Chapter 3

SUMMARY OF EVENTS (_continued_)

I made the last of my journey in the cold end of December, in a mighty
dry day of frost, and who should be my guide but Patey Macmorland,
brother of Tam! For a tow-headed, bare-legged brat of ten, he had more
ill tales upon his tongue than ever I heard the match of; having
drunken betimes in his brother’s cup. I was still not so old myself;
pride had not yet the upper hand of curiosity; and indeed it would have
taken any man, that cold morning, to hear all the old clashes of the
country, and be shown all the places by the way where strange things
had fallen out. I had tales of Claverhouse as we came through the bogs,
and tales of the devil, as we came over the top of the scaur. As we
came in by the abbey I heard somewhat of the old monks, and more of the
freetraders, who use its ruins for a magazine, landing for that cause
within a cannon-shot of Durrisdeer; and along all the road the Duries
and poor Mr. Henry were in the first rank of slander. My mind was thus
highly prejudiced against the family I was about to serve, so that I
was half surprised when I beheld Durrisdeer itself, lying in a pretty,
sheltered bay, under the Abbey Hill; the house most commodiously built
in the French fashion, or perhaps Italianate, for I have no skill in
these arts; and the place the most beautified with gardens, lawns,
shrubberies, and trees I had ever seen. The money sunk here
unproductively would have quite restored the family; but as it was, it
cost a revenue to keep it up.

Mr. Henry came himself to the door to welcome me: a tall dark young
gentleman (the Duries are all black men) of a plain and not cheerful
face, very strong in body, but not so strong in health: taking me by
the hand without any pride, and putting me at home with plain kind
speeches. He led me into the hall, booted as I was, to present me to my
lord. It was still daylight; and the first thing I observed was a
lozenge of clear glass in the midst of the shield in the painted
window, which I remember thinking a blemish on a room otherwise so
handsome, with its family portraits, and the pargeted ceiling with
pendants, and the carved chimney, in one corner of which my old lord
sat reading in his Livy. He was like Mr. Henry, with much the same
plain countenance, only more subtle and pleasant, and his talk a
thousand times more entertaining. He had many questions to ask me, I
remember, of Edinburgh College, where I had just received my mastership
of arts, and of the various professors, with whom and their proficiency
he seemed well acquainted; and thus, talking of things that I knew, I
soon got liberty of speech in my new home.

In the midst of this came Mrs. Henry into the room; she was very far
gone, Miss Katharine being due in about six weeks, which made me think
less of her beauty at the first sight; and she used me with more of
condescension than the rest; so that, upon all accounts, I kept her in
the third place of my esteem.

It did not take long before all Patey Macmorland’s tales were blotted
out of my belief, and I was become, what I have ever since remained, a
loving servant of the house of Durrisdeer. Mr. Henry had the chief part
of my affection. It was with him I worked; and I found him an exacting
master, keeping all his kindness for those hours in which we were
unemployed, and in the steward’s office not only loading me with work,
but viewing me with a shrewd supervision. At length one day he looked
up from his paper with a kind of timidness, and says he, “Mr.
Mackellar, I think I ought to tell you that you do very well.” That was
my first word of commendation; and from that day his jealousy of my
performance was relaxed; soon it was “Mr. Mackellar” here, and “Mr.
Mackellar” there, with the whole family; and for much of my service at
Durrisdeer, I have transacted everything at my own time, and to my own
fancy, and never a farthing challenged. Even while he was driving me, I
had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly in
pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse
over our accounts, staring at the page or out of the window; and at
those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from
him, awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One
day, I remember, we were late upon some business in the steward’s room.

This room is in the top of the house, and has a view upon the bay, and
over a little wooded cape, on the long sands; and there, right over
against the sun, which was then dipping, we saw the freetraders, with a
great force of men and horses, scouring on the beach. Mr. Henry had
been staring straight west, so that I marvelled he was not blinded by
the sun; suddenly he frowns, rubs his hand upon his brow, and turns to
me with a smile.

