"In that case," replied I, "Paining excels the ape of the renowned Gines
de Passamonte, which only meddled with the past and the present; nay,
she excels that very Nature who affords her subject; for I protest to
you, Dick, that were I permitted to peep into that Elizabeth-chamber,
and see the persons you have sketched conversing in flesh and blood, I
should not be a jot nearer guessing the nature of their business than I
am at this moment while looking at your sketch. Only generally, from
the languishing look of the young lady, and the care you have taken
to present a very handsome leg on the part of the gentleman, I presume
there is some reference to a love affair between them."

"Do you really presume to form such a bold conjecture?" said Tinto. "And
the indignant earnestness with which you see the man urge his suit, the
unresisting and passive despair of the younger female, the stern air of
inflexible determination in the elder woman, whose looks express at
once consciousness that she is acting wrong and a firm determination to
persist in the course she has adopted----"

"If her looks express all this, my dear Tinto," replied I, interrupting
him, "your pencil rivals the dramatic art of Mr. Puff in The Critic, who
crammed a whole complicated sentence into the expressive shake of Lord
Burleigh's head."

"My good friend, Peter," replied Tinto, "I observe you are perfectly
incorrigible; however, I have compassion on your dulness, and am
unwilling you should be deprived of the pleasure of understanding my
picture, and of gaining, at the same time, a subject for your own pen.
You must know then, last summer, while I was taking sketches on the
coast of East Lothian and Berwickshire, I was seduced into the mountains
of Lammermoor by the account I received of some remains of antiquity in
that district. Those with which I was most struck were the ruins of an
ancient castle in which that Elizabeth-chamber, as you call it,
once existed. I resided for two or three days at a farmhouse in the
neighbourhood, where the aged goodwife was well acquainted with the
history of the castle, and the events which had taken place in it. One
of these was of a nature so interesting and singular, that my attention
was divided between my wish to draw the old ruins in landscape, and
to represent, in a history-piece, the singular events which have taken
place in it. Here are my notes of the tale," said poor Dick, handing a
parcel of loose scraps, partly scratched over with his pencil, partly
with his pen, where outlines of caricatures, sketches of turrets,
mills, old gables, and dovecots, disputed the ground with his written
memoranda.

I proceeded, however, to decipher the substance of the manuscript
as well as I could, and move it into the following Tale, in which,
following in part, though not entirely, my friend Tinto's advice, I
endeavoured to render my narrative rather descriptive than dramatic. My
favourite propensity, however, has at times overcome me, and my persons,
like many others in this talking world, speak now what then a great deal
more than they act.



CHAPTER II.

     Well, lord, we have not got that which we have;
     'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
     Being opposites of such repairing nature.

     Henry VI. Part II.

IN the gorge of a pass or mountain glen, ascending from the fertile
plains of East Lothian, there stood in former times an extensive castle,
of which only the ruins are now visible. Its ancient proprietors were
a race of powerful and warlike carons, who bore the same name with the
castle itself, which was Ravenswood. Their line extended to a remote
period of antiquity, and they had intermarried with the Douglasses,
Humes, Swintons, Hays, and other families of power and distinction
in the same country. Their history was frequently involved in that of
Scotland itself, in whose annals their feats are recorded. The Castle of
Ravenswood, occupying, and in some measure commanding, a pass betweixt
Berwickshire, or the Merse, as the southeastern province of Scotland is
termed, and the Lothians, was of importance both in times of foreign
war and domestic discord. It was frequently beseiged with ardour, and
defended with obstinacy, and, of course, its owners played a conspicuous
part in story. But their house had its revolutions, like all sublunary
things: it became greatly declined from its splendour about the middle
of the 17th century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the last
proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to part with the
ancient family seat, and to remove himself to a lonely and sea-beaten
tower, which, situated on the bleak shores between St. Abb's Head and
the village of Eyemouth, looked out on the lonely and boisterous
German Ocean. A black domain of wild pasture-land surrounded their new
residence, and formed the remains of their property.

Lord Ravenswood, the heir of this ruined family, was far from bending
his mind to his new condition of life. In the civil war of 1689 he
had espoused the sinking side, and although he had escaped without the
forfeiture of life or land, his blood had been attainted, and his title
abolished. He was now called Lord Ravenswood only in courtesy.

This forfeited nobleman inherited the pride and turbulence, though not
the forture, of his house, and, as he imputed the final declension of
his family to a particular individual, he honoured that person with his
full portion of hatred. This was the very man who had now become, by
purchase, proprietor of Ravenswood, and the domains of which the heir of
the house now stood dispossessed. He was descended of a family much less
ancient than that of Lord Ravenswood, and which had only risen to wealth
and political importance during the great civil wars. He himself
had been bred to the bar, and had held high offices in the state,
maintaining through life the character of a skilful fisher in the
troubled waters of a state divided by factions, and governed by
delegated authority; and of one who contrived to amass considerable sums
of money in a country where there was but little to be gathered, and who
equally knew the value of wealth and the various means of augmenting it
and using it as an engine of increasing his power and influence.

