The time between the visit to Glasgow and the departure of Walkinshaw for Glengael was the busiest period that had occurred in the annals of Camrachle from the placing of Mr. Eadie in the cure of the parish. To the young men belonging to the hamlet, who had grown up with Walkinshaw, it was an era of great importance; and some of them doubted whether he ought not to have beaten up for recruits in a neighbourhood where he was known rather than in the Highlands. But the elder personages, particularly the matrons, were thankful that the Lord was pleased to order it differently.
His mother and sister, with the assistance of Ellen Frazer, were more thriftily engaged in getting his baggage ready; and although the sprightliness of Ellen never sparkled more brilliantly for the amusement of her friends, there were moments when her bosom echoed in a low soft murmur to the sigh of anxiety that frequently burst from his mother’s breast.
Mr. Eadie was not the least interested in the village. He seemed as if he could not give his pupil advice enough, and Walkinshaw thought he had never before been so tiresome. They took long walks together, and ever and anon the burden of the worthy minister’s admonition was the sins and deceptions of the world, and the moral perils of a military life.
But no one—neither tutor, mother, nor amorosa—appeared so profoundly occupied with the event as Mrs. Eadie, whose majestic intellect was evidently touched with the fine frenzy of a superstition at once awful and elevated. She had dreams of the most cheering augury, though all the incidents were wild and funereal; and she interpreted the voices of the birds and the chattering of the magpies in language more oriental and coherent than Macpherson’sOssian.
The moon had changed on the day on which Walkinshaw went into Glasgow, and she watched the appearance of its silver rim with the most mysterious solicitude. Soon after sunset on the third evening, as she was sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard with Mr. Eadie, she discovered it in the most favourable aspect of the Heavens, and in the very position which assured the most fortunate issues to all undertakings commenced at its change.
‘So it appears,’ said she, ‘like a boat, and it is laden with the old moon—that betokens a storm.’
‘But when?’ said her husband with a sigh, mournfully disposed to humour the aberrations of her fancy.
‘The power is not yet given to me to tell,’ was her solemn response. ‘But the sign is a witness that the winds of the skies shall perform some dreadful agency in the fortunes of all enterprises ruled by this lunar influence. Had the moon been first seen but as a portion of a broken ring, I would have veiled my face, and deplored the omen. She comes forth, however, in her brightness—a silver boat sailing the azure depths of the Heavens, and bearing a rich lading of destiny to the glorious portals of the sun.’
At that moment a cow looked over the churchyard wall, and lowed so close to Mr. Eadie’s ear, that it made him start and laugh. Instead, however, of disturbing the Pythian mood of his lady, it only served to deepen it; but she said nothing, though her look intimated that she was offended by his levity.
After a pause of several minutes she rose, and moved towards the gate without accepting his proffered arm.
‘I am sorry,’ said he, ‘that you are displeased with me; but really the bathos of that cow was quite irresistible.’
‘Do you think,’ was her mystical reply, ‘that an animal, which, for good reasons, the wise Egyptians hardly erred in worshipping, made to us but an inarticulate noise? It was to me a prophetic salutation. On the morning before my father left Glengael tojoin the royal standard, I heard the same sound. An ancient woman, my mother’s nurse, and one of her own blood, told me that it was a fatal enunciation, for then the moon was in the wane; but heard, she said, when the new moon is first seen, it is the hail of a victory or a bridal.’
‘It is strange,’ replied the minister, unguardedly attempting to reason with her, ‘that the knowledge of these sort of occurrences should be almost exclusively confined to the inhabitants of the Highlands.’
‘It is strange,’ said she; ‘but no one can expound the cause. The streamers of the northern light shine not in southern skies.’
At that moment she shuddered, and, grasping the minister wildly by the arm, she seemed to follow some object with her eye that was moving past them.
‘What’s the matter—what do you look at?’ he exclaimed with anxiety and alarm.
‘I thought it was Walkinshaw’s uncle,’ said she with a profound and heavy sigh, as if her very spirit was respiring from a trance.
‘It was nobody,’ replied the minister thoughtfully.
‘It was his wraith,’ said Mrs. Eadie.
The tone in which this was expressed curdled his very blood, and he was obliged to own to himself, in despite of the convictions of his understanding, that there are more things in the heavens and the earth than philosophy can yet explain; and he repeated the quotation fromHamlet, partly to remove the impression which his levity had made.
‘I am glad to hear you allow so much,’ rejoined Mrs. Eadie; ‘and I think you must admit that of late I have given you many proofs in confirmation. Did I not tell you when the cock crowed on the roof of our friend’s cottage, that we should soon hear of some cheerful change in the lot of the inmates? and next day came Walkinshaw from Glasgow with the news of the happy separation from his uncle. On the evening before I received my letter from Glengael, you may well remember the glittering star thatannounced it in the candle. As sure as the omen in the crowing of the cock, and the shining of that star, were fulfilled, will the auguries which I have noted be found the harbingers of events.’
Distressing as these shadows and gleams of lunacy were to those by whom Mrs. Eadie was justly beloved and venerated, to herself they afforded a high and holy delight. Her mind, during the time the passion lasted, was to others obscure and oracular. It might be compared to the moon in the misty air when she is surrounded with a halo, and her light loses its silveryness, and invests the landscape with a shroudy paleness and solemnity. But Mrs. Eadie felt herself as it were ensphered in the region of spirits, and moving amidst marvels and mysteries sublimer than the faculties of ordinary mortals could explore.
The minister conducted his wife to the house of Walkinshaw’s mother, where she went to communicate the agreeable intelligence, as she thought, of the favourable aspect of the moon, as it had appeared to her Highland astrology. But he was so distressed by the evident increase of her malady, that he did not himself immediately go in. Indeed, it was impossible for him not to acknowledge, even to the most delicate suggestions of his own mind towards her, that she was daily becoming more and more fascinated by her visionary contemplations; and in consequence, after taking two or three turns in the village, he determined to advise her to go with Walkinshaw to Glengael, in the hope that the change of circumstances, and the interest that she might take once more in the scenes of her youth, would draw her mind from its wild and wonderful imaginings, and fix her attention again on objects calculated to inspire more sober, but not less affecting, feelings.
The result of Mr. Eadie’s reflections was a proposition to Walkinshaw to delay his journey for a day or two, until Mrs. Eadie could be prepared to accompany him; but, when the subject was mentioned to her, she declared the most decided determination not to trouble the tide of his fortune by any interposition of hers which had been full of disappointments and sorrows. From whatever sentiment this feeling arose, it was undoubtedly dictated by magnanimity; for it implied a sense of sacrifice on her part; nevertheless, it was arranged, that, although Walkinshaw should set out at the time originally fixed, Mrs. Eadie, accompanied by Ellen Frazer, should follow him to Glengael as soon after as possible.
