TALES OF THE BORDERS,

AND OF SCOTLAND.

THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED.

It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or habits of body, that May is a trying month, and we have known what it is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful month, and the forerunner of the most healthy of the twelve. It is like a timid maiden blushing into womanhood, wooing and yet shrinking from the admiration which her beauty compels. The buds, the blossoms, the young leaves, the tender flowers, the glittering dew-drops, and the song of birds, burst from the grasp of winter as if the God of nature whispered in the sunbeams—"Let there be life!" But it is in the morning only, and before the business of the world summons us to its mechanical and artificial realities, that the beauties of May can be felt in all their freshness. We read of the glories of Eden, and that the earth was cursed because of man's transgression; yet, when we look abroad upon the glowing landscape, above us, and around us, and behold the pure heavens like a sea of music floating over us, and hear the earth answer it back in varied melody, while mountain, wood, and dale, seem dreaming in the sound, and stealing into loveliness, we almost wonder that a bad man should exist in the midst of a world that is still so beautiful, and where every object around him is a representative of the wisdom, the goodness, the mercy, the purity, and the omnipotence of his Creator. There is a language in the very wild-flowers among our feet that breathes a lesson of virtue. We can appreciate the feeling with which the poet beheld

"The last rose of summer left blooming alone;"

but in the firstlings of the spring, the primrose, the lily, and their early train, there is an appeal that passes beyond our senses. They are like the lispings and the smiles of infancy—lowly preachers, emblems of our own immortality, and we love them like living things. They speak to us of childhood and the scenes of youth, and memory dwells in their very fragrance. Yes, May is a beautiful month—it is a month of fair sights and of sweet sounds. To it belongs the lowly primrose blushing by the brae-side in congregated beauty, with here and there a cowslip bending over them like a lover among the flowers; the lily hanging its head by the brook that reflects its image, like a bride at the altar, as if conscious of its own loveliness; the hardy daisy on the green sward, like a proud man struggling in penury with the storms of fate. Now, too, the blossoms on a thousand trees unfold their rainbow hues; the tender leaves seem instinct with life, and expand to the sunbeams; and the bright fields, like an emerald sea, wave their first undulations to the breeze. The lark pours down a flood of melody on the nest of its mate, and the linnet trills a lay of love to its partner from the yellow furze. The chaffinch chants in the hedge its sweet but unvaried line of music; the thrush hymns his bold roundelay; and the blackbird swells the chorus; while the bird of spring sends its voice from the glens, like a wandering echo lost between love and sadness; and the swallow, newly returned from warmer climes or its winter sleep,

"Twitters from the straw-built shed."

The insect tribe leap into being, countless in numbers and matchless in livery, and their low hum swims like the embodiment of a dream in the air. The May-fly invites the angler to the river, while the minnow gambols in the brook; the young salmon sports and sparkles in the stream, and the grey trout glides slowly beneath the shadow of a rock in the deep pool. To enjoy for a single hour in a May morning the luxuries which nature spreads around—to wander in its fields and in its woods—to feel ourselves a part of God's glad creation—to feel the gowan under our feet, and health circulating through our veins with the refreshing breeze, is a recipe worth all in the Materia Medica.

Now, it was before sunrise on such a morning in May as I have described, that a traveller left the Black Bull in Wooler, and proceeded to the Cheviots. He took his route by way of Earle and Langleeford; and, at the latter place, leaving the long and beautiful glen, began to ascend the mountain. On the cairn, which is perhaps about five hundred yards from what is called the extreme summit of the mountain, he met an old and intelligent shepherd, from whom he heard many tales, the legends of the mountains—and amongst others, the following story:—

Near the banks of one of the romantic streams which take their rise among the Cheviots, stood a small and pleasant, and what might be termed respectable or genteel-looking building. It stood like the home of solitude, excluded by mountains from the world. Beneath it, the rivulet wandered over its rugged bed; to the east rose Cheviot, the giant of the hills; to the west, lesser mountains reared their fantastic forms, thinly studded here and there with dwarf alders, which the birds of heaven had planted, and their progeny had nestled in their branches; to the north and the south stretched a long and secluded glen, where beauty blushed in the arms of wildness—and thick woods, where the young fir and the oak of the ancient forest grew together, flourished beneath the shelter of the hills. Fertility also smiled by the sides of the rivulet, though the rising and setting sun threw the shadows of barrenness over it. Around the cottage stood a clump of solitary firs, and behind it an enclosure of alders, twisted together, sheltered a garden from the storms that swept down the hills.

Now, many years ago, a stranger woman, who brought with her a female domestic and a male infant, became the occupant of this house among the hills. She lived more luxuriously than the sheep-farmers in the neighbourhood, and her accent was not that of the Borders. She was between forty and fifty years of age, and her stature and strength were beyond the ordinary stature and strength of women. Her manners were repulsive, and her bearing haughty; but it seemed the haughtiness of a weak and uneducated mind. Her few neighbours, simple though they were, and little as they saw or knew of the world, its inhabitants and its manners, perceived that the stranger who had come amongst them had not been habituated to the affluence or easy circumstances with which she was then surrounded. The child also was hard-favoured, and of a disagreeable countenance; his back was strangely deformed; his feet were distorted, and his limbs of unequal length. No one could look upon the child without a feeling of compassion, save the woman who was his mother, his nurse, or his keeper (for none knew in what relation she stood to him), and she treated him as a persecutor, who hated his sight, and was weary of his existence.

She gave her name as Mrs Baird; and, as the child grew up, she generally in derision called him "Æsop," or, in hatred, "the little monster!" but the woman-servant called him Ebenezer, though she treated him with a degree of harshness only less brutal than she whom he began to call mother. We shall, therefore, in his history mention him by the name of Ebenezer Baird. As he grew in years, the disagreeable expression of his countenance became stronger, his deformity and lameness increased, and the treatment he had experienced added to both.

When nine years of age, he was sent to a boarding-school about twelve miles distant. Here a new series of persecutions awaited him. Until the day of his entering the school, he was almost ignorant that there was an alphabet. He knew not a letter. He had seen one or two books, but he knew not their use: he had never seen any one look upon them; he regarded them merely as he did a picture—a piece of useless furniture, or a plaything. Lame as he was, he had climbed the steep and the dripping precipice for the eggs of the water-ouzel, sought among the crags for the young of the gorgeous kingfisher, or climbed the tallest trees in quest of the crested wrens, which chirped and fluttered in invisible swarms among the branches.[A] The birds were to him companions; he wished to rear their young, that they might love him, for there was a lack of something in his heart—he knew not what it was—but it was the void of being beloved, of being regarded. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, and so did the heart of Ebenezer. He knew not what name to give it, but he longed for something that would show a liking for him, and to which he could show a liking in return. The heart is wicked, but it is not unsocial—its affections wither in solitariness. When he strolled forth on these rambles about the glen, having asked the permission of his mother or keeper (call her what you will) before he went, "Go, imp! Æsop!" she was wont to exclaim, "and I shall pray that you may break your neck before you return." There were no farmers' or shepherds' children within several miles: he had seen some of them, and when they had seen him, they had laughed at his deformity—they had imitated his lameness, and contorted their countenances into a caricatured resemblance of his. Such were poor Ebenezer's acquirements, and such his acquaintance with human nature, when he entered the boarding-school. A primer was put into his hands. "What must I do with it?" thought Ebenezer. He beheld the rod of correction in the hands of the teacher, and he trembled—for his misshapen shoulders were familiar with such an instrument. He heard others read, he saw them write; and he feared, wondered, and trembled the more. He thought that he would be called upon to do the same, and he knew he could not. He had no idea of learning—he had never heard of such a thing. He thought that he must do as he saw others doing at once, and he cast many troubled looks at the lord of a hundred boys. When the name of "Ebenezer Baird" was called out, he burst into tears, he sobbed, terror overwhelmed him. But when the teacher approached him kindly, took him from his seat, placed him between his knees, patted his head, and desired him to speak after him, the heart of the little cripple was assured, and more than assured; it was the first time he had experienced kindness, and he could have fallen on the ground and hugged the knees of his master. The teacher, indeed, found Ebenezer the most ignorant scholar he had ever met with, but he was no tyrant of the birch, though to his pupils

"A man severe he was, and stern to view;"

and though he had all the manners and austerity of the old school about him, he did not lay his head upon the pillow with his arm tired by the incessant use of the ferule. He was touched with the simplicity and the extreme ignorance of his new boarder, and he felt also for his lameness and deformity. Thrice he went over the alphabet with his pupil, commencing, "Big Aw—Little Aw," and having got over b, he told him to remember that c was like a half-moon. "Ye'll aye mind c again," added he; "think ye see the moon." Thus they went on to g, and he asked him what the carters said to their horses when they wished them to go faster; but this Ebenezer could not tell—carts and horses were sights that he had seen as objects of wonder. They are but seldom seen amongst the hills now, and in those days they were almost unknown. Getting over h, he strove to impress i upon the memory of his pupil, by touching the solitary grey orbit in his countenance (for Ebenezer had but one), and asking him what he called it. "My e'e," answered Ebenezer.

"No, sir, you must not say your e'e, but your eye—mind that; and that letter is I."

