The Antiquary — Complete

His sister hastened to silence his murmurs, by proposing some of the relies of the dinner. He spoke of another bottle of wine, but recommended in preference a glass of brandy which was really excellent. As no entreaties could prevail on Lovel to indue the velvet night-cap and branched morning-gown of his host, Oldbuck, who pretended to a little knowledge of the medical art, insisted on his going to bed as soon as possible, and proposed to despatch a messenger (the indefatigable Caxon) to Fairport early in the morning, to procure him a change of clothes.

This was the first intimation Miss Oldbuck had received that the young stranger was to be their guest for the night; and such was the surprise with which she was struck by a proposal so uncommon, that, had the superincumbent weight of her head-dress, such as we before described, been less preponderant, her grey locks must have started up on end, and hurled it from its position.

“Lord haud a care o’ us!” exclaimed the astounded maiden.

“What’s the matter now, Grizel?”

“Wad ye but just speak a moment, Monkbarns?”

“Speak!—what should I speak about? I want to get to my bed—and this poor young fellow—let a bed be made ready for him instantly.”

“A bed?—The Lord preserve us!” again ejaculated Grizel.

“Why, what’s the matter now?—are there not beds and rooms enough in the house?—was it not an ancient hospitium, in which, I am warranted to say, beds were nightly made down for a score of pilgrims?”

“O dear, Monkbarns! wha kens what they might do lang syne?—but in our time—beds—ay, troth, there’s beds enow sic as they are—and rooms enow too—but ye ken yoursell the beds haena been sleepit in, Lord kens the time, nor the rooms aired.—If I had kenn’d, Mary and me might hae gaen down to the manse—Miss Beckie is aye fond to see us—(and sae is the minister, brother)—But now, gude save us!”—

“Is there not the Green Room, Grizel?”

“Troth is there, and it is in decent order too, though naebody has sleepit there since Dr. Heavysterne, and”—

“And what?”

“And what! I am sure ye ken yoursell what a night he had—ye wadna expose the young gentleman to the like o’ that, wad ye?”

Lovel interfered upon hearing this altercation, and protested he would far rather walk home than put them to the least inconvenience—that the exercise would be of service to him—that he knew the road perfectly, by night or day, to Fairport—that the storm was abating, and so forth—adding all that civility could suggest as an excuse for escaping from a hospitality which seemed more inconvenient to his host than he could possibly have anticipated. But the howling of the wind, and the pattering of the rain against the windows, with his knowledge of the preceding fatigues of the evening, must have prohibited Oldbuck, even had he entertained less regard for his young friend than he really felt, from permitting him to depart. Besides, he was piqued in honour to show that he himself was not governed by womankind—“Sit ye down, sit ye down, sit ye down, man,” he reiterated;—“an ye part so, I would I might never draw a cork again, and here comes out one from a prime bottle of—strong ale—right anno domini—none of your Wassia Quassia decoctions, but brewed of Monkbarns barley—John of the Girnel never drew a better flagon to entertain a wandering minstrel, or palmer, with the freshest news from Palestine.—And to remove from your mind the slightest wish to depart, know, that if you do so, your character as a gallant knight is gone for ever. Why, ‘tis an adventure, man, to sleep in the Green Room at Monkbarns.—Sister, pray see it got ready—And, although the bold adventurer, Heavysterne, dree’d pain and dolour in that charmed apartment, it is no reason why a gallant knight like you, nearly twice as tall, and not half so heavy, should not encounter and break the spell.”

“What! a haunted apartment, I suppose?”

“To be sure, to be sure—every mansion in this country of the slightest antiquity has its ghosts and its haunted chamber, and you must not suppose us worse off than our neighbours. They are going, indeed, somewhat out of fashion. I have seen the day, when if you had doubted the reality of a ghost in an old manor-house you ran the risk of being made a ghost yourself, as Hamlet says.—Yes, if you had challenged the existence of Redcowl in the Castle of Glenstirym, old Sir Peter Pepperbrand would have had ye out to his court-yard, made you betake yourself to your weapon, and if your trick of fence were not the better, would have sticked you like a paddock, on his own baronial midden-stead. I once narrowly escaped such an affray—but I humbled myself, and apologised to Redcowl; for, even in my younger days, I was no friend to the monomachia, or duel, and would rather walk with Sir Priest than with Sir Knight—I care not who knows so much of my valour. Thank God, I am old now, and can indulge my irritabilities without the necessity of supporting them by cold steel.”

