man being from the most damning guilt, and all its | with feeling and sincerity, must necessarily, in the desperate consequences, if she desired the life and act of doing so, purify his mind from the dross of honour of her sister to be saved from the bloody fangs worldly passions and interests, and bring it into that of an unjust law, if she desired not to forfeit peace state, when the resolutions adopted are likely to be of mind here, and happiness hereafter," such was the selected rather from a sense of duty, than from any frantic style of the conjuration," she was entreated inferior motive. Jeanie arose from her devotions, to give a sure, secret, and solitary meeting to the with her heart fortified to endure affliction, and enwriter. She alone could rescue him," so ran the let-couraged to face difficulties. ter, "and he only could rescue her." He was in "I will meet this unhappy man," she said to hersuch circumstances, the billet further informed her, self-"unhappy he must be, since I doubt he has been that an attempt to bring any witness of their con- the cause of poor Effie's misfortune-but I will meet ference, or even to mention to her father, or any other him, be it for good or ill. My mind shall never cast person whatsoever, the letter which requested it,up to me, that, for fear of what might be said or done would inevitably prevent its taking place, and ensure to myself, I left that undone that might even yet be the destruction of her sister. The letter concluded the rescue of her." with incoherent but violent protestations, that in obeying this summons she had nothing to fear personally.

With a mind greatly composed since the adoption of this resolution, she went to attend her father. The old man, firm in the principles of his youth, did not, in outward appearance at least, permit a thought of his family distress to interfere with the stoical reserve of his countenance and manners. He even chid his daughter for having neglected, in the distress of the morning, some trifling domestic duties which fell under her department.

"Why, what meaneth this, Jeanie ?" said the old man-"The brown four-year-auld's milk is not seiled yet, nor the bowies put up on the bink. If ye neglect your warldly duties in the day of affliction, what confidence have I that ye mind the greater matters that concern salvation? God knows, our bowies, and our pipkins, and our draps o' milk, and our bits o' bread, are nearer and dearer to us than the bread of life."

The message delivered to her by Butler from the stranger in the Park tallied exactly with the contents of the letter, but assigned a later hour and a different place of meeting. Apparently the writer of the letter had been compelled to let Butler so far into his confidence, for the sake of announcing this change to Jeanie. She was more than once on the point of producing the billet, in vindication of herself from her lover's half-hinted suspicions. But there is something in stooping to justification which the pride of innocence does not at all times willingly submit to; besides that the threats contained in the letter, in case of her betraying the secret, hung heavy on her heart. It is probable, however, that, had they remained longer together, she might have taken the Jeanie, not unpleased to hear her father's though's resolution to submit the whole matter to Butler, and thus expand themselves beyond the sphere of his imbe guided by him as to the line of conduct which mediate distress, obeyed him, and proceeded to put she should adopt. And when, by the sudden inter- her household matters in order; while old David moruption of their conference, she lost the opportunity ofved from place to place about his ordinary employdoing so, she felt as if she had been unjust to a friend, ments, scarce showing, unless by a nervous impawhose advice might have been highly useful, and tience at remaining long stationary, an occasional whose attachment deserved her full and unreserved convulsive sigh, or twinkle of the eyelid, that he was confidence. labouring under the yoke of such bitter affliction.

To have recourse to her father upon this occasion, she considered as highly imprudent. There was no possibility of conjecturing in what light the matter might strike old David, whose manner of acting and thinking in extraordinary circumstances depended upon feelings and principles peculiar to himself, the operation of which could not be calculated upon ete even by those best acquainted with him. To quested some female friend to have accompanied her to the place of rendezvous, would perhaps have been the most eligible expedient; but the threats of the writer, that betraying his secret would prevent their meeting (on which her sister's safety was said to de-ed and anointed himself, and did eat bread, in order pend) from taking place at all, would have deterred her from making such a confidence, even had she known a person in whom she thought it could with safety have been reposed. But she knew none such. Their acquaintance with the cottagers in the vicinity had been very slight, and limited to trifling acts of good neighbourhood. Jeanie knew little of them, To add force to his precept, he took a morsel on his and what she knew did not greatly incline her to plate, but nature proved too strong even for the pow trust any of them. They were of the order of loqua-erful feelings with which he endeavoured to bridle it cious good-humoured gossips usually found in their Ashamed of his weakness, he started up, and ran ou' situation of life; and their conversation had at all of the house, with haste very unlike the deliberatior times few charms for a young woman, to whom na-of his usual movements. In less than five minutes ture and the circumstance of a solitary life had given a depth of thought and force of character superior to the frivolous part of her sex, whether in high or low degree.