The teacher went on, showing him that he could not forget round O, and crooked S; and in truth, after his first lesson, Ebenezer was master of these two letters. And, afterwards, when the teacher, in trying him promiscuously through the alphabet, would inquire, "What letter is this?"—"I no ken," the cripple would reply; "but I'm sure it's no O, and it's no S." Within a week he was master of the six-and-twenty mystical symbols, with the exception of four—and those four were b and d, p and q. Ebenezer could not for three months be brought to distinguish the b from the d, nor the p from the q; but he had never even heard that he had a right hand and a left until he came to the school—and how could it be expected?

Scarce, however, had he mastered the alphabet, until the faculties of the deformed began to expand. He now both understood and felt what it was to learn. He passed from class to class with a rapidity that astonished his teacher. He could not join in the boisterous sports of his schoolfellows, and while they were engaged in their pastime, he sought solitude, and his task accompanied him. He possessed strong natural talents, and his infirmities gave them the assistance of industry. His teacher noted these things in the cripple, and he was gratified with them; but he hesitated to express his feelings openly, lest the charge of partiality should be brought against him. Ebenezer, however, had entered the academy as the butt of his schoolfellows—they mocked, they mimicked, they tormented, they despised, or affected to despise him; and his talents and progress, instead of abating their persecutions, augmented them. His teacher was afraid to show him more kindness than he showed to others; and his schoolfellows gloried in annoying the cripple—they persecuted, they shunned, they hated him more than even his mother did. He began to hate the world, for he had found none that would love him. His teacher was the only human being that had ever whispered to him words of praise or of kindness, and that had always been in cold, guarded, and measured terms.

Before he was eighteen, he had acquired all the knowledge that his teacher could impart, and he returned to the cottage among the mountains. There, however, he was again subjected to a persecution more barbarous than that which he had met with from his schoolfellows. Mrs Baird mocked, insulted, and drove him from her presence; and her domestic showed him neither kindness nor respect. In stature, he scarcely exceeded five feet; and his body was feeble as well as deformed. The cruelty with which he had been treated had given an asperity to his temper, and made him almost a hater of the human race; and these feelings had lent their character to his countenance, marking its naturally harsh expression with suspicion and melancholy.

He was about five-and-twenty when the pangs and the terrors of death fell upon her whom he regarded as his parent. She died—as a sinner dies—with insulted eternity frowning to receive her. A few minutes before her death, she desired the cripple to approach her bedside. She fixed her closing eyes, which affection had never lighted, upon his. She informed him that he was not her son.

"Oh, tell me, then, whose son I am! Who are my parents?" he exclaimed, eagerly. "Speak! speak!"

"Your parents!" she muttered; and remorse and ignorance held her departing soul in their grasp. She struggled; she again continued: "Your parents! no, Ebenezer, no! I dare not name them! I have sworn—I have sworn! and a death-bed is no time to break an oath!"

"Speak! speak! Tell me, as you hope for heaven!" cried the cripple, with his thin, bony fingers grasping the wrists of the dying woman.

"Monster! monster!" she screamed, wildly, and in terror, "leave me—leave me! You are provided for—open that chest—the chest—the chest!"

Ebenezer loosed his grasp; he sprang towards a strong chest which stood in the room. "The keys! the keys!" he exclaimed, wildly; and again hurrying to the bed, he violently pulled a bunch of keys from beneath her pillow. But while he applied them to the chest, the herald of death rattled in the throat of its victim; and, with one agonising throe and a deep groan, her spirit escaped, and her body lay a corpse upon the bed.

He opened the chest, and in it he found securities, which settled upon him, under the name of Ebenezer Baird, five thousand pounds. But there was nothing which threw light on his parentage—nothing to inform who he was, or why he was there.

The body of her who had never shed a tear over him he accompanied to the grave. But now a deeper gloom fell upon him. He met but few men, and the few he met shunned him, for there was a wildness and a bitterness in his words—a railing against the world—which they wished not to hear. He fancied, too, that they despised him—that their eyes were ever examining the form of his deformities; and he returned their glance with a scowl, and their words with the accents of hatred. Even as he passed the solitary farmhouse, the younger children fled in terror, and the elder laughed, or pointed towards him the finger of curiosity. All these things fell upon the heart of the cripple, and turned the human kindness of his bosom into gall. His companions became the solitude of the mountains, and the silence of the woods. They heard his bitter soliloquies without reviling him, or echo answered him in tones of sympathy more mournful than his own. He sought a thing that he might love, that might unlock his prisoned heart, or give life to its blighted feelings. He loved the very primrose, because it was a thing of beauty, and shrank not from his deformity as man did. To him it gave forth its sweetness, and its leaves withered not at his touch; and he bent and kissed the flower that smiled upon him whom his kind avoided. He courted the very storms of winter, for they shunned him not, but spent their fury on his person, unconscious of its form. The only living thing that regarded him, or that had ever evinced affection towards him, was a dog, of the mastiff kind, which ever followed at his side, licked his hand, and received its food from it. And on this living thing all the affections that his heart ever felt were expended. He loved it as a companion, a friend, and protector; and he knew it was not ungrateful—it never avoided him; but, when mockery or insult was offered to its master, it growled, and looked in his face, as if asking permission to punish the offender.

Such was the life that he had passed until he was between thirty and forty years of age. Still he continued his solitary rambles, having a feeling for everything around him but man. Man only was his persecutor—man only despised him. His own kind and his own kindred had shut him out from them and disowned him—his sight had been hateful to them, and his form loathsome. He avoided the very sun, for it revealed his shadow; but he wandered in rapture, gazing on the midnight heavens, calling the stars by name, while his soul was lifted up with their glory, and his deformity lost and overshadowed in the depth of their magnificence. He loved the flowers of day, the song of morning birds, and the wildness or beauty of the landscape; but these dwindled, and drew not forth his soul as did the awful gorgeousness of night, with its ten thousand worlds lighted up, burning, sparkling, glimmering in immensity—the gems that studded the throne of the Eternal. While others slept, the deformed wandered on the mountains, holding communion with the heavens.

About the period we refer to, a gay party came upon a visit to a gentleman whose mansion was situated about three miles from the cottage of the cripple. As they rode out, they frequently passed him in his wanderings. And when they did so, some turned to gaze on him with a look of prying curiosity, others laughed and called to their companions—and the indignation of Ebenezer was excited, and the frown grew black upon his face.

He was wandering in a wood in the glen, visiting his favourite wild-flowers (for he had many that he visited daily, and each was familiar to him as the face of man to man—he rejoiced when they budded, blossomed, and laughed in their summer joy, and he grieved when they withered and died away), when a scream of distress burst upon his ear. His faithful mastiff started, and answered to the sound. He hurried from the wood to whence the sound proceeded as rapidly as his lameness would admit. The mastiff followed by his side, and, by its signs of impatience, seemed eager to increase its speed, though it would not forsake him. The cries of distress continued, and became louder. On emerging from the wood, he perceived a young lady rushing wildly towards it, and behind her, within ten yards, followed an infuriated bull. A few moments more, and she must have fallen its victim. With an eager howl, the dog sprang from the side of its master, and stood between the lady and her pursuer. Ebenezer forgot his lameness and the feebleness of his frame, and he hastened at his utmost speed to the rescue of a human being. Even at that moment a glow of delight passed through his heart, that the despised cripple would save the life of a fellow-mortal—of one of the race that shunned him. Ere he approached, the lady had fallen, exhausted and in terror, on the ground. The mastiff kept the enraged animal at bay, and, with a strength such as he had never before exhibited, Ebenezer raised the lady in his arms, and bore her to the wood. He placed her against a tree: the stream passed by within a few yards, and he brought water in the palms of his hands, and knelt over her, to bathe her temples and her fair brow. Her brow was indeed fair, and her face beautiful beyond all that he had looked upon. Her golden hair in wavy ringlets fell upon her shoulders—but her deep blue eyes were closed. Her years did not appear to be more than twenty.

"Beautiful!—beautiful!" exclaimed the cripple, as he dropped the water on her face, and gazed on it as he spoke—"it is wondrous beautiful! But she will open her eyes—she will turn from me as doth her race!—as from the animal that pursued her!—yet, sure she is beautiful!" and again, as he spoke, Ebenezer sighed.

