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good care o' ourselves, Tibby'; save just the auld Maister himself, and the young Chevalier. There's canny Mr. Gilbert, our auldest hope,-let number one alone to see after him. And as for mim Miss Mysie, I'll wager she's thinking more this night, Sabbath though it be, of her bridal fal-als, and the blankets and sheets she can reive frae the Fernylees, to her new hame, and the hundred more pounds o' tocher she should have had, had so much not been spent on Charlie's learning, than o' the father's house, and kindred she's leaving, and the witless, glaiket brother she is parting from."

Tibby could not dispute this affirmation. With the goose smoking on the assiette, between her hands, she halted to remark, that "The deadening o' natural affection, the sure sign o' the rampant growth of pride, prodigality, and the love o' filthy lucre, was among the sorest of the defections of these sinfu' times; when gear sindered the hearts nature had made the sibbest."

The time was gone bye, when the man and the woman sat at the board-end off the house o' the Fernylees, but on this night of peculiar solemnity, the old respectable pair who occupied the kitchen, were invited into the parlour to drink | prosperity to the departing inmates; the other servants were on the new system, lodged in bothies, save one young girl, Tibby's aid-decamp. This invitation was made on the motion of Charles, who was himself the bearer of it, and who returned with Tibby under his arm, smirking, and smoothing down her newly donned clean apron, Robin Steele following, with his queerest, funniest face, and his blue bonnet, en chapeau bras. Cold, and half-offended, though the bride-elect might look from under her dropt eyelids, the countenance of the auld Maister, and even those of the married daughters of the family, brightened in welcome of this re-union. Robin's Young Chevalier diligently filled the glass of Charles's Greysteel,*—such were their old caressing names for each other-caressing after the humorous fashion of Scotch wooing, of "nipping and scratching." The heart of the patriarchal farmer, at the head of the board, appeared to become lighter, for the whispered, half-heard, kindly jibes, passing below the salt.

"What can I do for you, Robin, and for you too, Tibby," whispered Charles, "in yonder far away, big town?" The considerate maiden paused.

"Send her a sure account o' the state o' the Gospel in Whirlpool," whispered Robin, smiling, and winking. "And him," retorted Tibby snelly, "be sure ye send him a sound prent, (Robin's name for a Radical newspaper,)" shewing how the nation is going to wrack, and the woo' rising."

"E'en let it be sae," rejoined the shepherd laughing. "That is, if it cost ye no expense. I'm not particular about the age, if the doctrine's sound when it comes; the Whig prents are grown as

Greysteel, the name, few natives of Scotland need be told, given by James the Fourth, when a boy, to the Douglas.

wersh and fuzionless as"

What we can

not tell, for the conversation swelled into a higher key, and became more general and lively. Charles was allowed to replenish the punch-bowl once; but the motion for another was promptly opposed by Tibby, and quietly overruled by the Master. And the youth, just beginning to taste "the sweet o' the night," wished Sunday had been Monday. It was, as Robin Steele afterwards sorrowfully remarked, the foundation of all his faults, that "he ne'er kenned when to stop." Long before the conviviality had reached the pitch to which Charles was attuned, the table had been cleared, and the " Big Ha' Bible" again placed upon it. Mr. Hepburn requested, on this night, that his friends should sing with him and his children, the scriptural paraphrase, on the chapter which he called on his son, Charles, to read, the vision of the Patriarch, as he journeyed to Padanaram, the covenant pillar of Bethel.

The devotional feelings of Charles Hepburn, though he had made shipwreck of his intended profession, were still as warm and excitable as his convivial sympathies. When that beautiful hymn,

"O God of Bethel,"

was sung, which so powerfully blends human
charities with heavenly trust, every fibre of his
frame was vibrating.
coldness of those around him, who could now, as
Repelled by the seeming
he scornfully thought, quietly say good night,
and retire to bed, he wandered out beneath the
stars. The very natural thought rose as he gaz-
ed around: "What shall have occurred to me,
before I look again on Fernylees, and share my
dear father's Sabbath night's supper?”

