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THE WANDERER'S RETURN.

the weaknesses of good people, who perhaps had come through more than they told, seeing it was common with persons in their way of life not to let others know all their straits. Although the new family came among us unexpectedly, that was owing to the habit of their aunts, in keeping their own secrets; and then in the end because the coach came late to the town; and it was some time before they could get a conveyance to Kirkhowe, and so every house was quiet when Mrs. Ferrie, with her boy and girl, returned to her native place.

CHAPTER X.

THE WANDERER's return.

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FOR Some time the current of our life ran smooth, and scarcely a ripple appeared on the waters, although we were all hurrying on to the great sea not less quickly than when troubles were in the way. We seemed like the deep and pleasant Forth as I have seen it often, winding out and in, or coiling around its meadows or corn fields, so quiet and still that we could scarcely tell whether it was going on to Leith or back to Stirling. The corn grew through all these days and nights, and the sun had become hot, and even the nights were warm, so that patches of barley began to lose their green hue, and turn to yellow. Then, upon an afternoon, there came a carriage to the manse, and some bags were put into it and a small trunk. It then drove round to Dr. More's, and a great number of bags and two trunks were placed in or upon it. The minister followed the carriage, demure and dowie in his look. He went not into Dr. More's, for the afternoon was very fine, and he sauntered up to the knowe among the flowers before the door, and looked through the trees, down the water, to Blinkbonnie; and it might have been that the sun's rays hurt his eyes, for they were so bright that the upper windows of that house which we could just see, shone like a furnace fire, although I knew nothing then of the great furnaces in the iron districts, where the stones are melted down with fervent heat, and the boiling metal is most beautiful to look upon; but at any rate his eyes did seem watery and weak, when Dr. More and Mrs. More came out accoutred as if they were going upon a far journey. So the lady gave me the little parcel which I had been sent for to carry up to Widow Robbs; and she said that they were going far away to London, and would not be back for a long time, only she had left messages concerning the school with Mr. Green who was still there, helping Mr. Petrie, because he waxed frailer as the year grew older; and she thought they would all be back before the harvest vacancy was done, which was not commenced then, nor even spoken or thought of, so the carriage rolled away, and Kirkhowe seemed duller; but I delivered my parcel.

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afternoons grew sensibly shorter and the evenings longer. The play had been given out for some time, and the schoolmaster was growing stronger with his leisure. The harvest was early, and promised to be good, so that the meal had already become cheaper, and everybody seemed to be pleased; for the farmers round there, being mostly "well to do" in the world, were not greedy for dearth; when the travellers returned, and brought with them a pleasant-looking aged man, not so bent as the doctor, nor so ruddy as the minister; but with very white hair and deep lines over his face. He was alone in life, and in all his long voyage from India, he expected not to be alone when he arrived here. It was not easy to tell the wanderer, returned after a long service in the East, that he had none of his own to welcome him back. The wife of his youth died beside him, and was buried beneath the palm tree. One by one their children dropped away and perished among the flowers of India, except that one who came to us. Her father resembled the man with only one lamb, of whom the Prophet told the Eastern king; but there was this difference, that for nearly twelve years he had only cherished the remembrance of that lamb, and God took her, but not man. It was not easy to tell him after the ship came up the London river, and he had landed once more on the soil of his own country that, there was no young person to bid him welcome; but that was all passed long ere he came to Blinkbonnie and Kirkhowe. The former place was out of order in some measure, for the work was stopped after the accident, and the old gentleman for a time lived with the Mores. At first he did not wish to come to Scotland; then he thought that he would like to see even her grave, and to live occasionally where she lived, and walk where she had walked; and his friends encouraged this run of thought in his mind, and the lady even said that nobody else could do her work; but yet he might help to finish part of what she had commenced; and that thought struck him more than any other, they said, as a reason for coming home, since, after all, he had no home but Blinkbounie; and so sometime after that return we read in the papers that the Hon. Mr. Rose, E.I.C.S., was to take up his abode at Blink bonnie, which he had purchased before the untimely death by accident of his only then living daughter. Something more was said of her character, often said when not quite true.

