Read Ebook: The House on the Moor v. 2/3 by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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He had no need of dreams to increase the real pain of his position next morning. It was the day of the sale; a kind of simple heroical devotion to the memory of his godfather, an idea of being on the spot to repel any slight which might be thrown on his character, impelled him to be present in or near the house during the whole day. Very likely he was very wrong to expose himself to the trial, but in his youthful, excited feeling, he thought it his duty, and that was enough for Roger. The bland Rector, who came with his wife to buy some favourite china ornaments, which the lady had contemplated with longing eyes in the Squire's time, extended a passing hand to Roger, and recommended him, scarcely stopping to give the advice, not to stay. Some young men, warmer hearted, surrounded him with attempts, the best they knew, to divert him from the sight of what was going on, and scandalized the grave people by their jokes and laughter. The humbler persons present addressed Roger with broad, well-meaning condolences: "Ah, if th' ould squire had but known!" one and another said to him with audible sighs of sympathy. The poor youth's eyes grew red, and his cheeks pale; he assumed, in spite of himself, a defiant look: he stood on the watch for something he could resent. The trial was too much for his warm blood and inexperienced heart; and when the great lady of the neighbourhood passed out to her carriage, as the sale drew towards a close, and saw him near the gate with his colourless face and agitated look, she scarcely bowed to poor Roger, and declared, almost in his hearing, that the young man had been drinking, and that it showed the most lamentable want of feeling on his part to be present at such a scene.

Poor Roger! perhaps it was very foolish of him to expose himself unnecessarily to all this pain. When the night came, and the silence, doubly silent after all that din, he went through the rooms, where the moon shone in through all the bare, uncurtained windows; where the straw littered the floor; and where the furniture was no longer part of the place, but stood in heaps, as this one and that one had bought it, ready to be carried away to-morrow; with his heart breaking, as he thought. In a few hours the desolation of the Grange would be complete, although, indeed, emptiness itself would be less desolate than the present aspect of the familiar place. Once more he read over the Colonel's letter, with all its good cheer and hopefulness. Only to have patience! Could he have patience?--was it possible that he could wait here, listless and inactive, while the good Colonel laboured for him?--and once more all his doubts and questions returned upon the young man. Should he accept so great a favour?--was he right to stand by and allow so much to be done for him, he who was a stranger to his benefactor? He buried his face in his hands, leaning on the table, which was the only thing in the apartment which had not been removed out of its usual place. Here exhaustion, and emotion, and grief surprised the forlorn lad into sleep. Presently he threw himself back, with the unconscious movement of a sleeper, upon his chair. The moon brightened and rose in the sky, and shone fuller and fuller into the room. The neglected candle burned to the socket and went out; the white radiance streamed in, in two broad bars of light, through the bare windows, making everything painfully clear within its range, and leaving a ghostly twilight and corners of profound shadow in the rest of the apartment. There he lay in the midst of his desolated household sanctuary, with the heaps of packed-up furniture round him, and the candle trembling and dying in the socket, and the white light just missing his white face--the last of the Musgraves, the heir of emptiness!--yet in his trouble and grief keeping the privilege of his years, and sleeping sweet the sleep of his youth.

