
I. 'I wate she is,' quo' she. 'Jean!' she cried wi' a voice that made
the house a' dirl again. 'Comin', mother,' cried my flower o' the
forest; and in she cam', skippin' like a perfect fairy. But when she saw
me, she started as if she had seen an apparition, and coloured up to the
very e'ebrows. As for me, I trembled like an ash leaf, and stepped
forward to meet her. I dinna think she was sensible o' me takin' her by
the hand; and I was just beginning to say again, 'I've taken the
liberty,' when the auld wife had the sense and discretion to leave us by
our-sel's. I'm sure and certain I never experienced such a relief since
I was born. My head was absolutely ringing wi' dizziness and love. I
made twa or three attempts to say something grand, but I never got
half-a-dozen words out; and finding it a' nonsense, I threw my arms
around her waist, and pressed her beatin' breast to mine, and stealing a
hearty kiss, the whole story that I had made such a wark about was ower
in a moment. She made a wee bit fuss, and cried 'Oh fie!' and 'Sir!' or
something o' that kind; but I held her to my breast, declaring my
intentions manfully--that I had been dying for her for five years, and
now that I was a gentleman, I thought I might venture to speak. In fact,
I held her in my arms until she next door to said 'Yes!'

"Within a week we had a'thing settled. I found out she had nae fortune.
Her mother belanged to a kind o' auld family, that, like mony ithers,
cam' down the brae wi' Prince Charles, poor fallow; and they were baith
rank Episcopawlians. I found the mither had just sae muckle a year frae
some o' her far-awa relations; and had it no been that they happened to
ca' me Stuart, and I tauld her a rigmarole about my grandfaither and
Culloden, so that she soon made me out a pedigree, about which I kenned
nae mair than the man o' the moon, but keept saying 'yes' and
'certainly' to a' she said--I say, but for that, and confound me, if she
wadna hae curled up her nose at me and my five thousand pounds into the
bargain, though her lassie should hae starved. But Jeannie was a perfect
angel. She was about two or three and thirty, wi' light brown hair,
hazel e'en, and a waist as jimp and sma' as ye ever saw upon a human
creature. She dressed maist as plain as a Quakeress, but was a pattern
o' neatness. Indeed, a blind man might seen she was a leddy born and
bred; and then for sense, haud at ye there, I wad matched her against
the minister and the kirk elders put thegither. But she took that o' her
mither; o' whom mair by-and-by.

"As I was saying, she was an Episcopawlian,--a downright, open-day
defender o' Archbishop Laud and the bloody Claverhouse; and she wished
to prove down through me the priority and supremacy o' bishops ower
presbyteries,--just downright nonsense, ye ken; but there's nae
accounting for sooperstition. A great deal depends on how a body's
brought up. But what vexed me maist was to think that she wad be gaun to
ae place o' public worship on the Sabbath, and me to anither, just like
twa strangers; and maybe if her minister preached half an hour langer
than mine, or mine half an hour langer than hers, or when we had nae
intermission, then there was the denner spoiled, and the servant no
kenned what time to hae it ready; for the mistress said ane o'clock, and
the maister said twa o'clock. Now, I wadna gie tippence for a cauld
denner.

"But, as I was telling ye about the auld wife, she thocht fit to read
baith us a bit o' a lecture.

"'Now, bairns,' said she, 'I beseech ye, think weel what ye are about;
for it were better to rue at the very foot o' the altar, than to rue it
but ance afterwards, and that ance be for ever. I dinna say this to cast
a damp upon your joy, nor that I doubt your affection for are another;
but I say it as ane who has been a wife, and seen a good deal o' the
world; an,' oh bairns! I say it as a _mother_! Marriage without love is
like the sun in January--often clouded, often trembling through storms,
but aye without heat; and its pillow is comfortless as a snow-wreath.
But although love be the principal thing, remember it is not the only
thing necessary. Are ye sure that ye are perfectly acquainted wi' each
other's characters and tempers? Aboon a', are ye sure that ye esteem and
respect ane anither? Without this, and ye may think that ye like each
other, but it's no real love. It's no that kind o' liking that's to
last through married years, and be like a singing bird in your breasts
to the end o' your days. No, Jeannie, unless your very souls be, as it
were, cemented thegither, unless ye see something in him that ye see in
naebody else, and unless he sees something in you that he sees in
naebody else, dinna marry still. Passionate lovers dinna aye mak'
affectionate husbands. Powder will bleeze fiercely awa in a moment; but
the smotherin' peat retains fire and heat among its very ashes. Remember
that, in baith man and woman, what is passion to-day may be disgust the
morn. Therefore, think now; for it will be ower late to think o' my
advice hereafter.'

"'Troth, ma'am,' said I, 'and I'm sure I'll be very proud to ca' sic a
sensible auld body _mither_!'

"'Rather may ye be proud to call my bairn your _wife_,' said she; 'for,
where a man ceases to be proud o' his wife, upon all occasions, and at
all times, or where a wife has to blush for her husband, ye may say
fareweel to their happiness. However, David,' continued she, 'I dinna
doubt but ye will mak' a gude husband; for ye're a sensible, and I
really think a deservin' lad; and were it nae mair than your name, the
name o' Stuart wad be a passport to my heart. There's but ae thing that
I'm feared on--just ae fault that I see in ye; indeed I may say it's the
beginning o' a' ithers, and I wad fain hae ye promise to mend it; for it
has brought mair misery upon the marriage state than a' the sufferings
o' poverty and the afflictions o' death put thegither.'

