CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING.

OUR village had few attractions to strangers, and many to "its own." The population of its twentyfive or twenty-six houses were intimately acquainted all with each, and each with all. It was the centre of our parish, but the noisy town, a short three miles' walk from us, carried away the trade. Our business was, therefore, upon a small scale; except the grave digger's, the session clerk's, and the minister's. The graveyard was a little hill formed by the dust of many generations. The church was old, yet it stood near the top of this solemn mound, which in parts rose more than four feet over its foundation. Thus we learned that a long time is required to make a pyramid of the dead, and of the grass that grows on graves, and fading, withers away again above them. The grass of our churchyard was not cropped, for we held it sacred, after a peculiar fashion. Around the place of the dead stood aged elms, in a stately row, like sentinels. They must have been older than the oldest house around them; and nobody remembered to have seen any change in their form or size. They had outlived the days of many families, and their roots, far beneath the grass, were twining in and out among the light brown dust of those who had planted them. Few persons ever examine human dust carefully, yet it is curiously fine and soft, having a colour of its own, of such a rich brown that no fuller on earth can imitate. The softness is like that of the silk, and its dye is unlike anything else whatever, when it is seen unmixed with the remains of coffins and common earth-never consecrated by the habitation of a soul, even for a very short season, and the longest life is a span, in comparison even to those years that are needed to make this handful of refined earth-more precious by much that cannot be calculated or told, than the gold of Ophir, or the precious stones of Havillah.

Our houses stood in the bottom of a wide bowl. Its upper edges were green and jagged with tall pines, that spread ont their broad arms in a gallant phalanx of leaves, to shelter us from all winds. The sides of the bowl consisted of little heights and howes, as if it had not been quite finished; and they were all divided into fields, full of farming wealth, and very rich in corn and cattle; but we, who were but boys, best liked the narrow paths, for the hedges and their flowers. We could see nothing beyond the tops of our hills, and there might have been two miles between them on any side, as a crow would fly, and many a crow did fly, so quickly that young folks often wished for wings to chase them. The birds, taking a bird's eye view of us, could not see a chink in the bowl, but there were three, and the waters crept in and out by them.

The founders of our hamlet planted it at the meeting of these waters, which were not very large, but they were very noisy, as if they had important business to do in the world; and so they had, too, for they fed the fairest trout we had ever caught, or that any of us will ever see, and by the help of the miller and his mill, they ground the corn. So they did not sing away their lives uselessly, under the shade of trees, so large that the stem was on one bank and the branches over the other, or rushing round green nooks, making little peninsulas, as they made islands and gulfs, to illustrate our geographies.

We had five slated houses and three roofed with tiles in our community, all the others were thatched, for many reasons, but with results more favourable to the busy sparrows and the twittering swallows, than any other animals, for their families were very numerous, and they could not make for themselves homesteads on casier terms than in a corner of our cottage eaves. Every house had its plot of ground, and each was called a garden; famous gardens they were for all edible vegetables, and some of the fruits and flowers. Our honeysuckle was unrivalled, our thyme was thick and flowery-myrtle rose in sweet smelling branches, that scented all the air-and we had many beds of marjory and mignionette-and roses that crept up among the ivy to the chimney-tops; while all the summer days, ten thousand busy bees gave thanks as they laboured, hymning, while they wrought, sweet gratitude for the profuse provision made for them; not that anything was secured to the idle, but everything to the industrious, for the bees are a strange people, with very radical notions, although they are the creatures on all the earth farthest from socialist opinions.

CHAPTER II.

THE MORES.

DR. MORE's house was at the extreme end of the village to the west. It was a large house, with a door flanked by two windows on each side on the lower floor, and three on the second flat, with two on the roof; and it had four on each gable, and four at the back-one of which was a very long staircase window.

It was thought that Mrs. More paid a ransom for air and light in these days, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer charged the consumers of heaven's direct gift, for leave to breathe and look about them. It may be deemed strange that in our retirement the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have been a recognised power; but the fact originated in this way-stray newspapers even from London came amongst us, after they had been read repeatedly in various families; yet we placed

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more reliance upon the county journals, which were published weekly, and we subscribed for one of each. We thus became acquainted with all the ongoings of the world. Sir Hudson Lowe, St. Helena, and Buonaparte were familiar names in our quarter then. The journals were not very large, yet they had many little anecdotes of the war; but we should not have forgotten it, even if nothing had been printed on the subject, for we had our share of living remembrancers, besides three widows in the parish, their little children, and Nancy Rose.

