Part 4 (1/2)

My cousin, a stout, active lad, carried the bag of Highland luxuries--cheese, and butter, and a full peck of nuts--hich we had been laden byboth my share of the burden and his own, he de extee, I accordingly began My stories, when I had cousin Walter for my companion, were usually co-extensive with the journey to be perforreeably to the measure of the road, and the determination of the mile-stones; and as at present required was a story of about thirty th, whose one end would touch the Barony of Gruids, and the other the Croht miles,very painful, began to bleed The day, too, had gro and unpleasant, and after twelve o'clock there ca drizzle I li at every few paces a blotch of blood upon the road, until, in the parish of Edderton, we both reh the hills, which two of our older cousins had taken during the previous year, when on a si which his elder cousins could perforet home as soon as possible, and by the shortest e both struck up the hill-side, and soon found ourselves in a dreary waste, without trace of human habitation

Walter, however, pushed on bravely and in the right direction; and, though ht diht was falling, we reached a heathy ridge, which commands the northern sea-board of the Cromarty Firth, and saw the cultivated country and the sands of Nigg lying only a few erous at certain hours of the tide, and accidents frequently happen in the fords; but then there could, we thought, be no fear of us; for though Walter could not swim, I could; and as I was to lead the way, he of course would be safe, by siht fell rather thick than dark, for there was a h the cloud; but, though Walter steered well, the doay was exceedingly rough and broken, and we had wandered from the path I retain a faint but painful recollection of a scraggy h which I had to grope onwards, stuan to feel as if I were , and that the dream was a very horrible one, fro a little cleared spot on the edge of the cultivated country, I dropped down as suddenly as if struck by a bullet, and, after an ineffectual attehtened; but he succeeded in carrying rass which stood up in therass, he laid himself down beside htened, as he lay, to hear the sounds of psal apparently fro cluh psalood people” in the low country, he did not know but that in the Highlands the casehad ceased, there was a slow, heavy step heard approaching the rick; an exclarasped Walter by the naked heel He started up, and found hirey-headed hbouring clump, had escaped his notice

The old ipsies, was at first disposed to be angry at the liberty we had taken with his hayrick; but Walter's siret that ”poor boys, who had met with an accident,” should have laid theht under the open sky, and a house so near ”It was putting disgrace,” he said, ”on a Christian land” I was assisted into his cottage, whose only other inhlander's wife, received us with great kindness and sye, the hospitable regrets and regards of both host and hostess waxed stronger and louder still They knew our randmother, and remembered old Donald Roy; and when ly-expressed burst of sorrow and commiseration, that the son of a man whom they had seen so ”well to do in the world” should be in circumstances so deplorably destitute I was too ill to take much note of what passed I only remember, that of the food which they placed before me, I could partake of only a few spoonfuls of milk; and that the old wo over ht's rest in their best bed, as to be fit in the _-cart, to the house of a relation in the parish of Nigg, from which, after a second day's rest, I was conveyed in another cart to the Cromarty Ferry And thus terhlands

Both -lived races, and Death did not often knock at the family door But the tih she was soer than her husband, ca to Bunyan, she ”called for her children, and told the woh intimately acquainted with her Bible, not in the least fitted to y: she could _live_ her religion better than _talk_ it; but she now earnestly recoreat interests once athered round her bed, she besought one of her daughters to read to her, in their hearing, that eighth chapter of the Romans which declares that ”there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, alk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” She repeated, in a sinking voice, the concluding verses,--”For I aels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to coht nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” And, resting in confidence on the hope which the passage so powerfully expresses, she slept her last sleep, in si of the general awakening I retain her wedding-ring, the gift of Donald Roy It is a sorely-wasted fragh on one of the sides, for she had toiled long and hard in her household, and the breach in the circlet, with its general thinness, testify to the fact; but its gold is still bright and pure; and, though not e it for the Holy Coat of Treves, or for waggon-loads of the wood of the ”true cross”

