"Honour bright?" asked Frank.

"I am not in the habit of lying, Mr. Innes," retorted Archie.  "I have 
the honour of wishing you good-day."

"You won't forget the Spec.?" asked Innes.

"The Spec.?" said Archie.  "O no, I won't forget the Spec."

And the one young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and 
all the day long, by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage of 
misery; while the other hastened smilingly to spread the news of Weir's 
access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at 
the Speculative, where further eccentric developments might certainly be 
looked for.  I doubt if Innes had the least belief in his prediction; I 
think it flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the 
scandal as great as possible; not from any ill-will to Archie - from the 
mere pleasure of beholding interested faces.  But for all that his words 
were prophetic.  Archie did not forget the Spec.; he put in an 
appearance there at the due time, and, before the evening was over, had 
dealt a memorable shock to his companions.  It chanced he was the 
president of the night.  He sat in the same room where the Society still 
meets - only the portraits were not there: the men who afterwards sat 
for them were then but beginning their career.  The same lustre of many 
tapers shed its light over the meeting; the same chair, perhaps, 
supported him that so many of us have sat in since.  At times he seemed 
to forget the business of the evening, but even in these periods he sat 
with a great air of energy and determination.  At times he meddled 
bitterly, and launched with defiance those fines which are the precious 
and rarely used artillery of the president.  He little thought, as he 
did so, how he resembled his father, but his friends remarked upon it, 
chuckling.  So far, in his high place above his fellow-students, he 
seemed set beyond the possibility of any scandal; but his mind was made 
up - he was determined to fulfil the sphere of his offence.  He signed 
to Innes (whom he had just fined, and who just impeached his ruling) to 
succeed him in the chair, stepped down from the platform, and took his 
place by the chimney-piece, the shine of many wax tapers from above 
illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving 
from behind his slim figure.  He had to propose, as an amendment to the 
next subject in the case-book, "Whether capital punishment be consistent 
with God's will or man's policy?"

A breath of embarrassment, of something like alarm, passed round the 
room, so daring did these words appear upon the lips of Hermiston's only 
son.  But the amendment was not seconded; the previous question was 
promptly moved and unanimously voted, and the momentary scandal smuggled 
by.  Innes triumphed in the fulfilment of his prophecy.  He and Archie 
were now become the heroes of the night; but whereas every one crowded 
about Innes, when the meeting broke up, but one of all his companions 
came to speak to Archie.

"Weir, man!  That was an extraordinary raid of yours!" observed this 
courageous member, taking him confidentially by the arm as they went 
out.

"I don't think it a raid," said Archie grimly.  "More like a war.  I
saw that poor brute hanged this morning, and my gorge rises at it yet."

"Hut-tut," returned his companion, and, dropping his arm like something 
hot, he sought the less tense society of others.

Archie found himself alone.  The last of the faithful - or was it only 
the boldest of the curious? - had fled.  He watched the black huddle of 
his fellow-students draw off down and up the street, in whispering or 
boisterous gangs.  And the isolation of the moment weighed upon him like 
an omen and an emblem of his destiny in life.  Bred up in unbroken fear 
himself, among trembling servants, and in a house which (at the least 
ruffle in the master's voice) shuddered into silence, he saw himself on 
the brink of the red valley of war, and measured the danger and length 
of it with awe.  He made a detour in the glimmer and shadow of the 
streets, came into the back stable lane, and watched for a long while 
the light burn steady in the Judge's room.  The longer he gazed upon 
that illuminated window-blind, the more blank became the picture of the 
man who sat behind it, endlessly turning over sheets of process, pausing 
to sip a glass of port, or rising and passing heavily about his book-
lined walls to verify some reference.  He could not combine the brutal 
judge and the industrious, dispassionate student; the connecting link 
escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should 
predict behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge 
into a business of which the end could not be foreseen? and presently 
after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to 
strike his father?  For he had struck him - defied him twice over and 
before a cloud of witnesses - struck him a public buffet before crowds.  
Who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and high 
questions?  The office was usurped.  It might have become a stranger; in 
a son - there was no blinking it - in a son, it was disloyal.  And now, 
between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, 
there was depending an unpardonable affront: and the providence of God 
alone might foresee the manner in which it would be resented by Lord 
Hermiston.