The fair being recovered—she raised her eyes—she gazed on his face, and turned not away from it. She expressed no false horror on beholding his countenance—no affected revulsion at the sight of his deformity; but she looked upon him with gratitude—she thanked him with tears. The cripple started—his heart burned. To be gazed on with kindness, to be thanked, and with tears, and by one so fair, so young, so beautiful, was to him so strange, so new, he half doubted the reality of the scene before him. Before the kindness and gratitude that beamed from her eyes, the misanthropy that had frozen up his bosom began to dissolve, and the gloom on his features died away, as a vapour before the face of the morning sun. New thoughts fired his imagination—new feelings transfixed his heart. Her smile fell like a sunbeam on his soul, where light had never before dawned; her accents of gratitude, from the moment they were delivered, became the music of his memory. He found an object on the earth that he could love—or shall we say that he did love; for he felt as though already her existence were mysteriously linked to his. We are no believers in what is termed love at first sight. Some romance-writers hold it up as an established doctrine, and love-sick boys and moping girls will make oath to the creed. But there never was love at first sight that a week's perseverance could not wear away. It holds no intercourse with the heart, but is a mere fancy of the eye; as a man would fancy a horse, a house, or a picture, which he desires to purchase. Love is not the offspring of an hour or a day, nor is it the ignis fatuus which plays about the brain, and disturbs the sleep of the youth and the maiden in their teens. It slowly steals and dawns upon the heart, as day imperceptibly creeps over the earth, first with the tinged cloud—the grey and the clearer dawn—the approaching, the rising, and the risen sun—blending into each other a brighter and a brighter shade; but each indistinguishable in their progress and blending, as the motion of the pointers on a watch, which move unobserved as time flies, and we mark not the silent progress of light till it envelop us in its majesty. Such is the progress of pure, holy, and enduring love. It springs not from mere sight, but its radiance grows with esteem; it is the whisper of sympathy, unity of feeling, and mutual reverence, which increases with a knowledge of each other, until but one pulse seems to throb in two bosoms. The feelings which now swelled in the bosom of Ebenezer Baird were not the true and only love which springs from esteem, but they were akin to it. For though the beauty of the fair being he had rescued had struck his eye, it was not her beauty that melted the misanthropy of his heart, but the tear of gratitude, the voice of thanks, the glance that turned not away from him, the smile—the first that woman had bestowed on him—that entered his soul. They came from the heart, and they spoke to the heart.

She informed him that her name was Maria Bradbury, and that she was one of the party then on a visit to the gentleman in his neighbourhood. He offered to accompany her to the house, and she accepted his offer. But it was necessary to pass near the spot where he had rescued her from the fury of the enraged bull. As they drew towards the side of the wood, they perceived that the bull was gone, but the noble mastiff, the friend, companion, and defender of the cripple, lay dead before them. Ebenezer wrung his hands, he mourned over his faithful guardian.

"Friend! poor Friend!" he cried (the name of the mastiff was Friend), "hast thou, too, left me? Thou, of all the things that lived, alone didst love thy master! Pardon me, lady, pardon an outcast; but until this hour I have never experienced friendship from man nor kindness from woman. The human race have treated me as a thing that belonged not to the same family with themselves; they have persecuted or mocked me, and I have hated them. Start not—hatred is an alien to my soul—it was not born there, it was forced upon it—but I hate not you—no! no! You have spoken kindly to me, you have smiled on me!—the despised, the disowned Ebenezer will remember you. That poor dog alone, of all living things, showed affection for me. But he died in a good cause! Poor Friend! poor Friend!—where shall I find a companion now?" and the tears of the cripple ran down his cheeks as he spoke.

Maria wept also, partly for the fate of the noble animal that had died in her deliverance, and partly from the sorrow of her companion; for there is a sympathy in tears.

"Ha! you weep!" cried the cripple; "you weep for poor Friend and for me. Bless thee—bless thee, fair one! they are the first that were ever shed for my sake! I thought there was not a tear on earth for me."

He accompanied her to the lodge of the mansion where she was then residing, and there he left her, though she invited him to accompany her, that he might also receive the congratulations of her friends.

She related to them her deliverance. "Ha! little Ebenezer turned a hero!" cried one; "Ebenezer the cripple become a knight-errant!" said another. But they resolved to visit him in a body, and return him their thanks.

But the soul of the deformed was now changed, and his countenance, though still melancholy, had lost its asperity. His days became a dream, his existence a wish. For the first time he entertained the hope of happiness; it was vain, romantic, perhaps we might say absurd, but he cherished it.

Maria spoke much of the courage, the humanity, the seeming loneliness, and the knowledge of the deformed, to her friends; and their entertainer, with his entire party of visiters, with but one exception, a few days afterwards, proceeded to the cottage of Ebenezer, to thank him for his intrepidity. The exception we have alluded to was a Lady Helen Dorrington, a woman of a proud and haughty temper, and whose personal attractions, if she ever possessed any, were now disfigured by the attacks of a violent temper, and the crow-feet and the wrinkles which threescore years imprint on the fairest countenance. She excused herself by saying, that the sight of deformed people affected her. Amongst the party who visited the cripple was her son, Francis Dorrington, a youth of two-and-twenty, who was haughty, fiery, and impetuous as his mother. He sought the hand of Maria Bradbury, and he now walked by her side.

Ebenezer received them coldly; amongst them were some who were wont to mock him as they passed, and he now believed that they had come to gratify curiosity, by gazing on his person as on a wild animal. But, when he saw the smile upon Maria's lips, the benign expression of her glance, and her hand held forth to greet him, his coldness vanished, and joy, like a flash of sunshine, lighted up his features. Yet he liked not the impatient scowl with which Francis Dorrington regarded her attention towards him, nor the contempt which moved visibly on his lip, when she listened delighted to the words of the despised cripple. He seemed to act as though her eyes should be fixed on him alone—her words addressed only to him. Jealousy entered the soul of the deformed; and shall we say that the same feeling was entertained by the gay and the haughty Dorrington? It was. He felt that, insignificant as the outward appearance of the cripple was, his soul was that of an intellectual giant, before the exuberance of whose power the party were awed, and Maria lost in admiration. His tones were musical as his figure was unsightly, and his knowledge universal as his person was diminutive. He discoursed with a poet's tongue on the beauty of the surrounding scenery; he defined the botany and geology of the mountains. He traced effect to cause, and both to their Creator. The party marvelled while the deformed spoke; and he repelled the scowl and contempt of his rival with sarcasm that scathed like passing lightning. These things produced feelings of jealousy also in the breast of Francis Dorrington; though from Maria Bradbury he had never received one smile of encouragement. On their taking leave, the entertainer of the party invited Ebenezer to his house, but the latter refused; he feared to mingle with society, for oft as he had associated with man, he had been rendered their sport—the thing they persecuted—the butt of their irony.

For many days the cripple met, or rather sought, Maria in his solitary rambles; for she, too, loved the solitude of the mountains or the silence of the woods, which is broken only by the plaintive note of the wood-pigeon, the chirm of the linnet, the song of the thrush, the twitter of the chaffinch, or the distant stroke of the woodman, lending silence a charm. She had become familiar with his deformity, and as it grew less singular to her eyes, his voice became sweeter to her ears. Their conversation turned on many things—there was wisdom in his words, and she listened to him as a pupil to a preceptor. His feelings deepened with their interviews, his hopes brightened, and felicity seemed dawning before him. As hope kindled, he acquired confidence. They were walking together, he had pointed out the beauties and explained the properties of the wild-flowers on their path, he had dwelt on the virtues of the humblest weed, when he stopped short, and gazing in her face—"Maria!" he added, "I have loved these flowers—I have cherished those simple weeds, because they shunned me not—they shrank not from me, as did the creatures of the human race—they spread their beauties before me—they denied me not their sweetness. You only have I met with among the children of Adam, who persecuted me not with ridicule, or who insulted not my deformity with the vulgar gaze of curiosity. Who I am I know not—from whence I was brought amongst these hills I cannot tell; I am a thing which the world has laughed at, and of which my parents were ashamed. But my wants have been few. I have gold to purchase flattery, if I desired it—to buy tongues to tell me I am not deformed; but I despise them. My soul partakes not of my body's infirmities—it has sought a spirit to love, that would love it in return. Maria, has it found one?"

Maria was startled—she endeavoured to speak, but her tongue faltered—tears gathered in her eyes, and her looks bespoke pity and astonishment.

"Fool! fool!" exclaimed the cripple, "I have been deceived! Maria pities me!—only pities me! Hate me, Maria—despise me as does the world. I can bear hatred—I can endure scorn—I can repel them!—but pity consumes me!—and pity from you! Fool! fool!" he added, "wherefore dreamed I there was one that would look with love on deformed Ebenezer? Farewell, Maria! farewell!—remember, but do not pity me!" and he hurried from her side.

She would have detained him—she would have told him that she reverenced him—that she esteemed him; but he hastened away, and she felt also that she pitied him—and love and pity can never dwell in the same breast for the same object. Maria stood and wept.

Ebenezer returned to his cottage; but the hope which he had cherished, the dream which he had fed, died reluctantly. He accused himself for acting precipitately—he believed he had taken the tear of affection for pity. His heart was at war with itself. Day after day he revisited the mountainside, and the path in the wood where they had met; but Maria wandered there no longer. His feelings, his impatience, his incertitude, rose superior to the ridicule of man; he resolved to visit the mansion of his neighbour, where Maria and her friends were residing. The dinner-bell was ringing as he approached the house; but he knew little of the etiquette of the world, and respected not its forms. The owner of the mansion welcomed him with the right hand of cordiality, for his discourse in the cottage had charmed him; others expressed welcome, for some who before had mocked now respected him; and Maria took his hand with a look of joy and her wonted sweetness. The heart of Ebenezer felt assured. Francis Dorrington alone frowned, and rose not to welcome him.