There would probably have appeared little
beauty in the scene on which the moon was now
rising to any one whose eyes had not, like those
of Charles', first opened upon this nook of earth.
The Fernylees was a rather bare, extensive pas-
ture farm, lying on "the winter-shaded" side of
a range of Border hills, near the foot of which,
on a gentle ascent, stood the thatched farm-
house. A few small arable fields and rushy mea-
dows, stretched out in front and along the holm,
by the side of the river, a humble stream, yet not
unknown in Scottish song. Around, lay the open
pastures, running up into the hills, and covered
with patches of fern, and straggling tufts of
juniper and gorse, or shelving into hollows and
little glades interspersed with natural coppices
of hazel, and alder, and sloe-thorn. On one
hand was a low range of bothies and farm-of-
fices: on the other, about equidistant, rose, on an
airy mound, the barn-yard, exactly on the site of
the old Peel-house of the Fernylees. Its massy
sunken wall or bulwark, was part of the origi-
nal structure. Four very large ash trees had re-
mained here, and, save one, thriven, since the times
of the Border raids. On the blasted ash the old
tyrant baron of the Fernylees (which was now
a fraction of a ducal domain,) had hung Judon
Ker, a Border thief, whose prowess was record-
ed in one of Tibby Elliott's ballads.

In a

nest, or cradle, amid its withered branches, the boy Charles had found an out-look far up and down the valley, and a place removed from the bustle of the family, in which to con his book in quiet,-Charles, the man, a spot "for ruminating sweet and bitter fancies," and for a repentance too seldom followed by good fruits.

He once again swung himself up into his old nestling place; and on the eve of a new exist. ence, cast his thoughts backwards upon his few and evil days, from the time that he had left the University. His course had been a series of errors and of failures in various attempts to obtain a living, alternating with periods of complete idleness, spent often in bitterness while lounging about his father's farm. Though Charles was but too prone to divide the blame of his misconduct with others, and to find it in any cause save the true one, it was not in a season like this, when unveiled conscience arraigned his thoughts, to listen to her solemn opinion pronounced on his conduct, that he could deceive himself. His elder brother and sister had treated him with coldness, -had scowled upon him as the idle waster of his father's substance, which was robbery of their rights. What he called their selfishness usually raised his indignation; but his feelings were moderate at this hour, and did more justice to his just, if not very generous or cordial relatives. While this train of thought and sentiment absorbed the young man, his affairs still formed the theme of the kitchen fireside, to which the shepherd had returned to light his pipe, after suppering the steed that was to bear Charles away early in the morning to a spot traversed by the Carlisle mail, and to which his Greysteel was to accompany him on the pony.

"I have no brew of this sudden journey, Robin," said the thoughtful maiden. "Ye see how ill fit that lad is to take care of himself: anither bowl on a Sabbath night! He's not fit to be trusted frae hame-his wild aits are far from being a' sawn yet, or I'm sair mista'en."

"And no place fitter than the Fernylees to drap them, where I'm sure there's no want o' geese to pick them up," said Robin, in a humour between mirth and bitterness. No one foresaw the dangers of his friend Charles's character more clearly than himself; but he saw farther, and looked hopefully to the future effects of the young man's early training, and to the natural strength of his understanding, yet correcting errors in whose source were mingled

"So much of earth-so much of Heaven,
And such impetuous blood."

The thick over-spreading branches of "Judon's ash," had for generations formed a kind of chapelry to the farm..house of Fernylees. It was the fortune of Charles Hepburn to be now, as it drew on to midnight, the unvoluntary listener to his grey-haired father's earnest prayers, for himself. With feelings he listened, from which we withdraw in reverence, though their fountain was no deeper than the breast of a gay and very thoughtless young man.

The lingering influence of these feelings made

him listen with more than ordinary patience and humility, to the final warning and lecture with which Robin and Tibby gratuitously favoured him.

"Dinna let wise Mr. Gilbert be casting ye up in our dish," said the shepherd, appealing to a species of motive, at all times too powerful with Charles, "And oh, Charlie," wailed the privileged and now weeping maiden, "be wise now, like a dear bairn, and bring na shame upon the honest house of Fernylees; and the grey-hairs o' the Maister, with sorrow to the grave."