To the lovers this was no doubt delightful; but, when the Laird of Kittlestonheugh heard of it in Glasgow, it disturbed him exceedingly. The departure of Ellen Frazer from Camrachle to Glengael, where his nephew was for a time to fix his head-quarters, was an occurrence that he had not contemplated, and still less, if any degree can exist in an absolute negative, that the minister’s insane wife should accompany her.
A circumstance, however, occurred at the time, which tended materially to diminish his anxieties: A number of gentlemen belonging to the royal city had projected a sea excursion in Allan M’Lean’s pilot-boat, and one of the party proposed to Kittlestonheugh that he should be of their party—for they were all friends, and sympathized, of course, with the most heartfelt commiseration, for the loss he had sustained in his wife, who had been nearly twenty years almost as much dead as alive, and particularly in the grief he suffered by the injudicious marriage of his daughter. George, with his habitual suavity, accepted the invitation; and on the selfsame day that our friend and personal acquaintance Walkinshaw set off in the coach from the classical and manufacturing town (aswe believe Gibbon the historian yclyped the royal city) for the soi-disant intellectual metropolis and modern Athens of Edinburgh, his uncle embarked at the stair of the west quay of Greenock.
What stores were laid in by those Glasgow Argonautics—what baskets of limes, what hampers of wine and rum, and loaves of sugar, and cheese and bacon hams, with a modicum of biscuit,—we must leave for some more circumstantial historian to describe. Sufficient for us, and for all acquainted with the munificent consideration of the Glottiani for themselves, is the fact, that seven of the primest magnates of the royal city embarked together to enjoy the sea air, and the appetite consequent thereon, in one of the best sailing and best navigated schooners at that time on the west of Scotland. Whether any of them, in the course of the voyage, suffered the affliction of sea-sickness, we have never heard; but from our own opinion, believing the thing probable, we shall not enter into any controversy on the subject. There was, to be sure, some rumour shortly after, that, off Ailsa, they did suffer from one kind of malady or another; but whether from eating of that delicious encourager of appetite, solan goose—the most savoury product of the rocky pyramid—or from a stomachique inability to withstand the tossings of the sea, we have never received any satisfactory explanation. Be this, however, as it may, no jovial, free-hearted, good kind of men, ever enjoyed themselves better than the party aboard the pilot boat.
They traversed the picturesque Kyles of Bute—coasted the shores of Cantyre—touched at the beautiful port of Campbelton—doubled the cliffy promontory—passed Gigha—left Isla on the left—navigated the sound of Jura—prudently kept along the romantic coast of Lorn and Appin—sailed through the sound of Mull—drank whisky at Rum—and, afraid of the beds and bowls of the hospitable Skye, cast anchor in Garelock. What more they did, and where they farther navigated the iron shores and tusky rocksof the headlands, that grin in unsatiated hunger upon the waves and restless waters of the Minch, we shall not here pause to describe. Let it be enough that they were courageously resolved to double Cape Wrath, and to enjoy the midnight twilights, and the smuggled gin of Kirkwall;—the aurora borealis of the hyperborean region, with the fresh ling of Tamy Tomson’s cobble boat at Hoy, and the silvery glimpses of Ursa Major; together with the tasty whilks and lampets that Widow Calder o’ the Foul Anchor at Stromness, assured her customers in all her English—were pickled to a concupiscable state of excellence. Our immediate duty is to follow the steps of the Laird’s nephew; and without entering upon any unnecessary details,—our readers, we trust, have remarked, that we entertain a most commendable abhorrence of all circumstantiality,—we shall allow Allan M’Lean and his passengers to go where it pleased themselves, while we return to Camrachle; not that we have much more to say respecting what passed there, than that Walkinshaw, as had been previously arranged, set out alone for Glengael Castle, in Inverness-shire; the parting from his mother and sister being considerably alleviated by the reflection, that Ellen Frazer, in attendance on Mrs. Eadie, was soon to follow him. Why this should have given him any particular pleasure, we cannot understand; but, as the young man, to speak prosaically, was in love, possibly there are some juvenile persons capable of entering into his feelings. Not, however, knowing, of our own knowledge, what is meant by the phrase—we must just thus simply advert to the fact; expressing, at the same time, a most philosophical curiosity to be informed what it means, and why it is that young gentlemen and ladies, in their teens, should be more liable to the calamity than personages of greater erudition in the practices of the world.
In the summer of the year 1793, we have some reason to believe that the rugging and riving times of antiquity were so well over in the north of Scotland, that, not only might any one of his Majesty’s subalterns travel there on the recruiting service, but even any spinster, not less than threescore, without let, hindrance, or molestation, to say nothing of personal violence; we shall not, therefore, attempt to seduce the tears of our fair readers, with a sentimental description of the incidents which befell our friend Walkinshaw, in his journey from Camrachle to Glengael, except to mention, in a parenthetical way, that, when he alighted from the Edinburgh coach at the canny twa and twae toun of Aberdeenawa, he had some doubt if the inhabitants spoke any Christian language.
Having remained there a night and part of a day, to see the place, and to make an arrangement with the host of an hostel, for a man and gig to take him to Glengael Castle, he turned his face towards the northwest, and soon entered what to him appeared a new region. Mrs. Eadie had supplied him with introductory letters to all her kith and kin, along the line of his route, and the recommendations of the daughter of the old Glengael were billets on the hospitality and kindness of the country. They were even received as the greatest favours by those who knew her least, so cherished and so honoured was the memory of the ill-fated chieftain, among the descendants of that brave and hardy race, who suffered in the desolation of the clans at Culloden.
The appearance and the natural joyous spirits of Walkinshaw endeared him to the families at the houses where he stopped on his way to Glengael, and his journey was, in consequence, longer and happier than he expected. On the afternoon of the ninth day after leaving Aberdeen, he arrived at the entrance of the rugged valley, in which the residence of Mr. Frazer was situated.
During the morning, he had travelled along the foot of the mountains and patches of cultivation, and here and there small knots of larches, recently planted, served to vary the prospect and enliven his journey; but as he approached the entrance to Glengael, these marks of civilization and improvement gradually became rarer. When he entered on the land that had been forfeited, they entirely disappeared, for the green spots that chequered the heath there were as the graves of a race that had been rooted out or slaughtered. They consisted of the sites of cottages which the soldiers of the Duke of Cumberland’s army had plundered and burnt in the year Forty-five.