The reading of the newspapers was a weekly pleasure to the old, and a toil to the young. Mr. Hume lives in my own recollection as a question of compound addition nine inches long, by which my reasoning faculties were exercised, at nearly this same time. He made speeches fuller of millions than the lift was of stars in a clear night, after a snow storm in December. It was a sad and a trying thing to have to do with him or with the schoolmaster, when this official was very angry, happily for us all, and more than we deserved, a rare occurrence. An execution was a reprieve from the meshes of figures that were bird's-lime to young minds, and these woeful events were very common, for law was then so red-handed that men were hung for sheep stealing. In this way the existence of a window tax became known to those who paid none, and Mrs. More was generally pitied.

Nobody thought of Dr. More, so far as I could gather. He had been in the Indies, and got great gain by curing brown persons who had land that grew gold as rapidly as the Laird of Dubton's moss grew peats, and yet could not drive off the jaundice or some other name that griped them hard in spite of diamonds and pearls. In helping them he lost his own health, and was not commonly seen out of his garden, except on Sabbaths, when he sat in the long pew facing the pulpit, on the left hand, as we came in by the front door, and Mrs. More also sat there. He had been a large and stately man, but he was now in ruins, and I very well remember that he had an immense head, on which I overheard one of our elders, Peter Smith, who held the farm of the Rackets, say that the almond tree flourished, and I looked often in wonder at the mystery, which I never could comprehend-neither could I understand what kind of tree the almond was, until in after years it was explained to me while reading that finest poetry in all the world, the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes.

The pew belonging to Dr. More was like his house, far too large for the family, although they had three women servants, besides the Doctor's John; except when the Brocks came to stop there, of whom a large number seemed to exist, and who came from England. The Doctor's John said that they belonged to London, and the country boys looked upon them with a good degree of reverence on that account; but they never came to school with us, although we often met them fishing in the

water, and they were rather upsetting at first and not well liked. The origin of Mrs. More was never clearly traced, although several of her matronly neighbours spared no exertion to get the clue of the story, yet they could only catch a thread. The last minister's wife said that she was well connected; and she dined often at "the Place" when the lady was at home. She was a busy, bustling, little lady, fond of news, and of helping poor families, bringing cordials to the old, and jellies to the young, and carrying a bag full of blisters and plasters, and linen for bandages, and salves for cuts, and good advice from the Doctor; sending broth and chicken, and even port wine to ailing people, who were far from rich, and could hardly in sickness get any diet, without thinking of nourishing diet, which Dr. Groom always ordered, although he looked as if he never tasted it; and Mrs. More sent without orders. She was better than a paid and regular assistant to Dr. Groom, a spare, thin, young man then, although he has been turned of sixty, some years now; who consulted Dr. More when things looked ill with a patient in the parish; but he said very quietly, to one or two, that Mrs. More was a busybody and a plague of his life; although to the neighbours she seemed to be always busy doing good; and it would have ill become them to have inquired anything regarding her origin that she did not choose to tell, or how the Doctor and she came to stop 'at Kirkhowe, since they might have bought a home at Dalmellington, or taken Burnbank, which was just as near to Pitgowan, where he was born and bred, and where his cousin, Mr. More, lived still, as our place. So it was generally supposed that she had been originally a Miss Brock, for her young friends called her aunt—and that her coming away from home was no small loss to England, not but that England, as we all knew, had many ladies, yet could not have many so couthie, and kind, and willing to help, as Mrs. Doctor More.

Their house stood at the top of a long bank that swelled before the front door with its ample and gravelled carriage road, its trim rows of box, surrounding flowers and shrubs, until it hid the water to which it sunk shortly afterwards, and only left visible the branching foliage of the great trees which formed a screen of leaves; and all around the place was fenced by thick-set thorns, that made a more impregnable wall than ever mason built. The house was old enough to have histories and traditions connected with every room, although they were older than my time, for I neither recollect the Ainsleys nor the Greys; and the Greys lived there long before the Ainslies, for the latter inherited from them, and they came into it by a marriage with one of the daughters of "the Place," in the dour days when Popery, or at least Prelacy, was rampant in the land, being long before the rebellions-and the first of them had been passed by rather more than a whole century ere our years.

