Red Cap Tales, Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North

At that moment, catching sight of Mannering, the smuggler stopped with a strange start. He thrust his hand into his pocket as if to draw out a hidden weapon, exclaiming: "What cheer, brother? You seem on the outlook, eh?"

But with a glance at the intruder Meg Merrilies checked him. In a moment Hatteraick had altered his tone, and was speaking to Mannering civilly, yet still with an undercurrent of sullen suspicion which he tried to disguise under a mask of familiarity.

"You are, I suppose," said Mannering, calmly, "the master of that vessel in the bay?"

"Ay, ay, sir," answered the sailor, "I am Captain Dirk Hatteraick of the Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen, and I am not ashamed of my name or of my vessel, either. Right cognac I carry—rum, lace, real Mechlin, and Souchong tea—if you will come aboard, I will send you ashore with a pouchful of that last—Dirk Hatteraick knows how to be civil!"

Mannering got rid of his offers without openly offending the man, and was well content to see the precious pair vanish down the stone stairs which had formerly served the garrison of the castle in time of siege.

On his return to the house of Ellangowan, Mannering related his adventure, and asked of his host who this villanous-looking Dutchman might be, and why he was allowed to wander at will on his lands.

This was pulling the trigger, and Mr. Bertram at once exploded into a long catalogue of griefs. According to him, the man was undoubtedly one Captain Dirk Hatteraick, a smuggler or free-trader. As for allowing him on his lands—well, Dirk was not very canny to meddle with. Besides, impossible as it was to believe, he, Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan, was not upon his Majesty's commission of the peace for the county. Jealousy had kept him off—among other things the ill-will of the sitting member. Besides which—after all a gentleman must have his cognac, and his lady her tea and silks. Only smuggled articles came into the country. It was a pity, of course, but he was not more to blame than others.

Thus the Laird maundered on, and Mannering, glad to escape being asked about the doubtful fortune which the stars had predicted for the young heir, did not interrupt him. On the next day, however, before he mounted his horse, he put the written horoscope into a sealed envelope, and, having strictly charged Bertram that it should not be opened till his son reached the age of five years, he took his departure with many expressions of regret.

The next five years were outwardly prosperous ones for Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan. As the result of an election where he had been of much service to the winning candidate, he was again made a Justice of the Peace, and immediately he set about proving to his brothers of the bench that he could be both a determined and an active magistrate. But this apparent good, brought as usual much of evil with it. Many old kindly customs and courtesies had endeared Godfrey Bertram to his poorer neighbours. He was, they said, no man's enemy, and even the gipsies of the little settlement would have cut off their right hands before they touched a pennyworth belonging to the Laird, their patron and protector. But the other landlords twitted him with pretending to be an active magistrate, and yet harbouring a gang of gipsies at his own door-cheek. Whereupon the Laird went slowly and somewhat sadly home, revolving schemes for getting rid of the colony of Derncleugh, at the head of which was the old witch-wife Meg Merrilies.

Occasions of quarrel were easy to find. The sloe-eyed gipsy children swinging on his gates were whipped down. The rough-coated donkeys forbidden to eat their bite of grass in peace by the roadside. The men were imprisoned for poaching, and matters went so far that one stout young fellow was handed over to the press-gang at Dumfries and sent to foreign parts to serve on board a man-of-war.

The gipsies, on their side, robbed the Ellangowan hen-roosts, stole the linen from my lady's bleaching-green, cut down and barked the young trees—though all the while scarce believing that their ancient friend the Laird of Ellangowan had really turned against them.

During these five years the son, so strangely brought into the world on the night of Mannering's visit, had been growing into the boldest and brightest of boys. A wanderer by nature from his youth, he went fearlessly into each nook and corner of his father's estates in search of berries and flowers. He hunted every bog for rushes to weave grenadiers' caps, and haled the hazelnuts from the lithe coppice boughs.