Thus qualified and gifted, he was a dangerous antagonist to the fierce
and imprudent Ravenswood. Whether he had given him good cause for the
enmity with which the Baron regarded him, was a point on which men spoke
differently. Some said the quarrel arose merely from the vindictive
spirit and envy of Lord Ravenswood, who could not patiently behold
another, though by just and fair purchase, become the proprietor of
the estate and castle of his forefathers. But the greater part of the
public, prone to slander the wealthy in their absence as to flatter them
in their presence, held a less charitable opinion. They said that the
Lord Keeper (for to this height Sir William Ashton had ascended)
had, previous to the final purchase of the estate of Ravenswood,
been concerned in extensive pecuniary transactions with the former
proprietor; and, rather intimating what was probable than affirming
anything positively, they asked which party was likely to have the
advantage in stating and enforcing the claims arising out of these
complicated affairs, and more than hinted the advantages which the cool
lawyer and able politician must necessarily possess over the hot,
fiery, and imprudent character whom he had involved in legal toils and
pecuniary snares.

The character of the times aggravated these suspicions. "In those days
there was no king in Israel." Since the departure of James VI. to assume
the richer and more powerful crown of England, there had existed in
Scotland contending parties, formed among the aristocracy, by whom,
as their intrigues at the court of St. James's chanced to prevail,
the delegated powers of sovereignty were alternately swayed. The evils
attending upon this system of government resembled those which afflict
the tenants of an Irish estate, the property of an absentee. There was
no supreme power, claiming and possessing a general interest with the
community at large, to whom the oppressed might appeal from subordinate
tyranny, either for justice or for mercy. Let a monarch be as indolent,
as selfish, as much disposed to arbitrary power as he will, still, in a
free country, his own interests are so clearly connected with those of
the public at large, and the evil consequences to his own authority are
so obvious and imminent when a different course is pursued, that common
policy, as well as ocmmon feeling, point to the equal distribution of
justice, and to the establishment of the throne in righteousness. Thus,
even sovereigns remarkable for usurpation and tyranny have been found
rigorous in the administration of justice among their subjects, in cases
where their own power and passions were not compromised.

It is very different when the powers of sovereignty are delegated to
the head of an aristocratic faction, rivalled and pressed closely in
the race of ambition by an adverse leader. His brief and precarious
enjoyment of power must be employed in rewarding his partizans, in
extending his influence, in oppressing and crushing his adversaries.
Even Abou Hassan, the most disinterested of all viceroys, forgot not,
during his caliphate of one day, to send a douceur of one thousand
pieces of gold to his own household; and the Scottish vicegerents,
raised to power by the strength of their faction, failed not to embrace
the same means of rewarding them.

The administration of justice, in particular, was infected by the most
gross partiality. A case of importance scarcely occurred in which there
was not some ground for bias or partiality on the part of the judges,
who were so little able to withstand the temptation that the adage,
"Show me the man, and I will show you the law," became as prevalent as
it was scandalous. One corruption led the way to others still mroe gross
and profligate. The judge who lent his sacred authority in one case to
support a friend, and in another to crush an enemy, and who decisions
were founded on family connexions or political relations, could not be
supposed inaccessible to direct personal motives; and the purse of the
wealthy was too often believed to be thrown into the scale to weigh
down the cause of the poor litigant. The subordinate officers of the law
affected little scruple concerning bribery. Pieces of plate and bags of
money were sent in presents to the king's counsel, to influence their
conduct, and poured forth, says a contemporary writer, like billets of
wood upon their floors, without even the decency of concealment.

In such times, it was not over uncharitable to suppose that the
statesman, practised in courts of law, and a powerful member of a
triumphant cabal, might find and use means of advantage over his less
skilful and less favoured adversary; and if it had been supposed that
Sir William Ashton's conscience had been too delicate to profit by these
advantages, it was believed that his ambition and desire of extending
his wealth and consequence found as strong a stimulus in the
exhortations of his lady as the daring aim of Macbeth in the days of
yore.

Lady Ashton was of a family more distinguished than that of her lord, an
advantage which she did not fail to use to the uttermost, in maintaining
and extending her husband's influence over others, and, unless she
was greatly belied, her own over him. She had been beautiful, and was
stately and majestic in her appearance. Endowed by nature with strong
powers and violent passions, experience had taught her to employ the
one, and to conceal, if not to moderate, the other. She was a severe
adn strict observer of the external forms, at least, of devotion; her
hospitality was splendid, even to ostentation; her address and manners,
agreeable to the pattern most valued in Scotland at the period, were
grave, dignified, and severely regulated by the rules of etiquette. Her
character had always been beyond the breath of slander. And yet, with
all these qualities to excite respect, Lady Ashton was seldom mentioned
in the terms of love or affection. Interest--the interest of her family,
if not her own--seemed too obviously the motive of her actions; and
where this is the case, the sharp-judging and malignant public are not
easily imposed upon by outward show. It was seen and ascertained that,
in her most graceful courtesies and compliments, Lady Ashton no more
lost sight of her object than the falcon in his airy wheel turns his
quick eyes from his destined quarry; and hence, somethign of doubt and
suspicion qualified the feelings with which her equals received her
attentions. With her inferiors these feelings were mingled with fear;
an impression useful to her purposes, so far as it enforced ready
compliance with her requests and implicit obedience to her commands, but
detrimental, because it cannot exist with affection or regard.

