As she spoke these words, she slowly raised her eyes, which had before
been hidden by her hand, to the latticed window of her apartment, which
was partly open, uttered a dismal shriek, and fainted. Lady Emily turned
her eyes in the same direction, but saw only the shadow of a man, which
seemed to disappear from the window, and, terrified more by the state of
Edith than by the apparition she had herself witnessed, she uttered
shriek upon shriek for assistance. Her brother soon arrived, with the
chaplain and Jenny Dennison; but strong and vigorous remedies were
necessary ere they could recall Miss Bellenden to sense and motion. Even
then her language was wild and incoherent.


[Illustration: Uttered A Dismal Shriek, And Fainted--224]


"Press me no farther," she said to Lord Evandale,--"it cannot be; Heaven
and earth, the living and the dead, have leagued themselves against this
ill-omened union. Take all I can give,--my sisterly regard, my devoted
friendship. I will love you as a sister and serve you as a bondswoman,
but never speak to me more of marriage."

The astonishment of Lord Evandale may easily be conceived.
"Emily," he said to his sister, "this is your doing. I was accursed when
I thought of bringing you here; some of your confounded folly has driven
her mad!"

"On my word, Brother," answered Lady Emily, "you're sufficient to drive
all the women in Scotland mad. Because your mistress seems much disposed
to jilt you, you quarrel with your sister, who has been arguing in your
cause, and had brought her to a quiet hearing, when, all of a sudden, a
man looked in at a window, whom her crazed sensibility mistook either for
you or some one else, and has treated us gratis with an excellent tragic
scene."

"What man?  What window?" said Lord Evandale, in impatient displeasure.
"Miss Bellenden is incapable of trifling with me; and yet what else could
have--"

"Hush! hush!" said Jenny, whose interest lay particularly in shifting
further inquiry; "for Heaven's sake, my lord, speak low, for my lady
begins to recover."

Edith was no sooner somewhat restored to herself than she begged, in a
feeble voice, to be left alone with Lord Evandale. All retreated,--Jenny
with her usual air of officious simplicity, Lady Emily and the chaplain
with that of awakened curiosity. No sooner had they left the apartment
than Edith beckoned Lord Evandale to sit beside her on the couch; her
next motion was to take his hand, in spite of his surprised resistance,
to her lips; her last was to sink from her seat and to clasp his knees.
"Forgive me, my lord!" she exclaimed, "forgive me! I must deal most
untruly by you, and break a solemn engagement. You have my friendship, my
highest regard, my most sincere gratitude; you have more,--you have my
word and my faith; but--oh, forgive me, for the fault is not mine--you
have not my love, and I cannot marry you without a sin!"

"You dream, my dearest Edith!" said Evandale, perplexed in the utmost
degree, "you let your imagination beguile you; this is but some delusion
of an over-sensitive mind. The person whom you preferred to me has been
long in a better world, where your unavailing regret cannot follow him,
or, if it could, would only diminish his happiness."

"You are mistaken, Lord Evandale," said Edith, solemnly; "I am not a
sleep-walker or a madwoman. No, I could not have believed from any one
what I have seen. But, having seen him, I must believe mine own eyes."

"Seen him,--seen whom?" asked Lord Evandale, in great anxiety.

"Henry Morton," replied Edith, uttering these two words as if they were
her last, and very nearly fainting when she had done so.

"Miss Bellenden," said Lord Evandale, "you treat me like a fool or a
child. If you repent your engagement to me," he continued, indignantly,
"I am not a man to enforce it against your inclination; but deal with me
as a man, and forbear this trifling."

He was about to go on, when he perceived, from her quivering eye and
pallid cheek, that nothing less than imposture was intended, and that by
whatever means her imagination had been so impressed, it was really
disturbed by unaffected awe and terror. He changed his tone, and exerted
all his eloquence in endeavouring to soothe and extract from her the
secret cause of such terror.

"I saw him!" she repeated,--"I saw Henry Morton stand at that window, and
look into the apartment at the moment I was on the point of abjuring him
for ever. His face was darker, thinner, and paler than it was wont to be;
his dress was a horseman's cloak, and hat looped down over his face; his
expression was like that he wore on that dreadful morning when he was
examined by Claverhouse at Tillietudlem. Ask your sister, ask Lady Emily,
if she did not see him as well as I. I know what has called him up,--he
came to upbraid me, that, while my heart was with him in the deep and
dead sea, I was about to give my hand to another. My lord, it is ended
between you and me; be the consequences what they will, she cannot marry
whose union disturbs the repose of the dead."

"Good Heaven!" said Evandale, as he paced the room, half mad himself with
surprise and vexation, "her fine understanding must be totally
overthrown, and that by the effort which she has made to comply with my
ill-timed, though well-meant, request. Without rest and attention her
health is ruined for ever."

At this moment the door opened, and Halliday, who had been Lord
Evandale's principal personal attendant since they both left the Guards
on the Revolution, stumbled into the room with a countenance as pale and
ghastly as terror could paint it.

"What is the matter next, Halliday?" cried his master, starting up. "Any
discovery of the--"

He had just recollection sufficient to stop short in the midst of the
dangerous sentence.

"No, sir," said Halliday, "it is not that, nor anything like that; but I
have seen a ghost!"