While the two young men responded thus to Colonel Sutherland's communications, Susan took her letter to her heart, and found unbounded comfort in it. All had not disappeared with Uncle Edward. Here was a perennial expectation, a constant thread of hope henceforward to run through her life. Never before had Susan known the altogether modern and nineteenth-century excitement of looking for the postman. It gave quite a new interest to the day--any day that unknown functionary might come again to refresh her soul with this novel delight. She could see him come across the moor, that celestial messenger! Not a Cupid, honest fellow; but bearing with him all the love that brightened Susan's firmament. She thought it would be quite impossible to be dull or listless now: even to be disappointed was something which would give a point and character to the day; and all was very different from the dead blank of her former life, in which she had no expectation, no disappointment, nothing to look for, and for entertainment to her youth only her patchwork and Peggy's talk, enjoyed by intervals. Her whole existence was changed. Uncle Edward's bundle of books, which had not captivated Susan at first sight, she found, after looking into them, to be more attractive even than her new embroidery frame. They were all novels--a kind of composition totally unknown to Susan. She had been very little attracted by literature hitherto; in the first place, because to obtain a book was a serious matter, necessitating a visit to her father's study, and a formal request for the undesirable volume, which had no charm for a young imagination when it came. But now Susan read with devotion, and amazement, and delight, each more vivid than the other. She entered into the fortunes of her heroes and heroines with a perfect interest, which would have won any story-teller's heart. She sat up almost all night, in breathless engrossment, with one which ended unhappily, and cried herself to sleep, almost frozen, with great indignation and grief at the last, to find that things would not mend. There, too, she found enlightenment upon many things. She learned, after its modern fashion, the perennial fable of the knight who delivers his lady-love. She found out how it is possible for a heroine to come through every trouble under heaven, to a paradise of love, and wealth, and happiness; and Susan's spirits rose, in spite of herself, into that heaven of imagination. Sometime or other nature and youth must come even to Marchmain; sometime it would be Susan's turn; sooner or later there would be some one in the world to whom she too would be the first and dearest. This inalienable privilege of womankind came to every Laura and Lucy in her novels, happily or unhappily; and the novels were not so far wrong either--so it does, to be sure, in life; but Susan did not take into her consideration the sad chance that liberation might be offered to the bewitched princess only by the wrong knight. The wrong knight only came in as a rival to make some complications in the story, as Susan read it; and somehow the girl adopted the tale by intuition, and fell into a vague delight of innocent dreams. Pursuing these at her needlework, after all her novels were exhausted, was almost as good as another romance; and this tale spun itself on inexhaustibly, a story without an end.

This spring in Susan's fresh heart developed itself unawares in her actions and life. She went about the house with a more sprightly step; she caught up Peggy's snatches of song, and kept humming and murmuring them, without knowing it. Sometimes her hands fell idle on her lap, as her new thoughts rose. Often she went out upon solitary rambles, with this pleasant companionship in her heart. It would not be right to say she was bolder, for the contrary was the case--she was shyer, more ready to shrink from any person whom she met; but somehow found a vague, delightful expectation, which gave a charm to everything diffused over her life.

A few days after she received Uncle Edward's letter, Susan had the good fortune to meet her friend Letty, her sole acquaintance--her secret intercourse with whom she had tremblingly revealed to the Colonel. Letty was delicate, and had not been permitted to be out of doors during the bad weather. She was a tall, meagre girl, who had outgrown her strength, and whose sallow cheeks, and prominent light gray eyes, made the greatest contrast possible to Susan's blooming health and simple beauty. Letty was supposed to have received a wonderful education: she could play on the piano, and draw, and speak French--achievements which, in Peggy's opinion, made her a most desirable companion for poor Susan, who was ignorant of all these fine things. Besides her accomplishments, Letty was very sentimental, and wrote verses, and took rather a pathetic view of things in general. Her great misfortune was that in her own person she had nothing to complain of. She was the only child of her parents, who petted and humoured her, as old people are apt to do to the child of their old age, and who were correspondingly proud of her acquirements. Consequently, to her own great disgust, she did very much as she liked, and was contradicted by nobody. She threw herself, with all the greater fervour of sympathy, into the circumstances of her friend, not without a little envy of Susan's trials, and splendid imaginations, had she been in the same position, of what she should have done. After this long separation she flew upon Susan, throwing her long arms round her friend's neck with enthusiasm. Then the two, with arms interlaced, strayed along by the side of the high hedgerow in the winterly sunshine--the young buds opening out on the branches against which they brushed in passing, and the young grass rustling under their feet. There was not a single passenger on the road as far as they could see. They were free to exchange their friendly confidence, without the least fear of interruption.