Here Miss Oldbuck re-entered, with a singularly sage expression of countenance.—“Mr. Lovel’s bed’s ready, brother—clean sheets—weel aired—a spunk of fire in the chimney—I am sure, Mr. Lovel,” (addressing him), “it’s no for the trouble—and I hope you will have a good night’s rest—But”—

“You are resolved,” said the Antiquary, “to do what you can to prevent it.”

“Me?—I am sure I have said naething, Monkbarns.”

“My dear madam,” said Lovel, “allow me to ask you the meaning of your obliging anxiety on my account.”

“Ou, Monkbarns does not like to hear of it—but he kens himsell that the room has an ill name. It’s weel minded that it was there auld Rab Tull the town-clerk was sleeping when he had that marvellous communication about the grand law-plea between us and the feuars at the Mussel-craig. —It had cost a hantle siller, Mr. Lovel; for law-pleas were no carried on without siller lang syne mair than they are now—and the Monkbarns of that day—our gudesire, Mr. Lovel, as I said before—was like to be waured afore the Session for want of a paper—Monkbarns there kens weel what paper it was, but I’se warrant he’ll no help me out wi’ my tale—but it was a paper of great significance to the plea, and we were to be waured for want o’t. Aweel, the cause was to come on before the fifteen—in presence, as they ca’t—and auld Rab Tull, the town-clerk, he cam ower to make a last search for the paper that was wanting, before our gudesire gaed into Edinburgh to look after his plea—so there was little time to come and gang on. He was but a doited snuffy body, Rab, as I’ve heard —but then he was the town-clerk of Fairport, and the Monkbarns heritors aye employed him on account of their connection wi’ the burgh, ye ken.”

“Sister Grizel, this is abominable,” interrupted Oldbuck; “I vow to Heaven ye might have raised the ghosts of every abbot of Trotcosey, since the days of Waldimir, in the time you have been detailing the introduction to this single spectre.—Learn to be succinct in your narrative.—Imitate the concise style of old Aubrey, an experienced ghost-seer, who entered his memoranda on these subjects in a terse business-like manner; exempli gratia—At Cirencester, 5th March, 1670, was an apparition.—Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, made no answer, but instantly disappeared with a curious perfume, and a melodious twang’—Vide his Miscellanies, p. eighteen, as well as I can remember, and near the middle of the page.”

“O, Monkbarns, man! do ye think everybody is as book-learned as yoursell?—But ye like to gar folk look like fools—ye can do that to Sir Arthur, and the minister his very sell.”

“Nature has been beforehand with me, Grizel, in both these instances, and in another which shall be nameless—but take a glass of ale, Grizel, and proceed with your story, for it waxes late.”

“Jenny’s just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e’en wait till she’s done.—Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that then was, made wi’ auld Rab Tull’s assistance;—but ne’er-be-licket could they find that was to their purpose. And sae after they had touzled out mony a leather poke-full o’ papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at e’en to wash the dust out of his throat—we never were glass-breakers in this house, Mr. Lovel, but the body had got sic a trick of sippling and tippling wi’ the bailies and deacons when they met (which was amaist ilka night) concerning the common gude o’ the burgh, that he couldna weel sleep without it—But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed; and in the middle of the night he got a fearfu’ wakening!—he was never just himsell after it, and he was strucken wi’ the dead palsy that very day four years. He thought, Mr. Lovel, that he heard the curtains o’ his bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might hae been the cat—But he saw—God hae a care o’ us! it gars my flesh aye creep, though I hae tauld the story twenty times—he saw a weel-fa’ard auld gentleman standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress, wi’ mony a button and band-string about it, and that part o’ his garments which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith side and wide, and as mony plies o’t as of ony Hamburgh skipper’s—He had a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as baudrons’—and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld o’, but they are forgotten now—it’s an auld story. Aweel, Rab was a just-living man for a country writer—and he was less feared than maybe might just hae been expected; and he asked in the name o’ goodness what the apparition wanted—and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue. Then Rab said he tried him wi’ Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the braes of Glenlivat—but it wadna do. Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him of the twa or three words o’ Latin that he used in making out the town’s deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit wi’ that, than out cam sic a blatter o’ Latin about his lugs, that poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great scholar, was clean overwhelmed. Od, but he was a bauld body, and he minded the Latin name for the deed that he was wanting. It was something about a cart, I fancy, for the ghaist cried aye, Carter, carter—”

“Carta, you transformer of languages!” cried Oldbuck;—“if my ancestor had learned no other language in the other world, at least he would not forget the Latinity for which he was so famous while in this.”

