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Title: The Ross-shire Buffs

Author: James Grant

Release date: December 31, 2025 [eBook #77588]

Language: English

Original publication: London: George Routledge and Sons, 1878

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS ***






[Illustration: Cover art]





  THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS


  BY

  JAMES GRANT

  AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," &c.



  LONDON
  GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
  THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE
  NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET




  LONDON:
  BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




  JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS.

  _Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards._

  THE ROMANCE OF WAR.
  THE AIDE-DE-CAMP.
  THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER.
  BOTHWELL.
  JANE SETON; OR, THE QUEEN'S ADVOCATE.
  PHILIP ROLLO.
  THE BLACK WATCH.
  MARY OF LORRAINE.
  OLIVER ELLIS; OR, THE FUSILEERS.
  LUCY ARDEN; OR, HOLLYWOOD HALL.
  FRANK HILTON; OR, THE QUEEN'S OWN.
  THE YELLOW FRIGATE.
  HARRY OGILVIE; OR, THE BLACK DRAGOONS.
  ARTHUR BLANE.
  LAURA EVERINGHAM; OR, THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLENORA.
  THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
  LETTY HYDE'S LOVERS.
  CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE.
  SECOND TO NONE.
  THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
  THE PHANTOM REGIMENT.
  THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.
  THE WHITE COCKADE.
  FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE.
  DICK ROONEY.
  THE GIRL HE MARRIED.
  LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH.
  JACK MANLY.
  ONLY AN ENSIGN.
  ADVENTURES OF ROB ROY.
  UNDER THE RED DRAGON.
  THE QUEEN'S CADET.
  SHALL I WIN HER?
  FAIRER THAN A FAIRY.
  ONE OF THE SIX HUNDRED.
  MORLEY ASHTON.
  DID SHE LOVE HIM?
  THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS.




  CONTENTS.

  THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS.

  CHAP.

  I.--ENGAGED
  II.--UNCLE GAINSWOOD
  III.--THE COLONEL'S ANSWER
  IV.--LORD CAMPSIE
  V.--THE PRINCE'S HUSSARS
  VI.--AT PIERSHILL
  VII.--A NOBLE LORD RESOLVES TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF
  VIII.--NEWS FROM INDIA
  IX.--THE APPLE OF DISCORD
  X.--"IT MAY BE FOR YEARS AND IT MAY BE FOR EVER"
  XI.--DOVE IN HER SORROW
  XII.--"CUIDICH'N RHI!"
  XIII.--IN THE GULF OF PERSIA
  XIV.--A BIVOUAC, AND AN "ALERTE" ON THE PLAIN OF SHIBAZ
  XV.--THE BATTLE OF KHOOSH-AB
  XVI.--TIDINGS OF THE LOST ONE
  XVII.--A BOMBARDMENT AND AN EXCITING ADVENTURE
  XVIII.--GILLIAN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY
  XIX.--THE TANGLED WEB UNWOVEN


A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON

STORY OF A HUSSAR OF THE REGENCY

A WEIRD STORY OF BRUGES

AGNES SOREL, "THE LADY OF BEAUTY"

THE VEILED PORTRAIT

A LEGEND OF THE OLD 55th; or, THE REGIMENT OF FLANDERS

THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE "LAURA;" or THE STORY OF JACK MILMAN




"THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS."



CHAPTER I.

ENGAGED.

"And will you love me always--always, as you do now?" asked the girl
in a low and winning voice, and after a pause, while colouring deeply.

"Could I ever cease to love you, Dove, darling?" replied the other,
questioningly and tremulously.

"And so you are to be my own--my very own."

"So long as my heart has pulsation, Dove!"

Thus it is, with a fragment of the "old, old story," first told in
Eden, that our new one begins--and told in a veritable Eden too,
where, under the glow of a glorious summer sunset, with seemingly all
the flowers that the earth can produce, where the trees are of
surpassing loveliness, and the tall feathery palms exceed in size and
beauty the boasted ones of Kew, beside a pool where the snow-white
lilies floated and the golden fish shot to and fro,--yet a place
having the most prosaic of names--the Botanical Gardens of
Edinburgh,--our two young friends were exchanging what Le Sage would
call "marks of their mutual esteem."

The hum of the adjacent city, towering high in air to the south, came
with a subdued cadence to the ear; the birds twittered about, the
sole witnesses apparently of the half fatuous caresses, which, with
tender incoherencies, make up the delight of such a period, when Time
itself seems to stand still.

Most decorously and demurely sat the pair, when other bipeds passed
near, and, to all appearance, they conversed fluently enough upon
botany or anything else that occurred to them; but the moment they
were alone face turned to face and eye to eye, while hand sought hand
again.

The love-talk in novels, though very delightful to lovers in general,
and perhaps to young ladies in particular, we, ourselves, are rather
apt to skip; for, remembering our own slight experience in such
matters, it seldom seems to have much in it that is capable of
coherent record; but, as this is a true narrative and not all
romance, a little of it must be given, as preluding and introductory.

"And so you will always love me?" cooed the girl, as her lover, after
one swift glance around them, kissed her for the second time, as yet;
but her pouting lips invited a third, after which she started and
said, "Now, Gillian, we must be very proper, for here come people who
may know us."

"Let us walk, then."

And, leaving the rustic sofa which was under a stately tree, they
entered a long leafy avenue known as the Lovers' Walk, where
doubtless the "old story" would be told over and over again.

And now to introduce them more fully to the reader.

Dove Gainswood--she was well-named "Dove," so gentle and sweet was
the girl in her nature--was the only daughter of a wealthy lawyer,
living in one of the stateliest squares, at the west-end of the
Scottish metropolis--a personage of whom we shall unhappily have much
more than his name to record.  Under the middle height, she had a
face that was charming in its contour and expression, with the pure
bright complexion that usually accompanies such thick rich hair as
hers, gorgeous dark auburn, of two shades, we may say, for it seemed
as if shot with gold when in the sunshine, and her soft dark eyes
were of that violet grey which looks black by lamp-light.

Gillian Lamond, her lover and cousin, we shall briefly say, was a
handsome, stout, and well-developed young fellow, taller than Dove,
by more than a head; with clear, honest, hazel eyes, who looked older
than his years, and milder than his real nature, which was proud,
fiery, and resentful, for he was, as his name imports, a Highlander
by blood.

In the dawn, but not the noon, of love, there is a difference in its
effect upon the sexes.  At first, a young man is timid--often the
more timid of the two; thus hesitation, hope and doubt--doubt of
himself and still more of his uncle Gainswood--made Gillian Lamond
almost bashful; while Dove was quite, or nearly quite, collected,
with a shy yet triumphant smile on her sweet little face.

When they had parted last, a mere boy and girl, she was in her
fifteenth year, and since then had spent three years at a finishing
educational establishment.  Now, when she had returned to Scotland in
her eighteenth year, and when Cousin Gillian was close on twenty-one,
it was somewhat perilous to be constantly together--for relationship
and propinquity are Cupid's greatest accessories; and Gillian formed
a portion of their domestic circle, as her father was his legal
guardian.

The hoyden of three years ago had returned from France mistress of
many accomplishments; she had a very pure intonation, and spoke very
sweetly, with a soft, low, cooing voice, quite in accordance with her
name; and had, in addition to that great charm in woman, acquired on
the Continent--or perhaps they were natural to her--some pretty
little ways and tricks of manner, that were very attractive.

Gillian was an only son.  His father and Mr. Gainswood had married
two sisters; both of them were dead, and had been so for some years,
at the time our story opens.  The mother of Gillian, with all her
little brood, of whom he was the sole survivor, had died far away in
India; and he, in early boyhood had been committed to his uncle's
care, while his father, Colonel Lachlan Lamond, whom he had not seen
for fourteen years, remained "up country," as the phrase is, serving
and scorching to amass money for one object, which had ever been the
passion of his life.

To regain by purchase the old estate of Avon-na-gillian, which had
been for ages in his family, till it passed into other hands through
the mischance of his having an extravagant grandfather, had been his
aim and ambition since the days when he had first passed the Sand
Heads of the Hooghly a poor cadet.

As the chief of the Clan Donoquhy had done, when he purchased back
his forfeited patrimony; as the late Glengarry hoped to do, when he
parted with all his vast estates, save the old castled rock and the
burial-place of his family, was the object of Colonel Lamond, and
amid years spent as a collector in Central India, during which time
he gradually passed, without much fighting certainly, to the head of
his regiment, he never forgot the arid rocks and heathy glens of
Avon-na-gillian; but had the mortification to see it thrice in the
market, before he had been able to transmit to his brother-in-law,
Gainswood, a sum sufficient for the purchase-money; for the coveted
estate, though small and poor naturally and originally, was now
rendered more valuable by its sheep and shootings.

Trusting implicitly in Gideon Gainswood, whom he believed to be a man
of the utmost probity, who was always reputed as such, and whom he
deemed safe as the Agra Bank or the India House itself, he confided
all to him; among others things, the most priceless, his only son,
who, with his name, was to inherit the estate when re-won; and whom
he would not permit--though it had been the lad's intense wish--to
become a soldier, lest the chances of war or of a tropical climate
might cut him off, as it had done all his little brothers, who lay
buried far apart in different parts of India.

Without binding him by any indenture, or fully educating him for the
legal profession--as the old Colonel had some contempt for it--the
injunctions to Gideon Gainswood were, that Gillian should learn
habits of order and industry by having a desk in his office, and
acquire sufficient knowledge of the law to make him careful, and able
to hold his own against all comers when he got it, and became Lamond
of Avon-na-gillian, in the Western Isles.

Gillian sighed at this decision, but was compelled to acquiesce in
his father's wishes, though repining bitterly; but ere long, after
manifesting the greatest reluctance and repugnance, he suddenly began
to devote himself with some perseverance to the dry mysteries of the
law, and to plod at his desk with a willingness which his
brother-clerks supposed to arise from the mere fact that he was a
species of volunteer in the work, but which in reality rose from a
desire to please his uncle Gainswood, and win his golden opinions,
for a reason which did not at first strike that usually astute
personage; and this was the return home of Dove, in whose society all
the leisure hours of Gillian were passed, and he was her escort
everywhere, to the great envy and admiration of his office-chums, who
were only permitted to know the young lady by sight, and among whom
Gillian was very popular--quite a lion in fact, from, his general
bonhommie, suavity, and generosity, as he was always "standing"
luncheons and dinners, as they phrased it, "to any extent."

It was quite natural, their companionship, the girl thought--were
they not cousins?  He was quite the same as a handsome brother; but,
of course, a thousand times more tender and attentive.  Matters
progressed rapidly and delightfully.  Gideon Gainswood did not see
the situation, so absorbed was he in the legal work of his dirty
little world as a lawyer, and in the spiritual affairs of the next,
as an Elder of the Kirk; but old Mrs. Elspat McBriar, a poor widowed
relation, who managed his household, perceived it without the aid of
her spectacles.

And so, with reference to all that we have explained, as they slowly
promenaded to and fro, in the leafy tunnel of the Lovers' Walk, with
his hand caressingly clasping Dove's--

"I should have been a soldier," said Gillian; "a soldier like my
father, and all our forefathers, but for his eccentric reluctance and
distinct objection thereto; but now, Dove, that you have come back to
us, and now that--that you--"

"Are loved by me, Gillian?"

"Oh, my darling--yes!"

"Well?"

"Ambition of every kind, save to love you in return, and to please
you--yes, to adore you, is dead within me!"

Et cætera.

Engaged!  So they were engaged, these two, and full of rapture to
think that they were so, and at the whole novelty of the sweet, yet
secret situation.  But to what end?  Gillian's allowance was small,
and he deemed the Colonel--notwithstanding his Indian pay and
allowances--to be poor, as, according to the statements of his uncle
Gainswood, the money destined for the acquisition of Avon-na-gillian
came home slowly and in small sums, yet he had a vague hope of more
monetary assistance from him in the future.

Dove's father was, he knew, rich, far beyond what legal men in
Scotland ever are; but he dared not reckon on that, as he knew him to
be grasping and avaricious.  Still less did the poor lad know that
he, personally, was hated by him secretly, with the hate of those who
wrong the innocent, and dread discovery, and the unweaving of the web
of deceit.

But, of this, more anon.

Withal that their love was in its flush, marriage, the natural
sequel, seemed distant--even remote; but both were so young, there
was time enough; and both were so happy, so hopeful in Heaven and so
true in themselves.

Poor hearts! they foresaw not then how all this love, hope, and truth
were to be tested.  It was in the sweet season of summer that Gillian
Lamond walked there hand-in-hand with Dove, his heart brimming over
with the new found joy.

Alas! he could little foresee where that day six months was to find
him--with Outram and Havelock, face to face with the fur-capped
Persian Cavaliers of Nusser-ud-Deen, in the land of the great
Cyrus--of Nusser-ud-Deen, the same shah whom we had so lately among
us, at Buckingham Palace and Trentham--a startling transition indeed.




CHAPTER II.

UNCLE GAINSWOOD.

The character we are about to pourtray, though not an uncommon one,
is a task alike difficult and distasteful.

Mr. Gideon Gainswood, Writer to the Signet and Notary Public, was a
good example of those coarse-looking local notorieties, who, painted
in accurate black, yearly figure, in kit-cat size, on the walls of
the Royal Scottish Academy.  His figure was sturdy, and his hands and
feet were as those of a hodman, which, perhaps, his more worthy
grandfather had been in his time.  His features were of a harsh
Scottish type; a cunning and sardonic turn of mind had puckered in
minute wrinkles the skin near his cold-grey, ferret-like eyes, which
seemed to focus on all he addressed.  He had coarse hair of a sandy
brown, now well grizzled in his fiftieth year; grey leg-of-mutton
whiskers, and a thin-lipped, cruel-looking mouth, the jaw of a
bull-dog, and a nose that can only be denominated as a large pug.  He
seldom laughed; then only from the teeth outwards, and these, being
yellow, contrasted unfavourably with the scrupulously white neck-tie,
which he was never seen without in his double capacity of a
professional man and Elder of the kirk.

Yet he was only one of the legion,--

  "Who eat, they drink, they sleep, they spend,
    They go to church on Sunday;
  For many are afraid of God,
    But more of Mrs. Grundy,--"

a typical female who is the bugbear--the modern Gyre Carlin--of "the
genteel" classes in Scotland, especially in her capital, thereby
restraining all honesty of action and inducing an amount of timidity
and snobbery that to a stranger seems astounding.

He certainly had the reputation of being an able lawyer and most
upright Elder--"a sly fox--a sharp fellow," some ill-natured people
averred; "one who took deuced good care not to be found out,"
whatever that might mean.  His chief weakness, besides unsatiable
avarice, was that desire, so peculiar to the middle-class Scotsman
and Frenchman, to figure on platforms at public meetings and see
their names duly recorded in the provincial prints.  As a general
rule, the learned professions in Scotland now contribute almost
nothing to the literature of the country, but Mr. Gainswood had
emitted an annotated edition of "A Shove Heavenward for Heavy-doupit
Sinners," which won him some fame, and added to the religious
reputation he had won for himself, by perpetually quoting
Scripture--more than we shall do for him.  And texts therefrom--not
illuminated, as such savoured of Popery and Episcopacy, but in fair
black roman letters--were hung all over his house, which was one of
the handsomest in the city.

He observed the seventh day with a rigidity that was edifying to
behold.  Under the management of Mrs. Elspat McBriar, cold dinners
ever graced the Sunday board, for as a writer has it, "spite may be
permissible on Sabbath, though hot potatoes and novels are not," as
poor Dove sighed to think, when, after three years in France, she
came home to all this sort of thing.

How such a man came to have a daughter so good and artless, and, more
than all, so exquisitely ladylike as Dove, was passing strange, and
one of those idiosyncracies of nature "which," as Dundreary says, "no
fellow can understand."

Though it suited him never to say so, the Colonel's fond and romantic
idea of buying back Avon-na-gillian, spending the last of his days
where its bluff rocks met the vast waves of the Atlantic, and being
laid finally under some old pine trees where generations of the Clan
Lamond lay, he considered "especial bosh," as he had no sympathy with
any such "old world" speculations.

He always deemed the scheme an impracticable one; and, sooth to say,
were the real truth known, for sundry cogent and secret reasons of
his own, it would have proved far from unwelcome, had tidings come,
that his brother-in-law were cut off in India by death in any
fashion, fever, battle, or the assassin's steel, and never came home
at all, as he hoped to do ere Gillian was twenty-one; yet he never
addressed a letter to the confiding old soldier, without preluding it
with "D.V.," as he did those to all his clients.

To such a creature as this, and such as he may prove to be, there
are, no doubt--even in his profession--good and bright exceptions;
yet in the "College of Justice," as it is historically or jocularly
called, they are often far apart; and he was one of the
representative men of a pretty numerous class of religious pretenders
that are to be found in all phases of life.

We have said that, secretly, Mr. Gainswood more than disliked his
nephew, yet for the love of his cousin the young fellow was
unwearying, and left nothing undone to please him; but so absorbed
was the lawyer in his own matters, so little did he seem aware that
such an emotion--"folly," he would have termed it--as love existed,
that when a wealthy client, the old Laird of Torduff, with whom he
was familiar, a sturdy, red-faced old gentleman in a black cutaway
coat, top-boots, and corded breeches, ventured to hint at that which
poor Mrs. McBriar dared not do, the real state of matters, as they
were supposed to be between the cousins, and to offer laughingly his
congratulations thereon, the scales fell suddenly from the
malicious-like eyes of Gainswood, and he really was, as he asserted
himself to be, never more surprised in the whole course of his life.

"What else could you expect, man?" asked Torduff, twirling and
untwirling the lash of his hunting-whip.

"It is a complication on which I did not calculate--a mistake I could
not foresee, when I undertook the care--the guardianship of my late
wife's nephew," said Gainswood, as if half speaking to himself.

"They are a likely and a handsome couple, and all who know and see
them say it will be an excellent match."

"The devil they do!" nearly escaped the Elder.  "Excellent match for
whom?" he asked, with his bushy brows knit and his thin lips set.

"Why, the Colonel's son, of course," stammered the other; "he is a
fine manly fellow--young, of course; but I approve of young
marriages."

"I don't--marry in haste and repent at leisure."

"No," replied Torduff, testily; "our Scot's proverb says, 'Marry for
love and work for siller.'"

"He who marries my daughter shall have no need to work; besides, the
relationship is too near, and I have other thoughts for Dove."

"Then, I am sorry to hear it.  Come, come, Gainswood, don't be hard
on the young folks," rejoined the cheery old country gentleman; "you
have made up a jolly big bank-book by this time."

"My dear sir, the grace of God is enough for me," said Gainswood,
suddenly relapsing into his pious whine; "I am one of those who take
no heed to gather up riches--those of this world, at least."

"Well, I hope I have done no mischief in telling you the _on dit_--I
had it from my own girls," added Torduff, buttoning his riding
gloves; "but you go so seldom to places of amusement that you don't
know what goes on even in our little world here.  And now I am off to
the club--good morning."

"Good morning, my _dear_ sir--good morning."

With a serene smile, great _empressement_, and a warm shake of the
hand, he bowed his client out; then, stamping his heel on the floor,
he threw himself into his leathern easy chair with a very
unmistakeable--well, interjection on his tongue; clenched his coarse
hands, and glared with a savage expression at a certain green box on
the iron frame close by--a box containing his correspondence with
Colonel Lamond, and all that related to him, and muttered,--

"On one hand, I cannot send Gillian away, and on the other, this sort
of thing cannot go on longer; at any day his father may come upon me,
and what am I to do then?  This upsets all my plans--the plans of
years!"

He ground his yellow teeth, with fury purpling in his face, and his
eyes wandered vacantly on the scenery beyond the tall windows of his
room, without seeming to see it.

The sun of the summer afternoon was shining then in all his beauty
above the woody undulations of the Corstorphine Hills, and on all
that lay between, white-walled villas, green woodlands, and waving
thickets, a scene both varied and charming; but the sordid creature
saw it not; his whole thoughts were intent on his own schemes, on
what he had heard, and the contents of the green box.

So--so! matters must have gone far indeed, between these young folks
at home, when others saw plainly that to which he had been blind, and
were coupling their names together, as an engaged pair.

So full was he of his own dark thoughts and of his schemes, that some
minutes elapsed before he saw one of his clerks, a mere boy, an
unpaid drudge, who had timidly approached him from an outer-room, and
was silently regarding him with wonder; and certes! at that
particular time, Mr. Gideon Gainswood would not have made a pleasant
picture; so here now was a helpless object on which to expend the
vials of his wrath.

Knitting his brows more deeply, he demanded, in a voice of thunder,--

"Did you fee-fund those papers in Graball's process, at the
Register-house, at the time I told you?"

"You told me too late, sir," replied the little lad, trembling from
head to heel.

"Too late--you young whelp!"

Though not blessed with much patience, it was seldom that he
exhibited himself in this unchristian fashion.

"Sir, it was a Box-day," urged the lad; "when the office closes at
two o'clock, and so--so--I thought----"

"What business have you to think?  Leave my office, Macquillan, this
instant, and let me see you no more!"

He was a knowing young fellow, Macquillan, who kept a copy of "The
Shove Heavenward" on his desk, though some lighter literature was
often in the recesses thereof; but the former availed him not now.
What could it all mean?

He felt himself ruined by this dismissal--ruined without knowing why,
and slunk away in utter bewilderment, to weep his heart out on his
mother's shoulder in some sordid quarter of the city; and a month
from that time found the poor little quill-driver making more noise
in the world than he ever expected to do, by beating a drum in Her
Majesty's Black Watch.

A sudden thought seized Mr. Gainswood, and he sharply summoned
Gillian Lamond, but that young gentleman had left the office early,
and assuming his hat and gloves, the former walked sullenly home,
when, to Dove's surprise, he presented himself in the drawing-room
just as she was having afternoon tea, an hour before his usual time,
and near her stood Gillian, suddenly busying himself with a
periodical and paper-knife.

"Here is your tea, papa dear--this is an unexpected treat," said the
girl, turning up her soft and beautiful face to his, the expression
of which was smoothed now and inscrutable to all but his daughter.

"You know I never take tea, Dove, especially at this time of the day,
nor can I understand any but fools taking it at the really usual
dinner hour," he replied, gruffly.  "You left your desk betimes,
Gillian," he added.

"Only to bring Dove this magazine."

"And do you mean to return?"

"If you will excuse me, uncle--"

"Do, papa, dear, we are going for a walk," urged Dove in her softest
tone, and with a determination not to perceive that he was annoyed;
for she had a quick apprehension, and detected something, she knew
not what, in the eyes of her father, as he feigned to interest
himself behind a newspaper; but the eyes dealt--that which she had
more than once detected of late--a dark and unpleasant glance at the
unconscious Gillian.

They were unusually silent in his presence to-day, he thought, and
this was not what they were wont to be.  Gillian was hovering near
Dove, and a charming picture the girl made, framed in, as it were, by
the drapery of a lofty window, through which a flood of sunshine
seemed to enshrine her, edging her auburn hair with burnished gold,
as she sat upon her ottoman, sipping and toying with her teaspoon in
the prettiest way in the world, and shyly smiling to her lover from
time to time.

Mr. Gainswood watched them narrowly and gloomily.  Dove had finished
her tea, and Gillian hastened to place her cup on the nearest
gueridon table.  Simple and usual though this small piece of
attention, he could perceive an upward and downward glance exchanged
between the two--a glance full of tenderness and secret
understanding--together with a touch of the hand almost swift as
light, and these seemed quite confirmation of what Torduff said, and
of his own suddenly awakened fears.

Now, whatever were his secret plans and aspirations, Gideon Gainswood
was a man of rapid decision, and when Dove, rising, said,

"Now, Gillian, for our walk--we shall keep papa from his paper."

"Stop," said he; "a word with you, Gillian, in my own room."

The gentlemen retired together, and all that followed was singularly
brief, as compared with the importance of all that hinged on the
interview.  The faintest suspicion of what was about to be referred
to, occurred to Gillian Lamond and filled him with confusion,
anxiety, and a general emotion of dread.  These were no way lessened
when Mr. Gainswood, while eyeing him very gravely, said somewhat
abruptly,

"This sort of thing between you and Dove cannot go on longer!"

"What sort of thing?" stammered Gillian, scarcely knowing what to say.

"Do not repeat my words, please; you know perfectly well what I mean,
but perhaps not that people--gossips--are already coupling your names
together."

Gillian coloured deeply and then grew very pale.  Was this the
beginning of a black ending? and was the bright dawn of love, that
but a short time before had come in so sweetly, to have a sunset of
cloud and storm?

"Dear uncle," he urged, "then is it possible that you, so clever and
sharp, have been the last--the very last to see--"

"What?"

"How much we love each other?"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"Do you disapprove of it?" asked Gillian, almost trembling under the
other's cold grey eyes.

"I do," was the snappish rejoinder.

"Uncle!"

"I do--till we have your father's full sanction."

"Oh, sir, we are sure of that; but have we yours?"

Gideon Gainswood paused and played with his eye-glass, for though
well versed in duplicity and every art and phrase thereof, the
present situation was--to him--a peculiar one.  He gave Gillian an
indescribable glance--unless that it seemed a threatening one--yet
said in a voice like a gasp,

"Yes--you have my sanction."

"God bless you, dearest uncle, for these words!" exclaimed the
impulsive young man, as he strove to take one of the other's hands in
his; but his "dearest uncle" deliberately placed them both behind his
back, and said, briefly and almost sternly--strangely so--

"I shall write to-night to your father, the Colonel, and if he
approves, there is nothing more to be said in the matter--the Record
will be closed."

With this professional phrase, he added a wave of the hand, as much
as to say the conversation was ended.  The man's whole manner was
singular; in the fulness of his gushing joy, Gillian took no heed of
it then; but there came a time when he was to recall it with sorrow
and dread.  He was about to speak again, when Mr. Gainswood said,

"Dove will be ready now; go for your walk and leave me."

"What can be meant by this coldness?" thought Gillian; "what by those
abrupt changes of manner?"

"Oh, what happiness to us, darling," exclaimed Dove, when he had
breathlessly told her all, and she clung to his arm when they set
forth for their walk, after he had with difficulty restrained her
from rushing back to embrace and weep on the breast of her "dearest
papa," who seemed in no mood for such ebullition; "but how did it all
come about?"

"I can scarcely tell--I care not to inquire, or to think of aught but
that you are to be mine--mine for ever, Dove--dearest Dove!"

Yet Gillian was perplexed by the manner of his intended
father-in-law; and still more would he have been so, as to what that
personage meant, had he heard him, while sitting at his desk, and
dipping his pen in a bottle of copying ink--for the letter to the
Colonel was to be duly copied--muttering between his set teeth,

"In this act I do but make the best of it!  It is not what I intended
to do--and not what I may do _yet_.  But, after all, it might be
worse--it might be worse!  If Lachlan Lamond ever comes home, he must
be merciful to me, for the sake of his son, if not for Dove's sake."

Merciful for what?  But the lawyer muttered to himself, while with
many a low interjection--many a pause of doubt, and fierce, stealthy
glances at nothing, he penned the promised letter to Colonel Lamond,
then far away in Central India.




CHAPTER III.

THE COLONEL'S ANSWER.

Their love permitted and acknowledged, to Gillian Lamond and Dove it
seemed more than ever a fact and reality, and how happy they were in
their young hearts, which were filled with gratitude to Mr.
Gainswood.  But the latter still viewed their engagement with
undisguised coldness; there was no doubt about that feature in the
affair.  He had abruptly consented to it, but with one sternly
impressed proviso, that it should be kept as secret as possible,
admitted to none, denied to all, till the proper time came, as such
arrangements were better not to be canvassed by any coterie of girls,
and old female gossips, till the time came, and that had but one
meaning full of joy to the pair as they heard him and gave their
promise; but another time came when Mr. Gainswood rubbed his hands
and ground his teeth with pleasure at his own foresight in this
matter.

The Indian mails were watched, and the Colonel's reply anxiously
looked for by all; but Gillian had a perfect and perplexing
consciousness that since that day on which the engagement had been
permitted, the temper of Mr. Gainswood, and his general bearing
towards himself, had not been improved.  He knew not what to make of
it, but trusted vaguely to his father's letter for explaining all.

To his unfortunate employés his manner became almost savage at times,
as upon them he could vent his secret wrath unfettered.

Weeks passed on, and no letter came from India; the lovers counted
the days, and yet, with them, the time passed happily enough and fast
too; equally quickly did they pass with busy Mr. Gainswood, for when
not drudging among the drudges in his spacious offices, laying snares
for clients, bullying his debtors, toadying or doing something
equally dignifying to further his own interests, he was attending
religious meetings or others, with reference to which his name was
sure to be reported prominently by the provincial press.

One morning, among many others a letter from India--_the_ expected
letter was laid on his desk.  He uttered a fierce snort, or
malediction, but under his breath, as he snatched it up, and by legal
force of habit, on glancing at the postmark, he saw that he should
have had it the day before.

"Whose duty was it to prepare these letters for me--yours, or Mr.
Smith's?" he sternly asked one of his clerks.

"Either Mr. Smith or I, sir--but I left it at the bottom of the
letter-box by mistake, and please--"

"You and Mr. Smith," he thundered out to the trembling lad, "may go
to the cashier, get what is due to you, and quit my service.  I never
forgive a dereliction of duty--go!"

The unfortunate fellow saw it was hopeless to urge anything, and
slunk away, with a sick heart, no doubt.  He was one of those who,
from day to day, and year to year, plodded on, under-paid and
over-worked, till every hope had died away, and every higher
aspiration faded out amid the wearying process of the dullest labour
with its ceaseless monotony.

And now for the letter of the Colonel, which was dated from Calcutta,
and some time back, as it had been following him "by dawk" for
several weeks, as he came down country.  It was a manly and
soldier-like letter, filled with the warmest profession of regard for
Gainswood, and intense gratitude to him for the care and affection
bestowed by that personage on his only son, the last left him by the
effects and contingencies of life and service in India.

"The proposed marriage of which you write me," continued Colonel
Lamond, "is quite what I wish should be, and is in every way the
fulfilment of a hope that often occurred to me, though I never hinted
of it.  The two sisters, our dear dead wives, loved each other with
great tenderness, and for both their sakes, as well as Gillian's, I
shall dearly love your daughter Dove.  I often think of her now, when
all duty is past, and I am left over brandy-pawnee and a cheroot in
my lonely bungalow.  I remember her well when she was a sweet wee
birdie indeed, only some three or four years old, and when I could
little think she would ever become a daughter to me.  Kiss her for my
sake, and say I shall bring her a suite of gold ornaments, the best
that Delhi can produce and that a queen might wear.

"Before that time, brother Gainswood, I have some work cut out for
me.  I have to take command of a little mixed force of all arms,
destined to act against some of the hill tribes that are marauding
near the Bhotan frontier.  This will close my long service in India,
and luckily it will only be a flash in the pan, as we used to say.
The moment it is over, and the field force is broken up, I shall
start for Europe to figure at the marriage, so the youngsters must
wait a few months for the sake of an old man who loves them well; and
so, God bless you all!"

Then followed a postscript about the repurchase of Avon-na-gillian,
which the lawyer read with bitter impatience, and muttered with a
saturnine smile on his thin lips.

"Long ere this he has been on the march towards Bhotan, where bullets
and poisoned arrows will be flying, and one of these may--well--well,
but we are all in the hands of the Lord, so let me not
anticipate--let me not anticipate," he added, for this man could
actually cant to himself!

"My poor old father going to fight again!" exclaimed Gillian, on the
letter being read to him.  "Oh, Uncle Gainswood, but for his
determined wish and my love for Dove, what a coward and slave I
should feel myself just now."

"Don't be melodramatic, Gillian," said Mr. Gainswood, eyeing the lad
gloomily from under his bushy eyebrows, as he actually seemed to hate
him for a tenderness and enthusiasm which his nature failed to
comprehend; "when your good aunt left me for a better world--'blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord'--she entrusted you to me, as
especially your father did, Gillian; but, alas! we cannot gather figs
of thistles.  We know not _what_ may happen; and, for all your good
father's bright hopes, you may still, my boy, be utterly penniless."

The Bhotanese bullets were, perhaps, hovering in the lawyer's mind.

Gillian had more than once heard this unpleasant, and to him
inexplicable, inuendo from his uncle, but did not attach to it the
weight that, after a time, he found himself compelled to do.

"The dispositions of Providence are mysterious--yea, most mysterious,
and no one knoweth what a day may bring forth!" said Mr. Gainswood,
shaking his head solemnly, and using one of those phrases of which he
had always a ready stock on hand, and which he used most when he was
weaving a web of deceit, as he proceeded to fold, and docket and date
the letter, by legal force of habit, "Colonel Lamond, anent his son's
marriage," and then consigned it to the particular tin box the key of
which he always kept himself.

So the dear old Colonel had consented, and nothing was wanted but his
return and his presence to crown the happiness of all, as Gillian
thought, when, with Mr. Gainswood's permission, he hurried home to
acquaint Dove with the contents of his father's letter, the effect of
which was very different upon the recipient thereof, for when left
alone, he sat long buried in thought, with his brows knit, his teeth
clenched, and his hands thrust far into his trowser's pocket, where
they played unconsciously--another habit he had--with the loose money
he loved so well.




CHAPTER IV

LORD CAMPSIE.

At dinner, a few days after this, Mr. Gainswood, after his usual long
benediction, added thereto, somewhat abruptly, as if it had been a
part thereof,--

"The Prince's Hussars have just come in."

"Indeed, papa," said Dove, not much interested by the intelligence,
though rather surprised that her father should be.  So was Gillian,
who looked up inquiringly from his soup.

"To Piershill?" he asked.

"To Piershill Barracks," added Mr. Gainswood, a little pompously;
"and I have just had a letter from our client, Viscount Kilsythe,
stating that his son, Lord Campsie, a captain in the regiment, will
call upon me, and that I must be careful in making monetary advances
to the young fellow; but that he wishes me to pay him some attention
as the son of an old friend."

"In what way, papa?"

"Oh--a dinner or a ball, perhaps!"

"A ball, papa?" repeated Dove, her fine eyes filling more with
absolute wonder than delight, while a kind of scared expression stole
over the wrinkled front of old Mrs. McBriar.

"Such vanities are not in my way--moreover, I never approved of the
sexes dancing together, but we shall have some dinner parties,
certainly--what do you think, Mrs. McBriar?"

"I mind me well, that when Quarter-master McBriar, of the Scots
Greys, was quartered at Jock's Lodge----"

"Bother Quarter-master McBriar!" said Mr. Gainswood, interrupting one
of the old lady's stereotyped reminiscences of her late husband, and
without the slightest ceremony.

However, it was carried _nem. con._ that a dinner-party was to be
given.  But though used well enough to such entertainments on a large
and lavish scale, Dove and her chaperone, Mrs. McBriar, were not wont
to have guests of the calibre of Lord Campsie and his brother
officers.  "Parliament House men," as the legal fraternity are named
in Edinburgh, from the circumstance of the old Hall of the Scottish
Estates being their "Westminster Hall," and solemn, ponderous, or
rough, toddy-imbibing country divines she had of late been well used
to, and constantly bored by, as they formed her father's "set;" but
the Prince's Hussars!

Poor little Dove was more scared than delighted by the prospect of
having the responsibility of acting hostess, though the situation was
not without its novelty; and forthwith she and Mrs. McBriar, who, of
course, took Gillian into their confidence, became deeply involved in
the question of who was to be invited, and in the still greater one
of who was to be omitted; for in small circles like the Scottish
capital and cathedral cities, that is frequently the most momentous
feature in connection with an entertainment.

The daily papers were searched now, in vain, by Gillian and Dove, and
by none more anxiously than Gideon Gainswood, for some tidings of
Colonel Lamond's remote and obscure expedition against the Hillmen.
Whatever the result thereof, no news appeared as yet in the journals
of the "modern Athens," where, even now in these railway days, the
_Times_ and other metropolitan journals are generally to be found at
the club-houses alone.

One day--Dove never forgot it--she and her particular friend and
gossip, Flora Stuart, a pretty blonde girl, whose bright face and
attractive figure were familiar to all the many idlers of the
fashionable promenades of that city of loungers, were setting forth
together, when a gentleman on horseback passed them in the huge and
otherwise empty square.

"A distinguished-looking young fellow--is not he, Dove?" said Flora,
as the rider passed them with his horse at a walk, and gave them a
casual, but critical, glance through his eye-glass.

Upright, tall, and flat-shouldered, he sat in his saddle with the
ease that declared him a finished horseman, and one who had perfect
power over the beautiful animal he rode.  He seemed about seven or
eight and twenty years of age, closely shaven, all save a dark
moustache, with deep grey eyes, and features that were undoubtedly
characteristic of good blood and lineage.  He had the calm,
self-satisfied air peculiar to a thorough man-about-town in the
present day, and the horse he rode was sufficient to stamp and prove
the excellence of his taste in that matter.

It was a dark-bay hunter about sixteen hands high, with small head,
slender neck, ample chest, full barrel, broad loins, muscular and
well-formed legs.  He was attended by a groom of the orthodox English
type--neither man nor boy, in leathers and white-topped boots, hat
encircled by a thin gold cord, a cockade and gold acorn thereon;
closely buttoned in a green coat with waistbelt and well folded white
neck-tie.  The horse he rode, a thoroughbred bay, was lighter than
that of his master, but seemed, like it, to combine both action and
blood.

The master was a style of man more often seen in the Row, the Lady's
Mile, or elsewhere at the West-end of London, than at the West-end of
Edinburgh, or any other quarter thereof now.  Dove's eye casually
followed the approving glance of Flora Stuart, but she could little
foresee the trouble this identical horseman was to cause her in time
to come.

"He has reined up at your house, Dove!" exclaimed her friend, as they
turned out of the square.

"Oh! one of those hussars, no doubt," said Dove, and dismissed the
subject from her mind, save in so far as the inevitable dinner party
was concerned.

The groom handed in the card of his master, whereon was engraved,

  "CAPTAIN LORD CAMPSIE,
      "Prince's Hussars,"

a piece of pasteboard destined to occupy a conspicuous place in the
card-basket of Mr. Gainswood, on whom, perhaps, his lordship would
never have called, but for the circumstance that he was the factor on
the little that remained of the Scottish Kilsythe Estates; and that,
like Hussars in general, he had debts that required liquidation, and
was always getting further into debt to accomplish that desired end.

Mr. Gainswood was at home, and Lord Campsie found himself in the
stately double drawing-room, the general good style of which was due
to Dove's correct taste; but their magnitude and magnificence would
have been sufficient to impress even him, had he not been attracted
by the grandeur of the view from the windows--the great extent of
beautiful country that--beyond the deep and rugged ravine where the
Leith brawled seaward between rocks and gardens, beyond bosky
Deanhaugh with its antique mills and stupendous bridge--stretched
away in sunny haze towards the Forth with all its isles, and the
shores of Fife, with all its clustering towns, green woods and hills,
where every tint and outline were softened and mellowed by distance.

"Respectability, according to Sydney Smith, keeps a gig," thought the
young lord; "I always supposed that respectability here, was glad
enough to be able to keep itself, without the gig; but, by Jove, old
Gainswood, you must have feathered your vulture's nest well!"

It was indeed a vulture's nest in some respects, but in it was a
dove, of whom Lord Campsie knew nothing yet.

Mr. Gainswood came bustling ID, adjusting his wristbands, looking
almost fussy, and with great energy shook Lord Campsie's hand, and
had it not been gloved, he would have been unpleasantly sensible that
the lawyer had just, in haste, washed his digits, as he made a
toilette on hearing his noble visitor announced.

He inquired with great _impressement_ after the health of dear
Viscount Kilsythe; and though, of course, the peer referred to was a
Viscount, it betrayed the lawyer's ignorance of good society to style
him so; thus his son replied, with a peculiar smile,

"Thanks--his lordship is quite well--at least, the old fellow was,
when he looked me up some time ago at Hounslow."

Old fellow!  Mr. Gainswood felt this to be a very free and easy way
to speak of a peer of the realm; for, in Scotland, though one of the
most democratic countries in the world, there is--as in America--a
slavish admiration of, and adulation to, title and rank, which in the
former instance, can only be accounted for by the non-residence of
the aristocracy in her capital; as, when not on a brief visit to
their estates, they are, of course, in London.

After some common-places, and agreement by common consent that the
weather was fine for the season, the young lord, who felt no great
pleasure in Mr. Gainswood's society, thought him of the object of his
visit.

"You are aware, I suppose, that I am quartered at Piershill,
near--near--"

"Ah--yes, my lord--near John's Lodge, my lord."

"Vulgar snob!" thought Campsie, his handsome face rippling with quiet
laughter.

"My daughter is, unfortunately, out," said Mr. Gainswood, who was
greatly irritated that she was so at this time; but he added suavely,
"I should so like her to have seen your lordship, of whom she has
heard so much."

Dove probably knew not there was such a person in existence till her
father mentioned the fact.

"So sorry--most happy--I'm sure," lisped Campsie, stroking his
mustache and not much interested in the matter; "I should, perhaps,
have called at your place of business; but I was trying a new horse
out this way."

He then proceeded to open the trenches at once.

"I am in a scrape, Gainswood."

"Going to be married?"

"Not at all--nothing so stupid."

Gainswood did not think he was; but thought there was no harm in
suggesting that personal sacrifice to him, or putting it in his head
anyhow.

"What then, my lord?" asked the lawyer, who knew that clients always
told their story their own way.

He wanted an advance--"only some cool hundreds--most pressing--a
doocid affair--but merely temporary."

Gainswood smiled blandly, and nodded while rubbing his coarse hands
over each other.  He knew to a farthing the monetary resources and
prospects of the Livingstones of Kilsythe, and resolved to advance,
as yet, only what he was sure of being repaid, with interest, and not
a shilling more; yet for some time he pretended to hesitate and raise
doubts.  After a time, and having thereby given Campsie cause for a
little anxiety, he said, in his most friendly tone,

"We'll arrange it all to-morrow, my lord--lunch with me here at
two--sharp; it is quieter than the office, we'll just have a bird and
some quiet talk over it."

"Thanks--a thousand thanks--most happy--I'm sure," drawled Campsie,
assuming his hat, and little thinking that "the bird," most likely
referred to, was poor Dove Gainswood.

To her great annoyance, the young lord came thrice to lunch before
the monetary matters were arranged, and on each occasion the lawyer
watched him closely.

Pleased, if not charmed, with the fresh young girl's beauty and
artlessness, Campsie paid her considerable attention.  Flora Stuart,
who was present once, declared it to be marked attention; but Dove,
as she wished it not, certainly never thought so.  When addressing
all women, Campsie's manner was naturally chivalrous, gentle, and
winning, though there were times, when at the stables and elsewhere,
he could be slangy enough; but Dove, though all unused to "Lords and
Knights of the Garter," was too intelligent a girl not to distinguish
the petty nothings, which, added to a very suave manner, might pass
for incipient love-making, and the real bearing of a lover.

Mr. Gainswood had not this delicate perception; but Dove knew her
father's heart, and could read his eyes like a printed book.  She
began to have forebodings of what might yet develop itself, and took
care never to be left alone with Lord Campsie even for a single
moment.

From that first visit her trials began--trials which she shrunk from
confiding even to Gillian Lamond, lest she might wound the honest
fellow's loving heart.




CHAPTER V

THE PKINCE'S HUSSARS.

Like everything else she undertook, Dove's little dinner party was a
success, from, the soup and fish to the maraschino or charteuse and
the coffee.  With the pairing of the couples we have little to do,
save to mention that, of course, she was led to the dining-room by
Lord Campsie, the guest of the evening, while Stafford Martingale,
one of the fastest men of the regiment--a prime favourite with fast
women, and who always boasted himself a non-marrying man--to his
disgust and bewilderment, had the duty of escorting old Mrs. Elspat
McBriar, while fair Flora Stuart was happy in having Sir Hayward
Carrington, a good-looking baronet, rather "horsey" and _blasé_, a
man about forty years of age, who had learned as much of life in half
those years as another man might in a hundred--but with the
entertainment in all its petty details we have leas to do, than what
it led to.

A little excited by the novelty of the affair, the flush in Dove's
soft cheek made her look more beautiful than ever, as it mantled
under the transparent texture of her fair white skin.  She was
dressed in blue, which she knew was most becoming to her complexion
and bright auburn hair with its golden sheen.  She wore with it the
richest lace, and her jewels few, as became a young girl, were good
and in excellent taste, and her cable-bracelets of Italian
workmanship set off the whiteness of her beautiful hands, which
Campsie, a true connoisseur in such features, could perceive were as
handsome as her eyes and the contour of her dazzling throat.  How
proud of her Gillian felt as he gazed at her from time to time during
the protracted repast.

Not quite at his ease, the lawyer rather overdid his part of host;
but that which was restlessness passed for hospitality; while old
Mrs. McBriar, in honour of the guests, appeared in an amplitude of
black skirt, moire antique, of a fashion unknown in this world now,
twisting nervously her grandmother's square gold eyeglass, but
nodding and smiling graciously to all, and whispering her
disappointment to Martingale that they had not come in uniform as she
fully expected them to do, with busbies and accoutrements, for in
Quarter-master McBriar's time--and so forth--she gave some prosy
anecdote to which the Hussar listened with well-bred indifference.

At first she was rather put about by the presence of a real lord at
the table.  The paper-lord, or "Parliament House" article, she was
used to; they were plain, half-bred, toddy-drinking and often
coarse-speaking old Scotsmen, but Campsie and his friends of "the
Prince's," with their general style, bearing, and easy
_insouciance_--for such it was--impressed her deeply.

Among these Hussars, with their man-about-town bearing and soldierly
aspect, their broad views of politics, their references to a
fashionable world which he was as unable to comprehend as he was
their occasional "horsey" talk, poor Gideon Gainswood was like a fish
out of the water.  Perhaps, in his heart he hated them for possessing
a tone, rank, and bearing so immeasurably above his own; but he was
proud of his guests--a real lord and baronet--and liked immensely
that his little barrister friends should see them at his table, but
he felt more at ease when it was quitted for the drawing-room.

On the other hand, such is the gratitude of "society," that Campsie,
Carrington, Martingale, and two other Hussars who were there, liked
his wines, his rooms, and the girls they met, better than his own
company, and when the piano was opened he was forthwith ignored; yet
he heeded it not--or, perhaps, felt it not.

The three Stuart girls, old Torduff's daughters, and two or three
more, who, like their countrywomen in general, were accomplished
musicians and sang well, now that the Hussars had been introduced to
them, looked fondly forward to the periodical balls and assemblies of
the coming season, which there begin in the February of each year;
thus they were full of gratitude to Dove, and certainly did their
best to excel; while Gillian, in spite of himself, looked rather
moodily on the progress of the whole affair.

Dove's beauty, and, more than all, her alleged expectations, had
found her many admirers among the men who frequented her father's
house; but these were chiefly sprouts of the provincial Bar--"young
reekies," as Campsie was wont to call them, whose inordinate
self-esteem only provoked the girl's sense of amusement.

Like Gainswood, they were only accustomed to those "Lords" who sprang
from their own society; but now, those who were present, when they
saw the son of a peer and an English baronet reputed to have £70,000
per annum, talking and looking very much like other people, were
perhaps surprised, and thus Campsie and Carrington actually began to
lose caste in their eyes.

