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Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

“She’ll be frae the north country,” said Marget. “I never heard o’ ony Norland freends Miss Kirstin had. Onyway it maun be for love ony fremd person taks heed o’ us – for it canna be for siller. They’re a strange family. Ye see the breath was scarce out o’ Maister Patrick, puir lamb – he was liker a bairn, than a man of years at ony time – when Miss Kirstin she gaed away. I saw your leddy seeking her – whaur she’s gane, guid kens.”

“Did she ever do that before?” asked Jacky.

“Eh, bless me, no: she was aye ower feared about him, puir man, wha has won out o’ a’ trouble this night. Maybe ye wad like to see him? He’s a bonnie – ”

Jacky interrupted her hurriedly. In that imaginative, solemn awe of hers, she could not endure the ghastly admiration which one hears so often expressed by persons of Marget’s class for the dead, about whom they have been employed.

“Ye’ll be wearied?” said Jacky, hastily.

“Ay, lass, I’m wearied: it’s no like I could be onything else wi’ a’ that I have to do – and that sair hoast, and the constant fecht I hae wi’ my breath – it’s little the like o’ you ken – forbye being my lane in the house. If ye’ll just bide and look to the door, I’ll gang an get some o’ the neighbor wives to come in beside me: there’s nae saying when Miss Kirstin may be hame.”

“Miss Anne’s coming hersel,” said Jacky, eagerly. “And if ye would lie down and get some rest, I’ll do the work – and I’m no feared to be my lane – and if ye had a guid sleep, ye would be the better o’t.”

“I’ll no’ say but what I would,” said Marget, graciously; “and ye’re a considerate lass to think o’t. Tak a cup o’ tea – it’s no right to gang out in the morning fasting – and I daresay I’ll just tak your counsel. It doesna do for an auld body like me to be out o’ my bed a’ night.”

So Jacky got Marget disposed of, and remained with much awe, and some shadow of superstitious fear, alone within the house of Schole – supported by the sunshine round about her as she lingered at the door – for Marget, in decent reverence, had drawn a simple curtain across the window. The other rooms were shuttered and dark – the natural homage of seemly awe and gravity in the presence of death.

Anne had no difficulty in inducing Miss Crankie to take upon her those matters of sad external business, which she herself was not qualified to manage. With more delicacy than she expected, Miss Crankie undertook them immediately. Mrs. Yammer was “in sore distress with rheumatics in my back, and my head like to split in twa wi’ the ticdoloureux – and it’s a’ yon awfu’ nicht – and I dinna believes Miss Ross, I’ll ever get the better o’t. – Johann and you, that are strong folk, fleeing out into the storm, and me, a puir weak creature, left, to fend my lane – forbye being like to gang out o’ my judgment wi’ fricht, for you and the perishing creatures in the ship. Eh! wha would have thought of a weak man like yon saving them – and so he’s ta’en to his rest! Weel I’m sure, Miss Ross, you’ve been uncommon kind to them – they canna say but they’ve found a friend in need.”

“They are my relatives,” said Anne: “I mean we are nearly connected.”

Miss Crankie opened her little dark eyes wide. Mrs. Yammer began, with an astonished exclamation, to recollect the pedigree of the Lillies, and acquaint herself with this strange relationship. – Her sister stopped her abruptly.

“Take your breakfast, Tammie, and dinna haver nonsense. Is Kirstin content, Miss Ross, to have ye biding in her house?”

“Quite content,” said Anne.

Miss Crankie’s eyes opened wider. She began with a rapid logic, by no means formal, but which had a knack of arriving at just conclusions, to put things together. She had a glimmering of the truth already.

“Miss Lillie is out,” said Anne. “I fear, in her deep grief, she wandered out, finding herself unable to rest; but neither she nor I are able for these details. You will greatly oblige me, Miss Crankie, and do your old friend a most kind service, if you will undertake this.”

Miss Crankie promised heartily, and Anne returned to Schole. Again there passed a long, weary, brilliant summer day, but Christian did not return. The night fell, but the roof that covered the mortal garment of Patrick Lille, sheltered no kindred blood. Anne had taken Christian’s place – she was the watcher now.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ANOTHER day, as bright, as weary, and as long, and still there were no tidings of Christian. Anne became alarmed. She sent out Jacky to make inquiries; Jacky ascertained that Miss Lillie on the previous morning had gone by the earliest coach to Edinburgh. The intelligence was some relief, yet perplexed Anne painfully; the arrangements were going on, but what could she do, if Christian remained absent, thus left alone with the dead?