My grandmother's term of life had exceeded by several twelvemonths the full threescore and ten; but when, only a few years after, Death next visited the circle, it was on its youngest members that his hand was laid A deadly fever swept over the place, and my two sisters--the one in her tenth, the other in her twelfth year--sank under it within a few days of each other Jean, the elder, who resided with irl, of fine intellect, and a great reader; Catherine, the younger, was lively and affectionate, and a general favourite; and their loss plunged the farief, but they felt strongly: my mother for weeks and months wept for her children, like Rachel of old, and refused to be corandfather, now in his eighty-fifth year, seemed to be rendered wholly bankrupt in heart by their loss As is perhaps not uncoeneration of grown-upthe children their descendants The boys, his grandsons, were too wild for hientle and affectionate--had seized on his whole heart; and now that they were gone, it see in the world left to care for He had been, up till this tie, a hale and active h on the verge of seventy, one of the first men in the place to apply for arradually sunk, and longed for the rest of the grave ”It is God's will,” I heard hiratulated hi term of life and unbroken health--”It is God's will, but not my desire” And in rather more than a twelvemonth after the death of my sisters, he was seized by almost his only illness--for, for nearly seventy years he had not been confined to bed for a single day--and was carried off in less than a week During the last few days, the fever under which he sank mounted to his brain; and he talked in unbroken narrative of the events of his past life He began with his earliest recollections; described the battle of Culloden as he had witnessed it from the Hill of Cromarty, and the appearance of Duke Willia a subsequent visit to Inverness; ran over the after events of his career--his e, his intervieith Donald Roy, his business transactions with neighbouring proprietors, long dead at the ti, in his oral history, his teran laying doith singular coherency, the stateical work of the old school, which he had been recently perusing And finally, his ood hope It is not uninteresting to look back on two such generations of Scotched They differed very considerably in sorandfather, with ood deal of the Tory in his coe III in the early policy of his reign, and by his adviser Lord Bute; reprobated Wilkes and Junius; and gravely questioned whether Washi+ngton and his coadjutors, the American Republicans, were other than bold rebels My uncles, on the contrary, were stanch Whigs, who looked upon Washi+ngton as perhaps the best and greatest man of modern times--stood firm by the policy of Fox, as opposed to that of Pitt--and held that the ith France, which imhly it changed its character afterwards, one of unjustifiable aggression But however greatly randfather may have differed on these points, they were equally honest eneration can perhaps forular interest of the links which serve to connect the recollections of a man who has seen his fiftieth birth-day, hat to them must appear a reht at Culloden--one on the side of the King, the other on that of the Prince--and, with these, not a feitnessed the battle froed woed man who had attained to mature manhood when the persecutions of Charles and Jaret excited by the death of Renwick My eldest e--remembered old John Feddes--turned of ninety at the ti expedition could not have dated later than the year 1687 I have known many who remembered the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions; and have listened to stories of executions which took place on the gallows-hills of burghs and sheriffdos perpetrated on town Links and baronial Laws And I have felt a strange interest in these glimpses of a past so unlike the present, when thus presented to the mind as personal reminiscences, or as well-attested traditions, ree All, for instance, which I have yet read of witch-burnings has failed to ily as the recollections of an old lady who in 1722 was carried in her nurse's arms--for she was almost an infant at the tihbourhood of Dornoch--the last which took place in Scotland The lady well re of the fire, and the miserable appearance of the poor fatuous creature whom it was kindled to consume, and who seemed to be so little aware of her situation, that she held out her thin shrivelled hands to warm them at the blaze But what htful incident in a sad spectacle--was the circumstance that, when the charred re aust of wind suddenly blew the smoke athwart the spectators, and she felt in her attendant's ar suffocated by the horrible stench I have heard described, too, by a man whose father had witnessed the scene, an execution which took place, after a brief and inadequate trial, on the burgh-gallows of Tain The supposed culprit, a Strathcarron Highlander, had been found lurking about the place, noting, as was supposed, where the burghers kept their cattle, and was hung as a spy; but they all, after the execution, came to deem him innocent, fro in the wind, a white pigeon had co the way, and, as it passed over, half-encircled the gibbet