As Stafford Martingale did not affect to be a musical man, Mrs.
McBriar fastened upon him for the infliction of her reminiscences of
the Scots Greys, which she interpolated with some choice _morceaux_
from "Elijah the Tishbite," "The Shove Heavenward," and similar
works, all uttered in a sharp West Highland accent.

"By Jove, the rum old girl is off her nut!" sighed Martingale, as he
eyed her through his glass as he might a species of Ourang-outang.

As Martingale had his left arm in a slight sling--little more than a
broad black riband--the ladies thought he must have been wounded
somewhere, and on Mrs. McBriar venturing to inquire where, he,
replied,

"In the hunting field, madam."

"In the field--dear me!" she added, full of interest, taking in only
the last word.

"It was in Leicestershire, when riding to hounds.  I had rasped a
bullfinch, but the second fence was an oxer--a ferocious one--a ditch
deep and broad, a thick laid fence, and stiff posts four or five feet
beyond.  I never craned a bit, but rushed my horse at it, Mrs.
McBriar, holding him thoroughly by the head, gave him a squeeze with
the knees, a touch with the spur, and he rose like a bird!" continued
Martingale, who could be fluent enough on such a subject as this.  "I
went crash into the rails and came a terrible cropper--you understand
me, Mrs. McBriar; but, though my arm was out, I clambered into my
saddle, and was in at the death, for the country after that was as
easy as the passage of the Red Sea, don't you know."

Mrs. McBriar was as shocked at the comparison as she was mystified by
the anecdote, and still more was she bewildered when she overheard
Lord Campsie say to Sir Hayward,

"Yes--of course--the Queen runs at Goodwood--she has more than once
done a good thing with Spinning Jenny with even weights--I have put a
pot of money on her."

"A pot on the Queen!" thought Mrs. McBriar, breathlessly.

"A pot," repeated the Baronet; "by Jove, I would not have put more
than a monkey--it is a sell, I fear."

"My book's made, don't you know, and I am safe to win, old boy,"
replied Campsie, confidently.

"Gad, I hope so--but I gave the straight tip--the Q. T. for light.
If you fail----"

"Don't talk of it--my resource, then, would inexorably be the
children of Israel."

"The Red Sea and the Children of Israel?" pondered the old lady;
"perhaps they were religious and God-fearing young men," but their
language sounded incomprehensible.

Lord Campsie was just the kind of man to feel himself at home
anywhere, and as this was his fourth or fifth visit to the house of
Gainswood, whom he patronised, and by whom he was treated with
servile deference, he felt himself quite _l'ami du maison_, and now
he was bending over Dove, as she sat at the piano, stroking his
moustache from time to time with all the air of a handsome fellow who
is perfectly pleased with himself, with his own "get-up," and with
the impression he hoped he was making, while turning over the leaves
of the music-book, the pleasant duty heretofore of Gillian Lamond
generally.

Sensible of this; when a cluster was about her, after much bad
French, indifferent German, and singularly weak English singing--weak
as far as composition went--had been performed, when Campsie, with
all the _empressement_ of which he was master, whisperingly urged her
to favour him with something--so closely that his moustache touched
her ear,--Dove coloured with annoyance, and motioning Gillian to her
side to turn over the leaves, said,

"You know all my songs, Gillian--what shall I sing?"

"Sing 'Wild Joanna,'" said he, with his eyes full of pleasure, while
Campsie fell back a pace.

"I know it is your favourite--place it before me--thanks, dear
Gillian," she whispered.

Her taste in music was cultivated and refined, and her selection of
songs was remarkable for sweetness and quaintness, and she knew that
Gillian was never weary of hearing her sing one, of a ballad
kind--the one named--which was mournful in cadence; the tender memory
of which was fated often to come back to him, when they were far
apart.

The song of some unknown writer, it told of a girl who vowed, in her
faith, to visit her lover even after death had parted them, and we
may be pardoned giving the opening lines here from memory--

  "Thou hast sworn, oh wild Joanna!
    When death shall come to thee,
  That if ever soul come back,
    Thy soul will come to me.

  "But think impetuous maiden!
    Though dear that radiant head,
  The mortal heart is weak,
    And hath terror of the dead.

  "Oh let there be no change!
    Come bright and sweet as now;
  With the same dusk on thy cheek,
    And dark hair on thy brow.

  "But come not, come not maiden!
    To my bedside in the night
  When my eyes with sleep are laden,
    Lest my heart may fail with fright."


The most tender verses were the last; and long, long was the
expression of Dove's soft violet eyes, as they looked upward for a
moment into Gillian's, doomed to haunt him in connection with the
story they told.

He withdrew, and once more Campsie assumed his post, with the
slightest _soupçon_ of supercilious annoyance in his face; while
Gillian, whom the other's rank alarmed, and his attention annoyed,
was not in the least degree jealous, for simply, the honest fellow
could not understand that anyone could know Dove Gainswood without
admiring and loving her.

But the evening came to an end at last, and Sir Hayward's carriage
took the Hussar party home to their barracks at Piershill, leaving
pressing invitations with Mr. Gainswood and Gillian to dine with them
at mess, on the next "stranger day."

Some of the ladies present--not Torduff's daughters, who were country
people--but of the legal circle, had enjoyed themselves immensely,
for one particular reason.  They could now, when asked if they knew
Viscount Kilsythe's son and heir, or Sir Hayward Carrington, or
Captain Stafford Martingale--the rich Hussar--say, and say with
truth, that they had met him at the Gainswood dinner party, and so
forth.

Flora Stuart's comments on Lord Campsie to Dove made the cheeks of
the latter colour.

"Isn't he charming, Dove?"

"Very pleasant."

"Pleasant! he is delightful--so handsome--so rich, and such fun,
dear!"

"They say he has spent all his money," croaked Mrs. McBriar.

"Not at all--who dares to say so?" asked Mr. Gainswood, with some
asperity.

"Never mind--money or no money," said Flora to Dove, as she shawled
herself and the carriage was announced, "he'll be a peer one day, and
you have made quite a conquest.  Don't you think she has, Mr. Lamond?"

"The 'young reekies' were certainly nowhere to-night," replied
Gillian, with a smile to conceal some of the real annoyance which the
heedless girl's rattle caused him.

But he forgot that his engagement with Dove had been formally denied
to her, as to others.




CHAPTER VI.

AT PIERSHILL

For the first time in his very prosaic life, Gideon Gainswood began
to indulge in some very brilliant day-dreams, out of which he wove a
future, even as Alnaschar did out of his basket of glass.

He felt certain that Dove's beauty had made a favourable impression
on the young lord, whose monetary necessities he knew, and any
monetary advances he made from thenceforward were simply as the means
to an end--to get the young heir of Viscount Kilsythe in his power.
The name and title of the latter were Scottish, of course; but so far
as nationality went, he was no more a Scot than Gainswood himself,
and he was about as much one in sentiment as a Fiji Islander.

Apart from the reversion of the estates in both countries, Campsie's
belongings were not much.  His wardrobe was unexceptionable, and so
was his jewellery.

He had four horses at Piershill, besides his charger; a dressing-case
that might suit a duchess, and was believed to be the gift of one,
and he had a betting-book, bound in gold and morocco, that cost him
more thought, certainly, than ever Euclid did.

"No--Campsie doesn't gamble," said Mr. Gainswood musingly, "but he
makes his racing pay."

"How?" asked Gillian, who was near.

"Why he won £20,000 on a horse last year."

As it was Gillian who spoke, Mr. Gainswood knit his brows and turned
away.

We have referred to the adulation of rank that exists in the Scottish
metropolis--a feature almost unknown in London, where the vast
community, linked together from the most exalted in station to the
most humble, in a graduated scale, gives unto every man his place;
but in Edinburgh it is totally different, and there the legal
profession, who are generally sprung from the humbler classes,
actually assume to themselves the place of the old Scottish
aristocracy.

"When royalty went to London," wrote one who knew the subject well,
and is now in his grave, "nobility followed; and in Edinburgh the
field is left now, and has been so left for a long time back, to Law,
Physic, and Divinity.  The professions predominate: than these, there
is _nothing higher_!  In Edinburgh, a Lord of Session is as a Prince
of the Blood; a Professor, a Cabinet minister; an Advocate, an heir
to a peerage.  The University and the Courts of Justice are to
Edinburgh what the Court and Houses of Lords and Commons are to
London."

_Proh pudor!_  Yet, elsewhere he admits, that in no other city will
we find so general an appreciation of books, music, and art.  "It is
peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and counting-house; it
is a Wiemar without a Goethe--a Boston without its nasal twang."

Gideon Gainswood was second to none there in his profound admiration
of the peerage, though in politics a most uncompromising
whig-radical; and now--now, the slender chance, the fond hope, the
dazzling prospect of securing by any means such a son-in-law as Lord
Campsie, the future Viscount Kilsythe, made him totally oblivious of
Dove's own wishes in the matter and his mode of dealing with his
nephew.  The peerage, attainted in 1715, after the battle of
Dunblane, had been restored by George IV., before his famous visit to
Scotland in 1822.

He took down the Peerage, and read with a fervour exceeding any he
had ever felt when reading the Scriptures perhaps, the pedigree of
the Livingstones of Campsie and Kilsythe, from Sir William who fought
under James II. at Roxburgh, William, fourth of his title, killed at
Flodden, William, sixth, knighted with the Duke of Albany in 1565,
and so on to others who fought for the Stuarts in all their
struggles, loyally, gallantly, and truly (the popish and bloody house
of Stuart, as Gainswood was wont to call it), till in fancy he saw it
coming down to "the present peer, A. E. Viscount Kilsythe, Captain in
the Prince's Hussars (and seventeenth of his line from Sir John
Livingstone of Callender) who married Dove, only daughter and heiress
of Gideon Gainswood, W. S., Edinburgh."

This would be indeed a fish-torpedo to explode among the gossips of
"the village in the North," as Thackeray named it.

In his over-vaulting ambition, he already foresaw that which poor
little Dove, all unconscious of the net that was weaving, certainly
did not--his grandson--the Master of Kilsythe--seated on his
knee--the picture of himself, as such pictures are alleged to be
reproduced in the third generation; and, as for the old Viscount, he
already counted as nothing in the lawyer's fervid day-dreams.

But the Colonel--the Colonel was coming home!  More than all, my Lord
Campsie had not yet proposed; and if he did, Dove might not have him.
Dare she refuse?

But the Colonel!  He glanced from his desk to the green charter box;
his hands clenched till the fingernails were buried in the palms, and
then, more than ever, did the dark, terrible, and hunted expression,
before mentioned, cloud all his sordid visage.


Mr. Gideon Gainswood declined the invitation to dine with the Hussar
mess at Piershill.  He had dined there once with the son of a client,
a lieutenant of Lancers, and drank so much wine of various kinds that
he remembered nothing of leaving the table, and was oblivious of
everything till next morning, when he was found by the Rough Rider
and his squad in the Riding School, tucked up to the nose in tan and
painted pea-green.

Of this insult he took no notice--wisely, it was said, as an ugly
story concerning how he had figured in some heavy bill transaction
was whispered about at the time; so Gillian, who was fond of military
society, proceeded to the barracks alone.

They are, or were until lately, considered the best accommodation for
cavalry in Britain, and stand in the plain immediately below the
northern base of Arthur's Seat, within a mile of the Forth, and in a
locality rich in such scenic attractions as comport well with the
vicinity of a city so picturesque and magnificent.  The actual name
of the place is Jock's Lodge--as it was so called in the time of
Charles II.--but the barracks are named Piershill, in honour of a
Colonel Piers, whose residence stood there, and who commanded a corps
of dragoons in the days of George II.  On one side towers the great
mountain that overlooks the city.  On the other opens the firth, with
its islets and steamers, and the wavy outline of Fife beyond.

Though Gillian was the only stranger, the band was playing at
intervals in the barrack square, and all the trophied plate of the
mess--the towering and costly vases and epergnes, the accumulations
and presentations of past years, added to the magnificence of a
luxurious and well-ordered dinner table, to which Gillian was
welcomed by Lord Campsie, Sir Hayward Carrington, and others, and
treated with every hospitality; and yet, as the evening wore on, he
had much reason to regret that he had accepted the invitation at all.
He heard some things that he would rather not have heard.

The troops of the left wing had just come in, and the officers, who
had never been in these quarters before, were inquiring what sort of
a place Edinburgh was--if there was any "society" and so forth; but,
headed by Lord Campsie, the first arrivals were unanimous in voting
that Piershill was an awful and melancholy change after Hounslow,
where they had been within a few miles of the Row, the Parks, Regent
Street, Lillie Bridge, the Opera, and a thousand other things unknown
to the modern Athenians; and the first Lord Campsie, who so stoutly
defended his castle of Kilsythe against Oliver Cromwell, had he been
within hearing, would have been sorely troubled and perplexed by the
style, ideas, and conversation of his noble descendant, especially
his somewhat contemptuous opinion of the "grey metropolis of the
North," and of the "upper ten dozen," whom he affirmed to be the
society inquired for.  Having been quartered at Piershill before, and
moreover, being the son of a Scottish peer, he was naturally looked
upon as an authority.

"The women want that finish and delicacy which those in London have,
and their fashions are always months behind their time," said his
lordship.

"But they have weekly assemblies here--daunces?" lisped Lieutenant
Lavender.

"Yes--of course, in what they call the season, and patronised by some
sixth-rate lady of the aristocracy, who maybe here _en passant_; but
they are bad form, very; all legal and shop-people; their wives in
cotton velvet, imitation lace, and French jewelry; and, like the men,
all displaying the most dreadful air of self-assertion in the world.
But it is great fun."

"Come, come, Campsie, that is too bad!" said Sir Hayward; "I have
heard that these entertainments--the weekly assemblies--are a very
good style of thing, and that Red Coats there are always at a
premium."

"Yes," replied Campsie; "there you are right, as the girls are pretty
sure that the wearers of them are gentlemen, which the Young-reekies
may not be."

"Then, I suppose, the General Assembly must be a very gay one," said
Lavender, "given, I suppose, by the Commander-in-chief?"

Campsie laughed outright at this, and then said,

"Congratulate yourself that you have escaped it, my boy, with its
swarms of Black-coats, and think of the Scotch paper-lords in the
train of the High Commissioner, in cabs, or carriages, with coats
armorial that outshine their father's signboards.  It's very funny;
but it is a yearly nuisance here, of which I shall move for the
abolition, if ever I am a representative peer.  I have been quartered
in this hole before, don't you know, for my sins."

"You are very unpatriotic!" said Sir Hayward.

"I have my own ideas on these matters, don't you know," drawled
Campsie.  "Mixed though his race is, that becomes true nationality in
an Englishman which is mere querulous provincialism in the Scot or
Irishman."

Gillian was decidedly annoyed by the derogatory remarks of the young
lord; but was loth to quarrel with him, loth to risk a scene, and
especially with one of his uncle's principal clients; and, oddly
enough, he was the more annoyed because he knew that some of
Campsie's remarks were but too true.

The music of the band partially drowned conversation for a time; the
evening being calm and serene, all the mess-room windows were open,
though twilight had fallen and the gasaliers were lit.  By this time
the cloth was removed, and the wine had been circulated pretty
freely, so much so, that Campsie's utterance had begun to get a
little "feathery," as he phrased it.

"Yes, I agree with you," he was saying to Stafford Martingale; "she
is a jolly little girl, and with lots of tin!"

"And utterly without the patois of Edinburgh."

"You are right, Staff, my boy; but, by Jove, the old pater--what's
his name--Gainswood possesses it in perfection.  A girl with such an
instep should be a good waltzer."

"You have been noting her points pretty closely," said Martingale.

"Are you speaking of Miss Gainswood?" asked Gillian, somewhat sharply.

"Hope you are not sweet upon her, Lamond?" said Campsie.

"Why?"

"Because I have half a mind to be so myself."

"Sir---she is my cousin."

On this the banter instantly ceased; the burst of laughter in which
the young lord indulged at his own conceit passed away, and there was
an adjournment made to the smoking-room, where, amid the smoke and
odour of manilla cheroots, bland weeds said to be slightly opiated
and hence more than usually soothing, and full-flavoured regalias,
much "horsey" talk was engaged in, as every officer present rode,
hunted, and betted freely on all the coming events, and Campsie,
perhaps to remove the unpleasant impression his careless remark might
have made upon Gillian, plunged at once into matters of which he knew
nothing; the Derby and Oaks, which were just at hand; how it was a
wonder he had not killed himself at the last Liverpool steeplechases;
but he was a fellow, don't you know, who took a vast deal of killing,
and ever and anon referred to his favourite mare on which he had won
so much last year, adding,

"I have entered her at Punchestown for the Great United Service
Handicap, and at Goodwood too.  If she wins both I am a made man."

"If not?"

"Don't think of it, old fellow, for then I shall be in a precious
hole!"

After a time the name of Gainswood fell again on Gillian's ear.  This
time the speakers were Sir Hayward Carrington and Lavender, who were
smoking outside one of the open windows.  Their voices came
distinctly to his ear, hence it was impossible for him not to listen.

"And you actually dined there--by Jove!" said Lavender.

"Campsie took us.  You are right--Gainswood--that is the name; he is
deuced bad form--a most disreputable old rascal.  I know now that it
was he who played here at Piershill, such a trick to O'Connor of the
Irish Lancers."

"How?"

"O'Connor and he did a bill for five thou. (he had a loss on the
Epsom) at inordinate percentage, you may be sure, though he had many
religious scruples about advancing money for a racing debt; but the
security was unexceptionable.  It fell, of course, inexorably due.
O's long-suffering parent stumped up like an old Irish brick as he
was, but omitted to have the beastly bit of blue paper returned."

"Well?" asked Lavender, tipping the ashes off his long regalia.

"And what does old Gainswood do?"

"Put it in the fire, I suppose."

"Not at all; he had it noted, protested, and paid away, and on its
being presented a second time, O'Connor had to pound his commission
at Greenwood's, and quit the Lancers for ever."

"Sharp practice, that!"

"Dodson and Fogg couldn't beat it."

"And what became of O'Connor--took to the wine-trade or a
secretaryship, I suppose."

"Poor fellow--he took her Majesty's shilling in the 11th Hussars, and
was shot through the heart, a private soldier, in the Balaclava
charge!" said Sir Hayward with emphatic bitterness.  "It nearly broke
the heart of the poor old man in Galway.  He never meant to drive Pat
to that resource.  But what did it matter to the Scotch Shylock who
had received, twice over, his pound of flesh?"

"I shall not dine here again," thought Gillian, as he took his way
homeward soon after hearing these terrible remarks, which made his
heart sick, more than all, when he thought of Dove.

He walked slowly onward, cigar in mouth, and lost in thought.  The
genuine snobbery of the young lord's remarks at mess he had utterly
forgotten in the bitterness of the revelation made by Sir Hayward
Carrington.  Before him rose the green outline of the Calton Hill,
with the great open columns of the intended Parthenon darkly defined
against the broad bright disc of the summer moon; on his right lay
the pretty village of Restalrig, with its quaint cottages and ancient
church of the thirteenth century, covered with ivy and embosomed
among orchards; and Gillian looked around him dreamily as he walked
leisurely homeward.

All that he had overheard concerning Mr. Gainswood--her
father--galled and stung him.  Could such things have been?  Dark,
vague, and terrible suspicions and anticipations, born of this and of
his uncle's peculiar bearing for some time past, began to haunt and
appal him in spite of himself.  For the first time in his life he was
most unhappy, in having overheard that which he sorrowed to have
heard at all.

Perhaps it was all a mistake.  Anyway, he resolved to be silent on
the subject.  He strove to thrust distrust of his uncle's honour
(Honour!) from him; but the story would come up again and again, for
was he not the father of Dove!

But events, unforeseen, were to happen thick and fast now.




CHAPTER VII.

A NOBLE LORD RESOLVES TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF.

It chanced that one afternoon Lord Campsie came to the conclusion,
that with regard to Dove, of whom he had evidently become as much
smitten as it was in his languid nature to be, he must do something
to place himself on a solid footing with her.

On that afternoon he had been dangling, as usual, about her in the
drawing-room; but she had been provokingly cold and distant to him;
spoke thrice to Gillian--who resolutely kept his post--for each time
she addressed the visitor, and when pressed to sing something, she
allowed him alone to turn the leaves of her music, and by her mode of
treating Lord Campsie, left nothing undone to show him that Gillian
was her affianced and accepted lover, to whom she felt that the
attention of one whom she conceived to be only amusing himself, must
be eminently distasteful.  Matters had come to such a pass, that some
such demonstration as this was necessary; and thus pique brought his
lordship suddenly to a point, that he was, perhaps, not yet quite
prepared for, so as he turned his horse's head eastward to the
barracks he began to reflect.

It was not a common process with him, and usually made him
taciturn---even sulky with his best friends.

He began to fancy himself very much in love, and naturally suspected
Gillian; but the chief infirmity of his character was a suspicion of
motives in every one, a fault created by his mode of education and
the circumstances of his position in society.

Though one of the fastest men in the Prince's Hussars, and in his set
in town, it was an understood thing, that Lord Campsie must, sooner
or later, "commit matrimony," as he would have said, whenever the
eligible female came to hand.  His father and mother had said so, and
everybody else except himself.  The charms of a little box at St.
John's Wood, with the inevitable outlay, in sealskins, diamonds,
bouquets, and tiny brougham, had been, as yet, quite enough for him,
especially while the tents of the Hussars were pitched at Hounslow,
Aldershot, and other pleasant places within a moderate distance of
the metropolis.

In the supposed bride certain qualities were deemed indispensable:
beauty, grace, dignity, good birth, and unexceptionable position.

Poor Dove had the first of these three requisites, and many more,
that were lovable, estimable, and adorable; yet she had neither good
birth, position, nor anything else in these ways, coming up to the
high standard required by the family of Viscount Kilsythe.  But, like
the daughters of Cottonopolis, she had money.  That it was not
acquired by honest hard work and genuine industry mattered not.

Campsie knew, or supposed that she would have a handsome dowry; for
when asking advances, had not the lawyer said casually, "I must be
careful of my little girl--I must not leave her less than eighty or a
hundred thousand;" and so now, it seemed high time that he, Campsie,
was married and settled at last.

The heir to an old title, taken from the now ruined castle of
Kilsythe, in Stirlingshire (about which he cared no more than if it
was in Timbuctoo or Dahomey), with already burdened estates in more
than one English county, he could not go down to his grave unwed,
especially with all his debts, so here was this taking little Dove
(though he detested her suave, canting, vulgar father) at hand to
make all comfortable, and to be had--he never doubted it--for the
asking.

Such were the views of my Lord Campsie, as he slowly made up his
noble mind to come to the point and "chuck himself away," whatever
the mess and his "set" might think.

Dove would make a very creditable-looking little wife, and---

  "Though from a humble stock, undoubtedly
  Was fashioned to much honour."

Her father was a nobody, and her grandfather, no doubt, a myth.
These were bitter pills to swallow; while, after all Campsie had seen
and known of life in London and elsewhere, it did seem rather a grim
joke that he should be proposing at last to the little provincial,
this Scots lawyer's heiress; but, once transplanted elsewhere, and
placed among the upper classes, he had no doubt that, with her
father's ill-gotten gains--he was certain they must be so--she would
pass very well as the future Viscountess Kilsythe.

"Eighty or a hundred thousand, incumbered with such a wife, will be a
very tolerable investment of myself," thought Campsie; "but the
pater--the awful father-in-law, ugh! he will require to be kept
utterly and permanently in the background or on his native heath.  I
wonder if the old beggar wouldn't take some of his own money and
emigrate!"

He had once, when under the influence of sundry brandies and sodas,
sounded Martingale to ascertain his views of such an alliance.

"I have lost fearfully, on one or two late events, old fellow, don't
you know; and at the Derby, my trainer tells me that it is even
betting my mare don't start at all; so Martingale, by Jove, I think
I'll marry the little Gainswood."

"The devil you will!" drawled the captain, as he lounged back in an
Indian chair, with a leg over each arm thereof, watching the smoke
from his cigar, as it curled upwards; "why she is only a provincial
attorney's daughter, and you know the adage."

"What is it?"

"Brazen pots and earthen vessels ought not to float down the same
channel."

"Old Gainswood already holds so many of my acceptances, that in one
sense, I am as much in his power as he could wish me to be."

"But old Six-and-eightpence will be certain to see that every penny
his girl may have is settled upon herself--everything, even to the
Maltese terrier and the pony phaeton, and she might request her lord
and master to leave even that, if they quarrelled."

"I would then get a seat in the little one's brougham at St. John's
Wood," said Campsie, grimly.

"Gainswood is bad form--very! and without position in society.  Take
time, old fellow, something else may turn up, even here."

And with the recollection of this not very cheering advice fresh in
his mind, Campsie dismounted at the door of Gainswood's office, and
even then paused for a moment, as he tied his reins in a knot.  He
was selfish; for any man brought up as he had been could not--like
too many of his class--escape being so, more or less.

"Well," thought his lordship, "hang it--here goes!" and on being
ushered into Mr. Gainswood's business-room, he lost not a moment in
announcing his object.

"My lord--you really take my breath away!" exclaimed Gainswood,
inserting a thumb in each arm-hole of his vest, and regarding with
pretended amazement, but with intense secret delight, the young lord,
who seated himself jauntily on the edge of his writing-table, and
flicked his glazed boots with the lash of his jewelled riding-whip.
He thought that Campsie had come, as usual, for an advance, or loan;
but not to this issue so suddenly.

"I have, indeed, Mr. Gainswood, thought of proposing _au serieux_,
for your dear daughter," he repeated.

"You do her and me a high honour, my lord!"

"I do _her_ none," was the rather pointed response.

"Who ever has the good fortune to marry my girl, will find with her
as much goodness as beauty, and as much money as either."

"A vulgar, purse-proud snob!" thought his intending son-in-law.

"You are the heir to an ancient and honourable Scottish peerage,
though not so rich a title as it might be; and you, my lord, pardon
me, have many incumbrances; but, oh, my lord, what matter earthly
riches; we shall all, I hope, meet one day in Heaven, where no riches
are required, save those of the soul, my lord--save those of the
soul!"

"But while on earth, and in the Prince's Hussars, a man must have
money or credit, or he is safe to go to the dogs and the devil before
his time."

"In this matter you are in earnest."

"As earnest as if it was the Derby day, and I heard the saddling bell
ring!" said Campsie, impatiently.

"Dove will have a most creditable portion in cash--besides"----

"Besides what?" thought Campsie, while the lawyer was eyeing him
acutely out of one eye; and it never seemed necessary to either of
these two men, to say one word concerning love, admiration,
affection, or such emotions as Dove might be supposed to excite.
With the lawyer, whose heart trembled with exultation and ambition,
it was simply a magnificent piece of business; while Campsie was much
cooler than he had often been when chaffering for a nag at
Tattersall's.

"Have I then your permission?" he asked, thinking he had bothered
long enough upon the matter.

"Of course, my dear lord--of course, my dear young friend; but can we
reckon upon that of Viscount Kilsythe?"

"As he never consulted me in his matrimonial affairs, I don't mean to
consult him," was the somewhat flippant response.  "The governor may
cut up rusty at first; but he'll learn to like Miss Gainswood in
time.  No one could know her, without liking and loving her." (His
lordship thought it was time to say something of this kind now.) "Her
manners are doocid good form--her temper sweet--her loveliness
undeniable; and as to title----"

"It is the last thing she or I would set store on, my lord!"
interrupted Mr. Gainswood, with great fervour.

"Very like a whale!" thought my Lord Campsie.

"My dear daughter," said the lawyer, now deeming it necessary to do a
little pathos, "has had a godly upbringing, as beseemed the child of
an elder of the kirk and a Christian man.  She is a religious and
God-fearing young woman, and will be as a pearl above price--yea, as
a crown of glory to her husband.  I give her to you, my lord, with
the fondest blessing of a loving and tender parent, and the
heart-felt wishes of an honest man.  May God bless you both!"

Then he wrung the hand of Campsie, and seeming to give way to
emotion, covered his eyes with his handkerchief,

  "To hide the tears he did not shed."


"Now, that 'the heavy father,' business has been done, I am off like
a bird," said Campsie, who had eyed him somewhat dubiously; "so that
is arranged--ta, ta, old fellow, I'd look you up to-morrow again."

"Good; what thine heart findeth to do, do it with all thy might."

Again his lordship betook him to his saddle, leaving the lawyer in a
very mixed mood of mind, in which exultation, ambition, gratified
vanity, and avarice, mingled with much of craven fear and more of
hate for Gillian now, as he alone stood in the way, adding to the
complications of the situation.

Gainswood had permitted the engagement of Dove and Gillian, and had
openly corresponded with the father of the latter on that important
subject; and now he had accorded to Campsie permission to address his
daughter as a lover! and, as yet, he could not see how the whole
affair was to end.

In his vanity and over-reaching ambition, he had not the courage to
act in a straightforward manner, besides, none knew what might happen.

If Dove accepted Campsie, and threw over her cousin, as he never
doubted she would, then--he seemed to pause even in speculation, and
his fishy, shifty eyes wandered unconsciously to the green charter
box.

Meanwhile, half regretting and half exulting in what he had done,
Campsie rode slowly homeward by the most magnificent terrace in
Europe, and yet saw not a feature of it.  "What a poem is Prince's
Street!" says Alexander Smith.  "The puppets of the busy,
many-coloured hour crowd about its pavement, while across the ravine,
Time has piled up the Old Town, ridge on ridge, grey as a rocky
coast, washed and worn by the foam of centuries; peaked and jagged by
gable and roof; windowed from basement to cope; the whole surmounted
by St. Giles's airy crown.  The New is there looking at the Old.  Two
Times are brought face to face, and are yet separated by a thousand
years."

Oblivious alike of the picturesque as of "the stirring memory" of
these thousand years, Lord Campsie rode homeward to his barracks, and
saw nothing of all that glorious scenery which makes the city of the
gallant James's so full of interest, even to strangers--that old, old
city, whose massive mansions of stone, weather-beaten, dark, and
built, some of them, in years beyond even the stormy middle ages,
have teemed with romantic and historical recollections for many
generations of men; many painful, many pitiful memories, some of love
and more of war, duels, and clan battles, of rancorous feud and
foreign invasion, and of loyal hearts that have wasted and well-nigh
broken in their passionate faith to religion and a race of kings that
are no more.

To Campsie, the scenery and the place were all flat, stale, and
unprofitable; and if he had a thought on the subject, as he glanced
towards the rugged and wonderful outline of the Canongate, it was
simply, that "it was d---- old and d---- dirty."

"I did not think I should have to chuck myself away among the women
here, of all places; but needs must, and so, I shall have to make a
sacrifice of myself on the altar of necessity!" he muttered as he
gave his bay the spur.




CHAPTER VIII.

NEWS FROM INDIA.

All men have their eventful days, it has been said; hence the day
after Lord Campsie's visit proved one most eventful to Gillian, who
had been--more especially since the dinner at Piershill--apparently
somewhat listless and distrait, while in reality full of corroding
thought, vague anxiety, and incertitude.

On that morning--Gideon Gainswood never forgot it--there was to be a
special meeting of the Presbytery, among whom he was a prominent
figure, a shining light and powerful hand at prayer; various kirk
extension schemes, and "overtures" of different kinds were to be
considered, yet he was absent.

Important cases before the Lords which were to be heard that day were
utterly forgotten, or committed entirely to the care of McCodicil,
his Parliament House clerk; for news had come concerning the
expedition against the Hill Tribes, and that seemed to absorb every
thought of Gideon Gainswood.

He was seated in his office betimes as usual, at the leather-covered
writing table, whereon lay many doquets of ominous-looking papers and
parchments, title-deeds, processes, leases, and so forth, tied up in
legal red tape, while around the room were tin boxes whereon were
painted the names of his _clientela_, while a book-case close by was
packed with law books and quarto tomes of the "Decisions of the Lords
of Council and Session," and on a side-table were somewhat
ostentatiously displayed piles of religious tracts and books of
prayer.

He was seated, full of thought, pulling his thin under-lip
unconsciously, while those cunning eyes of his, which seemed to have
the faculty of looking behind him, were idly wandering over the
columns of the morning paper, when suddenly he started as if he had
received a galvanic shock, and nearly crushed the journal up.  Then
tremblingly he spread it out upon his desk and turned again to the
paragraph which had excited him.

"Unfortunate affair with the Bhoteas--defeat and death of Colonel
Lachlan Lamond," so ran the quotation from the "Times" of India.  "We
have elsewhere stated that an expedition, consisting of 500 Assam
Light Infantry, a party of Sowars, and two steel mountain-guns, under
that old and distinguished officer, had started from Bengal to punish
the marauding Bhoteas.  He destroyed their village of Mora and
released many of their prisoners, but was compelled to fall back
before the hordes that attacked him on every side, who mercilessly
slew every wounded man and straggler.  Among the slain was Colonel
Lamond, who was last seen unhorsed, and fighting bravely, sword in
hand, against incredible odds, till he fell pierced by their lance
wounds.  Thus has the Indian army lost one of its most distinguished
officers, for Colonel Lamond served in the Affghan campaigns,
including the storming of Ghuznee, the battle of Tizeen, and Sale's
defence of Jelalabad."

Thrice did Gideon Gainswood read this paragraph ere he seemed to
realise the whole situation; and then his cold, shifty eyes wandered,
travelled, unconsciously as it were, to the tin charter-box which
bore the unfortunate Colonel's name; anon he cast them upward, as he
lay back in his chair, and planted his clenched hands on the desk
before him.

"Killed! dead--dead--_dead!_" he muttered; exultation, savage joy,
relief and safety, too, all oddly mingled in his deep and husky tone,
and in the expression of his then most repellant visage.

Many emotions passed in a moment through the mind of the lawyer, in
the vibration of a pendulum; conclusions, doubts, certainties, and
contradictions followed each other thick and fast, while drops of
perspiration gathered on his forehead.

To say that he looked relieved, is to give the mildest expression to
what his features indicated.  The man whose return home might have
revealed the secret of a system which he had been pursuing with
regard to himself and to his son Gillian, whom he had kept utterly in
the dark as to what his heritage really was, had fallen in that
distant strife, and the secret of the power he held over him--his
brother-in-law--had died within him.  He summoned his nephew from the
next room.

"Have you seen the morning paper?" he asked, abruptly.

"No, uncle.  I was busy with the release in that case of----"

"It contains bad news for you, Gillian.  Your poor father is
gone--read for yourself.  God's will be done!  His ways are not as
our ways; nor are His thoughts as our thoughts.  He slayeth and He
maketh to live."

Greatly excited, Gillian read the astounding tidings again and again,
and his affectionate heart went back to the days of his own infancy,
and to the face of that only surviving parent of whom he had but a
shadowy and indistinct recollection, but little more; and yet he had
loved him dearly, for all his letters had been full of tenderness and
affection; but, as the Colonel, unfortunately, until quite lately
seemed unable to realise the fact that Gillian was approaching
manhood, and quite capable of understanding his own affairs, all
matters that were monetary or of other business, he had confided to
Gideon Gainswood alone.  And while Gillian was reading, with a very
scared and crushed expression of face the fatal news, the former was
muttering,

"Gone! gone! poor old Lachlan! alas! there is no peace on this side
of the grave.  May he find it on the other, far distant though the
land be where that grave lies.  But take comfort, Gillian; whom the
Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and thus are you chastened."

"Oh give me faith in this!" said Gillian, to Heaven rather than the
speaker.

"Show your faith by your works, nephew; and now go break this most
woful calamity, this sore dispensation of an all-wise Providence, to
poor Dove.  It will make some sad alterations in our late
arrangements for you and her, I fear me--I fear me!"

Gillian withdrew, leaving Mr. Gainswood with his face buried in his
hands, as if to control or conceal his emotions; but scarcely had the
footsteps of the young man died away, than the former started up,
gave by force of habit a stealthy look around him, and lifted the
charter-box from the iron frame to the writing-table.  Carefully
selecting the key from a small bunch, which he always carried with
him, and entrusted to none, he unlocked and took forth several
documents.

One of these was the last will and testament of Lachlan Lamond, then
a captain, leaving everything of which he might die possessed in
money or otherwise to his only son Gillian, whom failing to his niece
Dove Gainswood, whom failing to her father, whom failing to an orphan
institution for the children of soldiers who died in the service.

The poor colonel's property was all money, amounting to nearly
£30,000, remitted for the purpose--or towards it--of recovering
Avon-na-gillian.

Of the money thus remitted by the colonel he had kept no separate
account; but, in the vague hope that it might all come one day to
himself, he had banked it all in his own name; so, but for the
existence of this will, the fortune that was in reality Gillian's,
but, of the existence of which he had been kept in total ignorance,
would go to enhance the dowry of Dove; so, with such a sum as he
could then offer as a bribe, Campsie, and even the consent of
Viscount Kilsythe, would be doubly secure.

Overcome by the temptation to error and avarice, with the prospect of
perfect immunity in case of the colonel's death, he had continued
this system, and held these views for years--years that had neither
been of regret nor repentance; but only of the hope that he might
not, like some others of his kind, be found out.

The colonel was gone; but what evidence was there of the existence of
the moneys disposed in the will?  The Calcutta attorney who wrote it
he knew to be dead; and the names of the witnesses, two brother
officers, had long since disappeared from the army list.  The
document had evidently not been recorded anywhere.  Had any one seen
it?

The lawyer pondered and paused.

He knew that a will, unlike many other legal instruments, may be
revoked by destroying or cancelling it; but he also knew that there
had been cases where a will when last seen in the possession of the
testator, if it could not be found after his death, the presumption
was that he had destroyed it, _animo revocandi_.  He had also known,
in such cases, draft copies produced, and given in secondary evidence
of the contents of the original.

Since this paper came into his possession, no human eye had seen it.

"Bah! though only so much waste paper, it will be as well out of
existence.  What thine heart findeth to do, do it with all thy
might!" muttered Gainswood, as he turned up the gas jet, at which he
was wont to seal letters, and deliberately committed to the flame
sheet after sheet of the document, the very ashes of which he
scattered and trod over the turkey carpet.

"Now--now," thought he, "to get rid of this hulking fellow, who
stands between my daughter's prosperity and honour.  I have no longer
the colonel to dread; and now my Dove shall be Lady Campsie,
Viscountess of Kilsythe, mistress of Campsie Hall, in the Midlands,
and a dozen other places.  If she doesn't love this young lord now,
she shall learn to do so in time; she shall marry him first, and let
the love come after when it may!"

And he almost hissed out the words as he relocked the charter-box,
shot it back into its place, and had just time to adjust his visage
to its usual calm and suave expression, and to affect to be writing
intently, with a pen that had no ink in it, when Mr. McCodicil
approached him on business, and he listened to what he had to say
with half-averted face; for, save when in a rage, or bullying those
who were at his mercy, Gideon Gainswood never looked any human being
directly in the face, if he could avoid it.

He received with admirable resignation the condolences of his friends
and brother elders on the severe dispensation of Heaven that had
fallen upon him and especially Gillian,--for whom, he said to all, it
would prove a sad and ruinous calamity indeed, poor fellow.  For a
time, he secretly liked all this; it was a creditable thing to have
his brother-in-law, a colonel--he wished he had been a
general,--killed in India; but he was nervously anxious that all
note-books, papers, and letters of the deceased should be sent to him
from Bengal, and wrote, and even telegraphed, for that purpose, but
without avail; either no one knew anything about them, or his
missives were unanswered.

"Good!" thought the lawyer; "the colonel's papers have perished with
him; and I hope the Bhoteas (whoever they may be) have lit their
pipes with the last of them!"




CHAPTER IX.

THE APPLE OF DISCORD.

To Dove the news from the far-away Indian Hills fell with a sense of
dull, aching sorrow that wrung the girl's heart; and she failed to
understand the grim, cold, unsympathetic, and at times, quietly
exultant bearing of her father when Gillian was not present.

The death, the assumption of mourning, and so forth, caused a few
days' delay in the movements of my Lord Campsie; and thus,
untrammelled by his presence, Dove was kinder and more tender than
ever to poor Gillian, whom she was told in secret by her father, was
penniless now--a veritable beggar--but not to mention it to himself.
So the soft-hearted Dove was pitiful, exceedingly pitiful, and
murmured to herself,

"What matters it?  Papa is rich, and can give us enough for two."

Full of her great love for Gillian, and real sorrow for the calamity
that had befallen them--for his father's death implied and involved
more than the loss of him--Dove had attached but small importance to
the attentions of Lord Campsie, and was rather provoked by them than
otherwise, as she was under the idea that he was only amusing himself
and seeking to kill the hours in a town which he declared to be
intensely dull and stupid; but she was fairly distressed and
"worried," when, by some remarks of her father, that were rather more
than hints, she was given to understand that he had sought and
obtained permission to address her.

"Viscountess Kilsythe would sound well, Dove," said he, pinching her
chin with a playfulness that was not his wont, and sat ill upon him.

"Perhaps," replied Dove, with indifference.

"The castle is a roofless ruin, though it has entertained some of the
popish House of Stuart, been battered by the Blasphemer, and has now
been abandoned to ghosts and gleds; but the Viscount has a place like
a palace, they say, in England."

"The dowry of a cotton-merchant's daughter, so Gillian says," said
Dove angrily.

"What can he, or such as he, know about it?" demanded Mr. Gainswood,
his eyes gleaming dangerously under his shaggy, bristling brows.  "It
is a place that you may be the mistress of one day, Dove."

"Perhaps, papa; but that would depend upon who was the master and how
I liked him," replied Dove, laughing to conceal her annoyance, while
her father turned away and left her full of anger.

Now old Mrs. McBriar had barely seen a lord, and certainly had never
before spoken to one, hence she was greatly impressed by the idea of
Dove's new and sudden expectations, and thus felt, perhaps, less
compunction for the intended supplanting of Gillian Lamond, and,
acting under Mr. Gainswood's orders, sought to bias the girl's mind
to suit his own views and wishes; but, as yet, in vain.

"Dove, dearie," said she; "you will offend your good papa; you are
too impulsive and don't know how to guide yourself, or the value of
your own bright prospects.  A coronet is at your feet--or may be.
Oh, lassie, you might as well have expected to see the crown of
Scotland there!"

"Oh, bother!" was the unsentimental rejoinder of Dove.

"Now, don't you think you could tolerate such a handsome husband as
Lord Campsie?"

"No!" replied Dove sharply, as the unctuous way in which Mrs. McBriar
pronounced the titled name provoked her.

"Aye, and learn in time to love him?"

"Don't talk of it, Mrs. McBriar, the very idea chills my heart.  And
you, too, have turned against him?"

"Against whom?"

"Gillian!" replied Dove, her dark blue eyes flashing through their
tears, while the rich colour mantled high in her soft cheek; "Elspat
McBriar, I am Gillian Lamond's promised wife; my father gave me to
him to be so, and his dead father--God rest him in his far-away
grave!--blessed us both; and Gillian shall I marry, or never, never
marry at all!"

Mrs. McBriar smiled, shook her head incredulously, and withdrew by
the way of the inner drawing-room, for, at that moment, a servant
announced, "Lord Campsie."

Dove was certainly, at that moment, in the worst of moods to receive
him, and, though secretly a little scared, lest what she feared was
to come, she made up a kind of "company smile" as she presented her
hand, begged him to be seated, and while a few of the usual
commonplaces were uttered, he was as usual eyeing her critically and
approvingly.

Dove was in deep mourning, and the black silk and crape, relieved
only by her collar, cuffs, and a simple silver brooch--the badge of
the Lamonds, of Cowal and Avon-na-gillian, the gift of Gillian--set
off to the utmost advantage the whiteness of her slender throat and
the purity of her complexion.  In the sheeny gold of her auburn hair,
in the violet-blue of her beautiful liquid eyes, the usual expression
of which was one of softness and--if we may so phrase it--partial
surprise, in the fine contour of her features and the firmness of her
curled vermilion lip, there were all that Campsie could desire, and
he felt conscious that she would adorn the sphere to which he fully
intended to remove her.

Such a wife as Dove would certainly adorn his home, and put an end to
his St. John's Wood expenses on one hand, and to the schemes and
pretensions of certain dowagers and their aspiring daughters in
Mayfair and Tyburnia, on the other.

"By Jove!" thought his lordship; "how came such an old toad as this
fellow Gainswood ever to have such a daughter?"

"Your mourning does indeed become you," said he, rising and placing a
hand on the back of Dove's chair, and bending over her admiringly.

"I deplore that I have had reason to wear it," said she.  "It is for
Gillian's father--you are aware."

"For Colonel Lamond," said Campsie, fitting his glass in his left eye.

"Poor Gillian's father," persisted Dove.

"He was a brave old fellow, it would seem."

"And devoted to Gillian."

This iteration of the same name, by which Dove hoped to protect
herself, as by a charm, certainly did pique Campsie, and rather put
him out, as he felt that to have such a rival was something
contemptible and unendurable; but he changed the subject, and began
to pave the way by much small talk and many really earnest
compliments, to which Dove listened with a quiet air of resignation,
which somewhat baffled him; but, resolved to bring matters to an
issue, he very deliberately, and with a greater tone of
self-abnegation than he had ever thought to assume, and in,
certainly, very well-chosen and well-bred language, made Dove a
formal proposal of marriage, which, in a manner as delicate as it was
decided--though she secretly trembled, with apprehension, she knew
not of what--Dove most distinctly declined.

Though she knew it was coming, she was more fluttered than flattered,
and would have given the world, she thought, to have "a good cry over
it."

Campsie drew back a pace, and eyed her with a very mingled expression
of face, while coolly re-adjusting his eye-glass and buttoning a
glove; he was always fussy about his ties, collars, and gloves.

"By Jove!" thought he.  Her coldness and indifference piqued and
roused in him a spirit of opposition; it enhanced her value, and
inspired him with a resolution to conquer, whether he actually cared
for her enough or not.  It was too absurd that he, "a drawing-room
pet" in town, should be baffled thus by a provincial lawyer's
daughter--a mere country chit.  "It was doocid funny, but doocid
unpleasant, to be held so cheap, don't you know!"

"Miss Gainswood--Dove--dear Dove, is there no chance--no hope, that
one--in the coming time, perhaps--haw----"

"There is no hope, my lord--I am unchangeable as yonder castled rock!"

"Am I, then, to understand that there is some preoccupation--some
foolish fancy----"

"I give you to understand nothing," said Dove, with a decision in her
tone that carried conviction with it for the time, and then rose as
if the interview was over; and Campsie, his heart, _blasé_ and vapid
as it was, swelling more with mortification and anger than it had
ever done with love, took the hint, and assumed his hat, saying:

"I do not despair of yet gaining your favour, and even more, your
love and esteem, Dove Gainswood; but, for the present, I shall
retire, and wish you a very good morning."

"Good morning, my lord," faltered Dove, as she rang the bell, and he
bowed himself out, without even touching her hand, and feeling
himself rather put down and confused, all the more that he had not a
big regalia to hang on to.

"He surely cannot call here again after this," thought Dove (but she
was mistaken), as she cast herself into a seat, and murmuring the
name of Gillian again and again, gave way to tears and dire
apprehension of the future.

Meanwhile, as if to get rid of his annoyance, Lord Campsie, who
believed that a good gallop was the best panacea for any evil under
the sun, spurred his horse along a lonely road that led into the
wooded bosom of the Corstorphine hills, for an hour's rough ride, ere
he despatched from the United Service, the Edinburgh "Rag," a brief
note to Mr. Gainswood, to report how Dove had rejected him, which
meant, to Campsie, the loss of many more thousands than he could
think of with patience--especially, when he remembered his
betting-book.

