It was a Lover and his Lass. Oliphant Margaret

no get her soothered down till she's in her ain stable," Duncan said. "Your half-a-crown's hard won. She'll just pu' my hands off on the road hame, with her stable at the hinder end, and this pawnic in her. And now ye have seen it are you muckle the better for it? That's what I aye ask when folk risk their necks for the pleasure of their een."

      "My good fellow," said Lewis, "are all Scotchmen, I would like to know, as uncivil as you?"

      A spark of humour kindled in Duncan's eyes.

      "No – no a'," he said, with a somewhat perplexing confusion of vowels, and burst into a sudden laugh. "And even me, my bark's worse than my bite," he added, with an amused look. Then, after a pause, "You're a gentleman that can tak' a joke. I like that sort. The English are maistly awfu' serious. They just glower at ye. You've maybe been in this countryside before?"

      "Never before. I have never been in Scotland before, nor in England either, for that matter," said the young man.

      "Lord sake!" cried Duncan, "and where may ye belong to, when you are at hame?"

      But the stranger did not carry his complacency so far as this. He said, somewhat abruptly,

      "Do you know anything about the family to whom that place belongs?"

      "Do I ken onything about – It's weel seen you've no acquaintance with this countryside," said Duncan. "What should a person ken about if no the Murrays? Was it the Murrays ye were meaning? I ken as much about them as ony man, whaever the other may be. My sister cam' frae Moffatt with them – that's my caulf-ground – and my little Bessy is in the kitchen, and coming on grand. I can tell you everything about them, if that's what you want."

      "Oh, not so much as that," said Grantley; "I am not so curious. Do they intend to finish the Murkley Castle?" he asked.

      "Finish it! Oh, man, but it's little you ken. I'll tell ye the haill story, if you like. You see there was old Sir Patrick. He was the man that biggit yon muckle castle; but his siller failed, and he took a disgust at it; then he gaed abroad, and things turned, and he got his money back. But do ye think he was the man to do like other folk, to let it go to them that had a right? Na, na, ye're out of your reckoning. He was an auld fool – him that had a son, and grandchildren, and a' that – what must he do but take up with some urchin he picked out of the streets, and pet it, and make of it, and set it up for a gentleman, and leave all his siller to that."

      Lewis Grantley had started again at this description. He said, hastily,

      "How do you know that it was out of the streets? How do you know – " and then he stopped short, and laughed. "Tell the story, my good fellow, your own way."

      "I'll do that," said Duncan, who despised the permission. "Out o' the streets or no out o' the streets, it was some adventurer-lad that took the fancy o' the auld man. True flesh and blood will not aye make itself over agreeable, and the short and the long is that he left all his siller to the young fellow, that was not a drap's blood to him, and left the muckle castle and the little castle and twa-three auld acres mortgaged to their full valley to his son. He couldn't help that, that was the bit that was settled, and that he couldn't will away."

      The young man listened with great interest, with now and then a movement of surprise. He did not speak at first; then he said, with a long breath,

      "That was surely a very strange thing to do."

      "Ay was it – an awfu' strange thing – but Sir Patrick was aye what's ca'ed an eccentric, and ye never could tell what he wouldna do. That's Murkley down yonder, on the water-side. Ye'll be a keen fisher, I'm thinking, to think o' living there."

      "And the son?" said the young man. "I suppose he had behaved badly to his father. It could not be for nothing that he was disinherited. You people who know everything, I suppose you know the cause too."

      "The general?" said Duncan. "Well, he wasna a saint: and when an auld man lives twice as long as is expected, and his son is as auld as himself, there's little thought of obedience to him then, ye may weel suppose. The general had a way of pleasing himself. He married a lady that was thought a grand match, and she turned out to have very little; and syne when she was dead he married anither that had nothing ava, and I suppose he never asked Sir Patrick's consent. If it was that, or if it was something else, how can I tell? But you'll no find many men to beat the general. They're a' very proud of him in this countryside."

      "I thought he was dead," said the young man, hurriedly.

      "Oh, ay, he's deed: and now it's the misses that has it. I have the maist interest in them, for, as I tellt ye – but ye were paying no attention – Moffatt, where their little bit place is, is my caulf-ground. They're living in the auld castle, just by the gate we came through. Lord, if he had been content with the auld castle, it would have been better for them a' this day. But 'deed I shouldna say that matters. It would have gane in every probability to yon creature I was telling ye of, the foreign lad."

      "You don't seem," said the stranger, with a laugh, "to have much charity for this foreign lad. Are you sure he is foreign, by the way?"

      "Ye'll maybe ken him, that ye ha'e a doubt," said the sharp-witted countryman.

      "How should I know him?" the young man replied, with a peculiar smile.

      "I say foreign, for nae Englishman – or maybe rather nae Scotchman, for I am no so clear of the other side – would do such a dirty trick. Take a doited auld man's siller that had kith and kin and lawful progeny of his ain. Fiech! I couldna do it if I was starving. And I ha'e a wife and bairns, which are things that are aye craving for siller. The Lord haud us out o' temptation! But I wouldna do it – no, if I was master of mysel'."

      "I did not know," said Grantley, with a forced gaiety, "that you were so scrupulous in Scotland. It is not the character you usually get in the world. But you are harsh judges all the same. Perhaps this unfortunate fellow did not know the circumstances. Perhaps – "

      "Unfortinate! with the Lord kens how mony thoosands! I dinna ca' that misfortune, for my part."

      "But then to balance the thousands he has not the privilege of possessing your esteem," Grantley said. He had an air of anger and pain under the pretended lightness of his tone, and meant to be bitterly satirical, forgetting evidently, in the warmth of the feelings raised by these animadversions, that the critic by his side was not very likely to be reached by shafts of this kind.

      Duncan gave him a stolid stare.

      "Ye'll be joking?" he said.

      The young man perceived the ludicrousness of his attempted sarcasm, and burst into a laugh which was somewhat agitated, but betrayed no secret to Duncan, who joined in it quite good-humouredly; but, growing grave immediately, added,

      "That's a' very weel. What I'm thinking of him's nae importance, nor what's thought in the countryside; but for a' that it's an ill thing to scandaleeze your fellow-creatures, whether they're folk of consequence or no. Yon's the 'Murkley Arms,' and Adam at the door. Ye maun be an awfu' keen fisher, sir, as I was saying, to leave a grand house like the 'George' for a country public, for it's no to call an inn – just a public, and no more. Here, Adam, here's a gentleman I've brought you; you'll have to give me a good dram for handsel, and him your best room, and as many trout as he can set his face to. He deserves it for coming here."

      The person thus addressed was a tall man, with a red beard, revealing only about a quarter of a countenance, who stood smoking and leaning against the doorway of the "Murkley Arms." He looked up, but somewhat languidly, at the appeal, and said,

      "Ay, Duncan, is that you?" with the greatest composure without deranging himself. Thereupon Duncan jumped down, throwing the reins on the mare's neck, who was much subdued by her rapid progress, and besides had the habit of standing still before the door of a "public."

      "And hoo's a' wi' ye, and hoo's the fushing?" Duncan said, plunging into an immediate conversation with his friend, at which Grantley, first in consternation, afterwards in amusement, listened with only partial understanding, but a most comical sense of his own complete unimportance and the total want of interest in him of the new world into which he was thrown. He sat for about five minutes (as he thought) quietly surveying from that elevation the village street, the river in the distance, the homely sights