you saw the hills, or the far-away sea-the thea,' as Dolly called it once, when at a well-remembered spot she asked Holdfast to lift her up in his arms, and there below them lay that clear shining heavenly streak of blue water which some of us love better than even the woman (or women) we adore. So the long summer day passed drowsily away, just as the country on either side of the tarry barge passed -a day spent somehow in a land of dreams. Once Dolly brought him. bread and sweet milk, and once old Isaak, noticing how faint he looked, insisted on his drinking a tumbler of some mixture or other, around which lingered an ethereal aroma (as it seemed to his dulled senses -it was whisky and water, I believe), all of which Holdfast accepted in a dim, passive way, as we accept what is offered to us in the lethargy of prostrating illness. The keen excitement of yesterday had been succeeded by a sleepless night, and his whole intellectual being had broken down. The strangest fancies took possession of him-the most grotesque shapes danced before his eyes. Fancy and fact mixed themselves up in an inextricably puzzling way. He fancied that a marriage and a funeral were going on simultaneously, and he knew that he had to take part in one or other as principal, but in which he was uncertain. The hearse, he observed incidentally, was a rather shabby one-horse vehicle, and he did not feel very anxious to occupy it; whereas the carriages, as they drove up with the young blushing bride and bridesmaids, were showy and brilliant, and upon the whole he came to think-Poor devil, if he is to be married or buried, the marriage is perhaps the more tolerable. But it was the (almost comical) illusoriness of the bridal festivities that most impressed his imagination, so that at last a feeling of dreamy utter disbelief took possession of

him, as though some one had said to him, 'Marriage to-day, death tomorrow. The festal procession is a mere clumsy disguise and mask, and to give the pageant the least touch of reality-the last carriage with the last guest should be-a hearse. Our friends are in wedding favours to-day; let the sun sink once or twice, and they will come back with funeral scarves, and those abominable black gloves which they use only at funerals.'

At length, as the last rays of the sun streamed through the trees, a deep sleep fell upon him, covering him, as Sancho Panza said, all over like a cloak.

MEANWHILE,

VI

Hazeldean society was agitated to its centre. The great commercial crash, which for some time had been dimly foreseen and dreaded, had come at last with a vengeance. The difficult financial problem-how to make money out of nothing?-on which the mercantile classes had been eagerly experimenting for some time, had answered itself. Ex nihilo nihil fit. The bubble had burst. And there was consternation and dismay upon the Hazeldean Exchange-as elsewhere.

During the afternoon the excitement, which had somewhat abated, was renewed by a rumour (the reader will be able to guess how it originated) that the Reverend Stephen Holdfast had drowned himself in the canal. The evening editions of the papers gave currency to the rumour, which at length reached the ears of the young person who superintended the toilette of Miss Louisa Higgins. Louisa, on the plea of a sick headache, had been secreted in her sanctum, with a copy of the Hazeldean Herald (containing a full report of the trial), during the whole forenoon. She was very sorry for Stephen, very sorry for herself. There had been

a coolness between her father and herself since the eventful evening when she had confessed that she loved the heretical clergyman; and on this day they did not meet till the evening had grown dim. Louisa was very white and ghost-like when her father entered her boudoir, for her handmaiden had just fetched her the paper, in which the rumour was mentioned under the head of This Day's News,' and she had not recovered from the unreasoning fit of horror which seized her as she read.

'See what you have done!' she exclaimed, rising to her feet with the paper in her hand, and confronting her father.

Possibly he did not know to what she referred; he made at least no attempt to meet her reproach.

This is not the time,' he said, 'for a daughter to turn against her father. I am a ruined man.'

And he stooped down and kissed her (the man really loved his daughter, I believe), and left the

room.

It was too true. The great contractor had failed for half-a-million. Higgins, to do him justice, was not a coward. He could have surrived the loss of fortune. Though an old man, he was still fresh and hale, and might have had a future before him. But there were some ugly facts connected with his failure which he could not face-facts which even his own religious world might refuse to forgive. So Higgins, having contemplated in the course of the afternoon all the possibilities of the position, came to be of opinion that the game was up. To save himself further trouble, hewell-to put it politely-he cut the

knot.