“Weel, weel, carta be it then, but they ca’d it carter that tell’d me the story. It cried aye carta, if sae be that it was carta, and made a sign to Rab to follow it. Rab Tull keepit a Highland heart, and banged out o’ bed, and till some of his readiest claes—and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca’ the high dow-cot—(a sort of a little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a Rickle o’ useless boxes and trunks)—and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi’ the tae foot, and a kick wi’ the tother, to that very auld east-country tabernacle of a cabinet that my brother has standing beside his library table, and then disappeared like a fuff o’ tobacco, leaving Rab in a very pitiful condition.”

“Tenues secessit in auras,” quoth Oldbuck. “Marry, sir, mansit odor—But, sure enough, the deed was there found in a drawer of this forgotten repository, which contained many other curious old papers, now properly labelled and arranged, and which seemed to have belonged to my ancestor, the first possessor of Monkbarns. The deed, thus strangely recovered, was the original Charter of Erection of the Abbey, Abbey Lands, and so forth, of Trotcosey, comprehending Monkbarns and others, into a Lordship of Regality in favour of the first Earl of Glengibber, a favourite of James the Sixth. It is subscribed by the King at Westminster, the seventeenth day of January, A. D. one thousand six hundred and twelve—thirteen. It’s not worth while to repeat the witnesses’ names.”

“I would rather,” said Lovel with awakened curiosity, “I would rather hear your opinion of the way in which the deed was discovered.”

“Why, if I wanted a patron for my legend, I could find no less a one than Saint Augustine, who tells the story of a deceased person appearing to his son, when sued for a debt which had been paid, and directing him where, to find the discharge.*

*Note D. Mr. Rutherford’s dream.

But I rather opine with Lord Bacon, who says that imagination is much akin to miracle-working faith. There was always some idle story of the room being haunted by the spirit of Aldobrand Oldenbuck, my great-great-great-grandfather—it’s a shame to the English language that, we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently. He was a foreigner, and wore his national dress, of which tradition had preserved an accurate description; and indeed there is a print of him, supposed to be by Reginald Elstracke, pulling the press with his own hand, as it works off the sheets of his scarce edition of the Augsburg Confession. He was a chemist as well as a good mechanic, and either of these qualities in this country was at that time sufficient to constitute a white witch at least. This superstitious old writer had heard all this, and probably believed it, and in his sleep the image and idea of my ancestor recalled that of his cabinet, which, with the grateful attention to antiquities and the memory of our ancestors not unusually met with, had been pushed into the pigeon-house to be out of the way—Add a quantum sufficit of exaggeration, and you have a key to the whole mystery.”

“O brother! brother! but Dr. Heavysterne, brother—whose sleep was so sore broken, that he declared he wadna pass another night in the Green Room to get all Monkbarns, so that Mary and I were forced to yield our”—

“Why, Grizel, the doctor is a good, honest, pudding-headed German, of much merit in his own way, but fond of the mystical, like many of his countrymen. You and he had a traffic the whole evening in which you received tales of Mesmer, Shropfer, Cagliostro, and other modern pretenders to the mystery of raising spirits, discovering hidden treasure, and so forth, in exchange for your legends of the green bedchamber;—and considering that the Illustrissimus ate a pound and a half of Scotch collops to supper, smoked six pipes, and drank ale and brandy in proportion, I am not surprised at his having a fit of the night-mare. But everything is now ready. Permit me to light you to your apartment, Mr. Lovel—I am sure you have need of rest—and I trust my ancestor is too sensible of the duties of hospitality to interfere with the repose which you have so well merited by your manly and gallant behaviour.”

So saying, the Antiquary took up a bedroom candlestick of massive silver and antique form, which, he observed, was wrought out of the silver found in the mines of the Harz mountains, and had been the property of the very personage who had supplied them with a subject for conversation. And having so said, he led the way through many a dusky and winding passage, now ascending, and anon descending again, until he came to the apartment destined for his young guest.

CHAPTER TENTH.