The dinner-bell again rang; the Lady Helen had not arrived, and dinner was delayed for her, but she came not. They proceeded to the dining-room. Ebenezer offered his arm to Maria, and she accepted it. Francis Dorrington muttered angry words between his teeth. The dinner passed—the dessert was placed upon the table—Lady Helen entered the room—she prayed to be excused for her delay—her host rose to introduce her to Ebenezer.

"Ebenezer!—the deformed!" she exclaimed, in a tone of terror, and, dashing her hands before her eyes, as he rose before her, she fell back in hysterics.

"Turn the monster from the house!" cried Francis Dorrington, springing forward; "my mother cannot endure the sight of such."

"Whom call ye monster, young man?" said Ebenezer, angrily.

"You, wretch!" replied Dorrington, raising his hand, and striking the cripple to the floor.

"Shame! shame!" exclaimed the company.

"Coward!" cried Maria, starting from her seat.

The cripple, with a rapidity that seemed impossible, sprang to his feet—he gasped, he trembled, every joint shook, rage boiled in his veins—he glanced at his insulter, who attempted to repeat the blow—he uttered a yell of vengeance, he clutched a dessert-knife from the table, and within a moment it was plunged in the body of the man who had injured him.

A scream of horror burst from the company. Ebenezer, with the reeking knife in his grasp, stood trembling from rage, not from remorse. But he offered not to repeat the blow. A half-consciousness of what he had done seemed to stay his hand. The sudden scream of the party aroused the Lady Helen from her real or affected fit. She beheld her son bleeding on the floor—she saw the vengeful knife in the hands of the cripple. She screamed more wildly than before—she wrung her hands!

"Monster!—murderer!" she exclaimed, "he has slain—he has slain his brother!"

"My brother!" shouted Ebenezer, still grasping the knife in his hand. "Woman—woman! mother—mother!—who am I? Answer me—who are you?" and he sprang forward, and held her by the arm. "Tell me," he continued, "what mean ye—what mean ye? My brother—do ye say my brother? Art thou my mother? Have I a mother? Speak—speak!" and he grasped her arm more fiercely.

"Monster!" she repeated, "offspring of my shame!—away—away! He is thy brother! I have shunned thee, wretch, I have disowned thee; but thou hast carried murder to my bosom!" and, tearing her arm from his grasp, she threw it round the neck of her wounded son.

The company gazed upon each other. Ebenezer stood for a moment, his eyes rolling, his teeth rattling together, the knife shaking in his hand. He uttered a wild cry of agony—he tore the garments from his breast, as though it were ready to burst, and, with the look and the howl of a maniac, he sprang to the door, and disappeared. Some from an interest in his fate, others from a desire to secure him, followed after him. But he fled to the woods, and they traced him not.

It was found that the wound of Francis Dorrington was not mortal; and the fears of the company were directed from him to Ebenezer, who they feared had laid violent hands upon his own life.

On the following day, without again meeting the company, Lady Helen left the house, having acknowledged the deformed Ebenezer to be her son—a child of shame—whose birth had been concealed from the world.

On the third day, the poor cripple was found by a shepherd wandering on the hills. His head was uncovered; his garments and his body were torn by the brambles through which he had rushed; his eyes rolled wildly, and, when accosted, he fled, exclaiming, "I am Cain! I am Cain! I have slain my brother! Touch me not—the mark is on my forehead!" He was secured, and taken to a place of safety.

The circumstances twined round Maria's heart; she heard no more of Ebenezer the cripple, but she forgot him not. Several years passed, and she, together with a friend, visited a lunatic asylum in a distant part of the country, in which a female acquaintance, once the admired of society, had become an inmate. They were shown round the different wards; some of the inmates seemed happy, others melancholy, but all were mild—all shrank from the eye of their keeper. The sound of the clanking chains around their ankles filled Maria's soul with horror, and she longed to depart; but the keeper invited them to visit the garden of his asylum. They entered, and beheld several quiet-looking people engaged in digging; others were pruning trees; and some sat upon benches on the paths, playing with their fingers, striking their heels upon the ground, or reading stray leaves of an old book or a newspaper. Each seemed engaged with himself, none conversed with his neighbour. Upon a bench near the entrance to a small arbour or summer-house sat a female, conning an old ballad; and, as she perused it, she laughed, wept, and sang by turns. Maria stopped to converse with her, and her friend entered the arbour. In it sat a grey-headed and deformed man; he held a volume of Savage in his hand, which had then been but a short time published.

"I am reading the 'Bastard,' by Savage," said he, as the stranger entered; "he is my favourite author. His fate was mine—he describes my feelings. He had an unnatural mother—so had I. He was disowned—so was I. He slew a man, and so did I; but I my brother."

The voice, the words, fell upon Maria's ear. She became pale, she glanced towards the arbour, she cast an inquiring look upon the keeper.

"Fear not, ma'am," he replied; "he is an innocent creature. He does not rave now; and but that there is an occasional wildness in his language, he is as well as you are. Enter and converse with him, ma'am; he is a great speaker, and to much purpose, too, as visiters tell me."

She entered the arbour. The cripple's eyes met hers—he threw down the book.

"Maria—Maria!" he exclaimed, "this is kind! this is kind, indeed! But do not pity me—do not pity me again! Hate me, Maria! you saw me slay my brother!"

She informed him that his brother was not dead—that he had recovered within a few weeks.

"Not dead!" replied the cripple. "Thank Heaven! Ebenezer is not a murderer! But I am well now—the fever of my brain is passed. Go, Maria, do this for me—it is all I now ask—inquire why I am here immured, and by whose authority. Suffer not my reason to be buried in reason's tomb, and crushed among its wrecks. Your smile, your words of kindness, your tears of gratitude, caused me to dream once, and its remembrance is still as a speck of light amidst the darkness of my bosom; but these grey hairs have broken the dream." And Ebenezer bent his head upon his breast, and sighed.

Maria and her friend left the asylum, but in a few weeks they returned, and when they again departed, Ebenezer Baird went with them. He now sought not Maria's love, but he was gratified with her esteem, and that of her friends. He outlived the persecution of his kindred and the derision of the world; and in the forty-sixth year of his age he died in peace, and bequeathed his property to Maria Bradbury—the first of the human race that had looked on him with kindness, or cheered him with a smile.

THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN OF KIRCONNEL.

The seat of a branch of the Dumfries-shire Maxwells—Kirconnel—a property lying not far distant from Dumfries, and surrounded by the little pastoral stream, Kirtle—is one of the most beautiful that ever gratified the taste or inspired the pride of a high family. It was not until about the beginning of the seventeenth century that it came into the possession of the Maxwells; for, during a long period, it belonged to the old, though never illustrious, family of the Bells, who, amidst all the turmoil and strife of the March territories, had the good sense to prefer the quiet pleasures of the retreats of their own pure Kirtle, to the tumultuous and cruel scenes which boasted no streamlet but the heart's blood of contending foes. The power of Lord Maxwell, or the threat of Douglas, were equally unavailing to force the old proprietor of Kirconnel—though he ranked as a lesser baron, and might command retainers to fight for his plea—to sacrifice the pleasures of domestic peace on the altars of Laverna or Bellona: these conjunct goddesses who, hand in hand, swayed the destinies of Border men, and regulated the Border rights of mine and thine. He held his fine property directly of the crown; and, so long as he fulfilled the conditions of his right, he conceived himself entitled to the enjoyment of what had been fairly got and honourably retained. One strong element in Kirconnel's determination to live at home, in the enjoyment of what home may produce to a mind capable of appreciating its sweets, was the fear of interrupting the happiness of his lady—one of the family of Irvings in that quarter, who latterly came to possess his property—and of one child, a daughter, the Maid of Kirconnel, concerning whom, as all our readers know, more has been said and sung by antiquarian minstrel than ever fell to the hapless fame or treasured memory of fair woman. Ah, we need scarcely say, that this young heiress of Kirconnel's name was Helen; for who that has read the touching lines of Pinkerton can ever forget the appellation of one whose fate has drawn more tears than ever did that of the heroine Lady Margaret, in the old ballad of "Douglas' Tragedy?" The disasters of ordinary women, though hallowed by the sanctifying power of love, have seldom in this country inspired the harp of the minstrel; so far we are forced to admit the power of beauty, abstracted from the qualities of the mind and heart, that it has been a talisman to bardic genius in every age; yet it is honourable to the character of our nation, that the soul which illumines the "face divine" has called forth strains as melting and triumphant as ever resulted from the effects of physical beauty. It is, however, when the two qualities have been found combined in a favoured daughter of Scotland, that an unhappy fate has called forth a sympathy which has left no harp to sound fitfully in the willow-tree, no heart in our true land untouched, no eye destitute of sympathetic tears. Such has truly been the effect produced by the fortune of Helen of Kirconnel—a fortune which came up on the revolving wheel of the mutable goddess, notwithstanding all the efforts of her father to make the course of her life happy, and its termination blessed. Abstracted as the thoughts were of the three inhabitants of Kirconnel—the lady, the laird, and the daughter—from the scenes that were ever changing in the warlike world around them, so much greater was the necessity for cultivating the opportunities of enjoyment that nature and fortune had awarded to them; and so much greater also was the relish for that enjoyment which has ever been found in minds and hearts properly constituted and tuned to the harp of goodness, to increase with possession as much as the false taste for stimulating avocations cloys with the easy surfeit. It is not often, even in our virtuous land, and even in these days when the blessings of a high civilisation have inclined mankind to the cultivation of the social affections, that a family is found with its different members so predisposed for the harmony of exclusively domestic joys, that some chord does not occasionally give forth a discordant sound when touched by an external impulse; but, in the times of which we speak, and in the district where the individuals resided, "the happy family" was a group that was more often found in the lyrics of the poet or the creations of hope deferred than in the real existences of the troubled and vexed world.