"Oh! Susan, I have wanted so to see you! I have been so melancholy shut up at home," cried Letty; "and when I wanted to come out, mamma would not let me. I do not mind being ill. Why should not I die young like my cousin Mary? I think it must be very sweet to die young, when everybody will be sorry for you--oh, Susan, don't you?"

"I--don't--know," said poor Susan, who thought this was a great sign of Letty's superiority, and scarcely liked to confess her own worldlymindedness. "No; I should think it rather hard to die if I had a great many people who loved me like you."

"Ah, people may love one--but then, perhaps, they don't understand one," said Letty. "Mamma would not let me go to the Sabbath school, because she thought I might take cold! Ah, Susan, do you think that is an excuse that will do at the Judgment?--perhaps I might have said something to one of the children which she never would have forgotten all her life--and to think of the opportunity being lost, for fear I might take cold! I am sometimes afraid," said Letty, with a deep mysterious sigh, "that God will think it necessary, for poor papa and mamma's sake, that I should die very early; for I am so frightened that they are making an idol of me. We ought not to love anyone so very much, you know."

"We must never make idols of them," said Letty; "and when I see how mamma takes care of me, I tremble for her. I should not mind it at all myself, but she would be so lonely if I were to die."

"Oh, Letty, for pity's sake, do not speak of it!" cried Susan.

"Why shouldn't I speak of it? I feel quite sure that people who feel like me never live long," said Letty. "I am going to write my will in poetry, Susan--I did one verse the other night. I think it is rather a nice idea--it is about putting flowers on my grave."

"Oh, Letty, do be quiet!--for your mamma's sake!" cried Susan, in terror and dismay, holding fast by her friend's arm, as if afraid to see her vanish into the impalpable air.

Letty was not at all inclined, having made so great an impression, to give up the subject, and was about to resume it in a still more pathetic tone, when Susan, stimulated by her own livelier meditations, made an animated diversion.

"Yes, if you wish me, Susan," said Letty, with a little demureness.

"Wish you! Oh, if I could only have my own will! Would your mamma be pleased?" cried Susan; "and would you promise not to be frightened if you saw papa?"

This person whom Susan was so unaccountably startled to see, was, of course, Roger Musgrave, walking here, as he walked everywhere within ten miles, because the poor fellow could not endure himself, and did not venture to battle with his own thoughts, and kept himself out-of-doors and in motion as a kind of safeguard. The only wonderful thing of the whole was that while Susan, without running, reached Marchmain with an incredible silent speed, and got in with her pulse high and her eyes shining, and the most profound amazement in her mind, Roger scarcely ever drew breath, on his part, till he had reached his own deserted house, though that was five miles off. Why they should have used such prodigious pains to get as far distant as possible from each other, in the shortest conceivable time, remains until this hour the mystery of that day.

