Weir of Hermiston; an unfinished romance

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT OF

WEIR OF
HERMISTON

An Unfinished Romance by

ROBERT LOUIS

STEVENSON

Copyright 1896 by
STONE & KIMBALL

Copyright 1896 by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. TT.S.A.

Cofle«e
Library

To
MY WIFE

/ saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn
On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again
In my precipitous city beaten bells
Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar,
Intent on my own race and place, I wrote.

Take tbou the writing : thine it is. For who
Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal,
Held still the target higher, chary of praise
And prodigal of counsel — who but tbou ?
So now, in the end, if this the least be good,
If any deed be done, if any fire
Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be thine.

CONTENTS

PAGE
DEDICATION ...... ill

INTRODUCTORY ..... 3

CHAP.

I. LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR , . 5

II. FATHER AND SON . . . -33

III. IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF

DUNCAN JOPP . . . .45

IV. OPINION OF THE BENCH . . .74
V. WINTER ON THE MOORS :

1. AT HERMISTON . . .92

2. KIRSTIE .... 99

3. A BORDER FAMILY . . .105

VI. A LEAF FROM CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK . 137
VII. ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES . . .185

VIII. A NOCTURNAL VISIT . . . .217

ix. AT THE WEAVER'S STONE . . .232

EDITORIAL NOTE . . . . .243

GLOSSARY OF SCOTTISH WORDS . . 26 1

WEIR OF HERMISTON

Introductory

In the wild end of a moorland parish, far
out of the sight of any house, there stands a
cairn among the heather, and a little by east
of it, in the going down of the .braeside, a
monument with some verses half defaced. It
was here that Claverhouse shot with his own
hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and
the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on
that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic
history have thus marked with a bloody finger
this hollow among the hills ; and since the
Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred
years ago, in a glorious folly, and without
comprehension or regret, the silence of the
moss has been broken once again by the re-
port of firearms and the cry of the dying.

The Deil's Hags was the old name. But

the place is now called Francie's Cairn. For

a while it was told that Francie walked.

Aggie Hogg met him in the gloaming by the

3

4 INTRODUCTORY

cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chatter-
ing teeth, so that his words were lost. He
pursued Rob Todd (if anyone could have be-
lieved Robbie) for the space of half a mile
with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of
incredulity ; these superstitious decorations
speedily fell off; and the facts of the story
itself, like the bones of a giant buried there
and half dug up, survived, naked and imper-
fect, in the memory of the scattered neigh-
bours. To this day, of winter nights, when
the sleet is on the window and the cattle are
quiet in the byre, there will be told again,
amid the silence of the young and the addi-
tions and corrections of the old, the tale of
the Justice-Clerk and of his son, young Her-
miston, that vanished from men's knowledge;
of the two Kirsties and the Four Black
Brothers of the Cauldstaneslap ; and of Frank
Innes, " the young fool advocate," that came
into these moorland parts to find his destiny.

Chapter I

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR

The Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in
that part of the country j but his lady wife
was known there from a child, as her race
had been before her. The old " riding Ruth-
erfords of Hermiston," of whom she was the
last descendant, had been famous men of yore,
ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands
to their wives though not their properties.
Tales of them were rife for twenty miles
about ; and their name was even printed in
the page of our Scots histories, not always to
their credit. One bit the dust at Flodden;
one was hanged at his peel door by James
the Fifth ; another fell dead in a carouse
with Tom Dalyell ; while a fourth (and that
was Jean's own father) died presiding at a

6 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Hell-Fire Club, of which he was the foun-
der. There were many heads shaken in
Crossmichael at that judgment ; the more so
as the man had a villainous reputation among
high and low, and both with the godly and
the worldly. At that very hour of his de-
mise, he had ten going pleas before the ses-
sion, eight of them oppressive. And the
same doom extended even to his agents ; his
grieve, that had been his right hand in many a
left-hand business, being cast from his horse
one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the
Kye skairs ; and his very doer (although law-
yers have long spoons) surviving him not
long, and dying on a sudden in a bloody flux.
In all these generations, while a male
Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads,
or brawling in a change-house, there would
be always a white-faced wife immured at
home in the old peel or the later mansion-
house. It seemed this succession of mar-
tyrs bided long, but took their vengeance in
the end, and that was in the person of the
last descendant, Jean. She bore the name

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 7

of the Rutherfords, but she was the daugh-
ter of their trembling wives. At the first
she was not wholly without charm. Neigh-
bours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of
elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad
little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty
that was not to be fulfilled. She withered
in the growing, and (whether it was the sins
of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers)
came to her maturity depressed, and, as it
were, defaced ; no blood of life in her, no
grasp or gaiety ; pious, anxious, tender, tear-
ful, and incompetent.

It was a wonder to many that she had
married — seeming so wholly of the stuff that
makes old maids. But chance cast her in
the path of Adam Weir, then the new Lord-
Advocate, a recognised, risen man, the con-
queror of many obstacles, and thus late in
the day beginning to think upon a wife. He
was one who looked rather to obedience than
beauty, yet it would seem he was struck with
her at the first look. " Wha's she ? " he
said, turning to his host ; and, when he had
been told, "Ay," says he, " she looks mense-

8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

ful. She minds me " ; and then, after

a pause (which some have been daring
enough to set down to sentimental recollec-
tions), " Is she releegious ? " he asked, and
was shortly after, at his own request, pre-
sented. The acquaintance, which it seems
profane to call a courtship, was pursued with
Mr. Weir's accustomed industry, and was
long a legend, or rather a source of legends,
in the Parliament House. He was described
coming, rosy with much port, into the draw-
ing-room, walking direct up to the lady, and
assailing her with pleasantries, to which the
embarrassed fair one responded, in what
seemed a kind of agony, " Eh, Mr. Weir ! "
or "O, Mr. Weir!" or "Keep me, Mr.
Weir ! " On the very eve of their engage-
ment it was related that one had drawn near
to the tender couple, and had overheard the
lady cry out, with the tones of one who
talked for the sake of talking, " Keep me,
Mr. Weir, and what became of him ? " and
the profound accents of the suitor's reply,
" Haangit, mem, haangit." The motives

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 9

upon either side were much debated. Mr.
Weir must have supposed his bride to be
somehow suitable ; perhaps he belonged to
that class of men who think a weak head the
ornament of women — an opinion invariably
punished in this life. Her descent and her
estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring
ancestors and her litigious father had done
well by Jean. There was ready money and
there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly
to the husband, to lend dignity to his de-
scendants, and to himself a title, when he
should be called upon the Bench. On the
side of Jean there was perhaps some fascina-
tion of curiosity as to this unknown male
animal that approached her with the rough-
ness of a ploughman and the aplomb of an
advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all
she knew, loved or understood, he may well
have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely
the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was an
ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the
period of his marriage, he looked already
older, and to the force of manhood added the
senatorial dignity of years ; it was, perhaps,

io WEIR OF HERMISTON

with an unreverend awe, but he was awful.
The Bench, the Bar, and the most experi-
enced and reluctant witness, bowed to his
authority — and why not Jeannie Rutherford ?
The heresy about foolish women is always
punished, I have said, and Lord Hermiston
began to pay the penalty at once. His house
in George Square was wretchedly ill-guided ;
nothing answerable to the expense of main-
tenance but the cellar, which was his own
private care. When things went wrong at
dinner, as they continually did, my lord
would look up the table at his wife : " I
think these broth would be better to swim in
than to sup." Or else to the butler :
" Here, M'Killop, awa' wi' this Raadical
gigot — tak' it to the French, man, and bring
me some puddocks ! It seems rather a sore
kind of a business that I should be all day in
Court haanging Raadicals, and get nawthing
to my denner." Of course this was but a
manner of speaking, and he had never hanged
a man for being a Radical in his life ; the
law, of which he was the faithful minister,
directing otherwise. And of course these

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR n

growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but
it was of a recondite sort ; and uttered as
they were in his resounding voice, and com-
mented on by that expression which they
called in the Parliament House " Hermiston's
hanging face " — they struck mere dismay
into the wife. She sat before him speechless
and fluttering ; at each dish, as at a fresh
ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's
countenance and fell again ; if he but ate in
silence, unspeakable relief was her portion ;
if there were complaint, the world was
darkened. She would seek out the cook,
who was always her sister in the Lord. " O,
my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that
my lord can never be contented in his own
house ! " she would begin ; and weep and
pray with the cook ; and then the cook
would pray with Mrs. Weir; and the next
day's meal would never be a penny the
better — and the next cook (when she came)
would be worse, if anything, but just as
pious. It was often wondered that Lord
Hermiston bore it as he did ; indeed he was
a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound

12 WEIR OF HERMISTON

wine and plenty of it. But there were mo-
ments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a
dozen times in the history of his married
life — " Here ! talc' it awa', and bring me a
piece bread and kebbuck ! " he had exclaimed,
with an appalling explosion of his voice and
rare gestures. None thought to dispute or
to make excuses ; the service was arrested ;
Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table
whimpering without disguise ; and his lord-
ship opposite munched his bread and cheese
in ostentatious disregard. Once only, Mrs.
Weir had ventured to appeal. He was pass-
ing her chair on his way into the study.

" O, Edom ! " she wailed, in a voice tragic
with tears, and reaching out to him both hands,
in one of which she held a sopping pocket-
handkerchief.

He paused and looked upon her with a
face of wrath, into which there stole, as he
looked, a twinkle of humour.

" Noansense ! " he said. " You and your
noansense ! What do I want with a Chris-
tian faim'ly ? I want Christian broth ! Get

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 13

me a lass that can plain boil a potato, if she
was a whiire off the streets." And with these
words, which echoed in her tender ears like
blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and
shut the door behind him.

Such was the housewifery in George
Square. It was better at Hermiston, where
Kirstie Elliot, the sister of a neighbour-
ing bonnet-laird, and an eighteenth cousin
of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept
a trim house and a good country table.
Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean,
capable, notable ; once a moorland Helen,
and still comely as a blood horse and healthy
as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice
and colour, she ran the house with her whole
intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without
buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in
those days required, she was the cause of
many an anxious thought and many a tearful
prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and
mistress renewed the parts of Martha and
Mary ; and though with a pricking conscience,
Mary reposed on Martha's strength as on a

H WEIR OF HERMISTON

rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in
a particular regard. There were few with
whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he
favoured with so many pleasantries. "Kirstie
and me maun have our joke," he would de-
clare, in high good-humour, as he buttered
Kirstie's scones and she waited at table. A
man who had no need either of love or of
popularity, a keen reader of men and of events,
there was perhaps only one truth for which
he was quite unprepared : he would have been
quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated
him. He thought maid and master were
well matched ; hard, handy, healthy, broad
Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the
pair of them. And the fact was that she
made a goddess and an only child of the effete
and tearful lady ; and even as she waited at
table her hands would sometimes itch for my
lord's ears.

Thus, at least, when the family were at
Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir
too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the
dreadful looking-for of the miscarried dinner,
she would mind her seam, read her piety

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR *5

books, and take her walk (which was my
lord's orders), sometimes by herself, some-
times with Archie, the only child of that
scarce natural union. The child was her
next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment
bloomed again, she breathed deep of life,
she let loose her heart, in that society. The
miracle of her motherhood was ever new to
her. The sight of the little man at her skirt
intoxicated her with the sense of power, and
froze her with the consciousness of her re-
sponsibility. She looked forward, and, see-
ing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse
part on the world's theatre, caught in her
breath and lifted up her courage with a lively
effort. It was only with the child that she
forgot herself and was at moments natural ;
yet it was only with the child that she had
conceived and managed to pursue a scheme
of conduct. Archie was to be a great man
and a good ; a minister if possible, a saint
for certain. She tried to engage his mind
upon her favourite books, Rutherford's " Let-
ters," Scougal's " Grace Abounding," and
the like. It was a common practice of hers

16 WEIR OF HERMISTON

(and strange to remember now) that she
would carry the child to the Deil's Hags, sit
with him on the Praying Weaver's stone and
talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran
down. Her view of history was wholly art-
less, a design in snow and ink ; upon the one
side, tender innocents with psalms upon their
lips ; upon the other, the persecutors, booted,
bloody-minded, flushed with wine ; a suffer-
ing Christ, a raging Beelzebub. Persecutor
was a word that knocked upon the woman's
heart ; it was her highest thought of wicked-
ness, and the mark of it was on her house.
Her great-great-grandfather had drawn the
sword against the Lord's anointed on the field
of Rullion Green, and breathed his last (tra-
dition said) in the arms of the detestable
Dalyell. Nor could she blind herself to this,
that had they lived in these old days, Hermis-
ton himself would have been numbered
alongside of Bloody MacKenzie and the pol-
itic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of
God's immediate enemies. The sense of
this moved her to the more fervor ; she had
a voice for that name of persecutor that thrilled

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 17

in the child's marrow ; and when one day
the mob hooted and hissed them all in my
lord's traveling carriage, and cried, "Down
with the persecutor ! down with Hanging
Hermiston ! " and mamma covered her eyes
and wept, and papa let down the glass and
looked out upon the rabble with his droll
formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they
said he sometimes looked when he gave
sentence, Archie was for the moment too
much amazed to be alarmed, but he had
scarce got his mother by herself before his
shrill voice was raised demanding an expla-
nation ; why had they called papa a perse-
cutor ?

" Keep me, my precious ! " she exclaimed.
" Keep me, my dear ! this is poleetical. Ye
must never ask me anything poleetical,
Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my
dear, and it 's no for me or you to be judg-
ing him. It would be telling us all if we
behaved ourselves in our several stations the
way your faither does in his high office ; and
let me hear no more of any such disrespect-
ful and undutiful questions ! No that you

i8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

meant to be undutiful, my lamb ; your
mother kens that — she kens it well, dearie!"
and so slid off to safer topics, and left on the
mind of the child an obscure but ineradic-
able sense of something wrong.

Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was
summed in one expression — tenderness. In
her view of the universe, which was all
lighted up with a glow out of the doors of
hell, good people must walk there in a kind
of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and
plants had no souls ; they were here but for
a day, and let their day pass gently ! And as
for the immortal men, on what black, down-
ward path were many of them wending, and
to what a horror of an immortality ! " Are
not two sparrows," " Whosoever shall smite
thee," " God sendeth His rain," " Judge not
that ye be not judged" — these texts made
her body of divinity ; she put them on in
the morning with her clothes and lay down
to sleep with them at night ; they haunted
her like a favourite air, they clung about her
like a favourite perfume. Their minister
was a marrowy expounder of the law, and

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 19

my lord sat under him with relish ; but Mrs.
Weir respected him from far off; heard him
(like the cannon of a beleaguered city) use-
fully booming outside on the dogmatic ram-
parts ; and meanwhile, within and out of
shot, dwelt in her private garden which she
watered with grateful tears. It seems strange
to say of this colourless and ineffectual
woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and
might have made the sunshine and the glory
of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie
knew she could be eloquent ; perhaps none
but he had seen her — her colour raised, her
hands clasped or quivering — glow with
gentle ardour. There is a corner of the
policy of Hermiston, where you come sud-
denly in view of the summit of Black Fell,
sometimes like the mere grass top of a hill,
sometimes (and this is her own expression)
like a precious jewel in the heavens. On
such days, upon the sudden view of it, her
hand would tighten on the child's fingers,
her voice rise like a song. " I to the hills !"
she would repeat. "And O, Erchie, are nae

20 WEIR OF HERMISTON

these like the hills of Naphtali ? " and her
easy tears would flow.

Upon an impressionable child the effect of
this continual and pretty accompaniment to
life was deep. The woman's quietism and
piety passed on to his different nature undi-
minished ; but whereas in her it was a native
sentiment, in him it was only an implanted
dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at
times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow
once struck him in the mouth ; he struck
back, the pair fought it out in the back stable
lane towards the Meadows, and Archie re-
turned with a considerable decline in the
number of his front teeth, and unregener-
ately boasting of the losses of the foe. It
was a sore day for Mrs. Weir ; she wept
and prayed over the infant backslider until
my lord was due from court, and she must
resume that air of tremulous composure with
which she always greeted him. The judge
was that day in an observant mood, and re-
marked upon the absent teeth.

" I am afraid Erchie will have been fecht-

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 21

ing with some of they blagyard lads," said
Mrs. Weir.

My lord's voice rang out as it did seldom
in the privacy of his own house. " I'll have
nonn of that, sir ! " he cried. " Do you
hear me ? — nonn of that ! No son of mine
shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty
raibble."

The anxious mother was grateful for so
much support ; she had even feared the con-
trary. And that night when she put the
child to bed — " Now, my dear, ye see ! " she
said, " I told you what your faither would
think of it, if he heard ye had fallen into
this dreidful sin ; and let you and me
pray to God that ye may be keepit from
the like temptation or stren'thened to resist
it!"

The womanly falsity of this was thrown
away. Ice and iron cannot be welded;
and the points of view of the Justice-
Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassim-
ilable. The character and position of his
-father had long been a stumbling-block to

22 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Archie, and with every year of his age the
difficulty grew more instant. The man was
mostly silent ; when he spoke at all, it was
to speak of the things of the world, always in
a worldly spirit, often in language that the
child had been schooled to think coarse, and
sometimes with words that he knew to be
sins in themselves. Tenderness was the
first duty, and my lord was invariably harsh.
God was love ; the name of my lord (to all
who knew him) was fear. In the world, as
schematised for Archie by his mother, the
place was marked for such a creature. There
were some whom it was good to pity and
well (though very likely useless) to pray for;
they were named reprobates, goats, God's
enemies, brands for the burning ; and Archie
tallied every mark of identification, and drew
the inevitable private inference that the Lord
Justice-Clerk was the chief of sinners.

The mother's honesty was scarce com-
plete. There was one influence she feared
for the child and still secretly combated ;
that was my lord's ; and half unconsciously,
half in a wilful blindness, she continued to

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 23

undermine her husband with his son. As
long as Archie remained silent, she did so
ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and
the child's salvation ; but the day came when
Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was
seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and
logic, when he brought the case up openly.
If judging were sinful and forbidden, how
came papa to be a judge ? to have that sin
for a trade ? to bear the name of it for a dis-
tinction ?

" I can't see it," said the little Rabbi, and
wagged his head.

Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace re-
plies.

" No, I cannae see it," reiterated Archie.
" And I'll tell you what, mamma, I don't
think you and me's justifeed in staying with
him."

The woman awoke to remorse ; she saw
herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and
bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of
worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride.
-She expatiated in reply on my lord's honour
and greatness ; his useful services in this

24 WEIR OF HERMISTON

world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in
which he stood, far above where babes and
innocents could hope to see or criticise. But
she had builded too well — Archie had his an-
swers pat : Were not babes and innocents the
type of the kingdom of heaven ? Were not
honour and greatness the badges of the world ?
And at any rate, how about the mob that had
once seethed about the carriage ?

" It's all very fine," he concluded, "but in
my opinion, papa has no right to be it. And
it seems that's not the worst yet of it. It
seems he's called 'the Hanging Judge' — it
seems he's crooool. I'll tell you what it is,
mamma, there's a tex' borne in upon me : It
were better for that man if a milestone were
bound upon his back and him flung into the
deepestmost pairts of the sea."

" O, my lamb, ye must never say the like
of that ! " she cried. " Ye're to honour
faither and mother, dear, that your days may
be long in the land. It's Atheists that cry
out against him — French Atheists, Erchie !
Ye would never surely even yourself down to
be saying the same thing as French Atheists ?

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 25

It would break my heart to think that of you.
And O, Erchie, here are'na you setting up to
judge ? And have ye no forgot God's plain
command — the First with Promise, dear ?
Mind you upon the beam and the mote ! "

Having thus carried the war into the
enemy's camp, the terrified lady breathed
again. And no doubt it is easy thus to circum-
vent a child with catchwords, but it may be
questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct
in his breast detects the quibble, and a voice
condemns it. He will instantly submit,
privately hold the same opinion. For even in
this simple and antique relation of the mother
and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied.

When the Court rose that year and the
family returned to Hermiston, it was a com-
mon remark in all the country that the lady
was sore failed. She seemed to loose and
seize again her touch with life, now sitting
inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon
waking to feverish and weak activity. She
dawdled about the lasses at their work, look-
ing stupidly on ; she fell to rummaging in
old cabinets and presses, and desisted when

26 WEIR OF HERMISTON

half through ; she would begin remarks with
an air of animation and drop them without
a struggle. Her common appearance was of
one who has forgotten something and is try-
ing to remember ; and when she overhauled,
one after another, the worthless and touching
mementoes of her youth, she might have
been seeking the clue to that lost thought.
During this period she gave many gifts to
the neighbours and house lassies, giving them
with a manner of regret that embarrassed
the recipients.

The last night of all she was busy on
some female work, and toiled upon it with so
manifest and painful a devotion that my lord
(who was not often curious) inquired as to
its nature.

She blushed to the eyes. " O, Edom, it's
for you ! " she said. " It's slippers. I — I
hae never made ye any."

" Ye daft auld wife ! " returned his lord-
ship. "A bonny figure I would be, palmer-
ing about in bauchles ! "

The next day, at the hour of her walk,

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 27

Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay
of her mistress very hard ; bore her a grudge,
quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anx-
iety of a genuine love wearing the disguise
of temper. This day of all days she insisted
disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs.
Weir should stay at home. But, " No, no,"
she said, " it's my lord's orders," and set
forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre
bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise,
the instrument of which was mire ; and she
stood and looked at him awhile like one
about to call ; then thought otherwise, sighed,
and shook her head, and proceeded on her
rounds alone. The house lassies were at the
burnside washing, and saw her pass with her
loose, weary, dowdy gait.

" She's a terrible feckless wife, the mis-
tress ! " said the one.

" Tut," said the other, " the wumman's
seeck."

" Weel, I canna see nae differ in her," re-
turned the first. " A fiishionless quean, a
feckless carline."

28 WEIR OF HERMISTON

The poor creature thus discussed rambled
a while in the grounds without a purpose.
Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and car-
ried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a
path, paused, returned, and tried another ;
questing, forgetting her quest ; the spirit
of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid
of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as
though she had remembered, or had formed a
resolution, wheeled about, returned with hur-
ried steps, and appeared in the dining-room,
where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one
charged with an important errand.

" Kirstie ! " she began, and paused ; and
then with conviction, " Mr. Weir isna
speeritually minded, but he has been a good
man to me."

It was perhaps the first time since her
husband's elevation that she had forgotten
the handle to his name, of which the tender,
inconsistent woman was not a little .rproud.
And when Kirstie looked up at the speaker's
face, she was aware of a change.

" Godsake, what's the maitter wi' ye,

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 29

mem ? " cried the housekeeper, starting from
the rug.

" I do not ken," answered her mistress,
shaking her head. " But he is not speeritu-
ally minded, my dear."

" Here, sit down with ye ! Godsake, what
ails the wife ? " cried Kirstie, and helped and
forced her into my lord's own chair by the
cheek of the hearth.

"Keep me, what's this?" she gasped.
" Kirstie, what's this ? I'm frich'ened."

They were her last words.

It was the lowering nightfall when my
lord returned. He had the sunset in his back,
all clouds and glory ; and before him, by the
wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She
was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in
the high, false note of barbarous mourning,
such as still lingers modified among Scots
heather.

" The Lord peety ye, Hermiston ! the
Lord prepare ye ! " she keened out. " Weary
upon me, that I should have to tell it ! "

He reined in his horse and looked upon
her with the hanging face.

30 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" Has the French landit ? " cried he.

" Man, man," she said, " is that a' ye
can think of? The Lord prepare ye, the
Lord comfort and support ye ! "

" Is onybody deid ? " says his lordship.
" It's no Erchie ? "

" Bethankit, no ! " exclaimed the woman,
startled into a more natural tone. " Na, na,
it's no sae bad as that. It's the mistress, my
lord ; she just fair flittit before my e'en. She
just gi'ed a sab and was by with it. Eh, my
bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel ! "
And forth again upon that pouring tide of
lamentation in which women of her class ex-
cel and overabound.

Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle behold-
ing her. Then he seemed to recover com-
mand upon himself.

" Weel, it's something of the suddenest,"
said he. " But she was a dwaibly body from
the first."

And he rode home at a precipitate amble
with Kirstie at his horse's heels.

Dressed as she was for her last walk, they

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 31

had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was
never interesting in life ; in death she was
not impressive ; and as her husband stood
before her, with his hands crossed behind
his powerful back, that which he looked
upon was the very image of the insignifi-
cant.

" Her and me were never cut out for one
another," he remarked at last. " It was a
daft-like marriage." And then, with a most
unusual gentleness of tone, " Puir bitch,"
said he, " puir bitch ! " Then suddenly:
" Where's Erchie ? "

Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and
given him "a jeely-piece."

" Ye have some kind of gumption, too,"
observed the Judge, and considered his house-
keeper grimly. " When all's said," he added,
" I micht have done waur — I micht have
been marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like
you ! "

" There's naebody thinking of you, Her-
miston ! " cried the offended woman. " We
think of her that's out of her sorrows. And
could she have done waur ? Tell me that,

32 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Hermiston — tell me that before her clay-cauld
corp ! "

" Weel, there's some of them gey an' ill
to please," observed his lordship.

Chapter II

FATHER AND SON

My Lord Justice-Clerk was known to
many ; the man Adam Weir perhaps to none.
He had nothing to explain or to conceal ; he
sufficed wholly and silently to himself; and
that part of our nature which goes out (too
often with false coin) to acquire glory or love,
seemed in him to be omitted. He did not try
to be loved, he did not care to be ; it is prob-
able the very thought of it was a stranger to
his mind. He was an admired lawyer, a
highly unpopular judge ; and he looked down
upon those who were his inferiors in either
distinction, who were lawyers of less grasp or
judges not so much detested. In all the rest
of his days and doings, not one trace of vanity
appeared ; and he went on through life with
a mechanical movement, as of the uncon-
scious, that was almost august.
33

34 WEIR OF HERMISTON

He saw little of his son, In the childish
maladies with which the boy was troubled, he
would make daily inquiries and daily pay him
a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious
and appalling countenance, letting off a few
perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to
the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday
falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage,
and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the
customary place of convalescence. It is con-
ceivable he had been more than usually anx-
ious, for that journey always remained in
Archie's memory as a thing apart, his father
having related to him from beginning to end,
and with much detail, three authentic murder
cases. Archie went the usual round of other
Edinburgh boys, the high school and the col-
lege ; and Hermiston looked on, or rather
looked away, with scarce an affectation of
interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon
a signal after dinner, he was brought in, given
nuts and a glass of port, regarded sardonically,
sarcastically questioned. " Well, sir, and
what have you donn with your book to-day ?"
my lord might begin, and set him posers in

FATHER AND SON 35

law Latin. To a child just stumbling into
Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite in-
vincible. But papa had memory of no other.
He was not harsh to the little scholar, having
a vast fund of patience learned upon the
bench, and was at no pains whether to con-
ceal or to express his disappointment. "Well,
ye have a long jaunt before ye yet !" he might
observe, yawning, and fall back on his own
thoughts (as like as not) until the time came
for separation, and my lord would take the
decanter and the glass, and be off to the back
chamber looking on the Meadows, where he
toiled on his cases till the hours were small.
There was no " fuller man " on the Bench ;
his memory was marvellous, though wholly
legal ; if he had to " advise " extempore, none
did it better; yet there was none who more
earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in
the night, or sat at table and forgot the pre-
sence of his son, no doubt but he tasted
deeply of recondite pleasures. To be wholly
devoted to some intellectual exercise is to
have succeeded in life ; and perhaps only in
law and the higher mathematics may this de-

36 WEIR OF HERMISTON

votion be maintained, suffice to itself without
reaction, and find continual rewards without
excitement. This atmosphere of his father's
sterling industry was the best of Archie's
education. Assuredly it did not attract him ;
assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed.
Yet it was still present, unobserved like the
ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless
stimulant in the boy's life.

But Hermiston was not all of one piece.
He was, besides, a mighty toper ; he could sit
at wine until the day dawned, and pass di-
rectly from the table to the Bench with a
steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the
third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a
larger print ; the low, gross accent, the low,
foul mirth, grew broader and commoner ; he
became less formidable, and infinitely more
disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from
Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, un-
equally mated with potential violence. In
the playing-fields, and amongst his own com-
panions, he repaid a coarse expression with a
blow ; at his father's table (when the time
came for him to join these revels) he turned

FATHER AND SON 37

pale and sickened in silence. Of all the
guests whom he there encountered, he had
toleration for only one : David Keith Car-
negie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond
was tall and emaciated, with long features
and long delicate hands. He was often com-
pared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden
in the Parliament House ; and his blue eye,
at more than sixty, preserved some of the
fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with
any of his fellow guests, his appearance as of
an artist and an aristocrat stranded in rude
company, riveted the boy's attention ; and
as curiosity and interest are the things in the
world that are the most immediately and cer-
tainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was
attracted to the boy.