Indescribable was the wrath of Mr. Gainswood on receiving the brief
note of Lord Campsie.  His fury was too great for words and too deep
for noisy demonstration, but he hurried home to upbraid, admonish,
and rebuke his daughter.

"Refused a lord--you have actually refused Lord Campsie!" he gasped
in sheer bewilderment.

"He is a fool, papa."

"You are a fool--an ass, and--and worse!" was the coarse rejoinder,
"and little more would make me curse you--yea, curse you--as you
deserve--but it beseems not," he added, relapsing into his
sanctimonious whine.

"Oh, papa!" urged the weeping girl, holding up her beautiful hands as
if in deprecation.

"You underrate the good qualities of Lord Campsie."

"That does not matter much, papa."

"Why?" he hissed through his teeth.

"Because he does not underrate himself at all events."

"I should think not--a lord--a viscount that is to be, with ever so
many thousands a year; you are mad, girl--stark, staring mad!  You
will repent this obstinacy."

"When?"

"When you know him better."

"In that case I am very unlikely to repent it at all, papa," said
Dove, trembling excessively, for never before had her father, with
all his faults, addressed her in his present tone.

"You have trifled with his lordship's heart."

"I don't think _that_ had much to do with his proposal," replied the
girl, smiling through her tears, "and certainly I am not disposed to
sell mine."

"Minx and fool! your ingratitude will break mine," he added, with
gravity suitable to the assertion.

"Oh, papa," urged Dove, in her most touching voice, "on earth the
most despicable thing is surely the man or woman who marries for
money, for rank, or anything but pure and true affection."

"This comes of reading novels--Scott, Bulwer, Dickens--and such-like
sinful and pernicious literature.  It is the very language of
hopeless idiotcy.  Alas! that kind Providence should put upon me the
sore dispensation of having a child, so blind to her own welfare, so
undutiful and rebellious, so disobedient and cruel to such a father
as I have been!"  He threw himself into a chair, and believing
himself to be a very ill-used man, glared at Dove with his hard,
fishy eyes, and added, "May God pardon you for this day's work--but I
never, never shall!"

"Dearest papa," said Dove, with fresh tears that seemed to well-up as
from her very heart; "do not quite forget that you promised me to
Gillian."

"To Gillian!" repeated Gains wood, with a deep snort of the fiercest
passion and concentrated rage, while starting to his feet as if a
cobra had stung him; "to Gillian," he added, grinding his teeth till
the sound thereof made Dove's blood run cold; "hah!--true--yes; and
now to end that folly for ever; and luckily, here he comes.  Follow
me to the library--I would speak with you--_you_, who have sown the
apple of discord under my roof-tree!" said he to his nephew, who at
that moment entered the room, from which Mr. Gainswood departed,
looking grim as Ajax.

"What is the matter, Dove?" asked Gillian, looking already crushed in
spirit, as the foreboding of evil had come heavily upon him.

She wound her soft arms around him, and pressing her quivering lips
to his cheek, whispered hurriedly:

"Papa would speak with you; be brave, gentle, and trusting, whatever
he may say, and remember, that tide what may, _I love you, Gillian_?"

The latter followed his uncle mechanically into the library, when
there a conversation ensued that was fated never to be forgotten by
either.




CHAPTER X.

"IT MAY BE FOR YEARS, AND IT MAY BE FOR EVER."

"Sit down, Gillian, and compose yourself--I would speak with you,"
said Mr. Gainswood gravely, and seeking to veil under his usually
bland exterior his real dislike and intense irritation--dislike of
Gillian--simply because he himself had basely wronged this young man,
and irritation, that he was the innocent cause of thwarting this
matrimonial design upon Lord Campsie.  After a pause, he said, "I
told you some days ago, when we first had tidings of that sore
dispensation of Divine Providence--your good father's death--that it
would materially alter your views and relations with Dove.  You
remember?"

"Yes," replied Gillian, faintly, and fearing that which was to come
next.

"Since then, I have been wrestling, as it were, in prayer with Fate,
for strength to tell you more, and painful intelligence."

"Of what nature?" asked Gillian, huskily.

"That you are totally without any means of subsistence, other than
what my purse may afford you," said Mr. Gainswood, putting the points
of his fingers together, and gazing upward at the ceiling, as if full
of sad and pious thoughts.

"How comes this to pass?" asked Gillian, thoroughly startled by such
dire intelligence; "my father----"

"Remitted yearly to me a moderate allowance for your
maintenance--moderate I say, lest you should be guilty of the sin of
extravagance; that allowance dies with him, and you are, in fact,
veritably, with pain and sorrow I say it--a beggar!"

The hot blood rushed to Gillian's temples, and for a moment the room
seemed to whirl round him.  After a pause, he said, in a broken voice:

"But was not my father amassing money?"

"Money!" said Gainswood, sternly, "who could have told you so?"

"For years past I have thought--somehow it was inferred--that he had
hopes of repurchasing Avon-na-gillian----"

"A bubble--a vain Highland bubble--folly; he never realised a
shilling; all he possessed was his commission, and the pay it
procured him.  Your allowance, therefore, ceases now; and even if it
did not, you could not expect that upon it alone, I could further
countenance your views with regard to my daughter.  The foolish
engagement which, at one time, I was weak enough to countenance, must
end here now, and for ever!  Moreover, you must leave my house,
Gillian, as you must be aware there is an awkwardness in your
presence here now; I will hand you the balance of your allowance, for
which you will give my cashier a receipt in full of all demands
against me; and by to-morrow at latest I shall expect you to go forth
and seek your bread elsewhere--out of this city, I hope.  God tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb, Gillian, and if you are earnest, pious,
and prayerful, as you could not fail to be, brought up as you have
been in my house and under my guidance, you cannot fail to succeed;
but be assured of this, that more I cannot, and will not, do for you."

This intelligence was triply crushing, for in a moment the lad found
himself deprived of the actual means of subsistence, of a splendid
home, and more than all, of the affectionate girl he so tenderly
loved.  His agitation was great.  He turned deadly pale; his lips
became dry, his throat parched; but Mr. Gainswood looked at him
gravely and utterly unmoved.

Notwithstanding the usual cant with which he closed a sentence that
sounded even as a sentence of death to his nephew, the latter
detected something false and hollow in his tone; vague suspicions of
being deluded flashed, he knew not how or why, upon his mind, but he
could give them neither form nor utterance.  Moreover, that the
speaker was the father of Dove, repressed much that he might have
said.  That he was about to lose, or had lost her, alone stood
prominently and out amid the ruin and chaos that seemed so suddenly
to have enveloped him.

"Uncle Gainswood, I am young--Dove is young--we can wait--I shall
work, oh, yes, and work so hard; surely, after all your promises, you
will not be so cruel as to separate us now?" he asked, almost in
tears.

"It would be greater cruelty not to do so, or to foster your
preposterous hopes," replied Gainswood, quietly.

"Preposterous?"

"Of course; you have not a sixpence in the world beyond the balance
owing you (some few pounds, I think).  Would you marry my daughter on
that!"

"No, uncle--no," replied Gillian, now thoroughly crushed; "but
surely, after the training I have had with you, I might obtain some
legal employment----"

"Better not--a lawyer's life is one of sore temptation--all honour be
to those who resist the tempter.  (He had not, whatever he meant.)
The All-seeing-Eye will, I doubt not, watch over you; but leave my
roof you must, and Dove must learn to forget the folly in which she
has been indulging."

"If--if--Lord Campsie has influenced you in coming to this decision,"
began Gillian, a sudden gust of jealous rage and suspicion coming to
his aid.

"Lord Campsie has not influenced me," replied Mr. Gainswood, assuming
a lofty and injured air; "but if his lordship had, what then?"

"By my father's soul, I would break every bone in his lordship's
body!" was the furious rejoinder.

"Is this a proper spirit in which to receive the dispensations of a
chastening Providence--dispensations, doubtless, meant for your good?
Leave my house, I tell you, but tell you sorrowfully; moderate your
angry passions, lest you fall into the hands of an angry and avenging
God!"

"Oh, Uncle Gainswood, how can you be so cruel, so unjust, and so
cuttingly cold to me?" urged Gillian, in a voice that would have
touched the heart of any other man but his hearer.

"Enough--that will do; to-morrow at latest--it is a grave
necessity--you leave this roof."

"For where?"

"That is your affair; by train I hope, for any place you like.  If
not, any way Dove Gainswood shall be put utterly beyond the reach of
even receiving a letter from you; further communing between you
beseems not now."

"So be it," said Gillian, grief mastering and suppressing the passion
and indignation that fired his spirit.  "My father has dealt hardly
and unjustly with me, in keeping me without a profession--even a
trade--in feeding false hopes that were never to be realised, and
leaving me thus upon a world like a stranded wreck, at the very
outset of life--a beggar, as you harshly, but truly, phrase it."

"Your father has gone to his account, Gillian; so judge not lest ye
be judged.  We part now and for ever--but let us part friends.
Go--the record is closed!"

He sighed, and looked heavenward; but only saw the ceiling.

Then, leaving Gillian as if turned to stone, Mr. Gainswood put on his
hat and went forth, in the earnest hope that he might never see his
face again.  His brows were knit, and there was a fierce glitter in
his grey eye--the glitter of suppressed rage, hate, and
mortification---rage at Dove, hatred of Gillian, as being the main
cause of her contumacy, and keen mortification at the too probable
destruction of his ambitious hope; and yet he chuckled with fierce
satisfaction that he had amply avenged himself, and acted so quietly
throughout the recent interview.

Would Campsie come to the point again?  If not!--  At this fear and
doubt, he ground his teeth, and with all his assumed blandness and
Christian meekness, he felt a gust of wrath that nearly choked him.
But he contented himself with bullying some of his drudges,
dismissing a footman--thus only compelling himself ere the week was
out to advertise for another, who was a "Christian and
teetotaller,"--and giving orders relative to some unhappy people
whose rents were in arrear--orders which he knew would inflict
incalculable hardship upon them; and thus, relieved in mind, attired
in accurate black, with a spotless necktie, he went blandly, in his
capacity of Elder, to some religious meeting where his speeches and
prayers proved as usual very edifying to those who were not as
hypocritical as himself, but yet thanked God that they were not as
other men.

Without having a word of explanation or farewell, or seeing Dove--Mr.
Gainswood had taken some sure means to preclude all chance of
that---Gillian walked forth with a few shillings in his pocket and a
change of raiment in a hand-bag, without aim, object, or intention,
as yet--forth, as it were, into the world.

He felt as one in a dream might do, or as if all this must be
happening to some other person, and not to him, the Gillian Lamond of
yesterday.

The city with its sounds and associations maddened him, so he sought
the solitude of the country.  It was a calm summer evening now, and a
scene of rare beauty lay before him, the vast and fertile plain, that
stretches westward for miles upon miles nearly to the spires and
smoke of Glasgow.  Amid clouds of gold and amber the sun was setting;
the fields of corn were yellowing on the upland slopes, and the birds
were circling in the air, full of life and with no fear of the
morrow; and in the distance, with their glens and ravines sunk in
shadow and their peaks bathed in rosy light, rose the wavy line of
the beautiful Pentland Hills which close the view to the south.

Despairing and broken-hearted though he was, Gillian resolved that he
would see Dove once more, and then turn his back upon Edinburgh; but
for where?  The grim fact stood ever before him.  Cast suddenly and
roughly on the world at his age, without prospects, or profession, or
even a trade, what was there left for him to do.  He could not work,
and to beg he was ashamed, and he almost shivered as he thought of
the Scriptural quotation, as such phraseology was so frequently on
the lips of Gideon Gainswood.

Pitiless as a famished wolf, the latter had no commiseration for the
lad who had grown up to manhood at his hearth, under his roof and
eye, who loved his daughter with his whole heart, and whom in secret
he had so foully and terribly wronged, going forth into the cold,
hard, and bitter world--into the very darkness thereof, as it were,
to push his fortune, to seek his food rather, where, when, or how he
best could, and too probably to perish in the attempt.

He saw, or heard of him no more.  One circumstance surprised him:
that Gillian never asked for the balance of his allowance, and he
could not imagine him adopting any line of action without it.
Without money he could neither leave the city nor live in it.
Penniless and desperate, ardent and full of fiery spirit, would he
have committed suicide?  Black-hearted though he was, Gideon
Gainswood felt somewhat appalled by the idea, and shrunk from it;
though there came a time when he might have cared less, had such a
calamity actually taken place.

The name of Gillian was seldom or never uttered by Gainswood or by
Dove now.  Of her sorrow, the former could not fail to be cognisant;
but it only fretted and annoyed him, and he watched her pale cheeks
and tear-inflamed eyes with a grim smile, as he felt convinced "this
sort of thing" would not last long; he could not understand a love
that was "never to die," and so forth, and felt assured that now the
cause of all this was removed, that Time would effect a cure in the
usual way.  "A determination to true lovemaking, in this civilised
world of ours," says a writer, "is a disease which is always
subjected to the management of the pruning knife of papas and mammas,
just as much as a determination of blood to the head belongs to the
family physician."

On the fifth night after Gillian's disappearance, Dove was found by
Mr. Gainswood, abandoned to her grief and weeping passionately.

"Dove, Dove," said he, in a tone of grave reprehension, "you know not
what you do in giving way thus, or the true nature of the lad you are
so foolish as to mourn for.  You have made a fortunate escape, girl.
He takes after his father, who hath now gone to judgment.  He is one
of those who know not the pain they give unto those who, like me,
pray and have prayed that they may see the Light, and who mourn
heavily over their indifference to the awful realities of judgment
and eternity."

Dove shuddered at this farrago and turned away; yet but an hour
before Gillian's kiss had been upon her lips, and it came to pass
thus.

Old Elspat McBriar had some human sympathies (if her kinsman
Gainswood had none), especially for lovers.  Gillian she had loved
for his sake, and perhaps all the more for the sake of his father,
who had been a soldier, even as Quarter-master McBriar, her "own
comely Duncan," had been; and when Gillian wrote to her, from the
quiet hotel at which he had temporarily taken a room, she--at the
risk of losing all Mr. Gainswood's favour, and even the shelter of
his roof--arranged a farewell meeting between the cousins, after dusk
in the spacious garden, of the square.

Gillian was there betimes.  It was to both a familiar spot, long
endeared to them by many sweet and tender memories, and the flowering
rhododendrons, the azaleas, the feathery disdara, and the trees whose
branches swept the smooth green turf, seemed all as old friends on
whom he was looking for the last time.

The idea that he had lost the chance of having Avon-na-gillian,
fortune and position never occurred to him now; he thought only of
his brave father's romantic and honest aspirations ended by murky
death and a distant grave; and that he had lost Dove.

There was a sound--the rustle of a dress--a heavy, heavy sob, one of
those that seem drawn from the heart, and the girl was clasped to his
breast in a long, and, at first, silent embrace--an embrace all the
more wild and passionate, that this interview could last but a few
minutes, as Mr. Gainswood was on the _qui vive_.

"I am in despair, Dove!" said Gillian, as his tears mingled with hers.

"Do not despair, my darling, my darling--it is a sin to do so," urged
the soft weeper, who clung despairingly, nevertheless, to his breast.

"You must learn to forget me, Dove."

"Never; for I know, Gillian, that you will never, never forget me!
And, oh, my own Gillian, if I die before we meet again, I shall come
to you in spirit, like the wild Joanna of my song."

"Do not talk so, my love."

After much weeping on the part of Dove, many deep sighs on the part
of Gillian, and the utterance of many tender interjections and
incoherences,--

"Now," said he, "my darling Dove, I must bury all the old past days
and think only of the life that is before me!"

"And where?"

"God alone knows--I do not."

"Gillian--Gillian!"

Tears choked her utterance as he kissed and pressed her hands, for
the time had come when they must inexorably part.

"Kiss me once again," she said, in a voice like a broken whisper.

A long, long and clinging kiss was exchanged, and then they were
apart--too surely, it seemed, for ever.  Old Elspat McBriar led away
Dove, who seemed as if turned to stone, while Gillian, stumbling like
a blind man, went forth upon his lonely way.

Gillian felt now that he was fairly launched upon the
world--committed as it were to the dark tide and turbid waves of Fate.

As he walked moodily and sadly on in the starlight, he gave a
farewell glance to all the grand and striking local features that had
been so long familiar to him--the mighty mass of the castled-rock
towering far and vast in gloom above the city--the dark, ridgy
outline of the ancient capital glittering with a thousand lights high
above the terraced splendour of the new one; the lion-shaped mountain
that for a thousand years and more has looked down darkly, solemnly,
and placidly upon the cradle of Scottish history, old Dunedin, "the
fort upon the slope"--Gillian, we say, looked sadly round him, as if
bidding a mute adieu to all he had ever loved, and then turned his
face resolutely to the path before him.




CHAPTER XI.

DOVE IN HER SORROW.

So they were parted these two young and loving hearts in the full
flush of their tenderness, hope, and affection; and Dove's home was,
to her, a broken home from thenceforward.  Therein were an empty
room, a vacant chair--ever a vacant place.  A species of living death
seemed to have been among them; a familiar voice was hushed, and a
well-known footstep had gone forth to return no more; and the heart
of the young girl was exceedingly sorrowful.

The sudden disappearance of Gillian had to be accounted for to
friends, to whom Mr. Gainswood answered in general terms, that, in
consequence of his father's death, he had gone abroad, and would
probably emigrate.  A few there were who, with honest interest in the
lad whom they loved, inquired after his welfare from time to time;
but after a while even they ceased to do so, and the very existence
of Gillian seemed to be forgotten, or committed to oblivion.

Before friends and visitors, especially such a close observer as her
particular ally and gossip, Flora Stuart, poor Dove had to make great
efforts to preserve appearances, and seem to be still in her former
happy spirits; but to Flora, and even to Mr. Gainswood, dull and
obtuse as he was in all that pertained to tenderness or sympathy, it
was evident that Dove's gentle nature was changing.  Her piano was
never opened, her music lay unused, and when left to herself, she
fell into long reveries of silence and abstraction.

From these she would seem to awaken with a half-startled air, and
with her dark blue eyes dilated, her manner excited, would begin to
talk rapidly about anything that came to hand, as if to lull the
suspicions to which her silent reverie gave rise.

At times she was quiet, gentle, and without will; at others, her
temper, which had been so charming from its sweetness and softness,
became irritable, captious, and wayward.  This made Mr. Gainswood
occasionally sharp and harsh, as it worried him, and he cursed
Gillian Lamond all the more bitterly that he could only do so in the
secrecy of his own heart; and this bitterness to the absent increased
when an eminent physician gently hinted that unless great care was
taken with Dove, whose ailment was solely mental, she might go into a
decline; and in that event, thought Gideon Gainswood, to what end, or
of what avail would be all the riches that, without scruple or pity
to others, he had been garnering up for years!

Yet, compunction for the mischief he had wrought, had he none.  He
had gone too far to recede, nor would he, even if he could have done
so.

Days passed on and became weeks, and the weeks grew into months, and
yet no message, letter, or tidings came of the absent one; and
meanwhile, Lord Campsie, encouraged by the countenance of her father,
for whom he nevertheless had the most profound contempt, had the
peculiarly bad taste to continue his visits, and annoy her by his
presence and attentions.

Of her fancy, as he called it, for Gillian, Campsie was not in the
least jealous; he did not love enough to be so; but idleness, ennui,
and want of the "ready," were his chief spurs to the present pursuit.

Love-making would fill up what he was wont to call his "period of
expatriation in Edinburgh;" and at this phrase Mr. Gainswood could
not resist the little and sardonic grimace which served him usually
for a smile, as he thought of how his lordship's ancestor, stout old
William of Kilsythe, who fell by King James's side at Flodden, or the
later William who fought at Dunblane, would have truncheoned him for
using such a term.

"I have the game in my own hands now, Gainswood, as that fellow
Lamond has bolted," his lordship would sometimes say, "over the wine
and walnuts."

"Of course, my lord," the other would reply, with his feeble smile,
for even to him it was evident that the heir of Kilsythe made but
little progress.

"Oh, yes, I don't despair, don't you know, of having her yet.  Wine,
women, and luck always change, according to a Portuguese proverb."

"Of course, my lord, only a few months' delicate attention--you see
she is in mourning yet--are necessary as an honourable and necessary
sacrifice to time and appearances; we all live more or less for
appearances."

"Here in this sanctimonious hole, by Jove, you do!" was the courteous
response of my Lord Campsie, who in his own languid way was perhaps
falling in love with Dove's person as well as her purse, and could
find no pleasanter mode of passing the afternoons when he was not
hunting, playing, or at drill on the seashore, than in her society,
though to any one possessed of keener perceptions, it would have been
evident to him that he made no progress.

Dove was too remarkable a girl not to have many admirers, whom
Gillian's perpetual presence and society had somewhat "scared,"
though she gave no encouragement to one more than another, while her
love for him rendered her indifferent to them all.  But now all her
elasticity had departed, and Dove was ever sad and triste.

"She'll get over it in time," the Elder would growl to himself.

But she did not get over it "in time."

She had a little respite from annoyance, when Lord Campsie, alleging
that he had become greatly bored by the utter emptiness of the town
in the summer months, donned a plum-coloured velvet knickerbocker
suit, and departed with Sir Hayward Carington in his yacht to shoot
and fish in Norway ostensibly, but in reality to keep out of the way
of "the chosen people," who held so much of his blue paper, that even
Gideon Gainswood was at his wit's end to get matters squared.

Sir Hayward's invitation was extended to the Fair One from St. John's
Wood, over whose little bills for diamond bracelets, &c., Gainswood
groaned in a spirit of avarice, not reprehension.

"I am a great believer in luck," said Campsie, in a letter written at
Christiania; "it is a divinity we often have to worship in our set,
and, by Jove, Gainswood, you're a trump, don't you know.  Life to me
has ever been a kind of merry-go-round, and things always come right
in the end somehow.  Moses, Aaron, and all the rest of them are
pretty familiar with my noble autograph, my expectations, and all
that sort of thing, so I never worry about a bill for six hundred
falling due when I have only a sixpence to meet it.  I always pull
through on settling day."

And yet to a creature so brainless and heedless as this he would
entrust Dove's happiness.  As for her dowry he would take means to
secure that pretty tightly.

When Campsie returned from his partially enforced voyage among the
fiords, that which poor Dove deemed her persecution began afresh, and
even her general patient endurance was sorely tested, and every
attempt was made to hurry her to, and through, scenes in which, a
young girl though she was, she had not the slightest interest.

Pic-nic parties with the band and regimental drag, with _carte
blanche_ to invite whom she chose; proposed riding parties, and
yachting excursions in Sir Hayward's schooner (the pride of Cowes) to
the castle on the Bass, to the Priory on the Isle of May, round the
Bell Rock, and even to the Fame Islands, were all declined by Dove,
though she was a good sailor and expert horsewoman.  Why?  She saw,
or feared, that Lord Campsie admired, and was learning to love
her--or thought he was--and knew that her father was slavishly--oh,
how slavishly!--obsequious to him.

"Rum girl--eccentric girl!  What does it all mean?" asked his
lordship, who detested to be much troubled about any thing.

"The girl is mad--blind to her own interests," thought her father;
"and yet I have removed effectually the cause of her contumacy.  It
hath been a dispensation of Providence to give me a child so
fractious."

So Campsie began to be bored again, and said abruptly one day, as he
reined up his horse in the street:

"I am going on leave, Gainswood, old man."

"Leave again, my lord?" asked the lawyer.

Campsie muttered under his moustache something with reference to a
pot of money he had "put on the winner of the late Gold Cup at Ascot,
and how Drawler of the Blues wouldn't stump up."

Mr. Gainswood thought shrewdly that the Fair One with the golden hair
was sweeping him away with her for a time, yet he said:

"So sorry, my lord, to lose your society--all the more, that nothing
is settled anent that which is so near our hearts; but the
All-seeing-Eye knoweth what is for the best."

"Canting old beggar!" thought Campsie, but he replied:

"Oh, all in good time.  You helped me over that pinch at the Derby,
for which, thanks.  Keep your eye on our little Dove; I shall be
away, and the enterprising cousin is away, so don't let Shoddy and
Co. take the field against me."

"Shoddy and Co., my lord?" asked the lawyer.

"Oh, I mean those priggish little barrister fellows that come about
your house, and blow themselves up like the bull-frog in the
fable--the 'Young Reekies,' as Dove calls them--members of the mutual
admiration society, who deem themselves the swells of the village in
the north; so ta, ta, old fellow, till I return;" and touching his
bay with the spur, he cantered laughingly away.

His temporary absence relieved Dove again; but the girl's spirits
seldom or never rose, and she ever preferred solitude to society.

"Nothing seems changed but me!" Dove would mutter, as she sat alone,
and looked from the windows on the same scene that met the languid
gaze of Campsie, on the afternoon of his first visit.  Setting beyond
the wooded ridges of Corstorphine, the evening sun was as bright, the
sky as blue and cloudless, as it used to be in the dear old days when
Gillian was with her.  The woods were less green, for autumn was
mellowing them, and the golden grain had been shorn and gathered on
the upland slopes; the crows were wheeling and cawing above the
ancient rookeries in the Dean Hollow, where the river brawled over
its rocky bed, and sometimes fell in thunder over its broad white
weir, and the last sweet songs of the birds filled the air with
melody, just as they were wont to do when she and Gillian were
together, and oh where, she asked in her heart, was Gillian now!

Aware that nothing lasts for ever, Gideon Gainswood awaited some
change in her, with that, which for him, was wonderful patience;
while, young girl-like, Dove's love for the absent seemed too holy,
pure, and sacred a thing to be "trotted" forth, as it sometimes was,
upbraidingly in the light of day.  She shrunk from the roughness of
his scornful taunts, and took refuge in tears and silence.

Little indeed could she imagine all that Gillian, with his
antecedents and hopes, the tenor of his past life, high education,
bearing, and accomplishments, was undergoing now.




CHAPTER XII.

"CUIDICH'N RHI!"

It was one morning in the November of this year, which was so
eventful to Dove Gainswood, that a transport, H.M. steamship _Indus_,
was slowly quitting the harbour of Suez, leaving astern the white
houses of the town, (which is built upon a flat, with a ridgy
eminence in its rear,) and running, partially under canvas, into the
Red Sea, bound for Bombay, with troops, chiefly detachments of the
64th Regiment, 78th Highlanders, under Captain Roderick McAra, and
the Royal Artillery, all of whom expected to see the beautiful shores
of Western India in about fourteen days from that time.

They had already found, at Suez, a certain foretaste of the land
towards which they were journeying (but which many of them were fated
not to see), in the shape of Hindoo servants, Indian officers in pith
helmets and kalkee uniforms returning homeward, and brown ayas clad
in cotton and calico; and now, all the soldiers, or nearly so, on
board the _Indus_ were young men, little more than recruits, and they
crowded in the waist, as the officers did upon the poop and bridge,
watching the coast on each side, as hour by hour the great ship sped
onward.

To starboard lay the plains of Lower Egypt, with the mountain ridge
that looks down upon the Valley of the Nile.  On the port side rose
Pharaoh's Hill, and then Mount Horeb, where the Law was delivered
unto man, and ere long the granite peaks of Mount Sinai, fifteen
hundred feet above the sea, excited the admiration even of the most
dull by the wonderful combination they presented in outline and
colouring, for when evening came and the sun was setting beyond the
Egyptian shore, the peaks rose against the deep blue of the sky like
petrified fire, and the soldiers, but more especially the Scottish
Highlanders, though silent and religious men, gazed with much of
wonder, but more of interest and respect, on the land and that sea
whose history is coeval with that of mankind.

A little apart from all, in the bow of the steamer, watching
alternately the white foam curling up beneath him and the shores of
classical and holy antiquity on each hand, was one, in whom now--with
his setting-up, closely shorn brown hair, thickened moustache,
already embrowned face, and saddened or thoughtful eyes, and who was
clad, moreover, in a canvas ship-frock, and the green tartan kilt and
gartered hose of the Highland Buffs--it might have taxed even the
penetration of Dove to have recognised at once Gillian Lamond--but he
it was.

From that night on which we last saw him turning his back, as he
believed, for ever upon his home, he had been a soldier; and now he
was fully trained, drilled, and _en route_ for India, the land of his
father's brilliant services, of his hard toil to acquire a
competence, and where he had found a grave.

Like the ardent and imaginative youth he was, Gillian had, but for a
little time only, his visions of realising a fortune as if by
magic--of conquering fate and destiny, and of returning home to claim
Dove Gainswood, _vis-et-armis_--again and again had he muttered, "I
would do anything for riches--I would do anything for moderate
wealth"; and now he was off to see the world, "with sixty rounds of
ammunition at his back."

Love and sorrow remained with him; but all bitterness of heart had
departed now, and alternately something of heedlessness as to what
might happen, and of a dogged resolution to do his duty, to grapple
with Fate, to excel and to win such honour and glory as might befall
a poor private soldier, inspired him alone.

How home to his heart had come that rattling air, "The Girl I left
behind me," when in the early dewy morning, and all the world of
Southampton seemed abed, he had marched, amid the cheers of his
comrades, to the place of embarkation, and felt himself in reality a
soldier.

Many things had been sorely against "his grain" at first; the
incessant saluting of his superiors, and starting to "attention" at
their approach, the barrack "fatigue duties," the manners and
language of those with whom he was now in daily contact, for more
than once when on duty he had shared the same hard guard-bed with men
who used coarse language, and were constantly quarrelling with their
comrades, who bullied youngsters out of their money for beer, had
been flogged for disgraceful conduct, tried for desertion, and whose
names appeared scores of times in the "Defaulters' Book;" but he had
borne the infliction of such presence patiently, and thanked Heaven
that there were few or no such characters in the brave old Ross-shire
Buffs; and he soon learned that the happiness or misery of a soldier
depends upon himself, and that an honourable bearing, temperance, and
strict obedience would ensure him the protection and regard of his
superiors, though he felt that a mighty chasm, in some senses, yawned
between himself and them now.

At the depôt, most of the officers and sergeants had noted Gillian;
the former suspected that he was the victim of circumstance, though
he strictly kept his own counsel as to his antecedents and who he
was; and the latter often remarked that he was "a smart young fellow,
didn't drink, didn't get into scrapes, and had never been 'up' since
he enlisted."

He got used to his duties and position; he strove to fulfil the
former, and to endure the latter without repining; but Dove was
blotted out of the scheme of his future, yet he ever thought of her
as he had last seen her on that night of mental anguish and farewell
in the garden.  Long ere that hour of calamity came, they had
exchanged rings; but the one that she had given him from her
beautiful little hand he could not show on his finger now; lest it
should be said that thereby hung a tale ill suited to the atmosphere
of a barrack-room or orlop deck, besides, apart from cleaning his
rifle and accoutrements, he had often work to perform that ill
befitted the diamond and pearl ring of Dove, so he wore it with a
ribbon at his neck.

She had refused the son of a peer, with all that such an alliance led
to--wealth, luxury, rank, London with its society and its
drawing-rooms--refused it all, and for his sake!

"How long--how long would all this endure?" he would ask of himself,
and was muttering even now, as the great ship sped onward, onward,
onward, cleaving the blue waves that roll round the low promontory of
Ras Mohammed.

"How would it all end?"  Ambition, properly so-called and considered,
he had none, and no Marshal's baton had yet been found in the
knapsacks of the Ross-shire Buffs.  He had shouldered a rifle as much
for food as to flee from his own thoughts, and he resolved to do his
duty, and die in doing so, if God willed it, but ever and anon came
the aching thoughts of Dove!

On one hand, he saw rank and wealth offered her, backed up by
assiduity, perseverance, and an undoubtedly prepossessing exterior in
Lord Campsie; on the other, were his own absence, obscurity, and
hopelessness.  When he drew mentally this double picture, he became
so desperate and heartless, that all desire to wrestle with hard
fortune died within him; while Dove seemed as one who was dead--dead
to him certainly.  As a bitter sigh escaped him, he felt a hand clap
his shoulder, and turning met the bright, cheerful face of his
comrade, Colin MacKenzie.

"In the doldrums again, Lamond!" said the latter, half-reproachfully;
"I have just got some fresh baccy from the steward--fill your pipe,
and we'll blow a little cloud together."

"Thanks, Colin," replied Gillian, proceeding to fill his pipe, which,
being a handsome meerschaum, was an object of some interest to his
new friends; "I was thinking deeply, and it is not jolly work."

"No--life is a mistake, I have sometimes thought; but still I have
contrived to rub on somehow."

"I have often wondered what star I was born under!" sighed Gillian.

"I never did--never had any doubt about mine."

"How?"

"I know deuced well--it was a falling one," replied MacKenzie,
laughing heartily.

Colin, of whom we shall have more mention to make, was his chosen
comrade and senior in years, as he was about five or six and twenty.
His face was ruddy and fresh, he had a thick dark moustache, good
regular features, dark grey eyes that, like those of many Scottish
mountaineers, were keen as those of the hawk or eagle; he was
handsome and stalwart in figure, with a cheerful aspect of perpetual
content and jollity, and a frank and fearless bearing.

He was a Highlander from the original cradle of the
regiment--Kintail, the land of black cattle, and these he had herded
many a day and oft, by the great stones that cover Diarmid's grave,
by the shores of Loch Alsh, and on the slopes of Tullochard, which is
alike the war-cry and crest of his name, and of the Marquises of
Seaforth, the lords of Kintail.

In his boyhood Colin had seen better days, ere misfortune had come
upon his father, who was, what the Highlanders call, a
"gentleman-drover," or cattle merchant; and so he became a soldier.
As such, his companionship and advice had proved of vast service to
Gillian in his new and humble phase of life, and each liked,
respected, and clung to the other.

Though not exactly told off two and two, every soldier has a comrade,
and these men rarely fail each other; each attends to the other's
food and wants when on duty, and may clean his arms; accoutrements,
or horse, when he comes off that duty.  Tom keeps an eye on Dick when
he is in hospital, and Dick will be sure to share his baccy, beer,
and clearings with Tom at other times; and many a tale told round the
guard-room fire turns on regimental traditions of generous,
high-spirited, and humane _camaraderie_, combined with faith and
truth; and of this, two are well known.  One is of a soldier who,
when his comrade, after Culloden, was sentenced to die for desertion,
unless a substitute could be procured, according to the then
practice, risked a throw of the dice with him on the drumhead and
_lost!_ another, of a soldier of the 13th, or 1st Somersetshire
regiment, who, in 1800, took five hundred lashes at the triangles to
save a comrade who was innocent, of a crime which he had himself
committed.

MacKenzie's cheerful manner--for, when not whistling interminable
pibrochs, he was always singing "The Woodland Laddie," and Highland
boat songs, or telling droll stories--drove Gillian from his sorrows
in spite of himself for a time; and something of hope--a hope, he
knew not of what--would then dawn in his heart, for he was too young
to be always desponding; and by the time the bugles blew "retreat,"
as the last red ray of sunset paled out on the peak of Mount Sinai,
he found himself laughing at some of Colin's remarks; but after the
bagpipers struck up "tattoo," and marched round the ship, and all
were ordered below save the deck watch, of whom Gillian made one, and
he was left as it were to himself, his thoughts fell into the old
groove again.

"Am I myself or some one else?" he would mutter; "or am I acting over
an incident I have read in a novel or seen in a play--a painful
waking dream.  Can it be that poor Colin is right, and that life is,
after all, a mistake?"

Thus would Gillian ponder for hours, while his comrades of the watch
trod to and fro in the waist of the ship, or nestled together to
leeward, in their grey greatcoats and Glengarrys, while the sound of
voices and laughter, and occasionally the notes of a piano, came from
the lighted saloon, from that circle of society from which he was now
excluded; and when the officers lingered after mess, and while the
bright stars that came out overhead, like the sharp crescent moon
then just rising above the isle of Jubal, were reflected in the
silent waters of the Red Sea.

At such moments, he strove to forget his harsh, rough, and sometimes
repellant surroundings, and some of the unpleasant duties he had to
perform; yet when deck-washing in the keen breeze of the British
Channel, and anon amid the burning winds of the Red Sea, he would
smile bitterly, and think, "Could Dove but see me now!"

By day and night, as the _Indus_ sped on, he had some compensation
for his troubles in the wonderful effects of sunshine or moonlight in
all parts of the Red Sea, when the wild mountains of its rugged
coasts--the abode of the Arab and Bedouin, or when its many isles
became visible; holy places of which he had so often heard his Uncle
Gainswood cant and snivel; but at times the heat was something
dreadful to endure, when the _Indus_ was steaming with the breeze and
not head to wind, when even the native stokers fainted in the
stoke-hole, and when near the arid rocks that seemed to quiver in the
sun, the Highlanders, gasping for breath, thought regretfully of the
green mountains of their native home, of the deep and dark blue lochs
that wash their bases, of the waving cornfields, of the shady woods,
the vast wastes of purple heather, and the pure, balmy air, where the
eagle and hawk were whirling aloft.

The poor privates--God help them!--had not much money among them, and
Gillian was as yet ignorant or careless of how to spend judiciously
his pittance of pay; hence in the days and nights when the air was
like a furnace, he often got "a bottle of bitter," that greatest
luxury in the East, from the "clearings" of poor Colin, who had been
early trained in the "uses of adversity," and in such an atmosphere
as that of the Red Sea, at that season, "bitter" was as the nectar of
the gods.

At times Colin MacKenzie succeeded in inspiring him with that genuine
_esprit-du-corps_, which exists in all regiments, but in none more
than the Scottish, which, from their costume and names, have a double
character to maintain, with regard to the historic honour of their
country and their _prestige_ as British soldiers; thus Colin was a
genuine enthusiast in all that pertained to his clan, and to the
regiment, which was raised out of it, and while still wearing its
tartan has upon its appointments the _caberfiedh_ of Seaforth, the
same stag's head, which was given as a crest to Colin MacKenzie, high
chief of Kintail, who shouted "_Cuidich'n Rhi_" (or Help the King!)
and slew by an arrow a stag which was rushing at King Alexander III.*
And as Scott sings,

  "Who in the land of the Saxon or Gael,
  Might match with MacKenzie,
          High Chief of Kintail?"

Alexander gave him other lands in Kintail, with "_Cuidich'n Rhi_" as
a motto, and deergrass as a clan-badge.


* Regimental tradition has it, that MacKenzie slew the stag with his
lance, and not with an arrow, as Douglas states in his Peerage, and
also that the King had been unhorsed.


He was never wearied of telling Gillian how, after the Ross-shire
Buffs were mustered in 1793 by Seaforth himself, at Fort George, the
winter of the following year saw them in Holland with the Cameron and
Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch--all young soldiers, who wore
the kilt when the cold was so intense that strong brandy froze in the
bottles, yet never a Gael dropped by the wayside, while the track of
other regiments was marked by the dead and the dying among the snow,
as the Duke of York advanced towards Westphalia; of how bravely they
fought on the plains of Assaye, brigaded with the MacLeods, and added
the elephant to their other trophies; how they conquered at Maida and
Java; and how at Argaum, they charged to the sound of their pipes and
the war-cry of _Cuidich'n Rhi!_ striking terror to the soul of
Scindia, and winning the warmest praises of the future Duke of
Wellington.

When Colin spoke of these stirring memories, his dark grey eyes would
sparkle and his cheek flush, while his voice became almost tremulous,
for his spirit was brave and ardent; but when he spoke of the pipes,
and how the "gathering of the MacKenzies" had risen high among the
ranks of the routed Albanian Horse and Foot, on the banks of the
Nile, he could little foresee how, in the year subsequent to that in
which our story opens, the same warlike air from the same wild
instrument would strike joy to the hearts of our garrison in
beleaguered Lucknow, when he had gone to a lowly grave, and could
hear their notes no more.

In due time the _Indus_ was off the sun-baked rocks of Aden--a bleak
bare place of ashes and cinders, fabled as once the Rose Garden of
Irene, where the wild Abdallees have long since ceased to regard a
steamer passing their shore, which is simply a congeries of dark and
sombre rocks; but where the little boy divers, for the amusement of
the officers and ladies clustered on the poop, ply their trade for
sixpences, with as much zest as the mudlarks do at Gravesend.

The steamer had barely dropped her anchor for the purpose of coaling,
when a boat, containing a staff-officer, came off to her speedily,
pulled by sepoys, with instructions for the officers commanding the
troops and ship.  These were, that instead of pursuing her voyage to
Bombay, she was to proceed towards Bushire, and there join the
expedition destined, under Generals Outram and Havelock, for the
invasion of Persia, with the Shah of which we had suddenly come to
blows.  The regiments to which the detachments with the _Indus_
belonged, all formed part of that expedition; and so, three hearty
British cheers arose from her deck, when after passing through the
straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, so named by early
navigators to mark their sense of the perils attendant on its
navigation, the courses of the stately steam transport were let fall,
her snow-white topsails hoisted and sheeted home, as she hauled up
for the Gulf of Persia.




CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE GULF OF PERSIA.

The secret of his past life, or of the position he had lost, Gillian
entrusted to none--not even to Colin, who, suspecting that he had
some such secret, advised him to keep it from all non-commissioned
officers especially, lest the jealousy of some might be roused, if he
were noticed by their superiors or promoted before his time; but
Gillian was never thrown off his guard, or nearly so, save once, by a
lady-passenger, the wife of a staff-officer.

The evening was a lovely one; the _Indus_ under easy steam was some
miles distant from the isle of Socotora; the Highlanders on the
main-deck had been dancing reels to the sound of the pipes, the
player of which had perched himself on the after-capstan, and several
officers, with one or two ladies, were clustered at the back of the
poop to see them enjoying themselves, and looked on approvingly and
applaudingly, as all Highlanders dance, and moreover dance well.

But from this amusement Gillian withdrew, as he became conscious that
a young lady was closely observing him, and more than once drew the
attention of others upon him especially.  Apart from his handsome
figure and attractive face, doubtless in his air and bearing she
detected something that marked him out from the rest, and this was a
distinction from which he then shrunk.

About an hour after this, while the pile of mountains which forms the
isle of Socotora had risen higher from the sea, and the sun that was
setting far away beyond the Arabian shore, was tipping as if with red
fire the mighty granite peaks that are high as Ben Nevis or Ben More,
the same young lady had betaken her to her sketch-book, and under the
shelter of the break of the poop was busy with her pencil in
transferring to paper the bold and striking outline of the hills,
which, at the distance they were then, seemed to start abruptly from
the sea, while an officer of the 64th lounged close by, and
laughingly criticised her progress.

"Oh, I shall never get my sketch made in time--we shall be past it,"
she exclaimed, with a pretty air of impatience, "and I make all my
sketches for the journal which I promised to send home to mamma."

"And the captain won't stop the engines even for you, I fear," said
the officer who hovered near her, in his mess jacket and forage cap.

"Do put your cigar away, or don't stand on that side of me."

The officer threw his cigar overboard.

"I should so wish to achieve this drawing--the outlines are changing
fast," she added, for already the flat plain from which the mountains
start had risen from the sea, and her pretty white hand had to add it
to the foreground; "could you assist me, Captain Jones?"

"Can't draw a line," replied the officer; "have drawn a bill,
though--a deuced sight too often."

"A few corks too, I suppose?"

Here her eye fell on Gillian, who was loitering near the stair that
led to the poop, and who, in truth, had been watching her with an
interest that made her colour slightly.  She belonged to that "set"
in which he could move no more.  The hoop on her finger showed that
she was married--indeed Gillian knew that she was the wife of Captain
Hartley, a staff-officer, though but a young girl, and she was more
than merely beautiful.

"Do you draw?" she asked, suddenly.

"A little," said Gillian, colouring in turn, as he raised his hand in
salute, "and if you will do me the honour of permitting me"----

"To finish the sketch?"

"If you please?"

"Oh, thanks very much!" she exclaimed, tendering her book and pencils
with a bright smile.

"By Jove!" muttered Captain Jones, as by force of habit he proceeded
to manipulate another cigar, while Gillian placing the book upon the
gunnel rapidly filled in and shaded the drawing, boldly and freely.

"I saw you dancing with your comrades some time ago," said Mrs.
Hartley; "it was very picturesque, and awfully jolly!--but those
terrible pipes do pierce one's ears so!"

(But a few months after this the same fair girl at Lucknow was fated
to hear that piercing sound ascending amid the musketry of the
Secunderbagh, as the voice of a delivering angel!)

Gillian laughed at her remark, handed her the finished sketch, for
the execution of which she thanked him very sweetly, and he was about
to retire, for he felt conscious that the officer was eying him with
cool scrutiny, when Mrs. Hartley said, with something of soft
interest in her girlish face:

"How long have you been in the Highlanders?"

"Four months."

His voice trembled, for now as the sunshine fell on her hair, it was
the identical hue of Dove's, and she was about the stature and age,
too, of Dove, and--it might be fancy--with the same sweet and tender
form of mouth.

"A mere recruit," said Captain Jones, curtly, as he thought the time
had come for the private to withdraw.

"What is this you have written in the corner of my sketch?" she asked.

"_Dioscorades._"

"Is that your name?" she asked, with surprise.

"No," replied Gillian, laughing quite merrily, "it is the classic
name of the island, and was so called by Ptolemy, when it belonged to
the Kings of the Incense Country."

"How did you learn all this?"

"By reading, madam."

"I know that even the humblest of your countrymen are usually well
educated; but you must have studied--where?"

It was impossible to equivocate with such lovely eyes as hers bent
upon him, so Gillian said, reluctantly--

"At the University of Edinburgh."

"Indeed!" and as she spoke her eyes wandered to the coarse white
Highland jacket he wore.

"You are a musician, perhaps, as well as an artist," said Captain
Jones, with something of a sneer.

"I have a taste, at least, for music, sir, and greatly was I
gratified, when last night I heard Mrs. Hartley sing that song of
Leonora's from Il Trovatore to your own accompaniment on the
piano--she did it, indeed, divinely!"

He was forgetting the gulf between them.

"And you," she asked, "where were you?"

"On sentry at the poop door," replied Gillian, at once remembering
himself, and with a salute, he was about to retire, when she said,--

"I beg your pardon, soldier--but you will lose that ring, and it
seems a valuable one."

"What ring?"

"The one now dangling at the end of blue ribbon from the breast of
your jacket."

It was Dove's engagement-ring, which he hastened to replace or
conceal, and hurried forward to mingle with the crowd of soldiers,
while the young girl looked after him with sympathy and interest.

"That is a lady's ring," said she, "and thereby hangs a tale!  That
poor lad has a history, which he keeps locked in his own breast."

"Very likely--most men have until they are under the influence of
tobacco and brandy-pawnee, then out it comes hand-over-hand, as the
sailors say; but as a rule, Scotsmen are always devilish close about
their own affairs."

"Poor--poor fellow!"

"My dear Mrs. Hartley, he is no doubt some fast sprig of anatomy who
has come to grief, so your sympathy is quite thrown away--but there
goes the drum for mess."

Whether the Captain's remarks affected her, it is impossible to say;
but the next time she saw Gillian, she affected to stare intently
seaward; so he ventured in the vicinity of the poop no more.

"If not happy, I thought I had at least become content or reconciled
to my lot, as poor La Vallière said in her convent," thought he; but
despite this, the petty episode made him sigh as he thought of the
past, and all that had vanished with it.

