1857.]

A

N old tumbledown house, which had been white but was now relieved by sundry grass - green patches, stood, seventy years ago, at the end of a short, straight avenue running through a belt of Scotch firs; beyond which, all around stretched as bleak and rushy moorland as ever clad the poor wards of Lanark. The house was not without pretension: it aimed at being a small place-a laird's mansion; but it had no air of prosperity, from its name of Watery Butts (and the winter rain lay weeks in the furrows of its sour, stiff clay soil) to the grey stones rent and shattered upon its steep roof, the lintels of the small battered windows defaced and worn, the wooden work crumbled down, and the battered door opening with two leaves like a cupboard. Within there was the same evidence of narrow means or waning for tunes: the sitting-room, originally panelled, was destitute of all more modern pretensions to elegance, or even comfort; the bare carpet of thick, grey woollen stuff was not superior to what might be met with in the best room of the one-story farmhouse built on the first arable farm beyond these moors; the table was of wainscot, and in the light of the hearth a young woman, with homely striped skirts, and keys at her side as the mistress of the house, sat spinning yarn from a dark polished wheel.

The mansion might have fallen into the hands of tenant owners of the humbler class, moorland farmers only raised a step above their cottars-but for the central figure, a man of sixty, poring, with keen eyes whose lashes were white as snow, over the cobwebbed, yellow papers of the pigeon-holes in an ancient escritoire mounted on spindle legs and planted by the window, occasionally laying them down to handle with his big, bony hands a few dull chipped stones contained in the drawer of the same repository, and compare them with

a rough basket at his feet filled with the same smutty material. The coarse plaiden coat, the weighty peasant shoes, the tangled grey hair, no more degraded their owner than the ponderous, clumsy, dim frame can overshadow a work of the painter's art.

The October sun, now setting behind these dreary tracks, shot its rays through the dispersed, erect, black pines, and piercing the lozenged panes, fell upon the Laird of Watery Butts, dreaming his phantasy; and a broad, furrowed brow of genius was Ringan Cockburn's, with sharp features, and eyes of wonderful fire looking out beneath their silvery brows. There was nobleness about Ringan Cockburn that no poverty could clog, youth that no old age could quench. He was musing earnestly, with a flush rising upon his sunken cheek: suddenly he threw down stones and papers, sat erect in his leathercovered elbow chair, and called Thrift,' in tones of cheery command.

Thrift Cockburn-twice Thrift Cockburn, the old Laird's daughter and only child, and at five-andtwenty the composed wife of the laird's nephew and heir, a Cockburn of a younger branch of the same gnarled tree-obeyed the summons; and there side by side, as if for comparison, were the starry light of science-all the purer that it was less a thing of facts than of conviction, that it was idealized in its lifelong struggle against groping ignorance and cumbersome difficultiesand the lowlier, commoner, more blessed beam of household love, lifting as with angel's wings the simple, unreasoning, instinctive nature to the higher, stronger spirit within whose circle it had flourished -as if the little social moorland lark had fluttered fearlessly to the plumed breast of the lonely, royal eagle. Thrift Cockburn was no exemplification of the somewhat hard-fisted, homely virtue, once so

esteemed on Scotch lips that it crept into a Christian appellation, pronounced with a benediction over tiny, unconscious faces in many a heathery nook, from the Solway to the highland-born Forth and Tay. Thrift Cockburn was tall and shapely, with a round, dimpled face, like a scarlet-streaked apple in the Bothwell orchards, and eyes bluer than the flower of the flax,' which she bade her Wat sow. It was a kindly, blithe face, with its own peculiar bloom, that neither mildew nor rust could wear away-that would survive the carle time and care with the best, and whose little lines of wilfulness never for a moment combated with the great reverence that nestled under her curch as beneath her maiden snood. Thrift Cockburn could dare her domestic, long-legged, red-headed Jean; or ban the dark vagabond gipsy that would fascinate her with his evil eye, while his tattered comrade lifted her griddle cakes or her grey cock;' and soundly shake her little urchin when he meddled with his grandfather's treasures, his dried weeds, or his stones and rude wooden models. But she had faith that never doubted her manly Watfaith that could lift mountains and cast them into the sea for her greyhaired father, the beggared Laird of Watery Butts.

'Thrift,' the Laird addressed her with confident congratulation, 'I see my way as clear as day. When the pit's down, your fortune's won.'