To Dominie Sampson, long since released from his village school, the difficult task was committed of accompanying, restraining, and guiding this daring spirit and active body. Shy, uncouth, awkward, with the memory of his failure in the pulpit always upon him, the Dominie was indeed quite able to instruct his pupil in the beginnings of learning, but it proved quite out of his power to control the pair of twinkling legs belonging to Master Harry Bertram. Once was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow. Once he fell into the brook at the stepping-stones, and once he was bogged in his middle in trying to gather water-lilies for the young Laird. The village matrons who relieved Dominie Sampson on this last occasion, declared that the Laird might just as well "trust the bairn to the care o' a tatie-bogle!"2 But the good tutor, nothing daunted, continued grave and calm through all, only exclaiming, after each fresh misfortune, the single word "Prodeegious!"

Often, too, Harry Bertram sought out Meg Merrilies at Derncleugh, where he played his pranks among the gipsies as fearlessly as within the walls of Ellangowan itself. Meanwhile the war between that active magistrate Godfrey Bertram and the gipsies grew ever sharper. The Laird was resolved to root them out, in order to stand well with his brother magistrates. So the gipsies sullenly watched while the ground officer chalked their doors in token that they must "flit" at the next term.

At last the fatal day arrived. A strong force of officers summoned the gipsies to quit their houses, and when they did not obey, the sheriff's men broke down the doors and pulled the roofs off the poor huts of Derncleugh.

Godfrey Bertram, who was really a kindly man, had gone away for the day to avoid the sight, leaving the business to the chief exciseman of the neighbourhood,—one Frank Kennedy, a bold, roistering blade, who knew no fear, and had no qualms whatever about ridding the neighbourhood of a gang of "sorners and thieves," as he called the Derncleugh gipsies.

But as Godfrey was riding back to Ellangowan with a single servant, right in the middle of the King's highway, he met the whole congregation of the exiles, evicted from their ruined houses, and sullenly taking their way in search of a new shelter against the storms of the oncoming winter. His servant rode forward to command every man to stand to his beast's head while the Laird was passing.

"He shall have his half of the road," growled one of the tall thin gipsies, his features half-buried in a slouch hat, "but he shall have no more. The highway is as free to our cuddies as to his horse."

Never before had the Laird of Ellangowan received such a discourteous reception. Anxious at the last to leave a good impression, he stammered out as he passed one of the older men, "And your son, Gabriel Baillie, is he well?" (He meant the young man who had been sent by means of the press-gang to foreign parts.) With a deep scowl the old man replied, "If I had heard otherwise, you would have heard it too!"

At last Godfrey Bertram thought that he had escaped. He had passed the last laden donkey of the expelled tribe. He was urging his beast toward Ellangowan with a saddened spirit, when suddenly at a place where the road was sunk between two high banks, Meg Merrilies appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever.

"Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried, "ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths—see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that? Ye have riven the thatch off seven cottars' houses—look if your roof-tree stands the faster. There are thirty yonder that would have shed their lifeblood for you—thirty, from the child of a week to the auld wife of a hundred, that you have made homeless, that you have sent out to sleep with the fox and the blackcock. Our bairns are hanging on our weary backs—look to it that your braw cradle at hame is the fairer spread! Now ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. These are the last words ye shall ever hear from Meg Merrilies, and this the last staff that I shall ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan!"

And with the gesture of a queen delivering sentence she broke the sapling she had held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road. The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill after the caravan.

Not only was there war by land at Ellangowan. There was also war by sea. The Laird, determined for once not to do things by halves, had begun to support Frank Kennedy, the chief revenue officer, in his campaign against the smugglers. Armed with Ellangowan's warrant, and guided by his people who knew the country, Kennedy swooped down upon Dirk Hatteraick as he was in the act of landing a large cargo upon Ellangowan's ground. After a severe combat he had been able to clap the government broad-arrow upon every package and carry them all off to the nearest customs' post. Dirk Hatteraick got safely away, but he went, vowing in English, Dutch, and German, the direst vengeance against Frank Kennedy, Godfrey Bertram, and all his enemies.

It was a day or two after the eviction of the gipsies when the Lady of Ellangowan, suddenly remembering that it was her son Harry's fifth birthday, demanded of her husband that he should open and read the horoscope written by the wandering student of the stars five years before. While they were arguing about the matter, it was suddenly discovered that little Harry was nowhere to be found. His guardian, Dominie Sampson, having returned without him, was summoned to give an account of his stewardship by the angry mother.

