* * * * *

Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam first into Ba'weary, he was still a
young man--a callant, the folk said--fu' o' book learnin' and grand at
the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin'
experience in religion.  The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his
gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved
even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver,
and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied.  It was before the
days o' the moderates--weary fa' them; but ill things are like guid--they
baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time; and there were folk even then
that said the Lord had left the college professors to their ain devices,
an' the lads that went to study wi' them wad hae done mair and better
sittin' in a peat-bog, like their forbears of the persecution, wi' a
Bible under their oxter and a speerit o' prayer in their heart.  There
was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the
college.  He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae
thing needful.  He had a feck o' books wi' him--mair than had ever been
seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi'
them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between
this and Kilmackerlie.  They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so
they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service
for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of a
plaid.  Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht forbye, which was
scant decent--writin', nae less; and first, they were feared he wad read
his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin' a book himsel', which was
surely no fittin' for ane of his years an' sma' experience.

Onyway it behoved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for
him an' see to his bit denners; and he was recommended to an auld
limmer--Janet M'Clour, they ca'd her--and sae far left to himsel' as to
be ower persuaded.  There was mony advised him to the contrar, for Janet
was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba'weary.  Lang or that, she
had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit {140} for maybe
thretty year; and bairns had seen her mumblin' to hersel' up on Key's
Loan in the gloamin', whilk was an unco time an' place for a God-fearin'
woman.  Howsoever, it was the laird himsel' that had first tauld the
minister o' Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to
pleesure the laird.  When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil,
it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible
to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that
thir days were a' gane by, and the deil was mercifully restrained.

Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was to be servant
at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi' her an' him thegether; and some
o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door cheeks and
chairge her wi' a' that was ken't again her, frae the sodger's bairn to
John Tamson's twa kye.  She was nae great speaker; folk usually let her
gang her ain gate, an' she let them gang theirs, wi', neither Fair-guid-
een nor Fair-guid-day; but when she buckled to, she had a tongue to deave
the miller.  Up she got, an' there wasnae an auld story in Ba'weary but
she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but
she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the guidwives up and
claught haud of her, and clawed the coats aff her back, and pu'd her doun
the clachan to the water o' Dule, to see if she were a witch or no, soum
or droun.  The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin'
Shaw, and she focht like ten; there was mony a guidwife bure the mark of
her neist day an' mony a lang day after; and just in the hettest o' the
collieshangie, wha suld come up (for his sins) but the new minister.

'Women,' said he (and he had a grand voice), 'I charge you in the Lord's
name to let her go.'

Janet ran to him--she was fair wud wi' terror--an' clang to him, an'
prayed him, for Christ's sake, save her frae the cummers; an' they, for
their pairt, tauld him a' that was ken't, and maybe mair.

'Woman,' says he to Janet, 'is this true?'

'As the Lord sees me,' says she, 'as the Lord made me, no a word o't.
Forbye the bairn,' says she, 'I've been a decent woman a' my days.'

'Will you,' says Mr. Soulis, 'in the name of God, and before me, His
unworthy minister, renounce the devil and his works?'

Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that fairly
frichtit them that saw her, an' they could hear her teeth play dirl
thegether in her chafts; but there was naething for it but the ae way or
the ither; an' Janet lifted up her hand and renounced the deil before
them a'.

'And now,' says Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, 'home with ye, one and all,
and pray to God for His forgiveness.'

And he gied Janet his arm, though she had little on her but a sark, and
took her up the clachan to her ain door like a leddy of the land; an' her
scrieghin' and laughin' as was a scandal to be heard.