In the middle of the day, Miss Crankie brought her a letter from Mrs. Catherine. Anne’s conscience smote her; during Patrick’s illness, she had scarcely written to Mrs. Catherine at all; and her brief notes had only intimated his illness, and her hope of obtaining some further information through the Lillies. Mrs. Catherine’s letter had an enclosure.

“My Gowan,

“What has come over you? I have been marvelling these past mornings whether it was success or failure – a light heart or a downcast one, that made you forgetful of folk to whom all your doings are matters of interest, and have been since you could use your own proper tongue to testify of them. Think you this lad Lillie has any further knowledge than you have yourself? I count it unlikely, or else he is a pithless laggard, not worthy to call Norman Rutherford friend, and Norman was not one to choose his friends lightly, or be joined in near amity with a shallow head and a faint heart. So I would have you build little on the hope of getting good tidings from him, seeing that if he had known anything, he must have put it to its fitting use before now. You say it gave him a fever? I like not folk, child, who are thrown into fevers by sore trouble and anguish, and make themselves a burden and a cumbrance, when they ought to be quickened to keener life – the more helpful and strong, the greater the extremity; it augurs a narrow vessel and a frail spirit in most cases – it may be other in his. Certain he bore himself like a man in the night you tell me of. Let me see his sister, if you can bring her; there, seems – if ye draw like the life – to be no soil in her for the cowardice of sickness to flourish on, from which I take my certainty, that if she had kent any good word concerning this dark mystery, she must have put it to the proof before now.

“To speak about other matters, I send you a letter – worthy the light-headed, undutiful fuil from whose vain hand it comes. You will see she will have none of my counsel, and puts my offer of an honorable roof over her, and a home dependent on no caprice or strange woman’s pleasure, in the light of a good meaning – will to do kindness without power. If it were not for Archie’s sake, and for the good-fame of their broken house, she should never more say light word to me. He has been but a month dead, this miserable man of hers – that she left her mother’s sick-bed for – and look at her words! without so much as a decent shadow on them, to tell where the sore gloom of death had fallen so late. I am growing testy in my spirit, child; though truly sorrow would set me better than anger, to look upon the like of a born fuil like this – her brother ruined, and her man killed. Archie, a laboring wayfarer, with his good name tarnished, and his father’s inheritance, lost; the husband for whose sake she brought down her mother’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, taken away suddenly from this world by the red grip of a violent death, and the wanton fuil what can I call her else? – as if she had not gotten enough to sober her for a while, returning in haste to her vanities – feared to leave the atmosphere of them – singing songs over the man’s new grave, and giving long nights to strangers, when she can but spare a brief minute to say a kind word to her one brother – a kind word, said I! I should say a bitter one, of folly and selfishness, – not comfort to him in his labor, but records of her own sinful vanities.

“You will say I am bitter, child, at this fuil – so I am – the more that I cannot be done with her, as I could with any other of her kind. She is still the bairn of Isabel Balfour – in good or in evil I am trysted to keep my eye upon her. I have been asking about the household she is in. The mistress of it, her friend, is at least of pure name; a scheming woman as I hear from one of their own vain kind – who has a pride in yoking the fuils about her in the unstable bands of marriage. Isabel has her mother’s fair face; they will be wedding her again for some passing fancy, or for dirt of siller. I scarce know which is the worst. I will have no hand in it, however it happens. Since she will be left to herself, she must. If deadly peril ever comes, I must put forth the strong hand.

“You will come to me with all speed when you can win. If you have any glimpse of good tidings, or if you have none – I am meaning when you come to any certainty – let me know without delay, that I may make ready for our home-going. To say the truth, I am weary at my heart of this place, and sickened with anger at the fuil whose letter I send you. Let me look upon you soon, lest the wrath settle down, and I be not able to shake it off again; which evil consequent, if you prevent it not, will be the worse for you all.

CATHERINE DOUGLAS.”

Mrs. Duncombe’s letter was enclosed.