These misgivings tortured him all night and arose with him in the 
winter's morning; they followed him from class to class, they made him 
shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his companions, they 
sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he 
brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased.  The 
cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. 
Gregory.  Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted window of a book 
shop, trying to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal.  My lord and 
he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with 
scarcely the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son 
that nothing had yet reached the father's ears.  Indeed, when he 
recalled the awful countenance of my lord, a timid hope sprang up in him 
that perhaps there would be found no one bold enough to carry tales.  If 
this were so, he asked himself, would he begin again? and he found no 
answer.  It was at this moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a 
voice said in his ear, "My dear Mr. Archie, you had better come and see 
me."

He started, turned round, and found himself face to face with Dr. 
Gregory.  "And why should I come to see you?" he asked, with the 
defiance of the miserable.

"Because you are looking exceedingly ill," said the doctor, "and you 
very evidently want looking after, my young friend.  Good folk are 
scarce, you know; and it is not every one that would be quite so much 
missed as yourself.  It is not every one that Hermiston would miss."

And with a nod and a smile, the doctor passed on.

A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, and had in turn, but more 
roughly, seized him by the arm.

"What do you mean? what did you mean by saying that?  What makes you 
think that Hermis - my father would have missed me?"

The doctor turned about and looked him all over with a clinical eye.  A 
far more stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have guessed the truth; but 
ninety-nine out of a hundred, even if they had been equally inclined to 
kindness, would have blundered by some touch of charitable exaggeration.  
The doctor was better inspired.  He knew the father well; in that white 
face of intelligence and suffering, he divined something of the son; and 
he told, without apology or adornment, the plain truth.

"When you had the measles, Mr. Archibald, you had them gey and ill; and 
I thought you were going to slip between my fingers," he said.  "Well, 
your father was anxious.  How did I know it? says you.  Simply because I 
am a trained observer.  The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand would 
have missed; and perhaps - PERHAPS, I say, because he's a hard man to 
judge of - but perhaps he never made another.  A strange thing to 
consider!  It was this.  One day I came to him: `Hermiston,' said I, 
`there's a change.'  He never said a word, just glowered at me (if ye'll 
pardon the phrase) like a wild beast.  `A change for the better,' said 
I.  And I distinctly heard him take his breath."

The doctor left no opportunity for anti-climax; nodding his cocked hat 
(a piece of antiquity to which he clung) and repeating "Distinctly" with 
raised eye-brows, he took his departure, and left Archie speechless in 
the street.

The anecdote might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for 
Archie was immense.  "I did not know the old man had so much blood in 
him."  He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal antique, 
this adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the 
least degree for another - and that other himself, who had insulted him!  
With the generosity of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the 
other side: had instantly created a new image of Lord Hermiston, that of 
a man who was all iron without and all sensibility within.  The mind of 
the vile jester, the tongue that had pursued Duncan Jopp with unmanly 
insults, the unbeloved countenance that he had known and feared for so 
long, were all forgotten; and he hastened home, impatient to confess his 
misdeeds, impatient to throw himself on the mercy of this imaginary 
character.

He was not to be long without a rude awakening.  It was in the gloaming 
when he drew near the door-step of the lighted house, and was aware of 
the figure of his father approaching from the opposite side.  Little 
daylight lingered; but on the door being opened, the strong yellow shine 
of the lamp gushed out upon the landing and shone full on Archie, as he 
stood, in the old-fashioned observance of respect, to yield precedence.  
The judge came without haste, stepping stately and firm; his chin 
raised, his face (as he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined, his 
mouth set hard.  There was never a wink of change in his expression; 
without looking to the right or left, he mounted the stair, passed close 
to Archie, and entered the house.  Instinctively, the boy, upon his 
first coming, had made a movement to meet him; instinctively he recoiled 
against the railing, as the old man swept by him in a pomp of 
indignation.  Words were needless; he knew all - perhaps more than all - 
and the hour of judgment was at hand.

It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion of hope, and before these 
symptoms of impending danger, Archie might have fled.  But not even that 
was left to him.  My lord, after hanging up his cloak and hat, turned 
round in the lighted entry, and made him an imperative and silent 
gesture with his thumb, and with the strange instinct of obedience, 
Archie followed him into the house.

All dinner-time there reigned over the Judge's table a palpable silence, 
and as soon as the solids were despatched he rose to his feet.

"M'Killup, tak' the wine into my room," said he; and then to his son: 
"Archie, you and me has to have a talk."

It was at this sickening moment that Archie's courage, for the first and 
last time, entirely deserted him.  "I have an appointment," said he.

"It'll have to be broken, then," said Hermiston, and led the way into 
his study.