“You would not guess what I was thinking,” says he. “I was thinking I
would be a happier man if I could ride and run the danger of my life,
with these lawless companions.”

I told him I had observed he did not enjoy good spirits; and that it
was a common fancy to envy others and think we should be the better of
some change; quoting Horace to the point, like a young man fresh from
college.

“Why, just so,” said he. “And with that we may get back to our
accounts.”

It was not long before I began to get wind of the causes that so much
depressed him. Indeed a blind man must have soon discovered there was a
shadow on that house, the shadow of the Master of Ballantrae. Dead or
alive (and he was then supposed to be dead) that man was his brother’s
rival: his rival abroad, where there was never a good word for Mr.
Henry, and nothing but regret and praise for the Master; and his rival
at home, not only with his father and his wife, but with the very
servants.

They were two old serving-men that were the leaders. John Paul, a
little, bald, solemn, stomachy man, a great professor of piety and
(take him for all in all) a pretty faithful servant, was the chief of
the Master’s faction. None durst go so far as John. He took a pleasure
in disregarding Mr. Henry publicly, often with a slighting comparison.
My lord and Mrs. Henry took him up, to be sure, but never so resolutely
as they should; and he had only to pull his weeping face and begin his
lamentations for the Master—“his laddie,” as he called him—to have the
whole condoned. As for Henry, he let these things pass in silence,
sometimes with a sad and sometimes with a black look. There was no
rivalling the dead, he knew that; and how to censure an old serving-man
for a fault of loyalty, was more than he could see. His was not the
tongue to do it.

Macconochie was chief upon the other side; an old, ill-spoken,
swearing, ranting, drunken dog; and I have often thought it an odd
circumstance in human nature that these two serving-men should each
have been the champion of his contrary, and blackened their own faults
and made light of their own virtues when they beheld them in a master.
Macconochie had soon smelled out my secret inclination, took me much
into his confidence, and would rant against the Master by the hour, so
that even my work suffered. “They’re a’ daft here,” he would cry, “and
be damned to them! The Master—the deil’s in their thrapples that should
call him sae! it’s Mr. Henry should be master now! They were nane sae
fond o’ the Master when they had him, I’ll can tell ye that. Sorrow on
his name! Never a guid word did I hear on his lips, nor naebody else,
but just fleering and flyting and profane cursing—deil hae him! There’s
nane kent his wickedness: him a gentleman! Did ever ye hear tell, Mr.
Mackellar, o’ Wully White the wabster? No? Aweel, Wully was an unco
praying kind o’ man; a dreigh body, nane o’ my kind, I never could
abide the sight o’ him; onyway he was a great hand by his way of it,
and he up and rebukit the Master for some of his on-goings. It was a
grand thing for the Master o’ Ball’ntrae to tak up a feud wi’ a’
wabster, wasnae’t?” Macconochie would sneer; indeed, he never took the
full name upon his lips but with a sort of a whine of hatred. “But he
did! A fine employ it was: chapping at the man’s door, and crying ‘boo’
in his lum, and puttin’ poother in his fire, and pee-oys [1] in his
window; till the man thocht it was auld Hornie was come seekin’ him.
Weel, to mak a lang story short, Wully gaed gyte. At the hinder end,
they couldnae get him frae his knees, but he just roared and prayed and
grat straucht on, till he got his release. It was fair murder, a’body
said that. Ask John Paul—he was brawly ashamed o’ that game, him that’s
sic a Christian man! Grand doin’s for the Master o’ Ball’ntrae!” I
asked him what the Master had thought of it himself. “How would I ken?”
says he. “He never said naething.” And on again in his usual manner of
banning and swearing, with every now and again a “Master of Ballantrae”
sneered through his nose. It was in one of these confidences that he
showed me the Carlisle letter, the print of the horse-shoe still
stamped in the paper. Indeed, that was our last confidence; for he then
expressed himself so ill-naturedly of Mrs. Henry that I had to
reprimand him sharply, and must thenceforth hold him at a distance.