" And so this is your son, Hermiston ?" he
asked, laying his hand on Archie's shoulder.
" He's getting a big lad."

u Hout ! " said the gracious father, "just
his mother over again — daurna say boo to a
goose !"

But the stranger retained the boy, talked
to him, drew him out, found in him a taste

38 WEIR OF HERMISTON

for letters, and a fine, ardent, modest, youth-
ful soul ; and encouraged him to be a visitor
on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold, lonely
dining-room, where he sat and read in the
isolation of a bachelor grown old in refine-
ment. The beautiful gentleness and grace
of the old Judge, and the delicacy of his per-
son, thoughts, and language, spoke to Archie's
heart in its own tongue. He conceived the
ambition to be such another ; and. when the
day came for him to choose a profession, it
was in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not
of Lord Hermiston, that he chose the Bar.
Hermiston looked on at this friendship with
some secret pride, but openly with the intol-
erance of scorn. He scarce lost an oppor-
tunity to put them down with a rough jape ;
and, to say truth, it was not difficult, for they
were neither of them quick. He had a word
of contempt for the whole crowd of poets,
painters, fiddlers, and their admirers, the bas-
tard race of amateurs, which was continually
on his lips. " Signer Feedle-eerie ! " he
would say. " Oh, for Goad's sake, no more
of the Signer ! "

FATHER AND SON 39

" You and my father are great friends, are
you not ? " asked Archie once.

" There is no man that I more respect,
Archie," replied Lord Glenalmond. " He is
two things of price. He is a great lawyer,
and he is upright as the day."

" You and he are so different," said the
boy, his eyes dwelling on those of his old
friend, like a lover's on his mistress's.

" Indeed so," replied the Judge ; " very
different. And so I fear are you and he.
Yet I would like it very ill if my young friend
were to misjudge his father. He has all the
Roman virtues : Cato and Brutus were such ;
I think a son's heart might well be proud of
such an ancestry of one."

" And I would sooner he were a plaided
herd," cried Archie, with sudden bitterness.

" And that is neither very wise, nor I be-
lieve entirely true," returned Glenalmond.
" Before you are done you will find some of
these expressions rise on you like a remorse.
They are merely literary and decorative ;
they do not aptly express your thought, nor
is your thought clearly apprehended, and no

40 WEIR OF HERMISTON

doubt your father (if he were here) would
say c Signer Feedle-eerie ! ' '

With the infinitely delicate sense of youth,
Archie avoided the subject from that hour.
It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked —
talked freely — let himself gush out in words
(the way youth loves to do and should), there
might have been no tale to write upon the
Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a
threat of ridicule sufficed ; in the slight tart-
ness of these words he read a prohibition ;
and it is likely that Glenalmond meant it so.

Besides the veteran, the boy was without
confidant or friend. Serious and eager, he
came through school and college, and moved
among a crowd of the indifferent, in the
seclusion of his shyness. He grew up hand-
some, with an open, speaking countenance,
with graceful, youthful ways ; he was clever,
he took prizes, he shone in the Speculative
Society. It should seem he must become the
centre of a crowd of friends ; but something
that was in part the delicacy of his mother,
in part the austerity of his father, held him
aloof from all. It is a fact, and a strange

FATHER AND SON 41

one, that among his contemporaries Hermis-
ton's son was thought to be a chip of the old
block. " You're a friend of Archie Weir's ?"
said one to Frank Innes ; and Innes replied,
with his usual flippancy and more than his
usual insight : " I know Weir, but I never
met Archie." No one had met Archie, a
malady most incident to only sons. He flew
his private signal, and none heeded it ; it
seemed he was abroad in a world from which
the very hope of intimacy was banished ; and
he looked round about him on the concourse
of his fellow-students, and forward to the
trivial days and acquaintances that were to
come, without hope or interest.

As time went on, the tough and rough old
sinner felt himself drawn to the son of his
loins and sole continuator of his new family,
with softnesses of sentiment that he could
hardly credit and was wholly impotent to ex-
press. With a face, voice and manner
trained through forty years to terrify and
repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he
" will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he
tried to propitiate Archie, but a fact that can-

42 WEIR OF HERMISTON

not be too lightly taken ; the attempt was so
unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically
supported. Sympathy is not due to these
steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain
his son's friendship, or even his son's. tolera-
tion, on he went up the great, bare staircase
of his duty, uncheered and undepressed.
There might have been more pleasure in his
relations with Archie, so much he may have
recognised at moments ; but pleasure was a
by-product of the singular chemistry of life,
which only fools expected.

An idea of Archie's attitude, since we are
all grown up and have forgotten the days of
our youth, it is more difficult to convey. He
made no attempt whatsoever to understand the
man with whom he dined and breakfasted.
Parsimony of pain, glut of pleasure, these
are the two alternating 'ends of youth ; and
Archie was of the parsimonious. The.wind
blew cold out of a certain quarter — he
turned his back upon it ; stayed as little as
was possible in his father's presence ; and
when there, averted his eyes as much as was
decent from his father's face. The lamp

FATHER AND SON 43

shone for many hundred days upon these two
at table — my lord ruddy, gloomy, and un-
reverent ; Archie with a potential brightness
that was always dimmed and veiled in that
society ; and there were not, perhaps, in
Christendom two men more radically stran-
gers. The father, with a grand simplicity,
either spoke of what interested himself, or
maintained an unaffected silence. The son
turned in his head for some topic that should
be quite safe, that would spare him fresh' evi-
dences either of my lord's inherent gross-
ness or of the innocence of his inhumanity j
treading gingerly the ways of intercourse, like
a lady gathering up her skirts in a by-path.
If he made a mistake, ^and my lord began to
abound in matter of offence, Archie drew
himself up, his brow grew dark, his share of
the talk expired ; but my lord would faith-
fully and cheerfully continue to pour out the
worst of himself before his silent and of-
fended son.

" Well, it's a poor hert that never re-
joices " he would say, at the conclusion of
such a nightmare interview. " But I must

44 WEIR OF HERMISTON

get to my plew-stilts." And he would se-
clude himself as usual in the back room, and
Archie go forth into the night and the city
quivering with animosity and scorn.

Chapter III

IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF
DUNCAN JOPP

It chanced in the year 1813 that Archie
strayed one day into the Judiciary Court.
The macer made room for the son of the
presiding judge. In the dock, the centre of
men's eyes, there stood a whey-coloured, mis-
begotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial for his
life. His story, as it was raked out before
him in that public scene, was one of disgrace
and vice and cowardice, the very nakedness
of crime ; and the creature heard and it
seemed at times as though he understood —
as if at times he forgot the horror of the
place he stood in, and remembered the shame
of what had brought him there. He kept his
head bowed and his hands clutched upon the
rail ; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times
he flung it back; and now he glanced about
the audience in a sudden fellness of terror,
45

46 WEIR OF HERMISTON

ana now looked in the face of his judge and
gulped. There was pinned about his throat
a piece of dingy flannel; and this it was per-
haps that turned the scale in Archie's mind
between disgust and pity. The creature stood
in a vanishing point; yet a little while, and he
was still a man, and had eyes and apprehen-
sion; yet a little longer, and with a last sordid
piece of pageantry, he would cease to be.
And here, in the meantime, with a trait of
human nature that caught at the beholder's
breath, he was tending a sore throat.

Over against him, my Lord Hermiston oc-
cupied the bench in the red robes of criminal
jurisdiction, his face framed in the white wig.
Honest all through, he did not affect the virtue
of impartiality; this was no case for refine-
ment; there was a man to be hanged, he would
have said, and he was hanging him. Nor
was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit
him of gusto in the task. It was plain he
gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties,
m the clear sight which pierced at once into
the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished
jibes with which he demolished every figment

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 47

of defense. He took his ease and jested, un-
bending in that solemn place with some of
the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of
man with the flannel round his neck was
hunted gallowsward with jeers.

Duncan had a mistress, scarce less forlorn
and greatly older than himself, who came up,
whimpering and curtseying, to add the weight
of her betrayal. My lord gave her the oath
in his most roaring voice and added an in-
tolerant warning.

"Mind what ye say now, Janet," said he.
"I have an e'e upon ye; I'm ill to jest with."

Presently, after she was tremblingly em-
barked on her story, "And what made ye do
this, ye auld runt ? " the Court interposed.
"Do ye mean to tell me ye was the pannel's
mistress ? "

"If you please, ma loard," whined the
female.

"Godsake ! ye made a bonny couple," ob-
served his lordship; and there was something
so formidable and ferocious in his scorn that
not even the galleries thought to laugh.

The summing up contained some jewels.

48 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" These two peetiable creatures seem to
have made up thegither, it's not for us to
explain why." — " The pannel, who (what-
ever else he may be) appears to be equally ill
set out in mind and boady." — " Neither the
pannel nor yet the old wife appears to have
had so much common sense as even to tell a
lie when it was necessary." And in the
course of sentencing, my lord had this obiter
dictum : " I have been the means, under God,
of haanging a great number, but never just
such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The
words were strong in themselves ; the light
and heat and detonation of their delivery, and
the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task,
made them tingle in the ears.

When all was over, Archie came forth
again into a changed world. Had there been
the least redeeming greatness in the crime,
any obscurity, any dubiety, perhaps he might
have understood. But the culprit stood, with
his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal
agony, without defence or excuse ; a thing to
cover up with blushes ; a being so much

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 49

sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that
pity might seem harmless. And the judge
had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing
gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for
nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger,
another to crush a toad ; there are aesthetics
even of the slaughter-house ; and the loath-
someness of Duncan Jopp enveloped .and
infected the image of his judge.

Archie passed by his friends in the High
Street with incoherent words and gestures.
He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance
of its romance awoke in him and faded ; he
had a vision of the old radiant stories, of
Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the
hooded stag, of the splendor and crime, the
velvet and bright iron of the past ; and dis-
missed them with a cry of pain. He lay and
moaned in the Hunter's Bog, and the
heavens were dark above him and the grass
of the field an offence. " This is my father,"
he said. " I draw my life from him ; the
flesh upon my bones is his, the bread I am
fed with is the wages of these horrors." He
recalled his mother, and ground his forehead

50 WEIR OF HERMISTON

in the earth. He thought of flight, and
where was he to flee to ? of other lives, but
was there any life worth living in this den of
savage and jeering animals ?

The interval before the execution was like
a violent dream. He met his father; he
would not look at him, he could not speak to
him. It seemed there was no living creature
but must have been swift to recognise that
imminent animosity, but the hide of the
Lord Justice-Clerk remained impenetrable.
Had my lord been talkative, the truce could
never have subsisted ; but he was by fortune
in one of his humours of sour silence ; and
under the very guns of his broadside Archie
nursed the enthusiasm of rebellion. It seemed
to him, from the top of his nineteen years'
experience, as if he were marked at birth to
be the perpetrator of some signal action, to
set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the
usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed,
on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments,
which he had often refuted at the Speculative,1

1 A famous debating society of the students of Edinburgh
University.

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 51

swam up in his mind and startled him
as with voices ; and he seemed to himself to
walk accompanied by an almost tangible
presence of new beliefs and duties.

On the named morning he was at the place
of execution. He saw the fleering rabble,
the flinching wretch produced. He looked
on for awhile at a certain parody of devotion,
which seemed to strip the wretch of his last
claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal
instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling
of the remains like a broken jumping-jack.
He had been prepared for something terrible,
not for this tragic meanness. He stood a
moment silent, and then — " I denounce this
God-defying murder " he shouted ; and his
father, if he must have disclaimed the senti-
ment, might have owned the stentorian voice
with which it was uttered.

Frank Innes dragged him from the spot.
The two handsome lads followed the same
course of study and recreation, and felt a
certain mutual attraction, founded mainly on
good looks. It had never gone deep; Frank
was by nature a thin, jeering creature, not

53 WEIR OF HERMISTON

truly susceptible whether of feeling or inspir-
ing friendship ; and the relation between the
pair was altogether on the outside, a thing of
common knowledge and the pleasantries that
spring from a common acquaintance. The
more credit to Frank that he was appalled by
Archie's outburst, and at least conceived the
design of keeping him in sight, and, if possi-
ble, in hand, for the day. But Archie, who
had just defied — was it God or Satan? —
would not listen to the word of a college
companion.

"I will not go with you," he said. "I do
not desire your company, sir ; I would be
alone."

" Here, Weir, man, don't be absurd," said
Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve.
"I will not let you go until I know what you
mean to do with yourself; it's no use brand-
ishing that staff." For indeed at that moment
Archie had made a sudden — perhaps a war-
like— movement. "This has been the most
insane affair; you know it has. You know
verv well that I'm playing the good Samari-
tan. All I wish is to keep you quiet."

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 53

"If quietness is what you wish, Mr. Innes,'"1
said Archie, " and you will promise to leave
me entirely to myself, I will tell you so much,
that I am going to walk in the country and
admire the beauties of nature."

" Honor bright ? " asked Frank.

" I am not in the habit of lying, Mr.
Innes," retorted Archie. " I have the honour
of wishing you good-day."

" You won't forget the Spec. ? " asked
Innes.

" The Spec. ? " said Archie. " Oh no, I
won't forget the Spec."

And the one young man carried his tor-
tured spirit forth of the city and all the day
long, by one road and another, in an endless
pilgrimage of misery ; while the other
hastened smilingly to spread the news of
Weir's access of insanity, and to drum up for
that night a full attendance at the Specula-
tive, where farther eccentric developments
might certainly be looked for. I doubt if
Innes had the least belief in his prediction ;
I think it flowed rather from a wish to make
the story as good and the scandal as great as

54 WEIR OF HERMISTON

possible ; not from any ill-will to Archie —
from the mere pleasure of beholding interested
faces. But for all that his words were pro-
phetic. Archie did not forget the Spec. ; he
put in an appearance there at the due time,
and, before the evening was over, had dealt a
memorable shock to his companions. It
chanced he was the president of the night. He
sat in the same room where the society still
meets — only the portraits were not there; the
men who afterwards sat for them were then
but beginning their career. The same lustre
of many tapers shed its light over the meet-
ing ; the same chair, perhaps, supported him
that so many of us have sat in since. At
times he seemed to forget the business of the
evening, but even in these periods he sat with
a great air of energy and determination. At
times he meddled bitterly and launched with
defiance those fines which are the precious
and rarely used artillery of the president. He
little thought, as he did so, how he resembled
his father, but his friends remarked upon it,
.chuckling. So far, in his high place above
his fellow-students, he seemed set beyond

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 55

the possibility of any scandal ; but his mind
was made up — he was determined to fulfil
the sphere of his offence. He signed to
Innes (whom he had just fined, and who just
impeached his ruling) to succeed him in the
chair, stepped down from the platform, and
took his place by the chimney-piece, the
shine of many wax tapers from above illum-
inating his pale face, the glow of the great
red fire relieving from behind his slim figure.
He had to propose, as an amendment to the
next subject in the case book, " Whether
capital punishment be consistent with God's
will or man's policy ? "

A breath of embarrassment, of something
like alarm, passed round the room, so daring
did these words appear upon the lips of Her-
miston's only son. But the amendment was
not seconded; the previous question was
promptly moved and unanimously voted, and
the momentary scandal smuggled by. Innes
triumphed in the fulfilment of his prophecy.
He and Archie were now become the heroes
of the night ; but whereas everyone crowded
about Innes, wheh the meeting broke up, but

56 WEIR OF HERMISTON

one of all his companions came to speak to
Archie.

"Weir, man ! That was an extraordinary
raid of yours ! " observed this courageous
member, taking him confidentially by the arm
as they went out.

"I don't think it a raid," said Archie
grimly. " More like a war. I saw that poor
brute hanged this morning, and my gorge
rises at it yet."

" Hut-tut ! " returned his companion, and,
dropping his arm like something hot, he
sought the less tense society of others.

Archie found himself alone. The last of
the faithful — or was it only the boldest of
the curious ? — had fled. He watched the
black huddle of his fellow-students draw off
down and up the street, in whispering or
boisterous gangs. And the isolation of the
moment weighed upon him like an omen and
an emblem of his destiny in life. Bred up
in unbroken fear himself, among trembling
servants, and in a house which (at the least
ruffle in the master's voice) shuddered into
silence, he saw himself on the brink of the

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 57

red valley of war, and measured the danger
and length of it with awe. He made a de-
tour in the glimmer and shadow of the streets,
came into the back stable lane, and watched
for a long while the light burn steady in the
Judge's room. The longer he gazed upon
that illuminated window-blind, the more blank
became the picture of the man who sat be-
hind it, endlessly turning over sheets of pro-
cess, pausing to sip a glass of port, or rising
and passing heavily about his book-lined walls
to verify some reference. He could not
combine the brutal judge and the industrious,
dispassionate student ; the connecting link
escaped him ; from such a dual nature, it was
impossible he should predict behaviour ; and
he asked himself if he had done well to
plunge into a business of which the end could
not be foreseen ? and presently after, with a
sickening decline of confidence, if he had done
loyally to strike his father ? For he had
struck him — defied him twice over and be-
fore a cloud of witnesses — struck him a public
buffet before crowds. Who had called him
to judge his father in these precarious and

58 WEIR OF HERMISTON

high questions ? The office was usurped. It
might have become a stranger; in a son — there
was no blinking it — in a son, it was disloyal.
And now, between these two natures so anti-
pathetic, so hateful to each other, there was
depending an unpardonable affront : and the
providence of God alone might foresee the
manner in which it would be resented by
Lord Hermiston.

These misgivings tortured him all night and
arose with him in the winter's morning ;
they followed him from class to class, they
made him shrinkingly sensitive to every shade
of manner in his companions, they sounded
in his ears through the current voice of the
professor; and he brought them home with
him at night unabated and indeed increased.
The cause of this increase lay in a chance
encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory.
Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted
window of a book shop, trying to nerve him-
self for the approaching ordeal. My lord and
he had met and parted in the morning as they
had now done for long, with scarcely the or-
dinary civilities of life ; and it was plain to

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 59

the son that nothing had yet reached the
father's ears. Indeed, when he recalled the
awful countenance of my lord, a timid hope
sprang up in him that perhaps there would be
found no one bold enough to carry tales. If
this were so, he asked himself, would he be-
gin again ? and he found no answer. It was
at this moment that a hand was laid upon his
arm, and a voice said in his ear, " My dear
Mr. Archie, you had better come and see
me."

He started, turned around, and found him-
self face to face with Dr. Gregory. " And
why should I come to see you ? " he asked,
with the defiance of the miserable.

" Because you are looking exceeding ill,"
said the doctor, " and you very evidently want
looking after, my young friend. Good folk
are scarce, you know ; and it is not everyone
that would be quite so much missed as your-
self. It is not everyone that Hermiston
would miss."

And with a nod and a smile, the doctor
passed on.

A moment after, Archie was in pursuit,

60 WEIR OF HERMISTON

and had in turn, but more roughly, seized
him by the arm.

" What do you mean ? what did you mean
by saying that ? What makes you think
that Hermis — my father would have missed
me ? "

The doctor turned about and looked him
all over with a clinical eye. A far more
stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have
guessed the truth ; but ninety-nine out of a
hundred, even if they had been equally in-
clined to kindness, would have blundered by
some touch of charitable exaggeration. The
doctor was better inspired. He knew the
father well ; in that white face of intelli-
gence and suffering, he divined something of
the son ; and he told, without apology or
adornment, the plain truth.

" When you had the measles, Mr. Archi-
bald, you had them gey and ill ; and I
thought you were going to slip between my
fingers," he said. " Well, your father was
anxious. How did I know it ? says you.
Simply because I am a trained observer.
The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 61

would have missed; and perhaps — perhaps,
I say, because he's a hard man to judge of
— but perhaps he never made another. A
strange thing to consider ! It was this. One
day I came to him : l Hermiston,' said I,
4 there 's a change.' He never said a word,
just glowered at me (if ye '11 pardon the
phrase) like a wild beast. c A change for
the better,' said I. And I distinctly heard
him take his breath."

The doctor left no opportunity for anti-
climax ; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of
antiquity to which he clung) and repeating
" Distinctly " with raised eyebrows, he took
his departure, and left Archie speechless in
the street.

The anecdote might be called infinitely
little, and yet its meaning for Archie was
immense. " I did not know the old man
had so much blood in him." He had never
dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal an-
tique, this adamantine Adam, had even so
much of a heart as to be moved in the least
degree for another — and that other himself,
who had insulted him ! With the generosity

62 WEIR OF HERMISTON

of youth, Archie was instantly under arms
upon the other side : had instantly created a
new image of Lord Hermiston, that of a
man who was all iron without and all sensi-
bility within. The mind of the vile jester,
the tongue that had pursued Duncan Jopp
with unmanly insults, the unbeloved counte-
nance that he had known and feared for so
long, were all forgotten ; and he hastened
home, impatient to confess his misdeeds, im-
patient to throw himself on the mercy of
this imaginary character.

He was not to be long without a rude
awakening. It was in the gloaming when he
drew near the doorstep of the lighted house,
and was aware of the figure of his father ap-
proaching from the opposite side. Little
daylight lingered ; but on the door being
opened, the strong yellow shine of the lamp
gushed out upon the landing and shone full
on Archie, as he stood, in the old-fashioned
observance of respect, to yield precedence.
The Judge came without haste, stepping
stately and firm ; his chin raised, his face (as
he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined,

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 63

his mouth set hard. There was never a
wink of change in his expression ; without
looking to the right or left, he mounted the
stair, passed close to Archie, and entered the
house. Instinctively, the boy, upon his first
coming, had made a movement to meet him ;
instinctively, he recoiled against the railing,
as the old man swept by him in a pomp of
indignation. Words were needless ; he knew
all — perhaps more than all — and the hour
of judgment was at hand.

It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion
of hope and before these symptoms of im-
pending danger, Archie might have fled.
But not even that was left to him. My lord,
after hanging up his cloak and hat, turned
round in the lighted entry, and made him an
imperative and silent gesture with his thumb,
and with the strange instinct of obedience,
Archie followed him into the house.

All dinner time there reigned over the
Judge's table a palpable silence, and as soon
as the solids were despatched he rose to his
feet.

" M'Killup, tak' the wine into my room,"

64 WEIR OF HERMISTON

said he ; and then to his son : " Archie, you
and me has to have a talk."

It was at this sickening moment that
Archie's courage, for the first and last time,
entirely deserted him. " I have an appoint-
ment," said he.

" It'll have to be broken, then," said Her-
miston, and led the way into his study.

The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed to
a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly
documents, the backs of law books made a
frame upon all sides that was only broken by
the window and the doors.

For a moment Hermiston warmed his hands
at the fire, presenting his back to Archie ;
then suddenly disclosed on him the terrors of
the Hanging Face.

"What's this I hear of ye !" he asked.

There was no answer possible to Archie.

" I'll have to tell ye, then," pursued Her-
miston. "It seems ye've been skirling against
the father that begot ye, and one of His Mai-
jesty's Judges in this land ; and that in the
public street, and while an order of the Court

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 65

was being executit. Forbye which, it would
appear that ye've been airing your opeenions
in a Coallege Debatin' Society," he paused a
moment : and then, with extraordinary bitter-
ness, added : " Ye damned eediot."

"I had meant to tell you," stammered
Archie. "I see you are well informed."

"Muckle obleeged to ye," said his lordship,
and took his usual seat. "And so you disap-
prove of caapital punishment?" he added.

"I am sorry, sir, I do," said Archie.

" I am sorry, too," said his lordship. " And
now, if you please, we shall approach this
business with a little more parteecularity. I
hear that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp —
and, man! ye had a fine client there — in the
middle of all the riffraff of the ceety, ye
thought fit to cry out, 'This is a damned
murder, and my gorge rises at the man that
haangit him.' "

" No, sir, these were not my words," cried
Archie.

"What were ye' r words, then?" asked the
Judge.

"I believe I said CI denounce it as a mur-

66 WEIR OF HERMISTON

der!'" said the son, "I beg your pardon — a
God-defying murder. I have no wish to
conceal the truth," he added, and looked his
father for a moment in the face.

" God, it would only need that of it
next ! " cried Hermiston. " There was
nothing about your gorge rising, then ? "

" That was afterwards, my lord, as I was
leaving the Speculative. I said I had been
to see the miserable creature hanged, and my
gorge rose at it."

" Did ye, though ? " said Hermiston.
" And I suppose ye knew who haangit him ? "

" I was present at the trial, I ought to tell
you that, I ought to explain. I ask your
pardon beforehand for any expression that
may seem undutiful. The position in which
I stand is wretched," said the unhappy hero,
now fairly face to face with the business he
had chosen. " I have been reading some of
your cases. I was present while Jopp was
tried. It was a hideous business. Father,
it was a hideous thing ! Grant he was vile,
why should you hunt him with a vileness
equal to his own ? It was done with glee —

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 67

that is the word — you did it with glee; and
I looked on, God help me ! with horror."

" You're a young gentleman that doesna
approve of caapital punishment," said Her-
miston. " Weel, I'm an auld man that does.
I was glad to get Jopp haangit, and what for
would I pretend I wasna ? You're all for
honesty, it seems; you couldn't even steik
your mouth on the public street. What for
should I steik mines upon the bench, the
King's officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to
evil-doers, as I was from the beginning, and
as I will be to the end ! Mair than enough
of it ! Heedious ! 1 never gave twa thoughts
to heediousness, I have no call to be bonny.
I'm a man that gets through with my day's
business, and let that suffice."

The ring of sarcasm had died out of his
voice as he went on ; the plain words became
invested with some of the dignity of the
justice-seat.

" It would be telling you if you could say
as much," the speaker resumed. " But ye
can not. Ye've been reading some of my

68 WEIR OF HERMISTON

cases, ye say. But it was not for the law in
them, it was to spy out your faither's naked-
ness, a fine employment in a son. You're
splairging ; you're running at lairge in life
like a wild nowt. It's impossible you should
think any longer of coming to the Bar.
You're not fit for it ; no splairger is. And
another thing : son of mines or no son of
mines, you have flung fylement in public on
one of the Senators of the Coallege of Jus-
tice, and I would make it my business to see
that ye were never admitted there yourself.
There is a kind of a decency to be observit.
Then comes the next of it — what am I to
do with ye next ? Ye'll have to find some
kind of a trade, for I'll never support ye in
idleset. What do ye fancy ye'll be fit for ?
The pulpit ? Na, they could never get
diveenity into that bloackhead. Him that
the law of man whammles is no likely to do
muckle better by the law of God. What
would ye make of hell ? Wouldna your
gorge rise at that ? Na, there's no room for
splairgers under the fower quarters of John

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 69

Calvin. What else is there ? Speak up.
Have ye got nothing of your own ? "

" Father, let me go to the Peninsula," said
Archie. " That's all I'm fit for — to fight."

" All ? quo' he ! " returned the Judge.
" And it would be enough too, if I thought
it. But I'll never trust ye so near the
French, you that's so Frenchifeed."

" You do me injustice there, sir," said
Archie. " I am loyal ; I will not boast ;
but any interest I may have ever felt in the
French — "

" Have ye been so loyal to me ? " inter-
rupted his father.

There came no reply.

" I think not," continued Hermiston.
" And I would send no man to be a servant
to the King, God bless him ! that has proved
such a shauchling son to his own faither.
You can splairge here on Edinburgh street,
and where's the hairm ? It doesna play
buff on me ! And if there were twenty
thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a
Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But

70 WEIR OF HERMISTON

there's no splairging possible in a camp ; and
if you were to go to it, you would find out
for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton ap-
proves of caapital punishment or not. You
a sodger ! " he cried, with a sudden burst of
scorn. " Ye auld wife, the sodgers would
bray at ye like cuddies ! "

As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie
was aware of some illogicality in his position,
and stood abashed. He had a strong impres-
sion, besides, of the essential valour of the
old gentleman before him, how conveyed it
would be hard to say.

"Well, have ye no other proposeetion ? "
said my lord again.

"You have taken this so calmly, sir, that I
cannot but stand ashamed," began Archie.

"I'm nearer voamiting, though, than you
would fancy," said my lord.

The blood rose to Archie's brow.

" I beg your pardon, I should have said that
you had accepted my affront. . . I admit
it was an affront; I did not think to apologise,
but I do, I ask your pardon; it will not be so
again, I pass you my word of honour.

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 71

I should have said that I admired your mag-
nanimity with — this — offender," Archie con-
cluded with a gulp.

