THE MERRY MENANDOther Tales and Fables

BYROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

TENTH EDITION

LONDONCHATTO & WINDUS1904

Three of the following Tales have appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_;one in _Longman's_; one in Mr. Henry Norman's Christmas Annual; and onein the _Court and Society Review_. The Author desires to make properacknowledgements to the Publishers concerned. 

Dedication

_MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR_, _To your name_, _if I wrote on brass_, _I could add nothing_; _it hasbeen already written higher than I could dream to reach_, _by a strongand dear hand_; _and if I now dedicate to you these tales_, _it is not asthe writer who brings you his work_, _but as the friend who would remindyou of his affection_. 

_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON_

SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH. 

Contents

The Merry Men

 i. Eilean Aros

 ii. What the wreck had brought to Aros

 iii. Land and sea in Sandag Bay

 iv. The gale

 v. A man out of the sea

Will o' the Mill

Markheim

Thrawn Janet

Olalla

The Treasure of Franchard

 i. By the dying Mountebank

 ii. Morning tale

 iii. The adoption

 iv. The education of the philosopher

 v. Treasure trove

 vi. A criminal investigation, in two parts

 vii. The fall of the House of Desprez

 viii. The wages of philosophy

THE MERRY MEN

CHAPTER I. EILEAN AROS. 

It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot forthe last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before atGrisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leavingall my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea, struckright across the promontory with a cheerful heart. 

I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, froman unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after apoor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in theislands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and whenshe died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, hadremained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means oflife, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued;he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a freshadventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither helpnor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the lowlands;there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my father was theluckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to die, but he lefta son to his name and a little money to support it. I was a student ofEdinburgh University, living well enough at my own charges, but withoutkith or kin; when some news of me found its way to Uncle Gordon on theRoss of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held blood thicker thanwater, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence, and taught me tocount Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations inthat part of the country, so far from all society and comfort, betweenthe codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that now, when I had donewith my classes, I was returning thither with so light a heart that Julyday. 

The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but asrough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it, fullof rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen--all overlooked fromthe eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the Gaelictongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more thanthree thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come blowingfrom the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it must makethem for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea level, therewould ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and wasmossy {5} to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broadsunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon themountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful tomy eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there were many wetrocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros, fifteen miles away. 

The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly todouble the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that aman had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where themoss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and notone house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course therewere--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the otherthat no stranger could have found them from the track. A large part ofthe Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than atwo-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather inbetween them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was alwayssea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl overall the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindlewith the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on aday of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring, like abattle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of thebreakers that we call the Merry Men. 

Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say itmeans _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of theRoss, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of theland, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from thecoast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a landriver; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the wateritself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in thebottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you couldpass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was betterbecause the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of theRoss, but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a goodone for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward over a bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could watch thevapours blowing on Ben Kyaw. 

On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these greatgranite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into thesea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the worldlike their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between theminstead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sidesinstead of heather; and the great sea conger to wreathe about the base ofthem instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can gowandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you aboutthe labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hearsthat cauldron boiling. 

Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and muchgreater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick asa country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear, westerlyblowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great rollersbreaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs. Butit is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, hererunning like a mill race, makes a long belt of broken water--a _Roost_ wecall it--at the tail of the land. I have often been out there in a deadcalm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the seaswirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and nowand again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_ weretalking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above allin heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a mile ofit, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end therecomes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big breakersdance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have got thename, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that theyrun fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the sprayruns twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from theirmovements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they makeabout the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more thanI can tell. 

The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our archipelagois no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs, and weatheredthe Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south coast of Aros, inSandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our family, as I proposeto tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going forward to set lightsupon the headlands and buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, inhospitable islands. 

The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from myuncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had transferredhis services without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. Therewas some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and didbusiness in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers ofthe Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach, and theresang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning hewas found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic Icannot tell, but they were thus translated: 'Ah, the sweet singing out ofthe sea. ' Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to speak toman in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that acertain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to convert theHebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to be called saint;for, with the boats of that past age, to make so rough a passage, andland on such a ticklish coast, was surely not far short of themiraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish underlings who hada cell there, that the islet owes its holy and beautiful name, the Houseof God. 

Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined to hearwith more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which scattered theships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of somesolitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment with all hands, hercolours flying even as she sank. There was some likelihood in this tale;for another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side, twenty miles fromGrisapol. It was told, I thought, with more detail and gravity than itscompanion stories, and there was one particularity which went far toconvince me of its truth: the name, that is, of the ship was stillremembered, and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The _Espirito Santo_they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasureand grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep toall eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in Sandag bay, upon thewest of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that tall ship, the 'HolySpirit, ' no more fair winds or happy ventures; only to rot there deep inthe sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry Men as the tide ranhigh about the island. It was a strange thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned the more of Spain, from which she hadset sail with so proud a company, and King Philip, the wealthy king, thatsent her on that voyage. 

And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the_Espirito Santo_ was very much in my reflections. I had been favourablyremarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer, Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers of anancient date to rearrange and sift of what was worthless; and in one ofthese, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the_Espirito Santo_, with her captain's name, and how she carried a greatpart of the Spaniard's treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross ofGrisapol; but in what particular spot, the wild tribes of that place andperiod would give no information to the king's inquiries. Putting onething with another, and taking our island tradition together with thisnote of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth, it had come stronglyon my mind that the spot for which he sought in vain could be no otherthan the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a fellow of amechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh that goodship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and bring backour house of Darnaway to its long-forgotten dignity and wealth. 

This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind wassharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the witnessof a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's treasures hasbeen intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquitmyself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not for their ownsake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart--my uncle'sdaughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been a time toschool upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have been happierwithout. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the servant, andher father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland, plainly bredup in a country place among Cameronians, long a skipper sailing out ofthe Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite discontent, managinghis sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for the necessary bread. Ifit was sometimes weariful to me, who was there but a month or two, youmay fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same desert all the yearround, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls, and the Merry Men singing anddancing in the Roost!

CHAPTER II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS. 

It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothingfor it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was at thedoor flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old long-leggedserving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For all hishurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I observedhim several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over curiouslyinto the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and haggard, andI thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired, with two newthwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood, thename of it unknown to me. 

'Why, Rorie, ' said I, as we began the return voyage, 'this is fine wood. How came you by that?'

'It will be hard to cheesel, ' Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then, dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which Ihad remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on myshoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay. 

'What is wrong?' I asked, a good deal startled. 

'It will be a great feesh, ' said the old man, returning to his oars; andnothing more could I get out of him, but strange glances and an ominousnodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measureof uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was stilland transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep. For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as ifsomething dark--a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow--followedstudiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I remembered oneof Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great, exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it unknown in allour waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferry-boat, untilno man dared to make the crossing. 

'He will be waiting for the right man, ' said Rorie. 

Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house ofAros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fencedwith the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in thekitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from thewindow; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was swingingfrom the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of linen andsilver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain old kitchenthat I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the stools, and thecloset bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and theclear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor;with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the threepatchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment--poor man'spatchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, andSunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was soneat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruousadditions, filled me with indignation and a kind of anger. In view ofthe errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust;but it burned high, at the first moment, in my heart. 

'Mary, girl, ' said I, 'this is the place I had learned to call my home, and I do not know it. '

'It is my home by nature, not by the learning, ' she replied; 'the place Iwas born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like thesechanges, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I wouldhave liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them now. '

Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she sharedwith her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was evengraver than of custom. 

'Ay, ' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet whenmy father died, I took his goods without remorse. '

'Your father died a clean strae death, as the folk say, ' said Mary. 

'True, ' I returned; 'and a wreck is like a judgment. What was shecalled?'

'They ca'd her the _Christ-Anna_, ' said a voice behind me; and, turninground, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway. 

He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhatbetween that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He neverlaughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like theCameronians he had been brought up among; and indeed, in many ways, usedto remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times before theRevolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid ofhell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man. 

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on hishead and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, tohave grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon hisface, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, orthe bones of the dead. 

'Ay' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the _Christ-Anna_. It's an awfu' name. '

I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;for I feared he had perhaps been ill. 

'I'm in the body, ' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the body andthe sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner, ' he said abruptly to Mary, and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten, arethey no? Yon's a bonny knock {15}, but it'll no gang; and the napery'sby ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk sellsthe peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o' them, an' maybe no even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face and burnin muckle hell; and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's them, as Iread the passage, the accursed thing. Mary, ye girzie, ' he interruptedhimself to cry with some asperity, 'what for hae ye no put out the twacandlesticks?'

'Why should we need them at high noon?' she asked. 

But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. 'We'll bruik {16} themwhile we may, ' he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought silverwere added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that rough sea-side farm. 

'She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht, ' he went on to me. 'There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the sook o'the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beatingto the wind. She wasnae a handy craft, I'm thinking, that _Christ-Anna_;for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they had ofit; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld--owercauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again, to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a sair day forthe last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashoreupon the back o' that. '

'And were all lost?' I cried. 'God held them!'

'Wheesht!' he said sternly. 'Nane shall pray for the deid on my hearth-stane. '

I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to acceptmy disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what hadevidently become a favourite subject. 

'We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the insideof her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the sook rinsstrong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's makin' hardan' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end of Aros, there comes aback-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel, there's the thingthat got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She but to have come in ram-staman' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften under, and the back-sideof her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But, man! the dunt that she camdoon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'! but it's an unco life to be asailor--a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's the gliff I got mysel' in thegreat deep; and why the Lord should hae made yon unco water is mair thanever I could win to understand. He made the vales and the pastures, thebonny green yaird, the halesome, canty land--

 And now they shout and sing to Thee, For Thou hast made them glad, as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No that I would preen myfaith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. "Who goto sea in ships, " they hae't again--

 And in Great waters trading be, Within the deep these men God's works And His great wonders see. 

Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant wi'the sea. But, troth, if it wasnae prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles betemp'it to think it wasnae the Lord, but the muckle, black deil that madethe sea. There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' thespentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shure, whilk would be whatDauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that Godshowed to the _Christ-Anna_--wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather:judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And theirsouls--to think o' that--their souls, man, maybe no prepared! The sea--amuckle yett to hell!'

I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved andhis manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these lastwords, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers, looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that hiseyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouthwere drawn and tremulous. 

Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not detachhim from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended, indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I thought itwas with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace, which was, asusual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would 'remember in mercy fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane beside thegreat and dowie waters. '

Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie. 

'Was it there?' asked my uncle. 

'Ou, ay!' said Rorie. 

I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some showof embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and lookeddown on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the partyfrom an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued thesubject. 

'You mean the fish?' I asked. 

'Whatten fish?' cried my uncle. 'Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu'o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish! it's a bogle!'

He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was notvery willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious. At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childishsuperstitions. 

'And ye come frae the College!' sneered Uncle Gordon. 'Gude kens whatthey learn folk there; it's no muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man, that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wastthere, wi' the sea grasses growin', an' the sea beasts fechtin', an' thesun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, butfearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea--deid theymay be, but they're folk whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that'slike the sea deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land deils, whena's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country, I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisko' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as gray's a tombstane. An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Naedoobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by therewi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would haelowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea wouldyoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir ladsin the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If yehad sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned thewickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a'that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an' siclike, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an' fish--thehale clan o' them--cauld-wamed, blind-eed uncanny ferlies. O, sirs, ' hecried, 'the horror--the horror o' the sea!'

We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily into his ownthoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore, recalled himto the subject by a question. 

'You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?' he asked. 

'No clearly, ' replied the other. 'I misdoobt if a mere man could see aneclearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi' a lad--they ca'd himSandy Gabart; he saw ane, shure eneueh, an' shure eneueh it was the endof him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde--a sair wark we hadhad--gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We hadgot in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by soa, an' were off on a lang tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far'sCopnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine gaunbreeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'--what nane o' us likit tohear--anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stanecraigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib sheet; wecouldnae see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a'at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were owernear Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deidskreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he couldtell was that a sea deil, or sea bogle, or sea spenster, or sic-like, hadclum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An', orthe life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for doon itcam'--a wund do I ca' it! it was the wund o' the Lord's anger--an' a'that nicht we foucht like men dementit, and the niest that we kenned wewere ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were crawin' in Benbecula. '

'It will have been a merman, ' Rorie said. 

'A merman!' screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. 'Auld wives'clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen. '

'But what was the creature like?' I asked. 

'What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! Ithad a kind of a heid upon it--man could say nae mair. '

Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen, mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands andattacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of hisincredulity, listened with uneasy interest. 

'Aweel, aweel, ' he said, 'it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find naeword o' mermen in the Scriptures. '

'And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe, ' objected Rorie, andhis argument appeared to carry weight. 

When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank behindthe house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a rippleanywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep andgulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsmanshowed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenlyand almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a referenceto the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, Ilistened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on thatremembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peatsthat had been lit by Mary. 

Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while beencovertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet andbade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tideat the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round allthe coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certainperiods of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay--ArosBay, as it is called--where the house stands and on which my uncle wasnow gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is anyswell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is, there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks--sea-runes, as we mayname them--on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in athousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself asI did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those heloved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention, struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance. 

'Do ye see yon scart upo' the water?' he inquired; 'yon ane wast the graystane? Ay? Weel, it'll no be like a letter, wull it?'

'Certainly it is, ' I replied. 'I have often remarked it. It is like aC. '

He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and thenadded below his breath: 'Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_. '

'I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself, ' said I; 'for my name isCharles. '

'And so ye saw't afore?', he ran on, not heeding my remark. 'Weel, weel, but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's been there waitin', as a man wadsay, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'. ' And then, breaking off: 'Ye'll no see anither, will ye?' he asked. 

'Yes, ' said I. 'I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, wherethe road comes down--an M. '

'An M, ' he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: 'An'what wad ye make o' that?' he inquired. 

'I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir, ' I answered, growing somewhatred, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the threshold of adecisive explanation. 

But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion ofthe other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hunghis head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that hehad not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echofrom my own. 

'I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary, ' he observed, and began towalk forward. 

There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay, where walking iseasy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman. Iwas perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an opportunityto declare my love; but I was at the same time far more deeply exercisedat the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was nothing ineven the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me for sostrange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes againstone fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his mind; and asI mentally ran over the different words which might be represented by theletter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like--I was arrestedwith a sort of start by the word murder. I was still considering theugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the direction of our walkbrought us to a point from which a view was to be had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the ocean, dotted tothe north with isles, and lying to the southward blue and open to thesky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood staring for awhile on thatexpanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand on my arm. 

'Ye think there's naething there?' he said, pointing with his pipe; andthen cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: 'I'll tell ye, man! Thedeid are down there--thick like rattons!'

He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps tothe house of Aros. 

I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, andthen but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost notime beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind. 

'Mary, ' I said, 'I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that shouldprove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure ofdaily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that, which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hopethat lies nearer to my heart than money. ' And at that I paused. 'Youcan guess fine what that is, Mary, ' I said. She looked away from me insilence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off. 'All my days I have thought the world of you, ' I continued; 'the timegoes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be happyor hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye. ' Stillshe looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that herhands shook. 'Mary, ' I cried in fear, 'do ye no like me?'

'O, Charlie man, ' she said, 'is this a time to speak of it? Let me be, awhile; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by thewaiting!'

I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me outof any thought but to compose her. 'Mary Ellen, ' I said, 'say no more; Idid not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: whatails you?'

She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, onlyshook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it wasa great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near it, 'said she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls aregone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they hadta'en their gear with them--poor souls!'

This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried outin surprise. 'There was a man at Grisapol, ' she said, 'in the month ofMay--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold ringsupon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for thatsame ship. '

It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers tosort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind thatthey were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling himselfsuch, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal, on amission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada. Putting onething with another, I fancied that the visitor 'with the gold rings uponhis fingers' might be the same with Dr. Robertson's historian fromMadrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after treasure forhimself than information for a learned society. I made up my mind, Ishould lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay sunk inSandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be for theadvantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself, and for thegood, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways. 

CHAPTER III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY. 

I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, setforth upon a tour of exploration. Something in my heart distinctly toldme that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not giveway entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in spiritsand walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet, its surface strewn withgreat rocks and shaggy with fernland heather; and my way lay almost northand south across the highest knoll; and though the whole distance wasinside of two miles it took more time and exertion than four upon a levelroad. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not very high--not threehundred feet, as I think--it yet outtops all the neighbouring lowlands ofthe Ross, and commands a great view of sea and islands. The sun, whichhad been up some time, was already hot upon my neck; the air was listlessand thundery, although purely clear; away over the north-west, where theisles lie thickliest congregated, some half-a-dozen small and raggedclouds hung together in a covey; and the head of Ben Kyaw wore, notmerely a few streamers, but a solid hood of vapour. There was a threatin the weather. The sea, it is true, was smooth like glass: even theRoost was but a seam on that wide mirror, and the Merry Men no more thancaps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie uneasily; a sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet as it was, the Roost itselfappeared to be revolving mischief. For I ought to say that all wedwellers in these parts attributed, if not prescience, at least a qualityof warning, to that strange and dangerous creature of the tides. 

I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended theslope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty largepiece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered fromall but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by lowsand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deepalong a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain timeeach flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into thebay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertowruns still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the actionof this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothingis to be seen out of Sandag Bay, but one small segment of the horizonand, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep sea reef. 

From half-way down the hill, I had perceived the wreck of February last, a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high and dryon the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were suddenlyarrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by one ofthose long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that we see so commonlyin graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said to meof any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my uncle hadall equally held their peace; of her at least, I was certain that shemust be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof indubitable ofthe fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask myself, with a chill, whatmanner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the signal of theLord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind supplied noanswer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at least, he musthave been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from some far and richland over-sea; or perhaps one of my own race, perishing within eyesightof the smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered by his side, and I couldhave desired that it had lain in our religion to put up some prayer forthat unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic way, outwardly to honourhis misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay there, a part of Aros, till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was forth and far away, among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell; andyet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that perhaps he was near mewhere I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and lingering on the scene of hisunhappy fate. 

Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat over-shadowed that I turned awayfrom the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Herstem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a littleabaft the foremast--though indeed she had none, both masts having brokenshort in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was very sharp andsudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the fracture gapedwidely open, and you could see right through her poor hull upon thefarther side. Her name was much defaced, and I could not make outclearly whether she was called _Christiania_, after the Norwegian city, or _Christiana_, after the good woman, Christian's wife, in that old bookthe 'Pilgrim's Progress. ' By her build she was a foreign ship, but I wasnot certain of her nationality. She had been painted green, but thecolour was faded and weathered, and the paint peeling off in strips. Thewreck of the mainmast lay alongside, half buried in sand. She was aforlorn sight, indeed, and I could not look without emotion at the bitsof rope that still hung about her, so often handled of yore by shoutingseamen; or the little scuttle where they had passed up and down to theiraffairs; or that poor noseless angel of a figure-head that had dippedinto so many running billows. 

I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but Ifell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with onehand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men and even ofinanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in uponmy mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed anunmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as ofsomething sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary, I tookheart again. My uncle would never consent to an imprudent marriage, norwould she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full approval. It behovedme, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh howlong it was since that great sea-castle, the _Espirito Santo_, had lefther bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights solong extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process oftime. 

I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the currentand the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay under theledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after thesecenturies, any portion of her held together, it was there that I shouldfind it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great rapidity, andeven close along-side the rocks several fathoms may be found. As Iwalked upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom ofthe bay; the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bayseemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in alapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but aninternal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows, and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. Theshadows of the rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so that myown shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that, reachedsometimes half across the bay. It was above all in this belt of shadowsthat I hunted for the _Espirito Santo_; since it was there the undertowran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water seemed thisbroiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler, and had a mysteriousinvitation for the eyes. Peer as I pleased, however, I could see nothingbut a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle, and here and there a lump ofrock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor. Twice did I pass from one end to the other of the rocks, and in the wholedistance I could see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one where itwas possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five fathoms ofwater, raised off the surface of the sand to a considerable height, andlooking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I walked. It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which prevented mejudging of its nature, but in shape and size it bore some likeness to avessel's hull. At least it was my best chance. If the _Espirito Santo_lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all in Sandag Bay; andI prepared to put the question to the proof, once and for all, and eithergo back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my dreams of wealth. 

I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my handsclasped, irresolute. The bay at that time was utterly quiet; there wasno sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind thepoint; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my venture. Sadsea-feelings, scraps of my uncle's superstitions, thoughts of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my mind. But thestrong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I stoopedforward and plunged into the sea. 

It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grewso thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself bygrasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting myfeet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear sandstretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks, scoured intothe likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the tides; andbefore me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but the samemany-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the terraceto which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths as atuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped below thewater-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all swayingtogether in the current, things were hard to be distinguished; and I wasstill uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural rock orupon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole tuft oftangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the surface, andthe shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my eyes in a gloryof crimson. 

I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at myfeet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. Istooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay aniron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to theheart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. Iheld it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me likethe presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor'shands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very footthat had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swervingdecks--the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hairand blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, notlike a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was thegreat treasure ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain andtreasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for theseaweed, her cabin a breeding place for fish, soundless but for thedredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon herbattlements--that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef in SandagBay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster ofthe foreign brig--was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and wornby a man of my own period in the world's history, hearing the same newsfrom day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in thesame temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed with drearythoughts; my uncle's words, 'the dead are down there, ' echoed in my ears;and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strongrepugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks. 

A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. Itwas no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with glass, where the green, submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, Isuppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blacknessfilled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossedconfusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked andquivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes;and when I leaped into the sea the second time it was with a quaking inmy soul. 

I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. Allthat met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alivewith crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had toharden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. Onall sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone; noplanks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was notthere. I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when something happened that sent meto the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had already stayed somewhatlate over my explorations; the current was freshening with the change ofthe tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there came a sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like a wave. I lost one hold, was flungsprawling on my side, and, instinctively grasping for a fresh support, myfingers closed on something hard and cold. I think I knew at that momentwhat it was. At least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped forthe surface, and clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with thebone of a man's leg in my grasp. 

Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceiveconnections. The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty shoe-bucklewere surely plain advertisements. A child might have read their dismalstory, and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankindthat the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit. I laidthe bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was alongthe rocks towards the human shore. I could not be far enough from thespot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again. The bones ofthe drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether ontangle or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, andhad covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against theruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long andpassionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is neverpresented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner isalways, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, atleast, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on thatgreat bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up therough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deepdetermination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or thetreasures of the dead. 

I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and lookbehind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange. 

For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almosttropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from itsconspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in thedistance the white waves, the 'skipper's daughters, ' had begun to fleebefore a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already along thecurve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I could hearfrom where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and solid continentof scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its contexture, thesun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and there, from allits edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet unclouded sky. Themenace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the sun was blottedout. At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in its might. 

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven thatit was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below myfeet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had justsurmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks slopingtowards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the wholeextent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down, but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but justturned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fanciedwhen I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat waslying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleevesrolled up, and one with a boathook, kept her with difficulty to hermoorings for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little wayoff upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be superiorin rank, laid their heads together over some task which at first I didnot understand, but a second after I had made it out--they were takingbearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheetof paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying features in amap. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, polling among the rocksand peering over the edge into the water. While I was still watchingthem with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly yet able to workon what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly stooped and summonedhis companions with a cry so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the compass in their hurry, and Icould see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from hand to hand, causingthe most unusual gesticulations of surprise and interest. Just then Icould hear the seamen crying from the boat, and saw them point westwardto that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly unfurling itsblackness over heaven. The others seemed to consult; but the danger wastoo pressing to be braved, and they bundled into the boat carrying myrelies with them, and set forth out of the bay with all speed of oars. 

I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house. Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent of theJacobites; and may be Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to detest, wasone of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock. Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely in my mind, thistheory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and the conduct of that oneamong the strangers who had looked so often below him in the water, allseemed to point to a different explanation of their presence on thatoutlying, obscure islet of the western sea. The Madrid historian, thesearch instituted by Dr. Robertson, the bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless search that very morning in the deep water of SandagBay, ran together, piece by piece, in my memory, and I made sure thatthese strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient treasure and thelost ship of the Armada. But the people living in outlying islands, suchas Aros, are answerable for their own security; there is none near by toprotect or even to help them; and the presence in such a spot of a crewof foreign adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled mewith apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of hisdaughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when Icame, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowedover; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last gleamof sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not heavily, but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and already aband of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of Grisapol. The boatwas still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of what had been hiddenfrom me lower down--a large, heavily sparred, handsome schooner, lying toat the south end of Aros. Since I had not seen her in the morning when Ihad looked around so closely at the signs of the weather, and upon theselone waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear she must havelain last night behind the uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this provedconclusively that she was manned by strangers to our coast, for thatanchorage, though good enough to look at, is little better than a trapfor ships. With such ignorant sailors upon so wild a coast, the cominggale was not unlikely to bring death upon its wings. 

CHAPTER IV. THE GALE. 

I found my uncle at the gable end, watching the signs of the weather, with a pipe in his fingers. 

'Uncle, ' said I, 'there were men ashore at Sandag Bay--'

I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but evenmy weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped hispipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen, hiseyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have lookedat one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made answerin this extraordinary fashion: 'Had he a hair kep on?'

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried atSandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come ashore alive. For thefirst and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactorand the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife. 

'These were living men, ' said I, 'perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French, perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the Spanishtreasure ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to yourdaughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the deadsleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this morning by his grave;he will not wake before the trump of doom. '

My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed hiseyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but itwas plain that he was past the power of speech. 

'Come, ' said I. 'You must think for others. You must come up the hillwith me, and see this ship. '

He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatientstrides. The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and hescrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he waswont, from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him tomake better haste. Only once he replied to me complainingly, and likeone in bodily pain: 'Ay, ay, man, I'm coming. ' Long before we hadreached the top, I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crimehad been monstrous the punishment was in proportion. 

At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see aroundus. All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun hadvanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady tothe point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was theinterval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood therelast; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, andalready it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first, invain for the schooner. 

'There she is, ' I said at last. But her new position, and the course shewas now lying, puzzled me. 'They cannot mean to beat to sea, ' I cried. 

'That's what they mean, ' said my uncle, with something like joy; and justthen the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put thequestion beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale onhand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that threatened, inthese reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream oftide, their course was certain death. 

'Good God!' said I, 'they are all lost. '

'Ay, ' returned my uncle, 'a'--a' lost. They hadnae a chance but to rinfor Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldnae win throughan the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man, ' he continued, touching me on the sleeve, 'it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in aetwalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!'

I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer inhis right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joyin his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in theprospect of this fresh disaster. 