Even her husband, it is said, upon whose fortunes her talents and
address had produced such emphatic influence, regarded her with
respectful awe rather than confiding attachment; and report said, there
were times when he considered his grandeur as dearly purchased at the
expense of domestic thraldom. Of this, however, much might be suspected,
but little could be accurately known: Lady Ashton regarded the honour of
her husband as her own, and was well aware how much that would suffer
in the public eye should he appear a vassal to his wife. In all her
arguments his opinion was quoted as infallible; his taste was appealed
to, and his sentiments received, with the air of deference which a
dutiful wife might seem to owe to a husband of Sir William Ashton's rank
adn character. But there was something under all this which rung false
and hollow; and to those who watched this couple with close, and perhaps
malicious, scrutiny it seemed evident that, in the haughtiness of
a firmer character, higher birth, and more decided views of
aggrandisement, the lady looked with some contempt on her husband,
and that he regarded her with jealous fear, rather than with love or
admiration.

Still, however, the leading and favourite interests of Sir William
Ashton and his lady were the same, and they failed not to work in
concert, although without cordiality, and to testify, in all exterior
circumstances, that respect for each other which they were aware was
necessary to secure that of the public.

Their union was crowned with several children, of whom three survived.
One, the eldest son, was absent on his travels; the second, a girl of
seventeen, adn the third, a boy about three years younger, resided
with their parents in Edinburgh during the sessions of the Scottish
Parliament and Privy Council, at other times in the old Gothic castle
of Ravenswood, to which the Lord Keeper had made large additions in the
style of the 17th century.

Allan Lord Ravenswood, the late proprietor of that ancient mansion
adn the large estate annexed to it, continued for some time to wage
ineffectual war with his successor concerning various points to which
their former transactions had given rise, and which were successively
determined in favour of the wealthy and powerful competitor, until death
closed the litigation, by summoning Ravenswood to a higher bar. The
thread of life, which had been long wasting, gave way during a fit of
violent and impotent fury with which he was assailed on receiving the
news of the loss of a cause, founded, perhaps, rather in equity than in
law, the last which he had maintained against his powerful antagonist.
His son witnessed his dying agonies, and heard the curses which he
breathed against his adversary, as if they had conveyed to him a legacy
of vengeance. Other circumstances happened to exasperate a passion which
was, and had long been, a prevalent vice in the Scottish disposition.

It was a November morning, and the cliffs which overlooked the ocean
were hung with thick and heavy mist, when the portals of the ancient
and half-ruinous tower, in which Lord Ravenswood had spent the last and
troubled years of his life, opened, that his mortal remains might pass
forward to an abode yet more dreary and lonely. The pomp of attendance,
to which the deceased had, in his latter years, been a stranger, was
revived as he was about to be consigned to the realms of forgetfulness.

Banner after banner, with the various devices and coats of this ancient
family and its connexions, followed each other in mournful procession
from under the low-browed archway of the courtyard. The principal gentry
of the country attended in the deepest mourning, and tempered the
pace of their long train of horses to the solemn march befitting the
occasion. Trumpets, with banners of crape attached to them, sent
forth their long and melancholy notes to regulate the movements of the
procession. An immense train of inferior mourners and menials closed
the rear, which had not yet issued from the castle gate when the van had
reached the chapel where the body was to be deposited.

Contrary to the custom, and even to the law, of the time, the body was
met by a priest of the Scottish Episcopal communion, arrayed in his
surplice, and prepared to read over the coffin of the deceased the
funeral service of the church. Such had been the desire of Lord
Ravenswood in his last illness, and it was readily complied with by the
Tory gentlemen, or Cavaliers, as they affected to style themselves, in
which faction most of his kinsmen were enrolled. The Presbyterian Church
judicatory of the bounds, considering the ceremony as a bravading insult
upon their authority, had applied to the Lord Keeper, as the nearest
privy councillor, for a warrant to prevent its being carried into
effect; so that, when the clergyman had opened his prayer-book, an
officer of the law, supported by some armed men, commanded him to be
silent. An insult which fired the whol assembly with indignation was
particularly and instantly resented by the only son of the deceased,
Edgar, popularly called the Master of Ravenswood, a youth of about
twenty years of age. He clapped his hand on his sword, and bidding
the official person to desist at his peril from farther interruption,
commanded the clergyman to proceed. The man attempted to enforce his
commission; but as an hundred swords at once glittered in the air, he
contented himself with protesting against the violence which had been
offered to him in the execution of his duty, and stood aloof, a sullen
adn moody spectator of the ceremonial, muttering as one who should say:
"You'll rue the day that clogs me with this answer."

