As for Lauderdale, he sighed; but without intending it, as it appeared, for he made a great effort to cover his sigh by a yawn, for which latter indulgence he had evidently no occasion, and then he tried a faint little unnecessary laugh, which sat still more strangely on him. "I'm an awfu' man for associations," he said; "I'm no to be held to ony account for the things that come into my head. You may say it's Cumberland, and I'm no disputing; but for a' that there's something in the sound of the voice Perhaps it required that refinement of Cumberland," said Colin, who notwithstandear natural to a, born citizen of Glasgow ing began to feel an uncomfortable heat to recognize that it was "English" which mounting upwards in his face; you may was being spoken round them as they ad- call it English, if you have a mind. There vanced-but the philosopher supposed him- is some imperceptible difference between self to have made that discovery. He re- that and the Dumfriesshire, I suppose; but curred to it with a certain pathetic meaning I should not like to have to discriminate as they went upon their way. They had where the difference lies." set out on foot from Carlisle, each with his knapsack, to make their leisurely way to the Lakes; and, when they rested and dined in the humble roadside inn which served for their first resting-place, the plaintive cadence of his friend's voice struck Colin with a certain amusement. "They're a' English here," Lauderdale said, with a tone of sad recollection, as a man might have said in Norway or Russia, hearing for the first time the foreign tongue, and bethinking himself of all the dreary seas and long tracts of country that lay between him and home. It might have been pathetic under such circumstances, though the chances are that even then Colin, graceless and fearless, would have laughed; but at present, when the absence was only half a day's march, and the difference of tongue, as we have said, only to be distinguished by an ear fine and native, the sigh was too absurd to be passed over lightly. "I never knew you have the mal du pays before," Colin said with a burst of laughter:- and the patriot himself did not refuse to smile. "Look here," said Colin impatiently; "listen to my tract. I want you to give me your opinion now it is finished; turn this way, with your face to the hills, and never mind the voice." "Oh ay," said Lauderdale, with another sigh; "there's nae voice like his ain voice to this callant's ear; it's an awfu' thing to be an author, and above a' a reformer; for you may be sure it's for the sake of the cause, and no because he's written a' that himself. Let's hear this grand tract of yours; no that I've any particular faith in that way of working," the philosopher added slowly, settling into his usual mode of talk, without consideration of his companion's impatience; "a book, or a poem, or a tract, or whatever it may be, is no good in this world without an audience. Any man can write a book; that's to say, most men could if they would but take the trouble to try; but, as for the audience, that's different. If it doesna come by nature, I see nae way of manufacturing that; "The first time you were in England- but I'm no objecting to hear what you have that was when you came to nurse me like a got to say," Lauderdale added impartially. good fellow as you are," said Colin; "IIt was not encouraging perhaps to the should have died that time but for my mother and you." Speak English," he said, with a quaint self-contradiction, "though I should say speak Scotch if I was consistent; you needna make your jokes at me. Oh ay, it's awfu' easy laughing. I'ts no that I'm thinking of; there's nothing out of the way in the association of ideas this time, though they play bonnie pranks whiles. I'm thinking of the first time I was in England, and how awfu' queer it sounded to hear the bits of callants on the road, and the poor bodies at the cottage doors." "I'm not saying that," said Lauderdale; you're one of the kind that's awfu' hard to kill a dour callant like you would have come through a' the same; but it's no that I'm thinking of. There are other things that come to my mind with the sound of the English tongue. Hold your peace, callant, and listen; is there nothing comes back to you, will you tell me, when you hear the like of that?" "I hear a woman talking in very broad young author; but Colin was sufficiently used by this time to his friend's prelections, and for his own part was very well pleased to escape from memories more perplexing and difficult to manage. It was with this intention that he had taken out No. I. of the Tracts for the Times. If any of the writers of the original series of these ronowned compositions could but have looked over the shoulder of the young Scotch minister, and beheld the different fashion of thoughts, the curious fundamental difference which lay underneath, and yet the apparent similarity of intention on the face also listened to Colin, and gave him the of it! Rome and the Pope were about as fullest attention. Lauderdale had not travfar off as Mecca and the prophet from elled much in his life, nor enjoyed many Colin's ideas. He was not in the least holidays; and, consequently, the very sense urgent for any infallible standard, nor at of leisure and novelty recalled to him the all concerned to trace a direct line of de- one great recreation of his life the spring scent for himself or his Church; and yet he had spent in Italy, with all its vicissi withal his notions were as high and absolute tudes, prefaced by the mournful days at and arbitrary on some points as if he had Wodensbourne. All this came before Laudbeen a member of the most potent of hier- erdale's mind more strongly