'If it were not too late, ' I cried with indignation, 'I would take thecoble and go out to warn them. '

'Na, na, ' he protested, 'ye maunnae interfere; ye maunnae meddle wi' thelike o' that. It's His'--doffing his bonnet--'His wull. And, eh, man!but it's a braw nicht for't!'

Something like fear began to creep into my soul and, reminding him that Ihad not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;nothing would tear him from his place of outlook. 

'I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie, ' he explained--and then as theschooner went about a second time, 'Eh, but they han'le her bonny!' hecried. 'The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this. '

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise somepart, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed theirdoomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seenhow fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, asthey saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began toboom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breakerwould fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brownreef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you, they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle men aboard thatship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to anyhuman-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like aconnoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his bellyon the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in theheather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body. 

When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still moresadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up overher strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock from thedresser and sat down to eat it in silence. 

'Are ye wearied, lad?' she asked after a while. 

'I am not so much wearied, Mary, ' I replied, getting on my feet, 'as I amweary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough tojudge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:you had better be anywhere but here. '

'I'll be sure of one thing, ' she returned: 'I'll be where my duty is. '

'You forget, you have a duty to yourself, ' I said. 

'Ay, man?' she replied, pounding at the dough; 'will you have found thatin the Bible, now?'

'Mary, ' I said solemnly, 'you must not laugh at me just now. God knows Iam in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, itwould be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away fromhere, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father'stoo, I want you far--far away from here. I came with other thoughts; Icame here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I have nodesire nor hope but to flee--for that's the word--flee, like a bird outof the fowler's snare, from this accursed island. '

She had stopped her work by this time. 

'And do you think, now, ' said she, 'do you think, now, I have neithereyes nor ears? Do ye think I havenae broken my heart to have these braws(as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think Ihave lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in anhour or two? No, ' she said, 'I know there's wrong in it; what wrong, Ineither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made betterby meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me toleave my father. While the breath is in his body, I'll be with him. Andhe's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie--he's notlong for here. The mark is on his brow; and better so--maybe better so. '

I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my headat last to speak, she got before me. 

'Charlie, ' she said, 'what's right for me, neednae be right for you. There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take yourthings upon your back and go your ways to better places and to betterfolk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twentyyears syne, you would find me aye waiting. '

'Mary Ellen, ' I said, 'I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good asyes. That's done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer tomy God. '

As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemedto stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the firstsquall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and lookedabout us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, hadsettled round the house. 

'God pity all poor folks at sea!' she said. 'We'll see no more of myfather till the morrow's morning. '

And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the risinggusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter hehad been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or, as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out forhours together on the Head, if it were at night, or on the top of Aros byday, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail. After February the tenth, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast ashoreat Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his excitement hadnever fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from dark to darker. Heneglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two would speak togetherby the hour at the gable end, in guarded tones and with an air of secrecyand almost of guilt; and if she questioned either, as at first shesometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with confusion. Since Roriehad first remarked the fish that hung about the ferry, his master hadnever set foot but once upon the mainland of the Ross. That once--it wasin the height of the springs--he had passed dryshod while the tide wasout; but, having lingered overlong on the far side, found himself cut offfrom Aros by the returning waters. It was with a shriek of agony that hehad leaped across the gut, and he had reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A fear of the sea, a constant haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in his looks when he wassilent. 

Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared, tooka bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set forth againto his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the schoonerwas losing ground, but the crew were still fighting every inch withhopeless ingenuity and course; and the news filled my mind withblackness. 

A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a galeas I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had come, evenin winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, thetempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the schooner, or mynot less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and yet ever andagain we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind would rise andstrike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly fall and draw away, sothat the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our sides. Nowthe storm in its might would seize and shake the four corners of theroof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in a lull, cold eddies oftempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair upon our headsand passing between us as we sat. And again the wind would break forthin a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the chimney, wailingwith flutelike softness round the house. 

It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled memysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even hisconstant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me tocome out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the morereadily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of thenight, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told Mary to beunder no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrappingmyself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open air. 

The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark asJanuary. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utterblackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes inthe flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man'snostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; andwhen there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gustsdismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knowsthe uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets ofmingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle ofAros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefsand beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like thecombinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardlyvaried for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hearthe changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of theMerry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of thename that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almostmirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if notmirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemedeven human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and, discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to myears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night. 

Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yardof ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we felltogether sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, andbreathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the housedown to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was myuncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the cliffis highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes a placeof shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet and seethe tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might lookdown from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so, fromthis post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On such anight, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the waterswheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of anexplosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury, height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and notrecounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns inthe darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gusttook them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yetthe spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by itsforce. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar--a gleefulvacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I foundmyself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tuneupon a jigging instrument. 

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away inone of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darknessof the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrownback and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw andrecognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head. 

'Has he been drinking?' shouted I to Rorie. 

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws, ' returned Rorie in the samehigh key, and it was all that I could do to hear him. 

'Then--was he so--in February?' I inquired. 

Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprungin cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to becondemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if youwill, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scenefor a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man hadchosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearfulpleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in theroaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, theman's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge ofdeath, his ear watching for the signs of ship-wreck, surely that, if itwere credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkestsuperstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelterand could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night withan unholy glimmer. 

'Eh, Charlie, man, it's grand!' he cried. 'See to them!' he continued, dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafeningclamour and those clouds of spray; 'see to them dancin', man! Is that nowicked?'

He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with thescene. 

'They're yowlin' for thon schooner, ' he went on, his thin, insane voiceclearly audible in the shelter of the bank, 'an' she's comin' aye nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't, the folkkens it, they ken wool it's by wi' them. Charlie, lad, they're a' drunkin yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were a' drunk in the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There's nane could droon at sea wantin' thebrandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?' with a sudden blast of anger. 'Itell ye, it cannae be; they droon withoot it. Ha'e, ' holding out thebottle, 'tak' a sowp. '

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeedI had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle, therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill evenmore as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me toswallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwingback his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loudlaugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leapup, shouting to receive it. 

'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel. Ye'll get bonnier northat, or morning. '

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yardsaway, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of ahuman voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, andthe Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we hadheard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed shipnow close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her masterissuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long, however, andto us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for onebrief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still seeher reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across thedeck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I candistinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the wholesight we had of her passed swifter than lightning; the very wave thatdisclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled cry of many voicesat the point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the MerryMen. And with that the tragedy was at an end. The strong ship, with allher gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin, the lives ofso many men, precious surely to others, dear, at least, as heaven tothemselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down into the surgingwaters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still ran andshouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbledas before. 

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, ismore than I can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one byone, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of thebank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirelymaster of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in analtered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudliniteration, 'Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, puirlads, puir lads!' and anon he would bewail that 'a' the gear was asgude's tint, ' because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men insteadof stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced withshuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half anhour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied orcaused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallenasleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, dayhad already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in faintand shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its lowest, andonly the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros remained towitness of the furies of the night. 

CHAPTER V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA. 

Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but myuncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part ofduty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, buttremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of achild that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon therocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merestbroken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be securedat the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls ofthe weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready tosupport him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw hispitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurseaccompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience. 

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the nightbefore, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a strongman. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment, was stillundiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he could not haveshrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his foot slipped andhe plunged to the midleg into a pool of water, the shriek that came upout of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for the spoils ofshipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more he tottered amongthe curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks among the burstingbubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set on driftwood, fit, ifit was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire. Pleased as he was withwhat he found, he still incessantly grumbled at his ill-fortune. 

'Aros, ' he said, 'is no a place for wrecks ava'--no ava'. A' the yearsI've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear cleantint!'

'Uncle, ' said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where therewas nothing to divert his mind, 'I saw you last night, as I never thoughtto see you--you were drunk. '

'Na, na, ' he said, 'no as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. Andto tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I cannae mend. There's naesoberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in mylug, it's my belief that I gang gyte. '

'You are a religious man, ' I replied, 'and this is sin'. 

'Ou, ' he returned, 'if it wasnae sin, I dinnae ken that I would carefor't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sino' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreights--the wind an' her area kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants, blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' theleelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'mwi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men. '

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned metowards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with theirmanes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach, towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand. Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to theassault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands that, with all their number and their fury, they might never pass. 

'Thus far shalt thou go, ' said I, 'and no farther. ' And then I quoted assolemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to thechorus of the breakers:--

 But yet the Lord that is on high, Is more of might by far, Than noise of many waters is, As great sea billows are. 

'Ay, ' said my kinsinan, 'at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; Idinnae misdoobt that. But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him toHis face. It is nae wise; I am nae sayin' that it's wise; but it's thepride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an' it's the wale o'pleesures. '

I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that laybetween us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man's betterreason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nordid he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step. The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and Icould see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in aprofound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or fourminutes we had topped the brae and begun to go down upon Sandag. Thewreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun roundand dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced alittle higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach. When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him. 

'A man, ' said I, 'was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortaldangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was astranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it maybe that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may behe was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning oftorment. I ask you in the sight of heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is theman for whom Christ died?'

He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and hisface expressed no feeling but a vague alarm. 

'You were my father's brother, ' I continued; 'You, have taught me tocount your house as if it were my father's house; and we are both sinfulmen walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. Itis by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by Histemptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the brutishman his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by thiscrime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and ifthere shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him, whatcan we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?'

Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face. Achange fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features seemedto dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rosewaveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips: 'The _Christ-Anna_!'

I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I returnthanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by thesight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to bescanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to itsfull height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky. Ihave said a thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at thatmoment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplainedappearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island filled me witha surprise that bordered close on terror. It seemed scarce possible thatany human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as had ratedlast night along the coasts of Aros; and the only vessel within miles hadgone down before our eyes among the Merry Men. I was assailed withdoubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put the matter to the touchat once, stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship. 

He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us. At this mycourage instantly revived, and I called and signed to him to draw near, and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowlyto approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark ofthe man's uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I advancedanother step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand. It wasplain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our islandhospitality; and indeed, about this time, the people farther north had asorry reputation. 

'Why, ' I said, 'the man is black!'

And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have recognised, my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream. I looked athim; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step ofthe castaway's the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of hisutterance and the fervour of his language redoubled. I call it prayer, for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting incongruitieswere ever before addressed to the Creator by a creature: surely if prayercan be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to my kinsman, Iseized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to his feet. 

'Silence, man, ' said I, 'respect your God in words, if not in action. Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, He sends you an occasionof atonement. Forward and embrace it; welcome like a father yon creaturewho comes trembling to your mercy. '

With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me tothe ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the shoulder of his jacket, andfled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I staggered tomy feet again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused insurprise, perhaps in terror, some halfway between me and the wreck; myuncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I thus foundmyself torn for a time between two duties. But I judged, and I prayHeaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch upon thesands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation; itwas one, besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by thattime to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic. I advancedaccordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach with foldedarms, like one prepared for either destiny. As I came nearer, he reachedforth his hand with a great gesture, such as I had seen from the pulpit, and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not a word wascomprehensible. I tried him first in English, then in Gaelic, both invain; so that it was clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks andgestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readilyand with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while there hadcome no shade of alteration in his face, neither of anxiety while he wasstill waiting, nor of relief now that he was reassured; if he were aslave, as I supposed, I could not but judge he must have fallen from somehigh place in his own country, and fallen as he was, I could not butadmire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I paused and raised my handsand eyes to heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead; and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his hands abroad; it was a strangemotion, but done like a thing of common custom; and I supposed it wasceremonial in the land from which he came. At the same time he pointedto my uncle, whom we could just see perched upon a knoll, and touched hishead to indicate that he was mad. 

We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle ifwe struck across the island; and as we walked, I had time enough tomature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy mydoubts. Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate beforethe negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before takingbearings with the compass at Sandag. He understood me at once, and, taking the imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was, pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, andthen down along the edge of the rock with the words 'Espirito Santo, 'strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus beenright in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but acloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson wasthe same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, withmany others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greedbrought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore. In themeantime the black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking upskyward as though watching the approach of the storm now, in thecharacter of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an officer, running along the rock and entering the boat; and anon bending overimaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the samesolemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile. Lastly, heindicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in words, how hehimself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his grief andindignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon folded hisarms once more, and stooped his head, like one accepting fate. 

The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to himby means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her. Heshowed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his openhand, seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they hadbeen) into God's pleasure. Respect came upon me and grew stronger, themore I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and severecharacter, such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached thehouse of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly forgiven him, hisuncanny colour. 

To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own myheart failed me; but I did wrong to doubt her sense of justice. 

'You did the right, ' she said. 'God's will be done. ' And she set outmeat for us at once. 

As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway, who was still eating, and set forth again myself to find my uncle. I hadnot gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the verytopmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had lastobserved him. From that point, as I have said, the most of Aros and theneighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it was plainthat he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head hadscarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had leapedto his feet and turned as if to face me. I hailed him at once, as wellas I was able, in the same tones and words as I had often used before, when I had come to summon him to dinner. He made not so much as amovement in reply. I passed on a little farther, and again tried parley, with the same result. But when I began a second time to advance, hisinsane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence, but withincredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky summitof the hill. An hour before, he had been dead weary, and I had beencomparatively active. But now his strength was recruited by the fervourof insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit. Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his terrors, and thusincreased the miseries of our position. And I had nothing left but toturn homeward and make my sad report to Mary. 

She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure, and, bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much inneed, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age itwould have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep; Islept long and deep; and it was already long past noon before I awoke andcame downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the black castawaywere seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that Mary had beenweeping. There was cause enough, as I soon learned, for tears. Firstshe, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle; each in turn hadfound him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in turn he hadsilently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase him, but in vain;madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from rock to rock overthe widest gullies; he scoured like the wind along the hill-tops; hedoubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and Rorie at length gavein; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated as before upon thecrest of Aros. Even during the hottest excitement of the chase, evenwhen the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment, very near tocapture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound. He fled, and hewas silent, like a beast; and this silence had terrified his pursuer. 

There was something heart-breaking in the situation. How to capture themadman, how to feed him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him when hewas captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve. 

'The black, ' said I, 'is the cause of this attack. It may even be hispresence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill. We have done thefair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I proposethat Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through theRoss as far as Grisapol. '

In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black followus, we all three descended to the pier. Certainly, Heaven's will wasdeclared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleledbefore in Aros; during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and, striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet ofwater with one side stove in. Three days of work at least would berequired to make her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led the wholeparty round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other side, andcalled to the black to follow me. He signed, with the same clearness andquiet as before, that he knew not the art; and there was truth apparentin his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to doubt his truth;and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we came to thehouse of Aros, the negro walking in our midst without embarrassment. 

All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate withthe unhappy madman. Again he was visible on his perch; again he fled insilence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his comfort;the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to be evenwarm. We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow; rest wasthe chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for unusual exertions;and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour. 

I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow. I was to place theblack on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards thehouse; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, asbest we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration ofthe island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him downupon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with thestrength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It wason his terror of the black that I relied; for I made sure, however hemight run, it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposedto have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the compass atleast would be secure. 

When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by adream of wrecks, black men, and submarine adventure; and I found myselfso shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped outbefore the house. Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together inthe kitchen; outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here andthere a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was nearthe top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windlessquiet of the night. Never, not even in the height of the tempest, had Iheard their song with greater awe. Now, when the winds were gatheredhome, when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber, andwhen the stars rained their gentle light over land and sea, the voice ofthese tide-breakers was still raised for havoc. They seemed, indeed, tobe a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life. Nor weretheir meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the silence ofthe night. For I could hear, now shrill and thrilling and now almostdrowned, the note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of theRoost. I knew it for my kinsman's; and a great fear fell upon me ofGod's judgments, and the evil in the world. I went back again into thedarkness of the house as into a place of shelter, and lay long upon mybed, pondering these mysteries. 

It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into my clothes and hurriedto the kitchen. No one was there; Rorie and the black had bothstealthily departed long before; and my heart stood still at thediscovery. I could rely on Rorie's heart, but I placed no trust in hisdiscretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he was plainly bentupon some service to my uncle. But what service could he hope to rendereven alone, far less in the company of the man in whom my uncle found hisfears incarnated? Even if I were not already too late to prevent somedeadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer. With the thought Iwas out of the house; and often as I have run on the rough sides of Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not believe I put twelveminutes to the whole ascent. 

My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had indeed been torn openand the meat scattered on the turf; but, as we found afterwards, nomouthful had been tasted; and there was not another trace of humanexistence in that wide field of view. Day had already filled the clearheavens; the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of BenKyaw; but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea laysteeped in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn. 

'Rorie!' I cried; and again 'Rorie!' My voice died in the silence, butthere came no answer back. If there were indeed an enterprise afoot tocatch my uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in dexterityof stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran on farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right and left, nor did I pauseagain till I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the wreck, theuncovered belt of sand, the waves idly beating, the long ledge of rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders, and gullies of theisland. But still no human thing. 

At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows and colours leapedinto being. Not half a moment later, below me to the west, sheep beganto scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle running. Isaw the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had time tounderstand, Rorie also had appeared, calling directions in Gaelic as to adog herding sheep. 

I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had done better to havewaited where I was, for I was the means of cutting off the madman's lastescape. There was nothing before him from that moment but the grave, thewreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven knows that what I didwas for the best. 

My uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to him, the chase wasdriving him. He doubled, darting to the right and left; but high as thefever ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where hewould, he was still forestalled, still driven toward the scene of hiscrime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed;and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all wasvain, for it was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chasestill sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmedclose past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared thesand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into thesurf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftlybehind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond thehands of men, and these were the decrees of God that came to pass beforeour eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach theywere beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black roseonce for a moment with a throttling cry; but the current had them, racingseaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can tell, itwould be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where theseabirds hover fishing. 

WILL O' THE MILL. 

CHAPTER I. THE PLAIN AND THE STARS. 

The Mill here Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a fallingvalley between pinewoods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill, soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey village laylike a seam or a ray of vapour on a wooded hillside; and when the windwas favourable, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin andsilvery, to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, andat the same time widened out on either hand; and from an eminence besidethe mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it overa wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on from city tocity on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced that over this valleythere lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom; so that, quiet and rural asit was, the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfarebetween two splendid and powerful societies. All through the summer, travelling-carriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly downwardspast the mill; and as it happened that the other side was very mucheasier of ascent, the path was not much frequented, except by peoplegoing in one direction; and of all the carriages that Will saw go by, five-sixths were plunging briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawlingup. Much more was this the case with foot-passengers. All the light-footed tourists, all the pedlars laden with strange wares, were tendingdownward like the river that accompanied their path. Nor was this all;for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part ofthe world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earthrang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles aroundthe coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at lastone of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, andfor three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child stood and watchedthem on their passage--the rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven facestanned about the eyes, the discoloured regimentals and the tatteredflags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and allnight long, after he was in bed, he could hear the cannon pounding andthe feet trampling, and the great armament sweeping onward and downwardpast the mill. No one in the valley ever heard the fate of theexpedition, for they lay out of the way of gossip in those troubloustimes; but Will saw one thing plainly, that not a man returned. Whitherhad they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and pedlars withstrange wares? whither all the brisk barouches with servants in thedicky? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing downward and everrenewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, andcarried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It seemed like agreat conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they all went downward, fleetly and gaily downward, and only he, it seemed, remained behind, likea stock upon the wayside. It sometimes made him glad when he noticed howthe fishes kept their heads up stream. They, at least, stood faithfullyby him, while all else were posting downward to the unknown world. 

One evening he asked the miller where the river went. 

'It goes down the valley, ' answered he, 'and turns a power of mills--sixscore mills, they say, from here to Unterdeck--and is none the wearierafter all. And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters the greatcorn country, and runs through a sight of fine cities (so they say) wherekings live all alone in great palaces, with a sentry walling up and downbefore the door. And it goes under bridges with stone men upon them, looking down and smiling so curious it the water, and living folksleaning their elbows on the wall and looking over too. And then it goeson and on, and down through marshes and sands, until at last it fallsinto the sea, where the ships are that bring parrots and tobacco from theIndies. Ay, it has a long trot before it as it goes singing over ourweir, bless its heart!'

'And what is the sea?' asked Will. 

'The sea!' cried the miller. 'Lord help us all, it is the greatest thingGod made! That is where all the water in the world runs down into agreat salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as innocent-likeas a child; but they do say when the wind blows it gets up into water-mountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows down great ships biggerthan our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can hear it miles awayupon the land. There are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as lone as our river and as old as all the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of silver on her head. '

Will thought he had never heard anything like this, and he kept on askingquestion after question about the world that lay away down the river, with all its perils and marvels, until the old miller became quiteinterested himself, and at last took him by the hand and led him to thehilltop that overlooks the valley and the plain. The sun was nearsetting, and hung low down in a cloudless sky. Everything was definedand glorified in golden light. Will had never seen so great an expanseof country in his life; he stood and gazed with all his eyes. He couldsee the cities, and the woods and fields, and the bright curves of theriver, and far away to where the rim of the plain trenched along theshining heavens. An over-mastering emotion seized upon the boy, soul andbody; his heart beat so thickly that he could not breathe; the scene swambefore his eyes; the sun seemed to wheel round and round, and throw off, as it turned, strange shapes which disappeared with the rapidity ofthought, and were succeeded by others. Will covered his face with hishands, and burst into a violent fit of tears; and the poor miller, sadlydisappointed and perplexed, saw nothing better for it than to take him upin his arms and carry him home in silence. 

From that day forward Will was full of new hopes and longings. Somethingkept tugging at his heart-strings; the running water carried his desiresalong with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface; the wind, as itran over innumerable tree-tops, hailed him with encouraging words;branches beckoned downward; the open road, as it shouldered round theangles and went turning and vanishing fast and faster down the valley, tortured him with its solicitations. He spent long whiles on theeminence, looking down the rivershed and abroad on the fat lowlands, andwatched the clouds that travelled forth upon the sluggish wind andtrailed their purple shadows on the plain; or he would linger by thewayside, and follow the carriages with his eyes as they rattled downwardby the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that went thatway, were it cloud or carriage, bird or brown water in the stream, hefelt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing. 

We are told by men of science that all the ventures of mariners on thesea, all that counter-marching of tribes and races that confounds oldhistory with its dust and rumour, sprang from nothing more abstruse thanthe laws of supply and demand, and a certain natural instinct for cheaprations. To any one thinking deeply, this will seem a dull and pitifulexplanation. The tribes that came swarming out of the North and East, ifthey were indeed pressed onward from behind by others, were drawn at thesame time by the magnetic influence of the South and West. The fame ofother lands had reached them; the name of the eternal city rang in theirears; they were not colonists, but pilgrims; they travelled towards wineand gold and sunshine, but their hearts were set on something higher. That divine unrest, that old stinging trouble of humanity that makes allhigh achievements and all miserable failure, the same that spread wingswith Icarus, the same that sent Columbus into the desolate Atlantic, inspired and supported these barbarians on their perilous march. Thereis one legend which profoundly represents their spirit, of how a flyingparty of these wanderers encountered a very old man shod with iron. Theold man asked them whither they were going; and they answered with onevoice: 'To the Eternal City!' He looked upon them gravely. 'I havesought it, ' he said, 'over the most part of the world. Three such pairsas I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon this pilgrimage, and nowthe fourth is growing slender underneath my steps. And all this while Ihave not found the city. ' And he turned and went his own way alone, leaving them astonished. 

And yet this would scarcely parallel the intensity of Will's feeling forthe plain. If he could only go far enough out there, he felt as if hiseyesight would be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would grow moredelicate, and his very breath would come and go with luxury. He wastransplanted and withering where he was; he lay in a strange country andwas sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken notions of theworld below: of the river, ever moving and growing until it sailed forthinto the majestic ocean; of the cities, full of brisk and beautifulpeople, playing fountains, bands of music and marble palaces, and lightedup at night from end to end with artificial stars of gold; of the greatchurches, wise universities, brave armies, and untold money lying storedin vaults; of the high-flying vice that moved in the sunshine, and thestealth and swiftness of midnight murder. I have said he was sick as iffor home: the figure halts. He was like some one lying in twilit, formless preexistence, and stretching out his hands lovingly towards many-coloured, many-sounding life. It was no wonder he was unhappy, he wouldgo and tell the fish: they were made for their life, wished for no morethan worms and running water, and a hole below a falling bank; but he wasdifferently designed, full of desires and aspirations, itching at thefingers, lusting with the eyes, whom the whole variegated world could notsatisfy with aspects. The true life, the true bright sunshine, lay farout upon the plain. And O! to see this sunlight once before he died! tomove with a jocund spirit in a golden land! to hear the trained singersand sweet church bells, and see the holiday gardens! 'And O fish!' hewould cry, 'if you would only turn your noses down stream, you could swimso easily into the fabled waters and see the vast ships passing over yourhead like clouds, and hear the great water-hills making music over youall day long!' But the fish kept looking patiently in their owndirection, until Will hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. 

Hitherto the traffic on the road had passed by Will, like something seenin a picture: he had perhaps exchanged salutations with a tourist, orcaught sight of an old gentleman in a travelling cap at a carriagewindow; but for the most part it had been a mere symbol, which hecontemplated from apart and with something of a superstitious feeling. Atime came at last when this was to be changed. The miller, who was agreedy man in his way, and never forewent an opportunity of honestprofit, turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn, and, severalpieces of good fortune falling in opportunely, built stables and got theposition of post master on the road. It now became Will's duty to waitupon people, as they sat to break their fasts in the little arbour at thetop of the mill garden; and you may be sure that he kept his ears open, and learned many new things about the outside world as he brought theomelette or the wine. Nay, he would often get into conversation withsingle guests, and by adroit questions and polite attention, not onlygratify his own curiosity, but win the goodwill of the travellers. Manycomplimented the old couple on their serving-boy; and a professor waseager to take him away with him, and have him properly educated in theplain. The miller and his wife were mightily astonished and even morepleased. They thought it a very good thing that they should have openedtheir inn. 'You see, ' the old man would remark, 'he has a kind of talentfor a publican; he never would have made anything else!' And so lifewagged on in the valley, with high satisfaction to all concerned butWill. Every carriage that left the inn-door seemed to take a part of himaway with it; and when people jestingly offered him a lift, he could withdifficulty command his emotion. Night after night he would dream that hewas awakened by flustered servants, and that a splendid equipage waitedat the door to carry him down into the plain; night after night; untilthe dream, which had seemed all jollity to him at first, began to take ona colour of gravity, and the nocturnal summons and waiting equipageoccupied a place in his mind as something to be both feared and hopedfor. 

One day, when Will was about sixteen, a fat young man arrived at sunsetto pass the night. He was a contented-looking fellow, with a jolly eye, and carried a knapsack. While dinner was preparing, he sat in the arbourto read a book; but as soon as he had begun to observe Will, the book waslaid aside; he was plainly one of those who prefer living people topeople made of ink and paper. Will, on his part, although he had notbeen much interested in the stranger at first sight, soon began to take agreat deal of pleasure in his talk, which was full of good nature andgood sense, and at last conceived a great respect for his character andwisdom. They sat far into the night; and about two in the morning Willopened his heart to the young man, and told him how he longed to leavethe valley and what bright hopes he had connected with the cities of theplain. The young man whistled, and then broke into a smile. 

