welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose
name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of

Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate
attended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to

perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious,
and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness,

discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more
than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even

desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had
had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston.

High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of
the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him

the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not suppose
himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself

my Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the
second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her

voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. He
stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused

himself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno of
the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself

that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and
to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of

right, from the favour of such society - seemed to extinguish mirth
wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and

retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented,
and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he

had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well
spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the

charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether
his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be

questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope
to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to

the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of
duty, an instinctivearistocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of

Adam Weir and Jean Rutherford.
2. KIRSTIE

Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of
limb, and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden

hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but
caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous

maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother
of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed

through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a
childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth

had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren
zeal of industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted

ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she
could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her

temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most
of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed

neutrality. The grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the
gardener who kept house for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she

wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the
offenders, and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it

must not be supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not
take in the husband also - or with the gardener's sister, and did not

speedily include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty
quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a

lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except
with her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her

mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods
without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according

to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian
summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this

equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the
cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so

much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious
illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young

gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance.
He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of

distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that
abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the

possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore
immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake.

And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the
everlasting fountains of interest.

Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of
a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had

asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to
do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It

was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him
when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner

when he returned. A young man who should have so doted on the idea,
moral and physical, of any woman, might be properly described as being

in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly.
But Kirstie - though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps - though,

when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day - had not a
hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the

end of time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered,
but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say

twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder.
I have said her heart leaped - it is the accepted phrase. But rather,

when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot
passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her

breath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when
the steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes' desire. This

perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the
alert. When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow him

with admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time of his return,
she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen standing

there sometimes by the hour together, gazing with shaded eyes, waiting the
exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on the mountains.

When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned down his
bed, and laid out his night-gear - when there was no more to be done for

the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her usually very
tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections, his future

career, and what she should give him the next day for dinner - there
still remained before her one more opportunity; she was still to take in

the tray and say good-night. Sometimes Archie would glance up from his
book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctory salutation which was in

truth a dismissal; sometimes - and by degrees more often - the volume
would be laid aside, he would meet her coming with a look of relief; and

the conversation would be engaged, last out the supper, and be prolonged
till the small hours by the waning fire. It was no wonder that Archie

was fond of company after his solitary days; and Kirstie, upon her side,
exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention.

She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off
with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE

RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue
wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved

by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to
give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of

separation. Like so many people of her class, she was a brave narrator;
her place was on the hearth-rug and she made it a rostrum, mimeing her

stories as she told them, fitting them with vital detail, spinning them
out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," her voice sinking into a

whisper over the supernatural or the horrific; until she would suddenly
spring up in affected surprise, and pointing to the clock, "Mercy, Mr.

Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it! God
forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she

was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but
invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not

to be dismissed.
3. A BORDER FAMILY

Such an unequalintimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where the
clan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the

same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a
pensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarilydestitute of the pride