Redgauntlet by Sir Walter Scott (page 5)

desire of his heart, that there may be a faithful witness to stand by thee in the hour of need, and to report how it shall fare with thee.

‘Nay, Rachel,’ said the worthy man, ‘thou art to blame in this, that to quiet thy apprehensions on my account, thou shouldst thrust into danger–if danger it shall prove to be–this youth, our guest; for whom, doubtless, in case of mishap, as many hearts will ache as may be afflicted on our account.’

‘No, my good friend,’ said I, taking Mr. Geddes’s hand, ‘I am not so happy as you suppose me. Were my span to be concluded this evening, few would so much as know that such a being had existed for twenty years on the face of the earth; and of these few, only one would sincerely regret me. Do not, therefore, refuse me the privilege attending you; and of showing, by so trifling an act of kindness, that if I have few friends, I am at least desirous to serve them.’

‘Thou hast a kind heart, I warrant thee,’ said Joshua Geddes, returning the pressure of my hand. ‘Rachel, the young man shall go with me. Why should he not face danger, in order to do justice and preserve peace? There is that within me,’ he added, looking upwards, and with a passing enthusiasm which I had not before observed and the absence of which perhaps rather belonged to the sect than to his own personal character–‘I say, I have that within which assures me, that though the ungodly may rage even like the storm of the ocean, they shall not have freedom to prevail against us.’

Having spoken thus, Mr. Geddes appointed a pony to be saddled for my use; and having taken a basket with some provisions, and a servant to carry back the horses for which there was no accommodation at the fishing station, we set off about nine o’clock at night, and after three-quarters of an hour’s riding, arrived at our place of destination.

The station consists, or then consisted, of huts for four or five fishermen, a cooperage and shed, and a better sort of cottage at which the superintendent resided. We gave our horses to the servant, to be carried back to Mount Sharon; my companion expressing himself humanely anxious for their safety–and knocked at the door of the house. At first we only heard a barking of dogs; but these animals became quiet on snuffing beneath the door, and acknowledging the presence of friends. A hoarse voice then demanded, in rather unfriendly accents, who we were, and what we wanted and it was not; until Joshua named himself, and called upon his superintendent to open, that the latter appeared at the door of the hut, attended by three large dogs of the Newfoundland breed. He had a flambeau in his hand, and two large heavy ship-pistols stuck into his belt. He was a stout elderly man, who had been a sailor, as I learned, during the earlier part of his life, and was now much confided in by the Fishing Company, whose concerns he directed under the orders of Mr. Geddes.

‘Thou didst not expect me to-night, friend Davies?’ said my friend to the old man, who was arranging seats for us by the fire.

‘No, Master Geddes,’ answered he, ‘I did not expect you, nor, to speak the truth, did I wish for you either.’

‘These are plain terms: John Davies,’ answered Mr.Geddes.

‘Aye, aye, sir, I know your worship loves no holiday speeches.’

‘Thou dost guess, I suppose, what brings us here so late, John Davies?’ said Mr. Geddes.

‘I do suppose, sir,’ answered the superintendent, ‘that it was because those d–d smuggling wreckers on the coast are showing their lights to gather their forces, as they did the night before they broke down the dam-dyke and weirs up the country; but if that same be the case, I wish once more you had stayed away, for your worship carries no fighting tackle aboard, I think; and there will be work for such ere morning, your worship.’

‘Worship is due to Heaven only, John Davies,’ said Geddes, ‘I have often desired thee to desist from using that phrase to me.’

‘I won’t, then,’ said John; ‘no offence meant: But how the devil can a man stand picking his words, when he is just going to come to blows?’

‘I hope not, John Davies,’ said Joshua Geddes. ‘Call in the rest of the men, that I may give them their instructions.’

‘I may cry till doomsday Master Geddes, ere a soul answers–the cowardly lubbers have all made sail–the cooper, and all the rest of them, so soon as they heard the enemy were at sea. They have all taken to the long-boat, and left the ship among the breakers, except little Phil and myself–they have, by–!’

‘Swear not at all, John Davies–thou art an honest man; and I believe, without an oath, that thy comrades love their own bones better than my goods and chattels. And so thou hast no assistance but little Phil against a hundred men or two?’

‘Why, there are the dogs, your honour knows, Neptune and Thetis –and the puppy may do something; and then though your worship–I beg pardon–though your honour be no great fighter, this young gentleman may bear a hand.’

‘Aye, and I see you are provided with arms,’ said Mr. Geddes; ‘let me see them.’

‘Aye, aye, sir; here be a pair of buffers will bite as well as bark–these will make sure of two rogues at least. It would be a shame to strike without firing a shot. Take care, your honour, they are double-shotted.’

‘Aye, John Davies, I will take care of them, throwing the pistols into a tub of water beside him; ‘and I wish I could render the whole generation of them useless at the same moment.’

A deep shade of displeasure passed over John Davies’s weatherbeaten countenance. ‘Belike your honour is going to take the command yourself, then?’ he said, after a pause. ‘Why, I can be of little use now; and since your worship, or your honour, or whatever you are, means to strike quietly, I believe you will do it better without me than with me, for I am like enough to make mischief, I admit; but I’ll never leave my post without orders.’

‘Then you have mine, John Davies, to go to Mount Sharon directly, and take the boy Phil with you. Where is he?’

‘He is on the outlook for these scums of the earth,’ answered Davies; ‘but it is to no purpose to know when they come, if we are not to stand to our weapons.’

‘We will use none but those of sense and reason, John.’

‘And you may just as well cast chaff against the wind, as speak sense and reason to the like of them.’

‘Well, well, be it so,’ said Joshua; ‘and now, John Davies, I know thou art what the world calls a brave fellow, and I have ever found thee an honest one. And now I command you to go to Mount Sharon, and let Phil lie on the bank-side–see the poor boy hath a sea-cloak, though–and watch what happens there, and let him bring you the news; and if any violence shall be offered to the property there, I trust to your fidelity to carry my sister to Dumfries to the house of our friends the Corsacks, and inform the civil authorities of what mischief hath befallen.’

The old seaman paused a moment. ‘It is hard lines for me,’ he said, ‘to leave your honour in tribulation; and yet, staying here, I am only like to make bad worse; and your honour’s sister, Miss Rachel, must be looked to, that’s certain; for if the rogues once get their hand to mischief, they will come to Mount Sharon after they have wasted and destroyed this here snug little roadstead, where I thought to ride at anchor for life.’

‘Right, right, John Davies,’ said Joshua Geddes; ‘and best call the dogs with you.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said the veteran, ‘for they are something of my mind, and would not keep quiet if they saw mischief doing; so maybe they might come to mischief, poor dumb creatures. So God bless your honour–I mean your worship–I cannot bring my mouth to say fare you well. Here, Neptune, Thetis! come, dogs, come.’

So saying, and with a very crestfallen countenance, John Davies left the hut.

‘Now there goes one of the best and most faithful creatures that ever was born,’ said Mr. Geddes, as the superintendent shut the door of the cottage. ‘Nature made him with a heart that would not have suffered him to harm a fly; but thou seest, friend Latimer, that as men arm their bull-dogs with spiked collars, and their game-cocks with steel spurs, to aid them in fight, so they corrupt, by education, the best and mildest natures, until fortitude and spirit become stubbornness and ferocity. Believe me, friend Latimer, I would as soon expose my faithful household dog to a vain combat with a herd of wolves, as yon trusty creature to the violence of the enraged multitude. But I need say little on this subject to thee, friend Latimer, who, I doubt not, art trained to believe that courage is displayed and honour attained, not by doing and suffering as becomes a man that which fate calls us to suffer and justice commands us to do, but because thou art ready to retort violence for violence, and considerest the lightest insult as a sufficient cause for the spilling of blood, nay, the taking of life. But, leaving these points of controversy to a more fit season, let us see what our basket of provision contains; for in truth, friend Latimer, I am one of those whom neither fear nor anxiety deprives of their ordinary appetite.’

We found the means of good cheer accordingly, which Mr. Geddes seemed to enjoy as much as if it had been eaten in a situation of perfect safety; nay, his conversation appeared to be rather more gay than on ordinary occasions. After eating our supper, we left the hut together, and walked for a few minutes on the banks of the sea. It was high water, and the ebb had not yet commenced. The moon shone broad and bright upon the placid face of the Solway Firth, and showed a slight ripple upon the stakes, the tops of which were just visible above the waves, and on the dark- coloured buoys which marked the upper edge of the enclosure of nets. At a much greater distance–for the estuary is here very wide–the line of the English coast was seen on the verge of the water, resembling one of those fog-banks on which mariners are said to gaze, uncertain whether it be land or atmospherical delusion.

‘We shall be undisturbed for some hours,’ said Mr. Geddes; ‘they will not come down upon us: till the state of the tide permits them to destroy the tide-nets. Is it not strange to think that human passions will so soon transform such a tranquil scene as this into one of devastation and confusion?’

It was indeed a scene of exquisite stillness; so much so, that the restless waves of the Solway seemed, if not absolutely to sleep, at least to slumber; on the shore no night-bird was heard –the cock had not sung his first matins, and we ourselves walked more lightly than by day, as if to suit the sounds of our own paces to the serene tranquillity around us. At length, the plaintive cry of a dog broke the silence, and on our return to the cottage, we found that the younger of the three animals which had gone along with John Davies, unaccustomed, perhaps, to distant journeys, and the duty of following to heel, had strayed from the party, and, unable to rejoin them, had wandered back to the place of its birth.

‘Another feeble addition to our feeble garrison,’ said Mr. Geddes, as he caressed the dog, and admitted it into the cottage. ‘Poor thing! as thou art incapable of doing any mischief, I hope thou wilt sustain none. At least thou mayst do us the good service of a sentinel, and permit us to enjoy a quiet repose, under the certainty that thou wilt alarm us when the enemy is at hand.’

There were two beds in the superintendent’s room, upon which we threw ourselves. Mr. Geddes, with his happy equanimity of temper, was asleep in the first five minutes. I lay for some time in doubtful and anxious thoughts, watching the fire, and the motions of the restless dog, which, disturbed probably at the absence of John Davies, wandered from the hearth to the door and back again, then came to the bedside and licked my hands and face, and at length, experiencing no repulse to its advances, established itself at my feet, and went to sleep, an example which I soon afterwards followed.