When they reached the Green Room, as it was called, Oldbuck placed the candle on the toilet table, before a huge mirror with a black japanned frame, surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same, and looked around him with something of a disturbed expression of countenance. “I am seldom in this apartment,” he said, “and never without yielding to a melancholy feeling—not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy attachment. It is at such moments as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the changes of time. The same objects are before us—those inanimate things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood—they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our feelings—changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength,—can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as being separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not choose a judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:*

*Probably Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.

Well, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is felt no more.”—So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished him good-night, and took his leave.

Step after step Lovel could trace his host’s retreat along the various passages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound more distant and dead. The guest, thus separated from the living world, took up the candle and surveyed the apartment.

The fire blazed cheerfully. Mrs. Grizel’s attention had left some fresh wood, should he choose to continue it, and the apartment had a comfortable, though not a lively appearance. It was hung with tapestry, which the looms of Arras had produced in the sixteenth century, and which the learned typographer, so often mentioned, had brought with him as a sample of the arts of the Continent. The subject was a hunting-piece; and as the leafy boughs of the forest-trees, branching over the tapestry, formed the predominant colour, the apartment had thence acquired its name of the Green Chamber. Grim figures in the old Flemish dress, with slashed doublets covered with ribbands, short cloaks, and trunk-hose, were engaged in holding grey-hounds, or stag-hounds, in the leash, or cheering them upon the objects of their game. Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned guns, were attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay. The branches of the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each depicted with its proper plumage. It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion, and Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient and excellent poet, to be embroidered in Gothic letters, on a sort of border which he had added to the tapestry:-

And in another canton was the following similar legend:—

The bed was of a dark and faded green, wrought to correspond with the tapestry, but by a more modern and less skilful hand. The large and heavy stuff-bottomed chairs, with black ebony backs, were embroidered after the same pattern, and a lofty mirror, over the antique chimney-piece, corresponded in its mounting with that on the old-fashioned toilet.

“I have heard,” muttered Lovel, as he took a cursory view of the room and its furniture, “that ghosts often chose the best room in the mansion to which they attached themselves; and I cannot disapprove of the taste of the disembodied printer of the Augsburg Confession.” But he found it so difficult to fix his mind upon the stories which had been told him of an apartment with which they seemed so singularly to correspond, that he almost regretted the absence of those agitated feelings, half fear half curiosity, which sympathise with the old legends of awe and wonder, from which the anxious reality of his own hopeless passion at present detached him. For he now only felt emotions like those expressed in the lines,—

He endeavoured to conjure up something like the feelings which would, at another time, have been congenial to his situation, but his heart had no room for these vagaries of imagination. The recollection of Miss Wardour, determined not to acknowledge him when compelled to endure his society, and evincing her purpose to escape from it, would have alone occupied his imagination exclusively. But with this were united recollections more agitating if less painful,—her hair-breadth escape—the fortunate assistance which he had been able to render her—Yet what was his requital? She left the cliff while his fate was yet doubtful—while it was uncertain whether her preserver had not lost the life which he had exposed for her so freely. Surely gratitude, at least, called for some little interest in his fate—But no—she could not be selfish or unjust—it was no part of her nature. She only desired to shut the door against hope, and, even in compassion to him, to extinguish a passion which she could never return.

But this lover-like mode of reasoning was not likely to reconcile him to his fate, since the more amiable his imagination presented Miss Wardour, the more inconsolable he felt he should be rendered by the extinction of his hopes. He was, indeed, conscious of possessing the power of removing her prejudices on some points; but, even in extremity, he determined to keep the original determination which he had formed, of ascertaining that she desired an explanation, ere he intruded one upon her. And, turn the matter as he would, he could not regard his suit as desperate. There was something of embarrassment as well as of grave surprise in her look when Oldbuck presented him—and, perhaps, upon second thoughts, the one was assumed to cover the other. He would not relinquish a pursuit which had already cost him such pains. Plans, suiting the romantic temper of the brain that entertained them, chased each other through his head, thick and irregular as the motes of the sun-beam, and, long after he had laid himself to rest, continued to prevent the repose which he greatly needed. Then, wearied by the uncertainty and difficulties with which each scheme appeared to be attended, he bent up his mind to the strong effort of shaking off his love, “like dew-drops from the lion’s mane,” and resuming those studies and that career of life which his unrequited affection had so long and so fruitlessly interrupted. In this last resolution he endeavoured to fortify himself by every argument which pride, as well as reason, could suggest. “She shall not suppose,” he said, “that, presuming on an accidental service to her or to her father, I am desirous to intrude myself upon that notice, to which, personally, she considered me as having no title. I will see her no more. I will return to the land which, if it affords none fairer, has at least many as fair, and less haughty than Miss Wardour. Tomorrow I will bid adieu to these northern shores, and to her who is as cold and relentless as her climate.” When he had for some time brooded over this sturdy resolution, exhausted nature at length gave way, and, despite of wrath, doubt, and anxiety, he sank into slumber.