"A ghost, you eternal idiot!" said Lord Evandale, forced altogether out
of his patience. "Has all mankind sworn to go mad in order to drive me
so? What ghost, you simpleton?"

"The ghost of Henry Morton, the Whig captain at Bothwell Bridge," replied
Halliday. "He passed by me like a fire-flaught when I was in the garden!"

"This is midsummer madness," said Lord Evandale, "or there is some
strange villainy afloat. Jenny, attend your lady to her chamber, while I
endeavour to find a clue to all this."

But Lord Evandale's inquiries were in vain. Jenny, who might have given
(had she chosen) a very satisfactory explanation, had an interest to
leave the matter in darkness; and interest was a matter which now weighed
principally with Jenny, since the possession of an active and
affectionate husband in her own proper right had altogether allayed her
spirit of coquetry. She had made the best use of the first moments of
confusion hastily to remove all traces of any one having slept in the
apartment adjoining to the parlour, and even to erase the mark of
footsteps beneath the window, through which she conjectured Morton's face
had been seen, while attempting, ere he left the garden, to gain one look
at her whom he had so long loved, and was now on the point of losing for
ever. That he had passed Halliday in the garden was equally clear; and
she learned from her elder boy, whom she had employed to have the
stranger's horse saddled and ready for his departure, that he had rushed
into the stable, thrown the child a broad gold piece, and, mounting his
horse, had ridden with fearful rapidity down towards the Clyde. The
secret was, therefore, in their own family, and Jenny was resolved it
should remain so.

"For, to be sure," she said, "although her lady and Halliday kend Mr.
Morton by broad daylight, that was nae reason I suld own to kenning him
in the gloaming and by candlelight, and him keeping his face frae Cuddie
and me a' the time."

So she stood resolutely upon the negative when examined by Lord Evandale.
As for Halliday, he could only say that as he entered the garden-door,
the supposed apparition met him, walking swiftly, and with a visage on
which anger and grief appeared to be contending.

"He knew him well," he said, "having been repeatedly guard upon him, and
obliged to write down his marks of stature and visage in case of escape.
And there were few faces like Mr. Morton's." But what should make him
haunt the country where he was neither hanged nor shot, he, the said
Halliday, did not pretend to conceive.

Lady Emily confessed she had seen the face of a man at the window, but
her evidence went no farther. John Gudyill deponed _nil novit in causa_.
He had left his gardening to get his morning dram just at the time when
the apparition had taken place. Lady Emily's servant was waiting orders
in the kitchen, and there was not another being within a quarter of a
mile of the house.

Lord Evandale returned perplexed and dissatisfied in the highest degree
at beholding a plan which he thought necessary not less for the
protection of Edith in contingent circumstances, than for the assurance
of his own happiness, and which he had brought so very near perfection,
thus broken off without any apparent or rational cause. His knowledge of
Edith's character set her beyond the suspicion of covering any capricious
change of determination by a pretended vision. But he would have set the
apparition down to the influence of an overstrained imagination, agitated
by the circumstances in which she had so suddenly been placed, had it not
been for the coinciding testimony of Halliday, who had no reason for
thinking of Morton more than any other person, and knew nothing of Miss
Bellenden's vision when he promulgated his own. On the other hand, it
seemed in the highest degree improbable that Morton, so long and so
vainly sought after, and who was, with such good reason, supposed to be
lost when the "Vryheid" of Rotterdam went down with crew and passengers,
should be alive and lurking in this country, where there was no longer
any reason why he should not openly show himself, since the present
Government favoured his party in politics. When Lord Evandale reluctantly
brought himself to communicate these doubts to the chaplain, in order to
obtain his opinion, he could only obtain a long lecture on demonology, in
which, after quoting Delrio and Burthoog and De L'Ancre on the subject of
apparitions, together with sundry civilians and common lawyers on the
nature of testimony, the learned gentleman expressed his definite and
determined opinion to be, either that there had been an actual apparition
of the deceased Henry Morton's spirit, the possibility of which he was,
as a divine and a philosopher, neither fully prepared to admit or to
deny; or else that the said Henry Morton, being still in _rerum natura_,
had appeared in his proper person that morning; or, finally, that some
strong _deceptio visus_, or striking similitude of person, had deceived
the eyes of Miss Bellenden and of Thomas Halliday. Which of these was the
most probable hypothesis, the doctor declined to pronounce, but expressed
himself ready to die in the opinion that one or other of them had
occasioned that morning's disturbance.

Lord Evandale soon had additional cause for distressful anxiety. Miss
Bellenden was declared to be dangerously ill.

"I will not leave this place," he exclaimed, "till she is pronounced to
be in safety. I neither can nor ought to do so; for whatever may have
been the immediate occasion of her illness, I gave the first cause for it
by my unhappy solicitation."

He established himself, therefore, as a guest in the family, which the
presence of his sister, as well as of Lady Margaret Bellenden (who, in
despite of her rheumatism, caused herself to be transported thither when
she heard of her granddaughter's illness), rendered a step equally
natural and delicate. And thus he anxiously awaited until, without injury
to her health, Edith could sustain a final explanation ere his departure
on his expedition.

"She shall never," said the generous young man, "look on her engagement
with me as the means of fettering her to a union, the idea of which seems
almost to unhinge her understanding."





CHAPTER XVIII.

               Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shades!
               Ah, fields beloved in vain!
               Where once my careless childhood strayed,
               A stranger yet to pain.
                       Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

It is not by corporal wants and infirmities only that men of the most
distinguished talents are levelled, during their lifetime, with the
common mass of mankind. There are periods of mental agitation when the
firmest of mortals must be ranked with the weakest of his brethren, and
when, in paying the general tax of humanity, his distresses are even
aggravated by feeling that he transgresses, in the indulgence of his
grief, the rules of religion and philosophy by which he endeavours in
general to regulate his passions and his actions. It was during such a
paroxysm that the unfortunate Morton left Fairy Knowe. To know that his
long-loved and still-beloved Edith, whose image had filled his mind for
so many years, was on the point of marriage to his early rival, who had
laid claim to her heart by so many services as hardly left her a title to
refuse his addresses, bitter as the intelligence was, yet came not as an
unexpected blow.

During his residence abroad he had once written to Edith. It was to bid
her farewell for ever, and to conjure her to forget him. He had requested
her not to answer his letter; yet he half hoped, for many a day, that she
might transgress his injunction. The letter never reached her to whom it
was addressed, and Morton, ignorant of its miscarriage, could only
conclude himself laid aside and forgotten, according to his own
self-denying request. All that he had heard of their mutual relations
since his return to Scotland prepared him to expect that he could only
look upon Miss Bellenden as the betrothed bride of Lord Evandale; and
even if freed from the burden of obligation to the latter, it would still
have been inconsistent with Morton's generosity of disposition to disturb
their arrangements, by attempting the assertion of a claim proscribed by
absence, never sanctioned by the consent of friends, and barred by a
thousand circumstances of difficulty. Why then did he seek the cottage
which their broken fortunes had now rendered the retreat of Lady Margaret
Bellenden and her granddaughter? He yielded, we are under the necessity
of acknowledging, to the impulse of an inconsistent wish which many might
have felt in his situation.

Accident apprised him, while travelling towards his native district, that
the ladies, near whose mansion he must necessarily pass, were absent; and
learning that Cuddie and his wife acted as their principal domestics, he
could not resist pausing at their cottage to learn, if possible, the real
progress which Lord Evandale had made in the affections of Miss Bellen
den--alas! no longer his Edith. This rash experiment ended as we have
related, and he parted from the house of Fairy Knowe, conscious that he
was still beloved by Edith, yet compelled, by faith and honour, to
relinquish her for ever. With what feelings he must have listened to the
dialogue between Lord Evandale and Edith, the greater part of which he
involuntarily overheard, the reader must conceive, for we dare not
attempt to describe them. An hundred times he was tempted to burst upon
their interview, or to exclaim aloud, "Edith, I yet live!" and as often
the recollection of her plighted troth, and of the debt of gratitude
which he owed Lord Evandale (to whose influence with Claverhouse he
justly ascribed his escape from torture and from death), withheld him
from a rashness which might indeed have involved all in further distress,
but gave little prospect of forwarding his own happiness. He repressed
forcibly these selfish emotions, though with an agony which thrilled his
every nerve.

"No, Edith!" was his internal oath, "never will I add a thorn to thy
pillow. That which Heaven has ordained, let it be; and let me not add, by
my selfish sorrows, one atom's weight to the burden thou hast to bear. I
was dead to thee when thy resolution was adopted; and never, never shalt
thou know that Henry Morton still lives!"

As he formed this resolution, diffident of his own power to keep it, and
seeking that firmness in flight which was every moment shaken by his
continuing within hearing of Edith's voice, he hastily rushed from his
apartment by the little closet and the sashed door which led to the
garden.

But firmly as he thought his resolution was fixed, he could not leave the
spot where the last tones of a voice so beloved still vibrated on his
ear, without endeavouring to avail himself of the opportunity which the
parlour window afforded to steal one last glance at the lovely speaker.
It was in this attempt, made while Edith seemed to have her eyes
unalterably bent upon the ground, that Morton's presence was detected by
her raising them suddenly. So soon as her wild scream made this known to
the unfortunate object of a passion so constant, and which seemed so
ill-fated, he hurried from the place as if pursued by the furies. He
passed Halliday in the garden without recognising or even being sensible
that he had seen him, threw himself on his horse, and, by a sort of
instinct rather than recollection, took the first by-road in preference
to the public route to Hamilton.

In all probability this prevented Lord Evandale from learning that he was
actually in existence; for the news that the Highlanders had obtained a
decisive victory at Killiecrankie had occasioned an accurate look-out to
be kept, by order of the Government, on all the passes, for fear of some
commotion among the Lowland Jacobites. They did not omit to post
sentinels on Bothwell Bridge; and as these men had not seen any traveller
pass westward in that direction, and as, besides, their comrades
stationed in the village of Bothwell were equally positive that none had
gone eastward, the apparition, in the existence of which Edith and
Halliday were equally positive, became yet more mysterious in the
judgment of Lord Evandale, who was finally inclined to settle in the
belief that the heated and disturbed imagination of Edith had summoned up
the phantom she stated herself to have seen, and that Halliday had, in
some unaccountable manner, been infected by the same superstition.
Meanwhile, the by-path which Morton pursued, with all the speed which his
vigorous horse could exert, brought him in a very few seconds to the
brink of the Clyde, at a spot marked with the feet of horses, who were
conducted to it as a watering-place. The steed, urged as he was to the
gallop, did not pause a single instant, but, throwing himself into the
river, was soon beyond his depth. The plunge which the animal made as his
feet quitted the ground, with the feeling that the cold water rose above
his swordbelt, were the first incidents which recalled Morton, whose
movements had been hitherto mechanical, to the necessity of taking
measures for preserving himself and the noble animal which he bestrode. A
perfect master of all manly exercises, the management of a horse in water
was as familiar to him as when upon a meadow. He directed the animal's
course somewhat down the stream towards a low plain, or holm, which
seemed to promise an easy egress from the river. In the first and second
attempt to get on shore, the horse was frustrated by the nature of the
ground, and nearly fell backwards on his rider. The instinct of
self-preservation seldom fails, even in the most desperate circumstances,
to recall the human mind to some degree of equipoise, unless when
altogether distracted by terror, and Morton was obliged to the danger in
which he was placed for complete recovery of his self-possession. A third
attempt, at a spot more carefully and judiciously selected, succeeded
better than the former, and placed the horse and his rider in safety upon
the farther and left-hand bank of the Clyde.

