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THE ROADS THROUGH THE WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING.

OUR village had few attractions to strangers, and many to "its own." The population of its twentyfive or twenty-six houses were intimately acquainted all with each, and each with all. It was the centre of our parish, but the noisy town, a short three miles' walk from us, carried away the trade. Our business was, therefore, upon a small scale except the grave digger's, the session clerk's, and the minister's. The graveyard was a little hill formed by the dust of many generations. The church was old, yet it stood near the top of this solemn mound, which in parts rose more than four

feet over its foundation. Thus we learned that a

long time is required to make a pyramid of the dead, and of the grass that grows on graves, and fading, withers away again above them. The grass of our churchyard was not cropped, for we held it sacred, after a peculiar fashion. Around the place of the dead stood aged elms, in a stately row, like sentinels. They must have been older than the oldest house around them; and nobody remembered to have seen any change in their form or size. They had outlived the days of many families, and their roots, far beneath the grass, were twining in and out among the light brown dust of those who had planted them. Few persons ever examine human dust carefully, yet it is curiously fine and soft, having a colour of its own, of such a rich brown that no fuller on earth can imitate. The softness is like that of the silk, and its dye is unlike anything else whatever, when it is seen unmixed with the remains of coffins and

common earth-never consecrated by the habitation of a soul, even for a very short season, and the longest life is a span, in comparison even to those years that are needed to make this handful of refined earth-more precious by much that cannot be calculated or told, than the gold of Ophir, or the precious stones of Havillah.

Our houses stood in the bottom of a wide bowl. Its upper edges were green and jagged with tall pines, that spread out their broad arms in a gallant phalanx of leaves, to shelter us from all winds. The sides of the bowl consisted of little heights and howes, as if it had not been quite finished; and they were all divided into fields, full of farming wealth, and very rich in corn and cattle; but we, who were but boys, best liked the narrow paths, for the hedges and their flowers. We could see nothing beyond the tops of our hills, and there might have been two miles between them on any side, as a crow would fly, and many a crow did fly, so quickly that young folks often wished for wings to chase them. The birds, taking a bird's eye view of us, could not see a chink in the bowl, but there were three, and the waters crept in and out by them.

The founders of our hamlet planted it at the meeting of these waters, which were not very large, but they were very noisy, as if they had important business to do in the world; and so they had, too, for they fed the fairest trout we had ever caught, or that any of us will ever see, and by the help of the miller and his mill, they ground the corn. So they did not sing away their lives uselessly, under the shade of trees, so large that the stem was on one bank and the branches over the other, or rushing round green nooks, making little peninsulas, as they made islands and gulfs, to illustrate our geographies.

We had five slated houses and three roofed with

tiles in our community, all the others were thatched, for many reasons, but with results more favourable to the busy sparrows and the twittering swallows, than any other animals, for their families were very numerous, and they could not make for themselves homesteads on easier terms than in a corner of our cottage eaves. Every house had its plot of ground, and each was called a garden; famous gardens they were for all edible vegetables, and some of the fruits and flowers. Our honeysuckle was unrivalled, our thyme was thick and flowery-myrtle rose in sweet smelling branches, that scented all the air--and we had many beds of marjory and mignionette-and roses that crept up among the ivy to the chimney-tops; while all the summer days, ten thousand busy bees gave thanks as they laboured, hymning, while they wrought, sweet gratitude for the profuse provision made for them; not that anything was secured to the idle, but everything to the industrious, for the bees are a strange people, with very radical notions, although they are the creatures on all the earth farthest from socialist opinions.

CHAPTER II.

THE MORES.

DR. MORE's house was at the extreme end of the village to the west. It was a large house, with a door flanked by two windows on each side on the lower floor, and three on the second flat, with two on the roof; and it had four on each gable, and four at the back-one of which was a very long staircase window.

It was thought that Mrs. More paid a ransom for air and light in these days, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer charged the consumers of heaven's direct gift, for leave to breathe and look about them. It may be deemed strange that in our retirement the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have been a recognised power; but the fact originated in this way-stray newspapers even from London came amongst us, after they had been read repeatedly in various families; yet we placed