It is seldom that sleep, after such violent agitation, is either sound or refreshing. Lovel’s was disturbed by a thousand baseless and confused visions. He was a bird—he was a fish—or he flew like the one, and swam like the other,—qualities which would have been very essential to his safety a few hours before. Then Miss Wardour was a syren, or a bird of Paradise; her father a triton, or a sea-gull; and Oldbuck alternately a porpoise and a cormorant. These agreeable imaginations were varied by all the usual vagaries of a feverish dream;—the air refused to bear the visionary, the water seemed to burn him—the rocks felt like down pillows as he was dashed against them—whatever he undertook, failed in some strange and unexpected manner—and whatever attracted his attention, underwent, as he attempted to investigate it, some wild and wonderful metamorphosis, while his mind continued all the while in some degree conscious of the delusion, from which it in vain struggled to free itself by awaking;—feverish symptoms all, with which those who are haunted by the night-hag, whom the learned call Ephialtes, are but too well acquainted. At length these crude phantasmata arranged themselves into something more regular, if indeed the imagination of Lovel, after he awoke (for it was by no means the faculty in which his mind was least rich), did not gradually, insensibly, and unintentionally, arrange in better order the scene of which his sleep presented, it may be, a less distinct outline. Or it is possible that his feverish agitation may have assisted him in forming the vision.

Leaving this discussion to the learned, we will say, that after a succession of wild images, such as we have above described, our hero, for such we must acknowledge him, so far regained a consciousness of locality as to remember where he was, and the whole furniture of the Green Chamber was depicted to his slumbering eye. And here, once more, let me protest, that if there should be so much old-fashioned faith left among this shrewd and sceptical generation, as to suppose that what follows was an impression conveyed rather by the eye than by the imagination, I do not impugn their doctrine. He was, then, or imagined himself, broad awake in the Green Chamber, gazing upon the flickering and occasional flame which the unconsumed remnants of the faggots sent forth, as, one by one, they fell down upon the red embers, into which the principal part of the boughs to which they belonged had crumbled away. Insensibly the legend of Aldobrand Oldenbuck, and his mysterious visits to the inmates of the chamber, awoke in his mind, and with it, as we often feel in dreams, an anxious and fearful expectation, which seldom fails instantly to summon up before our mind’s eye the object of our fear. Brighter sparkles of light flashed from the chimney, with such intense brilliancy as to enlighten all the room. The tapestry waved wildly on the wall, till its dusky forms seemed to become animated. The hunters blew their horns—the stag seemed to fly, the boar to resist, and the hounds to assail the one and pursue the other; the cry of deer, mangled by throttling dogs—the shouts of men, and the clatter of horses’ hoofs, seemed at once to surround him—while every group pursued, with all the fury of the chase, the employment in which the artist had represented them as engaged. Lovel looked on this strange scene devoid of wonder (which seldom intrudes itself upon the sleeping fancy), but with an anxious sensation of awful fear. At length an individual figure among the tissued huntsmen, as he gazed upon them more fixedly, seemed to leave the arras and to approach the bed of the slumberer. As he drew near, his figure appeared to alter. His bugle-horn became a brazen clasped volume; his hunting-cap changed to such a furred head-gear as graces the burgomasters of Rembrandt; his Flemish garb remained but his features, no longer agitated with the fury of the chase, were changed to such a state of awful and stern composure, as might best portray the first proprietor of Monkbarns, such as he had been described to Lovel by his descendants in the course of the preceding evening. As this metamorphosis took place, the hubbub among the other personages in the arras disappeared from the imagination of the dreamer, which was now exclusively bent on the single figure before him. Lovel strove to interrogate this awful person in the form of exorcism proper for the occasion; but his tongue, as is usual in frightful dreams, refused its office, and clung, palsied, to the roof of his mouth. Aldobrand held up his finger, as if to impose silence upon the guest who had intruded on his apartment, and began deliberately to unclasp the venerable, volume which occupied his left hand. When it was unfolded, he turned over the leaves hastily for a short space, and then raising his figure to its full dimensions, and holding the book aloft in his left hand, pointed to a passage in the page which he thus displayed. Although the language was unknown to our dreamer, his eye and attention were both strongly caught by the line which the figure seemed thus to press upon his notice, the words of which appeared to blaze with a supernatural light, and remained riveted upon his memory. As the vision shut his volume, a strain of delightful music seemed to fill the apartment—Lovel started, and became completely awake. The music, however, was still in his ears, nor ceased till he could distinctly follow the measure of an old Scottish tune.