The house of Kirconnel stood on "fair Kirconnel Lee;" a term implying that the wood, which in those days encompassed every baronial residence, had been, to a certain extent, cleared away, to allow the daisy-covered lawn to rejoice in the beams of the generally excluded sun. But, at a little distance, the empire of the forest was again resumed, on the condition exacted by nature, of allowing the winding Kirtle to enjoy her grassy bank, covered with the wild rose and the eglantine; and to roll playfully along her pebbly bed, unimpeded by the neighbouring trees, which, as if in amatory dalliance, sent down their straggling lips to kiss her as she went. The wood bower—in early times a species of rural retreat in much greater fashion than now-a-days—was, in repetition of itself, seen rearing its ornamented walls, round which the native parasite plants were entwined in close embrace in various parts of the shady retreat. Some of these had been carefully looked to by the lady of Kirconnel herself, who, anxious to confirm her husband's resolution against engaging in the wars of the times, left no energy unemployed to render their residence, not only within the walls of the house, but in the bowers and gardens, as pleasant to the eye as the fruits of her heart and mind were delightful to the rational and loving soul of her appreciating and grateful lord. As Sir Owain says:—

True; the Graces had, as yet, but small influence in Scotland; but the Genius of Chivalry, a cognate spirit, was busy in effecting a great revolution in the minds of the inhabitants; and though there was little to humanise, there was much to elevate and beautify. Traces of this power might already be seen about the bowers and shades of Kirconnel, where some rude figures of knights in various positions—one rescuing a damsel from her enemies—one in the combat at outrance—one striking the palisades of an armed city—placed, as they were, in the retreats of peace and domestic happiness by a former warlike possessor of the property, served the purpose of ornamenting the sequestered walks, and supplying to the peaceful and happy inhabitants a contrast between the pursuits of war and the pleasures of home, and home's blessed enjoyments.

At a little distance from the mansion or castle—for every house, in those days, had a castellated character—was, and still is, the burying-ground of Kirconnel; a spot which, from the peculiarity of its situation, as well as from its own mournful associations, impressed the mind of the visiter with feelings which startled him, as much from their novelty as from their intensity. There is a small stone there, that would, if deciphered and communicated to our readers, anticipate our story, and claim the ready tear before our own sympathies are relieved by our recital. We pass it by at present, to give some idea of the extraordinary spot where it lies. This ground of the dead, or "Death's Mailing," as it has sometimes been called, is invested with all the charms of a sublimed melancholy, which contemplates nature as a whole, and looks to those high purposes of her great author in visiting poor mortals with their heart-chastening woes. At the time of which we speak, this place of the dead was entirely surrounded with high oaks and spreading elms, except where the silvery Kirtle embraced the hallowed spot, as she rolled slowly along—more slowly, it might almost appear, at this spot than elsewhere—and murmured a soft threnody in the ears of the guardian spirits, that there tended the clay forms which they once animated. A few very rude stones, whose rudeness was their greatest recommendation to the sentimental mind, told, in the quaint "old Inglis" of that day, their simple tale. "Here lyethe the race of ye sons of Kirconnelle," might have been seen on a rude freestone that has long since disappeared. "Terraughtie did choose to lie her," appeared upon another old relic; and some exhibited more simple tokens—still pointing out nothing more than name and surname, yet more eloquent in that brevity than the most "storied urn." "Jon Kirkpatrycke," "Andrew Welles," "Heln Johnston," "Mary of the Le'," without one word more to say what they were, where they lived, when they visited this scene of sorrow, and when they departed from it, possessed an eloquence in their simple brevity that moved the heart of the visiter with a power now little felt and less appreciated. The swelling green tumuli, with these simple-speaking, grey-headed stones, standing, yet leaning to a side, as if themselves bent by the hands of time, how humbly might they appear, encircled as they were, with the proud monarch of the wood, the primeval oak, that had seen the sires and grandsires of the lowly inhabitants of "Death's Mailing" rise and fall, and become dust, as man contemplates the day-fly wing forth in the morning, live out its day, and die. Such was the romantic burying-place of Kirconnel at the time of which we speak; and even now, when the oak has fallen before the axe of civilisation, and Fame's trump has sounded even over the tomb, the place has a hallowed and romantic character (the Kirtle is still there) not exhibited by other burying-grounds in Scotland.

In those retreats, the members of the family of Kirconnel passed the greater part of their time. Helen, though a lover of home, was fond of gratifying a fancy pregnant of beautiful images, and a taste for what is lovely in nature, by sitting by the banks of the Kirtle, and supplying her mind with the pabulum of the old Scottish romances. "Raf Coilyear and his Cross-bow," and "Gilbert with the White Hand," though soon superseded by the continental romances, were then the legitimate fountains of amusement to the fair maids of Scotland; and those who aimed at sublimer flights, might have had recourse to "Fyn Maccowl," or "Gret Gow Macmorne;" but there was in none of the works as yet circulated in Scotland, what might gratify the intense yearnings of the female heart for those poetical images which subsequently sprang up with the more mature growth of chivalry. The loves of warriors are not the loves of everyday life, far less the loves of the inspired poet; and Helen, as she read these old legendary romances, might find in them the amusement that afforded a relaxing alternative to her own poetical communings with the oldest bard of all—Nature; but for the inspiration of love itself she required the talisman—man—in that high aspect she had prefigured of the noblest of God's creatures, to rouse her heart from nature to the lover's dream.

As yet the Maid of Kirconnel had not seen any one that realised the idea she had formed, by the banks of the Kirtle, of the individual who could call up in her young bosom those extraordinary emotions which constitute "love's young dream." The secluded mode of life adopted by her parents was unfavourable to a choice of the talismanic objects; and it even appeared to be her father and mother's wish that such choice should be excluded, that her heart might, in the absence of many forms, learn to be pleased with the man whom their love or policy might point out to her adoption. A second cousin of her own, Walter Bell of Blacket House, had a free passport to the hall of Kirconnel, as well as to the bowers that were enshrined in Kirconnel woods. The laird saw in the young man his nearest heir, in the event of his Helen being taken from him by fate; and the lady could detect, as she thought, in Bell's quiet and sombre manner, some assimilation to her own love of retirement and ease, and a consequent disrelish of the warlike and sanguinary customs of the times. Yet it was known that the young laird of Blacket House had been engaged in secret frays between the Johnstones and Crightons; while, for some purpose not generally known, though, from what we have said, not difficult to be surmised, he had fought in disguise, and disclaimed the glory of having hewn off the heads of many Johnstones, whose deaths might have brought him renown, if not wealth. He had fought from a spirit of animosity and a thirst of blood that lay deep buried in his heart, but which, along with its noisome fruits, he had striven to conceal, from the knowledge he possessed of the pacific disposition of his friends the Kirconnels, whose good-will he had a motive to cultivate more powerful than that of wealth or glory. He wished to recommend himself to the fair Helen, by acquiring the love and esteem of her father and mother; and he doubted not that, by his own personal accomplishments—neither few nor unimportant—aided by the advice or power of parental love and authority, he would succeed in changing in her the old habitual feelings of ordinary friendship into the higher and purer sentiments of affection.

And sure it was that no one who ever aimed to acquire a "ladye's love," made his attempt with more advantages on his side than Walter Bell of Blacket House. The gay lover in the old romance, who cried that, with the advantage of making love in a wood, and by the side of a silver stream, he would gain the heart of the fairest woman of Christendom, though his face were as black as the coal slave's, and his lineage no better than the knave-child's, spoke more of human nature than he himself perhaps knew. But he spoke of women in the aggregate; and it is not unlikely that such a woman as fair Helen of Kirconnel had never come under the trial of his skill. The truth of the statement fell to be tested by one who, besides the advantages stated by the gay knight, could boast the consent of a father, old friendship, and a face and a lineage against which no exception could be taken by the admirers of graces and genealogy. Bell was aware of the advantages he possessed; but he could calculate the strength of these better than he could fathom the mysteries of woman's heart. Although the greater part of his time was passed at Kirconnel, where he took every opportunity of threading the mazes of the oak woods, or sitting by the side of the Kirtle, with the object of his affections, it is doubtful if he ever ascertained, by the passing indications she exhibited, that her thoughts and feelings were pitched much beyond the grade of those which nature had awarded to himself. She saw and felt beauties in the scenery of Kirconnel, which to her lover were but as the "sear leaf." Every object in nature—from the planet to the plant, from the shining levin of heaven to the phosphoric beam on the margin of the Kirtle—had some intelligence for her inquiring eye. Every power in operation around her—from the general sympathy of nature's highest elements, to the loves of the little forest birds that sung their love-song in her bower—had some charm to elevate her thoughts and sublime her sentiments. She, therefore, who could search for intelligence where others saw nothing but inert matter, or, at least, the uninteresting indications of everyday nature, might probably have been an unfortunate object on whom our said romantic knight might try the effect of his extraneous charms of wood and water. Nor was she at all fitted for being acted upon by the love intrigues of her cousin of Blacket House, who, coming far short of a knowledge of the elevated sentiments by which she was inspired, could neither yield her that sympathy which she required as a sine qua non of affection, nor stand the investigation of the shrewd wisdom or the high philosophy of the heart of an elevated woman. While he simply sued and used the ordinary words of love, she analysed, and found that, where she never could be understood, she never could dispose of her affections.