One of the two Culloden soldiers whom I ree a the woods of the Cromarty Hill; and in his last illness, my uncles, whom I had always leave to accompany, used not unfrequently to visit him He had lived at the time his full century, and a few aunt face that used to stare froe, horny hand He had been settled in life, previous to the year 1745, as the head gardener of a northern proprietor, and little dreaed in war; but the rebellion broke out; and as his , had volunteered to serve on behalf of his principles in the royal arhty man of his hands,” ith hione at this ti forty years seele recollection could be drawn; but well did he re atrocities of the troops of cumberland He had accompanied the arustus, and there witnessed scenes of cruelty and spoliation of which the recollection, after the lapse of seventy years, and in his extreh to set his Scotch blood aboil While scores of cottages were fla on the eed in racing in sacks, or upon Highland ponies; and when the ponies were in request, the woarth's ”March to Finchley,” took their seats astride like the men Gold circulated and liquor flowed in abundance; and in a feeeks there were about twenty thousand head of cattle brought in byparties of the soldiery froroups of drovers froarpurchases at greatly less than half-price

My grandfather's recollections of Culloden were merely those of an observant boy of fourteen, who had witnessed the battle from a distance

The day, he has toldthe brow of the Hill of Cromarty, where he found many of his townsfolk already asseradually cleared away; first one hill-top cae of coast, froreat Caledonian valley to the proh the haze A little after noon there suddenly rose a round white cloud from the Moor of Culloden, and then a second round white cloud beside it And then the two cloudsslantways on the wind towards the west; and he could hear the rattle of the s with the roar of the artillery And then, in what seely brief space of tireater guns ceased, and a sharp intermittent patter of musketry passed on towards Inverness But the battle was presented to the iination, in these old personal narratives, in many a diverse form I have been told by an ancient wo some sheep on a solitary common near Munlochy, separated from the Moor of Culloden by the Firth, and screened by a lofty hill, that she sat listening in terror to the boom of the cannon; but that she was still , who sat upright on his haunches all the ti lasted, with his neck stretched out towards the battle, and ”looking as if he saw a spirit” Such are some of the recollections which link the memories of aage, and which serve to reeneration of men after another break and disappear on the shores of the eternal world, as wave after wave breaks in foaround-swell sets in heavily from the sea

CHAPTER VII

”Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall”--ROGERS

Some of the wealthier tradesress which their boys were ot a school ularities, got diurnally drunk, on receiving the instal as hisrid of him, they procured another--a licentiate of the Church--who for sohtful, and withal a painstaking teacher; but co in contact with so up such a cloud of doubt around hi the propriety of infant baptism, that both his bodily and mental health becan his charge