“My dear Mrs. Catherine,

“It is so good of you to think of troubling yourself with me at the Tower, and must have put you so much out of the way, coming to Edinburgh, that I hasten to thank you. Poor dear Duncombe was taken away very suddenly; you would be quite shocked to hear of it. I was distracted. They had been quarrelling over their wine. Poor Duncombe was always so very jealous; and it was all for the merest word of admiration, which he might have heard from a thousand people beside. So they fought, and he was wounded mortally. You may think how dreadful it was, when they brought him home to me dying. I went into hysterics directly, I believe I needed the doctor’s care more than he did: before he died I was just able to speak to him, and he was so very penitent for having been sometimes rude to me, and so sorry for his foolish jealousy. Poor dear Edward! – I shall never forget him.

“I am staying here with a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Legeretie. She has got a delightful house, quite out of town, and they have come here just for my sake, to be quiet and away from the gay world, which of course I could not bear just now. We have quite a nice circle of friends, besides our visitors from London, and just with quiet parties, and country amusements, get on delightfully. Dear Eliza is so kind, and gives up her engagements in town, without a murmur, just to let me have the soothing quietness of the country, which the doctors order me – with cheerful society – for if it were not for that, my poor heart would break, I am sure – I have suffered so dreadfully.

“You will have heard that dear Archibald has arrived safely at that horrid place in America. What could induce him to do such a thing, when he might have gone into the army, or got into Parliament, or something? and the friends of the family would have helped him, I am sure. It’s just like Archie; he’s always so hot and extreme. I thought he would have killed himself that dreadful time at Paris, before he took the fever; and what a shocking thing that would have been for me, with all my other misfortunes. To be sure, it was a horrid, foolish business – that of losing the estate – and if it had not been that dull old Strathoran, where papa and mamma managed to vegetate all the year through, I don’t know how – I should have been broken-hearted. I am sure, considering that dear Archie was only my brother, there was nothing I was not willing to do for him; but to go away a common clerk, into a horrid mercantile office! I must say he has shown very little regard for the feelings of his relatives, especially as he knows how I detest these ogres of commercial people. One can only bear with them if they are very rich, and I am afraid dear Archie is not likely ever to become a moneyed man.

“They are so fond of me here, and dear Eliza has done so much to make me comfortable, that I should be very ungrateful to run away, else I should have been delighted to spend a week or two at the Tower. Mr. Legeretie has a shooting-lodge in the Highlands, and dear Eliza talks of going down with him this year to give me a little change; if we do, we shall come by dear old dreary Strathoran just to look at it again. I hope the Rosses, and all the other old friends, are well. I used to think a good deal of Lewis. I suppose Anne is never married yet; she must be getting quite ancient now.

“My dear Mrs. Catherine,

“Very sincerely yours,

“ISABEL DUNCOMBE.”

It was a strange contrast – with Christian Lillie’s desolate life before her – with her own heart throbbing so anxiously for the stranger, Norman, whom, in her remembrance, she had never seen – to hear this Isabel, her play-mate long ago, talking of Archie as “only” her brother. The effect was very singular. What had become of the sad sufferer who lay within these walls in the tranquil rest of death, if for Christian, and Marion, and Norman there had been any “only” stemming the deep tide of their self-denying tenderness?

Anne wrote a brief note to Mrs. Catherine, announcing Patrick Lillie’s death, and saying that her mission was now accomplished; and that in a day or two she would return to Edinburgh to explain the further particulars of this long mystery. The day was waning again; in weary sadness and solitude she sat in Patrick Lillie’s study. From the kitchen she could hear the subdued voices of Marget and Jacky: above, the stealthy step of Miss Crankie, as she arranged the sad preliminaries of the funeral. The second evening had fallen since he departed to his rest; and where was Christian?

A dark shadow flitted across the window. She heard a footstep enter, and pass quickly up the stair. Anne rose and followed. The footstep was quicker than Christian’s, but it went steadily to the chamber of death.

Anne paused at the door. The lonely dimness of the evening air gathered shadowy and spiritual round the bed, a dark background, from which that rigid marble face stood out in cold relief. A deadly stillness – a dim, brooding, tremulous awe – which carried in it a vague conviction of watching spirits, and presences mysteriously unseen, was hovering in the room.

And kneeling at the bedside, her veil hanging round her white, thin face, like a cloud over the tearful pallor of a wan November sky, was Christian Lillie, the quivering smile upon her lip again, and the words of sad thankfulness falling from her tongue.