My old lord was uniformly kind to Mr. Henry; he had even pretty ways of
gratitude, and would sometimes clap him on the shoulder and say, as if
to the world at large: “This is a very good son to me.” And grateful he
was, no doubt, being a man of sense and justice. But I think that was
all, and I am sure Mr. Henry thought so. The love was all for the dead
son. Not that this was often given breath to; indeed, with me but once.
My lord had asked me one day how I got on with Mr. Henry, and I had
told him the truth.

“Ay,” said he, looking sideways on the burning fire, “Henry is a good
lad, a very good lad,” said he. “You have heard, Mr. Mackellar, that I
had another son? I am afraid he was not so virtuous a lad as Mr. Henry;
but dear me, he’s dead, Mr. Mackellar! and while he lived we were all
very proud of him, all very proud. If he was not all he should have
been in some ways, well, perhaps we loved him better!” This last he
said looking musingly in the fire; and then to me, with a great deal of
briskness, “But I am rejoiced you do so well with Mr. Henry. You will
find him a good master.” And with that he opened his book, which was
the customary signal of dismission. But it would be little that he
read, and less that he understood; Culloden field and the Master, these
would be the burthen of his thought; and the burthen of mine was an
unnatural jealousy of the dead man for Mr. Henry’s sake, that had even
then begun to grow on me.

I am keeping Mrs. Henry for the last, so that this expression of my
sentiment may seem unwarrantably strong: the reader shall judge for
himself when I have done. But I must first tell of another matter,
which was the means of bringing me more intimate. I had not yet been
six months at Durrisdeer when it chanced that John Paul fell sick and
must keep his bed; drink was the root of his malady, in my poor
thought; but he was tended, and indeed carried himself, like an
afflicted saint; and the very minister, who came to visit him,
professed himself edified when he went away. The third morning of his
sickness, Mr. Henry comes to me with something of a hang-dog look.

“Mackellar,” says he, “I wish I could trouble you upon a little
service. There is a pension we pay; it is John’s part to carry it, and
now that he is sick I know not to whom I should look unless it was
yourself. The matter is very delicate; I could not carry it with my own
hand for a sufficient reason; I dare not send Macconochie, who is a
talker, and I am—I have—I am desirous this should not come to Mrs.
Henry’s ears,” says he, and flushed to his neck as he said it.

To say truth, when I found I was to carry money to one Jessie Broun,
who was no better than she should be, I supposed it was some trip of
his own that Mr. Henry was dissembling. I was the more impressed when
the truth came out.

It was up a wynd off a side street in St. Bride’s that Jessie had her
lodging. The place was very ill inhabited, mostly by the freetrading
sort. There was a man with a broken head at the entry; half-way up, in
a tavern, fellows were roaring and singing, though it was not yet nine
in the day. Altogether, I had never seen a worse neighbourhood, even in
the great city of Edinburgh, and I was in two minds to go back.
Jessie’s room was of a piece with her surroundings, and herself no
better. She would not give me the receipt (which Mr. Henry had told me
to demand, for he was very methodical) until she had sent out for
spirits, and I had pledged her in a glass; and all the time she carried
on in a light-headed, reckless way—now aping the manners of a lady, now
breaking into unseemly mirth, now making coquettish advances that
oppressed me to the ground. Of the money she spoke more tragically.

“It’s blood money!” said she; “I take it for that: blood money for the
betrayed! See what I’m brought down to! Ah, if the bonnie lad were back
again, it would be changed days. But he’s deid—he’s lyin’ deid amang
the Hieland hills—the bonnie lad, the bonnie lad!”