That day was an important one to Roger Musgrave. To live in that Grange, a great, empty, deserted house, where every desolate apartment echoed to his footstep as if he were a dozen men, and which contained through all its ample rooms nothing but a rude table and chair in the library, where he took his solitary food, a truckle bed where he slept, and some homely implements for poor old Sally in the kitchen, which the unfortunate young man had redeemed out of his mother's twenty pounds--became at last and once for all impossible to him. That day, setting out for the only refuge of his idleness, a long walk, it had occurred to him to turn his steps in the direction of Marchmain, more from a passing caprice than a serious intention. His kind old Colonel had been there--and there was the Colonel's niece, the pretty frank little girl, who had clapped her hands at his boyish exploit a year ago. The gratified vanity of that moment, his former curiosity to see Susan again, and her friendly mention of him to her uncle, warmed the young man into more earnestness as he approached the house. Seeing no one, and amazed at its utter solitude and sadness, he had turned away disappointed, when their meeting took place. Then, as we have already said, the young man hurried home. When he arrived there he kept walking up and down the empty library, till the old house rung again, and old Sally believed the young squire was "a-gooin' out of his mind." But he was not doing any such thing; he was only repeating to himself that it was impossible!--impossible! that it was against nature, and a discredit to his own character; that he could no longer wait for what other people were doing for him; that this very day he must leave the Grange. What his meeting with Susan had to do with hastening this resolution it is quite impossible to tell; he did not know himself; but the conclusion was beyond disputing. He felt a feverish restlessness possess him--he could not remain even another night, though the morning certainly would have seemed a wiser time for setting out upon his journey. He pushed aside the chop which old Sally, with much care and all the skill her old hands retained, had prepared for him, and began to write. He wrote to his mother, who had recovered all her original place in his affections, a short cheerful note, to say that he was going to London, and would write to her from thence. Then he indited less easily a letter to the Colonel, in which, with all the eloquence he possessed, he represented the impossibility of remaining where he was. He described, with natural pathos, the empty house, the desecrated home, the listless life of idleness he was leading. He said, with youthful inconsequence, strong in the feeling of the moment, that, thrown back upon himself as he had been all these lonely days, he no longer cared for rank, nor desired to keep up a pretence of superior station, which he could not support. "In what am I better than a private soldier?" he wrote, with all the swell and impulse of his full young heart: "worse, in so far that I am neither trained to my weapons, nor used to obedience--better in nothing but an empty name!" And with all that facile philosophy with which young men comfort the bitterness of their disappointments, the lad wrought himself up to a heroical pitch, by asking himself and the Colonel why he should not serve his country as well in the ranks as among their commanders. Why, indeed? The fever of his excitement mounted into his brain. When he finished his letter he was in all the fervour of that self-sacrificing sentiment which is so dear to youth. He went upstairs and packed his clean linen--a goodly store, all unlike the equipment of a private soldier--with some few other necessaries, into a travelling-bag. Then he went down to the great deserted kitchen, where poor old Sally sat "like a crow in the mist" by the chimney corner, her morsel of attenuated fire gleaming faintly across the cold floor. Sally got up and curtseyed when the young master entered. She was a little old woman, bent and feeble, but she had lived there almost all her life, and it would have broken Sally's heart to be sent away from the Grange. She stood before him with her withered hands crossed upon her white apron, wondering in her dim thoughts whether there might be something to complain of in the dinner she had prepared. Behind her spread all the hospitable provisions of the rich man's kitchen, the arrangements which spoke of liberal entertainment, assembly of guests above and crowd of servants below; all black, cold, and desolate, unlighted save by the early wintry twilight from the windows and the superannuated glimmer of Sally's fire; and the emptiness and vacancy went with a chill and an ache to Roger's heart.

"Sally," said the young man, courageously, "I shall not give you any more trouble for a long time. You must keep the house as well as you can, and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Don't make the old place a show for strangers, now that it's desolate. See, Sally, here's for your present needs, and when I am settled I will send you more."

"I allays said it," said the old woman, "ye can ask Betty Gilsland. I said, says I, 'the young maister, take my word, 'll no bide here.' Ay, ay, ay, I allays said it--and you see it's coomed true."

Saying these words, Sally went off into a feeble little outburst of tears, and repeated her affirmation a third time, holding the money he had given her in her hand as if she did not know what to do with it. At last her ideas, such as they were, collected themselves. She made another curtsey.

"And where are you a-gooing, maister?" she said, looking earnestly into his face.

"To make my fortune, Sally," said the young man, with a smile which trembled between boldness and tears.

"And Amen--and grit may the fortin' be!" cried the old woman. "Have ye eaten your dinner?"

This was too much for the young man; he burst into a hysterical laugh, grasped her withered hand, shook it rapidly, and hurried away. The poor old body toiled up the stairs after him, to make sure that "the sneck was in the door--for them young things are that careless!" said poor old Sally; then she went back again to her kitchen, and looked at the money, and, after an interval, perceiving what had happened, fell a-sobbing and crying in her solitude, and praying "the Lord bless him!" and "the Lord be gude to him!" as she rocked herself in her wooden chair. He who, out of all that poverty and sadness, and stupor of old age, heard these ejaculations, is no respecter of persons, and it was not without a true benediction that Roger Musgrave left his home.