“Ye are thanking God in His own heaven, Patrick, my brother; the justice is done, the cloud is taken away. Henceforward, in the free light of heaven, may Norman bear his own name; and now there remaineth nothing but to lay you, with hope and solemn thanksgiving into your quiet grave.”

Anne stood still; there was a long pause. Christian knelt silently by her dead brother’s side, in darkness, in silence, in the presence of death, thanking God.

At last she rose, and turned to leave the room. Anne’s presence did not seem to excite any wonder; she took her offered arm quietly and kindly.

“I have been very anxious,” said Anne.

“Ay,” said Christian; “did you think I could rest, and that blight remaining on their name? Did you think there was any peace for me till all my labor was accomplished? Now – you heard me speak – Norman Rutherford may bear his own name, and return to his own country with honor and blessing upon him, in the open sunshine of day. My work is ended: I must but tarry for one look upon them, and then I wait the Lord’s pleasure. His call will not come too soon.”

“You have taken no rest,” said Anne, anxiously: “remember, there is one trial yet remaining. Let me get you some refreshment, and then try to sleep. This constant watching will kill you.”

Christian suffered herself to be led down stairs. Into the little parlor Anne hastily brought tea, and, considerably to Jacky’s horror, insisted upon rendering all needful services herself. It was evident that Christian felt the delicacy which kept strange eyes from beholding her grief. She took the tea eagerly, removed her cloak and bonnet, and met Anne’s anxious look with a tremulous, tender smile, inviting, rather than deprecating, conversation now.

“Let me go with you to your own room,” said Anne; “you have been in Edinburgh, and are quite exhausted, I see. You will be better after you have slept.”

“Sit down, I need no sleep,” said Christian: “I scarcely think now, after my long watching, that I can begin to think of rest. – Sometimes – sometimes – ”

She rose and stretched out her thin arms, like one who complains of some painful void within, drawing them in again wearily to her breast.

“Sometimes, when I do not think of them, and mind that he is gone, I could be content to bear it all again, were he but back once more. God aid us, for we are weak. Patrick, my brother, are ye away at last? are ye at peace? And I am ready to lament and pine, and not to thank God! God be thanked! God be thanked! that he is away in blessedness at last.”

She paced the room slowly for a while, and sitting down by the window, drew the curtains aside, and looked out in silence upon the sea – the placid, wakeful sea – with which so often in her misery she had taken counsel.

“The morning after he went home,” she said at last, turning to Anne abruptly, “I saw you looking out upon the Firth, when I departed on my needful errand. You mind the soft fall of the air, like the breath of a young angel – a spirit in its first joy – the latest born of heaven? You mind the joy and gentleness that were in the air?”

“Yes,” said Anne.

“On such a morning – as soft, as joyous, and as bright – he came to me, who is now in heaven at peace. There was no peace about him then. Within his soul, and in his face, was an agony more bitter than death. You know the reason. He had done the deed, for which, through eighteen lingering, terrible years, Norman Rutherford has been a banished man.

“I took him in, and closed the door: he fell down upon the ground, at my feet. From the terrible words of his first madness, I gleaned something of the truth. Think of it – think of that. – The horror of great darkness that fell on me that day has scarce ever been lightened for an hour, from that time to this.

“I sent for him, for Norman, your brother, and mine. He came to me, into the room where Patrick lay, in a burning fever of agony and madness. By that time a breath of the terrible story was abroad. It was his gun it was done with. He had parted from Arthur Aytoun in just anger. There were but two ways – either to give up the frantic, fevered lad that lay there before us, knowing neither him nor me, to a death of shame and horror, or for him – him, in his honorable, upright, pure youth – to sacrifice honor, and home, and name.

“He did not hesitate – the Lord bless him! – the Lord send the blessings of the convenant upon him, promised and purchased! – he made up his mind. And to us, as we stood there in our first agony, with Patrick stricken down before us, there was no consolation of innocence. We knew not but what the blood had been wilfully shed: we thought the torture he was in was the just meed of a murderer.

“I gave him a line to Marion: she was at a friend’s house, between Edinburgh and Glasgow. She had gone, a joyous light-hearted girl, with as fair a lot before her as ever lay at mortal feet, to get apparel for her bridal. I bade her go with Norman. When I wrote that, I was calmer than I am now. I, that was parting with them both – that was left here alone with this stricken man and his blood-guiltiness.