The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed to a nicety, the table covered 
deep with orderly documents, the backs of law books made a frame upon 
all sides that was only broken by the window and the doors.

For a moment Hermiston warmed his hands at the fire, presenting his back 
to Archie; then suddenly disclosed on him the terrors of the Hanging 
Face.

"What's this I hear of ye?" he asked.

There was no answer possible to Archie.

"I'll have to tell ye, then," pursued Hermiston.  "It seems ye've been 
skirting against the father that begot ye, and one of his Maijesty's 
Judges in this land; and that in the public street, and while an order 
of the Court was being executit.  Forbye which, it would appear that 
ye've been airing your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin' Society"; he 
paused a moment: and then, with extraordinary bitterness, added: "Ye 
damned eediot."

"I had meant to tell you," stammered Archie.  "I see you are well 
informed."

"Muckle obleeged to ye," said his lordship, and took his usual seat.  
"And so you disapprove of Caapital Punishment?" he added.

"I am sorry, sir, I do," said Archie.

"I am sorry, too," said his lordship.  "And now, if you please, we shall 
approach this business with a little more parteecularity.  I hear that 
at the hanging of Duncan Jopp - and, man! ye had a fine client there - 
in the middle of all the riff-raff of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry 
out, `This is a damned murder, and my gorge rises at the man that 
haangit him.' "

"No, sir, these were not my words," cried Archie.

"What were yer words, then?" asked the Judge.

"I believe I said, `I denounce it as a murder!'" said the son.  "I beg 
your pardon - a God-defying murder.  I have no wish to conceal the 
truth," he added, and looked his father for a moment in the face.

"God, it would only need that of it next!" cried Hermiston.  "There was 
nothing about your gorge rising, then?"

"That was afterwards, my lord, as I was leaving the Speculative.  I said 
I had been to see the miserable creature hanged, and my gorge rose at 
it."

"Did ye, though?" said Hermiston.  "And I suppose ye knew who haangit 
him?"

"I was present at the trial, I ought to tell you that, I ought to 
explain.  I ask your pardon beforehand for any expression that may seem 
undutiful.  The position in which I stand is wretched," said the unhappy 
hero, now fairly face to face with the business he had chosen.  "I have 
been reading some of your cases.  I was present while Jopp was tried.  
It was a hideous business.  Father, it was a hideous thing!  Grant he 
was vile, why should you hunt him with a vileness equal to his own?  It 
was done with glee - that is the word - you did it with glee; and I 
looked on, God help me! with horror."

"You're a young gentleman that doesna approve of Caapital Punishment," 
said Hermiston. "Weel, I'm an auld man that does.  I was glad to get 
Jopp haangit, and what for would I pretend I wasna?  You're all for 
honesty, it seems; you couldn't even steik your mouth on the public 
street.  What for should I steik mines upon the bench, the King's 
officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to evil-doers, as I was from the 
beginning, and as I will be to the end!  Mair than enough of it!  
Heedious!  I never gave twa thoughts to heediousness, I have no call to 
be bonny.  I'm a man that gets through with my day's business, and let 
that suffice."

The ring of sarcasm had died out of his voice as he went on; the plain 
words became invested with some of the dignity of the Justice-seat.

"It would be telling you if you could say as much," the speaker resumed.  
"But ye cannot.  Ye've been reading some of my cases, ye say.  But it 
was not for the law in them, it was to spy out your faither's nakedness, 
a fine employment in a son.  You're splairging; you're running at lairge 
in life like a wild nowt.  It's impossible you should think any longer 
of coming to the Bar.  You're not fit for it; no splairger is.  And 
another thing: son of mines or no son of mines, you have flung fylement 
in public on one of the Senators of the Coallege of Justice, and I would 
make it my business to see that ye were never admitted there yourself.  
There is a kind of a decency to be observit.  Then comes the next of it 
- what am I to do with ye next?  Ye'll have to find some kind of a 
trade, for I'll never support ye in idleset.  What do ye fancy ye'll be 
fit for?  The pulpit?  Na, they could never get diveenity into that 
bloackhead.  Him that the law of man whammles is no likely to do muckle 
better by the law of God.  What would ye make of hell?  Wouldna your 
gorge rise at that?  Na, there's no room for splairgers under the fower 
quarters of John Calvin.  What else is there?  Speak up.  Have ye got 
nothing of your own?"

"Father, let me go to the Peninsula," said Archie.  "That's all I'm fit 
for - to fight."

"All? quo' he!" returned the Judge.  "And it would be enough too, if I 
thought it.  But I'll never trust ye so near the French, you that's so 
Frenchi-feed."