As the _Indus_, hugging the Arabian coast, bore on her way, it was
impossible for those who had been a reader like Gillian, not to view
with deep and growing interest the shore on which they were now
looking for the first time, every foot of which was rendered famous
by the records of religious and classical antiquity; and, as the
headlands and islands came in sight, it seemed strange to him that he
should actually be looking on Arabia; that yonder promontory should
be Has al Hhad, where terminates the mighty desert that lies between
Mecca and Oman; that these rocks should be the Sohar Isles, and that
the coast which anon began to rise on the starboard bow was
Beloochistan, and that those mighty peaks which are visible for more
than a hundred miles at sea were western Kohistan, the home of the
Kurds; that ere long the waters cleft by the steamer were those of
the Gulf of Ormus, as her course was altered again, and she headed
more directly north-westward for the Gulf of Persia, and left the
high basaltic isles of Cape Mussunndom astern.

Some of these natural features were of great grandeur, vastness, and
solemnity, but Gillian found, to his own great amusement, that his
comrade, MacKenzie, always drew comparisons that were somewhat
invidious, between the land of the Great Cyrus, of Darius, even of
Ishmael, and Kintail-of-the-Cows; and declared the Gulf of Ormus was
no more to be compared to Loch Alsh or Loch Duich, than sherbet was
to a good dram of Farintosh.

But, anon, they began to fall in with other ships and transports
forming part of the great expedition, and all bearing on to one point
of rendezvous; and now it may not be unnecessary to inform the reader
of the cause that brought a British army, of which our hero formed a
unit, into this remote and remarkable part of the globe for the first
time.

It had become apparent to our Government for two years before, that
Nasser-ed-Deen, the Shah of Persia, son of the late Mahomet Shah and
Queen Velliat, of the Kadjar tribe, was resolved on having a war with
us; and to this end had despatched an army, under Prince Sultan
Moorad Mirza, into north-western Afghanistan, to act against our
interests at Herat.  The Governor-General of India remonstrated with
the Shah on this hostile demonstration, and, meanwhile, many gross
insults were offered to British officials at the Persian capital,
where our envoy, the Honourable Charles Murray, had ultimately to
strike his flag and retire.

The fall of Kars had been circulated over all Asia, with the most
exaggerated stories and rumours, during the Crimean war; while the
Russians took especial care that the fall of Sebastopol should not be
known in the same remote quarters till long after that event was
accomplished.  The secret agents of the ever-aggressive Czar had thus
the most ample means for producing a double result or effect, the
sequel of which was, that, impressed by some vague but pleasing ideas
that Britain had been beaten, weakened, and humiliated, the
effeminate Persians, like the Zemindars of Oude, that kingdom but
recently annexed by the Marquis of Dalhousie, thought that now or
never was the time to make war on us, and in defiance of all rights
and treaties, to conquer and annex Herat.  As every attempt to obtain
redress from the Shah--though a prince well acquainted with history,
and tolerably correct in his ideas of the relations in which he stood
to us and other European powers--proved unavailing, an expedition
sailed from Bombay early in January for the Gulf of Persia.

Major-General Sir James Outram, K.C.B., "the Bayard of India," to
whom the command was assigned, hastening from London, found that the
first division of "the army of Persia," had already sailed, under
Major-General Stalker, on which he placed himself at the head of the
second, which he reserved for his old Indian comrade, Brigadier
Havelock, who arrived soon after.

On entering the Gulf of Persia, Outram received the rank of
Lieutenant-General.  Colonels Wilson and Houssen were the brigadiers
of the first division; Colonels Hamilton (of the Ross-shire Buffs)
and Hale were brigadiers of the second.  Brigadiers Tapp and Stuart
led the cavalry; Hill, the artillery; and there was a numerous staff.

The strength of the whole force destined to invade and to humble the
land of that Cyrus who was lord of Babylon, Media, and Persia, was
singularly small; for, even when joined by the detachments on board
the _Indus_, it only mustered as follows: 419 sabres, including the
3rd Bombay cavalry and Poonah horse; 4,653 bayonets, including H.M.
64th Foot; the Ross-shire Buffs, 2nd Bombay Europeans, a battalion of
Beloochees, and three of native infantry, with thirty-two pieces of
cannon, some European artillery, and 1,842 camp followers.

The 78th Highlanders, when joined by Captain Roderick MacAra's
detachment, mustered only 739 bayonets.

The general rendezvous of the land and sea forces was at Ma'mer, on
the Gulf of Persia, and towards that point all the transports and
ships of war were speeding, under sail and steam, on the evening in
the end of January.




CHAPTER XIV

SHIRAZ.

The landing-place was Bushire, a well-frequented town, with a
harbour, on a long and sandy peninsula, one hundred and twenty miles
westward of Shiraz, and in storms or high tides it is completely
surrounded by water.

The vessels of the expedition came to anchor in the roads, under the
protection of the isle of Karrack, as ships drawing above eighteen
feet of water cannot enter the harbour.  The town, which is
triangular in form, is defended by a mud-wall on the land side, armed
with cannon.  Gillian, as, with Colin, he stood apart from the rest,
comparing notes, could see that it occupied a slight eminence,
shelving gently down on each side, and that though mean in reality,
it presented rather a handsome appearance to the seaward.

Its streets were narrow; the principal mansions were flat-roofed and
terraced, while the minor dwellings were merely unroofed enclosures
formed of reeds; and not a dome or minaret rose to break the monotony
of the view, which was terminated in the distance by the
ever-snow-capped mountains of Ardshir.

The boats were hoisted out, and cavalry, infantry, and artillery,
with all their baggage and stores, began the work of disembarkation
together.  As the troops were crowding towards the gangway and side
ladder of the _Indus_, Gillian saw pretty Mrs. Hartley descending it
among the first who went.  On this occasion she nodded smilingly to
him, and said, while her eyes shone with a peculiar brightness of
expression, which was, indeed, her own,

"I shall send your sketch of the island to mamma, as a souvenir of
our voyage together in the _Indus_."

He touched the sling of his rifle in salute, and the fair bright
English face passed away from him for the time.

Gillian had now become completely accustomed to his knapsack and
accoutrements, for MacAra had frequently held deck parades in heavy
marching order.  At first his shoulders had ached, and were black as
if bruised, and his arms were so stiff that he had to ask his comrade
to put off or on his plumed bonnet; now all these seemed as a part of
himself, though on the first day's march he felt his heart thumping
painfully at his ribs, over which the tight breast-strap was buckled.

In other ships alongside the _Indus_, the pipers of the regiment
could be heard playing "Seaforth's Gathering," the same wild air
that, in the warlike days of old, had many a time and oft summoned
the MacKenzies to Tullochard, when the bale-fire of war smoked on its
lofty summit.

In Bushire, MacAra "handed over" his detachment to the commanding
officer, and Gillian with his comrade were pleased to find themselves
placed together in company of the former.

Bushire was taken almost without opposition, the Persian troops in
the place taking to flight ere the cavalry of the expedition could
get their horses on shore; and on the 3rd of February the inland
march began.

As the Highlanders moved off with the first division, the pipers,
accompanied by all the brass drums, struck up "High Alisdair."

"That is the march of King Alexander, who gave to the MacKenzies the
stag's head that is now on your sporran," said Colin; "the same
Alexander who hunted in Kintail, and was killed at Kinghorn."

For, strange as it may sound to English ears, our Scottish regiments
often muster, march and charge at times, to airs, perhaps, a thousand
years old--the oldest and grandest of all being the march of
_Gillichroisd_, or the "Follower of Christ."

Gillian was but a small unit in Outram's army--a nameless
private--true! yet, when he thought that the soil he trod was Persia,
the land of that Cyrus who conquered Lydia, turned the current of the
mighty Euphrates, and slew Belshazzar; the land of the Selucidæ, and
many other warlike dynasties, high and great thoughts rose within
him; and when he heard the trumpets of cavalry, and the bands of the
other regiments filling the morning air with martial music--the
native infantry clad in silver grey, faced with white, the Bombay
rifles in green, the picturesque battalion of Beloochees; and more
than all, while he looked along the still more picturesque column of
the 78th on the march, with the black waving plumes and graceful
tartans, and thought of all the past and of the scenes in which those
kilts and bonnets had so often led the way to death, but never to
disaster or defeat, there swelled up in his heart a glow of
passionate triumph, which, though difficult to describe, is second to
none that Heaven implants in the human heart.

The chief, that pet phrase for the colonel, now common to all our
line regiments, who have caught it up from the Highland corps, rode
at the head of the column.  He was a worthy cadet of "the princely
House of Hamilton," as Scott has it, and was yet to win for himself a
glorious name in the terrible wars of India.

"A braver or a better man is not in the British army," said Captain
MacAra to Gillian, whose superior bearing he had frequently remarked;
"if Hamilton has one fault, it is too great an eagerness for battle;
and many a time, on our long and dusty marches in Central India, I
have seen him marching on foot, while the knapsacks of the failing
and the weary were slung on the back of his horse; so Lamond, you may
well be proud to serve under him."

An open plain, some forty miles in extent, lies between the mud-wall
of Bushire and the chain of snow-clad mountains separating it from
Shiraz.  On this plain nothing was visible but occasional clumps of
palm-trees, though in the gardens, three miles distant from the town,
pomegranates, oranges, and aloes grew in luxuriance together.

During the first two days' march our troops encountered some of those
unpleasant incidents peculiar to a tropical climate.  Tempests of
wind swept across the advancing columns, bearing with them mighty
clouds of fine white, whirling dust, which penetrated not only the
ears, eyes, and nostrils of the soldiers, but seemed to force its way
through the very pores of the skin.

"I'd give a month's pay for a good glass of beer," said Colin
MacKenzie, as he looked ruefully at his feather-bonnet, and shook its
black plumage which the dust had turned to white; and thirsty indeed
were they all; for though the heat was moderate, the dust was
stifling, all the more so, when kicked up by so many thousand
marching feet.  They were literally enveloped in it, as in a dense
and blinding cloud, amid which, at times, the columns seemed like
masses of shadowy spectres.

The sun set in dun and dusky-looking clouds when Sir James Outram
ordered the troops to halt and bivouac, but in the order of march.
It was in an open and comfortless place; but each battalion piled
arms by companies, date-trees were hewn down, dry branches collected,
and fires were lighted.  Round these the officers and men sat or lay
in groups, cloaked or great-coated, and strove to make themselves as
comfortable as circumstances would permit.  This was on the 4th of
February, and all were full of hope that on the morrow they would
thrash the Persians, who were said to be in position, and in some
strength, about nine miles distant.

After supping on a single ration biscuit, and a draft of cold water
from his canteen, Gillian reclined upon his knapsack, and, as usual,
began to indulge in reverie.  Far away from the singular scene around
him, where the glare of the watch-fires produced a Rembrandtish
effect of strong red light and deep shadow on the groups of soldiers,
the kilted Highlanders, the dark sepoys in their blue great-coats,
the wild Belochees in their scarlet turbans and Asiatic costume, the
piles of glittering arms, with all their bright bayonets fixed, and
the distant figures of the cavalry videttes thrown out in the
direction of the enemy--far away from that Persian bivouac and the
snowy hills of Shiraz, his mind sped home--home to Dove, back to that
bright eve of sunshine when they first acknowledged their love for
each other, and that bitter eve of gloom and sorrow when they parted,
it would seem, for ever.

How wondrously changed were all his surroundings now!  He should
never, never see her more, even as the wife of another.

He strove to thrust aside such thoughts, and to listen to the
heedless banter and the songs with which his comrades strove to while
away the time; and merrily many of them sang, though, for all they
could foresee, that night might be their last in the land of the
living.

And now Colin struck up an old ditty--a reaper lassie's song--he had
learned from his mother, and sung it to that air which is still used
as the march of the 55th, or old Stirlingshire.

  "To win my love in glances soft, the woodland laddie came;
  He vowed he'd ever be sincere, when thus he told his flame:
  'The moon is bright, my winsome lass, as bright as moon can be,
  To the woodland come, my lassie dear--to the greenwood come wi' me.'

  "My lad wi' love was sae distressed, I could na' say him nay,
  My lip he pressed, my hand caressed, as we gaed owre the brae:
  'My soldier-lad, thou'rt brave and braw, and blythe as blythe can be,
  And I to yonder fair greenwood, will gang my lad wi' thee.'

  "Our bridal day has come to pass; such joy was never seen,
  For I am called the greenwood lass--the soldier-laddie's queen!
  I bless the day, sae fresh and fair, I tauld my mind sae free--
  And went to yonder gude green wood, my soldier lad wi' thee."


The last line of each verse was chorused, and in this homely ditty,
which woke the echoes of the date groves of Shiraz, none joined more
heartily than an old staff colonel, who had reined up his horse near
the company of MacAra, and with kindly interest expressed in his
war-worn, grey, but handsome face, was looking at the Highlanders.

"The general's orders are, that we march at daybreak," said he to
Captain MacAra; "where can I find Colonel Hamilton?"

"At the head of the column," replied the captain.

"Come here, young man," said the Colonel to Gillian, as he
dismounted; "hold my horse for a few minutes."

Gillian started to his feet mechanically, but the expression of his
face was rendered fully apparent in the light of the fire that blazed
close by them.  On seeing the angry and haughty flush that suffused
his features, the old field-officer glanced at him inquiringly and
curiously; but ere Gillian could take the reins, MacKenzie started
forward and said:

"Allow me, Lamond--I understand cattle better than you."

"Thanks," muttered Gillian, as he wearily resumed his place on the
sod; "I thought I had got over all this sort of thing, and must
school myself, in time, to do so."

In a few minutes the old Colonel returned, and sprang on his horse,
and waving his hand, exclaimed, as he rode off:

"To-morrow we may be face to face with the Persians, so '_Clanna nan
Gael anguillan achele!_'"

From this cry--the favourite toast, meaning "Clansmen, shoulder to
shoulder," they learned that he was a countryman of their own.

Weary with the long and dusty day's march, Gillian strove to sleep;
but in addition to the strangeness of the place, and his general
surroundings, there was the sensation of still being at sea, and on
board the _Indus_; he had yet "the roll of the ship," thus the ground
on which he lay seemed to heave beneath him, to rise, fall, and
oscillate.

At last he dropped into a kind of dull waking doze, and not till rain
began to fall was he aware that, in addition to his grey great-coat,
he was covered by that of Colin Mackenzie, who had spread it over him.

"I cannot permit this," he exclaimed, starting up.

"You've not been used to this kind of work, Lamond," said the other;
"many a night, when stalking deer or driving cattle, I have slept on
the slopes of Tullochard with only my plaid about me."

"You are a good, kind fellow, Colin!"

"I have known misfortune, so have you--I can see that with half an
eye."

And now the rain began to fall as surely it had never fallen since
the flood.  Long, long did our Persian army remember that dreadful
thunderstorm in the plain of Shiraz; mingled with hail, the rain came
down in blinding torrents, drenching to the skin officers and men,
for all were alike tentless and shelterless, while from the snow-clad
hills there came an icy wind that rendered their sufferings all the
greater; but nothing could daunt the ardour of such troops,
especially when led by such a general as Outram--"Old Jamie Outram,"
as they loved to call him.

The infantry drums beat, and the cavalry trumpets blew "boot and
saddle," though the troopers were booted and the horses saddled (as
they had been throughout that wretched night), when the grey dawn of
the 5th of February stole into that wet and desolate bivouac, and the
brigades stood to their arms.  All loaded muskets were discharged in
the air and reloaded, to preclude any missing fire when the march to
the front was resumed, after each man had breakfasted on a pulpy
biscuit, the rain having soaked everything in their haversacks.

Riding by her husband's side, among the staff of the 1st Division,
Gillian saw the pretty Mrs. Hartley well-mounted, pass to the front,
caracoling her horse, and laughing merrily, sitting square in her
saddle, patting the neck of her horse as he arched it, in impatience
of her tiny but restraining hand.  Where or how she had passed the
night he knew not; but her bright auburn hair was coiled smoothly
under her smartly-veiled hat, and her well-fitting habit was as fresh
as if she had only come out of "the Row."  Despite Captain Hartley's
wish, she would not remain with other ladies on board the _Indus_,
but insisted on accompanying him into the field--an affectionate
obstinacy which was yet to cost them both dear.

About midday the bugles of the advanced guard sounded a halt, and
then every eye brightened, and every heart beat high with
expectation, as a murmur ran along the columns that "the enemy were
in front;" and ere long the Persians, in grey-looking masses, were
seen in possession of a strongly-intrenched position, where ever and
anon the steel of their bayonets and swords flashed out as the
occasional gleams of a watery sun fell on them.

"The brigades will deploy from column into line," was now the order
of Outram, whose firm dark face, with lip compressed, and thick
grizzled moustache, seemed to glow with ardour, as his staff galloped
hither and thither to the leaders of brigades and regiments; but
barely was the order of battle complete, when, to the intense
annoyance of all, the Persian masses seemed to break, and then, by
the wavering and uncertain gleaming of their arms, it was evident
that they were in full retreat, and without firing a shot!

"Forward, the cavalry!" was then Outram's order.

Cheerily the trumpets rang out, and unsheathing their swords as they
galloped off, the Horse of Brigadier Housen swept forward in hot
pursuit.  He narrowly escaped a ball which pierced his saddle; but
many of the Persians were cut down on every hand, and the military
Governor of Bras-joon, a dark and fierce-looking man, wearing a dark
fur cap and plume, a blue frock and large epaulettes, was made
prisoner.

On the 7th of February the march was resumed, yet the Persians still
avoided all collision with our troops, who could see them, but at a
vast distance, still continuing their retreat into the dark defiles
and woody fastnesses of the snow-capped mountains that overlook the
plain of Shiraz.

In that open spot--open save where a few scattered date-palms grew,
the army again halted and bivouacked for the night.  Arms were piled,
fires lighted, and the out-pickets posted in the direction of the
mountains.

Gillian was on duty as an advanced sentinel, and as the darkness was
closing, he stood, as in duty bound, with arms "ordered," and his
eyes fixed on the distance, where a range of red sparkling dots along
the mountain slopes indicated the watch-fires of the Persians.  Weary
with the toil of the past day's march he would gladly have slept; but
now he had to keep himself most keenly awake and alive to all about
him for the single hour he was posted, such being the period when
sentinels are in front of an enemy.  The sound of horses' hoofs made
him spring to attention and challenge, and he found himself face to
face with the old staff-colonel, whom he had often observed hanging
about the flanks of the Highlanders when on the march.

"You are a young soldier for this sort of work," said the veteran,
checking his horse, and looking kindly at Gillian's pale face; "but
you know your duty, I presume?"

"Yes, sir; to observe the enemy closely, to communicate by signal
with the picquet, and with the sentinels on my right and left."

"Exactly.  You seem a good style of young man--a smart fellow, too!
I should like much to have you for my permanent orderly."

Gillian was silent, but he coloured deeply.

"This would remove you from much of the discomfort, and even the
perils of the service," urged the other.

"For those very reasons, permit me to decline, sir."

"My lad," said the Colonel, after a little pause, "you seem to have
belonged to another sphere than the ranks?"

"I did, sir."

"Your family----"

"Are all in their graves, in India."

"Your father," continued the old man, kindly.

"Was a soldier, like myself."

"His rank--you may tell me that?"

"A colonel in the Bengal army; he was killed in action.  Please say
nothing of this to any one, and let us cease the subject.  It is not
what we choose that we do in this world; but what Fate chooses for
us."

"Most true, my lad, your secret is your own, keep it.  Good night."

"Good night, sir," replied Gillian, as the old officer, with
something of hauteur in his bearing, rode off.

"Orderly!" said Gillian, with great irritation, when his post was
"relieved;" "that d--d old fellow seems to have an inclination to
insult me, Colin!"

"Nay, you misjudge him; how can you think so?" replied MacKenzie; "he
looks like a kind old man; but, of course, he views you only as--as--"

"What?"

"A private soldier, like myself."

"True; and now for a snooze on mother earth."

The night was one of intense darkness; not a star was visible
overhead; it was very still, too, and no sound broke the silence save
the occasional neigh of a charger, or the voice of a distant sentinel
challenging a passer near his post, and Gillian soon dropped into a
sound sleep--yet not so sound as to prevent him dreaming, and for the
first time, these many months, of Dove Gainswood.

A strange but vivid sense of the reality of her presence was
impressed upon him.  Her face, with all its sweetness of expression,
its pale and delicate beauty, seemed bending close to his, and as she
whispered to him there was tender quivering in her cherry lips that
was peculiarly her own.  Her voice came distinctly to his ear as she
sang the last lines of "Wild Joanna,"

  "When half asleep, I'm reading,
    Some amorous lyric rare,
  Lean softly down and kiss me,
    From the bosom of the air!

  "Thus come, my wild Joanna!
    For well I know 'twill be,
  If ever soul come back again,
    Thy soul will come to me!"

Her lips seemed about to touch his, when he started and awoke, to be
haunted, bewildered, and half-terrified by the dream and its import,
as there flashed upon his memory her farewell words in the garden:
"If I die, Gillian, I will come to you like the wild Joanna of my
song"; but he had little more time to think of it, for, at that
moment, the whole bivouacked army was startled by a volley of
musketry flashing redly out of the gloom, together with the roar of
two pieces of cannon in its rear.

Many men fell killed and wounded; bullets struck and overturned the
piles of arms to which the soldiers mechanically rushed; thousands of
voices rang clamourously on the night air; chargers plunged; drums
were beaten, trumpets, bugles, and bagpipes blown; and for more than
half an hour the whole force became involved in a most singular and
utterly indescribable skirmishing fire with an unseen foe, for the
night, we have said, was so gloomy that the darkness seemed opaque.

Vociferously yelling and blowing their trumpets, the Persian cavalry
galloped about, cutting down stragglers, and MacKenzie caught by the
throat a Persian bugler who was actually mingling in the ranks of the
Highlanders, and blowing with might and main our British bugle calls,
"incline to the right," "incline to the left," and "cease firing," to
increase the general confusion and "the _fighting devil_ which lurks
in the heart of every man."

The shrill yelling, the hoarse shouting and bugling ceased after a
time, and satisfied with the _alerte_ they had given us, the Persians
withdrew into the gloom and mist, leaving the British under arms,
their hearts throbbing wildly with rage and excitement, and the
bivouac strewed with killed and wounded, officers, soldiers,
camp-followers, and baggage animals.

Dawn spread over the plain and on Outram's now marshalled host, and
with it spread the startling intelligence that Mrs. Hartley--the
pretty little woman who was daily seen riding by her husband's side
among the staff--had been carried off by the Persian cavalry, and the
grief and terror of the unfortunate captain were pitiable to behold.

Gillian was deeply concerned by the intelligence, for, though far
removed from him, he had somehow learned to look upon her as a friend.




CHAPTER XV

THE BATTLE OF KHOOSH-AB.

"I say, Gillian, old fellow," said Colin MacKenzie, with a waggish
expression in his eyes, as the troops began their forward march
again; "who is Dove--Dove, yes, that is the name?"

"Dove Gainswood!" said Gillian, in a breathless voice, the tossing
plumes of his bonnet failing to hide or shade the flush that crossed
his face.

"You mention that name now with surprise; when last you muttered it,
it was lingeringly done, as if sweet to your memory."

"When?"

"Last night, as you lay near me asleep on the turf, ere that
confounded shindy began."

"Ask me not about her," said Gillian, sadly and petulantly.

"Why?  She is some girl you have loved and lost, I suppose."

"Yes--loved and lost," muttered Gillian, through his firmly set teeth.

"Well--I have had my turn of that, too--so we shall say no more about
it; we've other things to think of now."

That the Persians should have a knowledge of our bugle-calls
surprised the troops, very few of whom, if any perhaps, were aware
that European discipline had first been introduced into the Persian
army by two Scottish soldiers of fortune--Major Christie and
Lieutenant Lindesay--while a third Scot--Doctor Campbell--organised
their medical staff, such as it was, under Prince Abbas Mirza, when
his army was encamped on the plain of Yam.

As our troops advanced early on the morning of the 8th of February,
the mist that had overhung the plain drew up skyward like a mighty
curtain, and then the Persian army, about 7,000 strong, led by
Shooja-ool-Moolk, were seen in position with eighteen pieces of
cannon, some of which were of very heavy calibre.

Among these troops, the flower of the Persian serlaz, or infantry,
were the Shah's own guards, the regiments of Shiraz, Tabriz, and
Kaskai, with the Eilkhanee cavalry.  All were uniformly clad in dark
blue, with white cross-belts and conical caps of black lambs-wool.
Their ridgy lines of bayonets and their crooked sabres shone brightly
in the sun, and at the usual intervals were seen their colours, with
the Persian Lion, floating in the wind.

Their right flank rested on a village, Khoosh-ab, which gave its name
to the battle that ensued.  Along their front were several dry
water-courses, which were lined with skirmishers in a very orthodox
manner; and, as our troops deployed and advanced in line against the
position, a cannonade from the flanks of each army preluded the
closer strife; but the resolute Outram advanced with such steady
rapidity, that our losses, as yet, were small.

"One steady volley, Sir James," said Colonel Hamilton; "and then we
shall get at them with the bayonet--we can face the world--do
everything with the bayonet!"

"Except sit upon it, as old Nap said," replied Outram, laughing.  But
next moment a cry escaped him.  Struck by a Persian ball, his horse
fell under him, and he was stunned, as he tells us in his despatch,
"at the commencement of the contest, recovering only in time to
resume my place at the head of the army shortly before the close of
the action."

Of the latter, Gillian, now for the second time under fire, could see
little but what occurred in his own immediate vicinity.  The first
thrill at facing death or mutilation, the first long-drawn breath and
sensation of tightness about the chest as the balls whizzed past--one
tearing away a plume of his bonnet and another grazing his hand, a
third killing the man on his left--passed away, and he heard the
voice of Captain MacAra above the fast-gathering and deepening roar
of the musketry.

"Old Roderick," as the soldiers called him, was a grim and sun-burnt
warrior, who had served in the Afghan campaign, and with the army in
Kohistan; he had lost an ear in the Pisheen Valley, his left hand in
the Khyber Pass; he led the stormers at Ghuznee, and, covered with
wounds, had been carried away for dead at Candahar.

"We are now in action," he cried, brandishing his claymore; "men, be
steady--none must fall out to look after the wounded; they must lie
with the dead, and remember, lads, it is as natural to die as to be
born!"

"The very words of Jeremy Taylor," said Colin MacKenzie; "but who'd
have thought, Gillian, of hearing them here in Persia, and from the
lips of old Roderick MacAra!"

Another moment, and the gallant MacAra was lying prone on his face
with a bullet in his heart; but coolly, as if upon parade, the
lieutenant assumed the command of the company as the lines went on.

The attack was, in reality, made by our artillery and cavalry,
supported by two lines of infantry.  The cavalry, like the rush of a
mighty wind, charged twice with splendid success and gallantry, the
Poonah Horse burst into a square of the Kaskai regiment as if it had
been but a field of wheat, and captured its colours, while the 3rd
Light Cavalry, by sheer dint of the sword, nearly annihilated the
entire battalion; but Captain Forbes, their leader, fell wounded, and
Lieutenant Frankland, of the 2nd Europeans, acting as Brigade Major,
was killed.  In this charge, Lieutenant A. Moor won the Victoria
Cross.  "He was the first man within the square of infantry.  His
horse was shot under him and he was on the point of being bayoneted,
when Lieutenant John Grant Malcomson, of the same regiment, rode to
his assistance, cut down the Persians on the right and left, and, by
dragging him out of the enemy's square, also won the much-prized
Order of Valour."

Our first line of infantry rushed on; the foe were soon so close that
Gillian could see the dark faces, the darker gleaming eyes of the
fur-capped Persians, and the flashing of their muzzles seemed
terribly near, when, with a dreadful crash, the bayonets were brought
to the charge, and their whole line gave way about ten in the morning.

They fell back in a state of utter disorder, and seemed to bear away
with them some of MacAra's company, who had got mingled with them in
the wild _mêlée_, and among these was Colin MacKenzie.

As the regiment halted for a minute to re-form and close in, out of
the hurley-burley and the smoke that whirled and eddied in front,
where the Persians were crowding together in yelling herds and
casting away their arms, there came the stately figure of a Highland
soldier.

It was MacKenzie, who came staggering back towards the British line;
save one, all the black feathers of his bonnet were shred away, his
white belts were spotted with blood, one bare knee was all bloody
too, like his hands and his bayonet, which was now bent and twisted.
He had a fierce, dazed aspect, as if yet hand-to-hand with the
Persians; his tartans were torn and his red jacket was rent under the
arms.  His keen eyes were dilated and his teeth were set; but a cry
of "_Cuidich'n Rhi!_" ending in a low wail of agony escaped him, as
he fell on his face dying.

Darting from the ranks, Gillian rushed towards him, though some
Persian horsemen were riding at the fallen man with their lances.
Gillian shot down the foremost, unhorsed the next with his musket,
which he slung over his shoulder, and, by the fierce excitement of
the moment, endowed with a strength that was far beyond what he
usually possessed, he raised Colin from the ground and hurried with
him to the rear.

The whole regiment applauded the action; but a ball had pierced
MacKenzie--who had many wounds--in the region of the heart; and now
all that was mortal on earth of the poor fellow was in the arms of
Gillian Lamond, who deposited the body under a date-tree, and resumed
his place in the ranks, weary, panting, breathless, and sad.

Among those who complimented him, the most flattering and not the
last, was the old colonel, who served on the staff of his friend
Outram as a volunteer, out of sheer love of fighting.

By this time the whole Persian army had melted away, and the field
was strewed with their arms and the _débris_ of their commissariat;
while nothing but the smallness of our cavalry force saved them from
total destruction and the loss of all their guns.  The number of
their killed and wounded was never ascertained.  It was only known to
be very great; while on our side, the grand total of casualties of
every kind amounted to only seventy-seven of all ranks.

For the remainder of the day, the troops bivouacked close to the
battle-field.  Along the plain were sad groups of the maimed and the
bleeding, of those who were spent with exhaustion, and of others
stretched on the earth, whose life was ebbing, or had already ebbed
away, and who would never march again; mingled side by side with the
effeminate Persians were the pale and stiffening bodies of those
British soldiers,--the sturdy Saxons of the "64th," or Staffordshire,
and the hardy Gaels of the Ross-shire Buffs ("that beautiful
regiment," as Napier was wont to call it), who had marched to battle,
reckless, defiant, full of fighting and genuine pluck,--that majesty
of bravery so peculiar to our troops.

The loss of his merry, bright-eyed comrade, ever so cheery and kind,
with his songs, stories, and even the endless pibrochs he was wont to
lilt and whistle, was keenly felt by Gillian, and, as yet, he cared
not to have another in Colin's place.

"It was formerly thought effeminate not to hunt Jews," says Leigh
Hunt; "then not to roast heretics; then not to bait bears and bulls;
then not to fight cocks and throw sticks at them.  All these
evidences of manhood became generally looked upon as no such
evidences at all, but things only fit for manhood to renounce; yet
the battles of Waterloo and Sobraon have been won, and Britons are
not a jot less brave all over the world.  Probably they are
braver--that is to say, more deliberately brave--more serenely
valiant; also more merciful to the helpless, and that is the crown of
valour."

And in this spirit of tenderness and generosity the wounded Persians
were cared for as rigidly and as kindly as our own.

For their marked bravery in this field, the 78th Highlanders were
ordered to inscribe "Khoosh-ab" on their colours with "Persia."

There is always a great revulsion of the spirits after the fierce
excitement of a battle, and when men have been face to face with
death.  Gillian felt this emotion keenly, and overcome by the whole
events of the morning, lay on the ground, striving, but in vain, to
sleep.  He thought of yellow fields of waving grain, of revolving
wheels, of anything that would induce a doze; and so he had to lie
there, thinking, thinking, thinking as only the sorrowful and the
desperate can do, of his dream over-night, and the death of his
comrade Colin; and he envied the calm of his present companion, a
little boy, who nestled asleep within his great-coat, and all
unconscious that his father was lying on the adjacent field, cold and
stark, with his unclosed eyes staring up to Heaven, for Gillian had
promised him to carry the child safely to the rear.

Ere long the serjeant-major came to seek him, and say that the
colonel had appointed him a lance-corporal for what he had done that
day.  To Gillian it seemed that he had done nothing; but this first
step of the long ladder gave him no satisfaction; yet that solitary
stripe of lace was to lead to the elucidation of much ere long.

With nightfall the army began its march of twenty miles over a
country rendered all but impassable by the torrents of rain that
fell, and amid a tempest reached Bushire.  In some places the mud or
mire was so deep that it reached the kilts of the Highlanders, and
with the hail came biting winds that swept over the almost treeless
waste; and yet this was in Shiraz, which the Persians say is so
famous for the richness of its fruits and wine, and the beauty of its
women, that had Mahomet been sensible of its many pleasures, he would
have begged God to make him immortal there.

Without the loss of a straggler our troops came into Bushire,
bringing with them all the wounded, and even the dead, whom the
gentle and chivalrous Outram buried within our lines with all the
solemn honours due to British soldiers; three volleys were fired over
the great ghastly trench where they lay, and the "Point of war" was
beaten beside it by the drummers.

For many days the rain fell at Bushire, as if once again the windows
of Heaven had opened, and the Union Jack on the ramparts flapped
heavily in the sea breeze above the Lion of Persia; and it was during
these days that Henry Havelock, of noble and immortal memory, arrived
from India to assume the command of his division.

About the same time there came tidings that the unhappy Mrs. Hartley
was alive, but destined for the zenana of Shooja-ool-Molk, the
defeated Persian general.




CHAPTER XVI.

TIDINGS OF THE LOST ONE.

And now to glance briefly homeward.

During all this time, and while these stirring operations had been
progressing, no tidings had been heard of Gillian Lamond.  To Dove it
seemed as though he had passed away as completely as if he had never
existed.  As to Mr. Gainswood, he had perhaps ceased to think about
him at all.

He had not put the ill-gotten £30,000 odd to any account as yet;
neither had he made any important progress in his matrimonial
project, though every week put the improvident young heir of Kilsythe
more and more in his power, till the latter almost writhed under the
conviction of degrading and hopeless entanglement.

"She is still moping after that young beggar!" said his lordship one
day, as he played with the lash of his hunting-whip.

"Yes, my lord," replied Mr. Gainswood, adopting the whine with which
he usually quoted scripture, and half-closing his grey ferret-like
eyes.  "'Many waters,' as Solomon saith, 'cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his
house for love, it would utterly be contemned.'"

"By Jove, if you turn on the religious tap, I'm off like a bird;" and
away he went, muttering, "how the deuce will all this end?  Devilish
hard, don't you know," he continued, addressing some imaginary
person, "to chuck one's self away--not on the _crême-de-la-crême_ of
Mayfair, as I might do, but the scum-de-la-scum of this provincial
lot!"  So thus, in the insolence of his spirit, could he speak or
think even of Dove.

And now he went off by train to ride with "the Pytchley hounds."  One
can always get leave in the hunting season; and with him went
Stafford Martingale, who was a wonder even among the welter-weights
of the Prince's Hussars: so Dove saw no more of her tormentor for a
time.

Before his departure she had one good laugh at him.  On the occasion
of a dinner party, when various divines had been especially invited
to meet "Lord Campsie," and rejoice in the light of his noble
countenance, till when talking of disestablishment and other matters
clerical, of which he knew about as much as the Khan of Khiva, he
said:

"The Church of England is, of course, a high branch of the Civil
Service, but that of Scotland--is--is--aw----"

"What, my lord?" asked one, hanging with delight on the coming
opinion of a titled man on any subject.

"Vulgaw--demmed vulgaw!"

By degrees, through little Mr. McCodicil, who had borne correspondent
in the Ross-shire Buffs, it came to be known that a recruit from
Edinburgh, named Gillian Lamond, had joined with the last draft from
Scotland at Bushire, and some other items of information proved his
identity with the lost one.

Old Elspat McBriar, to whom he gave the intelligence, lost no time in
communicating it to Mr. Gainswood and to Dove, on both of whom it
acted very differently.  To the latter it brought a startling and
crushing sense of new sorrow; to the former, secret, fierce, and
glowing exultation, and the hope that some Persian bullet might find
the billet he wished it, but if not, it mattered little.

"So the lad has become a soldier!" said Mrs. McBriar, with a kindling
of the eye.

"The camp is the natural home of the ne'er-do-weel and the ungodly,"
sighed Mr. Gainswood, fixing his eyes on the lofty ceiling of his
luxurious dining-room; "many perils must encompass him there--yea,
many and enough; yet I forgive him his ingratitude to me, and hope he
may pray with the psalmist, 'O spare me, that I may recover strength
before I go hence, and be no more.'"

So that night the servants were assembled betimes in the library, and
"family worship," as it was called, was held earlier than usual, Mr.
Gideon Gainswood leading the van in powerful prayer.

In spite of herself and her desire to see Dove Lady Campsie, at the
risk oven of all the girl's future happiness, old Elspat McBriar's
heart warmed within her at the idea of Gillian being a soldier, even
one so humble in rank.  She loved the "redcoat," not the less for the
sake of her "dear old man," who had worn it as quarter-master of the
Greys, but more than all when it was associated with the kilt, the
bonnet, and claymore, and all the past and present associations of
Highland chivalry; but from all her communings on these subjects,
Dove could gather no comfort.  One grim fact stood ever before her.

By this time, amid the strife that surrounded him, his kind and
gallant spirit might have fled forever, and the suspense she felt was
becoming beyond endurance now; while it was too dreadful to think
that when she had been talking, idling with her friends, promenading
in the gardens or the gay and sunny streets, the struggle for the
life of him she loved had been going on, and the worst that could
happen might all be over now.

A soldier!  Gillian, so tender and loving, so noble and true--true as
herself, who had no thoughts unconnected with him--fighting in the
ranks.  What could it all mean? what had driven him in desperation to
this resource, and what was the mystery involved in it? she would ask
of herself, little conceiving that the sphynx that could have told
her of all was daily at her elbow.

Had she and Gillian been able to compare notes, they might have found
that on the same night when he dreamt of her and her song, so weary
and worn, he lay on the bare earth with his knapsack for a pillow, in
that desolate bivouac on the plain of Shiraz, she had been alone,
abandoned to reverie and full of thoughts of him; but how different
were her surroundings in that splendid mansion at the west end of
Edinburgh.

She was in what a writer calls "that charming apartment known as 'my
own room,' which comprises the mysterious repose of a sleeping
chamber, with the solid comforts and light of a sitting-room."
Within an arched recess was her pretty little bed, with its laced
pillows, on which many a tear had fallen unseen; light muslins
separated it from the room in summer, but now, when snow capped the
scalps of the Pentlands, rich folds of heavy damask were festooned to
the pilasters on each side.  The fire burned ruddily in the grate of
polished steel, and the lights were blazing brightly in the slender
gaselier of Venetian bronze overhead.

Beside her were book-cases full of her favourite authors, on whose
leaves were many a pencilling made by the hand that was far away, at
that time she knew not where.  And there were her beautiful desk, her
jewel case, her Maltese spaniel--a gift from Campsie, with its silver
collar--in a mother-of-pearl basket, her riding-whips with silver and
jewelled heads, her favourite albums and sketch books, with a hundred
other pretty trifles, such as young girls love to have in their own
peculiar sanctum; and here she loved to retire, for Dove was one of
those to whom a library with its books, a fire with its embers, like
the sea with its waves, always furnished companionship.

As she looked on these, and could have seen where Gillian was lying
at that moment, the sight might have broken poor Dove's gentle heart.

But now she knew the worst, or nearly the worst; he was in Persia.

"Persia!" she would mutter, with a tone of almost incredulity, as she
looked at the map of the world.  Oh, could it be that about five
thousand miles, as the crow flies, of land and sea lay now between
her and him whose kiss was on her lip, but yesterday as it were; yet
in the confusion of thought it seemed long, long ago.

"And where is Gillian now?" she asked of herself, as she interlaced
the fingers of her delicate hands, clasped them above her hair of
golden auburn, and turned her passionate and beautiful face upward to
heaven.  "Oh, Gillian--Gillian!"

Had Dove Gainswood possessed the magic mirror of "Aunt Margaret" or
of Cornelius Agrippa, as the clouds on its surface dispersed, she
might have seen the single and lonely figure of a Highland sentinel
in his dark great-coat and drooping plume, wet and dank with the
shower that had passed away, standing with "arms ordered," silent,
thoughtful, pale, and hungry--for food was scarce in camp, and the
haversacks were empty--on the old rampart of Bushire; high overhead
the crescent moon, "sweet Regent of the Sky," tipping with light the
cannon in the adjacent embrasures, the white marble dome of a mosque,
and the summits of the dark waves that rose and fell in the mighty
Gulf of Persia, the leaves of the date palms, and other objects that
rose here and there amid the mass of murky shadow, as Gillian, with
the rest of his comrades, awaited the red flash and hoarse boom of
the morning gun--the morning that saw the soldiers of Outram on their
way to the bombardment of Mohammerah!

But it was remarked by all the household--though none of them knew
the cause--that from the day when little McCodicil's tidings came,
Dove's health visibly and painfully declined.




CHAPTER XVII.

A BOMBARDMENT AND AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.

To give the reader a detailed or even succinct account of our
campaign in Persia, forms no part of our plan, nor is it necessary
thereto; suffice it, that we must refer to some of those movements in
which Gillian Lamond bore a part, and during which, even in his minor
capacity, he was fated to figure prominently.

An amelioration of the tempestuous weather at Bushire tempted General
Outram, on the 4th of March, to despatch an expedition against
Mohammerah, while leaving a sufficient force (3,000 men) under
General Stalker, in Bushire, to keep that garrison and hold the
Persians in check.  He took with him 4,000 men, including five
companies of the Highlanders and five others of H.M. 64th regiment,
to fight the Persians, who were averred to be 13,000 strong at
Mohammerah, on which seven of our ships of war were to hurl their
broadsides at a hundred yards' distance.

Passing the bleak, rocky isle of Icarus, then held by the 4th Punjaub
Rifles, and then the mouth of the Euphrates, rolling as it rolled in
the days of Alexander and of Xenophon, by the 23rd the whole squadron
was quietly at anchor off the doomed place.  With his comrades who
crowded the side of the warships, Gillian could see the Persian
cavalry, clad in light blue, with high fur caps and white
cross-belts, galloping in clouds along the great stream of the
classic ages, flourishing their flashing sabres, and poising their
slender lances, as if they were seeking to impress the British with
high ideas of the terrible troops they were about to oppose.

All the Persian batteries were manned, strong, grim, and sulky they
looked; the walls were lined, and the gunners, with their inevitable
black fur caps, were seen standing by the guns, while, in the gentle
breeze of a calm and beautiful day, the banner with the Persian Lion
swelled gracefully out from its tall flagstaff, and ere long little
more than it became visible, when the general bombardment began, and
the batteries replied, till the increasing breeze dispelled the
smoke, and then a striking and beautiful scene presented itself.

The ships of war all decked in brilliant bunting to their trucks, as
if for a holiday, were ranged with all their flaming ports on one
side; on the other, lay the bank of the Euphrates, glittering in the
sunshine of the early morning, fringed with date trees and green,
luxuriant shrubbery, beyond the openings in which the
brilliantly-clad Persian cavalry could be seen uselessly galloping to
and fro; and closer at hand were the thundering batteries of
Mohammerah, against which the troops now began to disembark; the
Highlanders, under Havelock, in the _Berenice_, leading the way, as
he often led them to glory in the more terrible days that were to
come, for, of all our regiments in the East, the Ross-shire Buffs
were his favourites; and now the old Staff-Colonel, who seemed a
regular fire-eater, was by his side armed, not with a regulation
sword, but a prodigious Indian tulwur.

So crowded was the deck of the _Berenice_, so densely were the
Highlanders massed thereon, that had a single shot struck her, the
result would have been calamitous; but the dreadful broadsides of the
Indian navy protected them, and boat after boat, with its living
freight, and a piper blowing defiance in its bow, swept in shore,
while Outram, landing at another point, with the grenadiers of the
64th, made terrible havoc among the Persian matchlocks who held a
grove of date palms, and cleared a way for the whole force to advance
against the main point to be attacked, the camp of the Shahzadeh,
uncle of Nassir-ed-Deen, leaving the shipping to pound the town.

One of our 68-pound shots fell crashing into the Persian camp.

"Oh" exclaimed the terrified Shahzadeh, "if they fire things like
these, the sooner we are off the better!"

His advice was taken at once; the whole Persian army abandoned its
camp, and melted away like a dissolving view, abandoning all the
cannon, and leaving to its fate Mohammerah, which soon surrendered
after the explosion of its grand magazine, by a random shell from our
shipping.

The scene then was an awful one!  Gillian looked with an emotion of
shrinking horror on the legs, arms, hands, and other mangled
fragments of poor humanity that protruded from amid the
fire-blackened and shattered ruins; and among all this ghastly
_débris_ lay the wounded Persians in heaps, mingled with the dead,
their hideous cuts and gashes exposed, all undressed, to the now
blazing sunshine, the sharp whirling dust and the agonizing stings of
great insects that battened in their blood.

There lay, half disembowelled by a cannon shot, and dying, a Persian
officer, who, in answer to some questions of Sir James Outram,
informed him that Mrs. Hartley had not been transmitted as yet to
Teheran, but was conveyed about by the Shahzadeh in _takhteraidan_,
or mule litter, the usual carriage of a Persian lady of rank, and
Captain Hartley ground his teeth as he listened.

A few minutes after this the Persian expired, and in one of his
pockets was found a letter, addressed to his wife at Teheran, stating
that he was certain there would be a conflict on the morrow,
foreboding his own fate, bidding her tenderly farewell, and
entrusting the care of her and their little ones to his brother in
Teheran; to which place it was at once transmitted by Sir James
Outram, so true it is that--

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."


Hartley, of course, rode as yet with the General's staff, doing his
duty steadily and obeying all orders, but looking distraught and like
the ghost of his former self.

Sir James Outram now ascertained that the Persians had fallen back,
intending to halt at a place called Akwaz, a hundred miles distant on
the Karun River, the ancient _Eulœis_, which traverses the
Bachtiyara range of mountains and falls into the Gulf of Persia by
several channels, one of which joins the Euphrates.

At Akwaz stood their great depot of provisions and all munitions of
war, to destroy which and anticipate their reaching the point, he
instantly despatched a small expedition, consisting of only 150 men
of the 64th regiment and 150 Highlanders under Captain Duncan
MacAndrew, a veteran of the Affghan wars, on board of three steamers,
the _Comet_, _Planet_, and _Assyria_, and it was Gillian's fate to be
in the first-named vessel.  They had in tow a gun-boat armed with two
24-pound howitzers.

This expedition followed collaterally by water the track of the
retreating Persians along the beautiful and varied scenery of the
river's bank, and parties landing from time to time, could trace the
marks of their route, the hoof indentures of the horses, the wheel
tracks of five pieces of cannon, and of the mule litter.

On the morning of the 30th of March, the expedition made such
progress towards Akwaz, that the exploring party found the ground on
which the Persians had been but twenty-four hours before, the new
graves of several who had just been interred, and a straggler
informed Commodore Rennie that their force consisted of seven
battalions and 2,000 horse, with four guns, the fifth, which was now
unserviceable, being towed up the river; and to pursue all this
column were only 300 British soldiers!

To capture the gun in the towed boat, the _Comet_ shot ahead under
high steam and with canvas set as the wind served, but failed to do
so till next day, when the other ships came up, and the whole Persian
force were known to be massed somewhere beyond a low range of sandy
hills that lay near the bank of the river, and the boat with the
disabled gun was seen moored and half hidden among some thick, dense
mangrove-like shrubbery that overhung the Karun.