Charles could not reply then; but seventeen miles off, and ten hours latter, when he shook hands with the shepherd, as the mail came up, he said with the frank cordiality and sanguine confidence that kept the hearts his follies would have alienated: "You shall hear how steady a fellow I'm growin', Robin, Don't despair of seeing me, though going out a poor clerk, Mayor of Liverpool yet; while wise Gibby, at home yonder"-The coach-horn drowned the prognostication of the young prophet, whatever it might be, regarding his staid, industrious bro➡ ther; and he had mounted and was whirling over the moor, while his Greysteel followed him with glistening eyes.

And now two years had passed over the house of Fernylees, unmarked by any violent change, save that Tibby Elliot, fancied, with some truth, that her old master looked a dozen years older, and Robin Steele, silently remarked the increas ing difficulty with which he met the half-yearly rent-day. Frequent and various in the same period had been the shifting fortunes of Charles Hepburn; and flattering, painful, and contradictory the accounts received of, and from him. all promised prosperity, and Robin received a half-dozen newspapers by one post; and next time it was heard, from some chance source, that Charles had again lost his employment, or had abandoned it as usual.

Now

In a

Wise Gilbert had married, in the meanwhile, and brought home his wife; which made Tibby prudently abdicate to avert a virtual dethronement. She retired to a small cottage, in a thriving village, about two miles off, the recent creation of the wool of the adjoining hills. few months her "kind, gude, auld Maister," surrendering his concerns into the hands of his elder son, on a very slender annuity, to terminate with his lease, made the ancient maiden happy, by becoming her lodger, or rather the master of her cottage.

The trusty Robin Steele, who still lived at the farm, often joined their family worship on the evenings of Sundays; and so far as Tibby's means and management would stretch, the SABBATH NIGHT'S SUPPER, proscribed by the more refined manners of the modern lady of Fernylees, was not yet wholly wanting to the venerable auld Maister; nor was the health of Charles ever forgotten by Robin. If ever the father spoke of him whom his thoughts seldom left, it was to these two humble friends that his confidings

were made; his fears and hopes, and fears again. In a fit of generous, though somewhat misplaced indignation, Charles, usually a most irregular correspondent, wrote home when he learned the terms on which his father had surrendered his lease, enclosing all of his year's salary that he could realize, L.50. With what exultation did Tibby carry this intelligence to Robin, that afternoon, as she saw him wearing the hoggs down the braes overhanging the village. Scarcely could he prevail with her to keep from taunting, with the generosity of the prodigal son, the penurious brother:-" Ye wot not, lass," Robin said, "the hard bargain and sore strife, Gilbert has with a lady wife, down-looking merkates, and the ransom rent of the Fernylees." Tibby was a woman, and though almost always kind, not always perfectly reasonable. "Ye'll see Charlie Hepburn bigg us a braw sclated house with a byre at the gait-end, and mak' the auld Maister walk down the town with his gold cane yet," | was her frequent boast; but till the accomplishment of these prophecies, which sometimes made the saint-like old man smile, he thoughtfully laid aside the greater part of this money, fearing that Charles was not past all his expensive follies, and therefore not above want for himself. And he congratulated himself on this forethought, when, after another long silence, it was heard by accident, from a neighbouring farmer, who had been at Liverpool to sell his wool, that Charles Hepburn was married! Tibby's first impulse was indignation; but she suppressed her own feelings, to spare those of her master. "We'll be sure to get a letter next week," she would say, at the spare weekly supper, to which some old friend or neighbour often came in, uninvited but welcome. Postage, Mr. Charles knows to be no light charge; ye are aye complaining o' the parliamenters, Robin; will ye get them to take of that post-letter cess that brings sae meikle heartbreak to poor wives, widow women, and lanely mothers. But I'se warrant me Mr. Charles, now that he is a married man, with the care of a family upon his head, is another guess, man. I never saw the wise man yet that marriage did not sober and steady."

declared herself, though cast off by her friends, to be, as the wife of Charles, the happiest woman in England. There was that in the phrase which made the old father fear, that short as her term of married life had been, it had not all been thus happy. And he was right. The young pair-and the wife was very young-had not been many weeks married, when Charles, by his frequently recurring inattentions and imprudencies, lost an advantageous employment. Then came a season of great hardship and privation in which everything failed but the affection which mutual suffering deepened between them into unutterable tenderness. Oh, well may the strongest-minded of the human race dread the subduing force of evil habit, and guard against the very appearance of evil, when Charles Hepburn, now feeling to madness the folly and cruelty of his own unsteady conduct, and pardoned, and offending times without number, could again fall into error. His final lapse was more pardonable in the immediate cause, than many of his former misadventures, though it chanced to be attended by worse consequences; for though the least it was the last drop in the overflowing

cup.