The circulation of the Hazeldean Herald of the following morning was, I believe, the largest to which that respectable periodical ever attained. The table of contents was more sensational than a novel

by Mr. Charles Reade. It was no wonder that it sold. There were all the miserable episodes of the commercial panic-that Black Saturday, as the editor called it. There was the disappearance of Holdfast, and the suicide of Higgins. And, raciest of any, there was a bona fide letter which Higgins had addressed to the editor regarding a somewhat remarkable transaction with which his name had been mixed up, and which had formed the text of a leading article in the paper of the previous day. What right had a secular newspaper, a lay tribunal, to comment upon the doings (or misdoings) of the saints? Who shall lay anything (said Higgins) to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth: who is he that condemneth?

So Higgins, grimly consistent, passed to his account.

And Mrs. Montgomerie Jones, what of her? Mrs. Montgomerie Jones was not at home' on the day when the poor fatherless and motherless girl first called: she was at home to Louisa neither on that day nor any other.

My dear Fred,' said his anxious mother, we should be very thankful that that artful girl has not entangled you. What an escape you have had! It is a perfect Providence. Your father tells me that Higgins had lost every penny in the world! Poor Sir Humphrey Muddle has been sadly imposed upon-something in oil or gas that Higgins induced him to take. I must write the girl a note, and tell her that I will do what I can to get a place for her. A nursery governess, I suppose, or something of that kind.'

Upon the whole, mother, I think you had better not,' said Fred, who was not so cruel as the woman, though he, too, felt that his escape was a piece of luck-providential or other.

direct and decisive? It was indeed. For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light-wiser even than the gods themselves, and certainly sharper.

VII

HERE my story, properly speaking, closes. But the reader who has come patiently with me thus far would have reason to complain were I to leave him at the particularly rocky piece of road at which we have arrived. I do not wish you to suppose that the story which I have related ended as a tragic tale should end. On the contrary, I am willing to own that I have carried you past the stormiest passages in the lives of Stephen Holdfast and of the woman who loved him and whom he loved. The thunder-cloud had burst with fierce vehemence, but it left the air clear and the sky serene. The essential sweetness and strength of Louisa's character was first plainly manifested in this fiery trial. She had sprung from

the people, and she returned to them in her time of need-in works of charity, of self-denial, of patience, of wise and earnest helpfulness. At a time of severe suffering in Hazeldean, Doctor Diamond found her a willing and zealous assistant, and it was through Doctor Diamond that those explanations were made which brought her and Holdfast finally together. In the deep solitudes of the Ivy Glen, when the autumn had lighted up its saddest shades with golden fire, the words of supreme surrender were uttered. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."

Holdfast was at last a free man. The Church which he had offered to serve had parted with him, and he might go where he listed. He knew now that he might have

been a happier man had he left earlier and of his own free will. For a great burden was lifted from off his life-a burden of which he had been hardly conscious at the time, but which must have been heavy and grievous to bear, to judge from the elastic sense of liberty and release which followed its removal. Hitherto he had never been sure of his position, and he had laboured with a breathless impatience resembling the hectic ardour of fever: there rose now (instead of that somewhat lurid light) a bright, steady, continuous flame, burning but not consuming. And (if for one sentence I may be permitted to borrow the conventional language of the religious world) I may add that his work under its new conditions was 'blessed.' He was no longer an ordained minister in any Church which priestcraft had invented. The consecrating oil had been carefully wiped away. no sentence which man could pronounce prevented him from being a true servant of the living God, a chosen minister in the Temple of the Most High, nor from conducting, among the wretched dwellers in the dark caves and filthy dens of the great city, a free and spiritual service-a service without priest and without ritual.

But

The simple Divine message which the Holy Spirit has been commissioned to convey-that we have a Father in Heaven-that behind the feverish turmoil of time there is an abiding rest-that in spite of the tragic frailty and perishableness of human ties there is a strength which never fails and a love that does not wax cold-is a message at once too simple and too divine to solicit the intervention of any close corporation or sacerdotal caste. For Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

I. ITS SOCIAL CONDITION.

HE Battle of Flodden, the crowning calamity in Scottish history, was one of those events of which European history is so full, which mark off one age from another by a line of vivid and ineffaceable distinctness. In this instance the event was one of overwhelming national disaster. Through the previous hundred years, the Stuart kings in quick succession had been either killed or murdered in early life, and ere they had had time or experience to cope with the many evils which had grown up during each of their long minorities. The country had just begun to rally from its long depression, consequent upon the War of Independence, and to enter upon a period of prosperity. In the age immediately before, three universities, through the energy and splendid liberality of three different prelates, had risen within two generations; and the building of many fine edifices, Roslin Chapel among others, had given scope to any native skill that existed. James IV. had shown a wiser regard for architecture than his predecessor James III.; had introduced printing, and favoured learning, such as it was then; and however foolish in many of his ways, he was certainly hold ing his rude nobles with a firm hand, and bending them to his will. But in a moment all these fair hopes were crushed. A cry

of

agony went up from the land at the slaughter of the flower of the people; and to the men of that day it seemed as if the nation were doomed. But the Battle of Flodden has another meaning to us. It closed the medieval period in

