CHAPTER V. · The wind blew keen frae north and cast; Quo' our goodman to our goodwife, "My hand is in my housewife-skep, Goodman, as ye may see; If it shouldna be barr'd this hundred years, OLD SONG. WE can only hope that the gentle reader has not found the latter part of the last chapter extremely tedious; but, at any rate, his impatience will scarce equal that of young Mordaunt Mertoun, who, while the lightning came flash after flash, while the wind, veering and shifting from point to point, blew with all the fury of a hurricane, and while the rain was dashed against him in deluges, stood hammering, calling, and roaring at the door of the old Place at Harfra, impatient for admittance, and at a loss to conceive any position of existing circumstances, which could occasion the exclusion of a stranger, especially during such horrible weather. At length, finding his noise and vociferation were equally in vain, he fell back so far from the front of the house, as was necessary to enable him to reconnoitre the chimneys; and amidst "storm and shade," could discover, to the increase of his dismay, that though noon, then the dinner hour of these islands, was now nearly arrived, there was no smoke proceeding from the tunnels of the vents to give any note of preparation within. Mordaunt's wrathful impatience was now changed into sympathy and alarm; for, so long accustomed to the exuberant hospitality of the Zetland islands, he was immediately induced to suppose some strange and unaccountable disaster had befallen the family; and forthwith set himself to discover some place at which he could make forcible entry, in order to ascertain the situation of the inmates, as much as to obtain shelter from the still increasing storm. His present anxiety, was, however, as much thrown away as his late clamorous importunities for admittance had been. Triptolemus and his sister had heard the whole alarm without, and had already had a sharp dispute on the propriety of opening the door. Mrs. Baby, as we have described her, was no willing renderer of the rites of hospitality. In their farm of Cauldacres, in the Mearns, she had been the dread and abhorrence of all gaberlunzie men, and travelling packmen, gipsies, long remembered beggars, and so forth; nor was there one of them so wily, as she used to boast, as could ever say they had heard the clink of her sneck. In Zetland, where the new settlers were yet strangers to the extreme honesty and simplicity of all classes, suspicion and fear, joined with frugality in her desire to exclude all wandering guests of uncertain character; and the second of these motives had its effect on Triptolemus himself, who, though neither suspicious nor penurious, knew good people were scarce, good farmers scarcer, and had a reasonable share of that wisdom which looks towards self-preservation as the first law of nature. These hints may serve as a commentary on the following dialogue which took place betwixt the brother and sister. "Now, good be gracious to us," said Triptolemus, as he sat thumbing his old school-copy of Virgil, “here is a pure day for the bear seed!-Well spoke the wise Mantuan-ventis surgentibus—and then the groans of the mountains, and the long-resounding shores-but where's the woods, Baby? tell me, I where we shall find the nemorum murmur, sister Baby, say, in these new seats of ours?" "What's your foolish will ?" said Baby, popping her head from out of a dark recess in the kitchen, where she was busy about some nameless deed of housewifery. Her brother, who had addressed himself to her more from habit than intention, no sooner saw her bleak red nose, keen gray eyes, with the sharp features thereunto conforming, shaded by the flaps of the loose toy which depended on each side of her eager face, than he bethought himself that his query was likely to find little acceptation from her, and therefore stood another volley before he would resume the topic. “I say, Mr. Yellowley," said sister Baby, coming into the middle of the room, "what for are ye crying on me, and me in the midst of my housewife-skep?" "Nay, for nothing at all, Baby," answered Triptolemus, "saving that I was saying to myself, that here we had the sea, and the wind, and the rain, sufficient enough, but where's the wood? where's the wood, Baby, answer me that?" 66 The wood?" answered Baby-" Were I no to take better care of the wood than you, brother, there would soon be no more wood about the town than the barber's block that's on your own shoulders, Triptolemus. If ye be thinking of the wreck-wood that the callants brought in yesterday, there was six ounces of it gaed to boil your parritch this morning; though, I trow, a carefu' man wad have ta'en drammock, if breakfast he behoved to have, rather than waste baith meltith and fuel in the same morning." "That is to say, Baby," replied Triptolemus, who was somewhat of a dry joker in his way, " that when we have fire we are not to have food, and when we have food we are not to have fire, these being too great blessings to enjoy both on the same day. Good luck, you do