Six months before, when sunk in the very depths of misery, shunned by his gay companions, and looking forward to the last extremity of poverty; and when, but for the sake of his wife, he would have fled to the ends of the earth to avoid or amend his fortunes, he once more found employment as an inferior clerk to an extensive company, the senior partner of which was a native of Scotland. Their business was chiefly with the United States. For some weeks the punctu ality and diligence of Charles were quite exemplary. Mr. Dennistoun began to hope that the bad business character he bore universally in Liverpool, was unfounded or exaggerated.

"New brooms sweep clean," said the cautious Mr. William Smith, a junior partner, promoted for industry and attention, from the quill and packing. cord. He had, indeed, been very unwilling to receive the branded clerk, who, among other sins, was understood to have committed

that of rhyme. Mr. Smith was right. The

old leaven still fermented in the constitution of Hepburn; and simultaneously with the discovery of his superior intelligence in some departments of business, came the experience that had been forced upon all his employers. The temptations of society, pleasure, and what he called friendship, returned with unmitigated force upon their fascinated victim. Three times in the course of the twelve months he had been dis

Even to such slender consolation the old father would try to smile. Of the new ties and duties Charles had taken upon himself, in a distant land, he knew nothing: but he hoped, and prayed; and his heart revived, and grew strong in its trust, when his son's next letter called upon him to send his congratulations to the gentle English girl who had preferred his Charles to wealthier suitors, and a grandsire's blessing to the new-born infant, named, in pride and fond-charged, and restored upon promises of amendness, by his venerable name. It had been then that Charles, ever the man of impulse, had written home, and then, under the influence of new. born feelings, he had vowed, on the lips of his child, a future life of wisdom and firmness of purpose a resolution kept for three long months. At the end of that time his wife requested to add a postscript to his letter home,for Fernylees was still called home,-in which she

ment. The last time to the tears and intercessions of his wife, whom, as a desperate expedient, Charles had humbled himself so far as to permit to go to plead for him. Mr. Dennistoun pronounced his conduct" ruinous," such as he could not overlook, save for Mrs. Hepburn's sake, just this once. And could Agnes, who loved so tenderly, and hoped so brightly, doubt that now her husband, restored to comfort and respectability,

would be steady-be all that was wanting to make her, poor and unregarded as she was become, still "the happiest woman in England." Once again evil habit prevailed over the sincere but infirm resolution of Hepburn.

In the bitter cold morning of the 26th of January, 18—, the young wife of Charles Hepburn- | and she was still under nineteen-sat in the single poor apartment they rented by the week, hushing her moaning child; and at the same time preparing coffee for her husband's breakfast, to be ready against the minute he would awake. She knew that he slept too long. Her eyes, heavier from a long night of watching than from tears, for of late she seldom wept, were mournfully fixed on her infant, and then a single tear stole down the cheek, thin and sunken from the "peachy bloom" once celebrated in Charles's sonnets. The snow-drift was spinning without, and the twilight, grey and dull enough in that morning, in this narrow and mean street of a busy and crowded part of Liverpool; yet Agnes had opened but a small part of the shutter, that her husband might obtain another half hour's sleep after his prolonged revel. The clock of a neighbouring church struck a late hour. Starting at the sound, she stole on tip-toe to the side of the bed, and gazed, through now fast-gathering tears, on the sleeper, the dreamer whether awake or asleep!gently pressed her cold lips to his flushed brow, -and turned way. Soft as her movements had been, they had awaked the restless slumberer; and she was but seated, with her child in her lap, when he tossed aside the curtain.

"You are up already, Agnes, love:-I'm afraid I kept you up very late last night too; surely you did not watch for me? But what a glorious night, Agnes! how BURNS himself would have enjoyed it ;-a glorious night! a Noctes Ambrosiana!"

There was no immediate reply.

"Was Burns a married man ?" at last whispered the Englishwoman, whose young silvery voice was already touched with sorrow; and she leant her head on the bosom of her child.