The reflections which these monuments of fidelity awakened in the breast of the young soldier, as the guide explained to him what they were, saddened his spirit, and the scene which opened, when he entered the cliffy pass that led into Glengael, darkened it more and more. It seemed to him as if he was quitting the habitable world, and passing into the realms, not merely of desolation, but of silence and herbless sterility. A few tufts of heath and fern among the rocks, in the bottom of the glen, showed that it was not absolutely the valley of death.
The appearance of the lowering steeps, that hung their loose crags over the road, was as if some elder mountains had been crushed into fragments, and the wreck thrown in torrents, to fill up that dreary, soundless, desolate solitude, where nature appeared a famished skeleton, pining amidst poverty and horror.
But, after travelling for two or three miles through this interdicted chasm, the cliffs began to recede, and on turning a lofty projecting rock, his ears were gladdened with the sound of a small torrent that was leaping in a hundred cascades down a ravine fringed with birch and hazel. From that point verdure began to reappear, and as the stream in its course was increased by other mountain rivulets, the scenery of the glen gradually assumed a more refreshing aspect. The rocks became again shaggy with intermingledheath and brambles, and the stately crimson foxglove, in full blossom, rose so thickly along the sides of the mountains, that Walkinshaw, unconscious that it was from the effect of their appearance, began to dream in his reverie of guarded passes, and bloody battles, and picquets of red-coated soldiers bivouacking on the hills.
But his attention was soon roused from these heroical imaginings by a sudden turn of the road, laying open before him the glassy expanse of an extensive lake, and on the summit of a lofty rocky peninsula, which projected far into its bosom, the walls and turrets of Glengael.
From the desolate contrast of the pass he had travelled, it seemed to him that he had never beheld a landscape so romantic and beautiful. The mountains, from the margin of the water, were green to their summits, and a few oaks and firs around the castle enriched the picturesque appearance of the little promontory on which it stood. Beyond a distant vista of the dark hills of Ross, the sun had retired, but the clouds, in glorious masses of golden fires, rose in a prodigality of splendid forms, in which the military imagination of the young enthusiast had no difficulty in discovering the towers, and domes, and pinnacles of some airy Babylon, with burnished chariots on the walls, and brazen warriors in clusters on the battlements.
This poetical enchantment, however, was soon dissolved. The road along the skirt of the lake, as it approached the castle, was rugged and steep, and where it turned off into the peninsula, towards the gate, it literally lay on the cornice of a precipice, which, with all his valour, made Walkinshaw more than once inclined to leap from the gig. Here and there a fragment of an old wall showed that it had once been fenced, and where the rains had scooped hollows on the edge of the cliff, a few stakes had recently been put up; but there was an air of decay and negligence around, that prepared the mind of the visitor for the ruinous aspect of the castle.
Mr. Frazer, owing to his professional avocations, had seldom resided there, and he was too ambitious to raise the means to redeem the bonds he had granted for the purchase, to lay anything out in improvements. The state and appearance of the place was, in consequence, lone and dismal. Not only were the outer walls mantled with ivy, but the arch of the gateway was broken. Many of the windows in the principal edifice were rudely filled up with stones. The slates in several places had fallen from the extinguisher-less desolate roofed turrets, and patches of new lime on different places of the habitable buildings, bore testimony to the stinted funds which the proprietor allowed for repairs.
Within the gate the scene was somewhat more alluring. The space inclosed by the walls had been converted into a garden, which Mrs. Frazer and her daughters superintended, and had ornamented with evergreens and flowers. The apartments of the family were also neatly repaired, and showed, in the midst of an evident parsimony, a degree of taste that bespoke a favourable opinion of the inhabitants, which the reception given to Walkinshaw confirmed.
Mr. Frazer, an elderly gentleman, of an acute and penetrating look, met him at the door, and, heartily shaking him by the hand, led him into a parlour, where Mrs. Frazer, with two daughters, the sisters of Ellen, were sitting. The young ladies and their mother received him even with more frankness than the advocate. It was, indeed, not difficult to perceive, that they had previously formed an agreeable opinion of him, which they were pleased to find his prepossessing appearance confirm. But after the first congratulatory greetings were over, a slight cloud was cast on the spirits of the family by his account of the health of their relation Mrs. Eadie. It, however, was not of very long duration, for the intelligence that she might be daily expected with Ellen soon chased it away.
As Mr. Eadie found he could not conveniently get away from his parish, and the health of his lady requiring that she should travel by easy stages, it was arranged, after Walkinshaw’s departure, that his sister should take the spare corner of the carriage. Accordingly, on the day following his arrival at Glengael, they all made their appearance at the castle.
Mrs. Eadie’s malady had, in the meantime, undergone no change. On the contrary, she was become more constantly mystical, and the mournful feelings awakened by the sight of her early home, desolated by time and the ravages of war, rather served to increase her superstitious reveries. Every feature of the landscape recalled some ancient domestic tradition; and as often as she alluded to the ghostly stories that were blended with her ancestral tales, she expatiated in the loftiest and wildest flights of seeming inspiration and prophecy.
But still she enjoyed lucid intervals of a serene and tender melancholy. On one occasion, while she was thus walking with the young ladies in the environs of the castle, she stopped abruptly, and, looking suddenly around, burst into tears.
‘It was here,’ said she—‘on this spot, that the blossoms of my early hopes fell, and were scattered for ever.’
At that moment, a gentleman, some ten or twelve years older than Walkinshaw, dressed in the Highland garb, was seen coming towards the castle, and the majestic invalid uttered a terrific shriek, and fainted in the arms of her companions. The stranger, on hearing the scream, and seeing her fall, ran to the assistance of the ladies.
When Mrs. Eadie was so far recovered as to be able to look up, the stranger happened to be standing behind Ellen, on whose lap her head was laid, and, not seeing him, she lay, for some time after the entirerestoration of her faculties, in a state of profound solemnity and sorrow. ‘O Frazer!’ she exclaimed pathetically.
‘I have seen him,’ she added; ‘and my time cannot now be long.’
At that instant her eye lighted on the stranger as he moved into another position. She looked at him for some time with startled amazement and awe; and, turning round to one of the young ladies, said, with an accent of indescribable grief, ‘I have been mistaken.’ She then rose, and the stranger introduced himself. He was the same person in whom, on his arrival from France, she had fourteen years before discovered the son of her early lover. Seeing him on the spot where she had parted from his father, and dressed in the garb and tartan of the clan which her lover wore on that occasion, she had, in her visionary mood, believed he was an apparition.
