"She thanks your own self, Mistress Partan," said Duncan, as he followed her in; "and her heart will pe thanking you for ta coot welcome; and it will pe a long time since she 'll saw you howefer."

"Noo, noo," exclaimed Meg, stopping in the middle of her little kitchen as she was getting a chair for the old man, and turning upon him to revive on the first possible chance what had been a standing quarrel between them, "what can be the rizzon 'at gars ane like you, 'at never saw man or wuman i' yer lang life, the verra meenute ye open your mou' say its lang sin' ye saw me? A mensefu' body like you, Maister MacPhail, sud speyk mair to the p'int."

it was her countenance and manner conflict between horror at the Campbell changed utterly. "Preserve 's a'! Ye're blood and ineffaceable affection for the a sicht for sair e'en, Maister MacPhail!" youth in whose veins it ran, and who so she cried, holding out her hand, which the fully deserved all the love he had lavished blind man took as if he saw as well as she. upon him — he had concluded to rid him"Come awa' but the hoose. Wow! but self of all the associations of place and ye're walcome!" people and event now grown so painful, to make his way back to his native Glenco, and there endure his humiliation as best he might, beheld of the mountains which had beheld the ruin of his race. He would end the few and miserable days of his pilgrimage amid the rushing of the old torrents and the calling of the old winds about the crags and precipices that had hung over his darksome yet blessed childhood. These were still his friends. But he had not gone many days' journey before a farmer found him on the road insensible and took him home. As he recovered, his longing after his boy Malcolm grew until it rose to agony, but he fought with his heart, and believed he had overcome it. The boy was a good boy, he said to himself; the boy had been to him as the son of his own heart; there was no fault to find with him or in him; he was as brave as he was kind, as sincere as he was clever, as strong as he was gentle; he could play on the bagpipes and very nearly talk Gaelic; but his mother was a Campbell, and for that there was no help. To be on loving terms with one in whose veins ran a single drop of the black pollution was a thing no MacDhonuill must dream of. He had lived a man of honor, and he would die a man of honor, hating the Campbells to their last generation. How should the bard of his clan ever talk to his own soul if he knew himself false to the name of his fathers? Hard fate for him. As if it were not enough that he had been doomed to save and rear a child of the brood abominable, he was yet further doomed, worst fate of all, to love the evil thing: he could not tear the lovely youth from his heart. But he could go farther and farther from him.

"Ton't you'll pe preaking her heart with ta one hand while you'll pe clapping her head with ta other," said the piper. "Ton't pe taking her into your house to pe telling her she can't see. Is it that old Tuncan is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you'll pe telling her she can't see? I tell you she can see, and more tan you'll pe think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and tere wass pe none when Tuncan she'll co away."

"We a' ken ye hae the second sicht," said Mrs. Findlay, who had not expected such a reply; "an' it was only o' the first I spak. Haith! it wad be 'ill set o' me to anger ye the moment ye come back to yer ain.

Sit ye doon there by the chimla-neuk till I mak ye a dish o' tay. Or maybe ye wad prefar a drap o' parritch an' milk? It's no muckle I hae to offer ye, but ye cudna be mair walcome."

As easily appeased as irritated, the old man sat down with a grateful, placid look, and while the tea was drawing, Mrs. Findlay, by judicious questions, gathered from him the story of his adventures.

Unable to rise above the disappointment and chagrin of finding that the boy he loved as his own soul, and had brought up as his own son, was actually the child of a Campbell woman, one of the race to which belonged the murderer of his people in Glenco, and which therefore he hated with an absolute passion of hatred - unable also to endure the terrible schism in his being occasioned by the VOL. XVIII. 910

LIVING AGE.