There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht; but when
the morn cam' there was sic a fear fell upon a' Ba'weary that the bairns
hid theirsels, and even the men folk stood and keekit frae their doors.
For there was Janet comin' doun the clachan--her or her likeness, nane
could tell--wi' her neck thrawn, and her heid on ae side, like a body
that has been hangit, and a girn on her face like an unstreakit corp.  By
an' by they got used wi' it, and even speered at her to ken what was
wrang; but frae that day forth she couldnae speak like a Christian woman,
but slavered and played click wi' her teeth like a pair o' shears; and
frae that day forth the name o' God cam never on her lips.  Whiles she
wad try to say it, but it michtnae be.  Them that kenned best said least;
but they never gied that Thing the name o' Janet M'Clour; for the auld
Janet, by their way o't, was in muckle hell that day.  But the minister
was neither to haud nor to bind; he preached about naething but the
folk's cruelty that had gi'en her a stroke of the palsy; he skelpt the
bairns that meddled her; and he had her up to the manse that same nicht,
and dwalled there a' his lane wi' her under the Hangin' Shaw.

Weel, time gaed by: and the idler sort commenced to think mair lichtly o'
that black business.  The minister was weel thocht o'; he was aye late at
the writing, folk wad see his can'le doon by the Dule water after twal'
at e'en; and he seemed pleased wi' himsel' and upsitten as at first,
though a' body could see that he was dwining.  As for Janet she cam an'
she gaed; if she didnae speak muckle afore, it was reason she should
speak less then; she meddled naebody; but she was an eldritch thing to
see, an' nane wad hae mistrysted wi' her for Ba'weary glebe.

About the end o' July there cam' a spell o' weather, the like o't never
was in that country side; it was lown an' het an' heartless; the herds
couldnae win up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to play; an'
yet it was gousty too, wi' claps o' het wund that rumm'led in the glens,
and bits o' shouers that slockened naething.  We aye thocht it but to
thun'er on the morn; but the morn cam, an' the morn's morning, and it was
aye the same uncanny weather, sair on folks and bestial.  Of a' that were
the waur, nane suffered like Mr. Soulis; he could neither sleep nor eat,
he tauld his elders; an' when he wasnae writin' at his weary book, he wad
be stravaguin' ower a' the countryside like a man possessed, when a' body
else was blythe to keep caller ben the house.

Abune Hangin' Shaw, in the bield o' the Black Hill, there's a bit
enclosed grund wi' an iron yett; and it seems, in the auld days, that was
the kirkyaird o' Ba'weary, and consecrated by the Papists before the
blessed licht shone upon the kingdom.  It was a great howff o' Mr.
Soulis's, onyway; there he would sit an' consider his sermons; and indeed
it's a bieldy bit.  Weel, as he cam ower the wast end o' the Black Hill,
ae day, he saw first twa, an syne fower, an' syne seeven corbie craws
fleein' round an' round abune the auld kirkyaird.  They flew laigh and
heavy, an' squawked to ither as they gaed; and it was clear to Mr. Soulis
that something had put them frae their ordinar.  He wasnae easy fleyed,
an' gaed straucht up to the wa's; an' what suld he find there but a man,
or the appearance of a man, sittin' in the inside upon a grave.  He was
of a great stature, an' black as hell, and his e'en were singular to see.
{144}  Mr. Soulis had heard tell o' black men, mony's the time; but there
was something unco about this black man that daunted him.  Het as he was,
he took a kind o' cauld grue in the marrow o' his banes; but up he spak
for a' that; an' says he: 'My friend, are you a stranger in this place?'
The black man answered never a word; he got upon his feet, an' begude to
hirsle to the wa' on the far side; but he aye lookit at the minister; an'
the minister stood an' lookit back; till a' in a meenute the black man
was ower the wa' an' rinnin' for the bield o' the trees.  Mr. Soulis, he
hardly kenned why, ran after him; but he was sair forjaskit wi' his walk
an' the het, unhalesome weather; and rin as he likit, he got nae mair
than a glisk o' the black man amang the birks, till he won doun to the
foot o' the hill-side, an' there he saw him ance mair, gaun, hap, step,
an' lowp, ower Dule water to the manse.

