Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXIII Part 12

"Big with the fate of Thomas and his mother."

He was to preach his trial sermon; and where? In his own parish--in his native village! It was summer, but his mother rose by daybreak. Her son, however, was at his studies before her; and when she entered his bedroom with a swimming heart and swimming eyes, Thomas was stalking across the floor, swinging his arms, stamping his feet, and shouting his sermon to the trembling curtains of a four-post bed, which she had purchased in honour of him alone. "Oh, my bairn! my matchless bairn!" cried she, "what a day o' joy is this for your poor mother! But oh, hinny, hae ye it weel aff? I hope there's nae fears o' ye stickin' or using notes!"

"Dinna fret, mother--dinna fret," replied the young divine; "stickin'

and notes are out o' the question. I hae every word o' it as clink as the A B C." The appointed hour arrived. She was first at the kirk. Her heart felt too big for her bosom. She could not sit--she walked again to the air--she trembled back--she gazed restless on the pulpit. The parish minister gave out the psalm--the book shook while she held it. The minister prayed, again gave out a psalm, and left the pulpit. The book fell from Mrs. Jeffrey's hand. A tall figure paced along the pa.s.sage. He reached the pulpit stairs--took two steps at once. It was a bad omen; but arose from the length of his limbs--not levity. He opened the door--his knees smote upon one another. He sat down--he was paler than death. He rose--his bones were paralytic. The Bible was opened--his mouth opened at the same time, and remained open, but said nothing. His large eyes stared wildly around. At length his teeth chattered, and the text was announced, though half the congregation disputed it. "My brethren!" said he once, and the whiteness of his countenance increased; but he said no more. "My bre--thren!" responded he a second time; his teeth chattered louder; his cheeks became clammy and death-like. "My brethren!" stammered he a third time emphatically, and his knees fell together. A deep groan echoed from his mother's pew. His wildness increased. "My mother!" exclaimed the preacher. They were the last words he ever uttered in a pulpit. The shaking and the agony began in his heart, and his body caught the contagion. He covered his face with his hands, fell back, and wept. His mother screamed aloud, and fell back also; and thus perished her toils, her husband's prayer, her fond antic.i.p.ations, and the pulpit oratory of her son. A few neighbours crowded round her to console her and render her a.s.sistance. They led her to the door. She gazed upon them with a look of vacancy--thrice sorrowfully waved her hand, in token that they should leave her; for their words fell upon her heart like dew upon a furnace. Silently she arose and left them, and reaching her cottage, threw herself upon her bed in bitterness. She shed no tears; neither did she groan, but her bosom heaved with burning agony. Sickness smote Thomas to his very heart; yea, even unto blindness he was sick. His tongue was like heated iron in his mouth, and his throat like a parched land. He was led from the pulpit. But he escaped not the persecution of the unfeeling t.i.tter, and the expressions of shallow pity. He would have rejoiced to have dwelt in darkness for ever, but there was no escape from the eyes of his tormentors. The congregation stood in groups in the kirkyard, "just," as they said, "to hae anither look at the orator;" and he must pa.s.s through the midst of them. With his very soul steeped in shame, and his cheeks covered with confusion, he stepped from the kirk door. A humming noise issued through the crowd, and every one turned their faces towards him.

His misery was greater than he could bear. "Yon was oratory for ye!"

said one. "Poor deevil!" added another, "I'm sorry for him; but it was as guid as a play." "Was it tragedy or comedy?" inquired a third, laughing as he spoke. The remarks fell upon his ear--he grated his teeth in madness, but he could endure no more; and, covering his face with his hands, he bounded off like a wounded deer to his mother's cottage. In despair he entered the house, scarce knowing what he did. He beheld her where she had fallen upon the bed, dead to all but misery. "Oh mother, mother!" he cried, "dinna ye be angry--dinna ye add to the afflictions of your son! Will ye no, mother?--will ye no?" A low groan was the only answer. He hurried to and fro across the room, wringing his hands.