'My young friend, ' he remarked, 'you are a very curious little fellow tobe sure, and wish a great many things which you will never get. Why, youwould feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little fellows in thesefairy cities of yours are all after the same sort of nonsense, and keepbreaking their hearts to get up into the mountains. And let me tell you, those who go down into the plains are a very short while there beforethey wish themselves heartily back again. The air is not so light nor sopure; nor is the sun any brighter. As for the beautiful men and women, you would see many of them in rags and many of them deformed withhorrible disorders; and a city is so hard a place for people who are poorand sensitive that many choose to die by their own hand. '

'You must think me very simple, ' answered Will. 'Although I have neverbeen out of this valley, believe me, I have used my eyes. I know how onething lives on another; for instance, how the fish hangs in the eddy tocatch his fellows; and the shepherd, who makes so pretty a picturecarrying home the lamb, is only carrying it home for dinner. I do notexpect to find all things right in your cities. That is not whattroubles me; it might have been that once upon a time; but although Ilive here always, I have asked many questions and learned a great deal inthese last years, and certainly enough to cure me of my old fancies. Butyou would not have me die like a dog and not see all that is to be seen, and do all that a man can do, let it be good or evil? you would not haveme spend all my days between this road here and the river, and not somuch as make a motion to be up and live my life?--I would rather die outof hand, ' he cried, 'than linger on as I am doing. '

'Thousands of people, ' said the young man, 'live and die like you, andare none the less happy. '

'Ah!' said Will, 'if there are thousands who would like, why should notone of them have my place?'

It was quite dark; there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit upthe table and the faces of the speakers; and along the arch, the leavesupon the trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky, a patternof transparent green upon a dusky purple. The fat young man rose, and, taking Will by the arm, led him out under the open heavens. 

'Did you ever look at the stars?' he asked, pointing upwards. 

'Often and often, ' answered Will. 

'And do you know what they are?'

'I have fancied many things. '

'They are worlds like ours, ' said the young man. 'Some of them less;many of them a million times greater; and some of the least sparkles thatyou see are not only worlds, but whole clusters of worlds turning abouteach other in the midst of space. We do not know what there may be inany of them; perhaps the answer to all our difficulties or the cure ofall our sufferings: and yet we can never reach them; not all the skill ofthe craftiest of men can fit out a ship for the nearest of these ourneighbours, nor would the life of the most aged suffice for such ajourney. When a great battle has been lost or a dear friend is dead, when we are hipped or in high spirits, there they are unweariedly shiningoverhead. We may stand down here, a whole army of us together, and shoutuntil we break our hearts, and not a whisper reaches them. We may climbthe highest mountain, and we are no nearer them. All we can do is tostand down here in the garden and take off our hats; the starshine lightsupon our heads, and where mine is a little bald, I dare say you can seeit glisten in the darkness. The mountain and the mouse. That is like tobe all we shall ever have to do with Arcturus or Aldebaran. Can youapply a parable?' he added, laying his hand upon Will's shoulder. 'It isnot the same thing as a reason, but usually vastly more convincing. '

Will hung his head a little, and then raised it once more to heaven. Thestars seemed to expand and emit a sharper brilliancy; and as he keptturning his eyes higher and higher, they seemed to increase in multitudeunder his gaze. 

'I see, ' he said, turning to the young man. 'We are in a rat-trap. '

'Something of that size. Did you ever see a squirrel turning in a cage?and another squirrel sitting philosophically over his nuts? I needn'task you which of them looked more of a fool. '

CHAPTER II. THE PARSON'S MARJORY. 

After some years the old people died, both in one winter, very carefullytended by their adopted son, and very quietly mourned when they weregone. People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he wouldhasten to sell the property, and go down the river to push his fortunes. But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part of Will. Onthe contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and hired a coupleof servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there he settled down, akind, talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet three in his stockings, with an iron constitution and a friendly voice. He soon began to takerank in the district as a bit of an oddity: it was not much to bewondered at from the first, for he was always full of notions, and keptcalling the plainest common-sense in question; but what most raised thereport upon him was the odd circumstance of his courtship with theparson's Marjory. 

The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be aboutthirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any other girlin that part of the country, as became her parentage. She held her headvery high, and had already refused several offers of marriage with agrand air, which had got her hard names among the neighbours. For allthat she was a good girl, and one that would have made any man wellcontented. 

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonagewere only two miles from his own door, he was never known to go there buton Sundays. It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into disrepair, and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter took lodgingsfor a month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will's inn. Now, whatwith the inn, and the mill, and the old miller's savings, our friend wasa man of substance; and besides that, he had a name for good temper andshrewdness, which make a capital portion in marriage; and so it wascurrently gossiped, among their ill-wishers, that the parson and hisdaughter had not chosen their temporary lodging with their eyes shut. Will was about the last man in the world to be cajoled or frightened intomarriage. You had only to look into his eyes, limpid and still likepools of water, and yet with a sort of clear light that seemed to comefrom within, and you would understand at once that here was one who knewhis own mind, and would stand to it immovably. Marjory herself was noweakling by her looks, with strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quietbearing. It might be a question whether she was not Will's match instedfastness, after all, or which of them would rule the roast inmarriage. But Marjory had never given it a thought, and accompanied herfather with the most unshaken innocence and unconcern. 

The season was still so early that Will's customers were few and farbetween; but the lilacs were already flowering, and the weather was somild that the party took dinner under the trellice, with the noise of theriver in their ears and the woods ringing about them with the songs ofbirds. Will soon began to take a particular pleasure in these dinners. The parson was rather a dull companion, with a habit of dozing at table;but nothing rude or cruel ever fell from his lips. And as for theparson's daughter, she suited her surroundings with the best graceimaginable; and whatever she said seemed so pat and pretty that Willconceived a great idea of her talents. He could see her face, as sheleaned forward, against a background of rising pinewoods; her eyes shonepeaceably; the light lay around her hair like a kerchief; something thatwas hardly a smile rippled her pale cheeks, and Will could not containhimself from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay. She looked, even inher quietest moments, so complete in herself, and so quick with life downto her finger tips and the very skirts of her dress, that the remainderof created things became no more than a blot by comparison; and if Willglanced away from her to her surroundings, the trees looked inanimate andsenseless, the clouds hung in heaven like dead things, and even themountain tops were disenchanted. The whole valley could not compare inlooks with this one girl. 

Will was always observant in the society of his fellow-creatures; but hisobservation became almost painfully eager in the case of Marjory. Helistened to all she uttered, and read her eyes, at the same time, for theunspoken commentary. Many kind, simple, and sincere speeches found anecho in his heart. He became conscious of a soul beautifully poised uponitself, nothing doubting, nothing desiring, clothed in peace. It was notpossible to separate her thoughts from her appearance. The turn of herwrist, the still sound of her voice, the light in her eyes, the lines ofher body, fell in tune with her grave and gentle words, like theaccompaniment that sustains and harmonises the voice of the singer. Herinfluence was one thing, not to be divided or discussed, only to be feltwith gratitude and joy. To Will, her presence recalled something of hischildhood, and the thought of her took its place in his mind beside thatof dawn, of running water, and of the earliest violets and lilacs. It isthe property of things seen for the first time, or for the first timeafter long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edgeof sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passesout of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face iswhat renews a man's character from the fountain upwards. 

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs; a grave beatitudepossessed him from top to toe, and he kept smiling to himself and thelandscape as he went. The river ran between the stepping-stones with apretty wimple; a bird sang loudly in the wood; the hill-tops lookedimmeasurably high, and as he glanced at them from time to time seemed tocontemplate his movements with a beneficent but awful curiosity. His waytook him to the eminence which overlooked the plain; and there he satdown upon a stone, and fell into deep and pleasant thought. The plainlay abroad with its cities and silver river; everything was asleep, except a great eddy of birds which kept rising and falling and goinground and round in the blue air. He repeated Marjory's name aloud, andthe sound of it gratified his ear. He shut his eyes, and her imagesprang up before him, quietly luminous and attended with good thoughts. The river might run for ever; the birds fly higher and higher till theytouched the stars. He saw it was empty bustle after all; for here, without stirring a feet, waiting patiently in his own narrow valley, healso had attained the better sunlight. 

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner-table, while the parson was filling his pipe. 

'Miss Marjory, ' he said, 'I never knew any one I liked so well as you. Iam mostly a cold, unkindly sort of man; not from want of heart, but outof strangeness in my way of thinking; and people seem far away from me. 'Tis as if there were a circle round me, which kept every one out butyou; I can hear the others talking and laughing; but you come quiteclose. Maybe, this is disagreeable to you?' he asked. 

Marjory made no answer. 

'Speak up, girl, ' said the parson. 

'Nay, now, ' returned Will, 'I wouldn't press her, parson. I feel tongue-tied myself, who am not used to it; and she's a woman, and little morethan a child, when all is said. But for my part, as far as I canunderstand what people mean by it, I fancy I must be what they call inlove. I do not wish to be held as committing myself; for I may be wrong;but that is how I believe things are with me. And if Miss Marjory shouldfeel any otherwise on her part, mayhap she would be so kind as shake herhead. '

Marjory was silent, and gave no sign that she had heard. 

'How is that, parson?' asked Will. 

'The girl must speak, ' replied the parson, laying down his pipe. 'Here'sour neighbour who says he loves you, Madge. Do you love him, ay or no?'

'I think I do, ' said Marjory, faintly. 

'Well then, that's all that could be wished!' cried Will, heartily. Andhe took her hand across the table, and held it a moment in both of hiswith great satisfaction. 

'You must marry, ' observed the parson, replacing his pipe in his mouth. 

'Is that the right thing to do, think you?' demanded Will. 

'It is indispensable, ' said the parson. 

'Very well, ' replied the wooer. 

Two or three days passed away with great delight to Will, although abystander might scarce have found it out. He continued to take his mealsopposite Marjory, and to talk with her and gaze upon her in her father'spresence; but he made no attempt to see her alone, nor in any other waychanged his conduct towards her from what it had been since thebeginning. Perhaps the girl was a little disappointed, and perhaps notunjustly; and yet if it had been enough to be always in the thoughts ofanother person, and so pervade and alter his whole life, she might havebeen thoroughly contented. For she was never out of Will's mind for aninstant. He sat over the stream, and watched the dust of the eddy, andthe poised fish, and straining weeds; he wandered out alone into thepurple even, with all the blackbirds piping round him in the wood; herose early in the morning, and saw the sky turn from grey to gold, andthe light leap upon the hill-tops; and all the while he kept wondering ifhe had never seen such things before, or how it was that they should lookso different now. The sound of his own mill-wheel, or of the wind amongthe trees, confounded and charmed his heart. The most enchantingthoughts presented themselves unbidden in his mind. He was so happy thathe could not sleep at night, and so restless, that he could hardly sitstill out of her company. And yet it seemed as if he avoided her ratherthan sought her out. 

One day, as he was coming home from a ramble, Will found Marjory in thegarden picking flowers, and as he came up with her, slackened his paceand continued walking by her side. 

'You like flowers?' he said. 

'Indeed I love them dearly, ' she replied. 'Do you?'

'Why, no, ' said he, 'not so much. They are a very small affair, when allis done. I can fancy people caring for them greatly, but not doing asyou are just now. '

'How?' she asked, pausing and looking up at him. 

'Plucking them, ' said he. 'They are a deal better off where they are, and look a deal prettier, if you go to that. '

'I wish to have them for my own, ' she answered, 'to carry them near myheart, and keep them in my room. They tempt me when they grow here; theyseem to say, "Come and do something with us;" but once I have cut themand put them by, the charm is laid, and I can look at them with quite aneasy heart. '

'You wish to possess them, ' replied Will, 'in order to think no moreabout them. It's a bit like killing the goose with the golden eggs. It'sa bit like what I wished to do when I was a boy. Because I had a fancyfor looking out over the plain, I wished to go down there--where Icouldn't look out over it any longer. Was not that fine reasoning? Dear, dear, if they only thought of it, all the world would do like me; and youwould let your flowers alone, just as I stay up here in the mountains. 'Suddenly he broke off sharp. 'By the Lord!' he cried. And when sheasked him what was wrong, he turned the question off and walked away intothe house with rather a humorous expression of face. 

He was silent at table; and after the night hid fallen and the stars hadcome out overhead, he walked up and down for hours in the courtyard andgarden with an uneven pace. There was still a light in the window ofMarjory's room: one little oblong patch of orange in a world of dark bluehills and silver starlight. Will's mind ran a great deal on the window;but his thoughts were not very lover-like. 'There she is in her room, 'he thought, 'and there are the stars overhead:--a blessing upon both!'Both were good influences in his life; both soothed and braced him in hisprofound contentment with the world. And what more should he desire witheither? The fat young man and his councils were so present to his mind, that he threw back his head, and, putting his hands before his mouth, shouted aloud to the populous heavens. Whether from the position of hishead or the sudden strain of the exertion, he seemed to see a momentaryshock among the stars, and a diffusion of frosty light pass from one toanother along the sky. At the same instant, a corner of the blind waslifted and lowered again at once. He laughed a loud ho-ho! 'One andanother!' thought Will. 'The stars tremble, and the blind goes up. Why, before Heaven, what a great magician I must be! Now if I were only afool, should not I be in a pretty way?' And he went off to bed, chuckling to himself: 'If I were only a fool!'

The next morning, pretty early, he saw her once more in the garden, andsought her out. 

'I have been thinking about getting married, ' he began abruptly; 'andafter having turned it all over, I have made up my mind it's notworthwhile. '

She turned upon him for a single moment; but his radiant, kindlyappearance would, under the circumstances, have disconcerted an angel, and she looked down again upon the ground in silence. He could see hertremble. 

'I hope you don't mind, ' he went on, a little taken aback. 'You oughtnot. I have turned it all over, and upon my soul there's nothing in it. We should never be one whit nearer than we are just now, and, if I am awise man, nothing like so happy. '

'It is unnecessary to go round about with me, ' she said. 'I very wellremember that you refused to commit yourself; and now that I see you weremistaken, and in reality have never cared for me, I can only feel sadthat I have been so far misled. '

'I ask your pardon, ' said Will stoutly; 'you do not understand mymeaning. As to whether I have ever loved you or not, I must leave thatto others. But for one thing, my feeling is not changed; and foranother, you may make it your boast that you have made my whole life andcharacter something different from what they were. I mean what I say; noless. I do not think getting married is worth while. I would rather youwent on living with your father, so that I could walk over and see youonce, or maybe twice a week, as people go to church, and then we shouldboth be all the happier between whiles. That's my notion. But I'llmarry you if you will, ' he added. 

'Do you know that you are insulting me?' she broke out. 

'Not I, Marjory, ' said he; 'if there is anything in a clear conscience, not I. I offer all my heart's best affection; you can take it or wantit, though I suspect it's beyond either your power or mine to change whathas once been done, and set me fancy-free. I'll marry you, if you like;but I tell you again and again, it's not worth while, and we had beststay friends. Though I am a quiet man I have noticed a heap of things inmy life. Trust in me, and take things as I propose; or, if you don'tlike that, say the word, and I'll marry you out of hand. '

There was a considerable pause, and Will, who began to feel uneasy, beganto grow angry in consequence. 

'It seems you are too proud to say your mind, ' he said. 'Believe methat's a pity. A clean shrift makes simple living. Can a man be moredownright or honourable, to a woman than I have been? I have said mysay, and given you your choice. Do you want me to marry you? or will youtake my friendship, as I think best? or have you had enough of me forgood? Speak out for the dear God's sake! You know your father told youa girl should speak her mind in these affairs. '

She seemed to recover herself at that, turned without a word, walkedrapidly through the garden, and disappeared into the house, leaving Willin some confusion as to the result. He walked up and down the garden, whistling softly to himself. Sometimes he stopped and contemplated thesky and hill-tops; sometimes he went down to the tail of the weir and satthere, looking foolishly in the water. All this dubiety and perturbationwas so foreign to his nature and the life which he had resolutely chosenfor himself, that he began to regret Marjory's arrival. 'After all, ' hethought, 'I was as happy as a man need be. I could come down here andwatch my fishes all day long if I wanted: I was as settled and contentedas my old mill. '

Marjory came down to dinner, looking very trim and quiet; and no soonerwere all three at table than she made her father a speech, with her eyesfixed upon her plate, but showing no other sign of embarrassment ordistress. 

'Father, ' she began, 'Mr. Will and I have been talking things over. Wesee that we have each made a mistake about our feelings, and he hasagreed, at my request, to give up all idea of marriage, and be no morethan my very good friend, as in the past. You see, there is no shadow ofa quarrel, and indeed I hope we shall see a great deal of him in thefuture, for his visits will always be welcome in our house. Of course, father, you will know best, but perhaps we should do better to leave Mr. Will's house for the present. I believe, after what has passed, weshould hardly be agreeable inmates for some days. '

Will, who had commanded himself with difficulty from the first, broke outupon this into an inarticulate noise, and raised one hand with anappearance of real dismay, as if he were about to interfere andcontradict. But she checked him at once looking up at him with a swiftglance and an angry flush upon her cheek. 

'You will perhaps have the good grace, ' she said, 'to let me explainthese matters for myself. '

Will was put entirely out of countenance by her expression and the ringof her voice. He held his peace, concluding that there were some thingsabout this girl beyond his comprehension, in which he was exactly right. 

The poor parson was quite crestfallen. He tried to prove that this wasno more than a true lovers' tiff, which would pass off before night; andwhen he was dislodged from that position, he went on to argue that wherethere was no quarrel there could be no call for a separation; for thegood man liked both his entertainment and his host. It was curious tosee how the girl managed them, saying little all the time, and that veryquietly, and yet twisting them round her finger and insensibly leadingthem wherever she would by feminine tact and generalship. It scarcelyseemed to have been her doing--it seemed as if things had merely sofallen out--that she and her father took their departure that sameafternoon in a farm-cart, and went farther down the valley, to wait, until their own house was ready for them, in another hamlet. But Willhad been observing closely, and was well aware of her dexterity andresolution. When he found himself alone he had a great many curiousmatters to turn over in his mind. He was very sad and solitary, to beginwith. All the interest had gone out of his life, and he might look up atthe stars as long as he pleased, he somehow failed to find support orconsolation. And then he was in such a turmoil of spirit about Marjory. He had been puzzled and irritated at her behaviour, and yet he could notkeep himself from admiring it. He thought he recognised a fine, perverseangel in that still soul which he had never hitherto suspected; andthough he saw it was an influence that would fit but ill with his ownlife of artificial calm, he could not keep himself from ardently desiringto possess it. Like a man who has lived among shadows and now meets thesun, he was both pained and delighted. 

As the days went forward he passed from one extreme to another; nowpluming himself on the strength of his determination, now despising histimid and silly caution. The former was, perhaps, the true thought ofhis heart, and represented the regular tenor of the man's reflections;but the latter burst forth from time to time with an unruly violence, andthen he would forget all consideration, and go up and down his house andgarden or walk among the fir-woods like one who is beside himself withremorse. To equable, steady-minded Will this state of matters wasintolerable; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bring it to an end. So, one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes, took a thornswitch in his hand, and set out down the valley by the river. As soon ashe had taken his determination, he had regained at a bound his customarypeace of heart, and he enjoyed the bright weather and the variety of thescene without any admixture of alarm or unpleasant eagerness. It wasnearly the same to him how the matter turned out. If she accepted him hewould have to marry her this time, which perhaps was, all for the best. If she refused him, he would have done his utmost, and might follow hisown way in the future with an untroubled conscience. He hoped, on thewhole, she would refuse him; and then, again, as he saw the brown roofwhich sheltered her, peeping through some willows at an angle of thestream, he was half inclined to reverse the wish, and more than halfashamed of himself for this infirmity of purpose. 

Marjory seemed glad to see him, and gave him her hand without affectationor delay. 

'I have been thinking about this marriage, ' he began. 

'So have I, ' she answered. 'And I respect you more and more for a verywise man. You understood me better than I understood myself; and I amnow quite certain that things are all for the best as they are. '

'At the same time--, ' ventured Will. 

'You must be tired, ' she interrupted. 'Take a seat and let me fetch youa glass of wine. The afternoon is so warm; and I wish you not to bedispleased with your visit. You must come quite often; once a week, ifyou can spare the time; I am always so glad to see my friends. '

'O, very well, ' thought Will to himself. 'It appears I was right afterall. ' And he paid a very agreeable visit, walked home again in capitalspirits, and gave himself no further concern about the matter. 

For nearly three years Will and Marjory continued on these terms, seeingeach other once or twice a week without any word of love between them;and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would oftenwalk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whethis appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he couldsee the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between slopingfirwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, whichhe greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returninghomewards; and the peasants got so much into the habit of finding himthere in the twilight that they gave it the name of 'Will o' the Mill'sCorner. '

At the end of the three years Marjory played him a sad trick by suddenlymarrying somebody else. Will kept his countenance bravely, and merelyremarked that, for as little as he knew of women, he had acted veryprudently in not marrying her himself three years before. She plainlyknew very little of her own mind, and, in spite of a deceptive manner, was as fickle and flighty as the rest of them. He had to congratulatehimself on an escape, he said, and would take a higher opinion of his ownwisdom in consequence. But at heart, he was reasonably displeased, mopeda good deal for a month or two, and fell away in flesh, to theastonishment of his serving-lads. 

It was perhaps a year after this marriage that Will was awakened late onenight by the sound of a horse galloping on the road, followed byprecipitate knocking at the inn-door. He opened his window and saw afarm servant, mounted and holding a led horse by the bridle, who told himto make what haste he could and go along with him; for Marjory was dying, and had sent urgently to fetch him to her bedside. Will was no horseman, and made so little speed upon the way that the poor young wife was verynear her end before he arrived. But they had some minutes' talk inprivate, and he was present and wept very bitterly while she breathed herlast. 

CHAPTER III. DEATH

Year after year went away into nothing, with great explosions andoutcries in the cities on the plain: red revolt springing up and beingsuppressed in blood, battle swaying hither and thither, patientastronomers in observatory towers picking out and christening new stars, plays being performed in lighted theatres, people being carried intohospital on stretchers, and all the usual turmoil and agitation of men'slives in crowded centres. Up in Will's valley only the winds and seasonsmade an epoch; the fish hung in the swift stream, the birds circledoverhead, the pine-tops rustled underneath the stars, the tall hillsstood over all; and Will went to and fro, minding his wayside inn, untilthe snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young and vigorous;and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat strong and steady inhis wrists. He carried a ruddy stain on either cheek, like a ripe apple;he stooped a little, but his step was still firm; and his sinewy handswere reached out to all men with a friendly pressure. His face wascovered with those wrinkles which are got in open air, and which rightlylooked at, are no more than a sort of permanent sunburning; such wrinklesheighten the stupidity of stupid faces; but to a person like Will, withhis clear eyes and smiling mouth, only give another charm by testifyingto a simple and easy life. His talk was full of wise sayings. He had ataste for other people; and other people had a taste for him. When thevalley was full of tourists in the season, there were merry nights inWill's arbour; and his views, which seemed whimsical to his neighbours, were often enough admired by learned people out of towns and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble old age, and grew daily better known; so thathis fame was heard of in the cities of the plain; and young men who hadbeen summer travellers spoke together in _cafes_ of Will o' the Mill andhis rough philosophy. Many and many an invitation, you may be sure, hehad; but nothing could tempt him from his upland valley. He would shakehis head and smile over his tobacco-pipe with a deal of meaning. 'Youcome too late, ' he would answer. 'I am a dead man now: I have lived anddied already. Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into mymouth; and now you do not even tempt me. But that is the object of longliving, that man should cease to care about life. ' And again: 'There isonly one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in thedinner, the sweets come last. ' Or once more: 'When I was a boy, I was abit puzzled, and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that wascurious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick tothat. '

He never showed any symptom of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm to thelast; but they say he grew less talkative towards the end, and wouldlisten to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic silence. Only, when he did speak, it was more to the point and more charged withold experience. He drank a bottle of wine gladly; above all, at sunseton the hill-top or quite late at night under the stars in the arbour. Thesight of something attractive and unatttainable seasoned his enjoyment, he would say; and he professed he had lived long enough to admire acandle all the more when he could compare it with a planet. 

One night, in his seventy-second year, he awoke in bed in such uneasinessof body and mind that he arose and dressed himself and went out tomeditate in the arbour. It was pitch dark, without a star; the river wasswollen, and the wet woods and meadows loaded the air with perfume. Ithad thundered during the day, and it promised more thunder for themorrow. A murky, stifling night for a man of seventy-two! Whether itwas the weather or the wakefulness, or some little touch of fever in hisold limbs, Will's mind was besieged by tumultuous and crying memories. His boyhood, the night with the fat young man, the death of his adoptedparents, the summer days with Marjory, and many of those smallcircumstances, which seem nothing to another, and are yet the very gistof a man's own life to himself--things seen, words heard, looksmisconstrued--arose from their forgotten corners and usurped hisattention. The dead themselves were with him, not merely taking part inthis thin show of memory that defiled before his brain, but revisitinghis bodily senses as they do in profound and vivid dreams. The fat youngman leaned his elbows on the table opposite; Marjory came and went withan apronful of flowers between the garden and the arbour; he could hearthe old parson knocking out his pipe or blowing his resonant nose. Thetide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed: he was sometimes half-asleepand drowned in his recollections of the past; and sometimes he was broadawake, wondering at himself. But about the middle of the night he wasstartled by the voice of the dead miller calling to him out of the houseas he used to do on the arrival of custom. The hallucination was soperfect that Will sprang from his seat and stood listening for thesummons to be repeated; and as he listened he became conscious of anothernoise besides the brawling of the river and the ringing in his feverishears. It was like the stir of horses and the creaking of harness, asthough a carriage with an impatient team had been brought up upon theroad before the courtyard gate. At such an hour, upon this rough anddangerous pass, the supposition was no better than absurd; and Willdismissed it from his mind, and resumed his seat upon the arbour chair;and sleep closed over him again like running water. He was once againawakened by the dead miller's call, thinner and more spectral thanbefore; and once again he heard the noise of an equipage upon the road. And so thrice and four times, the same dream, or the same fancy, presented itself to his senses: until at length, smiling to himself aswhen one humours a nervous child, he proceeded towards the gate to sethis uncertainty at rest. 

From the arbour to the gate was no great distance, and yet it took Willsome time; it seemed as if the dead thickened around him in the court, and crossed his path at every step. For, first, he was suddenlysurprised by an overpowering sweetness of heliotropes; it was as if hisgarden had been planted with this flower from end to end, and the hot, damp night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath. Now theheliotrope had been Marjory's favourite flower, and since her death notone of them had ever been planted in Will's ground. 