'Do you say so, father!' replied Thrift, with answering gladness, as if she had not heard the same story fifty times; I'm blithe to hear it; not but I can bear puirtith, but you're growing auld, and Wat will lay aside the plough and ride with his marrows, and wee Wat will grow up to a grand inheritance; and you

shall be honoured as the doer of all and the benefactor of the countryside, never to be lichtlied more. I'm glad that you've fand the

seam.

speaking with a prophet's glowing certainty; the victory's won. Ι see the hill-head, with the blocks of hard, clean coal-it's parrot, Thrift, as I'm a living man-binged househigh, and the train of carts with their Clydesdale mares, and the stout carters bending beneath their load, and whistling and cracking their whips as they drive away to their ten miles' distant homes, and the black-a-viced, souple miners swinging in the tubs, and receiving their bright silver groats at the week's end. My word, the Laird of Briary Wood, with its waving holms of wheat and barley, wad fain niffer with the Laird of Watery Butts; such a hairst he will reap from his peat hags, as Briary Wood and all his generation niver saw. We'll rebuild the old house, Thrift; we'll have policies and herb gardens and pleasure gardens. Young Wat will get College learning, and sit in the London Parliament, and maintain the rights of Scotland, and counsel King George; and, lassie, I'll lay down my weary banes and dee in peace.'

'Dinna speak o' dee'in, father,' cried Thrift, with fortune at the door: gin Wat were but in to hear the news.'

'They have termed me a fule and a madman, Thrift,' continued Ringan Cockburn, unheeding her;

gentle and simple have charged me with wasting your means; they have said I would bring you to want and misery, and now, with the Lord's will, their children's children will owe me their bread.'

The Lord has blessed you, father,' exclaimed Thrift, devoutly; 'he has given to you to return gude for evil.'

'He gave me a gude bairn, Thrift,' responded her father, affectionately, that never failed me in my troubles, and that can rejoice wi' me when my jewel's found.'

now

Father,' pleaded Thrift, wistfully, Wat never said you nay.'

The Laird patted her comely cheek and smiled. 'Wat's a longsighted chap, and has a wife and a wean to protect, and he's been patient, forby eydent; I'm content.'

'But when will the coal be howkit, and the country side tell'd,

and crowns in place of bodles in our purse?' demanded Thrift.

The Laird looked down reprovingly. 'Bairn, Rome wasna built in ae day-it's a far cry to Lochawe-yet it's yonder, Thrift, ayont the blue hills; I saw it aince, and its wild swans and kilted clans, when I was a laddie, and Rob Roy yet brattled ower the vale of Menteith, and there was word of axes and claymores instead of picks and shools. The pit is not sunk to its last fathom, there maun be gude hire to transform mair hedgers and ditchers into miners and banksmen, and but a cauld coal to blow at in the mean time.' The Laird reflected. Ay, it's never darker than afore dawn.'

Thrift's gleeful face fell, though she strove not to be daunted, and would cling to the bright certainty that had been presented to her, for one moment, to be wrested the next from her grasp.

'It will be but a few shifts mair, father, and when Wat is convinced that success is so nigh-'

The Laird's brow contracted. Wat's honest, but he is dull, and he grows thrawn, and it is ill to stoop to my younger brither's orphan son.

'Oh! father, dinna blame Wat; he wad work or want for you, ony day; but he's ower anxious and he's ill-advised,' pleaded Thrift, faithfully.

'And my arms are stiff, and the day's gone by, when there was no want o' hands to maw the hay, and cut the oats, and big the peats for the Maister of Watery Butts; and my fellows look askant on me at kirk and at market, and hold puir Wat no better than a grieve or a ploughman, and wonder at his puir spirit that jowks to my maggots. That's the way o't, Thrift, and sirs, its high time it were ended.'

A new impulse swayed Thrift ; she threw her arms round her father's neck: How daur they, father, how daur they ?' she sobbed, 'you that were aye ower gude and wise, and never waured a plack on ae sin, and laboured for the weal o' ane an a'. Oh, how can they ?'

The Laird clasped his hands, and looked straight before him with frank pride. Ay, Thrift, I showed them how to bore the well at the

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Pends ; I bade Willie Lumsden straw lime on his barren rigs, and this day they bear twofold. I planted scores o' elms and beeches that will grow when we are sleeping," and wave their green tops when Wat and you are threescore; I have built a mill, though my red land's no great; I've had neep seed and grass seed frae foreign lands; the best is but little, but I've done my best, though I impoverished myself to enrich the beechen bog that's a slough of despond to this hour; and the yellow sandstones of my quarry were mauverish as snuff ere they had been months exposed to sun and wind.'

And you have dealt aumouses, father, to the sick and infirm; and you gave your barn to the tramping preacher that Briary Wood and Clay Gates drove off their lands.'

CHAPTER II.