"You do me injustice there, sir," said Archie.  "I am loyal; I will not 
boast; but any interest I may have ever felt in the French - "

"Have ye been so loyal to me?" interrupted his father.

There came no reply.

"I think not," continued Hermiston.  "And I would send no man to be a 
servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved such a shauchling 
son to his own faither.  You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and 
where's the hairm?  It doesna play buff on me!  And if there were twenty 
thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the 
fewer.  But there's no splairging possible in a camp; and if ye were to 
go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton 
approves of caapital punishment or not.  You a sodger!" he cried, with a 
sudden burst of scorn.  "Ye auld wife, the sodgers would bray at ye like 
cuddies!"

As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie was aware of some illogicality in 
his position, and stood abashed.  He had a strong impression, besides, 
of the essential valour of the old gentleman before him, how conveyed it 
would be hard to say.

"Well, have ye no other proposeetion?" said my lord again.

"You have taken this so calmly, sir, that I cannot but stand ashamed," 
began Archie.

"I'm nearer voamiting, though, than you would fancy," said my lord.
The blood rose to Archie's brow.

"I beg your pardon, I should have said that you had accepted my affront. 
. . . I admit it was an affront; I did not think to apologise, but I do, 
I ask your pardon; it will not be so again, I pass you my word of 
honour. . . . I should have said that I admired your magnanimity with - 
this - offender," Archie concluded with a gulp.

"I have no other son, ye see," said Hermiston.  "A bonny one I have 
gotten!  But I must just do the best I can wi' him, and what am I to do?  
If ye had been younger, I would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous 
exhibeetion.  The way it is, I have just to grin and bear.  But one 
thing is to be clearly understood.  As a faither, I must grin and bear 
it; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-
Clerk, son or no son, Mr. Erchibald Weir would have been in a jyle the 
night."

Archie was now dominated.  Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet 
the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of 
the man's self in the man's office.  At every word, this sense of the 
greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck more home; and along with it 
that of his own impotence, who had struck - and perhaps basely struck - 
at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even nettled him.

"I place myself in your hands without reserve," he said.

"That's the first sensible word I've had of ye the night," said 
Hermiston.  "I can tell ye, that would have been the end of it, the one 
way or the other; but it's better ye should come there yourself, than 
what I would have had to hirstle ye.  Weel, by my way of it - and my way 
is the best - there's just the one thing it's possible that ye might be 
with decency, and that's a laird.  Ye'll be out of hairm's way at the 
least of it.  If ye have to rowt, ye can rowt amang the kye; and the 
maist feck of the caapital punishmeiit ye're like to come across'll be 
guddling trouts.  Now, I'm for no idle lairdies; every man has to work, 
if it's only at peddling ballants; to work, or to be wheeped, or to be 
haangit.  If I set ye down at Hermiston I'll have to see you work that 
place the way it has never been workit yet; ye must ken about the sheep 
like a herd; ye must be my grieve there, and I'll see that I gain by ye.  
Is that understood?"

"I will do my best," said Archie.

"Well, then, I'll send Kirstie word the morn, and ye can go yourself the 
day after," said Hermiston.  "And just try to be less of an eediot!" he 
concluded with a freezing smile, and turned immediately to the papers on 
his desk.



CHAPTER IV - OPINIONS OF THE BENCH



LATE the same night, after a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into 
Lord Glenalmond's dining-room, where he sat with a book upon his knee, 
beside three frugal coals of fire.  In his robes upon the bench, 
Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a 
may-pole of a man that rose unsteadily from his chair to give his 
visitor welcome.  Archie had suffered much in the last days, he had 
suffered again that evening; his face was white and drawn, his eyes wild 
and dark.  But Lord Glenalmond greeted him without the least mark of 
surprise or curiosity.

"Come in, come in," said he.  "Come in and take a seat.  Carstairs" (to 
his servant), "make up the fire, and then you can bring a bit of 
supper," and again to Archie, with a very trivial accent: "I was half 
expecting you," he added.

"No supper," said Archie.  "It is impossible that I should eat."

"Not impossible," said the tall old man, laying his hand upon his 
shoulder, "and, if you will believe me, necessary."

"You know what brings me?" said Archie, as soon as the servant had left 
the room.

"I have a guess, I have a guess," replied Glenalmond.  "We will talk of 
it presently - when Carstairs has come and gone, and you have had a 
piece of my good Cheddar cheese and a pull at the porter tankard: not 
before."