The hour of noon came on, and the father and child sat down to their homely repast. In his petition for a blessing on the meal, the poor old man added to his supplication, a prayer that the bread eaten in sadness of heart, and the bitter waters of Merah, might be made as nourishing as those which basket and store; and having concluded his benedichad been poured forth from a full cup and a plentiful tion, and resumed the bonnet which he had laid "reverently aside," he proceeded to exhort his daughter to eat, not by example indeed, but at least by precept "The man after God's own heart," he said, "wash

to express his submission under a dispensation of suffering, and it did not become a Christian man or woman so to cling to creature-comforts of wife or bairns,"-(here the words became too great, as it were, for his utterance,)" as to forget the first duty submission to the Divine will."

he returned, having successfully struggled to recover his ordinary composure of mind and countenance and affected to colour over his late retreat, by mut tering that he thought he heard the "young stais loose in the byre."

**

Left alone and separated from all earthly counsel, she had recourse to a friend and adviser, whose ear He did not again trust himself with the subject o Is upen to the cry of the poorest and most afflicted of his former conversation, and his daughter was glau his people. She knelt, and prayed with fervent sin-to see that he seemed to avoid further discourse on cerity, that God would please to direct her what that agitating topic. The hours glided on, as on they course to follow in her arduous and distressing situa- must and do pass, whether winged with joy or laden tion. It was the belief of the time and sect to which with affliction. The sun set beyond the dusky emishe belonged, that special answers to prayer, differ-nence of the Castle, and the screen of western hills ug little in their character from divine inspiration, were, as they expressed it, "borne in upon their minds" in answer to their earnest petitions in a crisis of difficulty. Without entering into an abstruse point of divinity, one thing is plain; namely, that the persor who lave oren his doubts and distresses in prayer,

and the close of evening summoned David Deans and his daughter to the family duty of the night. It came bitterly upon Jeanie's recollection, how often, when the hour of worship approached, she used to watch the lengthening shadows, and look out from the door of the house, to see if she could spy her sis

ter's return homeward. Alas! this idle and thought-justed the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of less waste of time, to what evils had it not finally led? and was she altogether guiltless, who noticing Effie's turn to idle and light society, had not called in her father's authority to restrain her ?-But I acted for the best, she again reflected, and who could have expected such a growth of evil, from one grain of human leaven, in a disposition so kind, and candid, and generous?

plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in the Netherlands, A sense of impropriety as well as of danger pressed upon her, as she lifted the latch of her paternal mansion to leave it on so wild an expedition, and at so late an hour, unprotected, and without the knowledge of her natural guardian. When she found herself abroad and in the open As they sate down to the "exercise," as it is called, fields, additional subjects of appréhension crowded a chair happened accidentally to stand in the place upon her. The dim cliffs and scattered rocks, interwhich Effie usually occupied. David Deans saw his spersed with green sward, through which she had to daughter's eyes swim in tears as they were directed pass to the place of appointment, as they glimmered towards this object, and pushed it aside, with a ges- before her in a clear autumn night, recalled to her ture of some impatience, as if desirous to destroy memory many a deed of violence, which, according every memorial of earthly interest when about to ad- to tradition, had been done and suffered among them dress the Deity. The portion of Scripture was read, In earlier days they had been the haunt of robbers and the psalm was sung, the prayer was made; and it assassins, the memory of whose crimes are preserved was remarkable that, in discharging these duties, the in the various edicts which the council of the city, and old man avoided all passages and expressions, of even the parliament of Scotland, had passed for diswhich Scripture affords so many, that might be con- persing their bands, and ensuring safety to the lieges, sidered as applicable to his own domestic misfortune, so near the precincts of the city. The names of these In doing so it was perhaps his intention to spare the criminals, and of their atrocities, were still rememfeelings of his daughter, as well as to maintain, in bered in traditions of the scattered cottages and the outward show at least, that stoical appearance of paneigbouring suburb.. In latter times, as we have altient endurance of all the evil which earth could ready noticed, the sequestered and broken character bring, which was, in his opinion, essential to the of the ground rendered it a fit theatre for duels and character of one who rated all earthly things at their rencontres among the fiery youth of the period. Two own just estimate of nothingness. When he had or three of these incidents, all sanguinary, and one of finished the duty of the evening, he came up to his them fatal in its termination, had happened since daughter, wished her good-night, and, having done Deans came to live at Saint Leonard's. His daugh so, continued to hold her by the hands for half a mi- ter's recollections, therefore, were of blood and hornute; then drawing her towards him, kissed her fore- ror as she pursued the small scarce-tracked solitary head, and ejaculated, "The God of Israel bless you, path, every step of which conveyed her to a greater even with the blessings of the promise, my dear distance from help, and deeper into the ominous sebairn !11 clusion of these unhallowed precincts.

