Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875

"Oh, not very far; but don't fall: it won't be pleasant," said Bessie: "you would alight on very hard stones."

Mr. Forrester got on the roof first, and handed up the ladies; and they all stood looking out over the country. It was not a cold, bleak, snowy day, as Christmas in northern latitudes has a right to be. The winter had been mild—one of a series of mild winters, overturning the old traditions of frosts and snow-storms that lasted for months, and to a great extent stopped traffic and labor, and made traveling difficult and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much of it moorland.

If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the corn-field country,
Where vineyards leave off flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open chase,
And open chase to the very base
O' the mountain.

Strike out the vineyards and that description will apply very well to Cockhoolet; and in addition you ought to have seen from its roof Edinburgh and the sea; but on this day the sea wore a garment of mist, and had wrapped the metropolis in it also, as it not unfrequently does. You ought to have seen more than one range of hills too, yet except by eyes well acquainted with them their outlines could hardly be distinguished from the leaden gray clouds lying in bands along the horizon.

But as the party stood on the roof the clouds began to rise, tower upon tower, against the sky, and the sun, who retires early at this season, went behind them, when, instead of the pale, wistful gleam he had been keeping up all day, he suddenly threw a deep bright golden border on all the edges of the dark misty battlements which had piled themselves like castles of the Titans: a big rift appearing at their base, there poured through it, filling up the space, a great belt of crimson rays streaked with gray, as if from burning ashes falling into it, and like the dense glow from a furnace, giving the idea that the cloud-building was on fire, and that the flames from below, shooting up inside the dark walls, were the cause of the brilliant illumination that shone round every pinnacle and coign of vantage. It was a grand and a curious sight. You could fancy the sun looking across to the old Castle of Edinburgh standing on its rock, and saying, "Can you do anything like this with all the gas and paddelle you can lay your hands on?" Precisely this idea struck Mrs. Parker, for she said, "I think that is as good a sight as the castle the night the prince was married."

"That was a very good sight in its way," said Mr. Parker, "but we can hardly hope to compete with the sun, my dear: he has all his materials within himself, and we have to pay for them."

"Do you know, Miss Ormiston," said Mrs. Parker, "one of the buildings they said had such a fine effect put me in mind of a trunk studded with brass nails—the initials of the happy pair in gas-jets looked like the name of the owner of the trunk. All the time I was on the street I could not get that notion out of my head; and I was sorry, for I am sure it cost a great deal of money to light it up, and I really wished to think it grand."

"We were all in town that night," said John Ormiston—"papa and mamma, and the whole of us, and Mr. Forrester, who made eight."

"I thought it a beautiful sight," said Bessie.

"I never enjoyed anything more in my life," said Mr. Forrester, who on that occasion had been Miss Ormiston's escort through the streets, in which they lost their party, and had the supreme bliss of wandering together in the crowd, when Mr. Forrester almost forgot that Miss Ormiston was a goddess with five thousand earthly charms, and Miss Ormiston had compared his merits as a guide and protector with those of her brothers, and found he was much more considerate, and made her wish law, which they were often far from doing. In point of fact, a thaw had been very imminent, but, alas! since then a sharp frost had set in between them, as unaccountably as frosts frequently do set in.

"I think, now," said Mrs. Parker, "a fine old castle like this ought to have had a grander name: don't you think so, Miss Ormiston?"

"Yes, I do, and it had, originally. There was a monastery here at one time, over in that field with the trees in the corner of it: it was called the abbey of Cakeholy, and when the castle was built it got the name of Cakeholy Castle, after the abbey. The name Cakeholy, tradition says, arose from the fact that an extraordinary saint, whose wants had been relieved at the monastery, blessed all the bread that should ever be baked there, and the bread ever after had a great sustaining power in it; so that pilgrims from Edinburgh and the North, going to the southern shrines, all passed this way to get themselves supplied with the holy cakes. At the Reformation the abbey was destroyed, and became a ruin haunted by owls, so that, partly in derision and partly as suiting the altered circumstances, the common people corrupted the name into Cockhoolet; and in process of time it was given to the castle also, and stuck to it. That is the history of a name which is certainly neither romantic, nor high-sounding."

