sons fall defending his chief, called for his seventh and last boy, his Benjamin, to fight, and die with him in the noble but hopeless struggle. a good education and an honourable name, had no portion of goods to spend "on harlots and riotous living”—hand over hand, by their own manful exertions, they have climbed to the positions of honour, affluence, or usefulness they fill. In the profession of the ministry, it is true men may save souls; but in others, they will save money. In this they may win jewels for Christ's Now, look on the other hand to the commoncrown, but in these they may hope to array wife not universal, but common fate of those for whom and daughters in the glittering pride of jewellery. anxious parents have laid up stores of wealth! In In training a son for this office, they will place how many instances has it proved their ruin! Well him in circumstances the most favourable to and truly does the Psalmist say, "He heapeth up virtue and piety; still, though removed far from a riches and knoweth not who shall gather them." father's care, and a mother's prayers, and the It is well he does not. He sleeps, but it might means of grace, in secular occupations, in lands disturb him in his grave to see how recklessly where he hears no Sabbath-bells, or amid the squandered is all that he carefully gathered; that temptations of great cities, where no one cares for the portions he left are spent with the prodigal's his soul, he may make a fortune-and so money folly without being followed by the prodigal's recarries it over the highest and holiest considera-pentance; and that no inscription so describes his tions. The youth is launched forth on the world. life and befits his tombstone, as-Vanity, vanity, The helm is in the grasp of a feeble hand. The and vexation of spirit! He has enriched his chilstorm of temptation comes. His father's parting dren; and ruined them. He sowed the wind, and prayer, his mother's last tender look, and the holy they reap the whirlwind; and may use in hell the recollections of home, still fresh in his mind, he words of one who, mourning the dissensions that makes an effort to hold on in his virtuous career; a fortune they succeeded to had bred among her but by and by he gives up the unequal struggle, brothers and sisters, the deplorable wrecks which and, with "youth at the prow and pleasure at the it had made of youths once full of promise, helm," drives on to ruin-becomes a total wreck. exclaimed, as she wrung her hands-Oh, that What a fate for a parent to weep! What a sorrow wretched money! that wretched money! for his life! As he recalls the image of the boy whom he sacrificed to the love of gold, how will remorse wring from his heart more than the bitterness of David's cry, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! The undue regard to wealth appears in the desire of parents to bequeath riches to their children. I cup. If parents, without any respect to the spiritual, looked only to the temporal interests of their children, they would not be so anxious to leave them wealth. Few greater misfortunes could befall a youth than to be left a fortune. How would that event increase his danger; and, filling a father's heart with new fears, cast a dark shadow over the hopes he had begun to cherish of his son! The world presents temptations enough to youth without that. It needs a steady foot and a cool head to stand on the edge of a dizzy cliff; a steadier hand than most young men possess to carry a full With few, or almost no exceptions, they have a roaring sea of temptations to swim through; and to how many has their wealth proved a bag of gold, which a foolish parent's hand has tied round the neck of the unhappy youth? We have watched their course, and seen their heads, after a brief struggle, go down beneath the wave; while those who had nothing but their own exertions and God's blessing to depend on, finding in that emptiness a life-buoy, have struck out manfully for the land, and stood alive on the shore of a sea thickly strewn with the drowned bodies of others, to thank God that they had had a hard battle to fight, and the yoke to bear in their youth. Look around and see who those are that stand on the heights of their profession, or business! With few exceptions, they are those whom riches did not tempt to be idle; who wrought under the spur of a sharp necessity; whose purses were lighter than their hearts; who, receiving little else from a father but Let us not be misunderstood. It is the duty of parents to make a prudent provision for their children, and against the accidents of life. An apostle, speaking of him who provides not for those of his own house, says, that he "is worse than an infidel, and has denied the faith." That man certainly commits a crime against his children who