And then, after a pause, during which the boys enjoyed a delightfully long vacation, they got yet a third schoolh, if not very consistent religious profession, as always getting into pecuniary difficulties, and always courting, though with but little success, wealthy ladies, who, according to the poet, had ”acres of charms” To the subscription school I was transferred, at the instance of Uncle Ja the experience of the past, that I was destined to be a scholar And, invariably fortunate in my opportunities of amusement, the transference took place only a feeeks ere the better school health and heart in a labyrinth of perplexity resigned his charge I had little h to look about me on the new forms, and to renew, on a firmer foundation than ever, my friendshi+p with my old associate of the cave--who had been for the two previous years an inmate of the subscription school, and was now less undervacation; and for four happy one very little change: I was even fonder of the shores and woods than ever, and better acquainted with the rocks and caves A very considerable change, however, had taken place in the amusements of the school-fellows my contemporaries, ere now from two to three years older than when I had been associated with them in the parish school Hy-spy had lost its charms; nor was there lish; whereasindeed With the exception of my friend of the cave, they cared little about rocks or stones; but they all liked brambles, and sloes, and _craws-apples_, tolerably well, and took great delight in assisting me to kindle fires in the caverns of the old-coast line, at which we used to broil shell-fish and crabs, taken as and boulders of the ebb below, and roast potatoes, transferred from the fields of the hill above There was one cave, an especial favourite with us, in which our fires used to blaze day after day for weeks together It is deeply hollowed in the base of a steep ivy-neiss, a full hundred feet in height; and bears on its s its uneven bottoe rounded pebbles in theent to which it owed its existence had been the wild surf of this exposed shore But for more than two thousand years wave had never reached it: the last general elevation of the land had raised it beyond the reach of the highest streaht recesses, its stony sides were crusted with mosses and liverworts; and a crop of pale, attenuated, sickly-looking weeds, on which the sun had never looked in his strength, sprang thickly up over its floor In the rearner and thrashi+ng-place by a far crops of bere and oats on two sloping plots at the foot of the cliffs in its ihbourhood; and it was known, from this circumstance, to my uncles and the older inhabitants of the town, as Marcus's Cave My companions, however, had been chiefly drawn to it by a hland pensioner--a sorely dilapidated relic of the French-Aht under General Wolfe in his day--had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would fain have made it his hoant, and his daughter disreputable; and, desirous to quit their society altogether, and live as a herentleman who tenanted the farm above, to be per So bad was his English, however, that the gentleman failed to understand him; and his request was, as he believed, rejected, while it was in reality only not understood Aer folk the cave cales' Cave;” andin it as Rory would have lived, had his petition been granted In the wild half-savage life which we led, we did contrive to provide for ourselves remarkably well The rocky shores supplied us with limpets, periwinkles, and crabs, and now and then a lued slopes under the precipices, with hips, sloes, and bra the beach, and the wood above, furnished abundance of fuel; and as there were fields not half a mile away, I fear the more solid part of our diet consisted often of potatoes which we had not planted, and of pease and beans which we had not sown One of our nu away a pot unobserved fro us with a pitcher; there was a good spring not two hundred yards from the cave mouth, which supplied us ater; and, thus possessed of not ood deal more, we contrived to fare sumptuously every day It has been often remarked, that civilized man, when placed in circue I shall not say that my companions or myself had been particularly civilized in our previous state; but nothing could bevacation, we becaes The class which we attended was of a kind not opened in any of our accredited schools, and it ht be difficult to procure testimonials in its behalf, easily procurable as these usually are; and yet there were soht be conned with so the noble sentiment of self-reliance, or the all-important habit of self-help At the tih; and the ue of Reynard the Fox, seemed always omitted

Our parties in these excursions used at times to swell out to ten or twelve--at tiained in quantity they always lost in quality, and becareatly more than the arithmetical ratio When most innocent, they consisted of only a brace of ent boy from the south of Scotland, who boarded with two elderly ladies of the place, and attended the subscription school; and the acknowledged leader of the band, who, belonging to the permanent irreducible staff of the establishment, was never off duty We used to be very happy, and not altogether irrational, in these little skeleton parties My new friend was a gentle, tasteful boy, fond of poetry, and a writer of soft, simple verses in the old-fashi+oned pastoral vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we learned to love one another all the more, from the circu te, timid one Two of the stanzas of a little pastoral, which he addressed to me about a twelve the north country for Edinburgh, still remain fixed in my memory; and I must submit them to the reader, both as adequately representative of the many others, their fellohich have been lost, and of that juvenile poetry in general which ”is written,” according to Sir Walter Scott, ”rather from the recollection of what has pleased the author in others, than what has been suggested by his own in, My colly, my crook, and my horn: To leave you, indeed, I repine, But I must aith the ht, The world and its follies be new; But ah! can such scenes of delight Ere arise, as I witnessed with you!”

Timid as he naturally was, he soon learned to abide in my company terrors whichI was fond of lingering in the caves until long after nightfall, especially in those seasons when the moon at full, or but a few days in her wane, rose out of the sea as the evening wore on, to light up the wild precipices of that solitary shore, and to render practicable our ascending path to the hill above And Finlay was almost the only one of my band who dared to encounter with me the terrors of the darkness Our fire has often startled the benighted boat round so seawards frory tu of the surf beyond; and excise-cutters have oftener than once altered their tack intowards the coast, to deter a haunt of sneiss of the hill there is a subaqueous deposit of the Lias forist, because never yet laid bare by the ebb; though every heavier stor ashore fragments of its dark bituely charged with infla flame, as if steeped in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the coas byread in Shakspere of a fuel termed ”sea-coal,” and unaware at the tiht to London by sea, I inferred that the inflammable shale cast up from the depths of the Firth by the waves could not be other than the veritable ”sea-coal” which figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly; and so, assisted by Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the substance, as at once classical and an original discovery, I used to collect it in large quantities and convert it into smoky and troubled fires, that ever filled our cavern with a horrible stench, and scented all the shore

