The House on the Moor. Volume 1

Horace shrunk for a moment in mingled rage and amazement from the tone. It was inconceivable to him that anybody could feel even an instant’s contempt for him; but the feeling was momentary.

“Then he does desire that I should not know it!” he exclaimed, with a certain triumph – and set his teeth over the admission, as if this at least was something gained.

“I did not say so,” said the Colonel, with some embarrassment. “I said if – No, Horace, if you wish to investigate into all the secrets of your family, go to your father, and ask him – he is the proper judge of what should or should not be told you. At least, if you don’t admit that, he is at least the most proper person to be asked; and till he has refused to satisfy you, you have no right to apply to any one else. Take my advice – be honest and straightforward – it is the shortest way and the clearest: ask himself.”

“Ask himself! Do you know the terms we are on, uncle?” said Horace, with a smile.

“So much the worse for you both – and long enough that has lasted, surely,” said the Colonel. “The past is no man’s, the future is every man’s: I say to you again, that has lasted long enough! Ask himself, and let the mystery and the strife end together. It is the only honest way to clear your difficulties up.”

Once more Horace smiled – a smile of disappointment and anger – baffled and furious; while the Colonel went on with his honest, simple advice, exhorting the young man to candour and openness – he might as well have exhorted him to be Prime Minister – while Horace, for his part, kept silent, perceiving, once for all, that whether it was from mere foolishness, or some principle of character unknown to him, his uncle was impracticable, and that the only way to find anything out from him was to lie in wait for the unguarded admissions which, in spite of himself, might fall from his lips.

“After all,” said Colonel Sutherland, when he had concluded his good, honest advice to his own satisfaction, “what has all this to do with it? You are tired of inactivity and quiet, as a young man ought to be; you want to set out upon the world. Of course, your father cannot object to this; and as for me, all that I can do to forward it I will, heartily. But, Horace, setting out on the world does not mean anything vague, my lad. It means doing, or aiming at, some special thing – some one special thing, my dear boy. We can’t go out to conquer the world now-a-days – it must be a profession, or business, or a place, or something; so I’ll tell you what to do. Think it well over – what you said to me about having no inclinations. Sit down by yourself, and find out if there is not a special turn one way or other in some corner of your heart, and let us hear what it is. After that the way will be clear; we must look for an opening for you, and,” added Colonel Sutherland, after a little pause, and speaking with hesitation, “if you should then – wish for – my services with your father, why then, Horace – though we are not the best friends in the world – I’ll try my best.”

“Thank you,” said Horace, with sullenness, which he tried vainly to repress – “thank you, uncle. I will do as you say.”

The conversation then came to an end, Horace fuming over it secretly as a failure – and the young man had so high an idea of his own powers, that the thought galled him deeply. Then, after an unsatisfactory interval of indefinite conversation, which Horace could not keep up, and which the Colonel – tired, disheartened, and perplexed – sustained but dully, the young man got up and bade him “good night.” Colonel Sutherland went down to the door of the inn, half with a simple precaution to see him safely out of the “temptation” of that “low company” which Horace had owned to seeking, and half by suggestion of that kindness which could not bear to see any one discouraged. “Think it well over,” urged the Colonel once more, “and expect me to-morrow; and be cheerful, and keep up your heart, Horace. There’s plenty of room for you in the world, and plenty of force in yourself. Good night, my dear boy – good night.”

CHAPTER X

WHEN Horace Scarsdale left the lights of the village behind him, and took his way through the black roads towards Marchmain, he carried with him a burden of thoughts rather different from those which accompanied him here. Though his was neither a noble nor a sweet development of youth, still youth was in him, as in others, heroical and absolute. It is impossible to reduce to description the kind of fortune he had planned for himself; for, indeed, he had planned nothing, except a general self-glorification and domination over the world.

His uncle’s advice to him, to ascertain how his likings inclined, and make choice of some profession or employment precise and definite, humiliated and offended him unawares. His fancies had not condescended to any such particularity. He had an impression on his mind, how acquired he could not tell, that his father wronged him, and that it was only necessary for him to be aware of their true circumstances to set him at once beyond the common necessities of life. This conviction, however, he had never betrayed to any one; and Colonel Sutherland’s recommendation, which implied the restraints of labour and something to do, was not over-palatable to the young man brought up in idleness.