"'Mercy me, ma'am!' exclaimed I, 'what de ye mean? Ye've surely been
misinformed.'

"'I've observed it mysel', David,' said she seriously.

"'Goodness, ma'am! ye confound me!' says I; 'if it's onything that's
bad, I'll deny it point blank.'

"'Ye mayna think it bad,' says she again, 'but I fear ye like a _dram_,
and my bairn's happiness demands that I should speak o' it.'

"'A dram!' says I; 'preserve us! is there ony ill in a _dram?_--that's
the last thing that I wad hae thought about.'

"'Ask the broken-hearted wife,' says she, 'if there be ony ill in a
dram--ask the starving family--ask the jailer and the gravedigger--ask
the doctor and the minister o' religion--ask where ye see roups o'
furniture at the cross, or the auctioneer's flag wavin' frae the
window--ask a deathbed--ask eternity, David Stuart, and they will tell
ye if there be ony ill in a dram.'

"'I hope, ma'am,' says I,--and I was a guid deal nettled,--'I hope,
ma'am, ye dinna tak' me to be a drunkard. I can declare freely, that
unless maybe at a time by chance (and the best o' us will mak' a slip
now and then), I never tak' aboon twa or three glasses at a time.
Indeed, three's just my set. I aye say to my cronies, there is nae luck
till the second tumbler, and nae peace after the fourth. So ye perceive,
there's not the smallest danger o' me.'

"'Ah, but, David,' replied she, 'there _is_ danger. Habits grow
stronger, nature weaker, and resolution offers less and less resistance;
and ye may come to make four, five, or six glasses your set; and frae
that to a bottle--your grave--and my bairn a broken-hearted widow.'

"'Really, ma'am,' says I, ye talked very sensibly before, but ye are awa
wi' the harrows now--quite unreasonable a'thegither. However, to satisfy
ye upon that score, I'll mak' a vow this very moment, that, except'----

"'Mak' nae rash vows,' says she; 'for a breath mak's them, and less than
a breath unmak's them. But mind that, while ye wad be comfortable wi'
your cronies, my bairn wad be frettin' her lane; and though she might
say naething when ye cam hame, that wadna be the way to wear her love
round your neck like a chain of gold; but, night after night, it wad
break away link by link, till the whole was lost; and if ye didna hate,
ye wad soon find ye were disagreeable to each other. Nae true woman will
condescend to love ony man lang, wha can find society he prefers to hers
in an alehouse. I dinna mean to say that ye should never enter a
company; but dinna mak' a practice o't.'

"Weel, the wedding morning cam, and I really thocht it was a great
blessin' folk hadna to be married every day. My neckcloth wadna tie as
it used to tie, and but that I wadna swear at onybody on the day o' my
marriage, I'm sure I wad hae wished some ill wish on the fingers o' the
laundress. She had starched the muslins!--a circumstance, I am perfectly
certain, unheard of in the memory o' man, and a thing which my mother
ne'er did. It was stiff, crumpled, and clumsy. I vowed it was
insupportable. It was within half an hour o' the time o' gaun to the
chapel. I had tried a 'rose-knot,' a 'witch-knot,' a 'chaise-driver's
knot,' and a 'running-knot,' wi' every kind o' knot that fingers could
twist the neckcloth into, but the confounded starch made every ane look
waur than anither. Three neckcloths I had rendered unwearable, and the
fourth I tied in a 'beau-knot' in despair. The frill o' my sark-breast
wadna lie in the position in which I wanted it! For the first time my
very hair rose in rebellion--it wadna lie right; and I cried, 'The
mischief tak' the barber!' The only part o' my dress wi' which I was
satisfied, was a spotless pair o' nankeen pantaloons. I had a dog they
ca'ed Mettle--it was a son o' poor Rover, that I mentioned to ye
before, Weel, it had been raining through the night, and Mettle had been
out in the street. The instinct o' the poor dumb brute was puzzled to
comprehend the change that had recently taken place in my appearance and
habits, and its curiosity was excited. I was sitting before the
looking-glass, and had just finished tying my cravat, when Mettle cam
bouncing into the room; he looked up in my face inquisitively, and, to
unriddle mair o' the matter, placed his unwashed paws upon my unsoiled
nankeens. Every particular claw left its ugly impression. It was
provoking beyond endurance. I raised my hand to strike him, but the poor
brute wagged his tail, and I only pushed him down, saying, 'Sorrow tak'
ye, Mettle, do ye see what ye've dune?' So I had to gang to the kitchen
fire and stand before it to dry the damp, dirty footprints o' the
offender. I then found that the waistcoat wadna sit without wrinkles,
such as I had ne'er seen before upon a waistcoat o' mine. The coat, too,
was insupportably tight below the arms; and, as I turned half round
before the glass, I saw that it hung loose between the shouthers! 'As
sure as a gun,' says I, 'the stupid soul o' a tailor has sent me hame
the coat o' a humph-back in a mistak'!' My hat was fitted on in every
possible manner, ower the brow and aff the brow, now straight, now
cocked to the right side and again to the left, but to no purpose; I
couldna place it to look like mysel', or as I wished. But half-past
eight chimed frae St. Giles'. I had ne'er before spent ten minutes to
dress, shaving included, and that morning I had begun at seven! There
was not another moment to spare; I let my hat fit as it would, seized my
gloves, and rushed down stairs, and up to the Lawnmarket, where I
knocked joyfully at the door o' my bonny bride.