CHAPTER XV.

It was not either in the nature or habits of David As the moon began to peer forth on the scene with Deans to seem a fond father; nor was he often ob- a doubtful, flitting, and solemn light, Jeanie's appreserved to experience, or at least to evince, that fulness hensions took another turn, too peculiar to her rank of the heart which seeks to expand itself in tender and country to remain unnoticed. But to trace its expressions or caresses even to those who were dear-origin will require another chapter. est to him. On the contrary, he used to censure this as a degree of weakness in several of his neighbours, and particularly in poor widow Butler. It followed, however, from the rarity of such emotions in this self-denied and reserved man, that his children attached to occasional marks of his affection and approbation a degree of high interest and solemnity; well considering them as evidences of feelings which were only expressed when they became too intense for suppression or concealment.

With deep emotion, therefore, did he bestow, and his daughter receive, this benediction and paternal caress. And you, my dear father," exclaimed Jeanie, when the door had closed upon the venerable old man, "may you have purchased and promised blessings multiplied upon you-upon you, who walk in this world as though ye were not of the world, and hold all that it can give or take away but as the midges that the sun-blink brings out, and the evening wind sweeps away!"

-The spirit I have seen

Hamlet.

May be the devil. And the devil has power To assume a pleasing shape. WITCHCRAFT and demonology, as we have had already occasion to remark, were at this period believed in by almost all ranks, but more especially among the stricter classes of presbyterians, whose government, when their party were at the head of the state. had been much sullied by their eagerness to inquire into, aud prosecute these imaginary crimes. Now, in this point of view, also, Saint Leonard's Crags and the adjacent Chase were a dreaded and ill-reputed district. Not only had witches held their meetings there, but even of very late years the enthusiast, or impostor, mentioned in the Pandemonium of Richard Bovet, Gentleman,* had, among the recesses of these

* This legend was in former editions inaccurately said to ex ist in Baxter's" World of Spirits:" but is, in fact, to be found in" Pandamonium, or the Devil's Cloyster being a further blow to Modern Sadducism," by Richard Barton, Gentleman. 12m0, 1684. The work is inscribed to Dr. Henry More. The story is entitled, "A remarkable passage of one named the Fairy Boy of Leith, in Scotland, given me by my worthy friend Captain George Burton, and attested under his hand;" and is as fol

lows:

"About fifteen years since, having business that detained me for some time in Leith, which is near Edenborough, in the kingdom of Scotland, I often met some of my acquaintance at a certain house there, where we used to drink a glass of wine for our refection. The woman which kept the house, was of hones reputation amongst the neighbours, which made me give the more attention to what she told me one day about a Fairy Bow

She now made preparation for her night-walk. Her father slept in another part of the dwelling, and, regular in all his habits, seldom or never left his apartment when he had betaken himself to it for the evening. It was therefore easy for her to leave the house unobserved, so soon as the time approached at which she was to keep her appointment. But the step she was about to take had difficulties and terrors in her own eyes, though she had no reason to apprehend her father's interference. Her life had been spent in the quiet, uniform, and regular seclusion of their peaceful and monotonous household. The very hour which some damsels of the present day, as well of her own as of higher degree, would consider as (as they called him) who lived about that town. She had given me so strange an account of him, that I desired her I might see the natural period of commencing an evening of plea-him the first opportunity, which she promised; and not long sure, brought, in her opinion, awe and solemnity in after, passing that way, she told me there was the Fairy Boy but it; and the resolution she had taken had a strange, a little before I came by; and casting her eye into the street, daring, and adventurous character, to which she and designing him to me, I went, and by smooth words, and a said, Look you, sir, yonder he is at play with those other boys, could hardly reconcile herself when the moment ap- piece of money, got him to come into the house with me; where proached for putting it into execution. Her hands in the presence of divers people, I demanded of him several as trembled as she snooded her fair hair beneath the ritrological questions, which he answered with great subtlety, and through all his discourse carryed it with a cunning much beyoud band, then the only ornament or cover which young his years, which seemed not to exceed ten or eleven. He seemed unmarried women wore on their head, and as she ad- to make a motion like drumining upon the table with his fia VOL. II.