'I must be going crazy, ' he thought. 'Poor Marjory and her heliotropes!'

And with that he raised his eyes towards the window that had once beenhers. If he had been bewildered before, he was now almost terrified; forthere was a light in the room; the window was an orange oblong as ofyore; and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the nightwhen he stood and shouted to the stars in his perplexity. The illusiononly endured an instant; but it left him somewhat unmanned, rubbing hiseyes and staring at the outline of the house and the black night behindit. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if he must have stood therequite a long time, there came a renewal of the noises on the road: and heturned in time to meet a stranger, who was advancing to meet him acrossthe court. There was something like the outline of a great carriagediscernible on the road behind the stranger, and, above that, a few blackpine-tops, like so many plumes. 

'Master Will?' asked the new-comer, in brief military fashion. 

'That same, sir, ' answered Will. 'Can I do anything to serve you?'

'I have heard you much spoken of, Master Will, ' returned the other; 'muchspoken of, and well. And though I have both hands full of business, Iwish to drink a bottle of wine with you in your arbour. Before I go, Ishall introduce myself. '

Will led the way to the trellis, and got a lamp lighted and a bottleuncorked. He was not altogether unused to such complimentary interviews, and hoped little enough from this one, being schooled by manydisappointments. A sort of cloud had settled on his wits and preventedhim from remembering the strangeness of the hour. He moved like a personin his sleep; and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire and the bottlecame uncorked with the facility of thought. Still, he had some curiosityabout the appearance of his visitor, and tried in vain to turn the lightinto his face; either he handled the lamp clumsily, or there was adimness over his eyes; but he could make out little more than a shadow attable with him. He stared and stared at this shadow, as he wiped out theglasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the heart. The silenceweighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now, not even the river, butthe drumming of his own arteries in his ears. 

'Here's to you, ' said the stranger, roughly. 

'Here is my service, sir, ' replied Will, sipping his wine, which somehowtasted oddly. 

'I understand you are a very positive fellow, ' pursued the stranger. 

Will made answer with a smile of some satisfaction and a little nod. 

'So am I, ' continued the other; 'and it is the delight of my heart totramp on people's corns. I will have nobody positive but myself; notone. I have crossed the whims, in my time, of kings and generals andgreat artists. And what would you say, ' he went on, 'if I had come uphere on purpose to cross yours?'

Will had it on his tongue to make a sharp rejoinder; but the politenessof an old innkeeper prevailed; and he held his peace and made answer witha civil gesture of the hand. 

'I have, ' said the stranger. 'And if I did not hold you in a particularesteem, I should make no words about the matter. It appears you prideyourself on staying where you are. You mean to stick by your inn. Now Imean you shall come for a turn with me in my barouche; and before thisbottle's empty, so you shall. '

'That would be an odd thing, to be sure, ' replied Will, with a chuckle. 'Why, sir, I have grown here like an old oak-tree; the Devil himselfcould hardly root me up: and for all I perceive you are a veryentertaining old gentleman, I would wager you another bottle you loseyour pains with me. '

The dimness of Will's eyesight had been increasing all this while; but hewas somehow conscious of a sharp and chilling scrutiny which irritatedand yet overmastered him. 

'You need not think, ' he broke out suddenly, in an explosive, febrilemanner that startled and alarmed himself, 'that I am a stay-at-home, because I fear anything under God. God knows I am tired enough of itall; and when the time comes for a longer journey than ever you dream of, I reckon I shall find myself prepared. '

The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away from him. He lookeddown for a little, and then, leaning over the table, tapped Will threetimes upon the forearm with a single finger. 'The time has come!' hesaid solemnly. 

An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched. The tones of his voicewere dull and startling, and echoed strangely in Will's heart. 

'I beg your pardon, ' he said, with some discomposure. 'What do youmean?'

'Look at me, and you will find your eyesight swim. Raise your hand; itis dead-heavy. This is your last bottle of wine, Master Will, and yourlast night upon the earth. '

'You are a doctor?' quavered Will. 

'The best that ever was, ' replied the other; 'for I cure both mind andbody with the same prescription. I take away all plain and I forgive allsins; and where my patients have gone wrong in life, I smooth out allcomplications and set them free again upon their feet. '

'I have no need of you, ' said Will. 

'A time comes for all men, Master Will, ' replied the doctor, 'when thehelm is taken out of their hands. For you, because you were prudent andquiet, it has been long of coming, and you have had long to disciplineyourself for its reception. You have seen what is to be seen about yourmill; you have sat close all your days like a hare in its form; but nowthat is at an end; and, ' added the doctor, getting on his feet, 'you mustarise and come with me. '

'You are a strange physician, ' said Will, looking steadfastly upon hisguest. 

'I am a natural law, ' he replied, 'and people call me Death. '

'Why did you not tell me so at first?' cried Will. 'I have been waitingfor you these many years. Give me your hand, and welcome. '

'Lean upon my arm, ' said the stranger, 'for already your strength abates. Lean on me as heavily as you need; for though I am old, I am very strong. It is but three steps to my carriage, and there all your trouble ends. Why, Will, ' he added, 'I have been yearning for you as if you were my ownson; and of all the men that ever I came for in my long days, I have comefor you most gladly. I am caustic, and sometimes offend people at firstsight; but I am a good friend at heart to such as you. '

'Since Marjory was taken, ' returned Will, 'I declare before God you werethe only friend I had to look for. ' So the pair went arm-in-arm acrossthe courtyard. 

One of the servants awoke about this time and heard the noise of horsespawing before he dropped asleep again; all down the valley that nightthere was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind descending towards theplain; and when the world rose next morning, sure enough Will o' the Millhad gone at last upon his travels. 

MARKHEIM

'Yes, ' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Somecustomers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superiorknowledge. Some are dishonest, ' and here he held up the candle, so thatthe light fell strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case, ' he continued, 'I profit by my virtue. '

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes hadnot yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, heblinked painfully and looked aside. 

The dealer chuckled. 'You come to me on Christmas Day, ' he resumed, 'when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and makea point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; youwill have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing mybooks; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remarkin you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask noawkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he hasto pay for it. ' The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to hisusual business voice, though still with a note of irony, 'You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of theobject?' he continued. 'Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkablecollector, sir!'

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head withevery mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinitepity, and a touch of horror. 

'This time, ' said he, 'you are in error. I have not come to sell, but tobuy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to thewainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the StockExchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errandto-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady, ' hecontinued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he hadprepared; 'and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing youupon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I mustproduce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, arich marriage is not a thing to be neglected. '

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh thisstatement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curiouslumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a nearthoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence. 

'Well, sir, ' said the dealer, 'be it so. You are an old customer afterall; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far beit from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now, ' hewent on, 'this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from agood collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of mycustomer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and soleheir of a remarkable collector. '

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stoopedto take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock hadpassed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap ofmany tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that nowreceived the glass. 

'A glass, ' he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it moreclearly. 'A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?'

'And why not?' cried the dealer. 'Why not a glass?'

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. 'You askme why not?' he said. 'Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Doyou like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man. '

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confrontedhim with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. 'Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favoured, ' saidhe. 

'I ask you, ' said Markheim, 'for a Christmas present, and you give methis--this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies--thishand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tellme. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?'

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheimdid not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like aneager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth. 

'What are you driving at?' the dealer asked. 

'Not charitable?' returned the other, gloomily. Not charitable; notpious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safeto keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?'

'I will tell you what it is, ' began the dealer, with some sharpness, andthen broke off again into a chuckle. 'But I see this is a love match ofyours, and you have been drinking the lady's health. '

'Ah!' cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. 'Ah, have you been inlove? Tell me about that. '

'I, ' cried the dealer. 'I in love! I never had the time, nor have I thetime to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?'

'Where is the hurry?' returned Markheim. 'It is very pleasant to standhere talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurryaway from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. Weshould rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at acliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff amile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature ofhumanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of eachother: why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?'

'I have just one word to say to you, ' said the dealer. 'Either make yourpurchase, or walk out of my shop!'

'True true, ' said Markheim. 'Enough, fooling. To business. Show mesomething else. '

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon theshelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheimmoved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; hedrew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many differentemotions were depicted together on his face--terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of hisupper lip, his teeth looked out. 

'This, perhaps, may suit, ' observed the dealer: and then, as he began tore-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in aheap. 

Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slowas was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. Allthese told out the seconds in an intricate, chorus of tickings. Then thepassage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in uponthese smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of hissurroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on thecounter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by thatinconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustleand kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots ofdarkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of theportraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with along slit of daylight like a pointing finger. 

From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body ofhis victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small andstrangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in thatungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim hadfeared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, thisbundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or directthe miracle of locomotion--there it must lie till it was found. Found!ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ringover England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead ornot, this was still the enemy. 'Time was that when the brains were out, 'he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that thedeed was accomplished--time, which had closed for the victim, had becomeinstant and momentous for the slayer. 

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, withevery variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a cathedralturret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz-theclocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon. 

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggeredhim. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chancereflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Veniceor Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an armyof spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his ownsteps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, ashe continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickeningiteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen amore quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not haveused a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound andgagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, andkilled the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise:poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what wasunchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of theirrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, bruteterrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the moreremote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable wouldfall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish;or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, andthe black coffin. 

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like abesieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour ofthe struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge theircuriosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined themsitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned tospend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and nowstartingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family partiesstruck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger:every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, pryingand hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes itseemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tallBohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bignessof the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, witha swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeareda source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and hewould step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at easein his own house. 

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while oneportion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on thebrink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold onhis credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside hiswindow, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on thepavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through thebrick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched theservant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, 'out for the day'written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; andyet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir ofdelicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of somepresence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house hisimagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet hadeyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet againbehold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred. 

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door whichstill seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight smalland dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down tothe ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the thresholdof the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did therenot hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beatwith a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts andrailleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he layquite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows andshoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which wouldonce have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become anempty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from hisknocking, and departed. 

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forthfrom this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of Londonmultitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safetyand apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come: at any momentanother might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, andyet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys. 

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was stilllingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. Thehuman character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet thething repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, hefeared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body bythe shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light andsupple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddestpostures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale aswax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, forMarkheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, uponthe instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village: a gray day, apiping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the boomingof drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a boothand a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured:Brown-rigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest;Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famouscrimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again thatlittle boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense ofphysical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by thethumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon hismemory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breathof nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantlyresist and conquer. 

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from theseconsiderations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending hismind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a whileago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouthhad spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; andnow, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as thehorologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. Sohe reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness;the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for onewho had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make theworld a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was nowdead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor. 

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found thekeys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it hadbegun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof hadbanished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the housewere haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingledwith the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, heseemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of anotherfoot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely onthe threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, anddrew back the door. 

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against theyellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rainthrough all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to bedistinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the treadof regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in thecounting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared tomingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing ofthe water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him tothe verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt bypresences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, heheard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a greateffort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followedstealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly hewould possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever freshattention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held theoutposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turnedcontinually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from theirorbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded aswith the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty stepsto the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies. 

On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like threeambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could neveragain, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men'sobserving eyes, he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried amongbedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought hewondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fearthey were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, atleast, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callousand immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence ofhis crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitions terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilfulillegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeatedtyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of theirsuccession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when thewinter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befallMarkheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doingslike those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield underhis foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and therewere soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, thehouse should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or thehouse next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from allsides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might becalled the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himselfhe was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were hisexcuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he feltsure of justice. 

When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruousfurniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself atvarious angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed andunframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheratonsideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestryhangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune thelower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him fromthe neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before thecabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, forthere were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there mightbe nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closenessof the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw thedoor--even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besiegedcommander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But intruth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded naturaland pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano werewakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took upthe air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! Howfresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as hesorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas andimages; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; childrenafield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadenceof the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little torecall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the TenCommandments in the chancel. 

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stairslowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and thelock clicked, and the door opened. 

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether thedead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or somechance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. Butwhen a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, lookedat him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and thenwithdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose fromhis control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned. 

'Did you call me?' he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered theroom and closed the door behind him. 

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was afilm upon his sight, but the outlines of the new comer seemed to changeand waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of theshop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought hebore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of theearth and not of God. 

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stoodlooking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: 'You are looking forthe money, I believe?' it was in the tones of everyday politeness. 

Markheim made no answer. 

'I should warn you, ' resumed the other, 'that the maid has left hersweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim befound in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences. '

'You know me?' cried the murderer. 

The visitor smiled. 'You have long been a favourite of mine, ' he said;'and I have long observed and often sought to help you. '

'What are you?' cried Markheim: 'the devil?'

'What I may be, ' returned the other, 'cannot affect the service I proposeto render you. '

'It can, ' cried Markheim; 'it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not byyou! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!'

'I know you, ' replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity orrather firmness. 'I know you to the soul. '

'Know me!' cried Markheim. 'Who can do so? My life is but a travestyand slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; allmen are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. Yousee each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized andmuffled in a cloak. If they had their own control--if you could seetheir faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out forheroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; myexcuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclosemyself. '

'To me?' inquired the visitant. 

'To you before all, ' returned the murderer. 'I supposed you wereintelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of theheart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it;my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants havedragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the giants ofcircumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not lookwithin? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you notsee within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by anywilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read mefor a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwillingsinner?'

'All this is very feelingly expressed, ' was the reply, 'but it regards menot. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care notin the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as youare but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servantdelays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on thehoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as ifthe gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmasstreets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where tofind the money?'

'For what price?' asked Markheim. 

'I offer you the service for a Christmas gift, ' returned the other. 

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. 'No, ' said he, 'I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying ofthirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I shouldfind the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothingto commit myself to evil. '

'I have no objection to a death-bed repentance, ' observed the visitant. 

'Because you disbelieve their efficacy!' Markheim cried. 

'I do not say so, ' returned the other; 'but I look on these things from adifferent side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man haslived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or tosow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliancewith desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can addbut one act of service--to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build upin confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I amnot so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in lifeas you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbowsat the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to bedrawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it eveneasy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make atruckling peace with God. I came but now from such a deathbed, and theroom was full of sincere mourners, listening to the man's last words: andwhen I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint againstmercy, I found it smiling with hope. '

'And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?' asked Markheim. 'Do youthink I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Isthis, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me withred hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of murderindeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?'

'Murder is to me no special category, ' replied the other. 'All sins aremurder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starvingmariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine andfeeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of theiracting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on aquestion of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such amurderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtuesalso; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythesfor the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not inaction but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtlingcataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of therarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, butbecause you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape. '

'I will lay my heart open to you, ' answered Markheim. 'This crime onwhich you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned manylessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have beendriven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in thesetemptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches--both the power anda fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in theworld; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; somethingof what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the churchorgan, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life; I have wandered afew years, but now I see once more my city of destination. '

'You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?' remarked thevisitor; 'and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost somethousands?'

'Ah, ' said Markheim, 'but this time I have a sure thing. '

'This time, again, you will lose, ' replied the visitor quietly. 

'Ah, but I keep back the half!' cried Markheim. 

'That also you will lose, ' said the other. 

The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. 'Well, then, what matter?' heexclaimed. 'Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall onepart of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override thebetter? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do notlove the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime asmurder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knowstheir trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, Ilove honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth butI love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and myvirtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Notso; good, also, is a spring of acts. '

But the visitant raised his finger. 'For six-and-thirty years that youhave been in this world, ' said be, 'through many changes of fortune andvarieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years agoyou would have started at a theft. Three years back you would haveblenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any crueltyor meanness, from which you still recoil?--five years from now I shalldetect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor cananything but death avail to stop you. '

'It is true, ' Markheim said huskily, 'I have in some degree complied withevil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise ofliving, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings. '

'I will propound to you one simple question, ' said the other; 'and as youanswer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in manythings more lax; possibly you do right to be so--and at any account, itis the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any oneparticular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your ownconduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?'

'In any one?' repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. 'No, 'he added, with despair, 'in none! I have gone down in all. '

'Then, ' said the visitor, 'content yourself with what you are, for youwill never change; and the words of your part on this stage areirrevocably written down. '

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor whofirst broke the silence. 'That being so, ' he said, 'shall I show you themoney?'

'And grace?' cried Markheim. 

'Have you not tried it?' returned the other. 'Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not yourvoice the loudest in the hymn?'

'It is true, ' said Markheim; 'and I see clearly what remains for me byway of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes areopened, and I behold myself at last for what I am. '

At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which hehad been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour. 

'The maid!' he cried. 'She has returned, as I forewarned you, and thereis now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather seriouscountenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Oncethe girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has alreadyrid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the whole night, if needful--toransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This ishelp that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!' he cried; 'up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and act!'

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. 'If I be condemned to evilacts, ' he said, 'there is still one door of freedom open--I can ceasefrom action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though Ibe, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My loveof good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have stillmy hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, youshall see that I can draw both energy and courage. '

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovelychange: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even asthey brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause towatch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and wentdownstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberlybefore him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewedit, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiethaven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. Andthen the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour. 

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile. 

'You had better go for the police, ' said he: 'I have killed your master. '

THRAWN JANET

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish ofBalweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadfulto his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relativeor servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under theHanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eyewas wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in privateadmonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eyepierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Manyyoung persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of theHoly Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon onlst Peter, v. And 8th, 'The devil as a roaring lion, ' on the Sunday afterevery seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himselfupon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terrorof his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where itstood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shawoverhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorishhilltops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valuedthemselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachanalehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late bythat uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towardsthe kirk-town of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, abare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river andthe road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, orpassage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other bythe tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was thisstrip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balwearyso infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers; andwhen he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more daringschoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to 'follow my leader' acrossthat legendary spot. 

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God ofspotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder andsubject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance orbusiness into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of thepeople of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had markedthe first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who werebetter informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of thatparticular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warminto courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of theminister's strange looks and solitary life. 

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the end o' July there cam' a spell o' weather, the like o't neverwas in that country side; it was lown an' het an' heartless; the herdscouldnae win up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to play; an'yet it was gousty too, wi' claps o' het wund that rumm'led in the glens, and bits o' shouers that slockened naething. We aye thocht it but tothun'er on the morn; but the morn cam, an' the morn's morning, and it wasaye the same uncanny weather, sair on folks and bestial. Of a' that werethe waur, nane suffered like Mr. Soulis; he could neither sleep nor eat, he tauld his elders; an' when he wasnae writin' at his weary book, he wadbe stravaguin' ower a' the countryside like a man possessed, when a' bodyelse was blythe to keep caller ben the house. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary, the nicht o'the seeventeenth of August, seventeen hun'er' an twal'. It had been hetafore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was hetter than ever. The sungaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no astar, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han' afore your face, andeven the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin' fortheir breath. Wi' a' that he had upon his mind, it was gey and unlikelyMr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he tummled; the gude, callerbed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept, and whiles hewaukened; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, and whiles a tyke yowlin' upthe muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he heard boglesclaverin' in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the room. Hebehoved, he judged, to be sick; an' sick he was--little he jaloosed thesickness. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OLALLA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What did you hear?' I asked. 

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

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

'What is the matter?' I asked. 

'O, I am afraid, ' he replied. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to theportrait haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change ofattitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost. It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. Hecertainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engageby many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before myfire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordlesssongs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with anaffectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me anembarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capableof flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a wordof reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hintof inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange placeand surrounded by string people; but at the shadow of a question, heshrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was that, for a fraction ofa second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in theframe. But these humours were swift to pass; and the resemblance diedalong with them. 

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

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

At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad fromhis good resolutions, and, way-laying him at the gate, easily pursuadedhim to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which Iled him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling and alive with the humof insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh character, mounting upto heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an energy and graceof movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran round me in mereglee; he would stop, and look and listen, and seem to drink in the worldlike a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring into a tree with onebound, and hang and gambol there like one at home. Little as he said tome, and that of not much import, I have rarely enjoyed more stirringcompany; the sight of his delight was a continual feast; the speed andaccuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart; and I might have beenso thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of these wants, had not chanceprepared a very rude conclusion to my pleasure. By some swiftness ordexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top. He was then someway ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the ground and crouch there, crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The sound stirred my sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, thecry of the squirrel knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen much ofthe cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but what I now beheldstruck me into a passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, pluckedthe poor brute out of his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then Iturned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of myindignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and atlength, pointing toward the residencia, bade him begone and leave me, forI chose to walk with men, not with vermin. He fell upon his knees, and, the words coming to him with more cleanness than usual, poured out astream of the most touching supplications, begging me in mercy to forgivehim, to forget what he had done, to look to the future. 'O, I try sohard, ' he said. 'O, commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he willnever be a brute again!' Thereupon, much more affected than I cared toshow, I suffered myself to be persuaded, and at last shook hands with himand made it up. But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury;speaking of the poor thing's beauty, telling him what pains it hadsuffered, and how base a thing was the abuse of strength. 'See, Felipe, 'said I, 'you are strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless asthat poor thing of the trees. Give me your hand in mine. You cannotremove it. Now suppose that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasurein pain. I only tighten my hold, and see how you suffer. ' He screamedaloud, his face stricken ashy and dotted with needle points of sweat; andwhen I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moanedover it like a baby. But he took the lesson in good part; and whetherfrom that, or from what I had said to him, or the higher notion he nowhad of my bodily strength, his original affection was changed into a dog-like, adoring fidelity. 

Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crownof a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; onlyfrom the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen between twopeaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air inthese altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated there, and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the hilltops; ahoarse, and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round; and onecould there study all the ruder and more ancient characters of nature insomething of their pristine force. I delighted from the first in thevigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less in the antique anddilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This was a large oblong, flanked attwo opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one of which commandedthe door, while both were loopholed for musketry. The lower storey was, besides, naked of windows, so that the building, if garrisoned, could notbe carried without artillery. It enclosed an open court planted withpomegranate trees. From this a broad flight of marble stairs ascended toan open gallery, running all round and resting, towards the court, onslender pillars. Thence again, several enclosed stairs led to the upperstoreys of the house, which were thus broken up into distinct divisions. The windows, both within and without, were closely shuttered; some of thestone-work in the upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, hadbeen wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in thesemountains; and the whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, andstanding out above a grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden anddiscoloured with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the legend. Thecourt, in particular, seemed the very home of slumber. A hoarse cooingof doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when theyblew outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiledthe red bloom of the pomegranates; shuttered windows and the closed doorsof numerous cellars, and the vacant, arches of the gallery, enclosed it;and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides, andparaded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor. At the groundlevel there was, however, a certain pillared recess, which bore the marksof human habitation. Though it was open in front upon the court, it wasyet provided with a chimney, where a wood fire would he always prettilyblazing; and the tile floor was littered with the skins of animals. 

It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one ofthe skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar. It washer dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightlycoloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of thesame relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it washer beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back--watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes--and wearing at the same time anexpression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed aperfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyonda statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckeredwith suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk atrifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when Ireturned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was halfsurprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, followingthe sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivialsalutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the samedeep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had alreadybaffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answeredrather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning withprecision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They wereunusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at thatmoment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected mewas not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) thesingular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid Ihave never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went onmy way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet, when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again remindedof the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older andfuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides, was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attractedme in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a moral blankexpressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness, not so muchspeaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature as upon thewhole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set hissignature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of onesmiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of arace. 

From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find theSenora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug beforethe fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round ofthe stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right acrossmy path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least sparkof energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing hercopious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and brokenhoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself. These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere quiescence. She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had beenwitticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like theconversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrowrange of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, theyhad a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entirecontentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, andnow of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air ofthe court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in theirswift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she wouldsometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze ofsatisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded onherself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at firstannoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, untilat last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in theday, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knewof what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; herbeauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I began to find a kindof transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable goodnature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned; sheenjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation mayenjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when Icame, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on somefoolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some moreintimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I set withinreach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her handsand patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her accustomedattitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the caress; andwhen I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no answerablesentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act, and I blamedmyself for my own more uneasy consciousness. 

The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the motherconfirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood hadbeen impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be acommon error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, wasto be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired inshapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharplyfrom the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me fromthe portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom) wasdegenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had requiredthe potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista toraise, what approached hebetude in the mother, into the active oddity ofthe son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings, inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious. Of the mother Ihad no thoughts but those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are aptignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a partisan in the enmitywhich I perceived to smoulder between them. True, it seemed mostly onthe mother's part. She would sometimes draw in her breath as he camenear, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if with horroror fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were much upon the surface andreadily shared; and this latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept mewondering on what grounds it rested, and whether the son was certainly infault. 

I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a highand harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malariouslowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom itblew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; theirlegs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one handupon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the gulliesof the hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing andwhistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally depressing to themind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of awaterfall, so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew. But higher upon the mountain, it was probably of a more variablestrength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a far-offwailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the highshelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse, a tower ofdust, like the smoke of in explosion. 

I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension anddepression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the dayproceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth uponmy customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the stormhad soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I returned tothe residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty with dust. Thecourt had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of sun fled overit; now and then the wind swooped down upon the pomegranates, andscattered the blossoms, and set the window shutters clapping on the wall. In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro with a flushed countenanceand bright eyes; I thought, too, she was speaking to herself, like one inanger. But when I addressed her with my customary salutation, she onlyreplied by a sharp gesture and continued her walk. The weather haddistempered even this impassive creature; and as I went on upstairs I wasthe less ashamed of my own discomposure. 

All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint ofreading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Nightfell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for somesociety, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue ofthe first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. Thewood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which thedraught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and shakenbrightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall withdisconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms, throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disorderedmovements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; butthere was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when Ihad looked on awhile in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned tailas I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber. 

By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterlygone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I shouldhave kept him (even by force had that been necessary) to take off theedge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind hadexercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that thenight had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that reactedon my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors andsudden harkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a dish, Ifairly leaped out of my seat. 

'I think we are all mad to-day, ' said I, affecting to laugh. 

'It is the black wind, ' he replied dolefully. 'You feel as if you mustdo something, and you don't know what it is. '

I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimesa strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body. 'And your mother, too, ' said I; 'she seems to feel this weather much. Doyou not fear she may be unwell?'

He stared at me a little, and then said, 'No, ' almost defiantly; and thenext moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on thewind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. 'Whocan be well?' he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, forI was disturbed enough myself. 

I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness, but thepoisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar, would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves andsenses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wakeagain; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But itmust have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by anoutbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposingI had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries ofpain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and discordantthat they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living thing, somelunatic or some wild animal, was being foully tortured. The thought ofFelipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to the door, butit had been locked from the outside; and I might shake it as I pleased, Iwas a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued. Now they would dwindledown into a moaning that seemed to be articulate, and at these times Imade sure they must be human; and again they would break forth and fillthe house with ravings worthy of hell. I stood at the door and gave earto them, till at, last they died away. Long after that, I still lingeredand still continued to hear them mingle in fancy with the storming of thewind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it was with a deadly sicknessand a blackness of horror on my heart. 