"Mother," he again exclaimed, "will ye no speak ae word? Oh, woman! ye wadna be angry if ye kenned what an awfu' thing it is to see a thousan'

een below ye, and aboon ye, and round about ye, a' staring upon ye like condemning judges, an' looking into your very soul--ye hae nae idea o'

it, mother; I tell ye, ye hae nae idea o't, or ye wadna be angry. The very pulpit floor gaed down wi' me, the kirk wa's gaed round about, and I thought the very crown o' my head wad pitch on the top o' the precentor. The very een o' the mult.i.tude soomed round me like fishes!--an' oh, woman! are ye dumb? will ye torment me mair? can ye no speak, mother?" But he spoke to one who never spoke again. Her reason departed, and her speech failed, but grief remained. She had lived upon one hope, and that hope was destroyed. Her round ruddy cheeks and portly form wasted away, and within a few weeks the neighbours, who performed the last office of humanity, declared that a thinner corpse was never wrapt in a winding sheet than Mrs. Jeffrey. Time soothed, but did not heal the sorrows, the shame, and the disappointment of the son. He sank into a village teacher, and often, in the midst of his little school, he would quote his first, his only text--imagine the children to be his congregation--attempt to proceed--gaze wildly round for a moment, and sit down and weep. Through these aberrations his school dwindled into nothingness, and poverty increased his delirium. Once, in the midst of the remaining few, he gave forth the fatal text. "My brethren!" he exclaimed, and smiting his hand upon his forehead, cried, "Speak, mother!--speak now!" and fell with his face upon the floor. The children rushed screaming from the school, and when the villagers entered, the troubled spirit had fled for ever.

THE LAWYER'S TALES.

THE STORY OF MYSIE CRAIG.

In detailing the curious circ.u.mstances of the following story, I am again only reporting a real law case to be found in the Court of Session Records, the turning-point of which was as invisible to the judges as to the parties themselves--that is, until the end came; a circ.u.mstance again which made the case a kind of developed romance. But as an end implies a beginning, and the one is certainly as necessary as the other, we request you to accompany us--taking care of your feet--up the narrow spiral staircase of a tenement called Corbet's Land, in the same old town where so many wonderful things in the complicated drama--or dream, if you are a Marphurius--of human life have occurred. Up which spiral stair having got by the help of our hands, almost as indispensable as that of the feet, we find ourselves in a little human dovecot of two small rooms, occupied by two persons not unlike, in many respects, two doves--Widow Craig and her daughter, called May, euphuized by the Scotch into Mysie. The chief respects in which they might be likened, without much stress, to the harmless creatures we have mentioned, were their love for each other, together with their total inoffensiveness as regarded the outside world; and we are delighted to say this, for we see so many of the mult.i.tudinous sides of human nature dark and depraved, that we are apt to think there is no bright side at all. Nor shall we let slip the opportunity of saying, at the risk of being considered very simple, that of all the gifts of felicity bestowed, as the Pagan Homer tells, upon mankind by the G.o.ds, no one is so perfect and beautiful as the love that exists between a good mother and a good daughter.

For so much we may be safe by having recourse to instinct, which is deeper than any secondary causes we poor mortals can see. But beyond this, there were special reasons tending to this same result of mutual affection, which come more within the scope of our observation. In explanation of which, we may say that the mother, having something in her power during her husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an art of far more importance then than now--that of artistic, needlework.

Nay, of so much importance was this beautiful art, and to such perfection was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, embroidered by the hand, with its profuse imitations of natural objects, flowers, and birds, and strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds Scots, that a sight of one of those operose achievements of genius would make us blush for our time and the labours of our women. Nor was the perfection in this ornamental industry a new thing, for the daughters of the Pictish kings confined in the castle were adepts in it; neither was it left altogether to paid sempstresses, for great ladies spent their time in it, and emulation quickened both the genius and the diligence.