" I have no other son, ye see," said Hermis-
ton. " A bonny one I have gotten ! But I
must just do the best I can wi' him, and what
am I to do? If ye had been younger, I
would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous
exhibeetion. The way it is, I have just to
grin and bear. But one thing is to be clearly
understood. As a faither, I must grin and
bear it; but if 1 had been the Lord Advocate
instead of the Lord Justice-Clerk, son or no
son, Mr. Erchibald Weir would have been in
a jyle the night."

Archie was now dominated. Lord Her-
miston was coarse and cruel ; and yet the son
was aware of a bloomless nobility, an un-
gracious abnegation of the man's self in the
man's office. At every word, this sense of
the greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck
more home ; and along with it that of his own
impotence, who had struck — and perhaps
basely struck — at his own father, and not
reached so far as to have even nettled him.

72 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" I place myself in your hands without re-
serve," he said.

" That's the first sensible word I've had of
ye the night," said Hermiston. " I can tell
ye, that would have been the end of it, the
one way or the other ; but it's better ye
should come there yourself, than what I would
have had to hirstle ye. Weel, by my way
of it — and my way is the best — there's just
the one thing it's possible that ye might be
with decency, and that's a laird. Ye'll be
out of hairm's way at the least of it. If ye
have to rowt, ye can rowt amang the kye ;
and the maist feck of the caapital punish-
ment ye're like to come across '11 be guddling
trouts. Now, I'm for no idle lairdies ; every
man has to work, if it's only at peddling bal-
lants ; to work, or to be wheeped, or to be
haangit. If I set ye down at Hermiston, I'll
have to see you work that place the way it
has never been workit yet; ye must ken
about the sheep like a herd ; ye must be my
grieve there, and I'll see that I gain by ye.
Is that understood ? "

THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 73

" I will do my best," said Archie.

" Well, then, I'll send Kirstie word the
morn, and ye can go yourself the day after,"
said Hermiston. " And just try to be less of
an eediot ! " he concluded, with a freezing
smile, and turned immediately to the papers
on his desk.

Chapter IV

OPINION OF THE BENCH

Late the same night, after a disordered
walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glen-
almond's dining-room where he sat, with a
book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals
of fire. In his robes upon the bench, Glen-
almond had a certain air of burliness : plucked
of these, it was a may-pole of a man tha':
rose unsteadily from his chair to give his vis-
itor welcome. Archie had suffered much in
the last days, he had suffered again that
evening ; his face was white and drawn, his
eyes wild and dark. But Lord Glenalmond
greeted him without the least mark of sur-
prise or curiosity.

" Come in, come in," said he. " Come
in and take a seat. Carstairs " (to his ser-
vant) " make up the fire, and then you can
bring a bit of supper," and again to Archie,
74

OPINION OF THE BENCH 75

with a very trivial accent : " I was half ex-
pecting you," he added.

" No supper," said Archie. " It is impos-
sible that I should eat."

" Not impossible," said the tall old man,
laying his hand upon his shoulder, " and, if
you will believe me, necessary."

" You know what brings me ? " said
Archie, as soon as the servant had left the
room.

" I have a guess, I have a guess," replied
Glenalmond. " We will talk of it presently
— when Carstairs has come and gone, and
you have had a piece of my good Cheddar
cheese and a pull at the porter tankard : not
before."

" It is impossible I should eat," repeated
Archie.

" Tut, tut ! " said Lord Glenalmond.
"You have eaten nothing to-day, and, I ven-
ture to add, nothing yesterday. There is no
case that may not be made worse; this may be
a very disagreeable business, but if you were
to fall sick and die, it would be still more so,
and for all concerned — for all concerned."

76 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" I see you must know all," said Archie.
; Where did you hear it ? "

ct In the mart of scandal, in the Parlia-
ment House," said Glenalmond. " It runs
riot below among the bar and the public, but
it sifts up to us upon the bench, and rumour
has some of her voices even in the divisions."

Carstairs returned at this moment, and rap-
idly laid out a little supper ; during which
Lord Glenalmond spoke at large and a little
vaguely on indifferent subjects, so that it might
be rather said of him that he made a cheer-
ful noise, than that he contributed to human
conversation ; and Archie sat upon the other
side, not heeding him, brooding over his
wrongs and errors.

But so soon as the servant was gone, he
broke forth again at once. " Who told my
father ? Who dared to tell him ? Could it
have been you ? "

" No, it was not me," said the Judge ;
" although — to be quite frank with you, and
after I had seen and warned you — it might
have been me. I believe it was Glenkindie."

" That shrimp ! " cried Archie.

OPINION OF THE BENCH 77

" As you say, that shrimp," returned my
lord ; " although really it is scarce a fitting
mode of expression for one of the Senators
of the College of Justice. \Ve were hearing
the parties in a long, crucial case, before the
fifteen; Creech was moving at some length
for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie
lean forward to Hermiston with his hand
over his mouth and make him a secret com-
munication. No one could have guessed its
nature from your father; from Glenkindie,
yes, his malice sparked out of him a little
grossly. But your father, no. A man of
granite. The next moment he pounced
upon Creech. 'Mr. Creech,' says he, 'I'll
take a look of that sasine,' and for thirty
minutes after," said Glenalmond, with a
smile, "Messrs. Creech and Co. were fight-
ing a pretty uphill battle, which resulted, I
need hardly add, in their total rout. The
case was dismissed. No, I doubt if ever I
heard Hermiston better inspired. He was
literally rejoicing in apidbus juris."

Archie was able to endure no longer. He
thrust his plate away and interrupted the

7§ WEIR OF HERMISTON

deliberate and insignificant stream of talk.
" Here," he said, " I have made a fool of
myself, if I have not made something worse.
Do you judge between us — judge between a
father and a son. I can speak to you; it is
not like .... I will tell you what I feel
and what I mean to do; and you shall be the
judge," he repeated.

"I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond
with extreme seriousness. "But, my dear
boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if
it will interest you at all to hear what I may
choose to say when I have heard you, I am
quite at your command. Let an old man
say it, for once, and not need to blush: I
love you like a son."

There came a sudden sharp sound in
Archie's throat. " Ay," he cried, " and
there it is ! Love ! Like a son ! And how
do you think I love my father ? "

" Quietly, quietly," says my lord.

" I will be very quiet," replied Archie.
" And I will be baldly frank. I do not love
my father ; I wonder sometimes if I do not
hate him. There's my shame ; perhaps my

OPINION OF THE BENCH 79

sin ; at least, and in the sight of God, not my
fault. How was I to love him ? He has
never spoken to me, never smiled upon me ;
I do not think he ever touched me. You
know the way he talks ? You do not talk so,
yet you can sit and hear him without shud-
dering, and I cannot. My soul is sick when
he begins with it ; I could smite him in the
mouth. And all that's nothing. I was at
the trial of this Jopp. You were not there,
but you must have heard him often; the
man's notorious for it, for being — look at my
position ! he's my father and this is how I
have to speak of him — notorious for being a
brute and cruel and a coward. Lord Glenal-
mond, I give you my word, when I came out
of that Court, I longed to die — the shame of
it was beyond my strength : but I — I — " he
rose from his seat and began to pace the
room in a disorder. " Well, who am I ? A
boy, who have never been tried, have never
done anything except this twopenny impotent
folly with my father. But I tell you, my
lord, and I know myself, I am at least that
kind of a man — or that kind of a boy, if you

8o WEIR OF HERMISTON

prefer it — that I could die interments rather
than that anyone should suffer as that scoun-
drel suffered. Well, and what have I done ?
I see it now. I have made a fool of myself,
as I said in the beginning ; and I have gone
back, and asked my father's pardon, and
placed myself wholly in his hands — and he
has sent me to Hermiston," with a wretched
smile, "for life, I suppose — and what can I
say ? he strikes me as having done quite-
right, and let me off better than I had de-
served."

" My poor, dear boy ! " observed Glenal-
mond. " My poor dear and, if you will allow
me to say so, very foolish boy ! You are
only discovering where you are ; to one of
your temperament, or of mine, a painful dis-
covery. The world was not made for us ;
it was made for ten hundred millions of men,
all different from each other and from us ;
there's no royal road there, we just have to
sclamber and tumble. Don't think that I
am at all disposed to be surprised ; don't
suppose that I ever think of blaming you ;
indeed I rather admire ! But there fall to be

OPINION OF THE BENCH 81

offered one or two observations on the case
which occur to me and which (if you will
listen to them dispassionately) may be the
means of inducing you to view the matter
more calmly. First of all, I cannot acquit
you of a good deal of what is called intoler-
ance. You seem to have been very much
offended because your father talks a little
sculduddery after dinner, which it is per-
fectly licit for him to do, and which (although
I am not very fond of it myself) appears to
be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I
scarcely like to remind you, since it is so
trite a commonplace, is older than yourself.
At least, he is major and sui juris, and may
please himself in the matter of his conversa-
tion. And, do you know, I wonder if he
might not have as good an answer against
you and me ? We say we sometimes find
him coarse, but I suspect he might retort
that he finds us always dull. Perhaps a rele-
vant exception."

He beamed on Archie, but no smile could
be elicited.

82 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" And now," proceeded the Judge, " for
'Archibald on Capital Punishment.' This is
a very plausible academic opinion ; of course
I do not and I cannot hold it ; but that's not
to say that many able and excellent persons
have not done so in the past. Possibly, in
the past also, I may have a little dipped my-
self in the same heresy. My third client, or
possibly my fourth, was the means of a return
in my opinions. I never saw the man I
more believed in ; I would have put my hand
in the fire, I would have gone to the cross
for him ; and when it came to trial he was
gradually pictured before me, by undeniable
probation, in the light of so gross, so cold-
blooded, and so black-hearted a villain, that I
had a mind to have cast my brief upon the
table. I was then boiling against the man
with even a more tropical temperature than I
had been boiling for him. But I said to
myself: ' No, you have taken up his case;
and because you have changed your mind it
must not be suffered to let drop. All that
rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last
night with so much enthusiasm is out of

OPINION OF THE BENCH 83

place, and yet you must not desert him, you
must say something.' So I said something,
and I got him off. It made my reputation.
But an experience of that kind is formative.
A man must not bring his passions to the
bar — or to the bench."

The story had slightly rekindled Archie's
interest. " I could never deny," he began —
" I mean I can conceive that some men
would be better dead. But who are we to
know all the springs of God's unfortunate
creatures ? Who are we to trust ourselves
where it seems that God himself must think
twice before He treads, and to do it with
delight ? Yes, with delight. Tigris ut
aspera"

" Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle," said
Glenalmond. " And yet, do you know, I
think somehow a great one."

" I've had a long talk with him to-night,"
said Archie.

" I was supposing so," said Glenalmond.

" And he struck me 1 cannot deny

that he struck me as something very big,"
pursued the son. " Yes, he is big. He never

84 WEIR OF HERMISTON

spoke about himself; only about me. I sup-
pose I admired him. The dreadful part "

" Suppose we did not talk about that," in-
terrupted Glenalmond. " You know it very
well, it cannot in any way help that you
should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder
whether you and I — who are a pair of senti-
mentalists — are quite good judges of plain
men."

" How do you mean ? " asked Archie.

" Fair judges, I mean," replied Glenal-
mond. " Can we be just to them ? Do we
not ask too much ? There was a word of
yours just now that impressed me a little
when you asked me who we were to know
all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures.
You applied that, as I understood, to capital
cases only. But does it — I ask myself — does
it not apply all through ? Is it any less diffi-
cult to judge of a good man or of a half-
good man, than of the worst criminal at the
bar ? And may not each have relevant ex-
cuses ? "

" Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the
good," cried Archie.

OPINION OF THE BENCH 85

" No, we do not talk of it," said Glenal-
mond. " But I think we do it. Your father,
for instance."

" You think I have punished him ? " cried
Archie.

Lord Glenalmond bowed his head.

"I think I have," said Archie. "And
the worst is, I think he feels it ! How much,
who can tell, with such a being ? But I
think he does."

" And I am sure of it," said Glenalmond.

" Has he spoken to you, then ? " cried Ar-
chie.

" Oh, no," replied the Judge.

" I tell you honestly," said Archie, " I
want to make it up to him. I will go, I
have already pledged myself to go, to Her-
miston. That was to him. And now I
pledge myself to you, in the sight of God,
that I will close my mouth on capital punish-
ment and all other subjects where our views
may clash, for — how long shall I say? when
shall I have sense enough ? — ten years. Is
that well ? "

" It is well," said my lord.

86 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" As far as it goes," said Archie. " It is
enough as regards myself, it is to lay down
enough of my conceit. But as regards him,
whom I have publicly insulted ? What am
I to do to him ? How do you pay attentions
to a — an Alp like that ? "

" Only in one way," replied Glenalmond.
" Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and
scrupulous."

" And I promise that he shall have it," an-
swered Archie. " I offer you my hand in
pledge of it."

" And I take your hand as a solemnity,"
replied the Judge. " God bless you, my
dear, and enable you to keep your promise.
God guide you in the true way, and spare
your days, and preserve to you your honest
heart." At that, he kissed the young man
upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, anti-
quated way ; and instantly launched, with a
marked change of voice, into another sub-
ject. " And now, let us replenish the tank-
ard ; and I believe, if you will try my Ched-
dar again, you would find you had a better

OPINION OF THE BENCH 87

appetite. The Court has spoken, and the
case is dismissed."

" No, there is one thing I must say," cried
Archie. " I must say it in justice to himself.
I know — I believe faithfully, slavishly, after
our talk — he will never ask me anything un-
just. I am proud to feel it, that we have
that much in common, I am proud to say it
to you."

The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his
tankard. " And I think perhaps that we
might permit ourselves a toast," said he. " I
should like to propose the health of a man
very different from me and very much my
superior — a man from whom I have often
differed, who has often (in the trivial ex-
pression) rubbed me the wrong way, but
whom I have never ceased to respect and, I
may add, to be not a little afraid of. Shall I
give you his name ? "

" The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Her-
miston," said Archie, almost with gaiety ;
and the pair drank the toast deeply.

It was not precisely easy to re-establish,

88 WEIR OF HERMISTON

after these emotional passages, the natural
flow of conversation. But the Judge eked
out what was wanting with kind looks, pro-
duced his snufF-box (which was very rarely
seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing
of any further social success, was upon the
point of getting down a book to read a fav-
ourite passage, when there came a rather
startling summons at the front door, and
Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot
from a midnight supper. I am not aware
that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object,
being short, and gross-bodied, and with an
expression of sensuality comparable to a
bear's. At that moment, coming in hissing
from many potations, with a flushed counte-
nance and blurred eyes, he was strikingly
contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of
Glenalmond. A rush of confused thought
came over Archie — of shame that this was
one of his father's elect friends ; of pride,
that at the least of it Hermiston could carry
his liquor ; and last of all, of rage, that he
should have here under his eye the man that
had betrayed him. And then that too passed

OPINION OF THE BENCH 89

away ; and he sat quiet, biding his oppor-
tunity.

The tipsy senator plunged at once into an
explanation with Glenalmond. There was
a point reserved yesterday, he had been able
to make neither head nor tail of it, and see-
ing lights in the house, he had just dropped
in for a glass of porter — and at this point he
became aware of the third person. Archie
saw the cod's mouth and the blunt lips of
Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and
the recognition twinkle in his eyes.

" Who's this ? " said he. " What ? is this
possibly you, Don Quickshot ? And how
are ye ? And how's your father ? And
what's all this we hear of you ? It seems
you're a most extraordinary leveller, by all
tales. No king, no parliaments, and your
gorge rises at the macers, worthy men ! Hoot,
toot ! Dear, dear me ! Your father's son
too ! Most rideekulous!"

Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at
the reappearance of his unhappy figure of
speech, but perfectly self-possessed. " My
lord — and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear

9° WEIR OF HERMISTON

friend," he began, " this is a happy chance
for me, that I can make my confession
and offer my apologies to two of you at
once."

" Ah, but I don't know about that. Con-
fession ? It'll be judeecial, my young friend,"
cried the jocular Glenkindie. " And I'm
afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye were to
make me a coanvert ! "

" If you would allow me, my lord," re-
turned Archie, " what I have to say is very
serious to me ; and be pleased to be humor-
ous after I am gone ! "

" Remember, I'll hear nothing against the
macers !" put in the incorrigible Glenkindie.

But Archie continued as though he had
not spoken. " I have played, both yesterday
and to-day, a part for which I can only offer
the excuse of youth. I was so unwise as to
go to an execution ; it seems, I made a scene
at the gallows ; not content with which, I
spoke the same night in a college society
against capital punishment. This is the ex-
tent of what I have done, and in case you
hear more alleged against me, I protest my

OPINION OF THE BENCH 91

innocence. I have expressed my regret al-
ready to my father, who is so good as to
pass my conduct over — in a degree, and
upon the condition that I am to leave my
law studies." .

Chapter V

WINTER ON THE MOORS
I. AT HERMISTON

The road to Hermiston runs for a great
part of the way up the valley of a stream, a
favourite with anglers and with midges, full
of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and
natural woods of birch. Here and there, but
at great distances, a byway branches off, and
a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in
a fold of the hill ; but the more part of the
time, the road would be quite empty of pass-
age and the hills of habitation. Hermiston
parish is one of the least populous in Scot-
land ; and, by the time you came that length,
you would scarce be surprised at the inimita-
ble smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient
place seated for fifty, and standing in a green
by the burn-side among two-score grave-
stones. The manse close by, although no
02

WINTER ON THE MOORS 93

more than a cottage, is surrounded by the
brightness of a flower-garden and the straw
roofs of bees ; and the whole colony, kirk
and manse, garden and graveyard, finds har-
bourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the
year round in a great silence broken only by
the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn,
and the bell on Sundays. A mile beyond the
kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipi-
tous ascent, and brings you a little after to
the place of Hermiston, where it comes to
an end in the back-yard before the coach-
house. All beyond and about is the great
field of the hills ; the plover, the curlew, and
the lark cry there ; the wind blows as it blows
in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure ;
and the hill-tops huddle one behind another
like a herd of cattle into the sunset.

The house was sixty years old, unsightly,
comfortable ; a farmyard and a kitchen-
garden on the left, with a fruit wall where
little hard green pears came to their maturity
about the end of October.

The policy (as who should say the park)
was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed ;

94 WEIR OF HERMISTON

heather and moorfowl.had crossed the bound-
ary wall and spread and roosted within ; and
it would have tasked a landscape gardener to
say where policy ended and unpolicied nature
began. My lord had been led by the influ-
ence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable
design of planting ; many acres were accord-
ingly set out with fir, and the little feathery
besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange
air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great,
rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and
at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of
hill birds. Standing so high and with so little
shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed
by showers, drenched by continuous rains that
made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and
buffeted by all the winds of heaven ; and the
prospect would be often black with tempest,
and often white with the snows of winter.
But the house was wind and weather proof,
the hearths were kept bright, and the rooms
pleasant with live fires of peat ; and Archie
might sit of an evening and hear the squalls
bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire
prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke

WINTER ON THE MOORS 95

winding up the chimney, and drink deep of
the pleasures of shelter.

Solitary as the place was, Archie did not
want neighbours. Every night, if he chose,
he might go down to the manse and share a
"brewst" of toddy with the minister — a
hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and
light and still active, though his knees were
loosened with age, and his voice broke con-
tinually in childish trebles — and his lady
wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word
to say for herself beyond good even and good
day. Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds
of the neighbourhood paid him the compli-
ment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes
rode down to call, on his crop-eared pony;
young Pringle of Drumanno came up on
his bony grey. Hay remained on the hos-
pitable field, and must be carried to bed;
Pringle -got somehow to his saddle about 3
a.m., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on
the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a sense-
less view hal'loa, and vanished out of the
small circle of illumination like a wraith.
Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of

96 WEIR OF HERMISTON

his break-neck flight was audible, then it was
cut off by the intervening steepness of the
hill; and again, a great while after, the re-
newed beating of phantom horse-hoofs, far
in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that
the horse at least, if not his rider, was still
on the homeward way.

There was a Tuesday club at the " Cross-
keys" in Crossmichael, where the young
bloods of the country-side congregated and
drank deep on a percentage of the expense,
so that he was left gainer who should have
drunk the most. Archie had no great mind
to this diversion, but he took it like a duty
laid upon him, went with a decent regularity,
did his manfullest with the liquor, held up
his head in the local jests, and got home
again and was able to put up his horse, to
the admiration of Kirstie and the lass that
helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped at
Windielaws. He went to the new year's
ball at Huntsfield and was made welcome,
and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord
Muirfell, upon whose name, as that of a
legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so

WINTER ON THE MOORS 97

full of Lords of Session, my pen should
pause reverently. Yet the same fate
attended him here as in Edinburgh. The
habit of solitude tends to perpetuate itself,
and an austerity of which he was quite un-
conscious, and a pride which seemed arro-
gance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness, dis-
couraged and offended his new companions.
Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle
never at all, and there came a time when
Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club,
and became in all things — what he had had
the name of almost from the first — the Re-
cluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss
Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping
Miss Marshall of the Mains were under-
stood to have had a difference of opinion
about him the day after the ball — he was
none the wiser, he could not suppose himself
to be remarked by these entrancing ladies.
At the ball itself my Lord MuirfeH's daugh-
ter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and
the second time with a touch of appeal, so
that her colour rose and her voice trembled
a little in his ear, like a passing grace in

9s WEIR OF HERMISTON

music. He stepped back with a heart on
fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused him-
self, and a little after watched her dancing
with young Drumanno ' of the empty laugh,
and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to
himself that this was a world in which it was
given to Drumanno to please, and to himself
only to stand aside and envy. He seemed
excluded, as of right, from the favour of
such society — seemed to extinguish mirth
wherever he came, and was quick to feel the
wound, and desist, and retire into solitude.
If he had but understood the figure he pre-
sented, and the impression he made on these
bright eyes and tender hearts; if he had but
guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston,
young, graceful, well spoken, but always
cold, stirred the maidens of the county with
the charm of Byronism when Byronism was
new, it may be questioned whether his des-
tiny might not even yet have been modified.
It may be questioned, and I think it should
be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be
parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the
chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any

WINTER ON THE MOORS 99

opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman
sense of duty, an instinctive aristocracy of
manners and taste; to be the son of Adam
Weir and Jean Rutherford.

n. — KIRSTIE

Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have
sat to a sculptor. Long of limb and still
light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined,
her golden hair not yet mingled with any
trace of silver, the years had but caressed and
embellished her. By the lines of a rich and
vigorous maternity, she seemed destined to
be the bride of heroes and the mother of
their children ; and behold, by the iniquity of
fate, she had passed through her youth alone,
and drew near to the confines of age, a child-
less woman. The tender ambitions that she
had received at birth had been, by time and
disappointment, diverted into a certain barren
zeal of industry and fury of interference.
She carried her thwarted ardours into house-
work, she washed floors with her empty
heart. If she could not win the love of one
with love, she must dominate all by her tern-

ioo WEIR OF HERMISTON

per. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a
drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours,
and with the others not much more than
armed neutrality. The grieve's wife had
been " sneisty ;" the sister of the gardener
who kept house for him had shown herself
" upsitten ;" and she wrote to Lord Hermis-
ton about once a year demanding the dis-
charge of the offenders, and justifying the
demand by much wealth of detail. For it
must not be supposed that the quarrel rested
with the wife and did not take in the husband
also — or with the gardener's sister, and did
not speedily include the gardener himself.
As the upshot of all this petty quarrelling
and intemperate speech, she was practically
excluded (like a lightkeeper on his tower)
from the comforts of human association ; ex-
cept with her own indoor drudge, who, being
but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must
submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's "
moods without complaint, and be willing to
take buffets or caresses according to the
temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate

WINTER ON THE MOORS 101

and in the Indian summer of her heart, which
was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this
equivocal good thing of Archie's presence.
She had known him in the cradle and pad-
dled him when he misbehaved ; and yet, as
she had not so much as set eyes on him
since he was eleven and had his last serious
illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather
melancholy young gentleman of twenty came
upon her with the shock of a new acquaint-
ance. He was " Young Hermiston," " the
laird himsel' j" he had an air of distinctive
superiority, a cold straight glance of his black
eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in
the beginning, and therefore the possibility
of any quarrel was excluded. He was new,
and therefore immediately aroused her curi-
osity ; he was reticent, and kept it awake.
And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he
was male and she female, the everlasting
fountains of interest.

Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a
clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden
aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No
matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous

102 WEIR OF HERMISTON

or tragic, she would have done it and joyed
to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing
less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physi-
cal pleasure to make his bed or light his
lamp for him when he was absent, to pull
off" his wet boots or wait on him at dinner
when he returned. A young man who
should have so doted on the idea, moral and
physical, of any woman, might be properly
described as being in love, head and heels,
and would have behaved himself accordingly.
But Kirstie — though her heart leaped at his
coming footsteps — though, when he patted
her shoulder, her face brightened for the day
— had not a hope or thought beyond the
present moment and its perpetuation to the
end of time. Till the end of time she would
have had nothing altered, but still continue
delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid
(say twice in the month) with a clap on the
shoulder.

I have said her heart leaped — it is the ac-
cepted phrase. But rather, when she was
alone in any chamber of the house, and
heard his foot passing on the corridors, some-

WINTER ON THE MOORS 103

thing in her bosom rose slowly until her
breath was suspended, and as slowly fell
again with a deep sigh, when the steps had
passed and she was disappointed of her eyes'
desire. This perpetual hunger and thirst of
his presence kept her all day on the alert.
When he went forth at morning, she would
stand and follow him with admiring looks.
As it grew late and drew to the time of his
return, she would steal forth to a corner of
the policy wall and be seen standing there
sometimes by the hour together, gazing with
shaded eyes, waiting the exquisite and barren
pleasure of his view a mile off on the moun-
tains. When at night she had trimmed and
gathered the fire, turned down his bed, and
laid out his night-gear — when there was no
more to be done for the king's pleasure, but
to remember him fervently in her usually
very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding
upon his perfections, his future career, and
what she should give him the next day for
dinner — there still remained before her one
more opportunity ; she was still to take in
the tray and say good-night. Sometimes

104 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Archie would glance up from his book with
a pre-occupied nod and a perfunctory salu-
tation which was in truth a dismissal ; some-
times— and by degrees more often — the
volume would be laid aside, he would meet
her coming with a look of relief; and the
conversation would be engaged, last out the
supper, and be prolonged till the small hours
by the waning fire. It was no wonder that
Archie was fond of company after his soli-
tary days ; and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted
all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare
his attention. She would keep back some
piece of news during dinner to be fired off
with the entrance of the supper tray, and
form as it were the lever de rideau of the
evening's entertainment. Once he had heard
her tongue wag, she made sure of the result.
From one subject to another she moved by
insidious transitions, fearing the least silence,
fearing almost to give him time for an
answer lest it should slip into a hint of sep-
aration. Like so many people of her class,
she was a brave narrator ; her place was on
the hearth-rug and she made it a rostrum,

WINTER ON THE MOORS 105

miming her stories as she told them, fitting
them with vital detail, spinning them out
with endless " quo' he's " and " quo' she's,"
her voice sinking into a whisper over the
supernatural or the horrific ; until she would
suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and
pointing to the clock, " Mercy, Mr. Archie !"
she would say, " Whatten a time o' night is
this of it ! God forgive me for a daft wife ! "
So it befell, by good management, that she
was not only the first to begin these nocturnal
conversations, but invariably the first to
break them off; so she managed to retire
and not to be dismissed.