not propose we should starve with cold and starve with hunger, unico contextu. But to tell you the truth, I could never away with raw oatmeal, slockened with water, in all my life. Call it drammock, or crowdie, or just what ye list, my vivers must thole fire and water." "The mair gowk you," said Baby; "can ye not make your brose on the Sunday, and sup them cauld on the Monday, since ye're sae dainty? Mony is the fairer face than yours that has licked the lip after such a cogfu"." "Mercy on us, sister!" said Triptolemus; "at this rate, it's a finished field with me--I must unyoke the pleugh, and lie down to wait for the deadthraw. Here is that in this house wad hold all Zetland in meal for a twelvemonth, and ye grudge a cogfu' of warm parritch to me, that has sic a charge!" "Whisht-hold your silly clavering tongue," said Baby, looking round with apprehension-“ ye are a wise man to speak of what is in the house, and a fitting man to have the charge of it.-Hark, as I live by bread, I hear a tapping at the outer yett !" "Go and open it then, Baby," said her brother, glad at any thing that promised to interrupt the dispute. "Go and open it, said he !" echoed Baby, half angry, half frightened, and half triumphant at the superiority of her understanding over that of her brother-" Go and open it, said you, indeed is it to lend robbers a chance to take all that is in the house ?" "Robbers!" echoed Triptolemus, in his turn; "there are no more robbers in this country than there are lambs at Yule. I tell you, as I have told you an hundred times, there are no Highlandmen to harry us here. This is a land of quiet and honesty. O fortunati nimium!" "And what good is Saint Rinian to do ye, Tolemus ?" said his sister, mistaking the quotation for a Catholic invocation. "Besides, if there be no Highlandmen, there may be as bad. I saw sax or seven as ill-looking chields gang past the Place yesterday, as ever came frae beyont Clochna-ben; ill-fa'red tools they had in their hands, whaaling knives they ca'ed them, but they looked as like dirks and whingers as ae bit airn can look like anither. There is nae honest men carry siccan tools." Here the knocking and shouts of Mordaunt were very audible betwixt every swell of the horrible blast which was careering without. The brother and sister looked at each other in real perplexity and fear. "If they have heard of the siller," said Baby, her very nose changing with terror from red to blue, we are but gane folk!" "Who speaks now, when they should hold their tongue ?" said Triptolemus. "Go to the shot-window instantly, and see how many there are of them, while I load the old Spanishbarrelled duck-gun-go as if you were stepping on new-laid Baby crept to the window, and reported that she saw only one young chield, clattering and roaring as gin he were daft. How many there might be out of sight, she could not say." 66 Out of sight!-nonsense," said Triptolemus, laying aside the ramrod with which he was loading the piece, with a trembling hand. "I will warrant them out of sight and hearing both-this is some poor fellow catched in the tempest, wants the shelter of our roof, and a little refreshment. Open the door, Baby, it's a Christian deed." 66 But is it a Christian deed of him to come in at the window, then?" said Baby, setting up a most doleful shriek, as Mordaunt Merton, who had forced open one of the windows, leaped down into the apartment, dripping with water like a river god. Triptolemus, in great tribulation, presented the gun which he had not yet loaded, while the intruder exclaimed, Hold, hold-what the devil mean you by keeping your doors bolted in weather like this, and levelling your gun at folk's heads as you would at a sealgh's ?" "And who are you, friend, and what want you?" said Triptolemus, lowering the butt of his gun to the floor as he spoke, and so recovering his arms. "What do I want !" said Mordaunt; "I want every thingI want meat, drink, and fire, a bed for the night, and a sheltie for to-morrow morning to carry me to Jarlshof." And ye said there were nae caterans or sorners here ?" said Baby to the agriculturist, reproachfully. "Heard ye ever a breekless loon frae Lochaber tell his mind and his errand mair deftly?-Come, come, friend," she added, addressing herself to Mordaunt, "put up your pipes and gang your gate; this is the house of his Lordship's factor, and no place of reset for thiggers or sorners." Mordaunt laughed in her face at the simplicity of the request. "Leave built walls," he said, "and in such a tempest as this? What take you me for ?- -a gannet or a scart do you think I am, that your clapping your hands and skirling at me like a mad woman, should drive me from the shelter into the storm ?" "And so you propose, young man," said Triptolemus, gravely, "to stay in my house, volens nolens-that is, whether we will or no ?" "Will!" said Mordaunt; "what right have you to will any thing about it? Do you not hear the thunder? Do you not hear the rain? Do you not see the lightning? And do you not know this is the only house within I wot not how many |