He sate up in bed, and endeavoured to clear his brain of the phantoms which had disturbed it during this weary night. The beams of the morning sun streamed through the half-closed shutters, and admitted a distinct light into the apartment. He looked round upon the hangings,—but the mixed groups of silken and worsted huntsmen were as stationary as tenter-hooks could make them, and only trembled slightly as the early breeze, which found its way through an open crevice of the latticed window, glided along their surface. Lovel leapt out of bed, and, wrapping himself in a morning-gown, that had been considerately laid by his bedside, stepped towards the window, which commanded a view of the sea, the roar of whose billows announced it still disquieted by the storm of the preceding evening, although the morning was fair and serene. The window of a turret, which projected at an angle with the wall, and thus came to be very near Lovel’s apartment, was half-open, and from that quarter he heard again the same music which had probably broken short his dream. With its visionary character it had lost much of its charms—it was now nothing more than an air on the harpsichord, tolerably well performed—such is the caprice of imagination as affecting the fine arts. A female voice sung, with some taste and great simplicity, something between a song and a hymn, in words to the following effect:—

While the verses were yet singing, Lovel had returned to his bed; the train of ideas which they awakened was romantic and pleasing, such as his soul delighted in, and, willingly adjourning till more broad day the doubtful task of determining on his future line of conduct, he abandoned himself to the pleasing languor inspired by the music, and fell into a sound and refreshing sleep, from which he was only awakened at a late hour by old Caxon, who came creeping into the room to render the offices of a valet-de-chambre.

“I have brushed your coat, sir,” said the old man, when he perceived Lovel was awake; “the callant brought it frae Fairport this morning, for that ye had on yesterday is scantly feasibly dry, though it’s been a’ night at the kitchen fire; and I hae cleaned your shoon. I doubt ye’ll no be wanting me to tie your hair, for” (with a gentle sigh) “a’ the young gentlemen wear crops now; but I hae the curling tangs here to gie it a bit turn ower the brow, if ye like, before ye gae down to the leddies.”

Lovel, who was by this time once more on his legs, declined the old man’s professional offices, but accompanied the refusal with such a douceur as completely sweetened Caxon’s mortification.

“It’s a pity he disna get his hair tied and pouthered,” said the ancient friseur, when he had got once more into the kitchen, in which, on one pretence or other, he spent three parts of his idle time—that is to say, of his whole time—“it’s a great pity, for he’s a comely young gentleman.”

“Hout awa, ye auld gowk,” said Jenny Rintherout, “would ye creesh his bonny brown hair wi’ your nasty ulyie, and then moust it like the auld minister’s wig? Ye’ll be for your breakfast, I’se warrant?—hae, there’s a soup parritch for ye—it will set ye better tae be slaistering at them and the lapper-milk than meddling wi’ Mr. Lovel’s head—ye wad spoil the maist natural and beautifaest head o’ hair in a’ Fairport, baith burgh and county.”

The poor barber sighed over the disrespect into which his art had so universally fallen, but Jenny was a person too important to offend by contradiction; so, sitting quietly down in the kitchen, he digested at once his humiliation, and the contents of a bicker which held a Scotch pint of substantial oatmeal porridge.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

We must now request our readers to adjourn to the breakfast parlour of Mr. Oldbuck, who, despising the modern slops of tea and coffee, was substantially regaling himself, more majorum, with cold roast-beef, and a glass of a sort of beverage called mum—a species of fat ale, brewed from wheat and bitter herbs, of which the present generation only know the name by its occurrence in revenue acts of parliament, coupled with cider, perry, and other excisable commodities. Lovel, who was seduced to taste it, with difficulty refrained from pronouncing it detestable, but did refrain, as he saw he should otherwise give great offence to his host, who had the liquor annually prepared with peculiar care, according to the approved recipe bequeathed to him by the so-often mentioned Aldobrand Oldenbuck. The hospitality of the ladies offered Lovel a breakfast more suited to modern taste, and while he was engaged in partaking of it, he was assailed by indirect inquiries concerning the manner in which he had passed the night.