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"Married! ay, to be sure; have you forgotten Bonny Jean,' and the little charming song you made me teach you- When first I went a wooing of you? ?"" cried the Scotsman, with some impatience of his wife's ignorance on points so familiar to himself. "You have then forgotten Of all the airts the wind can blaw,"" he went on, in a half-reproachful, half-playful tone. Oh, no, no, I have not forgotten that." "Then, quick, Agnes dearest, get me some tea-not coffee to-day-my throat is parched, and my head aches like a hundred fiends. Fetch your son here, and I will nurse him till you get breakfast; I trust he is better to-day. But when did you get up, love? I hope you did not sit for me: I daresay it was two o'clock before I got home." Agnes did not now say how much later it had been, nor yet how long she had held her solitary vigil. She placed the boy in his father's arms, and hastened to procure a small quantity of tea with her almost last shilling. While she

moved about the room, Charles, still under the excitement of his revel, talked wildly of the wit, the gaiety, the national feeling, the rapturous conviviality, with which his friends and himself, men of different nations, Scotch, English, Irish, and American, united by the bond of enthusiastic admiration, had celebrated the birth-day of Scotland's immortal bard:

"And the bonds they grew tighter the more they were wet." He repeated the flashes of Scotch genius which had electrified the banqueters, the bursts of Irish humour which had set the table in a roar. Either the fire and spirit of these sallies had totally evaporated, or Agnes was an unfit recipient. On this morning she, for the first time, could not feel with Charles, or her sympathy was feigned or faint-her smile, for she attempted to smile, forced and languid. Charles, whose sensibility was quick as ethereal fire, felt damped, disconcerted, and became silent.

The neighbouring church clock again sullenly swung forth another hour, with the peculiar heavy sound of bells in a snow-fall. He paused in playing with and tossing the child, whom, in whatever humour it might be, he always succeeded in making laugh,-paused to count the strokes. "Seven, eight, nine"-he started-"ten, eleven!" He threw down the boy, and seized his watch. It had run down amid his jollity. "Good God! is that clock true! Agnes, how thoughtless, how very thoughtless, to let me sleep so long!" Conscience checked the unjust reproach. "I could not, Charles; indeed I could not find heart to awake you while you looked so fevered and flushed, so much to need rest."

"Foolish woman! For this your child may want bread!" He hastily dressed himself, or rather huddled on his clothes, soiled and unbrushed from his revel; while ready to faint amid the struggles of her various feelings, Agnes tremblingly held the cup to his parched lips, which he but tasted, as with one look fixed upon her, in which burned love, grief, and remorse, he started away. He flew to the warehouse, where he should have been, where he had most unconditionally and voluntarily promised to be, by nine o'clock; to the dock, where the New York packet had lain, in which he was that morning to have shipped a valuable consignment of expensive British shawls, which were only to arrive in Liverpool through the night. It was a duty which Mr. Dennistoun, in a fit of confidence and good-humour, had intrusted to Charles,— had specially selected him to manage, as a mark of confidence. The vessel had left the dockIn a state of feeling very she was out at sea! far from "glorious," Charles bent his steps to his place of business with shame and apprehension-not unmingled with self-condemnationstriving, in vain, to fortify himself with the reflection of how weak it was in Agnes not to have roused him earlier. True, she knew not of his important engagements; she had indeed scarce seen him for the last twenty-four hours.

The first sight that met the eyes of Charles, on entering the dreaded counting-house, was

Mr. Dennistoun himself, writing at the desk usually called Mr. Hepburn's. Mr. Smith was similarly employed; but the young gentleman partner, the capitalist, lounged over a newspaper. Every clerk was, in his own department, quill-driving, as if for life and death; and nought was heard but the rustle of sharp-nibbed pens on paper. The office clock struck the half-hour past mid-day-clocks, his enemies throughout all his life, were this day to be the ruin of Charles Hepburn-living things with mocking voices, taunting his misery. He stood crushing his hat between - his hands, by the side of his own desk; and, on his first attempt to speak, the eyes of all the persons present were involuntarily turned upon him, with expressions varying with the character of the spectators-all eyes, save those of Mr. Dennistoun, who never once raised his head. As there was, after five minutes waiting, no symptom of that gentleman relaxing in his writing, Charles, his brow flushing, muttered, in deep confusion, "I am quite ashamed-quite unpardonable my conduct is this morning, Sir." The old gentle. man bowed coldly in assent, and continued his writing. "But the Washington has not sailed, though the John Adams has gone. I trust there is yet time."