The rage of narration, my dear Alan–for I will never relinquish the hope that what I am writing may one day reach your hands–has not forsaken me, even in my confinement, and the extensive though unimportant details into which I have been hurried, renders it necessary that I commence another sheet. Fortunately, my pygmy characters comprehend a great many words within a small space of paper.

CHAPTER IV

DARSIE LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION

The morning was dawning, and Mr. Geddes and I myself were still sleeping soundly, when the alarm was given by my canine bedfellow, who first growled deeply at intervals, and at length bore more decided testimony to the approach of some enemy. I opened the door of the cottage, and perceived, at the distance of about two hundred yards, a small but close column of men, which I would have taken for a dark hedge, but that I could perceive it was advancing rapidly and in silence.

The dog flew towards them, but instantly ran howling back to me, having probably been chastised by a stick or a stone. Uncertain as to the plan of tactics or of treaty which Mr. Geddes might think proper to adopt, I was about to retire into the cottage, when he suddenly joined me at the door, and, slipping his arm through mine, said, ‘Let us go to meet them manfully; we have done nothing to be ashamed of.–Friends,’ he said, raising his voice as we approached them, ‘who and what are you, and with what purpose are you here on my property?’

A loud cheer was the answer returned, and a brace of fiddlers who occupied the front of the march immediately struck up the insulting air, the words of which begin–

Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker.

Even at that moment of alarm, I think I recognized the tones of the blind fiddler, Will, known by the name of Wandering Willie, from his itinerant habits. They continued to advance swiftly and in great order, in their front

The fiery fiddlers playing martial airs;

when, coming close up, they surrounded us by a single movement, and there was a universal cry, ‘Whoop, Quaker–whoop, Quaker! Here have we them both, the wet Quaker and the dry one.’

‘Hang up the wet Quaker to dry, and wet the dry one with a ducking,’ answered another voice.

‘Where is the sea-otter, John Davies, that destroyed more fish than any sealch upon Ailsa Craig?’ exclaimed a third voice. ‘I have an old crow to pluck with him, and a pock to put the feathers in.’

We stood perfectly passive; for, to have attempted resistance against more than a hundred men, armed with guns, fish-spears, iron-crows, spades, and bludgeons, would have been an act of utter insanity. Mr. Geddes, with his strong sonorous voice, answered the question about the superintendent in a manner the manly indifference of which compelled them to attend to him.

‘John Davies,’ he said, ‘will, I trust, soon be at Dumfries’–

‘To fetch down redcoats and dragoons against us, you canting old villain!’

A blow was, at the same time, levelled at my friend, which I parried by interposing the stick I had in my hand. I was instantly struck down, and have a faint recollection of hearing some crying, ‘Kill the young spy!’ and others, as I thought, interposing on my behalf. But a second blow on the head, received in the scuffle, soon deprived me of sense and consciousness, and threw me into it state of insensibility, from which I did not recover immediately. When I did come to myself, I was lying on the bed from which I had just risen before the fray, and my poor companion, the Newfoundland puppy, its courage entirely cowed by the tumult of the riot, had crept as close to me as it could, and lay trembling and whining, as if under the most dreadful terror. I doubted at first whether I had not dreamed of the tumult, until, as I attempted to rise, a feeling of pain and dizziness assured me that the injury I had sustained was but too real. I gathered together my senses listened–and heard at a distance the shouts of the rioters, busy, doubtless, in their work of devastation. I made a second effort to rise, or at least to turn myself, for I lay with my face to the wall of the cottage, but I found that my limbs were secured, and my motions effectually prevented–not indeed by cords, but by linen or cloth bandages swathed around my ankles, and securing my arms to my sides. Aware of my utterly captive condition, I groaned betwixt bodily pain and mental distress,

A voice by my bedside whispered, in a whining tone, ‘Whisht a-ye, hinnie–Whisht a-ye; haud your tongue, like a gude bairn–ye have cost us dear aneugh already. My hinnie’s clean gane now.’

Knowing, as I thought, the phraseology of the wife of the itinerant musician, I asked her where her husband was, and whether he had been hurt.

‘Broken,’ answered the dame, ‘all broken to pieces; fit for naught but to be made spunks of–the best blood that was in Scotland.’

‘Broken?–blood?–is your husband wounded; has there been bloodshed broken limbs?’

‘Broken limbs I wish,’ answered the beldam, ‘that my hinnie had broken the best bane in his body, before he had broken his fiddle, that was the best blood in Scotland–it was a Cremony, for aught that I ken.’

‘Pshaw–only his fiddle?’ said I.

‘I dinna ken what waur your honour could have wished him to do, unless he had broken his neck; and this is muckle the same to my hinnie Willie and me. Chaw, indeed! It is easy to say chaw, but wha is to gie us ony thing to chaw?–the bread-winner’s gane, and we may e’en sit down and starve.’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I will pay you for twenty such fiddles.’

‘Twenty such! is that a’ ye ken about it? the country hadna the like o’t. But if your honour were to pay us, as nae doubt wad be to your credit here and hereafter, where are ye to get the siller?’

‘I have enough of money,’ said I, attempting to reach my hand towards my side-pocket; ‘unloose these bandages, and I will pay you on the spot.’

This hint appeared to move her, and she was approaching the bedside, as I hoped, to liberate me from my bonds, when a nearer and more desperate shout was heard, as if the rioters were close by the hut.

‘I daurna I daurna,’ said the poor woman, ‘they would murder me and my hinnie Willie baith, and they have misguided us aneugh already;–but if there is anything worldly I could do for your honour, leave out loosing ye?’

What she said recalled me to my bodily suffering. Agitation, and the effects of the usage I had received, had produced a burning thirst. I asked for a drink of water.

‘Heaven Almighty forbid that Epps Ainslie should gie ony sick gentleman cauld well-water, and him in a fever. Na, na, hinnie, let me alane, I’ll do better for ye than the like of that.’

‘Give me what you will,’ I replied; ‘let it but be liquid and cool.’

The woman gave me a large horn accordingly, filled with spirits and water, which, without minute inquiry concerning the nature of its contents, I drained at a draught. Either the spirits taken in such a manner acted more suddenly than usual on my brain, or else there was some drug mixed with the beverage. I remember little after drinking it off, only that the appearance of things around me became indistinct; that the woman’s form seemed to multiply itself, and to flit in various figures around me, bearing the same lineaments as she herself did. I remember also that the discordant noises and cries of those without the cottage seemed to die away in a hum like that with which a nurse hushes her babe. At length I fell into a deep sound sleep, or rather, a state of absolute insensibility.

I have reason to think this species of trance lasted for many hours; indeed, for the whole subsequent day and part of the night. It was not uniformly so profound, for my recollection of it is chequered with many dreams, all of a painful nature, but too faint and too indistinct to be remembered. At length the moment of waking came, and my sensations were horrible.

A deep sound, which, in the confusion of my senses, I identified with the cries of the rioters, was the first thing of which I was sensible; next, I became conscious that I was carried violently forward in some conveyance, with an unequal motion, which gave me much pain. My position was horizontal, and when I attempted to stretch my hands in order to find some mode of securing myself against this species of suffering, I found I was bound as before, and the horrible reality rushed on my mind that I was in the hands of those who had lately committed a great outrage on property, and were now about to kidnap, if not to murder me. I opened my eyes, it was to no purpose–all around me was dark, for a day had passed over during my captivity. A dispiriting sickness oppressed my head–my heart seemed on fire, while my feet and hands were chilled and benumbed with want of circulation. It was with the utmost difficulty that I at length, and gradually, recovered in a sufficient degree the power of observing external sounds and circumstances; and when I did so, they presented nothing consolatory.

Groping with my hands, as far as the bandages would permit, and receiving the assistance of some occasional glances of the moonlight, I became aware that the carriage in which I was transported was one of the light carts of the country, called TUMBLERS, and that a little attention had been paid to my accommodation, as I was laid upon some sacks covered with matting, and filled with straw. Without these, my condition would have been still more intolerable, for the vehicle, sinking now on one side, and now on the other, sometimes sticking absolutely fast and requiring the utmost exertions of the animal which drew it to put it once more in motion, was subjected to jolts in all directions, which were very severe. At other times it rolled silently and smoothly over what seemed to be wet sand; and, as I heard the distant roar of the tide, I had little doubt that we were engaged in passing the formidable estuary which divides the two kingdoms.

There seemed to be at least five or six people about the cart, some on foot, others on horseback; the former lent assistance whenever it was in danger of upsetting, or sticking fast in the quicksand; the others rode before and acted as guides, often changing the direction of the vehicle as the precarious state of the passage required.

I addressed myself to the men around the cart, and endeavoured to move their compassion. I had harmed, I said, no one, and for no action in my life had deserved such cruel treatment, I had no concern whatever in the fishing station which had incurred their displeasure, and my acquaintance with Mr. Geddes was of a very late date. Lastly, and as my strongest argument, I endeavoured to excite their fears, by informing them that my rank in life would not permit me to be either murdered or secreted with impunity; and to interest their avarice, by the promises I made them of reward, if they would effect my deliverance. I only received a scornful laugh in reply to my threats; my promises might have done more, for the fellows were whispering together as if in hesitation, and I began to reiterate and increase my offers, when the voice of one of the horsemen, who had suddenly come up, enjoined silence to the men on foot, and, approaching the side of the cart, said to me, with a strong and determined voice, ‘Young man, there is no personal harm designed to you. If you remain silent and quiet, you may reckon on good treatment; but if you endeavour to tamper with these men in the execution of their duty, I will take such measures for silencing you, as you shall remember the longest day you have to live.’

I thought I knew the voice which uttered these threats; but, in such a situation, my perceptions could not be supposed to be perfectly accurate. I was contented to reply, ‘Whoever you are that speak to me, I entreat the benefit of the meanest prisoner, who is not to be subjected, legally to greater hardship than is necessary for the restraint of his person. I entreat that these bonds, which hurt me so cruelly, may be slackened at least, if not removed altogether.’

‘I will slacken the belts,’ said the former speaker; ‘nay, I will altogether remove them, and allow you to pursue your journey in a more convenient manner, provided you will give me your word of honour that you will not attempt an escape?’