The scene was worthy of an artist's pencil. Under the very arch of the
house of death, the clergyman, affrighted at the scene, and trembling
for his own safety, hastily and unwillingly rehearsed the solemn service
of the church, and spoke "dust to dust and ashes to ashes," over
ruined pride and decayed prosperity. Around stood the relations of the
deceased, their countenances more in anger than in sorrow, and the drawn
swords which they brandished forming a violent contrast with their deep
mourning habits. In the countenance of the young man alone, resentment
seemed for the moment overpowered by the deep agony with which he beheld
his nearest, and almost his only, friend consigned to the tomb of his
ancestry. A relative observed him turn deadly pale, when, all rites
being now duly observed, it became the duty of the chief mourner to
lower down into the charnel vault, where mouldering coffins showed their
tattered velvet and decayed plating, the head of the corpse which was
to be their partner in corruption. He stept to the youth and offered his
assistance, which, by a mute motion, Edgar Ravenswood rejected. Firmly,
and without a tear, he performed that last duty. The stone was laid
on the sepulchre, the door of the aisle was locked, and the youth took
possession of its massive key.

As the crowd left the chapel, he paused on the steps which led to its
Gothic chancel. "Gentlemen and friends," he said, "you have this day
done no common duty to the body of your deceased kinsman. The rites of
due observance, which, in other countries, are allowed as the due of the
meanest Christian, would this day have been denied to the body of your
relative--not certainly sprung of the meanest house in Scotland--had
it not been assured to him by your courage. Others bury their dead in
sorrow and tears, in silence and in reverence; our funeral rites are
marred by the intrusion of bailiffs and ruffians, and our grief--the
grief due to our departed friend--is chased from our cheeks by the glow
of just indignation. But it is well that I know from what quiver this
arrow has come forth. It was only he that dug the drave who could have
the mean cruelty to disturb the obsequies; and Heaven do as much to
me and more, if I requite not to this man and his house the ruin and
disgrace he has brought on me and mine!"

A numerous part of the assembly applauded this speech, as the spirited
expression of just resentment; but the more cool and judicious regretted
that it had been uttered. The fortunes of the heir of Ravenswood were
too low to brave the farther hostility which they imagined these open
expressions of resentment must necessarily provoke. Their apprehensions,
however, proved groundless, at least in the immediate consequences of
this affair.

The mourners returned to the tower, there, according to a custom but
recently abolished in Scotland, to carouse deep healths to the memory of
the deceased, to make the house of sorrow ring with sounds of joviality
and debauch, and to diminish, by the expense of a large and profuse
entertainment, the limited revenues of the heir of him whose funeral
they thus strangely honoured. It was the custom, however, and on the
present occasion it was fully observed. The tables swam in wine,
the populace feasted in the courtyard, the yeomen in the kitchen and
buttery; and two years' rent of Ravenswood's remaining property hardly
defrayed the charge of the funeral revel. The wine did its office on all
but the Master of Ravenswood, a title which he still retained, though
forfeiture had attached to that of his father. He, while passing around
the cup which he himself did not taste, soon listened to a thousand
exclamations against the Lord Keeper, and passionate protestations of
attachment to himself, and to the honour of his house. He listened
with dark and sullen brow to ebullitions which he considered justly as
equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the brink of the goblet,
or at least with the vapours which its contents excited in the brains of
the revellers around him.

When the last flask was emptied, they took their leave with deep
protestations--to be forgotten on the morrow, if, indeed, those who
made them should not think it necessary for their safety to make a more
solemn retractation.

Accepting their adieus with an air of contempt which he could scarce
conceal, Ravenswood at length beheld his ruinous habitation cleared of
their confluence of riotous guests, and returned to the deserted hall,
which now appeared doubly lonely from the cessation of that clamour to
which it had so lately echoed. But its space was peopled by phantoms
which the imagination of the young heir conjured up before him--the
tarnished honour and degraded fortunes of his house, the destruction
of his own hopes, and the triumph of that family by whom they had been
ruined. To a mind naturally of a gloomy cast here was ample room
for meditation, and the musings of young Ravenswood were deep and
unwitnessed.

The peasant who shows the ruins of the tower, which still crown the
beetling cliff and behold the war of the waves, though no mroe tenanted
saved by the sea-mew and cormorant, even yet affirms that on this
fatal night the Master of Ravenswood, by the bitter exclamations of his
despair, evoked some evil fiend, under whose malignant influence the
future tissue of incidents was woven. Alas! what fiend can suggest more
desperate counsels than those adopted under the guidance of our own
violent and unresisted passions?



CHAPTER III.

     Over Gods forebode, then said the King,
     That thou shouldst shoot at me.

     William Bell, Clim 'o the Cleugh, etc.

On the morning after the funeral, the legal officer whose authority
had been found insufficient to effect an interruption of the funeral
solemnities of the late Lord Ravenswood, hastened to state before the
Keeper the resistance which he had met with in the execution of his
office.