Saving these occasional hallucinations, her health certainly received new energy from her native air; and, by her presence at the castle, she was of essential service to the recruiting of her young friend.
In the meantime, Glengael being informed of the attachment between Walkinshaw and Ellen, had espoused his interests with great ardour; and French Frazer, as the stranger was called, also raising men for promotion, the castle became a scene of so much bustle as materially to disturb the shattered nerves of the invalid. With a view, therefore, to change the scene, and to enable Mrs. Eadie to enjoy the benefit of sea-bathing, an excursion was proposed to Caithness and Sutherland, where Glengael was desirous of introducing the officers to certain political connexions which he had in these counties, and it was proposed that, while the gentlemen went to pay their visits, the ladies should take up their residence at the little town of Wick.
The weather had, for some days before their departure from Glengael, been bright and calm, and the journey to Wick was performed with comparative ease and comfort. The party had, however, scarcely alightedat the house, which a servant sent on before had provided for their accommodation, when the wind changed, and the skies were overcast. For three days it raged a continual tempest; the rain fell in torrents, and the gentlemen, instead of being able to proceed on their visit, were confined to the house. At the end of the third day the storm subsided, and, though the weather was broken, there were intervals which allowed them to make little excursions in the neighbourhood.
The objects they visited, and the tales and traditions of the country, were alike new and interesting to the whole party; and it was agreed, that, before leaving Wick, the gentlemen should conduct the ladies to some of the remarkable spots which they had themselves visited;—among other places, Girnigo Castle, the ancient princely abode of the Earls of Caithness, the superb remains of which still obtain additional veneration in the opinion of the people, from the many guilty and gloomy traditions that fear and fancy have exaggerated in preserving the imperfect recollections of its early history.
Mrs. Eadie had agreed to accompany them, the walk not exceeding three or four miles; but on the evening preceding the day which they had fixed for the excursion, when the weather had all the appearance of being settled, she saw, or imagined that she saw, at sunset, some awful prodigy which admonished her not to go.
‘I beheld,’ said she, ‘between me and the setting sun, a shadowy hand bearing an hour-glass, run out; and when I looked again, I saw the visionary semblance of Walkinshaw’s uncle pass me with a pale countenance. Twice have I witnessed the same apparition of his wraith, and I know from the sign, that either his time is not to be long, or to-morrow we shall hear strange tidings.’
It was useless to reason or to argue with her sublime and incomprehensible pretensions; but as it was deemed not prudent to leave her alone, Glengael and Mrs. Frazer agreed to remain at Wick, while French Frazer and the young ladies, with Walkinshaw andhis sister, went to inspect the ruins of Girnigo, and the rocks, caverns, and precipices of Noss-head.
Of all places in the wild and withered region of Caithness, the promontory of Noss-head presents, alike to the marine voyager and the traveller by land, one of the most tremendous objects. The waves of the universal sea have, from the earliest epochs, raged against it. Huge rocks, torn from the cliffs, stand half hid in the waters, like the teeth and racks of destruction grinning for shipwrecks. No calm of the ocean is there without a swell, and no swell without horror. The sea-birds, that love to build on the wildest cliffs and precipices of that coast of ruins, shun Noss-head, for the ocean laves against it in everlasting cataracts, and the tides, whether in ebb or flow, hurl past in devouring whirlpools. To the pilots afar at sea it is a lofty landmark and a beacon,—but the vessel embayed either within its northern or its southern cliffs, may be known by the marks on her sails, or the name on the pieces of her stern,—but none of her crew ever escape to tell the circumstances of her fate. Even there the miserable native earns no spoils from the waves;—whatever reaches the shore consists of fragments, or splinters, or corses, or limbs,—all are but the crumbs and the surfeit-relics of destruction.
Mr. Donald Gunn, the worthy Dominie of Wick, who had agreed to act as a guide to Girnigo, was, soon after sunrise, at the door, summoning the party to make ready for the journey; for, although the morning was fair and bright, he had seen signs in the preceding evening, which made him apprehensive of another storm. ‘The wind,’ said he to Walkinshaw, who was the first that obeyed the call, ‘often, at this time of the year, rises about noon, when the waves jump with such agility against the rocks, that the most periculous points of view cannot be seen in their proper elegance,without the risk of breaking your neck, or at least being washed away, and drowned for ever.’
Walkinshaw, accordingly, upon Gunn’s report, as he called it, roused the whole party, and they set out for Staxigo, preceded by the Dominie, who, at every turn of the road, ‘indexed,’ as he said, ‘the most interesting places.’
During the walk to the village, the weather still continued propitious; but the schoolmaster observed that a slight occasional breeze from the north-east, the wildest wind that blows on that coast, rippled the glassy sea, as it undulated among the rocks below their path; a sure indication, so early in the morning, of a tempestuous afternoon. His companions, however, unacquainted with the omens of that ravenous shore, heard his remark without anxiety.
After breakfasting at Elspeth Heddle’s public in Staxigo on milk, and ham and eggs, a partan, and haddocks, they went on to the ruins of Girnigo. The occasional fetching of the wind’s breath, which the Dominie had noticed in their morning walk, was now become a steady gale, and the waves began to break against the rugged cliffs and headlands to the southward, insomuch, that, when the party reached the peninsula on which the princely ruins of the united castles of Girnigo and Sinclair are situated, they found several fishermen, belonging to Wick, who had gone out to sea at daybreak, busily drawing their boats on shore, in the little port on the south side of the cliffs, under the walls. The visitors inquired why they were so careful in such bright and summer weather; but they directed the attention of the Dominie to long flakes of goat’s beard in the skies, and to the sea-birds flying towards the upland.
By this time the billows were breaking white and high on the extremities of Noss-head, and the long grass on the bartisans and window-sills of the ruins streamed and hissed in the wind. The sun was bright; but the streaks of hoary vapour that veined the pure azure of the heavens retained their position andmenacing appearance. There was, however, nothing in the phenomena of the skies to occasion any apprehension; and the party, without thinking of the immediate horrors of a storm, sympathised with their guide, as he related to them the mournful legends of those solitary towers. But, although he dwelt, with particular emphasis, on the story of the Bishop, whom one of the Earls of Caithness had ordered his vassals to boil in a cauldron, on account of his extortions, their sympathy was more sorrowfully awakened by the woeful fate of the young Master of Caithness, who, in 1572, fell a victim to the jealousy of his father.