He was too old to begin the study of a profession, and when he thought of the laborious days and confined existence of men who have their own way to make in the world, secret rage and mortification took possession of Horace. Was this all that remained for him? – was this the life which he must look forward to? – was there nothing better in the future than this? He had no desire to choose his means of living, his manner of work – his thoughts eluded the subject when it was presented to him – it was easier to brood over a mysterious wrong, and dream of sudden revelations which should change everything in a moment. At the same time, his intellect was sufficiently clear to show him that contempt was likely to follow any exhibition of these feelings of his – he himself, as he reflected on it, fumed at himself with silent disgust.

Then he had failed to influence Colonel Sutherland as he expected – everything had failed in the absolute fashion – he could no longer carry matters, even to himself, with the high hand of dominant youthful unreason and disregard of things and men: – even things that pleased him took a definite, particular, and limited form, and came under conditions which made them distasteful. Already he began to perceive that the language and manner, which did very well for his alehouse companions, was not practicable in such society as that of his uncle; and unaware as yet how to acquire a more successful tone, fell into deep and angry mortification on the subject. He had not impressed upon Colonel Sutherland a high idea of his spirit, his energy, and his intellect, as Horace had intended to do; but had only conveyed the idea of a presumptuous and ignorant youth to the mind of his uncle. He felt this with a humiliation out of which he drew no humility. It was not so easy as he supposed, to see through and dominate over even so simple a character as that of Colonel Sutherland.

But it did not occur to Horace that his uncle’s plain simplicity and truthfulness was, in fact, the only thing in the world which could not be dominated over by the most splendid superiority of intellect. He supposed it was only his own ignorance, and inexperience, and want of address – deficiencies mortifying enough to acknowledge certainly, but not so mortifying as the entire incapacity either to comprehend or to influence. He had time enough to think over all these things, as he made his way through the lonely, dreary country roads, and across the moor.

This day, and this meeting, and the opening of his close heart even so far, had flashed into life the smouldering fire in the mind of Horace. He strode on with long, rapid steps, thinking it scarcely possible that he could contain himself within the miserable hermitage of Marchmain, even for a night. He went along pondering schemes to surprise the secret from his uncle, in spite of this first failure; and, intoxicated by the first realization of freedom, to imagine himself altogether free, his own master, triumphing over the world. But among these fancies there mingled neither a desire nor any attempt to ascertain, as Colonel Sutherland said, “his own inclinations,” or to decide upon what he should do. He said quite truly, when he reported of himself, that he had no inclinations which concerned labour or a profession, and even in his own thoughts he evaded that question. He could think closely, when the matter was to find out, from his uncle’s unsuspicious temper, his father’s secret; but not when the thing to determine was the needful labour of his own life.

Meanwhile, Susan sat silent in her father’s presence, longing for the return of Horace, picturing him to herself seated opposite to her uncle, free to say what he would, opening his heart under those genial looks, bringing home kind thoughts and kind messages, sunned and mellowed by that unsuspected love which had developed all the wonderful possibilities of a new life to herself. Even Susan could not sit still to-night – her patchwork had lost its attraction for her – her thoughts rose too fast, and were too numerous, to make her ordinary quiet possible. In spite of herself, and even unawares to herself, she was no longer the noiseless girl who sat hushed for hours, opposite to that rigid figure with the little reading-desk and open book. To her own amazement, she caught herself once humming an incipient tune as she sat over her work; and after a while found it impossible to sit still, and moved about with an involuntary restlessness, finding little matters to arrange in all the corners of the room, chairs to place differently, the curtains to be drawn closer, the fire to be stirred, something to keep her in motion, and express, by that only means permitted to her, the unaccustomed stir and commotion in her own heart. And what was even more remarkable, Mr. Scarsdale himself seemed to have an instinctive perception of this, and to be somehow moved in his own calm. A close observer might have perceived that he no longer travelled by mechanical accuracy from beginning to end of his page – that the leaves were tamed less regularly, and that his eyes were fixed upon the upper margin of his book, sometimes for half an hour together, while he watched, without looking at her, his daughter’s movements, and heard the faint rustle of her hushed motion about the room. He divined the cause, and knew the emotion in her heart, with a strange and bitter certainty. He was aware by intuition that all the affection, and confidence, and filial warmth which he had never sought, had sprung up in an instant to meet the touch of another who had not the same natural claim as he; and the forlorn man grew more forlorn by the knowledge, and perhaps even once for an instant hesitated whether he should not, at this last moment, open his heart to his child, his wife’s daughter, the only woman of the family. Somehow these words returned to him unawares. Mr. Scarsdale was not of the kind of man who is much influenced by women. Sympathy was an offence rather than a pleasure to him – he had none to bestow and he sought none. Consolations of affection he scarcely distinguished from intrusions of impertinence, and there was no soil on which tenderness could grow in his rocky nature. But if he had little affection, he had a perennial envy in his heart. He could not bear that another man should obtain anything which seemed by right to belong to himself. The idea that his wife’s brother had already possessed himself of Susan’s heart, more than he, her father, had done during her whole life, galled him bitterly; so much, that in that moment of indecision, while he held his book in his hands as though he would have closed it, the impulse had actually come upon him to put confidence in Susan, and so win her over, once for all, to his side, and shut out the less legitimate claimant on her affection.