III. A BORDER FAMILY

Such an unequal intimacy has never been
uncommon in Scotland, where the clan spirit
survives ; where the servant tends to spend
her life in the same service, a helpmeet at
first, then a tyrant, and at last a pensioner ;
where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute
of the pride of birth, but is, perhaps, like
Kirstie, a connection of her master's, and at
least knows the legend of her own family,

io6 WEIR OF HERMISTON

and may count kinship with some illustrious
dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all
classes: that he stands in an attitude towards
the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and re-
members and cherishes the memory of his
forbears, good or bad ; and there burns alive
in him a sense of identity with the dead even
to the twentieth generation. No more char-
acteristic instance could be found than in the
family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and
Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour
forth the particulars of their genealogy, embel-
lished with every detail that memory had hand-
ed down or fancy fabricated; and, behold! from
every ramification of that tree there dangled
a halter. The Elliotts themselves have had
a chequered history ; but these Elliotts de-
duced, besides, from three of the most un-
fortunate of the border clans — the Nicksons,
the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. One ances-
tor after another might be seen appearing a
moment out of the rain and the hill mist
upon his furtive business, speeding home,
perhaps, with a paltry booty of lame horses
and lean kine, or squealing and dealing death

WINTER ON THE MOORS 107

in some moorland feud of the ferrets and the
wildcats. One after another closed his ob-
scure adventures in mid-air, triced up to the
arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron's dule-
tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots
criminal justice, which usually hurts nobody
but jurymen, became a weapon of precision
for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the
Crozers. The exhilaration of their exploits
seemed to haunt the memories of their de-
scendants alone, and the shame to be forgot-
ten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish
their relationship to " Andrew Ellwald of the
Laverockstanes, called c Unchancy Dand,'
who was justifeed wi' seeven mair of the
same name at Jeddart in the days of King
James the Sax." In all this tissue of crime
and misfortune, the Elliotts of Cauldstane-
slap had one boast which must appear legiti-
mate : the males were gallows-birds, born out-
laws, petty thieves, and deadly brawlers; but
according to the same tradition, the females
were all chaste and faithful. The power of
ancestry on the character is not limited to the
inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestors by

io8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

the gross from the benevolence of Lion King
at Arms, my grandson (if he is Scottish) will
feel a quickening emulation of their deeds.
The men of the Elliotts were proud, lawless,
violent as of right, cherishing and prolonging
a tradition. In like manner with the women.
And the women, essentially passionate and
reckless, who crouched on the rug, in the
shine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had
cherished through life a wild integrity of vir-
tue.

Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious,
a savage disciplinarian in the antique style,
and withal a notorious smuggler. " I mind
when I was a bairn getting mony a skelp
and being shoo'd to bed like pou'try," she
would say. " That would be when the lads
and their bit kegs were on the road. We've
had the riffraff of two-three counties in our
kitchen, mony's the time, betwix' the twelve
and the three ; and their lanterns would be
standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o' them
at once. But there was nae ungodly talk
permitted at Cauldstaneslap ; my faither was
a consistent man in walk and conversation j

WINTER ON THE MOORS 109

just let slip an aith, and there was the door
to ye ! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was
a fair wonder to hear him pray, but the
faimily has aye had a gift that way." This
father was twice married, once to a dark
woman of the old Ellwald stock, by whom
he had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap ;
and, secondly, to the mother of Kirstie.
" He was an auld man when he married
her, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice —
you could hear him rowting from the top o'
the kye-stairs," she said ; " but for her, it
appears, she was a perfit wonder. It was
gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie, for it was
your ain. The country-side gaed gyte about
her and her gowden hair. Mines is no to be
mentioned wi' it, and there's few weemen
has mair hair than what I have, or yet a bon-
nier colour. Often would I tell my dear
Miss Jeannie — that was your mother, dear,
she was cruel ta'en up about her hair, it was
unco tender, ye see — l Houts, Miss Jean-
nie,' I would say, 'just fling your washes and
your French dentifrishes in the back o' the

no WEIR OF HERMISTON

fire, for that's the place for them ; and awa'
down to a burn-side, and wash yersel in cauld
hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the
caller wind o' the muirs, the way that my
mother aye washed hers, and that I have aye
made it a practice to have washen mines —
just you do what I tell ye, my dear, and ye'll
give me news of it ! Ye'll have hair, and
routh of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I
said, ' and the bonniest colour like the clear
gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll no
can keep their eyes off it ! ' Weel, it lasted
out her time, puir thing ! I cuttit a lock of
it upon her corp that was lying there sae
cauld. I'll show it ye some of thir days if
ye're good. But, as I was sayin', my

midier "

On the death of the father there re-
mained golden-haired Kirstie, who took ser-
vice with her distant kinsfolk, the Ruther-
fords, and black-a-vised Gilbert, twenty
years older, who farmed the Cauldstane-
slap, married, and begot four sons between
1773 and 1784, and a daughter, like a post-
script, in '97, the year of Camperdown and

WINTER ON THE MOORS in

Cape St. Vincent. It seemed it was a tra-
dition of the family to wind up with a be-
lated girl. In 1804, at tne age °f sixty,
Gilbert met an end that might be called
heroic. He was due home from market any
time from eight at night till five in the
morning, and in any condition from the quar-
relsome to the speechless, for he maintained
to that age the goodly customs of the Scots
farmer. It was known on this occasion that
he had a good bit of money to bring home ;
the word had gone round loosely. The laird
had shown his guineas, and if anybody had
but noticed it, there was an ill-looking, vaga-
bond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that
drew out of the market long ere it was dusk
and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where
it was not to be believed that they had lawful
business. One of the country-side, one
Dickieson, they took with them to be their
guide, and dear he paid for it ! Of a sudden,
in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this vermin
clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him
three parts asleep, having drunk hard. But it
is ill to catch an Elliott. For awhile, in the

H3 WEIR OF HERMISTON

night and the black water that was deep as to
his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff
like a smith at his stithy, and great was the
sound of oaths and blows. With that the
ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home
with a pistol-ball in him, three knife-wounds,
the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and
bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race
with death that the laird rode ! In the mirk
night, with his broken bridle and his head
swimming, he dug his spurs to the rowels in
the horse's side, and the horse, that was even
worse off than himself, the poor creature !
screamed out loud like a person as he went,
so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks
at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the
table and looked at each other with white
faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate,
the laird won the length of the house and fell
there on the threshold. To the son that
raised him he gave the bag of money. " Hae,"
said he. All the way up the thieves had
seemed to him to be at his heels, but now
the hallucination left him — he saw them
again in the place of the ambuscade — and

WINTER ON THE MOORS 113

the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying
mind. Raising himself and pointing with an
imperious finger into the black night from
which he had come, he uttered the single
command, " Brocken Dykes," and fainted.
He had never been loved, but he had been
feared in honour. At that sight, at that
word, gasped out at them from a toothless
and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott spirit
awoke with a shout in the four sons.
" Wanting the hat," continues my author,
Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she
told this tale like one inspired, " wanting
guns, for there wasnae twa grains o' pouder
in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than
their sticks into their hands, the fower o'
them took the road. Only Hob, and that
was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill
where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi'
it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o'
the auld Border aith. ' Hell shall have her
ain again this nicht ! ' he raired, and rode
forth upon his errand." It was three miles
to Broken Dykes, down hill, and a sore road.

H4 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Kirstie has seen men from Edinburgh dis-
mounting there in plain day to lead their
horses. But the four brothers rode it as if
Auld Hornie were behind and Heaven in
front. Come to the ford, and there was
Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead,
but breathed and reared upon his elbow, and
cried out to them for help. It was at a grace-
less face that he asked mercy. As soon as
Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern, the
eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth
in the man's face, " Damn you ! " says he ;
" ye hae your teeth, hae ye ? " and rode his
horse to and fro upon that human remnant.
Beyond that, Dandie must dismount with the
lantern to be their guide ; he was the young-
est son, scarce twenty at the time. " A'
nicht long they gaed in the wet heath and
jennipers, and whaur they gaed they neither
knew nor cared, but just followed the bluid-
stains and the footprints o' their faither's
murderers. And a' nicht Dandie had his
nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithers
followed and spak' naething, neither black
nor white. There was nae noise to be

WINTER ON THE MOORS 115

heard, but just the sough of the swalled
burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his
teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of
the morning they saw they were on the
drove road, and at that the four stopped
and had a dram to their breakfasts, for they
knew that Dand must have guided them
right, and the rogues could be but little
ahead, hot foot for Edinburgh by the way of
the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock they
had word of them — a shepherd had seen
four men " uncoly mishandled " go by in the
last hour. " That's yin a piece," says Clem,
and swung his cudgel. " Five o' them ! "
says Hob. " God's death, but the faither
was a man ! And him drunk ! " And then
there befell them what my author termed " a
sair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by
a posse of mounted neighbors come to aid in
the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the
reinforcement. "The deil's broughten you!"
said Clem, and they rode thenceforward in
the rear of the party with hanging heads.
Before ten they had found and secured the

n6 WEIR OF HERMISTON

rogues, and by three of the afternoon, as
they rode up the Vennel with their prisoners,
they were aware of a concourse of people
bearing in their midst something that dripped.
" For the boady of the saxt," pursued Kirs-
tie, " wi' his head smashed like a hazelnit,
had been a' that nicht in the chairge o' Her-
miston Water, and it dunting it on the
stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and
flinging the deid thing heels-ower-hurdie at
the Fa's o' Spango; and in the first o' the day
Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried
him off like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled
and raced wi' him, bobbing under brae-
sides, and was long playing with the creature
in the drumlie lynns under the castle, and at
the hinder end of all cuist him up on the
starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they
were a' thegither at last (for Dickieson had
been brought in on a cart long syne), and
folk could see what mainner o' man my
brither had been that had held his head
again sax and saved the siller, and him
drunk ! " Thus died of honourable injuries

WINTER ON THE MOORS 117

and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of
the Cauldstaneslap ; but his sons had scarce
less glory out of the business. Their savage
haste, the skill with which Dand had found
and followed the trail, the barbarity to the
wounded Dickieson (which was like an open
secret in the county) and the doom which it
was currently supposed they had intended for
the others, struck and stirred popular imagi-
nation. Some century earlier the last of the
minstrels might have fashioned the last of
the ballads out of that Homeric fight and
chase ; but the spirit was dead, or had been
reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and
the degenerate moorsmen must be content to
tell the tale in prose and to make of the
" Four Black Brothers " a unit after the
fashion of the " Twelve Apostles " or the
" Three Musketeers."

Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew —
in the proper Border diminutive, Hob, Gib,
Clem and Dand Elliott — these ballad heroes
had much in common; in particular, their
high sense of the family and the family hon-
our; but they went diverse ways, and pros-

Il8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

pered and failed in different businesses. Ac-
cording to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in their
bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was,
indeed, essentially a decent man. An elder
of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon
his lips, save, perhaps, thrice or so at the
sheep-washing, since the chase of his father's
murderers. The figure he had shown on
that eventful night disappeared as if swal-
lowed by a trap. He who had ecstatically
dipped his hand in the-red blood, he who had
ridden down Dickieson, became, from that
moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model
of the rustic proprieties; cannily profiting by
the high war prices, and yearly stowing away
a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity;
approved of and sometimes consulted by the
greater lairds for the massive and placid sense
of what he said, when he could be induced
to say anything; and particularly valued by
the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a righthand
man in the parish, and a model to parents.
The transfiguration had been for the moment
only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of
our ancestors, sleeps in all of us till the fit

WINTER ON THE MOORS 119

circumstance shall call it into action; and
for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had
given once for all the measure of the devil
that haunted him. He was married, and, by
reason of the effulgence of that legendary
night, was adored by his wife. He had a
mob of little lusty, barefoot children who
marched in a caravan the long miles to
school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were
marked by acts of spoliation and mischief,
and who were qualified in the country-side
as "fair pests." But in the house, if "faither
was in," they were quiet as mice. In short,

Hob moved through life in a great peace

the reward of anyone who shall have killed
his man, with any formidable and figurative
circumstance, in the midst of a country
gagged and swaddled with civilisation.

It was a current remark that the Elliotts
were " guid and bad, like sanguishes " ; and
certainly there was a curious distinction, the
men of business coming alternately with the
dreamers. The second brother, Gib, was a
weaver by trade, had gone out early into the
world to Edinburgh, and come home again

120 WEIR OF HERMISTON

with his wings singed. There was an exalta-
tion in his nature which had led him to em-
brace with enthusiasm the principles of the
French Revolution, and had ended by bring-
ing him under the hawse of my Lord Her-
miston in that furious onslaught of his upon
the Liberals, which sent Muir and Palmer
into exile and dashed the party into chaff. It
was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn
for the movement, and prevailed upon a little
by a sense of neighbourliness, had given Gib
a hint. Meeting him one day in the Potter-
row, my lord had stopped in front of him.
" Gib, ye eediot," he had said, " what's this I
hear of you ? Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics,
weaver's poalitics, is the way of it, I hear.
If ye arenae a' thegether dozened with eedi-
ocy, ye'll gang your ways back to Cauld-
staneslap, and ca' your loom, and ca' your
loom, man ! " And Gilbert had taken him
at the word and returned, with an expedition
almost to be called flight, to the house of his
father. The clearest of his inheritance was
that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie

WINTER ON THE MOORS 12 1

had boasted ; and the baffled politician now
turned his attention to religious matters — or,
as others said, to heresy and schism. Every
Sunday morning he was in Crossmichael,
where he had gathered together, one by one,
a sect of about a dozen persons, who called
themselves " God's Remnant of the True
Faithful," or, for short, " God's Remnant."
To the profane, they were known as " Gib's
Deils." Baillie Sweedie, a noted humorist
in the town, vowed that the proceedings
always opened to the tune of " The Deil Fly
Away with the Exciseman," and that the
sacrament was dispensed in the form of hot
whiskey toddy ; both wicked hits at the
evangelist, who had been suspected of smug-
gling in his youth, and had been overtaken
(as the phrase went) on the streets of Cross-
michael one Fair day. It was known that
every Sunday they prayed for a blessing on
the arms of Bonaparte. For this, " God's
Remnant," as they were " skailing " from the
cottage that did duty for a temple, had been
repeatedly stoned by the bairns, and Gib him-

122 WEIR OF HERMISTON

self hooted by a squadron of Border volun-
teers in which his own brother, Dand, rode
in a uniform and with a drawn sword. The
" Remnant " were believed, besides, to be
" antinomian in principle," which might
otherwise have been a serious charge, but the
way public opinion then blew it was quite
swallowed up and forgotten in the scandal
about Bonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had
set up his loom in an outhouse at Cauld-
staneslap, where he laboured assiduously six
days of the week. His brothers, appalled
by his political opinions and willing to avoid
dissension in the household, spoke but little
to him ; he less to them, remaining absorbed
in the study of the Bible and almost constant
prayer. The gaunt weaver was dry-nurse at
Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him
dearly. Except when he was carrying an
infant in his arms, he was rarely seen to
smile — as, indeed, there were few smilers in
that family. When his sister-in-law rallied
him, and proposed that he should get a wife
and bairns of his own, since he was so fond
of them, " I have no clearness of mind upon

WINTER ON THE MOORS 123

that point," he would reply. If nobody
called him in to dinner, he stayed out. Mrs.
Hob, a hard, unsympathetic woman, once
tried the experiment. He went without food
all day, but at dusk, as the light began to fail
him, he came into the house of his own ac-
cord, looking puzzled. " I've had a great
gale of prayer upon my speerit," said he.
" I canna mind sae muckle's what I had for
denner." The creed of God's Remnant was
justified in the life of its founder. " And
yet I dinna ken," said Kirstie. " He's maybe
no more stockfish than his neeghbours ! He
rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good
stamach to the work, by a' that I hear ! God's
Remnant ! The deil's clavers ! There
wasna muckle Christianity in the way Hob
guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least of it ;
but Guid kens ! Is he a Christian even ?
He might be a Mahommedan or a Deevil or
a Fireworshipper, for what I ken."

The third brother had his name on a door-
plate, no less, in the city of Glasgow, " Mr.
Clement Elliott," as long as your arm. In
his case, that spirit of innovation which had

124 WEIR OF HERMISTON

shown itself timidly in the case of Hob by
the admission of new manures, and which
had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive
politics and heretical religions, bore useful
fruit in many ingenious mechanical improve-
ments. In boyhood, from his addiction to
strange devices of sticks and string, he had
been counted the most eccentric of the family.
But that was all by now, and he was a part-
ner of his firm, and looked to die a baillie.
He too had married, and was rearing a
plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glas-
gow ; he was wealthy, and could have bought
out his brother, the cock-laird, six times
over, it was whispered ; and when he slipped
away to Cauldstaneslap for a well-earned
holiday, which he did as often as he was
able, he astonished the neighbours with his
broadcloth, his beaver hat, and the ample
plies of his neck-cloth. Though an emi-
nently solid man at bottom, after the pattern
of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow
briskness and aplomb which set him off. All
the other Elliotts were as lean as a rake, but
Clement was laying on fat, and he panted

WINTER ON THE MOORS 125

sorely when he must get into his boots.
Dand said, chuckling : " Ay, Clem has the
elements of a corporation." " A provost
and corporation," returned Clem. And his
readiness was much admired.

The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd
to his trade, and by starts, when he could
bring his mind to it, excelled in the business.
Nobody could train a dog like Dandie ;
nobody, through the peril of great storms in
the winter time, could do more gallantly.
But if his dexterity were exquisite, his dili-
gence was but fitful ; and he served his
brother for bed and board, and a trifle of
pocket-money when he asked for it. He
loved money well enough, knew very well
how to spend it, and could make a shrewd
bargain when he liked. But he preferred a
vague knowledge that he was well to wind-
ward to any counted coins in the pocket ;
he felt himself richer so. Hob would expos-
tulate : " I'm an amature herd," Dand would
reply : " I'll keep your sheep to you when
I'm so minded, but I'll keep my liberty too.
Thir's no man can coandescend on what

126 WEIR OF HERMISTON

I'm worth." Clem would expound to him
the miraculous results of compound interest,
and recommend investments. "Ay, man ?"
Dand would say, " and do you think, if I
took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it
or wear it on the lassies ? And, anyway,
my kingdom is no of this world. Either
I'm a poet or else I'm nothing." Clem
would remind him of old age. " I'll die
young, like Robbie Burns," he would say
stoutly. No question but he had a certain
accomplishment in minor verse. His " Her-
miston Burn," with its pretty refrain —

"I love to gang thinking whaur ye gang linking,
Hermiston burn, in the howe;"

his "Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts,
dour, bauld Elliotts of auld," and his really
fascinating piece about the Praying Weaver's
Stone, had gained him in the neighbourhood
the reputation, still possible in Scotland, of a
local bard ; and, though not printed himself,
he was recognized by others who were and
who had become famous. Walter Scott
owed to Dandie the text of the " Raid of
Wearie " in the Minstrelsy and made him

WINTER ON THE MOORS 127

welcome at his house, and appreciated his
talents, such as they were, with all his usual
generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his
sworn crony ; they would meet, drink to
excess, roar out their lyrics in each other's
faces, and quarrel and make it up again till
bedtime. And besides these recognitions,
almost to be called official, Dandie was made
welcome for the sake of his gift through the
farmhouses of several contiguous dales, and
was thus exposed to manifold temptations
which he rather sought than fled. He had
figured on the stool of repentance, for once
fulfilling to the letter the tradition of his hero
and model. His humorous verses to Mr.
Torrance on that occasion — " Kenspeckle
here my lane I stand " — unfortunately too
indelicate for further citation, ran through
the country like a fiery cross ; they were re-
cited, quoted, paraphrased and laughed over
as far away as Dumfries on the one hand and
Dunbar on the other.

These four brothers were united by a
close bond, the bond of that mutual ad-
miration — or rather mutual hero-worship —

128 WEIR OF HERMISTON

which is so strong among the members
of secluded families who have much ability
and little culture. Even the extremes
admired each other. Hob, who had as
much poetry as the tongs, professed to
find pleasure in Band's verses ; Clem, who
had no more religion than Claverhouse,
nourished a heartfelt, at least an open-
mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and
Dandie followed with relish the rise of
Clem's fortunes. Indulgence followed hard
on the heels of admiration. The laird,
Clem and Dand, who were Tories and
patriots of the hottest quality, excused to
themselves, with a certain bashfulness, the
radical and revolutionary heresies of Gib.
By another division of the family, the laird,
Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly vir-
tuous, swallowed the dose of Dand's irregu-
larities as a kind of clog or drawback in the
mysterious providence of God affixed to
bards, and distinctly probative of poetical
genius. To appreciate the simplicity of
their mutual admiration, it was necessary to
hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits,

WINTER ON THE MOORS 129

and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony
with the affairs and personalities of that great
city of Glasgow where he lived and trans-
acted business. The various personages,
ministers of the church, municipal officers,
mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasion
to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all
served but as reflectors to cast back a flatter-
ing side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap.
The Provost, for whom Clem by exception
entertained a measure of respect, he would
liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird
there," he would say. "He has some of
Hob's grand, whun-stane sense, and the same
way with him of steiking his mouth when
he 's no very pleased." And Hob, all un-
conscious, would draw down his upper lip
and produce, as if for comparison, the for-
midable grimace referred to. The unsatis-
factory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was
thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa
fingers o' Gib's he would waken them up."
And Gib, honest man ! would look down and
secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they
had sent out into the world of men. He had

130 WEIR OF HERMISTON

come back with the good news that there
was nobody to compare with the Four Black
Brothers, no position that they would not
adorn, no official that it would not be well
they should replace, no interest of mankind,
secular or spiritual, which would not imme-
diately bloom under their supervision. The
excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce
the breadth of a hair divided them from the
peasantry. The measure of their sense is
this: that these symposia of rustic vanity
were kept entirely within the family, like
some secret ancestral practice. To the
world their serious faces were never deformed
by the suspicion of any simper of self-con-
tentment. Yet it was known. "They hae
a guid pride o' themsel's ! " was the word in
the country-side.

Lastly, in a Border story, there should be
added their " two-names." Hob was The
Laird. " Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne " ;
he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap — say fifty
acres — ipsissimus. Clement was Mr. Elliott,
as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty
having been discarded as no longer applicable,

WINTER ON THE MOORS 131

and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment
and the imbecility of the public ; and the
youngest, in honour of his perpetual wander-
ings, was known by the sobriquet of Randy
Band.

It will be understood that not all this in-
formation was communicated by the aunt,
who had too much of the family failing her-
self to appreciate it thoroughly in others.
But as time went on, Archie began to ob-
serve an omission in the family chronicle.

" Is there not a girl too ? " he asked.

" Ay. Kirstie. She was named from me,
or my grandmother at least — it's the same
thing," returned the aunt, and went on again
about Dand, whom she secretly preferred by
reason of his gallantries.

u But what is your niece like ? " said
Archie at the next opportunity.

" Her ? As black's your hat ! But I
dinna suppose she would maybe be what you
would ca' ill-looked a' thegither. Na, she's a
kind of a handsome jaud — a kind o' gipsy,"
said the aunt, who had two sets of scales for
men and women — or perhaps it would be

I32 WEIR OF HERMISTON

more fair to say that she had three, and the
third and the most loaded was for girls.

" How comes it that I never see her in
church ? " said Archie.

" 'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie with
Clem and his wife. A heap good she's like
to get of it ! I dinna say for men folk, but
where weemen folk are born, there let them
bide. Glory to God, I was never far'er from
here than Crossmichael."

In the meanwhile it began to strike Archie
as strange, that while she thus sang the praises
of her kinsfolk, and manifestly relished their
virtues and (I may say) their vices like a
thing creditable to herself, there should ap-
pear not the least sign of cordiality between
the house of Hermiston and that of Cauld-
staneslap. Going to church of a Sunday, as
the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts
kilted, three tucks of her white petticoat
showing below, and her best India shawl upon
her back (if the day were fine) in a pattern
of radiant dyes, she would sometimes over-
take her relatives preceding her more leisurely
in the same direction. Gib of course was

WINTER ON THE MOORS 133

absent : by skriegh of day he had been gone
to Crossmichael and his fellow heretics ; but
the rest of the family would be seen march-
ing in open order : Hob and Dand, stiff-
necked, straight-backed six-footers, with
severe dark faces, and their plaids about their
shoulders ; the convoy of children scattering
(in a state of high polish) on the wayside,
and every now and again collected by the
shrill summons of the mother ;* and the
mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance
which might have afforded matter of thought
to a more experienced observer than Archie,
wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with
Kirstie's but a thought more gaudy and con-
spicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew
more tall — Kirstie showed her classical pro-
file, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure
blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate
living pink.

"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott,"
said she, and hostility and gentility were
nicely mingled in her tones. " A fine day,
mem," the laird's wife would reply with a
miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her

134 WEIR OF HERMISTON

plumage — setting off, in other words, and
with arts unknown to the mere man, the
pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the
whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in
closer order, and with an indescribable air of
being in the presence of the foe ; and while
Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain famil-
iarity as of one who was well in court, Hob
marched on in awful immobility. There ap-
peared upon the face of this attitude in the
family the consequences of some dreadful
feud. Presumably the two women had been
principals in the original encounter, and the
laird had probably been drawn into the quar-
rel by the ears, too late to be included in the
present skin-deep reconciliation.

u Kirstie," said Archie one day, " what is
this you have against your family ? "

" I dinna complean," said Kirstie, with a
flush. " I say naething."

" I see you do not — not even good day
to your own nephew," said he.

" I hae naething to be ashamed of," said
she. " I can say the Lord's prayer with a
good grace. If Hob was ill, or in preeson or

WINTER ON THE MOORS 135

poverty, I would see to him blithely. But
for curtchying and complimenting and col-
loguing, thank ye kindly ! "

Archie had a bit of a smile : he leaned
back in his chair. " I think you and Mrs.
Robert are not very good friends," says he
slyly, " when you have your India shawls
on ? "

She looked upon him in silence, with a
sparkling eye but an indecipherable expres-
sion ; and that was all that Archie was ever
destined to learn of the battle of the India
shawls.

" Do none of them ever come here to see
you ? " he inquired.

" Mr. Archie," said she, " I hope that I
ken my place better. It would be a queer
thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up
your faither's house . . . that I should say
it ! — wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane
o' them it was worth while to mar soap upon
but just mysel' ! Na, they're all damnifeed
wi' the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience
wi' black folk." Then, with a sudden con-
sciousness of the case of Archie, " No that it

136 WEIR OF HERMISTON

maitters for men sae muckle," she made
haste to add, " but there's naebody can deny
that it's unwomanly. Long hair is the orna-
ment o' woman ony way ; we've good war-
randise for that — it's in the Bible — and
wha can doubt that the Apostle had some
gowden-haired lassie in his mind — Apostle
and all, for what was he but just a man like
yersel' ? "

Chapter VI

A LEAF FROM CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK.

Archie was sedulous at church. Sunday
after Sunday he sat down and stood up with
that small company, heard the voice of Mr.
Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet
from key to key, and had an opportunity to
study his moth-eaten gown and the black
thread mittens that he joined together in
prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity
in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew
was a little square box, dwarfish in propor-
tion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a
table not much bigger than a footstool.
There sat Archie an apparent prince, the
only undeniable gentleman and the only
great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in
the only pew, for no other in the kirk had
doors. Thence he might command an un-
disturbed view of that congregation of solid
137

138 WEIR OF HERMISTON

plaided men, strapping wives and daughters,
oppressed children, and uneasy sheep-dogs.
It was strange how Archie missed the look
of race; except the dogs, with their refined
foxy faces and inimitably curling tails, there
was no one present with the least claim to
gentility. The Cauldstaneslap party was
scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as
he amused himself making verses through
the interminable burden of the service, stood
out a little by the glow in his eye and a cer-
tain superior animation of face and alertness
of body; but even Dandie slouched like a
rustic. The rest of the congregation, like
so many sheep, oppressed him with a sense
of hob-nailed routine, day following day —
of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal
porridge, peas bannock, the somnolent fire-
side in the evening, and the night-long nasal
slumbers in a box-bed. Yet he knew many
of them to be shrewd and humorous, men of
character, notable women, making a bustle in
the world and radiating an influence from
their low-browed doors. He knew besides
they were like other men; below the crust

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 139

of custom, rapture found a way; he had
heard them beat the timbrel before Bacchus
— had heard them shout and carouse over
their whisky toddy; and not the most Dutch-
bottomed and severe faces among them all,
not even the solemn elders themselves, but
were capable of singular gambols at the
voice of love. Men drawing near to an end
of life's adventurous journey — maids thrill-
ing with fear and curiosity on the threshold
of entrance — women who had borne and
perhaps buried children, who could remem-
ber the clinging of the small dead hands and
the patter of the little feet now silent — he
marvelled that among all those faces there
should be no face of expectation, none that
was mobile, none into which the rhythm
and poetry of life had entered. "O fora
live face," he thought; and at times he had
a memory of Lady Flora; and at times he
would study the living gallery before him
with despair, and would see himself go on to
jwaste his days in that joyless, pastoral place,
and death come to him, and his grave be dug
under the rowans, and the Spirit of the

H° WEIR OF HERMISTON

Earth laugh out in a thunder-peal at the
huge fiasco.

