Grace's, which is the same thing.--And speaking of
garrisons, in the year forty-five, I was poot with a garrison of twenty
of my lads in the house of Inver-Garry, whilk had near been unhappily,
for--"

"I beg your pardon, sir--But I wish I could think of some way of
indemnifying this good lady."

"O, no need of intemnifying at all--no trouble for her, nothing at all--
So, peing in the house of Inver-Garry, and the people about it being
uncanny, I doubted the warst, and--"

"Do you happen to know, sir," said Lady Staunton, "if any of these two
lads, these young Butlers, I mean, show any turn for the army?"

"Could not say, indeed, my leddy," replied Knockdunder--"So, I knowing
the people to pe unchancy, and not to lippen to, and hearing a pibroch in
the wood, I pegan to pid my lads look to their flints, and then--"

"For," said Lady Staunton, with the most ruthless disregard to the
narrative which she mangled by these interruptions, "if that should be
the case, it should cost Sir George but the asking a pair of colours for
one of them at the War-Office, since we have always supported Government,
and never had occasion to trouble ministers."

"And if you please, my leddy," said Duncan, who began to find some savour
in this proposal, "as I hae a braw weel-grown lad of a nevoy, ca'd Duncan
MacGilligan, that is as pig as paith the Putler pairns putten thegither,
Sir George could ask a pair for him at the same time, and it wad pe put
ae asking for a'."

Lady Staunton only answered this hint with a well-bred stare, which gave
no sort of encouragement.

Jeanie, who now returned, was lost in amazement at the wonderful
difference betwixt the helpless and despairing girl, whom she had seen
stretched on a flock-bed in a dungeon, expecting a violent and
disgraceful death, and last as a forlorn exile upon the midnight beach,
with the elegant, well-bred, beautiful woman before her. The features,
now that her sister's veil was laid aside, did not appear so extremely
different, as the whole manner, expression, look, and bearing. In outside
show, Lady Staunton seemed completely a creature too soft and fair for
sorrow to have touched; so much accustomed to have all her whims complied
with by those around her, that she seemed to expect she should even be
saved the trouble of forming them; and so totally unacquainted with
contradiction, that she did not even use the tone of self-will, since to
breathe a wish was to have it fulfilled. She made no ceremony of ridding
herself of Duncan as soon as the evening approached; but complimented him
out of the house under pretext of fatigue, with the utmost _nonchalance._

When they were alone, her sister could not help expressing her wonder at
the self-possession with which Lady Staunton sustained her part.

"I daresay you are surprised at it," said Lady Staunton composedly; "for
you, my dear Jeanie, have been truth itself from your cradle upwards; but
you must remember that I am a liar of fifteen years' standing, and
therefore must by this time be used to my character."

In fact, during the feverish tumult of feelings excited during the two or
three first days, Mrs. Butler thought her sister's manner was completely
contradictory of the desponding tone which pervaded her correspondence.
She was moved to tears, indeed, by the sight of her father's grave,
marked by a modest stone recording his piety and integrity; but lighter
impressions and associations had also power over her. She amused herself
with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long been assistant, and was
so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance
with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself
to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by
his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But
when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to
her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she
veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort, as the gay
uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound. There were
moods and moments, in which her despondence seemed to exceed even that
which she herself had described in her letters, and which too well
convinced Mrs. Butler how little her sister's lot, which in appearance
was so brilliant, was in reality to be envied.

There was one source, however, from which Lady Staunton derived a pure
degree of pleasure. Gifted in every particular with a higher degree of
imagination than that of her sister, she was an admirer of the beauties
of nature, a taste which compensates many evils to those who happen to
enjoy it. Here her character of a fine lady stopped short, where she
ought to have

Scream'd at ilk cleugh, and screech'd at ilka how,
As loud as she had seen the worrie-cow.

On the contrary, with the two boys for her guides, she undertook long and
fatiguing walks among the neighbouring mountains, to visit glens, lakes,
waterfalls, or whatever scenes of natural wonder or beauty lay concealed
among their recesses. It is Wordsworth, I think, who, talking of an old
man under difficulties, remarks, with a singular attention to nature,

Whether it was care that spurr'd him,
God only knows; but to the very last,
He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale.

In the same manner, languid, listless, and unhappy, within doors, at
times even indicating something which approached near to contempt of the
homely accommodations of her sister's house, although she instantly
endeavoured, by a thousand kindnesses, to atone for such ebullitions of
spleen, Lady Staunton appeared to feel interest and energy while in the
open air, and traversing the mountain landscapes in society with the two
boys, whose ears she delighted with stories of what she had seen in other
countries, and what she had to show them at Willingham Manor. And they,
on the other hand, exerted themselves in doing the honours of
Dumbartonshire to the lady who seemed so kind, insomuch that there was
scarce a glen in the neighbouring hills to which they did not introduce
her.

Upon one of these excursions, while Reuben was otherwise employed, David
alone acted as Lady Staunton's guide, and promised to show her a cascade
in the hills, grander and higher than any they had yet visited. It was a
walk of five long miles, and over rough ground, varied, however, and
cheered, by mountain views, and peeps now of the firth and its islands,
now of distant lakes, now of rocks and precipices. The scene itself, too,
when they reached it, amply rewarded the labour of the walk. A single
shoot carried a considerable stream over the face of a black rock, which
contrasted strongly in colour with the white foam of the cascade, and, at
the depth of about twenty feet, another rock intercepted the view of the
bottom of the fall. The water, wheeling out far beneath, swept round the
crag, which thus bounded their view, and tumbled down the rocky glen in a
torrent of foam. Those who love nature always desire to penetrate into
its utmost recesses, and Lady Staunton asked David whether there was not
some mode of gaining a view of the abyss at the foot of the fall. He said
that he knew a station on a shelf on the farther side of the intercepting
rock, from which the whole waterfall was visible, but that the road to it
was steep and slippery and dangerous. Bent, however, on gratifying her
curiosity, she desired him to lead the way; and accordingly he did so
over crag and stone, anxiously pointing out to her the resting-places
where she ought to step, for their mode of advancing soon ceased to be
walking, and became scrambling.