"But whither," said Morton, in the bitterness of his heart, "am I now to
direct my course? or rather, what does it signify to which point of the
compass a wretch so forlorn betakes himself? I would to God, could the
wish be without a sin, that these dark waters had flowed over me, and
drowned my recollection of that which was, and that which is!"
The sense of impatience, which the disturbed state of his feelings had
occasioned, scarcely had vented itself in these violent expressions, ere
he was struck with shame at having given way to such a paroxysm. He
remembered how signally the life which he now held so lightly in the
bitterness of his disappointment had been preserved through the almost
incessant perils which had beset him since he entered upon his public
career.

"I am a fool!" he said, "and worse than a fool, to set light by that
existence which Heaven has so often preserved in the most marvellous
manner. Something there yet remains for me in this world, were it only to
bear my sorrows like a man, and to aid those who need my assistance. What
have I seen, what have I heard, but the very conclusion of that which I
knew was to happen? They"--he durst not utter their names even in
soliloquy--"they are embarrassed and in difficulties. She is stripped of
her inheritance, and he seems rushing on some dangerous career, with
which, but for the low voice in which he spoke, I might have become
acquainted. Are there no means to aid or to warn them?"

As he pondered upon this topic, forcibly withdrawing his mind from his
own disappointment, and compelling his attention to the affairs of Edith
and her betrothed husband, the letter of Burley, long forgotten, suddenly
rushed on his memory, like a ray of light darting through a mist.
"Their ruin must have been his work," was his internal conclusion. "If it
can be repaired, it must be through his means, or by information obtained
from him. I will search him out. Stern, crafty, and enthusiastic as he
is, my plain and downright rectitude of purpose has more than once
prevailed with him. I will seek him out, at least; and who knows what
influence the information I may acquire from him may have on the fortunes
of those whom I shall never see more, and who will probably never learn
that I am now suppressing my own grief, to add, if possible, to their
happiness."

Animated by these hopes, though the foundation was but slight, he sought
the nearest way to the high-road; and as all the tracks through the
valley were known to him since he hunted through them in youth, he had no
other difficulty than that of surmounting one or two enclosures, ere he
found himself on the road to the small burgh where the feast of the
popinjay had been celebrated. He journeyed in a state of mind sad indeed
and dejected, yet relieved from its earlier and more intolerable state of
anguish; for virtuous resolution and manly disinterestedness seldom fail
to restore tranquillity even where they cannot create happiness. He
turned his thoughts with strong effort upon the means of discovering
Burley, and the chance there was of extracting from him any knowledge
which he might possess favourable to her in whose cause he interested
himself; and at length formed the resolution of guiding himself by the
circumstances in which he might discover the object of his quest,
trusting that, from Cuddie's account of a schism betwixt Burley and his
brethren of the Presbyterian persuasion, he might find him less
rancorously disposed against Miss Bellenden, and inclined to exert the
power which he asserted himself to possess over her fortunes, more
favourably than heretofore.

Noontide had passed away when our traveller found himself in the
neighbourhood of his deceased uncle's habitation of Milnwood. It rose
among glades and groves that were chequered with a thousand early
recollections of joy and sorrow, and made upon Morton that mournful
impression, soft and affecting, yet, withal, soothing, which the
sensitive mind usually receives from a return to the haunts of childhood
and early youth, after having experienced the vicissitudes and tempests
of public life. A strong desire came upon him to visit the house itself.
"Old Alison," he thought, "will not know me, more than the honest couple
whom I saw yesterday. I may indulge my curiosity, and proceed on my
journey, without her having any knowledge of my existence. I think they
said my uncle had bequeathed to her my family mansion,--well, be it so. I
have enough to sorrow for, to enable me to dispense with lamenting such a
disappointment as that; and yet methinks he has chosen an odd successor
in my grumbling old dame, to a line of respectable, if not distinguished,
ancestry. Let it be as it may, I will visit the old mansion at least once
more."