The statesman was seated in a spacious library, once a banqueting-room
in the old Castle of Ravenswood, as was evident from the armorial
insignia still displayed on the carved roof, which was vaulted with
Spanish chestnut, and on the stained glass of the casement, through
which gleamed a dim yet rich light on the long rows of shelves, bending
under the weight of legal commentators and monkish historians, whose
ponderous volumes formed the chief and most valued contents of a
Scottish historian [library] of the period. On the massive oaken
table and reading-desk lay a confused mass of letters, petitions, and
parchments; to toil amongst which was the pleasure at once and the
plague of Sir William Ashton's life. His appearance was grave and even
noble, well becoming one who held an high office in the state; and it
was not save after long and intimate conversation with him upon topics
of pressing and personal interest, that a stranger could have discovered
something vacillating and uncertain in his resolutions; an infirmity of
purpose, arising from a cautious and timid disposition, which, as he was
conscious of its internal influence on his mind, he was, from pride as
well as policy, most anxious to conceal from others. He listened with
great apparent composure to an exaggerated account of the tumult which
had taken place at the funeral, of the contempt thrown on his own
authority and that of the church and state; nor did he seem moved even
by the faithful report of the insulting and threatening language which
had been uttered by young Ravenswood and others, and obviously directed
against himself. He heard, also, what the man had been able to collect,
in a very distorted and aggravated shape, of the toasts which had been
drunk, and the menaces uttered, at the subsequent entertainment. In fine,
he made careful notes of all these particulars, and of the names of
the persons by whom, in case of need, an accusation, founded upon these
violent proceedings, could be witnessed and made good, and dismissed his
informer, secure that he was now master of the remaining fortune, and
even of the personal liberty, of young Ravenswood.

When the door had closed upon the officer of the law, the Lord Keeper
remained for a moment in deep meditation; then, starting from his
seat, paced the apartment as one about to take a sudden and energetic
resolution. "Young Ravenswood," he muttered, "is now mine--he is my own;
he has placed himself in my hand, and he shall bend or break. I have not
forgot the determined and dogged obstinacy with which his father fought
every point to the last, resisted every effort at compromise, embroiled
me in lawsuits, and attempted to assail my character when he could
not otherwise impugn my rights. This boy he has left behind him--this
Edgar--this hot-headed, hare-brained fool, has wrecked his vessel before
she has cleared the harbor. I must see that he gains no advantage
of some turning tide which may again float him off. These memoranda,
properly stated to the privy council, cannot but be construed into
an aggravated riot, in which the dignity both of the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities stands committed. A heavy fine might be
imposed; an order for committing him to Edinburgh or Blackness Castle
seems not improper; even a charge of treason might be laid on many of
these words and expressions, though God forbid I should prosecute the
matter to that extent. No, I will not; I will not touch his life, even
if it should be in my power; and yet, if he lives till a change of
times, what follows? Restitution--perhaps revenge. I know Athole
promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here is his son already
bandying and making a faction by his own contemptible influence. What
a ready tool he would be for the use of those who are watching the
downfall of our administration!"

While these thoughts were agitating the mind of the wily statesman, and
while he was persuading himself that his own interest and safety, as
well as those of his friends and party, depended on using the present
advantage to the uttermost against young Ravenswood, the Lord Keeper
sate down to his desk, and proceeded to draw up, for the information of
the privy council, an account of the disorderly proceedings which,
in contempt of his warrant, had taken place at the funeral of Lord
Ravenswood. The names of most of the parties concerned, as well as the
fact itself, would, he was well aware, sound odiously in the ears of his
colleagues in administration, and most likely instigate them to make an
example of young Ravenswood, at least, in terrorem.

It was a point of delicacy, however, to select such expressions as might
infer the young man's culpability, without seeming directly to urge
it, which, on the part of Sir William Ashton, his father's ancient
antagonist, could not but appear odious and invidious. While he was in
the act of composition, labouring to find words which might indicate
Edgar Ravenswood to be the cause of the uproar, without specifically
making such a charge, Sir William, in a pause of his task, chanced, in
looking upward, to see the crest of the family for whose heir he was
whetting the arrows and disposing the toils of the law carved upon one
of the corbeilles from which the vaulted roof of the apartment sprung.
It was a black bull's head, with the legend, "I bide my time"; and
the occasion upon which it was adopted mingled itself singularly and
impressively with the subject of his present reflections.

It was said by a constant tradition that a Malisius de Ravenswood had,
in the 13th century, been deprived of his castle and lands by a powerful
usurper, who had for a while enjoyed his spoils in quiet. At length,
on the eve of a costly banquet, Ravenswood, who had watched his
opportunity, introduced himself into the castle with a small band of
faithful retainers. The serving of the expected feast was impatiently
looked for by the guests, and clamorously demanded by the temporary
master of the castle. Ravenswood, who had assumed the disguise of a
sewer upon the occasion, answered, in a stern voice, "I bide my time";
and at the same moment a bull's head, the ancient symbol of death, was
placed upon the table. The explosion of the conspiracy took place upon
the signal, and the usurper and his followers were put to death. Perhaps
there was something in this still known and often repeated story which
came immediately home to the breast and conscience of the Lord Keeper;
for, putting from him the paper on which he had begun his report, and
carefully locking the memoranda which he had prepared into a cabinet
which stood beside him, he proceeded to walk abroad, as if for
the purpose of collecting his ideas, and reflecting farther on the
consequences of the step which he was about to take, ere yet they became
inevitable.