As soon as he was able he resumed his journey westward, and at length reached his native glen, the wildest spot in all the island. There he found indeed the rush of the torrents and the call of the winds unchanged, but when his soul cried out in its agonies, they went on with the same song that had soothed his childhood: for the heart of the suffering man they had no response. Days passed before he came upon a creature who remembered him, for more than twenty years were

ing dirk from its sheath, she threw herself upon him, wrenched it from his hand, and testified that "fules sudna hae chappin'sticks, nor yet teylors guns." It was days before Duncan discovered where she had hidden it. But not the less heartily did she insist on his taking up his abode with her; and the very next day he resumed his old profession of lamp-cleaner to the community.

When Miss Horn heard that he had come, and where he was, old feud with Meg Partan rendering it imprudent to call upon him, she watched for him in the street and welcomed him home, assuring him that if ever he should wish to change

"I'm nae Cam'ell, ye ken, Duncan," she concluded, "an' what an auld wuman like mysel' can du to mak ye comfortable sall no fail, an' that I promise ye."

The old man thanked her with the perfect courtesy of the Celt, confessed that he was not altogether at ease where he was, but said he must not hurt the feelings of Mistress Partan, "for she'll not pe a paad womans," he added, "but her house will pe aalways in ta flames, howefer."

gone, and a new generation had come up asseveration, he drew the dangerous-looksince he forsook the glen. Worst of all, the clan spirit was dying out, the family type of government all but extinct, the patriarchal vanishing in a low form of the feudal, itself already in abject decay. The hour of the Celt was gone by, and the long-wandering raven, returning at last, found the ark it had left afloat on the waters dry and deserted and rotting to dust. There was not even a cottage in which he could hide his head. The one he had forsaken when cruelty and crime drove him out had fallen to ruins, and now there was nothing of it left but its foundations. The people of the inn at the mouth of the valley did their best for him, but he learned by accident that they had Camp-his quarters her house was at his service. bell connections, and, rising that instant, walked from it forever. He wandered about for a time, playing his pipes, and everywhere hospitably treated, but at length his heart could endure its hunger no more: he must see his boy, or die. He walked, therefore, straight to the cottage of his quarrelsome but true friend, Mistress Partan, to learn that his benefactor, the marquis, was dead, and Malcolm gone. But here alone could he hope ever to see him again, and the same night he sought his cottage in the grounds of Lossie House, never doubting his right to reoccupy it. But the door was locked, and he could find no entrance. He went to the house, and there was referred to the factor. But when he knocked at his door and requested the key of the cottage, Mr. Crathie, who was in the middle of his third tumbler, came raging out of his dining-room, cursed him for an old Highland goat, and heaped insults on him and his grandson indiscriminately. It was well he kept the door between him and the old man, for otherwise he would never have finished the said third tumbler. That door carried in it thenceforth the marks of every weapon that Duncan bore, and indeed the half of his sgian dhu was the next morning found sticking in it, like the sting which the bee is doomed to leave behind her. He returned to Mistress Partan white and trembling, in a mountainous rage with "ta low-pred hount of a factor." Her sympathy was enthusiastic, for they shared a common wrath. And now came the tale of the factor's cruelty to the fishers, his hatred of Malcolm and his general wildness of behavior. The piper vowed to shed the last drop of his blood in defence of his Mistress Partan. But when, to strengthen the force of his

So he remained where he was, and the general heart of the Seaton was not a little revived by the return of one whose presence reminded them of a better time, when no such cloud as now threatened them heaved its ragged sides above their horizon.

The factor was foolish enough to attempt inducing Meg to send her guest away.

"We want no landloupin' knaves, old or young, about Lossie," he said. "If the place is no keepit dacent, we'll never get the young marchioness to come near 's again."

"Deed, factor," returned Meg, enhancing the force of her utterance by a composure marvelous from its rarity, "the first thing to mak' the place — I'll no say dacent, sae lang there's sae mony claverin' wives in't, but mair dacent nor it has been for the last ten year, wad be to sen' factors back whaur they cam' frae."

"And whaur may that be?" asked Mr. Crathie.