‘George, the Earl at that time,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘with his son the Master of Caithness, was on the leet of the lovers of Euphemia, the only daughter of an ancestor of Lord Reay. The lady was young and beautiful, and naturally preferred the son to the father; but the Earl was a haughty baron, and, in revenge for his son proving a more thriving wooer, was desirous of putting him for a season out of the way—but not by the dirk, as the use and wont of that epoch of unrule might have justified. Accordingly, one afternoon, as they were sitting together in the hall at yonder architraved window in the second story, the wrathful Earl clapped his hands thrice, and in came three black-aviced kerns in rusted armour, who, by a signal harmonized between them and Earl George, seized the lawful heir, and dragged him to a dampish captivity in yon vault, of which you may see the yawning hungry throat in the chasm between the two principal lumps of the buildings.’
The learned Dominie then proceeded to relate the sequel of this strange story—by which it appeared, that, soon after the imprisonment of his son, the Earl being obliged to render his attendance at the court of Stirling, left his son in the custody of Murdow Mackean Roy, who, soon after the departure of his master, was persuaded by the prisoner to connive at a plan for his escape. But the plot was discovered by William, the Earl’s second son, who apprehendedMurdow, and executed him in the instant. Immediately after, he went down into the dungeon, and threatened his brother also with immediate punishment, if he again attempted to corrupt his keepers. The indignant young nobleman, though well ironed, sprang upon Lord William, and bruised him with such violence, that he soon after died. David and Inghrame Sinclair were then appointed custodiers of the prisoner; but, availing themselves of the absence of the Earl, and the confusion occasioned by the death of William, they embezzled the money in the castle, and fled, leaving their young lord in the dungeon, a prey to the horrors of hunger, of which he died.
About seven years after, the Earl, while he lamented the fatal consequences of his own rash rivalry, concealed his thirst for revenge. Having heard that Inghrame Sinclair, who had retired with his booty to a distant part of the country, intended to celebrate the marriage of his daughter by a great feast, he resolved to make the festival the scene of punishment. Accordingly, with a numerous retinue, he proceeded to hunt in the neighbourhood of Inghrame Sinclair’s residence; and, availing himself of the hospitable courtesies of the time, he entered the banquet-hall, and slew the traitor in the midst of his guests.—
While the visitors in the lee of the ruins were listening to the Dominie’s legend, the wind had continued to increase and the sea to rise, and the spray of the waves was springing in stupendous water-spouts and spires of foam over all the headlands in view to the south.
‘Aye,’ said the Dominie, pointing out to them the ruins of Clyth Castle, over which the sea was breaking white in the distance, ‘we may expect a dry storm, for Clyth has got on its shroud. Look where it stands like a ghost on the shore. It is a haunted and unhallowed monument.
‘In olden and ancient times the Laird of Clyth went over to Denmark, and, being at the court of Elsineur, counterfeited, by the help of a handsome person, and a fine elocution, the style and renown of the mostprosperous gentleman in all Caithness, by which he beguiled a Prince of Copenhagen to give him his daughter in marriage, a lady of rare and surpassing beauty. After his marriage he returned to Scotland to prepare for the reception of his gorgeous bride; but, when he beheld his own rude turret amidst the spray of the ocean’s sea, and thought of the golden palaces and sycamore gardens of Denmark, he was shocked at the idea of a magnificent princess inhabiting such a bleak abode, and overwhelmed with the dread of the indignation that his guilt would excite among her friends. So when the Danish man-of-war, with the lady on board, was approaching the coast, he ordered lights and fires along the cliffs of Ulbster, by which the pilots were bewildered, and the ship was dashed in pieces. The princess and her maids of honour, with many of the sailors, were drowned; but her body was found, beautiful in death, with rings on her fingers, and gems in her ears; and she was interred, as became a high-born lady of her breeding, in the vault where she now lies, among the ancestors of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster; and ever since that time, the Castle of Clyth has been untenanted, and as often as the wind blows from the north-east, it is covered with a shroud as if doing penance for the maiden of Denmark.’
Notwithstanding the pedantry in the Dominie’s language in relating this tradition, the unaffected earnestness with which he expressed himself, moved the compassion of his auditors, and some of the ladies shed tears; which the gentlemen observing, Walkinshaw, to raise their spirits, proposed they should go forward towards Noss-head to view the dreadful turbulency of the breakers. But, before they had approached within half a mile of the promontory, the violence of the gale had increased to such a degree, that they found themselves several times obliged to take refuge in the hollows of the rocks, unable to withstand the fury of the wind, and the lavish showers of spray, that rose in sheets from the waves, and came heavier than rain on the blast.
In the meantime, the Glasgow party on board Allan M’Lean’s pilot-boat was enjoying their sail and sosherie. Enticed by the beauty of the sunny weather, which had preceded the arrival of our Glengael friends at Wick, they had made a long stretch as far to the north as the Mainland of Shetland, and after enjoying fresh ling and stockfish in the highest perfection there, and laying in a capital assortment of worsted hose for winter, they again weighed anchor, with the intention of returning by the Pentland Firth. Being, however, overtaken by the boisterous weather, which obliged Mr. Frazer and his two recruiting guests to stop at Wick, they went into Kirkwall Bay, where they were so long detained, that the thoughts of business and bills began to deteriorate their pleasure.
To none of the party was the detention so irksome as to Mr. Walkinshaw, for, independent of the cares of his mercantile concerns, his fancy was running on Ellen Frazer, and he was resolved, as soon as he returned to the Clyde, to sound her father with a proposal, to solicit her for his second wife. Why a gentleman, so well advanced in life, should have thought of offering himself as a candidate for a lady’s love, against his nephew, we must leave to be accounted for by those who are able to unravel the principles of the Earl of Caithness’s enmity to his son, particularly as we are in possession of no reasonable theory, adequate to explain how he happened to prefer Ellen Frazer to the numerous beauties of the royal city. It is sufficient for us, as historians, simply to state the fact, and narrate the events to which it gave rise.
Mr. Walkinshaw then, being rendered weary of the Orkneys, and, perhaps, also of the joviality of his companions, by the mingled reflections of business, and the tender intention of speedily taking a second wife, resolved, rather than again incur the uncertainties of the winds and waves, to leave the pilot-boat at Kirkwall, and embark for Thurso, in order to return home over land; a vessel belonging to that port being then wind-bound in the bay. Accordingly, on the same morning that the party from Wick went to visit Girnigo Castle, and the magnificent horrors of Noss-head, he embarked.