"Mr. Sampson," she cried, "it is the most extraordinary thing in the world wide, that you have free up-putting in this house,—bed, board, washing, and twelve pounds sterling a year just to look after that boy,—and here you have let him out of your sight for three hours at a time!"

Bowing with awkward gratitude at each clause in this statement of his advantages, the poor Dominie was at last able to stammer out that Frank Kennedy had taken charge of Master Harry, in the face of his protest, and had carried him off to Warroch Head to see the taking of Dirk Hatteraick's ship by the King's sloop-of-war, which he had ridden all the way to Wigton Bay to bring about.

"And if that be so," cried the Lady of Ellangowan, "I am very little obliged to Frank Kennedy. The bairn may fall from his horse, or anything may happen."

The Laird quieted his wife by telling her that he and Frank Kennedy had together seen the sloop-of-war giving chase to Dirk Hatteraick's ship, and that even then the Dutchman, disabled and on fire, was fast drifting upon the rocks. Frank Kennedy had ridden off to assist in the capture by signalling to the man-of-war from Warroch Head, and had evidently picked up little Harry upon the way. He would doubtless, continued the Laird, be back in a little time. For he had ordered the punch-bowl to be made ready, that they might drink good luck to the King's service and confusion to all smugglers and free-traders wherever found.

But hour after hour went by, and neither Frank Kennedy nor the boy Harry returned. The night approached. Parties of searchers anxiously beat the woods and patrolled the cliffs. For long they found nothing, but at last a boat's crew, landing perilously at the foot of the precipices, came upon the body of the excise officer, a sword-cut in his head, lying half in and half out of the water. He had been flung from the cliffs above. Frank Kennedy was dead—as to that there was no question. But what had become of the child, Harry Bertram? That—no one could answer. Not a trace of him was to be found. The smuggler's ship still burned fiercely, but Dirk Hatteraick and his men had completely vanished. Some one suggested the gipsies, whereupon the Laird mounted the first horse he came across and rode furiously to the huts of Derncleugh. Bursting in a door, he found on the ruined hearth of the house that had once sheltered Meg Merrilies, a fire still smouldering. But there, too, Godfrey Bertram discovered nothing and no one.

While he remained on the spot, dazed and uncertain, looking at the blackened hearthstone, his old servant entered hastily to bid him return at once to Ellangowan. His wife had been taken dangerously ill. Godfrey spurred as fast as horse would carry him, but Death had gone faster, and had arrived before him. When he reached the gate, the Lady of Ellangowan was dead, leaving him with a little baby girl less than an hour old. The shock of Kennedy's murder and her own little Harry's loss had killed her.

INTERLUDE OF INTERROGATION

The melancholy conclusion of the first Guy Mannering tale kept the children quieter than usual. I think they regretted a little the gallant opening of Waverley, but as ever they were full of questions.

"And all that happened here, in our Galloway?" began Sweetheart, looking about her at the hills of dark heather and the sparkling Solway sands, from which the storm-clouds were just beginning to lift.

"Yes," I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever was in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything—than whom no man knew Galloway better?"

"Did gipsies really steal children?" said Maid Margaret, with some apprehension. She was somewhat anxious, for an affirmative answer might interfere with certain wide operations in blackberrying which she was planning.

"Sometimes they did," I answered, "but not nearly so often as they were blamed for. They had usually enough mouths of their own to feed. So, unless they were sure of a ransom, or perhaps occasionally for the sake of revenge, gipsies very seldom were guilty of kidnapping."

"But they always do steal them in books," said Hugh John; "well, I would just like to see them cart me off! And if they took Sir Toady Lion, they would soon send him back. He eats so much!"

This was Hugh John's idea of a joke, and somewhat hastily I interrupted fraternal strife by returning to the general subject.

"Adam Smith, a very learned man, who afterwards wrote The Wealth of Nations, was stolen by gipsies when a child," I said.

"I wish they had just kept him," said Hugh John, unexpectedly; "then we wouldn't have had to paraphrase the beastly thing at school. It is as full of jaw-breakers as a perch is full of bones."

"Was little Harry really stolen by gipsies, or was he killed over the cliff?" queried Maid Margaret.