It was believed by old persons in Kirkhowe,

who heard the story from their grandfathers, and who were worthy of credit for these did not belong to families of gipsies or land-loupers, seeing they had been for so many years living on the same land, and were laid in the same cave of Machpelah -that the first Grey who came to Kirkhowe was a man of means from the south, who married the youngest of the Grahams at the place, before the troubles; and at that time he held with the Laird, but he became a Whig, and the Grahams were always friends to the Stewarts, for Montrose and Claverhouse belonged to them; and so a bitter coldness grew into enmity, as it always will do between friends; and when Mr. Grey went far south-east to Edinburgh, the Grahams threatened to lock up the Dowager-house, which was new then, and keep Mrs. Grey and her two bairus in custody, and starve them relentlessly, unless they would recant, although it was not likely that the children could have much sense of an ecclesiastical kind; yet at this time, broad dark spots were over all the land, and the lady's father and mother, brothers and sisters, watched the house at every outlet, and sat and counted beads in the ground floor, while their relatives starved above them. But a stout tree stood behind the house, and threw some branches so nearly over it, that after nightfall a stranger from the fishing village, seven miles nearly away, aided the mother to carry out her children by these branches, and so they escaped, the children in a creel, and the mother carrying it-in the usual dress of a fisher-woman. Long after they had gone away, the family, partly wondering at the stillness of the upper floor of the house, explored the premises, and finding them deserted, held that a curse had fallen on the renegades; but when peaceful times came back, they returned to their own. And in this way the large oak was called the bairnie's tree, and when a neighbour watched for something past waiting for, they had long irreverently said in Kirkhowe, and out of the Laird's hearing, that he kept the Graham's watch. The old house had more interesting stories of its own, but not so pleasing; for they had something to do with its being baunted, in more than one room; and yet no foundation existed for this vague opinion, that could not well have any foundation on the very edge of a grave yard; but yet it helped to scare away idle youths, who, without tickets-ofleave, might have endeavoured to possess them. selves of the riches of the grand old trees that bent and drooped in autumn beneath their wealth and weight of fruit.

CHAPTER III.

THE MANSE AND THE MINISTER.

THE manse was in many persons' eyes the most important dwelling in our village; and truly it was a house of a bien and substantial appearance, with two flats and attics; and a large kitchen, modestly

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retiring on one flank, corresponded with what might have been planned for a study upon the other; but our minister needed no study save flowers and trees-for he was a natural philosopher, and the place that kept the kitchen in countenance was now only an out-house, full of old nic-nacs, mineralogical specimens, nuts from Africa, palms from Jericho, and shells from the Pacificas if all quarters of the world had been ransacked for our parochial instruction. The tenant of the manse for life was, as the schoolmaster assured us, per se a man of a merry heart, as he certainly possessed a ruddy countenance, but then he looked at us per ecclesiam, and moved through the parish in holy orders, which had on him a dismal and dour influence, as if he thought the climax of all goodness consisted in being melancholy; only certain of our more elderly women hinted that he had come through sore tribulation, and Mrs. More once called him in my own hearing a most dignified perwhile Mrs. Buttry, who lived in a cottage within the policy, and should have known, as Mr. Buttry was upper servant at the Castle-as we sometimes called the Place-described him as a perfect gentleman. A rumour was prevalent that he was a profound scholar; and whatever he said upon the Sabbath days was so profound that I had heard him long before I understood any part of it.

son,

Geology and radicalism began to creep into our parish together, at or near to this time-and, for evidence thereof, when one day the minister told us ex cathedra, or ex rostro, that our limestone was just the corpses of many little animals, of which there might be thirteen or fourteen millions in a pound weight, John Robb, the mason, denied the assertion, in the graveyard, to more than twenty people, adding that, having wrought among lime for twenty years, he had never seen the body of one of those animals, and he should know; and David Petrie, who had been schoolmaster of the parish for forty-eight years, said "ne sutor ultra crepi dam "-which one of our ladies, without a bonnet, in a cap and plaid, declared "left nae ae word to be said atween them,' but whether David Petrie ne sutor" for mason or minister is more than I ever knew.

meant "

The manse stood upon a little hill, between the burn and the water, with a steep bank down to the burn on one side, and a steep brae down to the water on the other. A natural division was thus formed between the flower and the kitchen garden, both of which were beautified by manifold bushes, in single clumps, like sentinels; or set in hedges, like soldiers in a line ready to charge. Over and above all rose pines and yews-dark trees looking evermore as if they were in mourning; and blythesome birches, glad and green- and long tapering ashes, and the three great oaks, that the monks planted, when they heard for certain that Edward Longshanks had gone to that dreadful account which was bespoken for him by his Scotch enemies, for reason of his ambition and cruelty.

