Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance

made the peat-fire glow red by the contrast. Over the fire, from a great chain, hung a three-legged pot, in which something was slowly cooking. Between the fire and th

it. I fancy she had clung to it the more that from the time of her marriage nothing had seemed to go well with the family into which she had married. She and her husband had struggled and striven, but to no seeming purpose; poverty had drawn its meshes closer and closer around them. They had but one son, the present laird, and

ve the scrag end of a property and a history without a man to take them up, and possibly bear them on to redemption; for who could tell what life might be in the stock yet! Anyhow, it would be better to leave an heir to take the remnant in charge, and at least carry the name a generation farther, even should it be into yet deeper poverty than hitherto. A Warlock could face his fate. Thereupon, with a sense of the fitness of things not always manifested on such occasions, he had paid his addresses to a woman of five and thirty, the daughter of the last clergyman of the parish, and had by her been accepted with little hesitation. She was a capable an

pride or fastidiousness or unjustifiable free-handedness. Hence they came to think and speak of him as a poor creature, and soon the man, through the keen sensitiveness of his nature, became aware of the fact. But to his sense of the misprision of neighbours and friends, came the faith and indignant confidence of his wife like the closing and binding up and mollifying of a wound with ointment. The man was of a far finer nature than any of those who thus judged him, of whom some would doubtless have got out of their difficulties sooner than he-only he was more honorable in debt than they were out of it. A woman of strong sense, with an undeveloped stratum of poetry in the heart of it, his wife was able to appreciate the finer elements of his nature; and she let him see very plainly that she did. This was strength and a lifting up of the head to the husband, who in his youth had been o

judged a paring far too thick, into a bowl of water. She looked nearly as old as her mistress, though she was really ten years younger. She had co

d straight to it, diagonally across the floor, and seated himself like one verily lost in thought. Now and then, as she peeled, Grizzie would cast a keen glance at him out of her bright blue eyes, round whose fire the wrinkles had gathered like ashes: those eyes were sweet and pleasant, and the expr

cking at the boy, where he sat with his back to th

the smile of play, rather with the look of admonition, as if it was the boy's first du

lost again in the thoughts from which his grandmother

Cossie?" she said again, in

man of the old time, when the hig

to answer the old lady's question-not that he did not know something at least of what was going on in his mind,

e; "Ye'll hae to learn manners afore ye

nt; nor was Grizzie indebted to Solomon, but to her own experience and practice, for the wisdom of the saw. Only the pared potatoes splashed louder in

er like one walking in his sleep, stoo

e sayin', g

en till, an that's enouch," she a

mamma, if you please

by gie ower muckle tether to wull thoucht, an' someday ye'll be laid i' the dub, followin' what has naither

aboot the burn

lat the burnie rin, an' s

gran'mamma, and the

very clearly unde

'm feart ye may be the last. It's but sma' honour, laddie, to ony man to be the last; an' gien ye dinna gaither the wit ye hae, and du the best ye can, ye winna lang be laird o' Glenwarlock. Gien it wasna for Grizzie there, wha has no

esman, I houp, my leddy," s

at be?" rejoine

to come atween father an' son wi' licht upo' family-affair

Grizzie," said the o

in the bowl. Her mistress sat grimly silent, for though she had had the last word and had been obeyed, she was rebuked in herself. Cosmo, judging the s

wrong you must think it." He wore large strong shoes-I think a description should begin with the feet rather than the head-fit for boggy land; blue, ribbed, woollen stockings; knee-breeches of some home-made stuff: all the coarser cloth they wore, and they

r sad voice, as if the days of his mourning

g her, and Grizzie's devotion to him wa

r yer ain fowk, though ye may be for yer ain stamack. Th

e them so much, Grizzie

ouchsafed

mself in it. The laird acknowledged his attention with a smile, sat down, and looked like the last sitter grown suddenly old. He put out his hand to the boy across th

uth was sweet, but he had lost his teeth, and the lips had fallen in; his chin, however, was large and strong; while his blue eyes looked out from under his narrow high forehead with a softly piercing glance of great gentleness and benignity. A

blame for not having made a better job of him, or for having given him too much to do in the care of himself. For neither did his mother believe in him farther than that he had the

d, "hae ye a drappy o' s

d the kitchen, whence presently she emerged with a white basin full of rich milk-half cream, it was

d, "ye wad hae me a sh

at's no s

e, laird!" returned Grizzie co

particle of offence, rather in the tone of apology for ha

t your time o' life, it's weel there sud be anither 'at does. What has a man o' your 'ears to du drinkin' soor mi

that!" interrupt

she added, in revenge for the insinuation as to her age, "it wad ill become ony wum

using it to him?"

sic an' siclike,"

oof in it. "Ye ken weel it's no my mother wad grudge me the milk ye wad gie me. It was but my'se

Lord's anintit depen

with ind

st of it, as none knew better than she. In a minute or

nd money was of all ordinary things the seldomest seen at Castle Warlock. From these operative causes it came by degrees, that one winter, for the sake of company, of warmth, of economy, Mistress Warlock had her chair carried to the kitchen; and the thing once done, it easily and naturally grew to a custom, and extended itself to the summer as well; for she who had ceased to stand on ceremony in the winter, could hardly without additional loss of dignity reascend her pedestal only because it was summer again. To the laird it was a matter of no consequence where he sat, ate, or slept. When his wife was alive, wherever she was, that was the place for him; when she was gone, all places were the same to him. There was, besides, that in the disposition of the man which tended to the homely:-any one who imagines that in the least synonymous with the coarse, or discourteous, or unrefined, has yet to unders