It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? Whathad passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shockingcries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries werescarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, couldthus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thusturning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I hadnot yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more probablethan that the daughter of the Senora, and the sister of Felipe, should beherself insane? Or, what more likely than that these ignorant and half-witted people should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by violence?Here was a solution; and yet when I called to mind the cries (which Inever did without a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether insufficient:not even cruelty could wring such cries from madness. But of one thing Iwas sure: I could not live in a house where such a thing was halfconceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if necessary, interfere. 

The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothingto remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedsidewith obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court, the Senora wassunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued fromthe gateway, I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling, theheavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and themountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A shortwalk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumbthis mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipepass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to theresidencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged inslumber; I stood awhile and marked her, but she did not stir; even if mydesign were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian; andturning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of thehouse. 

All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious andfaded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full chargeof daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Timehad breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spiderswung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants hadtheir crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big andfoul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, hadset up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about therooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carvedchair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify ofman's bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set with theportraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in thehouse of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering. Manyof the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of nobleoffices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases most of them byfamous hands. But it was not so much these evidences of greatness thattook hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the presentdepopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the parable offamily life that I read in this succession of fair faces and shapelybodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continuedrace, the creation and recreation, the weaving and changing and handingdown of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of oneascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are wondersdulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look, in thecommon features and common bearing, of all these painted generations onthe walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked me in theface. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way, I stood andread my own features a long while, tracing out on either hand thefilaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my family. 

At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of achamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportionsand faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured. Theembers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a chairhad been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was ascetic tothe degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor and wallswere naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in someconfusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The sightof books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and I beganwith a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go from oneto another and hastily inspect their character. They were of all sorts, devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great age and inthe Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of constant study;others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in petulance ordisapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber, I espiedsome papers written upon with pencil on a table near the window. Anunthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a copy of verses, very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may rendersomewhat thus--

 Pleasure approached with pain and shame, Grief with a wreath of lilies came. Pleasure showed the lovely sun; Jesu dear, how sweet it shone! Grief with her worn hand pointed on, Jesu dear, to thee!

Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, Ibeat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor hismother could have read the books nor written these rough but feelingverses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the roomof the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharplypunished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretlypushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, andthe fear that she might somehow come to hear of it, oppressed me likeguilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to oneof whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien, wasted withmaceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, anddwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives; andas I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into thebright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolentwoman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips asin the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene withthe cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the daughterdwelt. 

That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter thegates of the residencia. The revelation of the daughter's character hadstruck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the nightbefore; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I descended, then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among the woods, posted myselfby the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he appeared I steppedforth and introduced myself as the lodger of the residencia. He had avery strong, honest countenance, on which it was easy to read the mingledemotions with which he regarded me, as a foreigner, a heretic, and yetone who had been wounded for the good cause. Of the family at theresidencia he spoke with reserve, and yet with respect. I mentioned thatI had not yet seen the daughter, whereupon he remarked that that was asit should be, and looked at me a little askance. Lastly, I plucked upcourage to refer to the cries that had disturbed me in the night. Heheard me out in silence, and then stopped and partly turned about, asthough to mark beyond doubt that he was dismissing me. 

'Do you take tobacco powder?' said he, offering his snuff-box; and then, when I had refused, 'I am an old man, ' he added, 'and I may be allowed toremind you that you are a guest. '

'I have, then, your authority, ' I returned, firmly enough, although Iflushed at the implied reproof, 'to let things take their course, and notto interfere?'

He said 'yes, ' and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me whereI was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at rest, andhe had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more dismissedthe recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding on mysaintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite forget that I hadbeen locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper Iattacked him warily on both points of interest. 

'I never see your sister, ' said I casually. 

'Oh, no, ' said he; 'she is a good, good girl, ' and his mind instantlyveered to something else. 

'Your sister is pious, I suppose?' I asked in the next pause. 

'Oh!' he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, 'a saint; it isshe that keeps me up. '

'You are very fortunate, ' said I, 'for the most of us, I am afraid, andmyself among the number, are better at going down. '

'Senor, ' said Felipe earnestly, 'I would not say that. You should nottempt your angel. If one goes down, where is he to stop?'

'Why, Felipe, ' said I, 'I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may saya good one; but I suppose that is your sister's doing?'

He nodded at me with round eyes. 

'Well, then, ' I continued, 'she has doubtless reproved you for your sinof cruelty?'

'Twelve times!' he cried; for this was the phrase by which the oddcreature expressed the sense of frequency. 'And I told her you had doneso--I remembered that, ' he added proudly--'and she was pleased. '

'Then, Felipe, ' said I, 'what were those cries that I heard last night?for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering. '

'The wind, ' returned Felipe, looking in the fire. 

I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he smiledwith a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my resolve. But Itrod the weakness down. 'The wind, ' I repeated; 'and yet I think it wasthis hand, ' holding it up, 'that had first locked me in. ' The lad shookvisibly, but answered never a word. 'Well, ' said I, 'I am a stranger anda guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your affairs;in these you shall take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to beexcellent. But in so far as concerns my own I will be no man's prisoner, and I demand that key. ' Half an hour later my door was suddenly thrownopen, and the key tossed ringing on the floor. 

A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point ofnoon. The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of therecess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house wasunder a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentlewind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among thepomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in thestillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the courtand up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round, when adoor opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla. Surprisetransfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the deepshadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon mine andclung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands; and themoments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, weresacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how long it was beforeI awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into theupper stair. She did not move, but followed me with her great, thirstingeyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she paled andfaded. 

In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not thinkwhat change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it shouldthus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her--Olalla! Andthe stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azureanswered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; andin her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richestcolours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom he had made activeas a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes he had lighted thetorches of the soul. The thrill of her young life, strung like a wildanimal's, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out fromher eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart and sprang to my lipsin singing. She passed through my veins: she was one with me. 

I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out inits ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold andsorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her atfirst sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to myexperience. What then was to follow? She was the child of an afflictedhouse, the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even inher beauty. She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as anarrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background ofthe world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the nameof brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that immovableand lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper nowrecurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could not marry, what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single andlong glance which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weaknessequal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the coldnorthern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was aknowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than I could find couragefor; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection. 

As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It hadfallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes ofpaint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type inthat declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. Iremembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, acreature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, andI marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty Ihad seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often drawn towomen, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that Idesired and had not dared to imagine was united. 

I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed forher, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned, aboutmy usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks once moremet and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near to her;but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a magnet, something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow and passby; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me with hernoble eyes. 

I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory itseemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something ofher mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which Iknow she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with acunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodicestood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of thepoverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brownbosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight inlife and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hungupon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness, lightsof poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that were abovethe earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul, was more thanworthy of that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable flower towither unseen on these rough mountains? Should I despise the great giftoffered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a soul immured;should I not burst its prison? All side considerations fell off from me;were she the child of Herod I swore I should make her mine; and that veryevening I set myself, with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace, tocaptivate the brother. Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned up the better qualitiesof that imperfect soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and hisvery likeness to Olalla, while it annoyed, yet softened me. 

A third day passed in vain--an empty desert of hours. I would not lose achance, and loitered all afternoon in the court where (to give myself acountenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows it waswith a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and evenas for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing warmthof toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her, shewould doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again withoutembarrassment; and this composure staggered me. And again, as I markedher make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and lingering onthe bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder at this depthof passive sensuality. She lived in her body; and her consciousness wasall sunk into and disseminated through her members, where it luxuriouslydwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her eyes. Each time sheturned on me these great beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to theday, but closed against human inquiry--each time I had occasion toobserve the lively changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted ina breath--I know not what it was came over me, I can find no name for themingled feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and distaste that jarredalong my nerves. I tried her on a variety of subjects, equally in vain;and at last led the talk to her daughter. But even there she provedindifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was herhighest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higherthought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned inmy face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothingto say. 'People speak much, very much, ' she added, looking at me withexpanded pupils; and then again yawned and again showed me a mouth thatwas as dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and, leaving her toher repose, went up into my own chamber to sit by the open window, looking on the hills and not beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deepdreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a voice that I had neverheard. 

I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation thatseemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and foot, and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. Itshould lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living bythe eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit, and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of itwith wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown andlovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure. Yet whenI did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me andat once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like achildish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near tothe margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but hereyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last, whenI was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me; if Iadvanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that wassane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thoughtof such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life in our eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then, with agreat effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a suddenbitterness of disappointment, I turned and went away in the same silence. 

What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she alsosilent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless andinevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken, we were wholly strangers: and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of agiant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me withimpatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew nothing butmy bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth; thelaws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my arms; and Idrew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be jealous formyself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began tofall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp must beher mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintlymonitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a manwith whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of pity, allother thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and consoleand reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love was returned on myside, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was not unworthy. 

The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blueover-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in thetrees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air withdelicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. Myheart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother. Isat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound theplateau to the north. Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of astream, where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even touchingto behold the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of thedelight and glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with awhimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemedto grow in strength and stature, like a Samson. 

And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared outof a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood upand waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fireand lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energywas in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would haverun, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept hereyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it waswithout one glance that she addressed me. At the first note of her voiceI started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test ofmy love. And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping andincomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though deeper thanusual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in arich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the redthreads were mingled with the brown among her tresses. It was not only avoice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her. Andyet her words immediately plunged me back upon despair. 

'You will go away, ' she said, 'to-day. '

Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of aweight, or as if a spell had been dissolved. I know not in what words Ianswered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the wholeardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her, slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear mycountry, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side. Andthen, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, Icomforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to share andlighten. 'Nature, ' I told her, 'was the voice of God, which men disobeyat peril; and if we were thus humbly drawn together, ay, even as by amiracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our souls; we must bemade, ' I said--'made for one another. We should be mad rebels, ' I criedout--'mad rebels against God, not to obey this instinct. '

She shook her head. 'You will go to-day, ' she repeated, and then with agesture, and in a sudden, sharp note--'no, not to-day, ' she cried, 'to-morrow!'

But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. Istretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me andclung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as ofa blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next momentshe had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled with thespeed of a deer among the cork-trees. 

I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards theresidencia, waltzing upon air. She sent me away, and yet I had but tocall upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses ofgirls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not exempted. Go? Not I, Olalla--O, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang near by;and in that season, birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. Andonce more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stablemountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in theshadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on thelineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struckupon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; theearth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woodssmouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight runthrough the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, andsavage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature'ssecrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared aliveand friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strungme up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling ofthe soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Loveburned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, Ipitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me inwith dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God uponthe other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocenceand to the unbridled forces of the earth. 

My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, andthe sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, allsloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with apassive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour fellaway like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding suchshaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me withher unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of therealm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for thefirst time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should be so muchdisquieted. 

On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in thenorth room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla'shand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, 'Ifyou have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a creaturesorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for the sake ofHim who died, I supplicate that you shall go. ' I looked at this awhilein mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and horror oflife; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and I began toshake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my lifeunmanned me like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not myhappiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not lose her. Isaid so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a dream, I movedto the window, put forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust itthrough the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and with aninstantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on thelittle leaping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty roomthere was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I requiredassistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might bemy helper, and I turned and went down stairs, still keeping my thumb uponthe wound. 

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself tothe recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozingclose before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her. 

'Pardon me, ' said I, 'if I disturb you, but I must apply to you forhelp. '

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very wordsI thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils andseemed to come suddenly and fully alive. 

'I have cut myself, ' I said, 'and rather badly. See!' And I held out mytwo hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping. 

Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemedto fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yetinscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at herdisturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by thehand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten meto the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and themonstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beather back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries, criesthat I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of the highwind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbingwith the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the abhorrentstrangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound, pinned downhis mother on the floor. 

A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I wasincapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon thefloor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she strove toreach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on myface, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry meupstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then Isaw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening tothe savage cries that shook the residencia. And then, swift and light asa thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in herbosom, moaning and mourning over it with dove-like sounds. They were notwords that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there, a thoughtstung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a thought, like aworm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love. Yes, they werebeautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness; but wastheir beauty human?

All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless femalething, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp, resounded through thehouse, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were thedeath-cry of my love; my love was murdered; was not only dead, but anoffence to me; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it stillswelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at herlooks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt uponOlalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through thewhole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very foundationsand story of our love--though it appalled, though it shocked and sickenedme, was yet not of power to break the knot of my infatuation. 

When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which Iknew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him--I know notwhat. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling bymy bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. Sothen, for these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently perused thestory in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw hereyes darken and brighter, and still speak no language but that of anunfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the robe, the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the growingdarkness of the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted; but even thenthe touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked with me. To liethus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, is toreawake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I reasoned withmyself; and I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold toaccept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious sentimentsurvived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now, even asbefore, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned to her? Late onin the night some strength revived in me, and I spoke:--

'Olalla, ' I said, 'nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I loveyou. '

She knelt down awhile and prayed, and I devoutly respected her devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the threewindows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw herindistinctly. When she rearose she made the sign of the cross. 

'It is for me to speak, ' she said, 'and for you to listen. I know; youcan but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this place. Ibegged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or ifnot, O let me think so!'

'I love you, ' I said. 

'And yet you have lived in the world, ' she said; after a pause, 'you area man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn muchdo but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive thedignity of the design--the horror of the living fact fades from theirmemory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, andare warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So Ishall have a life in the cherished places of your memory: a life as muchmy own, as that which I lead in this body. '

'I love you, ' I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but winceda little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was notunkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call uponher resolution; plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same timeleaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart. 'There, ' she cried, 'you feel the very footfall of my life. It onlymoves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed tooffer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a livebranch from a tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or Ithink I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent prisoner, and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This capsule, such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a touch for itsmaster; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I think not; Iknow not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me your words were ofthe soul; it is of the soul that you ask--it is only from the soul thatyou would take me. '

'Olalla, ' I said, 'the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love. What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the soulcleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's signal;and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the footstool andfoundation of the highest. '

'Have you, ' she said, 'seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your eyes never restedon that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died agesago; and she did evil in her life. But, look-again: there is my hand tothe least line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine, then, andwhat am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, andfor the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me) not a gesturethat I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others?Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men haveheard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears. Thehands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, theyguide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform features andattributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of thegrave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me? The girlwho does not know and cannot answer for the least portion of herself? orthe stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of which she isthe passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is ever young, itcarries its eternal destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon thesea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul is inthe race. '

'You fret against the common law, ' I said. 'You rebel against the voiceof God, which he has made so winning to convince, so imperious tocommand. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings tomine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we arecompounded awake and run together at a look; the clay of the earthremembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawntogether as the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb andflow, by things older and greater than we ourselves. '

'Alas!' she said, 'what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundredyears ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great, cunning, andcruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war;the king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung forthem or when they returned and found their hovels smoking, blasphemedtheir name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he has sprungfrom the brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The breath ofweariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed; they began to godown; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady andsenseless like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was stillhanded down, but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart; the seedpassed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the bones, but theywere the bones and the flesh of brutes, and their mind was as the mind offlies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have seen for yourself how thewheel has gone backward with my doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon alittle rising ground in this desperate descent, and see both before andbehind, both what we have lost and to what we are condemned to go fartherdownward. And shall I--I that dwell apart in the house of the dead, mybody, loathing its ways--shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind anotherspirit, reluctant as my own, into this bewitched and tempest-brokentenement that I now suffer in? Shall I hand down this cursed vessel ofhumanity, charge it with fresh life as with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in the faces of posterity? But my vow has been given; therace shall cease from off the earth. At this hour my brother is makingready; his foot will soon be on the stair; and you will go with him andpass out of my sight for ever. Think of me sometimes as one to whom thelesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with courage; asone who loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her lovewas hateful to her; as one who sent you away and yet would have longed tokeep you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and nogreater fear than to be forgotten. '

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice soundingsofter and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I layalone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lainbound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was there fell uponme a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in atthe door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe coming, charged mewithout a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate, where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood outsharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of theplateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkledin the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily, its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern frontabove the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart joltedonwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into avalley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe walked in silencebeside the shafts, but from time to time he would cheek the mule and seemto look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his handupon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such asimplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the burstingof an artery. 

'Felipe, ' I said, 'take me where they will ask no questions. '

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end, retracedsome part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another path, led meto the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirkton ofthat thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell in my mind ofthe day breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of arms thathelped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and of a swoonthat fell upon me like sleep. 

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my sidewith his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I began topick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery, and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, withoutnaming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did notaffect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. 'Sir, ' said I, 'youknow that I do not ask in wantonness. What of that family?'

He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, andthat they were very poor and had been much neglected. 

'But she has not, ' I said. 'Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she isinstructed and wise beyond the use of women. '

'Yes, ' he said; 'the Senorita is well-informed. But the family has beenneglected. '

'The mother?' I queried. 

'Yes, the mother too, ' said the Padre, taking snuff. 'But Felipe is awell-intentioned lad. '

'The mother is odd?' I asked. 

'Very odd, ' replied the priest. 

'I think, sir, we beat about the bush, ' said I. 'You must know more ofmy affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to be justified onmany grounds. Will you not be frank with me?'

'My son, ' said the old gentleman, 'I will be very frank with you onmatters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it doesnot require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, Itake your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all inGod's hands, and that His ways are not as our ways? I have even advisedwith my superiors in the church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a greatmystery. '

'Is she mad?' I asked. 

'I will answer you according to my belief. She is not, ' returned thePadre, 'or she was not. When she was young--God help me, I fear Ineglected that wild lamb--she was surely sane; and yet, although it didnot run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had beenso before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on growing, notonly in the individual but in the race. '

'When she was young, ' I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, andit was only with a great effort that I was able to add, 'was she likeOlalla?'

'Now God forbid!' exclaimed the Padre. 'God forbid that any man shouldthink so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the Senorita (butfor her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not ahair's resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I could notbear to have you think so; though, Heaven knows, it were, perhaps, betterthat you should. '

At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own horrors, myown passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and withsomething more than a purely formal submission, appealing to hisjudgment. 

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done, hesat for some time silent. Then he began: 'The church, ' and instantlybroke off again to apologise. 'I had forgotten, my child, that you werenot a Christian, ' said he. 'And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual, even the church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you havemy opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; Iwould accept her judgment. '

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduousin his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainlyfeared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a manmight be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx. The villagers, too, avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. Ithought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the moresuperstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set thisdown to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon methat if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at theresidencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; andyet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell uponmy love. It did not conquer, but I may not deify that it restrained myardour. 

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, fromwhich the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it becamemy daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where thepathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelfof rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the sizeof life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great oldhouse, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro aboutthe garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be broken upagain by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me inunbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain. Thisdistant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my life hadbeen so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour. I passedwhole days there, debating with myself the various elements of ourposition; now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear toprudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two. 

One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhatgaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly didnot know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, hedrew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Amongother things he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years hadmuch frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army withhis mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with hisfamily. 

'Do you know that house?' I inquired, at last, pointing to theresidencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from thethought of Olalla. 

He looked at me darkly and crossed himself. 

'Too well, ' he said, 'it was there that one of my comrades sold himselfto Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!'

A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the manresumed, as if to himself: 'Yes, ' he said, 'O yes, I know it. I havepassed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it;sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but there wasworse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm, Senor, and dragged himto the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forthwith me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see hewas moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out on the gallery, andcalled him by his name; and he turned, and there was she standing with alamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud toGod, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and left me alone. Hehad made his choice; God help us. I would pray for him, but to what end?there are sins that not even the Pope can loose. '

'And your friend, ' I asked, 'what became of him?'

'Nay, God knows, ' said the muleteer. 'If all be true that we hear, hisend was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair. '

'Do you mean that he was killed?' I asked. 

'Sure enough, he was killed, ' returned the man. 'But how? Ay, how? Butthese are things that it is sin to speak of. '

'The people of that house . . . ' I began. 

But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. 'The people?' he cried. 'What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?' And here he put hismouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain mighthave over-heard and been stricken with horror. 

What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed, but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was rather theapplication that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the church wouldhave burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the church was nowshortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men, andleft to the more awful judgment of an offended God. This was wrong; butit should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age; he was evenbewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to their owndanger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of that house shouldgo up to heaven. 

He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news direct to thethreatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a womandrawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hiddenbehind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then Icame forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too, remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each otherwith a passionate sadness. 

'I thought you had gone, ' she said at length. 'It is all that you can dofor me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. Butdo you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on yourhead, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thoughtyou love me, and the people will not suffer it. '

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it. 'Olalla, ' I said, 'I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but notalone. '

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I stoodby and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration, now atthe living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubedcountenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image. Thesilence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that circledsidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil, and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked upon mewith a pale and sorrowful countenance. 

'I have laid my hand upon the cross, ' she said. 'The Padre says you areno Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the faceof the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in allof us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endurefor a little while, until morning returns bringing peace. Suffer me topass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely, counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it isthus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of earthlyhappiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion. '

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend toimages, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was arude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to myintelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadlycontraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me thatthe sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as itstill stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, anemblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but anaccident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best tosuffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain insilence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closedabout my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix. 

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD. 

CHAPTER I. BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK. 

They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six. About eight somevillagers came round for the performance, and were told how mattersstood. It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill like realpeople, and they made off again in dudgeon. By ten Madame Tentaillon wasgravely alarmed, and had sent down the street for Doctor Desprez. 

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the littledining-room, and his wife was asleep over the fire in another, when themessenger arrived. 

'Sapristi!' said the Doctor, 'you should have sent for me before. It wasa case for hurry. ' And he followed the messenger as he was, in hisslippers and skull-cap. 

The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop there;he went in at one door and out by another into the court, and then ledthe way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the loft where themountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live a thousand years, hewould never forget his arrival in that room; for not only was the scenepicturesque, but the moment made a date in his existence. We reckon ourlives, I hardly know why, from the date of our first sorry appearance insociety, as if from a first humiliation; for no actor can come upon thestage with a worse grace. Not to go further back, which would be judgedtoo curious, there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents inthe lives of all, which would make as logical a period as this of birth. And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty, who had madewhat is called a failure in life, and was moreover married, found himselfat a new point of departure when he opened the door of the loft aboveTentaillon's stable. 

It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man, with aQuixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon stooped overhim, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to his feet; and on achair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or twelve, with his feetdangling. These three were the only occupants, except the shadows. Butthe shadows were a company in themselves; the extent of the roomexaggerated them to a gigantic size, and from the low position of thecandle the light struck upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings. The mountebank's profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and itwas strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was blownabout by draughts. As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no more thana gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a hemisphere of head. Thechair legs were spindled out as long as stilts, and the boy set perchedatop of them, like a cloud, in the corner of the roof. 

It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy. He had a great arched skull, the forehead and the hands of a musician, and a pair of haunting eyes. Itwas not merely that these eyes were large, or steady, or the softestruddy brown. There was a look in them, besides, which thrilled theDoctor, and made him half uneasy. He was sure he had seen such a lookbefore, and yet he could not remember how or where. It was as if thisboy, who was quite a stranger to him, had the eyes of an old friend or anold enemy. And the boy would give him no peace; he seemed profoundlyindifferent to what was going on, or rather abstracted from it in asuperior contemplation, beating gently with his feet against the bars ofthe chair, and holding his hands folded on his lap. But, for all that, his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room with a thoughtfulfixity of gaze. Desprez could not tell whether he was fascinating theboy, or the boy was fascinating him. He busied himself over the sickman: he put questions, he felt the pulse, he jested, he grew a little hotand swore: and still, whenever he looked round, there were the brown eyeswaiting for his with the same inquiring, melancholy gaze. 

At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap. He remembered the looknow. The little fellow, although he was as straight as a dart, had theeyes that go usually with a crooked back; he was not at all deformed, andyet a deformed person seemed to be looking at you from below his brows. The Doctor drew a long breath, he was so much relieved to find a theory(for he loved theories) and to explain away his interest. 

For all that, he despatched the invalid with unusual haste, and, stillkneeling with one knee on the floor, turned a little round and looked theboy over at his leisure. The boy was not in the least put out, butlooked placidly back at the Doctor. 

'Is this your father?' asked Desprez. 

'Oh, no, ' returned the boy; 'my master. '

'Are you fond of him?' continued the Doctor. 

'No, sir, ' said the boy. 

Madame Tentaillon and Desprez exchanged expressive glances. 

'That is bad, my man, ' resumed the latter, with a shade of sternness. 'Every one should be fond of the dying, or conceal their sentiments; andyour master here is dying. If I have watched a bird a little whilestealing my cherries, I have a thought of disappointment when he fliesaway over my garden wall, and I see him steer for the forest and vanish. How much more a creature such as this, so strong, so astute, so richlyendowed with faculties! When I think that, in a few hours, the speechwill be silenced, the breath extinct, and even the shadow vanished fromthe wall, I who never saw him, this lady who knew him only as a guest, are touched with some affection. '

The boy was silent for a little, and appeared to be reflecting. 

'You did not know him, ' he replied at last, 'he was a bad man. '

'He is a little pagan, ' said the landlady. 'For that matter, they areall the same, these mountebanks, tumblers, artists, and what not. Theyhave no interior. '

But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little pagan, his eyebrowsknotted and uplifted. 

'What is your name?' he asked. 

'Jean-Marie, ' said the lad. 

Desprez leaped upon him with one of his sudden flashes of excitement, andfelt his head all over from an ethnological point of view. 

'Celtic, Celtic!' he said. 

'Celtic!' cried Madame Tentaillon, who had perhaps confounded the wordwith hydrocephalous. 'Poor lad! is it dangerous?'

'That depends, ' returned the Doctor grimly. And then once moreaddressing the boy: 'And what do you do for your living, Jean-Marie?' heinquired. 

'I tumble, ' was the answer. 

'So! Tumble?' repeated Desprez. 'Probably healthful. I hazard theguess, Madame Tentaillon, that tumbling is a healthful way of life. Andhave you never done anything else but tumble?'

'Before I learned that, I used to steal, ' answered Jean-Marie gravely. 

'Upon my word!' cried the doctor. 'You are a nice little man for yourage. Madame, when my _confrere_ comes from Bourron, you will communicatemy unfavourable opinion. I leave the case in his hands; but of course, on any alarming symptom, above all if there should be a sign of rally, donot hesitate to knock me up. I am a doctor no longer, I thank God; but Ihave been one. Good night, madame. Good sleep to you, Jean-Marie. '

CHAPTER II. MORNING TALK

Doctor Desprez always rose early. Before the smoke arose, before thefirst cart rattled over the bridge to the day's labour in the fields, hewas to be found wandering in his garden. Now he would pick a bunch ofgrapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellice; now he would drawall sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he wouldgo down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber landing-place at which he moored his boat. There was no time, he used to say, for making theories like the early morning. 'I rise earlier than any oneelse in the village, ' he once boasted. 'It is a fair consequence that Iknow more and wish to do less with my knowledge. '

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatricaleffect to usher in the day. He had a theory of dew, by which he couldpredict the weather. Indeed, most things served him to that end: thesound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of theforest, the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the lookof the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of thelight, and last, although not least, the arsenal of meteorologicalinstruments in a louvre-boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever since he hadsettled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the localmeteorologist, the unpaid champion of the local climate. He thought atfirst there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By the endof the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the wholedepartment. And for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had beenprepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for arival to his chosen spot. 