On this particular Sunday, there was no
doubt but that the spring had come at last.
It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air
that made the warmth only the more wel-
come. The shallows of the stream glittered
and tinkled among bunches of primrose.
Vagrant scents of the earth arrested Archie
by the way with moments of ethereal intoxi-
cation. The grey, Quakerish dale was still
only awakened in places and patches from
the sobriety of its wintry colouring ; and he
wondered at its beauty ; an essential beauty
of the old earth it seemed to him, not resi-
dent in particulars but breathing to him from
the whole. He surprised himself by a sud-
den impulse to write poetry — he did so
sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in
the vein of Scott — and when he had taken
his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls
and shaded by a whip of a tree that was
already radiant with new leaves, it still more
surprised him that he should find nothing to
write. His heart perhaps beat in time to

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 141

some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe.
By the time he came to a corner of the val-
ley and could see the kirk, he had so lingered
by the way that the first psalm was finishing.
The nasal psalmody, full of turns and trills
and graceless graces, seemed the essential
voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanks-
giving. " Everything's alive," he said ; and
again cries it aloud, " Thank God, every-
thing's alive ! " He lingered yet awhile in
the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was
blooming hard by the leg of an old, black
table tombstone, and he stopped to contem-
plate the random apologue. They stood forth
on the cold earth with a trenchancy of con-
trast; and he was struck with a sense of
incompleteness in the day, the season, and
the beauty that surrounded him — the chill
there was in the warmth, the gross black
clods about the opening primroses, the damp
earthy smell that was everywhere inter-
mingled with the scents. The voice of the
aged Torrance within rose in an ecstasy.
And he wondered if Torrance also felt in his
old bones the joyous influence of the spring

H2 WEIR OF HERMISTON

morning ; Torrance, or the shadow of what
once was Torrance, that must come so soon
to lie outside here in the sun and rain with
all his rheumatisms, while a new minister
stood in his room and thundered from his
own familiar pulpit ? The pity of it, and
something of the chill of the grave, shook
him for a moment as he made haste to enter.
He went up the aisle reverently and took
his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for
he feared he had already offended the kind
old gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous
to offend no farther. He could not follow
the prayer, not even the heads of it. Bright-
nesses of azure, clouds of fragrance, a tinkle
of falling water and singing birds, rose like
exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal
memory, that was not his, but belonged to
the flesh on his bones. His body remem-
bered ; and it seemed to him that his body
was in no way gross, but ethereal and perish-
able like a strain of music ; and he felt for it
an exquisite tenderness as for a child, an in-
nocent, full of beautiful instincts and destined
to an early death. And he felt for old Tor-

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 143

ranee — of the many supplications, of the few
days — a pity that was near to tears. The
prayer ended. Right over him was a tablet
in the wall, the only ornament in the roughly
masoned chapel — for it was no more ; the
tablet commemorated, I was about to say the
virtues, but rather the existence of a former
Rutherford of Hermiston ; and Archie, under
that trophy of his long descent and local
greatness, leaned back in the pew and con-
templated vacancy with the shadow of a smile
between playful and sad, that became him
strangely. Dandie's sister, sitting by the side
of Clem in her new Glasgow finery, chose
that moment to observe the young laird.
Aware of the stir of his entrance, the little
formalist had kept her eyes fastened and her
face prettily composed during the prayer. It
was not hypocrisy, there was no one farther
from a hypocrite. The girl had been taught
to behave : to look up, to look down, to look
unconscious, to look seriously impressed in
church, and in every conjuncture to look her
best. That was the game of female life, and
she played it frankly. Archie was the one

H4 WEIR OF HERMISTON

person in church who was of interest, who
was somebody new, reputed eccentric, known
to be young, and a laird, and still unseen by
Christina. Small wonder that, as she stood
there in her attitude of pretty decency, her
mind should run upon him ! If he spared a
glance in her direction, he should know she
was a well-behaved young lady who had been
to Glasgow. In reason he must admire her
clothes, >nd it was possible that he should
think her pretty. At that her heart beat the
least thing in the world ; and she proceeded,
by way of a corrective, to call up and dismiss
a series of fancied pictures of the young man
who should now, by rights, be looking at her.
She settled on the plainest of them, a pink
short young man with a dish face and no
figure, at whose admiration she could afford
to smile ; but for all that, the consciousness
of his gaze (which was really fixed on Tor-
ranee and his mittens) kept her in something
of a flutter till the word Amen. Even then,
she was far too well-bred to gratify her curi-
osity with any impatience. She resumed her
seat languidly — this was a Glasgow touch —

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK H5

she composed her dress, rearranged her nose-
gay of primroses, looked first in front, then
behind upon the other side, and at last allowed
her eyes to move, without hurry, in the
direction of the Hermiston pew. For a
moment, they were riveted. Next she had
plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird
who should have meditated flight. Possibili-
ties crowded on her ; she hung over the future
and grew dizzy ; the image of this young
man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscruta-
ble half-smile, attracted and repelled her like
a chasm. " I wonder, will I have met my
fate ? " she thought, and her heart swelled.

Torrance was got some way into his first
exposition, positing a deep layer of texts as
he went along, laying the foundations of his
discourse, which was to deal with a nice
point in divinity, before Archie suffered his
eyes to wander. They fell first of all on
Clem, looking insupportably prosperous and
patronising Torrance with the favour of a
modified attention, as of one who was used
to better things in Glasgow. Though he
had never before set eyes on him, Archie

146 WEIR OF HERMISTON

had no difficulty in identifying him, and no
hesitation in pronouncing him vulgar, the
worst of the family. Clem was leaning
lazily forward when Archie first saw him.
Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and
that deadly instrument, the maiden, was sud-
denly unmasked in profile. Though not
quite in the front of the fashion (had any-
body cared !), certain artful Glasgow mantua-
makers, and her own inherent taste, had ar-
rayed her to great advantage. Her accoutre-
ment was, indeed, a cause of heart-burning,
and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal
kirk company. Mrs. Hob had said her say
at Cauldstaneslap. " Daft-like ! " she had
pronounced it. " A jaiket that '11 no meet !
Whaur 's the sense of a jaiket that '11 no but-
ton upon you, if it should come to be weet?
What do ye ca' thir things? Demmy bro-
kens, d' ye say ? They '11 be brokens wi' a
vengeance or ye can win back ! Weel, I
have naething to do wi' it — it 's no good
taste." Clem, whose purse had thus meta-
morphosed his sister, and who was not

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 147

insensible to the advertisement, had come to
the rescue with a " Hoot, woman ! What
do you ken of good taste that has never been
to the ceety ? " And Hob, looking on the
girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly dis-
played her finery in the midst of the dark
kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: "The
cutty looks weel," he had said, "and it's no
very like rain. Wear them the day, hizzie;
but it 's no a thing to make a practice o'."
In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the
kirk very conscious of white under-linen,
and their faces splendid with much soap, the
sight of the toilet had raised a storm of vary-
ing emotion, from the mere unenvious ad-
miration that was expressed in a long-drawn
"Eh!" to the angrier feeling that found vent
in an emphatic " Set her up ! " Her frock
was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut
low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so
as to display her demi-broquins of Regency
violet, crossing with many straps upon a
yellow cobweb stocking. According to the
pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did
not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts

148 WEIR OF HERMISTON

went forth armed for the pursuit and capture
of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up
so as to mould the contour of both breasts,
and in the nook between a cairngorm brooch
maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very
enviable position, trembled the nosegay of
primroses. She wore on her shoulders — or
rather, on her back and not her shoulders,
which it scarcely passed — a French coat of
sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces,
and of the same colour with her violet shoes.
About her face clustered a disorder of dark
ringlets, a little garland of yellow French
roses surmounted her brow, and the whole
was crowned by a village hat of chipped
straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the
weathered faces that surrounded her in
church, she glowed like an open flower —
girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that
caught the daylight and returned it in a fiery
flash, and the threads of bronze and gold
that played in her hair.

Archie was attracted by the bright thing
like a child. He looked at her again and yet
again, and their looks crossed. The lip was

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 149

lifted from her little teeth. He saw the red
blood work vividly under her tawny skin.
Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck
and held his gaze. He knew who she must
be — Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his
housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic
prophet, Gib — and he found in her the an-
swer to his wishes.

Christina felt the shock of their encounter-
ing glances, and seemed to rise, clothed in
smiles, into a region of the vague and bright.
But the gratification was not more exquisite
than it was brief. She looked away abruptly,
and immediately began to blame herself for
that abruptness. She knew what she should
have done, too late — turned slowly with her
nose in the air. And meantime his look was
not removed, but continued to play upon her
like a battery of cannon constantly aimed,
and now seemed to isolate her alone with
him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a
pillory, before the congregation. For Archie
continued to drink her in with his eyes, even
as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a
mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks

150 WEIR OF HERMISTON

with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of her
little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and
the pale florets of primrose fascinated him.
He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake
with the heaving, and marvelled what should
so much discompose the girl. And Christina
was conscious of his gaze — saw it, perhaps,
with the dainty plaything of an ear that
peeped among her ringlets ; she was conscious
of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady
breath. Like a creature tracked, run down,
surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to
give herself a countenance. She used her
handkerchief — it was a really fine one —
then she desisted in a panic : " He would
only think I was too warm." She took to
reading in the metrical psalms, and then re-
membered it was sermon-time. Last she put
a " sugar-bool " in her mouth, and the next
moment repented of the step. It was such
a homely-like thing ! Mr. Archie would never
be eating sweeties in kirk ; and, with a pal-
pable effort, she swallowed it whole, and her
color flamed high. At this signal of distress
Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour.

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 151

What had he been doing ? He had been ex-
quisitely rude in church to the niece of his
housekeeper ; he had stared like a lackey and
a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It
was possible, it was even likely, he would
be presented to her after service in the kirk-
yard, and then how was he to look ? And
there was no excuse. He had marked the
tokens of her shame, of her increasing indig-
nation, and he was such a fool that he had
not understood them. Shame bowed him
down, and he looked resolutely at Mr.
Torrance ; who little supposed, good, worthy
man, as he continued to expound justification
by faith, what was his true business : to play
the part of derivative to a pair of children at
the old game of falling in love.

Christina was greatly relieved at first. It
seemed to her that she was clothed again.
She looked back on what had passed. All
would have been right if she had not blushed,
a silly fool ! There was nothing to blush at,
. if she bad taken a sugar-bool. Mrs. Mac-
Taggart, the elder's wife in St. Enoch's,
took them often. And if he had looked at

I52 WEIR OF HERMISTON

her, what was more natural than that a young
gentleman should look at the best dressed
girl in church ? And at the same time, she
knew far otherwise, she knew there was
nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and
valued herself on its memory like a decora-
tion. Well, it was a blessing he had found
something else to look at ! And presently
she began to have other thoughts. It was
necessary, she fancied, that she should put
herself right by a repetition of the incident,
better managed. If the wish was father to
the thought, she did not know or she would not
recognise it. It was simply as a manoeuvre of
propriety, as something called for to lessen
the significance of what had gone before,
that she should a second time meet his eyes,
and this time without blushing. And at the
memory of the blush, she blushed again, and
.became one general blush burning from head
to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate,
so forward, done by a girl before ? And here
she was, making an exhibition of herself be-
fore the congregation about nothing ! She
stole a glance upon her neighbours, and be-

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 153

hold ! they were steadily indifferent, and
Clem had gone to sleep. And still the one
idea was becoming more and more potent
with her, that in common prudence she must
look again before the service ended. Some-
thing of the same sort was going forward in
the mind of Archie, as he struggled with the
load of penitence. So it chanced that, in the
flutter of the moment when the last psalm
was given out, and Torrance was reading the
verse, and the leaves of every psalm-book in
church were rustling under busy fingers, two
stealthy glances were sent out like antennae
among the pews and on the indifferent and
absorbed occupants, and drew timidly nearer
to the straight line between Archie and
Christina. They met, they lingered together
for the least fraction of time, and that was
enough. A charge as of electricity passed
through Christina, and behold ! the leaf of her
psalm-book was torn across.

Archie was outside by the gate of the
graveyard, conversing with Hob and the
minister and shaking hands all round with the
scattering congregation, when Clem and

154 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Christina were brought up to be presented.
The laird took off his hat and bowed to her
with grace and respect. Christina made her
Glasgow curtsey to the laird, and went on
again up the road for Hermiston and Cauld-
staneslap, walking fast, breathing hurriedly
with a heightened colour, and in this strange
frame of mind, that when she was alone she
seemed in high happiness, and when anyone
addressed her she resented it like a contradic-
tion. A part of the way she had the com-
pany of some neighbour girls and a loutish
young man ; never had they seemed so in-
sipid, never had she made herself so disagree-
able. But these struck aside to their various
destinations or were out-walked and left be-
hind ; and when she had driven off with sharp
words the proffered convoy of some of her
nephews and nieces, she was free to go on
alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air,
dwelling intoxicated among clouds of happi-
ness. Near to the summit she heard steps
behind her, a man's steps, light and very
rapid. She knew the foot at once and walked

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 155

the faster. " If it's me he's wanting he can
run for it," she thought, smiling.

Archie overtook her like a man whose
mind was made up.

" Miss Kirstie " he began.

" Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir,"
she interrupted. " I canna bear the con-
traction."

" You forget it has a friendly sound for
me. Your aunt is an old friend of mine and
a very good one. I hope we shall see much
of you at Hermiston ? "

" My aunt and my sister-in-law doesna
agree very well. Not that I have much ado
with it. But still when I'm stopping in the
house, if I was to be visiting my aunt, it
would not look considerate-like."

" I am sorry," said Archie.

" I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir," she said.
" I whiles think myself it's a great peety."

" Ah, I am sure your voice would always
be for peace ! " he cried.

"I wouldna be too sure of that," she
said. " I have my days like other folk, I
suppose."

I56 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" Do you know, in our old kirk, among
our good old grey dames, you made an effect
like sunshine."

" Ah, but that would be my Glasgow
clothes ! "

" I did not think I was so much under the
influence of pretty frocks."

She smiled with a half look at him.
" There's more than you ! " she said. " But
you see I'm only Cinderella. I'll have to
put all these things by in my trunk ; next
Sunday I'll be as grey as the rest. They're
Glasgow clothes, you see, and it would never
do to make a practice of it. It would seem
terrible conspicuous."

By that they were come to the place
where their ways severed. The old grey
moors were all about them ; in the midst a
few sheep wandered ; and they could see on
the one hand the straggling caravan scaling
the braes in front of them for Cauldstaneslap,
and on the other, the contingent from Her-
miston bending off and beginning to disap-
pear by detachments into the policy gate. It
was in these circumstances that they turned

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 157

to say farewell, and deliberately exchanged a
glance as they shook hands. All passed as
it should, genteelly ; and in Christina's mind,
as she mounted the first steep ascent for
Cauldstaneslap, a gratifying sense of triumph
prevailed over the recollection of minor
lapses and mistakes. She had kilted her
gown, as she did usually at that rugged pass ;
but when she spied Archie still standing and
gazing after her, the skirts came down again
as if by enchantment. Here was a piece of
nicety for that upland parish, where the
matrons marched with their coats kilted in
the rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to
kirk through the dust of summer, and went
bravely down by the burnside, and sat on
stones to make a public toilet before enter-
ing ! It was perhaps an air wafted from
Glasgow ; or perhaps it marked a stage of
that dizziness of gratified vanity, in which
the instinctive act passed unperceived. He
was looking after ! She unloaded her bosom
of a prodigious sigh that was all pleasure,
and betook herself to run. When she had

158 WEIR OF HERMISTON

overtaken the stragglers of her family, she
caught up the niece whom she had so re-
cently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her,
and drove her away again, and ran after her
with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she
thought the laird might still be looking !
But it chanced the little scene came under
the view of eyes less favourable ; for she
overtook Mrs. Hob marching with Clem and
Dand.

" You're shiirely fey,1 lass ! " quoth
Dandie.

" Think shame to yersel', miss ! " said the
strident Mrs. Hob. " Is this the gait to
guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk ?
You're shiirely no sponsible the day ! And
anyway I would mind my guid claes."

" Hoot ! " said Christina, and went on be-
fore them head in air, treading the rough
track with the tread of a wild doe.

She was in love with herself, her destiny,
the air of the hills, the benediction of the
sun. All the way home, she continued

'Unlike yourself, strange, as persons are observed to be in
the hour of approaching death or calamity.

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 159

under the intoxication of these sky-scraping
spirits. At table she could talk freely of
young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him
off-hand and with a loud voice, that he was a
handsome young gentleman, real well man-
nered and sensible-like, but it was a pity he
looked doleful. Only — the moment after
— a memory of his eyes in church embar-
rassed her. But for this inconsiderable check,
all through meal-time she had a good appe-
tite, and she kept them laughing at table,
until Gib (who had returned before them
from Crossmichael and his separative worship)
reproved the whole of them for their levity.
Singing "in to herself" as she went, her
mind still in the turmoil of glad confusion,
she rose and tripped upstairs to a little loft,
lighted by four panes in the gable, where she
slept with one of her nieces. The niece,
who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's"
high spirits, was flounced out of the apart-
ment with small ceremony, and retired,
smarting and half-tearful, to bury her woes
in the byre among the hay. Still humming,
Christina divested herself of her finery, and

160 WEIR OF HERMISTON

put her treasures one by one in her great
green trunk. The last of these was the
psalm-book; it was a fine piece, the gift of
Mistress Clem, in distinct old-faced type, on
paper that had begun to grow foxy in the
warehouse — not by service — and she was used
to wrap it in a handkerchief every Sunday
after its period of service was over, and bury
it end-wise at the head of her trunk. As
she now took it in hand the book fell open
where the leaf was torn, and she stood and
gazed upon that evidence of her bygone dis-
composure. There returned again the vision
of the two brown eyes staring at her, intent
and bright, out of that dark corner of the
kirk. The whole appearance and attitude,
the smile, the suggested gesture of young
Hermiston came before her in a flash at
the sight of the torn page. "I was surely
fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie,
and at the suggested doom her high spirits
deserted her. She flung herself prone upon
the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-
book in her hands for hours, for the more
part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleas-

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 161

ure and unreasoning fear. The fear was
superstitious ; there came up again and again
in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words,
and a hundred grisly and black tales out of
the immediate neighbourhood read her a
commentary on their force. The pleasure
was never realised. You might say the
joints of her bo.dy thought and remembered,
and were gladdened, but her essential self, in
the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked
feverishly of something else, like a nervous
person at a fire. The image that she most
complacently dwelt on was that of Miss
Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of
Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the
straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and
the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's im-
age, on the other hand, when it presented
itself was never welcomed — far less wel-
comed with any ardour, and it was exposed
at times to merciless criticism. In the long,
vague dialogues she held in her mind, often
with imaginary, often with unrealised inter-
locutors, Archie, if he were referred to at
all, came in for savage handling. He was

162 WEIR OF HERMISTON

described as "looking like a stork," "staring
like a caulf," "a face like a ghaist's." "Do
you call that manners ? " she said ; or, " I
soon put him in his place." "'•Miss Chris-
tina, if you please, Mr. Weir !' says I, and
just flyped up my skirt tails." With gabble
like this she would entertain herself long
whiles together, and then her eye would per-
haps fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of
Archie would appear again from the dark-
ness of the wall, and the voluble words de-
serted her, and she would lie still and stupid,
and think upon nothing with devotion, and be
sometimes raised by a quiet sigh. Had a
doctor of medicine come into that loft, he
would have diagnosed a healthy, well-devel-
oped, eminently vivacious lass lying on her
face in a fit of the sulks; not one who had
just contracted, or was just contracting, a
mortal sickness of the mind which should
yet carry her towards death and despair.
Had it been a doctor of psychology, he might
have been pardoned for divining in the girl a
passion of childish vanity, self-love in excelsis,
and no more. It is to be understood that I

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 163

have been painting chaos and describing the
inarticulate. Every lineament that appears
is too precise, almost every word used too
strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains
on a day of rolling mists ; I have but copied
the names that appear upon the pointers, the
names of definite and famous cities far dis-
tant, and now perhaps basking in sunshine;
but Christina remained all these hours, as it
were, at the foot of the post itself, not mov-
ing, and enveloped in mutable and blinding
wreaths of haze.

The day was growing late and the sun-
beams long and level, when she sat suddenly
up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put
by that psalm-book which had already played
a part so decisive in the first chapter of her
love-story. In the absence of the mesmer-
ist's eye, we are told nowadays that the head
of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be
steadfastly regarded. So that torn page had
riveted her attention on what might else have
been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten ;
while the ominous words of Dandie — heard,
not heeded, and still remembered — had lent

164 WEIR OF HERMISTON

to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast
of solemnity, and that idea of Fate — a pagan
Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity,
obscure, lawless, and august — moving in-
dissuadably in the affairs of Christian men.
Thus even that phenomenon of love at first
sight, which is so rare and seems so simple
and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue,
may be decomposed into a sequence of acci-
dents happily concurring.

She put on a grey frock and a pink ker-
chief, looked at herself a moment with ap-
proval in the small square of glass that served
her for a toilet mirror, and went softly down-
stairs through the sleeping house that re-
sounded with the sound of afternoon snoring.
Just outside the door Dandie was sitting with
a book in his hand, not reading, only honour-
ing the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind.
She came near him and stood still.

" I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.

There was something unusually soft in
her tones that made him look up. She was
pale, her eyes dark and bright ; no trace re-
mained of the levity of the morning.

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 165

" Ay, lass ? Ye'll have ye're ups and
downs like me, I'm thinkin'," he observed.

" What for do ye say that ?" she asked.

" O, for naething," says Dand. " Only I
think ye're mair like me than the lave of
them. Ye've mair of the poetic temper,
tho' Guid kens little enough of the poetic
taalent. It's an ill gift at the best. Look
at yoursel'. At denner you were all sun-
shine and flowers and laughter, and now
you're like the star of evening on a lake."

She drank in this hackneyed compliment
like wine, and it glowed in her veins.

" But I'm saying, Dand " — she came
nearer him — " I'm for the muirs. I must
have a braith of air. If Clem was to be
speiring for me, try and quaiet him, will ye
no ? "

" What way ? " said Dandie. " I ken
but the ae way, and that's leein'. I'll say ye
had a sair heed, if ye like."

" But I havena," she objected.

" I daur say not," he returned. " I said
I would say ye had ; and if ye like to nay-say

166 WEIR OF HERMISTON

me when ye come back, it'll no mateerially
maitter, for my chara'ter's clean gane a'ready
past reca'."

" O, Dand. are ye a leear ? " she asked,
lingering.

"Folks say sae," replied the bard.

" Wha says sae ? " she pursued.

" Them that should ken the best," he re-
sponded. " The lassies, for ane."

" But, Dand, you would never lee to me?"
she asked.

" I'll leave that for your pairt of it, ye
girzie," said he. " Ye'll lee to me fast
eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I'm tellin'
ye and it's true ; when you have a jo, Miss
Kirstie, it'll be for guid and ill. I ken : I
was made that way myseP, but the deil was
in my luck ! Here, gang awa wi' ye to your
muirs, and let me be ; I'm in an hour of in-
spiraution, ye upsetting tawpie !"

But she clung to her brother's neighbour-
hood, she knew not why.

" Will ye no gie's a kiss, Dand ? " she
said. " I aye likit ye fine."

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 167

He kissed her and considered her a moment;
he found something strange in her. But he
was a libertine through and through, nour-
ished equal contempt and suspicion of all
womankind, and paid his way among them
habitually with idle compliments.

" Gae wa' wi' ye ! " said he. " Ye're a
dentie baby, and be content wi' that ! "

That was Dandie's way ; a kiss and a com-
fit to Jenny — a bawbee and my blessing to
Jill — and good night to the whole clan of ye,
my dears ! When anything approached the
serious, it became a matter for men, he both
thought and said. Women, when they did
not absorb, were only children to be shoo'd
away. Merely in his character of connois-
seur, however, Dandie glanced carelessly after
his sister as she crossed the meadow. "The
brat's no that bad ! " he thought with sur-
prise, for though he had just been paying her
compliments, he had not really looked at her.
" Hey ! what's yon ? " For the grey dress
was cut with short sleeves and skirts, and
displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink
stockings of the same shade as the kerchief

i68 WEIR OF HERMISTON

she wore round her shoulders, and that shim-
mered as she went. This was not her way in
undress ; he knew her ways and the ways of
the whole sex in the country-side, no one
better ; when they did not go barefoot, they
wore stout " rig and furrow " woollen hose
of an invisible blue mostly, when they were
not black outright ; and Dandie, at sight of
this daintiness, put two and two together. It
was a silk handkerchief, then they would be
silken hose ; they matched — then the whole
outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly pre-
sent, and not something to be worn through
bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sun-
day. He whistled. "My denty May, either
your heid's fair turned, or there's some on-
goings !" he observed, and dismissed the sub-
ject.

She went slowly at first, but ever straighter
and faster for the Cauldstaneslap, a pass
among the hills to which the farm owed its
name. The Slap opened like a doorway be-
tween two rounded hillocks ; and through
this ran the short cut to Hermiston. Im-
mediately on the other side it went down

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 169

through the Deil's Hags, a considerable
marshy hollow of the hill-tops, full of springs,
and crouching junipers, and pools where the
black peat-water slumbered. There was no
view from here. A man might have sat upon
the Praying Weaver's stone a half-century,
and seen none but the Cauldstaneslap children
twice in the twenty-four hours on their way
to the school and back again, an occasional
shepherd, the irruption of a clan of sheep,
or the birds who haunted about the springs,
drinking and shrilly piping. So, when she
had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was received
into seclusion. She looked back a last time
at the farm. It still lay deserted except for
the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to
be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected
inspiration having come to him at last. Thence
she passed rapidly through the morass, and
came to the further end of it, where a slug-
gish burn discharges, and the path for Her-
miston accompanies it on the beginning of its
downward path. From this corner a wide
view was opened to her of the whole stretch
of braes upon the other side, still sallow and

17° WEIR OF HERMISTON

in places rusty with the winter, with the path
marked boldly, here and there by the burn-
side a tuft of birches, and — three miles off
as the crow flies — from its enclosures and
young plantations, the windows of Hermiston
glittering in the western sun.

Here she sat down and waited, and looked
for a long time at these far-away bright panes
of glass. It amused her to have so extended
a view, she thought. It amused her to see
the house of Hermiston — to see "folk";
and there was an indistinguishable human
unit, perhaps the gardener, visibly sauntering
on the gravel paths.

By the time the sun was down and all the
easterly braes lay plunged in clear shadow,
she was aware of another figure coming up
the path at a most unequal rate of approach,
now half-running, now pausing and seeming
to hesitate. She watched him at first with
a total suspension of thought. She held her
thought as a person holds his breathing.
Then she consented to recognize him.
" He'll no be coming here, he canna be ; it's
no possible." And there began to grow

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 171

upon her a subdued choking suspense. He
was coming ; his hesitations had quite ceased,
his step grew firm and swift ; no doubt re-
mained ; and the question loomed up before
her instant : what was she to do ? It was all
very well to say that her brother was a laird
himself; it was all very well to speak of
casual intermarriages and to count cousinship,
like Auntie Kirstie. The difference in their
social station was trenchant ; propriety, pru-
dence, all that she had ever learned, all that
she knew, bade her flee. But on the other
hand the cup of life now offered to her was
too enchanting. For one moment, she saw
the question clearly, and definitely made her
choice. She stood up and showed herself an
instant in the gap relieved upon the sky line ;
and the next, fled trembling and sat down
glowing with excitement on the Weaver's
stone. She shut her eyes, seeking, praying
for composure. Her hand shook in her lap,
and her mind was full of incongruous and
futile speeches. What was there to make a
work about ? She could take care of herself,
she supposed ! There was no harm in see-

I72 WEIR OF HERMISTON

ing the laird. It was the best thing that
could happen. She would mark a proper
distance to him once and for all. Gradually
the wheels of her nature ceased to go round
so madly, and she sat in passive expectation,
a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the grey
moss. I have said she was no hypocrite, but
here I am at fault. She never admitted to
herself that she had come up the hill to look
for Archie. And perhaps after all she did
not know, perhaps came as a stone falls. For
the steps of love in the young, and especially
in girls, are instinctive and unconscious.

In the meantime Archie was drawing
rapidly near, and he at least was consciously
seeking her neighbourhood. The afternoon
had turned to ashes in his mouth ; the
memory of the girl had kept him from read-
ing and drawn him as with cords ; and at
last, as the cool of the evening began to
come on, he had taken his hat and set forth,
with a smothered ejaculation, by the moor
path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no hope to
find her ; he took the off chance without ex-
pectation of result and to relieve his uneasi-

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 173

ness. The greater was his surprise, as he
surmounted the slope and came into the
hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see there, like
an answer to his wishes, the little womanly
figure in the grey dress and the pink kerchief
sitting little, and low, and lost, and acutely
solitary, in these desolate surroundings and
on the weather-beaten stone of the dead
weaver. Those things that still smacked of
winter were all rusty about her, and those
things that already relished of the spring had
put forth the tender and lively colours of the
season. Even in the unchanging face of the
death-stone changes were to be remarked ;
and in the channeled-lettering, the moss be-
gan to renew itself in jewels of green. By
an after-thought that was a stroke of art, she
had turned up over her head the back of the
kerchief; so that it now framed becomingly
her vivacious and yet pensive face. Her
feet were gathered under her on the one side,
and she leaned on her bare arm, which
showed out strong and round, tapered to a
slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading
light.