Mr. Soulis wasnae weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak' sae
free wi' Ba'weary manse; an' he ran the harder, an', wet shoon, ower the
burn, an' up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to see.  He
stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a' ower
the gairden, but na, nae black man.  At the hinder end, and a bit feared
as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and there was
Janet M'Clour before his een, wi' her thrawn craig, and nane sae pleased
to see him.  And he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set his een upon
her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue.

'Janet,' says he, 'have you seen a black man?'

'A black man?' quo' she.  'Save us a'!  Ye're no wise, minister.  There's
nae black man in a Ba'weary.'

But she didnae speak plain, ye maun understand; but yam-yammered, like a
powney wi' the bit in its moo.

'Weel,' says he, 'Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken with
the Accuser of the Brethren.'

And he sat down like ane wi' a fever, an' his teeth chittered in his
heid.

'Hoots,' says she, 'think shame to yoursel', minister;' an' gied him a
drap brandy that she keept aye by her.

Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a' his books.  It's a lang,
laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin' cauld in winter, an' no very dry even in
the tap o' the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn.  Sae doun he
sat, and thocht of a' that had come an' gane since he was in Ba'weary,
an' his hame, an' the days when he was a bairn an' ran daffin' on the
braes; and that black man aye ran in his heid like the ower-come of a
sang.  Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o' the black man.  He
tried the prayer, an' the words wouldnae come to him; an' he tried, they
say, to write at his book, but he could nae mak' nae mair o' that.  There
was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter, an' the swat stood
upon him cauld as well-water; and there was other whiles, when he cam to
himsel' like a christened bairn and minded naething.

The upshot was that he gaed to the window an' stood glowrin' at Dule
water.  The trees are unco thick, an' the water lies deep an' black under
the manse; an' there was Janct washin' the cla'es wi' her coats kilted.
She had her back to the minister, an' he, for his pairt, hardly kenned
what he was lookin' at.  Syne she turned round, an' shawed her face; Mr.
Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore, an' it was borne
in upon him what folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne, an' this was a
bogle in her clay-cauld flesh.  He drew back a pickle and he scanned her
narrowly.  She was tramp-trampin' in the cla'es, croonin' to hersel'; and
eh!  Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face.  Whiles she sang louder,
but there was nae man born o' woman that could tell the words o' her
sang; an' whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there was naething there
for her to look at.  There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon his
banes; and that was Heeven's advertisement.  But Mr. Soulis just blamed
himsel', he said, to think sae ill of a puir, auld afflicted wife that
hadnae a freend forbye himsel'; an' he put up a bit prayer for him and
her, an' drank a little caller water--for his heart rose again the
meat--an' gaed up to his naked bed in the gloaming.

That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary, the nicht o'
the seeventeenth of August, seventeen hun'er' an twal'.  It had been het
afore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was hetter than ever.  The sun
gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no a
star, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han' afore your face, and
even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin' for
their breath.  Wi' a' that he had upon his mind, it was gey and unlikely
Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep.  He lay an' he tummled; the gude, caller
bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept, and whiles he
waukened; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, and whiles a tyke yowlin' up
the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he heard bogles
claverin' in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the room.  He
behoved, he judged, to be sick; an' sick he was--little he jaloosed the
sickness.

At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark on
the bed-side, and fell thinkin' ance mair o' the black man an' Janet.  He
couldnae weel tell how--maybe it was the cauld to his feet--but it cam'
in upon him wi' a spate that there was some connection between thir twa,
an' that either or baith o' them were bogles.  And just at that moment,
in Janet's room, which was neist to his, there cam' a stramp o' feet as
if men were wars'lin', an' then a loud bang; an' then a wund gaed
reishling round the fower quarters of the house; an' then a' was aince
mair as seelent as the grave.

Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil.  He got his tinder-box,
an' lit a can'le, an' made three steps o't ower to Janet's door.  It was
on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keeked bauldly in.  It was a big
room, as big as the minister's ain, an' plenished wi' grand, auld, solid
gear, for he had naething else.  There was a fower-posted bed wi' auld
tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that was fu' o' the minister's
divinity books, an' put there to be out o' the gate; an' a wheen duds o'
Janet's lying here and there about the floor.  But nae Janet could Mr.
Soulis see; nor ony sign of a contention.  In he gaed (an' there's few
that wad ha'e followed him) an' lookit a' round, an' listened.  But there
was naethin' to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in a' Ba'weary
parish, an' naethin' to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin' round the
can'le.  An' then a' at aince, the minister's heart played dunt an' stood
stock-still; an' a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o' his heid.  Whaten a
weary sicht was that for the puir man's een!  For there was Janat hangin'
frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet: her heid aye lay on her
shoother, her een were steeked, the tongue projekit frae her mouth, and
her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.

'God forgive us all!' thocht Mr. Soulis; 'poor Janet's dead.'

He cam' a step nearer to the corp; an' then his heart fair whammled in
his inside.  For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man to judge, she
was hingin' frae a single nail an' by a single wursted thread for darnin'
hose.

It's an awfu' thing to be your lane at nicht wi' siccan prodigies o'
darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord.  He turned an' gaed his
ways oot o' that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by step,
doon the stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can'le on the table
at the stairfoot.  He couldnae pray, he couldnae think, he was dreepin'
wi' caul' swat, an' naething could he hear but the dunt-dunt-duntin' o'
his ain heart.  He micht maybe have stood there an hour, or maybe twa, he
minded sae little; when a' o' a sudden, he heard a laigh, uncanny steer
upstairs; a foot gaed to an' fro in the cha'mer whaur the corp was
hingin'; syne the door was opened, though he minded weel that he had
lockit it; an' syne there was a step upon the landin', an' it seemed to
him as if the corp was lookin' ower the rail and doun upon him whaur he
stood.

He took up the can'le again (for he couldnae want the licht), and as
saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out o' the manse an' to the far
end o' the causeway.  It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o' the can'le, when
he set it on the grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a room; naething
moved, but the Dule water seepin' and sabbin' doon the glen, an' yon
unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse.  He
kenned the foot over weel, for it was Janet's; and at ilka step that cam'
a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals.  He commanded his
soul to Him that made an' keepit him; 'and O Lord,' said he, 'give me
strength this night to war against the powers of evil.'

By this time the foot was comin' through the passage for the door; he
could hear a hand skirt alang the wa', as if the fearsome thing was
feelin' for its way.  The saughs tossed an' maned thegether, a lang sigh
cam' ower the hills, the flame o' the can'le was blawn aboot; an' there
stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram goun an' her black mutch,
wi' the heid aye upon the shouther, an' the girn still upon the face
o't--leevin', ye wad hae said--deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned--upon the
threshold o' the manse.

It's a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into his
perishable body; but the minister saw that, an' his heart didnae break.

She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an' cam' slowly
towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs.  A' the life o' his
body, a' the strength o' his speerit, were glowerin' frae his een.  It
seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an' made a sign wi' the
left hand.  There cam' a clap o' wund, like a cat's fuff; oot gaed the
can'le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an' Mr. Soulis kenned that, live
or die, this was the end o't.

'Witch, beldame, devil!' he cried, 'I charge you, by the power of God,
begone--if you be dead, to the grave--if you be damned, to hell.'

An' at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o' the Heevens struck the
Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o' the witch-wife,
sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils, lowed up like
a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the grund; the thunder followed,
peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain upon the back o' that; and Mr.
Soulis lowped through the garden hedge, and ran, wi' skelloch upon
skelloch, for the clachan.

That same mornin', John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn
as it was chappin' six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house at
Knockdow; an' no lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw him gaun linkin' doun the
braes frae Kilmackerlie.  There's little doubt but it was him that
dwalled sae lang in Janet's body; but he was awa' at last; and sinsyne
the deil has never fashed us in Ba'weary.