So we need hardly say it became to the mother a thing to be proud of, that her daughter Mysie proved herself so apt a scholar that she became an adept, and was soon known as one of the finest embroideresses in the great city. So, too, as a consequence, it came to pa.s.s that great ladies employed her; and often the narrow spiral staircase of Corbet's Land was brushed on either side by the huge ma.s.ses of quilted and emblazoned silk that, enveloping the belles of the day, were with difficulty forced up to and down from the small room of the industrious Mysie.

But we are now speaking of art, while we should have more to say (for it concerns us more) of the character of the young woman who was destined to figure in a stranger way than in making beautiful figures on silk.

Mysie was one of a cla.s.s: few in number they are indeed, but on that account more to be prized. Her taste and fine manipulations were but counterparts of qualities of the heart--an organ to which the pale face, with its delicate lines and the clear liquid eyes, was a suitable index.

The refinement which enabled her to make her imitation of beautiful objects on the delicate material of her work was only another form of a sensibility which pervaded her whole nature--that gift which is only conceded to peculiar organizations, and is such a doubtful one, too, if we go, as we cannot help doing, with the poet, when he sings that "chords that vibrate sweetest pleasures," often also "thrill the deepest notes of woe." Nay, we might say that the creatures themselves seem to fear the gift, for they shrink from the touch of the rough world, and retire within themselves as if to avoid it, while they are only courting its effects in the play of an imagination much too ardent for the duties of life; and, as a consequence, how they seek secretly the support of stronger natures, clinging to them as do those strange plants called parasites, which, with their tender arms and something so like fingers, cling to the nearest stem of a stouter neighbour, and embracing it, even though hollow and rotten, cover it, and choke it with a flood of flowers. So true is it that woman, like the generous vine, lives by being supported and held up; yet equally true that the strength she gains is from the embrace she gives; and so it is also that goodness, as our Scottish poet Home says, often wounds itself, and affection proves the spring of sorrow.

All which might truly be applied to Mysie Craig; but as yet the stronger stem to which she clung was her mother, and it was not likely, nor was it in reality, that that affection would prove to her anything but the spring of happiness, for it was ripened by love; and the earnings of the nimble fingers, moving often into the still hours of the night, not only kept the wolf from the door, but let in the lambs of domestic harmony and peace. Would that these things had so continued! But there are other wolves than those of poverty, and the "ae lamb o' the fauld" cannot be always under the protection of the ewe; and it so happened on a certain night, not particularized in the calendar, that our Mysie, having finished one of these floral petticoats on which she had been engaged for many weeks, went forth with her precious burden to deliver the same to its impatient owner, no other than the then famous Anabella Gilroy, who resided in Advocate's Close--of which fine lady, by the way, we may say, that of all the gay creatures who paraded between "the twa Bows,"

no one displayed such ample folds of brocaded silk, nodded her pon-pons more jauntily, or napped with a sharper crack her high-heeled shoes, all to approve herself to "the bucks" of the time, with their square coats brocaded with lace, their three-cornered hats on the top of their bob-wigs, their knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. And certainly not the least important of those, both in his own estimation and that of the sprightly Anabella, was George Balgarnie, a young man who had only a year before succeeded to the property of Balgruddery, somewhere in the north, and of whom we might say that, in forming him, Nature had taken so much pains with the building up of the body, that she had forgotten the mind, so that he had no more spiritual matter in him than sufficed to keep his blood hot, and enable his sensual organs to work out their own selfish gratifications; or, to perpetrate a metaphor, he was all the polished mahogany of a piano, without any more musical springs than might respond to one keynote of selfishness. And surely Anabella had approved herself to the fop to some purpose; for when our sempstress with her bundle had got into the parlour of the fine lady, she encountered no other than Balgarnie--a circ.u.mstance apparently of very small importance; but we know that a moment of time is sometimes like a small seed, which contains the nucleus of a great tree--perhaps a poisonous one. And so it turned out that, while Anabella was gloating over the beautiful work of the timid embroideress, Balgarnie was busy admiring the artist, but not merely--perhaps not at all--as an artist, only as an object over whom he wished to exercise power.