“They went away, and he was still lying unconscious on my hands. Then I had to hear the unjust stain thrown upon the noble and brave heart that was bearing the burden. I had to hear it all – to listen to the certainties of his guilt – to hear them tell how he had done it like a coward; and with my heart burning within me, I dared not say to them that he was pure and guiltless as ever was righteous man. I turned from the scorching summer light, and the false accusation, in to the bedside of my raving, maddened brother, and he was the man. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! how did I live?

“Then there came the word that they were lost; and a calm, like what you will see in storms, came over the miserable heart within me. I defied my misery: I dared it to add to me another pang.

“Then I said that Marion was dead – my bird – my light – my little sister! When I said that, I knew not it was false; I believed she was gone out of her new grief; I believed I was alone in the world.

“Then the secret news came to me that they were safe, and then the life struggled through that time of horror, and Patrick rose from his bed. One solemn still night I told him all, and in his agony he said he was innocent. Since that time through all this life of desolation, he has repeated that at times, when his mind was clear; but his soul was frozen within him in terror. When I spoke of justice to Norman, he shrank and trembled, and bade me wait. What could I do? I could not give him up as a shedder of blood – he was in my hand. To my own heart, and to my Father in heaven, I had to answer for him; and when I dared hope that he had shed this blood unawares, I became strong.”

She paused. She had been speaking rapidly, without stop or hesitation, almost without breath. Anne endeavored to soothe and calm her.

“Last year, they sent me their child. He had called her Lilie. He himself, whom our unhappy name had blighted. The child was pining under the hot sun of yon strange land. I could not keep her in our desolate house. I took her to Norman’s country. I was to place her with his nurse, near to his old home. When we got there, I feared to enter; I trembled to betray the secret I was burdened with. I thought a heart that he was dear to, could not fail to discover his bairn, and so I took her to a stranger.

“When I left her there – you mind? – I met you, and we looked upon each other face to face: I did not need to hear the name that the blue-eyed girl by your side was saying. I knew you were Norman’s sister – I felt that his spirit was within you, and that we would meet again.

“Now we have met, and you know it all. The history is public now. The ban is off Norman’s name – your brother and mine. I will see them again – my bird Marion – my bairn, that my own hands nurtured!”

“Christian,” said Anne, “for her sake, and for us all, you must rest. There are quiet days in store – tranquil days of household peace and honor. You have done your work nobly and bravely, as few could have done; for Marion’s sake, who is my sister as well as yours, and for the sake of the dead, for whom you have watched so long, take rest now. Your work is over.”

Christian drew the curtain aside again, and gazed out upon the sea. “For him – for Marion – for Norman; for Thy mercy’s sake, O, Lord! and for Thy beautiful world, which Thou hast given to calm us, I will be calm – give me now what Thou willest, and Thy rest in Thine own heaven, when Thy good time shall come.”

And so peacefully, in chastened hope and with gentle tears, refreshing with their milder sorrow the weary eyes that had burned in tearless agony so long, they laid the innocent shedder of blood in his quiet grave.

On the evening after the funeral, Christian wandered out alone. “She goeth unto the grave to weep there,” said Anne, as it was said of the Mary of the Lord’s time; and she made no attempt either to detain or to accompany her. To Christian, the balm of Anne’s sisterly care and sympathy was evidently very dear; but she was not wont to lean upon any mortal arm, and it was best that she should be left with her sorrow alone.

The house had the exhausted, worn-out look which is common after such a solemn departure. Marget sat, dressed in her new mourning, in the kitchen, in languid despondent state, telling Jacky traits of the dead Master, whom, now that all excitement was over, she began to miss and lament, and weep some natural tears for. Jacky was half-listening to these, half-buried in an old volume of “Quarles’ Emblems,” which she had recently brought from the study. Anne had opened the low projecting window, and sat in the recess with one of those devout contemplative books in her hand; she was reading little, and thinking much – feeling herself affected by the listless weariness that reigned around her.

She saw a lad come in at the gate, without observing who he was. In a minute after Jacky entered the study.

“If ye please, Miss Anne, it’s Johnnie Halflin.”

Anne started.

“Has he come from Mrs. Catherine?”

“If ye please, Miss Anne, Mrs. Catherine’s at Miss Crankie’s.”