174 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Young Hermiston was struck with a cer-
tain chill. He was reminded that he now
dealt in serious matters of life and death.
This was a grown woman he was approach-
ing, endowed with her mysterious potencies
and attractions, the treasury of the continued
race, and he was neither better nor worse
than the average of his sex and age. He had
a certain delicacy which had preserved him
hitherto unspotted, and which (had either of
them guessed it) made him a more dangerous
companion when his heart should be really
stirred. His throat was dry as he came
near ; but the appealing sweetness of her
smile stood between them like a guardian
angel.

For she turned to him and smiled, though
without rising. There was a shade in this
cavalier greeting that neither of them per-
ceived ; neither he, who simply thought it
gracious and charming as herself; nor yet
she, who did not observe (quick as she was)
the difference between rising to meet the
laird and remaining seated to receive the ex-
pected admirer.

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 175

" Are ye stepping west, Hermiston ?" said
she, giving him his territorial name after the
fashion of the country-side.

" I was," said he a little hoarsely, " but I
think I will be about the end of my stroll
now. Are you like me, Miss Christina ? the
house would not hold me. I came here
seeking air."

He took his seat at the other end of the
tombstone and studied her, wondering what
was she. There was infinite import in the
question alike for her and him.

" Ay," she said. " I couldna bear the
roof either. It 's a habit of mine to come
up here about the gloaming when it's quaiet
and caller."

" It was a habit of my mother's also," he
said gravely. The recollection half-startled
him as he expressed it. He looked around.
" I have scarce been here since. It's peace-
ful," he said, with a long breath.

" It's no like Glasgow," she replied. " A
weary place, yon Glasgow ! But what a day
have I had for my hame-coming, and what a
bonny evening ! "

I76 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" Indeed, it was a wonderful day," said
Archie. " I think I will remember it years
and years until I come to die. On days like
this — I do not know if you feel as I do —
but everything appears so brief, and fragile,
and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life.
We are here for so short a time ; and all the
old people before us — Rutherfords of Herm-
iston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap — that
were here but a while since, riding about and
keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner
— making love too, and marrying — why,
where are they now ? It's deadly common-
place, but after all, the commonplaces are the
great poetic truths."

He was sounding her, semi-consciously,
to see if she could understand him ; to learn
if she were only an animal the colour of
flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her
sweet. She, on her part, her means well in
hand, watched, womanlike, for any oppor-
tunity to shine, to abound in his humour,
whatever that might be. The dramatic
artist, that lies dormant or only half-awake in
most human beings, had in her sprung to his

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 177

feet in a divine fury, and chance had served
her well. She looked upon him with a sub-
dued twilight look that became the hour of
the day and the train of thought ; earnestness
shone through her like stars in the purple
west; and from the great but controlled up-
heaval of her whole nature there passed into
her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a
thrill of emotion.

" Have you mind of Dand's song ? " she
answered. " I think he'll have been trying
to say what you have been thinking."

" No, I never heard it," he said. " Repeat
it to me, can you ? "

" It's nothing wanting the tune," said
Kirstie.

" Then sing it me," said he.

" On the Lord's Day ? That would never
do, Mr. Weir ! "

u I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper
of the Sabbath, and there is ho one in this
place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient
under the stone."

" No that I'm thinking that really," she
said. " By my way of thinking, it's just as

178 WEIR OF HERMISTON

serious as a psalm. Will I sooth it to ye,
then ? "

" If you please," said he, and, drawing
near to her on the tombstone, prepared to
listen.

She sat up as if to sing. " I'll only can
sooth it to ye," she explained. " I wouldna
like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I think
the birds would carry news of it to Gilbert,"
and she smiled. " It's about the Elliotts,"
she continued, " and I think there's few bon-
nier bits in the book-poets, though Dand has
never got printed yet."

And she began, in the low, clear tones of
her half-voice, now sinking almost to a
whisper, now rising to a particular note which
was her best, and which Archie learned to
wait for with growing emotion : —

" O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane,

In the rain and the wind and the lave,
They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill,

But they' re a' quaitit noo in the grave.

Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of
auld !"

All the time she sang she looked stead-
fastly before her, her knees straight, her hands

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK i?9

upon her knee, her head cast back and up.
The expression was admirable throughout,
for had she not learned it from the lips and
under the criticism of the author ? When
it was done, she turned upon Archie a face
softly bright, and eyes gently suffused and
shining in the twilight, and his heart rose and
went out to her with boundless pity and sym-
pathy. His question was answered. She
was a human being tuned to a sense of the
tragedy of life ; there were pathos and music
and a great heart in the girl.

He arose instinctively, she also; for she
saw she had gained a point, and scored the
impression deeper, and she had wit enough
left to flee upon a victory. They were but
commonplaces that remained to be exchanged,
but the low, moved voices in which they
passed made them sacred in the memory. In
the falling greyness of the evening he
watched her figure winding through the
morass, saw it turn a last time and wave a
hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it
seemed to him as if something went along
with her out of the deepest of his heart.

l8o WEIR OF HERMISTON

And something surely had come, and come
to dwell there. He had retained from child-
hood a picture, now half-obliterated by the
passage of time and the multitude of fresh
impressions, of his mother telling him, with
the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and
often with dropping tears, the tale of the
"Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his
brief tragedy and long repose. And now
there was a companion piece; and he beheld,
and he should behold forever, Christina
perched on the same tomb, in the grey col-
ours of the evening, gracious, dainty, perfect
as a flower, and she also singing —

" Of old, unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago,"

— of their common ancestors now dead, of
their rude wars composed, their weapons
buried with them, and of these strange
changelings, their descendants, who lingered
a little in their places, and would soon be
gone also, and perhaps sung of by others at
the gloaming hour. . By one of the uncon-
scious arts of tenderness the two women
were enshrined together in his memory.

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 181

Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into
his eyes indifferently at the thought of either,
and the girl, from being something merely
bright and shapely, was caught up into the
zone of things serious as life and death and
his dead mother. So that in all ways and on
either side, Fate played his game artfully
with this poor pair of children. The gen-
erations were prepared, the pangs were made
ready, before the curtain rose on the dark
drama.

In the same moment of time that she dis-
appeared from Archie, there opened before
Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which
the farm lay. She saw, some five hundred
feet below her, the house making itself bright
with candles, and this was a broad hint to her
to hurry. For they were only kindled on a
Sabbath night with a view to that family
worship which rounded in the incomparable
tedium of the day and brought on the relaxa-
tion of supper. Already she knew that
Robert must be within-sides at the head of
the table, " waling the portions ;" for it was

182 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Robert in his quality of family priest and
judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated.
She made good time accordingly down the
steep ascent, and came up to the door panting
as the three younger brothers, all roused at
last from slumber, stood together in the cool
and the dark of the evening with a fry of
nephews and nieces about them, chatting and
awaiting the expected signal. She stood
back ; she had no mind to direct attention to
her late arrival or to her labouring breath.

" Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my
lass," said Clem. " Whaur were ye ? "

" O, just taking a dander by myseP," said
Kirstie.

And the talk continued on the subject of
the American war, without further reference
to the truant who stood by them in the covert
of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the
sense of guilt.

The signal was given, and the brothers
began to go in one after another, amid the
jostle and throng of Hob's children.

Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught
Kirstie by the arm. " When did ye begin

CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 183

to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott ? "
he whispered slyly.

She looked down ; she was one blush. " I
maun have forgotten to change them," said
she j and went into prayers in her turn with
a troubled mind, between anxiety as to
whether Dand should have observed her yel-
low stockings at church, and should thus
detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame
that she had already made good his prophecy.

She remembered the words of it, how it
was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that
that would be for good and evil. " Will I
have gotten my jo now ? " she thought with
a secret rapture.

And all through prayers, where it was her
principal business to conceal the pink stock-
ings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs.
Hob — and all through supper, as she made
a feint of eating and sat at the table radiant
and constrained — and again when she had
left them and come into her chamber, and
was alone with her sleeping niece, and could
at last lay aside the armour of society — the
same words sounded within her, the same

184 WEIR OF HERMISTON

profound note of happiness, of a world all
changed and renewed, of a day that had been
passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to
be heaven opened. All night she seemed to
be conveyed smoothly upon a shallow stream
of sleep and waking, and through the bowers
of Beulah ; all night she cherished to her
heart that exquisite hope ; and if, towards
morning, she forgot it awhile in a more pro-
found unconsciousness, it was to catch again
the rainbow thought with her first moment
of awaking.

Chapter VII

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES

Two days later a gig from Crossmichael
deposited Frank Innes at the doors of Herm-
iston. Once in a way, during the past
winter, Archie, in some acute phase of bore-
dom, had written him a letter. It had con-
tained something in the nature of an invita-
tion, or a reference to an invitation — pre-
cisely what, neither of them now remembered.
When Innes had received it, there had been
nothing further from his mind than to bury
himself in the moors with Archie ; but not
even the most acute political heads are guided
through the steps of life with unerring direct-
ness. That would require a gift of prophecy
which has been denied to man. For instance,
who could have imagined that, not a month
after he had received the letter, and turned it
into mockery, and put off answering it, and
in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy
185

186 WEIR OF HERMISTON

cast should begin to thicken over Frank's
career ? His case may be briefly stated. His
father, a small Morayshire laird with a large
family, became recalcitrant and cut off the
supplies ; he had fitted himself out with the
beginnings of quite a good law library, which,
upon some sudden losses on the turf, he had
been obliged to sell before they were paid
for ; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour
of the event, took out a warrant for his
arrest. Innes had early word of it, and was
able to take precautions. In this immediate
welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge
hanging over him, he had judged it the part
of prudence to be off instantly, had written a
fervid letter to his father at Inverauld, and
put himself in the coach for Crossmichael.
Any port in a storm ! He was manfully
turning his back on the Parliament House
and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the
racecourse and the ring ; and manfully pre-
pared, until these clouds should have blown
by, to share a living grave with Archie Weir
at Hermiston.

To do him justice, he was no less sur-

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 187

prised to be going than Archie was to see
him come ; and he carried off his wonder with
an infinitely better grace.

" Well, here I am !" said he, as he alighted.
" Pylades has come to Orestes at last. By
the way, did you get my answer ? No ?
How very provoking ! Well, here I am to
answer for myself, and that's better still."

" I am very glad to see you, of course,"
said Archie, " I make you heartily welcome,
of course. But you surely have not come
to stay, with the courts still sitting ; is that
not most unwise?"

" Damn the courts ! " says Frank. " What
are the courts to friendship and a little fish-
ing?"

And so it was agreed that he was to stay,
with no term to the visit but the term which
he had privily set to it himself — the day,
namely, when his father should have come
down with the dust, and he should be able to
pacify the bookseller. On such vague con-
ditions there began for these two young men
(who were not even friends) a life of great
familiarity and, as the days grew on, less and

l88 WEIR OF HERMISTON

less intimacy. They were together at meal
times, together o' nights when the hour had
come for whisky toddy ; but it might have
been noticed (had there been anyone to pay
heed) that they were rarely so much together
by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to,
multifarious activities in the hills, in which he
did not require, and had even refused, Frank's
escort. He would be off sometimes in the
morning and leave only a note on the break-
fast table to announce the fact ; and some-
times, with no notice at all, he would not re-
turn for dinner until the hour was long past.
Innes groaned under these desertions ; it re-
quired all his philosophy to sit down to a
solitary breakfast with composure, and all his
unaffected good-nature to be able to greet
Archie with friendliness on the more rare
occasions when he came home late for
dinner.

11 1 wonder what on earth he finds to do,
Mrs. Elliott ? " said he one morning, after he
had just read the hasty billet and sat down to
table.

" I suppose it will be business, sir," re-

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 189

plied the housekeeper dryly, measuring his
distance off to him by an indicated curtsey.

" But I can't imagine what business ! " he
reiterated.

" I suppose it will be his business," re-
torted the austere Kirstie.

He turned to her with that happy bright-
ness that made the charm of his disposition,
and broke into a peal of healthy and natural
laughter.

" Well played, Mrs. Elliott ! " he cried,
and the housekeeper's face relaxed into the
shadow of an iron smile. " Well played in-
deed ! " said he. " But you must not be
making a stranger of me like that. Why,
Archie and I were at the High School
together, and we've been to college to-
gether, and we were going to the Bar
together, when — you know ! Dear, dear
me ! what a pity that was ! A life spoiled,
a fine young fellow as good as buried here in
the wilderness with rustics ; and all for what ?
"A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more.
God, how good your scones are, Mrs.
Elliott."

190 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" They're no mines, it was the lassie made
them," said Kirstie ; " and, saving your pres-
ence, there's little sense in taking the Lord's
name in vain about idle vivers that you fill
your kyte wi'."

" I daresay you're perfectly right, ma'am,"
quoth the imperturbable Frank. " But, as I
was saying, this is a pitiable business, this
about poor Archie; and you and I might do
worse than put our heads together, like a
couple of sensible people, and bring it to an
end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that Archie is
really quite a promising young man, and in
my opinion he would do well at the Bar.
As for his father, no one can deny his
ability, and I don't fancy any one would
care to deny that he has the deil's own
temper — "

"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think
the lass is crying on me," said Kirstie, and
flounced from the'room.

"The damned, cross-grained, old broom-
stick ! " ejaculated Innes.

In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 191

the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent
to her feelings.

" Here, ettercap ! Ye '11 have to wait
on yon Innes ! I canna haud myself in.
1 Puir Erchie ' ! I'd l puir Erchie ' him, if
I had my way ! And Hermiston with
the deil's ain temper ! God, let him take
Hermiston's scones out of his mouth first.
There's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs
that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it
than what he has in his hale dwaibly body !
Settin' up his snash to me ! Let him
gang to the black toon where he 's mebbe
wantit — birling in a curricle — wi' pima-
tum on his heid — making a mess o' him-
sel' wi' nesty hizzies — a fair disgrace!"
It was impossible to hear without admira-
tion Kirstie's graduated disgust, as she
brought forth, one after another, these some-
what baseless charges. Then she remem-
bered her immediate purpose, and turned
again on her fascinated auditor. " Do ye
no hear me, tawpie ? Do ye no hear
what I 'm tellin' ye ? Will I have to shoo
ye in to him ? If I come to attend to ye,

i9z WEIR OF HERMISTON

mistress ! " And the maid fled the kitchen,
which had become practically dangerous,
to attend on Innes' wants in the front
parlour.

Tantaene irae? Has the reader perceived
the reason ? Since Frank's coming there
were no more hours of gossip over the
supper tray ! All his blandishments were
in vain ; he had started handicapped on the
race for Mrs. Elliott's favour.

But it was a strange thing how mis-
fortune dogged him in his efforts to be
genial. I must guard the reader against
accepting Kirstie's epithets as evidence ;
she was more concerned for their vigour
than for their accuracy. Dwaibly, for in-
stance; nothing could be more calumni-
ous. Frank was the very picture of good
looks, good humour, and manly youth.
He had bright eyes with a sparkle and
a dance to them, curly hair, a charming
smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable car-
riage of the head, the look of a gentleman,
the address of one accustomed to please at
first sight and to improve the impression.

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 193

And with all these advantages, he failed with
everyone about Hermiston ; with the silent
shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with
the groom who was also the ploughman, with
the gardener and the gardener's sister — a
pious, down-hearted woman with a shawl
over her ears — he failed equally and flatly.
They did not like him, and they showed it.
The little maid, indeed, was an exception ;
she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed
of him in her private hours ; but she was ac-
customed to play the part of silent auditor to
Kirstie's tirades and silent recipient of Kir-
stie's buffets, and she had learned not only to
be a very capable girl of her years, but a
very secret and prudent one besides. Frank
was thus conscious that he had one ally and
sympathiser in the midst of that general union
of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and
waited on him in the house of Hermiston ;
but he had little comfort or society from that
alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve
on her last birthday) preserved her own coun-
sel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly
responsive, but inexorably unconversational.

194 WEIR OF HERMISTON

For the others, they were beyond hope and
beyond endurance. Never had a young
Apollo been cast among such rustic barba-
rians. But perhaps the cause of his ill-success
lay in one trait which was habitual and un-
conscious with him, yet diagnostic of the
man. It was his practice to approach any
one person at the expense of someone else.
He offered you an alliance against the some-
one else; he flattered you by slighting him; you
were drawn into a small intrigue against him
before you knew how. Wonderful are the
virtues of this process generally ; but Frank's
mistake was in the choice of the someone
else. He was not politic in that; he listened
to the voice of irritation. Archie had offend-
ed him at first by what he had felt to be
rather a dry reception ; had offended him
since by his frequent absences. He was
besides the one figure continually present
in Frank's eye ; and it was to his immediate
dependents that Frank could offer the snare
of his sympathy. Now the truth is that the
Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a
posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 195

they were vastly proud. It was a distinction
in itself to be one of the vassals of the
" Hanging Judge," and his gross, formidable
joviality was far from unpopular in the neigh-
bourhood of his home. For Archie they
had, one and all, a sensitive affection and re-
spect which recoiled from a word of belittle-
ment.

Nor was Frank more successful when he
went farther afield. To the Four Black
Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in
the highest degree. Hob thought him too
light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw
him but for a day or two before he went to
Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule's
business was, and whether he meant to stay
here all session time ! " Yon 's a drone,-" he
pronounced. As for Dand, it will be enough
to describe their first meeting, when Frank
had been whipping a river and the rustic
celebrity chanced to come along the path.

" I 'm told you are quite a poet," Frank
had said.

"Wha tell 't ye that, mannie? " had been
the unconciliating answer.

I96 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" O, everybody " says Frank.

" God ! Here 's fame ! " said the sardonic
poet, and he had passed on his way.

Come to think of it, we have here perhaps
a truer explanation of Frank's failures. Had
he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have
turned a neater compliment, because Mr.
Scott would have been a friend worth mak-
ing. Dand, on the other hand, he did not
value sixpence, and he showed it even while
he tried to flatter. Condescension is an ex-
cellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided
the pleasure of it is ! He who goes fishing
among the Scots peasantry with condescen-
sion for a bait will have an empty basket by
evening.

In proof of this theory Frank made a
great success of it at the Crossmichael Club,
to which Archie took him immediately on his
arrival ; his own last appearance on that
scene of gaiety. Frank was made welcome
there at once, continued to go regularly, and
had attended a meeting (as the members ever
after loved to tell) on the evening before his
death. Young Hay and young Pringle ap-

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 197

peared again. There was another supper at
Windielaws, another dinner at Driffel ; and
it resulted in Frank being taken to the bosom
of the county people as unreservedly as he
had been repudiated by the country folk. He
occupied Hermiston after the manner of an
invader in a conquered capital. He was per-
petually issuing from it, as from a base, to
toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner par-
ties, to which Archie was not invited, or to
which Archie would not go. It was now
that the name of The Recluse became gen-
eral for the young man. Some say that
Innes invented it ; Innes, at least, spread it
abroad.

" How 's all with your Recluse to-day ? "
people would ask.

"O, reclusing away!" Innes would de-
clare, with his bright air of saying something
witty ; and immediately interrupt the general
laughter which he had provoked much more
by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's
^all very well laughing, but I 'm not very
well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow,
an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked.

19^ WEIR OF HERMISTON

I think it small of him to take his little dis-
grace so hard and shut himself up. ' Grant
that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridicu-
lous,' I keep telling him. ' Be a man !
Live it down, man ! ' But not he. Of
course it 's just solitude, and shame, and all
that. But I confess I 'm beginning to fear
the result. It would be all the pities in the
world if a really promising fellow like Weir
was to end ill. I'm seriously tempted to
write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly
to him."

" I would if I were you," some of his
auditors would say, shaking the head, sitting
bewildered and confused at this new view of
the matter, so deftly indicated by a single
word. " A capital idea ? " they would add,
and wonder at the aplomb and position of this
young man, who talked as a matter of course
of writing to Hermiston and correcting him
upon his private affairs.

And Frank would proceed, sweetly confi-
dential : " I'll give you an idea, now. He's
actually sore about the way that I'm received
and he's left out in the county — actually

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 199

jealous and sore. I've rallied him and I've
reasoned with him, told him that everyone
was most kindly inclined towards him, told
him even that I was received merely because I
was his guest. But it's no use. He will
neither accept the invitations he gets, nor
stop brooding about the ones where he's left
out. What I'm afraid of is that the wound's
ulcerating. He had always one of those
dark, secret, angry natures — a little under-
hand and plenty of bile — you know the sort.
He must have inherited it from the Weirs,
whom I suspect to have been a worthy
family of weavers somewhere; what's the
cant phrase ? — sedentary occupation. It's
precisely the kind of character to go wrong
in a false position like what his father's made
for him, or he's making for himself, which-
ever you like to call it. And for my part, I
think it a disgrace," Frank would say gener-
ously.

Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this
disinterested friend took shape. He began
in private, in conversations of two, to talk
vaguely of bad habits and low habits. " I

200 WEIR OF HERMISTON

must say I'm afraid he's going wrong alto-
gether," he would say. " I'll tell you plainly,
and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay
there any longer; only, man, I'm positively
afraid to leave him alone. You'll see, I shall
be blamed for it later on. I'm staying at a
great sacrifice. I'm hindering my chances
at the Bar, and I can't blind my eyes to it.
And what I'm afraid of is that I'm going to
get kicked for it all round before all's done.
You see, nobody believes in friendship now-
adays."

" Well, Innes," his interlocutor would
reply, " it's very good of you, I must say
that. If there's any blame going you'll al-
ways be sure of my good word, for one thing."

"Well," Frank would continue, " candidly,
I don't say it's pleasant. He has a very
rough way with him ; his father's son, you
know. I don't say he's rude — of course, I
couldn't be expected to stand that — but he
steers very near the wind. No, it's not
pleasant ; but I tell ye, man, in conscience I
don't think it would be fair to leave him.
Mind you, I don't say there's anything actu-

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 201

ally wrong. What I say is that I don't like
the looks of it, man ! " and he would press
the arm of his momentary confidant.

In the early stages I am persuaded there
was no malice. He talked but for the pleas-
ure of airing himself. He was essentially
glib, as becomes the young advocate, and
essentially careless of the truth, which is the
mark of the young ass ; and so he talked at
random. There was no particular bias, but
that one which is indigenous and universal, to
flatter himself and to please and interest the
present friend. And by thus milling air out
of his mouth, he had presently built up a
presentation of Archie which was known and
talked of in all corners of the county. Wher-
ever there was a residential house and a
walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish
castle and a park, wherever a quadruple cot-
tage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an
old family going down, and wherever a hand-
some villa with a carriage approach and a
^shrubbery marked the coming up of a new
one — probably on the wheels of machinery
— Archie began to be regarded in the light

202 WEIR OF HERMISTON

of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery, and the
future developments of his career to be
looked for with uneasiness and confidential
whispering. He had done something dis-
graceful, my dear. What, was not precisely
known, and that good kind young man, Mr.
Innes, did his best to make light of it. But
there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anx-
ious about him now ; he was really uneasy,
my dear ; he was positively wrecking his own
prospects because he dared not leave him
alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy
of a single prater, not needfully with any
malign purpose ! And if a man but talks of
himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtu-
ous actions by the way, and never applies to
them the name of virtue, how easily his evi-
dence is accepted in the court of public
opinion.

All this while, however, there was a more
poisonous ferment at work between the two
lads, which came late indeed to the surface,
but had modified and magnified their dissen-
sions from the first. To an idle, shallow,

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 203

easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of
a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind
something to play with, like a new toy to a
child ; and it took him on the weak side, for
like many young men coming to the Bar, and
before they have been tried and found want-
ing, he flattered himself he was a fellow of
unusual quickness and penetration. They
knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in these
days, but there was a good deal said of Talley-
rand. And if you could have caught Frank
off his guard, he would have confessed with
a smirk that, if he resembled anyone, it was
the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was
on the occasion of Archie's first absence that
this interest took root. It was vastly deep-
ened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at
breakfast, and that same afternoon there
occurred another scene which clinched the
business. He was fishing Swingleburn, Archie
accompanying him, when the latter looked at
his watch.

" Well, good-bye," said he. " I have
something to do. See you at dinner."

204 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" Don't be in such a hurry," cries Frank.
" Hold on till I get my rod up. I'll go with
you ; I 'm sick of flogging this ditch."

And he began to reel up his line.

Archie stood speechless. He took a long
while to recover his wits under this direct
attack ; but by the time he was ready with
his answer, and the angle was almost packed
up, he had become completely Weir, and the
hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders.
He spoke with a laboured composure, a
laboured kindness even ; but a child could
see that his mind was made up.

" I beg your pardon, Innes ; I don't want
to be disagreeable, but let us understand one
another from the beginning. When I want
your company, I '11 let you know."

" Oh !" cries Frank, " you don't want my
company, don't you ? "

" Apparently not just now," replied
Archie. " I even indicated to you when I
did, if you '11 remember — and that was at
dinner. If we two fellows are to live to-
gether pleasantly — and I see no reason why
we should not — it can only be by respecting

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 205

each other's privacy. If we begin intrud-
ing "

" Oh, come ! I '11 take this at no man's
hands. Is this the way you treat a guest
and an old friend ? " cried Innes.

" Just go home and think over what I said
by yourself," continued Archie, " whether
it 's reasonable, or whether it 's really offen-
sive or not ; and let 's meet at dinner as
though nothing had happened. I '11 put it
this way, if you like — that I know my own
character, that I 'm looking forward (with
great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit
from you, and that I 'm taking precautions at
the first. I see the thing that we — that I,
if you like — might fall out upon, and I step
in and obsto prindpiis. I wager you five pounds
you '11 end by seeing that I mean friendliness,
and I assure you, Francie, I do," he added,
relenting.

Bursting with anger, but Incapable of
speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a
gesture of farewell, and strode off down the
burn-side. Archie watched him go with-
out moving. He was sorry, but quite un-

206 WEIR OF HERMISTON

ashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, but
in one thing he was his father's son. He
had a strong sense that his house was his
own and no man else's ; and to lie at a
guest's mercy was what he refused. He
hated to seem harsh. But that was Frank's
look-out. If Frank had been commonly dis-
creet, he would have been decently cour-
teous. And there was another consideration.
The secret he was protecting was not his
own merely j it was hers ; it belonged to
that inexpressible she who was fast taking
possession of his soul, and whom he would
soon have defended at the cost of burning
cities. By the time he had watched Frank
as far as the Swingleburnfoot, appearing and
disappearing in the tarnished heather, still
stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled
in the distance into less than the smallness of
Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the
occurrence. Either Frank would go, and
that would be a relief — or he would con-
tinue to stay, and his host must continue to
endure him. And Archie was now free —
by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 207

hollow of burns — to make for the trysting-
place where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew
and the plover, waited and burned for his
coming by the Covenanter's stone.

Innes went off down-hill in a passion of
resentment, easy to be understood, but which
yielded progressively to the needs of his situ-
ation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted,
unfriendly, rude dog; and himself still
more passionately for a fool in having come
to Hermiston when he might have sought
refuge in almost any other house in Scotland,
but the step once taken was practically irre-
trievable. He had no more ready money to
go anywhere else ; he would have to borrow
from Archie the next club-night; and ill as
he thought of his host's manners,1 he was
sure of his practical generosity. Frank's
resemblance to Talleyrand strikes me as im-
aginary ; but at least not Talleyrand himself
could have more obediently taken his lesson
from the facts. He met Archie at dinner
without resentment, almost with cordiality.
You must take your friends as you find them,
he would have said. Archie couldn't help

2o8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

being his father's son, or his grandfather's,
the hypothetical weaver's, grandson. The
son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at
heart, incapable of true generosity and con-
sideration ; but he had other qualities with
which Frank could divert himself in the
meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was nec-
essary that Frank should keep his temper.