When he was out upon the high road he turned back to look at the Grange. The evening was dark and favoured him. The day had been mild, and early spring quickened and rustled among those trees, warming to the very tips of their branches with that invisible and silent life which should shortly make them green. There they stood clustering in mutual defence against the night wind, with the high-pitched gable-roof of the old house looking out from among them, and the black belt of firs behind filling up the breaks in their softer outline. By-and-bye, as Roger lingered in that last wistful look, he could see a small, unsteady light wandering from window to window. It was poor old Sally shutting the shutters, murmuring to herself that it was always so when the family were from home. There was something in the action symbolical and significant to Roger; it was the shutting up of the old house, the closing of the old refuge, the audible and visible sentence forbidding the return which up to that moment had been possible: he turned away with tears in his eyes, slung his travelling-bag over his strong shoulders, and setting his face to the wind, sped away through the dark country roads to the little new-built railway town, with its inns and labourers' cottages. It was quite dark when he got there; the lights dazzled him, and the noise of the coffee-room into which he went filled him with disgust in his exalted and excited state of feeling. Strangely enough as it appeared to him, a recruiting party had possession of the inn; a swaggering sergeant with parti-coloured ribbons went and came between the coffee-room and the bar, where a batch of recruits were drowning their regrets and compunctions in oceans of beer. Roger went out, with a strange mixture of disgust and curiosity, to look at them. He could not observe, and criticize, and despise as Horace Scarsdale could have done; he found no amusement in the coarse self-reproach of one, the sullen obstinacy of another, the reckless gaiety with which a third put off his repentance till to-morrow. The din of their pretended enjoyment was pathetic and melancholy to Roger; but, amid all, he could not help the thought which occurred to him again and again--"Am I to be the comrade of these unfortunate blockheads?--are these my brothers-in-arms?"

And then, quick as thought, another picture presented itself to him. He thought of the Colonel, with his kind solicitous face, his stoop of attention, and the smile which lighted up his fatherly eyes when he spoke of his boy, whom he should hope to see Roger's brother-in-arms. For the moment he saw before him, not the flaring lights and clumsy figures of this rude company, but the dim inn-parlour, with its poor candles, and the benign old stranger with his paternal smile. The young man could not bear it. He said to himself sternly, "This must not be!" and dismissed the contrast which distracted him from his mind with a violent effort. Then he made his way into the half-lighted railway-station, where everything lay dark and silent, a stray porter making ghostly appearance across the rails, and an abysm of darkness on either side, out of which, and into which, now and then plunged the red-eyed ogre of a passing train. In answer to his inquiries, he found that the night-train to London stopped here to take up passengers in the middle of the night. He made a homely supper in the inn, and then came outside, to the station, to wait for it. There he paced up and down, watching the coming and going of short trains here and there, the hurried clambering up, and the more leisurely descent of rural passengers, upon whom the light fell coldly as they went and came. The roar and rustle with which some one-eyed monster, heard long before seen, came plunging and snorting out of the darkness, and all the rapid, shifting, phantasmagoria, of that new fashion of the picturesque which belongs to modern times. The wind blew chill from the open country, with a shrill and piercing concentration of cold through the narrow bar of the little station. By-and-bye the lights diminished, the noises stilled, nobody was left in the place but himself, a drowsy clerk in the little office, and some porters sleeping on the benches. Roger, for his part, could not sleep; he kept in motion, marching up and down the short, resounding, wooden platform, urged by the midnight cold, and by his thoughts, until his weary vigil was concluded by the arrival of his train. Then he, too, plunged like everybody else into darkness, into the mysterious midnight road, with dark London throbbing and shouting at the end; into life and his fate.

On the same day, and in a manner not very dissimilar, Horace Scarsdale left his home.