The mind of Helen had long been made up on the question of her cousin's suit. It had begun early; and the innumerable walks he had enjoyed with her along the banks of the Kirtle had afforded him a thousand opportunities of declaring his feelings. By the natural tact of women, she had always contrived to evade the question, and contented herself, even in the midst of extravagant declarations, with negative indications of her inability to return his passion. These he understood not; and, unfortunately, he acted upon the principle that has driven many a fond lover to despair—that the mistress who appears to listen without displeasure is presumed to give a tacit consent. They know little of the heart of woman who trust their happiness or their lives to the frail bark of such a fond and dangerous delusion. A woman will seldom put an end to the adulation that supports her pride; but the Maid of Kirconnel, who had no pride to gratify, acted as many a single-hearted female has done and will do, who receives without a frown that her nature detests, but without a satisfaction that her honesty will not allow her to assume, the fond speeches of an old friend, couched in terms of an admiration which is only her due. The native sensibility of her soul shrank at the thought of first construing harshly her relative's professions of affection, and then telling him that he was not the individual who was qualified to win her heart. Yet, in justice to her, it requires to be stated, that she often communed with herself, in her solitary walks, on the necessity of checking her cousin's fond and unfortunate delusion, lest evil might come out of gentleness so nearly allied to good.

This unfortunate connection between Blacket House and his fair cousin, fated as it was to continue, assumed daily a more critical aspect. The young man, overwhelmed by a passion that was daily and hourly fed by the contemplation of a beauty and qualities seldom before witnessed in a Scottish maiden, was not only intoxicated by the violence of his love, but satisfied that his cousin, in return loved him with an affection only more chastely expressed, though, of course, not less powerful than his own. Her parents, too, who had lent a fond and willing ear to his statements of their daughter's love for him, had made up their minds upon a point which presented all the appearances of being sealed and settled by her who had the greatest interest in its truth. She was always to be found by him in her solitary walks among Kirconnel woods. Their meetings were favoured by their parents; their walks were uninterrupted; the current of his passion flowed without check, and his expressions only varied in becoming more animated. The absence of a harsh denial filled the measure of a deluding, blending hope; and while the courses of their two minds were in directions entirely opposite—his along the rose-strewed valley of a requited affection; hers in a channel that led to objects too brilliant for his dull eye to scan, and too sublime for his unfledged fancy to reach—he conceived that a mutual sympathy of congenial feeling animated both their hearts.

It was at this extraordinary state of the domestic affairs of Kirconnel that an extraneous cause gave a new current to the feelings of the young maiden, without having the effect of changing that of her lover, or of opening the eyes of her father and mother to the true fact, that she could not love the man they intended as her husband. A gallant, high-spirited youth, one of the Flemings of Kirkpatrick, had followed a doe up to within a very short space of Kirconnel House. The timid creature had taken to the water, and, springing on the opposite bank, fled past a bower in which Helen was at the time sitting reading "Sir Tristam," then in the hands of every young lady in Scotland and England. She started as the creature shot past her, and, putting her head timidly forward, to get a better view of the fleet inhabitant of the forest, saw before her, with cap in hand, bowing, in knightly guise, Adam Fleming of Kirkpatrick. Neither of the two had before seen the other; but the fame of the one's noble mien, high mind, and martial virtues, and of the other's incomparable beauty and elevation of sentiment, had reached reciprocally their willing ears.

"That a Fleming of Kirkpatrick," said the youth, still bowing humbly, and smiling, "should have had the boldness to interpose the image of his worthless person between the fancy and the heaven of the meditations of fair Helen of Kirconnel, doth, by my sword, require an apology. Shall I be still bolder in asking a pardon?"

The effect produced on Helen's mind by the noble figure of the youth, and the romantic and playful turn he had given to his intrusion, was quick and heartfelt. It was, besides, simultaneous with the memory of his spread fame; and in an instant her face was in a glow of mixed shame and confusion, the causes of which, perhaps, lay deeper than the influence of a mere feeling of surprise or interruption.

"You have my full forgiveness, sir," she replied, while her face glowed deeper, in spite of her efforts to appear unaffected.

Her soft musical voice fell on the ear of the youth; but his keen, dark eye was busy with the examination of charms with which his ear had been long familiar. The blush of a woman is a man's triumph; whatever may be its secret cause, the man will construe it favourably to himself, in the face of a denial of his power; and so far at least he has the right, that nature herself evidences in his favour, by an acknowledgment that he has touched the fountains of the heart. Fleming was not different from other men; and, though he might have been wrong in his construction of the secret moving impulse which called up the mantling adornment of beauty that was almost beyond the power of increase, he felt the full influence of the effect he thought he had produced, and, conceiving himself favourably received, laid in his heart the germs of an affection that was to govern his destiny. The forms of breeding, more punctilious in those days of chivalry than even now, forbade farther communication at that time, and, bowing gracefully as he drank up the rays of her blushing beauty, he bounded away after his dogs, that had kept their course in pursuit of the flying doe.

This was the first time that ever Helen had seen a stranger huntsman cross Kirconnel Lee in pursuit of his game; but it was soon to appear that roes and does, when pursued by the gallant Fleming, seemed to think that in the recesses of Kirconnel they might find that safety which was denied them in other coverts; at least it became certain that more of that kind of game fled before the hunter over Kirconnel Lee, after the meeting we have described, than ever were seen before by man or maiden. Meanwhile the image of the noble youth, with his clear, intelligent eye, his rising and expanded forehead, from which his black hair was shaded to a side, and mixed with the long flowing locks that reached down to his shoulders; his intellectual expression of countenance, where beauty sat enshrined among the virtues, his breeding, his modesty, his voice and general bearing—were all busy with the fancy of the Maid of Kirconnel. Nature's talisman had been applied, and the charm had wrought in its highest and most mysterious power. Nor less had been the effect of that first meeting on the mind of the youthful heir of Kirkpatrick. They loved; and the does which afterwards brushed over Kirconnel Lee were only the scouts of the hunting lover, who, while he could not help the choice of the flying wilding in taking that direction, could not, of a consequence, avoid a repeated intrusion on the wood-bower privacy of her who longed to see him with a heart that palpitated at his coming as strongly as did that of the flying deer. The rules of breeding direct all their force against a first interview; against a second, though brought about in the same way as the first, they have no efficacy; and love, which defies the whole code, soon reconciled differences which he despised. A few meetings revealed to each other the fact—which, somehow or other, is discovered by nobody but lovers—that one person has been intended from the beginning of the world to be formed for another. The heir of Kirkpatrick and the Maid of Kirconnel exhibited to each other such a similarity of thought, feeling, and sentiment, that love seemed to have nothing more to do than to tie those threads which nature had not only spun, but hung forth with a predisposed reciprocity of communication. The discovery that their thoughts had taken the same range, and reached an equal altitude of elevation, carried with it that pleasant surprise that is always favourable to the progress of the tender passion; and the delight of a new-born sympathy in sentiments that had long gratified only the heart in which they were conceived, but which now were seen glowing in the eyes of another, was only another form of that passion itself.

Though Helen had seen many indications that might have satisfied her (if her mind had been directed to the subject) that her father and mother were bent upon a match between her cousin of Blacket House and her, she had never, either from a want of courage or steady serious thought on the subject, put it to herself what was her precise predicament or condition, on the supposition of such circumstance being in itself true and irremediable. She had hitherto had no great need for secresy, because she did not love another; and her father, mother, and lover, having taken it for granted that she was favourable to her cousin's suit, nothing of a definite nature had ever transpired to call for a demonstration on her part, as an alternative of dishonesty and double-dealing. Her situation was now changed. She now loved, and loved ardently, another; and the necessity she felt of meeting the heir of Kirkpatrick in secret, brought out in full relief her inmost sense of what were the views and purposes of her father and mother, and all the responsibility of her negative conduct, as regarded the suit of him she could never love. But, strange as it may seem, if she felt a difficulty in correcting her cousin and disobeying her parents before the accession of her love, she felt that difficulty rise to an impossibility after that important event of her life. She trembled at the thought of her love being crossed: one word of her rejection of the suit of her cousin would reach the ears of her parents; dissension would be thrown into the temple of peace; her love would be discovered; her lover, a man famous in arms, and an aider of the Johnstones, the opponents of Blacket House, traced, rejected, and banished: and her heart finally torn and broken by the antagonist powers of love and duty. She felt her own weakness, and trembled at it, without coming to a resolution to make a disclosure; while her overwhelming love carried her, on the moonlight nights, over Kirconnel Lee, to meet her faithful Heir of Kirkpatrick in the romantic burying-ground already described. This extraordinary place was that fixed upon by the lovers for their night meetings; for in any other part of the domains of Kirconnel they could not have escaped the eye of Blacket House; who, though he had no suspicion of a rival, was so often in search of the object of his engrossing passion, that she seldom went out without being observed by the ever-waking and vigilant surveillance of love.