For some time after leaving Kirkwall, light airs and summer breezes enabled the sloop in which he had taken his passage to work pleasantly round Moulhead. But before she had passed the spiky rocks and islets of Copinshaw, the master deemed it prudent to stand farther out to sea; for the breeze had freshened, and the waves were dashing themselves into foam on Roseness and the rugged shores of Barra.
The motion of the sloop, notwithstanding the experience which the passenger had gained in the pilot-boat, overwhelmed him with unutterable sickness, and he lay on the deck in such affliction, that he once rashly wished he was drowned. The cabin-boy who attended him was so horror-struck at hearing so profane a wish at sea, while the wind was rising on a lee shore, that he left him to shift for himself.
For some time the master did not think it necessary to shorten sail, but only to stretch out towards the south-east; but, as the sun mounted towards the meridian, the gale so continued to increase, that he not only found it necessary to reef, but in the end to hand almost all his canvas save the foresail. Still, as there were no clouds, no rain, no thunder nor lightning, the sea-sick Glasgow merchant dreamt of no danger.
‘Maybe,’ said the cabin-boy in passing, as the Laird happened to look up from his prostrate situation on the deck, ‘ye’ll get your ugly wish oure soon.’
The regardless manner and serious tone in which this was said had an immediate and restorative effect. Mr. Walkinshaw roused himself, and, looking round, was surprised to see the sails taken in; and, casting his eyes to leeward, beheld, with a strong emotion of consternation, the ocean boiling with tremendous violence, and the spindrift rising like steam.
‘It blows a dreadful gale?’ said he inquiringly to the master.
‘It does,’ was the emphatic reply.
‘I hope there is no danger,’ cried the merchant, alarmed, and drawing himself close under the larboard gunnel.
The master, who was looking anxiously towards Duncansby-head, which presented a stupendous tower of foaming spray, over the starboard bow,replied,—
‘I hope we shall be able to weather Noss-head.’
‘And if we do not,’ said Mr. Walkinshaw, ‘what’s to be done?’
‘You’ll be drowned,’ cried the cabin-boy, who had seated himself on the lee-side of the companion; and the bitterness of the reproachful accent with which this was said stung the proud merchant to the quick—but he said nothing; his fears were, however, now all awake, and he saw, with a feeling of inexpressible alarm, that the crew were looking eagerly and sorrowfully towards the roaring precipices of Caithness.
Still the vessel kept bravely to her helm, and was working slowly outward; but, as she gradually wore round, her broadside became more and more exposed to the sea, and once or twice her decks were washed fore and aft.
‘This is terrible work, Captain,’ said Mr. Walkinshaw.
‘It is,’ was all the answer he received.
‘Is there no port we can bear away for?’
‘None.’
‘Good Heavens! Captain, if this continues till night?’
The master eyed him for a moment, and said with ashudder,—
‘If it does, sir, we shall never see night.’
‘You’ll be drowned,’ added the little boy, casting an angry look from behind the companion.
‘Almighty Powers!—surely we are not in such danger?’ exclaimed the terrified merchant.
‘Hold your tongue,’ again cried the boy.
Mr. Walkinshaw heard him, and for a moment waspetrified, for the command was not given with insolence, but solemnity.
A cry of ‘Hold fast’, in the same instant, came from the forecastle, and, after a momentary pause, a dreadful sea broke aboard, and swept the deck. The master, who had himself taken the helm, was washed overboard, and the tiller was broken.
‘We are gone!’ said the little boy, as he shook the water from his jacket, and crawled on towards the mast, at the foot of which he seated himself, for the loss of the tiller, and the damage the rudder had sustained, rendered the vessel unmanageable, and she drifted to her fate before the wind.
‘Is there indeed no hope?’ cried Mr. Walkinshaw to one of the sailors, who was holding by the shrouds.
‘If we get into Sinclair’s Bay, there is a sandy beach,’ replied the sailor.
‘And if we do not?’ exclaimed the passenger in the accent of despair.
‘We’ll a’ be drowned,’ replied the boy with a scowling glance, as he sat cowering with his head between his knees, at the foot of the mast.
‘We shall not get into Sinclair’s Bay,’ said the sailor, firmly; ‘but we may pass Noss-head.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Mr. Walkinshaw, catching something like hope and fortitude from the sedate courage of the sailor.
Another cry of ‘Hold fast’ prepared him for a second breach of the sea, and he threw himself on the deck, and took hold of a ring-bolt, in which situation he continued, though the vessel rose to the wave. In the meantime, the resolute sailor, after looking calmly and collectedly around for some time, went from the larboard to the starboard, and mounted several rattlings of the shrouds, against which he leant with his back, while the vessel was fast driving towards Noss-head.
The party from Glengael, who had, as we have described, been obliged to take refuge from the wind in the lee of the rocks, stood contemplating the scene in silence. The sky was without a cloud—but the atmosphere was nevertheless almost like steam, through which the sun shone so sickly, that, even without hearing the hiss of the wind, or the rage of the ocean, no shelter could have prevented the spectator from being sensible that some extraordinary violence agitated and troubled the whole air. Every shrub and bramble not only bent before the wind, but it may be said their branches literally streamed in the blast. There was a torrent which ran towards the sea, near the spot where the party stood; but the wind caught its waters as they fell in a cataract, and blew them over the face of the hill like a wreath of mist. A few birch trees, that skirted the dell through which this stream ran, brushed the ground before the breeze; and the silver lining of their leaves was so upturned in the constant current of the storm, that they had the appearance of being covered with hoar frost. Not a bee was abroad on the heath, and the sea birds were fluttering and cowering in the lee of the rocks—a bernacle, that attempted to fly from behind a block of granite, was whirled screaming away in the wind, and flung with such resistless impetuosity against the precipice, behind a corner of which the party were sheltering, that it was killed on the spot. The landscape was bright in the hazy sunshine; but the sheep lay in the hollows of the ground, unable to withstand the deluge of the dry tempest that swept all before it, and a wild and lonely lifelessness reigned on the mountains.
The appearance of the sea was awful. It was not because the waves rolled in more tremendous volumes than any of the party had ever before seen, and burst against the iron precipices of Noss-head with the roar and the rage of the falls of Niagara—the wholeexpanse of the ocean was enveloped with spindrift, and, as it occasionally opened, a vessel was seen. At first it was thought she was steering for the bay of Wick, but it soon appeared that she drifted at random towards Sinclair’s Bay, and could, by nothing less than some miraculous change of the wind, reach the anchorage opposite to Kiess Castle.