"That's mair nor I richtly can say," answered Meg Partan, "but auld-farand fouk threepit it was somewhaur 'ithin the swing o' Sawtan's tail."

The reply on the factor's lips as he left the house tended to justify the rude sarcasm.

CHAPTER LVI.

MID-OCEAN.

THERE came a breath of something in the east. It was neither wind nor warmth. It was light before it is light to the eyes of men. Slowly and softly it grew, until, like the dawning soul in the face of one who lies in a faint, the life of light came back to the world, and at last the whole huge hollow hemisphere of rushing sea and cloud-flecked sky lay like a great empty heart, waiting, in conscious glory of the light, for the central glory, the coming lord of day. And in the whole crystalline hollow, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting for more, the Psyche was the one only lonely life-bearing thing-the one cloudy germ-spot afloat in the bosom of the great roc-egg of sea and sky, whose sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of flame.

sprung upon her. He stood composed and clear and cool as the morning, without sign of doubt or conscience of wrong, now peeping into the binnacle, now glancing at the sunny sails, where swayed across and back the dark shadows of the rigging as the cutter leaned and rose like a child running and staggering over the multitudinous and unstable hillocks. She turned from him.

"Good-morning, my lady! What a good morning it is!" As in all his address to his mistress, the freedom of the words did not infect the tone that was resonant of essential honor. "Strange to think," he went on, "that the sun himself there is only a great fire, and knows nothing about it! There must be a sun to that sun, or the whole thing is a vain show. There must be One to whom each is itself, yet the all makes a whole - One who is at once both centre and circumference to all."

Florimel cast on him a scornful look. For not merely was he talking his usual unintelligible rubbish of poetry, but he had the impertinence to speak as if he had done nothing amiss and she had no ground for being offended with him. She made him no answer. A cloud came over Malcolm's face, and until she went again below he gave his attention to his steering.

Florimel woke, rose, went on deck, and for a moment was fresh born. It was a fore-scent even this could not be called a fore-taste of the kingdom of heaven; but Florimel never thought of the kingdom of heaven, the ideal of her own existence. She could, however, half appreciate this earthly outbreak of its glory, this incarnation of truth invisible. Round her, like a thousand doves, clamored with greeting wings the joyous sea-wind. Up came a In the mean time, Rose, who happily thousand dancing billows to shout their had turned out as good a sailor as her new good-morning. Like a petted animal im- mistress, had tidied the little cabin, and portunate for play, the breeze tossed her Florimel found, if not quite such a sumphair and dragged at her fluttering gar- tuous breakfast laid as at Portland Place, ments, then rushed into the Psyche's sails, yet a far better appetite than usual to meet swelled them yet deeper, and sent her what there was; and when she had findancing over the dancers. The sun peered ished her temper was better, and she was up like a mother waking and looking out inclined to think less indignantly of Malon her frolicking children. Black shadows colm's share in causing her so great a fell from sail to sail, slipping and shifting, pleasure. She was not yet quite spoiled. and one long shadow of the Psyche her- She was still such a lover of the visible self shot over the world to the very gates world and of personal freedom that the of the west, but held her not, for she thought of returning to London and its danced and leaned and flew as if she had leaden-footed hours would now have been but just begun her coranto-lavolta fresh unendurable. At this moment she could with the morning, and had not been danc- have imagined no better thing than thus ing all the livelong night over the same to go tearing through the water - home floor. Lively as any new-born butterfly - to her home. For although she had spent not like a butterfly's flitting and hovering little of her life at Lossie House, she could was her flight, for still, like one that not but prefer it unspeakably to the longed, she sped and strained and flew. schools in which she had passed almost The joy of bare life swelled in Florimel's the whole of the preceding portion of it. bosom. She looked up, she looked around, There was little or nothing in the affair she breathed deep. The cloudy anger she could have wished otherwise except that had rushed upon her like a watching its origin. She was mischievous enough tiger the moment she waked fell back, and to enjoy even the thought of the consterleft her soul a clear mirror to reflect God's nation it would cause at Portland Place. dream of a world. She turned and saw She did not realize all its awkwardness. Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath | A letter to Lady Bellair when she reached