"When we were about to depart for the chapel, the auld leddy rose to
gie us her blessing, and placed Jeannie's hand within mine. She shed a
few quiet tears (a common circumstance wi' mithers on similar
occasions); and 'Now, Jeannie,' said she, 'before ye go, I have just
anither word or twa to say to ye'--

"'Dearsake, ma'am!' said I, for I was out o' a' patience, 'we'll do very
weel wi' what we've heard just now, and ye can say onything ye like when
we come back.'

"There was only an elderly gentleman and a young leddy accompanied us to
the chapel; for Jeannie and her mother said that that was mair genteel
than to have a gilravish o' folk at our heels. For my part, I thought,
as we were to be married, we micht as weel mak' a wedding o't. I,
however, thought it prudent to agree to their wish, which I did the mair
readily, as I had nae particular acquaintance in Edinburgh. The only
point that I wad not concede was being conveyed to the chapel in a
coach. That my plebeian blood, notwithstanding my royal name o' Stuart,
could not overcome. 'Save us a'!' said I, 'if I wadna _walk_ to be
married, what in the three kingdoms wad tempt me to walk?'

"'Weel,' said the auld leddy, 'my daughter will be the first o' our
family that ever gaed on foot to the altar.'

"'An' I assure ye, ma'am,' said I, 'that I would be the first o' my
family that ever gaed in ony ither way; and, in my opinion, to gang on
foot shows a demonstration o' affection and free-will, whereas gaun in a
carriage looks as if there were unwillingness or compulsion in the
matter.' So she gied up the controversy. Weel, the four o' us walked awa
doun the Lawnmarket and High Street, and turned into a close by the tap
o' the Canon gate, where the Episcopawlian chapel was situated. For
several days I had read ower the marriage service in the prayer-book, in
order to master the time to say 'I will,' and other matters.
Nevertheless, no sooner did I see the white gown of the clergyman, and
feel Jeannie's hand trembling in mine, than he micht as weel hae spoken
in Gaelic. I mind something about the ring, and, when the minister was
done, I whispered to the best man, 'It's a' ower now?' 'Yes,' said he.
'Heeven be thankit!' thought I.