"Now to capture the gun," said the Captain of the _Comet_--"I want
but a party only of a few--who will volunteer?"

"I, sir," said Gillian, starting forward; "but who will follow me?"

"I, and I--and I!" cried every man, rushing forward.

"This won't do, Lamond," said the officer commanding, laughing; "four
men are enough."

"Then, sir, I shall take the four next me."

"Good--here is the pinnace--jump in--shove off."

The Commodore's despatch simply calls this party "a corporal's guard
of the 78th Highlanders," but omitted to mention who the corporal
was; so that was left for Outram to report.  Every Highlander then
would have volunteered to follow Gillian, for all who knew him,
especially the men of his company, liked and respected the lad for
his gentleness, good conduct, orderly ways, and strict sobriety, nor
were the officers slow to recognize these and other good qualities.

He and his four men loaded and capped their rifles as the pinnace was
pulled in shore, and speedily secured the gun, which proved to be a
brass 12-pounder of exquisite workmanship, and while softly, but
speedily, the seamen were hoisting it into the pinnace, he sprang
ashore and crept up the bank to have a peep at the country beyond,
all unaware that the Commodore and the old Staff-Colonel, who were
watching him through their glasses, were reprehending his temerity
and the probable delay it might cause in no measured terms.

Gillian could see far off near a mosque that stood between the brown
sandhills, four dark columns of infantry massed and halted, their
arms glittering in the rising sun; on the plain, in the
middle-distance, was a column of some 2,000 cavalry also halted, and
close by him, within some fifty yards at the utmost, under the
shelter of a beautiful grove of palm trees, where evidently it had
passed the night--he saw, what?

The _takhteraidan_ with its escort!  The latter consisted of six
Persian lancers clad in long blue coats, with white trousers and
cross-belts.  In one was slung a sabre, in the other a matchlock, and
they evidently belonged to the Bachtyara tribes, who form the flower
of the Shah's cavalry.  They were all dismounted, girthing up,
adjusting their bridles, and feeding their horses prior to starting
again in the direction of Akwaz.

At a window of the mule litter he could see a small pale face,
evidently that of their fair English captive, gazing intently towards
the river, where the smoke of the British steamers ascended high and
thin into the clear ambient air of the early spring morning.
Gillian's plan was instantly formed, for he had Lowland prudence that
tempered his Highland fire, and he resolved to rescue Mrs. Hartley or
die!

The gun was already on board the pinnace, when by a low whistle he
attracted the attention of his four comrades and beckoned them up to
his side, where in a moment he told them his plans, which were simply
to fire a volley, rush on in the smoke, and bring off the lady; and
the whole affair was done and over nearly in the time we take to
write these lines.

"Not a shot must be thrown away--come, each, a man in succession,"
said Gillian, in a low voice, that excitement rendered husky.

Aiming from the knee, the Highlanders each selected a Persian.

"_Now!_" cried Gillian.  The rifles rang together as one; there was a
yell of agony, and five Persians were stretched on the ground killed
or wounded, while the sixth fled.  Gillian rushed to the mule litter;
its pale and terror-stricken occupant _was_ Mrs. Hartley, whose
trembling hands vainly strove to unfasten the door; but Gillian
wrenched it open with his bayonet, and with a strange and
indescribable cry--joy, prayer, and terror mingled--she fairly fell
into his arms, and without a word he bore her to the boat.

Not a moment was to be lost, as already a scattered cloud of Persian
cavalry from the column on the plain, were galloping in wild and hot
confusion towards them, unslinging their matchlocks as they came on,
and already opening fire at random on the high jingle by the river
side.  Ere they reached it, the crew of the pinnace had shipped their
oars, and with a defiant cheer were pulling into the fairway, from
whence the guns of the _Comet_ sent over their heads a few round shot
booming and shells screaming.  These soon cooled the ardour of the
horsemen, and put them to flight; but not until they had peppered the
pinnace with matchlock balls, one of which grazed the cheek of the
coxswain and broke the left collar-bone of Gillian, and inflicted on
him other injuries that were internal; but after the first shrill cry
elicited by pain and alarm escaped him, he could only groan through
his set teeth, while the blood flowed fast from his wound, and his
arm hung powerless by his side.

He was borne up to the deck of the _Comet_ in a fainting condition,
and was scarcely conscious of the buzz that surrounded him, or the
joy of her he had rescued, as she clung to the breast of her husband.




CHAPTER XVIII.

GILLIAN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

For the present Gillian's fighting was over, though he remained, of
course, on board the _Comet_, with the expedition, which ended
successfully in the entire capture or total destruction of the
Persian munitions of war at Akwaz, and the consequent disorganization
of the army of the Shah--facts that belong to history rather than to
our story.

Gillian was the hero of the hour; there was not a man in the army,
from Outram and Havelock down to the humblest camp-follower, but
envied the gallant young rescuer of pretty Mrs. Hartley.

Oblivious of all this, conscious only of his agony, and inspired by
no wish but to escape it by death, he lay between two after guns on
the starboard side of the main-deck, with a pillow under his head and
a top studding-sail spread as awning above him--pale, breathing
heavily, and was only completely roused, when Captain Hartley, after
thanking him in words, which certainly came from his very heart,
proffered him first his purse and next his watch.

Then an angry flush crossed Gillian's face, the blood from his wound
burst through the doctor's dressings, and with his right hand he
motioned the Captain away impatiently.

"A most singular young man!" said he to the Staff-Colonel, who leant
on his sword--the old tulwur--and looked on approvingly.

"Hartley, dearest, leave him to me," urged his wife, who looked pale,
ill, weary, and worn, after the terror she had been lately enduring;
"the poor lad is not what he seems."

"Seems! by Jove, he is a soldier to the heart's core; but, as you
will, my darling."

Full of tender and womanly sympathy, she hung over the lad, bathing
his temples with a handkerchief, dipped in eau-de-cologne; and, as he
lay there, on the hard deck, in the "garb of old Gaul"--the garb that
for grace is second to none in the world,--a woman's eye could see
how handsome he was, above the middle height, stalwart and well knit
in figure, with finely proportioned limbs, and a more than pleasing
face, and delicate in its features.  His plumed and chequered bonnet
was off now, and his close shorn hair seemed rich and crisp as that
of a girl.  His four-tailed Highland doublet had been thrown open,
that the wound might be dressed, and she could see, as all near did,
the ring of Dove Gainswood, attached to its blue ribbon.

"Poor fellow," said she, bursting into tears, as her husband led her
away; "that bauble contains the secret of his life, and doubtless it
is a sad one."

"His future shall be our care in every way," said the officer, full
of gratitude and generosity; but there was another near, of whom he
and Gillian wotted little--the old Staff-Colonel, who had been
regarding him with great and growing interest.

"My God!" said he, in a low but piercing voice, "how strongly--how
much and mysteriously his face reminds me of one I saw--long, long
ago!"

"Of whose, Colonel?" asked the doctor, who had been gently
re-adjusting the bandages.

"Of my poor dead wife.  What is your name, my lad?" he asked,
stooping over the sufferer.

"Lamond, sir," replied Gillian, faintly.

"Ah--my own--I, too, am a Lamond," replied the other, as his eyes
brightened, and clansman-like, he pressed in his the young corporal's
passive hand; "what other name--John, Duncan, or what?"

"Gillian Lamond," replied the other, with his eyes closed.

"How came you by that uncommon name?"

"It was that of my grandfather."

"And who was he?"

"Gillian Lamond of Avon-na-gillian."

A singular cry, or rather gasp, in which utter bewilderment and joy,
were mingled with grief and horror, escaped the old field-officer, as
he sank, tremulous in voice and in every limb, on his knees by
Gillian's side, and in defiance of the astonished doctor, asked a few
more hurried and earnest questions--only a few, but more than enough
to convince him that this sufferer, who, from being a betrayed
out-cast, had become a soldier, was his son; and so, while the
_Comet_ and her two consorts were steaming up the Karun, blazing with
their mortars and 36-pounders at the distant pickets of Persian
cavalry, a great discovery was being made on her deck, and the
strands of a singular narrative were woven together, but only at such
long intervals as the cautious doctor would permit, for Gillian was
now--notwithstanding all the blood he had lost--in a state so low and
feverish, that any excitement might kill him.

"Gillian, my boy--Gillian, my son--whose ring is this you wear, as
Mrs. Hartley tells me, at your neck?" asked the Colonel.

"Dove's--Dove Gainswood, father."  (How new the words seemed now to
his lips!)

"Then, for her sake, I shall not curse her father," replied the old
soldier; and after a time proceeded to do so in no very measured or
gentle terms, recurring ever and anon, pathetically, to the secret
sentiment that had first stirred his soul, when he saw Gillian in the
bivouac on the plain of Shiraz.

So it seemed that the newspaper report, concerning the defeat and
death of Colonel Lamond among the hill tribes, was all a canard or
mistake.  His party had been victorious; but he had certainly been
wounded and carried off prisoner in the affair at Mora; but an old
Lama priest, saved, protected, and cured him, and conveyed him to the
plains, from whence he had reached Calcutta.  From thence and Bombay,
he had written to his brother-in-law, Gideon Gainswood, announcing
his safety and homeward journey; but both letters would seem to have
been miscarried; and, as at Bombay, he found "his old friend, Jamie
Outram," departing with his expedition for Bushire, he could not
resist having, as he said, "a farewell shy at the Persians," and thus
had joined his personal staff as a volunteer, in the capacity of an
extra aide-de-camp; and thereby hung a great deal more than the pious
and godly Gideon Gainswood would care to see nicely woven up into a
"process" before the Lords of Council and Session; and the old man
gnawed his grizzled moustache, while black fury gathered in his
bronzed visage, as he thought of the cruel, dark, and treacherous
game that had been played to himself and his son; and where now, he
thought, were all those savings of years of industry and peril, that
were to have made his son the heir of their ancestral rocks and hills
of Avon-na-gillian!

"I suppose much must be pardoned even in a Scotch lawyer, that would
be unpardonable in a man of any other trade," said the Colonel, as he
sat on the gunslide near Gillian, and poured forth his wrath,
sometimes in Hindostanee, when the vocabulary of English abuse failed
him; "but Gainswood is a psalm-singing scoundrel of the deepest die,
and one whom, ere long, I shall most terribly unmask."

"But, father," urged Gillian, in a broken voice; "to use his own
adopted phraseology--are the children to suffer for the sins of their
parents?  Is Dove to be considered as venial as her father?"

"Dove is a dear girl, and a genuine little brick!" exclaimed the
Colonel, smiting the deck with his tulwur; "but as for her father, I
must, when thinking of him, agree with Mrs. Shelly, that 'it is
certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance
of man, than to be the confidant and accomplice of his vices--which
is the profession of the law.'  When shall I be face to face with the
sanctimonious legal Thug!"

Night came down on the Karun; the moon, no longer a crescent now, but
full, round, and in all her silver beauty, came out of the blue sky;
the boom of the guns and the crash of the mortars had died away, and
under half steam the _Comet_ moved quietly in the fairway of that
stately tribute of the Euphrates.

For the last few hours Gillian was almost voiceless, or able to speak
only in tremulous and uncertain whispers; and he was sleeping
heavily, while the old Colonel, sleepless, full of sad and fierce
thoughts, sat yet on the gunslide and watched him, as the doctor
alleged it was too close between decks to have one so feverish taken
below; and from time to time, the old man stooped and gazed on him,
till his eyes became blind with tears, and even while prayers
gathered in his heart, the curses of deep and most just anger hovered
on his lips.

Around him was the Persian shore bordering the waves of that classic
river.  It was a calm and lovely evening now; dusky shadows were
stealing upward from the roots of the graceful date palms, and
pomegranate trees, the leaves of which glittered in the moonlight,
even while the last rays of sunshine lingered redly on the snow-clad
mountain peaks that stood up so sharply against the deep blue of the
sky beyond.  The rising breeze rustled the foliage, the river went
flowing downward to the Euphrates, snatching at the roots of the
overhanging underwood, and watching by his newly-found son, that old
man sat buried in bitter thought.

Away from the banks of the Karun, away from Shiraz, where Hafiz, the
Anacreon of Persia, lies in his rose-covered grave near the garden of
Jehan Numa; away from Faristan, the land of Abassides and the
Attabegs, where the chinar, the dark cypress, and the pale willow
grow side by side, and cast their changing shadows on the rice and
brilliant poppy fields, the cotton-trees, the saffron and the hemp,
the old Indian soldier's heart went home to Avon-na-gillian--the
place of his hopes and his day-dreams--amid the surf-beaten isles of
the West.

He saw before him a heath-clad glen, traversed by the Avon, a rough
mountain stream, foaming over water-worn rocks, with tufts of
vegetation sprouting in the many crevices as the burn leaped from
pool to pool, its brown surface flecked by air-bells and the frequent
trout.  Overhead is a grey sky, against which stands a
weather-stained old tower, looking down upon the distant tumbling
sea, as it looked when Hacho's galleys fled from Largs in the days of
old.

Old Lachlan Lamond had seen the wonders of the Taj Mahal at Agra, the
marble domes of Delhi, and Seringham with its Temple of the Thousand
Pillars, but he would freely have given them, all for that old
battered Hebridean tower; and the glories of the _Indus_, the Jumna
and Ganges, were as nothing to his heart, when compared with the old
brawling burn that foamed through the lonely glen.

From his reverie he was roused by the doctor kneeling and looking
anxiously at Gillian, who was an object of uncommon interest now.

"Is he in danger?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"Very great."

"Will the boy die?" he asked piteously, after a painful pause.

The staff-surgeon only waved his hand, as if to impose silence or
resignation, and moved away without any other response.

Then the heart of the old soldier--the heart that had never quailed
amid the strife of India's bloodiest battles--died away within him,
and stunned and bewildered by the discoveries and catastrophe of the
day, bowing his head upon the hilt of his sword, he wept like a very
woman.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE TANGLED WEB UNWOVEN.

In these our days of haste and hurry, steam and telegraph, when all
men acknowledge that life seems far too short for what we seek to
cram into it, it must not seem incorrect or "a violation of the
unities," if we suddenly turn from Persia, and take another glance
homeward at the most beautiful, yet, perhaps, most provincial, of all
European capitals.

In Edinburgh the night was cold and gusty--the last of April--with
occasional blasts of rain and hail.  Mr. Gainswood was seated alone
in his library; Dove was in the drawing-room, for father and daughter
were now more apart than they were wont to be.  With something of
pleasure he heard her touching the piano.  Poor Dove!  Tortured and
despairing, she had been more than once on the point of yielding to
her father's matrimonial wishes, and she seldom thought of her music
now.  Seldom, indeed, she opened the piano, and even then she was
running her pretty fingers over the keys in a wandering and
purposeless way; at one time it was a waltz, at another a national
melody that Gillian loved; then the lawyer would grind his teeth, as
it always ended in "Wild Joanna."

"Poor girl!" he muttered; "she always looks so pale--curse that
designing cousin!  Her eyes have an expression so mournful and sad
that often I feel inclined to take her in my arms and kiss her--but
'tisn't my way.  She casts the mercies from her!  How like a
serpent's tooth it is----"

Then he paused, in doubt whether he was quoting Scripture or some
profane writer, to do which beseemed not a man of his religious
character.

Sunk back in softly stuffed easy chair, Mr. Gainswood abandoned
himself to the luxury of thinking over the riches he had amassed from
a very small and very sordid beginning.  The lofty room was
brilliantly lighted, and its interior contrasted pleasantly with the
cold and stormy night without, where the tall trees with the old
rookery were swaying in the occasional blasts.  Sweeping curtains of
rich maroon damask shrouded the windows, and from cornices of
walnut-wood, gilded, bearing the Gainswood crest (some cognizance to
heraldry unknown) fell on the rich carpet woven in the looms of
Aubusson, in the department of Creuse--a carpet wherein the florid
crimson roses, mellowed into the pink and yellow of other flowers.

It was a stately room, and everything around him betokened ease
combined with splendour.

In the low, deep chair he sat before the fire, his slippered feet
stretched out upon the fender of polished steel; and, while listening
with dreamy pleasure to the wailing of the wind and the gusts of the
storm that he was not exposed to, he thought over all he had amassed
(without caring how); of an address he was to make at a religious
meeting on the morrow; of cases pending before the Inner and Outer
Houses; and then, as the notes of the piano came idly from the
distant drawing-room, of Dove's rare beauty---a useless commodity as
yet, unless she yielded to him and Campsie; and anon, by the chain of
thought, a vision of a face came before him with painful
distinctness--the face of the wanderer, him whom he had expelled and
robbed of his inheritance--the face of Gillian as he had seen it last.

The war was over in Persia; a peace had been concluded so early as
the 4th of March, unknown to Sir James Outram; and the 78th
Highlanders, under Havelock, had gone to India, where new and
terrible complications were arising.  Mr. Gainswood knew all this
from the public papers.  Many rank and file had fallen in battle he
knew; he had gloated over their numbers hopefully.  Had Gillian
escaped; and, if so, would he escape the greater perils that were to
come?

A sour smile gathered in his ferret-eyes, and the bull-dog jaw
assumed a set expression of defiance.  It passed away, and the former
smile of indolent ease and of bland hypocrisy spread over his coarse
face, as he thought, and thought, and thought again, of how he "had
flourished even as the green bay-tree," till a loud ring of the front
door bell echoed through the stone staircase and corridors, after a
wheeled vehicle had stopped at the pillared portico without.

Mr. Gainswood glanced inquiringly at his library clock.  Who could
his visitor be at such an unusual hour?

"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir," said the servant, ushering in a
person whom Mr. Gainswood saw to be a stranger, who had come thus
suddenly without the prelude of sending up his card.  He was a tall,
thin man, of haughty and aristocratic bearing and undoubtedly
military aspect, bronzed and furrowed in face, with a densely thick
moustache that mingled with his flowing and silvery beard.  Many
years had elapsed since Mr. Gainswood had seen Colonel Lamond, for he
it was; he was closely shaven in those days, with hair of a ruddy
brown, so he utterly failed to recognize him or even his voice now.

The Colonel threw open his Highland cloak, deposited his hat and
leather gloves with something of emphasis on the table, grasped
nervously a silver-mounted and heavy malacca cane, and, when asked to
"be seated," took a chair, with a keen and scrutinising expression in
his eyes that thoroughly roused Mr. Gainswood, who said:

"May I ask whom I have the honour to receive?"

"An extra aide-de-camp of General Sir James Outram," replied the
other, wishing to preserve his incognito for some time.

"Your name?"

"That you will have in good time.  We have met before."

"Perhaps; but I have no recollection----"

"All the better."

"Your business, sir?"

"Is with you."

"Well?" said Mr. Gainswood sharply, as he decidedly thought his
client was a strange one, and felt restless under his keen, bright,
steady, and contemptuous glance.

"I have a message to you from Colonel Lachlan Lamond."

"My _late_ brother-in-law!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood, now thoroughly
roused.

The Colonel smiled and twisted his heavy grey moustaches, as he saw
that Gainswood's face became livid, and that already drops of clammy
perspiration glittered about his temples; but he said:

"Poor old Lachlan! he was killed at Mora by the Bhoteas.  Alas! in
the midst of life we are in death!"

"He left a son in your care, Mr. Gainswood."

"A profligate, who left me and went forth into the world--I know not
where.  Were you in the campaign against the Hill Tribe?"

"I was."

"Then what was, or is, your message to me?"

"It concerns the will which Colonel Lamond entrusted to your
care--the will by which he bequeathed all he possessed to his son,
whom failing, to your daughter."

"I never heard of any such document, and, if it existed, it will, no
doubt, be recorded somewhere."

"It was not, so far as I know."

"Then there is no proof of its existence at all."

"Very probably," replied the Colonel, scornfully; "so we shall pass
that, and come to the fortune left by the Colonel, out of which you
brought up his son, as a species of half-drudge in your office, in
total ignorance that such a thing existed."

"A fortune!"

"Thirty thousand pounds and more, transmitted to you from India as a
portion of the money to re-purchase Avon-na-gillian."

"You have been dining or are dreaming, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood,
growing pale, but attempting to bully nevertheless, as he started to
his feet and approached a bell-handle.

"Sit down, sir, and listen to me, or, by Heaven, I shall stretch you
beside that fender!" cried the Colonel, grasping his heavy cane and
looking as if he meant to use it.

Mr. Gainswood re-seated himself and affected to listen, with the
half-amused and incredulous smile of one who has a lunatic to humour,
and lay back in his elbow-chair with the tips of his fingers placed
together; but, with all this assumed exterior, there flashed upon his
memory the old saying about giving even the tip of one's little
finger to Satan.

"Do you mean to deny the existence of this money, as well as that of
the will, or that you ever received it?" asked the Colonel, quietly.

"I do."

"Foul liar!"

"Calm yourself, my good sir--calm yourself.  Your words, if heard,
are actionable; but there is a power above that rules us all and
guides us all," replied the lawyer, looking with an air of
resignation upward to the crystal gaselier that glittered overhead;
"you are labouring under some incomprehensible delusion.  If the
money, those many thousands, were ever transmitted to me, or anyone
else, by my dear dead brother-in-law some vouchers of the fact must
be somewhere."

"They are so."

"Indeed; where?"

"In the hands of my banker," replied the other, with a calm smile.

For nearly a minute the two men regarded each other in silence.  The
trembling lips and pallid cheeks of Gainswood had been the result of
his naturally bullying temper, but now they came of craven, abject
fear, for terror and alarm were curdling in his coward heart.  The
malice of the devil was in it, and in his ferret eyes, yet his plight
and aspect were pitiable--most pitiable--and the Colonel, even with
all his scorn, felt it to be so.

"There are shades of guilt, Mr. Gainswood," said he.

"Shades, sir," stammered the lawyer.

"Yes, sir; shades."

"The All-seeing Eye can pierce all shades----."

"The less we have of this from such a worm as you the better, sir,"
interrupted his visitor, rising; "there are people of your infamous
stamp who think it less guilty to suppress evidence than to destroy
it; but that you have done, suppressed or destroyed the will left
with you, and other documents that concern the transmitted money; but
the proof of that transmission my vouchers can affirm."

"And you, sir," exclaimed the lawyer, fairly brought to bay at last,
"who are you?"

"Colonel Lachlan Lamond, of whose existence the Procurator-Fiscal
shall convince you to-morrow morning," replied the other sternly, as
he carefully drew on his gloves, and eyed with withering scorn the
lawyer, who, like a hunted creature, uttered a moan, not of sorrow,
but of mingled rage, hate, and baffled desire for defiance, as he
covered his face with his trembling hands, and thought perhaps,--

  "O what a tangled web we weave,
  When first we practise to deceive!"

Here was a turning of the tables with a vengeance.  His shame and
disgrace, his committal and trial as a felon were in the hands of
Colonel Lamond, and judging by himself and his own nature, he felt
certain that the injured father would be merciless.  He could have no
comfort in his religion, for religion had he none.  Though ever on
his lips, he had about as much of it in his heart as a Zulu Kaffir,
or those Bhoteas, who, so unfortunately for him, had not made mince
meat of his brother-in-law.

The Colonel had ended buttoning his gloves and highland cloak, and
was about to assume his hat, when Mr. Gainswood, whose hands shook
like aspen, leaves, stretched them forth deprecatingly, and said:

"Lachlan, for the sake of our dead wives, for the sake of Dove, do
not, do not expose me!"

Something of sadness now mingled with the sour scorn that filled the
eyes of the old soldier, who, after a pause, said:

"Faithless and false-trickster as you have been, thief as you would
be, heartless and cruel though you proved to my poor boy, Gillian,
for the memory of those you name, and for the sake of the cousins who
have loved each other so well and tenderly, I shall forgive you; but
never, while the breath of Heaven is in your nostrils, ask Lachlan
Lamond to degrade himself by taking your hand in his!"

"And where is Gillian now?" asked Gideon Gainswood, after a pause.

"Within summons if you wish to see him."

And sooth to say, during all this exciting interview, Gillian, whom
we had last seen lying, to all appearances done nigh unto death, on
the deck of H.M.S. _Comet_, had been in the adjoining drawing-room,
with Dove's head pillowed upon his breast, and his arms around her.

Gillian, she thought, looked certainly haggard, pale, and hairy, and
there was an unwonted glitter in his eye that was born of the
sufferings he had undergone, but it was blended with the brightness
and triumph of his present joy.


Gillian alive, safe, and back home again!  It required days to pass
ere Dove--in blissful ignorance of the dark and intricate springs on
which her fate had turned--would settle down into a calm and
delicious state of happiness subsequent to the return of the loved
one, so bitterly mourned as lost for ever, that their engagement was
permitted, and all barriers, monetary and otherwise, were dissipated
and removed.

How differently passed the days now since she knew that he was safe
and her own as before.  Ah, how wearily they were wont to lag and
drag in the dreadful past time, when at dawn and noon she only longed
for night, though, when all were abed and asleep, she lay awake, with
her heart aching, and her poor little head full of all manner of
terrible imaginings, and knew that if she slept, she would, with
daylight only come back to a dull sense of all-pervading sorrow.

As for my Lord Campsie, who had been to her a species of
Frankenstein, she was relieved of his presence for ever, and with
more ease than he was ever likely to be of his monetary
embarrassments.

He has since espoused the fair one with the golden locks, thus
combining the establishment at St. John's Wood with his own.  He has,
moreover, become a representative peer by the death of the old
viscount, and being chronically "hard up," will have no objection to
pocket the salary and figure yearly as H.M. Commissioner to the Kirk,
if it will have him, "though it is a doocid bore, don't you know, and
so demmed vulgaw."  But then "the viscountess would have the upper
ten dozen of Edinburgh and their women folk" at her receptions in the
long gallery of the kings of Scotland, and there might be a little
satisfaction in that.




A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.

In the following pages I propose to give the brief history of a
Prince of Wales who, had he lived long enough, might, by the
brilliance of his talents and the tenor of his character, have
changed the whole fate and annals of the British Isles after his own
time, in so far, that Cromwell and the great civil war, the Scottish
Covenant, the battles of Montrose and Claverhouse, the advents of
William and Mary, of Anne, and even the accession of the House of
Hanover, _would never have been heard of_.

At three in the morning of Tuesday, the 19th February, 1593, there
was born in the Castle of Stirling, Henry, afterwards Prince of
Wales, eldest son of James VI. of Scotland and I. of Great Britain,
by his queen, Anne, daughter of Frederick II., and sister of the
gallant sailor-king, Christian IV. of Denmark, in the fourth year of
their marriage.  A discharge of twelve great guns announced the event
to the town; the king sent for the ministry, desiring that everywhere
the people should be called together, to have public thanksgiving;
and bale-fires were, as Calderwood records, set ablaze on all the
great mountains; and Moyse adds in his memoirs, that so great was the
joy of the nation, "that people in all parts appeared to be daft for
mirth."

The baptism was deferred for six months, says Dr. Birch, the king
having "thought proper to invite several foreign princes and states
to send their ambassadors to be present at that solemnity"; but
scarcely had that young prince--the future heir of all the British
Isles--seen the light ere faction, the old curse of the Scottish
nation, began to contemplate employing the unconscious infant for the
promotion of its base designs.  By the conspirators it was proposed
to retain him in their hands as the means of strengthening their own
party.  To the honour of Lord Zouch, however, to whom the offer was
made, he peremptorily declined all concurrence; so the despicable
expedient, which had been so successful in past times of Scottish
history, was abandoned.  In the meantime Zouch, though strictly
watched, busied himself, in conformity with his infamous secret
instructions from Queen Elizabeth, to intrigue with all the Scottish
nobility who were opposed to James's temporising policy, and embroil
him with his people.

On the 27th of August the little prince was baptised in the Castle of
Stirling, amid unusual magnificence.  He was borne from his own room
to the queen's chamber of presence, laid on a stately bed, in care of
the Countess of Mar and other ladies of rank, who delivered him to
Ludovic Stewart, Duke of Lennox, Admiral and Lord High Chamberlain of
Scotland, who presented him to the foreign ambassadors.  Among these
was the representative of Elizabeth, the young Earl of Sussex, who
was connected with her by ties of blood, and who came attended with a
magnificent retinue, bearer of a letter from his royal mistress,
congratulating the king on the auspicious event, and abounding in
expressions of friendly feeling, in her own quaint manner; though at
that very time she was intriguing for the destruction and death of
Maitland, the Lords Home, Huntly, and others who were his most loyal
nobles.  There too were the ambassadors of the Duke of Brunswick, the
States of Holland, the Duke of Mecklenburg, and other princes.
"Behind the Earl of Sussex," says Dr. Birch, "stood the Lord Wharton
and Sir Henry Bromley, Knight, no other Englishman being admitted
into the chapel royal."

Thither the child was borne by Sussex, preceded by Lord Home bearing
the ducal crown, Lord Livingstone the napkin, Lord Seaton the basin,
and Lord Semple the laver.  Above their heads was a great canopy,
borne by the Lairds of Buccleuch, Cessford, Dudhope, and Traquair,
while the prince's train was held up by the Lords Sinclair and
Urquhart.  Around was a guard of chosen young men of Edinburgh,
richly dressed and armed; and the trumpets sounded as the king seated
himself in a chair "adorned with the arms of France."

After a sermon "in the Scots tongue," by one of the king's chaplains,
David Cunninghame, Bishop of Aberdeen, preached in Latin on the
creed.  The child was then baptised and knighted; the trumpets
sounded, again the cannon thundered over the Valley of the Forth,
while the Lyon King and his heralds from the gates and battlements
proclaimed the now-forgotten prince, by the name of "Frederick Henry,
Henry Frederick, by the grace of God Knight and Baron of Renfrew,
Lord of the Isles, Earl of Carrick, Duke of Rothesay, Prince and
Great Steward of Scotland" (Calderwood).  Gifts were then presented
to the infant.  Among these were a cupboard of plate worth £3,000
from Elizabeth; two massive gold chains from the King of Denmark; a
table enriched with diamonds from the Duke of Mecklenburg; two gold
cups from the States of Holland, worth 12,400 crowns, each weighing
400 ounces, and in one were 5,000 florins, the first of the prince's
annual donations from the conservator of Scottish privileges at
Campvere in Zealand.

History tells us that the pageants which succeeded this ceremony were
of the most costly and gorgeous description, "and much ingenuity was
expended by Mr. Fowler, Master of the Revels, as well as by the king
himself, in planning masks, shows, and triumphs, together with
curious and mysterious devices suited to the tastes of that age."
Soon after, the prince was committed to the care of John, Earl of
Mar, Governor of the Castle of Stirling and Chamberlain of Monteith,
&c.; and he was assisted in his charge by his mother, Annabella,
Countess Dowager of Mar, a daughter of the Lord Tullybardine.

For these two guardians the little prince, as boyhood crept on,
showed such affection that the queen became jealous of them, and
endeavoured to remove him into her own custody; but James wrote to
the earl, desiring him upon no account to give up the prince to his
mother; yet the charge of the old countess ended when, in his sixth
year, Adam Newton, a gentleman "learned in languages," was made his
tutor.  Many attendants of rank were appointed; but chief of all
these was still the Earl of Mar.  It was at this time, in 1599, that
the pedantic James composed for his use in Greek "His Majesty's
Instructions to his dearest son, Henry the Prince."  In the preface
thereto were some passages that puzzled many; for by his bitterness
against the Puritans he gave grounds for doubting his Protestantism,
and in others he seemed to cherish some vindictiveness against
England, though the heir to its throne.

In 1600, when in his seventh year, the prince wrote in his own hand a
letter to the States-General, expressing gratitude to and regard for
them.  This letter, which most probably was dictated by the "Scottish
Solomon," was taken to Holland by Sir David Murray.  In the year
following the prince began to take great pleasure in all manly
exercises--in learning to ride, sing, dance, leap, to shoot with the
bow and to toss the pike; and in most of these things he became a
great proficient, under the care of Sir Richard Preston (of
Craigmillar), Constable of Dingwall, and afterwards Earl of Desmond
in Ireland.  Of his progress in learning we have a proof in the
recorded fact that he wrote a letter on his ninth birthday to his
father, in which he mentions that "he had begun two years before to
write to his Majesty, in order to make him a judge of the proficiency
he had made in his studies; and that since his (James's) departure he
had read over Terence's _Hecyra_, the third book of Phædrus's
_Fables_, and two books of Cicero's _Select Epistles_."

On the death of Elizabeth, at Richmond, in 1603, James succeeded
peacefully to the English throne, and soon after took with him to
London his heir, still in the custody of the Earl of Mar; but the
latter had, for a time, to return to Scotland, where Queen Anne was
demanding from his custody her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth
(afterwards Queen of Bohemia), and her son, Prince Charles
(afterwards Charles I.); but the earl urged again the express
commands of the king on the subject, and it is said that the queen
never forgave him.  Mar resumed his care of the prince, who, together
with the earl, when the feast of St. George was celebrated at
Windsor, on the 2nd of July, 1603, received the Order of the Garter;
and young Henry, now for the first time saluted as Prince of Wales,
"was highly commended by the Earl of Nottingham, in the hearing of
Edward Howes, our English chronicler of that age, for his quick witty
answers, princely carriage, and reverend obeisance to the altar" (Dr.
Birch).

Branishill, in Hampshire, was built as a residence for him.  He was
the _first_ Prince of Wales who ever wore the _triple_ plume, and all
the traditions which assign it to the Black Prince and John of
Bohemia are totally unsupported by history.  The latter at Cressy
wore an eagle's pinion in his helmet, and the seal of the former in
1370 shows him wearing a _single_ feather.

On New-year's-day, 1604, when in his eleventh year, he sent to his
father a short poem in Latin hexameters, as his first offering of
that kind.  In the same year the prince, having already evinced a
great love for naval affairs, had a vessel specially built for his
amusement and instruction at Limehouse; and on the 14th of March it
was brought to anchor off the king's lodging in the Tower, where the
prince came and showed the lord high admiral and other nobles, with
much boyish delight, how he could handle this craft, which was gaily
furnished with ensigns and pendants.  Anon we are told that it was
brought to anchor off Whitehall Stairs, when the prince again went on
board with the admiral, the Earl of Worcester, and other persons of
rank.  The anchor was then weighed, and under her foresail and
topsail she dropped down the river to Paul's Wharf, where, with a
great bowl of wine, the prince baptised her by the name of the
Disdain.

The prince evinced a great love of arms, and was never weary of
handling the pike; and in Drayton's _Polyolbion_ we have a portrait
of him when about his seventeenth year thus engaged, and the drawing
depicts him as handsome in figure, regularly featured, with his hair
starting in spouts from an open forehead.  He is dressed in rich
half-armour, with gauntlets, trunk hose, and the Garter on his left
leg.  Already men of learning had begun to court him as their patron,
and he maintained a correspondence with such as were most eminent for
their talent; and he gave such promise of future greatness that
foreign princes solicited his friendship, and in a letter which the
French ambassador sent home he remarked to the king his master, "that
it would be a serious omission in policy to neglect a prince who
promised such great things.  None of his pleasures savour the least
of childish pursuits.  He is a particular lover of horses and what
belongs to them; but he is not fond of hunting, and when he goes to
it, it is rather for the pleasure of galloping than for that which
the dogs afford him.  He plays willingly enough at tennis, and at
another Scots diversion very like mall [golf?], but always with
persons older than himself, as if he despised those of his own age.
He studies two hours a day, and employs the rest of his time in
tossing the pike, or leaping, throwing the bar, shooting with the
bow, vaulting, or some other exercise of that kind, for he is never
idle.  He shows himself likewise very amicable to his dependents, and
supports their interests against all persons whatsoever, and pushes
what he undertakes for them with such zeal as procures success; and
by exerting his whole strength to compass what he desires, is already
feared by those who have the management of affairs."

The Duke de Sully tells us in his memoirs that the young prince
naturally hated Spain and favoured France, though there seems to have
been some strange proposal on foot for having him educated finally in
the former country.  He also tells us that it was a favourite project
of Henri IV to marry his eldest daughter to the prince, to whom he
sent "a golden lance and helmet, enriched with diamonds, together
with a fencing-master and vaulter" (_Memoirs_, vol. iii.).  With all
these gifts of mind and person we are told that he was less a
favourite with the queen than her second son, Charles, Duke of York
and Albany.  The company of Merchant Taylors having requested the
king to become a member of their guild, he replied that he "was
already free of another company," referring to the similar
corporation in Edinburgh; but added that his son the prince would
avail himself of the honour, and that he would be present at the
ceremony.  So the king came, and "with his highness was entertained
with vocal and instrumental musick--the musick of twelve lutes
equally divided, and placed by six and six in a window of the hall;
and in the area between them was a gallant ship triumphant, in which
were three men dressed like sailors, eminent for their voice and
skill, who were accompanied by the lutists."

In vol. i. Coke relates an anecdote which he heard from his father,
who about the time was of the prince's age.  Being out hunting, a
butcher's dog chanced to kill the stag, and thus spoil the sport.  As
Henry did not resent this, the courtiers, to incense him against the
butcher, said, that "if the king his father had been served thus, he
would have sworn so that no man could have endured it."  "Away,"
replied the gentle prince; "all the pleasure in the world is not
worth one oath!"

In 1612 the cowardly and contemptible Elector Palatine came to London
to marry the Princess Elizabeth, whom the scarcely less pitiful James
had named after the woman who destroyed his unhappy mother.  He was
received in London with profound respect, and the court was fully
occupied by brilliant entertainments, masques, and joyous diversions
in honour of the royal nuptials; but amid them a mortal illness
seized upon the promising young prince, who, not conceiving it
dangerous, continued to appear in public with the elector till he was
unable to leave his bed, on the 27th of October; and he died, between
seven and eight o'clock P.M., on the 6th of November.  He expired at
St. James's Palace, and in the arms of the Earl of Mar.

Of what disease he died none now can say; but, as usual in those
days, ugly whispers were abroad.

"He was," says Rapin, combining the encomiums of Wilson, Coke, and
Osburn, "the most accomplished prince that ever was--I will not say
in all England, but in all Europe.  He was sober, chaste, temperate,
religious, full of honour and probity.  He was never heard to swear,
though the example of his father and of the whole court might have
been apt to corrupt him in that respect.  He took great delight in
the conversation of men of honour, and those who were not reckoned as
such, were looked upon with a very ill eye at his court.  He had
naturally a greatness of mind, with noble and generous thoughts, and
as much displeased with trifles as his father was fond of them.  He
frequently said if ever he mounted the throne his first care should
be to try and reconcile the Puritans to the Church of England.  As
this could not be done without concessions on each side, and as such
a condescension was directly contrary to the temper of the court and
clergy, he was suspected to countenance Puritanism.  He was naturally
gentle and affable; but, however, in his carriage had a noble
stateliness, without affectation.  He showed a warlike genius in his
passionate fondness for all martial exercises.  In short, to say all
in a word, though he was only eighteen when he died, no historian has
ever taxed him with any vice."

Another annalist tells us that "neither the illusions of passion nor
of rank had ever seduced him into any irregular pleasures; business
and ambition alone engaged his heart and occupied his mind.  Had he
lived to come to the throne he might probably have promoted the glory
more than the happiness of his people, his disposition being strongly
turned to war" (Russell).

Regarding this spirit, Coke tells us that on a French ambassador
coming one day to take leave of the prince he "found him tossing a
pike"; and on asking "what service he would commend him to the king
his master," "Tell him _what I am doing_," was the significant reply.

The weak king his father, on finding that Henry's court at St.
James's was more frequented than his own, is said to have exhibited
some jealousy on the subject, and was one day heard to ask "if his
son would bury him."

The disease of which he died puzzled his physicians so much that the
usual vulgar rumour, as I have said, went abroad that he had been
poisoned, and Burnet tells us that, without the slightest proof, many
actually accused Viscount Rochester of the crime; and thus a
post-mortem examination took place, in presence of many physicians
and surgeons, who declared on oath that they were unable to detect
the slightest symptoms of poison.  Howes says that he died of a
malignant fever, which in that year "carried away a great many people
of all sorts and ages."  Balfour calls it "a malignant purpuer fever."

It is somewhat remarkable that the king forbade all court mourning,
unless it can be explained that he was loth to cast a gloom over his
daughter's recent marriage; but the funeral, which took place in
Westminster Abbey on the 7th of December, was a stately one, and cost
£2000 of the money of that time (Howes).

Sir Robert Douglas states that, after the prince's death, the
faithful old Earl of Mar returned home, and, after being Lord High
Treasurer of Scotland, died at a green old age in 1634.

With regard to the well-known plume, perhaps he adopted three
feathers to signify the three kingdoms to which he was heir, or
because three feathers are the badge of a chief in Scotland; but,
whatever the cause, Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, was the first who
gave that crest to the Principality.

The "Scots Magazine" for 1809, contains a copy of the doggrel
epitaph--perhaps penned by the pedantic king his father--which was
carved upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Many of his letters are inserted in Disraeli's "Curiosities of
Literature;" and his magnificent suit of armour is still preserved in
the Tower of London.




  THE STRANGE STORY OF THE
  DUCHESS OF KINGSTON.

In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of George III. no _cause
célèbre_ made greater excitement than the trial of this person, whose
appearance at the bar of the House of Lords, on a charge of felony,
was long remembered in London.

Elizabeth Chudleigh was the daughter of a colonel in the army,
representative of an ancient Devonshire family, a member of which
fought valiantly at the defeat of the Armada.  He died when Elizabeth
was very young, and the care of her education devolved upon her
mother, who had little more than her pension as an officer's widow,
to add to which she opened a fashionable boarding-house in London,
whither she would seem to have come, according to the statement of
the Attorney-General, in the year 1740, when her daughter was in the
bloom of her beauty, "distinguished for a brilliancy of repartee, and
for other qualities highly recommendatory, because extremely
pleasing."  George II. was then residing at Leicester House, and his
son Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (who died in 1751), had, of
course, an establishment of his own elsewhere.  To his princess,
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Miss Chudleigh was presented by the famous Mr.
Pulteney, who obtained for her, in her eighteenth year, the post of
one of her maids-of-honour.

Having secured for her this elevated position, Mr. Pulteney
endeavoured to cultivate her understanding, suggested to her a course
of reading, and they frequently corresponded on various subjects; but
we are told that "the extreme vivacity of her nature" precluded her
from acquiring much.  Her personal attractions won her many admirers
at court, among others, John Duke of Hamilton, who afterwards married
Miss Gunning.  Indeed they were formally engaged, and their marriage
was to take place after his grace, like all men of fashion in those
days, had made "the grand tour;" but during his absence distrust
ensued between them, and in the interim, at the house of an aunt,
whose name was Hanmer, at Laneston, in Hampshire, the Honourable John
Augustus Harvey, then a lieutenant in the navy, was introduced to
Miss Chudleigh, and fell deeply in love with her.  To favour his
views, her aunt strangely and treacherously contrived to intercept
all the letters of the Duke of Hamilton.  His supposed silence roused
the indignation of Elizabeth; her pride was easily worked upon, and
the attentions of a handsome and winning lover at such a crisis were
almost sure to meet with success.  Piqued beyond endurance by what
she deemed the insulting silence of her betrothed, she agreed to
accept the hand of Mr. Harvey, and they were privately married by Mr.
Amus, the rector, on the 4th August, 1744, in a private chapel at
Laneston, adjoining the mansion of Mr. Merril; and the only surviving
witness of _four_, when the subsequent trial ensued, was an old
female servant of the family, named Anne Craddock.

The reason given for a _private marriage_ was, as stated by the
Attorney-General on that occasion, "that both their situations in
life rendered a public marriage very impracticable, as he on one side
depended on his friends for his future prospects, and she, on her
remaining a single woman, derived her chief rank and support; that
such being the situation of the parties, they agreed to marry
privately, without the knowledge or consent of their friends."  They
soon after came to London, and lived privately in Conduit Street,
Hanover Square, but in a state of great unhappiness, owing to the
dissipated conduct of Harvey, for six months, till he joined his ship
in the East Indian Seas, under Sir John Danvers.  Her position was
now a very painful and anomalous one--Miss Chudleigh and a
maid-of-honour in public, Mrs. Harvey and a wife in private!  She was
still an attractive centre in the higher circles, and the Princess of
Wales was still her most particular friend; but she had many more;
and few women in London in those days made more conquests.  The fame
of them reached Harvey, now a captain; and when he returned, at the
end of a year and a half, he insisted that she should live with him
again; though so great was her aversion of him, that she had resolved
never to subject herself to his cruelties again.

However, she would seem to have been prevailed upon, under terror of
his threats, to join him again at their house in Conduit Street.  One
account says that she was lured thither, and had the doors locked
upon her, to secure her detention.  The result of this union was a
boy.  "Cæsar Hawkins became the professional confidant on this
occasion, and Miss Chudleigh (as the world knew her) removed to
Chelsea for change of air, but returned to Leicester House perfectly
recovered from her indisposition.  The infant soon sank into the arms
of death, leaving only the tale of his existence to be related," and
his father joined his ship in the Mediterranean.

The year 1748 saw Miss Chudleigh the belle of Tunbridge Wells; and
she figures in an old engraving of the period, with the burly
Johnson, Cibber, simpering beau Nash, Mr. Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Mr.
Whiston, Richardson, and others about her--they in all the glory of
bag-wig and sword, high-heeled shoes, and point ruffles.  In
Richardson's letter to Miss Westcomb he speaks of her as "the
triumphant toast," lively, sweetly tempered, and gay.  "She moved not
without crowds after her; she smiled at every one; every one smiled
when they heard she was on the walk.  She played, she lost, she won,
all with equal good-humour.  But, alas! she went off before she was
wont to go off, and then the fellows' hearts were almost broken for a
new beauty."

It was about this time that, after a long residence abroad, the Duke
of Hamilton, who still loved her passionately, had an interview with
her, and then the whole Hanmer conspiracy was brought to light, when
too late.  He again offered her his hand, but knew not why she dared
not accept it, and she was compelled to prohibit his visits; thus,
four years after, he married Miss Gunning, of Castle Coote.  She also
refused to marry the Duke of Argyle (who espoused the latter lady in
her widowhood, in 1759) and several others.  The world of fashion was
astonished, and her mother, who was kept in ignorance of her secret
marriage, reprehended what she deemed her folly in no measured terms.
To be rid of all this she left England, and went to Dresden and
Berlin; and her late position in our royal household secured her the
attention of the pedantic King of Prussia, who corresponded with her.
On her return, we are told that she "ran the course of pleasure,
enlivened the court circles, and each year became more ingratiated
with the mistress she served; led fashions, played whist with Lord
Chesterfield, and revelled with Lady Harrington and Miss Ashe."  So
passed the days; but with night came reflection, and too often the
debauched Harvey, like an evil spirit crossing the path of her whose
life he had, to a great measure, blasted.  Unable to claim her, in
dread of the resentful nature of his father the earl, he nevertheless
was exasperated to see her so admired and so immersed in gaiety; and
times there were that, in fits of rage, he threatened to disclose the
whole affair to the Princess of Wales.  In this, however, she would
seem to have anticipated him.  Her royal mistress heard and pitied
her, and continued her friend to the hour of her death.  So plans
were proposed to rid her of Harvey.  One was a divorce, on the plea
of his immoral habits; but this she shrank from, as involving many
disclosures; the other--a most unwise measure--was to destroy the
proofs of their marriage.  The clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Amus, who
officiated at that ceremony, and many of the witnesses, were dead.
She visited the obscure little church at Laneston, where the
register-book chanced to be in careless hands.  A small sum procured
an inspection of it, as if from curiosity, and while the custodian
was beguiled with some amusing story, she contrived to "tear out,"
says a print of the day, "to erase," says the Attorney-General,
"every memorial of her marriage with Mr. Harvey."  Thus, in her
rashness or ignorance, passion or hate, believing she was now free,
she bade Harvey defiance; and, as it chanced that about this time he
had unaccountably and totally ceased to care for her, he gave her no
further inquietude, and ceased, as he was wont, to haunt every rout,
ridotto, or ball at which he was likely to find her.