The house of Milnwood, even in its best days, had nothing cheerful about
it; but its gloom appeared to be doubled under the auspices of the old
housekeeper. Everything, indeed, was in repair; there were no slates
deficient upon the steep grey roof, and no panes broken in the narrow
windows. But the grass in the court-yard looked as if the foot of man had
not been there for years; the doors were carefully locked, and that which
admitted to the hall seemed to have been shut for a length of time, since
the spiders had fairly drawn their webs over the door-way and the
staples. Living sight or sound there was none, until, after much
knocking, Morton heard the little window, through which it was
usual to reconnoitre visitors, open with much caution. The face of
Alison, puckered with some score of wrinkles in addition to those with
which it was furrowed when Morton left Scotland, now presented itself,
enveloped in a _toy_, from under the protection of which some of her grey
tresses had escaped in a manner more picturesque than beautiful, while
her shrill, tremulous voice demanded the cause of the knocking.
"I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson, who resides here,"
said Henry.

"She's no at hame the day," answered Mrs. Wilson, _in propria persona_,
the state of whose headdress, perhaps, inspired her with this direct mode
of denying herself; "and ye are but a mislear'd person to speer for her
in sic a manner. Ye might hae had an M under your belt for Mistress
Wilson of Milnwood."

"I beg pardon," said Morton, internally smiling at finding in old Ailie
the same jealousy of disrespect which she used to exhibit upon former
occasions,--"I beg pardon; I am but a stranger in this country, and have
been so long abroad that I have almost forgotten my own language."
"Did ye come frae foreign parts?" said Ailie; "then maybe ye may hae
heard of a young gentleman of this country that they ca' Henry Morton?"

"I have heard," said Morton, "of such a name in Germany."

"Then bide a wee bit where ye are, friend; or stay,--gang round by the
back o' the house, and ye'll find a laigh door; it's on the latch, for
it's never barred till sunset. Ye 'll open 't,--and tak care ye dinna fa'
ower the tub, for the entry's dark,--and then ye'll turn to the right,
and then ye'll hand straught forward, and then ye'll turn to the right
again, and ye 'll tak heed o' the cellarstairs, and then ye 'll be at the
door o' the little kitchen,--it's a' the kitchen that's at Milnwood
now,--and I'll come down t'ye, and whate'er ye wad say to Mistress
Wilson ye may very safely tell it to me."

A stranger might have had some difficulty, notwithstanding the minuteness
of the directions supplied by Ailie, to pilot himself in safety through
the dark labyrinth of passages that led from the back-door to the little
kitchen; but Henry was too well acquainted with the navigation of these
straits to experience danger, either from the Scylla which lurked on one
side in shape of a bucking tub, or the Charybdis which yawned on the
other in the profundity of a winding cellar-stair. His only impediment
arose from the snarling and vehement barking of a small cocking spaniel,
once his own property, but which, unlike to the faithful Argus, saw his
master return from his wanderings without any symptom of recognition.

"The little dogs and all!" said Morton to himself, on being disowned by
his former favourite. "I am so changed that no breathing creature that I
have known and loved will now acknowledge me!"

At this moment he had reached the kitchen; and soon after, the tread of
Alison's high heels, and the pat of the crutch-handled cane which served
at once to prop and to guide her footsteps, were heard upon the
stairs,--an annunciation which continued for some time ere she fairly
reached the kitchen.

Morton had, therefore, time to survey the slender preparations for
housekeeping which were now sufficient in the house of his ancestors. The
fire, though coals are plenty in that neighbourhood, was husbanded with
the closest attention to economy of fuel, and the small pipkin, in which
was preparing the dinner of the old woman and her maid-of-all-work, a
girl of twelve years old, intimated, by its thin and watery vapour, that
Ailie had not mended her cheer with her improved fortune.

When she entered, the head, which nodded with self-importance; the
features, in which an irritable peevishness, acquired by habit and
indulgence, strove with a temper naturally affectionate and good-natured;
the coif; the apron; the blue-checked gown,--were all those of old Ailie;
but laced pinners, hastily put on to meet the stranger, with some other
trifling articles of decoration, marked the difference between Mrs.
Wilson, life-rentrix of Milnwood, and the housekeeper of the late
proprietor.

"What were ye pleased to want wi' Mrs. Wilson, sir? I am Mrs. Wilson,"
was her first address; for the five minutes time which she had gained for
the business of the toilet entitled her, she conceived, to assume the
full merit of her illustrious name, and shine forth on her guest in
unchastened splendour. Morton's sensations, confounded between the past
and present, fairly confused him so much that he would have had
difficulty in answering her, even if he had known well what to say. But
as he had not determined what character he was to adopt while concealing
that which was properly his own, he had an additional reason for
remaining silent. Mrs. Wilson, in perplexity, and with some apprehension,
repeated her question.

"What were ye pleased to want wi' me, sir? Ye said ye kend Mr. Harry
Morton?"

"Pardon me, madam," answered Henry, "it was of one Silas Morton I spoke."
The old woman's countenance fell.

"It was his father, then, ye kent o', the brother o' the late Milnwood?
Ye canna mind him abroad, I wad think,--he was come hame afore ye were
born. I thought ye had brought me news of poor Maister Harry."

"It was from my father I learned to know Colonel Morton," said Henry; "of
the son I know little or nothing,--rumour says he died abroad on his
passage to Holland."