"It is impossible I should eat" repeated Archie.

"Tut, tut!" said Lord Glenalmond.  "You have eaten nothing to-day, and I 
venture to add, nothing yesterday.  There is no case that may not be 
made worse; this may be a very disagreeable business, but if you were to 
fall sick and die, it would be still more so, and for all concerned - 
for all concerned."

"I see you must know all," said Archie.  "Where did you hear it?"

"In the mart of scandal, in the Parliament House," said Glenalmond.  "It 
runs riot below among the bar and the public, but it sifts up to us upon 
the bench, and rumour has some of her voices even in the divisions."

Carstairs returned at this moment, and rapidly laid out a little supper; 
during which Lord Glenalmond spoke at large and a little vaguely on 
indifferent subjects, so that it might be rather said of him that he 
made a cheerful noise, than that he contributed to human conversation; 
and Archie sat upon the other side, not heeding him, brooding over his 
wrongs and errors.

But so soon as the servant was gone, he broke forth again at once.  "Who 
told my father?  Who dared to tell him?  Could it have been you?"

"No, it was not me," said the Judge; "although - to be quite frank with 
you, and after I had seen and warned you - it might have been me - I 
believe it was Glenkindie."

"That shrimp!" cried Archie.

"As you say, that shrimp," returned my lord; "although really it is 
scarce a fitting mode of expression for one of the senators of the 
College of Justice.  We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial 
case, before the fifteen; Creech was moving at some length for an 
infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with his 
hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication.  No one could 
have guessed its nature from your father: from Glenkindie, yes, his 
malice sparked out of him a little grossly.  But your father, no.  A man 
of granite.  The next moment he pounced upon Creech.  `Mr. Creech,' says 
he, `I'll take a look of that sasine,' and for thirty minutes after," 
said Glenalmond, with a smile, "Messrs. Creech and Co. were fighting a 
pretty up-hill battle, which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total 
rout.  The case was dismissed.  No, I doubt if ever I heard Hermiston 
better inspired.  He was literally rejoicing IN APICIBUS JURIS."

Archie was able to endure no longer.  He thrust his plate away and 
interrupted the deliberate and insignificant stream of talk.  "Here," he 
said, "I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made something worse.  
Do you judge between us - judge between a father and a son.  I can speak 
to you; it is not like ... I will tell you what I feel and what I mean 
to do; and you shall be the judge," he repeated.

"I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond, with extreme seriousness.  
"But, my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if it will 
interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard 
you, I am quite at your command.  Let an old man say it, for once, and 
not need to blush: I love you like a son."

There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie's throat.  "Ay," he cried, 
"and there it is!  Love!  Like a son!  And how do you think I love my 
father?"

"Quietly, quietly," says my lord.

"I will be very quiet," replied Archie.  "And I will be baldly frank.  I 
do not love my father; I wonder sometimes if I do not hate him.  There's 
my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my 
fault.  How was I to love him?  He has never spoken to me, never smiled 
upon me; I do not think he ever touched me.  You know the way he talks?  
You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without shuddering, and 
I cannot.  My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in 
the mouth.  And all that's nothing.  I was at the trial of this Jopp.  
You were not there, but you must have heard him often; the man's 
notorious for it, for being - look at my position! he's my father and 
this is how I have to speak of him - notorious for being a brute and 
cruel and a coward.  Lord Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came 
out of that Court, I longed to die - the shame of it was beyond my 
strength: but I - I -" he rose from his seat and began to pace the room 
in a disorder.  "Well, who am I?  A boy, who have never been tried, have 
never done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father.  
But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a 
man - or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it - that I could die in 
torments rather than that any one should suffer as that scoundrel 
suffered.  Well, and what have I done?  I see it now.  I have made a 
fool of myself, as I said in the beginning; and I have gone back, and 
asked my father's pardon, and placed myself wholly in his hands - and he 
has sent me to Hermiston," with a wretched smile, "for life, I suppose - 
and what can I say? he strikes me as having done quite right, and let me 
off better than I had deserved."