Mr. Rose was a wonderfully placid man in the midst of sorrow, and he spoke most kindly to all the neighbours, and especially to the boys at the school, so that it appeared as if affliction had mellowed his character, and that alone, and childless, he could yet be in some measure happy. A tall marble column was placed against the wall of the church, at the top of his daughter's grave. It was very beautiful then, and is beautiful yet, although the roses have The summer faded into the early autumn. The twined round the top and shed many leaves in

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autumn at its foot and over her carnations. It was said to be erected by J. R. Rose, of Blinkbonnie, in memory of Agnes Fletcher, his wife, who died at Madras, on the 8th of June, 1816; and of their children, whose births, and deaths, and names it gave; two daughters and one son, who all died where they were born, in the land of their parents' sojourn; and of Nancy Rose, who was drowned, and the date and place were added, and was buried in this spot, "Aged 21 Years." Then followed, by what coincidence I cannot say, that very text on which old Samuel Coutts, from the Upper Burn, had spoken on the Sabbath after her death, when there was no preaching in the kirk. (Malachi iii., 17.) A space was left for one name; and it has been long since filled up, so that the family record is complete on that one marble.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MINISTER'S TRIALS.

I NEVER mentioned before that the minister's name was Fletcher. He belonged in a distant link to the Fletchers of Burnside, who had a small estate; and even the minister himself was an heritor in another parish, where Burnside stood; but he had only one small farm, and the land was cold and thin. When he was a very young man he went to study in Edinburgh, I believe; and he stopped in the house of a relative, who had one daughter, and only one, and she was the Agnes Fletcher mentioned on the marble slab in our kirk yard. Mr. Fletcher had always been a man of retiring habits, and he did not even make that close acquaintance with many of his friends that other people would have done. In addition to his natural diffidence, Miss Agnes was an only child, and comfortable in the world, while he had only his small piece of cold upland, and himself, and he also had his sister to portion off the farm-for they were orphans. So Mr. Fletcher, while it cannot be questioned, as I came to know for certain, that he was deeply in love with this Miss Agnes, thought that he could not speak to her on the subject of settling in the world, seeing he was no better than a probationer of ordinary parts, when he was advised to go back to his own neighbourhood on some assistantship.

He remained there for well nigh two years, before he heard that Mr. Rose, who had called sometimes before, had become extremely intimate with his second cousin; although they wrote once in two or three months. By some influence he had got the presentation to a small parish more among the hills than our own; and probably Kinabers had a smaller stipend than Kirkhowe. So he thought the time might be come when he could speak to his second cousin in perfect consistence with the prudence and sobriety that became his station. Accordingly, notwithstanding that he had heard indirectly of this Mr. Rose, he jour

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neyed to Edinburgh, by the bridge of Stirling-not altogether both a cheap and an easy task, in those days; and he got there, and was made most welcome, for his coming was opportune, since Mr. Rose had obtained an appointment in India, and Miss Agnes was to marry him, aad leave for that land, stranger then than now, in a short time. Mr. Fletcher was a young man then of strong good sense, and well guided by the influences from on high. So, although this was to him a complete casting down of the castles he had been building in the air above the mause of Kinaber; yet he tried to be composed, for he knew that he could not blame Miss Agues, and as little could he be offended with Mr. Rose; who had only, as it were, shown the same discernment as himself. He did nothing very romantic, therefore, but bore his pain in his own breast, well hidden, and dealt with his fair cousin as if he had come up just to propose as his sister was married, and Miss Agnes was to be married, and as he did not expect ever to see it to be his duty to take a wife-that old Mrs. Fletcher should not be left alone in the world, but should reside with him at Kinabers; and this was agreed to, more readily, perhaps, on the old lady's part, that she really needed no more than sympathy in the world, and their relative, the young minister of Kinabers, was not likely to divert away her property from the straight line, while his home would look more minister-like with such a respectable lady dwelling there. So this marriage occurred, and Mr. Fletcher was necessitated to take therein a subordinate place, instead of the principal, to which he had aspired-unknown to her who alone could have given him that presentation; and the young and old, both sorrowing, parted from the young, whose joy no doubt was coloured and tinged by grief at parting with one whom they could no more expect to see on earth; and the aged and the young went northward to quiet Kinabers, and their friends to the gorgeous East. When a few years came and went, Mrs. Fletcher died, and Mr. Fletcher, who had been to her as a son, in writing of her death, told his own secret to Mr. Rose, leaving to his discretion whether it should be communicated to Mrs. Rose, whom it could in no way help to hear bad tidings. Then Mr. Fletcher added that his sister had become a widow, and with her son and two daughters, was to reside with him in the manse. The years that followed were happy and useful at Kinabers; but death came into the little circle, and first the minister's sister died, and then her daughters, one after another, as they grew into youth, followed her into the grave, dying of consumption--the plague of our changeable climate. It was then that some of his friends, when our parish became vacant, managed to obtain his transference to it, away a little from a house of mourning, and it was then, also, or soon after, that Mr. and Mrs. Rose suggested to him the charge of their young daughter, after others had faded in that land where European families have