"That's ower like to be true," said the old woman with a sigh, "and mony
a tear it's cost my auld een. His uncle, poor gentleman, just sough'd awa
wi' it in his mouth. He had been gieing me preceeze directions anent the
bread and the wine and the brandy at his burial, and how often it was to
be handed round the company (for, dead or alive, he was a prudent,
frugal, painstaking man), and then he said, said he, 'Ailie,' (he aye
ca'd me Ailie; we were auld acquaintance), 'Ailie, take ye care and haud
the gear weel thegither; for the name of Morton of Milnwood 's gane out
like the last sough of an auld sang.' And sae he fell out o' ae dwam into
another, and ne'er spak a word mair, unless it were something we cou'dna
mak out, about a dipped candle being gude eneugh to see to dee wi'. He
cou'd ne'er bide to see a moulded ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on
the table."

While Mrs. Wilson was thus detailing the last moments of the old miser,
Morton was pressingly engaged in diverting the assiduous curiosity of the
dog, which, recovered from his first surprise, and combining former
recollections, had, after much snuffing and examination, begun a course
of capering and jumping upon the stranger which threatened every instant
to betray him. At length, in the urgency of his impatience, Morton could
not forbear exclaiming, in a tone of hasty impatience, "Down, Elphin!
down, sir!"

"Ye ken our dog's name," said the old lady, struck with great and sudden
surprise,--"ye ken our dog's name, and it's no a common ane. And the
creature kens you too," she continued, in a more agitated and shriller
tone,--"God guide us! it's my ain bairn!"

So saying, the poor old woman threw herself around Morton's neck, cling
to him, kissed him as if he had been actually her child, and wept for
joy. There was no parrying the discovery, if he could have had the heart
to attempt any further disguise. He returned the embrace with the most
grateful warmth, and answered,--

"I do indeed live, dear Ailie, to thank you for all your kindness, past
and present, and to rejoice that there is at least one friend to welcome
me to my native country."

"Friends!" exclaimed Ailie, "ye'll hae mony friends,--ye 'll hae mony
friends; for ye will hae gear, hinny,--ye will hae gear. Heaven mak ye a
gude guide o't! But eh, sirs!" she continued, pushing him back from her
with her trembling hand and shrivelled arm, and gazing in his face as if
to read, at more convenient distance, the ravages which sorrow rather
than time had made on his face,--"Eh, sirs! ye're sair altered, hinny;
your face is turned pale, and your een are sunken, and your bonny
red-and-white cheeks are turned a' dark and sun-burnt. Oh, weary on the
wars! mony 's the comely face they destroy.--And when cam ye here, hinny?
And where hae ye been? And what hae ye been doing? And what for did ye na
write to us? And how cam ye to pass yoursell for dead? And what for did
ye come creepin' to your ain house as if ye had been an unto body, to gie
poor auld Ailie sic a start?" she concluded, smiling through her tears.
It was some time ere Morton could overcome his own emotion so as to give
the kind old woman the information which we shall communicate to our
readers in the next chapter.





CHAPTER XIX.

               Aumerle that was,
               But that is gone for being Richard's friend;
               And, madam, you must call him Rutland now.
                                      Richard II.

The scene of explanation was hastily removed from the little kitchen to
Mrs. Wilson's own matted room,--the very same which she had occupied as
housekeeper, and which she continued to retain. "It was," she said,
"better secured against sifting winds than the hall, which she had found
dangerous to her rheumatisms, and it was more fitting for her use than
the late Milnwood's apartment, honest man, which gave her sad thoughts;"
and as for the great oak parlour, it was never opened but to be aired,
washed, and dusted, according to the invariable practice of the family,
unless upon their most solemn festivals. In the matted room, therefore,
they were settled, surrounded by pickle-pots and conserves of all kinds,
which the ci-devant housekeeper continued to compound, out of mere habit,
although neither she herself, nor any one else, ever partook of the
comfits which she so regularly prepared.

Morton, adapting his narrative to the comprehension of his auditor,
informed her briefly of the wreck of the vessel and the loss of all
hands, excepting two or three common seamen who had early secured the
skiff, and were just putting off from the vessel when he leaped from the
deck into their boat, and unexpectedly, as well as contrary to their
inclination, made himself partner of their voyage and of their safety.
Landed at Flushing, he was fortunate enough to meet with an old officer
who had been in service with his father. By his advice, he shunned going
immediately to the Hague, but forwarded his letters to the court of the
Stadtholder.

"Our prince," said the veteran, "must as yet keep terms with his
father-in-law and with your King Charles; and to approach him in the
character of a Scottish malecontent would render it imprudent for him to
distinguish you by his favour. Wait, therefore, his orders, without
forcing yourself on his notice; observe the strictest prudence and
retirement; assume for the present a different name; shun the company of
the British exiles; and, depend upon it, you will not repent your
prudence."

The old friend of Silas Morton argued justly. After a considerable time
had elapsed, the Prince of Orange, in a progress through the United
States, came to the town where Morton, impatient at his situation and the
incognito which he was obliged to observe, still continued, nevertheless,
to be a resident. He had an hour of private interview assigned, in which
the prince expressed himself highly pleased with his intelligence, his
prudence, and the liberal view which he seemed to take of the factions of
his native country, their motives and their purposes.

"I would gladly," said William, "attach you to my own person; but that
cannot be without giving offence in England. But I will do as much for
you, as well out of respect for the sentiments you have expressed, as for
the recommendations you have brought me. Here is a commission in a Swiss
regiment at present in garrison in a distant province, where you will
meet few or none of your countrymen. Continue to be Captain Melville, and
let the name of Morton sleep till better days."