She had a rapt manner of crying on the bonnie lad, clasping her hands
and casting up her eyes, that I think she must have learned of
strolling players; and I thought her sorrow very much of an
affectation, and that she dwelled upon the business because her shame
was now all she had to be proud of. I will not say I did not pity her,
but it was a loathing pity at the best; and her last change of manner
wiped it out. This was when she had had enough of me for an audience,
and had set her name at last to the receipt. “There!” says she, and
taking the most unwomanly oaths upon her tongue, bade me begone and
carry it to the Judas who had sent me. It was the first time I had
heard the name applied to Mr. Henry; I was staggered besides at her
sudden vehemence of word and manner, and got forth from the room, under
this shower of curses, like a beaten dog. But even then I was not quit,
for the vixen threw up her window, and, leaning forth, continued to
revile me as I went up the wynd; the freetraders, coming to the tavern
door, joined in the mockery, and one had even the inhumanity to set
upon me a very savage small dog, which bit me in the ankle. This was a
strong lesson, had I required one, to avoid ill company; and I rode
home in much pain from the bite and considerable indignation of mind.

Mr. Henry was in the steward’s room, affecting employment, but I could
see he was only impatient to hear of my errand.

“Well?” says he, as soon as I came in; and when I had told him
something of what passed, and that Jessie seemed an undeserving woman
and far from grateful: “She is no friend to me,” said he; “but, indeed,
Mackellar, I have few friends to boast of, and Jessie has some cause to
be unjust. I need not dissemble what all the country knows: she was not
very well used by one of our family.” This was the first time I had
heard him refer to the Master even distantly; and I think he found his
tongue rebellious even for that much, but presently he resumed—“This is
why I would have nothing said. It would give pain to Mrs. Henry . . .
and to my father,” he added, with another flush.

“Mr. Henry,” said I, “if you will take a freedom at my hands, I would
tell you to let that woman be. What service is your money to the like
of her? She has no sobriety and no economy—as for gratitude, you will
as soon get milk from a whinstone; and if you will pretermit your
bounty, it will make no change at all but just to save the ankles of
your messengers.”

Mr. Henry smiled. “But I am grieved about your ankle,” said he, the
next moment, with a proper gravity.

“And observe,” I continued, “I give you this advice upon consideration;
and yet my heart was touched for the woman in the beginning.”

“Why, there it is, you see!” said Mr. Henry. “And you are to remember
that I knew her once a very decent lass. Besides which, although I
speak little of my family, I think much of its repute.”

And with that he broke up the talk, which was the first we had together
in such confidence. But the same afternoon I had the proof that his
father was perfectly acquainted with the business, and that it was only
from his wife that Mr. Henry kept it secret.

“I fear you had a painful errand to-day,” says my lord to me, “for
which, as it enters in no way among your duties, I wish to thank you,
and to remind you at the same time (in case Mr. Henry should have
neglected) how very desirable it is that no word of it should reach my
daughter. Reflections on the dead, Mr. Mackellar, are doubly painful.”

Anger glowed in my heart; and I could have told my lord to his face how
little he had to do, bolstering up the image of the dead in Mrs.
Henry’s heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter that
false idol; for by this time I saw very well how the land lay between
my patron and his wife.