This circ.u.mstance was not un.o.bserved by the little embroideress, but it was only observed to be shrunk from in her own timid way; and probably it would soon have pa.s.sed from her mind, if it had not been followed up by something more direct and dangerous. And it was; for no sooner had Mysie got to the foot of the stairs than she encountered Balgarnie, who had gone out before her; and now began one of those romances in daily life of which the world is full, and of which the world is sick.

Balgarnie, in short, commenced that kind of suit which is nearly as old as the serpent, and therefore not to be wondered at; neither are we to wonder that Mysie listened to it, because we have heard so much about "lovely woman stooping to folly," that we are content to put it to the large account of natural miracles. And not very miraculous either, when we remember that if the low-breathed accents of tenderness awaken the germ of love, they awaken at the same time faith and trust. And such was the beginning of the romance which was to go through the normal stages,--the appointment to meet again, the meeting itself, the others that followed, the extension of the moonlight walks, sometimes to the Hunter's Bog between Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, and sometimes to the song-famed "Wells o' Weary,"--all which were just as sun and shower to the germ of the plant. The love grew and grew, and the faith grew and grew also which saw in him that which it felt in itself. Nay, if any of those moonlight-loving elves that have left their foot-marks in the fairy rings to be seen near St. Anthony's Well had whispered in Mysie's ear, "Balgarnie will never make you his wife," she would have believed the words as readily as if they had impugned the sincerity of her own heart. In short, we have again the a.n.a.logue of the parasitic plant. The very fragility and timidity of Mysie were at once the cause and consequence of her confidence. She would cling to him and cover him with the blossoms of her affection; nay, if there were unsoundness in the stem, these very blossoms would cover the rottenness.

This change in the life of the little sempstress could not fail to produce some corresponding change at home. We read smoothly the play we have acted ourselves; and so the mother read love in the daughter's eyes, and heard it, too, in her long sighs; nor did she fail to read the sign that the song which used to lighten her beautiful work was no longer heard; for love to creatures so formed as Mysie Craig is too serious an affair for poetical warbling. But she said nothing; for while she had faith in the good sense and virtue of her daughter, she knew also that there was forbearance due to one who was her support. Nor, as yet, had she reason to fear, for Mysie still plied her needle, and the roses and the lilies sprang up in all their varied colours out of the ground of the silk or satin as quickly and as beautifully as they were wont, though the lilies of her checks waxed paler as the days flitted.

And why the latter should have been, we must leave to the reader; for ourselves only hazarding the supposition that, perhaps, she already thought that Balgarnie should be setting about to make her his wife--an issue which behoved to be the result of their intimacy sooner or later; for that in her simple mind there should be any other issue, was just about as impossible as that, in the event of the world lasting as long, the next moon would not, at her proper time, again shine in that green hollow, between the Lion's Head and Samson's Ribs, which had so often been the scene of their happiness. Nay, we might say that though a doubt on the subject had by any means got into her mind, it would not have remained there longer than it took a shudder to scare the wild thing away.

Of course, all this was only a question of time; but certain it is, that by-and-by the mother could see some connection between Mysie's being more seldom out on those moonlight nights than formerly, and a greater paleness in her thin face, as if the one had been the cause of the other. But still she said nothing, for she daily expected that Mysie would herself break the subject to her; and so she was left only to increasing fears that her daughter's heart and affections had been tampered with, and perhaps she had fears that went farther. Still, so far as yet had gone, there was no remission in the labours of Mysie's fingers, as if in the midst of all--whatever that all might be--she recognised the paramount necessity of bringing in by those fingers the required and usual amount of the means of their livelihood. Nay, somehow or other, there was at that very time, when her cheek was at the palest, and her sighs were at their longest, and her disinclination to speak was at the strongest, an increase of work upon her; for was not there a grand tunic to embroider for Miss Anabella, which was wanted on a given day; and were there not other things for Miss Anabella's friend, Miss Allardice, which were not to be delayed beyond that same day? And so she st.i.tched and st.i.tched on and on, till sometimes the little lamp seemed to go out for want of oil, while the true cause of her diminished light was really the intrusion of the morning sun, against which it had no chance. It might be, too, that her very anxiety to get these grand dresses finished helped to keep out of her mind ideas which could have done her small good, even if they had got in.