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay ravin'
in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he was the man ye ken the day.




OLALLA


'Now,' said the doctor, 'my part is done, and, I may say, with some
vanity, well done.  It remains only to get you out of this cold and
poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy
conscience.  The last is your affair.  To the first I think I can help
you.  It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padre
came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of
contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among some
of his parishioners.  This was a family--but you are ignorant of Spain,
and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it,
then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen to the brink
of destitution.  Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, and
certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not even
a goat could support life.  But the house is a fine old place, and stands
at a great height among the hills, and most salubriously; and I had no
sooner heard my friend's tale, than I remembered you.  I told him I had a
wounded officer, wounded in the good cause, who was now able to make a
change; and I proposed that his friends should take you for a lodger.
Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it
would.  It was out of the question, he said.  Then let them starve, said
I, for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride.  There-upon we
separated, not very content with one another; but yesterday, to my
wonder, the Padre returned and made a submission: the difficulty, he
said, he had found upon enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in
other words, these proud people had put their pride in their pocket.  I
closed with the offer; and, subject to your approval, I have taken rooms
for you in the residencia.  The air of these mountains will renew your
blood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the
medicines in the world.'

'Doctor,' said I, 'you have been throughout my good angel, and your
advice is a command.  But tell me, if you please, something of the family
with which I am to reside.'

'I am coming to that,' replied my friend; 'and, indeed, there is a
difficulty in the way.  These beggars are, as I have said, of very high
descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for
some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand,
from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor,
whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty forces
them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most
ungracious stipulation.  You are to remain, they say, a stranger; they
will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea of the
smallest intimacy.'

I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened
my desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that barrier
if I desired.  'There is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,' said
I; 'and I even sympathise with the feeling that inspired it.'

'It is true they have never seen you,' returned the doctor politely; 'and
if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that ever
came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common, but
pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome with
a better grace.  But since you take the thing so well, it matters not.  To
me, indeed, it seems discourteous.  But you will find yourself the
gainer.  The family will not much tempt you.  A mother, a son, and a
daughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and a
country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is,
therefore,' chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not much
in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'

'And yet you say they are high-born,' I objected.

'Well, as to that, I should distinguish,' returned the doctor.  'The
mother is; not so the children.  The mother was the last representative
of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune.  Her father
was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the residencia
till his death.  Then, much of the fortune having died with him, and the
family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever, until at last
she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a smuggler;
while there are some who uphold there was no marriage at all, and that
Felipe and Olalla are bastards.  The union, such as it was, was
tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such seclusion, and
the country at that time was in so much disorder, that the precise manner
of the man's end is known only to the priest--if even to him.'

'I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,' said I.

'I would not romance, if I were you,' replied the doctor; 'you will find,
I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality.  Felipe, for instance,
I have seen.  And what am I to say?  He is very rustic, very cunning,
very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably to
match.  No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial society among
the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least, if you are at
all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not be
disappointed.'

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a mule;
and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell to the
doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had befriended me
during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the Eastern gate, and
began to ascend into the Sierra.  I had been so long a prisoner, since I
was left behind for dying after the loss of the convoy, that the mere
smell of the earth set me smiling.  The country through which we went was
wild and rocky, partially covered with rough woods, now of the cork-tree,
and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and frequently intersected by the
beds of mountain torrents.  The sun shone, the wind rustled joyously; and
we had advanced some miles, and the city had already shrunk into an
inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us, before my attention began
to be diverted to the companion of my drive.  To the eye, he seemed but a
diminutive, loutish, well-made country lad, such as the doctor had
described, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture; and this
first impression was with most observers final.  What began to strike me
was his familiar, chattering talk; so strangely inconsistent with the
terms on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect
enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very
difficult to follow clearly without an effort of the mind.  It is true I
had before talked with persons of a similar mental constitution; persons
who seemed to live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the
visual object of the moment and unable to discharge their minds of that
impression.  His seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of
conversation proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great
vacancy of the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country.
But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-
keeper; 'I wish I was there now,' he said; and then, spying a tree by the
wayside, he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its
branches.