If that could be called home which had been for years a prison to the young man. With a secret feeling of exultation, he collected everything belonging to him into a trunk, which he confided, without much explanation, into the hands of Peggy. "When I send for this give it to my messenger," said Horace. Peggy was prudent, and nodded in assent, without asking any question. She had divined for some time that he meant to go away, and Peggy, who thought it the best thing he could do, prepared to remain in ignorance, and to have no information to give her master in case he should think of questioning her. Susan had not yet returned from her walk; there was no one in the house but Mr. Scarsdale, shut up as usual in his study, and Peggy looking out anxiously, but stealthily; unwilling to be seen, or suspected of watching her young master, when Horace left the house. He, too, carried a little bag--and he, too, when he had got half-way across the moor, turned round to look at the house in which the greater part of his life had been spent. Looking back, no tender images softened in the mind of Horace the harsh and angular outline of those unsheltered walls; he had no associations to make sweet to him the dwelling of his youth. He drew a long, deep breath of satisfaction. He had escaped, and he was young, and life was bright before him. As he stood there, too far off to be called back, with his bag lying at his feet among the brown heather, he could see Peggy steal out to the corner of the house and look up and down the road to see which way he had gone, with her hand over her eyes, to shield them from the sun: and then another lighter figure came quickly, with an agitated speed, to the door, and stood there in the sunshine, without looking round her at all, waiting for admittance. Horace contracted his eyebrows over his short-sighted eyes, and smiled to recognize his sister--smiled, but not with affection or pleasure. Perhaps it heightened for the moment his own sense of liberation to see that poor little bird going back to her cage; perhaps he imagined her consternation and alarm and amazement on finding him gone. When Peggy had gone in from her corner, and Susan had disappeared into the house, Horace took up his bag and pursued his way. He was not going any great distance; his destination, for this time at least, was only Kenlisle, where he arrived in the afternoon, after a long walk, made pleasant by the sense of freedom, which increased as step by step he increased the distance between himself and Marchmain.

"I have come to consult you about some matters of much importance to me," he said. "I am forced to adopt a profession, though I ought to have no need for any such thing. I have determined to adopt yours, Mr. Pouncet. I have a long explanation to make before you can understand the case--have you time to hear me?"

"Certainly," said the lawyer, but not with effusion; for the preface was not very encouraging to his hopes of a new client.

"My father lives not very far off, at Marchmain, on the borders of Lanwoth Moor," said Horace, and made a pause at the end of these words.

A look of increased curiosity rewarded him. "Ah, Mr. Scarsdale? I remember to have heard the name," said the attorney, taking up his pen, playing with it, and at last, as if half by inadvertence, making a note upon a sheet of paper.

"He lives a life of mystery and seclusion," said Horace; "he has some secret which he guards from me; he says it is unnecessary for me to support myself, and yet his own establishment is poor. What am I to do?--life is insupportable at Marchmain. My uncle wishes me to proceed to London, to read for the bar. I confess my ambition does not direct me towards the bar. I see no necessity for losing my best years in labour which, when I discover all, will most likely be useless to me. Here is what I want to do: I wish to remain near; I wish to attain sufficient legal knowledge to be able to follow this mystery out. Such is my case plainly; what ought I to do?"

Mr. Pouncet gave a single, sharp glance at Horace, then resumed his scribbling on his paper, drawing fantastic lines and flourishes, and devoting a greater amount of attention to these than to his answer. "Really, I find it difficult to advise," he said, in a tone which meant plainly that he perceived his client had something more to say. "Take your uncle's advice."

"No," said Horace; "you will receive me into your office."

"I--I am much obliged, it would be an honour; but my office is already full," said Mr. Pouncet, with a little quiet sarcasm; "I have more clerks than I know what to do with."

"Yes, these fellows there," said Horace--"I can see it; but I am of very different mettle; you will find a place for me; wait a little, you will soon see your advantage in it."

"You have a very good opinion of yourself, my young friend," said the lawyer, laughing dryly, with a little amazement, and a little anger.