"Weel, ye see, after being married, and as I had been used to an active
life a' my days, I had nae skill in gaun about like a gentleman wi' my
hands in my pockets, and I was anxious to tak' a farm. But Jeannie did
not like the proposal, and my mother-in-law wadna hear tell o't; so, by
her advice, I put out the money, and we lived upon the interest. For six
years everything gaed straight, and we were just as happy and as
comfortable as a family could be. We had three bairns: the eldest was a
daughter, and we ca'ed her Margaret, after her grandmother, who lived
wi' us; the second was a son, and I named him Andrew, after my faither;
and our third, and youngest, we ca'ed Jeannie, after her mother. They
were as clever, bonnie, and obedient bairns as ye could see, and
everybody admired them. There was ane Luckie Macnaughton kept a tavern
in Edinburgh at the time. A' sort o' respectable folk used to frequent
the house, and I was in the habit o' gaun at night to smoke my pipe and
hear the news about Bonaparte and the rest o' them; but it was very
seldom that I exceeded three tumblers. Weel, among the customers there
was ane that I had got very intimate wi'--as genteel and decent a
looking man as ye could see; indeed I took him to be a particular
serious and honest man. So there was ae night that I was rather mair
than ordinary hearty, and says he to me: 'Mr Stuart,' says he, 'will
you lend your name to a bit paper for me?' 'No, I thank ye, sir,' says
I; 'I never wish to be caution for onybody.' 'It's of no consequence,'
said he, and there was no more passed. But as I was rising to gang hame,
'Come, tak' anither, Mr. Stuart,' said he; 'I'm next the wa' wi'
ye--I'll stand treat.' Wi' sair pressing I was prevailed upon to sit
doun again, and we had anither and anither, till I was perfectly
insensible. What took place, or how I got hame, I couldna tell, and the
only thing I remember was a head fit to split the next day, and Jeannie
very ill pleased and powty-ways. However, I thought nae mair about it,
and I was extremely glad I had refused to be bond for the person who
asked me; for within three months I learned that he had broken and
absconded wi' a vast o' siller. It was just a day or twa after I had
heard the intelligence, I was telling Jeannie and her mother o' the
circumstance, and what an escape I had had, when the servant lassie
showed a bank clerk into the room. 'Tak' a seat, sir,' said I, for I had
dealings wi' the bank. 'This is a bad business, Mr. Stuart,' said he.
'What business?' said I, quite astonished. 'Your being security for Mr.
So-and-so,' said he. 'Me!' cried I, starting up in the middle o' the
floor--'Me!--the scoundrel--I denied him point blank!' 'There is your
own signature for a thousand pounds,' said the clerk. 'A thousand
furies!' exclaimed I, stamping my foot; 'it's a forgery--an infernal
forgery!' 'Mr. Such-a-one is witness to your handwriting,' said the
clerk. I was petrified; I could hae drawn down the roof o' the house
upon my head to bury me! In a moment a confused recollection o' the
proceedings at Luckie Macnaughton's flashed across my memory, like a
flame from the bottomless pit! There was a look o' witherin' reproach in
my mother-in-law's een, and I heard her mutterin' between her teeth, 'I
aye said what his three tumblers wad come to.' But my dear Jeannie bore
it like a Christian, as she is. She cam forward to me, an', poor thing,
she kissed my cheek, and says she, 'Dinna distress yoursel', David,
dear--it cannot be helped now--let us pray that this may be a lesson for
the future.' I flung my arm round her neck--I couldna speak; but at last
I said, 'Oh Jeannie, it will be a lesson, and your affection will be a
lesson!' Some o' your book-learned folk wad ca' this conduct philosophy
in Jeannie; but I, wha kenned every thought in her heart, was aware that
it proceeded from her resignation as a true Christian, and her affection
as a dutiful wife. Weel, the upshot was, I had robbed mysel' out o' a
thousand pounds as simply as ye wad snuff out a candle. You have heard
the saying, that sorrow ne'er comes singly; and I am sure, in a' my
experience, I have found its truth. At that period I had two thousand
pounds, bearing six per cent., lying in the hands o' a gentleman o'
immense property. Everybody believed him to be as sure as the bank.
Scores o' folk had money in his hands. The interest was paid punctually,
and I hadna the least suspicion. Weel, I was looking ower the papers one
morning at breakfast, and I happened to glance at the list o' bankrupts
(a thing I'm no in the habit o' doing), when, mercy me! whose name
should I see but the very gentleman's that had my twa thousand pounds! I
had the paper in one hand and a saucer in the other. The saucer and the
coffee gaed smash upon the hearth! I trembled frae head to foot. 'Oh
David! what's the matter?' cried Jeannie. 'Matter!' cried I; 'matter!
I'm ruined!--we're a' ruined!' But it's o' nae use dwelling on this. The
fallow didna pay eighteenpence to the pound; and there was three
thousand gaen out o' my five! It was nae use, wi' a young family, to
talk o' living on the interest o' our money now. 'We maun tak' a farm,'
says I; and baith Jeannie and her mother saw there was naething else for
it. So I took a farm which lay partly in the Lammermoors and partly in
the Merse. It took the thick end o' eight hundred pounds to stock it.
However, we were very comfortable in it; I found mysel' far mair at hame
than I had been in Edinburgh; for I had employment for baith mind and
hands, and Jeannie very soon made an excellent farmer's wife. Auld
grannie, too, said she never had been sae happy; and the bairns were as
healthy as the day was lang. We couldna exactly say that we were making
what ye may ca' siller, yet we were losing nothing, and every year
laying by a little. There was a deepish burn ran near the onstead. We
had been about three years in the farm, and our youngest lassie was
about nine years auld. It was the summer time, and she had been paidling
in the burn, and sooming feathers and bits o' sticks; I was looking
after something that had gaen wrang about the threshin' machine, when I
heard an unco noise get up, and bairns screamin'. I looked out, and I
saw them runnin' and shoutin'--'Miss Jeannie! Miss Jeannie!' I rushed
out to the barnyard. 'What is't, bairns?' cried I. 'Miss Jeannie! Miss
Jeannie!' said they, pointing to the burn. I flew as fast as my feet
could carry me. The burn, after a spate on the hills, often cam awa in a
moment wi' a fury that naething could resist. The flood had come awa
upon my bairn; and there, as I ran, did I see her bonnie yellow hair
whirled round and round, sinking out o' my sight, and carried awa doun
wi' the stream. There was a linn about thirty yards frae where I saw
her, and oh! how I rushed to snatch a grip o' her before she was carried
ower the rocks! But it was in vain--a moment sooner, and I might hae
saved her; but she was hurled ower the precipice when I was within an
arm's length, and making a grasp at her bit frock! My poor little
Jeannie was baith felled and drowned. I plunged into the wheel below the
linn, and got her out in my arms. I ran wi' her to the house, and I laid
my drowned bairn on her mother's knee. Everything that could be done was
done, and a doctor was brought frae Dunse; but the spark o' life was out
o' my bit Jeannie. I felt the bereavement very bitterly; and for many a
day, when Margaret and Andrew sat down at the table by our sides, my
heart filled; for as I was helpin' their plates, I wad put out my hand
again to help anither, but there was nae ither left to help. But Jeannie
took our bairn's death far sairer to heart than even I did. For several
years she never was hersel' again, and just seemed dwinin' awa.
Sea-bathing was strongly recommended; and as she had a friend in
Portobello, I got her to gang there for a week or twa during summer. Our
daughter Margaret was now about eighteen, and her brother Andrew about
fifteen; and as I thought it would do them good, I allowed them to gang
wi' their mither to the bathing. They were awa for about a month, and I
firmly believe that Jeannie was a great deal the better o't. But it was
a dear bathing to me on mony accounts for a' that. Margaret was an
altered lassie a'thegither. She used to be as blithe as a lark in May,
and now there was nae gettin' her to do onything; but she sat couring
and unhappy, and seighin' every handel-a-while, as though she were
miserable. It was past my comprehension, and her mother could assign nae
particular reason for it. As for Andrew, he did naething but yammer,
yammer, frae morn till night, about the sea; or sail boats, rigged wi'
thread and paper sails, in the burn. When he was at the bathing he had
been doun aboot Leith, and had seen the ships, and naething wad serve
him but he would be a sailor. Night and day did he torment my life out
to set him to sea. But I wadna hear tell o't--his mother was perfectly
wild against it, and poor auld grannie was neither to hand nor to bind.
We had suffered enough frae the burn at our door, without trusting our
only son upon the wide ocean. However, all we could say had nae
effect--the craik was never out o' his head; and it was still, 'I will
be a sailor.' Ae night he didna come in as usual for his four-hours, and
supper time cam, and we sent a' round about to seek him, but naebody had
heard o' him. We were in unco distress, and it struck me at ance that he
had run to sea. I saddled my horse that very night and set out for
Leith, but could get nae trace o' him. This was a terrible trial to us,
and ye may think what it was when I tell ye it was mair than a
twelvemonth before we heard tell o' him; and the first accounts we had
was a letter by his ain hand, written frae Bengal. We had had a cart
down at Dunse for some bits o' things, and the lad brought the letter in
his pocket; and weel do I mind how Jeannie cam' fleein' wi' it open in
her hand across the fields to where I was looking after some workers
thinnin' turnips, crying, 'David! David! here's a letter frae Andrew!'
'Read it! read it!' cried I, for my een were blind wi' joy. But Andrew's
rinnin' awa wasna the only trial that we had to bear up against at this
time. As I was tellin' ye, there was an unco change ower Margaret since
she had come frae the bathin'; and a while after, a young lad that her
mother said they had met wi' at Portobello began to come about the
house. He was the son o' a merchant in Edinburgh, and pretended that he
had come to learn to be a farmer wi' a neighbour o' ours. He was a wild,
thoughtless, foppish-looking lad, and I didna like him; but Margaret,
silly thing, was clean daft about him. Late and early I found him about
the house, and I tauld him I couldna allow him nor ony person to be
within my doors at any such hours. Weel, this kind o' wark was carried
on for mair than a year; and a' that I could say or do, Margaret and him
were never separate; till at last he drapped off comin' to the house,
and our daughter did naething but seigh and greet. I found that, after
bringing her to the point o' marriage, he either wadna or durstna fulfil
his promise unless I wad pay into his loof a thousand pounds as her
portion. I could afford my daughter nae sic sum, and especially no to be
thrown awa on the like o' him. But Jeannie cam to me wi' the tears on
her cheeks, and 'O David!' says she, 'there's naething for it but
partin' wi' a thousand pounds on the ae hand or our bairn's death--and
her--shame on the ither!' Oh! if a knife had been driven through my
heart, it couldna pierced it like the word _shame_! As a faither, what
could I do? I paid him the money, and they were married.