'A crow?' I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and
thinking I had heard imperfectly.

But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with a
rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he struck
me rudely, to make me hold my peace.  Then he smiled and shook his head.

'What did you hear?' I asked.

'O, it is all right,' he said; and began encouraging his mule with cries
that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.

I looked at him more closely.  He was superlatively well-built, light,
and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very
large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was
a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that
he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairyness; two characteristics
that I disliked.  It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me.  The
doctor's phrase--an innocent--came back to me; and I was wondering if
that were, after all, the true description, when the road began to go
down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent.  The waters thundered
tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound,
the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their descent.
The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very
securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished
to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion.  The
voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in
weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to
swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the
barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to the
clamour, that my driver more particularly winced and blanched.  Some
thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river Kelpie, passed across my
mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of
Spain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.

'What is the matter?' I asked.

'O, I am afraid,' he replied.

'Of what are you afraid?' I returned.  'This seems one of the safest
places on this very dangerous road.'

'It makes a noise,' he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my doubts
at rest.

The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body, active
and swift, but stunted in development; and I began from that time forth
to regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first with
indulgence, and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed babble.

By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountain
line, said farewell to the western sunshine, and began to go down upon
the other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through the
shadow of dusky woods.  There rose upon all sides the voice of falling
water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but
scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen.  Here, too,
the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto
voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never true
either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an
effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the of birds.  As the
dusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artless
warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air, and still
disappointed; and when at last I asked him what it was he sang--'O,'
cried he, 'I am just singing!'  Above all, I was taken with a trick he
had of unweariedly repeating the same note at little intervals; it was
not so monotonous as you would think, or, at least, not disagreeable; and
it seemed to breathe a wonderful contentment with what is, such as we
love to fancy in the attitude of trees, or the quiescence of a pool.

Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a
little after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could
only conjecture to be the residencia.  Here, my guide, getting down from
the cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an
old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,
carrying a candle in his hand.  By the light of this I was able to
perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by
iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a wicket.
The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my guide and I
passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us; and by the
glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a stone stair, along a
section of an open gallery, and up more stairs again, until we came at
last to the door of a great and somewhat bare apartment.  This room,
which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by three windows, lined
with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and carpeted with the skins
of many savage animals.  A bright fire burned in the chimney, and shed
abroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze there was drawn a
table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood ready.  I was
pleased by these preparations, and said so to Felipe; and he, with the
same simplicity of disposition that I held already remarked in him,
warmly re-echoed my praises.  'A fine room,' he said; 'a very fine room.
And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the pleasure in your bones.  And
the bed,' he continued, carrying over the candle in that direction--'see
what fine sheets--how soft, how smooth, smooth;' and he passed his hand
again and again over their texture, and then laid down his head and
rubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content that somehow
offended me.  I took the candle from his hand (for I feared he would set
the bed on fire) and walked back to the supper-table, where, perceiving a
measure of wine, I poured out a cup and called to him to come and drink
of it.  He started to his feet at once and ran to me with a strong
expression of hope; but when he saw the wine, he visibly shuddered.

'Oh, no,' he said, 'not that; that is for you.  I hate it.'

'Very well, Senor,' said I; 'then I will drink to your good health, and
to the prosperity of your house and family.  Speaking of which,' I added,
after I had drunk, 'shall I not have the pleasure of laying my
salutations in person at the feet of the Senora, your mother?'

But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and was
succeeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy.  He backed away
from me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap or
some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door,
glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils.  'No,' he said at last,
and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard his
footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed over
the house.