‘NEVER!’ I answered, with an energy of which despair alone could have rendered me capable–‘I will never submit to loss of freedom a moment longer than I am subjected to it by force.’

‘Enough,’ he replied; ‘the sentiment is natural; but do not on your side complain that I, who am carrying on an important undertaking, use the only means in my power for ensuring its success.’

I entreated to know what it was designed to do with me; but my conductor, in a voice of menacing authority, desired me to be silent on my peril; and my strength and spirits were too much exhausted to permit my continuing a dialogue so singular, even if I could have promised myself any good result by doing so.

It is proper here to add, that, from my recollections at the time, and from what has since taken place, I have the strongest possible belief that the man with whom I held this expostulation was the singular person residing at Brokenburn, in Dumfriesshire, and called by the fishers of that hamlet, the Laird of the Solway Lochs. The cause for his inveterate persecution I cannot pretend even to guess at.

In the meantime, the cart was dragged heavily and wearily on, until the nearer roar of the advancing tide excited the apprehension of another danger. I could not mistake the sound, which I had heard upon another occasion, when it was only the speed of a fleet horse which saved me from perishing in the quicksands. Thou, my dear Alan, canst not but remember the former circumstances; and now, wonderful contrast! the very man, to the best of my belief, who then saved me from peril, was the leader of the lawless band who had deprived me of my liberty. I conjectured that the danger grew imminent; for I heard some words and circumstances which made me aware that a rider hastily fastened his own horse to the shafts of the cart in order to assist the exhausted animal which drew it, and the vehicle was now pulled forward at a faster pace, which the horses were urged to maintain by blows and curses. The men, however, were inhabitants of the neighbourhood; and I had strong personal reason to believe that one of them, at least, was intimately acquainted with all the depths and shallows of the perilous paths in which we were engaged. But they were in imminent danger themselves; and if so, as from the whispering and exertions to push on with the cart was much to be apprehended, there was little doubt that I should be left behind as a useless encumbrance, and that, while I was in a condition which rendered every chance of escape impracticable. These were awful apprehensions; but it pleased Providence to increase them to a point which my brain was scarcely able to endure.

As we approached very near to a black line, which, dimly visible as it was, I could make out to be the shore, we heard two or three sounds, which appeared to be the report of fire-arms. Immediately all was bustle among our party to get forward. Presently a fellow galloped up to us, crying out, ‘Ware hawk! ware hawk! the land-sharks are out from Burgh, and Allonby Tom will lose his cargo if you do not bear a hand.’

Most of my company seemed to make hastily for the shore on receiving this intelligence. A driver was left with the cart; but at length, when, after repeated and hairbreadth escapes, it actually stuck fast in a slough or quicksand, the fellow, with an oath, cut the harness, and, as I presume, departed with the horses, whose feet I heard splashing over the wet sand and through the shallows, as he galloped off.

The dropping sound of fire-arms was still continued, but lost almost entirely in the thunder of the advancing surge. By a desperate effort I raised myself in the cart, and attained a sitting posture, which served only to show me the extent of my danger. There lay my native land–my own England–the land where I was born, and to which my wishes, since my earliest age, had turned with all the prejudices of national feeling–there it lay, within a furlong of the place where I yet was; that furlong, which an infant would have raced over in a minute, was yet a barrier effectual to divide me for ever from England and from life. I soon not only heard the roar of this dreadful torrent, but saw, by the fitful moonlight, the foamy crests of the devouring waves, as they advanced with the speed and fury of a pack of hungry wolves.

The consciousness that the slightest ray of hope, or power of struggling, was not left me, quite overcame the constancy which I had hitherto maintained. My eyes began to swim–my head grew giddy and mad with fear–I chattered and howled to the howling and roaring sea. One or two great waves already reached the cart, when the conductor of the party whom I have mentioned so often, was, as if by magic, at my side. He sprang from his horse into the vehicle, cut the ligatures which restrained me, and bade me get up and mount in the fiend’s name.

Seeing I was incapable of obeying, he seized me as if I had been a child of six months old, threw me across the horse, sprang on behind, supporting with one hand, while he directed the animal with the other. In my helpless and painful posture, I was unconscious of the degree of danger which we incurred; but I believe at one time the horse was swimming, or nearly so; and that it was with difficulty that my stern and powerful assistant kept my head above water. I remember particularly the shock which I felt when the animal, endeavouring to gain the bank, reared, and very nearly fell back on his burden. The time during which I continued in this dreadful condition did not probably exceed two or three minutes, yet so strongly were they marked with horror and agony, that they seem to my recollection a much more considerable space of time.

When I had been thus snatched from destruction, I had only power to say to my protector,–or oppressor,–for he merited either name at my hand, ‘You do not, then, design to murder me?’

He laughed as he replied, but it was a sort of laughter which I scarce desire to hear again,–‘Else you think I had let the waves do the work? But remember, the shepherd saves his sheep from the torrent–is it to preserve its life?–Be silent, however, with questions or entreaties. What I mean to do, thou canst no more discover or prevent, than a man, with his bare palm, can scoop dry the Solway.’

I was too much exhausted to continue the argument; and, still numbed and torpid in all my limbs, permitted myself without reluctance to be placed on a horse brought for the purpose. My formidable conductor rode on the one side, and another person on the other, keeping me upright in the saddle. In this manner we travelled forward at a considerable rate, and by by-roads, with which my attendant seemed as familiar as with the perilous passages of the Solway.

At length, after stumbling through a labyrinth of dark and deep lanes, and crossing more than one rough and barren heath, we found ourselves on the edge of a highroad, where a chaise and four awaited, as it appeared, our arrival. To my great relief, we now changed our mode of conveyance; for my dizziness and headache had returned in so strong a degree, that I should otherwise have been totally unable to keep my seat on horseback, even with the support which I received.

My doubted and dangerous companion signed to me to enter the carriage–the man who had ridden on the left side of my horse stepped in after me, and drawing up the blinds of the vehicle, gave the signal for instant departure.

I had obtained a glimpse of the countenance of my new companion, as by the aid of a dark lantern the drivers opened the carriage door, and I was wellnigh persuaded that I recognized in him the domestic of the leader of this party, whom I had seen at his house in Brokenburn on a former occasion. To ascertain the truth of my suspicion, I asked him whether his name was not Cristal Nixon.

‘What is other folk’s names to you,’ he replied, gruffly, ‘who cannot tell your own father and mother?’

‘You know them, perhaps!’ I exclaimed eagerly. ‘You know them! and with that secret is connected the treatment which I am now receiving? It must be so, for in my life have I never injured any one. Tell me the cause of my misfortunes, or rather, help me to my liberty, and I will reward you richly.’

‘Aye, aye,’ replied my keeper; ‘but what use to give you liberty, who know nothing how to use it like a gentleman, but spend your time with Quakers and fiddlers, and such like raff! If I was your–hem, hem, hem!’

Here Cristal stopped short, just on the point, as it appeared, when some information was likely to escape him. I urged him once more to be my friend, and promised him all the stock of money which I had about me, and it was not inconsiderable, if he would assist in my escape.

He listened, as if to a proposition which had some interest, and replied, but in a voice rather softer than before, ‘Aye, but men do not catch old birds with chaff, my master. Where have you got the rhino you are so flush of?’

‘I will give you earnest directly, and that in banknotes,’ said I; but thrusting my hand into my side-pocket, I found my pocket- book was gone. I would have persuaded myself that it was only the numbness of my hands which prevented my finding it; but Cristal Nixon, who bears in his countenance that cynicism which is especially entertained with human misery, no longer suppressed his laughter.

‘Oh, ho! my young master,’ he said; ‘we have taken good enough care you have not kept the means of bribing poor folk’s fidelity. What, man, they have souls as well as other people, and to make them break trust is a deadly sin. And as for me, young gentleman, if you would fill Saint Mary’s Kirk with gold, Cristal Nixon would mind it no more than so many chucky-stones.’

I would have persisted, were it but in hopes of his letting drop that which it concerned me to know, but he cut off further communication, by desiring me to lean back in the corner and go to sleep.

‘Thou art cock-brained enough already,’ he added, ‘and we shall have thy young pate addled entirely, if you do not take some natural rest.’

I did indeed require repose, if not slumber; the draught which I had taken continued to operate, and, satisfied in my own mind that no attempt on my life was designed, the fear of instant death no longer combated the torpor which crept over me–I slept, and slept soundly, but still without refreshment.

When I awoke, I found myself extremely indisposed; images of the past, and anticipations of the future, floated confusedly through my brain. I perceived, however, that my situation was changed, greatly for the better. I was in a good bed, with the curtains drawn round it; I heard the lowered voice and cautious step of attendants, who seemed to respect my repose; it appeared as if I was in the hands either of friends, or of such as meant me no personal harm.

I can give but an indistinct account of two or three broken and feverish days which succeeded, but if they were chequered with dreams and visions of terror, other and more agreeable objects were also sometimes presented. Alan Fairford will understand me when I say, I am convinced I saw G.M. during this interval of oblivion. I had medical attendance, and was bled more than once. I also remember a painful operation performed on my head, where I had received a severe blow on the night of the riot. My hair was cut short, and the bone of the skull examined, to discover if the cranium had received any injury.

On seeing the physician, it would have been natural to have appealed to him on the subject of my confinement, and I remember more than once attempting to do so. But the fever lay like a spell upon my tongue, and when I would have implored the doctor’s assistance, I rambled from the subject, and spoke I know not what nonsense. Some power, which I was unable to resist, seemed to impel me into a different course of conversation from what I intended, and though conscious, in some degree, of the failure, I could not mend it; and resolved, therefore, to be patient, until my capacity of steady thought and expression was restored to me with my ordinary health, which had sustained a severe shock from the vicissitudes to which I had been exposed. [See Note 6.]

CHAPTER V

DARSIE LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION

Two or three days, perhaps more, perhaps less, had been spent in bed, where I was carefully attended, and treated, I believe, with as much judgement as the case required, and I was at length allowed to quit my bed, though not the chamber. I was now more able to make some observation on the place of my confinement.