"Spare yourself all trouble on that account, Mr. Hepburn," said the old gentleman, who could be as stately, when he so pleased, as if bred in a court, instead of a Glasgow countinghouse. "The goods are shipped,-though tardily, yet in good order. That, Sir, became my duty, as I had been credulous enough to believe the Ethiopian could change his skin; weak enough to assume an improper responsibility." He was still writing; and now coolly handed a slip of paper to Hepburn, who, while his eyes flashed, and then became dim, read an order to the cash-keeper to pay instantly whatever arrears of salary were due to him. That was not much, but Dennistoun, Smith, and Company had no further occasion for his services! Charles stood at first dumb and petrified; he then attempted to speak, to remonstrate, to supplicate. He thought of Agnes and her boy, and bitter and wretched were his feelings. This dismissal was not merely loss of employment: it was the wreck of the last remains of his professional character. Who would trust any man dismissed in disgrace by the calm and liberal Dennistoun. In reply to his broken solicitation, this gentleman, now inexorable, however kind he had formerly been, without uttering a word, wrote away, merely bowing and waving his hand, in signal to the speaker to be gone. Choking with feelings of pride, of grief now chafed to anger, Hepburn abruptly left the apartment, and the old gentleman picked up the order he had dropt, and desired the cash-keeper to pay over the money to himself. As Charles passed through the outer room the lounging gentleman-partner called to him to pay him a compliment on his verses, recited at the festival of the preceding night, which he, an amateur of the Muses, had just finished reading, though in business hours. It

wanted but this, in the present mood of the unfortunate Hepburn, to madden him outright. He ran out; he passed from street to street; his only distinct thought being by which avenue he could soonest escape from the town. In an hour he was several miles beyond money-making, many-masted Liverpool, cursing his existence, and the day that had given birth to a wretch whose life was fraught with blighting to all that loved him. An expression once wrung in anguish from his aged father, now recurred to him, as one idea will to the man whose reason is failing: "Unstable as water thou shalt not prevail !" This he muttered; shouted in his own ears; screamed out in his despair.

The long winter's day wore heavily on with the drooping, and ill-boding Agnes; yet she exerted herself to amuse her child, and to prepare such food, against her husband's arrival, as her slender means afforded, and such as she conceived best adapted to the state of inanition in which she knew he must return home after his revel and subsequent exhaustion. That he would not return, never once occurred to her, many as were the anxious thoughts over which she brooded. As the day wore later, Agnes, became more and more uneasy. Occasionally Hepburn's impulsive zeal had detained him after the ordinary hours of business; and but too frequently he encountered, in the busy streets of Liverpool, "friends, countrymen, and lovers," all joyously met; whom he could not entertain in his own poor lodging, and adjourned with to a tavern.

In the evening, one or two of Charles's convivial companions, of the previous night, called at his lodging to fight their battles o'er again; but he was found to be abroad, and his wife, usually a very lively person, was "sullen," one young man said, and another, more candid, "in low spirits, and no wonder." Later in the night a porter called, belonging to the Dennistoun and Smith firm, who was from Charles's native parish, and who felt kindly towards him, and was often helpful to him and his wife in many little matters. When informed that Mr. Hepburn had not yet come home to dinner, the man looked so blank, that the imagination of Agnes, prone of late to gloomy apprehension, caught fresh alarm, and the simple man was glad to escape from her anxious questionings. Leaving her sleeping child to the care of her landlady, Agnes walked to the extensive warehouses of Dennistoun. All was shut up in darkness, and must have been so for some hours. With difficulty she made her way home, where Hepburn had not yet appeared; and now exhausted from want of sleep and of food, and tortured by apprehension, she became so ill, that when the landlady proposed to go to the private residence of Mr. Dennistoun, to obtain intelligence of Charles, no opposition was offered.

The Liverpool merchant was in his splendid drawing-room, enjoying his well-earned evening leisure in the midst of his family, and with a

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