My pen is clear enough to tell a plain tale; but to render the effect
of an infinity of small things, not one great enough in itself to be
narrated; and to translate the story of looks, and the message of
voices when they are saying no great matter; and to put in half a page
the essence of near eighteen months—this is what I despair to
accomplish. The fault, to be very blunt, lay all in Mrs. Henry. She
felt it a merit to have consented to the marriage, and she took it like
a martyrdom; in which my old lord, whether he knew it or not, fomented
her. She made a merit, besides, of her constancy to the dead, though
its name, to a nicer conscience, should have seemed rather disloyalty
to the living; and here also my lord gave her his countenance. I
suppose he was glad to talk of his loss, and ashamed to dwell on it
with Mr. Henry. Certainly, at least, he made a little coterie apart in
that family of three, and it was the husband who was shut out. It seems
it was an old custom when the family were alone in Durrisdeer, that my
lord should take his wine to the chimney-side, and Miss Alison, instead
of withdrawing, should bring a stool to his knee, and chatter to him
privately; and after she had become my patron’s wife the same manner of
doing was continued. It should have been pleasant to behold this
ancient gentleman so loving with his daughter, but I was too much a
partisan of Mr. Henry’s to be anything but wroth at his exclusion.
Many’s the time I have seen him make an obvious resolve, quit the
table, and go and join himself to his wife and my Lord Durrisdeer; and
on their part, they were never backward to make him welcome, turned to
him smilingly as to an intruding child, and took him into their talk
with an effort so ill-concealed that he was soon back again beside me
at the table, whence (so great is the hall of Durrisdeer) we could but
hear the murmur of voices at the chimney. There he would sit and watch,
and I along with him; and sometimes by my lord’s head sorrowfully
shaken, or his hand laid on Mrs. Henry’s head, or hers upon his knee as
if in consolation, or sometimes by an exchange of tearful looks, we
would draw our conclusion that the talk had gone to the old subject and
the shadow of the dead was in the hall.

I have hours when I blame Mr. Henry for taking all too patiently; yet
we are to remember he was married in pity, and accepted his wife upon
that term. And, indeed, he had small encouragement to make a stand.
Once, I remember, he announced he had found a man to replace the pane
of the stained window, which, as it was he that managed all the
business, was a thing clearly within his attributions. But to the
Master’s fancies, that pane was like a relic; and on the first word of
any change, the blood flew to Mrs. Henry’s face.

“I wonder at you!” she cried.

“I wonder at myself,” says Mr. Henry, with more of bitterness than I
had ever heard him to express.

Thereupon my old lord stepped in with his smooth talk, so that before
the meal was at an end all seemed forgotten; only that, after dinner,
when the pair had withdrawn as usual to the chimney-side, we could see
her weeping with her head upon his knee. Mr. Henry kept up the talk
with me upon some topic of the estates—he could speak of little else
but business, and was never the best of company; but he kept it up that
day with more continuity, his eye straying ever and again to the
chimney, and his voice changing to another key, but without check of
delivery. The pane, however, was not replaced; and I believe he counted
it a great defeat.

Whether he was stout enough or no, God knows he was kind enough. Mrs.
Henry had a manner of condescension with him, such as (in a wife) would
have pricked my vanity into an ulcer; he took it like a favour. She
held him at the staff’s end; forgot and then remembered and unbent to
him, as we do to children; burthened him with cold kindness; reproved
him with a change of colour and a bitten lip, like one shamed by his
disgrace: ordered him with a look of the eye, when she was off her
guard; when she was on the watch, pleaded with him for the most natural
attentions, as though they were unheard-of favours. And to all this he
replied with the most unwearied service, loving, as folk say, the very
ground she trod on, and carrying that love in his eyes as bright as a
lamp. When Miss Katharine was to be born, nothing would serve but he
must stay in the room behind the head of the bed. There he sat, as
white (they tell me) as a sheet, and the sweat dropping from his brow;
and the handkerchief he had in his hand was crushed into a little ball
no bigger than a musket-bullet. Nor could he bear the sight of Miss
Katharine for many a day; indeed, I doubt if he was ever what he should
have been to my young lady; for the which want of natural feeling he
was loudly blamed.

Such was the state of this family down to the 7th April, 1749, when
there befell the first of that series of events which were to break so
many hearts and lose so many lives.

On that day I was sitting in my room a little before supper, when John
Paul burst open the door with no civility of knocking, and told me
there was one below that wished to speak with the steward; sneering at
the name of my office.

I asked what manner of man, and what his name was; and this disclosed
the cause of John’s ill-humour; for it appeared the visitor refused to
name himself except to me, a sore affront to the major-domo’s
consequence.

“Well,” said I, smiling a little, “I will see what he wants.”