a great deal archies-though this might perhaps be set than it did before that of Colin, because it down to the score of his youth. It would, was to the elder man the one sole and however, be doing Colin injustice to repro- clearly marked escape out of the monotony duce here this revolutionary document: to of a long life -a thing that had occurred tell the truth, circumstances occurred very but once, and never could occur again. soon after to retard the continuation of the How the Cumberland hills, and the peasant series, and, so far as his historian is aware, voices in their rude dialect, and the rough the publication of this preliminary* ad- stone bench outside the door of a gray limedress was only partial. For, to be sure, stone cottage, could recall to Lauderdale the young man had still abundance of time the olive slopes of Frascati, the tall houses before him, and the first and the most im- shut up and guarded against the sunshine, portant thing, as Lauderdale had suggested, and the far-off solemn waste of the Camwas the preparation of the audience an pagna, would have been something uninobject which was on the whole better car- telligible to Colin. But in the meantime ried out by partial and private circulation these recollections were coming to a climax than by coming prematurely before the in his companion's mind. He gave a great public, and giving the adversary occasion start in the midst of Colin's most eloquent to blaspheme, and perhaps frightening the paragraph, and jumped to his feet, crying, Kirk herself out of her wits. Having said "Do you hear that?" with a thrill of exso much, we may return to the more pri-citement utterly inexplicable to the astonvate and individual aspect of affairs. The two friends were seated, while all this was going on, out of doors, on a stone bench by the gray wall of the cottage inn, in which they had just refreshed themselves with a "Do I hear what?" said Colin; and, as nondescript meal. The Cumberland hills this interruption occurred just at the mo- at that moment bleaching under the ment when he supposed he had roused his sunshine, showing all their scars and stains hearer to a certain pitch of excitement and in the fullness of the light-stretched far anxiety, by his account of the religious away into the distance, hiding religiously deficiencies of Scotland, which he was on in their depths the sacred woods and wa- the point of relieving by an able exposition ters that were the end of the pilgrimage on of the possibilities of reform, it may be forwhich the two friends were bound. Laud-given to him if he spoke with a little asper erdale sat at leisure and listened, shading ity. Such a disappointment is a trying exthe sunshine from his face, and watching perience for the best of men. "What is it, the shadows play on the woods and hills; for Heaven's sake?" said the young man, and the same force of imagination which forgetting he was a minister; and, to tell persuaded the unaccustomed traveller that the truth, Lauderdale was so much ashamed he could detect a difference of tone in the of himself that he felt almost unable to exrude talk he heard in the distance, and that plain. that which was only Cumberland was English, persuaded him also that the sunshine in which he was sitting was warmer than the sunshine at home, and that he was really, as he himself would have described it, "going south." He was vaguely following out these ideas, notwithstanding that he Numbers I. and II. of the Scotch Tracts for the Times, together with fragments of subsequent numbers uncompleted, will be given, if desired by Colin's friends, in the appendix to the second edition of this biography. ished young man; and then Lauderdale grew suddenly ashamed of himself, and took his seat again, abashed, and felt that it was needful to explain. "She's singing something, that's a'," said the confused philosopher. "I'm an awfu' haveril, Colin. There's some things I canna get out of my head. Never you mind; a' that's admirable," said the culprit, with a certain deprecatory eagerness. "I'm awfu' anxious to see how you get us out of the Go on." scrape. Colin was angry, but he was human, and he could not but laugh at the discomfiture and conciliatory devices of his disarmed " Here critic. "I am not going to throw away my | hunting; when Heaven knows pearls," he said; "since your mind is in Colin stopped short, and cut his pencil so such a deplorable state you shall hear violently that he cut his finger, which was no more to-day. Oh, no. I understand the an act which convicted him of using unextent of your anxiety. And so here's necessary force, and of which accordingly, Lauderdale going the way of all flesh. he was ashamed. Who is she? and what is she singing? The best policy is to make a clean breast of it," said the young man, laughing; "and then, perhaps, I may look over the insult you have been guilty of to myself." But Lauderdale was in no mood for laughing. "I'm not sure that it wouldna be the best plan to go on," he said; "for notwithstanding, I've been giving my best attention; and maybe if I was to speak out what was in my heart 66 Speak it out," said Colin. He was a little affronted, but he kept his composure. As he folded up his papers and put them away in his pocket-book, he too heard the song which Lauderdale had been listening to. It was only a country-woman singing as she went about her work, and there was no marked resemblance in either the voice or the song to anything he had heard before. All that could be said was that the voice was young and fresh, and that the melody was sad, and had the quality of suggestiveness, which is often wanting to more elaborate music. He knew what was coming when he put up his papers