"Thus began my fortune," continued Morton; "and my services have, on
various occasions, been distinguished by his Royal Highness, until the
moment that brought him to Britain as our political deliverer. His
commands must excuse my silence to my few friends in Scotland; and I
wonder not at the report of my death, considering the wreck of the
vessel, and that I found no occasion to use the letters of exchange with
which I was furnished by the liberality of some of them,--a circumstance
which must have confirmed the belief that I had perished."

"But, dear hinny," asked Mrs. Wilson, "did ye find nae Scotch body at the
Prince of Oranger's court that kend ye? I wad hae thought Morton o'
Milnwood was kend a' through the country."

"I was purposely engaged in distant service," said Morton, "until a
period when few, without as deep and kind a motive of interest as yours,
Ailie, would have known the stripling Morton in Major-General Melville."

"Malville was your mother's name," said Mrs. Wilson; "but Morton sounds
far bonnier in my auld lugs. And when ye tak up the lairdship, ye maun
tak the auld name and designation again."

"I am like to be in no haste to do either the one or the other, Ailie,
for I have some reasons for the present to conceal my being alive from
every one but you; and as for the lairdship of Milnwood, it is in as good
hands."

"As gude hands, hinny!" re-echoed Ailie; "I'm hopefu' ye are no meaning
mine? The rents and the lands are but a sair fash to me. And I'm ower
failed to tak a helpmate, though Wylie Mactrickit the writer was very
pressing, and spak very civilly; but I 'm ower auld a cat to draw that
strae before me. He canna whilliwhaw me as he's dune mony a ane. And then
I thought aye ye wad come back, and I wad get my pickle meal and my soup
milk, and keep a' things right about ye as I used to do in your puir
uncle's time, and it wad be just pleasure eneugh for me to see ye thrive
and guide the gear canny. Ye'll hae learned that in Holland, I'se
warrant, for they're thrifty folk there, as I hear tell.--But ye'll be
for keeping rather a mair house than puir auld Milnwood that's gave; and,
indeed, I would approve o' your eating butchermeat maybe as aften as
three times a-week,--it keeps the wind out o' the stamack."

"We will talk of all this another time," said Morton, surprised at the
generosity upon a large scale which mingled in Ailie's thoughts and
actions with habitual and sordid parsimony, and at the odd contrast
between her love of saving and indifference to self-acquisition. "You
must know," he continued, "that I am in this country only for a few days
on some special business of importance to the Government, and therefore,
Ailie, not a word of having seen me. At some other time I will acquaint
you fully with my motives and intentions."

"E'en be it sae, my jo," replied Ailie, "I can keep a secret like my
neighbours; and weel auld Milnwood kend it, honest man, for he tauld me
where he keepit his gear, and that's what maist folk like to hae as
private as possibly may be.--But come awa wi' me, hinny, till I show ye
the oak-parlour how grandly it's keepit, just as if ye had been expected
haine every day,--I loot naebody sort it but my ain hands. It was a kind
o' divertisement to me, though whiles the tear wan into my ee, and I said
to mysell, What needs I fash wi' grates and carpets and cushions and the
muckle brass candlesticks ony mair? for they'll ne'er come hame that
aught it rightfully."

With these words she hauled him away to this sanctum sanctorum, the
scrubbing and cleaning whereof was her daily employment, as its high
state of good order constituted the very pride of her heart. Morton, as
he followed her into the room, underwent a rebuke for not "dighting his
shune," which showed that Ailie had not relinquished her habits of
authority. On entering the oak-parlour he could not but recollect the
feelings of solemn awe with which, when a boy, he had been affected at
his occasional and rare admission to an apartment which he then supposed
had not its equal save in the halls of princes. It may be readily
supposed that the worked-worsted chairs, with their short ebony legs and
long upright backs, had lost much of their influence over his mind; that
the large brass andirons seemed diminished in splendour; that the green
worsted tapestry appeared no masterpiece of the Arras loom; and that the
room looked, on the whole, dark, gloomy, and disconsolate. Yet there were
two objects, "The counterfeit presentment of two brothers," which,
dissimilar as those described by Hamlet, affected his mind with a variety
of sensations. One full-length portrait represented his father in
complete armour, with a countenance indicating his masculine and
determined character; and the other set forth his uncle, in velvet and
brocade, looking as if he were ashamed of his own finery, though entirely
indebted for it to the liberality of the painter.

"It was an idle fancy," Ailie said, "to dress the honest auld man in thae
expensive fal-lalls that he ne'er wore in his life, instead o' his douce
Raploch grey, and his band wi' the narrow edging."

In private, Morton could not help being much of her opinion; for anything
approaching to the dress of a gentleman sate as ill on the ungainly
person of his relative as an open or generous expression would have done
on his mean and money-making features. He now extricated himself from
Ailie to visit some of his haunts in the neighbouring wood, while her own
hands made an addition to the dinner she was preparing,--an incident no
otherwise remarkable than as it cost the life of a fowl, which, for any
event of less importance than the arrival of Henry Morton, might have
cackled on to a good old age ere Ailie could have been guilty of the
extravagance of killing and dressing it. The meal was seasoned by talk of
old times and by the plans which Ailie laid out for futurity, in which
she assigned her young master all the prudential habits of her old one,
and planned out the dexterity with which she was to exercise her duty as
governante. Morton let the old woman enjoy her day-dreams and
castle-building during moments of such pleasure, and deferred till some
fitter occasion the communication of his purpose again to return and
spend his life upon the Continent.