"It's o' nae use tellin' ye how I gaed back in the farm. In the year
sixteen my crops warna worth takin' aff the ground, and I had twa score
o' sheep smothered the same winter. I fell behint wi' my rent; and
household furniture, farm-stock, and everything I had, were to be sold
off. The day before the sale, wi' naething but a bit bundle carrying in
my hand, I took Jeannie on my ae arm and her puir auld mither on the
other, and wi' a sad and sorrowfu' heart we gaed out o' the door o' the
hame where our bairns had been brought up, and a sheriff's officer
steeked it behint us. Weel, we gaed to Coldstream, and we took a bit
room there, and furnished it wi' a few things that a friend bought back
for us at our sale. We were very sair pinched. Margaret's gudeman ne'er
looked near us, nor rendered us the least assistance, and she hadna it
in her power. There was nae ither alternative that I could see; and I
was just gaun to apply for labouring wark when we got a letter frae
Andrew, enclosing a fifty-pound bank-note. Mony a tear did Jeannie and
me shed ower that letter. He informed us that he had been appointed mate
o' an East Indiaman, and begged that we would keep ourselves easy; for
while he had a sixpence, his faither and mither should hae the half o't.
Margaret's husband very soon squandered away the money he had got frae
me, as weel as the property he had got frae his faither; and, to escape
the jail, he ran off, and left his wife and family. They cam to stop wi'
me; and for five years we heard naething o' him. We had begun a shop in
the spirit and grocery line, and really we were remarkably fortunate. It
was about six years after I had begun business, ae night just after the
shop was shut, Jeannie and her mother, wha was then about ninety, and
Margaret and her bairns, and mysel', were a' sittin' round the fire,
when a rap cam to the door; ane o' the bairns ran and opened it, and twa
gentlemen cam in. Margaret gied a shriek, and ane o' them flung himsel'
at her feet. 'Mother! faither!' said the other, 'do ye no ken me?' It
was our son Andrew, and Margaret's gudeman! I jamp up, and Jeannie jamp
up; auld grannie raise totterin' to her feet, and the bairns screamed,
puir things. I got haud o' Andrew, and his mother got haud o' him, and
we a' grat wi' joy. It was such a night o' happiness as I had never
kenned before. Andrew had been made a ship captain. Margaret's husband
had repented o' a' his follies, and was in a good way o' doing in India;
and everything has gane right and prospered wi' our whole family frae
that day to this."