"I have," said Horace, laconically; "I know what I can do. Look here--I am not what I have been brought up to appear; there is something in my future which my father envies and grudges me; I know it!--and it must be worth his while; he's not a man to waste his ill-temper without a good cause; very likely there's an appeal to the law before me, when I know what this secret is. You can see what stuff I am made of. I don't want to go to London, to waste time and cultivate a profession; the chances are I shall never require it--give me a place here!"

"Your request is both startling and unreasonable," said Mr. Pouncet, putting down his pen, and looking his visitor full in the face. "I have reason to complain of a direct imposition you have practised upon me. You come as a client, and then you ask for employment; it is absurd. I have young men in my office of most excellent connections--each of them has paid me a premium; and you think the eccentricity of your demand will drive me into accepting you, whom I never saw before; the thing is quite absurd."

"I beg your pardon," said Horace, coolly; "I am not asking for employment--I am your client, seeking your advice; here is your fee. I ask you, whether this is not what you would advise me, as the best thing I could do. As for premium, I don't care for that. If I am not worth half-a-dozen of these lads, to any man who knows how to employ me, it is a very odd thing to me. Now, understand me, sir: I have left home--I wish to conclude what I am to do at once; if not in your office, in some other; can you find a place for me here?"

"Eyeh, man! and that's a' the geed ye've done? If I had but had the sense to ging mysel'! Where's my son? Black be the day ye coom across this door, ye bletherin' Ould Hunderd! Where's my Sam? Eyeh, my purty boy, that was aye handy to a' things, and ne'er a crooked word in his mouth but when you crossed him, and a temper like an angel? Where's my Sam? Do you mean to tell me you've gane and you've coomed, John Gilsland, and brought nae guid news in your hand?"

"Eyeh, woman, if ye but had!" said John, "ye would have knowed better; yon'er he is fast enough, and no a penny less than thirty pound'll buy him off, and ye know best yoursel' if ye can spare that off of the business in such bad times; but there's mair as bad off as you. And I can tell you I saw greater folk nor our Sam look wistful at the ribbons. As I sat down by the chimney side, who should come in but Mr. Roger, him that should be the young Squire by rights, if the ould wan had done fairly by him. He stood i' the door, as I might be dooing, and gave a look athwart the place. If he warn't envying of the lads as could 'list, and no more said, never trust my word again. I'll bet a shilling he was in twenty minds to take the bounty himsel'. Though he is a gentleman, he's a deal worse off nor our Sam; he'll goo hanging about in London, till the great folk doo somat for him. He durstent set for'ard bold, and into the ranks wi' him. I'm more grieveder like, in a general way, for the sort of him nor our lad. Dry thy een, wife, and set on a great wash, and take it out on th' wench; it'll do thee good, and thoo canst do nae benefit to Sam."

Mrs. Gilsland, though she contradicted her husband as usual, found some wisdom in his advice, and, after doing something elaborately the reverse for a time, adopted it, to the discomfiture of her poor maid-of-all-work, who might not have appreciated her master's counsel had she been aware of it. A good scold did the landlady good; she sought out poor Sam's wardrobe, collected a little heap of articles to be washed and mended for him, and managed, by this means, to get through the day with tolerable comfort, though interrupted by many gossiping visits of condolence, in all of which she renewed and expatiated upon her grief. When the evening arrived, Mrs. Gilsland was in considerable force, with red eyes, and face a little swollen, but strong in all her natural eloquence and courage, lying in wait for the arrival of the unsuspecting "Ould Hunderd," who had not yet been informed, so far as she was aware of, what had taken place. Before he made his appearance, however, there arrived the carrier from Kenlisle, who made a diversion in her excitement. He brought a note from Horace Scarsdale to John Gilsland, enclosing an open one, addressed to Peggy at Marchmain, and requested her to send his trunk with the bearer; a communication which very much roused the curiosity of both husband and wife. While they were considering this billet, Sergeant Kennedy came in as usual, and got his place, and his pipe, in the public room, without calling forth any demonstration of hostilities. When she became aware of his presence, Mrs. Gilsland rushed into the apartment, with the note still in her hand.