Anne rose immediately, and proceeded up the lane to Miss Crankie’s house. Mrs. Catherine’s carriage stood at the door. Mrs. Catherine herself was in the parlor, where Miss Crankie stood in deferential conversation with her – keenly observant of all the particulars of her plain, rich dress and stately appearance, and silently exulting over the carriage at the door – the well-appointed, wealthy carriage, which all the neighborhood could see.

“Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Catherine, as Anne in her deep mourning dress entered the room. “What is the matter?”

Miss Crankie sensibly withdrew.

“He is dead, Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne.

“Who is dead? Who is this lad?”

“The brother of Marion – the brother of Norman’s wife.”

“Anne,” said Mrs. Catherine, “you have not dealt ingenuously and frankly with me in this matter. Who is this lad, I ask you? Have you a certainty that Norman’s wife was his sister, that you are thus mourning for a fremd man?”

Anne sat down beside her.

“What I knew formerly was so dim and indistinct that I feared to tell you. They avoided me – they went away from their own home to shun my presence. In the confusion of my imperfect knowledge, I felt that I could not speak of them. Now I am sure. There is a most sad story to tell you, Mrs. Catherine – Patrick Lillie is Marion’s brother – he is more than that.”

“Speak out, child. Who is he?”

“He is the man for whom Norman sacrificed all – he is the slayer of Alice Aytoun’s father.”

Mrs. Catherine started – in her extreme wonder she could say nothing.

“An innocent man, Mrs. Catherine; this dreadful deed was done unawares, and in a life of agony has it been avenged.”

Mrs. Catherine remained silent for a moment.

“And he let Norman, the honorable, generous, just lad, suffer a death for him – suffer the death of a lifetime? Anne – Anne, is it a coward like this you are mourning for? A faint heart and a weak spirit – what could it be other that would let a righteous man bear this for him?”

“There is justice done,” said Anne, “it is over now. I acknowledge the weakness, Mrs. Catherine; but he has suffered dreadfully. A gentle, delicate, pensive spirit, unfit for storms and trials – altogether unfit for doing any great thing: one to be supported and tenderly upheld – not to take any bold step alone.”

“Suffered!” Mrs. Catherine rose and walked through the room, till the boards, less solid than those of the Tower, quaked and sounded below her feet. “Wherefore did he not come forth in the light of day, and bear his own burden? Good fame and honor – land and home – what was he that a just man should lay down these for him?”

“He was a feeble, delicate, dependant spirit,” said Anne: “one of those whom it is our natural impulse to defend and suffer for. That was his only claim; but you know how strong that is.”

Mrs. Catherine did know, but she felt no sympathy for the shrinking weakness which could suffer another to bear its own just punishment.

“I know? Yes, I know; but what claim has the like of such a weakling to call himself a man? Eighteen years – eighteen long, slow years – all Alice Aytoun’s lifetime. Anne, I marvel you can bear with his memory, or lift up your face to me, and speak of him as kindred. He shed this blood unawares, said you? Did he doom Norman to this death unawares? was it without his knowledge that he laid this blight upon the two that have borne banishment for him? Speak not to me of this coward, child. I say, mention not his name to me.”

“Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne, “bear with me till you hear his story. If you had seen him as I have seen – if you had listened to Christian as I have listened, you too would mourn over this blighted, broken man, less in his death than in his life. When Norman fled, he was in an agony of fever and madness, unconscious of what was passing round him – only aware in his burning horror and grief that he had shed blood. When he recovered – and most strange it was that he should have recovered – most strange the tenacious life and strength of his feebleness – he heard of Norman’s sacrifice; and then I acknowledge he ought to have done justice, had not his weakness overpowered him. He dared not face the terror and the shame; perhaps the dreadful death due to his blood-guiltiness, and so he lived on – such a life as few have ever lived in this world – a life of despair, and gloom, and misery: terrible to hear of – more terrible to see.”

Mrs. Catherine seated herself again.

“And the sister and the righteous man, his friend, bearing a dark name for him over the sea; and the sad woman at home, that you have told me of, wearing out her days for him. Was his miserable life worth that, think you? Should that not have been worse than any death?”

“Should have been,” said Anne; “but I do not speak of what should be, Mrs. Catherine. Why this shrinking, feeble spirit was conjoined with such a lot, who can tell? It had a strange, feverish, hysteric strength, too. When he battled through yon dark waves to save the perishing seamen, you would not have said that Patrick Lillie was a coward.”