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minister's man, two women servants, who had been there since the minister came to the place, and for years before that day, as they were servants in the old family, who were out of my recollection, seeing, indeed, they had left for the town before my arrival in the world. The manse was not an extremely attractive place by itself; and the character of its principal inmate seemed to make garden and all dark-even in the sunshine; because we understood him not. All the apples upon one large tree, the best bearer in the garden, were sent regularly to the old family, for, according to the minister's man, that tree belonged originally to the lady of the manse; yet it was curious that in some seasons it alone had fruit, and all the others missed-either from the frosts in May, or the worms in June, or some other cause, not so easily known. Few alterations were ever made in the garden. By inches yearly the standard trees stretched and swelled, and such other changes occurred as nature effected; but there was no overturning or reforming in a general way, for the walks ran where they had originally been struck; and very nearly the same place was occupied by the flowrets and herbs then that they had filled twenty years before. Beneath the cold stern look of the minister the heart was warm, and he could not bear to put man or vegetable out of an old place. This current of hidden kindness was compared, by David Petrie, to the wells of the desert, although as I, in after years, understood, the simile was not characterised by the usual accuracy of Mr. Petrie's illustrations, forasmuch as the desert streamlets run deep, and take hard coaxing and digging to draw to the light; whereas, the minister's good-heartedness was close to the surface, and breaking through continually, so that, if the comparison had been altogether true, the desert would have been blossoming before the patriarch's time. Still, this fact did not keep us from thinking that the man servant was cross, both the women servants crabbed, the master dour-like, and the manse a darksome, dull place, where nobody was to laugh or sing, and such a thing as play was never heard of, so that all the school crept quietly past and round the garden wall, and held their breath for a time, not from any particularly nervous affection, but only the atmosphere of the place. One circumstance gave heart to the manse, and character among the school-children to the minister, for they could not help loving anybody who lived near to Nancy Rose, and she was the light of the minister's dwelling.

CHAPTER IV.

MISS NANCY.

It is not a digression, but in the common course of my narrative, that I should tell out her story here, and the reasons why she swayed the school in some measure, and the village childhood

completely, with a most loveable authority. What a world of woe has come upon this earth since these days, and a great multitude of those who were strong and young then, have gone away to her country; and many more to that land where her home cannot be. And through various changes, some thick with gloom, and others light with hope, through far lands and strange people have my own feet wandered since then, yet that memory is fresh, like the green emerald that never fades, and warm at my heart, like a July evening as the sun goes down behind Cairndlu, and colours all its darkness with the deep purple of a summer day's death among the heather. No human being walks through the world in a struggle against his own sin and its temptations, without meeting green fields in the waste, and where fields are green there are those who till them. Some believe the poet who wrote that "the darkest night is not all dark,” and others, that happiness in life is distributed equally, which I believe not. So it has been to me, however, that the cloud has been followed by the blink, and the shower by the sunshine. Yet, having seen the strong become weak, and the countenance of friends changed, the bright eye closed, the red cheek turn to wan, and the ruddy lip wax white very many times, it seems strange that this one memory should be brighter and more like life than all the others. Multitudes carry down to the grave two or three memories in that way, so very clear that the lost come up to the mind more vivid than the living, who were parted from but one half-hour. Chiefly they belonged to the dreamer's family, or to the early loved, and may be lost. It was morally impossible that I had been in love with Miss Nancy, who was not then nearly through with my first seven years, and had taken up with Betsy Martin, who helped my mother, and was well over thirty years, as my prime favourite, for substantial reasons, which it might be a shame to confess, except to clear away that other suspicion, since they were altogether selfish, and originated in faggots of bread, with occasional additions.

Still, as the straw bonnet of a chipped pattern, black and white, in which the colours fell into each other like the teeth of a saw; the skyblue velvet, narrow, like a ribbon, that bound it; the grey cloak, not more than half the usual length, according to the fashion of Kirkhowe; the hood with its lining of crimson silk; the little basket; the braided fair hair, the deep blue eyes, the placid face, of which we thought not whether it were or were not beautiful, for it was always smiling-are remembered like the things of yesterday-the owner must have been very loveable.

She was then always known as Miss Nancy, and at this spring time she had been for ten years a resident of Kirkhowe, to which she was brought from one of the Indies, while a very little girl, in her tenth year or thereby, although of that I remember nothing. To me she seemed always fair and tall, and not like a person connected in any way with the Indies. She had neither brother nor

THE LAW OF KINDNESS.

sister-and of her family and parents we heard nothing. The post-master sent our letters to Mrs. Grey's, who was no connexion to the Grey family already named; and she remarked that large let ters came to Miss Nancy from foreign parts, for which more money than the day's wages of a tradesman was charged; and the address of some of them was in a very neat female hand, like those sent away by Mrs. More, or others that came to the Place.

