Read Ebook: Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 09 by Wilson John Mackay Compiler Leighton Alexander Editor

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he first time he entertained the hope of happiness; it was vain, romantic, perhaps we might say absurd, but he cherished it.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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:--

"Fair were her erbers with flowers-- Rose and lili divers colours, Primrol and parvink; Mint, feverfoy, and eglantine, Colimbin, and mo there were, Than ani man mocht think."

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.

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.

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.

Though Helen had seen many indications that might have satisfied her 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.

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.

"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.

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.

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