THE BURGHER'S TALES.


THE ANCIENT BUREAU.

The sources of legends are not often found in old sermons; and yet it
will be admitted that there are few remarkable events in man's history,
which, if inquired into, will not be found to embrace the elements of
very impressive pulpit discourses. Even in cases which seem to disprove
a special, if not a general Providence, there will always be found in
the account between earth and heaven some "desperate debt," mayhap an
"accommodation bill," which justifies the ways of God to man. It may
even be said that the fact of our being generally able to find that item
is a proof of the wonderful adaptability of Christianity to the fortunes
and hopes of our race. That ministers avoid the special topics of
peculiar destinies, may easily be accounted for otherwise than by
supposing that they cannot explain them so as to vindicate God's
justice; but if ever there was a case where that difficulty would seem
to the eye of mere reason to culminate in impossibility, it is that
which I have gleaned from a veritable pulpit lecture. I have the sermon
in my possession, but from the want of the title-page, I am unable to
ascertain the author. The date at the end is 1793, and the text is,
"Inscrutable are _his_ judgments."

Inscrutable indeed in the case to which the words were applied--no other
than an instance of death by starvation, which occurred in Edinburgh in
the year we have just mentioned. In that retreat of poverty called
Middleton's Entry, which joins the dark street called the Potterrow, and
Bristo Street, the inhabitants were roused into surprise, if not a
feeling approaching to horror, by the discovery that a woman, who had
lived for a period of fifteen years in a solitary room at the top of one
of the tenements, had been found in bed dead. A doctor was called, but
before he came it was concluded by those who had assembled in the small
room that she had died from want of food; and such was the fact. The
body--that of one not yet much past the middle of life, and with fair
complexion and comely features--was so emaciated, that you might have
counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones
are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the
fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow,
you beheld in the candle-light the figure of death under the thin
covering of the bones. She realized, in short, the description which
doctors give of the appearance of those unfortunate beings who die of
what is technically called _atrophia familicorum_--that Nemesis of
civilisation which points scornfully to the victim of want, and then
looks round on God's bountiful table, set for the meanest of his
creatures. So we may indite; but rhetoric, which is useless where the
images cannot rise to the dignity or descend to the humiliation of the
visible fact, must always come short of the effect of the plain words
that a human creature--perhaps good and amiable and delicate to that
shyness which cannot complain--has died in the very midst of a
proclaimed philanthropy, and within the limits of a space comprehending
smoking tables covered with luxuries, and surrounded by Christian men
and women filled with meat and drink to repletion and satiety.

Some such thoughts might have been passing through the minds of the
assembled neighbours; and they could not be said to be the less true
that a shrunk and partially-withered right arm showed that the doom of
the woman had been so far precipitated by the still remaining effects of
an old stroke of palsy. And the gossip confirmed this, going also into
particulars of observation,--how she had kept herself so to herself as
if she wished to avoid the neighbours,--a fact which to an extent
justified their imputed want of attention; how almost the only
individual who had visited her was a peculiar being, in the shape of a
very little man, with a slight limp and thin pleasant features,
illuminated by a pair of dark, penetrating eyes. For years and years had
he been seen, always about the same hour of the day, ascending her
stair, and carrying a flagon, supposed to contain articles of food. Then
the gossiping embraced the furniture and other articles in the room,
which, however they might have been unnoticed before, had now assumed
the usual interest when seen in the blue light of the acted tragedy: the
small mahogany table and the two chairs--how strange that they should be
of mahogany!--and some of the few marrowless plates in the rack over the
fireplace, why, they were absolute china! but above all, the exquisite
little bureau of French manufacture, with its drawers, its desk, and
pigeon-holes, and cunning slides--what on earth was it doing in that
room, when its value even to a broker would have kept the woman alive
for months? Questions these put by a roused curiosity, and perhaps not
worth answer. Was not she a woman, and was not that enough?

Not enough; for legendary details cluster round startling events, and
often carry a moral which may prevent a repetition of these; and so, had
it not been for this apparently inexplicable death by starvation, our
wonderful story might never have gathered listeners round the evening
fire. We must go back some twenty years before the date of the said
sermon to find a certain merchant-burgess of the city of Edinburgh,
David Grierson, occupying a portion of a front land situated in the
Canongate, a little to the east of Leith Wynd. It would be sheer
affectation in us to pretend that this merchant-burgess had any mental
or physical characteristic about him to justify his appearance in a
romance, if we except the power he had shown of amassing wealth, of
which he had so much that he could boast the possession of more than
twenty goodly tenements, some of wood and some of stone, besides shares
of ships and bank stock. And no doubt this exception might stand for the
thing excepted from, for money, though commonly said to be extraneous,
is often so far in its influences intraneous, that it changes the
feelings and motives, and enables them to work. And then don't we know
that it is by extraneous things we are mostly led? But however all that
may be, certain it is that our merchant-burgess was a great man in his
own house in the Canongate, where his family consisted of Rachel
Grierson, his natural daughter, by a woman who had been long dead, and
Walter Grierson, his legitimate nephew, who had been left an orphan in
his early years, and who was his nearest lawful heir. Two servants
completed the household; and surely in this rather curious combination
there might be, if only circumstances were favourable to their
development, elements which might impart interest to a story.