But at length the eventful hour came when the gentle sempstress withdrew the shining needle, made clear by long use, from the last touch of the last rose; and doubtless, if Mysie had not been under the cloud of sorrow we have mentioned, she would have been happier at the termination of so long a labour than she had ever been, for the finishing evening had always been celebrated by a gla.s.s of strong Edinburgh ale--a drink which, as both a liquor and a liqueur, was as famous then as it is at this day. But of what avail was this work-termination to her now? Was it not certain that she had not seen Balgarnie for two moons? and though the impossibility of his not marrying her was just as impossible as ever, why were these two moons left to shine in the green hollow and on the rising hill without the privilege of throwing the shadows of Mysie Craig and George Balgarnie on the gra.s.s, where the fairies had left the traces of their dances? Questions these which she was unable to answer, if it were not even that she was afraid to put them to herself. Then, when was it that she felt herself unable to tie up her work in order to take it home, and that her mother, seeing the reacting effect of the prior sleepless nights in her languid frame, did this little duty for her, even as while she was doing it she looked through her tears at her changed daughter? But Mysie would do so much. While the mother should go to Miss Allardice, Mysie would proceed to Miss Anabella; and so it was arranged. They went forth together, parting at the Nether Bow; and Mysie, in spite of a weakness which threatened to bring her with her burden to the ground, struggled on to her destination. At the top of Advocate's Close she saw a man hurry out and increase his step even as her eye rested on him; and if it had not appeared to her to be among the ultimate impossibilities of things, natural as well as unnatural, she would have sworn that that man was George Balgarnie; but then, it just so happened that Mysie came to the conclusion that such a circ.u.mstance was among these ultimate impossibilities.

This resolution was an effort which cost her more than the conviction would have done, though doubtless she did not feel this at the time, and so with a kind of forced step she mounted the stair; but when she got into the presence of Miss Gilroy, she could scarcely p.r.o.nounce the words--

"I have brought you the dress, ma'am."

"And I am so delighted, Miss Craig, that I could almost take you into my arms," said the lady; "but what ails ye, dear? You are as white as any snow I ever saw, whereas you ought to have been as blithe as a bridesmaid, for don't you know that you have brought me home one of my marriage dresses? Come now, smile when I tell you that to-morrow is my wedding-day."

"Wedding-day," muttered Mysie, as she thought of the aforesaid utter impossibility of herself not being soon married to George Balgarnie; an impossibility not rendered less impossible by the resolution she had formed not to believe that within five minutes he had flown away from her.

"Yes, Miss Craig, and surely you must have heard who the gentleman is; for does not the town ring of it from the castle to the palace, from Kirk-o'-Field to the Calton?"

"I have not been out," said Mysie.

"That accounts for it," continued the lady; "and I am delighted at the reason, for wouldn't it have been terrible to think that my marriage with George Balgarnie of Balgruddery was a thing of so small a note as not to be known everywhere?"

If Mysie Craig had appeared shortly before to Miss Gilroy paler than any snow her ladyship had ever seen, she must now have been as pale as some other kind of snow that n.o.body ever saw. The dreadful words had indeed produced the adequate effect, but not in the most common way, for we are to keep in view that it is not the most shrinking and sensitive natures that are always the readiest to faint; and there was, besides, the aforesaid conviction of impossibility which, grasping the mind by a certain force, deadened the ear to words implying the contrary. Mysie stood fixed to the spot, as if she were trying to realize some certainty she dared not think was possible, her lips apart, her eyes riveted on the face of the lady--mute as that kind of picture which a certain ancient calls a silent poem, and motionless as a figure of marble.