The room, in appearance and furniture, resembled the best apartment in a farmer’s house; and the window, two stories high, looked into a backyard, or court, filled with domestic poultry. There were the usual domestic offices about this yard. I could distinguish the brewhouse and the barn, and I heard, from a more remote building, the lowing of the cattle, and other rural sounds, announcing a large and well-stocked farm. These were sights and sounds qualified to dispel any apprehension of immediate violence. Yet the building seemed ancient and strong, a part of the roof was battlemented,and the walls were of great thickness; lastly, I observed, with some unpleasant sensations, that the windows of my chamber had been lately secured with iron stanchions, and that the servants who brought me victuals, or visited my apartment to render other menial offices, always locked the door when they retired.

The comfort and cleanliness of my chamber were of true English growth, and such as I had rarely seen on the other side of the Tweed; the very old wainscot, which composed the floor and the panelling of the room, was scrubbed with a degree of labour which the Scottish housewife rarely bestows on her most costly furniture.

The whole apartments appropriated to my use consisted of the bedroom, a small parlour adjacent, within which was a still smaller closet having a narrow window which seemed anciently to have been used as a shot-hole, admitting, indeed, a very moderate portion of light and air, but without its being possible to see anything from it except the blue sky, and that only by mounting on a chair. There were appearances of a separate entrance into this cabinet, besides that which communicated with the parlour, but it had been recently built up, as I discovered by removing a piece of tapestry which covered the fresh mason-work. I found some of my clothes here, with linen and other articles, as well as my writing-case, containing pen, ink, and paper, which enables me, at my leisure (which, God knows, is undisturbed enough) to make this record of my confinement. It may be well believed, however, that I do not trust to the security of the bureau, but carry the written sheets about my person, so that I can only be deprived of them by actual violence. I also am cautious to write in the little cabinet only, so that I can hear any person approach me through the other apartments, and have time enough to put aside my journal before they come upon me.

The servants, a stout country fellow and a very pretty milkmaid- looking lass, by whom I am attended, seem of the true Joan and Hedge school, thinking of little and desiring nothing beyond the very limited sphere of their own duties or enjoyments, and having no curiosity whatever about the affairs of others. Their behaviour to me in particular, is, at the same time, very kind and very provoking. My table is abundantly supplied, and they seem anxious to comply with my taste in that department. But whenever I make inquiries beyond ‘what’s for dinner’, the brute of a lad baffles me by his ANAN, and his DUNNA KNAW, and if hard pressed, turns his back on me composedly, and leaves the room. The girl, too, pretends to be as simple as he; but an arch grin, which she cannot always suppress, seems to acknowledge that she understands perfectly well the game which she is playing, and is determined to keep me in ignorance. Both of them, and the wench in particular, treat me as they would do a spoiled child, and never directly refuse me anything which I ask, taking care, at the same time, not to make their words good by effectually granting my request. Thus, if I desire to go out, I am promised by Dorcas that I shall walk in the park at night, and see the cows milked, just as she would propose such an amusement to a child. But she takes care never to keep her word, if it is in her power to do so.

In the meantime, there has stolen on me insensibly an indifference to my freedom–a carelessness about my situation, for which I am unable to account, unless it be the consequence of weakness and loss of blood. I have read of men who, immured as I am, have surprised the world by the address with which they have successfully overcome the most formidable obstacles to their escape; and when I have heard such anecdotes, I have said to myself, that no one who is possessed only of a fragment of freestone, or a rusty nail to grind down rivets and to pick locks, having his full leisure to employ in the task, need continue the inhabitant of a prison. Here, however, I sit, day after day, without a single effort to effect my liberation.

Yet my inactivity is not the result of despondency, but arises, in part at least, from feelings of a very different cast. My story, long a mysterious one, seems now upon the verge of some strange development; and I feel a solemn impression that I ought to wait the course of events, to struggle against which is opposing my feeble efforts to the high will of fate. Thou, my Alan, wilt treat as timidity this passive acquiescence, which has sunk down on me like a benumbing torpor; but if thou hast remembered by what visions my couch was haunted, and dost but think of the probability that I am in the vicinity, perhaps under the same roof with G.M., thou wilt acknowledge that other feelings than pusillanimity have tended in some degree to reconcile me to my fate.

Still I own it is unmanly to submit with patience to this oppressive confinement. My heart rises against it, especially when I sit down to record my sufferings in this journal, and I am determined, as the first step to my deliverance, to have my letters sent to the post-house.

—-

I am disappointed. When the girl Dorcas, upon whom I had fixed for a messenger, heard me talk of sending a letter, she willingly offered her services, and received the crown which I gave her (for my purse had not taken flight with the more valuable contents of my pocket-book) with a smile which showed her whole set of white teeth.

But when, with the purpose of gaining some intelligence respecting my present place of abode, I asked to which post-town she was to send or carry the letter, a stolid ‘ANAN’ showed me she was either ignorant of the nature of a post-office, or that, for the present, she chose to seem so.–‘Simpleton!’ I said, with some sharpness.

‘O Lord, sir!’ answered the girl, turning pale, which they always do when I show any sparks of anger, ‘Don’t put yourself in a passion–I’ll put the letter in the post.

‘What! and not know the name of the post-town?’ said I, out of patience. ‘How on earth do you propose to manage that?’

‘La you there, good master. What need you frighten a poor girl that is no schollard, bating what she learned at the Charity School of Saint Bees?’

‘Is Saint Bees far from this place, Dorcas? Do you send your letters there?’ said I, in a manner as insinuating, and yet careless, as I could assume.

‘Saint Bees! La, who but a madman–begging your honour’s pardon –it’s a matter of twenty years since fader lived at Saint Bees, which is twenty, or forty, or I dunna know not how many miles from this part, to the West, on the coast side; and I would not have left Saint Bees, but that fader’–

‘Oh, the devil take your father!’ replied I.

To which she answered, ‘Nay, but thof your honour be a little how-come-so, you shouldn’t damn folk’s faders; and I won’t stand to it, for one.’

‘Oh, I beg you a thousand pardons–I wish your father no ill in the world–he was a very honest man in his way.’

‘WAS an honest man!’ she exclaimed; for the Cumbrians are, it would seem, like their neighbours the Scotch, ticklish on the point of ancestry,–‘He IS a very honest man as ever led nag with halter on head to Staneshaw Bank Fair. Honest! He is a horse- couper.’

‘Right, right,’ I replied; ‘I know it–I have heard of your father-as honest as any horse-couper of them all. Why, Dorcas, I mean to buy a horse of him.’

‘Ah, your honour,’ sighed Dorcas, ‘he is the man to serve your honour well–if ever you should get round again–or thof you were a bit off the hooks, he would no more cheat you than’–

‘Well, well, we will deal, my girl, you may depend on’t. But tell me now, were I to give you a letter, what would you do to get it forward?’

‘Why, put it into Squire’s own bag that hangs in hall,’ answered poor Dorcas. ‘What else could I do? He sends it to Brampton, or to Carloisle, or where it pleases him, once a week, and that gate.’

‘Ah!’ said I; ‘and I suppose your sweetheart John carries it?’

‘Noa–disn’t now–and Jan is no sweetheart of mine, ever since he danced at his mother’s feast with Kitty Rutlege, and let me sit still; that a did.’

‘It was most abominable in Jan, and what I could never have thought of him,’ I replied.

‘Oh, but a did though–a let me sit still on my seat, a did.’

‘Well, well, my pretty May, you will get a handsomer fellow than Jan–Jan’s not the fellow for you, I see that.’

‘Noa, noa,’ answered the damsel; ‘but he is weel aneugh for a’ that, mon. But I carena a button for him; for there is the miller’s son, that suitored me last Appleby Fair, when I went wi’ oncle, is a gway canny lad as you will see in the sunshine.’

‘Aye, a fine stout fellow. Do you think he would carry my letter to Carlisle?’

‘To Carloisle! ‘Twould be all his life is worth; he maun wait on clap and hopper, as they say. Odd, his father would brain him if he went to Carloisle, bating to wrestling for the belt, or sic loike. But I ha’ more bachelors than him; there is the schoolmaster, can write almaist as weel as tou canst, mon.’

‘Then he is the very man to take charge of a letter; he knows the trouble of writing one.’

‘Aye, marry does he, an tou comest to that, mon; only it takes him four hours to write as mony lines. Tan, it is a great round hand loike, that one can read easily, and not loike your honour’s, that are like midge’s taes. But for ganging to Carloisle, he’s dead foundered, man, as cripple as Eckie’s mear.’

‘In the name of God,’ said I, ‘how is it that you propose to get my letter to the post?’

‘Why, just to put it into Squire’s bag loike,’ reiterated Dorcas; ‘he sends it by Cristal Nixon to post, as you call it, when such is his pleasure.’

Here I was, then, not much edified by having obtained a list of Dorcas’s bachelors; and by finding myself, with respect to any information which I desired, just exactly at the point where I set out. It was of consequence to me, however, to accustom, the girl to converse with me familiarly. If she did so, she could not always be on her guard, and something, I thought, might drop from her which I could turn to advantage.

‘Does not the Squire usually look into his letter-bag, Dorcas?’ said I, with as much indifference as I could assume.

‘That a does,’ said Dorcas; ‘and a threw out a letter of mine to Raff Miller, because a said’–

‘Well, well, I won’t trouble him with mine,’ said I, ‘Dorcas; but, instead, I will write to himself, Dorcas. But how shall I address him?’

‘Anan?’ was again Dorcas’s resource.

‘I mean how is he called? What is his name?’

‘Sure you honour should know best,’ said Dorcas.

‘I know? The devil! You drive me beyond patience.’

‘Noa, noa! donna your honour go beyond patience–donna ye now,’ implored the wench. ‘And for his neame, they say he has mair nor ane in Westmoreland and on the Scottish side. But he is but seldom wi’ us, excepting in the cocking season; and then we just call him Squoire loike; and so do my measter and dame.’

‘And is he here at present?’ said I.

‘Not he, not he; he is a buck-hoonting, as they tell me, somewhere up the Patterdale way; but he comes and gangs like a flap of a whirlwind, or sic loike.’

I broke off the conversation, after forcing on Dorcas a little silver to buy ribbons, with which she was so much delighted that she exclaimed, ‘God! Cristal Nixon may say his worst on thee; but thou art a civil gentleman for all him; and a quoit man wi’ woman folk loike.’

There is no sense in being too quiet with women folk, so I added a kiss with my crown piece; and I cannot help thinking that I have secured a partisan in Dorcas. At least, she blushed, and pocketed her little compliment with one hand, while, with the other, she adjusted her cherry-coloured ribbons, a little disordered by the struggle it cost me to attain the honour of a salute.