the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Ba
shan, as he's ca'd in Scripture."*

romantic cliffs, found his way into the hidden retreats where the fairies revel in the bowels of the earth. With all these legends Jeanie Deans was too well Trained in these and similar legends, it was no acquainted, to escape that strong impression which wonder that Jeanie began to feel an ill-defined appre they usually make on the imagination. Indeed, re- hension, not merely of the phantoms which might lations of this ghostly kind had been familiar to her beset her way, but of the quality, nature, and purpose from her infancy, for they were the only relief which of the being who had thus appointed her a meeting, her father's conversation afforded from controversial at a place and hour of horror, and at a time when argument, or the gloomy history of the strivings and her mind must be necessarily full of those tempting testimonies, escapes, captures, tortures, and execu- and ensnaring thoughts of grief and despair, which tions of those martyrs of the Covenant, with whom were supposed to lay sufferers particularly open to the it was his chiefest boast to say he had been acquaint- temptations of the Evil One. If such an idea had ed. In the recesses of mountains, in caverns, and in crossed even Butler's well-informed mind, it was calmorasses, to which these persecuted enthusiasts were culated to make a much stronger impression upon so ruthlessly pursued, they conceived they had often hers. Yet firmly believing the "ossibility of an en to contend with the visible assaults of the Enemy of counter so terrible to flesh and brood, Jeanie, with a mankind, as in the cities, and in the cultivated fields, degree of resolution of which we cannot sufficiently they were exposed to those of the tyrannical govern- estimate the merit, because the incredulity of the age ment and their soldiery. Such were the terrors which has rendered us strangers to the nature and extent of made one of their gifted seers exclaim, when his com- her feelings, persevered in her determination not to panion returned to him, after having left him alone omit an opportunity of doing something towards sa in a haunted cavern in Sorn in Galloway, "It is hard ving her sister, although, in the attempt to avail herliving in this world-incarnate devils above the earth, self of it, she might be exposed to dangers so dreadand devils under the earth! Satan has been here since ful to her imagination. So, like Christiana in the ye went away, but I have dismissed him by resist- Pilgrim's Progress, when traversing with a timid yet ance; we will be no more troubled with him this resolved step the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow night." David Deans believed this, and many other of Death, she glided on by rock and stone, "now in such ghostly encounters and victories, on the faith of glimmer and now in gloom," as her path lay through the Ansars, or auxiliaries of the banished prophets.moonlight or shadow, and endeavoured to overpower This event was beyond David's remembrance. But the suggestions of fear, sometimes by fixing her mind he used to tell with great awe, yet not without a feel- upon the distressed condition of her sister, and the ing of proud superiority to his auditors, how he him- duty she lay under to afford her aid, should that be self had been present at a field-meeting at Croch-in her power; and more frequently by recurring in made, when the duty of the day was interrupted by mental prayer to the protection of that Being to whom the apparition of a tall black man, who, in the act of night is as noon-day. crossing a ford to join the congregation, lost ground, and was carried down apparently by the force of the stream. All were instantly at work to assist him, but with so little success, that ten or twelve stout men, who had hold of the rope which they had cast in to his aid, were rather in danger to be dragged into the stream, and lose their own lives, than likely to save that of the supposed perishing man. "But famous John Semple of Carspharn," David Deans used to say with exultation, "saw the whaup in the rape. Quit the rope,' he cried to us, (for I that was but a callant had a haud o' the rape mysell,) 'it is the Great Enemy! he will burn, but not drown; his design is to disturb the good wark, by raising wonder and confusion in your minds; to put off from your spirits all that ye hae heard and felt.'-Sae we let go the rape," said David, "and he went adown gers, upon which I asked him, whether he could beat a drum, to which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday night I beat all points to a sort of people that use to meet under yonder hill' (peinting to the great hill between Edenborough and Leith.) How, boy,' quoth I; what company have you there?'-'There are, sir,' said he, 'a great company both of men and women, and they are entertained with many sorts of musick besides my drum; they have, besides, plenty variety of meats and wine; and many times we are car. ried into France or Holland in a night, and return again; and whilst we are there, we enjoy all the pleasures the country doth afford. I demanded of him, how they got under that hill? To which he replied, that there were a great pair of gates that opened to them, though they were invisible to others, and that within there were brave large rooms, as well accommodated as most in Scotland. I then asked him, how I should know what he said to be true? upon which he told me he would read my fortune, saying I should have two wives, and that he saw the forms of them sitting on my shoulders; that both would be very handsome women.

Thus drowning at one time her fears by fixing her mind on a subject of overpowering interest, and arguing them down at others by referring herself to the protection of the Deity, she at length approached the place assigned for this mysterious conference.