An att.i.tude and appearance still more inexplicable to Anabella, perhaps irritating as an unlucky omen, and therefore not possessing any claim for sympathy--at least it got none.

"Are you the Mysie Craig," she cried, as she looked at the girl, "who used to chat to me about the dresses you brought, and the flowers on them? Ah, jealous and envious, is that it? But you forget, George Balgarnie never could have made _you_ his wife--a working needlewoman; he only fancied you as the plaything of an hour. He told me so himself when I charged him with having been seen in your company. So, Mysie, you may as well look cheerful. Your turn will come next with some one in your own station."

There are words which stimulate and confirm; there are others that seem to kill the nerve and take away the sense, nor can we ever tell the effect till we see it produced; and so we could not have told beforehand--nay, we would have looked for something quite opposite--that Mysie, shrinking and irritable as she was by nature, was saved from a faint (which had for some moments been threatening her) by the cruel insult which thus had been added to her misfortune. She had even power to have recourse to that strange device of some natures, that of "affecting to be not affected;" and casting a glance at the fine lady, she turned and went away without uttering a single word. But who knows the pain of the conventional concealment of pain except those who have experienced the agony of the trial? Even at the moment when she heard that George Balgarnie was to be married, and that she came to know that she had been for weeks sewing the marriage dress of his bride, she was carrying under her heart the living burden which was the fruit of her love for that man. Yet not the burden of shame and dishonour, as our story will show, for she was justified by the law of her country--yea, by certain words once written by an apostle to the Corinthians, all which may as yet appear a great mystery; but as regards Mysie Craig's agony, as she staggered down Miss Gilroy's stairs on her way home, there could be no doubt or mystery whatever.

Nor, when she got home, was there any comfort there for the daughter who had been so undutiful as to depart from her mother's precepts, and conceal from her not only her unfortunate connection with a villain, but the condition into which that connection had brought her. But she was at least saved from the pain of a part of the confession, for her mother had learned enough from Miss Allardice to satisfy her as to the cause of her daughter's change from the happy creature she once was, singing in the long nights, as she wrought unremittingly at her beautiful work, and the poor, sighing, pale, heart-broken thing she had been for months. Nor did she fail to see, with the quick eye of a mother, that as Mysie immediately on entering the house laid herself quietly on the bed, and sobbed in her great agony, she had learned the terrible truth from Miss Gilroy that the robe she had embroidered was to deck the bride of her destroyer. Moreover, her discretion enabled her to perceive that this was not the time for explanation, for the hours of grief are sacred, and the heart must be left to do its work by opening the issues of Nature's a.s.suagement, or ceasing to beat. So the night pa.s.sed, without question or answer; and the following day, that of the marriage, was one of silence, even as if death had touched the tongue that used to be the medium of cheerful words and tender sympathies--a strange contrast to the joy, if not revelry, in Advocate's Close.

It was not till after several days had pa.s.sed that Mysie was able, as she still lay in bed, to whisper, amidst the recurring sobs, in the ear of her mother, as the latter bent over her, the real circ.u.mstances of her condition; and still, amidst the trembling words, came the vindication that she considered herself to be as much the wife of George Balgarnie as if they had been joined by "Holy Kirk;" a statement which the mother could not understand, if it was not to her a mystery, rendered even more mysterious by a reference which Mysie made to the law of the country, as she had heard the same from her cousin, George Davidson, a writer's clerk in the Lawnmarket. Much of which, as it came in broken syllables from the lips of the disconsolate daughter, the mother put to the account of the fond dreams of a mind put out of joint by the worst form of misery incident to young women. But what availed explanations, mysteries or no mysteries, where the fact was patent that Mysie Craig lay there, the poor heartbroken victim of man's perfidy--her powers of industry broken and useless--the fine weaving genius of her fancy, whereby she wrought her embroidered devices to deck and adorn beauty, only engaged now on portraying all the evils of her future life; and above all, was she not soon to become a mother?