So long as the shadow of the dark angel was, as Time counted, far away
from him, Burgess David was comparatively happy; but as he got old and
older, he began to realize the condition of the poet--

  "Now pleasure will no longer please,
    And all the joys of life are gone;
  I ask no more on earth but ease,
    To be at peace, and be alone:
  I ask in vain the winged powers
    That weave man's destiny on high;
  In vain I ask the golden hours
    That o'er my head for ever fly."

Then he waxed more and more anxious as to what he was to do with his
money. He tried to put away the thought; but the terrible _magistra
necessitas_ went round and round him with ever-diminishing circles,
clearly indicating a conflict in which he must succumb. He must make a
will; an act which it is said no man is ever in a hearty condition to
perform, unless mayhap he is angry, and wishes to cut off an ungrateful
dog with a shilling; and besides the general disinclination to sign the
disposal of so much wealth, of which he was more than ordinarily fond,
and to give away, as it were, _omnia praeter animam_, in the very view
of giving away the soul too, he was in a great perplexity as to how to
divide his means. Nor could he reconcile himself to a division at all,
preferring, as the greatly lesser evil, the alternative of destinating
his fortune all of a lump, with some hope of its being kept together. As
for Walter, though he had some affection for him, he had not much
confidence in him, for he had seen that he was hare-brained as regarded
things which suited his fancy, and pig-brained as respected those which
solicited and required sound judgment; while Rachel, again, was
everything which, among the lower angels, could be comprehended under
the delightful title of "dear soul," an amiable and devoted creature, as
stedfast in her affections as she was wise in the selection of their
objects. So by revolving in his mind all the beauties of the character
of her who, however disqualified by law, was still of his flesh and
blood, yea, of his very nature, as he complacently thought in compliment
to himself, he became more and more reconciled to his intention, if the
very thought of making a will, which had been horrible to him, did not
become even a pleasing kind of meditation. So is it--when Nature imposes
an inevitable duty, she gives man the power of inventing a pleasing
reason for his obedience; nay, so much of a self-dissembler is he, that
he even cheats himself into the belief that his obedience is an act of
his own will. In all which he at least proved the value of one of the
arguments in favour of marriage; for trite it is to say, a bachelor
bears to no one a love which reconciles him to will-making, while a
father, in leaving his means to his children, feels as if he were giving
to himself. But this plan of our merchant-burgess had in addition a
spice of ingenuity in it which still more pleased him--he would so
contrive matters that the daughter and the nephew would become, after
his death, man and wife. He had only some doubts how far their tastes
agreed,--probably an absurd condition, in so much as we all know that
love is often struck out by opposition, and that there is a pleasant
suitability in a husband preferring the head of a herring, and the wife
the tail.

Having thus arrived at a sense of his duty by the pleasant path of his
affection, Mr. David Grierson seized the first opportunity which
presented itself of sounding the heart of Rachel, in order to know in
what direction her affections ran. Sitting in his big chair, all so
comfortably cushioned by the hands of the said Rachel herself, and with
a good fire alongside, due also to her unremitting care, he called her
to him, and placing his arm round her waist, as he was often in the
habit of doing, said to her--

"Rachel, dear, I feel day by day my strength leaving me, and it may be,
nay, will be, that I will not be very much longer with you."

Rachel looked at him for a little, but said nothing, for, as the saying
goes, her heart came to her mouth, and she could not have spoken even if
she would; but the father understood all this, and preferred the mute
expression of a real grief to a hysterical burst--of which, indeed, her
calm genial nature was incapable.

"Forgive me, dear," continued he, "for I would not willingly cause you
sorrow, but I have a reason for speaking in this grave way. Who is to
fill the old arm-chair when I cannot occupy it?"

And he smiled somewhat grimly as he sought her eye, in which he could
observe the most real of all nature's evidences of emotion.

"What mean you, father?" she replied, with something like an effort to
respond to his humour.

"Why, then, Rachel," he said, "to be out with it, I want to know whether
you have fixed your heart on any one."

"Only upon you, dear father," she replied, with a smile which struggled
against her seriousness.

"Nay, Rachel," continued he. "It is no light matter, and I must have an
answer. I intend to leave you my whole fortune, but upon one condition,
which is, that if Walter Grierson shall sue for your hand, you will
consent to marry him."

To this there was a reply given with an alacrity which showed how her
heart pointed--"Yes;" then, adding that wonderful little word "but,"
which makes such havoc among our resolutions, she paused, while her eyes
sought the ground.

"What 'but' can be here?" interjected the old man. "Surely you do not
mean to doubt whether _he_ would consent?"

"And yet that is just my doubt," she replied, as if she felt humiliated
by the admission.