And now her better angel influenced with love for her the heart of a
man whom an old magazine styles "the exemplar of amiability."  This
was Evelyn Pierrepoint, Duke of Kingston, K.G., and Master of the
Staghounds north of the Trent, who raised a regiment of horse to act
against the Highlanders in 1745, and, when a lieutenant-general,
carried St. Edward's staff at the coronation of George III. in 1761.

At this time it appeared that very soon Captain Harvey would succeed
to the earldom of Bristol, his grandfather having died in 1751, and
his elder brother, who succeeded to the peerage, being unmarried and
unlikely to marry.  Much as she disliked her husband, rank and
fortune were too tempting to Miss Chudleigh, and a very short period
before Harvey succeeded to these, she contrived once more to visit
Laneston, to procure a re-insertion of her marriage.  To achieve this
she employed artifice, all the charms of which she was mistress, and
spent money with a liberal hand.  The officiating clerk, little
supposing that his caligraphy would be tested by the legal and
critical acumen of the House of Lords, "doctored" the register to her
wishes; and from Mr. Merril's house she returned to London, rejoicing
that she had now two noble strings to her bow.  We are told, "she
did, it is true, succeed, but it was laying the groundwork of that
very evidence which, in conjunction with oral testimony, operated
afterwards to her conviction and disgrace.  Here was cunning
enveloping the possessor in a net of her own fabricating; and no
wonder, when her hour of degradation arrived, that she fell unpitied;
but re-married by her own stratagem, the participation of ducal
honours became legally impossible."

Ignorant of all this secret plotting, the Duke of Kingston, who had
been born in 1705, and was now not much past the prime of life,
became the most ardent of her lovers; yet, with the Bristol marriage
hanging over her, how was she to accept him? and while loving him she
still hoped to die Countess of Bristol.  But Harvey's brother, the
second earl, lived longer than she anticipated, and she conducted her
intrigue--for, after all her brilliant offers, to an intrigue she
descended at last--with such care and decorum "that," as a writer
says of it, "although their intimacy was a moral, it was not an
evidenced, certainty."  At last he who was really her husband became
third Earl of Bristol in 1775; but five years before this, on the 8th
of March, 1769, Elizabeth Chudleigh had been publicly espoused by the
Duke of Kingston.

Lord Bristol, ignorant of how the register had been tampered with,
and having fallen in love with a new flame, "the civilians were
consulted on the matter, a jactitation suit was instituted; _the
evidence_ which could prove the marriage _was kept back_."  He failed
to substantiate the marriage that he might procure a divorce; and
raised now to the pinnacle of her fate, the (so-called) duchess
defied him, and paraded her new honours for some years in perfect
safety till the death of the duke by a stroke of palsy at Bath, on
the 23rd September, 1773; and he was "interred with a magnificence
becoming his dignity in the family vault at Holme-Pierrepoint in
Nottinghamshire" (_Ann. Reg._).  It is now the property of Earl
Manvers, for Duke Evelyn was the last of his line.  His will now
produced a fatal storm.  It excluded from any benefit an elder nephew
and preferred a younger, thus giving rise to a public prosecution of
the duchess, which ended in her exile and the beggary of the nephew.
Two wills would seem to have been drawn, but only one signed--that by
which "the duke bequeathed the income of his estates to his relict
during her life, expressly under the condition of her continuing in a
state of _widowhood_"; but as this did not suit her ulterior views,
she strove in vain, with Mr. Field of the Temple, to have another
signed, that was more to her taste.

The moment the vault at Holme-Pierrepoint was closed the duchess
sailed for Rome, where Ganganelli, a Pope who bestowed always great
attention upon the English, treated her with marked favour and
honour.  She now built a magnificent yacht--then a most uncommon
appendage to an English household--and giving the command of it to
Mr. Harding, a lieutenant of the navy, cruised about the
Mediterranean, all ignorant that a storm was gathering against her in
England, and that a Nemesis was hovering over her in the person of
old Anne Craddock, or that a motion was being moved in the Consistory
Court of London against "Elizabeth Countess of Bristol, calling
herself Duchess of Kingston."

Anne Craddock, being in reduced circumstances, had applied for
pecuniary relief to Mr. Field of the Temple, urging her distress and
the absence of the duchess, on whose purse she had a just claim as
the witness of her first marriage.  Lawyer-like, he turned a deaf ear
to her, and the old woman, exposed to penury, gave herself up to the
task of vengeance and ruin.  To the elder nephew of the late duke,
she gave all the information in her power, and he, assisted by legal
friends, had a bill of indictment for bigamy preferred against the
duchess, whom Mr. Field advised at once to return to Britain lest she
should be outlawed.  The fashionable circles were filled with
astonishment by this sudden _exposé_.  If there were fraud or
collusion, the Earl of Bristol must have acquiesced in both!
Evidence in support of the first marriage was fully gone into, and it
then came forth that if there was turpitude in the destruction of the
register of a marriage with him, there was something extremely
covetous in the attempt to restore it; and the latter act a woman
named Judith Philips proved beyond a doubt, and the birth of the
child was proved by Mr. Cæsar Hawkins.

The opponents of the duchess took every means to prevent her return
to England.  With Mr. Jenkins, a banker in Rome, she had placed
securities for such sums as she might require; but when she requested
money to enable her to return home, he so sedulously avoided her,
that she at last lost all patience--fearing the sentence of
outlawry--and swore that Jenkins was in the interest of her enemies;
so, armed with a brace of pistols, she repaired to his house.  The
usual answer was given her, that he was not at home.

"Here shall I remain a week, a month--yea, a year, till he returns!"
was her resolute rejoinder; and finding her inflexible, the banker at
last appeared, and a stormy interview ensued.  She demanded her
money.  He attempted to prevaricate; but the production of her
pistols ended that.  Her cheques were cashed, and she instantly set
out on her return by way of the Alps.  Excitement and anxiety--shame
perhaps at the sudden and terrible exposure about to be made--brought
on a fever, and caused an abscess in her side, compelling her to
travel in a litter instead of a carriage to Calais; thus after a
painful and tedious journey, which in her ignorance of law she feared
would end in a London prison, yet resolutely she travelled home, and
was joined by Colonel West, brother of John Earl of Delaware, and by
the famous Earl of Mansfield, who, from the post of Lord Chief
Justice, had been raised to the House of Lords.  After her arrival at
Kingston House, he soothed her apprehensions, and her natural spirits
rose on finding that she had friends of such zeal and ability.

The Dukes of Ancaster, Portland, and Newcastle, Lord Mountstuart, and
others, became her warm adherents; and from the moment that
recognisances for the appearance of the duchess were entered into,
public excitement rose to fever heat, but pending the trial, she
suddenly found a new and rather unexpected enemy in the person of
Samuel Foote, the famous player.  This gentleman was perfectly
intimate with the leading features of the duchess's life, and some of
the more private matters thereof he obtained from a Miss Penrose.
All these he wove up in a piece called _A Trip to Calais_, in which
the character of the duchess was humorously and admirably, but
disadvantageously, drawn.  For its suppression, and before it could
appear at the Haymarket, he was mean enough to expect a handsome sum
from her, and he had the effrontery, when visiting her, to read at
her request those scenes in which she figured as "My Lady Kitty
Crocodile."  She started up, inflamed with passion.

"Mr. Foote," she exclaimed; "what a wretch you make me!"

"This is not designed for your grace--it is not you," he urged, but
in vain.

A long and angry correspondence (which will be found in the
"Westminster Magazine" of 1776) ensued between them; and for the
suppression of the farce Foote would seem to have demanded £2,000.
She proffered him a cheque on Drummond for £1,600.  The time for her
was most critical, and she felt acutely that, at this crisis of her
affair, with a trial impending before the Upper House, the production
of this farce might destroy her.  Foote held out for the original
sum, but was baffled, as he deserved to be, in the end, as the Lord
Chamberlain would not permit the _Trip to Calais_ to be acted.

At last the day of trial came inexorably, and on the 15th of April,
1776, she was arraigned at the bar in Westminster Hall, and charged
with bigamy and felony.  The commission to try her was read.  The
judges were in their robes, the masters in Chancery in their gowns.
The Lord High Steward asked their lordships if it was their pleasure
that the judges should be covered; and on an answer being given in
the affirmative, the sergeant-at-arms called aloud,

"Elizabeth Duchess of Kingston, come forth and save yourself and your
bail, or forfeit your recognisance."

On this the duchess, attended by Mr. Egerton of the Bridgewater
family, Mrs. Barrington, widow of the general of that name, Drs.
Isaac Schomberg and Warren, entered the court, preceded by the Yeoman
Usher of the Black Rod, and was desired to seat herself.  We are told
that she "was dressed in a black polonaise, with a black gauze cap".
She seemed cheerful and composed after the first shock.  While she
was reading the paper delivered in to the lords, she appeared to be
strongly agitated and very sensibly affected.  The business of her
alleged crimes was then fully gone into; many witnesses were
examined; and the trial, which excited the whole country, lasted five
days.  Anne Craddock's evidence, that of Judith Philips, and others,
was fatally conclusive; and after the court adjourned to the chamber
of parliament, Lord Mansfield asked each peer in succession whether
the prisoner was or was not guilty; and all in succession replied,
"Guilty, upon my honour," save the Duke of Newcastle, who added,
"_erroneously_, but not intentionally."

On this being announced to her, she claimed "the benefit of the
peerage applicable to the statute."  She was then discharged on
paying her fees; but on learning that, as Countess of Bristol, the
prosecutors were preparing a writ of _ne exeat regno_, to prevent her
quitting England and to deprive her of her property, she resolved to
give them "the slip."  She ordered her carriage to be driven about
the public thoroughfares, and invited a select party to dine at
Kingston; and while they were assembling she was travelling in all
haste to Dover, where Harding, the captain of her yacht, met her, and
in an open boat conveyed her safely to Calais.

And now began her life of aimless wandering.  She repaired to Rome,
where she found the palace she had rented there, and in which she had
left much property, had been stripped by thieves in her absence;
while at home every means were taken to set aside the will of the
Duke of Kingston.  In a handsome vessel, built at her own expense,
and in which "there was a drawing-room, a dining-parlour, and other
conveniences," and on board of which she put several of the late
duke's most valuable pictures, as a present for the Empress of
Russia, she sailed for St. Petersburg, where the novelty of an
English lady "braving the billows of the Baltic" excited considerable
interest, and a handsome mansion was assigned her.  The empress
treated her with great distinction, but our ambassador had to keep
aloof from her in public.  She purchased an estate near St.
Petersburg for £12,000, and named it Chudleigh, and thereon she
erected a distillery for making brandy!  Leaving an Englishman in
charge, she again returned to Calais, accompanied by a Russian
colonel with his wife and children.  The former, says an old
_Edinburgh Magazine_, _en route_ "took French leave of the duchess,
borrowing one of her watches, merely that he might not be at a loss
as to the hour of the day, and taking a couple of rings, the
brilliance of which would remind him of the charms of the real
owner."  Repairing to Paris, she bought a residence at Montmartre,
with much land about it, and thence she sent much game to the
markets; so the people in London alleged that she had become a
Russian distiller and a French rabbit-merchant.  In the latter affair
she had a legal dispute.

In the August of the following year, when she was at dinner, it was
announced that a decision had been given against her concerning the
French property.  She became greatly agitated, and burst a
blood-vessel internally.  She appeared to recover; but a few days
afterwards, on the 26th of the month, when about to rise from bed,
she complained of weakness, had some medicine given her, and was
conducted to a couch.

"I shall lie here," she said; "I can sleep, and after a sleep I shall
be entirely recovered."

She sank gradually back into a profound sleep, and from that slumber
she never awakened.




STORY OF A HUSSAR OF THE REGENCY.

Sir Bernard Burke in recording the name of the _last_ baronet of the
old line of Craigie in Ayrshire--the parent stock from which the
Scottish patriot sprang--Sir Thomas Wallace, says, that he married a
daughter of Agnew Lochryan, "by whom he had one son, a captain of the
Guards, who pre-deceased him."

This is all the clue that Sir Bernard gives to one of the most
extraordinary and wasted, miserable and wandering, lives that ever
existed; for this Captain William Wallace (who was never in the
Household troops), early in his career, became embroiled--through the
famous Mrs. Mary Anne Clark--with those in high places at Court, and
with the Horse Guards, most singularly and fatally for himself; but
whether in the future, he was in guilt or error personally, or the
victim of a most remarkable plot, it is difficult now to tell.  Any
way, our ambassador at Paris, Sir Charles Stuart, in writing of his
affairs in 1819, asserts that "he considers him to have been the
victim of a most unfounded and unprecedented persecution."

In the early part of the present century, there was published by a
respectable firm in Stationers' Court, a volume of his memoirs, now
out of print, or long since bought up for cogent reasons, and from it
this paper is chiefly made out, with constructive evidence of his
assertions from other sources.

Born in 1788, this heir of an old and honourable line began his
military career in 1802, when he joined the army in India, and served
in most of the operations of that war, so successfully waged by
Wellington (then General Wellesley), against the Mahrattas, and when
we were so signally triumphant on the plains of Assaye; and during
that time, young Wallace would seem to have won the affection of his
brother officers, and the esteem of his superiors.  When the power of
Scindiah was broken, and the strife was over, he came home for the
recovery of his health, which had been seriously injured by service
in India.  In his eighteenth year, he was on leave of absence in
London, at that time when "H.R.H. the Prince Regent," was the source
of so much gossip, and the Pavilion at Brighton was the centre of
rank and dissipation; when gloomy Old Bond Street was still in its
glory as a fashionable lounge, though rivalled by the New and
Piccadilly; when the Life Guards still wore Kevenhüller hats, and the
Line rejoiced in their pigtails and pipe-clayed breeches.

Habituated to Oriental splendour and profusion, new to the gay world
in which he found himself, by nature warm and impetuous, and, as an
only son, too liberally supplied with means, young Wallace fell
readily, for some time, into the perpetration of many follies, in the
midst of which he was appointed to the 15th Hussars, then commanded
by the Duke of Cumberland, and noted as one of the most expensive
regiments in the service.  Soon after, he found himself engaged to
marry one of the richest heiresses in England, and, at this period,
in the brilliancy of his expectations, with his natural vivacity, and
the example of his wealthy and reckless comrades, he plunged into the
most prodigal extravagance, incumbering himself with horses,
carriages, and dogs to a useless extent.

In vain did his father, the old baronet, remonstrate with him.  His
love of adventure and impetuous character, led him into many
_intrigues d'amour_, and frequent duels, for every regiment and
circle had then its "triers and provers" of a young fellow's courage;
but by horsewhipping publicly the Marquis of H---- in Hyde Park, and
thrashing a gentleman in the Round Room of the Opera House, with
several similar offences, won him many enemies.  This wild career
caused his marriage to be broken off, and as he had calculated upon
it, as a means of paying those debts which he had contracted with the
profusion of a Timon, a phalanx of creditors took the field against
him.

He asserts in his vindication of himself, that his Colonel, the Duke
of Cumberland, assumed a haughty right of interference in his private
affairs.  Perhaps the Royal Duke was only giving him sound advice;
but as he could no longer remain in the 15th Hussars, he begged
permission to exchange into the 2nd Life Guards with a Mr.
Barrington; but the Duke objected to the personal appearance of the
latter, while, on the other hand, if we are to believe the portrait
of Captain Wallace, engraved by W. Woolnoth in 1821, the latter was a
handsome young man, with regular features, pensive eyes, a
well-formed mouth and chin, a slight moustache, and hair shorn very
short for the days of the Regency.

He then applied to the Duke for permission to exchange into the 10th
Hussars; but the prince, offended by his determination to leave his
regiment, gave him a peremptory order to rejoin the 15th Hussars,
thus arbitrarily cancelling sick leave of absence which he had
obtained from the Commander-in-Chief.  Conceiving the Colonel's order
illegal, he delayed obeying it, and found himself _superseded_, just
about the time he was wounded in a duel with a Captain Ross.

The moment he recovered, he laid the case before the kind Duke of
York, through the influence of that fine old soldier the Earl of
Cathcart, and was restored to rank and pay; but by being gazetted to
the 17th Light Dragoons, then under orders for India, the climate of
which he dared not face again in consequence of his broken health, he
applied for any cavalry corps in the Peninsula, where Moore was then
combating Soult, but memorials were in vain, and at this juncture,
his evil star gave him an introduction to--Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke.

This lady took the young dragoon so much into her confidence, as
rashly to intrust him with a very remarkable correspondence, which,
in kinder days, had passed between her, the Duke of York, and Colonel
McMahon, and was now to be of vast service to her in the measures she
was about to institute against the former.

Wallace was rash enough to boast of possessing these formidable
letters; rumour soon reached those in power of the startling fact,
and the most strenuous efforts were made to induce their surrender.
He thus drew upon himself the indignation of those whose favours he
was at that very time soliciting, and whom it was his interest to
have conciliated.  About this time, he dined, he states, with the
Duke of Sussex and other officers at the Neapolitan Club, where he
drank freely, as all men did in those days, and losing all caution,
was persuaded, by one who accompanied him home, to destroy those
letters, on the publicity of which so much depended.  This person, he
asserts, was Charles Viscount Falkland, who fell in a duel in 1809.
Wallace flung them in the fire.  The whole merit of their destruction
was attributed to the Viscount; and from that hour his entreaties
were vain, and the only answer he received from the Horse Guards was
a peremptory order to join his regiment.

Again he urged his health in India, and the injuries he had received
by his horse falling back upon him when rearing--injuries so severe,
that he was borne to the nearest house, that of the Duchess of
Roxburghe; again he urged his services in the Mahratta war, and
enclosed medical certificates from Drs. Bailey and Heaviside.  We
have only his own word for the tenor of this correspondence, which
ended, however, by the appearance of his name in the Gazette as
having _resigned_ His Majesty's Commission.

"It is impossible for me to attribute this unprecedented treatment,"
he wrote; "to H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief, whose well-known
liberality and kindness to the army in general, I had formerly
experienced in the most marked manner myself; but to a false and
malicious representation of the transaction itself."

All hope in the Horse Guards seemed over now, yet, in the ardour of
his temperament, young Wallace conceived the romantic idea of all-but
wresting back his commission, by quitting his sick-room, and joining
our army in the Peninsula, as a cavalry volunteer; but his then evil
genius preceded him, and by the malice of certain persons never
known, his project was nearly defeated on his arrival in Portugal.
His appearance in the ranks, divested of all the insignia of an
officer, made him the subject of much, and not always friendly
conversation; thus at the dinner-table of Sir Charles Stuart, then
our Ambassador at Lisbon, he became embroiled with a Captain Fenwick
and a Colonel Mackinnon, the former asserting that he had seen him
behaving improperly at Plymouth, and the latter that he held certain
of his acceptances.  To these officers he sent challenges by the
Honourable Dudley Carlton (who died in 1820), and received apologies
for the assertions, but a prejudice against him remained in the mind
of Sir Arthur Wellesley.

As a volunteer trooper, risking every privation and danger, his
bravery with the advanced guard at the Lines of Torres Vedras won him
the notice, perhaps the pity, of General Sir William Erskine, who
took him out of the ranks and placed him in a temporary situation
near his person.  On every occasion, reconnoitering, foraging, or
harassing the enemy, his peculiar position compelled him to be
prominent; but the night-guards, without shelter from the cold or
rain, brought back his Indian fever, and the once gay Hussar was
reduced to the verge of the grave.  A return home was necessary, and
furnished with such testimonials as he hoped would restore to him the
commission he prized so much, and charged with private despatches
from Sir William Erskine, he returned to London, where, while his
name was placed on the list at the Horse Guards for reappointment (as
the Records show, on the 17th December, 1814), he was assailed by a
host of creditors, whose attacks were worse than those of the French,
so to avoid them he retired into Scotland.

After a time of gloom, disappointment, and useless regret, he
effected a compromise with his creditors, but returned to town only
to fall into fresh scrapes, and he became, for a time, the victim and
slave of one of the famous and fascinating, beautiful and extravagant
of the _demi-monde_, whose name it is useless to record; but who had
recently come to the metropolis after queening it at Brighton.
Having gone to visit his father, Sir Thomas Wallace, who, after being
long a prisoner of war in France, was released by the Treaty of
Paris, to his rage and mortification, the fair one on whom he had
lavished all, eloped with one of his friends; but such was the
weakness of his character, that some time after, on going to a masked
ball at the Argyll Rooms, accompanied by Colonel Brown, Captain Moore
of the Life-Guards, and two other officers, a lady near him, "either
fainted, or affected to faint, and fell into the arms of the
bystanders."  Her mask was removed, and in all her wonderful beauty
he saw the woman he had loved and lost!  Pity seized him now; he was
silly enough to bear her to her carriage, which drove her and his
friends to her house, No. 3, Crawford Street, where a mad night of
champagne and deep play ensued, and the losses of Wallace were
enormous.  Other gambling transactions followed with reckless spirits
of the Guards, and many of those military idlers whom the Peace had
cast upon the town.  In one of these a Mr. Bradburne lost so much
that he shot himself, and a paragraph in "The Day" announced that he
had been "decoyed (to gamble) by Captain W---- and a Mr. A.," and had
put a period to his existence in consequence.  Action was taken
against the Editor, but too late; the story spread with a thousand
additions.  Wallace certainly held Bradburne's acceptances for
£2,200, which he had fairly won in the attempt of the latter to win
_his_ money; yet after receiving a promissory note for the amount on
Hoare and Co., he threw it into the fire; but his rash career in
London had gained him such a host of enemies, that society viewed him
coldly, and accompanied by a friend, named Andrews, he left it.  "We
determined to proceed to the nearest sea-port town," he states, "and
there await the favourable moment at which it was agreed we were to
be recalled by our friends, to meet the charges and defeat the
machinations of our prosecutors.  With this view we departed for
Calais."

But his friends failed to recall him, for now began the most
extraordinary portion of his misfortunes and adventures.

On the 7th March, 1816, they put up at the Hôtel de Bourbon, Rue de
la Paix, Paris, waiting news from London, and then, the maître
d'hôtel, Monsieur de Marcel, urged him to go to the Hôtel de Valois,
which he kept in the Rue de Richelieu, promising to afford better
service and accommodation.  "There was an eagerness in the manner of
this fellow--an importunity beyond all bounds--that struck me with
suspicion of some further motive," says Wallace; "I coldly declined
his solicitations, but it did not discourage him; he came almost
daily and besieged me with entreaties, and bore repulses with a
patience that would have astonished me in any one but a Frenchman."
Eventually the friends removed to his other hotel on the 19th of
March, and Wallace had soon reason to suspect that his escritoire had
been opened and his papers examined, by Marcel and some
suspicious-looking men, whom he once surprised in his rooms; but they
were partly in their host's power by that time, as Mr. Andrews was
1,040 francs in his debt.  For this he gave bills upon his mother and
Lord Wallscourt, and then left for Madrid with the Count de Gadez;
while Wallace, finding that the bad impression against him in London
had passed away, set out for England by the way of Brussels, where he
was well received by the many English tourists to whom the continent
was now open.  Unfortunately a friend induced him to revisit Paris,
where more than once he saw his former host, Marcel, who always
saluted him with marked respect.  He then went to Boulogne, and one
evening when he was dining with some friends at the Hôtel
Charpentier, a party of gendarmes broke into the room and roughly
arrested him, at the instance of Marcel, for a debt of 4,000 francs.
He was conducted to prison, where, resolving to resist this infamous
attempt to extort money, he employed MM. Lessis and Deslandes, an
advocate and attorney, to defend him before the _Tribunal de Première
Instance Civile_, which--as Marcel was unable to prove his claim--set
Wallace at liberty, and awarded him damages for the insult, the
motive for which seemed inexplicable to all.

Reflection showed that Marcel had some secret inducement, and that he
was the paid agent of powerful enemies elsewhere.  This Marcel had
been notorious during the Reign of Terror, and only escaped death by
having a friend, whose name was _Martel_, executed, by a strange
trick, in his place.  He became a member of the secret police, and by
his denunciations had long "kept the guillotine in the south of
France in continual motion, and Bordeaux in perpetual mourning."
Such was the agent of the enemies of Wallace, who states, that when
leaving the debtor's prison in accordance with the sentence of the
Court, he was, to his rage and astonishment, arrested by the
_concierge_ on a charge of _robbery_, and was conducted with a
"brigade of convicts," under an armed guard, to Paris--everywhere, as
an Englishman--taunted and reviled, for Waterloo was fresh in every
Frenchman's mind.  He had, however, the use of a cabriolet, which
deposited him at the prison of La Force, after being insolently
treated by the _Procureur du Roi_, and coldly answered by our
ambassador; and then his spirit would have sunk but for the kindness
of a young Belgian girl, to whom he had become attached, and who had
followed him from Brussels.  Of this influence he was soon deprived,
by being thrust into a cell with nine _galériens_, who robbed him of
money supplied to him by kind Deslandes, the advocate, to pay "the
right of entry."  His valet was denied access to him, and all his
letters were intercepted.  Then, surrounded by bolts and bars, the
dust and dirt of years, and among such ruffians as France can alone
produce, he remained in an agony of perplexity till, on the absurd
charge of stealing from the Hôtel de Valois three towels and a
shoebrush, the property of M. Marcel, eighteen months before, he was
arraigned at the _Palais de Justice_, where Marcel appeared in the
double capacity of prosecutor and witness; and though "all were
anxious to hear the accusation that would banish an Englishman to the
galleys," he totally failed to prove it, and once more Wallace was
set at liberty.

Boiling with rage, he hastened into the street, resolving to demand
redress from our ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, when he was seized
by an armed party, and beaten by them so severely that he would have
been killed but for the intervention of an Irish soldier in the
French service.  He was then dragged back to La Force, into which he
was thrown on a new charge--forgery!  A few days after, he was
thumbscrewed, and brought under escort, before M. Meslin, the _Juge
d'Instruction_, for examination; he was denied the use of an
interpreter, and no one was suffered to be present but the
_greffier_, an intimate friend of Marcel.

He was told that his name was Philip, not William; that he was a
Russian, not a Scotsman, and the _Juge_ alluded to many mysterious
events to which William was a total stranger.  He was declared
incorrigible.  "_Gendarmes, remenez-le à La Force!_" was the order,
and he was marched back to prison.  Eventually he was ordered to be
released, when his advocate, the Chevalier Duplessis, discovered
through Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador, that he had been
arrested in mistake for another person who had forged a draft upon
His Excellency.  On Wallace appealing to M. Meslin for some
satisfaction for all he had undergone, that official only laughed,
and ordered him again to La Force, saying there was a new and more
serious charge against him!  This was an accusation of swindling.  He
was flung into the dreadful _Bâtiment-neuf_, where his sufferings,
like the horrible scenes he witnessed, are beyond all description.
The charge was made at the instance of the inevitable and inexorable
Marcel!  He based it on the old claim of debt.  Duplessis treated the
prosecution as a nullity; but Marcel procured a judgment against him
by default, and he was tried by the _Cour de Premiere Instance_, on
the charge of having obtained credit from Marcel through a bill drawn
on a _Lord Wallace_.  The bill drawn by Mr. Andrews on Lord
_Wallscourt_, and on which the name of Wallace did not appear "either
as drawer, or acceptor or indorser," was adduced in evidence against
him.  The charge fell to the ground.  Even the _Procureur du Roi_ was
warmly in his favour.  He was acquitted, and left the court overjoyed.

As he went forth, he was again arrested in virtue of the judgment
obtained by Marcel, through default, and thrown into Ste. Pélagie,
the King's Bench of Paris, where his place of confinement was so
horrible, that he longed to be back again in La Force.  He was now
almost heart-broken; but as the wretch who persecuted, failed to
aliment him, he was released on the 27th January, 1818; but at the
gate he was again arrested by order of the Comte d'Angles, the
Prefect of Police, in virtue of a _private letter_, and confined "_au
secret!_"  No human being could have access to him now, and all
intercourse with the outer world was denied.  His situation was now
harrowing in the extreme.  "I felt," he says, "all the difference
between the misery that has hope to dwell upon, and that which has
none."  Without a pretext, his captivity would be without an end, it
seemed.

But, on the 28th January, 1818, the _concierge_ abruptly announced an
order to set him free; and added that M. Marcel was without with a
party of gendarmes.  He begged permission to remain till sunset; but
the agent of the Secret Police, finding that he did not come forth,
entered and dragged him out; and along the quays and bridges he was
torn by twelve armed men, followed by a vast unpitying multitude,
with a handkerchief thrust into his mouth, and then retaken to Ste.
Pélagie, on three charges of murder--for assassinating a British
General at Valenciennes, and two bankers in Paris!

On these outrageous charges he pined in prison for eighteen months
longer, till consumption began to waste him, and all spirit and all
desire for life were gone; for though no attempt was made to
substantiate them, the _Cour de Premiere Instance_ had reconfirmed to
Marcel the power of detaining him as a debtor for life in Ste.
Pélagie.  Fortunately, about this time he was discovered by an old
English friend, who, by ample bribery, prevailed upon that remarkable
scoundrel (who thought his victim was dying) to sign a document,
relinquishing all claim, if Wallace would abandon all right of
counter prosecution.  He also added an invitation to take up a
residence in _his house_!

On the 6th October, wasted, worn, penniless, and every way destitute,
he quitted Ste. Pélagie, and was conveyed to the humble lodging of
his faithful valet in the Faubourg St. Marceau, when on the verge of
death.  In the solitude of his various prisons, how often must this
son of luxury, this butterfly of fashion, who, though brave in
battle, was but a Bond Street lounger when at home, have felt
bitterly that the shaping of his life had gone beyond him now, ere
youth was well-nigh past; and that its illusions, hopes, and
enthusiasm had also gone for ever.

Nursed by his old valet he gradually recovered strength, and on
receiving an affectionate letter from his father urging that the air
of his native country would completely restore him, he gladly turned
his back on Paris, and its hated police power.

But he would seem never to have got over the shock of all these
accusations, as he sank into a premature grave, thus leaving old Sir
Thomas Wallace the last of his line, and without an heir to his
baronetcy, which was created in 1669.




A WEIRD STORY OF BRUGES.

Six months ago, when in Bruges, that "quaint old town of art and
song," as Longfellow styles it--a town all unchanged since the
ancient days of Flanders--I became cognisant of the following events,
by happening to be present at the examination of the chief actor in
them, before one of the two burgomasters who govern the city.

With a Belgian friend, I had been lounging in a window of the
club-house that overlooks the spacious square known as the Grande
Place (above which towers the wonderful belfry, from whence one may
look down on the frontiers of Holland as on a map, and from whence,
it is said, the mouth of the Thames may be seen on a clear day), when
a police escort, with swords drawn, conducted a prisoner past,
towards the Palais de Justice.  He was a young man of the better
class, apparently, very pale, very sad, and depressed in aspect, very
handsome in face, graceful in bearing, and most unlike a criminal.
His hands, however, were manacled, and a crowd of workmen and
children clattered noisily around him in their wooden sabots.

As the rumour spread that a terrible assassination had just been
committed, we followed the escort to the magnificent old hall in that
edifice, which was whilom the Palais du Franc de Bruges, and which
contains a chimney-piece occupying one entire side of it, with
gigantic statues carved in wood, and marble bas-reliefs representing
chastely the story of Susannah and the Elders, as the reader may find
in his "John Murray."

From that which transpired at the examination of the prisoner, and
what I read in a few subsequent numbers of the little local paper
named _La Patrie_, I gleaned the substance of the following story,
which, in some of its features, reminds one of the case of Oriental
metempsychosis mentioned in the _Spectator_--the passing of the soul
from body to body, including the influences of mesmeric, crystalline,
and magnetic forces, though I do not pretend to know anything of the
learned and mysterious jargon concerning those matters; but much of
which I heard that day referred to in the Palais de Justice.

A mile or so on the level highway beyond the beautiful round towers
of the loopholed and embattled Porte St. Croix, one of the still
remaining barriers of the old fortifications, there stands at a
little distance from the road, a quaint old Flemish dwelling-house,
built of red brick, and almost hidden among chestnut and apple-trees.
If we are to believe the "Chronyke Van Vlanderen," it was once a
shooting-box of Charles the Bold, and near it Mary of Burgundy
received the fall from her horse which proved so fatal.  Be all this
as it may, it is a house with many pointed gables, strange outshots
and beams of quaintly-carved oak; and therein, with his nephew,
Hendrik, and an old housekeeper, resided Dr. Van Gansendonck, called
Doctor, not from his profession, but for his learning, as he enjoyed
the reputation of understanding all languages, living and dead, and
being master of every science, human and divine; and was regarded by
the simple and religious Brugois, as altogether a miracle of a man in
some respects.

Some there were who deemed him a dangerous dupe to his own powers,
and these were the clergy especially who, with something of
repugnance, drew their black cloaks closer about them when "the
doctor" passed them, on the highway or in the narrow unpaved streets
as it was notorious that he never crossed the threshold of a church,
or was known to lift his hat either to them or to the numerous
Madonnas that decorate every street corner, and many a doorway too,
in Bruges.

The Herr Doctor, now past his sixtieth year, had, in some respects,
decidedly a bad reputation, and a hundred and fifty years ago or so,
might have ended his studies amid a blaze of tar-barrels in the
Grande Place as a wizard, but in this our age of steam and telegraphy
he was viewed as simply a learned eccentric, and as a dabbler in
mesmerism, clairvoyance, the odic light, and second sight; but these
occult mysteries, which the church condemns, he would seem to have
carried to a length that seems strangely out of place in these days
of hard facts and practical common-sense.

A forehead high and bald, a head tonsured round by a fringe of
silvery hair, eyes keen and quick as those of a rattlesnake--eyes
that seemed to glare through his gold-rimmed glasses, made the face
of Herr Van Gansendonck so remarkable, that those who saw it never
failed to be impressed by its strange expression of intellectual
power, tinged with somewhat of insanity; but his visitors were few.
His time was chiefly spent in his library; and as he was rich, being
proprietor of more than one of those gigantic mills, the sails of
which overshadow the grassy ramparts, he could afford to please
himself by living as he chose, and seclusion was his choice.  He
seemed to have but one favourite only--Hendrik--a brother's orphan
son, whom he had adopted, educated, and who was to be his heir.

Hendrik was now in his twentieth year, decidedly handsome, but with
dreamy blue eyes that had an expression in them one could not easily
forget; yet the lad's temperament was poetic and enthusiastic, and
now he had but recently returned to Bruges, after undergoing a course
of study, and attending those lectures which are given on science,
literature, and art at the library of the Museum in Brussels.

The grim old student hailed the return of the younger one with a
pleasure that he did not conceal, and there was at least one more in
Bruges that did so with joy.

This was Lenora, the daughter of Madame Van Eyck, a widow lady,
residing in one of those quaint old houses at the Quai Espagnol.  To
her he had been betrothed, and the monetary plans of his uncle alone
were awaited for their marriage, young though Hendrik was.

Bruges, according to an old monkish rhyme, has ever been celebrated
for its pretty girls, but Lenora Van Eyck, a bright blonde of
eighteen, was more than pretty--she was charming, with that wonderful
bloom of complexion which is so truly Belgian; light, laughing, hazel
eyes that were full of merriment, and all her ways and modes of
expression piquant and attractive.

She had been one of the six young ladies who, clothed and veiled in
white, were selected on the last Corpus Christi day to bear the gilt
Madonna through the streets before the bishop.  Lenora had been with
her family at Blankenburg--the little Brighton of the Brugois--for
several weeks after the return of Hendrik to the house of his uncle;
and when again they met at their favourite trysting place, the long
walk of stately poplars by the canal near the Porte St. Croix, she
soon became conscious of a strange and painful change in the bearing,
the manner, and the eyes of her lover.  Languor seemed to pervade
every action; his face had become pale, his eyes more dreamy than
ever, and he was unusually taciturn and abstracted.

Why was this?  Lenora asked of herself, while she watched him with
that keenness of eye and anxiety of heart that are born of love and
tenderness, for there was a singular mystery now about the once happy
Hendrik that filled her with grave perplexity.  Had his love for her
changed?  His eyes, though sad, were loving in expression as ever,
when they met hers--yet even his smile was sad--so very sad!

Again and again, in her most winning way, she would implore Hendrik
to reveal to her any secret that weighed upon his mind, but in vain.
Why was it, she asked, that he, whom she had left so lively in
bearing and happy in spirit, had now become so moody? and why was it
that there were times when he seemed to feel himself compelled, as it
were, to leave her suddenly and in haste, without a word of
explanation, apology, or excuse?  She pleaded without avail; Hendrik
could but avert his pallid face, or cover his eyes with his hand, as
if to shut out some painful vision or crush some worrying thought.

He dared not tell her--lest she should deem him mad, and so shrink
from him--that his uncle, the Herr Van Gansendonck, had,
mesmerically, acquired a mysterious and terrible influence over him,
and that by the mere power of will he could summon him to his
presence at all times, wherever he might be, or with whomsoever he
was engaged--even with herself; and that he, Hendrik, found himself
totally powerless and incapable of effecting his emancipation from
the bodily and mental thraldom under which he writhed!

He dared not tell her all this, or, further, that Herr Van
Gansendonck had the power to set him asleep on a chair in his
library, and then to cause his spirit (for this was alleged in the
Palais de Justice) to disengage itself from the body, and go on
distant missions through the air for thousands of miles in the course
of a few minutes, or that when thus put to sleep, the Herr, by
exciting his organ of ideality, could obtain such information as he
wished on strange and abstruse subjects.

That he had become a helpless and nerve-shattered mesmeric medium, he
thought at times he might confide to her; but even in this his
courage failed him, for other and more terrifying convictions were
creeping upon him; thus he shrank from telling the girl who loved him
so dearly, that when his spiritual essence was despatched to distant
lands, the Herr, by the same power, permitted other spirits to enter
his body and use its members for purposes of their own.  The horror
of this idea, it was alleged, made the youth's life insupportable,
for on awaking from these strange and involuntary trances, he would
at times find on his person cuts and bruises he was all unconscious
of receiving; sometimes his purse would be gone, or in its place
might be found strange money and letters to and from individuals of
whose existence he knew nothing.

All this was done by one whose power he could neither repel nor defy;
and now he had the natural dread that if his body was made to obey
the behests of these spiritual intruders, he might be led into some
horrible predicament--the committal of a dreadful crime.  Another
might even come in his place and meet Lenora!

One evening as they sat on the grassy rampart that overlooked the
great canal, the girl strove to rouse or soothe him by singing with
great sweetness one of Jan Van Beer's Flemish songs; but the music of
her voice and the poetry of the author of "Zeik Jongeling" fell on
Hendrik's ear in vain.  When she paused,

"I dreamt of you last night, darling Lenora," said the young man,
looking at her with inexpressible tenderness; "but such dreams are so
tantalising, even more so than the dreams one has by day."

"All your life seems one hazy dream now, Hendrik," said Lenora
somewhat petulantly.

"Forgive me, dearest, you know not what you talk of.  My mind, I
grant you, is a chaos, full of strange terrors, perplexity, and
confusion; and times there are when I fear for my reason," he added
wildly, passing a hand over his forehead, and looking aside.

"Dear Hendrik, do not speak thus, I implore you."

"I must--in whom can I confide, if not in you?  And yet I dare not--I
dare not!"

After a pause he spoke again, but with his eyes fixed, not on her,
but on the still, deep water of the shining canal.

"This much I will tell you, Lenora.  Yesterday, my uncle sent me on
some business of his to the house of an advocate, Père Baas, near the
Béguinage, a house in which I had never been before, and I was shown
into a room to wait.  On looking round, to my astonishment, every
article in it--and the room itself--the ceiling, the stove, the
windows, and the paintings--especially one by Hans Hemling--were all
familiar to me, and I seemed to recognise every object there.  'I was
never here before,' thought I; 'and yet I must have been--but when?
If so, there is a little window behind this picture, which opens to
the garden of the Béguinage.'  I turned the picture, and lo! there
was the little window in question; I saw through it the garden with
all its cherry-trees and two or three béguines flitting about.  Oh,
Lenora, there is indeed some power beyond matter, proving that the
soul is independent of the body!"

"It must have been a dream."

"It was no dream," replied Hendrik gloomily.

"But how do you account for the strange fancy?"

"My disembodied spirit must have been there, sent on some accursed
errand by my uncle!"

"But you would die, Hendrik."

"Not if another tenant were at hand," replied Hendrik, gnashing his
teeth.

Then the girl wept to hear him, as she naturally deemed it, raving
thus.

"Such things cannot be," said she, sobbing.

"My uncle says they may; and the theory is as old as the days of
Pythagoras."

"I know nothing of Herr Pythagoras; but this I know, that the Herr
Van Ganseudonck is a strange and bad man.  Pardon me, dear Hendrik;
but he never enters a church door, nor has he been to mass or
confession for years.  Leave him, and Bruges too, rather than become
the victim of such dreadful delusions."

"To do either is to leave and to lose you!  I am his heir; and we
have but to wait his pleasure--or, it may be, his death, to be so
happy," replied Hendrik, sadly: and then they relapsed into silence.
With Lenora it was silence induced by sorrow and alarm, while her
lover seemed to let his thoughts slip away into dreamland.  The
sultry summer evening breeze rustled the leaves near them; the
honey-bees buzzed and hummed among the wild flowers and buttercups
that grew on the old rampart; and far away could be heard the
ceaseless chirping of the crickets.

Lenora's head rested on Hendrik's shoulder, and he was lost in
thought, though mechanically toying with her hair, which shone like
ripples of gold in the light of the setting sun.

He was aware that Lenora had begun to speak to him again; her voice
seemed to mingle with the drowsy hum of the bees and the evening
chimes or carillons in the distant spires; but he heard as if he
heard her not; till suddenly a thrill seemed to pass over him, as a
secret and intuitive sense or knowledge that his terrible relation
required his immediate presence, made him start from the grassy bank,
snatch a hasty kiss, and hurry away by the arch of the Porte St.
Croix, leaving Lenora mortified, sorrowful, and utterly bewildered by
the abruptness of his departure.

"Oh, how changed he is!" thought she, as she proceeded slowly in the
other direction towards her home on the Quai Espagnol.

On two or three occasions the unhappy Hendrik had, what he conceived
to be, undoubted proof of his body having been, in the intervals of
mesmeric trances, tenanted by another spirit than his own; and this
strange and wild conviction caused such intense horror and loathing
of his uncle that the expressions to which he gave utterance to more
than one of his friends--more than all to Lenora--were recalled, most
fatally for himself, at a future time.

One day, in the Rue des Augustines, he was accosted by brother
Eusebius, a Capuchin.

"Friend Hendrik," said he, severely and gravely, "was it becoming in
you to be roystering as you were yesterday at the low estaminet in
the market-place, and with such companions--fellows in blouses and
sabots?"

"Impossible, Brother Eusebius; I was not there," faltered Hendrik, as
the usual fear crept over him.

"I myself saw you.  And, moreover, you looked at me."

"When--at what hour?"

"Six in the evening."

"Six!"

Hendrik felt himself grow pale.  He remembered that at that identical
time he was under the hands of his uncle.  He groaned in sore and
dire perplexity, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, while
the Capuchin continued to address him in tones of rebuke and earnest
remonstrance.

"Have I a double-ganger, or am I becoming crazed?" urged Hendrik.
"Believe me, Brother Eusebius, I was not there!" he added, piteously
and earnestly.

"At the hour of six?" persisted the unbelieving Capuchin.

"I swear to you that at the hour of six I was, and had been for some
time, in one of those unaccountable trances in which my uncle has the
power to cast me--one of those hours of bodily torpor that have come
upon me," he added, while the perspiration poured in bead-drops from
his pallid brow.  "I awoke about eight.  I heard the chimes ringing
in the church of St. Giles, and near me sat my uncle, pen in hand, as
if in the act of questioning me and committing to paper that which I
had been revealing in my magnetic slumber.  Oh! am I the victim of
necromancy?"

"Scarcely, in this age of the world," replied the Capuchin, but now
with more of pity than rebuke in his manner.

"I swear to you by the Holy Blood that I speak the truth!" continued
Hendrik, referring to the famous relique of the Brugois in the little
chapel near the Hôtel de Ville.  "I last remember hearing the voice
of my uncle as I sank into sleep; my arms fell powerless by my side;
my eyes closed; waves of magnetic fluid or air seemed to flow over
me; and my spirit passed away, at his behest, to other lands."

"What madness--what raving is this, Hendrik?" said the sandalled
friar, with sadness and severity.  "Do you mean to tell me that your
uncle is another Cagliostro--a veritable Balsamo?"

"I fear it--I fear it," said Hendrik, with clasped hands.

"Learn first to fear the potations of the estaminet," replied the
Capuchin, as he turned coldly and bluntly away, believing that the
young man was intoxicated.

On another occasion Hendrik failed to keep an appointment with Lenora
Van Eyck, who waited for him anxiously till long past the time named,
and then proceeded pensively homeward.  As she approached the steep
and antique bridge that leads from the Rue des Augustines to the Quai
Espagnol she saw Hendrik cross it, and look at her calmly and
deliberately the while, but without a glance or smile of recognition.
Her heart, which at first had beat happily, now became perplexed as
he turned abruptly up the opposite bank of the canal, and dropped
into a little skiff, which he proceeded to unmoor, and, in doing so,
cut his right hand severely.

"Hendrik!  Hendrik!" she called aloud; but he heard her not, and,
shipping a pair of sculls, pulled swiftly out of sight.

When next they met, and she upbraided him with this strange conduct,
the same emotion of fear that had come over him when confronted by
the Capuchin again filled his heart, and he called Heaven to witness
that it was not he whom she had seen.

"But here, Hendrik, love, is the wound on your hand," urged the
astonished girl.

"I know not how I received it," he moaned, "though aware that a wound
is there."

"This passes all comprehension!" said Lenora mournfully.  "Oh!
Hendrik, I thought a love like ours would never die; yet doubt and
terror are destroying it now."

Something like a sob came into Hendrik's throat, and through his
clenched teeth he muttered hoarsely and fiercely--

"This kind of life--a double life, it would seem--cannot last for
ever.  Nothing does last for ever, and the end will come anon."  And
as he spoke he fixed his moist and now hollow eyes as if on some
distant horizon which he alone could see.

"Hendrik!--dearest Hendrik!" urged the girl soothingly, as she
caressed his face between her soft and pretty hands, for her heart
was full of alarm as well as love; it was a conviction so dreadful,
the fear that he was perhaps becoming insane.

"Can over-study at Brussels have made the poor boy ill," thought
Lenora, in the solitude of her chamber that night.  "Oh! must I give
him up after all--after all?  Dare I go through life as the wife of
one so strange, so wayward, and so moody?  No; better be a béguine
like Aunt Truey.  I am so happy at home.  Why do girls marry? and for
what do I want to marry?"  And as she pondered thus, she sat looking
at her white hands, and changing Hendrik's betrothal ring--an opal
set with diamonds--from one finger to another, till it slipped from
her and rolled away on the varnished floor, whence she snatched it up
with a little cry of alarm, for the event seemed ominous of evil.
"Oh, I must indeed consult Brother Eusebius about this matter," was
her concluding thought, more especially as the Capuchin had told her
that 'opals were unlucky.'