'Doctor, ' he would say--'doctor is a foul word. It should not be used toladies. It implies disease. I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation, that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, havewashed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; Iam only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah, believe me, it isshe who has the cestus! And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has sheplaced her shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walkwith her in the early morning, and she shows me how strong she has madethe peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow uptall and comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become cleanand agile at her presence. --Rheumatism!' he would cry, on some malapertinterruption, 'O, yes, I believe we do have a little rheumatism. Thatcould hardly be avoided, you know, on a river. And of course the placestands a little low; and the meadows are marshy, there's no doubt. But, my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands high. Bourron is close tothe forest; plenty of ozone there, you would say. Well, compared withGretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles. '

The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, theDoctor visited the wharf at the tail of his garden, and had a long lookat the running water. This he called prayer; but whether his adorationswere addressed to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity, neverplainly appeared. For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimesdeclaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes extollingit as the great moral preacher, continually preaching peace, continuity, and diligence to man's tormented spirits. After he had watched a mile orso of the clear water running by before his eyes, seen a fish or two cometo the surface with a gleam of silver, and sufficiently admired the longshadows of the trees falling half across the river from the oppositebank, with patches of moving sunlight in between, he strolled once moreup the garden and through his house into the street, feeling cool andrenovated. 

The sound of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day;for the village was still sound asleep. The church tower looked veryairy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it, seemed to swim inan atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in longtransparent shadows, filled his lungs amply, and proclaimed himself wellcontented with the morning. 

On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a littledark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately recognisedJean-Marie. 

'Aha!' he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on eitherknee. 'So we rise early in the morning, do we? It appears to me that wehave all the vices of a philosopher. '

The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation. 

'And how is our patient?' asked Desprez. 

It appeared the patient was about the same. 

'And why do you rise early in the morning?' he pursued. 

Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he hardly knew. 

'You hardly know?' repeated Desprez. 'We hardly know anything, my man, until we try to learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come, push methis inquiry home. Do you like it?'

'Yes, ' said the boy slowly; 'yes, I like it. '

'And why do you like it?' continued the Doctor. '(We are now pursuingthe Socratic method. ) Why do you like it?'

'It is quiet, ' answered Jean-Marie; 'and I have nothing to do; and then Ifeel as if I were good. '

Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side. He wasbeginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly thoughtbefore he spoke, and tried to answer truly. 'It appears you have a tastefor feeling good, ' said the Doctor. 'Now, there you puzzle me extremely;for I thought you said you were a thief; and the two are incompatible. '

'Is it very bad to steal?' asked Jean-Marie. 

'Such is the general opinion, little boy, ' replied the Doctor. 

'No; but I mean as I stole, ' explained the other. 'For I had no choice. I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right to have bread, there comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat me cruelly if Ireturned with nothing, ' he added. 'I was not ignorant of right andwrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest, who was verykind to me. ' (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word 'priest. ')'But it seemed to me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it wasa different affair. I would not have stolen for tartlets, I believe; butany one would steal for baker's bread. '

'And so I suppose, ' said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, 'you prayed Godto forgive you, and explained the case to Him at length. '

'Why, sir?' asked Jean-Marie. 'I do not see. '

'Your priest would see, however, ' retorted Desprez. 

'Would he?' asked the boy, troubled for the first time. 'I should havethought God would have known. '

'Eh?' snarled the Doctor. 

'I should have thought God would have understood me, ' replied the other. 'You do not, I see; but then it was God that made me think so, was itnot?'

'Little boy, little boy, ' said Dr. Desprez, 'I told you already you hadthe vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I must go. Iam a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain andtemperate nature in her common walks; and I cannot preserve my equanimityin presence of a monster. Do you understand?'

'No, sir, ' said the boy. 

'I will make my meaning clear to you, ' replied the doctor. 'Look thereat the sky--behind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then upand up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it isalready as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful colour? Does it notplease the heart? We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown inwith our familiar thoughts. Now, ' changing his tone, 'suppose that skyto become suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the colour of clearcoals, and growing scarlet towards the top--I do not say it would be anythe less beautiful; but would you like it as well?'

'I suppose not, ' answered Jean-Marie. 

'Neither do I like you, ' returned the Doctor, roughly. 'I hate all oddpeople, and you are the most curious little boy in all the world. '

Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and then he raised his headagain and looked over at the Doctor with an air of candid inquiry. 'Butare not you a very curious gentleman?' he asked. 

The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to hisbosom, and kissed him on both cheeks. 'Admirable, admirable imp!' hecried. 'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of forty-two! No, 'he continued, apostrophising heaven, 'I did not know such boys existed; Iwas ignorant they made them so; I had doubted of my race; and now! It islike, ' he added, picking up his stick, 'like a lovers' meeting. I havebruised my favourite staff in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury, however, is not grave. ' He caught the boy looking at him in obviouswonder, embarrassment, and alarm. 'Hullo!' said he, 'why do you look atme like that? Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you despise me, boy?'

'O, no, ' replied Jean-Marie, seriously; 'only I do not understand. '

'You must excuse me, sir, ' returned the Doctor, with gravity; 'I am stillso young. O, hang him!' he added to himself. And he took his seat againand observed the boy sardonically. 'He has spoiled the quiet of mymorning, ' thought he. 'I shall be nervous all day, and have a febriculewhen I digest. Let me compose myself. ' And so he dismissed hispre-occupations by an effort of the will which he had long practised, andlet his soul roam abroad in the contemplation of the morning. He inhaledthe air, tasting it critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage, andprolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto. He counted the littleflecks of cloud along the sky. He followed the movements of the birdsround the church tower--making long sweeps, hanging poised, or turningairy somersaults in fancy, and beating the wind with imaginary pinions. And in this way he regained peace of mind and animal composure, consciousof his limbs, conscious of the sight of his eyes, conscious that the airhad a cool taste, like a fruit, at the top of his throat; and at last, incomplete abstraction, he began to sing. The Doctor had but one air--, 'Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre;' even with that he was on terms of merepoliteness; and his musical exploits were always reserved for momentswhen he was alone and entirely happy. 

He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face. 'What do you think of my singing?' he inquired, stopping in the middle ofa note; and then, after he had waited some little while and received noanswer, 'What do you think of my singing?' he repeated, imperiously. 

'I do not like it, ' faltered Jean-Marie. 

'Oh, come!' cried the Doctor. 'Possibly you are a performer yourself?'

'I sing better than that, ' replied the boy. 

The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction. He was aware thathe was angry, and blushed for himself in consequence, which made himangrier. 'If this is how you address your master!' he said at last, witha shrug and a flourish of his arms. 

'I do not speak to him at all, ' returned the boy. 'I do not like him. '

'Then you like me?' snapped Doctor Desprez, with unusual eagerness. 

'I do not know, ' answered Jean-Marie. 

The Doctor rose. 'I shall wish you a good morning, ' he said. 'You aretoo much for me. Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps celestialichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:--that you are no human being. No, boy'--shaking his stick at him--'you are not a human being. Write, write it in your memory--"I am not a human being--I have no pretension tobe a human being--I am a dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, anillusion--what you please, but not a human being. " And so accept myhumble salutations and farewell!'

And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, andthe boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him. 

CHAPTER III. THE ADOPTION. 

Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie, presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to lookupon, a stout _brune_, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, andhands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort ofperson over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in theworst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for amoment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity ofa contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie was ofa very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat boldpleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than forhis. She was imperturbably good-natured, but had no idea ofself-sacrifice. To live in that pleasant old house, with a green gardenbehind and bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best, to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour, never to wear staysor a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept ina continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to Doctor Desprezand have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of her nature to the brim. Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired quiteas many theories, but of a different order, attributed his presentphilosophy to the study of Anastasie. It was her brute enjoyment that herationalised and perhaps vainly imitated. 

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor;everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shonegloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, theirsingle servant, had no other business in the world but to scour andburnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf, warmedand cosseted to his heart's content. 

The midday meal was excellent. There was a ripe melon, a fish from theriver in a memorable Bearnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and adish of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The Doctor drank half abottle _plus_ one glass, the wife half a bottle _minus_ the samequantity, which was a marital privilege, of an excellent Cote-Rotie, seven years old. Then the coffee was brought, and a flask of Chartreusefor madame, for the Doctor despised and distrusted such decoctions; andthen Aline left the wedded pair to the pleasures of memory and digestion. 

'It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished one, ' observed theDoctor--'this coffee is adorable--a very fortunate circumstance upon thewhole--Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that poison for to-day; onlyone day, and you will feel the benefit, I pledge my reputation. '

'What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?' inquired Anastasie, notheeding his protest, which was of daily recurrence. 

'That we have no children, my beautiful, ' replied the Doctor. 'I thinkof it more and more as the years go on, and with more and more gratitudetowards the Power that dispenses such afflictions. Your health, mydarling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they wouldall have suffered, how they would all have been sacrificed! And forwhat? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health fleesbefore their face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; theydemand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their nosesblown; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I breakthis piece of sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid offspring, like an infidelity. '

'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed. 'Now, that is like you--to takecredit for the thing you could not help. '

'My dear, ' returned the Doctor, solemnly, 'we might have adopted. '

'Never!' cried madame. 'Never, Doctor, with my consent. If the childwere my own flesh and blood, I would not say no. But to take anotherperson's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I have too muchsense. '

'Precisely, ' replied the Doctor. 'We both had. And I am all the betterpleased with our wisdom, because--because--' He looked at her sharply. 

'Because what?' she asked, with a faint premonition of danger. 

'Because I have found the right person, ' said the Doctor firmly, 'andshall adopt him this afternoon. '

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. 'You have lost your reason, ' shesaid; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed to threaten trouble. 

'Not so, my dear, ' he replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To theproof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way ofpreparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I think, recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife. The factis, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident. I neverthought to find a son of my own. Now, last night, I found one. Do notunnecessarily alarm yourself, my dear; he is not a drop of blood to methat I know. It is his mind, darling, his mind that calls me father. '

'His mind!' she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics. 'Hismind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you mad? Hismind! And what of my mind?'

'Truly, ' replied the Doctor with a shrug, 'you have your finger on thehitch. He will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever beautifulAnastasie. She will never understand him; he will never understand her. You married the animal side of my nature, dear and it is on the spiritualside that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie. So much so, that, to beperfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself. You will easilyperceive that I am announcing a calamity for you. Do not, ' he broke outin tones of real solicitude--'do not give way to tears after a meal, Anastasie. You will certainly give yourself a false digestion. '

Anastasie controlled herself. 'You know how willing I am to humour you, 'she said, 'in all reasonable matters. But on this point--'

'My dear love, ' interrupted the Doctor, eager to prevent a refusal, 'whowished to leave Paris? Who made me give up cards, and the opera, and theboulevard, and my social relations, and all that was my life before Iknew you? Have I been faithful? Have I been obedient? Have I not bornemy doom with cheerfulness? In all honesty, Anastasie, have I not a rightto a stipulation on my side? I have, and you know it. I stipulate myson. '

Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colours instantly. 'Youwill break my heart, ' she sighed. 

'Not in the least, ' said he. 'You will feel a trifling inconvenience fora month, just as I did when I was first brought to this vile hamlet; thenyour admirable sense and temper will prevail, and I see you already ascontent as ever, and making your husband the happiest of men. '

'You know I can refuse you nothing, ' she said, with a last flicker ofresistance; 'nothing that will make you truly happier. But will this?Are you sure, my husband? Last night, you say, you found him! He may bethe worst of humbugs. '

'I think not, ' replied the Doctor. 'But do not suppose me so unwary asto adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of theworld; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to meetthem all. I take the lad as stable boy. If he pilfer, if he grumble, ifhe desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I shall recognise himfor no son of mine, and send him tramping. '

'You will never do so when the time comes, ' said his wife; 'I know yourgood heart. '

She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh; the Doctor smiled as hetook it and carried it to his lips; he had gained his point with greaterease than he had dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth time he hadproved the efficacy of his trusty argument, his Excalibur, the hint of areturn to Paris. Six months in the capital, for a man of the Doctor'santecedents and relations, implied no less a calamity than total ruin. Anastasie had saved the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictlyin the country. The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear; and shewould have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the back garden, let alone adopting a stable-boy, rather than permit the question ofreturn to be discussed. 

About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost; he hadnever been conscious since his seizure. Doctor Desprez was present athis last passage, and declared the farce over. Then he took Jean-Marieby the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where there was aconvenient bench beside the river. Here he sat him down and made the boyplace himself on his left. 

'Jean-Marie, ' he said very gravely, 'this world is exceedingly vast; andeven France, which is only a small corner of it, is a great place for alittle lad like you. Unfortunately it is full of eager, shoulderingpeople moving on; and there are very few bakers' shops for so manyeaters. Your master is dead; you are not fit to gain a living byyourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your situation then isundesirable; it is, for the moment, critical. On the other hand, youbehold in me a man not old, though elderly, still enjoying the youth ofthe heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated inthis world's affairs; keeping a good table:--a man, neither as friend norhost, to be despised. I offer you your food and clothes, and to teachyou lessons in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the purposefor a lad of your stamp than those of all the priests in Europe. Ipropose no wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me, the doorshall be open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start the worldupon. In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which you would veryspeedily learn to clean and keep in order. Do not hurry yourself toanswer, and take it or leave it as you judge aright. Only remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person, but a man who livesrigorously to himself; and that if I make the proposal, it is for my ownends--it is because I perceive clearly an advantage to myself. And now, reflect. '

'I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I can do. I thank you, sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful, ' said the boy. 

'Thank you, ' said the Doctor warmly, rising at the same time and wipinghis brow, for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind. Arefusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed him in a ridiculouslight before Anastasie. 'How hot and heavy is the evening, to be sure! Ihave always had a fancy to be a fish in summer, Jean-Marie, here in theLoing beside Gretz. I should lie under a water-lily and listen to thebells, which must sound most delicately down below. That would be alife--do you not think so too?'

'Yes, ' said Jean-Marie. 

'Thank God you have imagination!' cried the Doctor, embracing the boywith his usual effusive warmth, though it was a proceeding that seemed todisconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an Englishschoolboy of the same age. 'And now, ' he added, 'I will take you to mywife. '

Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool wrapper. All the blindswere down, and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled with water; hereyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a novel as the theyentered. Though she was a bustling woman, she enjoyed repose betweenwhiles and had a remarkable appetite for sleep. 

The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for thebenefit of both parties, 'You must try to like each other for my sake. '

'He is very pretty, ' said Anastasie. 'Will you kiss me, my pretty littlefellow?'

The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the passage. 'Are you afool, Anastasie?' he said. 'What is all this I hear about the tact ofwomen? Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my experience. Youaddress my little philosopher as if he were an infant. He must be spokento with more respect, I tell you; he must not be kissed andGeorgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child. '

'I only did it to please you, I am sure, ' replied Anastasie; 'but I willtry to do better. '

The Doctor apologised for his warmth. 'But I do wish him, ' he continued, 'to feel at home among us. And really your conduct was so idiotic, mycherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of place, that a saintmight have been pardoned a little vehemence in disapproval. Do, dotry--if it is possible for a woman to understand young people--but ofcourse it is not, and I waste my breath. Hold your tongue as much aspossible at least, and observe my conduct narrowly; it will serve you fora model. '

Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor's behaviour. She observed that he embraced the boy three times in the course of theevening, and managed generally to confound and abash the little fellowout of speech and appetite. But she had the true womanly heroism inlittle affairs. Not only did she refrain from the cheap revenge ofexposing the Doctor's errors to himself, but she did her best to removetheir ill-effect on Jean-Marie. When Desprez went out for his lastbreath of air before retiring for the night, she came over to the boy'sside and took his hand. 

'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners, ' shesaid. 'He is the kindest of men, but so clever that he is sometimesdifficult to understand. You will soon grow used to him, and then youwill love him, for that nobody can help. As for me, you may be sure, Ishall try to make you happy, and will not bother you at all. I think weshould be excellent friends, you and I. I am not clever, but I am verygood-natured. Will you give me a kiss?'

He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to cry. The woman had spoken in complaisance; but she had warmed to her ownwords, and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering, found themenlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he was justbeginning, in an awful voice, 'Anastasie--, ' when she looked up at him, smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his peace, wondering, whileshe led the boy to his attic. 

CHAPTER IV. THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER. 

The installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected, andthe wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the Doctor's house. Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes helped inthe housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdomfrom the fountain-head; and was introduced at night to the sciences andthe dead tongues. He retained his singular placidity of mind and manner;he was rarely in fault; but he made only a very partial progress in hisstudies, and remained much of a stranger in the family. 

The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All forenoon he worked on hisgreat book, the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical Dictionary ofall Medicines, ' which as yet consisted principally of slips of paper andpins. When finished, it was to fill many personable volumes, and tocombine antiquarian interest with professional utility. But the Doctorwas studious of literary graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a touchof manners, a moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to bepreferred before a piece of science; a little more, and he would havewritten the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia' in verse! The article 'Mummia, 'for instance, was already complete, though the remainder of the work hadnot progressed beyond the letter A. It was exceedingly copious andentertaining, written with quaintness and colour, exact, erudite, aliterary article; but it would hardly have afforded guidance to apractising physician of to-day. The feminine good sense of his wife hadled her to point this out with uncompromising sincerity; for theDictionary was duly read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and waning, as itproceeded towards an infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor was alittle sore on the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusionwith asperity. 

After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie; for madame wouldhave preferred any hardship rather than walk. 

She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied aboutmaterial comforts, and ready to drop asleep over a novel the instant shewas disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as she never snored orgrew distempered in complexion when she slept. On the contrary, shelooked the very picture of luxurious and appetising ease, and wokewithout a start to the perfect possession of her faculties. I am afraidshe was greatly an animal, but she was a very nice animal to have about. In this way, she had little to do with Jean-Marie; but the sympathy whichhad been established between them on the first night remained unbroken;they held occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to theextreme disappointment of the Doctor, they occasionally sallied offtogether to that temple of debasing superstition, the village church;madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a month toFontainebleau and returned laden with purchases; and in short, althoughthe Doctor still continued to regard them as irreconcilablyanti-pathetic, their relation was as intimate, friendly, and confidentialas their natures suffered. 

I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly despised andpitied the boy. She had no admiration for his class of virtues; sheliked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in hand, lightof foot, meeting the eye; she liked volubility, charm, a little vice--thepromise of a second Doctor Desprez. And it was her indefeasible beliefthat Jean-Marie was dull. 'Poor dear boy, ' she had said once, 'how sadit is that he should be so stupid!' She had never repeated that remark, for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutalbluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally matedwith an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the tablechina by the fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered silently to heropinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity in theDoctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms about his neck, lay hercheek to his, and communicate her sympathy with his distress. 'Do notmind, ' she would say; 'I, too, am not at all clever, and I can assure youthat it makes no difference in life. '

The Doctor's view was naturally different. That gentleman never weariedof the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeableenough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so cynicallyindifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by themost relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy? Andeducation, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby growinto a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life become waysof pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more contentwith his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He wasso agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, whenchallenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort offlower upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a fish, andleft his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth. 

Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with the ill-success of his more formal education. A boy, chosen by so acute anobserver for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learning by sophilosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature of the universe, tomake a more obvious and lasting advance. Now Jean-Marie was slow in allthings, impenetrable in others; and his power of forgetting was fully ona level with his power to learn. Therefore the Doctor cherished hisperipatetic lectures, to which the boy attended, which he generallyappeared to enjoy, and by which he often profited. 

Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and moderationproved the subject of the Doctor's divagations. To these he lovinglyreturned. 

'I lead you, ' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, mybeliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase--to avoid excess. Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminatesexcess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance herprovisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the law. Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and for ourneighbours--lex armata--armed, emphatic, tyrannous law. If you see acrapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box! The judge, thoughin a way an admission of disease, is less offensive to me than either thedoctor or the priest. Above all the doctor--the doctor and the purulenttrash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air--from the neighbourhoodof a pinetum for the sake of the turpentine--unadulterated wine, and thereflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works ofnature--these, my boy, are the best medical appliances and the bestreligious comforts. Devote yourself to these. Hark! there are the bellsof Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair). How clear andairy is the sound! The nerves are harmonised and quieted; the mindattuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart!Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yetyou yourself perceive they are a part of health. --Did you remember yourcinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona also is a work of nature; it is, after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for ourselves ifwe lived in the locality. --What a world is this! Though a professedatheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the world. Look at thegratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround our path! The river runsby the garden end, our bath, our fishpond, our natural system ofdrainage. There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling waterfrom the earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with a little wine, mostwholesome. The district is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism isthe only prevalent complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I tell you--and my opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processesof reason--if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, itwould be the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend toprevent us with a pistol bullet. '

One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village. Theriver, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage. Theindefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower. Ahealthy wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerablethousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of greenleaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something betweenwhispered speech and singing. It seemed as if every blade of grass musthide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling farand near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their stationon the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon theone hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretzitself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding arch ofthe blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemedincredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or air tobreathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came home to theboy, perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words. 

'How small it looks!' he sighed. 

'Ay, ' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now. Yet it was once a walledcity; thriving, full of furred burgesses and men in armour, humming withaffairs;--with tall spires, for aught that I know, and portly towersalong the battlements. A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the curfewbell. There were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows. In time ofwar, the assault swarmed against it with ladders, the arrows fell likeleaves, the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each sideuttered its cry as they plied their weapons. Do you know that the wallsextended as far as the Commanderie? Tradition so reports. Alas, what along way off is all this confusion--nothing left of it but my quiet wordsspoken in your ear--and the town itself shrunk to the hamlet underneathus! By-and-by came the English wars--you shall hear more of the English, a stupid people, who sometimes blundered into good--and Gretz was taken, sacked, and burned. It is the history of many towns; but Gretz neverrose again; it was never rebuilt; its ruins were a quarry to serve thegrowth of rivals; and the stones of Gretz are now erect along the streetsof Nemours. It gratifies me that our old house was the first to riseafter the calamity; when the town had come to an end, it inaugurated thehamlet. '

'I, too, am glad of that, ' said Jean-Marie. 

'It should be the temple of the humbler virtues, ' responded the Doctorwith a savoury gusto. 'Perhaps one of the reasons why I love my littlehamlet as I do, is that we have a similar history, she and I. Have Itold you that I was once rich?'

'I do not think so, ' answered Jean-Marie. 'I do not think I should haveforgotten. I am sorry you should have lost your fortune. '

'Sorry?' cried the Doctor. 'Why, I find I have scarce begun youreducation after all. Listen to me! Would you rather live in the oldGretz or in the new, free from the alarms of war, with the green countryat the door, without noise, passports, the exactions of the soldiery, orthe jangle of the curfew-bell to send us off to bed by sundown?'

'I suppose I should prefer the new, ' replied the boy. 

'Precisely, ' returned the Doctor; 'so do I. And, in the same way, Iprefer my present moderate fortune to my former wealth. Goldenmediocrity! cried the adorable ancients; and I subscribe to theirenthusiasm. Have I not good wine, good food, good air, the fields andthe forest for my walk, a house, an admirable wife, a boy whom I protestI cherish like a son? Now, if I were still rich, I should indubitablymake my residence in Paris--you know Paris--Paris and Paradise are notconvertible terms. This pleasant noise of the wind streaming amongleaves changed into the grinding Babel of the street, the stupid glare ofplaster substituted for this quiet pattern of greens and greys, thenerves shattered, the digestion falsified--picture the fall! Already youperceive the consequences; the mind is stimulated, the heart steps to adifferent measure, and the man is himself no longer. I have passionatelystudied myself--the true business of philosophy. I know my character asthe musician knows the ventages of his flute. Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself gambling; nay, I go further--I should break theheart of my Anastasie with infidelities. '

This was too much for Jean-Marie. That a place should so transform themost excellent of men transcended his belief. Paris, he protested, waseven an agreeable place of residence. 'Nor when I lived in that city didI feel much difference, ' he pleaded. 

'What!' cried the Doctor. 'Did you not steal when you were there?'

But the boy could never be brought to see that he had done anything wrongwhen he stole. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but thatgentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort. 

'And now, ' he concluded, 'do you begin to understand? My only friendswere those who ruined me. Gretz has been my academy, my sanatorium, myheaven of innocent pleasures. If millions are offered me, I wave themback: _Retro_, _Sathanas_!--Evil one, begone! Fix your mind on myexample; despise riches, avoid the debasing influence of cities. Hygiene--hygiene and mediocrity of fortune--these be your watchwordsduring life!'

The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coincided with his tastes; andhis picture of the perfect life was a faithful description of the one hewas leading at the time. But it is easy to convince a boy, whom yousupply with all the facts for the discussion. And besides, there was onething admirable in the philosophy, and that was the enthusiasm of thephilosopher. There was never any one more vigorously determined to bepleased; and if he was not a great logician, and so had no right toconvince the intellect, he was certainly something of a poet, and had afascination to seduce the heart. What he could not achieve in hiscustomary humour of a radiant admiration of himself and hiscircumstances, he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom. 

'Boy, ' he would say, 'avoid me to-day. If I were superstitious, I shouldeven beg for an interest in your prayers. I am in the black fit; theevil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the personaldevil of the mediaeval monk, is with me--is in me, ' tapping on hisbreast. 'The vices of my nature are now uppermost; innocent pleasureswoo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the mire. See, ' hewould continue, producing a handful of silver, 'I denude myself, I am notto be trusted with the price of a fare. Take it, keep it for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river--Iwill homologate your action. Save me from that part of myself which Idisown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if necessary, wreck thetrain! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any extremity were better thanfor me to reach Paris alive. '

Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes, as a variation in hispart; they represented the Byronic element in the somewhat artificialpoetry of his existence; but to the boy, though he was dimly aware oftheir theatricality, they represented more. The Doctor made perhaps toolittle, the boy possibly too much, of the reality and gravity of thesetemptations. 

One day a great light shone for Jean-Marie. 'Could not riches be usedwell?' he asked. 

'In theory, yes, ' replied the Doctor. 'But it is found in experiencethat no one does so. All the world imagine they will be exceptional whenthey grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring up; andthe silly taste for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure. '

'Then you might be better if you had less, ' said the boy. 

'Certainly not, ' replied the Doctor; but his voice quavered as he spoke. 