Thereafter the letters had very deep black on the edge of the paper, but no black sealing wax, for they were never fastened in that way, and those of the beautiful female hand came no more. At that time Miss Nancy went into very deep mourning, and the lady, her governess, left soon after wards and never returned-for her pupil's education was completed; but after a long period, she had forsaken gradually her raiment of woe, which I cannot clearly recollect; and I only gathered up these facts, as they were told, at different times, in the ordinary course of idle conversation in which old people engage, often supposing that the young cannot understand their secrets. The minister always wore black clothes, and as it was not common then to put servants in mourning when a bereavement occurred, nothing was known in that way respecting his connexion with the far-travelled letters.

CHAPTER V.

THE LAW OF KINDNESS.

MISS NANCY was a great help to Mrs. More, in dealings with the sick and the young; for that lady could not understand the young so well, because a long time had passed since she had been at school. It was no doubt true that Mrs. More had also taught the younger lady many things, and sometimes they went from home together, for only a few days. It would have been a serious business if anything uncommon had occurred then-for David Petrie had a strong conviction of the value of his strop, as a system, though he was a good-natured man, and Mr. Green was only his occasional assistant, and had not overmuch authority. I have read in books often since then of the law of kindness, but it differed little in any way from the transactions of Miss Nancy with her young friends, as she called us, although David Petrie grumbled sometimes when she sought pardon for a careless boy, and especially for a girl who had displeased the master; and which he could not well refuse, she being, as it were, in the place of a daughter to the minister, and he had none other; but the master spoke to himself always on these occasions of revolutions and friends of the people, saying that Miss Nancy was "a friend of the people "-and it would not do to let over much with her; and he used to argue with Mr. Green on the subject, who was always for giving good advice instead of

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making a warning. Morcover, Miss Nancy was as good as a bursary, so to speak, or an endowment to the school, for she gave the children little teadrinkings in the winter, and fruit and nuts in summer, and books and pictures at all times, which she called prizes, only we all gained prizes somehow, all the village infancy, at any rate. She also taught us occasionally, and sometimes she would read the Bible lesson to us, and it seemed easy when she read, for she had a way of speaking that made the words be understood.

Upon the Sabbath mornings, before the bell rang, she collected a class in her own room, in the house, of girls-and then, in the afternoons, she had a younger class of boys in the room at the church, to which I belonged, being rather under the age of Mr. Green's class in the school on that day. Kirkhowe was indebted to our Indian visitor for these innovations, as they were once considered, and for its pre-eminence in education over all the other parishes around, and even the town. A stout wrestle occurred between the new and the old world before these changes were homologated by the authorities. We lived in dangerous times, and it was the opinion of Mr. McDonald, who was the Laird's grieve, that all alterations savoured of Radicalism. This was his view, and Mr. Buttry's also, who was supposed to speak for the whole Place. A meeting of the heads of the parish, being the two officials aforesaid, the schoolmaster, three elders, and the minister, with Dr. More, occurred to consider the critical position of affairs; and, on account of the weakness of the Doctor, who could neither walk far nor fast, it was held in his drawing-room, to the profit of Mr. Green, who being a discreet young man, often took tea with Mrs. More and any of her young friends in that little back parlour, which looked by a bow window to the north-west, and was comfortable in summer time, when the sun was going down. chanced that he was there that afternoon, not by way of eaves dropping, which, of course, would not have been permitted by Mrs. More; but they could not avoid hearing what was loudly spoken, and neither could Miss Rose, who complained that she was in an improper position; but except by the window, and that was one flat from the ground, there was no way out unless through the great room. By this means Mr. Green was able to relate in after times nearly all that was spoken, but as Dr. More cut all arguments very short, and was clear for his wife's side, the discussion did not last very long, and the substance was that he pressed Mr. McDonald and Mr. Buttry for the reason of their interference, and whether they had or had not

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any letters from Mr. Augustus Blacker Eustace Cochrane upon the subject, and they had none. Then it appeared that the Doctor had, and he read from them that in Mr. A. B. E. Cochrane's opinion, no harm could possibly come from reading. the Bible, and if any young ladies could be found willing to teach the children, they were, in his view of the matter, occupying their time in a most

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praiseworthy manner. So the Place was settled. | Mr. McDonald indeed added that "a little learning was a dangerous thing," and should be seen after; but that split the party, for Mr. Petrie, conscious that for more than forty years he had been teaching only a little learning to the scholars of Kirkhowe took the line in a personal sense, and called it a downright heresy, and an insult to the wisdom of the church, that had instituted schools as well as colleges. "Besides," said Mr. Smith, who for a farmer, was an acute, well-read man, and well knew how to stir up the wrath of his friends in the session, "it's borrowed from ane Pope." "Frae the Pope," said the elder next him, "do you hear that, James ?"--and James, who was the third elder, said he did, and also "that to all things savourin' o' Popery they should be opposed, and would only be safe on the clean opposite road;" and Dr. More appealed to the minister, who knew well that Pope the poet was not Pope the priest; but he did not correct the error, and only took refuge under Gamaliel, the great Jewish teacher; and so the conference ended in the discomfiture of the opponents of parochial reforms, and the triumph of their promoters.