I found in the entrance hall a big man, very plainly habited, and
wrapped in a sea-cloak, like one new landed, as indeed he was. Not, far
off Macconochie was standing, with his tongue out of his mouth and his
hand upon his chin, like a dull fellow thinking hard; and the stranger,
who had brought his cloak about his face, appeared uneasy. He had no
sooner seen me coming than he went to meet me with an effusive manner.

“My dear man,” said he, “a thousand apologies for disturbing you, but
I’m in the most awkward position. And there’s a son of a ramrod there
that I should know the looks of, and more betoken I believe that he
knows mine. Being in this family, sir, and in a place of some
responsibility (which was the cause I took the liberty to send for
you), you are doubtless of the honest party?”

“You may be sure at least,” says I, “that all of that party are quite
safe in Durrisdeer.”

“My dear man, it is my very thought,” says he. “You see, I have just
been set on shore here by a very honest man, whose name I cannot
remember, and who is to stand off and on for me till morning, at some
danger to himself; and, to be clear with you, I am a little concerned
lest it should be at some to me. I have saved my life so often, Mr. —,
I forget your name, which is a very good one—that, faith, I would be
very loath to lose it after all. And the son of a ramrod, whom I
believe I saw before Carlisle . . . ”

“Oh, sir,” said I, “you can trust Macconochie until to-morrow.”

“Well, and it’s a delight to hear you say so,” says the stranger. “The
truth is that my name is not a very suitable one in this country of
Scotland. With a gentleman like you, my dear man, I would have no
concealments of course; and by your leave I’ll just breathe it in your
ear. They call me Francis Burke—Colonel Francis Burke; and I am here,
at a most damnable risk to myself, to see your masters—if you’ll excuse
me, my good man, for giving them the name, for I’m sure it’s a
circumstance I would never have guessed from your appearance. And if
you would just be so very obliging as to take my name to them, you
might say that I come bearing letters which I am sure they will be very
rejoiced to have the reading of.”

Colonel Francis Burke was one of the Prince’s Irishmen, that did his
cause such an infinity of hurt, and were so much distasted of the Scots
at the time of the rebellion; and it came at once into my mind, how the
Master of Ballantrae had astonished all men by going with that party.
In the same moment a strong foreboding of the truth possessed my soul.

“If you will step in here,” said I, opening a chamber door, “I will let
my lord know.”

“And I am sure it’s very good of you, Mr. What-is-your-name,” says the
Colonel.

Up to the hall I went, slow-footed. There they were, all three—my old
lord in his place, Mrs. Henry at work by the window, Mr. Henry (as was
much his custom) pacing the low end. In the midst was the table laid
for supper. I told them briefly what I had to say. My old lord lay back
in his seat. Mrs. Henry sprang up standing with a mechanical motion,
and she and her husband stared at each other’s eyes across the room; it
was the strangest, challenging look these two exchanged, and as they
looked, the colour faded in their faces. Then Mr. Henry turned to me;
not to speak, only to sign with his finger; but that was enough, and I
went down again for the Colonel.

When we returned, these three were in much the same position I same
left them in; I believe no word had passed.

“My Lord Durrisdeer, no doubt?” says the Colonel, bowing, and my lord
bowed in answer. “And this,” continues the Colonel, “should be the
Master of Ballantrae?”

“I have never taken that name,” said Mr. Henry; “but I am Henry Durie,
at your service.”

Then the Colonel turns to Mrs. Henry, bowing with his hat upon his
heart and the most killing airs of gallantry. “There can be no mistake
about so fine a figure of a lady,” says he. “I address the seductive
Miss Alison, of whom I have so often heard?”

Once more husband and wife exchanged a look.

“I am Mrs. Henry Durie,” said she; “but before my marriage my name was
Alison Graeme.”

Then my lord spoke up. “I am an old man, Colonel Burke,” said he, “and
a frail one. It will be mercy on your part to be expeditious. Do you
bring me news of—” he hesitated, and then the words broke from him with
a singular change of voice—“my son?”