in his pocket-book, and it occurred to him that perhaps it would be well to have the explanation over and be done with it, for he knew how persistent his companion was. "It's no that there's much to say," said Lauderdale, changing his tone; a man like me, that's little used to change, gets awfu' like a fool in his associations. There's naething that ony reasonable creature could see in thae hills, and a' the sheep on them, that should bring that to my mind; and, as you say, callant, it's_Cumberland they're a' speaking, and no English. It's just a kind of folly that men are subject to that live their lane. I canna but go a' through again, from the beginning to Well, I suppose," ," said Lauderdale with a sigh, "what you and me would call the end." "What any man in his senses would call the end," said Colin, beginning to cut his pencil with some ferocity, which was the only occupation that occurred to him for the moment; "I don't suppose there can be any question as to what you mean. Was it to be expected that I would court rejection over again for the mere pleasure of being rejected? as you know I have been, both by letter and in person; and then, as if even that was not enough, accused of fortune "It is no that I was thinking of," said Lauderdale; "I was minding of the time when we a' met, and the bit soft English voice. It's no that I'm fond of the English, or their ways," continued the philosopher. "We're maybe no so well in our ain country, and maybe we're better; I'll no say. It's a question awfu' hard to settle. But, if ever we a' foregather again, I cannot think there will be that difference. It wasna to say musical that I ken of, but it was aye soft and pleasant-maybe ower soft, Colin. for the like of you-and with a bit of yielding tone in it, as if the heart would break sooner than make a stand for its own way. I mind it real weel," said Lauderdale, with a sigh." As for the father, no doubt there was little to be said in his favour. But, after a', it wasna him that you had any intention to marry. And yon Sabbath-day after he was gone, poor man! - when you and me didna ken what to do with ourselves till the soft thing came out of her painted cha'amer, and took the guiding of us into her hands. It's that I was thinking of," said Lauderdale, fixing his eyes on a far off point upon the hills, and ending his musing with a sigh. Colin sighed, too, for sympathy-he could not help it. The scene came before him as his friend spoke. He thought he could see Alice, in her pallor and exhaustion, worn to a soft shadow, in her black dress, coming into the bare Italian room in the glorious summer day, which all the precautions possible could not shut out from the house of mourning—with her prayerbook in her hand; and then he remembered how she had chidden him for reading another lesson than that appointed for the day. It was in the height of his own revolutionary impulses that this thought struck him; and he smiled to himself in the midst of his sigh, with a tender thought for Alice, and a passing wonder for himself, what change might have been wrought upon him if that dutiful little soul had actually become the companion of his life. Colin was not the kind of man who can propose to himself to form his wife's mind, and rule her thoughts, and influence her without being sensible of her influence in return. That was not the order of domestic affairs in Ramore; and naturally he judged the life that might have been, and even yet 1 might be, by that standard. The Mistress's son did not understand having a nullity, or a shadow of himself, for a wife; and insensibly he made his way back from the attendrissement into which Lauderdale's musings had led him, into half-amused speculation as to the effect Alice and her influence might have had upon him by this time. "If that had happened," he said with a smile, bursting out, as was usual to him when Lau derdale was his companion, at that particular point of his thoughts which required expression, without troubling himself to explain how he came there- "if that had happened," said Colin, with the conscious smile of old, "I wonder what sort of fellow I should have been by this time? I doubt if I should have had any idea, of disturbing the constituted order of affairs. Things are always for the best, you perceive, as everybody says. A man who has any revolutionary work to do must be free and alone. But don't let us talk any more of that-I don't like turning back upon the road. But for that feeling I should have settled the business before now about poor Arthur's Voice from the Grave."" "I was aye against that title," said Lauderdale, "if he would have paid any attention; but you're a' the same, you young callants; it's nae more a voice from the grave than mine is. It's a voice from an awfu' real life, that had nae intention to lose a minute that was permitted. It would be something, to be sure that he was kept informed, and had a pleasure in his book; but then, so far as I can judge, he maun ken an awfu' deal better by this time—and maybe up there they're no heeding about a third edition. It's hard to say; he was so terrible like himself up to the last moment; I canna imagine, in my own mind, that he's no like himself still. There should be a heap of siller," said Lauderdale, "by this time; and sooner or later you'll have to open communication, and let them ken." 66 Yes," said Colin, with a momentary look of sullenness and repugnance; and then he added, in a lighter tone, "heaps of money never came out of a religious publisher's hand. A third edition does not mean the same thing with them as with other people. Of course, it must be set right some time or other. We had better set off, I can tell you, and not talk idle