After the opposite party had left, along with the elders who had far to travel, except Mr. Smith, for it was only a short mile to the Rackets, the tea was set forth in a stately manner, in the drawingroom, with Mrs. More's very best china cups, which were only used upon great specialities, along with the set of old silver spoons, very massive, that were heir-looms of the Pitgowan family; and David Petrie, although not altogether favourable, being an influential man as the schoolmaster, had been taken into the library to look at some Hindoo manuscript or Persian parchment by the Doctor; so that Miss Nancy seemed to have called for the minister and Mr. Green to have looked in by accident, as it were-although no accidents really occur in nature-when the party were all gathered round the tea table.

A long supplement to the ante-tea conference occurred then, and the issue was the formation of a clothing society-a new idea, attributable to the English lady; of which Mr. Petrie was the only male official, it being necessary to keep him in employment, and to have the services of some one skilled in accounts. At that time, we had no families in utter rags in the parish, yet the times were very hard, and seeing the number of orphans was not small, and the Sunday collections were not large, it was thought that their distribution might be husbanded and improved in that way, which Mr. Smith believed would be also a great relief to the duties of the eldership; and they were very much of a monetary description.

This matter was found to be so easy that, a short time afterwards, a thing altogether unknown in that quarter of the country was done, in the institution of a Bible society, which commenced in the gift of a dozen of bibles, in large types, from Mrs. Cochrane, who was the heiress of the

Grahams, being the last of that stock, whereat, Mr. McDonald only said that the old families of the country were going very fast to ruin, and that no such levelling work was ever contemplated in the good old days of Mr. Graham.

Soon afterwards, a local library was established, although some of the books were not better than tracts; but they had among them useful works, and they afforded a variety in the parochial reading, chiefly in that of the village, because we were near to the library. For myself, some change was necessary; as, except the writings of Mr. Willison, some works by Philip Doddridge-Time, and the End of Time-Watt's Sermons-the Fourfold State --the Hind let Loose-the Cloud of Witnessesand some volumes of profane history, my opportunities of reading were confined to dry and heavy books, such as the Assembly's Catechism, and finally, with the view of beginning Latin, a grammar in that unknown tongue, to which Grey's Arithmetic might be added.

Soon after its commencement, the business of the library devolved upon Mr. David Petrie, in an unforeseen manner; for Mr. Green, although a youth of parts and promise, was also a young man of poverty, who aspired to the pulpit, without any visible means of meeting his expenses, and he was obliged to teach by the way. He was suddenly taken away to classes in Edinburgh; and it was even said, as I remember well, that Nancy Rose was concerned therein, but it might have been Mrs. More, or even the minister, who never liked to hear, or to let others hear, of any good he did; for, as I have since thought, it would not have been altogether seemly for a young lady, turning into the twenties, to pay for classes, and food, and lodging, to a young man of nearly the same age, or a little more, although he was very discreet.

So many institutions and reforms in Kirkhowe caused the Presbytery, at a half-yearly meeting, to take cognizance of the case, and especially as our minister had been known for a quiet philosophic man; but Mr. Smith, of the Rackets, had been bold enough to take a seat in that reverend court, a step without precedent, looking to his position, being only a working elder, and neither a laird nor a lawyer; and he spoke so long upon the laws of the church, and also the Bible, that the moderator approved of leaving the business over until a future day, and he afterwards forgot to do more than privately admonish concerning the danger of all novelties in times of change, and great excitement, also of Radicalism.

The withdrawal of Mr. Green for a season, as his place was not filled, and that being in the winter month, when the school was full, cast more than usual work on Mr. Petrie, and the Miss Birnies, with whom he had been a lodger for thirty-five years, could not but see that he was failing fast; so the minister looked in often, and did all the clerking work, and Mrs. More helped Miss Nancy with what might have been called the juvenile classes; they teaching all the lessons in the little

THE DARK CLOUD.

room at the kirk, while he had still the fees, which were not fully a shilling by the quarter, for those who did not count.