The only woman of the family! It was his daughter whom Edward Sutherland made this claim of affection on – it was a piece of his property which the new comer appropriated; and Mr. Scarsdale had almost been moved out of himself to secure the filial heart which he cared not for, yet which it galled him to see claimed by any other. But nature conquered the sudden thought; he set his book once more steadily open upon his little desk – he made his heart bitter and hard – a forced and painful smile came upon his lip; within himself he recalled, half unawares, some of those words of contemptuous sarcasm against women, by which some men revenge themselves for some woman’s misdeeds. But it made him colder, harder, more forlorn and solitary, in spite of himself. His son, whom he had always treated as an enemy, was with his brother-in-law; his daughter, though here in bodily presence, was with that intruder also in her heart. He was alone, alone – always alone; a jealous, envious, morbid rage deepened the shade upon his face; the love was nothing to him – but he gnashed his teeth to see it enjoyed by another.

When Horace returned – and they could hear his summons at the door, and Peggy’s tardy opening – he did not come into the dining-room, but went upstairs at once; sending a message to Susan, to her great disappointment, that he was tired with his walk from Tillington, and was going to rest. Mr. Scarsdale did not retire till a much later hour than usual that night; and when he did, made Susan precede him by a few minutes, that he might see her shut up in her own room, and prevent all communication with her brother. He persuaded himself that they were in a conspiracy against him, and roused his temper with the thought; he spoke more harshly to Susan than he had ever done before in her recollection, and sent her to her own room in tears. Tears! – miserable woman’s play of pretended suffering! – at least he was beyond the weakness of being deceived by it; and he smiled bitterly to himself, as he went to his own comfortless rest, thinking on the smiles which would greet her uncle. Unjust fate! unnatural nature! – for these smiles were his, and belonged to him – yet he could not prevent the kind looks of a stranger from stealing this property away.

And Susan cried herself to sleep, with hopes and happy anticipations taking the bitterness out of the tears; and Horace sat in his room, where he had hastily extinguished his candle on hearing approaching footsteps – as little inclined to see Susan as his father was that he should; pondering his wiles for overcoming his uncle. Only last night the house had been undisturbed in its unchanging life; now everything was commotion, disturbance, new efforts and hopes, a changed aspect of existence: and all from the advent of that guileless old soldier, who, waking in the night with his twinges of rheumatism, his fears that his bed had not been aired, and his deeper perplexity and pain about his sister’s children, mixed these different troubles altogether, with a hazy mist of oppression and distress in his mind as he turned his head towards the wall, and sank into a heavy sleep.

CHAPTER XI

COLONEL SUTHERLAND was out of doors early next morning, as was his wont. The weather had improved, the sun was shining, the fells rose dewy and fresh through the air and distance, the whole face of the country was changed. The Colonel strayed along the country road, with his unusual burden on his mind, yet making such minute, half-conscious observations of external nature as were usual to him; pausing to examine the hedges, to pinch a bud upon a branch, and make involuntary comparison between the progress of the spring at home and here; noting the primrose-tufts which began to appear in the hedgeside herbage, soft green leaves still curled up in their downy roll; and making unconscious memorandums in his mind of the early notes of birds already to be heard among the branches. Everything was early this year, he thought to himself, as with a calm and placid pleasure he enjoyed the air, the light, and the cold yet dewy and sparkling freshness of the morning. In the calm of his age this old man had recovered the sweet sensations and susceptibilities of childhood; life with its passions and struggles was over for him, or seemed so; all was well with his boys; and the many and sharp sorrows of his manhood had left upon him that feeling of happiness in the mere freedom from acute and immediate pain, which only those who have suffered deeply can feel. The sunshine warmed and cheered him to the heart. It was true that trouble, anxiety, and doubt were in that innocent and tender soul; a strong desire to help and deliver his young relatives, with still no perception of the means for doing so; but this was no urgent distress, enough to break in upon that sacramental morning hour. There might be difficulty, but everything was hopeful; and the Colonel wandered along the lonely rural road, where the wet grass sparkled in the sunshine, and the buds on the hawthorn-hedge basked with a secret growth and invisible expansion in the tender warmth and light; and in his age, and the quiet of his soul, was glad as they.