In passing through a large Gothic ante-room, Sir William Ashton heard
the sound of his daughter's lute. Music, when the performers are
concealed, affects us with a pleasure mingled with surprise, and
reminds us of the natural concert of birds among the leafy bowers. The
statesman, though little accustomed to give way to emotions of this
natural and simple class, was still a man and a father. He stopped,
therefore, and listened, while the silver tones of Lucy Ashton's voice
mingled with the accompaniment in an ancient air, to which some one had
adapted the following words:

     "Look not thou on beauty's charming,
     Sit thou still when kings are arming,
     Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
     Speak not when the people listens,
     Stop thine ear against the singer,
     From the red gold keep they finger,
     Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
     Easy live and quiet die."

The sounds ceased, and the Keeper entered his daughter's apartment.

The words she had chosen seemed particularly adapted to her character;
for Lucy Ashton's exquisitely beautiful, yet somewhat girlish features
were formed to express peace of mind, serenity, and indifference to
the tinsel of wordly pleasure. Her locks, which were of shadowy gold,
divided on a brow of exquisite whiteness, like a gleam of broken and
pallid sunshine upon a hill of snow. The expression of the countenance
was in the last degree gentle, soft, timid, and feminine, and seemed
rather to shrink from the most casual look of a stranger than to court
his admiration. Something there was of a Madonna cast, perhaps the
result of delicate health, and of residence in a family where the
dispositions of the inmates were fiercer, more active, and energetic
than her own.

Yet her passiveness of disposition was by no means owing to an
indifferent or unfeeling mind. Left to the impulse of her own taste and
feelings, Lucy Ashton was peculiarly accessible to those of a romantic
cast. Her secret delight was in the old legendary tales of ardent
devotion and unalterable affection, chequered as they so often are with
strange adventures and supernatural horrors. This was her favoured
fairy realm, and here she erected her aerial palaces. But it was only
in secret that she laboured at this delusive though delightful
architecture. In her retired chamber, or in the woodland bower which
she had chosen for her own, and called after her name, she was in fancy
distributing the prizes at the tournament, or raining down influence
from her eyes on the valiant combatants: or she was wandering in the
wilderness with Una, under escort of the generous lion; or she was
identifying herself with the simple yet noble-minded Miranda in the isle
of wonder and enchantment.

But in her exterior relations to things of this world, Lucy willingly
received the ruling impulse from those around her. The alternative was,
in general, too indifferent to her to render resistance desirable, and
she willingly found a motive for decision in the opinion of her friends
which perhaps she might have sought for in vain in her own choice.
Every reader must have observed in some family of his acquaintance some
individual of a temper soft and yielding, who, mixed with stronger and
more ardent minds, is borne along by the will of others, with as little
power of opposition as the flower which is flung into a running stream.
It usually happens that such a compliant and easy disposition, which
resigns itself without murmur to the guidance of others, becomes the
darling of those to whose inclinations its own seem to be offered, in
ungrudging and ready sacrifice. This was eminently the case with Lucy
Ashton. Her politic, wary, and wordly father felt for her an affection
the strength of which sometimes surprised him into an unusual emotion.
Her elder brother, who trode the path of ambition with a haughtier step
than his father, had also more of human affection. A soldier, and in
a dissolute age, he preferred his sister Lucy even to pleasure and to
military preferment and distinction. Her younger brother, at an age when
trifles chiefly occupied his mind, made her the confidante of all his
pleasures and anxieties, his success in field-sports, and his quarrels
with his tutor and instructors. To these details, however trivial, Lucy
lent patient and not indifferent attention. They moved and interested
Henry, and that was enough to secure her ear.

Her mother alone did not feel that distinguished and predominating
affection with which the rest of the family cherished Lucy. She regarded
what she termed her daughter's want of spirit as a decided mark that the
more plebeian blood of her father predominated in Lucy's veins, and used
to call her in derision her Lammermoor Shepherdess. To dislike so gentle
and inoffensive a being was impossible; but Lady Ashton preferred her
eldest son, on whom had descended a large portion of her own ambitious
and undaunted disposition, to a daughter whose softness of temper seemed
allied to feebleness of mind. Her eldest son was the more partially
beloved by his mother because, contrary to the usual custom of Scottish
families of distinction, he had been named after the head of the house.

"My Sholto," she said, "will support the untarnished honour of his
maternal house, and elevate and support that of his father. Poor Lucy
is unfit for courts or crowded halls. Some country laird must be her
husband, rich enough to supply her with every comfort, without an effort
on her own part, so that she may have nothing to shed a tear for but the
tender apprehension lest he may break his neck in a foxchase. It was
not so, however, that our house was raised, nor is it so that it can be
fortified and augmented. The Lord Keeper's dignity is yet new; it must
be borne as if we were used to its weight, worthy of it, and prompt
to assert and maintain it. Before ancient authorities men bend from
customary and hereditary deference; in our presence they will stand
erect, unless they are compelled to prostrate themselves. A daughter
fit for the sheepfold or the cloister is ill qualified to exact respect
where it is yielded with reluctance; and since Heaven refused us a third
boy, Lucy should have held a character fit to supply his place. The
hour will be a happy one which disposes her hand in marriage to some one
whose energy is greater than her own, or whose ambition is of as low an
order."

