old beau, eh?" was his query, for my face flushed as I glanced at the familiar name upon the card which he handed me. "Don't be a-flirtin' with him all day to-morrow. I want you to bring out Baby Violet in some new song; haven't had her on to-night on purpose; have kept her back as principal attraction for the second night.' The next morning was the very happiest of my life, for Jamie called, and when I explained that real pinching poverty had driven me to this occupation he did not seem to think it strange at all, but replied, with a tenderer thrill than usual in his cheery voice, "It's all a seesaw, isn't it? The world goes up and the world goes down. Last year you were rich and I poor; now, by a strange fate for which I have not felt in the least thankful, I am the probable heir to a large fortune. I have not cared for it hitherto, but now this probability, which is so strong that it amounts to a certainty, enables me to come to the woman I love and ask her to be my wife. I loved you in Scotland, but I was too poor to marry, and the only prospect before me then was one of grinding toil." "I We talked together until the gong sounded for dinner, building air-castles on the ancestral lands in Scotland. am glad if you will enjoy this, Laura," he said to me as we parted: 66 as for myself, I would gladly renounce this fortune if by so doing I could save the life of one very dear to me, my cousin Effie, who is the rightful heir to it all." "Can nothing save her?" I asked. "Nothing but a miracle." All that afternoon Mrs. Flack and I worked over Wee Joukydaidles. I was determined at last that she should appear in Scotch costume and sing a Scotch song. Mrs. Flack's needle flew through the pretty plaids, and before night the baby's suit, with a cap decorated with gay feathers, was finished, and Wee Joukydaidles was transformed into a bewitching Highland laddie. I had intended teaching her but one song, but she caught the first with such marvellous quickness that it seemed as if she must have been familiar with it, and I gave her a second. I was to sing with her, thus helping her memory; and the songs I had selected were two that I had sung with Jamie long ago. I knew that he would remember them, and I wanted him to be interested in the child. At the last moment Captain Flack asked to hear them. He was not pleased, though the costume was exceedingly becoming and the child sang remarkably well. "After this," he said, “you will consult me before carrying your preparations to such an extent.' I glanced from the corners of my eyes at Jamie as Wee Joukydaidles came upon the stage, and saw him start violently; but my attention was immediately absorbed by the song. This time I did not join in it, for the child's voice, with its spice of brogue, rose sweet and clear in the words, Oh, wha's at the window? Wha? wha? To tak' bonny Jeanie awa', awa'. He has plighted his troth, and a', and a'. And sae has she dune, By a' that's abune, For he loes her, she loes him, 'bune a', 'bune a'. It's no that she's Jamie's, ava, ava, That my heart is sae eerie When a' the lave's cheerie, The second song, called for by loud and long encores, was that sweet old love song, Oh, my love is like a red red rose That's sweetly played in tune. Though it were ten thousand mile! As we left the hall that evening I was not surprised to find Jamie waiting to escort me to the hotel, but I could not account for his being agitated and even excited. "Could you love me just the same, Laura," he asked, "if the fortune I spoke of should never be mine? God knows that it was not with any intention of deceiving you or winning you with false pretences that I mentioned it." "Oh, have you heard from your cousin?" I exclaimed joyfully; "is there hope?" "I think that she will live," he replied solemnly; and then, as it seemed to me, changing the subject rather abruptly, he asked me to tell him all I knew about the little singer of that evening, Baby Violet. I was only too glad to confide my long-pent surmises to some one, but I was none the less astonished to hear from his lips the missing part of the child's history. What was to be done? Captain Flack proposed leaving on the next day for some town in Kentucky. There were no police-officers or detectives in the little village in which we were. We were afraid to wait for slow legal processes. Wee Joukydaidles slept with me, and I readily assented to Jamie's proposal to elope with him that night, carrying the child with us. "I will have a carriage at the door at twelve o'clock. By fast driving we can reach Dayton in time for the threeo'clock express. I will telegraph for a minister to be at the station, if you say so, but I would rather wait until we reach Vermont and be married at Aunt Janet's." On the whole, this plan seemed to be best, owing to the difficulty in procuring a license, and my desire to have my mother present at the wedding. And so, noiselessly, tremblingly, like a couple of culprits, we stole away Wee Joukydaidles. Happening by a strange chance to look over a California newspaper a week later, I saw an advertisement of what I was confident was the captain and his family, though under an entire change of name. To have reached California by the date of the newspaper, I calculated that they must have left the very morning after our departure and have travelled without stopping. Evidently we had been fleeing from each other. The joy of our reception is beyond my power to describe. We had not dared to telegraph our coming until we were within a few miles of the Quarries, for fear that some unforeseen accident should snatch the baby from our grasp; and VOL. V. N. 8.