As she unlocked the door to leave the apartment, she turned back, and looking on me with a strong expression of compassion, added the remarkable words, ‘La–be’st mad or no, thou’se a mettled lad, after all.’

There was something very ominous in the sound of these farewell words, which seemed to afford me a clue to the pretext under which I was detained in confinement, My demeanour was probably insane enough, while I was agitated at once by the frenzy incident to the fever, and the anxiety arising from my extraordinary situation. But is it possible they can now establish any cause for confining me arising out of the state of my mind?

If this be really the pretext under which I am restrained from my liberty, nothing but the sedate correctness of my conduct can remove the prejudices which these circumstances may have excited in the minds of all who have approached me during my illness. I have heard–dreadful thought!–of men who, for various reasons, have been trepanned into the custody of the keepers of private madhouses, and whose brain, after years of misery, became at length unsettled, through irresistible sympathy with the wretched beings among whom they were classed. This shall not be my case, if, by strong internal resolution, it is in human nature to avoid the action of exterior and contagious sympathies.

Meantime I sat down to compose and arrange my thoughts, for my purposed appeal to my jailer–so I must call him–whom I addressed in the following manner; having at length, and after making several copies, found language to qualify the sense of resentment which burned in the first, drafts of my letter, and endeavoured to assume a tone more conciliating. I mentioned the two occasions on which he had certainly saved my life, when at the utmost peril; and I added, that whatever was the purpose of the restraint, now practised on me, as I was given to understand, by his authority, it could not certainly be with any view to ultimately injuring me. He might, I said, have mistaken me for some other person; and I gave him what account I could of my situation and education, to correct such an error. I supposed it next possible, that he might think me too weak for travelling, and not capable of taking care of myself; and I begged to assure him, that I was restored to perfect health, and quite able to endure the fatigue of a journey. Lastly, I reminded him, in firm though measured terms, that the restraint which I sustained was an illegal one, and highly punishable by the laws which protect the liberties of the subject. I ended by demanding that he would take me before a magistrate; or, at least, that he would favour me with a personal interview and explain his meaning with regard to me.

Perhaps this letter was expressed in a tone too humble for the situation of an injured man, and I am inclined to think so when I again recapitulate its tenor. But what could I do? I was in the power of one whose passions seem as violent as his means of gratifying them appear unbounded. I had reason, too, to believe (this to thee, Alan) that all his family did not approve of the violence of his conduct towards me; my object, in fine, was freedom, and who would not sacrifice much to attain it?

I had no means of addressing my letter excepting ‘For the Squire’s own hand.’ He could be at no great distance, for in the course of twenty-four hours I received an answer. It was addressed to Darsie Latimer, and contained these words: ‘You have demanded an interview with me. You have required to be carried before a magistrate. Your first wish shall be granted– perhaps the second also. Meanwhile, be assured that you are a prisoner for the time, by competent authority, and that such authority is supported by adequate power. Beware, therefore, of struggling with a force sufficient to crush you, but abandon yourself to that train of events by which we are both swept along, and which it is impossible that either of us can resist.’

These mysterious words were without signature of any kind, and left me nothing more important to do than to prepare myself for the meeting which they promised. For that purpose I must now break off, and make sure of the manuscript–so far as I can, in my present condition, be sure of anything–by concealing it within the lining of my coat, so as not to be found without strict search.

CHAPTER VI

LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION

The important interview expected at the conclusion of my last took place sooner than I had calculated; for the very day I received the letter, and just when my dinner was finished, the squire, or whatever he is called, entered the room so suddenly that I almost thought I beheld an apparition. The figure of this man is peculiarly noble and stately, and his voice has that deep fullness of accent which implies unresisted authority. I had risen involuntarily as he entered; we gazed on each other for a moment in silence, which was at length broken by my visitor.

‘You have desired to see me,’ he said. ‘I am here; if you have aught to say let me hear it; my time is too brief to be consumed in childish dumb-show.’

‘I would ask of you,’ said I, ‘by what authority I am detained in this place of confinement, and for what purpose?’

‘I have told you already,’ said he, ‘that my authority is sufficient, and my power equal to it; this is all which it is necessary for you at present to know.’

‘Every British subject has a right to know why he suffers restraint,’ I replied; ‘nor can he be deprived of liberty without a legal warrant. Show me that by which you confine me thus.’

‘You shall see more,’ he said; ‘you shall see the magistrate by whom it is granted, and that without a moment’s delay.’

This sudden proposal fluttered and alarmed me; I felt, nevertheless, that I had the right cause, and resolved to plead it boldly, although I could well have desired a little further time for preparation. He turned, however, threw open the door of the apartment, and commanded me to follow him. I felt some inclination, when I crossed the threshold of my prison-chamber, to have turned and run for it; but I knew not where to find the stairs–had reason to think the outer doors would be secured and, to conclude, so soon as I had quitted the room to follow the proud step of my conductor, I observed that I was dogged by Cristal Nixon, who suddenly appeared within two paces of me, and with whose great personal strength, independent of the assistance he might have received from his master, I saw no chance of contending. I therefore followed, unresistingly and in silence; along one or two passages of much greater length than consisted with the ideas I had previously entertained of the size of the house. At length a door was flung open, and we entered a large, old-fashioned parlour, having coloured glass in the windows, oaken panelling on the wall, a huge grate, in which a large faggot or two smoked under an arched chimney-piece of stone which bore some armorial device, whilst the walls were adorned with the usual number of heroes in armour, with large wigs instead of helmets, and ladies in sacques, smelling to nosegays.

Behind a long table, on which were several books, sat a smart underbred-looking man, wearing his own hair tied in a club, and who, from the quire of paper laid before him, and the pen which he handled at my entrance, seemed prepared to officiate as clerk. As I wish to describe these persons as accurately as possible, I may add, he wore a dark-coloured coat, corduroy breeches, and spatterdashes. At the upper end of the same table, in an ample easy-chair covered with black leather, reposed a fat personage, about fifty years old, who either was actually a country justice, or was well selected to represent such a character. His leathern breeches were faultless in make, his jockey boots spotless in the varnish, and a handsome and flourishing pair of boot-garters, as they are called, united the one part of his garments to the other; in fine, a richly-laced scarlet waistcoat and a purple coat set off the neat though corpulent figure of the little man, and threw an additional bloom upon his plethoric aspect. I suppose he had dined, for it was two hours past noon, and he was amusing himself, and aiding digestion, with a pipe of tobacco. There was an air of importance in his manner which corresponded to the rural dignity of his exterior, and a habit which he had of throwing out a number of interjectional sounds, uttered with a strange variety of intonation running from bass up to treble in a very extraordinary manner, or breaking off his sentences with a whiff of his pipe, seemed adopted to give an air of thought and mature deliberation to his opinions and decisions. Notwithstanding all this, Alan, it might be DOOTED, as our old Professor used to say, whether the Justice was anything more then an ass. Certainly, besides a great deference for the legal opinion of his clerk, which might be quite according to the order of things, he seemed to be wonderfully under the command of his brother squire, if squire either of them were, and indeed much more than was consistent with so much assumed consequence of his own.

‘Ho–ha–aye–so–so–hum–humph–this is the young man, I suppose–hum–aye–seems sickly. Young gentleman, you may sit down.’

I used the permission given, for I had been much more reduced by my illness than I was aware of, and felt myself really fatigued, even by the few paces I had walked, joined to the agitation I suffered.

‘And your name, young man, is–humph–aye–ha–what is it?’

‘Darsie Latimer.’

‘Right–aye–humph–very right. Darsie Latimer is the very thing–ha–aye–where do you come from?’

‘From Scotland, sir,’ I replied.

‘A native of Scotland–a–humph–eh–how is it?’

‘I am an Englishman by birth, sir.’

‘Right–aye–yes, you are so. But pray, Mr. Darsie Latimer, have you always been called by that name, or have you any other?– Nick, write down his answers, Nick.’

‘As far as I remember, I never bore any other,’ was my answer.

‘How, no? well, I should not have thought so, Hey, neighbour, would you?’

Here he looked towards the other squire, who had thrown himself into a chair; and, with his legs stretched out before him, and his arms folded on his bosom, seemed carelessly attending to what was going forward. He answered the appeal of the Justice by saying, that perhaps the young man’s memory did not go back to a very early period.

‘Ah–eh–ha–you hear the gentleman. Pray, how far may your memory be pleased to run back to?–umph?’

‘Perhaps, sir, to the age of three years, or a little further.’

‘And will you presume to say, sir,’ said the squire, drawing himself suddenly erect in his seat, and exerting the strength of his powerful voice, ‘that you then bore your present name?’

I was startled at the confidence with which this question was put, and in vain rummaged my memory for the means of replying. ‘At least,’ I said, ‘I always remember being called Darsie; children, at that early age, seldom get more than their Christian name.’

‘Oh, I thought so,’ he replied, and again stretched himself on his seat, in the same lounging posture as before.

‘So you were called Darsie in your infancy,’ said the Justice; ‘and–hum–aye–when did you first take the name of Latimer?’

‘I did not take it, sir; it was given to me.’

‘I ask you,’ said the lord of the mansion, but with less severity in his voice than formerly, ‘whether you can remember that you were ever called Latimer, until you had that name given you in Scotland?’

‘I will be candid: I cannot recollect an instance that I was so called when in England, but neither can I recollect when the name was first given me; and if anything is to be founded on these queries and my answers, I desire my early childhood may be taken into consideration.’

‘Hum–aye–yes,’ said the Justice; ‘all that requires consideration shall be duly considered. Young man–eh–I beg to know the name of your father and mother?’

This was galling a wound that has festered for years, and I did not endure the question so patiently as those which preceded it; but replied, ‘I demand, in my turn, to know if I am before an English Justice of the Peace?’

‘His worship, Squire Foxley, of Foxley Hall, has been of the quorum these twenty years,’ said Master Nicholas.

‘Then he ought to know, or you, sir, as his clerk, should inform him,’ said I, ‘that I am the complainer in this case, and that my complaint ought to be heard before I am subjected to cross- examination.’