After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began to
prepare for rest; but in the new position of the light, I was struck by a
picture on the wall.  It represented a woman, still young.  To judge by
her costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she had
long been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the eyes and
the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.
Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red
tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden brown,
held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped, was yet
marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression.  Something in both
face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of an
echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood awhile,
unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance.
The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been originally designed
for such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas, had
fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting on the shaft and
holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring home a lodger.  Perhaps an
actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of the delicate flesh that
was once clothed upon with the satin and brocade of the dead lady, now
winced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.

The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I
lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;
its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one
after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign
and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she
were alive, I should love her.  Day after day the double knowledge of her
wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer.  She came to be the heroine
of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and sufficiently
rewarded, crimes.  She cast a dark shadow on my fancy; and when I was out
in the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and healthily
renewing the current of my blood, it was often a glad thought to me that
my enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken, her lips
closed in silence, her philtre spilt.  And yet I had a half-lingering
terror that she might not be dead after all, but re-arisen in the body of
some descendant.

Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to the
portrait haunted me.  At times it was not; at times, upon some change of
attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost.
It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed.  He
certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engage
by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my
fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless
songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an
affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an
embarrassment of which I was ashamed.  But for all that, he was capable
of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness.  At a word
of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat,
and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint
of inquisition.  I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place
and surrounded by string people; but at the shadow of a question, he
shrank back, lowering and dangerous.  Then it was that, for a fraction of
a second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in the
frame.  But these humours were swift to pass; and the resemblance died
along with them.

In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless the
portrait is to be counted; and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,
and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous
neighbourhood with equanimity.  As a matter of fact, it was for some time
irksome; but it happened before long that I obtained over him so complete
a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.

It fell in this way.  He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond,
and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but
laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the
residencia.  Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on
the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,
about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me that,
of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes
see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very plants he had
been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves, and
still more so since I was well assured they were foreign to his
disposition and the fruit of an ungrateful effort.  But while I admired,
I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttle-witted this enduring
sense of duty.  How was it sustained?  I asked myself, and to what length
did it prevail over his instincts?  The priest was possibly his inspirer;
but the priest came one day to the residencia.  I saw him both come and
go after an interval of close upon an hour, from a knoll where I was
sketching, and all that time Felipe continued to labour undisturbed in
the garden.

At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad from
his good resolutions, and, way-laying him at the gate, easily pursuaded
him to join me in a ramble.  It was a fine day, and the woods to which I
led him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling and alive with the hum
of insects.  Here he discovered himself in a fresh character, mounting up
to heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an energy and grace
of movement that delighted the eye.  He leaped, he ran round me in mere
glee; he would stop, and look and listen, and seem to drink in the world
like a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring into a tree with one
bound, and hang and gambol there like one at home.  Little as he said to
me, and that of not much import, I have rarely enjoyed more stirring
company; the sight of his delight was a continual feast; the speed and
accuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart; and I might have been
so thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of these wants, had not chance
prepared a very rude conclusion to my pleasure.  By some swiftness or
dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top.  He was then some
way ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the ground and crouch there,
crying aloud for pleasure like a child.  The sound stirred my sympathies,
it was so fresh and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, the
cry of the squirrel knocked upon my heart.  I have heard and seen much of
the cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but what I now beheld
struck me into a passion of anger.  I thrust the fellow aside, plucked
the poor brute out of his hands, and with swift mercy killed it.  Then I
turned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of my
indignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and at
length, pointing toward the residencia, bade him begone and leave me, for
I chose to walk with men, not with vermin.  He fell upon his knees, and,
the words coming to him with more cleanness than usual, poured out a
stream of the most touching supplications, begging me in mercy to forgive
him, to forget what he had done, to look to the future.  'O, I try so
hard,' he said.  'O, commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he will
never be a brute again!'  Thereupon, much more affected than I cared to
show, I suffered myself to be persuaded, and at last shook hands with him
and made it up.  But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury;
speaking of the poor thing's beauty, telling him what pains it had
suffered, and how base a thing was the abuse of strength.  'See, Felipe,'
said I, 'you are strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless as
that poor thing of the trees.  Give me your hand in mine.  You cannot
remove it.  Now suppose that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasure
in pain.  I only tighten my hold, and see how you suffer.'  He screamed
aloud, his face stricken ashy and dotted with needle points of sweat; and
when I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moaned
over it like a baby.  But he took the lesson in good part; and whether
from that, or from what I had said to him, or the higher notion he now
had of my bodily strength, his original affection was changed into a dog-
like, adoring fidelity.

Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health.  The residencia stood on the crown
of a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; only
from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen between two
peaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance.  The air in
these altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated there,
and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the hilltops; a
hoarse, and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round; and one
could there study all the ruder and more ancient characters of nature in
something of their pristine force.  I delighted from the first in the
vigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less in the antique and
dilapidated mansion where I dwelt.  This was a large oblong, flanked at
two opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one of which commanded
the door, while both were loopholed for musketry.  The lower storey was,
besides, naked of windows, so that the building, if garrisoned, could not
be carried without artillery.  It enclosed an open court planted with
pomegranate trees.  From this a broad flight of marble stairs ascended to
an open gallery, running all round and resting, towards the court, on
slender pillars.  Thence again, several enclosed stairs led to the upper
storeys of the house, which were thus broken up into distinct divisions.
The windows, both within and without, were closely shuttered; some of the
stone-work in the upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, had
been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in these
mountains; and the whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, and
standing out above a grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden and
discoloured with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the legend.  The
court, in particular, seemed the very home of slumber.  A hoarse cooing
of doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when they
blew outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiled
the red bloom of the pomegranates; shuttered windows and the closed doors
of numerous cellars, and the vacant, arches of the gallery, enclosed it;
and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides, and
paraded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor.  At the ground
level there was, however, a certain pillared recess, which bore the marks
of human habitation.  Though it was open in front upon the court, it was
yet provided with a chimney, where a wood fire would he always prettily
blazing; and the tile floor was littered with the skins of animals.

It was in this place that I first saw my hostess.  She had drawn one of
the skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar.  It was
her dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly
coloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of the
same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates.  At a second look it was
her beauty of person that took hold of me.  As she sat back--watching me,
I thought, though with invisible eyes--and wearing at the same time an
expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a
perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond
a statue's.  I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered
with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;
but she paid no heed to my courtesy.  I went forth on my customary walk a
trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when I
returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was half
surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following
the sunshine.  This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial
salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same
deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already
baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son.  I answered
rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with
precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me.  They were
unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at that
moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me
was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the
singular insignificance of their regard.  A look more blankly stupid I
have never met.  My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went on
my way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed.  Yet,
when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again reminded
of the miracle of family descent.  My hostess was, indeed, both older and
fuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides,
was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attracted
me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a moral blank
expressing literally naught.  And yet there was a likeness, not so much
speaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature as upon the
whole.  It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set his
signature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of one
smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of a
race.

From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the
Senora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug before
the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of
the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right across
my path.  In all these days, I never knew her to display the least spark
of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her
copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken
hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself.  These,
I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere quiescence.
She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had been
witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like the
conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow
range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they
had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entire
contentment.  Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)
she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and
now of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air of
the court.  The birds excited her.  As they raked the eaves in their
swift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would
sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze of
satisfaction.  But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on
herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure.  Her invincible content at first
annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until
at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the
day, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew
of what.  I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her
beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me.  I began to find a kind
of transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable good
nature moved me to admiration and envy.  The liking was returned; she
enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may
enjoy the babbling of a brook.  I can scarce say she brightened when I
came, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some
foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more
intimate communication than the sight.  And one day, as I set within
reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her hands
and patted mine.  The thing was done, and she was back in her accustomed
attitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the caress; and
when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no answerable
sentiment.  It was plain she attached no moment to the act, and I blamed
myself for my own more uneasy consciousness.