Scotland. It was really a knights' battle. Ten thousand of the nation's noblest born fell in it-lay stretched in heaps around their chivalrous king, who had fought as the heroes of the Crusades had fought. Most of the great earls and churchmen had fallen; there were few families of note which did not lose one relative or another, whilst some houses had to weep the death of all. But it was the last of such battles in Scotland. Chivalry was extinguished on that terrible field; and Feudalism never again brought together so formidable an army. Before the ancient, and, as it would seem, the implacable enmity between the two nations had again bred another cause of battle, new influences were working a change, and were destined to work a revolution.

Its immediate effects were favourable only to anarchy. On the assembling of parliament for the coronation of the infant king, not two years old, there were none who commanded authority, and few who deserved respect. Almost the entire peerage had passed into a new generation; the natural leaders of the nation were among the dead; and those who were left alive, who had anything of ability in them, abhorred all counsels tending to peace.2

All the miseries of a

minority were once more in prospect. The strong were resolved to be stronger, the poor to be rich.

Conspicuous among these were the great nobles and the great churchmen. The struggle began with the churchmen. Several of the highest ecclesiastical dignities having become vacant, a struggle at once arose, remarkable for its display of covetousness and high

handed boldness, which found its most flagrant exhibition in the contest for the archbishopric of St. Andrews. Broad lands and splendid revenues and political position were the things at stake: in all respects it was a struggle typical of the times. For two years it distracted the church and the council, and was finally settled by a compromise which gave the largest share of the honours to the largest giver of bribes.1

But, scandalous as were these ecclesiastical feuds, they were after all comparatively light matters. They were far surpassed by the feuds among the great nobles, who waged private war against each other with a ferocity which defied interference. It is not easy for us to conceive how savage these men were. Perhaps there never was a more turbulent and rapacious nobility, not to be aliens or conquerors. Each, regardless of his loyalty, was bent on his own or his chief's aggrandisement. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The lord of the manor was alike lawgiver and lord of life. There was indeed a central contest of the Douglases or Angus clan on one side, and of the Hamiltons, who were now almost their rivals in power, on the other, which drew into its whirl the sympathies of the country nearest the capital; but separate disputes, ever seeking a deadly issue, branched out in all directions from this central contest, and filled the country with slaughter.

Our general histories tell us this; but only in our county histories, with their family broils and personal hatreds, and all that came of these, do we see it reflected with a faithfulness which justifies the his

'Buchanan, ii. 144; Tytler; Burton.

torian in describing Scotland during these years, the minority of James V., as a theatre of constant rapine and assassination.' 2 'As for the ordering of God's justice,' says a sagacious English observer, 'there is none done in all Scotland.' 3 Neither was there any pretence of doing it, which was the worst feature in the time. No one really cared about the mending of matters. The Queen-mother, Margaret Tudor, ficklest and foolishest of women, moved through her mazes of illdoing eager only on her own ends ;◄ the rude rapacious nobles were haughtily lawless; and the churchmen were rent into sections deadly in their mutual enmities."

On the borders, misrule was rampant, and had been so for generations. They could only be said to be Scottish territory by a fiction, and were commonly called the Debateable Land. Brigandage, or freebooting, was the settled order of life in the dales of the Esk, the Tweed, and the Teviot, and sometimes it put on a ducal, almost a regal air. One freebooter was called the King of the Border, and another was а terror as far south as the Tyne. The later poetry and fiction of this district have thrown their glamour over this state of things and obscured its real character. We must not be so deceived, however, in forming our historical opinions. The lonely peel on the hillside, or at the head of the pleasant valley, was a reiver's watchtower, whence issued bands of men

Who sought the beeves that made them broth

In England and in Scotland both.

In the Castle of Tushielaw there was a gallows-tree marked in its principal branches by the ropes.

2 Tytler, ch. viii.