The Laird had donned his grey cloak and blue bonnet, and was out in the tempestuous October twilight, plodding, with bent head, but unrelaxing foot, to the ruddy fire that, like a beacon at sea, burned night and day on one spot on the waste, there to hold his vigil.

The summer had been cold and wet,
And stuff was unco green.

And on the moorlands of Watery Butts the hardy reapers were yet cutting down the crop that, in spite of the Laird's experiments, the winter snow might surprise a-field. Wat Cockburn was superintending their labourers.

Thrift's satellite, Jean, was an out-worker. Thrift was alone at her warm hearth, the windows rattling and the clouds drifting without-alone save for little Wat, who sat in his corner marshalling flocks and herds of the dry, brown, empty husks of field-peas, and knobbed fir-tops. Thrift span and pondered, rose to set the great pot on the kitchen fire, and to mingle and stir its warm wholesome mess; but it was not of the tired harvest hands she thought, or even of Wat's coming in cold and hungry from his day's toil. Thrift dwelt upon her father's words with the pertinacity of a temper early imbued with a portion of the Laird's ardour, and

an affection made up of respect and protecting fondness. The Laird had been an abstracted, singular, scheming man all his life; and, in spite of the unselfishness of his motives and actions, and the occasional flashes of good fortune which he caught, he was demurred at by his contemporaries, as men, like water, will love a dead level and an old channel. Thrift knew better. Thrift honoured him far more than if he had been proven worldly-wise, instead of crack-brained. Thrift was fond of him as one is fond of an object peculiarly his own, with wants and weaknesses to be softly covered with a holy mantle. In many respects (whisper it not in the ears of sultans) Thrift was more engrossed with her father than her husband, although she had married Wat from true love, and was a faithful, tender wife, because Wat was independent of her-Wat was strong, she but his weaker helpmeet.

Thrift studied and re-studied her household resources; she would fain aid her father in his strait, contribute to the remotest chance of his fulfilling his long-proclaimed feat. The peril and precariousness of his undertaking had its own hold on her woman's imagination; she felt (but probably in a keener degree) like Royal Isabella when she pledged her crownjewels and bestowed the monies on the voyager Columbus. Blessings on woman's faith! It may have stranded many a deluded bark, but it has also landed many a good ship -the rudder gone, the hold sprung a leak. But Thrift was sorely puzzled, her means were so very small, and there were gaps innumerable for the price of the first sold grain; there were servants' wages, and needful repairs, and groceries, and wearing apparel, besides old accounts to be looked to. Wat, too, had long disapproved of the Laird's proceedings, and now it was scarcely to be hoped that, in order to promote them in their extremity, he should again relinquish the better part of his particular earnings and the capital on which the family depended for all foreign aid during the long winter. Wat was so twitted for facility of temper and weakness of will by his thoughtless, complacent acquain

tances, that he might be driven to assert his prerogative to the utmost.

At last a project occurred to her, though it was humble-so humble that the little bit of pride in Thrift's warm heart cried out against it, and had to be silenced by the brave doctrine to which she had listened from childhood-that honest means, however plain and poor, are dignified and graced the moment they are applied to a high end.

I

My father and Wat, though Watery Butts and its title deeds have belonged to our forbears sin' the memory of man, have not thought shame to cast their coats mony a day, and slave for me. will put on my red mantle, and fill my basket with butter, and eggs, and young chickens, and hanks of yarn, and maybe some napery, and carry it into the merchants of Ravenston. I haena' mony acquaintances to forgather wi', and what need I heed though they say there's the Leddy o' Watery Butts forced, puir woman, to bode away her own gear like ony cadger's wife trampin' wi' her creel? Jean canna be spared, and wad mak no bargain. I see na, though I were a warlock, how else I could earn a penny.'

6

Thrift would conceal her simple device from the Laird; she would start in the morning before he was astir, but over night she must confide it to Wat, and obtain his consent. She first settled the minutiæ of her plan, as she spun by her lamp, while Wat read his old newspaper and attended to the horse suppering. After her father had returned from the sinking,' and partaken of the frugal supper; when Jean, leading her male squad of ploughboy and herdboy, had entered, to profit by the worship,' which rose so quaintly and soothingly— Thrift's clear voice leading the psalm, Wat's deep notes chiming in, Ringan's impressive broken bass uttering lofty verse and reverent prayer; then, when servants were dismissed; and Ringan had retired to rest; and little Wat, with his brown cheek pressed against his pillow, and his chubby hand still grasping his fir-tops, slept the dreamless sleep of infancy; and Thrift and Wat sat beside their own ingle and talked in the fearless con