As he approached the corner of an intersecting road, voices came to the ear of the Colonel, or rather one voice, which seemed familiar to him. The speaker was addressing some one who made little reply; and Colonel Sutherland heard, to his great astonishment, a glowing description of the advantages and pleasures of a soldier’s life in India, splendidly set forth by the odd, familiar accents of this voice, as he approached. Half amused, half amazed, he listened – the words being, evidently, not of any private importance, and delivered in a tone too loud for confidential communications. He thought to himself that it must be some old soldier beguiling the innocence of some rustic lad, whom want of employment or youthful disappointment had prompted to try the expedient of “soldiering,” and went forward with a wrinkle on his forehead, but a smile on his lip – divided between sympathy for the supposed victim, and a professional reluctance to balk the voluntary recruiter, if the recruit should chance to be a promising one. But, to his surprise, when he had gained the corner of the road, instead of a young ploughman or country bumpkin, his eye fell upon a young man of extremely prepossessing appearance, with all the look of a gentleman, who listened with dilated nostrils and eyes fixed upon the distant hills – listened as a man listens whose thoughts are already too many for him, and who has but little attention to spare for what is said – but who, nevertheless, has a serious intention of hearing what is addressed to him. The Colonel was so much startled by this, that he scarcely observed the other person present, till an astonished exclamation of his own name, and the sudden motion of a military obeisance, aroused him. Then the smile returned, though with a difference, to his lip. The speaker was a sergeant of his own regiment, a veteran nearly as old as himself, who now stood before him, between joy and reluctance, eager to make himself known, yet not perfectly satisfied to be found in this exercise of his vocation; with confusion in his face, and his mouth full of excuses.

“What, Kennedy!” cried the Colonel; “my good fellow, what brings you here?”

“It’s far enough out of the way, to be sure, Cornel,” said the sergeant, rather sheepishly; “and neyther my oun place, nor like it. Sure it’s a bit of a flirt of a girl’s brought me, that’s come to be married here.”

“Married! What, you? You old blockhead!” cried the Colonel, inclining his deaf ear towards the voice, “what do you want with such nonsense at your age?”

“Na, Cornel, ne’er a bit of me – the Lord forbid!” said the old soldier; “but a daughter it is, brought up within five mile of ould Derry, but seed a lad o’ the fells as took her heart; and sure she’s all in wan, as ye may say, the whole stock o’ me familly; and according, Cornel, I’m here.”

“And at your old trade, I perceive,” said Colonel Sutherland – “hey, Kennedy? – you will never forget your cockade and bunch of ribbons; but I rather think you’re out a little here.”

“Ay, sir, ay – I said as much mysel’ wan moment afore. The young master, Cornel, he’s aboove my hand,” said the sergeant, promptly; “but youth, sir, youth will not hearken to a good advice. So I bid to tell him as he desired; he’s all for the cap and the feather, Cornel, and it’s not for an ould sodger to balk a gentleman, in especial as it was information Mr. Roger sought; and I well rec’klet, Cornel, that ye aye liked a lad of spirit yoursel’.”

“This is a mistake, however,” said the young man, hurriedly; “I’m not a gentleman seeking information. Go on, Kennedy; I want pay and bread – don’t be afraid, sir, there’s nobody belonging to me to break their hearts if I enlist. Let him say out what he has to say.”

The Colonel cast kindly eyes upon the young man, and saw his nervous haste of manner, and the impatient way in which he roused himself out of his half abstraction to deny the inferences of the sergeant – which, indeed, were entirely foreign to the address which Kennedy had just been delivering; and his benevolent heart was interested. “I also am an old soldier,” he said, with his kind stoop forward, and his smile; “perhaps I am a safer adviser for a young man of your appearance than Kennedy. Eh? Do you prefer the sergeant? Very well! But you must understand that the good fellow romances, and that rising from the ranks, even in India, is not so easy as he would have you suppose. Very true, I have nothing to do with it; but don’t be persuaded to enlist with such an idea. I wish you good morning, young gentleman. You can come to me, sergeant, at the inn in an hour or so. I am here only for a few days.”