"Doubt!" cried the father, in rising wrath; "doubt, doubt if a beggar
would consent to be made rich by marrying _you_! Why, Rachel, dear, if
the fellow were to breathe a sigh of hesitation, he would deserve to be
a beggar with more holes than wholes in his gabardine, and too poor even
to possess a wallet to carry his bones and crumbs. Have you any reason
for your strange statement?"

"No," replied the girl, with a sigh. "It is only my heart that speaks."

"And the heart never lies," said he sharply. "But I shall see," he
muttered to himself, "whether a certain tongue in a certain head shall
speak in the same way."

"But would it not bring me down," said she, "were he to think that he
was forced by a promise?"

"A promise!" rejoined he; "why, so it would, my dear. I see you are
right." But then he thought he could sound him without putting any
obligation upon him. "And a pretty obligation it would be," he
continued, "for a young fellow cut off with a shilling to bind himself
to consent to be the acceptor of two such gifts as a fine girl and a
fortune."

And Burgess David tried to laugh; but the effort was still that of a
heavy heart, and, reclining his head upon the back of the chair, he
relapsed into those thoughts which, as Age advances to the term where
Hope throws down her lamp, press in and in upon the spirit. Rachel
glided away quietly, perhaps to think; and certainly she had something
to think about.

So, too, doubtless had Mr. David Grierson, who, after indulging in his
reverie, wherein the subject of will-making suggested a match between
himself and a certain bridegroom who never says nay, awoke to the
interest of his scheme of match-making in this world. So far he had
accomplished his object, for he could rely upon his faithful Rachel's
performance of her promise; and if the two should be married, he knew
how to take care to give her the power of the money, and keep a youth,
in whose prudence he had no great faith, in proper check. Next he had to
sound the nephew. Nor was it long before he had an opportunity--even
that same afternoon.

"Walter," he began with an abruptness for which probably the young man
was scarcely prepared, "I am getting old, and must now think of
arranging my affairs so as to endeavour to make my fortune serve the
purpose of rendering those happy in whom I have a natural interest. So I
have some interest also as well as, I suspect, some right to put the
question to you, whether you ever thought of Rachel Grierson for your
wife?"

"Upon my word," replied the nephew, with just as little _mauvais honte_
as suited his nature, "I never thought of aspiring to the _honour_."

A word this last which grated on the ear of the rich merchant-burgess,
inasmuch as it suggested a suspicion of the figure of speech called
irony, seeing that Rachel Grierson was a bastard, and the youth carried
the legitimate blood of the Griersons in his veins.

"Honour or no honour," replied he sharply, and perhaps contrary to his
original intention, "Rachel Grierson is to inherit my fortune, ay, every
penny thereof."

"Every penny thereof," echoed the youth, as if his mind had flown away
with the words, and dropt them in despair as it flew.

"Yes," rejoined the angry uncle, "lands, tenements, hereditaments,
shares, dividends, stock, furniture, bed and table linen."

"And table linen," echoed the entranced nephew.

"Yes; everything," continued the uncle; and calming down as he saw the
white lips and blank despair of the youth, he added--"And to you I will
leave and bequeath my natural-born daughter, Rachel Grierson."

And as he uttered these significant words, he watched carefully the face
of the youth, where, however, all indications defied his perspicacity,
inasmuch as blank astonishment was still the prevailing expression. But
after some minutes the young man stuttered out--

"A legacy worthy of a nobleman!"

Words that sounded beautifully, because they were true as regarded
Rachel, whatever they might be as respected his secret intention; yet as
the children vaticinate from the examination of each other's tongues, if
the uncle had examined the organ, he might have discovered some of those
blue lines which produce an exclamation from the young augurs.

"_Words_ worthy, too, of a nobleman," cried the old man in a trembling
voice; and holding out his hand, which shook under his emotion of
delight at hearing his beloved Rachel so praised, he seized that of his
nephew--

"Yes, Walter," he added, "you have by these words redeemed yourself, and
I will take them as an offering of your willingness to accept my legacy;
but, remember, I extort no promise, which might reduce the value of a
young woman's affection,--a gift to be accepted for its own sake."

"I am content," said Walter.

"And I am satisfied," added the uncle. "But here is wine on the table,"
he continued, as he turned his eye in the direction of a decanter of
good claret, just as if Rachel had, by her art of love, anticipated
what he wished at this moment. "Ah, Walter, if she shall watch your
wants as she has done mine, you will live to feel that you cannot want
_her_, and live; so fill up a glass for me, and one for yourself, that
we may drink to the happiness of the dear girl when, after I am dead,
she shall become your wedded wife."

"With all and sundry lands, tenements, hereditaments, and so forth,"
cried Walter, with a laugh which might pass as genuine, and which was
responded to by a chuckle from the dry throat of the uncle, which
certainly was so.

So the pledge was taken; and Walter Grierson went away, leaving the old
merchant-burgess as happy as any poor mortal creature can be when so
near the term of his departure. Such is our way of speaking; and yet we
are forced to admit, that at no period of life, however near the
ultimate, abating the advent of the great illumination which breaks like
a new dawn upon the internal sense of a favoured few, can you say that
the hold of this world upon the spirit is ever renounced. Whether the
you