Ellen Frazer was the first who spoke of the sloop’s inevitable fate.—‘It is dreadful,’ said she, ‘for us to stand in safety here, like spectators at a tragedy, and see yon unfortunate bark rushing without hope to destruction. Let us make an attempt to reach the beach—she may be driven on the shore, and we may have it in our power to assist the poor wretches, if any should escape.’
They, accordingly, endeavoured to reach the strand; but before they could wrestle with the wind half-way towards it, they saw that the vessel could not attain Sinclair’s Bay, and that her only chance of salvation was in weathering Noss-head, to which she was fast nearing. They, in consequence, changed their course, and went towards the promontory; but, by the time they had gained the height, they saw it was hopeless to think they could render any assistance, and they halted under the ledge of an overhanging rock, to see if she would be able to weather that dreadful headland.
The place where they took shelter was to the windward of the spray, which rose like a furious cataract against the promontory; and in pyramids of foam, that were seen many leagues off at sea, deluged the land to a great extent far beyond Castle Girnigo. It happened that Ellen Frazer had a small telescope in her hand, which they had brought with them, and, when they were under cover, she applied it to her eye.
‘The sailors,’ said she, ‘seem to have abandoned themselves to despair—I see two prostrate on the deck. There is one standing on the shrouds, as if he hopes to be able to leap on the rocks when she strikes. The dog is on the end of the bowsprit—I can look at them no more.’
She then handed the telescope to Mary, and, retiring to a little distance, seated herself on a stone, and, covering her face with her handkerchief, could no longer control her tears. The vessel, in the meantime, was fast drifting towards the rocks, with her broadside to the wave.
‘I think,’ said Mary, ‘that she must have lost her helm; nobody is near where it should be.—They have no hope.—One of the men, who had thrown himself on the deck, is risen. He is tying himself to the shrouds.—There is a boy at the foot of the mast, sitting cowering on the deck, holding his head between his hands.’
Walkinshaw, without speaking, took the telescope from his sister, who went and sat down in silence beside Ellen. By this time, the vessel had drifted so near, that everything on her deck was distinct to the naked eye.
‘The person on the deck,’ said Walkinshaw, after looking through the glass about the space of a minute, ‘is not a sailor—he has long clothes, and has the appearance of a gentleman, probably a passenger. That poor little boy!—he is evidently covering his ears, as if he could shut out the noise of the roaring death that awaits him. What a brave and noble fellow that is on the shrouds,—if coolness and courage can save, he is safe.’
At this moment, a shriek from Mary roused Ellen, and they both ran to the spot where Walkinshaw was standing. A tremendous wave had covered the vessel, as it were, with a winding-sheet of foam, and before it cleared away, she was among the breakers that raged against the headland.
‘She is gone!’ said Walkinshaw, and he took his sister and Ellen by the hands.—‘Let us leave these horrors.’ But the ladies trembled so much, that they were unable to walk; and Ellen became so faint, that she was obliged to sit down on the ground, while her lover ran with his hat to find, if possible, a little fresh water to revive her. He had not, however, been absentmany minutes, when another shriek from his sister called him back, and, on returning, he found that a large dog, dripping wet, and whimpering and moaning, had laid himself at the feet of the ladies with a look of the most piteous and helpless expression. It was the dog they had seen on the bowsprit of the vessel, and they had no doubt her fate was consummated; but three successive enormous billows coming, with all the force of the German Ocean, from the Baltic, rolled into the bay. The roar with which they broke as they hurled by the cliff, where the party were standing, drew the attention of Walkinshaw even from Ellen; and, to his surprise, he saw that the waves had, in their sweep, drawn the vessel into the bay, and that she was coming driving along the side of the precipice, and, if not dashed in pieces before, would pass within a few yards of where they stood. Her bowsprit was carried away, which showed how narrowly she had already escaped destruction.
The ladies, roused again into eager and anxious sympathy by this new incident, approached with Walkinshaw as near as possible to the brink of the cliff—to the very edge of which the raging waters raised their foamy crests as they passed in their might and majesty from the headland into the bay. Another awful wave was soon after seen rising at a distance, and, as it came rolling onward nearer and nearer, it swallowed up every lesser billow. When it approached the vessel, it swept her along so closely to the rocks that Walkinshaw shouted unconsciously, and the dog ran barking to the edge of the precipice,—all on board were for a moment animated with fresh energy,—the little boy stood erect; and the sailor on the shrouds, seeing Walkinshaw and the ladies, cried bravely, as the vessel rose on the swell in passing, ‘It will not do yet.’ But the attention of his admiring spectators was suddenly drawn from him to the gentleman. ‘Good Heavens!’ exclaimed Ellen Frazer, ‘it is your uncle!’
It was even so. Mr. Walkinshaw, on raising his head to look up, saw and recognized them, and, wildlystarting from the deck, shook his uplifted hands with a hideous and terrific frenzy. This scene was, however, but for an instant; the flank of the wave, as it bore the vessel along, broke against a projecting rock, and she was wheeled away by the revulsion to a great distance.
The sailor in the shrouds still stood firm; a second wave, more appalling than the former, brought the vessel again towards the cliff. The dog, anticipating what would happen, ran towards the spot where she was likely to strike. The surge swung her almost to the top of the precipice,—the sailor leapt from the shrouds, and caught hold of a projecting rock,—the dog seized him by the jacket to assist him up, but the ravenous sea was not to lose its prey.—In the same moment the wave broke, and the vessel was again tossed away from the rock, and a frightful dash of the breakers tore down the sailor and the faithful dog. Another tremendous revulsion, almost in the same moment, terminated the fate of the vessel. As it came roaring along it caught her by the broadside, and dashed her into ten thousand shivers against an angle of the promontory, scarcely more than two hundred yards from the spot where the horror-struck spectators stood. Had she been made of glass, her destruction and fragments could not have been greater. They floated like chaff on the waters; and, for the space of four or five seconds, the foam amidst which they weltered was coloured in several places with blood.
The same gale which proved so fatal on the coast of Caithness, carried the Glasgow party briskly home.
Before their arrival the news of the loss of Mr. Walkinshaw had reached the city, and Dirdumwhamle and his son were as busy, as heirs and executors could well be, in taking possession of his fortune, which, besides the estate of Kittlestonheugh, greatly exceeded their most sanguine expectations. They were, however,smitten with no little concern when, on applying to Mr. Pitwinnoch, the lawyer, to receive infeftment of the lands, they heard from him, after he had perused the deed of entail, that Robina had no right to the inheritance; but that our friend Walkinshaw was the lawful heir.