‘Humph–hoy–what, aye–there is something in that, neighbour,’ said the poor Justice, who, blown about by every wind of doctrine, seemed desirous to attain the sanction of his brother squire.

‘I wonder at you, Foxley,’ said his firm-minded acquaintance; ‘how can you render the young man justice unless you know who he is?’

‘Ha–yes–egad, that’s true,’ said Mr. Justice Foxley; ‘and now– looking into the matter more closely–there is, eh, upon the whole–nothing at all in what he says–so, sir, you must tell your father’s name, and surname.’

‘It is out of my power, sir; they are not known to me, since you must needs know so much of my private affairs.’

The Justice collected a great AFFLATUS in his cheeks, which puffed them up like those of a Dutch cherub, while his eyes seemed flying out of his head, from the effort with which he retained his breath. He then blew it forth with,–‘Whew!–Hoom– poof–ha!–not know your parents, youngster?–Then I must commit you for a vagrant, I warrant you. OMNE IGNOTUM PRO TERRIBILI, as we used to say at Appleby school; that is, every one that is not known to the Justice; is a rogue and a vagabond. Ha!–aye, you may sneer, sir; but I question if you would have known the meaning of that Latin, unless I had told you.’

I acknowledged myself obliged for a new edition of the adage, and an interpretation which I could never have reached alone and unassisted. I then proceeded to state my case with greater confidence. The Justice was an ass, that was clear; but if was scarcely possible he could be so utterly ignorant as not to know what was necessary in so plain a case as mine. I therefore informed him of the riot which had been committed on the Scottish side of the Solway Firth, explained how I came to be placed in my present situation, and requested of his worship to set me at liberty. I pleaded my cause with as much earnestness as I could, casting an eye from time to time upon the opposite party, who seemed entirely indifferent to all the animation with which I accused him.

As for the Justice, when at length I had ceased, as really not knowing what more to say in a case so very plain, he replied, ‘Ho–aye–aye–yes–wonderful! and so this is all the gratitude you show to this good gentleman for the great charge and trouble he hath had with respect to and concerning of you?’

‘He saved my life, sir, I acknowledge, on one occasion certainly, and most probably on two; but his having done so gives him no right over my person. I am not, however, asking for any punishment or revenge; on the contrary, I am content to part friends with the gentleman, whose motives I am unwilling to suppose are bad, though his actions have been, towards me, unauthorized and violent.’

This moderation, Alan, thou wilt comprehend, was not entirely dictated by my feelings towards the individual of whom I complained; there were other reasons, in which regard for him had little share. It seemed, however, as if the mildness with which I pleaded my cause had more effect upon him than anything I had yet said. We was moved to the point of being almost out of countenance; and took snuff repeatedly, as if to gain time to stifle some degree of emotion.

But on Justice Foxley, on whom my eloquence was particularly designed to make impression, the result was much less favourable. He consulted in a whisper with Mr. Nicholas, his clerk–pshawed, hemmed, and elevated his eyebrows, as if in scorn of my supplication. At length, having apparently made up his mind, he leaned back in his chair, and smoked his pipe with great energy, with a look of defiance, designed to make me aware that all my reasoning was lost on him.

At length, when I stopped, more from lack of breath than want of argument, he opened his oracular jaws, and made the following reply, interrupted by his usual interjectional ejaculations, and by long volumes of smoke:–‘Hem–aye–eh–poof. And, youngster, do you think Matthew Foxley, who has been one of the quorum for these twenty years, is to be come over with such trash as would hardly cheat an apple-woman? Poof–poof–eh! Why, man–eh– dost thou not know the charge is not a bailable matter–and that –hum–aye–the greatest man–poof–the Baron of Graystock himself, must stand committed? and yet you pretend to have been kidnapped by this gentleman, and robbed of property, and what not; and–eh–poof–you would persuade me all you want is to get away from him? I do believe–eh–that it IS all you want. Therefore, as you are a sort of a slip-string gentleman, and–aye –hum–a kind of idle apprentice, and something cock-brained withal, as the honest folks of the house tell me–why, you must e’en remain under custody of your guardian, till your coming of age, or my Lord Chancellor’s warrant, shall give you the management of your own affairs, which, if you can gather your brains again, you will even then not be–aye–hem–poof–in particular haste to assume.’

The time occupied by his worship’s hums, and haws, and puffs of tobacco smoke, together with the slow and pompous manner in which he spoke, gave me a minute’s space to collect my ideas, dispersed as they were by the extraordinary purport of this annunciation.

‘I cannot conceive, sir,’ I replied, ‘by what singular tenure this person claims my obedience as a guardian; it is a barefaced imposture. I never in my life saw him, until I came unhappily to this country, about four weeks since.’

‘Aye, sir–we–eh–know, and are aware–that–poof–you do not like to hear some folk’s names; and that–eh–you understand me– there are things, and sounds, and matters, conversation about names, and suchlike, which put you off the hooks–which I have no humour to witness. Nevertheless, Mr. Darsie–or–poof–Mr. Darsie Latimer–or–poof, poof–eh–aye, Mr. Darsie without the Latimer–you have acknowledged as much to-day as assures me you will best be disposed of under the honourable care of my friend here–all your confessions–besides that–poof–eh–I know him to be a most responsible person–a–hay–aye–most responsible and honourable person–Can you deny this?’

‘I know nothing of him,’ I repeated; ‘not even his name; and I have not, as I told you, seen him in the course of my whole life, till a few weeks since.’

‘Will you swear to that?’ said the singular man, who seemed to await the result of this debate, secure as a rattle-snake is of the prey which has once felt its fascination. And while he said these words in deep undertone, he withdrew his chair a little behind that of the Justice, so as to be unseen by him or his clerk, who sat upon the same side; while he bent on me a frown so portentous, that no one who has witnessed the look can forget it during the whole of his life. The furrows of the brow above the eyes became livid and almost black, and were bent into a semicircular, or rather elliptical form, above the junction of the eyebrows. I had heard such a look described in an old tale of DIABLERIE, which it was my chance to be entertained with not long since; when this deep and gloomy contortion of the frontal muscles was not unaptly described as forming the representation of a small horseshoe.

The tale, when told, awaked a dreadful vision of infancy, which the withering and blighting look now fixed on me again forced on my recollection, but with much more vivacity. Indeed, I was so much surprised, and, I must add, terrified, at the vague ideas which were awakened in my mind by this fearful sign, that I kept my eyes fixed on the face in which it was exhibited, as on a frightful vision; until, passing his handkerchief a moment across his countenance, this mysterious man relaxed at once the look which had for me something so appalling. ‘The young man will no longer deny that he has seen me before,’ said he to the Justice, in a tone of complacency; ‘and I trust he will now be reconciled to my temporary guardianship, which may end better for him than he expects.’

‘Whatever I expect,’ I replied, summoning my scattered recollections together, ‘I see I am neither to expect justice nor protection from this gentleman, whose office it is to render both to the lieges. For you, sir, how strangely you have wrought yourself into the fate of an unhappy young man or what interest you can pretend in me, you yourself only can explain. That I have seen you before is certain; for none can forget the look with which you seem to have the power of blighting those upon whom you cast it.’

The Justice seemed not very easy under this hint,’Ha!–aye,’ he said; ‘it is time to be going, neighbour. I have a many miles to ride, and I care not to ride darkling in these parts. You and I, Mr. Nicholas, must be jogging.’

The Justice fumbled with his gloves, in endeavouring to draw them on hastily, and Mr. Nicholas bustled to get his greatcoat and whip. Their landlord endeavoured to detain them, and spoke of supper and beds. Both, pouring forth many thanks for his invitation, seemed as if they would much rather not, and Mr. Justice Foxley was making a score of apologies, with at least a hundred cautionary hems and eh-ehs, when the girl Dorcas burst into the room, and announced a gentleman on justice business.

‘What gentleman?–and whom does he want?’

‘He is cuome post on his ten toes,’ said the wench; ‘and on justice business to his worship loike. I’se uphald him a gentleman, for he speaks as good Latin as the schule-measter; but, lack-a-day! he has gotten a queer mop of a wig.’

The gentleman, thus announced and described, bounced into the room. But I have already written as much as fills a sheet of my paper, and my singular embarrassments press so hard on me that I have matter to fill another from what followed the intrusion of– my dear Alan–your crazy client–Poor Peter Peebles!

CHAPTER VII

LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION

Sheet 2.

I have rarely in my life, till the last alarming days, known what it was to sustain a moment’s real sorrow. What I called such, was, I am now well convinced, only the weariness of mind which, having nothing actually present to complain of, turns upon itself and becomes anxious about the past and the future; those periods with which human life has so little connexion, that Scripture itself hath said, ‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’

If, therefore, I have sometimes abused prosperity, by murmuring at my unknown birth and uncertain rank in society, I will make amends by bearing my present real adversity with patience and courage, and, if I can, even with gaiety. What can they–dare they-do to me? Foxley, I am persuaded, is a real Justice of Peace, and country gentleman of estate, though (wonderful to tell!) he is an ass notwithstanding; and his functionary in the drab coat must have a shrewd guess at the consequences of being accessory to an act of murder or kidnapping. Men invite not such witnesses to deeds of darkness. I have also–Alan, I have hopes, arising out of the family of the oppressor himself. I am encouraged to believe that G.M. is likely again to enter on the field. More I dare not here say; nor must I drop a hint which another eye than thine might be able to construe. Enough, my feelings are lighter than they have been; and, though fear and wonder are still around me, they are unable entirely to overcloud the horizon.

Even when I saw the spectral form of the old scarecrow of the Parliament House rush into the apartment where I had undergone so singular an examination, I thought of thy connexion with him, and could almost have parodied Lear–

Death!–nothing could have thus subdued nature To such a lowness, but his ‘learned lawyers.’

He was e’en as we have seen him of yore, Alan, when, rather to keep thee company than to follow my own bent, I formerly frequented the halls of justice. The only addition to his dress, in the capacity of a traveller, was a pair of boots, that seemed as if they might have seen the field of Sheriffmoor; so large and heavy that, tied as they were to the creature’s wearied hams with large bunches of worsted tape of various colours, they looked as if he had been dragging them along, either for a wager or by way of penance.

Regardless of the surprised looks of the party on whom he thus intruded himself, Peter blundered into the middle of the apartment, with his head charged like a ram’s in the act of butting, and saluted them thus:–

‘Gude day to ye, gude day to your honours. Is’t here they sell the fugie warrants?’