-4 Effie only received the announcement, "Wee Joukydaidles is found," a few moments before the child was placed in her arms. The news spread instantly, all work was suspended, and the inhabitants of the place flocked to the Macauley cottage. Old Auley, with outstretched arms, gave vent to his emotions in the language of Scripture, quoting in his own native Gaelic, all unconscious that it was not understood by the majority of his hearers, the passage in our Lord's beautiful parable in which the father exults over the recovery of the son who "was dead and is alive again." "Oir bha mo mhac so marbh, agus tha e brò a ris; bha e cailtte, agus fhuaradh e. Agus thoisch iad air bhi subhach," he exclaimed, in the grand old language now so rapidly passing away; and then, as though the last words, and they began to be merry," had turned his head, or because his mood had changed from an intensely solemn one to another of as intense hilarity, he began to caper about like mad, executing with the utmost precision, and at the same time with incredible rapidity, all the difficult passes of the Highland Fling. When the news' was first conveyed to Janet, the woman of the iron will showed herself possessed of less presence of mind or self control than her daughter, for she fainted away outright. When she came to herself and hurried to the sheiling, she found it noisy with mirth, for Blaikie Clangrundle had brought his bagpipes, and was playing a lilt, while the company were organizing for the "Reel of Tullochgorum," with Wee Joukydaidles and Jamie Glen at the head. But old Auley would not agree to such disrespect of age and rank, as for a baby to lead that reel while an older and nobler lady was in the room was, as he expressed it, "letting things a' gang tapsalteerie." And, as so often in the days long since gone by, he solicited and obtained the honor of leading the reel with "Leddy Janet Cockpen.' Very gravely and statelily Janet performed her steps, lowlily she "bobbit"-or courtesied—to her Scotland; but Jamie is fast becoming a "brin body," or comfortably well off, and we are very happy. I think Aunt Janet has a kindly feeling for me, for she once gave it as her opinion that I was a "douce, sympatheezin' lassie," though a wee hard-favored, and too much gi'en to girn" (or grin) to girn" (or grin) "to hide the bigness of my mou'.' But I do not mind my own plainness, for we have a handsome baby-boy, who, Janet says, is a "hardy loon" and will make "braw lad." a When we all meet at Effie's on the Though the storm rattles o'er us, Wi' the light lilting chorus. LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY. JOHN BROWN AT DUTCH HENRY'S CROSSING. ABOUT sunset on the 24th of May, 1856, a young man, over whom some great storm of excitement was evidently sweeping, hurried toward his father's cabin, which stood on the banks of the Pottawatomie, a small river in Eastern Kansas, near a ford known as Dutch Henry's Crossing. What invests this otherwise insignificant event with no small degree of interest, what suggests and justifies its rescue from an oblivion of twenty-six years, lies in its relation to a debatable passage in the border career of John Brown. This youth, a surveyor by profession, minutely acquainted with the topography of the surrounding country, whose knowledge, therefore, could be turned to good account in the partisan war of which it was then the theatre,-had attached himself to the person and fortunes of the old chieftain. Two days before, he had set out upon an expedition to the North that promised to consume considerable time, but this pleasant May evening found him at home and the possessor of a startling secret, or one that would have been startling in any ordinary condition of society. The Dutch Henry's Crossing of this present year of grace is a paradise of rural peace and happiness. The fiercest sounds I heard during a somewhat prolonged visit to that region were the clatter of agricultural machinery and the fervent hallelujahs of a holiness campmeeting. Here quiet and security seem to have reached their utmost limit. The Pottawatomie-half limpid, with slighter mixtures of discoloring mud than any Kansas stream that I have seen-winds languidly between beautifully-shaded banks toward the Marais des Cygnes. The vast fields of corn and wheat, with their picturesque borders of orange hedge, lie mapped upon the rolling prairie in every direction, As quietly as spots of sky The Dutch Henry's Crossing of 1856 -the inaugural year of a vast social and political revolution in our countrystands out in polar antithesis to all this Arcadian repose. Then there was no law but force, no rule but violence, in the Territory of Kansas. Then civilization lapsed for a time into utter anarchy. A veritable reign of terror was inaugurated. Marauders were prowling about in whose eyes nothing was sacred that stood in the way of their passions. The opposing factions into whose hands the question of slavery or no slavery for Kansas had