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GLEANINGS AND FRAGMENTS.

been hitherto but truly pilgrims and strangers by the way. When he came down to Kirkhowe, as has been said, he continued every person and thing in its place, so far as was possible, and his home grew cheerier when the young Indian girl and her governess came to dwell there; and his heart would naturally get very warm to the little thing that ran out and in among his trees and walks; and so when she grew up, and somehow rather went before him in doing good, and had to draw him into her plans, and looked so very like the Miss Agnes of his college days and his probationship, it may be supposed, without thinking anything out of the way in the shape of romance, that the old man's affections, which for a quiet man, who never travelled far from home, had been sorely seared and tried, and driven as it were, into himself, again looked forth, and clustered round his young charge. And even when her father wrote that he was to return, the minister rejoiced, although Blinkbonnie was out of his parish, that it was near his home, and that Mr. Cairns had been able to buy it at the exact time when it was needed; so that, although the manse might be again dark and dull, yet Miss Nancy would be near to him, and all the little works which she had commenced to do. Thus it will be seen that over and above the ordinary "trahels" and tribulations of his professional life, this man had a hidden spring of grief that ran deep and long, for a time; and then came more easily seen woes; and, last of all, the sad shock that seemed to say that he must die alone, with none of the young for whom he had cared to close his eyes on the things of time. It is true, that the minister's life had in it nothing very exciting; but yet it gave a curious illustration of the manner whereby men's roads through the world cross each other, go far round, and meet at last. The lines of these two old gentlemen outwardly presented a singular contrast; one working on at home among

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his own people, and the other hanging on, as it were, at the very outskirts of civilisation for a long lifetime; and yet their devious roads met at last, beside a grave which held the latest object of their inner life's love and thought. The roads came together in the kirkyard of Kirkhowe. But one person among the young charges of the minis. ter is unacconnted for. Death had all the others in its keeping. Once he thought it might have been well if death had taken that one also in store; but men often think erroneously. This was his sister's son, who left him long before he left Kinabers; not so much that he was then more than thoughtless; but when he went into a large town, and was to learn all that was necessary for his future career in life, he rather learned other things, and fell into bad company, and into debt, which his uncle could pay, and into drink which that friend could not cure; and he was a deep grief at the manse, the more especially when word came that he had left his lodgings and gone no one knew where, nor with whom, nor for what purpose, nor even if he was still alive. Being such a reckless boy, and this happening on the back of his younger sister's death, just upon her grave, as it were, ere even the sods had joined, it looked like the heaping up of sorrow upon trouble. Young Wilson did not die, however, but he was long in a hard state, and with a hard heart-for many years passed away before word came of him to the man whom he had helped to sadden. Nevertheless, it was well that he did not die and perish from the earth like the rest of his family. And yet it was not written that the uncle and nephew were ever to meet again in our world. Their roads separated from the time that the boy flung himself into the stormiest currents of life, and was tossed so long among its breakers, down its rapids, and past its rocks, that he seemed never likely more to reach the plain course of duty; and when he did, it never floated him back to our land.

GLEANINGS AND FRAGMENT S.

MR. ROEBUCK AND THE GENERALS.

THE member for Sheffield would be a more formidable agitator than he is, if he had better health and strength; but he is formidable. At Liverpool, during the last month, he has been endeavouring to instruct the members of the Financial Association, between whom and the Administrative Reform Association of London he wishes to form an alliance. At one meeting he enumerated the temptations that assail honest members of Parliament, of which the most dangerous are the smiles of aristocratic and fair ladies. The watchdogs of the people were, he said, led astray by the mere commonplace civilities of soirees, or what we should call vulgarly evening parties. At the next elections, therefore, the voters must keep a sharp

watch for representatives who may be considered tea and coffee proof. Mr. Roebuck in his speech, and in reference to military life, said, by the report we have read, that from the days of Marlborough to those of Wellington, we had no great General, although several great Admirals arose ; and he explained the curiosity by ascribing military power entirely to the aristocracy, whereas plebeian genius had more scope in the naval department. Mr. Roebuck must have forgotten the names of Wolfe, of Clive, of Abercromby, of Ouchterlony, of Baird, of Lake, and Moore. They are the names of able and great Generals; the roll might be largely increased, especially from the Eastern service. Abercrombie, who died a victor in Egypt, Moore who finished his life and his

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THE CRIMEAN COMMISSION THE PRUSSIAN MANIFESTO.