The inmates of the manse consisted of the

minister's man, two women servants, who had been there since the minister came to the place, and for years before that day, as they were servants in the old family, who were out of my recollection, seeing, indeed, they had left for the town before my arrival in the world. The manse was not an extremely attractive place by itself; and the character of its principal inmate seemed to make garden and all dark-even in the sunshine; because we understood him not. All the apples upon one large trec, the best bearer in the garden, were sent regularly to the old family, for, according to the minister's man, that tree belonged originally to the lady of the manse; yet it was curious that in some seasons it alone had fruit, and all the others missed-either from the frosts in May, or the worms in June, or some other cause, not so easily known. Few alterations were ever made in the garden. By inches yearly the standard trees stretched and swelled, and such other changes occurred as nature effected; but there was no overturning or reforming in a general way, for the walks ran where they had originally been struck; and very nearly the same place was occupied by the flowrets and herbs then that they had filled twenty years before. Beneath the cold stern look of the minister the heart was warm, and he could not bear to put man or vegetable out of an old place. This current of hidden kindness was compared, by David Petrie, to the wells of the desert, although as I, in after years, understood, the simile was not characterised by the usual accuracy of Mr. Petrie's illustrations, forasmuch as the desert streamlets run deep, and take hard coaxing and digging to draw to the light; whereas, the minister's good-heartedness was close to the surface, and breaking through continually, so that, if the comparison had been altogether true, the desert would have been blossoming before the patriarch's time. Still, this fact did not keep us from thinking that the man servant was cross, both the women servants crabbed, the master dour-like, and the manse a darksome, dull place, where nobody was to laugh or sing, and such a thing as play was never heard of, so that all the school crept quietly past and round the garden wall, and held their breath for a time, not from any particularly nervous affection, but only the atmosphere of the place. One circumstance gave heart to the manse, and . character among the school-children to the minister, for they could not help loving anybody who lived near to Nancy Rose, and she was the light of the minister's dwelling.

CHAPTER IV.

MISS NANCY.

Ir is not a digression, but in the common course of my narrative, that I should tell out her story here, and the reasons why she swayed the school in some measure, and the village childhood

completely, with a most loveable authority. What a world of woe has come upon this earth since these days, and a great multitude of those who were strong and young then, have gone away to her country; and many more to that land where her home cannot be. And through various changes, some thick with gloom, and others light with hope, through far lands and strange people have my own feet wandered since then, yet that memory is fresh, like the green emerald that never fades, and warm at my heart, like a July evening as the sun goes down behind Cairndhu, and colours all its darkness with the deep purple of a summer day's death among the heather. No human being walks through the world in a struggle against his own sin and its temptations, without meeting green fields in the waste, and where fields are green there are those who till them. Some believe the poet who wrote that" the darkest night is not all dark," and others, that happiness in life is distributed equally, which I believe not. So it has been to me, however, that the cloud has been followed by the blink, and the shower by the sunshine. Yet, having seen the strong become weak, and the countenance of friends changed, the bright eye closed, the red cheek turn to wan, and the ruddy lip wax white very many times, it seems strange that this one memory should be brighter and more like life than all the others. Multitudes carry down to the grave two or three memories in that way, so very clear that the lost come up to the mind more vivid than the living, who were parted from but one half-hour. Chiefly they belonged to the dreamer's family, or to the early loved, and may be lost. It was morally impossible that I had been in love with Miss Nancy, who was not then nearly through with my first seven years, and had taken up with Betsy Martin, who helped my mother, and was well over thirty years, as my prime favourite, for substantial reasons, which it might be a shame to confess, except to clear away that other suspicion, since they were altogether selfish, and originated in faggots of bread, with occasional additions.

Still, as the straw bonnet of a chipped pattern, black and white, in which the colours fell into each other like the teeth of a saw; the skyblue velvet, narrow, like a ribbon, that bound it; the grey cloak, not more than half the usual length, according to the fashion of Kirkhowe; the hood with its lining of crimson silk; the little basket; the braided fair hair, the deep blue eyes, the placid face, of which we thought not whether it were or were not beautiful, for it was always smiling—are remembered like the things of yesterday-the owner must have been very loveable.

She was then always known as Miss Nancy, and at this spring time she had been for ten years a resident of Kirkhowe, to which she was brought from one of the Indies, while a very little girl, in her tenth year or thereby, although of that I remember nothing. To me she seemed always fair and tall, and not like a person connected in any way with the Indies. She had neither brother nor

sister-and of her family and parents we heard nothing. The post-master sent our letters to Mrs. Grey's, who was no connexion to the Grey family already named; and she remarked that large letters came to Miss Nancy from foreign parts, for which more money than the day's wages of a tradesman was charged; and the address of some of them was in a very neat female hand, like those sent away by Mrs. More, or others that came to the Place.