It was, however, agreed, as the world, as well as themselves, had uniformly understood and believed that old Grippy had disinherited his eldest son, to say nothing about this important discovery. Walky and Robina accordingly took possession in due form of her father’s mansion. Their succession was unquestioned, and they mourned in all the most fashionable pomp of woe for the loss they had sustained, receiving the congratulatory condolence of their friends with the most befitting decorum. To do the lady, however, justice, the tears which she shed were immediate from the heart; for, with all his hereditary propensity to gather and hold, her father had many respectable domestic virtues, and was accounted by the world a fair and honourable man. It is also due to her likewise to mention, that she was not informed, either by her husband or father-in-law, of the mistake they had been all in with regard to the entail; so that, whatever blame did attach to them for the part they played, she was innocent of the fraud.
To Walkinshaw’s mother the loss of her brother-in-law was a severe misfortune, for with him perished her annuity of fifty pounds a year. She entertained, however, a hope that Robina would still continue it; but the feelings arising from the consciousness of an unjust possession of the estate, operated on the mind of Milrookit in such a way, as to make him suddenly become wholly under the influence of avarice. Every necessary expense was grudged; his wife, notwithstanding the wealth she had brought him, was not allowed to enjoy a guinea; in a word, from the day in which Pitwinnoch informed him that she had no right to the property, he was devoured, in the most singular manner, with the most miserly passions and fears.
The old Leddy, for some time after the shock she had met with in the sudden death of her son, mourned with more unaffected sorrow than might have been expected from her character; and having, during that period, invited Mrs. Charles to spend a few weeks with her, the loss of the annuity, and conjectures respecting the continuance of it, frequently formed the subject of their conversation.
‘It’s my notion,’ the Leddy would say, ‘that Beenie will see to a continuality o’ the ’nuity—but Walky’s sic a Nabal, that nae doot it maun be a task o’ dexterity on her side to get him to agree. Howsever, when they’re a’ settled, I’ll no be mealy-mouthed wi’ them. My word! a bein bargain he has gotten wi’ her, and I’m wae to think it did nae fa’ to your Jamie’s luck, who is a laddie o’ a winsome temper—just as like his grandfather, my friend that was, as a kittling’s like a cat—the only difference being a wee thought mair o’ daffing and playrifety.’
Nor was it long after these observations that the Leddy had an opportunity of speaking to her grandchildren on the subject. One day soon after, when they happened to call, she took occasion to remind them how kind she had been at the time of their marriage, and also that, but for her agency, it might never have taken place.
‘Noo,’ said she, ‘there is ae thing I would speak to you anent, though I was in the hope ye would hae spar’t me the obligation, by making me a reasonable gratis gift for the cost and outlay I was at, forbye trouble on your account. But the compliment is like the chariot-wheels o’ Pharaoh, sae dreigh o’ drawing, that I canna afford to be blate wi’ you ony langer. Howsever, Walky and Beenie, I hae a projection in my head, the whilk is a thought o’ wisdom for you to consider, and it’s o’ the nature o’ a solemn league and covenant. If ye’ll consent to alloo Bell Fatherlans her ’nuity of fifty pounds per annus, as it is called according to law, I’ll score you out o’ my books for the bed, board, and washing due to me, and a heavy soom it is.’
‘Where do you think we are to get fifty pounds a year?’ exclaimed Milrookit. ‘Fifty pounds a year!’
‘Just in the same neuk, Walky, where ye found the Kittlestonheugh estate and the three and twenty thousand pounds o’ lying siller, Beenie’s braw tocher,’ replied the Leddy; ‘and I think ye’re a very crunkly character, though your name’s no Habakkuk, to gi’e me sic a constipation o’ an answer.’
‘I can assure you, Leddy,’ said he, ‘if it was a thing within the compass of my power, I would na need to be told to be liberal to Mrs. Charles; but the burden o’ a family’s coming upon us, and it’s necessary, nay, it’s a duty, to consider that charity begins at hame.’
‘And what’s to become o’ her and her dochter? Gude guide us! would the hard nigger let her gang on the session? for I canna help her.’
‘All I can say at present,’ was his reply, ‘is that we are in no circumstances to spare any thing like fifty pounds a year.’
‘Then I can tell thee, Walky, I will this very day mak out my count, and every farthing I can extortionate frae thee, meeserable penure pig that thou art, shall be pay’t o’er to her to the last fraction, just to wring thy heart o’ niggerality.’
‘If you have any lawful claim against me, of course I am obliged to pay you.’
‘If I hae ony lawful claim?—ye Goliah o’ cheatrie—if I hae ony lawful claim?—But I’ll say nothing—I’ll mak out an account—and there’s nae law in Christendom to stop me for charging what I like—my goose shall lay gouden eggs, if the life bide in my bodie.—Ye unicorn of oppression, to speak to me o’ law, that was so kind to you—but law ye shall get, and law ye shall hae—and be made as lawful as it’s possible for caption and horning, wi’ clerk and signet to implement.’
‘If you will make your little favours a debt, nobody can prevent you; but I will pay no more than is justly due.’
The Leddy made no reply, but her eyes looked unutterable things; and after sitting for some time inthat energetic posture of displeasure, she turned round to Robina, and said, with an accent of the most touchingsympathy,—
‘Hegh, Beenie! poor lassie! but thou hast ta’en thy sheep to a silly market. A skelp-the-dub creature to upbraid me wi’ his justly dues! But crocodile or croakin-deil, as I should ca’ him, he’ll get his ain justly dues.—Mr. Milrookit o’ Kittlestonheugh, as it’s no the fashion when folk hae recourse to the civil war o’ a law-plea, to stand on a ceremony, maybe ye’ll find some mair pleasant place than this room, an ye were to tak the pains to gang to the outside o’ my door; and I’ll send, through the instrumentality o’ a man o’ business, twa lines anent that bit sma’ matter for bed, board, and washing due to me for and frae that time, when, ye ken, Mr. Milrookit, ye had na ae stiver to keep yourself and your wife frae starvation.—So out o’ my house, and daur no longer to pollute my presence, ye partan-handit, grip-and-haud smiddy-vice Mammon o’ unrighteousness.’
After this gentle hint, as the Leddy afterwards called it, Milrookit and Robina hastily obeyed her commands, and returned to their carriage; but before driving home, he thought it necessary, under the menace he had received, to take the advice of his lawyer, Mr. Pitwinnoch. Some trifling affairs, however, prevented him from driving immediately to his office, and the consequence was, that the Leddy, who never allowed the grass to grow in her path, was there before him.