So excellently was it controlled that he
awoke next morning with his head full of a
different, though a cognate subject. What
was Archie's little game ? Why did he shun
Frank's company? What was he keeping
secret? Was he keeping tryst with some-
body, and was it a woman ? It would be a
good joke and a fair revenge to discover.
To that task he set himself with a great deal
of patience, which might have surprised his
friends, for he had been always credited not
with patience so much as brilliancy ; and
little by little, from one point to another, he
at last succeeded in piecing out the situation.
First he remarked that, although Archie set
out in all the directions of the compass, he
always came home again from some point

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 209

between the south and west. From the
study of a map, and in consideration of the
great expanse of untenanted moorland run-
ning in that direction towards the sources of
the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstanes-
lap and two other neighbouring farms, Kings-
muirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to
advance farther. With his rod for a pretext,
he vainly visited each of them in turn;
nothing was to be seen suspicious about this
trinity of moorland settlements. He would
have tried to follow Archie, had it been the
least possible, but the nature of the land pre-
cluded the idea. He did the next best,
ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and
pursued his movements with a telescope. It
was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of
his futile vigilance, left the telescope at
home, and had almost given the matter up
in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh day
of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with
the person whom he sought. The first Sun-
day Kirstie had managed to stay away from
kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which
was more truly modesty; the pleasure of

zio WEIR OF HERMISTON

beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too
vivid for that public place. On the two
following Frank had himself been absent on
some of his excursions among the neighbour-
ing families. It was not until the fourth,
accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set
eyes on the enchantress. With the first look,
all hesitation was over. She came with the
Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at
Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret,
here was the woman, and more than that —
though I have need here of every manage-
able attenuation of language — with the first
look, he had already entered himself as rival.
It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in
revenge, it was much in genuine admiration :
the devil may decide the proportions; I can-
not, and it is very likely that Frank could
not.

" Mighty attractive milkmaid," he ob-
served, on the way home.

" Who ? " said Archie.

" O, the girl you 're looking at — are n't
you ? Forward there on the road. She
came attended by the rustic bard ; presuma-

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 211

bly, therefore, belongs to his exalted family.
The single objection ! for the four black
brothers are awkward customers. If any-
thing were to go wrong, Gib would gibber,
and Clem would prove inclement ; and Dand
fly in danders, and Hob blow up in gobbets.
It would be a Helliott of a business ! "

" Very humorous, I am sure," said Archie.

" Well, I am trying to be so," said Frank.
" It 's none too easy in this place, and with
your solemn society, my dear fellow. But
confess that the milkmaid has found favour
in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a man
of taste."

" It is no matter," returned Archie.

But the other continued to look at him,
steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly
rose and deepened under the glance, until not
impudence itself could have denied that he
was blushing. And at this Archie lost some
of his control. He changed his stick from
one hand to the other, and — " O, for God's
sake, don't be an ass ! " he cried.

" Ass ? That 's the retort delicate with-
out doubt," says Frank. " Beware of the

212 WEIR OF HERMISTON

homespun brothers, dear. If they come into
the dance, you '11 see who 's an ass. Think
now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as
much talent as I have applied to the question
of what Mr. Archie does with his evening
hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty
when the subject 's touched on —

" You are touching on it now," interrupted
Archie with a wince.

" Thank you. That was all I wanted, an
articulate confession," said Frank.

" I beg to remind you — " began Archie.

But he was interrupted in turn. " My
dear fellow, do n't. It 's quite needless.
The subject's dead and buried."

And Frank began to talk hastily on other
matters, an art in which he was an adept, for
it was his gift to be fluent on anything or
nothing. But although Archie had the grace
or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he
was by no means done with the subject.
When he came home to dinner, he was
greeted with a sly demand, how things were
looking " Cauldstaneslap ways." Frank took
his first glass of port out after dinner to the

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 213

toast of Kirstie, and later in the evening he
returned to the charge again.

" I say, Weir, you '11 excuse me for re-
turning again to this affair. I 've been think-
ing it over, and I wish to beg you very
seriously to be more careful. It 's not a safe
business. Not safe, my boy," said he.

" What ? " said Archie.

" Well, it 's your own fault if I must put
a name on the thing ; but really, as a friend,
I cannot stand by and see you rushing head
down into these dangers. My dear boy,"
said he, holding up a warning cigar, " con-
sider ! What is to be the end of it ? "

" The end of what ? " — Archie, helpless
with irritation, persisted in this dangerous
and ungracious guard.

" Well, the end of the milkmaid ; or, to
speak more by the card, the end of Miss
Christina Elliott of the Cauldestaneslap ? "

u I assure you," Archie broke out, " this
is all a figment of your imagination. There
is nothing to be said against that young lady ;
you have no right to introduce her name into
the conversation."

214 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" I '11 make a note of it," said Frank.
" She shall henceforth be nameless, name-
less, nameless, Grigalach ! I make a note
besides of your valuable testimony to her
character. I only want to look at this thing
as a man of the world. Admitted she 's an
angel — but, my good fellow, is she a lady ? "

This was torture to Archie. " I beg
your pardon," he said, struggling to be com-
posed, " but because you have wormed your-
self into my confidence — "

" O, come ! " cried Frank. " Your con-
fidence ? It was rosy but unconsenting.
Your confidence, indeed ? Now, look !
This is what I must say, Weir, for it con-
cerns your safety and good character, and
therefore my honour as your friend. You
say I wormed myself into your confidence.
Wormed is good. But what have I done ?
I have put two and two together, just as the
parish will be doing to-morrow, and the
whole of Tweeddale in two weeks, and the
black brothers — well, I won 't put a date on
that ; it will be a dark and stormy morning.
Your secret, in other words, is poor Poll's.

ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 215

And I want to ask of you as a friend whether
you like the prospect ? There are two horns
to your dilemma, and I must say for myself
I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do
you see yourself explaining to the Four Black
Brothers ? or do you see yourself presenting
the milkmaid to papa as the future lady of
of Hermiston ? Do you ? I tell you plainly,
I don 't ! "

Archie rose. " I will hear no more of
this," he said in a trembling voice.

But Frank again held up his cigar. " Tell
me one thing first. Tell me if this is not a
friend's part that I am playing ? "

" I believe you think it so," replied Archie.
" I can go as far as that. I can do so much
justice to your motives. But I will hear no
more of it. I am going to bed."

" That 's right Weir," said Frank, heartily.
" Go to bed and think over it ; and I say,
man, don 't forget your prayers ! I don 't
often do the moral — don 't go in for that
sort of thing — but when I do there 's one
thing sure, that I mean it."

So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank

216 WEIR OF HERMISTON

sat alone by the table for another hour or so,
smiling to himself richly. There was noth-
ing vindictive in his nature ; but, if revenge
came in his way, it might as well be good,
and the thought of Archie's pillow reflec-
tions that night was indescribably sweet to
him. He felt a pleasant sense of power.
He looked down on Archie as on a very
little boy whose strings he pulled — as on a
horse whom he had backed and bridled by
sheer power of intelligence, and whom he
might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure.
Which was it to be ? He lingered long, rel-
ishing the details of schemes that he was too
idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent,
he tasted that night the sweets of omnipo-
tence, and brooded like a deity over the
strands of that intrigue which was to shatter
him before the summer waned.

Chapter VIII

A NOCTURNAL VISIT

Kirstie had many causes of distress. More
and more as we grow old — and yet more
and more as we grow old and are women,
frozen by the fear of age — we come to
rely on the voice as the single outlet of the
soul. Only thus, in the curtailment of our
means, can we relieve the straitened cry of
the passion within us ; only thus, in the bit-
ter and sensitive shyness of advancing years,
can we maintain relations with those viva-
cious figures of the young that still show
before us and tend daily to become no more
than the moving wall-paper of life. Talk is
the last link, the last relation. But with the
end of the conversation, when the voice
stops and the bright face of the listener is
turned away, solitude falls again on the
bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her "cannie
217

2i8 WEIR OF HERMISTON

hour at e 'en ; " she could no more wander
with Archie, a ghost if you will but a happy
ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was
as if the whole world had fallen silent ; to
him, but an unremarkable change of amuse-
ments. And she raged to know it. The
effervescency of her passionate and irritable
nature rose within her at times to bursting
point.

This is the price paid by age for unseason-
able ardours of feeling. It must have been
so for Kirstie at any time when the occasion
chanced ; but it so fell out that she was de-
prived of this delight in the hour when she
had most need of it, when she had most to
say, most to ask, and when she trembled to
recognize her sovereignty not merely in
abeyance but annulled. For, with the clair-
voyance of a genuine love, she had pierced
the mystery that had so long embarrassed
Frank. She was conscious, even before it
was carried out, even on that Sunday night
when it began, of an invasion of her rights ;
and a voice told her the invader's name.
Since then, by arts, by accident, by small

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 219

things observed, and by the general drift of
Archie's humour, she had passed beyond all
possibility of doubt. With a sense of jus-
tice that Lord Hermiston might have envied,
she had that day in church considered and
admitted the attractions of the younger
Kirstie j and with the profound humanity
and sentimentality of her nature, she had
recognised the coming of fate. Not thus
would she have chosen. She had seen, in
imagination, Archie wedded to some tall,
powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden
locks, made in her own image, for whom
she would have strewed the bride-bed with
delight ; and now she could have wept to see
the ambition falsified. But the gods had
pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.

She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged
with feverish thoughts. There were danger-
ous matters pending, a battle was toward,
over the fate of which she hung in jealousy,
sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and dis-
loyalty to either side. Now she was re-in-
carnated in her niece, and now in Archie.
Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the

220 WEIR OF HERMISTON

youth on his knees to her, heard his persua-
sive instances with a deadly weakness, and
received his over-mastering caresses. Anon,
with a revulsion, her temper raged to see
such utmost favours of fortune and love
squandered on a brat of a girl, one of her
own house, using her own name — a deadly
ingredient — and that " didnae ken her ain
mind an' was as black 's your hat." Now
she trembled lest her deity should plead in
vain, loving the idea of success for him like
a triumph of nature ; anon, with returning
loyalty to her own family and sex, she
trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the
Elliotts. And again she had a vision of her-
self, the day over for her old-world tales and
local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link
with life and brightness and love; and be-
hind and beyond, she saw but the blank butt-
end where she must crawl to die. Had she
then come to the lees ? she, so great, so
beautiful, with a heart as fresh as a girl's and
strong as womanhood ? It could not be, and
yet it was so ; and for a moment her bed
was horrible to her as the sides of the grave.

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 221

And she looked forward over a waste of
hours, and saw herself go on to rage, and
tremble, and be softened, and rage again,
until the day came and the labours of the day
must be renewed.

Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs —
his feet, and soon after the sound of a win-
dow-sash flung open. She sat up with her
heart beating. He had gone to his room
alone, and he had not gone to bed. She
might again have one of her night cracks ;
and at the entrancing prospect, a change
came over her mind ; with the approach of
this hope of pleasure, all the baser metal
became immediately obliterated from her
thoughts. She rose, all woman, and all the
best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating the
wrong, loyal to her own sex — and all the
weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing,
cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly
flattering, hopes that she would have died
sooner than have acknowledged. She tore
off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her
shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry
awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal

222 WEIR OF HERMISTON

rush, she stood before the looking-glass, car-
ried her shapely arms above her head, and
gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She
was never backward to admire herself; that
kind of modesty was a stranger to her na-
ture ; and she paused, struck with a pleased
wonder at the sight. " Ye daft auld wife ! "
she said, answering a thought that was not ;
and she blushed with the innocent conscious-
ness of a child. Hastily she did up the mas-
sive and shining coils, hastily donned a wrap-
per, and with the rush-light in her hand,
stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard
the clock ticking the deliberate seconds, and
Frank jingling with the decanters in the din-
ing-room. Aversion rose in her, bitter and
momentary. " Nesty, tippling puggy!"she
thought ; and the next moment she had
knocked guardedly at Archie's door and was
bidden enter.

Archie had been looking out into the an-
cient blackness, pierced here and there with
a rayless star ; taking the sweet air of the
moors and the night into his bosom deeply ;
seeking, perhaps finding, peace after the

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 223

manner of the unhappy. He turned round
as she came in, and showed her a pale face
against the window-frame.

" Is that you, Kirstie ? " he asked. " Come
in ! "

" It 's unco late, my dear," said Kirstie,
affecting unwillingness.

"No, no," he answered, "not at all.
Come in, if you want a crack. I am not
sleepy, God knows ? "

She advanced, took a chair by the toilet
table and the candle, and set the rush-light at
her foot. Something — it might be in the
comparative disorder of her dress, it might
be the emotion that now welled in her bosom
— had touched her with a wand of transfor-
mation, and she seemed young with the
youth of goddesses.

" Mr. Erchie," she began, " what 's this
that's come to ye ? "

" I am not aware of anything that has
come," said Archie, and blushed and re-
pented bitterly that he had let her in.

" Oh, my dear, that '11 no dae ! " said
Kirstie. " It 's ill to blind the eyes of love.

224 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Oh, Mr. Erchie, talc' a thocht ere it 's ower
late. Ye shouldnae be impatient o' the
braws o' life, they '11 a' come in their saison,
like the sun and the rain. Ye 're young
yet ; ye 've mony cantie years afore ye.
See and dinnae wreck yersel at the outset
like sae money ithers ! Hae patience —
they telled me aye that was the owercome o'
life — hae patience, there 's a braw day com-
ing yet. Gude kens it never cam to me ;
and here I am wi' nayther man nor bairn to
ca' my ain, wearying a' folks wi' my ill
tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Erchie ? "

" I have a difficulty in knowing what you
mean," said Archie.

"Weel, and I'll tell ye," she said. "It's
just this, that I'm feared. I'm feared for ye,
my dear. Remember, your faither is a hard
man, reaping where he hasnae sowed and gaith-
ering where he hasnae strawed. It 's easy
speakin', but mind ! Ye '11 have to look in
the gurly face o 'm, where it 's ill to
look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind
me o' a bonny ship pitten oot into the black

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 225

and gowsty seas — ye 're a' safe still sittin'
quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown
chalmer; but whaur will ye be the morn,
and in whatten horror o' the fearsome tem-
pest, cryin' on the hills to cover ye ? "

"Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical
to-night — and very eloquent," Archie put
in.

" And, my dear Mr. Erchie," she con-
tinued, with a change of voice, " ye mauna
think that I canna sympathise wi' ye. Ye
mauna think that I havena been young
mysel'. Langsyne, when I was a bit lassie,
no twenty yet — " She paused and sighed.
" Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the hinney
bee," she continued. " I was aye big and
buirdly, ye maun understand ; a bonny figure
o' a woman, though I say it that suldna —
built to rear bairns — braw bairns they suld
hae been, and grand I would hae likit it !
But I was young, dear, wi' the bonny glint
o' youth in my e'en, and little I dreamed I 'd
ever be tellin' ye this, an auld, lanely, rudas
wife ! Weel, Mr. Erchie, there was a lad

226 WEIR OF HERMISTON

cam' courtin' me, as was but naetural.
Mony had come before, and I would nane o'
them. But this yin had a tongue to wile the
birds frae the lift and the bees frae the fox-
glove bells. Deary me, but it 's lang syne.
Folk have deed sinsyne and been buried, and
are forgotten, and bairns been born and got
merrit and got bairns o' their ain. Sinsyne
woods have been plantit, and have grawn up
and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in their
shadow, and sinsyne auld estates have
changed hands, and there have been wars and
rumours of wars on the face of the earth.
And here I 'm still — like an auld droopit
craw — lookin' on and craikin' ? But, Mr.
Erchie, do ye no think that I have mind o'
it a' still ? I was dwalling then in my
faither's house ; and it 's a curious thing that
we were whiles trysted in the Deil's Hags.
And do ye no think that I have mind of the
bonny simmer days, the lang miles o' the
bluid-red heather, the cryin' o' the whaups,
and the lad and the lassie that was trysted ?
Do ye no think that I mind how the hilly
sweetness ran about my hairt. Ay, Mr,

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 227

Erchie, I ken the way o' it — fine do I ken
the way — how the grace o' God takes them
like Paul of Tarsus, when they think oit
least, and drives the pair o' them into a land
which is like a dream, and the world and the
folks in 't are nae mair than clouds to the
puir lassie, and Heeven nae mair than win-
dle-straes, if she can but pleesure him !
Until Tarn deed — that was my story," she
broke off to say, " he deed, and I wasna at
the buryin'. But while he was here, I could
take care o' mysel'. And can yon puir
lassie ? "

Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears,
stretched out her hand towards him appeal-
ingly ; the bright and the dull gold of her
hair flashed and smouldered in the coils be-
hind her comely head, like the rays of an
eternal youth ; the pure colour had risen in
her face ; and Archie was abashed alike by
her beauty and her story. He came towards
her slowly from the window, took up her
~hand in his and kissed it.

u Kirstie," he said hoarsely, " you have
misjudged me sorely. I have always thought

228 WEIR OF HERMISTON

of her, I wouldna harm her for the universe,
my woman ? "

" Eh, lad, and that 's easy sayin'," cried
Kirstie, " but it 's nane sae easy doin' ! Man,
do ye no comprehend that it 's God's wull
we should be blendit and glamoured, and
have nae command over our ain members at
a time like that ? My bairn," she cried, still
holding his hand, " think o' the puir lass !
have pity upon her, Erchie ! and O, be wise
for twa ? Think o' the risk she rins ! I
have seen ye and what 's to prevent ithers ?
I saw ye once in the Hags, in my ain howl,
and I was wae to see ye there — in pairt for
the omen, for I think there 's a weird on the
place — and in pairt for pure nakit envy and
bitterness o' hairt. It 's strange ye should
forgather there tae ! God ! but yon puir,
thrawn, auld Covenanter's seen a heap o'
human natur since he lookit his last on the
musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore,"
she added with a kind of wonder in her eyes.

" I swear by my honour I have done her
no wrong," said Archie. " I swear by my

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 229

honour and the redemption of my soul that
there shall none be done her. I have heard
of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie,
not unkind and, above all, not base."

" There 's my bairn ! " said Kirstie, rising.
" I '11 can trust ye noo, I '11 can gang to my
bed wi' an easy hairt." And then she saw
in a flash how barren had been her triumph.
Archie had promised to spare the girl, and he
would keep it ; but who had promised to
spare Archie ? What was to be the end of
it ? Over a maze of difficulties she glanced,
and saw, at the end of every passage, the
flinty countenance of Hermiston. And a
kind of horror fell upon her at what she had
done. She wore a tragic mask. " Erchie,
the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me ! I
have buildit on this foundation," — laying
her hand heavily on his shoulder — "and
buildit hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of
it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think,
laddie, I would dee ! Excuse a daft wife
that loves ye, and that kenned your mither.
And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae

230 WEIR OF HERMISTON

inordinate desires ; baud your heart in baith
your hands, carry it canny and laigh ; dinna
send it up like a bairn's kite into the collies-
hangie o' the wunds? Mind, Maister Erchie
dear, that this life's a' disappointment, and a
mouthfu' o' mools is the appointed end."

" Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you 're
asking me ower much at last," said Archie,
profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad
Scots. " Ye 're asking what nae man can
grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can
grant ye if He see fit. Ay ! And can even
He ? I can promise ye what I shall do, and
you can depend on that. But how I shall
feel — my woman, that is long past thinking
of!"

They were both standing by now oppo-
site each other. The face of Archie wore
the wretched semblance of a smile ; hers was
convulsed for a moment.

" Promise me ae thing," she cried, in a
sharp voice. " Promise me ye '11 never do
naething without telling me."

A NOCTURNAL VISIT 231

" No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that,"
he replied. " I have promised enough, God
kens ! "

" May the blessing of God lift and rest
upon ye, dear ! " she said.

" God bless ye, my old friend," said he.

Chapter IX
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE

It was late in the afternoon when Archie
drew near by the hill path to the Pray-
ing Weaver's stone. The Hags were in
shadow. But still, through the gate of the
Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which sped
far and straight across the surface of the
moss, here and there touching and shining
on a tussock, and lighted at length on the
gravestone and the small figure awaiting
him there. The emptiness and solitude of
the great moors seemed to be concentred
there, and Kirstie pointed out by that figure
of sunshine for the only inhabitant. His
first sight of her was thus excruciatingly
sad, like a glimpse of a world from which
all light, comfort, and society were on the
point of vanishing. And the next moment,
when she had turned her face to him and
232

AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 233

the quick smile had enlightened it, the whole
face of nature smiled upon him in her smile
of welcome. Archie's slow pace was quick-
ened ; his legs hasted to her though his heart
was hanging back. The girl, upon her side,
drew herself together slowly and stood up,
expectant ; she was all languor, her face was
gone white; her arms ached for him, her
soul was on tip-toes. But he deceived her,
pausing a few steps away, not less white
than herself, and holding up his hand with
a gesture of denial.

" No, Christina, not to-day," he said.
" To-day I have to talk to you seriously.
Sit ye down, please, there where you were.
Please ! " he repeated.

The revulsion of feeling in Christina's
heart was violent. To have longed and
waited these weary hours for him, rehears-
ing her endearments — to have seen him at
last come — to have been ready there, breath-
less, wholly passive, his to do what he would
with — and suddenly to have found herself
confronted with a grey-faced, harsh school-
master— it was too rude a shock. She

234 WEIR OF HERMISTON

could have wept, but pride withheld her.
She sat down on the stone, from which she
had arisen, part with the instinct of obedi-
ence, part as though she had been thrust
there. What was this ? Why was she
rejected ? Had she ceased to please ? She
stood here offering her wares, and he would
none of them ! And yet they were all his !
His to take and keep, not his to refuse
though ! In her quick petulant nature, a
moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted
love and wounded vanity wrought. The
schoolmaster that there is in all men, to
the despair of all girls and most women,
was now completely in possession of Archie.
He had passed a night of sermons ; a day of
reflection ; he had come wound up to do
his duty ; and the set mouth, which in him
only betrayed the effort of his will, to her
seemed the expression of an averted heart.
It was the same with his constrained voice
and embarrassed utterance; and if so — if
it was all over — the pang of the thought
took away from her the power of think-
ing.

AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 235

He stood before her some way off.
" Kirstie, there's been too much of this.
We've seen too much of each other." She
looked up quickly and her eyes contracted.
" There 's no good ever comes of these secret
meetings. They're not frank, not honest
truly, and I ought to have seen it. People
have begun to talk ; and it 's not right of me.
Do you see ? "

" I see somebody will have been talking
to ye," she said sullenly.

"They have, more than one of them,"
replied Archie.

" And whae were they ? " she cried.
"And what kind o' love do ye ca' that,
that's ready to gang round like a whirligig
at folk talking ? Do ye think they havena
talked to me ? "

" Have they indeed ? " said Archie, with
a quick breath. "That is what I feared.
Who were they? Who has dared "

Archie was on the point of losing his
temper.

As a matter of fact, not any one had
talked to Christina on the matter; and she

236 WEIR OF HERMISTON

strenuously repeated her own first question
in a panic of self-defence.

"Ah, well! what does it matter?" he
said. " They were good folk that wished
well to us, and the great affair is that there
are people talking. My dear girl, we have
to be wise. We must not wreck our lives
at the outset. They may be long and happy
yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, like
God's rational creatures and not like fool
children. There is one thing we must see to
before all. You 're worth waiting for, Kirstie !
worth waiting for a generation ; it would be
enough reward." — And here he remembered
the schoolmaster again, and very unwisely
took to following wisdom. " The first thing
that we must see to, is that there shall be no
scandal about for my father's sake. That
would ruin all ; do ye no see that ? "

Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been
some show of warmth of sentiment in what
Archie had said last. But the dull irritation
still persisted in her bosom ; with the abo-
riginal instinct, having suffered herself, she
wished to make Archie suffer.

AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 237

And besides, there had come out the word
she had always feared to hear from his lips,
the name of his father. It is not to be sup-
posed that, during so many days with a love
avowed between them, some reference had
not been made to their conjoint future. It
had in fact been often touched upon, and
from the first had been the sore point. Kirstie
had wilfully closed the eye of thought ; she
would not argue even with herself; gallant,
desperate little heart, she had accepted the
command of that supreme attraction like the
call of fate and marched blindfold on her
doom. But Archie, with his masculine sense
of responsibility, must reason ; he must dwell
on some future good, when the present good
was all in all to Kirstie ; he must talk — and
talk lamely, as necessity drove him — of what
was to be. Again and again he had touched
on marriage; again and again been driven
back into indistinctness by a memory of
Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been
swift to understand and quick to choke down
and smother the understanding ; swift to leap
up in flame at a mention of that hope, which

238 WEIR OF HERMISTON

spoke volumes to her vanity and her love,
that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of
Hermiston ; swift, also, to recognise in his
stumbling or throttled utterance the death-
knell of these expectations, and constant,
poor girl ! in her large-minded madness, to
go on and to reck nothing of the future.
But these unfinished references, these blinks
in which his heart spoke, and his memory
and reason rose up to silence it before the
words were well uttered, gave her unqualifi-
able agony. She was raised up and dashed
down again bleeding. The recurrence of the
subject forced her, for however short a time,
to open her eyes on what she did not wish to
see; and it had invariably ended in another
disappointment. So now again, at the mere
wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his
father's name — who might seem indeed to
have accompanied them in their whole moor-
land courtship, an awful figure in a wig with
an ironical and bitter smile, present to guilty
consciousness — she fled from it head down.

" Ye havena told me yet," she said, " who
was it spoke ? "

AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 239

" Your aunt for one," said Archie.

" Auntie Kirstie ? " she cried. " And what
do I care for my Auntie Kirstie ? "

" She cares a great deal for her niece,"
replied Archie, in kind reproof.

"Troth, and it's the first I've heard of
it," retorted the girl.

" The question here is not who it is,
but what they say, what they have noticed,"
pursued the lucid schoolmaster. "That
is what we have to think of in self-de-
fence."

" Auntie Kirstie, indeed ! A bitter, thrawn
auld maid that's fomented trouble in the
country before I was born, and will be doing
it still, I daur say, when I'm deid ! It's in
her nature; it's as natural for her as it's for
a sheep to eat."

" Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the
only one," interposed Archie. " I had two
warnings, two sermons, last night, both most
kind and considerate. Had you been there,
I promise you you would have grat, my
dear ! And they opened my eyes. I saw
we were going a wrong- way."

240 WEIR OF HERMISTON

" Who was the other one ? " Kirstie
demanded.

By this time Archie was in the condition
of a hunted beast. He had come, braced
and resolute ; he was to trace out a line
of conduct for the pair of them in a few
cold, convincing sentences ; he had now been
there some time, and he was still staggering
round the outworks and undergoing what he
felt to be a savage cross-examination.

" Mr. Frank ! " she cried. " What nex',
I would like to ken ? "

" He spoke most kindly and truly."

" What like did he say ? "

" I am not going to tell you ; you have
nothing to do with that," cried Archie,
startled to find he had admitted so much.

" O, I have naething to do with it!" she
repeated, springing to her feet. "A'body at
Hermiston 's free to pass their opinions upon
me, but I have naething to do wi' it ! Was
this at prayers like? Did ye ca' the grieve
into the consultation ? Little wonder if
a'body 's talking, when ye make a'body ye're
confidants! But as you say, Mr. Weir, —

AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 241

most kindly, most considerately, most truly,
I 'm sure, — I have naething to do with it.
And I think I'll better be going. I'll be
wishing you good evening, Mr. Weir."
And she made him a stately curtsey, shak-
ing as she did so from head to foot, with
the barren ecstasy of temper.

Poor Archie stood dumbfounded. She had
moved some steps away from him before he
recovered the gift of articulate speech.

"Kirstie!" he cried. "O, Kirstie woman!"

There was in his voice a ring of appeal,
a clang of mere astonishment that showed
the schoolmaster was vanquished.

She turned round on him. "What do
ye Kirstie me for ? " she retorted. " What
have ye to do wi' me ? Gang to your ain
freends and deave them ! "

He could only repeat the appealing
" Kirstie ! "

" Kirstie, indeed ! " cried the girl, her eyes
blazing in her white face. " My name is
Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to
ken, and I daur ye to ca' me out of it. If
I canna get love, I'll have respect, Mr.

242 WEIR OF HERMISTON

Weir. I 'm come of decent people, and I '11
have respect. What have I done that ye
should lightly me ? What have I done ?
What have I done ? O, what have I
done ? " and her voice rose upon the third
repetition. "I thocht — I thocht — I thocht
I was sae happy ! " and the first sob broke
from her like the paroxysm of some mortal
sickness.

Archie ran to her. He took the poor
child in his arms, and she nestled to his
breast as to a mother's, and clasped him
in hands that were strong like vices. He
felt her whole body shaken by the throes
of distress, and had pity upon her beyond
speech. Pity, and at the same time a
bewildered fear of this explosive engine in
his arms, whose works he did not under-
stand, and yet had been tampering with.
There arose from before him the curtains
of boyhood, and he saw for the first time
the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In
vain he looked back over the interview ; he
saw not where he had offended. It seemed
unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute
nature.