His next care was to lay aside his military dress, which he considered
likely to render more difficult his researches after Burley. He exchanged
it--for a grey doublet and cloak, formerly his usual attire at Milnwood,
and which Mrs. Wilson produced from a chest of walnut-tree, wherein she
had laid them aside, without forgetting carefully to brush and air them
from time to time. Morton retained his sword and fire-arms, without which
few persons travelled in those unsettled times. When he appeared in his
new attire, Mrs. Wilson was first thankful "that they fitted him sae
decently, since, though he was nae fatter, yet he looked mair manly than
when he was taen frae Milnwood."

Next she enlarged on the advantage of saving old clothes to be what she
called "beet-masters to the new," and was far advanced in the history of
a velvet cloak belonging to the late Milnwood, which had first been
converted to a velvet doublet, and then into a pair of breeches, and
appeared each time as good as new, when Morton interrupted her account of
its transmigration to bid her good-by.

He gave, indeed, a sufficient shock to her feelings, by expressing the
necessity he was under of proceeding on his journey that evening.

"And where are ye gaun? And what wad ye do that for? And whar wad ye
sleep but in your ain house, after ye hae been sae mony years frae hame?"

"I feel all the unkindness of it, Ailie, but it must be so; and that was
the reason that I attempted to conceal myself from you, as I suspected
you would not let me part from you so easily."

"But whar are ye gaun, then?" said Ailie, once more. "Saw e'er mortal een
the like o' you, just to come ae moment, and flee awa like an arrow out
of a bow the neist?"

"I must go down," replied Morton, "to Niel Blane the Piper's Howff; he
can give me a bed, I suppose?"

"A bed? I'se warrant can he," replied Ailie, "and gar ye pay weel for 't
into the bargain. Laddie, I daresay ye hae lost your wits in thae foreign
parts, to gang and gie siller for a supper and a bed, and might hae baith
for naething, and thanks t' ye for accepting them."

"I assure you, Ailie," said Morton, desirous to silence her
remonstrances, "that this is a business of great importance, in which I
may be a great gainer, and cannot possibly be a loser."

"I dinna see how that can be, if ye begin by gieing maybe the feck o'
twal shillings Scots for your supper; but young folks are aye
venturesome, and think to get siller that way. My puir auld master took
a surer gate, and never parted wi' it when he had anes gotten 't."

Persevering in his desperate resolution, Morton took leave of Ailie, and
mounted his horse to proceed to the little town, after exacting a solemn
promise that she would conceal his return until she again saw or heard
from him.

"I am not very extravagant," was his natural reflection, as he trotted
slowly towards the town; "but were Ailie and I to set up house together,
as she proposes, I think my profusion would break the good old creature's
heart before a week were out."





CHAPTER XX.

               Where's the jolly host
               You told me of? 'T has been my custom ever
               To parley with mine host.
                                  Lover's Progress.

Morton reached the borough town without meeting with any remarkable
adventure, and alighted at the little inn. It had occurred to him more
than once, while upon his journey, that his resumption of the dress which
he had worn while a youth, although favourable to his views in other
respects, might render it more difficult for him to remain incognito. But
a few years of campaigns and wandering had so changed his appearance that
he had great confidence that in the grown man, whose brows exhibited the
traces of resolution and considerate thought, none would recognise the
raw and bashful stripling who won the game of the popinjay. The only
chance was that here and there some Whig, whom he had led to battle,
might remember the Captain of the Milnwood Marksmen; but the risk, if
there was any, could not be guarded against.

The Howff seemed full and frequented as if possessed of all its old
celebrity. The person and demeanour of Niel Blane, more fat and less
civil than of yore, intimated that he had increased as well in purse as
in corpulence; for in Scotland a landlord's complaisance for his guests
decreases in exact proportion to his rise in the world. His daughter had
acquired the air of a dexterous barmaid, undisturbed by the circumstances
of love and war, so apt to perplex her in the exercise of her vocation.
Both showed Morton the degree of attention which could have been expected
by a stranger travelling without attendants, at a time when they were
particularly the badges of distinction. He took upon himself exactly the
character his appearance presented, went to the stable and saw his horse
accommodated, then returned to the house, and seating himself in the
public room (for to request one to himself would, in those days, have
been thought an overweening degree of conceit), he found himself in the
very apartment in which he had some years before celebrated his victory
at the game of the popinjay,--a jocular preferment which led to so many
serious consequences.

He felt himself, as may well be supposed, a much changed man since that
festivity; and yet, to look around him, the groups assembled in the Howff
seemed not dissimilar to those which the same scene had formerly
presented. Two or three burghers husbanded their "dribbles o' brandy;"
two or three dragoons lounged over their muddy ale, and cursed the
inactive times that allowed them no better cheer. Their cornet did not,
indeed, play at backgammon with the curate in his cassock, but he drank
a little modicum of _aqua mirabilis_ with the grey-cloaked Presbyterian
minister. The scene was another, and yet the same, differing only in
persons, but corresponding in general character.

Let the tide of the world wax or wane as it will, Morton thought as he
looked around him, enough will be found to fill the places which chance
renders vacant; and in the usual occupations and amusements of life,
human beings will succeed each other as leaves upon the same tree, with
the same individual difference and the same general resemblance.