Many times already had Helen waited till her unconscious parents retired to the rest of the aged, and the moon threw her sheet of silver over Kirconnel Lee, and, wrapped up in a night-cloak, slipped out at the wicker-gate of the west enclosure, to seek, under the shades of the oaks, Death's Mailing, the appointed trysting-place of the ardent lovers. Again she was to see her beloved Heir of Kirkpatrick, and at last she had resolved to break to him the painful position in which she was placed by the still existing belief of her parents and Blacket House, that she was to be his wedded wife. On this occasion, she sat wistfully looking out at her chamber window. Her father and mother had retired to their couch. Everything was quiet, the wind stilled, and the mighty oaks whispered not the faintest sigh to disturb the sensitive ear of night. The moon was already up, and she was on the eve of wrapping her cloak round her, and creeping forth into the forest shade, when she observed the long shadow of a man extending many yards upon the shining grass of the green lee. The figure of the individual she could not see; for a projection of the building, sufficient to conceal him, but not to prevent his shadow from being revealed, interrupted her vision. She hesitated and trembled. If the shadow had moved and disappeared, she could have accounted for it, by supposing that some of the domestics had not yet retired to bed; but why should a man stand alone and stationary at that hour, in that place, in that position? Her fears ran all upon Blacket House, who was never happy but when in her presence or near her person; and who had been, on a former occasion, reported by the servants to have lain and slept under her window for an entire night, and never left his position till the morning sun exposed the doting lover to the wondering eyes of the domestics, who had never yet felt a love that kept them awake for more than a dreamy hour at cockcrow. As she gazed and hesitated, her hour was passing, and her lover would be among the grave-stones, waiting for her. Her anxiety grew intense; she feared to go, but shook at the thoughts of disappointing him; never dreaming (so whispered love) of herself. The figure still stood as stationary as a grave-stone, while her soul was agitated like the restless spirit that hovers over it, sighing for the hour of departure to the regions of ether. She could bear no longer; the projection which concealed him would conceal her; she plied the furtive steps of love; and crossing, like a fairy on the moonlit green knowe, the rising lawn, was forth among the towering oaks in as little time as the shadow of a passing cloud would have taken to trail its dingy traces over the shining lee.

In a short time she arrived at the churchyard, and saw, through the interstices of the surrounding trees, the Heir of Kirkpatrick sitting on a green tumulus, the grave of one who had perhaps loved as they now loved, waiting for her who was beyond the trysting-hour. In a moment longer she was in his arms, and the stillness of the dead was invaded by the stifled sighs, the burning whispers, the rustling pressure of ardent, impatient lovers. The rising graves, and the mossy tomb-stones, and the white scattered bones that had escaped the sexton's eye, and glittered in the moonbeams, were equally neglected and overlooked; and no fear of fairy, ghost, or gnome, or gowl, entered where Love left no room but for his own engrossing sacrifices. The simple monument of love of "Mary of the Le'," that rose by their side, had often brought the tears to Helen's eyes; but Mary of the Lee was now forgotten. "There is a time and a place for all things" but love, whose rule is general over the flowery lee and the green grave, the mid-day hour and the dreary key-stone of night's black arch.

"What kept ye, sweet Helen, love?" whispered Kirkpatrick in her ear, as she lay entranced in love's dream on his bosom.

"By that question, good Adam," answered she, according to the mode of familiar address of her day, "there hangs a secret that oppresses your Helen, and drinks up all the joys of our affection."

"Speak it forth, my gentle Helen," said Fleming. "What is it? The secresy of our meeting? I have been meditating a resolution to address your father, and this will confirm me. He can have no objections to my suit, save that I am a friend of the Johnstones, and an open warrior; while your cousin, whom you rejected before you saw me, is a concealed mosstrooper, and a secret manslayer."

"There, there," muttered Helen, with trembling emotion—"there, Adam, you have hit the bleeding part of my heart. I did not say to you that I had rejected Blacket House before I saw you; but you were entitled to make that supposition, because I told you that I never received his love; but, alas! Adam, there is a distinction there; and, small as it may seem, its effects may be great upon the fortunes and happiness of your Helen. It is true I have never received his love; but it is equally true that his love, having overgrown the thought of a possibility of rejection, has overlooked my negative indications, and put down my silence for consent. Yes, Adam, yes—even now Blacket House thinks I love him; and, oh! the full responsibility of my apathy rises before me like a threatening giant; my father and my mother have, I fear, taken for granted that I am to become the wedded wife of my cousin."

"Helen, this does indeed surprise me," replied Kirkpatrick, thoughtfully and sorrowfully. "I thought I had a sufficient objection to overcome on the part of your father, when I had to conquer the prejudices of clanship, and soothe his fears of my ardent spirit for the foray. But this changes all, and my difficulties are increased from the height of Kirconnel Lee to the towering Criffel." And he sat silent for a time, and mused thoughtfully. "But why, my love," he continued, "have you allowed this dangerous delusion to rest so long undisturbed, till it has become a conviction that may only be removed with danger to us all?"

"Ask me not, Adam," replied she, with a full heart, "what I cannot explain. While the tongue of Blacket House's friendship was changing to love, I, whose thoughts were otherwise directed, perceived not the change; and when the truth appeared to me, my love for my father and mother, against the placid stream of whose life I have ever trembled to throw the smallest pebble of a daughter's disobedience, prevented me, day by day, from making the avowal that I could not love their choice. The difficulty increased with the hour; and, ah! my love for you crowned it at last with impossibility."

"That should rather have removed the difficulty," answered he. "Explain, sweet Helen. You are dealing in shadowy parables."

"Think you so, Adam?" said she, sighing. "Ah, then, is man's love different from woman's? The one can look an obstacle in the face; the other turns from it with terror, and flees. See you not that, by telling my parents I could not love my cousin, I would have been conjuring up a bad angel to cross, with his black wing, the secret but sweet path of our affection. The very possibility of being separated from you—too dear, Adam, as you are to this beating heart—made me tremble at the articulation of that charmed word which contains all my happiness on earth. You have stolen my heart from my father and mother, my sweet woods and bowers, my bright moon and Kirtle; and think you what it would be for me to lose him in whom all is centred!"

"Ah! Helen, Helen, this is unlike the majesty of that mind that roved the blue fields of the heavens, and searched the hidden springs of the love that reigns through all created things. That such thoughts should be allied to that weakness which increases inevitable danger by flying from it, I could not have supposed to be exemplified by my Maid of Kirconnel. Yet is that trembling fear not a greater proof of my Helen's love than an outspoken rejection of twenty rival suitors? It is—I feel it is; and who will chide a fault of earth that hangs by a virtue of heaven? Dear, devoted, cherished object of my first passion, what has the simple heir of Kirkpatrick to give in exchange for the devotion of such a being?"

And the impassioned youth pressed her closer and closer to his breast, while he spread over her shoulders the falling cloak, to shield her from the autumn dews.

They sat for some time silent—the difficulty of their situation being for a brief period forgotten and lost in the tumult of the rising feelings of a strong mutual passion.

"But this must not be allowed to continue," again said Kirkpatrick. "It is necessary, Helen, that you do this duty to yourself, to your cousin, your parents, and to me. Call up the necessary fortitude, my love. Tell your mother that you cannot love Blacket House. I know the pain it will produce to you and to them; but, alas! there are many positions in this world where we can only get to the object of our desires through painful means. Pain is, indeed, the price of most of our pleasures; and, when we do not pay that price, we become bankrupt in our best feelings, and die wretched. When the path is free, I shall come forward and claim my Helen in the face of the world. Will you, will you, love?"

And he bent his head, and repeated the question in soft tones beneath the cloak that covered her head; while she, in muffled accents, replied—

"I will, I will, Adam, though I should die with the last word of the declaration."