The sunset was rather an assumption than a decease, a reception of him out of their sight into an eternity of gold and crimson; and when he was gone, and the gorgeous bliss had withered into a dovehued grief, then the cool, soft twilight, thoughtful of the past and its love, crept out of the western caves over the breast of the water, and filled the dome, and made of itself a great lens royal, through which the stars and their motions were visible; and the ghost of Aurora with both hands lifted her shroud above her head, and made a dawn for the moon on the verge of the watery horizon - a dawn as of the past, the hour of inverted hope. Not a word all day had been uttered between Malcolm and his mistress: when the moon appeared, with the waves sweeping up against her face, he approached Florimel where she sat in the stern. Davy was steering. "Will your ladyship come forward and see how the Psyche goes?" he said. "At the stern you can see only the passive part of her motion. It is quite another thing to see the will of her at work in the bows."

home would, she said to herself, set every- | still the unwearied wind blew, and still the thing right and if Malcolm had now re- Psyche danced on, as unwearied as the pented and put about, she would instantly wind. have ordered him to hold on for Lossie. But it was mortifying that she should have come at the will of Malcolm, and not by her own worse than mortifying that perhaps she would have to say so. If she were going to say so she must turn him away as soon as she arrived. There was no help for it. She dared not keep him after that in the face of society. But she might take the bold, and perhaps a little dangerous, measure of adopting the flight as altogether her own madcap idea. Her thoughts went floundering in the bog of expediency until she was tired, and declined from thought to reverie. Then, dawning out of the dreamland of her past, appeared the image of Lenorme. Pure pleasure, glorious delight, such as she now felt, could not long possess her mind without raising in its charmed circle the vision of the only man except her father whom she had ever something like loved. Her behavior to him had not yet roused in her shame or sorrow or sense of wrong. She had driven him from her; she was ashamed of her relation to him; she had caused him bitter suffering; she had all but promised to marry another man; yet she had not the slightest wish for that man's company there and then: with no one of her acquaintance but Lenorme could she have shared this conscious splendor of life. "Would to God he had been born a gentleman instead of a painter!" she said to herself when her imagination had brought him from the past and set him in the midst of the present. "Rank," she said, "I am above caring about. In that he might be ever so far my inferior and welcome, if only he had been of a good family, a gentleman born." She was generosity, magnanimity itself, in her own eyes. Yet he was of far better family than she knew, for she had never taken the trouble to inquire into his history. And now she was so much easier in her mind since she had so cruelly broken with him that she felt positively virtuous because she had done it and he was not at that moment by her side. And yet if he had that moment stepped from behind the mainsail she would in all probability have thrown herself into his arms.

The day passed on. Florimel grew tired and went to sleep; woke and had her dinner; took a volume of the "Arabian Nights" and read herself again to sleep; woke again; went on deck; saw the sun growing weary in the west. And

At first she was going to refuse, but she changed her mind, or her mind changed her: she was not much more of a living and acting creature yet than the Psyche herself. She said nothing, but rose and permitted Malcolm to help her forward.

It was the moon's turn now to be level with the water, and as Florimel stood on the larboard side, leaning over and gazing down, she saw her shine through the little feather of spray the cutwater sent curling up before it and turn it into pearls and semi-opals.

"She's got a bone in her mouth, you see, my lady," said old Travers.

"Go aft till I call you, Travers," said Malcolm.

Rose was in Florimel's cabin, and they were now quite alone.

"My lady," said Malcolm, "I can't bear to have you angry with me.”

"Then you ought not to deserve it," returned Florimel.

"My lady, if you knew all, you would not say I deserved it."

"Tell me all, then, and let me judge."