And Colonel Sutherland had turned away, and was once more descending the road, wondering a little, perhaps, that the young fellow did not eagerly seek his offered advice on a subject which he knew so much better than the sergeant, when he heard himself called from behind, and, looking back, found the youth following. As he came up, the Colonel remarked him more closely. He was of brown complexion and athletic form, though only about twenty – already a powerful though so young a man. He was dressed entirely in black – a somewhat formal suit, which almost suggested the clerical profession, though, in fact, it meant only mourning, and had a mingled look in his face of grief and mortification, sincere sorrow, and a certain affronted, indignant, resentful aspect, which raised a little curiosity in the mind of the Colonel. He came up with a bold, firm, straightforward step, which Colonel Sutherland could not help contrasting unawares with that of Horace, and with the colour varying on his cheek.

“I ought at least to thank you, sir, for the offer of your advice,” he said hurriedly; then came to a pause; and then, as if vainly seeking for some explanation of the reason why he rejected it; “I am, however, only a recruit for the sergeant, not for the Colonel,” he added, with sudden confusion. “It is because of this that I appear churlish and ungrateful in declining your offer. My dress is a deception. I have no right to be treated as a gentleman.”

“These are strong words,” said the Colonel. “I presume, then, that you have done something by which you forfeit your natural rank?”

A violent colour rushed to the young man’s face – “No! – No! – twenty times No!” – he cried, with a sudden effusion of feeling, half made up of anger, and half of the grief which lay in wait for him to catch him unawares; “and will not, if I should starve or die!”

“It seems to me,” said Colonel Sutherland, looking round in vain for Kennedy, who had taken the favourable moment to escape, “that you are in a very excited condition of mind; if you will take my advice, you will not do anything in your present state of feeling, and, above all, don’t enlist. Kennedy’s story is the common recruiting fable, dressed up to suit your particular palate. The old fellow cannot forget his old successes in that way, I suppose. It is as foolish to ’list in haste as to marry in haste, my young friend. It is a thing much easier to do than to undo. Keep yourself out of temptation, and consult your friends.”

Having said so much, the Colonel gave a slight kindly bow to his companion, and was about to pass on, but, looking at him again, waited to see if he had anything to say.

“Is it better to take the plough-stilts than the shilling?” exclaimed the young man; “you know nothing about me – but you look at my distress with a kind face. You know the world and life as they really are, and not as they appear to us here, becalmed on the shores of the sea. I have no friends to consult, no one to be grieved for me whatever I do. I have not much wit, and less education; I have only what the brutes have – strength. What shall I do with it. Is it best to be a ploughman or a soldier? – I will abide by your decision – which shall it be?”

“Walk down with me to my inn,” said Colonel Sutherland, “and tell me who you are, and how this has happened to you.”

The young man turned with an implicit, instantaneous obedience. He made no preface, no explanation. He had reached to that extreme agitation of mind in which a listener, interested and friendly, is salvation to the self-consuming spirit, when that spirit is of the kind which can disclose itself; as in this case it happened to be.

“My name is Roger Musgrave,” he said; “I have been brought up as heir to my godfather, a man supposed rich. With him I have lived most of my life – we two. He was more than a father to me: but he is dead, and died poor. There is nothing left of the supposed inheritance – worse than that; but that is all that relates to me,” he cried, suddenly pausing with a gasp of restrained grief. “The people here exhaust their kind feelings to me in reproaches upon him who has left me unprovided for. False reproaches! – insults to me as much as to him! He is gone, and all control of me, all love for me, have died in his grave. I have myself to support, and his honour to reclaim. I ask you how I am to do it best – must it be as a labourer at home, or as a soldier abroad?”

“But you have given me no reason why your choice should be limited to these two trades,” said Colonel Sutherland; “there are many things besides which such a young man as yourself can do better than either. Come, you are very young – you are arbitrary and impatient. The profession of arms can only carry a man on and forward in time of war. You are thinking of Napoleon’s soldiers, those men who might possibly carry a marshal’s baton in their knapsacks; but you forget that the first thing required is not the soldiers, but the Napoleon – and things were never so in the English army, my young friend. Even in times of war, not one man in a thousand rises from the ranks – no, not even in India – not in the Company’s service. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t you know that even the old women in the village break their hearts when their sons enlist, and declare that anything would be better? I don’t say that. I am a soldier myself; but they are nearer the truth than you.”