Meanwhile, and in the midst of all this misery, the laid-up earnings of Mysie's industry wore away, where there was no work by those cunning fingers, now thin and emaciated; and before the days pa.s.sed, and the critical day came whereon another burden would be imposed on the household, there was need for the sympathy of neighbours in that form which soon wears out--pecuniary help. That critical day at length came.

Mysie Craig gave birth to a boy, and their necessities from that hour grew in quicker and greater proportion than the generosity of friends.

There behoved something to be done, and that without delay. So when Mysie lay asleep, with the innocent evidence of her misfortune by her side, Mrs. Craig put on her red plaid and went forth on a mother's duty, and was soon in the presence of George Balgarnie and his young wife. She was under an impulse which made light of delicate conventionalities, and did not think it necessary to give the lady an opportunity of being absent: nay, she rather would have her to be present; for was she, who had been so far privy to the intercourse between her husband and Mysie, to be exempt from the consequences which she, in a sense, might have been said to have brought about?

"Ye have ruined Mysie Craig, sir!" cried at once the roused mother. "Ye have ta'en awa her honour. Ye have ta'en awa her health. Ye have ta'en awa her bread. Ay, and ye have reduced three human creatures to want, it may be starvation; and I have come here in sair sorrow and necessity to ask when and whaur is to be the remeid?"

"When and where you may find it, woman!" said the lady, as she cast a side-glance to her husband, probably by way of appeal for the truth of what she thought it right to say. "Mr. Balgarnie never injured your daughter. Let him who did the deed yield the remeid!"

"And do you stand by this?" said Mrs. Craig.

But the husband had been already claimed as free from blame by his wife, who kept her eye fixed upon him; and the obligation to conscience, said by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is sometimes weaker than what is due to a wife, in the estimation of whom a man may wish to stand in a certain degree of elevation.

"You must seek another father to the child of your daughter," said he lightly. And not content with the denial, he supplemented it by a laugh as he added, "When birds go to the greenwood, they must take the chance of meeting the goshawk."

"And that is your answer?" said she.

"It is; and you need never trouble either my wife or me more on this subject," was the reply.

"Then may the vengeance o' the G.o.d of justice light on the heads o'

baith o' ye!" added Mrs. Craig, as she went hurriedly away.

Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, for she held on her way direct to the Lawnmarket, where she found George Davidson, to whom she related as much as she had been able to get out of Mysie, and also what had pa.s.sed at the interview with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing which, the young writer shook his head.

"You will get a trifle of aliment," said he; "perhaps half-a-crown a week, but no more; and Mysie could have made that in a day by her beautiful work."

"And she will never work mair," said the mother, with a sigh.

"For a hundred years," rejoined he, more to himself than to her, and probably in congratulation of himself for his perspicacity, "and since ever there was a College of Justice, there never was a case where a man pulled up on oath for a promise of marriage admitted the fact. It is a good Scotch law, only we want a people to obey it. But what," he added again, "if we were to try it, though it were only as a grim joke and a revenge in so sad and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig!"

Words which the mother understood no more than she did law Latin; and so she was sent away as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did not want to raise hopes which there was no chance of being fulfilled; but he knew as a Scotchman that a man who trusts himself to a "strae rape" in the hope of its breaking, may possibly hang himself; and so it happened that the very next day a summons was served upon George Balgarnie, to have it found and declared by the Lords of Session that he had promised to marry Mysie Craig, whereupon a child had been born by her; or, in fault of that, he was bound to sustain the said child. Thereupon, without the ordinary law's delay, certain proceedings went on, in the course of which Mysie herself was examined as the mother to afford what the lawyers call a _semiplena probatio_, or half proof, to be supplemented otherwise, and thereafter George Balgarnie stood before the august fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with Mysie, except an occasional walk in the Hunter's Bog; and this he would have denied also, but he knew that he had been seen, and that it would be sworn to by others. And then came the last question, which Mr. Greerson, Mysie's advocate, put in utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem to try to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put his head in a noose on the pretence of seeing how it fitted his neck, that he smiled even as the words came out of his mouth--

"Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig?"