"My poor, dear boy!" observed Glenalmond.  "My poor dear and, if you 
will allow me to say so, very foolish boy!  You are only discovering 
where you are; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful 
discovery.  The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred 
millions of men, all different from each other and from us; there's no 
royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble.  Don't think that 
I am at all disposed to be surprised; don't suppose that I ever think of 
blaming you; indeed I rather admire!  But there fall to be offered one 
or two observations on the case which occur to me and which (if you will 
listen to them dispassionately) may be the means of inducing you to view 
the matter more calmly.  First of all, I cannot acquit you of a good 
deal of what is called intolerance.  You seem to have been very much 
offended because your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, 
which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not 
very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste.  Your 
father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a 
commonplace, is older than yourself.  At least, he is MAJOR and SUI 
JURIS, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation.  And, 
do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you 
and me?  We say we sometimes find him COARSE, but I suspect he might 
retort that he finds us always dull.  Perhaps a relevant exception."

He beamed on Archie, but no smile could be elicited.

"And now," proceeded the Judge, "for `Archibald on Capital Punishment.'  
This is a very plausible academic opinion; of course I do not and I 
cannot hold it; but that's not to say that many able and excellent 
persons have not done so in the past.  Possibly, in the past also, I may 
have a little dipped myself in the same heresy.  My third client, or 
possibly my fourth, was the means of a return in my opinions.  I never 
saw the man I more believed in; I would have put my hand in the fire, I 
would have gone to the cross for him; and when it came to trial he was 
gradually pictured before me, by undeniable probation, in the light of 
so gross, so cold-blooded, and so black-hearted a villain, that I had a 
mind to have cast my brief upon the table.  I was then boiling against 
the man with even a more tropical temperature than I had been boiling 
for him.  But I said to myself: `No, you have taken up his case; and 
because you have changed your mind it must not be suffered to let drop.  
All that rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last night with so 
much enthusiasm is out of place, and yet you must not desert him, you 
must say something.'  So I said something, and I got him off.  It made 
my reputation.  But an experience of that kind is formative.  A man must 
not bring his passions to the bar - or to the bench," he added.

The story had slightly rekindled Archie's interest.  "I could never 
deny," he began - "I mean I can conceive that some men would be better 
dead.  But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate 
creatures?  Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God 
Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight?  
Yes, with delight.  TIGRIS UT ASPERA."

"Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle," said Glenalmond.  "And yet, do you 
know, I think somehow a great one."

"I've had a long talk with him to-night," said Archie.

"I was supposing so," said Glenalmond.

"And he struck me - I cannot deny that he struck me as something very 
big," pursued the son.  "Yes, he is big.  He never spoke about himself; 
only about me.  I suppose I admired him.  The dreadful part - "

"Suppose we did not talk about that," interrupted Glenalmond.  "You know 
it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood upon it, 
and I sometimes wonder whether you and I - who are a pair of 
sentimentalists - are quite good judges of plain men."

"How do you mean?" asked Archie.

"FAIR judges, mean," replied Glenalmond.  "Can we be just to them?  Do 
we not ask too much?  There was a word of yours just now that impressed 
me a little when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of 
God's unfortunate creatures.  You applied that, as I understood, to 
capital cases only.  But does it - I ask myself - does it not apply all 
through?  Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man or of a half-
good man, than of the worst criminal at the bar?  And may not each have 
relevant excuses?"

"Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the good," cried Archie.

"No, we do not talk of it," said Glenalmond.  "But I think we do it.  Your
father, for instance."

"You think I have punished him?" cried Archie.

Lord Glenalmond bowed his head.

"I think I have," said Archie.  "And the worst is, I think he feels it!  
How much, who can tell, with such a being?  But I think he does."

"And I am sure of it," said Glenalmond.

"Has he spoken to you, then?" cried Archie.

"O no," replied the judge.

"I tell you honestly," said Archie, "I want to make it up to him.  I 
will go, I have already pledged myself to go to Hermiston.  That was to 
him.  And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will 
close my mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects where our 
views may clash, for - how long shall I say? when shall I have sense 
enough? - ten years.  Is that well?"

"It is well," said my lord.

"As far as it goes," said Archie.  "It is enough as regards myself, it 
is to lay down enough of my conceit.  But as regards him, whom I have 
publicly insulted?  What am I to do to him?  How do you pay attentions 
to a - an Alp like that?"

"Only in one way," replied Glenalmond.  "Only by obedience, punctual, 
prompt, and scrupulous."

"And I promise that he shall have it," answered Archie.  "I offer you my 
hand in pledge of it."

"And I take your hand as a solemnity," replied the judge.  "God bless 
you, my dear, and enable you to keep your promise.  God guide you in the 
true way, and spare your days, and preserve to you your honest heart."  
At that, he kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious, 
distant, antiquated way; and instantly launched, with a marked change of 
voice, into another subject.  "And now, let us replenish the tankard; 
and I believe if you will try my Cheddar again, you would find you had a 
better appetite.  The Court has spoken, and the case is dismissed."