“We canna compliment Mr. Lovel on his looks this morning, brother—but he winna condescend on any ground of disturbance he has had in the night time. I am certain he looks very pale, and when he came here he was as fresh as a rose.”

“Why, sister, consider this rose of yours has been knocked about by sea and wind all yesterday evening, as if he had been a bunch of kelp or tangle, and how the devil would you have him retain his colour?”

“I certainly do still feel somewhat fatigued,” said Lovel, “notwithstanding the excellent accommodations with which your hospitality so amply supplied me.”

“Ah, sir!” said Miss Oldbuck looking at him with a knowing smile, or what was meant to be one, “ye’ll not allow of ony inconvenience, out of civility to us.”

“Really, madam,” replied Lovel, “I had no disturbance; for I cannot term such the music with which some kind fairy favoured me.”

“I doubted Mary wad waken you wi’ her skreighing; she dinna ken I had left open a chink of your window, for, forbye the ghaist, the Green Room disna vent weel in a high wind—But I am judging ye heard mair than Mary’s lilts yestreen. Weel, men are hardy creatures—they can gae through wi’ a’ thing. I am sure, had I been to undergo ony thing of that nature,—that’s to say that’s beyond nature—I would hae skreigh’d out at once, and raised the house, be the consequence what liket—and, I dare say, the minister wad hae done as mickle, and sae I hae tauld him,—I ken naebody but my brother, Monkbarns himsell, wad gae through the like o’t, if, indeed, it binna you, Mr. Lovel.”

“A man of Mr. Oldbuck’s learning, madam,” answered the questioned party, “would not be exposed to the inconvenience sustained by the Highland gentleman you mentioned last night.”

“Ay, ay—ye understand now where the difficulty lies. Language? he has ways o’ his ain wad banish a’ thae sort o’ worricows as far as the hindermost parts of Gideon” (meaning possibly Midian), “as Mr. Blattergowl says—only ane widna be uncivil to ane’s forbear, though he be a ghaist. I am sure I will try that receipt of yours, brother, that ye showed me in a book, if onybody is to sleep in that room again, though I think, in Christian charity, ye should rather fit up the matted-room—it’s a wee damp and dark, to be sure, but then we hae sae seldom occasion for a spare bed.”

“No, no, sister;—dampness and darkness are worse than spectres—ours are spirits of light, and I would rather have you try the spell.”

“I will do that blythely, Monkbarns, an I had the ingredients, as my cookery book ca’s them—There was vervain and dill—I mind that—Davie Dibble will ken about them, though, maybe, he’ll gie them Latin names—and Peppercorn, we hae walth o’ them, for”—

“Hypericon, thou foolish woman!” thundered Oldbuck; “d’ye suppose you’re making a haggis—or do you think that a spirit, though he be formed of air, can be expelled by a receipt against wind?—This wise Grizel of mine, Mr. Lovel, recollects (with what accuracy you may judge) a charm which I once mentioned to her, and which, happening to hit her superstitious noddle, she remembers better than anything tending to a useful purpose, I may chance to have said for this ten years. But many an old woman besides herself”—

“Auld woman, Monkbarns!” said Miss Oldbuck, roused something above her usual submissive tone; “ye really are less than civil to me.”

“Not less than just, Grizel: however, I include in the same class many a sounding name, from Jamblichus down to Aubrey, who have wasted their time in devising imaginary remedies for non-existing diseases.—But I hope, my young friend, that, charmed or uncharmed—secured by the potency of Hypericon,

or left disarmed and defenceless to the inroads of the invisible world, you will give another night to the terrors of the haunted apartment, and another day to your faithful and feal friends.”

“I heartily wish I could, but”—

“Nay, but me no buts—I have set my heart upon it.”

“I am greatly obliged, my dear sir, but”—

“Look ye there, now—but again!—I hate but; I know no form of expression in which he can appear, that is amiable, excepting as a butt of sack. But is to me a more detestable combination of letters than no itself.No is a surly, honest fellow—speaks his mind rough and round at once. But is a sneaking, evasive, half-bred, exceptuous sort of a conjunction, which comes to pull away the cup just when it is at your lips—