"How interesting!" said Mrs. Parker. "If I were you, I would go back to the old name: there is a reverence about it there is not about the other. Only think of bands of pilgrims coming across the moor there!"

"Yes, in their gowns and rope girdles, with wallets and scallop-shells," said Bessie. "It must have been a curious old world then: one could sit here and muse by the hour on all that has come and gone. I often bring up my work or my book here in summer and think of it."

"I do like old things," said Mrs. Parker, "and old families and old names. Our name, for instance, has no smack of age about it, and it is so short and perky: it must have been given to some one who had to do with parks."

"But parks may be a very old institution," said Bessie, "if we looked into the thing, though not so old as Forrester: that is an ancient name," glancing at Edwin, who was leaning against a sentry-box listening and watching the sun putting out the lights in his bed-chamber; "yet not nearly so ancient as Ormiston. I always feel it is fitting we should live in an old castle, we are so ancient ourselves."

"Are we?" said John: "I never knew that before."

"Ormiston," she said, "is perhaps as pure a Saxon word as now exists. It was during the Roman invasion our ancestor led an army through a dense mist against the invaders: just as he came up with them the sun shone out and the mist. The legions were taken by surprise, for the advancing enemy had been hidden by the mist, and they were utterly routed. The Saxon king—"

"What was his name?" asked John.

"John," she said, "don't seek to be wise above what is revealed. The king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on the spot—'Gold-Mist-on;' that is, 'Be ever in the van;' and a proud race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name. But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William, laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood must be the bluest of the blue."

"Mine must be as blue," said Edwin, "for the Forresters came in with the trees, and the trees were early settlers."

"But the mists were first by a very long time," answered Bessie.

"I don't believe that story," said John. "I have read about the Cakeholy business somewhere, but you have made that Or-Mist-on affair out of your own head: isn't that true, Bessie?"

"I am not bound to answer unbelievers, John."

"Besides," said John, "Ormiston is far; liker French than Saxon."

"Mr. Parker," said Bessie, "there was an abbot John of Cakeholy who flourished in the thirteenth century: his ghost is said to revisit its old habitation, or rather the place where it stood. I should like to meet it and have a talk over things; it would be very interesting."

"Would you not be terrified?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"If I saw what I believed to be a ghost, I should die of terror," said Bessie; "especially if I was alone and it was the dead of night; but I have no faith whatever in ghosts."

"It is getting rather chilly," said Mrs. Parker.

"Perhaps we had better go down now, then," Miss Ormiston said. "Mr. Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let us pass?"

"Certainly. I'll see you all safe off the battlements. I wasn't in a brown study: I was in a mist."

"Then take care: people in a mist always think they are going the right way when they are going directly wrong."

"If I only knew the right way!" he said.

"That's true, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker. "If we only knew the right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;" and she threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the party.

III

The dining-room, with its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome: Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of the Alps and laden with good things, looked a place where people even not in love with each other might, unless naturally perverse, be very happy.

Mrs. Parker, being from town, was in raptures with every country eatable, especially the scones, which she found were manufactured by Miss Ormiston herself.

"And have they," asked Mr. Parker, "the sustaining power that the cakes made here of old had?"

"If you eat enough of them you may get to Edinburgh to-night before you are very hungry," said John.

"The abbey cakes were unleavened," Bessie explained, "which these are not, so that they are less substantial fare."

"What do you raise them with?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"Butter, milk and carbonate of soda," said Miss Ormiston.

"We call Bessie a doctor of the Carbon," said John: "she makes very good scones, although you would hardly go from here to Canterbury on the strength of one of them."

"Mr. Forrester, are you dull?" asked Jessie: "you are not saying anything."

"I am too busy eating the holy cakes, Jessie," said Edwin: "your sister is a master in her art."

"I say," Jessie went on, "are you ever dull at home? When I told Bessie that you had come she was surprised, and said that you must surely be dull at home. I am sorry for you if you are: you should come here oftener—we are never dull here."