I observed that on his entrance, my friend–or enemy–drew himself back, and placed himself as if he would rather avoid attracting the observation of the new-comer. I did the same myself, as far as I was able; for I thought it likely that Mr. Peebles might recognize me, as indeed I was too frequently among the group of young juridical aspirants who used to amuse themselves by putting cases for Peter’s solution, and playing him worse tricks; yet I was uncertain whether I had better avail myself of our acquaintance to have the advantage, such as it might be, of his evidence before the magistrate, or whether to make him, if possible, bearer of a letter which might procure me more effectual assistance. I resolved, therefore, to be guided by circumstances, and to watch carefully that nothing might escape me. I drew back as far as I could, and even reconnoitred the door and passage, to consider whether absolute escape might not be practicable. But there paraded Cristal Nixon, whose little black eyes, sharp as those of a basilisk, seemed, the instant when they encountered mine, to penetrate my purpose.

I sat down, as much out of sight of all parties as I could, and listened to the dialogue which followed–a dialogue how much more interesting to me than any I could have conceived, in which Peter Peebles was to be one of the dramatis personae!

‘Is it here where ye sell the warrants–the fugies, ye ken?’ said Peter.

‘Hey–eh–what!’ said Justice Foxley; ‘what the devil does the fellow mean?–What would you have a warrant for?’

‘It is to apprehend a young lawyer that is IN MEDITATIONE FUGAE; for he has ta’en my memorial and pleaded my cause, and a good fee I gave him, and as muckle brandy as he could drink that day at his father’s house–he loes the brandy ower weel for sae youthful a creature.’

‘And what has this drunken young dog of a lawyer done to you, that you are come to me–eh–ha? Has he robbed you? Not unlikely if he be a lawyer–eh–Nick–ha?’ said Justice Foxley.

‘He has robbed me of himself, sir,’ answered Peter; ‘of his help, comfort, aid, maintenance, and assistance, whilk, as a counsel to a client, he is bound to yield me RATIONE OFFICII–that is it, ye see. He has pouched my fee, and drucken a mutchkin of brandy, and now he’s ower the march, and left my cause, half won half lost–as dead a heat as e’er was run ower the back-sands. Now, I was advised by some cunning laddies that are used to crack a bit law wi’ me in the House, that the best thing I could do was to take heart o’ grace and set out after him; so I have taken post on my ain shanks, forby a cast in a cart, or the like. I got wind of him in Dumfries, and now I have run him ower to the English side, and I want a fugie warrant against him.’

How did my heart throb at this information, dearest Alan! Thou art near me then, and I well know with what kind purpose; thou hast abandoned all to fly to my assistance; and no wonder that, knowing thy friendship and faith, thy sound sagacity and persevering disposition, ‘my bosom’s lord should now sit lightly on his throne’; that gaiety should almost involuntarily hover on my pen; and that my heart should beat like that of a general, responsive to the drums of his advancing ally, without whose help the battle must have been lost.

I did not suffer myself to be startled by this joyous surprise, but continued to bend my strictest attention to what followed among this singular party. That Poor Peter Peebles had been put on this wildgoose chase by some of his juvenile advisers in the Parliament House, he himself had intimated; but he spoke with much confidence, and the Justice, who seemed to have some secret apprehension of being put to trouble in the matter, and, as sometimes occurs on the English frontier, a jealousy lest the superior acuteness of their northern neighbours might overreach their own simplicity, turned to his clerk with a perplexed countenance.

‘Eh–oh–Nick–d–n thee–Hast thou got nothing to say? This is more Scots law, I take it, and more Scotsmen.’ (Here he cast a side-glance at the owner of the mansion, and winked to his clerk.) ‘I would Solway were as deep as it is wide, and we had then some chance of keeping of them out.’

Nicholas conversed an instant aside with the supplicant, and then reported:–

‘The man wants a border-warrant, I think; but they are only granted for debt–now he wants one to catch a lawyer.’

‘And what for no?’ answered Peter Peebles, doggedly; ‘what for no, I would be glad to ken? If a day’s labourer refuse to work, ye’ll grant a warrant to gar him do out his daurg–if a wench quean rin away from her hairst, ye’ll send her back to her heuck again–if sae mickle as a collier or a salter make a moonlight flitting, ye will cleek him by the back-spaul in a minute of time–and yet the damage canna amount to mair than a creelfu’ of coals, and a forpit or twa of saut; and here is a chield taks leg from his engagement, and damages me to the tune of sax thousand punds sterling; that is, three thousand that I should win, and three thousand mair that I am like to lose; and you that ca’ yourself a justice canna help a poor man to catch the rinaway? A bonny like justice I am like to get amang ye!’

‘The fellow must be drunk,’ said the clerk.

‘Black fasting from all but sin,’ replied the supplicant; ‘I havena had mair than a mouthful of cauld water since I passed the Border, and deil a ane of ye is like to say to me, “Dog, will ye drink?”‘

The Justice seemed moved by this appeal. ‘Hem—tush, man,’ replied he; ‘thou speak’st to us as if thou wert in presence of one of thine own beggarly justices–get downstairs–get something to eat, man (with permission of my friend to make so free in his house), and a mouthful to drink, and I warrant we get ye such justice as will please ye.’

‘I winna refuse your neighbourly offer,’ said Poor Peter Peebles, making his bow; ‘muckle grace be wi’ your honour, and wisdom to guide you in this extraordinary cause.’

When I saw Peter Peebles about to retire from the room, I could not forbear an effort to obtain from him such evidence as might give me some credit with the Justice. I stepped forward, therefore, and, saluting him, asked him if he remembered me?

After a stare or two, and a long pinch of snuff, recollection seemed suddenly to dawn on Peter Peebles. ‘Recollect ye!’ he said; ‘by my troth do I.—Haud him a grip, gentlemen!– constables, keep him fast! where that ill-deedie hempy is, ye are sure that Alan Fairford is not far off. Haud him fast, Master Constable; I charge ye wi’ him, for I am mista’en if he is not at the bottom of this rinaway business. He was aye getting the silly callant Alan awa wi’ gigs, and horse, and the like of that, to Roslin, and Prestonpans, and a’ the idle gates he could think of. He’s a rinaway apprentice, that ane.’

‘Mr. Peebles,’ I said, ‘do not do me wrong. I am sure you can say no harm of me justly, but can satisfy these gentlemen, if you will, that I am a student of law in Edinburgh–Darsie Latimer by name.’

‘Me satisfy! how can I satisfy the gentlemen,’ answered Peter, ‘that am sae far from being satisfied mysell? I ken naething about your name, and can only testify, NIHIL NOVIT IN CAUSA.’

‘A pretty witness you have brought forward in your favour,’ said Mr. Foxley. ‘But–ha–aye—I’ll ask him a question or two. Pray, friend, will you take your oath to this youth being a runaway apprentice?’

‘Sir,’ said Peter, ‘I will make oath to onything in reason; when a case comes to my oath it’s a won cause: But I am in some haste to prie your worship’s good cheer;’ for Peter had become much more respectful in his demeanour towards the Justice since he had heard some intimation of dinner.

‘You shall have–eh–hum–aye–a bellyful, if it be possible to fill it. First let me know if this young man be really what he pretends. Nick, make his affidavit.’

‘Ow, he is just a wud harum-scarum creature, that wad never take to his studies; daft, sir, clean daft.’

‘Deft!’ said the Justice; ‘what d’ye mean by deft–eh?’

‘Just Fifish,’ replied Peter; ‘wowf–a wee bit by the East Nook or sae; it’s a common case–the ae half of the warld thinks the tither daft. I have met with folk in my day that thought I was daft mysell; and, for my part, I think our Court of Session clean daft, that have had the great cause of Peebles against Plainstanes before them for this score of years, and have never been able to ding the bottom out of it yet.’

‘I cannot make out a word of his cursed brogue,’ said the Cumbrian justice; ‘can you, neighbour–eh? What can he mean by DEFT?’

‘He means MAD,’ said the party appealed to, thrown off his guard by impatience of this protracted discussion.

‘Ye have it–ye have it,’ said Peter; ‘that is, not clean skivie, but–‘

Here he stopped, and fixed his eye on the person he addressed with an air of joyful recognition.–‘Aye, aye, Mr. Herries of Birrenswork, is this your ainsell in blood and bane? I thought ye had been hanged at Kennington Common, or Hairiebie, or some of these places, after the bonny ploy ye made in the Forty-five.’

‘I believe you are mistaken, friend,’ said Herries, sternly, with whose name and designation I was thus made unexpectedly acquainted.

‘The deil a bit,’ answered the undaunted Peter Peebles; I mind ye weel, for ye lodged in my house the great year of Forty-five, for a great year it was; the Grand Rebellion broke out, and my cause –the great cause–Peebles against Plainstanes, ET PER CONTRA –was called in the beginning of the winter session, and would have been heard, but that there was a surcease of justice, with your plaids, and your piping, and your nonsense.’

‘I tell you, fellow,’ said Herries, yet more fiercely, ‘you have confused me with some of the other furniture of your crazy pate.’

‘Speak like a gentleman, sir,’ answered Peebles; ‘these are not legal phrases, Mr. Herries of Birrenswork. Speak in form of law, or I sall bid ye gude day, sir. I have nae pleasure in speaking to proud folk, though I am willing to answer onything in a legal way; so if you are for a crack about auld langsyne, and the splores that you and Captain Redgimlet used to breed in my house, and the girded cask of brandy that ye drank and ne’er thought of paying for it (not that I minded it muckle in thae days, though I have felt a lack of it sin syne), why I will waste an hour on ye at ony time.–and where is Captain Redgimlet now? he was a wild chap, like yoursell, though they arena sae keen after you poor bodies for these some years bygane; the heading and hanging is weel ower now–awful job–awful job–will ye try my sneeshing?’

He concluded his desultory speech by thrusting out his large bony paw, filled with a Scottish mull of huge dimensions, which Herries, who had been standing like one petrified by the assurance of this unexpected address, rejected with a contemptuous motion of his hand, which spilled some of the contents of the box.