"Eyeh, gude forgive me if I'm like to swear!" cried the indignant mother, "you're here, ye ould deceiver! You're here to beguile other folks's sons, and dare to look me in the face as if ye had ne'er done mischief in your days. Where's my Sam? Where's my lad, that never had an ill thought intill his head till he came to speech of you? Well did the Cornel say ye wur an ould humbug! Where's my son?"

"Husht! husht!" said the Sergeant, soothingly--"I have heard on't already in the town. I always said he was a lad of spirit--he'll make a good souldhier, and some day ye'll be proud enough to see him in his uniform. Husht, would you have the onlearned believe he had 'listed in drink, or because of ill-doing? You're an oncommon discreet woman when ye like. Think of the poor lad's credit, then, and hould your peace. Would you make the foulks think he 'listed like a ne'er-do-well? Husht, if any person says so of Sam Gilsland to me, Sergeant Kennedy, o' the Ould Hunderd, I'll knock him down."

This sudden new aspect of the subject took away the good woman's breath; she was not prepared for so skilful a defence, since, to blame her son in blaming Kennedy, was the last thing she could have thought of. After a few moments she recovered herself, but not the full advantage she had started with.

"I said you was a deceiver, and it's proved upon me," said Mrs. Gilsland; "and you think you can take me in with your lyin' tongue as well as my boy! How dare ye speak of drink or ill-doing and my Sam?--a steadier lad was never born; he's no' like you, you ould sponge that you are, soaking in whatever's gooing in the way of liquor. He's no as long-tongued nor as acquaint with ill; and but for coming across of you when the lad knowed no better, and taking a' your stories for Gospel, he'd ha' been here this day. And you sit and lift up your face to me in my own house, you do! Ye ould storyteller!--ye cruel deceiver!--ye onnat'ral ould man! You a feyther yoursel' and make other foulks's house desolate! But what need I speak?--there's wan there forenenst ye, that cares little more nor you do, for all the lad I'm naming is his son as well as mine!"

This sudden attack took the unfortunate John entirely by surprise; he recoiled a step or two, with an exclamation of amazement and injury. He had been standing calmly by, enjoying the unusual pleasure of listening to his wife's eloquence as a spectator, and rather rejoicing in the castigation of the sergeant. This assault took away his breath--nor was it allowed to remain a single blow. Before anyone could speak, an old cracked, high-pitched voice made itself heard from the door of the apartment, where, shivering with cold, and anger, and age, with an old checked shawl thrown over her cap, old Sally from the Grange shook her withered and trembling hand at the unhappy John.

"It's you that's a-spreading tales against the young maister--it's you!" she cried, in her shrill accents; "and it's you, Betty Gilsland, that's puttin' him up to it; you that's eaten the Squire's bread, and married on his present, and thrived wi' his coostom. Fie upon me for a silly ould fool, that thought there was such a thing as thankfulness to the fore in this world! Eh, man! to think ye should have come coorting to the Grange kitchen, many's the day, and eaten your commforable supper wi' the rest on us, and yet have the heart to turn again Mr. Roger, like the gentry themsels! I would not have believed it if half the sheer had ta'en their Bible oath--no, not for nothing but hearing on it mysel'. What ill did he ever doo you, that you should raise a story on Mr. Roger? Oh, fie, fie, fie, for shame!"

The husband and wife looked at each other in mutual amazement at this unexpected charge, while Kennedy pricked up his ears and recovered his former boldness. He did not doubt now to come out of the affair with flying colours; for though John Gilsland's reflections on the looks of Roger when he encountered him the previous night had been overheard and carried rapidly to the interested ears of Sally, the sergeant was still unaware both of Roger's purpose and his departure. He inclined his ear with great attention to Sally's complaint; he cocked his cap upon one side of his head, and assumed the part of moderator with a masterly promptitude; he called her in, waving his hand to her, and set a stool for her near the fire.

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