A heavy groan at this moment fell upon their ear. Adam started hastily up; and Helen, roused from her love's dream, stood petrified with fear. They looked around them in every direction; but the proximity of the place where they had been sitting to the edge of the wood, rendered it easy for an intruder to overhear their discourse, and to escape among the trees in an instant. Helen's fears again fell on Blacket House, and she whimpered to Adam what she had observed previous to her leaving the house. He conceived them to be well founded; and, as the thought of the man who could kill his enemies in disguise, and deny the deed, flashed upon his mind, he felt for his sword, and then smiled at the precipitude of his defensive precaution. It was necessary, however, that Helen should now hurry home; and, surmounting the turf-dyke of the burying-ground, they, with rapid steps, made for Kirconnel House, at a little distance from which they parted, with a close embrace. Helen stood for a moment, and looked after her lover; then, wrapping her cloak about her head, she moved quickly round the edge of the enclosed lawn, and was on the eve of running forward to the wicket, when Blacket House stood before her. He looked for a moment sternly at her, spoke not a word, and then dashed away into the wood. Terrified still more, Helen hurried away, and got into the house and her own chamber before the full extent of her danger opened, with all its probable consequences, upon her mind. Having undressed herself, she retired to her couch, and meditated on the extraordinary position in which she was now placed. She had now been discovered by her cousin, who, no doubt, knew well that she had that night had a secret meeting with Kirkpatrick—a partisan of his antagonists, the Johnstones. The discovery of a rival had come on him with the discovery of a delusion under which he had sighed, and dreamed, and hoped for years. It was probable, nay, certain, then, that the communication she intended to make to her father and mother, that she could not love Blacket House, would be received along with the elucidating commentary, that the lover now despised had discovered her love intercourse with the heir of Kirkpatrick. She would, therefore, get no credit for her statement that she never loved her cousin; but would be set down as a breaker of pledges, and one who traitorously amused herself with the broken hopes of her unfortunate lovers. Whether she made the communication or not, it would be made by Blacket House, whose fear of losing the object of his affections, or his revenge—whichever of the two moved him—would force him to the immediate disclosure. The serenity of the domestic peace and happiness of Kirconnel House would be clouded for the first time, and that by the disobedience of one who had heretofore been held to contribute, in no small degree, to that which she was to be the means of destroying, perhaps for ever. The contrast between the confidence, the hope, and the affection with which she had been, by her parents, contemplated, and fondly cherished, during all the bygone part of her life, and the new-discovered treachery into which her secret love for a stranger would be construed, was a thought she could scarcely bear. These and a thousand other things passed through her thoughts with a rapidity which did not lessen the burning pain of their impress upon her mind; and the repetition of a thousand reflections, fears, and hopes, produced in the end a confusion that terrified sleep from her pillow, and consigned her to the powers of anguish for the remainder of the night and morning.

She rose with a burning cheek and a high-fluttering pulse, produced by the fever of mind under which she still laboured. She opened the casement to let in the cool breeze of morning to brace her nerves, and enable her to stand an interview with her father and mother, who might already (for Blacket House was at Kirconnel at all hours) be in possession of the secret of what they conceived to be their once-loved Helen's disobedience and treachery. Her own communication, which she had pledged herself to Kirkpatrick to make, was now invested with treble terrors; and though she knew that her safety and happiness depended upon an open declaration, she felt herself totally unable to make it. Trembling and irresolute, she approached the parlour where her father and mother, along with herself, were in the habit of taking their morning meal. They were there; and there was another there—it was her cousin. He looked at her as she entered, with a calm, but mysterious eye, which fluttered her nerves again, and forced her to stand for a moment in the middle of the apartment, irresolute whether to go forward or retreat. She fearfully threw her eye over the faces of her parents. There was no change there; the ordinary placidity of their wonted manner, and the kindly love-greeting borne in their mellow voices, startled her—so strong had been her conviction that all was disclosed. Her parents were destitute of guile; and an instant's thought satisfied her that they were still in their ignorance of the secret. But Blacket House continued his dark gaze in silence; and even this—a decided alteration in his manner—was unnoticed by the unsuspecting couple, who threw their fond eyes on their loving daughter as their only remaining pride and solace. What meant this? The new turn taken by the stream of her difficulty and danger surprised and confused her; but, calming by the influence of her parents' kindness, she sat down and went through the forms of the morning meal, without exhibiting a discomposure that might attract the notice of these loving beings, who searched her face only for the indications of health and the beams of her pleasure. Her comparative composure enabled her to collect her ideas; and she thought she now discovered a reason for this seeming forbearance or discretion of Blacket House—a man little formed for these, or any other virtues: he intended to sell his knowledge at the price of a hand that never could be his, but by this or some other means of compulsion. The moment this thought—and, under all the circumstances, it was a reasonable one—entered her mind, she trembled at the power of the dark-eyed, silent being who sat there, and gazed upon her in revengeful triumph. For relief, she turned her eyes to her parents; yet she saw there the smile that approved his suit, and the confidence that would believe his declaration. Her own Kirkpatrick was absent; and she dared not meet him to receive the assistance of his advice, to enable her to support herself under her trial, or devise a plan suited to the changed circumstances for her relief. She hurried over her meal, and hastened again to her apartment, to confirm herself in the opinion she had formed of Blacket House's intentions. Every thought tended to add to her conviction that she was correct, and told her that he never would succeed in his scheme. He would now, for certain, endeavour to see her alone, and lay before her the danger into which she had plunged herself, and the bargain by which she would be relieved from it. But she would defeat him; she would renounce her walks in the woods, desert, for a time, her bowers, and bid adieu to her silver Kirtle. She would keep her apartment under a pretence of slight indisposition—far from an untruth—and, in the meantime, try to devise some mode of relief from her painful situation.

But the solicitude of her parents interfered, in some degree, with these plans. They discovered that she was not so ill as to be unable to seek what might do her service—her former walks and amusements around Kirconnel Lee; and thus was she obliged to yield to kindness; yet she contrived to have her parents near her, so as to deprive Blacket House of an opportunity of communicating to her his imputed plan of enforcing his suit. As yet, his silence had been continued: her parents were still in ignorance; and it was only (so she argued) because he had not hitherto found her alone, that his dreaded communication had not as yet been made. On the occasion of her first walk, however, she, by some untoward chance, was left in one of the arbours alone, and the opportunity (the first that had occurred) was seized by him—Blacket House was again before her, and all her fears were in a moment roused. Their eyes met with an intelligence they had never before possessed. Every passing thought seemed to be mutually read, while a few words of ordinary import seemed to be only as a preparation to his expected statement. Helen did not dare to leave him; she feared to rouse his anger, and yet she wanted courage to reply with ordinary pertinence to his remarks. His eye was constantly fixed on her, and the few words he uttered came with difficulty and pain; yet was there not the slightest allusion to the secret he undoubtedly held locked up in his breast. Was he not to bring forward his threat of exposing her, as a wrenching instrument, to force from her a consent that he was satisfied would never be given voluntarily? There was no indication of any such issue. What could be the true meaning of this dark-minded man's conduct? Again he had disappointed her fearful anticipations. He had not told her parents; he was not to tell herself. What then was he to do? She could not answer her self-put question; and her surprise when he parted from her, after a short conversation, conducted with difficulty, with his secret unapproached, and the mysterious stare of his illegible eye, was not less than her terror of the anticipated issue when she first encountered him.

This new extraordinary element in the subject of her meditations and fears disarranged all her ideas, and sent her thoughts in new channels for a discovery of what might be the secret plans of her cousin. She sighed for an interview with her lover; but that, she was satisfied, would be attended with great danger; and thus reduced to her own resources, she passed the night following her meeting with Blacket House in still increasing pain and difficulty. In the morning she was visited in her own chamber by her mother, who appeared, from the serious aspect of her countenance, to have something of great importance to communicate.

"Helen," began the good matron, "though your father and I have seldom broached the subject of love and marriage in your presence, we have, with heartfelt satisfaction, observed and understood that the man who alone has our consent to win your virgin heart is your own choice. Your wooing has lasted so long, that the very birds in the woods are familiar with your persons and converse; and surely this is not to last always. You are twenty years old, my dear Helen, at the next Beltane, the first of May; and I know that it is Blacket House's wish that your happiness may be crowned by a union within as short a period as we will agree to fix. I have broken the matter to you, my love; and as I am well acquainted with the fluttering of Love's wings when Hymen enters the bower, I will not urge you to fix a day at present, but leave you to the pleasant meditations my communication cannot but call forth. I shall send your breakfast to your bedroom this morning, my love; but I hope we may walk in the afternoon. Say nothing, Helen. Adieu! adieu!"

And the mother left the room rapidly, as if to avoid noticing the blushes of the supposed happy damsel. Helen heard the words uttered, as one may be supposed to feel the syllables of a condemnation falling upon the heart. It was well that her mother departed so rapidly, for the agitation the kind parent attributed to joy, was but the prelude to a faint, which retained her cold and straggling in its relentless arms for a considerable period. The first indications of consciousness were, if possible, more terrible than the last thoughts that frightened it away. For a long period she sat upon the couch where she had heard the dreadful intelligence, and, passing her hand over her brow, tried to collect her energies, so as to be able to contemplate the full extent of her evil. She thought she could now see some connection between the announcement made by her mother and the extraordinary and mysterious conduct of Blacket House, though she was satisfied that neither of her parents possessed any knowledge of her intercourse with Kirkpatrick. The scheme of the early marriage might originate in the fears of her cousin, while his secresy was only still maintained till he found that she would not yield to her parents' authority; when would be the time for using his threat of disclosure to Helen, to compel her consent. All this reasoning seemed founded in existing circumstances and appearances; but so confused were her thoughts, and so painful every effort of her mind to acquire clearer views, that she felt inclined to renounce reasoning on a subject that seemed at every turn to defeat all her efforts to come to the real truth. Her misery was at least certain; for now, while the absolute necessity of a disclosure of her secret love became more peremptory and inevitable, the circumstances under which it would be made were such as would add to the unhappiness of her parents, and to the apparent deceit and treachery of her own nature, which was, notwithstanding, incapable of guile.