In this manner, clinging like sea-birds to the face of the rock, they
were enabled at length to turn round it, and came full in front of the
fall, which here had a most tremendous aspect, boiling, roaring, and
thundering with unceasing din, into a black cauldron, a hundred feet at
least below them, which resembled the crater of a volcano. The noise, the
dashing of the waters, which gave an unsteady appearance to all around
them, the trembling even of the huge crag on which they stood, the
precariousness of their footing, for there was scarce room for them to
stand on the shelf of rock which they had thus attained, had so powerful
an effect on the senses and imagination of Lady Staunton, that she called
out to David she was falling, and would in fact have dropped from the
crag had he not caught hold of her. The boy was bold and stout of his
age--still he was but fourteen years old, and as his assistance gave no
confidence to Lady Staunton, she felt her situation become really
perilous. The chance was, that, in the appalling novelty of the
circumstances, he might have caught the infection of her panic, in which
case it is likely that both must have perished. She now screamed with
terror, though without hope of calling any one to her assistance. To her
amazement, the scream was answered by a whistle from above, of a tone so
clear and shrill, that it was heard even amid the noise of the waterfall.

In this moment of terror and perplexity, a human face, black, and having
grizzled hair hanging down over the forehead and cheeks, and mixing with
mustaches and a beard of the same colour, and as much matted and tangled,
looked down on them from a broken part of the rock above.

"It is the Enemy!" said the boy, who had very nearly become incapable of
supporting Lady Staunton.

"No, no," she exclaimed, inaccessible to supernatural terrors, and
restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the
danger of her situation, "it is a man--For God's sake, my friend, help
us!"

The face glared at them, but made no answer; in a second or two
afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first,
equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in
elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole
expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties,
clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the
superstitious terror of her guide, he became incapable of supporting her.
Her words were probably drowned in the roar of the falling stream, for,
though she observed the lips of the young being whom she supplicated move
as he spoke in reply, not a word reached her ear.

A moment afterwards it appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her
supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation
and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after
lowered a ladder of twisted osiers, about eight feet in length, and made
signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended. Despair gives
courage, and finding herself in this fearful predicament, Lady Staunton
did not hesitate to risk the ascent by the precarious means which this
accommodation afforded; and, carefully assisted by the person who had
thus providentially come to her aid, she reached the summit in safety.
She did not, however, even look around her until she saw her nephew
lightly and actively follow her examples although there was now no one to
hold the ladder fast. When she saw him safe she looked round, and could
not help shuddering at the place and company in which she found herself.
They were on a sort of platform of rock, surrounded on every side by
precipices, or overhanging cliffs, and which it would have been scarce
possible for any research to have discovered, as it did not seem to be
commanded by any accessible position. It was partly covered by a huge
fragment of stone, which, having fallen from the cliffs above, had been
intercepted by others in its descent, and jammed so as to serve for a
sloping roof to the farther part of the broad shelf or platform on which
they stood. A quantity of withered moss and leaves, strewed beneath this
rude and wretched shelter, showed the lairs,--they could not be termed
the beds,--of those who dwelt in this eyrie, for it deserved no other
name. Of these, two were before Lady Staunton. One, the same who had
afforded such timely assistance, stood upright before them, a tall,
lathy, young savage; his dress a tattered plaid and philabeg, no shoes,
no stockings, no hat or bonnet, the place of the last being supplied by
his hair, twisted and matted like the _glibbe_ of the ancient wild Irish,
and, like theirs, forming a natural thick-set stout enough to bear off
the cut of a sword. Yet the eyes of the lad were keen and sparkling; his
gesture free and noble, like that of all savages. He took little notice
of David Butler, but gazed with wonder on Lady Staunton, as a being
different probably in dress, and superior in beauty, to anything he had
ever beheld. The old man, whose face they had first seen, remained
recumbent in the same posture as when he had first looked down on them,
only his face was turned towards them as he lay and looked up with a lazy
and listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and
rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad
than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan
trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious.
Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which
there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable
anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and
barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the
superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay
scattered around the fire, of which the red glare cast a ruddy tinge on
the precipitous foam and mist of the cascade. The lad, when he had
satisfied his curiosity with staring at Lady Staunton, fetched an earthen
jar and a horn-cup, into which he poured some spirits, apparently hot
from the still, and offered them successively to the lady and to the boy.
Both declined, and the young savage quaffed off the draught, which could
not amount to less than three ordinary glasses. He then fetched another
ladder from the corner of the cavern, if it could be termed so, adjusted
it against the transverse rock, which served as a roof, and made signs
for the lady to ascend it, while he held it fast below. She did so, and
found herself on the top of a broad rock, near the brink of the chasm
into which the brook precipitates itself. She could see the crest of the
torrent flung loose down the rock, like the mane of a wild horse, but
without having any view of the lower platform from which she had
ascended.

David was not suffered to mount so easily; the lad, from sport or love of
mischief, shook the ladder a good deal as he ascended,