"Of course he was stolen, silly," broke in Sir Toady Lion, sagely; "look how much more of the book there has got to be all about him. Think there would be all that, if he got killed right at the beginning, eh?"

"Do any people smuggle nowadays?" demanded Hugh John.

"Of course they do—in Spain," interjected Sir Toady Lion, "father got put in prison there once."

"That was all owing to a mistake," I explained hastily (for really this had nothing to do with Scott); "it was only because your parent happened to be wearing the same kind of hat as a certain well-known smuggler, a very desperate character."

"Hum-m!" said Sir Toady Lion, suddenly developing a cold in the nose.

"Well, anyway, they do smuggle—though not much in this country now," said Sweetheart, "and I'm glad father knew a man who smuggled in Spain. It makes this book so much more real."

"Getting put in prison instead of him made it almost too real," said Sir Toady. He is a most disconcerting and ironical boy. One often wonders where he gets it from.

So to shut off further questioning, I proceeded immediately with the telling of the second tale from Guy Mannering.

THE SECOND TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING"

I. HAPPY DOMINIE SAMPSON

It was seventeen long years after the murder of Frank Kennedy and the disappearance of little Harry Bertram when Guy Mannering, now a soldier famous for his wars in the East, penetrated a second time into Galloway. His object was to visit the family of Ellangowan, and secretly, also, to find out for himself in what way his random prophesies had worked out.

But he arrived at an unfortunate time. He found that, chiefly by the plotting and deceit of a rascally lawyer, one Gilbert Glossin, the Bertrams were on the point of being sold out of Ellangowan. All their money had been lost, and the sale of the estate was being forced on by the rascally lawyer Glossin for his own ends.

The old man Godfrey Bertram also was very near his end. And indeed on the very day of the sale, and while Mannering was paying his respects to his former host, the sight of Glossin so enraged the feeble old man that he was taken with a violent passion, falling back in his chair and dying in a few minutes.

Mannering, whose heart was greatly touched, was most anxious to do all that he could to assist Lucy Bertram, the old man's daughter, but he was compelled by an urgent summons to return into England. It had been his intention to save the estate of Ellangowan from the clutches of the scoundrel Glossin by buying it himself, but the drunkenness of a postboy whom he had sent with a letter to Mr. Mac-Morlan, the lawyer in charge of the sale, defeated his intentions, so that Ellangowan became the property of the traitor. So young Lucy Bertram and Dominie Sampson (who refused to be separated from her) became for the moment inmates of Mr. Mac-Morlan's house. The Dominie found a pupil or two in the neighbourhood that he might not be chargeable to his dear Lucy or her friend Mr. Mac-Morlan. And so, in the twenty-first year after the birth of an heir, and after Mannering's prophecy concerning him, there seemed an end to the ancient house of the Bertrams of Ellangowan.

During these years, Colonel Mannering also had a tale to tell. Wedded early to the wife of his youth and his heart, he had gone to India in the service of the Honourable, the East India Company. There by his valour and talent he had rapidly acquired both wealth and position. But during the twenty-first year an event occurred which gave him a distaste for the land of his adoption, and he had come back to his native country with the idea of settling down, far away from old memories and new entanglements.

In a duel which he had fought in India with a young man named Brown—a brave youth of no position, who had offended Mannering by his attentions to his daughter, and by establishing himself in his house as a friend of the family—he had left Brown for dead on the field, hardly escaping himself with his life from a sudden attack of the armed banditti who, in the India of that day, were always hovering round desert places. The shock of that morning had so told on the health of Mannering's wife that she died shortly afterwards, leaving him with one daughter, Julia—a proud, sprightly, sentimental girl, whom he had brought home, and placed under the care of a friend named Mervyn, whose house stood upon one of the Cumberland lakes.

So it came about that when Mannering was in Scotland, he received a letter from his friend which took him to Mervyn Hall as fast as horse-flesh could carry him.