And when he dropped in for his post-prandial cup of coffee with her
mother that evening, Lenora did take him into her confidence; but the
friar only imbibed pinch after pinch of snuff from the huge wooden
box which he carried in the sleeve pocket of his brown frock; hinted
of what he had seen at the estaminet, and shook his shaven head,
adding that "Hendrik Van Gansendonck came of a bad stock, and should
be avoided."  So the Capuchin was consulted no more on the subject.

Hendrik now broke many appointments made with Lenora.  He seemed to
be no longer the master of his own actions, and he was so frequently
reproached by her for his inattention and unkindness, that he feared
to make a promise to her at all, and two entire days passed without
their meeting.

Could he tell her that which he now confidently believed to be the
case; that Herr Van Gansendonck had cast him into a mesmeric trance,
leaving him in that condition, and intending to come back in an hour
or so; but, having been summoned away on business, had left him, to
all appearance spell-bound and helpless, to the terror of the old
housekeeper at the château?

On the third day he met her coming from vespers in the church of the
Béguinage, where she had been to visit her Aunt Truey.

Lenora was very pale; her eyes were full of tears, and, as Hendrik
could perceive, they were sparkling with resentment.  She was in the
very summer of her beauty--that age when all girls seem pretty.
Hendrik gazed upon her carelessly, and would have kissed her, but the
walk was a public one, and the _blanchisseurs_ were busy amid the
Minnewater.  Lenora was so prettily dressed, too: and most suitably
did her silver-grey costume, trimmed with rose-coloured ribbon,
become her blonde beauty, her purity of complexion, and fair shining
tresses.  Fresh, young, and graceful, there was a delicacy and
softness in all her air and person, yet anger was apparent in her
eyes; and those of Lenora were what a writer has described, as
"wonderful golden eyes--eyes which painters dare not imitate, because
the colour is so subtle, and the light in them so living--eyes that
are called hazel, but are not hazel."

"I now know the reason of your avoiding me in the Rue des Augustines,
and also where you were going on that evening in the skiff," said she.

"Lenora, have I not already said----"

"Hendrik," interrupted the girl, with severity, "I have for some time
feared that you were crazed; now I find that you are wicked, and that
Brother Eusebius was right after all."

"Wicked--my darling!"

"Do not speak to me thus; I have good reason to be most indignant
with you," she continued, stamping her little foot on the ground.

"For what, dearest?" asked Hendrik, whose heart was sinking with
vague apprehension as usual.

"Cease to twist your moustache, and answer me this: was it right or
proper of you to be drinking with soldiers at the Rampart de Caserne
last evening?--and worse still, to be toying with and caressing
little Mademoiselle Dentelle, the lace-maker, who lives there--toying
with her actually in the open street, while mamma and I passed you?"
added Lenora, whose eyes were flashing through their tears, though
her cheek was pale, as Hendrik's now became.

He was voiceless, and could make neither response nor reply, for he
knew that at the time to which he referred he had been, as he simply
phrased it, "put to sleep in his kinsman's study," and that on
awaking he had found himself not there, but lying on the grassy bank
near the Rampart de Caserne, and that, instead of his hat, he found
on his head the kepi of a soldier of the 2nd Regiment, then quartered
in Bruges, and a pipe, of which he knew nothing, dangling from a
button of his coat!  The stars were shining, and the dew was on the
grass, but how long he had been there, or how he came to be there,
were alike mysteries to him.

He felt bitterly the utter hopelessness of urging more to Lenora; yet
he attempted to falter out some explanation.

"This is juggling, Hendrik," replied the girl passionately; "another
face--another love has come between us, otherwise you would not dare
to treat me thus?"

"Your suspicion is false, dearest Lenora," said he.  "Oh, pardon me,
sweet one! but I feel as if I were in a dream--as if I were some one
else, and not myself!"

"Again, dreams!" said Lenora scornfully, as she drew his betrothal
ring from her finger, dashed it at his feet, and left him.  Night
after night had Lenora lain awake, brooding over the change that had
come upon Hendrik, weeping the while, with wide-open eyes in the
darkness, and now she had come to the firm resolution to dismiss him
for ever; but when she left him, silent, stunned, and confounded by
the Minnewater, her heart yearned for him again, and she repented her
severity, lest his mind might be, as she too justly feared, affected.

And now he, while gazing wistfully after her retiring figure, thought
with loathing and horror of the keen visage, the hawk-like nose, the
cold, yet clear glittering eyes and gold spectacles of that odious
relative to whom he was unhappily indebted even for food and raiment,
for his past education, and all his future prospects in life--Lenora
included; but who seemed to possess over him a power so
unaccountable, so terrible and diabolical!  Much of this he said to
one or two friends whom he met on his way homeward, and the
expressions were also remembered against him in the time that was to
come.

Soon after he found himself secretly and imperatively summoned to the
presence of the Herr, who--as he afterwards told the Burgomaster in
the Palais de Justice--"bade him go sleep," and sent his spirit on
some mysterious errand, hundreds of miles away.  What happened in the
library of that lonely little château outside the Porte St. Croix,
while his spiritual essence was thus absent, the unhappy Hendrik
never could know; but when it re-entered his body--or when he
awoke--he was horrified to find his learned uncle lying dead on the
floor amid a pool of blood, his face and throat gashed by dreadful
wounds, which had evidently been inflicted by a blood-spotted knife
which Hendrik found clutched in his own right hand!  Blood gouts were
over all his clothes, the pockets of which were found to be stuffed
with money, jewels, end other valuables taken from a bureau and desk,
which had been burst open and ransacked.

The soul of Hendrik died within him!  Even if he had committed this
crime in frenzy--and he felt certain that he did not do so--why
should he have sought to rob his uncle?  He then thought of Lenora,
and of the sorrow and shame that would come upon her now; he reeled
and fell senseless on the floor.  The cries of the old housekeeper
speedily brought aid; Hendrik was arrested, charged with
assassination and robbery, and was at once consigned, as already
described, to the Palais de Justice, where all the weird story came
to light.  The hatred and horror he had expressed of his dead uncle
were now remembered fatally by all who had heard them; but the knife
he had in his hand was, singularly enough, found to be the property
of a soldier of the 2nd Belgian Infantry.

To the last Hendrik asserted his innocence, when tried and convicted
for that which was, not unnaturally, deemed a most cruel and
ungrateful crime; and his advocate, Père Baas, who, singularly
enough, was also a dabbler in mesmerism, laboured hard in his cause,
but in vain.  When brought to the scaffold in the Grande Place,
Hendrik, attended by Brother Eusebius, had all the bearing of a
martyr, as he fully believed that the crime committed, if by his
hand, was at least by the dictate of another spirit.

Lenora visited him in the dreary cell the night before he died, and,
according to "La Patrie," as they parted, Hendrik said:

"Death, even on the scaffold, has no terror for me now.  I know where
my spirit will go, and that none on earth can recall it.  You will
come to me, beloved Lenora," he added, pointing upwards; "you will
come to me there in heaven, where there can be no parting, no death,
and no sorrow."

And, with one long embrace, they parted for ever.

The editor of "La Patrie," writing of these things next day, said,
not without truth, "Hendrik Van Gansendonck was, too probably,
crazed; and if so, should not have been executed."




AGNES SOREL, "THE LADY OF BEAUTY."

This celebrated favourite of Charles VII. of France--one who has
inherited from her own time to ours, after a lapse of more than four
centuries, the distinctive sobriquet of "the beautiful Agnes"--was
the daughter of M. Soreau (vulgarly called Sorel, according to De
Mezerai), the Seigneur de St. Geran, a noble gentleman of Touraine,
and not the child of a humble house, _de petite basse maison_, as
George Chastelain, her personal enemy, would have us to believe in
his "Chronique des Ducs de Bourgogne."

She was born in 1409, and in 1431, when in her two-and-twentieth
year, received the appointment of attendant or lady of honour to
Isabella, queen of Naples and Sicily, from whose court and service
she passed into that of Mary, daughter of Louis II., Duke of Anjou,
afterwards queen of Charles VII., where her rank, education, and more
than these, her marvellous beauty, all conspired to win her the
perilous attention of a king who was younger than herself.  Agnes was
_not_ seventeen, as the fair authoress of the "Histoire des
Favorites," asserts she was, at this time; but had attained the more
mature age of at least twenty-eight--perhaps thirty, as Oliver de la
Marche, a contemporary, when recording some event which took place in
1444, tells us that "the king had just then elevated a poor lady, a
pretty woman, called Agnes Sorel, and placed her in such triumph and
power that her state was comparable to that of the greatest princess
of the realm."

Her features were beautiful, and expressive of extreme gentleness;
her skin has been described as being of the hue of alabaster, and her
hair was marvellously golden in its brightness.  She was then in the
full bloom and beauty of womanhood, and possessed a vivacity of
manner which "spread an air full of charm on the least of her
actions, so that the most insensible souls could not resist her"
("Histoire des Favorites").  "Heaven," says this authoress, "had not
only endowed Agnes with the charms of face; she had an air full of
grace, an admirable figure, more wit than any other woman in the
world, and the most delicate and finely turned, with a certain
greatness of soul which led her naturally to generosity; all her
inclinations were noble; she was attentive, compassionate, ardent in
friendship, discreet, sincere, and, in short, altogether fitted to
make herself beloved to distraction" (p. 102).

De Mezerai writes of her as "a very agreeable and generous lady, who,
by setting herself up as the equal of the greatest princesses, became
the envy of the court and the scandal of France."  With all her
errors, Agnes was admitted to be lavish to the poor, to be pious,
generally humble, and always patriotic and full of public spirit.
The majority of historians have written most favourably of her, and
never did the mistress of a king--especially a king who was her
junior--make so wise a use of her perilous power, which she ever
employed only for the good of others.  Pride, and an extreme love of
dress, are the chief errors alleged against her; but to her influence
over Charles VII. must be attributed all the good that ever appeared
in him, and the effort to which he was roused--that essay by which,
at last, the invading English were driven from the soil of France;
for he had been a lover of pleasure, "and of the fair sex, which
never can be a vice," adds Voltaire, "save when it leads to vicious
actions."

Charles was neither a warlike nor a high-spirited king.  The
influence of England in France after the death of its conqueror,
Henry V., was so nobly sustained by his brother, the Duke of Bedford,
that after the demise of Charles VI., his successor had been crowned
at Poictiers, Rheims being then in possession of the foe; and he was
but the monarch of a nominal kingdom, France having greatly aided the
English invaders, as she was rent by two rival factions, one led by
the Duke of Burgundy and the other by the Duke of Orleans.  Charles
VI. had been alternately the prisoner of each, and the dauphin was
the scoff of both--often a fugitive, and always in danger of
destruction.

When the latter became Charles VII., aided by an alliance with
Scotland--the usual "cat's-paw" of the French in their English
wars--and by a body of Scottish troops under the Earl of Buchan, who
was constable of France, he made some show of resistance, when all
hope seemed at an end, and to this unwonted activity he was roused by
Agnes Sorel.

He had already conceived the feeble idea of retiring into Languedoc
or Dauphiny, and contenting himself with the defence of these minor
provinces, which must, eventually, have been wrested from him.  Mary
of Anjou, a princess of great prudence and merit, vehemently opposed
this measure, which she saw would lead to a general desertion of his
cause by the French people.

"The fair Agnes Sorel," says Hume, "who lived in entire amity with
the queen, seconded all her remonstrances, and threatened that if he
(Charles) thus pusillanimously threw away the sceptre of France, she
would seek at the court of England a fortune that was correspondent
to her wishes."  Thus, the love of her on one hand, and dread of
losing her on the other, roused in the breast of Charles VII. a glow
of courage which neither just ambition, nor pure patriotism, could
kindle, and he resolved to dispute every inch of French soil with his
imperious enemies, rather than yield ingloriously to an evil fortune,
and to the loss of his crown and mistress.  And thus, in urging him
to the field, Mary of Anjou was forced to seek the assistance of that
fair rival who had supplanted her; and she seems at all times to have
borne with singular sweetness of temper--with a resignation that some
might think savoured of indifference or stupidity--the alienation of
the king's love for herself; and neither by action or word does she
seem ever to have reproached the reigning favourite.

But now a new ally came, in the person of Joan of Arc; victory
attended her banners, and in two months Charles VII. was crowned
again, a step considered necessary after the double coronation of
young Henry of England at Westminster and Paris.  The loss of the
latter city soon followed.  The maid of Orleans perished at the
stake, but her mission was accomplished: France was free, and England
was glad to sign the treaty of Arras.

After this consummation, Charles abandoned himself entirely to the
society of Agnes Sorel; "ease and prosperity," according to De
Mezerai, "plunged him into dalliance and effeminate softness."  She
was his greatest passion, states Duclos, and was the most worthy of
it; she loved Charles tenderly for himself, and had no other object
in her conduct than the glory of her somewhat soft lover and the good
of the state.  Agnes Sorel, he adds, distinguished herself by
qualities preferable to those which are usually found in her sex--a
rather obscure phrase.  But, despite what some allege of her
humility, ostentation and a love of splendour are said by others to
have been among her weaknesses; but such are pardonable enough in a
beautiful woman.

At court she appeared in all the state of a royal princess; her
apartments were more expensively decorated with hangings of silk and
taffeta, with furniture and tapestries, than those of the queen, Mary
of Anjou; she had a larger and more splendid retinue of servants than
her royal mistress, and had quite as much reverence shown her.  Her
couches, her linen, her vessels of gold and silver, her rings and
other jewelry, all surpassed in beauty and in value those of the
queen.  Even her kitchen surpassed that of the neglected wife; "for
with this woman, called Agnes, whom I have seen and known," says the
author of the "Chronique des Ducs de Bourgogne," "the king was
terribly besotted."

Her robes were more costly, and her trains were longer, than those
worn by any of the royal princesses; and it was remembered that to
show the extreme fairness of her skin and beautiful contour of her
bust, she had all her dresses more _décolletées_, or cut lower in
front, than had ever been the custom at the court of France.
Enguerand de Monstrelet, in his "Chronicles," corroborates the
statements of Chastelain concerning her love of finery.  "This fair
Agnes had been five years in the service of the queen," he writes,
"during which time she enjoyed all the pleasures of life, in wearing
rich clothes, furred robes, golden chains, and precious stones."

But what young and pretty woman, in any age of the world, has ever
been quite careless of such accessories to enhance her natural
charms?  And in being somewhat _décolletée_, Agnes might perhaps only
have followed others, for the same was said of Isabella of Bavaria,
queen of Charles VI., whose love of dress was carried to a length so
fantastic, that the doors of the palace of Vincennes had to be
altered to permit her and the ladies of her suite to pass with their
lofty horned headdresses.

In some burst of temper, Agnes has been accused of having so
arrogantly disregarded the feelings of the queen, that she was struck
on the mouth by the son of the latter, the dauphin, afterwards the
cruel, subtle, and savage Louis XI., in whose whole character there
was but one undeniably redeeming point--a love for his mother, with a
tender reverence for her memory.

Alain Chartier, secretary to Charles VII., and author of a history of
that king--a writer whom Pasquin compares to Seneca--extols the
"perfect purity" of Agnes and the unsullied love which she had for
her royal master; which sounds comical enough, when we know that she
bore him three daughters during the few years she held his heart in
undivided sway.  De Mezerai asserts that these three daughters of
Charles were by three different ladies of the court.

Agnes died in the year 1450, as many historians have affirmed, of
poison, a common suspicion in those days, and for long after.  De
Mezerai states the circumstance broadly and clearly, that when the
king was at Jumièges, fourteen miles from Rouen, where there was then
a vast and famous abbey containing no less than two thousand four
hundred monks and lay brethren, "they (_i.e._ the courtiers) poisoned
his dear Agnes de Soreau, without whom he could not live one moment."

No one was ever punished for this alleged poisoning, which scandal
hinted to have been the work of Louis the dauphin; but the mutual
ill-will they bore each other, and the old quarrel and affront, might
readily serve to fix such a stigma and suspicion on one who was so
crafty and so cruel by nature.

Her illness was violent and spasmodic, and carried her off in her
fortieth year, while she was still in the bloom of her wonderful
beauty.  In her last hours she was attended by the Sieur de la
Trimouille, the lady of the seneschal of Poitou, and M. Gouffier, an
equerry of Charles VII., to all of whom she spoke eloquently and
pathetically of the littleness of human life and human vanity.  "She
was very contrite," records Monstrelet, "and sincerely repented her
sins.  She often remembered Mary Magdalen, who had been a great
sinner, and devoutly invoked God and the Blessed Virgin Mary to her
aid."

She distributed alms and gifts to the value of sixty thousand crowns;
she begged her confessor to give her absolution for all her sins and
wickedness, conformable to an absolution which she said had been
accorded to her at Loches; and the confessor thereupon absolved her.
After receiving the last sacraments, she called for a missal, in
which she had, with her own hand, written "the little prayer of St.
Bernard," which ends, "O Mother of the Eternal Word, adopt me as thy
child and take upon thee the care of my salvation.  Do not let it be
said that I have perished, when no one ever found but grace and
salvation."

With a loud shriek she called once more "on the mercy of God and
support of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and gave up the ghost on Monday,
the 9th February, about six o'clock in the afternoon.  May God have
mercy on her soul and admit it into Paradise!" adds the old
chronicler Monstrelet, who never showed her any particular favour.

Then we are told that the fair and tender body of Agnes was interred
in the abbey church of Our Lady at Loches, which had been often
enriched by her liberality.  A black marble tomb was placed over it,
surmounted by an effigy the size of life, and of the purest white
marble.  Two kneeling angels supported the pillow on which the head
of this recumbent statue reclined, and, in allusion to her name, a
lamb was carved at its feet.

Her heart was sent to the church of St. Philibert the Abbot, at
Jumièges, and deposited near the high altar, a circumstance to which
we may attribute the attachment of her lover Charles for that place,
where he had an apartment in the abbey fitted up for his especial
use, when he chose to come thither for meditation.

In a valley of the forest of Loches, there are still traceable the
remains of a hunting lodge, or "rendez-vous de chasse," built by
Charles VII., and where he spent many a day in the society of Agnes.
Beneath it is a cave, in which lies a prodigious treasure, according
to tradition, but watched by the usual guardian of such things in
Touraine--a fiery dragon.

It is stated that Francis I., who lived about a century after her,
believed in the gentleness and patriotism of "the Lady of Beauty," as
she was named, and, finding a picture of her, among others, he wrote
the following lines under it:--

  "Gentille Agnès! plus d'honneur tu mérites,
  La cause étant de France recouvrée,
  Que ce que peut dans un cloître ouvrer
  Close nonnain, ou bien dévote hermite."


At the period of the Revolution a band of ruffians, when desecrating
the church of Loches, broke open the tomb of Agnes Sorel; rent the
coffin asunder, and scattered her bones in the streets.

"The rancour of her own sex has long ceased to persecute the memory
of Fair Rosamund, and even of the more guilty Jane Shore," says a
clever but sneering writer; "and the most harshly virtuous of the sex
in the present day are good enough to hope that both the one and the
other have found that grace which was given to Mary Magdalen and
Rahab.  Under the notion, which is the prevailing one in the present
day, that Agnes Sorel was an extremely amiable sinner, a lover of her
country and her country's glory, a set of quadrilles bearing her name
is admitted to a place on virtuous pianos; just as Nell Gwynne is at
this day introduced on the stage in decent comedies."

Charles survived her seven years, and died literally of hunger, in
his nervous dread of poison from the dauphin, and not knowing from
what hand to take his food without peril; but his days of mourning
for his lost Agnes would seem to have been few; and there is
something curiously ironical in the manner in which De Mezerai
dismisses the subject of his sorrow.

"To comfort him, Antoinette de Maignelais, Dame de Villequier, cousin
of the deceased, took her place; but she was not the sole mistress."
Others followed this Lady of Beauty in rapid succession, and the last
who was taken into the favour of the most Christian king was the
daughter of a pastry-cook!

Prior to the outrage committed at the Revolution, we have an
interesting account of the remains of Agnes Sorel, as described in a
French work, entitled "Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France," by
M. Saint-Edme.

He tells us that in 1777, Louis XVI., in compliance with reiterated
requests of the canons of Loches, consented to the removal of the
tomb of Agnes Sorel from the choir to the nave of the church, with
the express injunction that no part of the body which it contained
should be disturbed; but curiosity is often destructive of the
feelings of humanity.

Of the remains found in the tomb, nothing was in a state of
preservation but the head, and alas! for human beauty--of that little
more than the bones.  On attempting to raise it, the hair remained in
the hand, together with the two maxillary bones, which, as well as
the lower jaw, were furnished with all the teeth.

The hair _crêpé_, from four or five inches in height, and from nine
to ten inches in width, formed the upper part of the head-dress of
Agnes, while on each side were two flowing curls.  The hair at the
back of the head, in tresses of from eighteen to twenty inches in
length, was gathered up and fastened under the _crêpé_.  The hair was
of a light brown or ash colour (_brun clair, ou cendré_).  At this
point of exhumation only one tress of Agnes's hair was purloined; but
under the _régime_ of the convention the remainder of the hair was
stolen, the jaws were broken up for the extraction of her beautiful
teeth, and her remains were scattered as we have described.




THE VEILED PORTRAIT.

It has been asserted that one cannot hold intercourse with that which
is generally called the Unseen World, or behold anything
supernatural, and live; but these ideas, from my own experience, I am
inclined to doubt.

In the year subsequent to the great Bengal mutiny, I found myself at
home on sick leave.  My health had been injured by service in India,
and by our sufferings consequent on the revolt; while my nervous
system had been so seriously shaken by a grape-shot wound received at
Lucknow, that it was completely changed, and I became cognisant of
many things so utterly new to me, and so bewildering, that until I
read Baron Reichenbach's work on magnetism and crystalism, I feared
that I was becoming eccentric.  I was sensible of the power of a
magnet over me, though it might be three rooms distant, and twice, in
darkness which seemed perfect to others, my room became filled with
light; but the Baron holds that darkness is full of light, and that
to increase the sensitiveness of the visual organs is to render that
rare and dissipated light susceptible, with all that it may contain.

I was now compelled to acknowledge the existence of that new power in
nature which the Baron calls the Odic Light, and of many other
phenomena that are described in "Der Geist in der Natur," of
Christian Oersted--the understanding that pervades all things.

But to my story.

Nearly a year had elapsed since the mutiny.  The massacres at Delhi,
Lucknow, Cawnpore, and elsewhere had been fearfully avenged by that
army of retribution which marched from Umballah, and I found myself
in London, enfeebled, enervated, and, as the saying is, "weak as a
child."  The bustle of the great capital stunned and bewildered me;
thus I gladly accepted a hearty invitation which I received from
Sidney Warren, one of "ours," but latterly of the Staff Corps, to
spend a few weeks--months if I chose--at his place in Herts; a fine
old house of the Tudor times, approached from the London road by an
avenue that was a grand triumphal arch of nature's own creation, with
lofty interlacing boughs and hanging foliage.

Who, thought I, that was lord of such a place could dream of broiling
in India--of sweltering in the whitewashed barrack at Dumdum, or the
thatched cantonments of Delhi or Meerut!

My friend came hurrying forth to meet me.

"How goes it, old fellow?  Welcome to my new quarters," he exclaimed.

"Well, Sidney, old man, how are you?"

Then we grasped each other's hands as only brother soldiers do.

I found Warren, whom I had not seen since the commencement of the
revolt, nearly as much changed and shattered in constitution as
myself; but I knew that he had lost those whom he loved most in the
world amid the massacre at Meerut.  He received me, however, with all
the warmth of an old comrade, for we had a thousand topics in common
to con over; while the regiment, which neither of us might see
again--he certainly not, as he had sold out--would prove an endless
source of conversation.

Sidney Warren was in his fortieth year, but looked considerably
older.  His once dark hair and coal-black moustache were quite
grizzled now.  The expression of his face was one of intense sadness,
as if some secret grief consumed him; while there was a weird and
far-seeing expression that led me to fear he was not fated to be long
in this world.  Yet he had gone through the storm of the Indian war
without receiving even a scratch!  Why was this?

Before I had spent two days with Sidney, he had shown me all the
objects of interest around the Warren and in it--the portrait
gallery, with its courtiers in high ruffs, and dames in the long
stomachers of one period and _décolletée_ dresses of another; his
collection of Indian antiquities, amassed at the plundering of Delhi;
and those which were more interesting to me, ponderous suits of mail
which had been hacked and battered in the wars of the Roses, and a
torn pennon unfurled by Warren's troop of horse, "for God and the
King," at Naseby.

But there was one object which he would neither show nor permit me to
look upon, and which seemed to make him shiver or shudder whenever it
caught his eye, and this was a picture of some kind in the library--a
room he very rarely entered.  It was the size of a life-portrait, but
covered closely by a green-baize hanging.  Good taste compelled me to
desist from talking to him on the subject, but I resolved to gratify
my curiosity on the first convenient occasion; so one day when he was
absent at the stable court, I drew back the hanging of this
mysterious picture.

It proved to be the full-length portrait of a very beautiful girl--a
proud and stately one, too--bordering on blooming womanhood.  Her
features were clearly cut and classic; she had an olive-coloured
complexion, that seemed to tell of another land than England, yet the
type of her rare beauty was purely English.  Her forehead was broad
and low; her dark eyes, that seemed to haunt and follow me, were
deeply set, with black brows well defined; her chin was rather
massive, as if indicating resolution of character, yet the soft, ripe
lips were full of sweetness; while the gorgeous coils of her dark
hair were crisp and wavy.  Her attire was a green riding-habit, the
skirt of which was gathered in her left hand, while the right grasped
the bridle of her horse.

It was not a portrait of his wife, whom I remember to have been a
fair-haired little woman; so who was this mysterious lady?  I cannot
describe the emotion this portrait excited within me; but I started
and let fall the curtain, with a distinct sensation of some one, or
something I could not see, being close beside me; so I hurried from
the shady library into the sunshine.  Lovely though the face--I can
see it yet in all its details--it haunted me with an unpleasant
pertinacity, impossible either to analyse or portray.  But I was a
creature of fancies then.

"Herein," thought I; "lurks some mystery, which may never be cleared
up to me."  But in this surmise I was wrong, for one night--the night
of Sunday, the 10th May, _the first anniversary_ of the outbreak at
Meerut, after we had discussed an excellent dinner, with a bottle or
two of Moselle, and betaken us to iced brandy _pawnee_ (for so we
still loved to call it), and to the "soothing weed," on the sofas of
the smoking-room, Warren became suddenly seized by one of those
confidential fits which many men unaccountably have at such times,
and, while he unsparingly and bitterly reproached himself for the
part he had acted in it, I drew from him, little by little, the
secret story of his life.

Some ten years before those days of which I write, when in the
Guards, and deeply dipped in debt by extravagance, he had, unknown to
his family, married secretly a beautiful girl who was penniless, at
the very time his friends were seeking to retrieve his fortune by a
wealthy alliance.  An exchange into the Line--"the sliding
scale"--became necessary, thus he was gazetted to our regiment in
India, at a period when his young wife was in extremely delicate
health; so much so that the idea of her voyaging round the
Cape--there were no P. and O. Liners then--was not to be thought of,
as it was expressly forbidden by the medical men; so they were to be
separated for a time; and that time of parting, so dreaded by
Constance, arrived inexorably.

The last fatal evening came--the last Sidney was to spend with her.
His strapped overlands and bullock-trunks, his sword and cap, both
cased, were already in the entrance hall; the morrow's morning would
see him off by the train for Southampton, and his place would be
vacant; and she should see his fond hazel eyes no more.

"Tears again!" said he, almost impatiently, while tenderly caressing
the dark and glossy hair of his girl-wife; "why on earth are you so
sad, Conny, about this temporary separation?"

"Would that I could be certain it is only such!" she exclaimed.
"Sad; oh, can you ask me, Sidney, darling?  The presentiment of a
great sorrow to come is hanging over me."

"A presentiment, Constance!  Do not indulge in this folly."

"If I did not love you dearly, Sidney, would such a painful emotion
rack my heart?"

"It is the merest superstition, darling, and you will get over it
when I am fairly away."

Her tender eyes regarded him wistfully for a moment, and then her
tears fell faster at the contemplation of the coming loneliness.

After a pause, she asked:

"Are there many passengers going out with you?"

"A few--in the cuddy," he replied carelessly.

"Do you know any of them?"

"Yes; one or two fellows on the staff."

"And the ladies?" she asked, after another pause.

"I don't know, Conny dear; what do they matter to you or me?"

"I heard incidentally that--that Miss Dashwood was going out in your
vessel."

"Indeed; I believe she will."

Constance shivered, for with the name of this finished flirt that of
her husband had been more than once linked, and his change of colour
was unseen by her as he turned to manipulate a cigar.  So for four,
perhaps six months, these two would be together upon the sea.

Constance knew too well the irritable nature of her husband's temper
to say more on the subject of her secret thoughts; and deeply loth
was she that such ideas should embitter the few brief hours they were
to be together now; so a silence ensued, which, after a time, she
broke, while taking between her slender fingers a hand of Sidney, who
was leaning half moodily, half listlessly against the mantelpiece,
twisting his moustache with a somewhat mingled expression of face.

"Sidney, darling," said she entreatingly; "do forgive me if I am dull
and sad--so _triste_--this evening."

"I do forgive you, little one."

"You know, Sidney, that I would die for you!"

"Yes; but don't, Conny--for I hate scenes," said he, playfully
kissing her sweetly sad, upturned face; and the poor girl was forced
to be contented with this matter-of-fact kind of tenderness.

So the dreaded morrow came with its sad moment of parting.

To muffle the sound of the departing wheels she buried her head, with
all its wealth of dark, dishevelled hair, among the pillows of her
bed, and some weeks--weeks of the most utter loneliness, elapsed, ere
she left it, with the keen and ardent desire to recover health and
strength, to the end that she might follow her husband over the world
of waters and rejoin him; but the strength and health, so necessary
for the journey, were long of coming back to her.

She had hoped he would write her before sailing from Southampton--a
single line would have satisfied the hungry cravings of her heart;
but, as he did not do so, she supposed there was not time; yet the
transport lay three days in the docks after the troops were on board.
He would write by some passing ship, he had said, and one letter,
dated from Ascension, reached her; but its cold and careless tone
struck a mortal chill to the sensitive heart of Constance, and one or
two terms of endearment it contained were manifestly forced and
ill-expressed.

"He writes me thus," she muttered, with her hand pressed upon her
heaving bosom; "thus--and with that woman, perhaps, by his side!"

She consulted the map, and saw how far, far away on the lonely ocean
was that island speck.  Months had elapsed since he had been there;
so she knew that he must be in India now, and she had the regular
mails to look to with confidence--a confidence, alas! that soon faded
away.  Long, tender, and passionate was the letter she wrote in
reply; she fondly fixed the time when she proposed to leave England
and rejoin him, if he sent her the necessary remittances; but mail
after mail came in without any tidings from Sidney, and she felt all
the unspeakable misery of watching the postman for letters that
never, never came!

Yet she never ceased to write, entreating him for answers, and
assuring him of unswerving affection.

Slowly, heavily, and imperceptibly a year passed away--a whole
year--to her now a black eternity of time!

"Could Sidney be dead?" she asked herself with terror; but she knew
that his family (who were all unaware of _her_ existence) had never
been in mourning, as they must infallibly have been in the event of
such a calamity; and in her simplicity she never thought of applying
to the Horse Guards for information concerning him--more information
than she might quite have cared to learn.

Her old thoughts concerning Miss Dashwood took a strange hold of her
imagination now; a hundred "trifles light as air" came back most
gallingly to memory and took coherent and tangible shapes; but a
stray number of the "Indian Mail" informed her of the marriage of
Miss Dashwood--her _bête-noire_--to a Major Milton; and also that the
regiment to which Sidney belonged "was moving up country," a phrase
to her perplexing and vague.

Her funds were gone--her friends were few and poor.  Her jewels--his
treasured presents--were first turned into cash; then the furniture
of her pretty villa, and next the villa itself with its sweet
rose-garden, had to be exchanged for humbler apartments in a meaner
street; and, ere long, Constance Warren found, that if she was to
live, it must be by her own unaided efforts; and for five years she
maintained a desperate struggle for existence--five years!

A lady going to India "wanted a young person as a governess and
companion."

To India--_to India!_  On her knees Constance prayed that her
application might prove successful; and her prayer was heard, for out
of some hundred letters--from a few which were selected--the tenor of
hers suited best the taste of the lady in question.  She said nothing
of her marriage or of her apparent desertion; but as her wedding
ring, which, with a fond superstition of the heart, she never drew
from her finger, told a tale, she had to pass for a widow.

So in the fulness of time she found herself far away from England,
and duly installed with an Anglo-Indian family in one of the stately
villas of the European quarter of Calcutta--a veritable palace in the
city of palaces, overlooking the esplanade before Fort William--in
charge of one sickly, but gentle little pale-faced girl.

She had been a month there when her employer's family proposed to
visit some relatives at Meerut, where she heard that Sidney's
regiment was cantoned!  To her it seemed as if the hand of Fate was
in all this.  O the joy of such tidings!  Some one there must be able
to unravel the horrible mystery involving his fate; for by this time
she had ascertained that his name was out of the corps; but her heart
suggested that he might have exchanged into another.

"If alive, is he worth caring for?"  She often asked this of herself,
but thrust aside the idea, and pursued with joy the long journey up
country by river steamers, dawk-boats, and otherwise, on the Ganges
to Jehangeerabad, from whence they were to travel by carriages to the
place of their destination, some fifty miles distant.

On the way Constance had an addition to her charge in the person of a
little boy, who, with his _ayah_, was going to join his parents at
Meerut.  This little boy was more than usually beautiful, with round
and dimpled cheeks, dark hazel eyes, curly golden hair, and a sweet
and winning smile.  Something in the child's face or its expression
attracted deeply the attention of Constance, and seemed to stir some
memory in her heart.  Where had she seen those eyes before?

She drew the boy caressingly towards her, and when kissing his fair
and open forehead, her eyes fell involuntarily on a ring that secured
his necktie, a mere blue riband.  It was of gold, and on it were
graven the initials C. and S. with a lover's knot between.  These
were those of herself and her husband, and the ring was one she had
seen him wear daily.  Constance trembled in every limb; she felt a
deadly paleness overspread her face, and the room in which she sat
swam round her; but on recovering her self-possession, she said:

"Child, let me look at this ring."

The wondering boy placed in her hand the trinket, which she had not
the slightest doubt of having seen years before in London.

"Who gave you this, my child?" she asked.

"My papa."

"Your papa!--what is your name?"

"Sidney."

"What else?" she asked, impetuously.

"Sidney Warren Milton."

"Thank God!  But how came you to be named so?  There is some mystery
in this--a mystery that must soon be solved now.  Where were you
born, dear little Sidney?"

"In Calcutta."

"What is your age, child?"

"Next year, I shall be seven years old."

"Seven--how strange it is that you have the name you bear!"

"It is my papa's," said the boy, with a little proud irritability of
manner.

"Where did your papa live before he came to Calcutta?"

"I don't know--in many places--soldiers always do."

"He is a soldier?"

"My papa is Major Milton, and lives in the cantonments at Meerut."

"A little time, and I shall know all," replied poor Constance,
caressing the boy with great tenderness.

On arriving at Meerut, however, she found herself ill--faint and
feverish--so that for days she was confined to her bed, where she lay
wakeful by night, watching the red fire-flies flashing about the
green jalousies, and full of strange, wild dreams by day.  She had
but one keen and burning desire--to see Major Milton, and to learn
from his lips the fate of her husband.  On the evening of the fifth
day--the evening of the 10th of May--she was lying on her pillow,
watching the red sunshine fading on the ruined mosques, and Abu's
stately tomb, when just as the sunset gun pealed over the
cantonments, the _ayah_ brought her a card, inscribed, "Major
Milton--Staff Corps."

"Desire the Major to come to me!" said Constance, in a broken voice,
and terribly convulsed emotion; for now she was on the eve of knowing
all.

"Here to the _mehm sahib's_ bedside?" asked the astonished _ayah_.

"Here instantly--go--go!"

Endued with new strength, as the woman withdrew, she sprang from her
bed, put on her slippers, threw round her an ample cashmere dressing
robe, and seated herself in a bamboo chair, trembling in every fibre.
In a mirror opposite she could see that her face was as white as
snow.  The door was opened.

"Major Milton," said a voice that made her tremble, and attired in
undress uniform, pith-helmet in hand, her husband, looking scarcely a
day older, stood gazing at her in utter bewilderment.  He gave one
convulsive start, and then stood rooted to the spot; but no
expression or glance of tenderness escaped him.  His whole aspect
bore the impress of terror.

Years had elapsed as a dream, and they were again face to face, those
two, whom no man might put asunder.  Softness, sorrow, and reproach
faded from the face of Constance.  Her broad, low forehead became
stern; her deep-set, dark eyes sparkled perilously, her full lips
became set, and her chin seemed to express more than ever, resolution.

"Oh, Constance--Constance," he faltered; "I know not what to say!"

"It may well be so, Sidney" (and at the utterance of his name her
lips quivered).  "So _you_ are Major Milton, and the supposed husband
of Miss Dashwood?"

There was a long pause, after which she said:

"I ask not the cause of your most cruel desertion, but whence this
name of Milton?"

"A property was left me--and--but, of course, you have long since
ceased to love me, Constance?"

"_You_ actually dare to take an upbraiding tone to me!" she
exclaimed, her dark eyes flashing fire.  Then looking upward
appealingly, she wailed, "Oh, my God! my God! and _this_ is the man
for whom, during these bitter years, I have been eating my own heart!"

"Pardon me, Constance; you may now learn that there is no gauge to
measure the treachery of which the human heart in its weakness is
capable.  Yet there has been a worm in mine that has never died."

She wrung her hands, and then said, with something of her old
softness of manner:

"You surely loved me once, Sidney?"

"I did."  He drew nearer, but she recoiled from him.

"Then whence this cruel change?"

"Does not some one write, that we love, and think we love truly, and
yet find another to whom one will cling as if it required these two
hearts to make a perfect whole?"

"Most accursed sophistry!  But if you have no pity, have you not
fear?"

"I have great fear," said he, in a broken voice; "thus, Constance, by
the love you once bore me, I beseech you to have pity, not on me, but
on my little boy, and his poor mother--preserve their happiness----"

"And sacrifice my own?" said she, in a hollow voice.

"Spare, and do not expose me--my commission--my position here----"

"Neither shall be lost through me," she replied, in a voice that grew
more and more weak; "but leave me--leave me--the air is
suffocating--the light has left my eyes.  Farewell, Sidney--kiss your
child, for my sake."

He drew near to take her hand, but she repulsed him with a wild
gesture of despair, and throwing up her arms, fell back in her seat,
with a gurgle in her throat, her head on one side, and her jaw fallen.

"Dead--quite dead!" was his first exclamation, and with his terror
was blended a certain selfish emotion of satisfaction and relief at
his escape.  The blood again flowed freely in his veins, and he was
roused by the cantonment _ghurries_ clanging the hour of nine.

"Help--help!" cried he; but no help came, and as he hurried away, the
sudden din of musket-shots, of shrieks and yells, announced that the
great revolt had begun at Meerut, and that the expected massacre of
the Europeans had commenced.  In that butchery, those he loved most
on earth perished, and midnight saw him, wifeless and childless,
lurking in misery and alone in a mango tope, on the road to Kurnaul.

* * * *

While listening to the narrative of my friend Sidney, whom I had
always known as Warren, rather than Milton, the clock on the
mantelpiece struck nine, and he said, in a broken voice:

"It was at this very hour, twelve months ago, that my boy and his
mother were murdered by the 3rd Cavalry, at the moment that Constance
was dying!"

As he spoke, a strange white light suddenly filled one end of the
smoking-room, and amid it there came gradually, but distinctly to
view, two figures, one was a little boy with golden hair, the other a
woman whose left arm was around him--a beautiful woman, with
clearly-cut features, masses of dark hair curling over a low, broad
forehead, lips full and handsome, with a massive chin and classic
throat--the woman of the veiled picture, line for line, but to all
appearance living and breathing, with a beautiful smile in her eyes,
and wearing, not the riding-habit, but a floating crape-like white
garment, impossible to describe.  There was a strange, weird
brightness in her face--the transfigured brightness of great joy and
greater love.

"Constance--Constance and my child!" cried Sidney, in a voice that
rose to a shriek; and like a dissolving view, the light, and all we
looked on with eyes transfixed, faded away!

I was aware of an excess of sensitiveness, and that my heart was
beating with painful rapidity.  I did not become insensible, but some
time elapsed before I became aware that lights were in the room, and
that several servants, whom my friend's cry had summoned in haste and
alarm, were endeavouring to rouse him to consciousness from a fit
that had seized him; but from that fit he never recovered.  His heavy
stertorous breathing gradually grew less and less, and ere a doctor
came, he had ceased to respire.

His death--sudden as hers on that eventful night, but a retributive
one--was declared to be apoplexy; but I knew otherwise.  Since then,
though the effect of the grape-shot wound on my nervous system has
quite passed away, I feel myself compelled to agree with the
hackneyed remark of Hamlet, that "there are more things in heaven and
earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy."




  A LEGEND OF THE OLD 55TH;
  OR, THE REGIMENT OF FLANDERS.

For the truth of the following remarkable story, which is much more
fact than fiction, we must refer the reader to the quarto "History of
the Mauritius," privately printed in London in 1801, from the papers
of the late Governor thereof, under Louis XVI., Baron Grant, Maréchal
of France, and edited by his son, Charles Grant, "Vicomte de Vaux sur
Seule, Normandie," who knew well the family of the hero, and of his
father, M. de Grenville, with whom he had become intimate at the
house of another Scoto-French gentleman (whom he styles M. Grant
d'Anelle, then in the Isle of France), and of whom he writes thus,
page 219:--

"This gentleman (M. de Grenville, of an ancient family in Normandy)
is an old officer who has served with honour both in France and
India; and may, with truth, be represented as superior to the
generality of mankind, from his understanding, his knowledge, and the
qualities of his character.  He is distinguished here, by the title
of the Philosopher, and he deserves it.  In the early part of his
life, the vivacity of his temper, heightened by the military spirit
of the period, engaged him in frequent affairs of honour; and the
last having taken place with a nobleman in the service of the Court,
in the Garden of Versailles, and under the very windows of the king's
apartment, it threatened the most serious consequences.  But M. de
Maupou, then in high office, to whom he was related, procured him a
commission in India, where he served with distinction.

"If it were consistent with the objects of this work, it would be a
delightful circumstance to dwell on the virtues and extraordinary
qualities of this family.  I must, however, confine myself to one, M.
de Grenville de Forval, the second son of M. de Grenville.

"Some events relative to him are so connected with the manners of
these islands, and are so remarkable (and romantic) in themselves,
that they will at the same time heighten the interest, as well as add
to the information of this work (_i.e._ the History of the Mauritius).

"In these islands there is not a single example of a deformed or
crooked shape, which must arise from the natural and unrestrained
mode of education which prevails there.  To these advantages, Forval
united a martial air, blended with a slight appearance of severity,
and an approved courage, to the most noble and generous sentiments
that are to be found in the human heart."

But to quote the gossipping old Baron at greater length, would be
only to anticipate the legend to which we refer.

At the time when the Comte de Malartic was first appointed
commander-in-chief and governor-general for the most Christian king
of the Isles of France and Bourbon, and over all the French
establishments eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, there was stationed
in the Mauritius (as we now name the Isle of France) a battalion of
the old French Regiment de Flandre, then numbered as the 77th of the
monarchy, and afterwards as the 55th regiment of the line, under
Napoleon III.--the same corps in which the father of Victor Hugo,
author of "Notre Dame" and "Les Misérables," served with honour as a
captain.

Among the officers who came with a detachment from France to join
this famous regiment were the Chevalier René d'Esterre and Captain
Forval de Grenville, the representative of one of the oldest families
in Normandy, the same stock from whence spring the English Dukes of
Buckingham and Chandos.

Forval was a gay and handsome man, and in the prime of life.  Baron
Grant, the Vicomte de Vaux, in his history of the island, records as
stated, that he had a martial air, with a slight appearance of
severity, and that he was a man of the most approved courage.  He was
always attired in the height of fashion when not in uniform; but he
generally preferred the latter, as the costume of the Regiment de
Flandre was very handsome, and became his dark complexion well, being
white, faced with light blue, and laced with gold.

Whether in uniform or out of it, he was never known to be without his
sword, in the use of which he excelled, and with which he had fought
many a duel, sometimes about the powdered and jewelled ladies of the
court, and quite as often about ballet-girls and actresses--all were
the same to Forval de Grenville.

His reckless career in France was, however, brought suddenly to a
close by a flirtation with a _chanoinesse_--the famous Comtesse de
V----, which by its scandal and extravagance drove him to seek
shelter in the distant Isle of France from the rage of the noble
families of Segonzac, Sainte-Croix, and Cressi, with whom she was
allied.

His affair with the high-born countess might have had a perilous
end--the Bastille St. Antoine, perhaps--but for his acceptance of
foreign service, and the aid given him by his friend, René d'Esterre,
who, as he had pursued a similar career of folly and extravagance,
had a fellow-feeling for him, and we all know that a fellow-feeling
makes us wondrous kind.

The monotonous pleasures of the island soon palled upon the _blasé_
Forval and his friend, and they sighed for the gaieties of Paris, or
rather to be anywhere but where they were.

"Morbleu!" exclaimed Forval, as he and D'Esterre sat over their wine
one evening at an open window in a _café_ of Port Louis, after being
long silent, and gazing dreamily on the sea, whose waves were
rippling in gold and purple against the rocks and bastions of the
little Isle aux Tonneliers, which lies before the harbour, and while
the red rays of the sun, now sinking in the Indian Sea, lingered on
the rocky and fantastic Tête de Peter Bott.  "Morbleu, chevalier! but
this atrocious Isle of France does grow irksome."

"Yet it is the land of Paul and that sweet little Virginia, for
another such as whom we have sought over all the isle."

"And have sought in vain.  Diable, yes!  Such miracles--such
sphinxes--exist only in the pages of Bernardin St. Pierre and such
like fellows."

"Perhaps so," sighed D'Esterre, as he emptied his glass.  "However, I
am sick unto death of this island and its utter monotony.  Paris----"

"Ah, dear, dear Paris! when shall we see it again?"

"When our debts are paid, perhaps."

"Don't speak of impossibilities, please.  How strange to think that
the tide of life flows there--that the great world rolls on all the
same as when we mounted guard at the Louvre, and not content with
that, sighed to be on duty at Versailles or the dear little Trianon."

"You always preferred the latter," said D'Esterre.  "The Comtesse de
V----, that dazzling little creature, was always about the queen."

"Don't speak of her now, when all those thousand miles of bridgeless
sea are rolling between us," exclaimed Forval, with knitted brows.
"That hulking fellow, Baron Zurlerben, of the Gardes Suisses, will no
doubt be on her staff now.  She could never exist without an affair
of the heart.  Well, I am at one with you--sick indeed of duty here."

"The comtesse was devoted to the chevaliers of the army," said René
d'Esterre, musingly.

"All the girls in Paris favoured us immensely."

"All the girls in France, you mean," said the chevalier, complacently.

"How comes it to pass, René?  Is it the handsome uniform or the risk
we run in war that gives us such an advantage over the mere
bourgeoisie?"