talk like this, if we mean to get to our journey's and to-night." "Oh, ay," said Lauderdale, "you're aye in a hurry, you young callants. As for me, I've aye found time to finish what I was about. Is it the father that makes you so but unwilling for any correspondence? it's awfu' easy to settle a thing like that." "I think you want to try how far my patience can go," said Colin, who had grown crimson up to the hair. "Do you think a man has no feeling, Lauderdale? Do you think it is possible to be treated as I have been, and yet go back again with humility, hat in hand? I don't feel myself capable of that." "If you're asking me my opinion," said Lauderdale, calmly, "I've nae objection to tell you what I think. You're no vindictive, and you've nae pride to speak of-I'm meaning pride of that kind. It's no in you to bear a grudge at onybody beyond, maybe, the hour or the day. So I'm no heeding much about that question, for my part. If you had an awfu' regard for the man,.. he might affront you; but no being indifferent. I'm telling you just my opinion, with my partial knowledge of the premises- but for her, I cannot but say what is in my ain mind. I've a kind of longing to see her again; we used to be awfu' good friends, her and me. I had you to take care of, callant, and she had him; and whiles she had a moment of envy, and grudged terrible in her heart to see the air and the sun, that are for baith the good and the evil, so hard upon him, and so sweet to you; there was little in her mind to hide, and her and me were good friends. I'll never forget our counts and our reckonings. It's awfu' hard for the like o' me to divine wherefore it is that a' that has come to an end, and her and you dropped out of one another's life." "Lauderdale," said Colin, with a little choking in his voice, "I will tell you what I never told you before. -" and then the young man stopped short, as if he had received a blow. What was it that came over him like an imperious sudden prohibition, stopping the words upon his lips the first time he had ever dreamt of uttering them to mortal ear? He had a feeling somehow as if one of those flying shadows that kept coming and going over the mountains had taken another shape and come before him, and put a cold hand on his lips. He was about to have confessed that his love had been no more than tender compassion and kindness; he was about to have said what Lauderdale might have guessed before, what Colin had kept secret and hidden in his breast that Alice never was nor could be the ideal woman of his thoughts, the true love, who waited for him somewhere in the future. But perhaps, after all, it was no shadow nor unseen influence, but only the young man's magnanimous heart that spared 1 "We shall have an hour's walking in the dark, if we don't make all the better progress," said Colin; "which is uncomfortable when one does not know the way. And now to return to No. I." he said with a laugh, as they went on along the dusty road. There was not another word said between them of the confession thus abruptly stopped. Perhaps Lauderdale in his heart had a perception of what it meant; but, however that might be, both fell at once with eagerness, as if they had never digressed for a moment, upon the first number of Colin's Tracts for the Times. that humiliation to the name of Alice-sole- crevice of his heart a dumb consciousness CHAPTER XLVIII. This conversation, however, as was natural, had a certain effect upon both the friends. It threw Colin, who, to be sure, was chiefly concerned, into a world of confused imaginations, which influenced even his dreams, and through his dreams reacted upon himself. When he was alone at night, instead of going to sleep at once, as would have been natural after his day's journey, he kept falling into absurd little dozes and waking up suddenly with the idea that Alice was standing by him, that she was calling him, that it was the marriage-day, and that somebody had found him out, and was about to tell his bride that he did not love her; "Thae great hills are awfu' in the way," and at last, when he went to sleep in good said Lauderdale. "I'm no saying but earnest, the fantastic mélange of recollection they're an ornament to a country, and grand and imagination carried him back to Fras- things for you, and the like of you, that cati, where he found Arthur and Alice, as make verses; but I canna see any reason of old, in the great salone, with its frescoed why they should come between me and the walls, and talked to them as in the former sun. I'm no so high, but I'm maybe mair days. He thought Meredith told him of an important in the economy of creation. Yet, important journey upon which he was setting for a' that, there's yon bald fellow yonder, out, and made arrangements in the mean- with a' those patches on his crown, puts himtime for his sister with an anxiety which the self right between us and the light without real Arthur had never dreamt of exhibiting. even asking pardon. It's no respectful to "She will be safe with you at present," you in your position, Colin. They're awfu’ the visionary Arthur seemed to say, "and like men. I've seen a man standing like by-and-by you will send her to me "that across another man's lifeAnd when Colin woke it was hard for him to convince himself at first that he had not been in actual communication with his friend. He accounted for it, of course, as it is very easy to account for dreams, and convinced himself, and yet left behind in some or whiles another woman's," said the philosopher. "It's not an encouraging spectacle. I'm no heeding about Nature, that kens no better; but for a man 66 Perhaps the man, too, might know no. better," said Colin, laughing; but his laugh |