His friend wrote, as he was careful to say, without his wife's knowledge. Mr. Mervyn told Colonel Mannering that he was certain that his daughter Julia was receiving secret visits from some one whom she did not dare to see openly. Not only were there long solitary walks and hill-climbings, but on several occasions he had heard up the lake at midnight, as if under her windows, a flageolet playing a little Indian air to which Julia Mannering was partial. This was evidently a signal, for a boat had been seen hastily crossing the lake, and the sash of Julia's window had been heard to shut down at the first alarm. Mr. Mervyn said that, little as he liked playing the part of tale-bearer, he felt that Julia was under his care, and he would not deserve his old name of Downright Dunstable if he did not inform her father of what he had discovered. Julia, he said, was both a charming and high spirited girl, but she was too much her own father's daughter to be without romantic ideas. On the whole, concluded Mr. Mervyn, it behooved the Colonel to come at once to Mervyn Hall and look after his own property.

This was the letter which, put into his hands at a seaport town in Scotland, lost Mannering the estate of Ellangowan, and threw the ancient seat of many generations of Bertrams into the clutches of the scoundrelly Glossin. For Colonel Mannering instantly posted off to the south, having first of all sent despatches to Mr. Mac-Morlan by the untrustworthy postilion—the same who arrived a day too late for the sale.

When Colonel Mannering first went to Mervyn Hall, he could make nothing of the case. Of course he believed Brown to have died by his hand in India, and he could find no traces of any other man likely to be making love to his daughter. Nevertheless he had brought back a plan with him from Scotland, which, he thought, would put an end to all future difficulties. The helplessness of Lucy Bertram had moved his heart. Besides, he was more amused than he cared to own by the originality of the Dominie. He had easily obtained, by means of Mr. Mac-Morlan, a furnished house in the neighbourhood of Ellangowan, and he resolved for a time at least to repose himself there after his campaigns. His daughter Julia would thus have a companion in Lucy Bertram, and it was easy to provide the Dominie with an occupation. For the library of an uncle of Mannering's, who had been a learned bishop of the Church of England, had been willed to him. The Dominie was the very man to put the books in order. So indeed it was arranged, after some saucy remarks from Miss Mannering as to the supposed Scottish accent and probable red hair of her companion.

Then Colonel Mannering, accustomed to do nothing by halves, sent down his directions about Dominie Sampson, whose heart indeed would have been broken if he had been separated from the young mistress over whom he had watched from childhood.

"Let the poor man be properly dressed," wrote the Colonel to Mr. Mac-Morlan, "and let him accompany his young lady to Woodbourne!"

The dressing of Dominie Sampson was, however, easier said than done. For it would hurt the pride of the Dominie to have clothes presented to him as to a schoolboy. But Lucy Bertram soon settled the matter. The Dominie, she said, would never notice the difference, if they put one garment at a time into his sleeping room and took away the other. This was what her father had always done when the wardrobe of his dependent needed renewing. Nor had the Dominie ever showed the least consciousness of the change.

So said, so done. A good tailor, having come and looked Mr. Sampson over, readily agreed to provide him with two excellent suits, one black and one raven grey, such as would fit the Dominie as well as a man of such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by merely human needles and shears.

The Dominie, when completely equipped, made no remark upon the change—further than that, in his opinion, the air of a seaport town like Kippletringan seemed to be favourable to wearing-apparel.

It was the depth of winter when the Mannerings arrived at Woodbourne. All were a little anxious. Even Dominie Sampson longed to be at his books, and going repeatedly to the windows demanded, "Why tarry the wheels of their chariot?" But when at last they came, Lucy and Julia Bertram were soon friends, while the Dominie stood with uplifted hands, exclaiming, "Prodeegious! Prodeegious!" as, one after another, the thirty or forty cart-loads of books were deposited on the library floor ready to his hand. His arms flapped like windmills, and the uncouth scholar counted himself the happiest man on earth as he began to arrange the great volumes on the shelves. Not that he got on very quickly. For he wrote out the catalogue in his best running-hand. He put the books on the shelves as carefully as if they had been old and precious china. Yet in spite of the Dominie's zeal, his labours advanced but slowly. Often he would chance to open a volume when halfway up the ladder. Then, his eye falling upon some entrancing passage, he would stand there transfixed, oblivious of the flight of time, till a serving-maid pulled his skirts to tell him dinner was waiting. He would then bolt his food in three-inch squares, and rush back to the library, often with his dinner napkin still tied round his neck like a pinafore. Thus, for the first time in his life, Dominie Sampson was perfectly content.