'Why?' demanded pitiless innocence. 

Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment; the stableuniverse appeared to be about capsizing with him. 'Because, ' saidhe--affecting deliberation after an obvious pause--'because I have formedmy life for my present income. It is not good for men of my years to beviolently dissevered from their habits. '

That was a sharp brush. The Doctor breathed hard, and fell intotaciturnity for the afternoon. As for the boy, he was delighted with theresolution of his doubts; even wondered that he had not foreseen theobvious and conclusive answer. His faith in the Doctor was a stout pieceof goods. Desprez was inclined to be a sheet in the wind's eye afterdinner, especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness. He wouldthen remark on the warmth of his feeling for Anastasie, and with inflamedcheeks and a loose, flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of topics, andbe feebly and indiscreetly witty. But the adopted stable-boy would notpermit himself to entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude. It isquite true that a man may be a second father to you, and yet take toomuch to drink; but the best natures are ever slow to accept such truths. 

The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but perhaps he exaggerated hisinfluence over his mind. Certainly Jean-Marie adopted some of hismaster's opinions, but I have yet to learn that he ever surrendered oneof his own. Convictions existed in him by divine right; they werevirgin, unwrought, the brute metal of decision. He could add othersindeed, but he could not put away; neither did he care if they wereperfectly agreed among themselves; and his spiritual pleasures hadnothing to do with turning them over or justifying them in words. Wordswere with him a mere accomplishment, like dancing. When he was byhimself, his pleasures were almost vegetable. He would slip into thewoods towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches. His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think;sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs against thesky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a spiritwholly abstracted. A single mood filled him, to which all the objects ofsense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum merge and disappear inwhite light. 

So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted stable-boybemused himself with silence. 

CHAPTER V. TREASURE TROVE. 

The Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig with a hood; a kind ofvehicle in much favour among country doctors. On how many roads has onenot seen it, a great way off between the poplars!--in how many villagestreets, tied to a gate-post! This sort of chariot isaffected--particularly at the trot--by a kind of pitching movement to andfro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy. Thehood describes a considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnlyabsurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride in such acarriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; butI have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, its wide popularity among physicians. 

One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened thegate, and mounted to the driving-seat. The Doctor followed, arrayed fromtop to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense flesh-colouredumbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a baldric; and the equipagedrove off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation. They were boundfor Franchard, to collect plants, with an eye to the 'ComparativePharmacopoeia. '

A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders of theforest and struck into an unfrequented track; the noddy yawed softly overthe sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs. There was a great, green, softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead. In thearcades of the forest the air retained the freshness of the night. Theathletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleasedthe mind like so many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eyeadmiringly upward to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch ofazure. Squirrels leaped in mid air. It was a proper spot for a devoteeof the goddess Hygieia. 

'Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie?' inquired the Doctor. 'I fancynot. '

'Never, ' replied the boy. 

'It is ruin in a gorge, ' continued Desprez, adopting his expositoryvoice; 'the ruin of a hermitage and chapel. History tells us much ofFranchard; how the recluse was often slain by robbers; how he lived on amost insufficient diet; how he was expected to pass his days in prayer. Aletter is preserved, addressed to one of these solitaries by the superiorof his order, full of admirable hygienic advice; bidding him go from hisbook to praying, and so back again, for variety's sake, and when he wasweary of both to stroll about his garden and observe the honey bees. Itis to this day my own system. You must often have remarked me leavingthe "Pharmacopoeia"--often even in the middle of a phrase--to come forthinto the sun and air. I admire the writer of that letter from my heart;he was a man of thought on the most important subjects. But, indeed, hadI lived in the Middle Ages (I am heartily glad that I did not) I shouldhave been an eremite myself--if I had not been a professed buffoon, thatis. These were the only philosophical lives yet open: laughter orprayer; sneers, we might say, and tears. Until the sun of the Positivearose, the wise man had to make his choice between these two. '

'I have been a buffoon, of course, ' observed Jean-Marie. 

'I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your profession, ' said theDoctor, admiring the boy's gravity. 'Do you ever laugh?'

'Oh, yes, ' replied the other. 'I laugh often. I am very fond of jokes. '

'Singular being!' said Desprez. 'But I divagate (I perceive in athousand ways that I grow old). Franchard was at length destroyed in theEnglish wars, the same that levelled Gretz. But--here is the point--thehermits (for there were already more than one) had foreseen the dangerand carefully concealed the sacrificial vessels. These vessels were ofmonstrous value, Jean-Marie--monstrous value--priceless, we may say;exquisitely worked, of exquisite material. And now, mark me, they havenever been found. In the reign of Louis Quatorze some fellows weredigging hard by the ruins. Suddenly--tock!--the spade hit upon anobstacle. Imagine the men fooling one to another; imagine how theirhearts bounded, how their colour came and went. It was a coffer, and inFranchard the place of buried treasure! They tore it open like famishedbeasts. Alas! it was not the treasure; only some priestly robes, which, at the touch of the eating air, fell upon themselves and instantly wastedinto dust. The perspiration of these good fellows turned cold upon them, Jean-Marie. I will pledge my reputation, if there was anything like acutting wind, one or other had a pneumonia for his trouble. '

'I should like to have seen them turning into dust, ' said Jean-Marie. 'Otherwise, I should not have cared so greatly. '

'You have no imagination, ' cried the Doctor. 'Picture to yourself thescene. Dwell on the idea--a great treasure lying in the earth forcenturies: the material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence notemployed; dresses and exquisite pictures unseen; the swiftest gallopinghorses not stirring a hoof, arrested by a spell; women with the beautifulfaculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice, opera singing, orchestras, castles, beautiful parks and gardens, big ships with a tower ofsailcloth, all lying unborn in a coffin--and the stupid trees growingoverhead in the sunlight, year after year. The thought drives onefrantic. '

'It is only money, ' replied Jean-Marie. 'It would do harm. '

'O, come!' cried Desprez, 'that is philosophy; it is all very fine, butnot to the point just now. And besides, it is not "only money, " as youcall it; there are works of art in the question; the vessels were carved. You speak like a child. You weary me exceedingly, quoting my words outof all logical connection, like a parroquet. '

'And at any rate, we have nothing to do with it, ' returned the boysubmissively. 

They struck the Route Ronde at that moment; and the sudden change to therattling causeway combined, with the Doctor's irritation, to keep himsilent. The noddy jigged along; the trees went by, looking on silently, as if they had something on their minds. The Quadrilateral was passed;then came Franchard. They put up the horse at the little solitary inn, and went forth strolling. The gorge was dyed deeply with heather; therocks and birches standing luminous in the sun. A great humming of beesabout the flowers disposed Jean-Marie to sleep, and he sat down against aclump of heather, while the Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quickturns, culling his simples. 

The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his eyes were closed, hisfingers had fallen lax about his knees, when a sudden cry called him tohis feet. It was a strange sound, thin and brief; it fell dead, andsilence returned as though it had never been interrupted. He had notrecognised the Doctor's voice; but, as there was no one else in all thevalley, it was plainly the Doctor who had given utterance to the sound. He looked right and left, and there was Desprez, standing in a nichebetween two boulders, and looking round on his adopted son with acountenance as white as paper. 

'A viper!' cried Jean-Marie, running towards him. 'A viper! You arebitten!'

The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, and, advanced in silenceto meet the boy, whom he took roughly by the shoulder. 

'I have found it, ' he said, with a gasp. 

'A plant?' asked Jean-Marie. 

Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up andmimicked. 'A plant!' he repeated scornfully. 'Well--yes--a plant. Andhere, ' he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he had hithertoconcealed behind his back--'here is one of the bulbs. '

Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth. 

'That?' said he. 'It is a plate!'

'It is a coach and horses, ' cried the Doctor. 'Boy, ' he continued, growing warmer, 'I plucked away a great pad of moss from between theseboulders, and disclosed a crevice; and when I looked in, what do yousuppose I saw? I saw a house in Paris with a court and garden, I saw mywife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a deputy, I saw you--well, I--Isaw your future, ' he concluded, rather feebly. 'I have just discoveredAmerica, ' he added. 

'But what is it?' asked the boy. 

'The Treasure of Franchard, ' cried the Doctor; and, throwing his brownstraw hat upon the ground, he whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean-Marie, whom he suffocated with embraces and bedewed with tears. Then heflung himself down among the heather and once more laughed until thevalley rang. 

But the boy had now an interest of his own, a boy's interest. No soonerwas he released from the Doctor's accolade than he ran to the boulders, sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into the crevice, drewforth one after another, encrusted with the earth of ages, the flagons, candlesticks, and patens of the hermitage of Franchard. A casket camelast, tightly shut and very heavy. 

'O what fun!' he cried. 

But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had followed close behind andwas silently observing, the words died from his lips. Desprez was oncemore the colour of ashes; his lip worked and trembled; a sort of bestialgreed possessed him. 

'This is childish, ' he said. 'We lose precious time. Back to the inn, harness the trap, and bring it to yon bank. Run for your life, andremember--not one whisper. I stay here to watch. '

Jean-Marie did as he was bid, though not without surprise. The noddy wasbrought round to the spot indicated; and the two gradually transportedthe treasure from its place of concealment to the boot below the drivingseat. Once it was all stored the Doctor recovered his gaiety. 

'I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this dell, ' he said. 'O, fora live coal, a heifer, and a jar of country wine! I am in the vein forsacrifice, for a superb libation. Well, and why not? We are atFranchard. English pale ale is to be had--not classical, indeed, butexcellent. Boy, we shall drink ale. '

'But I thought it was so unwholesome, ' said Jean-Marie, 'and very dearbesides. '

'Fiddle-de-dee!' exclaimed the Doctor gaily. 'To the inn!'

And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head, with an elastic, youthful air. The horse was turned, and in a few seconds they drew upbeside the palings of the inn garden. 

'Here, ' said Desprez--'here, near the table, so that we may keep an eyeupon things. '

They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now infantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter withwitticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far morecharged with gas than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a longglassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-Marie. 'Drink, ' he said;'drink deep. '

'I would rather not, ' faltered the boy, true to his training. 

'What?' thundered Desprez. 

'I am afraid of it, ' said Jean-Marie: 'my stomach--'

'Take it or leave it, ' interrupted Desprez fiercely; 'but understand itonce for all--there is nothing so contemptible as a precisian. '

Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass but nottasting it, while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own, at first withclouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the heady, pricklingbeverage, and his own predisposition to be happy. 

'Once in a way, ' he said at last, by way of a concession to the boy'smore rigorous attitude, 'once in a way, and at so critical a moment, thisale is a nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is debasing; wine, thejuice of the grape, is the true drink of the Frenchman, as I have oftenhad occasion to point out; and I do not know that I can blame you forrefusing this outlandish stimulant. You can have some wine and cakes. Isthe bottle empty? Well, we will not be proud; we will have pity on yourglass. '

The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie finishedhis cakes. 'I burn to be gone, ' he said, looking at his watch. 'GoodGod, how slow you eat!' And yet to eat slowly was his own particularprescription, the main secret of longevity!

His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed theirplaces in the buggy, and Desprez, leaning luxuriously back, announced hisintention of proceeding to Fontainebleau. 

'To Fontainebleau?' repeated Jean-Marie. 

'My words are always measured, ' said the Doctor. 'On!'

The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the light, the shining leaves, the very movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall intune with his golden meditations; with his head thrown back, he dreamed aseries of sunny visions, ale and pleasure dancing in his veins. At lasthe spoke. 

'I shall telegraph for Casimir, ' he said. 'Good Casimir! a fellow of thelower order of intelligence, Jean-Marie, distinctly not creative, notpoetic; and yet he will repay your study; his fortune is vast, and isentirely due to his own exertions. He is the very fellow to help us todispose of our trinkets, find us a suitable house in Paris, and managethe details of our installation. Admirable Casimir, one of my oldestcomrades! It was on his advice, I may add, that I invested my littlefortune in Turkish bonds; when we have added these spoils of the mediaevalchurch to our stake in the Mahometan empire, little boy, we shallpositively roll among doubloons, positively roll! Beautiful forest, ' hecried, 'farewell! Though called to other scenes, I will not forget thee. Thy name is graven in my heart. Under the influence of prosperity Ibecome dithyrambic, Jean-Marie. Such is the impulse of the natural soul;such was the constitution of primaeval man. And I--well, I will notrefuse the credit--I have preserved my youth like a virginity; another, who should have led the same snoozing, countryfied existence for theseyears, another had become rusted, become stereotype; but I, I praise myhappy constitution, retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a newsphere of duties find me unabated in ardour and only more mature byknowledge. For this prospective change, Jean-Marie--it may probably haveshocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike you as an inconsistency?Confess--it is useless to dissemble--it pained you?'

'Yes, ' said the boy. 

'You see, ' returned the Doctor, with sublime fatuity, 'I read yourthoughts! Nor am I surprised--your education is not yet complete; thehigher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully. Ahint--till we have leisure--must suffice. Now that I am once more inpossession of a modest competence; now that I have so long preparedmyself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty to proceed toParis. My scientific training, my undoubted command of language, mark meout for the service of my country. Modesty in such a case would be asnare. If sin were a philosophical expression, I should call it sinful. A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade hisobligations. I must be up and doing; I must be no skulker in life'sbattle. '

So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency withwords; while the boy listened silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, hismind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array of words couldunsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's; and he drove into Fontainebleau filledwith pity, horror, indignation, and despair. 

In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to guardthe treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airinessof manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands withgarrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of oldexperience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costlyfruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, apreposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for theboy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched histelegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising avisit on the morrow; and generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the firstfine aroma of his divine good humour. 

The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the foresttrees extended across the broad white road that led them home; thepenetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a cloud ofincense, from that broad field of tree-tops; and even in the streets ofthe town, where the air had been baked all day between white walls, itcame in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. Half-way home, the lastgold flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left; and when they cameforth beyond the borders of the wood, the plain was already sunken inpearly greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through thefilmy poplars. 

The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked. He spoke of thewoods, and the wars, and the deposition of dew; he brightened and babbledof Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the politicalarena. All was to be changed; as the day departed, it took with it thevestiges of an outworn existence, and to-morrow's sun was to inauguratethe new. 'Enough, ' he cried, 'of this life of maceration!' His wife(still beautiful, or he was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried;she should now shine before society. Jean-Marie would find the world athis feet; the roads open to success, wealth, honour, and post-humousrenown. 'And O, by the way, ' said he, 'for God's sake keep your tonguequiet! You are, of course, a very silent fellow; it is a quality Igladly recognise in you--silence, golden silence! But this is a matterof gravity. No word must get abroad; none but the good Casimir is to betrusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels in England. '

'But are they not even ours?' the boy said, almost with a sob--it was theonly time he had spoken. 

'Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's, ' replied the Doctor. 'But the State would have some claim. If they were stolen, for instance, we should be unable to demand their restitution; we should have no title;we should be unable even to communicate with the police. Such is themonstrous condition of the law. {263} It is a mere instance of whatremains to be done, of the injustices that may yet be righted by anardent, active, and philosophical deputy. '

Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez; and as they drove forwarddown the road from Bourron, between the rustling poplars, he prayed inhis teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual speed. Surely, as soonas they arrived, madame would assert her character, and bring this wakingnightmare to an end. 

Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most furiousbarking; all the dogs in the village seemed to smell the treasure in thenoddy. But there was no one in the street, save three lounging landscapepainters at Tentaillon's door. Jean-Marie opened the green gate and ledin the horse and carriage; and almost at the same moment Madame Desprezcame to the kitchen threshold with a lighted lantern; for the moon wasnot yet high enough to clear the garden walls. 

'Close the gates, Jean-Marie!' cried the Doctor, somewhat unsteadilyalighting. 'Anastasie, where is Aline?'

'She has gone to Montereau to see her parents, ' said madame. 

'All is for the best!' exclaimed the Doctor fervently. 'Here, quick, come near to me; I do not wish to speak too loud, ' he continued. 'Darling, we are wealthy!'

'Wealthy!' repeated the wife. 

'I have found the treasure of Franchard, ' replied her husband. 'See, here are the first fruits; a pineapple, a dress for my ever-beautiful--itwill suit her--trust a husband's, trust a lover's, taste! Embrace me, darling! This grimy episode is over; the butterfly unfolds its paintedwings. To-morrow Casimir will come; in a week we may be in Paris--happyat last! You shall have diamonds. Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. Weshall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; itwill be a whet--it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I myselfwill proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that littleBeaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are still threebottles left. Worthy wine for a worthy occasion. '

'But, my husband; you put me in a whirl, ' she cried. 'I do notcomprehend. '

'The turtle, my adored, the turtle!' cried the doctor; and he pushed hertowards the kitchen, lantern and all. 

Jean-Marie stood dumfounded. He had pictured to himself a differentscene--a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on thespot. 

The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on his legs, perhaps, andnow and then taking the wall with his shoulder; for it was long since hehad tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that the absinthehad been a misconception. Not that he regretted excess on such aglorious day, but he made a mental memorandum to beware; he must not, asecond time, become the victim of a deleterious habit. He had his wineout of the cellar in a twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels, some on the white table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still crusted withhistoric earth. He was in and out of the kitchen, plying Anastasie withvermouth, heating her with glimpses of the future, estimating their newwealth at ever larger figures; and before they sat down to supper, thelady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity haddisappeared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly of the life atGretz; and as she took her place and helped the soup, her eyes shone withthe glitter of prospective diamonds. 

All through the meal, she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy plans. They bobbed and bowed and pledged each other. Their faces ran over withsmiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they projected the Doctor'spolitical honours and the lady's drawing-room ovations. 

'But you will not be a Red!' cried Anastasie. 

'I am Left Centre to the core, ' replied the Doctor. 

'Madame Gastein will present us--we shall find ourselves forgotten, ' saidthe lady. 

'Never, ' protested the Doctor. 'Beauty and talent leave a mark. '

'I have positively forgotten how to dress, ' she sighed. 

'Darling, you make me blush, ' cried he. 'Yours has been a tragicmarriage!'

'But your success--to see you appreciated, honoured, your name in all thepapers, that will be more than pleasure--it will be heaven!' she cried. 

'And once a week, ' said the Doctor, archly scanning the syllables, 'oncea week--one good little game of baccarat?'

'Only once a week?' she questioned, threatening him with a finger. 

'I swear it by my political honour, ' cried he. 

'I spoil you, ' she said, and gave him her hand. 

He covered it with kisses. 

Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon swung high over Gretz. Hewent down to the garden end and sat on the jetty. The river ran by witheddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song. Faint veils of mistmoved among the poplars on the farther side. The reeds were quietlynodding. A hundred times already had the boy sat, on such a night, andwatched the streaming river with untroubled fancy. And this perhaps wasto be the last. He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this green, rustling country, this bright and quiet stream; he was to pass into thegreat city; his dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; hisgood, garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling deputy; andboth be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and their better selves. He knew hisown defects; he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in theturmoil of a city life, sink more and more from the child into theservant. And he began dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil. He could see a change in both. His generous incredulity failed him forthis once; a child must have perceived that the Hermitage had completedwhat the absinthe had begun. If this were the first day, what would bethe last? 'If necessary, wreck the train, ' thought he, remembering theDoctor's parable. He looked round on the delightful scene; he drank deepof the charmed night air, laden with the scent of hay. 'If necessary, wreck the train, ' he repeated. And he rose and returned to the house. 

CHAPTER VI. A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS. 

The next morning there was a most unusual outcry, in the Doctor's house. The last thing before going to bed, the Doctor had locked up somevaluables in the dining-room cupboard; and behold, when he rose again, ashe did about four o'clock, the cupboard had been broken open, and thevaluables in question had disappeared. Madame and Jean-Marie weresummoned from their rooms, and appeared in hasty toilets; they found theDoctor raving, calling the heavens to witness and avenge his injury, pacing the room bare-footed, with the tails of his night-shirt flirtingas he turned. 

'Gone!' he said; 'the things are gone, the fortune gone! We are paupersonce more. Boy! what do you know of this? Speak up, sir, speak up. Doyou know of it? Where are they?' He had him by the arm, shaking himlike a bag, and the boy's words, if he had any, were jolted forth ininarticulate murmurs. The Doctor, with a revulsion from his ownviolence, set him down again. He observed Anastasie in tears. 'Anastasie, ' he said, in quite an altered voice, 'compose yourself, command your feelings. I would not have you give way to passion like thevulgar. This--this trifling accident must be lived down. Jean-Marie, bring me my smaller medicine chest. A gentle laxative is indicated. '

And he dosed the family all round, leading the way himself with a doublequantity. The wretched Anastasie, who had never been ill in the wholecourse of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from remedies, weptfloods of tears as she sipped, and shuddered, and protested, and then wasbullied and shouted at until she sipped again. As for Jean-Marie, hetook his portion down with stoicism. 

'I have given him a less amount, ' observed the Doctor, 'his youthprotecting him against emotion. And now that we have thus parried anymorbid consequences, let us reason. '

'I am so cold, ' wailed Anastasie. 

'Cold!' cried the Doctor. 'I give thanks to God that I am made offierier material. Why, madam, a blow like this would set a frog into atranspiration. If you are cold, you can retire; and, by the way, youmight throw me down my trousers. It is chilly for the legs. '

'Oh, no!' protested Anastasie; 'I will stay with you. '

'Nay, madam, you shall not suffer for your devotion, ' said the Doctor. 'Iwill myself fetch you a shawl. ' And he went upstairs and returned morefully clad and with an armful of wraps for the shivering Anastasie. 'Andnow, ' he resumed, 'to investigate this crime. Let us proceed byinduction. Anastasie, do you know anything that can help us?' Anastasieknew nothing. 'Or you, Jean-Marie?'

'Not I, ' replied the boy steadily. 

'Good, ' returned the Doctor. 'We shall now turn our attention to thematerial evidences. (I was born to be a detective; I have the eye andthe systematic spirit. ) First, violence has been employed. The door wasbroken open; and it may be observed, in passing, that the lock was dearindeed at what I paid for it: a crow to pluck with Master Goguelat. Second, here is the instrument employed, one of our own table-knives, oneof our best, my dear; which seems to indicate no preparation on the partof the gang--if gang it was. Thirdly, I observe that nothing has beenremoved except the Franchard dishes and the casket; our own silver hasbeen minutely respected. This is wily; it shows intelligence, aknowledge of the code, a desire to avoid legal consequences. I arguefrom this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability--outward, of course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves. But I argue, second, that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by someoccult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and patiencethat I venture to qualify as consummate. No ordinary man, no occasionalcriminal, would have shown himself capable of this combination. We havein our neighbourhood, it is far from improbable, a retired bandit of thehighest order of intelligence. '

'Good heaven!' cried the horrified Anastasie. 'Henri, how can you?'

'My cherished one, this is a process of induction, ' said the Doctor. 'Ifany of my steps are unsound, correct me. You are silent? Then do not, Ibeseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my conclusion. Wehave now arrived, ' he resumed, 'at some idea of the composition of thegang--for I incline to the hypothesis of more than one--and we now leavethis room, which can disclose no more, and turn our attention to thecourt and garden. (Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following myvarious steps; this is an excellent piece of education for you. ) Comewith me to the door. No steps on the court; it is unfortunate our courtshould be paved. On what small matters hang the destiny of thesedelicate investigations! Hey! What have we here? I have led on to thevery spot, ' he said, standing grandly backward and indicating the greengate. 'An escalade, as you can now see for yourselves, has taken place. '

Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and broken;and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe. The foot hadslipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the size of the shoe, and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the nails. 

'The whole robbery, ' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has beenreconstituted. Inductive science can no further go. '

'It is wonderful, ' said his wife. 'You should indeed have been adetective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents. '

'My dear, ' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientificimagination combines the lesser faculties; he is a detective just as heis a publicist or a general; these are but local applications of hisspecial talent. But now, ' he continued, 'would you have me go further?Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits--or rather, for I cannotpromise quite so much, point out to you the very house where theyconsort? It may be a satisfaction, at least it is all we are likely toget, since we are denied the remedy of law. I reach the further stage inthis way. In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I require a manlikely to be in the forest idling, I require a man of education, Irequire a man superior to considerations of morality. The threerequisites all centre in Tentaillon's boarders. They are painters, therefore they are continually lounging in the forest. They arepainters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering ofeducation. Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral. And this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merelyaddresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moralsense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, impliesthe dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is nevermoral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too manyshifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of thelaw!'

'But you always say--at least, so I understood you'--said madame, 'thatthese lads display no imagination whatever. '

'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic order, too, ' returned the Doctor, 'when they embraced their beggarly profession. Besides--and this is an argument exactly suited to your intellectuallevel--many of them are English and American. Where else should weexpect to find a thief?--And now you had better get your coffee. Becausewe have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving. For my part, Ishall break my fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated andthirsty to-day. I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery. And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly. '

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour; and ashe sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wineand picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous appetite, ifa third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other two-thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his detectiveskill. 

About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train toFontainebleau, and driven over to save time; and now his cab was stabledat Tentaillon's, and he remarked, studying his watch, that he could sparean hour and a half. He was much the man of business, decisively spoken, given to frowning in an intellectual manner. Anastasie's born brother, he did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her an English familykiss, and demanded a meal without delay. 

'You can tell me your story while we eat, ' he observed. 'Anything goodto-day, Stasie?'

He was promised something good. The trio sat down to table in thearbour, Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating, and the Doctor recountedwhat had happened in his richest narrative manner. Casimir heard it withexplosions of laughter. 

'What a streak of luck for you, my good brother, ' he observed, when thetale was over. 'If you had gone to Paris, you would have played dick-duck-drake with the whole consignment in three months. Your own wouldhave followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like thelast time. But I give you warning--Stasie may weep and Henriratiocinate--it will not serve you twice. Your next collapse will befatal. I thought I had told you so, Stasie? Hey? No sense?'

The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-Marie; but the boy seemedapathetic. 

'And then again, ' broke out Casimir, 'what children you are--viciouschildren, my faith! How could you tell the value of this trash? Itmight have been worth nothing, or next door. '

'Pardon me, ' said the Doctor. 'You have your usual flow of spirits, Iperceive, but even less than your usual deliberation. I am not entirelyignorant of these matters. '

'Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of, ' interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness. 

'At least, ' resumed the Doctor, 'I gave my mind to the subject--that youmay be willing to believe--and I estimated that our capital would bedoubled. ' And he described the nature of the find. 

'My word of honour!' said Casimir, 'I half believe you! But much woulddepend on the quality of the gold. '

'The quality, my dear Casimir, was--' And the Doctor, in default oflanguage, kissed his finger-tips. 

'I would not take your word for it, my good friend, ' retorted the man ofbusiness. 'You are a man of very rosy views. But this robbery, ' hecontinued--'this robbery is an odd thing. Of course I pass over yournonsense about gangs and landscape-painters. For me, that is a dream. Who was in the house last night?'