Editorial Note

With the words last printed, "a wilful convul-
sion of brute nature," the romance of Weir of
Hermiston breaks off. They were dictated, I
believe, on the very morning of the writer's
sudden seizure and death. Weir of Hermiston
thus remains in the work of Stevenson what
Edwin Drood is in the work of Dickens or
Denis Duval in that of Thackeray : or rather it
remains relatively more, for if each of those frag-
ments holds an honourable place among its author's
writings, among Stevenson's the fragment of
Weir holds certainly the highest.

Readers may be divided in opinion on the ques-
tion whether they would or they would not wish
to hear more of the intended course of the story
and destinies of the characters. To some, silence
may seem best, and that the mind should be left to
its own conjectures as to the sequel, with the help
of such indications as the text affords. I confess
that this is the view which has my sympathy. But
since others, and those almost certainly a majority,
243

244 WEIR OF HERMISTON

are anxious to be told all they can, and since edi-
tors and publishers join in the request, I can
scarce do otherwise than comply. The intended
argument, then, so far as it was known at the
time of the writer's death to his step-daughter and
devoted amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, was nearly as
follows : —

Archie persists in his good resolution of avoiding
further conduct compromising to young Kirstie's
good name. Taking advantage of the situation
thus created, and of the girl's unhappiness and
wounded vanity, Frank Innes pursues his purpose
of seduction ; and Kirstie, though still caring for
Archie in her heart, allows herself to become
Frank's victim. Old Kirstie is the first to per-
ceive something amiss with her, and believing
Archie to be the culprit, accuses him, thus making
him aware for the first time that mischief has hap-
pened. He does not at once deny the charge, but
seeks out and questions young Kirstie, who con-
fesses the truth to him ; and he, still loving her,
promises to protect and defend her in her trouble.
He then has an interview with Frank Innes on
the moor, which ends in a quarrel, and in Archie
killing Frank beside the Weaver's Stone. Mean-
while the Four Black Brothers, having become aware

EDITORIAL NOTE 245

of their sister's betrayal, are bent on vengeance
against Archie as her supposed seducer. They
are about to close in upon him with this purpose,
when he is arrested by the officers of the law for
the murder of Frank. He is tried before his own
father, the Lord Justice-Clerk, found guilty, and
condemned to death. Meanwhile the elder Kirstie,
having discovered from the girl how matters really
stand, informs her nephews of the truth : and they,
in a great revujsion of feeling in Archie's favour,
determine on an action after the ancient manner of
their house. They gather a following, and after a
great fight break the prison where Archie lies con-
fined, and rescue him. He and young Kirstie
thereafter escape to America. But the ordeal of
taking part in the trial of his own son has been too
much for the Lord Justice- Clerk, who dies of the
shock. " I do not know," adds the amanuensis,
" what becomes of old Kirstie, but that character
grew and strengthened so in the writing that I am
sure he had some dramatic destiny for her."

The plan of every imaginative work is subject,
of course, to change under the artist's hand as he
carries it out ; and not merely the character of the
elder Kirstie, but other elements of the design no
less, might well have deviated from the lines

246 WEIR OF HERMISTON

originally traced. It seems certain, however, that
the next stage in the relations of Archie and the
younger Kirstie would have been as above fore-
shadowed ; this conception of the lover's uncon-
ventional chivalry and unshaken devotion to his
mistress after her fault is very characteristic of the
author's mind. The vengeance to be taken on
the seducer beside the Weaver's Stone is prepared
for in the first words of the Introduction : while
the situation and fate of the judge, confronting like
a Brutus, but unable to survive, the duty of send-
ing his own son to the gallows, seems clearly to
have been destined to furnish the climax and essen-
tial tragedy of the tale. How this circumstance
was to have been brought about within the limits
of legal usage and social possibility, seems hard
to conjecture ; but it was a point to which the
author had evidently given careful consideration.
Mrs. Strong says simply that the Lord Justice-
Clerk, like an old Roman, condemns his son to
death ; but I am assured on the best legal authority
of Scotland, that no judge, however powerful either
by character or office, could have insisted on pre-
siding at the trial of a near kinsman of his own.
The Lord Justice-Clerk was head of the criminal
justiciary of the country ; he might have insisted
on his right of being present on the bench when

EDITORIAL NOTE 247

his son was tried ; but he would never have been
allowed to preside or to pass sentence. Now in a
letter of Stevenson's to Mr. Baxter, of October
1892, I find him asking for materials in terms
which seem to indicate that he knew this quite
well: — "I wish Pitcairn's 'Criminal Trials,'
quant primum. Also an absolutely correct text of
the Scots judiciary oath. Also, in case Pitcairn
does not come down late enough, I wish as full
a report as possible of a Scots murder trial between
1790—1820. Understand the fullest possible. Is
there any book which would guide me to the
following facts? The Justice-Clerk tries some
people capitally on circuit. Certain evidence crop-
ping up, the charge is transferred to the Justice-
Clerk's own son. Of course in the next trial the
Justice-Clerk is excluded, and the case is called
before the Lord Justice-General. Where would this
trial have to be ? I fear in Edinburgh, which would
not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit
town ? ' ' The point was referred to a quondam
fellow-member with Stevenson of the Edinburgh
Speculative Society, Mr. Graham Murray, the
present Solicitor-General for Scotland ; whose reply
was to the effect that there would be no difficulty
in making the new trial take place at the circuit
town : that it would have to be held there in spring

248 WEIR OF HERMISTON

or autumn, before two Lords of Justiciary ; and that
the Lord Justice-General would have nothing to do
with it, this title being at the date in question only
a nominal one held by a layman (which is no longer
the case). On this Stevenson writes, "Graham
Murray's note re the venue was highly satisfactory,
and did me all the good in the world." The terms
of his inquiry seem to imply that he intended other
persons, before Archie, to have fallen first under
suspicion of the murder ; and also — doubtless in
order to make the rescue by the Black Brothers
possible — that he wanted Archie to be imprisoned
not in Edinburgh but in the circuit town. But
they do not show how he meant to get over the
main difficulty, which at the same time he fully
recognises. Can it have been that Lord Hermis-
ton's part was to have been limited to presiding at
the first trial, where the evidence incriminating
Archie was unexpectedly brought forward, and to
directing that the law should take its course ?

Whether the final escape and union of Archie
and Christina would have proved equally essential
to the plot may perhaps to some readers seem
questionable. They may rather feel that a tragic
destiny is foreshadowed from the beginning for all
concerned, and is inherent in the very conditions
of the tale. But on this point, and other matters

EDITORIAL NOTE 249

of general criticism connected with it, I find an
interesting discussion by the author himself in his
correspondence. Writing to Mr. J. M. Barrie,
under date November I, 1892, and criticising that
author's famous story of The Little Minister,
Stevenson says : —

" Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord
Rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. . . . The
Little Minister ought to have ended badly ; we all
know it did, and we are infinitely grateful to you
far the grace and good feeling with which you have
lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one
could never have forgiven you. As you had con-
ceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about
the end, though indisputably true to fact, would
have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in art.
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must
end badly from the beginning. Now, your book
began to end well. You let yourself fall in love
with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once
you had done that, your honour was committed —
at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save
them. It is the blot on Richard Feverel for in-
stance, that it begins to end well ; and then tricks
you and ends ill. But in this case, there is worse
behind, for the ill ending does not inherently issue
from the plot — the story had, in fact, ended well

250 WEIR OF HERMISTON

after the great last interview between Richard and
Lucy — and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes
all has no more to do between the boards than a
fly has to do with a room into whose open window
it comes buzzing. It might have so happened ; it
needed not ; and unless needs must, we have no
right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case
of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield
story. Braxfield — only his name is Hermiston —
has a son who is condemned to death ; plainly there
is a fine tempting fitness about this — and I meant
he was to hang. But on considering my minor
characters, I saw there were five people who would
— in a sense, who must — break prison and attempt
his rescue. They are capable hardy folks too, who
might very well succeed. Why should they not
then ? Why should not young Hermiston escape
clear out of the country ? and be happy, if he could,
with his — but soft ! I will not betray my secret
nor my heroine. ..."

To pass, now, from the question how the story
would have ended to the question how it originated
and grew in the writer's mind. The character
of the hero, Weir of Hermiston, is avowedly
suggested by the historical personality of Robert
Macqueen, Lord Braxfield. This famous judge
has been for generations the subject of a hundred

EDITORIAL NOTE 251

Edinburgh tales and anecdotes. Readers of Ste-
venson's essay on the Raeburn exhibition, in
Virginibus Puerisque, .will remember how he is
fascinated by Raeburn' s portrait of Braxfield, even
as Lockhart had been fascinated by a different por-
trait of the same worthy sixty years before (see
Peter1 s Letters to His Kinsfolk'} ; nor did his
interest in the character diminish in later life.

Again, the case of a judge involved by the
exigencies of his office in a strong conflict between
public duty and private interest or affection, was one
which had always attracted and exercised Steven-
son's imagination. In the days when he and
Mr. Henley were collaborating with a view to the
stage, Mr. Henley once proposed a plot founded
on the story of Mr. Justice Harbottle in Sheridan
Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, in which the
wicked judge goes headlong per fas et nefas to his
object of getting the husband of his mistress hanged.
Some time later Stevenson and his wife together
wrote a play called The Hanging Judge. In this,
the title character is tempted for the first time in
his life to tamper with the course of justice, in
order to shield his wife from persecution by a
former husband who reappears after being supposed
dead. Bulwer's novel of Paul Clifford, with its
final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir

252 WEIR OF HERMISTON

William Brandon, learning that the highwayman
whom he is in the act of" sentencing is his own
son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well
known to Stevenson, and no doubt counted for
something in the suggestion of the present story.

Once more, the difficulties often attending the re-
lation of father and son in actual life had pressed
heavily on Stevenson's mind and conscience from
the days of his youth, when in obeying the law of
his own nature he had been constrained to disap-
point, distress, and for a time to be much misun-
derstood by, a father whom he justly loved and
admired with all his heart. Difficulties of this kind
he had already handled in a lighter vein once or
twice in fiction — as for instance in the Story of a
Lie and in The Wrecker — before he grappled with
them in the acute and tragic phase in which they
occur in the present story.

These three elements, then, the interest of the
historical personality of Lord Braxfield, the prob-
lems and emotions arising from a violent conflict
between duty and nature in a judge, and the diffi-
culties due to incompatibility and misunderstanding
between father and son, lie at the foundations of
the present story. To touch on minor matters,
it is perhaps worth notice, as Mr. Henley reminds
me, that the name of Weir had from of old a spe-

EDITORIAL NOTE 253

cial significance for Stevenson's imagination, from
the traditional fame in Edinburgh of Major Weir,
burned as a warlock, together with his sister, under
circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Another name,
that of the episodical personage of Mr. Torrance
the minister, is borrowed direct from life, as indeed
are the whole figure and its surroundings — kirk-
yard, kirk, and manse — down even to the black
thread mittens : witness the following passage from
a letter of the early seventies : — "I've been to
church and am not depressed — a great step. It
was at that beautiful church [of Glencorse hi the
Pentlands, three miles from his father's country
home at Swanston] . It is a little cruciform
place, with a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard
is full of old grave- stones ; one of a Frenchman
from Dunkerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the
military prison hard by. And one, the most
pathetic memorial I ever saw : a poor school-slate,
in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it
evidently by the father's own hand. In church,
old Mr. Torrance preached, over eighty and a
relic of times forgotten, with his black thread
gloves and mild old face." A side hint for a
particular trait in the character of Mrs. Weir we
can trace in some family traditions concerning the
writer's own grandmother, who is reported to have

254 WEIR °F HERMISTON

valued piety much more than efficiency in her
domestic servants. The other women characters
seem, so far as his friends know, to have been pure
creation, and especially that new and admirable
incarnation of the eternal feminine in the elder
Kirstie. The little that he says about her himself
is in a letter written a few days before his death
to Mr. Gosse. The allusions are to the various
moods and attitudes of people in regard to middle
age, and are suggested by Mr. Gosse' s volume of
poems, In Russet and Silver. " It seems rather
funny," he writes, «' that this matter should come
up just now, as I am at present engaged in treating
a severe case of middle age in one of my stories,
The Justice- Clerk. The case is that of a woman,
and I think I am doing her justice. You will be
interested, I believe, to see the difference in our
treatments. Secreta Vitae [the title of one of
Mr. Gosse' s poems] comes nearer to the case of
my poor Kirstie." From the wonderful midnight
scene between her and Archie, we may judge what
we have lost in those later scenes w'.ere she was
to have taxed him with the fault that was not his
— to have presently learned his innocence from the
lips of his supposed victim — to have then vindi-
cated him to her kinsmen and fired them to the
action of his rescue. The scene of the prison-

EDITORIAL NOTE 255

breaking here planned by Stevenson would have
gained interest (as will already have occurred to
readers) from comparison with the two famous
precedents in Scott, the Porteous mob and the
breaking of Portanferry Jail.

The best account of Stevenson's methods of
imaginative work is in the following sentences
from a letter of his own to Mr. W. Craibe Angus
of Glasgow : — "I am still ' a slow study,' and sit
for a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious
thought, there is the only method : macerate your
subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and
look in — and there your stuff is — good or bad."
The several elements above noted having been left
to work for many years in his mind, it was in the
autumn of 1 892 that he was moved to " take the lid
off and look in," — under the influence, it would
seem, of a special and overmastering wave of that
feeling for the romance of Scottish scenery and
character which was at all times so strong in him,
and which his exile did so much to intensify. I
quote again from his letter to Mr. Barrie on
November I in that year : — "It is a singular
thing that I should live here in the South Seas
under conditions so new and so striking, and yet
my imagination so continually inhabit the cold old
huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have

256 WEIR OF HERMISTON

finished David Balfour, I have another book on
the stocks, The Young Chevalier, which is to be
part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal
with Prince Charlie about the year 1 749 ; and now
what have I done but begun a third, which is to be
all moorland together, and is to have for a centre-
piece a figure that I think you will appreciate — that
of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my
grand premier — or since you are so much involved
in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead."

Writing to me at the same date he makes the
same announcement more briefly, with a list of the
characters and an indication of the scene and date
of the story. To Mr. Baxter he writes a month
later, "I have a novel on the stocks to be called
The Justice- Clerk. It is pretty Scotch ; the grand
premier is taken from Braxfield (O, by the by, send
me Cockburn's Memorials}, and some of the story
is, well, queer. The heroine is seduced by one
man, and finally disappears with the other man who
shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The Justice-
Clerk to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is al-
ready a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so
far as he has gone far my best character." From
the last extract it appears that he had already at this
date drafted some of the earlier chapters of the book.
He also about the same time composed the dedica-

EDITORIAL NOTE 257

tion to his wife, who found it pinned to her bed-
curtains one morning on awaking. It was always
his habit to keep several books in progress at the
same time, turning from one to another as the
fancy took him, and finding rest in the change of
labour ; and for many months after the date of this
letter, first illness, — then a voyage to Auckland,
— then work on the Ebb-Tide, on a new tale
called St. Ives, which was begun during an attack
of influenza, and on his projected book of family
history, — prevented his making any continuous
progress with Weir. In August 1893 he says he
has been recasting the beginning. A year later,
still only the first four or five chapters had been
drafted. Then, in the last weeks of his life, he
attacked the task again, in a sudden heat of inspi-
ration, and worked at it ardently and without inter-
ruption until the end came. No wonder if during
those weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension
of the spirit difficult to sustain. " How can I
keep this pitch ? " he is reported to have said after
finishing one of the chapters. To keep the pitch
proved indeed beyond his strength ; and that frail
organism, taxed so long and so unsparingly in
obedience to his indomitable will, at last betrayed
him in mid effort.

There remains one more point to be mentioned,

258 WEIR OF HERMISTON

as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge
himself. That these are not a whit exaggerated,
in comparison with what is recorded of his historic
prototype, Lord Braxfield, is certain. The locus
classicus . in regard to this personage is in Lord
Cockburn's Memorials of bis Time. "Strong built
and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes,
threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was
like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and dia-
lect were exaggerated Scotch ; his language, like
his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Illit-
erate and without any taste for any refined enjoy-
ment, strength of understanding which gave him
power without cultivation, only encouraged him to
a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less
coarse than his own. It may be doubted if he was
ever so much in his element as when tauntingly
repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched
culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the
gallows with an insulting jest. Yet this was not
from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too
jovial, but from cherished coarseness." Readers,
nevertheless, who are at all acquainted with the
social history of Scotland will hardly fail to have
made the observation that Braxfield' s is an extreme
case of eighteenth-century manners, as he himself
was an eighteenth-century personage (he died in

EDITORIAL NOTE 259

1 799 in his seventy-eighth year) ; and that for the
date in which the story is cast (1814) such man-
ners are somewhat of an anachronism. During the
generation contemporary with the French Revolu-
tion and the Napoleonic wars, — or to put it
another way, the generation that elapsed between
the days when Scott roamed the country as a
High School and University student and those
when he settled in the fulness of fame and pros-
perity at Abbotsford, — or again (the allusions will
appeal to readers of the admirable Gait) during the
intervals between the first and the last provostry
of Bailie Pawkie in the borough of Gudetown, or
between the earlier and the final ministrations of
Mr. Balwhidder in the parish of Dalmailing, —
during this period a great softening had taken place
in Scottish manners generally, and in those of the
Bar and Bench not least. "Since the death of
Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield," says
Lockhart, writing about 1817, " the whole exterior
of judicial deportment has been quite altered." A
similar criticism may probably hold good on the
picture of border life contained in the chapter con-
cerning the Four Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap,
viz., that it rather suggests the ways of an earlier
generation ; nor have I any clue to the reasons
which led Stevenson to choose this particular date,

z6o WEIR OF HERMISTON

in the year preceding Waterloo, for a story which,
in regard to some of its features at least, might
seem more naturally placed some twenty-five or
thirty years before.

If the reader seeks, farther, to know whether the
scenery of Hermiston can be identified with any
one special place familiar to the writer's early
experience, the answer, I think, must be in the
negative. Rather it is distilled from a number of
different haunts and associations among the moor-
lands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and
in a letter to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as
the scene of his tragedy, and Mrs. Stevenson (his
mother) tells me that she thinks he was inspired
by recollections of a visit paid in boyhood to an
uncle living at a remote farmhouse in that district
called Overshiels, in the parish of Stow. But
although he may have thought of the Lammermuirs
in the first instance, we have already found him
drawing his description of the kirk and manse from
another haunt of his youth, namely, Glencorse in
the Pentlands. And passages in chapters v. and
viii. point explicitly to a third district, that is, the
country bordering upon Upper Tvveeddale and the
head waters of the Clyde. With this country also
holiday rides and excursions from Peebles had
made him familiar as a boy : and this seems cer-

EDITORIAL NOTE 261

tainly the most natural scene of the story, if only
from its proximity to the proper home of the
Elliotts, which of course is in the heart of the
Border, especially Teviotdale and Ettrick. Some
of the geographical names mentioned are clearly
not meant to furnish literal indications. The
Spango, for instance, is a water running, I believe,
not into the Tweed but into the Nith, and Cross-
michael as the name of a town is borrowed from
Galloway.

But it is with the general and essential that the
artist deals, and questions of strict historical per-
spective or local definition are beside the mark in
considering his work. Nor will any reader ex-
pect, or be grateful for, comment in this place on
matters which are more properly to the point — on
the seizing and penetrating power of the author's
ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing pages, the
wide range of character and emotion over which
he sweeps with so assured a hand, his vital poetry
of vision and magic of presentment. Surely no
son of Scotland has died leaving with his last
breath a worthier tribute to the land he loved.

SIDNEY COLVIN.

Glossary

ae, one.

antinomian, one of a sect which
holds that under the gospel
dispensation the moral law is
not obligatory.

Auld Hornie, the Devil.

ballant, ballad.

bauchles, brogues, old shoes.

bees in their bonnet, fads.

birling, whirling.

black-a-vised, dark - complex-
toned.

bonnet-laird, small landed pro-
prietor.

bool, ball.

brae, rising ground.

butt end, end of a cottage.

byre, cow-bouse.

ca', drive.

caller, fresh.

canna, cannot.

canny, careful, shrewd.

cantie, cheerful.

carline, an old woman.
chalmer, chamber.
claes, clothes.
clamjamfry, crowd.
clavers, idle talk.
cock-laird, a yeoman.
collieshangie, turmoil.
crack, to converse.
cuddy, donkey.
cuist, cast.
cutty, slut.

daft, mad, frolicsome.

dander, to saunter.

danders, cinders.

daurna, dare not.

deave, to deafen.

demmy brokens, demi-bro-
quins.

dirdum, vigour.

disjaskit, worn out, disrepu-
table looking.

doer, law agent.

dour, bard.

drumlie, dark.

263

264

WEIR OF HERMISTON

dunting, knocking.

dule-tree, the tree of lamenta-
tion, the banging tree: dule
is also Scots for boundary,
and it may mean the boun-
dary tree, the tree on which
the baron bung interlopers.

dwaibly, infirm, rickety.

earrand, errand.
ettercap, -vixen.

fechting, fighting.

feck, quantity, portion.

feckless, feeble, poiuerless.

fell, strong and fiery.

fey, unlike yourself, strange, as
persons are observed to be
in the hour of approaching
death or disaster.

fit, foot.

flyped, turned up, turned in-
side out.

forgather, to fall in with.

fule, fool.

fiishionless, pithless, -weak.

fyle, to soil, to defile.

fylement, obloquy, defilement.

gaed, went.
gey an', -very.
gigot, leg of mutton.

girzie, lit. diminutive ofGrizel,
here a playful nickname.

glaur, mud.

glint, glance, sparkle.

gloaming, tiviligbt.

glower, to scowl.

gobbets, small lumps.

gowden, golden.

gowsty, gusty.

grat, -wept.

grieve, land-steward.

guddle, to catch fish -with the
bands by groping under the
stones or banks.

guid, good.

gumption, common sense, judg-
ment.

gurley, stormy, surly.

gyte, beside itself.

haddit, held.
hae, have, take.
hale, 'whole.
heels-ower-hurdie, heels over

head.

hinney, honey.
hirstle, to bustle.
hizzie, wench.
howl, hovel.
hunkered, crouched.
hypothec, lit. a term in Scots

law meaning the security

GLOSSARY

265

given by a tenant to a
landlord, as furniture,
produce, etc. ; by metonymy
and colloquially " the tubole
structure" " the "whole af-
fair. ' '

idleset, idleness.

infeftment, a term in Scots

law originally synonymous

•with investiture.

jeely-piece, a slice of bread

and jelly.
jennipers, juniper.
jo, sweetheart.
justifeed, executed, made the

victim of justice.
jyle, jail.

kebbuck, cheese.
ken, to know.
kenspeckle, conspicuous.
kilted, tucked up.
kyte, belly.

laigh, low.

laird, landed proprietor.

lane, alone.

lave, rest, remainder.

lown, lonely, still.

lynn, cataract.

macers, officers of the court
[cf. Guy Mannering, last
chapter] .

maun, must.

menseful, of good manners.

mirk, dark.

misbegowk, deception, disap-
pointment.

mools, mould, earth.

muckle, much, great big.

my lane, by myself.

nowt, black cattle.

palmering, walking infirmly.
panel, in Scots law, the accused

person in a criminal action,

the prisoner.

peel, a fortified watch-tower.
plew-stilts, plough-handles.
policy, ornamental grounds of

a country mansion.
puddock, frog.

quean, •wench.

riff-raff, rabble.
risping, grating.
rowt, to roar, to rant.
rowth, abundance.
rudas, haggard old woman.
runt, an old cow past breeding,
opprobriously, an old woman.

266

WEIR OF HERMISTON

sab, sot.

sanguishes, sandwiches.
sasine, in Scots law, the act of
giving legal possession of
feudal property, or, collo-
quially, the deed by which
that possession is proved.

sclamber, to scramble.

sculduddery, impropriety, gross-
ness.

session, the Court of Session,
the supreme court of Scot-
land.

shauchling, shuffling.

shoo, to chase gently.

siller, money.

sinsyne, since then.

skailing, dispersing.

skelp, slap.

skirling, screaming.

skreigh-o'-day, daybreak.

snash, abuse.

sneisty, supercilious.

sooth, to hum.

speir, to ask.

speldering, sprawling.

splairge, to splash.

spunk, spirit, fire.

steik, to shut.
sugar-bool, sugar-plum.

tawpie, a slow foolish slut.
telling you, a good thing for

you.

thir, these.

thrawn, cross-grained.
toon, toivn.
two-names, local sobriquets

in addition to patronymic.
tyke, dog.

unchancy, unlucky.

unco, strange, extraordinary,

very.
upsitten, impertinent.

vivers, victuals.

waling, choosing.
warrandise, -warranty.
waur, worse.
weird, destiny.
whammle, to upset.
whaup, curlew.
windlestrae, crested dog's-tail
grass.

yin, one.

THE WORKS OF

Robert Louis Stevenson

JUST ISSUED.
Mr. Stevenson's Unfinished Romance

Weir of Hermiston,

Attractively bound. 121110, $1.50.

STEVENSON S ESTIMATE OF THE STORY AS QUOTED IN
MRS. STRONG'S DIARY :

"The story unfolds itself before me to the least detail.
There is nothing left in doubt. I never felt so before in any-
thing I ever wrote. It will be ray best work. I feel myself so
sure in every word.1'

" Surely no son of Scotland has died, leaving
with his last breath a worthier tribute to the land
he loved." — SIDNEY COLVIN.

In no case of an unfinished romance has an author
left so full a forecast of his intention. Mr. Stevenson
had outlined to his amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, the
plot of what remained unwritten, and by her aid
an editorial note of nearly twenty pages gives it so
fully that the reader is left in no doubt of the result
or of the fate of any of the characters.

WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

JUST PUBLISHED.

Poems and Ballads.

By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

With Portrait. From new plates with artistic cover design.
12mo, $1.50.

Lovers of Mr. Stevenson's work will be
delighted with this dainty and attractively bound
volume, which comprises all the poems contained
in "A Child's Garden of Verses," "Ballads,"
"Underwoods," and, in addition, over forty
pieces of verse written since the publication of
those volumes.

*„,* Messrs. Charles Scribner s Sons, having recently
acquired the rights to the publication of the following vol-
umes, are now the publishers, in this country, of all of Mr.
Stevenson* s works.

THE VAILIMA LETTERS. Two vols., i6mo, . . $2.35

THE EBB TIDE. 16mo 1.35

THE AMATEUR EniQRANT. 16mo, . . 1.25

riACAIRH. 16mo, . . . i.oo

THE WORKS OF

Robert Louis Stevenson.

*#* The following -volumes issued in a new uniform
edition. 23 vols. , 121110, in a box, $28. oo.

Weir of Hermiston. $150

Poems and Ballads. With portait, . . 1.50

Kidnapped. Illustrated, . . . . 1.50

David Balfour, 1.50

Treasure Island. With Map, . . . i.oo
The Wrecker. With Lloyd Osbourne. Illus-
trated, ....... 1.50

The Master of Ballantrae. Illustrated, . 1.50

Prince Otto. A Romance, . . . i.oo
The Merry Men, and other Tales, and Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, . . . . 1.25

The Black Arrow. Illustrated, . . 1.25

New Arabian Nights, . . . . 1.25

The Dynamiter. With Mrs. Stevenson. Pa-
per, 300. ; cloth, 1.25

Island Nights' Entertainments. Illustrated, 1.25
The Wrong Box. With Lloyd Osbourne. Pa-
per, 5<Dc. ; cloth 1.25

Across the Plains, 1.25

An Inland Voyage i.oo

WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Travels with a Donkey, . . . . $i oo

The Silverado Squatters, .... i.oo

Familiar Studies of Men and Books, . 1.25

Virginibus Puerisque, .... 1.25

Memories and Portraits, .... 1.25

A Foot -Note to History, . . . . 1.50

Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, . . . 1.25

SPECIAL EDITIONS.

A Child's Garden of Verses. Profusely Illus-
trated. i2mo, ...... $1.50

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
i2mo, paper, 250. ; cloth, .... i.oo

The Merry Men, and Other Tales. i2tno, paper, .35
Virginibus Puerisque. Cameo Edition, i6mo, 1.25
The Suicide Club. Ivory Series. i6mo, . .75

Three Plays. Decon Brodie, Beau Austin, Ad-
miral Guinea. With W. E. Henley. 8vo, net, 2.00

Ballads. i2mo i.oo

Underwoods. i2mo, i.oo

A Child's Garden of Verses. i2mo, . i.oo

Charles Scribner's Sons,

153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York.

RETURN
TO ^ COLLEGE LIBRARY, UCLA

LOAN PERIOD 1

14DAV

2

3

4

5

6

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, CA. 90024

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

A 001 168 194 7

UCLA-College Library

PR 5487 W3 1896

ii mi nun
L 005 759 583 7