celebrated retreat in victory, at Corunna, Wolfe, | writer warns us to return into good old Toryism,

who died while victor at Quebec, did not belong to the aristocratic classes-or to the higher aristocracy. Clive founded an aristocratic family, but made his own fortune. Lake's victories in India were even more complete and decisive, if possible, than those of Wellington. Our military system appears to be more indebted to an official coterie than to the aristocracy for its failures. The late Commander-in-Chief Viscount Hardinge, was not an aristocrat's, but a clergyman's son. Sir George Brown, who is a brave man, although he is considered a strong drill and pipe-clay soldier, belongs to the middle classes. Sir Colin Campbell began his march with his commission and his sword, although we admit that the same services would have placed him long years ago in a higher position than he yet occupies, in any other service. It may be said that Abercrombie and Moore did not achieve on land the results wrought by Duncan and Nelson at sea, or Marlborough before, or Wellington after them, but they had not equal means. We were in their days not a great military but a great naval power.

THE CRIMEAN COMMISSION.

SIR John M'Neill and Colonel Tulloch have by different means expressed their displeasure with the manner in which the Chelsea Board of Generals dealt by their report upon the state of the army in the Crimea. They both consider the conduct of the Government and of the Horse Guards calculated to prevent the success of similar commissions hereafter. The Liverpool people, in a very proper spirit, have addressed the two Commissioners on the subject. Sir John M'Neill is unfortunately able to say that their address is the first public acknowledgment of his labours that he has received. We complain of the Parliament. What of the people? They can do what they please when they please to do it. And if the efficiency and honour of the army were as dear to them as ninepence in the pouud, December and January last teach us what they could accomplish, If these two Commissioners, who bravely and honestly shook the official board of mismanage ment to its foundations, cannot be publicly thanked by the Parliament on account of the Government, who cannot be frank on account of the Court, the people can do that business without the fear of any consequences except those of neglecting it.

THE PRUSSIAN MANIFESTO.

If some of the newspapers have not been the subjects of a very odious hoax, a pamphlet has been published in Berlin, which is the most impudent prodnction of its kind and of the times. The writer is supposed to be in concert with the Court. Some of the passages very much resemble the "inspirited" poetics of the King's speeches. In Berlin at any rate, a violent attack upon Great Britain and its institutions could not appear without the indirect sanction of the authorities. The

and worse, verily worse, to something like the continental system, otherwise a coalition of nations will be formed against us. The quotations professedly made fromthe pamphlet savour of too much champagne. They all read like "tenth tumbler sentences." Our press is a disgrace to ourselves for its licentiousness; and our Palmerstonian foreign politics are a nuisance to Europe; which they threaten. We hope that one person has passed a clever trick on some other person in respect to the extracts; but one coalition is advisable in the circumstances, namely a coalition, if the story be true, not to vote any dowry to the British Princess who is to marry a Prussian Prince, until the work be condemned in its nativity, even if its pages have been inspired by Royalty. As to coalitions against us, our Posen and Rhenish provinces are not much in Europe's way.

THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.

A NUMBER of French generals met last month to pay a personal compliment to Prince Napoleon, in reference to the Crimean war. The Prince left in bad health before the winter, and knew nothing personally of what passed then. Because at that meeting in respect to a French Prince, nothing was said regarding the British army and its work, therefore one set of alarmists said the alliance was falling to pieces; and others said, "Think of that Redan; this rocky, stupid Redan again." The revival of these calumnies is ungenerous; and the only remedy that we can see is to ask the gentlemen who make them also to take pickaxe in hand and show us how to make a trench through a rock. According to Admiral Houston Stewart's version of the matter, as represented to his old friends at Greenock, during the month, the British had either to trench through a rock, which they could not do, or make an open race at the Redan for several hundred yards; while the French could and did cut through a soft soil to the guns of the Malakhoff. This is, we presume, an adequate explanation of the matter-which yet will have to be repeated agaiu and again during the current year. It does not explain, however, how the British always had the rocks, and our allies the sand; how they marched over the Alma under the shelter of guns from the sea; and our people had to take the inland journey; how we had the exposed port of Balaklava and they the safer landing at Kamiesch; how we had to guard the long lines of Inkermann while they were comparatively sheltered from attack-but we fancy that all these things came of the alliance which is in no danger whatever from any cause, so long as it is useful to both nations, and will not last a day beyond that time. The comfort regarding it is, that we have no policy to promote which can in any way cross the purposes of France, so long as the latter are confined to the peace of its people, and the advancement (of their material wealth and political freedom.