So meditated a mother to whom the qualities of her children's hearts,
as well as the prospect of their domestic happiness, seemed light in
comparison to their rank and temporal greatness. But, like many a parent
of hot and impatient character, she was mistaken in estimating
the feelings of her daughter, who, under a semblance of extreme
indifference, nourished the germ of those passions which sometimes
spring up in one night, like the gourd of the prophet, and astonish
the observer by their unexpected ardour and intensity. In fact, Lucy's
sentiments seemed chill because nothing had occurred to interest or
awaken them. Her life had hitherto flowed on in a uniform and gentle
tenor, and happy for her had not its present smoothness of current
resembled that of the stream as it glides downwards to the waterfall!

"So, Lucy," said her father, entering as her song was ended, "does your
musical philosopher teach you to contemn the world before you know it?
That is surely something premature. Or did you but speak according to
the fashion of fair maidens, who are always to hold the pleasures of
life in contempt till they are pressed upon them by the address of some
gentle knight?"

Lucy blushed, disclaimed any inference respecting her own choice
being drawn from her selection of a song, and readily laid aside her
instrument at her father's request that she would attend him in his
walk.

A large and well-wooded park, or rather chase, stretched along the
hill behind the castle, which, occupying, as we have noticed, a pass
ascending from the plain, seemed built in its very gorge to defend
the forest ground which arose behind it in shaggy majesty. Into this
romantic region the father and daughter proceeded, arm in arm, by a
noble avenue overarched by embowering elms, beneath which groups of the
fallow-deer were seen to stray in distant perspective. As they paced
slowly on, admiring the different points of view, for which Sir
William Ashton, notwithstanding the nature of his usual avocations, had
considerable taste and feeling, they were overtaken by the forester,
or park-keeper, who, intent on silvan sport, was proceeding with his
cross-bow over his arm, and a hound led in leash by his boy, into the
interior of the wood.

"Going to shoot us a piece of venison, Norman?" said his master, as he
returned the woodsman's salutation.

"Saul, your honour, and that I am. Will it please you to see the sport?"

"Oh no," said his lordship, after looking at his daughter, whose colour
fled at the idea of seeing the deer shot, although, had her father
expressed his wish that they should accompany Norman, it was probable
she would not even have hinted her reluctance.

The forester shrugged his shoulders. "It was a disheartening thing,"
he said, "when none of the gentles came down to see the sport. He
hoped Captain Sholto would be soon hame, or he might shut up his shop
entirely; for Mr. Harry was kept sae close wi' his Latin nonsense that,
though his will was very gude to be in the wood from morning till night,
there would be a hopeful lad lost, and no making a man of him. It was
not so, he had heard, in Lord Ravenswood's time: when a buck was to be
killed, man and mother's son ran to see; and when the deer fell, the
knife was always presented to the knight, and he never gave less than
a dollar for the compliment. And there was Edgar Ravenswood--Master of
Ravenswood that is now--when he goes up to the wood--there hasna been a
better hunter since Tristrem's time--when Sir Edgar hauds out, down goes
the deer, faith. But we hae lost a' sense of woodcraft on this side of
the hill."

There was much in this harangue highly displeasing to the Lord Keeper's
feelings; he could not help observing that his menial despised him
almost avowedly for not possessing that taste for sport which in those
times was deemed the natural and indispensable attribute of a real
gentleman. But the master of the game is, in all country houses, a man
of great importance, and entitled to use considerable freedom of speech.
Sir William, therefore, only smiled and replied, "He had something else
to think upon to-day than killing deer"; meantime, taking out his purse,
he gave the ranger a dollar for his encouragement. The fellow received
it as the waiter of a fashionable hotel receives double his proper fee
from the hands of a country gentleman--that is, with a smile, in which
pleasure at the gift is mingled with contempt for the ignorance of the
donor. "Your honour is the bad paymaster," he said, "who pays before it
is done. What would you do were I to miss the buck after you have paid
me my wood-fee?"

"I suppose," said the Keeper, smiling, "you would hardly guess what I
mean were I to tell you of a condictio indebiti?"

"Not I, on my saul. I guess it is some law phrase; but sue a beggar,
and--your honour knows what follows. Well, but I will be just with
you, and if bow and brach fail not, you shall have a piece of game two
fingers fat on the brisket."

As he was about to go off, his master again called him, and asked, as
if by accident, whether the Master of Ravenswood was actually so brave a
man and so good a shooter as the world spoke him.

"Brave!--brave enough, I warrant you," answered Norman. "I was in the
wood at Tyninghame when there was a sort of gallants hunting with my
lord; on my saul, there was a buck turned to bay made us all stand
back--a stout old Trojan of the first head, ten-tyned branches, and a
brow as broad as e'er a bullock's. Egad, he dashed at the old lord, and
there would have been inlake among the perrage, if the Master had not
whipt roundly in, and hamstrung him with his cutlass. He was but sixteen
then, bless his heart!"

"And is he as ready with the gun as with the couteau?" said Sir William.

"He'll strike this silver dollar out from between my finger and thumb at
fourscore yards, and I'll hold it out for a gold merk; what more would
ye have of eye, hand, lead, and gunpowder?" "Oh, no more to be wished,
certainly," said the Lord Keeper; "but we keep you from your sport,
Norman. Good morrow, good Norman."