“My dear lord, I will be round with you like a soldier,” said the
Colonel. “I do.”

My lord held out a wavering hand; he seemed to wave a signal, but
whether it was to give him time or to speak on, was more than we could
guess. At length he got out the one word, “Good?”

“Why, the very best in the creation!” cries the Colonel. “For my good
friend and admired comrade is at this hour in the fine city of Paris,
and as like as not, if I know anything of his habits, he will be
drawing in his chair to a piece of dinner.—Bedad, I believe the lady’s
fainting.”

Mrs. Henry was indeed the colour of death, and drooped against the
window-frame. But when Mr. Henry made a movement as if to run to her,
she straightened with a sort of shiver. “I am well,” she said, with her
white lips.

Mr. Henry stopped, and his face had a strong twitch of anger. The next
moment he had turned to the Colonel. “You must not blame yourself,”
says he, “for this effect on Mrs. Durie. It is only natural; we were
all brought up like brother and sister.”

Mrs. Henry looked at her husband with something like relief or even
gratitude. In my way of thinking, that speech was the first step he
made in her good graces.

“You must try to forgive me, Mrs. Durie, for indeed and I am just an
Irish savage,” said the Colonel; “and I deserve to be shot for not
breaking the matter more artistically to a lady. But here are the
Master’s own letters; one for each of the three of you; and to be sure
(if I know anything of my friend’s genius) he will tell his own story
with a better grace.”

He brought the three letters forth as he spoke, arranged them by their
superscriptions, presented the first to my lord, who took it greedily,
and advanced towards Mrs. Henry holding out the second.

But the lady waved it back. “To my husband,” says she, with a choked
voice.

The Colonel was a quick man, but at this he was somewhat nonplussed.
“To be sure!” says he; “how very dull of me! To be sure!” But he still
held the letter.

At last Mr. Henry reached forth his hand, and there was nothing to be
done but give it up. Mr. Henry took the letters (both hers and his
own), and looked upon their outside, with his brows knit hard, as if he
were thinking. He had surprised me all through by his excellent
behaviour; but he was to excel himself now.

“Let me give you a hand to your room,” said he to his wife. “This has
come something of the suddenest; and, at any rate, you will wish to
read your letter by yourself.”

Again she looked upon him with the same thought of wonder; but he gave
her no time, coming straight to where she stood. “It will be better so,
believe me,” said he; “and Colonel Burke is too considerate not to
excuse you.” And with that he took her hand by the fingers, and led her
from the hall.

Mrs. Henry returned no more that night; and when Mr. Henry went to
visit her next morning, as I heard long afterwards, she gave him the
letter again, still unopened.

“Oh, read it and be done!” he had cried.

“Spare me that,” said she.

And by these two speeches, to my way of thinking, each undid a great
part of what they had previously done well. But the letter, sure
enough, came into my hands, and by me was burned, unopened.

To be very exact as to the adventures of the Master after Culloden, I
wrote not long ago to Colonel Burke, now a Chevalier of the Order of
St. Louis, begging him for some notes in writing, since I could scarce
depend upon my memory at so great an interval. To confess the truth, I
have been somewhat embarrassed by his response; for he sent me the
complete memoirs of his life, touching only in places on the Master;
running to a much greater length than my whole story, and not
everywhere (as it seems to me) designed for edification. He begged in
his letter, dated from Ettenheim, that I would find a publisher for
the whole, after I had made what use of it I required; and I think I
shall best answer my own purpose and fulfil his wishes by printing
certain parts of it in full. In this way my readers will have a
detailed, and, I believe, a very genuine account of some essential
matters; and if any publisher should take a fancy to the Chevalier’s
manner of narration, he knows where to apply for the rest, of which
there is plenty at his service. I put in my first extract here, so
that it may stand in the place of what the Chevalier told us over our
wine in the hall of Durrisdeer; but you are to suppose it was not the
brutal fact, but a very varnished version that he offered to my lord.