Though unaware of the fact at the tietable, but to animal substance; the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of e a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches' caldron--blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur--eye of beleht in its very se, and inexplicable Once or twice I see the ments of shells embedded in its substance; and at least once I laid open aon the dark surface as a creaanisms raised a temporary wonder, it was not until a later period that I learned to comprehend their true import, as the half-effaced but still decipherable characters of a rey, dream-encircled past

With the docile Finlay as ed, I was rarely or never mischievous On the occasions, however, in which my band swelled out to ten or a dozen, I often experienced the ordinary evils of leadershi+p, as known in all gangs and parties, civil and ecclesiastical; and was soe in enterprises whichthe other ”Confessions” hich our literature is charged, we had the _bona fide_ ”Confessions of a Leader,”

with exah he seems to overbear, he is in reality overborne, and actually follows, though he appears to lead

Honest Sir Williah, and a hero, was at once candid and huh to confess to the canons of Hexha evil-disposed men,” whom he could neither ”justify nor punish,” he was able to protect woht” And, of course, other leaders, less tall and less heroic, must not unfrequently find thenanimity to confess the fact, in circuet hold of queen bees, they are able, by controlling the movements of these natural leaders of hives, to control the movements of the hives themselves; and not unfrequently in Churches and States do there exist inconspicuous bee- the leader-bees, in reality influence and control the movements of the entire body, politic or ecclesiastical, over which these natural y Partly in the character of leader--partly beingone of er parties into a tolerably serious scrape We passed every day, on our way to the cave, a fine large orchard, attached to thean adjacent hill over which our path lay, and which commands a bird's-eye view of the trim-kept walks and well-laden trees, there used not unfrequently to arise wild speculations a a supply of the fruit, to serve as desserts to our meals of shell-fish and potatoes

Weeks elapsed, however, and autu on to its close, ere we could quite reed to lead; and, after arranging the plan of the expedition, we broke into the orchard under the cloud of night, and carried aith us whole pocketfuls of apples They were all intolerably bad--sour, hard, baking apples; for we had delayed the enterprise until the better fruit had been pulled: but though they set our teeth on edge, and we flung most of them into the sea, we had ”snatched” in the foray, what Gray well ter it, merely for the sake of the excitement induced and the risk encountered, when out ca fact, that one of our nu's evidence, betrayed his companions

The factor of the Cromarty property had an orphan nepheho for part in the orchard foray He had also engaged, however, in a second enterprise of a si An out-house pertaining to the dwelling in which he lodged, though itself situated outside the orchard, was attached to another house inside the walls, which was eardener as a store-place for his apples; and finding an unsuspected crevice in the partition which divided the two buildings, soh which Pyramus and Thisbe htway availing hiardener's apples Sharpening the end of a long stick, he began harpooning, through the hole, the apple-heap below; and though the hole was greatly too ser specied froetting a good ardener--far advanced in life at the ti too ih a the evil influence that was destroying his apples The harpooned individuals lay scattered over the floor by scores; but the agent that had dispersed and perforated theether an inscrutable th, however, there ca, in which our quondam companion lost hold, when busy at work, of the pointed stick; and when John next entered his storehouse, the guilty harpoon lay stretched across the harpooned apples The discovery was followed up; the culprit detected; and, on being closeted with his uncle the factor, he communicated not only the details of his own special adventure, but the particulars of ours also And early next day there was a er, to the effect that ould be all put in prison in the course of the week

We were terribly frightened; sopoint of our position--the double-dyed guilt of the factor's nephew--failed to occur to any of us; and we looked for only instant incarceration I still re of shame I used to experience every ti, all-engrossing belief that every one was looking at and pointing me out--and the terror, when in my uncles'--akin to that of the culprit who hears fro learned of race to an honest family, on which, in the memory of man, no stain had before rested The discipline was eot it It did seee, however, that no one appeared to know anything about our misdemeanour: the factor kept our secret re so in order to pounce upon us all thea hasty council in the cave, we resolved that, quitting our ho the rocks till the stor should have blown by