‘Aweel, aweel,’ said Peter Peebles, totally unabashed by the repulse, ‘e’en as ye like, a wilful man maun hae his way; but,’ he added, stooping down and endeavouring to gather the spilled snuff from the polished floor, ‘I canna afford to lose my sneeshing for a’ that ye are gumple-foisted wi’ me.’

My attention had been keenly awakened, during this extraordinary and unexpected scene. I watched, with as much attention as my own agitation permitted me to command, the effect produced on the parties concerned. It was evident that our friend, Peter Peebles, had unwarily let out something which altered the sentiments of Justice Foxley and his clerk towards Mr. Herries, with whom, until he was known and acknowledged under that name, they had appeared to be so intimate. They talked with each other aside, looked at a paper or two which the clerk selected from the contents of a huge black pocket-book, and seemed, under the influence of fear and uncertainty, totally at a loss what line of conduct to adopt.

Herries made a different, and far more interesting figure. However little Peter Peebles might resemble the angel Ithuriel, the appearance of Herries, his high and scornful demeanour, vexed at what seemed detection yet fearless of the consequences, and regarding the whispering magistrate and his clerk with looks in which contempt predominated over anger or anxiety, bore, in my opinion, no slight resemblance to

the regal port
And faded splendour wan

with which the poet has invested the detected King of the powers of the air.

As he glanced round, with a look which he had endeavoured to compose to haughty indifference, his eye encountered mine, and, I thought, at the first glance sank beneath it. But he instantly rallied his natural spirit, and returned me one of those extraordinary looks, by which he could contort so strangely the wrinkles on his forehead. I started; but, angry at myself for my pusillanimity, I answered him by a look of the same kind, and catching the reflection of my countenance in a large antique mirror which stood before me, I started again at the real or imaginary resemblance which my countenance, at that moment, bore to that of Herries. Surely my fate is somehow strangely interwoven with that of this mysterious individual. I had no time at present to speculate upon the subject, for the subsequent conversation demanded all my attention.

The Justice addressed Herries, after a pause of about five minutes, in which, all parties seemed at some loss how to proceed. He spoke with embarrassment, and his faltering voice, and the long intervals which divided his sentences, seemed to indicate fear of him whom he addressed.

‘Neighbour,’ he said, ‘I could not have thought this; or, if I–eh–DID think–in a corner of my own mind as it were–that you, I say–that you might have unluckily engaged in–eh–the matter of the Forty-five–there was still time to have forgot all that.’

‘And is it so singular that a man should have been out in the Forty-five?’ said Herries, with contemptuous composure;–‘your father, I think, Mr. Foxley, was out with Derwentwater in the Fifteen.’

‘And lost half of his estate,’ answered Foxley, with more rapidity than usual; ‘and was very near–hem–being hanged into the boot. But this is–another guess job–for–eh–Fifteen is not Forty-five; and my father had a remission, and you, I take it, have none.’

‘Perhaps I have,’ said Herries indifferently; ‘or if I have not, I am but in the case of half a dozen others whom government do not think worth looking after at this time of day, so they give no offence or disturbance.’

‘But you have given both, sir,’ said Nicholas Faggot, the clerk, who, having some petty provincial situation, as I have since understood, deemed himself bound to be zealous for government, ‘Mr. Justice Foxley cannot be answerable for letting you pass free, now your name and surname have been spoken plainly out. There are warrants out against you from the Secretary of State’s office.’

‘A proper allegation, Mr. Attorney! that, at the distance of so many years, the Secretary of State should trouble himself about the unfortunate relics of a ruined cause,’ answered Mr. Herries.

‘But if it be so,’ said the clerk, who seemed to assume more confidence upon the composure of Herries’s demeanour; ‘and if cause has been given by the conduct of a gentleman himself, who hath been, it is alleged, raking up old matters, and mixing them with new subjects of disaffection–I say, if it be so, I should advise the party, in his wisdom, to surrender himself quietly into the lawful custody of the next Justice of Peace–Mr. Foxley, suppose–where, and by whom, the matter should be regularly inquired into. I am only putting a case,’ he added, watching with apprehension the effect which his words were likely to produce upon the party to whom they were addressed.

‘And were I to receive such advice,’ said Herries, with the same composure as before–‘putting the case, as you say, Mr. Faggot–I should request to see the warrant which countenanced such a scandalous proceeding.’

Mr. Nicholas, by way of answer, placed in his hand a paper, and seemed anxiously to expect the consequences which were to ensue. Mr. Herries looked it over with the same equanimity as before, and then continued, ‘And were such a scrawl as this presented to me in my own house, I would throw it into the chimney, and Mr. Faggot upon the top of it.’

Accordingly, seconding the word with the action, he flung the warrant into the fire with one hand, and fixed the other, with a stern and irresistible grip, on the breast of the attorney, who, totally unable to contend with him, in either personal strength or mental energy, trembled like a chicken in the raven’s clutch. He got off, however, for the fright; for Herries, having probably made him fully sensible of the strength of his grasp, released him, with a scornful laugh.

‘Deforcement–spulzie-stouthrief–masterful rescue!’ exclaimed Peter Peebles, scandalized at the resistance offered to the law in the person of Nicholas Faggot. But his shrill exclamations were drowned in the thundering voice of Herries, who, calling upon Cristal Nixon, ordered him to take the bawling fool downstairs, fill his belly, and then give him a guinea, and thrust him out of doors. Under such injunctions, Peter easily suffered himself to be withdrawn from the scene.

Herries then turned to the Justice, whose visage, wholly abandoned by the rubicund hue which so lately beamed upon it, hung out the same pale livery as that of his dismayed clerk. ‘Old friend and acquaintance,’ he said, ‘you came here at my request on a friendly errand, to convince this silly young man of the right which I have over his person for the present. I trust you do not intend to make your visit the pretext of disquieting me about other matters? All the world knows that I have been living at large, in these northern counties, for some months, not to say years, and might have been apprehended at any time, had the necessities of the state required, or my own behaviour deserved it. But no English magistrate has been ungenerous enough to trouble a gentleman under misfortune, on account of political opinions and disputes which have been long ended by the success of the reigning powers. I trust, my good friend, you will not endanger yourself by taking any other view of the subject than you have done ever since we were acquainted?’

The Justice answered with more readiness, as well as more spirit than usual, ‘Neighbour Ingoldsby–what you say–is–eh–in some sort true; and when you were coming and going at markets, horse- races, and cock-fights, fairs, hunts, and such-like–it was–eh –neither my business nor my wish to dispel–I say–to inquire into and dispel the mysteries which hung about you; for while you were a good companion in the field, and over a bottle now and then–I did not–eh–think it necessary to ask–into your private affairs. And if I thought you were–ahem–somewhat unfortunate in former undertakings, and enterprises, and connexions, which might cause you to live unsettledly and more private, I could have–eh–very little pleasure–to aggravate your case by interfering, or requiring explanations, which are often more easily asked than given. But when there are warrants and witnesses to names–and those names, christian and surname, belong to–eh–an attainted person–charged–I trust falsely– with–ahem-taking advantage of modern broils and heart-burnings to renew our civil disturbances, the case is altered; and I must –ahem–do my duty.’

The Justice, got on his feet as he concluded this speech, and looked as bold as he could. I drew close beside him and his clerk, Mr. Faggot, thinking the moment favourable for my own liberation, and intimated to Mr. Foxley my determination to stand by him. But Mr. Herries only laughed at the menacing posture which we assumed. ‘My good neighbour,’ said he, ‘you talk of a witness. Is yon crazy beggar a fit witness in an affair of this nature?’

‘But you do not deny that you are Mr. Herries of Birrenswork, mentioned in the Secretary of State’s warrant?’ said Mr. Foxley.

‘How can I deny or own anything about it?’ said Herries, with a sneer. ‘There is no such warrant in existence now; its ashes, like the poor traitor whose doom it threatened, have been dispersed to the four winds of heaven. There is now no warrant in the world.’

‘But you will not deny,’ said the Justice, ‘that you were the person named in it; and that–eh–your own act destroyed it?’

‘I will neither deny my name nor my actions, Justice,’ replied Mr. Herries, ‘when called upon by competent authority to avow or defend them. But I will resist all impertinent attempts either to intrude into my private motives, or to control my person. I am quite well prepared to do so; and I trust that you, my good neighbour and brother sportsman, in your expostulation, and my friend Mr. Nicholas Faggot here, in his humble advice and petition that I should surrender myself, will consider yourselves as having amply discharged your duty to King George and government.’

The cold and ironical tone in which he made this declaration; the look and attitude, so nobly expressive of absolute confidence in his own superior strength and energy, seemed to complete the indecision which had already shown itself on the side of those whom he addressed.

The Justice looked to the clerk–the clerk to the Justice; the former HA’D, EH’D, without bringing forth an articulate syllable; the latter only said, ‘As the warrant is destroyed, Mr. Justice, I presume you do not mean to proceed with the arrest?’

‘Hum–aye–why, no–Nicholas–it would not be quite advisable– and as the Forty-five was an old affair–and–hem–as my friend here will, I hope, see his error–that is, if he has not seen it already–and renounce the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender–I mean no harm, neighbour–I think we–as we have no POSSE, or constables, or the like–should order our horses–and, in one word, look the matter over.’

‘Judiciously resolved,’ said the person whom this decision affected; ‘but before you go, I trust you will drink and be friends?’

‘Why,’ said the Justice, rubbing his brow, ‘our business has been–hem–rather a thirsty one.’

‘Cristal Nixon,’ said Mr. Herries, ‘let us have a cool tankard instantly, large enough to quench the thirst of the whole commission.’

While Cristal was absent on this genial errand, there was a pause, of which I endeavoured to avail myself by bringing back the discourse to my own concerns. ‘Sir,’ I said to Justice Foxley, ‘I have no direct business with your late discussion with Mr. Herries, only just thus far–You leave me, a loyal subject of King George, an unwilling prisoner in the hands of a person whom you have reason to believe unfriendly to the king’s cause. I humbly submit that this is contrary to your duty as a magistrate, and that you ought to make Mr. Herries aware of the illegality of his proceedings, and take steps for my rescue, either upon the spot, or, at least, as soon as possible after you have left this case’–

‘Young man,’ said Mr. Justice Foxley, ‘I would have you remember you are under the power, the lawful power–ahem–of your guardian.’

‘He calls himself so, indeed,’ I replied; ‘but he has shown no