'None but ourselves, ' replied the Doctor. 

'And this young gentleman?' asked Casimir, jerking a nod in the directionof Jean-Marie. 

'He too'--the Doctor bowed. 

'Well; and if it is a fair question, who is he?' pursued the brother-in-law. 

'Jean-Marie, ' answered the Doctor, 'combines the functions of a son andstable-boy. He began as the latter, but he rose rapidly to the morehonourable rank in our affections. He is, I may say, the greatestcomfort in our lives. '

'Ha!' said Casimir. 'And previous to becoming one of you?'

'Jean-Marie has lived a remarkable existence; his experience his beeneminently formative, ' replied Desprez. 'If I had had to choose aneducation for my son, I should have chosen such another. Beginning lifewith mountebanks and thieves, passing onward to the society andfriendship of philosophers, he may be said to have skimmed the volume ofhuman life. '

'Thieves?' repeated the brother-in-law, with a meditative air. 

The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out. He foresaw what was coming, and prepared his mind for a vigorous defence. 

'Did you ever steal yourself?' asked Casimir, turning suddenly on Jean-Marie, and for the first time employing a single eyeglass which hunground his neck. 

'Yes, sir, ' replied the boy, with a deep blush. 

Casimir turned to the others with pursed lips, and nodded to themmeaningly. 'Hey?' said he; 'how is that?'

'Jean-Marie is a teller of the truth, ' returned the Doctor, throwing outhis bust. 

'He has never told a lie, ' added madame. 'He is the best of boys. '

'Never told a lie, has he not?' reflected Casimir. 'Strange, verystrange. Give me your attention, my young friend, ' he continued. 'Youknew about this treasure?'

'He helped to bring it home, ' interposed the Doctor. 

'Desprez, I ask you nothing but to hold your tongue, ' returned Casimir. 'I mean to question this stable-boy of yours; and if you are so certainof his innocence, you can afford to let him answer for himself. Now, sir, ' he resumed, pointing his eyeglass straight at Jean-Marie. 'Youknew it could be stolen with impunity? You knew you could not beprosecuted? Come! Did you, or did you not?'

'I did, ' answered Jean-Marie, in a miserable whisper. He sat therechanging colour like a revolving pharos, twisting his fingershysterically, swallowing air, the picture of guilt. 

'You knew where it was put?' resumed the inquisitor. 

'Yes, ' from Jean-Marie. 

'You say you have been a thief before, ' continued Casimir. 'Now how am Ito know that you are not one still? I suppose you could climb the greengate?'

'Yes, ' still lower, from the culprit. 

'Well, then, it was you who stole these things. You know it, and youdare not deny it. Look me in the face! Raise your sneak's eyes, andanswer!'

But in place of anything of that sort Jean-Marie broke into a dismal howland fled from the arbour. Anastasie, as she pursued to capture andreassure the victim, found time to send one Parthian arrow--'Casimir, youare a brute!'

'My brother, ' said Desprez, with the greatest dignity, 'you take uponyourself a licence--'

'Desprez, ' interrupted Casimir, 'for Heaven's sake be a man of the world. You telegraph me to leave my business and come down here on yours. Icome, I ask the business, you say "Find me this thief!" Well, I findhim; I say "There he is!" You need not like it, but you have no mannerof right to take offence. '

'Well, ' returned the Doctor, 'I grant that; I will even thank you foryour mistaken zeal. But your hypothesis was so extravagantly monstrous--'

'Look here, ' interrupted Casimir; 'was it you or Stasie?'

'Certainly not, ' answered the Doctor. 

'Very well; then it was the boy. Say no more about it, ' said the brother-in-law, and he produced his cigar-case. 

'I will say this much more, ' returned Desprez: 'if that boy came and toldme so himself, I should not believe him; and if I did believe him, soimplicit is my trust, I should conclude that he had acted for the best. '

'Well, well, ' said Casimir, indulgently. 'Have you a light? I must begoing. And by the way, I wish you would let me sell your Turks for you. I always told you, it meant smash. I tell you so again. Indeed, it waspartly that that brought me down. You never acknowledge my letters--amost unpardonable habit. '

'My good brother, ' replied the Doctor blandly, 'I have never denied yourability in business; but I can perceive your limitations. '

'Egad, my friend, I can return the compliment, ' observed the man ofbusiness. 'Your limitation is to be downright irrational. '

'Observe the relative position, ' returned the Doctor with a smile. 'Itis your attitude to believe through thick and thin in one man'sjudgment--your own. I follow the same opinion, but critically and withopen eyes. Which is the more irrational?--I leave it to yourself. '

'O, my dear fellow!' cried Casimir, 'stick to your Turks, stick to yourstable-boy, go to the devil in general in your own way and be done withit. But don't ratiocinate with me--I cannot bear it. And so, ta-ta. Imight as well have stayed away for any good I've done. Say good-bye fromme to Stasie, and to the sullen hang-dog of a stable-boy, if you insiston it; I'm off. '

And Casimir departed. The Doctor, that night, dissected his characterbefore Anastasie. 'One thing, my beautiful, ' he said, 'he has learnedone thing from his lifelong acquaintance with your husband: the word_ratiocinate_. It shines in his vocabulary, like a jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he continually misapplies it. For you must have observedhe uses it as a sort of taunt, in the sense of to _ergotise_, implying, as it were--the poor, dear fellow!--a vein of sophistry. As for hiscruelty to Jean-Marie, it must be forgiven him--it is not his nature, itis the nature of his life. A man who deals with money, my dear, is a manlost. '

With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat slow. Atfirst he was inconsolable, insisted on leaving the family, went fromparoxysm to paroxysm of tears; and it was only after Anastasie had beencloseted for an hour with him, alone, that she came forth, sought out theDoctor, and, with tears in her eyes, acquainted that gentleman with whathad passed. 

'At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing, ' she said. 'Imagine! ifhe had left us! what would the treasure be to that? Horrible treasure, it has brought all this about! At last, after he has sobbed his veryheart out, he agrees to stay on a condition--we are not to mention thismatter, this infamous suspicion, not even to mention the robbery. Onthat agreement only, the poor, cruel boy will consent to remain among hisfriends. '

'But this inhibition, ' said the Doctor, 'this embargo--it cannot possiblyapply to me?'

'To all of us, ' Anastasie assured him. 

'My cherished one, ' Desprez protested, 'you must have misunderstood. Itcannot apply to me. He would naturally come to me. '

'Henri, ' she said, 'it does; I swear to you it does. '

'This is a painful, a very painful circumstance, ' the Doctor said, looking a little black. 'I cannot affect, Anastasie, to be anything butjustly wounded. I feel this, I feel it, my wife, acutely. '

'I knew you would, ' she said. 'But if you had seen his distress! Wemust make allowances, we must sacrifice our feelings. '

'I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices, 'returned the Doctor very stiffly. 

'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed? It will belike your noble nature, ' she cried. 

So it would, he perceived--it would be like his noble nature! Up jumpedhis spirits, triumphant at the thought. 'Go, darling, ' he said nobly, 'reassure him. The subject is buried; more--I make an effort, I haveaccustomed my will to these exertions--and it is forgotten. '

A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortallysheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about hisbusiness. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat down thatnight to supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He thus sang therequiem of the treasure:--

'This has been, on the whole, a most amusing episode, ' he said. 'We arenot a penny the worse--nay, we are immensely gainers. Our philosophy hasbeen exercised; some of the turtle is still left--the most wholesome ofdelicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has her new dress, Jean-Marie isthe proud possessor of a fashionable kepi. Besides, we had a glass ofHermitage last night; the glow still suffuses my memory. I was growingpositively niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let metake the hint: we had one bottle to celebrate the appearance of ourvisionary fortune; let us have a second to console us for itsoccultation. The third I hereby dedicate to Jean-Marie's weddingbreakfast. '

CHAPTER VII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ. 

The Doctor's house has not yet received the compliment of a description, and it is now high time that the omission were supplied, for the house isitself an actor in the story, and one whose part is nearly at an end. Twostories in height, walls of a warm yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddybrown diversified with moss and lichen, it stood with one wall to thestreet in the angle of the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven withrude marks and patterns; the handrail of the stair was carved incountrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to supportthe dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over thelegendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell upon theScandinavian scholar who had left them. Floors, doors, and rafters madea great variety of angles; every room had a particular inclination; thegable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from thatside with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; andnothing but its excellent brightness--the window-glass polished andshining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop allwreathed about with climbing flowers--nothing but its air of awell-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the sunnycorner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people toinhabit. In poor or idle management it would soon have hurried into theblackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole family loved it, andthe Doctor was never better inspired than when he narrated its imaginarystory and drew the character of its successive masters, from the Hebrewmerchant who had re-edified its walls after the sack of the town, andpast the mysterious engraver of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty-handed boor from whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. Asfor any alarm about its security, the idea had never presented itself. What had stood four centuries might well endure a little longer. 

Indeed, in this particular winter, after the finding and losing of thetreasure, the Desprez' had an anxiety of a very different order, and onewhich lay nearer their hearts. Jean-Marie was plainly not himself. Hehad fits of hectic activity, when he made unusual exertions to please, spoke more and faster, and redoubled in attention to his lessons. Butthese were interrupted by spells of melancholia and brooding silence, when the boy was little better than unbearable. 

'Silence, ' the Doctor moralised--'you see, Anastasie, what comes ofsilence. Had the boy properly unbosomed himself, the littledisappointment about the treasure, the little annoyance about Casimir'sincivility, would long ago have been forgotten. As it is, they prey uponhim like a disease. He loses flesh, his appetite is variable and, on thewhole, impaired. I keep him on the strictest regimen, I exhibit the mostpowerful tonics; both in vain. '

'Don't you think you drug him too much?' asked madame, with anirrepressible shudder. 

'Drug?' cried the Doctor; 'I drug? Anastasie, you are mad!'

Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly declined. The Doctorblamed the weather, which was cold and boisterous. He called in his_confrere_ from Bourron, took a fancy for him, magnified his capacity, and was pretty soon under treatment himself--it scarcely appeared forwhat complaint. He and Jean-Marie had each medicine to take at differentperiods of the day. The Doctor used to lie in wait for the exact moment, watch in hand. 'There is nothing like regularity, ' he would say, fillout the doses, and dilate on the virtues of the draught; and if the boyseemed none the better, the Doctor was not at all the worse. 

Gunpowder Day, the boy was particularly low. It was scowling, squallyweather. Huge broken companies of cloud sailed swiftly overhead; rakinggleams of sunlight swept the village, and were followed by intervals ofdarkness and white, flying rain. At times the wind lifted up its voiceand bellowed. The trees were all scourging themselves along the meadows, the last leaves flying like dust. 

The Doctor, between the boy and the weather, was in his element; he had atheory to prove. He sat with his watch out and a barometer in front ofhim, waiting for the squalls and noting their effect upon the humanpulse. 'For the true philosopher, ' he remarked delightedly, 'every factin nature is a toy. ' A letter came to him; but, as its arrival coincidedwith the approach of another gust, he merely crammed it into his pocket, gave the time to Jean-Marie, and the next moment they were both countingtheir pulses as if for a wager. 

At nightfall the wind rose into a tempest. It besieged the hamlet, apparently from every side, as if with batteries of cannon; the housesshook and groaned; live coals were blown upon the floor. The uproar andterror of the night kept people long awake, sitting with pallid facesgiving ear. 

It was twelve before the Desprez family retired. By half-past one, whenthe storm was already somewhat past its height, the Doctor was awakenedfrom a troubled slumber, and sat up. A noise still rang in his ears, butwhether of this world or the world of dreams he was not certain. Anotherclap of wind followed. It was accompanied by a sickening movement of thewhole house, and in the subsequent lull Desprez could hear the tilespouring like a cataract into the loft above his head. He pluckedAnastasie bodily out of bed. 

'Run!' he cried, thrusting some wearing apparel into her hands; 'thehouse is falling! To the garden!'

She did not pause to be twice bidden; she was down the stair in aninstant. She had never before suspected herself of such activity. TheDoctor meanwhile, with the speed of a piece of pantomime business, andundeterred by broken shins, proceeded to rout out Jean-Marie, tore Alinefrom her virgin slumbers, seized her by the hand, and tumbled downstairsand into the garden, with the girl tumbling behind him, still not halfawake. 

The fugitives rendezvous'd in the arbour by some common instinct. Thencame a bull's-eye flash of struggling moonshine, which disclosed theirfour figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle of flyingdrapery, and not without a considerable need for more. At thehumiliating spectacle Anastasie clutched her nightdress desperately abouther and burst loudly into tears. The Doctor flew to console her; but sheelbowed him away. She suspected everybody of being the general public, and thought the darkness was alive with eyes. 

Another gleam and another violent gust arrived together; the house wasseen to rock on its foundation, and, just as the light was once moreeclipsed, a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the wind announcedits fall, and for a moment the whole garden was alive with skipping tilesand brickbats. One such missile grazed the Doctor's ear; anotherdescended on the bare foot of Aline, who instantly made night hideouswith her shrieks. 

By this time the hamlet was alarmed, lights flashed from the windows, hails reached the party, and the Doctor answered, nobly contendingagainst Aline and the tempest. But this prospect of help only awakenedAnastasie to a more active stage of terror. 

'Henri, people will be coming, ' she screamed in her husband's ear. 

'I trust so, ' he replied. 

'They cannot. I would rather die, ' she wailed. 

'My dear, ' said the Doctor reprovingly, 'you are excited. I gave yousome clothes. What have you done with them?'

'Oh, I don't know--I must have thrown them away! Where are they?' shesobbed. 

Desprez groped about in the darkness. 'Admirable!' he remarked; 'my greyvelveteen trousers! This will exactly meet your necessities. '

'Give them to me!' she cried fiercely; but as soon as she had them in herhands her mood appeared to alter--she stood silent for a moment, and thenpressed the garment back upon the Doctor. 'Give it to Aline, ' shesaid--'poor girl. '

'Nonsense!' said the Doctor. 'Aline does not know what she is about. Aline is beside herself with terror; and at any rate, she is a peasant. Now I am really concerned at this exposure for a person of yourhousekeeping habits; my solicitude and your fantastic modesty both pointto the same remedy--the pantaloons. ' He held them ready. 

'It is impossible. You do not understand, ' she said with dignity. 

By this time rescue was at hand. It had been found impracticable toenter by the street, for the gate was blocked with masonry, and thenodding ruin still threatened further avalanches. But between theDoctor's garden and the one on the right hand there was that verypicturesque contrivance--a common well; the door on the Desprez' side hadchanced to be unbolted, and now, through the arched aperture a man'sbearded face and an arm supporting a lantern were introduced into theworld of windy darkness, where Anastasie concealed her woes. The lightstruck here and there among the tossing apple boughs, it glinted on thegrass; but the lantern and the glowing face became the centre of theworld. Anastasie crouched back from the intrusion. 

'This way!' shouted the man. 'Are you all safe?' Aline, stillscreaming, ran to the new comer, and was presently hauled head-foremostthrough the wall. 

'Now, Anastasie, come on; it is your turn, ' said the husband. 

'I cannot, ' she replied. 

'Are we all to die of exposure, madame?' thundered Doctor Desprez. 

'You can go!' she cried. 'Oh, go, go away! I can stay here; I am quitewarm. '

The Doctor took her by the shoulders with an oath. 

'Stop!' she screamed. 'I will put them on. '

She took the detested lendings in her hand once more; but her repulsionwas stronger than shame. 'Never!' she cried, shuddering, and flung themfar away into the night. 

Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the well. The man was thereand the lantern; Anastasie closed her eyes and appeared to herself to beabout to die. How she was transported through the arch she knew not; butonce on the other side she was received by the neighbour's wife, andenveloped in a friendly blanket. 

Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes of very various sizes forthe Doctor and Jean-Marie; and for the remainder of the night, whilemadame dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics, her husband satbeside the fire and held forth to the admiring neighbours. He showedthem, at length, the causes of the accident; for years, he explained, thefall had been impending; one sign had followed another, the joints hadopened, the plaster had cracked, the old walls bowed inward; last, notthree weeks ago, the cellar door had begun to work with difficulty in itsgrooves. 'The cellar!' he said, gravely shaking his head over a glass ofmulled wine. 'That reminds me of my poor vintages. By a manifestprovidence the Hermitage was nearly at an end. One bottle--I lose butone bottle of that incomparable wine. It had been set apart against Jean-Marie's wedding. Well, I must lay down some more; it will be an interestin life. I am, however, a man somewhat advanced in years. My great workis now buried in the fall of my humble roof; it will never becompleted--my name will have been writ in water. And yet you find mecalm--I would say cheerful. Can your priest do more?'

By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the firesideinto the street. The wind had fallen, but still charioted a world oftroubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party, as they stoodabout the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon theirbreasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirelyfallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel wasplaced over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned toTentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottlecirculated somewhat freely; and before they left the table it had begunto snow. 

For three days the snow continued to fall, and the ruins, covered withtarpaulin and watched by sentries, were left undisturbed. The Desprez'meanwhile had taken up their abode at Tentaillon's. Madame spent hertime in the kitchen, concocting little delicacies, with the admiring aidof Madame Tentaillon, or sitting by the fire in thoughtful abstraction. The fall of the house affected her wonderfully little; that blow had beenparried by another; and in her mind she was continually fighting overagain the battle of the trousers. Had she done right? Had she donewrong? And now she would applaud her determination; and anon, with ahorrid flush of unavailing penitence, she would regret the trousers. Nojuncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantimethe Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of thesummer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of aremittance; they were both English, but one of them spoke French prettyfluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded fellow, with whomthe Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of comprehension. Many werethe glasses they emptied, many the topics they discussed. 

'Anastasie, ' the Doctor said on the third morning, 'take an example fromyour husband, from Jean-Marie! The excitement has done more for the boythan all my tonics, he takes his turn as sentry with positive gusto. Asfor me, you behold me. I have made friends with the Egyptians; and myPharaoh is, I swear it, a most agreeable companion. You alone arehipped. About a house--a few dresses? What are they in comparison tothe "Pharmacopoeia"--the labour of years lying buried below stones andsticks in this depressing hamlet? The snow falls; I shake it from mycloak! Imitate me. Our income will be impaired, I grant it, since wemust rebuild; but moderation, patience, and philosophy will gather aboutthe hearth. In the meanwhile, the Tentaillons are obliging; the table, with your additions, will pass; only the wine is execrable--well, I shallsend for some to-day. My Pharaoh will be gratified to drink a decentglass; aha! and I shall see if he possesses that acme of organisation--apalate. If he has a palate, he is perfect. '

'Henri, ' she said, shaking her head, 'you are a man; you cannotunderstand my feelings; no woman could shake off the memory of so publica humiliation. ' The Doctor could not restrain a titter. 'Pardon me, darling, ' he said; 'but really, to the philosophical intelligence, theincident appears so small a trifle. You looked extremely well--'

'Henri!' she cried. 

'Well, well, I will say no more, ' he replied. 'Though, to be sure, ifyou had consented to indue--_A propos_, ' he broke off, 'and my trousers!They are lying in the snow--my favourite trousers!' And he dashed inquest of Jean-Marie. 

Two hours afterwards the boy returned to the inn with a spade under onearm and a curious sop of clothing under the other. 

The Doctor ruefully took it in his hands. 'They have been!' he said. 'Their tense is past. Excellent pantaloons, you are no more! Stay, something in the pocket, ' and he produced a piece of paper. 'A letter!ay, now I mind me; it was received on the morning of the gale, when I wasabsorbed in delicate investigations. It is still legible. From poor, dear Casimir! It is as well, ' he chuckled, 'that I have educated him topatience. Poor Casimir and his correspondence--his infinitesimal, timorous, idiotic correspondence!'

He had by this time cautiously unfolded the wet letter; but, as he benthimself to decipher the writing, a cloud descended on his brow. 

'_Bigre_!' he cried, with a galvanic start. 

And then the letter was whipped into the fire, and the Doctor's cap wason his head in the turn of a hand. 

'Ten minutes! I can catch it, if I run, ' he cried. 'It is always late. I go to Paris. I shall telegraph. '

'Henri! what is wrong?' cried his wife. 

'Ottoman Bonds!' came from the disappearing Doctor; and Anastasie andJean-Marie were left face to face with the wet trousers. Desprez hadgone to Paris, for the second time in seven years; he had gone to Pariswith a pair of wooden shoes, a knitted spencer, a black blouse, a countrynightcap, and twenty francs in his pocket. The fall of the house was buta secondary marvel; the whole world might have fallen and scarce left hisfamily more petrified. 

CHAPTER VIII. THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY. 

On the morning of the next day, the Doctor, a mere spectre of himself, was brought back in the custody of Casimir. They found Anastasie and theboy sitting together by the fire; and Desprez, who had exchanged histoilette for a ready-made rig-out of poor materials, waved his hand as heentered, and sank speechless on the nearest chair. Madame turned directto Casimir. 

'What is wrong?' she cried. 

'Well, ' replied Casimir, 'what have I told you all along? It has come. It is a clean shave, this time; so you may as well bear up and make thebest of it. House down, too, eh? Bad luck, upon my soul. '

'Are we--are we--ruined?' she gasped. 

The Doctor stretched out his arms to her. 'Ruined, ' he replied, 'you areruined by your sinister husband. '

Casimir observed the consequent embrace through his eyeglass; then heturned to Jean-Marie. 'You hear?' he said. 'They are ruined; no morepickings, no more house, no more fat cutlets. It strikes me, my friend, that you had best be packing; the present speculation is about workedout. ' And he nodded to him meaningly. 

'Never!' cried Desprez, springing up. 'Jean-Marie, if you prefer toleave me, now that I am poor, you can go; you shall receive your hundredfrancs, if so much remains to me. But if you will consent to stay'--theDoctor wept a little--'Casimir offers me a place--as clerk, ' he resumed. 'The emoluments are slender, but they will be enough for three. It istoo much already to have lost my fortune; must I lose my son?'

Jean-Marie sobbed bitterly, but without a word. 

'I don't like boys who cry, ' observed Casimir. 'This one is alwayscrying. Here! you clear out of this for a little; I have business withyour master and mistress, and these domestic feelings may be settledafter I am gone. March!' and he held the door open. 

Jean-Marie slunk out, like a detected thief. 

By twelve they were all at table but Jean-Marie. 

'Hey?' said Casimir. 'Gone, you see. Took the hint at once. '

'I do not, I confess, ' said Desprez, 'I do not seek to excuse hisabsence. It speaks a want of heart that disappoints me sorely. '

'Want of manners, ' corrected Casimir. 'Heart, he never had. Why, Desprez, for a clever fellow, you are the most gullible mortal increation. Your ignorance of human nature and human business is beyondbelief. You are swindled by heathen Turks, swindled by vagabondchildren, swindled right and left, upstairs and downstairs. I think itmust be your imagination. I thank my stars I have none. '

'Pardon me, ' replied Desprez, still humbly, but with a return of spiritat sight of a distinction to be drawn; 'pardon me, Casimir. You possess, even to an eminent degree, the commercial imagination. It was the lackof that in me--it appears it is my weak point--that has led to theserepeated shocks. By the commercial imagination the financier forecaststhe destiny of his investments, marks the falling house--'

'Egad, ' interrupted Casimir: 'our friend the stable-boy appears to havehis share of it. '

The Doctor was silenced; and the meal was continued and finishedprincipally to the tune of the brother-in-law's not very consolatoryconversation. He entirely ignored the two young English painters, turning a blind eyeglass to their salutations, and continuing his remarksas if he were alone in the bosom of his family; and with every secondword he ripped another stitch out of the air balloon of Desprez's vanity. By the time coffee was over the poor Doctor was as limp as a napkin. 

'Let us go and see the ruins, ' said Casimir. 

They strolled forth into the street. The fall of the house, like theloss of a front tooth, had quite transformed the village. Through thegap the eye commanded a great stretch of open snowy country, and theplace shrank in comparison. It was like a room with an open door. Thesentinel stood by the green gate, looking very red and cold, but he had apleasant word for the Doctor and his wealthy kinsman. 

Casimir looked at the mound of ruins, he tried the quality of thetarpaulin. 'H'm, ' he said, 'I hope the cellar arch has stood. If ithas, my good brother, I will give you a good price for the wines. '

'We shall start digging to-morrow, ' said the sentry. 'There is no morefear of snow. '

'My friend, ' returned Casimir sententiously, 'you had better wait tillyou get paid. '

The Doctor winced, and began dragging his offensive brother-in-lawtowards Tentaillon's. In the house there would be fewer auditors, andthese already in the secret of his fall. 

'Hullo!' cried Casimir, 'there goes the stable-boy with his luggage; no, egad, he is taking it into the inn. '

And sure enough, Jean-Marie was seen to cross the snowy street and enterTentaillon's, staggering under a large hamper. 

The Doctor stopped with a sudden, wild hope. 

'What can he have?' he said. 'Let us go and see. ' And he hurried on. 

'His luggage, to be sure, ' answered Casimir. 'He is on the move--thanksto the commercial imagination. '

'I have not seen that hamper for--for ever so long, ' remarked the Doctor. 

'Nor will you see it much longer, ' chuckled Casimir; 'unless, indeed, weinterfere. And by the way, I insist on an examination. '

'You will not require, ' said Desprez, positively with a sob; and, castinga moist, triumphant glance at Casimir, he began to run. 

'What the devil is up with him, I wonder?' Casimir reflected; and then, curiosity taking the upper hand, he followed the Doctor's example andtook to his heels. 

The hamper was so heavy and large, and Jean-Marie himself so little andso weary, that it had taken him a great while to bundle it upstairs tothe Desprez' private room; and he had just set it down on the floor infront of Anastasie, when the Doctor arrived, and was closely followed bythe man of business. Boy and hamper were both in a most sorry plight;for the one had passed four months underground in a certain cave on theway to Acheres, and the other had run about five miles as hard as hislegs would carry him, half that distance under a staggering weight. 

'Jean-Marie, ' cried the Doctor, in a voice that was only too seraphic tobe called hysterical, 'is it--? It is!' he cried. 'O, my son, my son!'And he sat down upon the hamper and sobbed like a little child. 

'You will not go to Paris now, ' said Jean-Marie sheepishly. 

'Casimir, ' said Desprez, raising his wet face, 'do you see that boy, thatangel boy? He is the thief; he took the treasure from a man unfit to beentrusted with its use; he brings it back to me when I am sobered andhumbled. These, Casimir, are the Fruits of my Teaching, and this momentis the Reward of my Life. '

'_Tiens_, ' said Casimir. 

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Footnotes

{5} Boggy. 

{15} Clock

{16} Enjoy. 

{140} To come forrit--to offer oneself as a communicant. 

{144} It was a common belief in Scotland that the devil appeared as ablack man. This appears in several witch trials and I think in Law's_Memorials_, that delightful store-house of the quaint and grisly. 

{263} Let it be so, for my tale!