Thereafter the letters had very deep black on the edge of the paper, but no black sealing wax, for they were never fastened in that way, and those of the beautiful female hand came no more. At that time Miss Nancy went into very deep mourning, and the lady, her governess, left soon after wards and never returned-for her pupil's education was completed; but after a long period, she had forsaken gradually her raiment of woe, which I cannot clearly recollect; and I only gathered up these facts, as they were told, at different times, in the ordinary course of idle conversation in which old people engage, often supposing that the young cannot understand their secrets. The minister always wore black clothes, and as it was not common then to put servants in mourning when a bereavement occurred, nothing was known in that way respecting his connexion with the far-travelled letters.

CHAPTER V.

THE LAW OF KINDNESS.

MISS NANCY was a great help to Mrs. More, in dealings with the sick and the young; for that lady could not understand the young so well, because a long time had passed since she had been at school. It was no doubt true that Mrs. More had also taught the younger lady many things, and sometimes they went from home together, for only a few days. It would have been a serious business if anything uncommon had occurred then-for David Petrie had a strong conviction of the value of his strop, as a system, though he was a good-natured man, and Mr. Green was only his occasional assistant, and had not overmuch authority. I have read in books often since then of the law of kindness, but it differed little in any way from the transactions of Miss Nancy with her young friends, as she called us, although David Petric grumbled sometimes when she sought pardon for a careless boy, and especially for a girl who had displeased the master; and which he could not well refuse, she being, as it were, in the place of a daughter to the minister, and he had none other; but the master spoke to himself always on these occasions of revolutions and friends of the people, saying that Miss Nancy was "a friend of the people "and it would not do to let over much with her; and he used to argue with Mr. Green on the subject, who was always for giving good advice instead of

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making a warning. Moreover, Miss Nancy was as good as a bursary, so to speak, or an endowment to the school, for she gave the children little teadrinkings in the winter, and fruit and nuts in summer, and books and pictures at all times, which she called prizes, only we all gained prizes somehow, all the village infancy, at any rate. She also taught us occasionally, and sometimes she would read the Bible lesson to us, and it seemed easy when she read, for she had a way of speaking that made the words be understood.

Upon the Sabbath mornings, before the bell rang, she collected a class in her own room, in the house, of girls-and then, in the afternoons, she had a younger class of boys in the room at the church, to which I belonged, being rather under the age of Mr. Green's class in the school on that day. Kirkhowe was indebted to our Indian visitor for these innovations, as they were once considered, and for its pre-eminence in education over all the other parishes around, and even the town. A stout wrestle occurred between the new and the old world before these changes were homologated by the authorities. We lived in dangerous times, and it was the opinion of Mr. McDonald, who was the Laird's grieve, that all alterations savoured of Radicalism. This was his view, and Mr. Buttry's also, who was supposed to speak for the whole Place. A meeting of the heads of the parish, being the two officials aforesaid, the schoolmaster, three elders, and the minister, with Dr. More, occurred to consider the critical position of affairs; and, on account of the weakness of the Doctor, who could neither walk far nor fast, it was held in his drawing-room, to the profit of Mr. Green, who being a discreet young man, often took tea with Mrs. More and any of her young friends in that little back parlour, which looked by a bow window to the north-west, and was comfortable in summer time, when the sun was going down. chanced that he was there that afternoon, not by way of eaves-dropping, which, of course, would not have been permitted by Mrs. More; but they could not avoid hearing what was loudly spoken, and neither could Miss Rose, who complained that she was in an improper position; but except by the window, and that was one flat from the ground, there was no way out unless through the great room. By this meaus Mr. Green was able to relate in after times nearly all that was spoken, but as Dr. More cut all arguments very short, and was clear for his wife's side, the discussion did not last very long, and the substance was that he pressed Mr. McDonald and Mr. Buttry for the reason of their interference, and whether they had or had not any letters from Mr. Augustus Blacker Eustace Cochrane upon the subject, and they had none. Then it appeared that the Doctor had, and he read from them that in Mr. A. B. E. Cochrane's opinion, no harm could possibly come from reading the Bible, and if any young ladies could be found willing to teach the children, they werc, in his view of the matter, occupying their time in a most

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It