"I cannot tell you all yet, but I will tell you something which may perhaps incline you to feel merciful. Did your ladyship ever think what could make me so much attached to your father?"

"No, indeed. I never saw anything

peculiar in it. Even nowadays there are | plicity, nobleness, and affection—yes, servants to be found who love their mas- even what in him was mere doggedness ters. It seems to me natural enough. and presumption — all, everything, exBesides, he was very kind to you." "It was natural indeed, my lady natural than you think. Kind to me he was, and that was natural too."

"Natural to him, no doubt, for he was kind to everybody."

"My grandfather told you something of my early history, did he not, my lady?" "Yes: at least I think I remember his doing so."

"Will you recall it, and see whether it suggests nothing?"

But Florimel could remember nothing in particular, she said. She had, in truth, forasmuch as she was interested at the time, forgotten almost everything of the story. "I really cannot think what you mean," she added. "If you are going to be mysterious I shall resume my place by the tiller. Travers is deaf and Davy is dumb: I prefer either."

plained itself to Florimel in the fact that more the incomprehensible fisherman-groom, that talked like a parson, was the son of her father. She never thought of the woman that was his mother, and what share she might happen to have in the phenomenon - thought only of her father, and a little pitifully of the half honor and more than half disgrace infolding the very existence of her attendant. As usual, her thoughts were confused. The one moment the poor fellow seemed to exist only on sufferance, having no right to be there at all, for as fine a fellow as he was: the next she thought how immeasurably he was indebted to the family of the Colonsays. Then arose the remembrance of his arrogance and presumption in assuming on such a ground something more than guardianship, absolute tyranny, over her, and with the thought pride and injury at once got the upper hand. Was she to be dictated to by a low-born, low-bred fellow like that - a fellow whose hands were Florimel drew herself up, and would harder than any leather, not with doing have looked him to ashes if wrath could things for his amusement, but actually burn. with earning his daily bread Malcolm saw he must come to the point used to smell so of fish-on the ground at once or the parley would cease. My of a right too, and such a right as ought lady," he said, “your father was my father to exclude him forever from her prestoo. I am the son of the marquis of Los-ence? sie, and your brother - your ladyship's She turned to him again. "How long half-brother, that is." have you known this - this painful — in deed I must confess to finding it an awkward and embarrassing fact? I presume you do know it?" she said coldly and searchingly.

"My lady," said Malcolm, "your father knew my mother, and persuaded her that he loved her."

66

She looked a little stunned. The gleam died out of her eyes and the glow out of her cheek. She turned and leaned over the bulwark. He said no more, but stood watching her. She raised herself suddenly, looked at him and said, "Do I understand you?"

"I am your brother," Malcolm repeated. She made a step forward and held out her hand. He took the little thing in his great grasp tenderly. Her lip trembled. She gazed at him for an instant, full in the face, with a womanly, believing expression. "My poor Malcolm!" she said. "I am sorry for you."

She withdrew her hand, and again leaned over the bulwark. Her heart was softened towards her groom-brother, and for a moment it seemed to her that some wrong had been done. Why should the one be a marchioness and the other a groom? Then came the thought that now all was explained. Every peculiarity of the young man, every gift extraordinary of body, mind, or spirit, his strength, his beauty, his courage and honesty, his sim

one that

"My father confessed it on his death

bed."

"It ex

"Confessed!" echoed Florimel's pride, but she restrained her tongue. plains much," she said with a sort of judicial relief. "There has been a great change upon you since then. Mind, I only say explains. It could never justify such behavior as yours no, not if you had been my true brother. There is some excuse, I dare say, to be made for your ignorance and inexperience. No doubt the discovery turned your head. Still, I am at a loss to understand how you could imagine that sort of-of-that sort of thing gave you any right over me."

"Love has its rights, my lady," said Malcolm.

Again her eyes flashed and her cheek flushed: "I cannot permit you to talk so to me. You must not fancy such things are looked upon in our position with the