"I don't know what it is; but the interest is very pleasant, and I
trust it will never cease.  So 'Vive le Regiment de Flandre!  Vive la
ligne!'" cried René, draining a bumper of wine.

"Stop!  A thought strikes me," said Forval.  "Suppose that for a
little temporary excitement one of us should get married?"

"Agreed," cried D'Esterre.  "Here is a golden louis; we shall toss up
for who is to marry the first pretty Creole girl we meet.  The losing
man shall dance at the other's wedding."

"What if the pretty girl refuse?"

"Refuse one of the Regiment de Flandre!  My dear fellow, such an
outrage on good taste is not to be anticipated.  She shall be married
after a month's engagement."

"Ah, likely enough.  People do strange things in the Indian isles."

"Is it a low state of finances?"

"No, a high state of the thermometer.  A month may see us ordered off
to Pondicherry; but you must be the victim, chevalier.  I have an
affianced in France."

"And I have three!  Parbleu!"

"Well, to kill time, we have nothing for it but to volunteer for the
next slave-hunting expedition to the Isle Dauphine.  What say you,
chevalier--will you go?"

"Think of the distance--by sea, too!"

"Something less than five hundred miles."

"And the feeding----"

"Will not be up to the Parisian mark; but; then, we shall have some
excitement."

"A little fighting?" said René.

"Yes; and I had better be shot with honour than shoot myself."

"Very well, I shall go with you.  Let the war support the war.  We
shall feed ourselves at the bayonet's point among the Madagasees."

So in this spirit, when the time came, did M. Forval de Grenville and
his friend René d'Esterre set out for Madagascar, or, as the French
then named it, the Isle Dauphine.

A scarcity of slaves for manual labour in the Isles of France and
Bourbon rendered such predatory expeditions to Madagascar and the
coast of Africa necessary.  Vessels were generally equipped for the
purpose by the Comte de Malartic and wealthy merchants, and certain
detachments of troops were sent with them to favour and enforce the
object of the voyage; and with two hundred men of the Regiment de
Flandre, Forval and D'Esterre, having volunteered for the first
slaving expedition, sailed in two vessels for Madagascar in the month
of May, which is the finest and most healthy season for operations in
the island.

The vessels, with the troops on board, ran along the eastern coast,
and on disembarking, a camp was formed on the small rocky isle of
Sainte Marie, called Ibrahim by the natives.  There they found the
remains of a _chaloupe_, or sloop, which had been constructed out of
the shattered hull of the ship _Utile_ (which had been wrecked there
some forty years before), but had never been launched.  Her crew
being only French negroes, no attempt was ever made to succour or to
save them, so they all perished miserably of hunger, and their
whitened bones, bleached by the sun, lay all over the little rocky
isle when Forval and his comrades landed.  These remains he had
collected and interred, while despatching messengers to Adrian Baba,
the king of the island, to acquaint his sable majesty of the errand
on which he had come, offering him for every man and woman in full
health, and between the ages of thirteen and forty years, two
muskets, fifteen hundred leaden bullets, and the same number of
flints.

"Corbœuf!" said the Chevalier D'Esterre, "I hope we shall not be
detained long on this rock of Sainte Marie.  I am all curiosity to
see the wonders of Madagascar.  Does not La Croix tell us that the
woods abound with snow-white apes having black tails, and that there
is a kind of creature in the cane-brakes as large as a heifer, with a
round head, a man's face, and hands and feet like a monkey?"

"La Croix was an ass to record such rubbish, and you are exceedingly
simple to believe it," replied Forval, laughing at his friend's
credulity.

King Adrian, who had been at war with some of his African neighbours,
had, or pretended to have, plenty of prisoners in his hands, and sent
to M. Forval most friendly replies, together with presents.

In a short time Adrian Baba arrived in person, and crossed the little
strait which separated the Isle of St. Marie from the mainland in a
gaily painted pirogua, accompanied by much barbaric pomp, and was
received by the little party of French troops with all the honours
they could present to European royalty, and with keen and covetous
eyes he surveyed their handsome white uniforms and gold epaulettes,
their fine muskets, swords, chests of arms, and so forth, for which
the slaves were to be bartered, and he was heard to say to a prince
of the second class who accompanied him:

"Why may I not keep my people, and make lawful spoil of all these
things?  The Isle of Ibrahim is mine, and what do these Frenchmen do
here?"

His voice was soft and his manner persuasive, and he easily persuaded
Forval and D'Esterre to cross from the island, and encamp a portion
of their troops--of whose discipline and resolute aspect he had a
wholesome dread--on the mainland, and to leave the rest on the isle,
or send them on board the ships at their anchorage; but Forval warily
preferred the former plan, and left them in their tents at the first
encampment under a lieutenant.

With a hundred infantry he pitched his tents in a pleasant spot about
a mile from the sea.  Adrian, who yet hoped to have even the two
ships, if their crews could be massacred, loaded Forval and his
friend with presents and attentions, and showing them a vast herd of
cattle, asked them, in the pride of his heart, if the King of France
was as great a king as he.

To this the polite Frenchmen, who both knew the Polynesian language
of the Madagasees, made a courteous but dubious reply, which caused
the eyes of the half-savage monarch to sparkle with satisfaction.

Charmed by the friendly bearing and character of the king and his
people, and lulled into a sense of trustful security, on the third
day, after forming a little camp for half his force on the mainland,
Forval de Grenville doffed his uniform, and clad in a light white
hunting suit, took his gun, and followed by a favourite dog, set
forth into the adjacent forest in search of game, attended by a negro
boy, who carried his bag.

At last he reached a place where the forest became more open and the
ground more rocky.  Overcome by the heat of the day, the young French
officer hailed with pleasure a little tarn, or pool, which lay at the
base of some rocks, and was completely surrounded by lofty trees.

Forval lay down on the sward, half hidden by the giant leaves of the
wild gourds that grew there.  He lay long, sunk in a reverie, till a
very strange and startling sight aroused him; and he sprang to his
feet and peered through the bushes.

A girl was in the act of disrobing for the purpose of bathing in the
pool, and already she was seated on its bank ere Captain de Grenville
could speak.  In fact, he knew not what to say or do, and so, wholly
hidden among the great green leaves, he looked on in breathless
wonder, for that she was a Madagasee was evident; but then her skin,
though brown, was fair for a native of that sunny isle.

She was in the full bloom, the first blush, of budding womanhood, and
the fire of love, as yet unkindled, was doubtless hidden in her heart.

So thought the French officer as he stood there among the leaves.

The form of the young girl was perfection.  Her eyes were large and
black, and her hair rolled in silky masses over her smooth brown
shoulders.

Advancing to the edge of the pool, she put in one tiny foot and
tapered ankle.  The water seemed to strike her with a chill, for she
drew back, and seemed all unconscious that a human eye was upon her.

"Here is an adventure," muttered Forval.  "Could I but catch such a
slave as this, old Monsieur le Comte de Malartic, governor of the
Isle of France, and so forth, should not have her from me even for a
pile of golden louis as high as the Tête de Peter Bott itself.  Ah,
could I but catch her now!  But how am I to set about it?  The finest
girl in Paris is but a cub when compared with her."

The unknown beauty was still trembling on the brink when one of those
monster bats peculiar to those woods, blinded by the rays of light,
flew against her.  On this she uttered a cry of terror, and sprang,
half-robed as she was, into the pool, where she swam about like a
Naiad of classic antiquity, her beautiful head and shoulders rising
above the silver ripples that seemed to kiss her as she shot from
side to side in the cool, deep pool.

Forval remained in doubt what to do.  The wonderful beauty of the
girl had inspired him with a desire to know more of her--to capture
her, in fact.  But, then, he was far away from his little camp, and
she might have friends or armed attendants near, for by her dress and
ornaments--particularly a necklace of great pearls--her rank seemed
to be high in the land, and he might pay a terrible penalty for even
seeing, without molesting her.

Loth to retire, lest he should lose her, and afraid to advance lest
he should alarm or offend her; he lurked among the leaves, feeling,
with a blush upon his cheek, that he was committing an offence
against propriety even in that savage land, for though a _roué_, and
a wild one too, Forval de Grenville was, withal, a gentleman.

He longed for the sudden arrival of some wild beast, from which he
might defend or save her with his gun, even with his life, but longed
in vain, as there are no such animals in the Isle of Madagascar.

He turned to search for the slave boy who bore his game bag.  The
latter lay there, but its sooty bearer was gone.  He had disappeared,
concealed himself, or fled, and even this circumstance was calculated
to inspire Forval with alarm.  He felt if his hunting-knife was loose
in its sheath, and looked to the flints and priming of his gun, into
each barrel of which he now slipped a ball, so that he might be ready
for any emergency.

By the time he had done this quietly and slowly in his hiding place,
the girl had quitted the pool, and rapidly and completely attired
herself in the simple but graceful costume then worn by a Madagasee
lady--a long and loose robe of brilliantly coloured silk, without
sleeves--and she was in the act of shaking out the water from the
heavy masses of her shining black hair, when our adventurous
Frenchman, fearful of losing her, suddenly started from his lair
among the leaves and gourds, and advanced towards her, praying in
very choice words that she would linger for one moment and speak with
him, as he had lost his way in the forest.

But, instead of according him any reply, with her cheeks paled by
terror and her large eyes dilated, she turned and fled with the speed
of an antelope.

Obeying his first impulse, and undeterred by danger, Forval dashed
after her in pursuit; but, strong and active though he was, she
proved too swift of foot for him.  Carried away by her fears, or
aided by the activity natural to a savage race, she clambered over
the cliffs of rock crystal, where he dared not follow her, and when
he reached the other side by a detour round the pool she had
vanished, and not a trace of her was to be found.

Forval was intensely perplexed and provoked that he had not attempted
her capture while in the pool.  Then he repelled the idea, by
considering that such an act would have been unbecoming a French
gentleman.

"Bah!" thought he, after all; "she is only a little Madagasee, and I
may get her as a slave for a few old muskets.  I must speak to Sa
Majesté le Roi--to King Adrian about it on the first opportunity."

Neglecting his soldiers on one hand, and the purchase of slaves on
the other, for three entire consecutive days did Forval haunt the
vicinity of the sequestered pool; but the beautiful Naiad came there
no more.

On a stated day the king was to hand over to Forval and D'Esterre
five hundred male and female slaves, in exchange for one thousand old
regimental muskets and the requisite proportion of flints and
ammunition.

"If I can but get the girl from him, whoever she is, I'll give him a
couple of ship cannon."

"And all our empty champagne bottles," added D'Esterre; "but you may
have some difficulty in describing her."

"Nay, her beauty and extreme fairness of skin--fairness at least amid
this dusky people--as well as a string of enormous pearls of great
purity which she wears round her neck, must make her known; and they
are pearls to which those of Monseigneur de Rohan's famous necklace
were but a joke."

Forval was all excitement when he went for presentation to the king,
in his capital of Antanarivo, which contained some twenty thousand
inhabitants then, but many more now; the houses of which are of wood,
covered with plantain leaves, and entirely surrounded by a
fortification of palisades.

Here Adrian Baba could easily have cut off his unsuspecting visitor;
but the Chevalier René d'Esterre remained in camp with the small band
of troops, and Forval was accompanied only by two faithful sergeants,
armed with their swords, and a double brace of loaded pistols under
their coats.

Adrian Baba received him very graciously in a chamber, the furniture
of which consisted chiefly of some seamen's chests and other _débris_
of an occasional wreck or piracy, and mats of red and yellow straw,
which served as seats or beds, as occasion required, and around him
were his sub-princes, the lords of villages and districts, learned
men, guards, and slaves, all arrayed in their best robes, with
swords, darts, and feathers and beads in great plenty; others with
shield, knife, and war club, and all looking most unpleasantly
numerous, savage, and warlike.

But what was the astonishment of Captain de Grenville on beholding by
the side of the king, clothed in a long robe of fine silk, striped
alternately with scarlet and yellow, the Naiad of the lonely pool,
with her brown but yet beautiful arms bare to the shoulder, and
adorned only by strings of snowy pearls, like those which were woven
in her dark hair--pearls outshone by her own teeth.

Perceiving that the eyes of the French officer were fixed on her with
wonder and admiration, old Adrian Baba said, in the language of his
country:

"My daughter, Ranavolana."

"She is beautiful enough to be the daughter of--of perfection," said
the French officer, bowing low, and kissing her hand, while he half
knelt before her--a courtesy, a bearing of adoration which astonished
the girl, and provoked the sneering smiles of those who looked on.
"But how wonderfully white for a Madagasee--the daughter of this old
King of the Cannibal Islands," thought he.  "Here is a discovery!  I
don't believe he will give her up even for a dozen of old ship guns,
and all D'Esterre's empty bottles into the bargain.  Were they full,
we might have a better chance of success."

The soft dark eyes of the young princess regarded the handsome
Frenchman, as he thought shrewdly, with a strange and sorrowful
interest, and it was evident that, as he was now in the uniform of
the Regiment de Flandre, she did not recognize him, and he afterwards
learned that the extreme fairness of her skin was to be accounted for
by the circumstance that her mother had been the daughter of a
notorious English pirate, who bore the extremely prosaic name of Tom
Simcolls, and who for a time had made himself the petty king of a
portion of the isle, till Adrian Baba overthrew him in battle, and
made spoil of all he possessed, including a favourite daughter, who
became the mother of Ranavolana.

Adrian's treacherous plans with regard to the French were not yet
completed, so it was arranged that on the following day Forval was to
come with a hundred infantry to receive over the slaves for
embarkation.

That night, in the tent of Forval, he and the Chevalier D'Esterre
lingered long over their wine, and their hopes that a European war
might bring their regiment home, till, weary and sleepy, and
considerably overpowered by wine, René d'Esterre retired to his own
quarters.

Forval remained in his tent, stretched upon a couch, feeling far from
sleepy--very wide awake, indeed--and gazing through the open
triangular door of his canvas habitation on the dark blue waters of
the strait that lay between the mainland and the Isle of Sainte Marie.

His mind was dwelling on the singular beauty of Ranavolana, the girl
whom he had seen by the side of Adrian, and closing his eyes, as if
to concentrate his thoughts, he drew in glowing fancy again and again
the vision he had seen of her in the forest pool.

Suddenly there was a sound as of rustling silk, a soft hand touched
his shoulder lightly and timidly, he looked up, and Ranavolana, the
island princess, stood before him, and alone.

She must have glided unseen past his sentinels; but then he thought
not of that.  Though large and sparkling, her eyes were pensive, and
wonderfully beautiful in expression, in form of lid and length of
lash, "especially for a savage," as Forval thought; and in his time
he had seen some of the brightest eyes in Paris and Versailles droop
beneath the saucy and loving glances of his own.

"I disturb your sleep," said she, timidly drawing back a pace, as
Forval sprang from his camp bed.

"Do you think I would have slept, mademoiselle, had I expected you?"

"Not with the tidings I have for you," she replied, gravely.

"Tidings of what?"

"Death."

"Death?"

"A cruel one, too."

"I do not understand all this.  But we have met before."

"At my father's court to-day."

"And elsewhere?"

"Indeed!"

"Pardon me, but I had the delight of seeing you bathing in a pool in
yonder forest."

"You it was who pursued me?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, and I crave your pardon now," said he, kneeling.

She blushed painfully, and, as Forval thought, angrily.

"What have I to fear here when your father, the good old Adrian Baba,
is my friend?"

"He deceives you.  My father has neither prisoners to sell nor slaves
to give you on the morrow."

"Am I mocked or snared?" asked Forval, haughtily.

"You are both."

"And I am to be killed, lady--eh?",

"You and all who are with you," said she, mournfully.

"Well, so far as I am concerned, the loss will not be great," replied
Forval, with true French _sang froid_.

"Why?"

"I have five brothers in France, all wilder fellows than I, so France
can well spare one of us."

"But is life, indeed, so valueless to you?" she asked.

"To me perhaps it is; but you could shed a light upon it, lovely
girl, and make that sunshine which at present is all gloom to Forval
de Grenville."

She did not quite understand him, save that he was paying her a
compliment, and half savage though she was, she smiled with pleasure.
A brilliant light filled her eyes, a species of dusky fire, and
casting them down, she said, in her own soft language:

"You have seen me but thrice.  You cannot love me already?"

Forval was somewhat bewildered by the suddenness of this remark; but
he was too gallant a gentleman to leave her long in doubt.

"Not love you!" he exclaimed, while endeavouring to take her hands in
his; "ah, who could look upon you and not love you?"

"Would you not wish me changed--whiter, I mean?" she asked, with a
timid smile.

"Changed in what respect?  Are you not as near perfection as
possible?  Nay, you are perfection itself."

She laughed, and so did Forval, for he thought of what some of the
powdered and patched, painted and furbelowed dames and demoiselles at
whose feet he had knelt in the gilded salons of Paris and Versailles,
would have said, had they seen him--Captain De Grenville, of the
Regiment de Flandre--on his knees in apparent adoration of a little
Malay girl!

"But, _vive la bagatelle_!" thought he.

Starting up, he sought to kiss her; but she shrank back.

"Do you hate me?" he asked, sadly.

"No--oh no!"

"Do you love me then?" he asked, in a different key.

"No----"

"Parbleu! you must do either one or other."

"You did not let me finish what I was about to say--that I neither
hate nor like people until I have known them for a time; but in your
case----"

She paused.

"Ah, well--in my case?"

"I love you!" said she, looking fully and tenderly into his dark eyes.

Forval's heart leaped, for few women had ever made such an avowal to
him before; but the abruptness and strangeness of it in such a place,
and at such a time, rendered the Frenchman suspicious.  He began to
fear some snare, and remembered the manner in which she had commenced
this singular conversation.

"Accept my gratitude, lovely girl," said he, laying a hand upon his
heart; "but you did not come to tell me this alone--you came to warn
me of some impending danger?"

"I did.  Would you wish to sacrifice my life to save your own?"

"Heavens!  I should think not!" he exclaimed.

"Well, a plot has been formed against your life, and the lives of all
who accompany you.  I am full of sorrow that so handsome and kind a
white man should perish" (here the captain drew himself up and bowed
low) "and I shall tell you all, on one condition."

"Name it."

"That you will take me away with you."

"To the Isle of France?"

"Yes; and make me your wife."

Forval, still more astonished by her simplicity and trust, charmed by
her beauty and grace, and bewildered by the whole affair, forgot all
about poor Mademoiselle De Motteville and a dozen other fine ladies,
and registered a solemn and most energetic vow that he would do as
she required.

Taking her right hand between his own, he pressed it to his lips, and
thinking what a faultlessly beautiful little hand it was, he said,

"And now, lady, speak.  What is this terrible plot?"

"I must have one promise from you."

"Indeed! something beyond marriage?"

"Yes," said she, beginning to weep.  "For you I am about to sacrifice
my father's throne, which, as I am an only child, is my inheritance.
For you, my country, my friends, my native customs, and that liberty
which is so dear to me.  My kinsmen, who would deem me dishonoured,
will detest me, and if you leave me to their vengeance I shall be
reduced to the endurance of tortures worse even than the death they
propose for you."

"Heavens! but this is a terrible prologue to our matrimonial comedy."

"Promise to grant me what I demand, swear that your soldiers will not
injure my people, and I will reveal all that is necessary for you to
know."

With growing admiration and astonishment, Forval gave another solemn
assurance.

"Well," said she, with tremulous accents, while her tears fell fast,
"the king, my father, will come here to-morrow by sunrise.  He will
seem to be attended apparently by only a few; but followers to the
number of thousands, armed with poisoned arrows, lances, and
hatchets, are to be concealed in a wood close by; and at a given
signal they will rush upon and massacre all your people."

"Indeed!"

"For you is reserved a peculiar mode of death, suggested by the
learned men of the nation."

"And this flattering distinction is----"

"That you be taken to the summit of the cliff which rises in the
centre of the city, and be hurled from thence alive."

Forval grew pale with rage on hearing all this, for he knew that the
place referred to is the Tarpeian Rock of Madagascar, where the
vilest criminals are executed by being hurled headlong down a
precipice of eighty feet, at which depth his battered remains, after
being received on some scattered masses of rock, fall four hundred
feet below to the base of the hill.

"You are thus to be offered up as a solemn sacrifice to the gods of
Madagascar," she said.

"Offered up to them?  Thrown down, you mean!  Here's a scheme!  But
the signal you speak of, what is it?"

"To-morrow, if my father breaks a white wand which he usually
carries, it seals the fate of you and all your followers."

"Is no other sign, to be given?"

"Only one more.  If the king should see fit to change his mind, and
wish his people to return, he will cast his plumed cap towards them,
as if the heat or weight of it oppressed him."

Forval loaded his beautiful visitor with thanks and caresses; but as
the night had nearly passed, and the morning would soon be at hand,
no time was to be lost in preparing for the coming emergency.  He
sent her on board the _Madame de Pompadour_, and the ships he ordered
to prepare for sea, to be hove short on their anchors, to have all
the cannon loaded, and the boats in readiness to embark the troops
the moment a rocket was discharged.

These he immediately got under arms, and brought from the Isle of
Sainte Marie the hundred who were there under the lieutenant.  His
mind was full of deep gratitude.  But for the timely revelations of
this generous and merciful girl, how terribly for him and for his
comrades must the morrow have closed!

René d'Esterre was still more astonished when he heard of the
adventures of the night; but alarm was mingled with his thoughts.

"Now, by St. Denis!" he exclaimed, "or rather by St. Lawrence, after
whom this rascally island was once named, we should broil this demon
of a king on a gridiron of ramrods, even as St. Lawrence himself was
broiled!"

"And over eggshells, as the Bollandists have it?"

"No; but over a pile of good pine faggots."

"But you forget my promises to the girl; and then, to broil one's
father-in-law--the idea is not to be thought of."

"Ah! the charming savage!  Why did I not see her?" exclaimed
D'Esterre, laughing, as he loaded a pair of pistols and placed them
in his embroidered belt.

"Come, come," said Forval, with an air of mock serenity, to cover the
avowal under which he winced; "I must again remind you that the king
is to be the father-in-law of Forval de Grenville."

"Oho!" laughed D'Esterre, "Mademoiselle Rana--Rana--what's her
name?--la Princesse de l'Ile Dauphine--is not at all a marrying young
lady--quite passionless in all her proceedings, it would appear!"

"'Pon my soul, René, I'll parade you at twelve paces after this
business is over."

"No you won't.  You were not to marry Mademoiselle de Motteville
until you were a colonel, and now, as a captain, you are about to
espouse----  Oh, it is too absurd," and the chevalier laughed till he
nearly shook his epaulettes off.

"The girl is lovely, and you have not seen her.  But now day is
breaking.  Let the men get under arms, and fall in in front of the
line of tents."

"Ah, we wanted a little excitement, and now we have it with a
vengeance."

"By the gods of the Greeks, I should think so.  We are but two
hundred Frenchmen, and in yonder wood the savages muster in
thousands."

"But we belong to the Regiment de Flandre," said René, proudly, as he
took his sword and left the tent.

Forval felt his heart beat with many strange emotions, amid which
rage and alarm were not wanting, when, about sunrise, he saw the
treacherous king coming very deliberately towards the little camp,
mounted, and having borne above his head a large gilded umbrella with
a deep scarlet fringe.  He wore his royal robes of flowing silk of
many colours, with his plumed cap, and in his right hand was a long
white wand--the death-signal--and he was accompanied by about a dozen
young princes, all handsomely equipped and unusually well armed.
Their countenances betrayed nothing of the deadly purpose they had in
view.

As Adrian Baba dismounted, and gave his bridle to a slave, the French
drums beat a salute and the ranks presented arms--arms that were
carefully loaded--while Forval and D'Esterre saluted with their
swords.  He approached Forval, who already saw, or thought he saw,
the dark visages clustering thick as bees among the underwood of the
adjacent forest.

When within three paces of Forval, the king snapped his white wand in
two pieces.

"Thunder of heaven!" cried the Frenchman, as he seized him by the
throat, and placed a pistol at his head.  "Treacherous dog, throw
your cap towards those scoundrels in the wood, or you die!"

"Shoulder arms--ready!" commanded the Chevalier D'Esterre, and
suddenly the ranks closed, and the two hundred soldiers cocked their
muskets.

"Sire, forgive my _brusquerie_; but really----"  Forval paused with
suppressed rage, and fierce mockery in his eyes, as he pressed the
cold muzzle of the pistol against the head of Adrian Baba.

Terrified by the unexpected discovery and seizure, the king cast his
royal cap in the direction indicated.  On this the savages in the
wood disappeared; nay, more, on a shot or two being fired, his
attendant princes took to their heels in ignominious haste, and left
him a prisoner in the hands of Forval, who resolutely kept him as a
hostage until he had the whole of his force, with all their tents and
stores, embarked; and ere night fell he found himself far out upon
the lonely seas, standing once more towards the Mauritius, with the
coast of Madagascar and the Ile aux Prunes sunk to a stripe upon the
starboard quarter, the Princess Ranavolana being the sole trophy of
the famous expedition on which the Comte De Malartic had sent him.

There was a chaplain on board, and despite all that the more wary
D'Esterre and others could say, Forval, who was a man of his word,
prepared regularly to espouse her on the following day.

"My dear Forval, are you mad?  Think of your family," exclaimed his
friend, who he knew loved him well.

"What do my family think of me?" was the petulant response.

"That you are _étourdi_--nay more, a _vaurien_, perhaps."

"And they are right."

"But think of your ancestors--of Richard de Grenville, who was Lord
of Rouen and Caen in Normandy!  What says La Roque of them in his
'Treatise on Nobility?'"

"I neither know nor care.  I can do nothing for my ancestors, and
they nothing for me.  What is done is done."

"But not that which is to do.  I grant you that the girl is
beautiful, and that you might make a fortune out of her----"

"Where?" asked Forval, sharply.

"At the Théàtre des Funambules (ropedancers), in the Boulevard du
Temple."

"Sacré! but now you go too far," cried Forval, with a hand on his
sword; but he felt himself compelled to withdraw it, as his friend
was choking with laughter.

"In all your love affairs at home, I have heard you declare that you
would never be 'in love' with any one."

"Ah, but, René, this is very different.  My little Malay is so
piquante."

"And you have been so long bored with ennui."

"Perhaps I shall sicken at the sight of the Peter Bott.  Besides, I
have passed my word to her."

"Think of your betrothed in France," urged René, with great
seriousness; "think of Mademoiselle de Motteville, whom sedulously
you taught to love you well, and who had more wedding rings offered
her than she had pretty fingers--refusing all because she was
infatuated about you.  Think of that charming Countess V----; think
of----"

"I'll think of nothing but my pledged word and my piquante little
savage, so cease, chevalier, I command you," responded Forval,
impetuously.

The chevalier shrugged his shoulders, and said:

"Well, I am safe from all such spells."

"How so?"

"I left my heart----"

"Or that which did duty for it?"

"In France behind me."

"Pity you did not leave your sagacious head there, chevalier."

"Why?"

"Both would have been spared the chance of having a bullet through
them."

"Here we may face many bullets, Forval, and yet never win the cross
or cordon of St. Louis."

"I have always had a prejudice in favour of a well-dressed wife, with
a fashionable _trousseau_--of a bride with kid gloves and well-made
boots, with a modern costume, instead of only a string of beads, and
a robe like your grandmother's sacque.  But the climate here is so
different; and then fancies are prejudices--yes, in faith, mere
prejudices, and my little Malay is charming without any of our
fashionable absurdities."

"So, courage, Forval, my friend you may one day be king of the Isle
Dauphine, this infernal Madagascar, on which those perfidious and
grasping English have had their eyes for some time past."

M. l'Abbé, the chaplain, had some scruples about wedding a Christian
gentleman like Forval to a believer in Rahillimaza, Ramahavely, and
Co.; but they were overcome, and he was formally married to
Ranavolana, the Captain of the _Pompadour_ transport officiating in
place of Adrian Baba, and he landed with her as his wife, to the
astonishment of all the people in the Isle of France, the sole trophy
of his great slaving expedition.

Not long after this her father, the treacherous Adrian Baba, died.
The people of Madagascar, who are ardently attached to the blood of
their native kings, sought her out, and the government of the island
was offered to her and her husband by ambassadors in the name of the
people.

"The king is dead!  Long live the king!" cried the volatile and
reckless René D'Esterre on parade that morning.

"Long live Forval, the king of the Isle Dauphine!  Long live the
Regiment de Flandre!" cried the entire battalion.

"Forval," said Ranavolana, "you had the generosity to marry me in
opposition to the wishes of your friends and the prejudices of your
religion and your country when I had nothing to offer you but my
humble person, and those charms which, whatever they might have been
considered in my native country, fell far short of the women of
France; but I have now my inheritance, and, Forval, it is yours."

So Captain de Grenville became King of Madagascar, and those who wish
to see the documentary details of his story will find them in the
"History of the Isle of France," by Charles Grant, Vicomte de Vaux,
and it was their granddaughter, Queen Ranavolana, whose outrages on
the English residents and French missionaries--all suggested by her
lover, a renegade Frenchman, in the name of the false gods--that
caused a British armament to destroy, by shot and shell, her
principal town in the year 1845, and it is a singular circumstance
that the name of her renegade lover was D'Esterre, the grandson of
Forval's friend and comrade.

The Chevalier René returned to France and married Mademoiselle de
Motteville, whose engagement had been a conditional one, and their
descendant it was who, for complicity in the affairs of 1848, had to
fly from France, and found a stormy home in the Isle of Madagascar.




  THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE 'LAURA;'
  OR, THE STORY OF JACK MILMAN.

It was in the midsummer of this year that my friend Milman, of the
Household Brigade, invited me to accompany him on a trip in his new
steam yacht, the _Laura_, along the shores of the Baltic.

She was a well-formed, smart--indeed, elegant--little vessel, the
_Laura_, a good sea-going boat, as well as a safe coaster.

We were five of a party.  Little Tom Tucker, fresh from Oxford; his
chum, Harry Winton, ditto; Morton Parker, of the late Bengal Army,
home on two years' leave--great on the subjects of niggers, hog and
tiger hunting, chutney, and curry--Jack, and myself; and a merry
party of thoughtless addlepates we were.

We had "done" the entire Baltic, and the Gulfs of Finland and
Bothnia, and had come to the conclusion that the said Baltic was all
very slow, stupid, and that there was "nothing in it," though we had
seen Cronstadt; the Malta of that sea, with all its batteries and
countless cannon, had flirted with the fair-haired girls of the Rue
de Goths and Amalien Gade at Copenhagen, drunk lager beer at Dantzig,
steamed past Elsinore, and actually, with our four six-pounders, had
exchanged salutes with a Danish man-o'-war in the Cattegat, as poor
King Christian IX. has been an ill-used man; and then we stood down
the Skager Rack for old England.

My friend Jack, or Long Milman, as we called him, for he was above
six feet, was the _beau ideal_ of a fine young Englishman.  "A trump,
a brick," and so forth, Jack was termed by all who knew him; but he
was a finished gentleman and a thorough good fellow, a prime bat and
bowler, always had the stroke oar at Oxford, and was a good
rifle-shot.

All the girls envied her who waltzed with Jack.  He was a king of
every pic-nic, and always shone in amateur theatricals, disdaining
such tame characters as John Mildmay, and choosing such as Sir
Affable Hawk, in which (privately) it was Jack's weakness to think
that he quite equalled Mr. Charles Mathews.

As the very antipodes of his home costume and Guards' uniform, on
this voyage Jack wore a round blue jacket, with anchor buttons, a
straw hat, with a blue ribbon (changed occasionally for a
sou'-wester), and a black handkerchief knotted loosely round his
neck.  In London Jack wore the best fitting gloves that Houbigant
could produce; but now he disdained any such coverings for his
digits, which were as dark as salt water, tar, and exposure could
make them, for Jack was every inch a man, and could tally on to a
rope with the best seaman on board.

"By Jove, if _Laura_ could only see me with these paws!" he would
sometimes say; and then we laughed, for we knew who _Laura_ was, and
rather envied Jack's ascendency in that quarter.

The yacht was under steam, with her fore and aft, fore and mainsails
set, as we sat at dinner, on the day we quitted the Skager Rack, and
the summer weather was soft and balmy.

Jack proposed that, instead of standing through the North Sea for the
coast of England, we should steam westward, and visit some of the
Scottish Isles before returning.

"Impossible," said Harry Winton.

"And wherefore impossible, thou man of objections?"

"I'm due in London by the end of the month."

"So am I," said Jack; "but we'll manage it in time.  Pass the
bottles.  Consider the magnificent scenery we shall see."

"Pshaw--scenery!  It is, as some one writes, but a weak invention of
artists and innkeepers."

"'Oh, blessed are they that sneer!'" exclaimed Jack, brandishing his
cigar case; "'for they shall never make fools of themselves.'  An
addition to the list of beatitudes well becoming the spirit of the
present day.  Try another glass of that glorious old port--it's 1820
vintage--and see how my project looks then.  Buttons, wine for Mr.
Winton."

"I certainly have a curiosity to see some of those islands, where no
one ever goes to, and no one ever comes from," said Morton Parker.

"Mere curiosity," replied Harry, while sipping his wine; "but beware
of it.  It was their wives' thirst for unwise knowledge which wrecked
alike the peace of Father Adam and of Bluebeard."

Winton's opposition was soon laughed down.  Jack Milman consulted his
skipper, and the yacht's head was at once trimmed west and by north.

"We shall only be a fortnight or so longer absent," said Parker; "no
heart will break in that time."

"Laura will be sure to think I am lost," said Jack, in a low voice to
me.

"It may excite her."

"No difficult matter, by Jove?" replied Jack, laughing; for Laura
Hammond was a girl who was fond of all excitement--made up her book
on the Oaks and Derby, and had herself photographed on horseback, on
skates, at archery meetings, in fancy dresses, and all manner of
ways, as we well knew, by the albums with which Jack's cabin was
plentifully strewn.

On the second day after this, while at luncheon, we heard the cry of
"Land ahead!" and saw a stern and rocky coast rising slowly from a
dark grey and rather bleak and stormy sea.

It was the Scaw of Lambness, the most northern point of the Shetland
Isles, towering up amid foam, with mist resting on its scalp, and the
wild seabirds whirling round it.

"Deuced glad we are drawing near home, anyway," said Jack, as he tied
his sou'-wester on, and levelled his telescope at this shore of most
uninviting aspect.

"Ugh!" said little Tom Tucker, who hailed from, the region of
Bayswater.  "Heavens, Jack, do you call this home?"

"Well, Tom, it is the first instalment of it.  We are four hundred
miles from the Tweed, as a bird flies."

"So that beastly chart below tells me."

"Seven hundred and fifty, at least, from Bayswater, Tom," I added,
laughing.

"And we have polished off the most of our wines," said Jack.
"Buttons gave us the last bottle of that tidy Bordeaux yesterday, and
to-day he has opened our last case of Cliquot, so we shan't stay
hereabout long, I promise you, Tom."

By nightfall we had run through the Sound of Yell, amid little sandy
holms and mossy rocks, where the eider-duck and grey gull seemed the
only inhabitants, and where whales appeared spouting at times, and
the young sillocks were in swarms.  We came to anchor in a quiet and
sheltered little voe (as the inlets are there named), and then we
discovered from a fisherman who came on board that we were off
Northmaven, part of the mainland of Shetland, one of the most
northern and primitive of the almost countless isles of Scotland,
forty-four leagues west of Bergen, in Norway, and forty-seven north
of the coast of Buchan.

Night was setting in when the "native," "the Sawney Bean," as some of
us termed him, was brought down to the cabin for our inspection, and
his own delectation in the matter of grog.

Magnus Kolbainson--for so this northern named himself--was a rough
and weather-beaten old stump of a Shetlander, in his seventieth year;
but hardy, hale, and active as a southron of half his age, with a
clear, bright grey eye, and a face which, though a mass of wrinkles,
was still ruddy and fresh.

He removed a black fur cap from his white, silvery hairs, and glanced
round the little cabin with much of wonder in his face, for he was
quite unused to luxury, and had spent all the years of a long life
amid storms and shipwrecks, in pursuit of the whale and the walrus.

He drank horn after horn of stiff boatswain's grog, and his
conversation--in a strange dialect, and at times
unintelligible--consisted of weird tales of wrecks upon the rocks of
Eaglesbay and Gunister, or of whales stranded by hundreds in the
shallow voes of Burra, Quayfirth, and Gluss; of the terrors of the
Holes of Scraada; of witches' spells; of spirits haunting holms and
dunes, and Pict-houses; of names, places, and things that seemed and
sounded strange and barbarous to us; and yet this queer old man was a
loyal subject of Queen Victoria, and a Briton like ourselves, though
he knew as much about steam or electricity as Noah or Tubal Cain
might have known.  Hence we questioned and surveyed him with wonder
and speculation.

From subsequent circumstances I am thus particular in describing old
Magnus Kolbainson.

When he rose to go ashore in his little punt, the summer moon was
shining brightly, and we could see all the rocky indentations of that
most picturesque coast with great clearness.  As he crossed the deck,
he suddenly started, and after an exclamation expressive of surprise
and alarm, asked:

"When was that man drowned?"

"Who?--where?--what man?" asked Jack Milman.

"He there!"

"Where?"

"Lying by the capstan, with a white handkerchief over his face," said
Magnus, gravely and earnestly.

"Stuff! my good fellow," said Milman.  "There is no man lying there.
It is a shadow you've seen--or has our grog been too strong for you,
old boy?"

The old man, with fear and wonder in his face and manner, approached
the spot he had indicated, and passed his hands over the planks, and
then across his eyes.

"Strange!" said he; "I thought I saw a man lying there, dead and
cold, wet and dripping.  It must have been the shadow of a bird or a
cloud--perhaps a spirit--between us and the moon."

"The poor old fogey is screwed," said Jack, as we carefully assisted
him into his little punt, and, with honest anxiety, watched until we
saw him safe ashore, and proceeding in the pale moonshine up the
steep rocks, to where a red light shone in the window of his hut.
The skipper was ordered to get the yacht close in shore, and
alongside the rocks, in the morning, so that we might land as easily
and as often as we pleased, as we had resolved to pic-nic on the
island.

The morning proved a lovely one.  Breakfast over, Buttons packed a
hamper to take ashore, while Jack produced from his armoury guns of
all kinds, double and single-barrelled, muzzle and breech-loaders, as
we meant to make a great slaughter among the gulls, cormorants,
seals, and whatever else came within range of our fire.

"Buttons, my boy, give us plenty of the Cliquot," said Jack to his
steward.  "Chuck in the old Melton pie for Mr. Tucker--chutney for
Captain Parker; he'll die without it--Bengal chutney."

We all landed with our guns and game-bags, and, under the guidance of
old Magnus Kolbainson, made our way along the slopes of Mons Ronaldi,
which is said to be the highest hill in all those isles, being nearly
four thousand feet in altitude; and to Londoners--we travelled
Londoners, as we rather flattered ourselves we were--the scene we
witnessed was certainly novel, exciting, and terrible.

We shot a few seabirds, but they were scarcely worth picking up; and
we scared great herds of the wild ponies, and made them scamper to
and fro.

With many a strange tale of the rude and antique tower that crowns
the mountain, and of the chain of watch-houses or Pictish dunes that
guard the coast, our quaint old cicerone beguiled the way, all
unsuspicious of how we "chaffed, and trotted him out," though
puffing, blowing, and perspiring sorely, for the heat of the weather
was great, and the mountain paths were steep, rugged, and tortuous,
and seldom trodden by aught but sheep, rabbits, and wild ponies.

At last we reached the western side of the peninsula, where the
cliffs are stupendous in height, and seem to have been rent and torn
by billows, earthquakes, and volcanic throes, into strange and
fearful shapes.

In these cliffs are the perpendicular caverns known as the Holes of
Scraada.

These are two immense natural perforations, distant from the
sea-cliffs two hundred and fifty feet inland, sinking down
collaterally like two deep pits, separated only by a bridge-like mass
of grass-covered rock, under which the sea communicates by a
cavernous tunnel, where the waves, surging with the whole force of
the Atlantic, boil, suck, gurgle, and thunder, with the most
appalling sound.

Little Tommy Tucker shrank back, and could by no means be persuaded
to approach, and, though stigmatised by Jack as "a muff," candidly
wished himself at Bayswater, or anywhere else.  Even Morton Parker,
who had seen more of the world than any of us, and had peeped into
the Bloody Well of Cawnpore, felt timid, while plucky Harry Winton
declared it "doocid good, and the best got up thing of the kind he
had ever seen."

"So well got up, indeed, old fellow, that I mean to make a sketch of
it for Laura Hammond's album," said Jack Milman, producing his
sketch-book, and seating himself in a secluded spot, unpleasantly
near the verge, though.

"What the dickens, Jack," said Tucker, ruefully; "you don't mean to
say that you are about to bother and make a sketch of this place?"

"And why not, by my halidame, by'r lady, or anything else?"

"It will occupy the whole afternoon, and it is past two now.  I'm a
lineal descendant of that Mr. Thomas Tucker who sang for his supper,
and I'm dying for something to eat."

"And I for something to drink," chorused we all.

"Well," said Jack; "till I've made my sketch for Laura Hammond, I
won't budge--that's flat!  You know where Buttons has opened the
hampers and spread out the grub.  Walk slowly back, and I'll rejoin
you, Keep a bottle of the sparkling in a cool runnel for me--I won't
be twenty minutes behind you.  Now be off, those who are hungry.
Meantime, I'll have a quiet weed, and sketch this truly infernal
hole!"

"All right," said Tommy; "but if you are late, Jack, I hope you won't
give us the trouble of coming up this awful road after you; for
really it's rather hard upon a fellow in his thirties, and on the
confines of fogeydom."

"Never fear!  I may see something else to sketch.  Away!  I'll be on
board the _Laura_, dead or alive, by four o'clock--dead or alive!
Look after that old Sawney Kolbainson--supply his little wants, and
now, _au revoir_!"

Shrugging his shoulders as if he wished to be rid of us, Jack
commenced his sketch, and as we descended, we saw him contemplating
it from time to time complacently, with his head on one side, and a
cigar between the fingers of his left hand.

Pure hunger and an intense thirst, conduced by exercise, heat, and
the keen breeze from the sea, made us enjoy the luncheon of cold
fowl, Russian tongue, and other condiments provided for us by
Buttons, who had spread a snow-white cloth on the grassy sward, and
in a runnel that gurgled close by he had the most acceptable of all
viands, the Cliquot, sunk among the pebbles for coolness.

We were all very merry, and uncorked bottle after bottle of
champagne; and great was the astonishment of old Magnus Kolbainson,
after imbibing such a beverage as he had never seen or heard of
before, and to his throat it was new and strange as the ambrosia of
the gods.

Inspired thereby, however, he told us a long, weird story of the
stone ship we saw, and how it was the craft of a pirate, on whom a
spell or curse had fallen; and then he sang us a strange and uncouth
song, which sounded exactly like a Norse ballad.

"Four o'clock," said Tucker, looking suddenly at his watch.

"And yet no appearance of Jack," said I, starting up.

"He spoke of twenty minutes.  His sketch has taken longer."

"Less, I should say.  There is Jack half a mile off, and making his
way straight for the yacht!"

"Without us," cried Parker.

"Without lunch, too.  Strange.  I hope we hav'n't offended him in any
way," suggested Tucker.

"Should be sorry if so.  Milman's the best fellow in the world.
Hallo!  Jack--Jack Milman!"

But Jack walked steadily on by the rugged and descending road, which
led to the voe where the yacht lay.  Leaving Buttons and two of the
crew to pack the _débris_ of the luncheon, we picked up our guns, and
a few of those birds which we proposed to have stuffed in London as
souvenirs of our sojourn in Ultima Thule, and hurried after Milman,
who had now disappeared in a conie, or hollow.  We had evidently
gained on him though, for when he reappeared we were much nearer him.

"He's in a devil of a hurry, surely," said Parker.  "Thinks, perhaps,
we've polished off the Cliquot, and wants some of that '41 Lafitte,
or brandy and seltzer."

We shouted singly and together; but received no answer.

Jack's conduct was unaccountable, and we began to fear that something
untoward had happened.  Jack had neither his gun, straw hat, nor
shot-belt; the back of his jacket was rent open, and his right arm
seemed to dangle helplessly by his side.

Thoroughly alarmed by these indications, we ran on to overtake him,
but were not quick enough.  He reached the steamer before us, and,
unnoticed, apparently, by the crew, stepped from the rocks upon the
gangway, crossed the deck, and, after lingering for a moment, as if
looking at the sky, descended into the cabin.

We soon followed, and dived below; but Jack was nowhere to be seen.
We searched all the state-cabins, and every locker and bunk, without
finding a trace of him.

"He's hiding somewhere," said I.  "Come along, Jack; show yourself.
Are you ill, old fellow, or only up to some of your usual larks?"

There was no reply, and after a minute search we became painfully
certain of the fact that Jack Milman was not on board at all!

We questioned the crew on deck.  All denied having seen him, and the
skipper, who had been seated all the time in the cabin, had seen no
one enter, heard no one come down.  What mystery was this?

All our weariness vanished now; and, with emotions of alarm,
astonishment, and anxiety difficult to describe, we retraced our
steps towards the western side of Northmaven, just as the sun was
verging towards the Atlantic, expecting to meet Jack returning; but
no trace of him was seen till we reached the brink of the Black Holes
of Scraada, where the sea boiled through its subterraneous caverns,
in surf and foam, with the dreadful sound I have described.

By the edge of the rocks, we found a double barrelled gun, a
half-smoked cigar, and a pencil lying.  Lower down lay a sketch-book
open, with its leaves fluttering in the wind; the grass of the bridge
or middle rock was torn and rent, as if someone had fallen there, and
clung thereto; and lower down, alas! a hundred feet or more, was the
body of poor Jack Milman, appearing and disappearing momentarily, as
it was tossed upward or sucked down, a drowned, sodden, and battered
corpse, the sport of the furious waves, in that appalling hole.

Bewildered and in silent horror, we stood for a time looking at it,
and in each other's blanched faces.  Old Magnus Kolbainson alone took
off his fur cap, and said:

"The Lord receive his soul!  Mind ye o' his parting words, that at
four o'clock he would be on board, _dead or alive_, and he hath kept
his word!"

We knew not what to think of all this, and sat by the margin of the
dreadful place, utterly crushed.

Not so old Magnus.  Aided by his sons and grandsons, all hardy
Islemen, who now came to our assistance, he was slung by a rope down
into that watery profundity.  He fastened a line to the body; it was
drawn reverently upward, and laid on the grassy slope.  Then we found
that the face and hands had been sorely bruised by the rocks, and
that his right arm was broken in three places, just as it had
appeared in that of the figure we had followed on board the steamer.

Poor Jack had kept his promise; but at the moment we were questioning
the skipper, he had been for three hours a drowned corpse.

Slowly and sadly we bore him down from that frightful place to the
_Laura_.  When we brought him on board, the ghostly moon was shining
clearly; and that a complete fulfilment of the strange foreshadowing
of his fate might not be wanting, it chanced that we laid him down by
the capstan, and spread a handkerchief over his pallid face; and as
we did so, the last night's vision of Magnus Kolbainson rushed
vividly and painfully on the memory of us all.

Poor Jack Milman, the king of good fellows, lay there!

After such an adventure as this, it may well be conceived that the
next morning found us running, as fast as steam, and wind could take
us, on our homeward path, towards the Orkneys and the mainland of
Scotland.



THE END.



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