Miss Nancy was the best teacher that we ever had, and yet we were all afraid of her, for she was curiously opposed to some of our plans, and set fights between the boys went out altogether. Kirkhowe always bred great flocks of birds, from the number of its trees, where they got food and shelter, and the boys were given to hunting them with stones, knowing that the laird shot them with guns; although Miss Nancy often called it cruel, and even sinful, and spoke so to Mr. Petrie on the subject that he read to us for half an hour from a large book on the construction of birds, and the nature of feathers, showing that they could derive no advantage from being stoned, without, however, convincing the audience that they should abandon their former habits. As this lecture produced no more good than might have been expected, Miss Rose one morning handed round copies of another lecture on the subject, more suited to our comprehension. The verses were beautifully written, but whether they were copied from a book, were de vised for the occasion, or were ever published before I cannot tell, but they stand as I have copied them, in a very neat hand, clear and plain :

I like the bonnie birdies,

I loo' them ane an' a',
When glinting in the sun beams,
Or fluttering through the snaw.
Singing in the morning's youth,
Ere yet the sun be high,
Cheerie notes o' trustful truth,
Far up in the blue sky;
Singing in the evening's hour,
In beech or birken shaw,
I like the bonnie birdies,
I loo' them ane an' a'.

The mavis on the pine tree,
The lark upon the sod,
Or mounting in its wild glee,
Far up the angel's road.
The blackbird on the May thorn,
The linnet on the lea,

The craick amang the young corn,
The swallow o'er the sea,
That comes afore the blythe flowers,
Which hide the garden wa',

I like the bonnie birdies,
I loo' them anean' a'.

The robins in the cold hours,
That crumple a' the leaves,
The finches in the green bowers,
That gladsome summer weaves,
Are fed by God in kindness,

An' richly clad by Him;
To tell us of our blindness,
When Faith an' Hope are dim.
Oh! never stane the wee birds
In sport frae cot' or ha,
For if you kill the sparrow,

Our Father sees it fa'.

The birds had good times for that spring, from the verses, which we sung to merry airs; and fewer birds' nests were stolen that season at Kirkhowe than in any year since the forty-five.

Few changes occurred in our quiet life, for, notwithstanding reports and rumours of Radical risings, Kirkhowe did not rise, but pursued the even tenor of its way, and the ordinary course of its business. One afternoon in spring, Mr. Green was noticed walking round to John Dow's, where he lodged, and weary and footsore as he was, everybody was delighted that he had come back again, for somehow he had gotten great applause from the masters at Edinburgh, for his learning, and the Miss Birnies both said that they knew what would happen from the onerous David Petrie bestowed upon the young man's lescare that Mr. Green's return was a good help to Mr. Petrie, and a relief to Miss Nancy and Mrs. More, who were able to be more attentive to their dispensary, as Dr. More had named the little room behind the dining-room, which corresponded to the small room behind the drawing-room.

sons.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DARK CLOUD.

THE winter had been hard upon the poor labourers' families. The frost went deep into the earth, and the snow lay deep above it. The meal rose to close upon two pounds for the boll, a price at which I heard many say the bairnies could not get one good diet for each day. The work was stopped for a month at once, by reason of the snow, and with the work the earnings ended, and it was a very hard time. After famine comes fever, more or less vehement, in proportion to the want. That rule obtains in the country as in the town; and fevers are often more fatal in the open field than in the crowded and fenced cities. The spring was one of much sickness in the parish, and Dr. Groom ordered nourishing diet for his patients, more than usual, as people said when they had sometimes to do without any diet; and many healthy persons made proof of their affection, as was well known, for the ailing, by going without anything for them. selves in order that the Doctor's prescription might be observed, and to impose by a make-believe mode of working on the neighbours, lest they should think that they were poorer than they were. The dispensary was very busy then, and the assistants had more work than usual. At the same time, Miss Nancy was full of preparations for some friends who were coming home; and it was said that they had bought or taken the house of Blinkbonnie, which stood not more than half a mile from the manse, above the water, where it crept through the little hills away from us, and out into the world again. The land belonging to it was no more than one very large, or two ordinary, farms, of one to two hundred acres each, or thereby-for the lairds had been spendthrifts for generations, and the last, who had long left the neighbourhood, was the worst of all. The possession was therefore desolate in appearance, and the large gardens-for Blinkbonnie

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