“Is it then only the alternative of despair?” cried the young man.

Colonel Sutherland curved his hand over his deaf ear, and begged his pardon, and had not heard him. The excellent Colonel was at home in his capacity of adviser: he could understand this lad who came with his heart on his lips ten times better than he could understand Horace, and took up his case with lively zeal and interest. He took him to the inn with himself, and made him sit by while he breakfasted, and grew into friendship with the young stranger almost against his will. On the whole, the encounter pleased the Colonel: he made Roger promise to come to him in the evening, when they could talk over his affairs at leisure, and warned him with fatherly kindness to do nothing rashly, and to entertain no further thought of enlistment. Perhaps it was very foolish of the Colonel to comfort the youth’s heart after this rash fashion; perhaps it was “raising expectations which could never be justified.” The old man never thought of that: he had kindness to give, and good counsel, and some knowledge of the world. He said to himself that this was all an old man was good for, and so shook hands with poor Roger Musgrave as if he had known him all his life, and occupied himself on the road to Marchmain with contrivances for serving him. It was his “way”; there are people who have a worse “way” to be met with in this world.

CHAPTER XII

BEFORE Colonel Sutherland left the inn on his expedition to Marchmain, he had another visitor in the sergeant, who took care, however, to make sure that Musgrave was gone before making his appearance. He was not unlike the Colonel himself in his outer man; tall, spare, and brown, with a weather-beaten face and a grizzled moustache, Kennedy had at least sufficient resemblance to his old Colonel to mark their connection as comrades in arms. But the sergeant was neither deaf nor to any remarkable extent benevolent; abstract kindness did not influence him much: he flattered himself that he “knew what he was about” under all circumstances, and was somewhat pragmatical and dogmatic on most matters. His extensive experience and knowledge of the world had made him the cock of the village for a year or two past, where everybody believed his big stories, and most people were disposed to indorse his own opinion of himself. He was from the north of Ireland; a violent Protestant and Orangeman – tendencies sufficiently innocent in him; but the place of his birth, mingling a little of the fire and vehemence of the Milesian with all the obstinacy, dogmatism, and self-opinion of Scotland, had sufficient influence on his character to be noted. He was a rigid Presbyterian – one of the pillars of one of those little churches which, lingering near the border, prove that the national faith of Scotland has pushed her colonies more effectively into the sister country than England has been able to do in return; but this did not prevent Kennedy from making himself the oracle of the village ale-house, where he might be seen three or four nights a-week, sometimes in a very lofty and dignified state of haziness, freely bestowing the most grave advice upon everybody, and disposed to take rather a melancholy view of the degradation of the times, and of things in general. But this was the worst that anyone could say against him. He was fond of his little grandchildren, and was always busy with something for their amusement; good to his daughter, whom he often helped out of his own little funds; and in general friendly and serviceable. He presented himself to his old commander with a little awkwardness, fully expecting, as it seemed, to be taken to task for his morning’s exploits; and his expectations were not disappointed. Colonel Sutherland was too much given to advising youth himself to have any patience with the advice of the sergeant. It was an invasion of his own domain which he could not forgive.

“I am glad to hear you are so comfortable,” said the Colonel, “and that you manage to live in peace with your son-in-law, which, I confess to you, I would have thought rather doubtful; for I know you’re rather strong in your opinions – eh! is it your daughter that keeps the peace?”

“Na, Cornel, na,” said the sergeant; “I’m no so onexperienced as that; faothers and moothers are best in their oun place. I have a cot to mysel’, and a’ my traps about me – next house to Mary, poor thing! – and she’s kept a’ goin’ since I’ve come, and the childer they keep back and forard; and so far as the husband goes, it never was said, among a’ slanders, that I was ought but a peaceable man – ”

“Oh! a very peaceable man,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a smile. “That, to be sure, is the last thing one could think of doubting; but come, you have your faults, my good fellow – what do you say to me, now, for such an account as I heard your giving, this morning, to the young man?”

“Well, Cornel!” exclaimed the culprit, keeping up his boldness, though a little abashed —