"No, there is one thing I must say," cried Archie.  "I must say it in 
justice to himself.  I know - I believe faithfully, slavishly, after our 
talk - he will never ask me anything unjust.  I am proud to feel it, 
that we have that much in common, I am proud to say it to you."

The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his tankard.  "And I think perhaps
that we might permit ourselves a toast," said he.  "I should like to
propose the health of a man very different from me and very much my
superior - a man from whom I have often differed, who has often (in
the trivial expression) rubbed me the wrong way, but whom I have never
ceased to respect and, I may add, to be not a little afraid of.  Shall
I give you his name?"

"The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Hermiston," said Archie, almost with 
gaiety; and the pair drank the toast deeply.

It was not precisely easy to re-establish, after these emotional 
passages, the natural flow of conversation.  But the Judge eked out what 
was wanting with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which was very 
rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further 
social success, was upon the point of getting down a book to read a 
favourite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the 
front door, and Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot from a 
midnight supper.  I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful 
object, being short, and gross-bodied, and with an expression of 
sensuality comparable to a bear's.  At that moment, coming in hissing 
from many potations, with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was 
strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glenalmond.  
A rush of confused thought came over Archie - of shame that this was one 
of his father's elect friends; of pride, that at the least of it 
Hermiston could carry his liquor; and last of all, of rage, that he 
should have here under his eyes the man that had betrayed him.  And then 
that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding his opportunity.

The tipsy senator plunged at once into an explanation with Glenalmond.  
There was a point reserved yesterday, he had been able to make neither 
head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped 
in for a glass of porter - and at this point he became aware of the 
third person.  Archie saw the cod's mouth and the blunt lips of 
Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in his 
eyes.

"Who's this?" said he.  "What? is this possibly you, Don Quickshot?  And 
how are ye?  And how's your father?  And what's all this we hear of you?  
It seems you're a most extraordinary leveller, by all tales.  No king, 
no parliaments, and your gorge rises at the macers, worthy men!  Hoot, 
toot!  Dear, dear me!  Your father's son too!  Most rideeculous!"

Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at the reappearance of his 
unhappy figure of speech, but perfectly self-possessed.  "My lord - and 
you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear friend," he began, "this is a happy chance 
for me, that I can make my confession and offer my apologies to two of 
you at once."

"Ah, but I don't know about that.  Confession?  It'll be judeecial, my 
young friend," cried the jocular Glenkindie.  "And I'm afraid to listen 
to ye.  Think if ye were to make me a coanvert!"

"If you would allow me, my lord," returned Archie, "what I have to say 
is very serious to me; and be pleased to be humorous after I am gone!"

"Remember, I'll hear nothing against the macers!" put in the 
incorrigible Glenkindie.

But Archie continued as though he had not spoken.  "I have played, both 
yesterday and to-day, a part for which I can only offer the excuse of 
youth.  I was so unwise as to go to an execution; it seems I made a 
scene at the gallows; not content with which, I spoke the same night in 
a college society against capital punishment.  This is the extent of 
what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged against me, I 
protest my innocence.  I have expressed my regret already to my father, 
who is so good as to pass my conduct over - in a degree, and upon the 
condition that I am to leave my law studies." . . .



CHAPTER V - WINTER ON THE MOORS



I. AT HERMISTON


THE road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of 
a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and 
pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch.  Here and 
there, but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt 
farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part 
of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of 
habitation.  Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; 
and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at 
the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated 
for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score 
gravestones.  The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is 
surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of 
bees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds 
harbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a great 
silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, 
and the bell on Sundays.  A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the 
valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the 
place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the 
coach-house.  All beyond and about is the great field, of the hills; the 
plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows 
in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle 
one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset.

The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farmyard and a 
kitchen-garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard green 
pears came to their maturity about the end of October.

The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill 
reclaimed; heather and moorfowl had crossed the boundary wall and spread 
and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say 
where policy ended and unpolicied nature began.  My lord had been led by 
the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of 
planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little 
feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop 
to the moors.  A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at 
all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds.  Standing so 
high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed 
by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, 
beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect 
would be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows of 
winter.  But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept 
bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might 
sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch 
the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the 
chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter.

Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours.  Every night, 
if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a "brewst" of toddy 
with the minister - a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light and 
still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice 
broke continually in childish trebles - and his lady wife, a heavy, 
comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even and 
good-day.  Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid 
him the compliment of a visit.  Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call, 
on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony 
grey.  Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed; 
Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood 
with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view-
holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a 
wraith.  Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight 
was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the 
hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom 
horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse 
at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.