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Titanic shadows than immense masses of earth and stone. One then caught the brilliant glow upon the quiet river, that was meandering through the valley, blushing like a fair virgin with her lover's last kiss at parting on her brow. Having exhausted all our powers of description upon the scenery, we determined, as we began to feel fatigued, to rest for a time at the little inn that stood by the roadside.

We were shown into a snug little parlour, and left to ourselves. As the evening was rather chilly, our host accommodated us with a fire, and refreshing ourselves with a jug of his home-brewed, we chatted till it grew quite dark.

My companion was evidently quite tired-for I found, on launching out into some flowery description of foreign scenes, and comparing them with Wales, I received no answer or comment from him. I looked up, and found he was fast asleep; so my only resource was to stir the fire, and as books were out of the question in a neighbourhood like this, to draw my chair nearer to it, and give myself to reflection till my companion should be rested sufficiently to walk home. Sitting by the firelight, I am very apt to lose myself in imaginative dreams. In these abstracted moods, the ordinary objects of the room often mingle strangely with my reveries, and assist the illusions of the fancy. It was particularly the case at this moment. All was so quiet and subdued that the mind was insensibly carried away to the past. Old faces seemed to flash upon me in the flickering firelight; old hopes and aspirations came fresh to my memory from the long years that were gone; sweet tones that had touched my heart in those days seemed now to echo faintly in my ears; bright looks and sunny smiles that had long ago been quenched in the grave came vividly to the mind's eye.

A FEW summers back I was making a pedestrian tour of South Wales, when, in one of my solitary rambles, I fell in with a very interesting companion. The similarity of tastes which we discovered in our first interview, led to a further intimacy, and we soon became fast friends—so intimate, indeed, that Mr. Arthur Mostyn (such was my companion's name), invited me to spend the remainder of the summer at a little cottage he owned near Brecon. I was not over-burdened with worldly cares. I had neither wife, child, nor business to cause me any anxiety; so I cheerfully accepted the invitation so heartily given, and in a day or two was regularly domiciled with my new friend. He was a young man about thirty, well educated, and accomplished; a first-rate artist-for many of his sketches and drawings would have done no discredit to a professional hand. There were, however, many peculiarities in his manner which had not appeared in our first interview, and these I could not help noticing as I was more in his company. He spoke French with a purity of accent that I had never remarked in any other English-up man. I accounted for this by supposing that he had resided for some time on the continent; but on my remarking his perfection in the language, he became silent and reserved for the remainder of the day. It was evident that I had touched upon a jarring chord, and as my only object in keeping his company was the enjoyment of his intellectual taste, and the gratification of my love of the picturesque, I did not seek to know more of him than he chose to tell me. I had noticed that everything relating to France, if but slightly touched upon, produced in him a fit of melancholy; so I carefully avoided any reference to that subject. But a circumstance occurred in one of our excursions that aroused my curiosity in a great degree. We frequently took very long walks in the mountainous districts in the neighbourhood of Brecon, and one fine evening, as the sun was setting, we found ourselves at the little village of Llauhamlach, some two or three miles from that town. This village is one of the best specimens of South Wales scenery. Lying in the midst of a lovely valley watered by the Usk, we thought, as we now gazed upon it illuminated by the setting sun, that it would be difficult indeed to find a more beautiful picture. We sat upon a gate by the road side, and were soon lost in delicious reveries, broken only by some murmured exclamation as a change in the aspect of the gorgeously tinted clouds awoke in us such admiration that we could no longer keep silent. Then, breaking into raptures, we vied with each other who could discover the greatest beauties. One pointed to the darkened outline of the little church spire, that stood directly in the crimson glow of the sunlight. The other remarked the purpling tint of the distant mountains, that formed the background of the picture, looking more like

It was growing late, but siill Arthur slept. The moon rose above the Brecon Beacons, and shone full upon the exquisite landscape, and into the apartment where we sat. I went to the window, and looked out on the beautiful scene. Then I went back again to my chair by the fireside. I had not been sitting long, when it struck me that a faint and unusual shadow seemed to be cast across the room from the direction of the window. I was almost asleep, as well as my companion, and did not at first turn round to notice it; but in a minute or two I recalled my faculties from the abysses of my reveries, and glanced directly toward the window. The object, whatever it was that had obstructed the moonlight, vanished instantly; but it appeared to me, in the indistinct light and the momentary glance I caught, to be the face of a female. So sudden was the disappearance from the window, and so shadowy were my recollections of the features, that I fancied for some time it could not have been a reality-that I had been dreaming, or had conjured up the sweet phan

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