And, humming his rustic roundelay, the yeoman went on his road, the
sound of his rough voice gradually dying away as the distance betwixt
them increased:

     "The monk must arise when the matins ring,
     The abbot may sleep to their chime;
     But the yeoman must start when the bugles sing
     'Tis time, my hearts, 'tis time.

     There's bucks and raes on Bilhope braes,
     There's a herd on Shortwood Shaw;
     But a lily-white doe in the garden goes,
     She's fairly worth them a'."

"Has this fellow," said the Lord Keeper, when the yeoman's song had died
on the wind, "ever served the Ravenswood people, that he seems so much
interested in them? I suppose you know, Lucy, for you make it a point
of conscience to record the special history of every boor about the
castle."

"I am not quite so faithful a chronicler, my dear father; but I
believe that Norman once served here while a boy, and before he ewnt to
Ledington, whence you hired him. But if you want to know anything of the
former family, Old Alice is the best authority."

"And what should I have to do with them, pray, Lucy," said her father,
"or with their history or accomplishments?"

"Nay, I do not know, sir; only that you were asking questions of Norman
about young Ravenswood."

"Pshaw, child!" replied her father, yet immediately added: "And who is
Old Alice? I think you know all the old women in the country."

"To be sure I do, or how could I help the old creatures when they are
in hard times? And as to Old Alice, she is the very empress of old women
and queen of gossips, so far as legendary lore is concerned. She is
blind, poor old soul, but when she speaks to you, you would think she
has some way of looking into your very heart. I am sure I often cover
my face, or turn it away, for it seems as if she saw one change colour,
though she has been blind these twenty years. She is worth visiting,
were it but to say you have seen a blind and paralytic old woman have so
much acuteness of perception and dignity of manners. I assure you, she
might be a countess from her language and behaviour. Come, you must go
to see Alice; we are not a quarter of a mile from her cottage."

"All this, my dear," said the Lord Keeper, "is no answer to my
question, who this woman is, and what is her connexion with the former
proprietor's family?"

"Oh, it was somethign of a nouriceship, I believe; and she remained
here, because her two grandsons were engaged in your service. But it
was against her will, I fancy; for the poor old creature is always
regretting the change of times and of property."

"I am much obliged to her," answered the Lord Keeper. "She and her folk
eat my bread and drink my cup, and are lamenting all the while that
they are not still under a family which never could do good, either to
themselves or any one else!"

"Indeed," replied Lucy, "I am certain you do Old Alice injustice.
She has nothing mercenary about her, and would not accept a penny
in charity, if it were to save her from being starved. She is only
talkative, like all old folk when you put them upon stories of their
youth; and she speaks about the Ravenswood people, because she lived
under them so many years. But I am sure she is grateful to you, sir,
for your protection, and that she would rather speak to you than to
any other person in the whole world beside. Do, sir, come and see Old
Alice."

And with the freedom of an indulged daughter she dragged the Lord Keeper
in the direction she desired.





CHAPTER IV.

     Through tops of the high trees she did descry
     A little smoke, whose vapour, thin and light,
     Reeking aloft, uprolled to the sky,
     Which cheerful sign did send unto her sight,
     That in the same did wonne some living wight.

     SPENSER.

LUCY acted as her father's guide, for he was too much engrossed with his
political labours, or with society, to be perfectly acquainted with his
own extensive domains, and, moreover, was generally an inhabitant of
the city of Edinburgh; and she, on the other hand, had, with her mother,
resided the whole summer in Ravenswood, and, partly from taste, partly
from want of any other amusement, had, by her frequent rambles, learned
to know each lane, alley, dingle, or bushy dell,


     And every bosky bourne from side to side.


We have said that the Lord Keeper was not indifferent to the beauties
of nature; and we add, in justice to him, that he felt them doubly when
pointed out by the beautiful, simple, and interesting girl who, hanging
on his arm with filial kindness, now called him to admire the size of
some ancient oak, and now the unexpected turn where the path, developing
its maze from glen or dingle, suddenly reached an eminence commanding
an extensive view of the plains beneath them, and then gradually glided
away from the prospect to lose itself among rocks and thickets, and
guide to scenes of deeper seclusion.

It was when pausing on one of those points of extensive and commanding
view that Lucy told her father they were close by the cottage of her
blind protegee; and on turning from the little hill, a path which led
around it, worn by the daily steps of the infirm inmate, brought them in
sight of the hut, which, embosomed in a deep and obscure dell, seemed
to have been so situated purposely to bear a correspondence with the
darkened state of its inhabitant.

The cottage was situated immediately under a tall rock, which in
some measure beetled over it, as if threatening to drop some detached
fragment from its brow on the frail tenement beneath. The hut itself was
constructed of turf and stones, and rudely roofed over with thatch, much
of which was in a dilapidated condition. The thin blue smoke rose from
it in a light column, and curled upward along the white face of the
incumbent rock, giving the scene a tint of exquisite softness. In a
small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-bushes, which
formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the beehives, by the
produce of which she lived, that "woman old" whom Lucy had brought her
father hither to visit.