It was situated in the depth of the valley behind Salisbury Crags, which has for a background the north-western shoulder of the mountain called Arthur's Seat, on whose descent still remain the ruins of what was once a chapel, or hermitage, dedicated to St. Anthony the Eremite. A better site for such a building could hardly have been selected; for the chapel, situated among the rude and pathless cliffs, lies in a desert, even in the immediate vicinity of a rich, populous, and tumultuous capital: and the hum of the city might mingle with the orisons of the recluses, conveying as little of worldly interest as if it had been the roar of the distant ocean. Beneath the steep ascent on which these ruins are still visible, was, and perhaps is still pointed out, the place where the wretch Nicol Muschat, who has been already mentioned in these pages, had closed a long scene of cruelty towards his unfortunate wife, by murdering her, with circumstances of uncommon barbarity.t The execration in which the man's crime was held extended itself to the place where it was perpetrated which was marked by a small cairn, or heap of stones, composed of those which each chance passenger had thrown there in testimony of abhorrence, and on the principle, it would seem, of the ancient British malediction, "May you have a cairn for your burial-place!"

As our heroine approached this ominous and unhallowed spot, she paused and looked to the moon, now rising broad on the north-west, and shedding a more distinct light than it had afforded during her walk thither. Eyeing the planet for a moment, she then slowly and fearfully turned her head towards the

"As he was thus speaking, a woman of the neighbourhood, coming into the room, demanded of him what her fortune should be? He told her that she had two bastards before she was married; which put her in such a rage, that she desired not to hear the rest. The woman of the house told me that all the people in Scotland could not keep him from the rendezvous on Thurs: day night; upon which, by promising him some more money, I got a promise of him to meet me at the same place, in the afternoon of the Thursday following, and so dismissed him at that ume. The boy came again at the place and time appointed, and I had prevailed with some friends to continue with me, if possible, to prevent his moving that night; he was placed between us, and answered many questions, without offering to go from us, until about eleven of the clock, he was got away unperruption thwart a minister's wish to perform service at a particeived of the company; but I suddenly missing him, hasted to the door, and took hold of him, and so returned him into the same room: we all watched him and on a sudden he was again got out of the doors. I followed him close, and he made a noise in the street as if he had been set upon; but from that time I could never och hith "GEORGE BURTON."

*The gloomy, dangerous, and constant wanderings of the per secuted sect of Cameronians, naturally led to their entertaining with peculiar credulity the belief, that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the wrath of men, but by the secret wiles and open terrors of Satan. In fact, a flood could not hap pen, a horse cast his shoe, or any other the most ordinary inte cular spot, than the accident was imputed to the immediat agency of fiends. The encounter of Alexander Peden with the Devil in the cave, and that of John Semple with the demon in the ford, are given by Peter Walker, almost in the anguage of the text. ↑ See note, chap. xi p. 38. Muschat's Cairn.

"Be still and hearken!--The person who assisted her in her illness murdered the child; but it was without the mother's knowledge or consent-She is therefore guiltless, as guiltless as the unhappy innocent, that but gasped a few minutes in this unhappy world-the better was its hap to be so soon at rest. "1 will think on what you have said," said Jeanic, She is innocent as that infant, and yet she must die who began to get much alarmed at the frantic vehe--it is impossible to clear her of the law!" tnence of his manner, and disputed in her own mind, whether she spoke to a maniac, or an apostate spirit incarnate-"I will think on what you say, and let you ken to-morrow."

1

Foolish, hard-hearted girl," said the stranger, The Scottish Statute Book, anno 1690, chapter 21, in conse quence of the great increase of the crime of child murder, both from the temptations to commit the offence and the difficulty of discovery, enacted a certain set of presumptions, which, in the absence of direct proof, the jury were directed to receive as evither she ought to fly homeward with all the speed she dence of the crime having actually been committed. The cir cumstances selected for this purpose were, that the woman should have concealed her situation during the whole period of pregnancy; that she should not have called for help at her delivery; and that, combined with these grounds of suspicion, the child should be either found dead or be altogether missing. Many persons suffered death during the last century under tha severe act. But during the author's memory a more lenient course vas followed, and the female accused under the act, and conscious of no competent defence, usually lodged a petition to the Court of Justiciary, denying, for form's sake, the tenor of the indictment, but stating, that as her good name had been destroyed by the charge, she was willing to submit to sentence of panishment, to which the crown counsel usually consented. This lenity in practice, and the comparative infrequency of the crime since the doom of public ecclesiastical penance has been generally dispensed with, have led to the abolition of the statute of William and Mary, which is now replaced by another, impodag banishment in those circumstances in which the crime was Cormerly capital. This alteration took place in 1803,