There was a Tuesday club at the "Cross-keys" in Crossmichael, where the 
young bloods of the country-side congregated and drank deep on a 
percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have 
drunk the most.  Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took 
it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his 
manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got 
home again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of 
Kirstie and the lass that helped her.  He dined at Driffel, supped at 
Windielaws.  He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made 
welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose 
name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of 
Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently.  Yet the same fate 
attended him here as in Edinburgh.  The habit of solitude tends to 
perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious, 
and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness, 
discouraged and offended his new companions.  Hay did not return more 
than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even 
desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had 
had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston.
High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of 
the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him 
the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not suppose 
himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies.  At the ball itself 
my Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the 
second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her 
voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music.  He 
stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused 
himself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno of 
the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself 
that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and 
to himself only to stand aside and envy.  He seemed excluded, as of 
right, from the favour of such society - seemed to extinguish mirth 
wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and 
retire into solitude.  If he had but understood the figure he presented, 
and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he 
had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well 
spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the 
charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether 
his destiny might not even yet have been modified.  It may be 
questioned, and I think it should be doubted.  It was in his horoscope 
to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to 
the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of 
duty, an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of 
Adam Weir and Jean Rutherford.


2. KIRSTIE


Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor.  Long of 
limb, and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden 
hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but 
caressed and embellished her.  By the lines of a rich and vigorous 
maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother 
of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed 
through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a 
childless woman.  The tender ambitions that she had received at birth 
had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren 
zeal of industry and fury of interference.  She carried her thwarted 
ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart.  If she 
could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her 
temper.  Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most 
of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed 
neutrality.  The grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the 
gardener who kept house for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she 
wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the 
offenders, and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail.  For it 
must not be supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not 
take in the husband also - or with the gardener's sister, and did not 
speedily include the gardener himself.  As the upshot of all this petty 
quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a 
lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except 
with her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her 
mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of  "the mistress's" moods 
without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according 
to the temper of the hour.  To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian 
summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this 
equivocal good thing of Archie's presence.  She had known him in the 
cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so 
much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious 
illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young 
gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance.  
He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of 
distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that 
abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the 
possibility of any quarrel was excluded.  He was new, and therefore 
immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake.  
And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the 
everlasting fountains of interest.

Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of 
a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god.  No matter what he had 
asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to 
do it.  Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her.  It 
was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him 
when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner 
when he returned.  A young man who should have so doted on the idea, 
moral and physical, of any woman, might be properly described as being 
in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly.  
But Kirstie - though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps - though, 
when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day - had not a 
hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the 
end of time.  Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, 
but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say 
twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder.

I have said her heart leaped - it is the accepted phrase.  But rather, 
when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot 
passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her 
breath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when 
the steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes' desire.  This 
perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the 
alert.  When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow him 
with admiring looks.  As it grew late and drew to the time of his return,
she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen standing
there sometimes by the hour together, gazing with shaded eyes, waiting the 
exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on the mountains.  
When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned down his 
bed, and laid out his night-gear - when there was no more to be done for 
the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her usually very 
tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections, his future 
career, and what she should give him the next day for dinner - there 
still remained before her one more opportunity; she was still to take in 
the tray and say good-night.  Sometimes Archie would glance up from his 
book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctory salutation which was in 
truth a dismissal; sometimes - and by degrees more often - the volume 
would be laid aside, he would meet her coming with a look of relief; and 
the conversation would be engaged, last out the supper, and be prolonged 
till the small hours by the waning fire.  It was no wonder that Archie 
was fond of company after his solitary days; and Kirstie, upon her side, 
exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention.  
She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off 
with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE 
RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment.  Once he had heard her tongue 
wag, she made sure of the result.  From one subject to another she moved 
by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to 
give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of 
separation.  Like so many people of her class, she was a brave narrator; 
her place was on the hearth-rug and she made it a rostrum, mimeing her 
stories as she told them, fitting them with vital detail, spinning them 
out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," her voice sinking into a 
whisper over the supernatural or the horrific; until she would suddenly 
spring up in affected surprise, and pointing to the clock, "Mercy, Mr. 
Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it!  God 
forgive me for a daft wife!"  So it befell, by good management, that she 
was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but 
invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not 
to be dismissed.