fallen hunted each other like wolves. Pistol-shots and swordslits were the prevailing style of argument. In such an era of disturbance, when the elements of society ground and clashed in confused collision, it is not strange that the disclosures carried to the cabin on the Pottawatomie and detailed in the presence of the assembled household on that pleasant May evening should have awakened scarcely a ripple. of excitement. It stirred the listeners hardly more than the announcement of a wolf-hunt or of a new constitutional convention would have done,-these tidings of an impending tragedy singing in the upper air. Well, I don't know but it will be for the best," was the first comment that broke the silence when the young man finished his story. The intelligence which fell almost flat upon the Pottawatomie circle-greeted by no explosions of horror-was to the effect that a pro-slavery settlement in the neighborhood would be raided that very night; that certain men, conspicuous in fomenting the border troubles, leaders and abettors of the other side, would be seized and summarily executed; that John Brown, having organized the foray, had communicated his plans to the young surveyor, but forbidden his participation in their execution. "I do not wish you to go with us," said the old man. "That might involve your friends in trouble. Go home; show yourself there, so that there may be no question in the matter. You must shield your family from all suspicion of complicity in the affair. That night the savage work was done. In the morning there were five dead pro-slavery squatters at Dutch Henry's Crossing. But how did it happen that John Brown, who has woven his name inextricably into the history of human liberty, who by his life and death almost created an epoch in the history of civilization, should strike down his enemies, or rather the enemies of the cause he represented, by stealth and under cover of darkness? The mystery that brooded so long over this sanguinary affair has lifted at last, and it can now be traced step by step from inception to conclusion. The capture and sack of Lawrence on the 21st of May marked a climax in one phase of the border struggle in Kansas. That town was the head-quarters of the abolitionists, and their opponents naturally regarded it with special hatred. Its destruction was hailed with acclamations throughout the slave States. The leader of the gang that burned it, as he watched the swift progress of the conflagration, swore with a tremendous oath that it was the happiest day of his life. John Brown went to Lawrence a few days before the catastrophe, to talk over the situation with his friends. Eight hundred Southerners were mustering for the campaign. They had come from They had come from Georgia, from Mississippi, and the Carolinas, as well as from States nearer at hand, to wipe out the fanatics who were troubling their peculiar institution. The Free-State leaders met in solemn council, John Brown among them. The question of policy, of tactics to be pursued in this grave emergency, was instant, imperative. What could be done? Did wisdom lie along the path of finesse or of fighting? Compromise or Sharps rifles, which promised the happier results? A strong peace sentiment was rife, and finally carried the day,-carried it against the strenuous opposition of John Brown. The decision not to fight, but to attempt conciliatory measures, seemed to him midsummer madness. and he was not careful to disguise his sentiments. Brown's Kansas home was at Osawatomie, not far from Dutch Henry's Crossing, where a claim had been taken and a cabin built. On leaving Lawrence, he seems to have set out for this place in an unhappy frame of mind. The journey had been nearly accomplished when he encountered half a hundred of his friends and neighbors, armed to the teeth, who had heard that Lawrence was in trouble, and were hastening to the rescue. The sight cheered him, and he immediately joined the expedition. But he had scarcely faced about and begun to retrace his steps when gloomy news came in from the front: Lawrence had fallen ; there was nothing to be done. The courier from the front had but just finished his discouraging story when a scout from the rear-from the vicinity of Dutch Henry's Crossing—dashed into camp. He, too, had something to say which would interest the eager group that crowded about him. In attempting the rescue of Lawrence, these men had left their own homes defenceless. A deficiency had been discovered in the ammunition after the expedition was fairly under way. The scout had volunteered to return and secure fresh supplies. Powder and lead could be obtained at a little country store which a feeble, superannuated old man by the name of Morse kept. The trader stood in the door of his shop when the scout came up. "What shall I do?" he asked, evidently in great alarm and distress. "What's the matter?" inquired the scout. "Why," he replied, "some pro-slavery men who live here were in my store this morning and ordered me to leave the country in twenty-four hours. They swore that they would drive every abolitionist out of this region. They boasted that a band of Missourians was coming to put the business through,-that the Yankees found here after the expiration of the period of grace would fare hard. What shall I do?" |