rears them in the habits of affluent circumstances, and leaves them beggars at his death. Such conduct, however common, is inexcusable and cruel in the upper classes. And it is unwise and wrong in the humbler, not to make honey or hay when the sun shines; and stand prepared for days when the right hand has lost its cunning, and the brawny arm its strength, and the back that bore itself erect under the burden of life's daily toil, bends beneath the weight of years. Only let money be kept in its own place. Its place is in your hands, not in your affections. Lodge it in the bank; but not in your heart— keep that for God. Gold is a good servant; but a bad, base, exacting, cruel, despotic master. on your guard; if it is not your servant, you must be its slave. Well does the Bible pronounce the love of it to be "the root of all evil." It drew Lot into Sodom, from whose fiery ruin he escaped but by the skin of his teeth. Demas was an apostle, and it made him an apostate. It turned Judas into a traitor, and, loading his name with eternal infamy, sank his soul into eternal perdition. Money cannot be safely made, or safely saved, but by those who through grace receive and use it as a gift from God; who would not give one red drop of a Saviour's blood for all the gold of banks; who amid all other questions of profit and loss, are most impressed and most occupied with this,-What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Be CHAPTER III.-"HE LAY DOWN TO SLEEP ON THE MOORLAND SO DREARY." OLLY MUSGRAVE but Joanna would not leave home at the season when was gone with her father was liable to his worst rheumatic twinges. flying colours. Polly had shown herself really good-natured under She had been her ease and luxury, and Joanna had been a little indefatigable in penitent and vexed that she did not like Polly any procuring her more than in a cousinly way. Whether Polly was aunt, uncle, and right in saying that Joanna was romantic or not, cousins, parting Polly had not a particle of romance in her constitugifts that would tion, dug out yet, but much that was flourishing, suit their tastes; fresh, and fragrant, in pure, commonplace, selfish, she had actually good-natured worldliness, for it is a mistake to toiled herself in suppose that quality (without hypocrisy) has not paying courtesy- its attractive guise. Without knowing herself calls round the romantic, Joanna was apt to quarrel in her own neighbourhood; mind with cleverer girls, accomplished girls, pleaand she had writ- sant girls, even good girls, sensible women, business ten half a dozen women, nay, religious women, until she feared she letters, and evinc- must be fault-finding, satirical, sour-as her sisters ed a considerable protested at intervals. Joanna, sour? Joanna, so amount of suc- charitable and sympathizing. Take comfort, Joanna; cessful manage- the spirit is willing though the flesh is weak. ment in procuring an invitation for two of her cousins to join her during the week or weeks of York's gaieties. She would have had Joanna also, The Ewes was in its normal condition; the parish was in its normal condition; the excitement of Harry Jardine's return to Whitethorn had : " died out; he might shoot, as it was September, or fish still, or farm, or ride, or read as he pleased. He retained his popularity. His father had been a popular man, fully more popular than Mr. Crawfurd of the Ewes. Harry was even more approved, for mingling with the world had smoothed down in him the intolerance of temper which beset his father. What did Joanna Crawfurd say to such compromising agreeability? Joanna was disarmed in his case; she contradicted herself, as we all do; or she had the penetration to perceive that many externals went to raise Harry Jardine's price in the eyes of the world; externals which had little to do with the individual man, were mere garments of time and place-youth, a good presence, a fair patrimony, freedom from appropriating ties; strip Harry of these, render him middle-aged, time-worn or care-worn, reduce him to poverty, marry him, furnish him with a clamorous circle of connexions, land-lock him with children! Is the difference not startling? Would he need to be condemned for the world's favour, then? Joanna trowed not. The Crawfurds met Mr. Jardine occasionally, but there was no probability of the acquaintance ripening, since Mr. Crawfurd could not call for Harry at Whitethorn, and Harry did not see the necessity of offering his company at the Ewes. Mrs. Jardine had not visited much since the shock of her widowhood, and she only now began to recur to her longdisused visiting-list on Harry's account. Though a reasonable woman, it is scarcely requisite to say that she did not propose to renew her friendship with the family at the Ewes. She had been a very gay, high-spirited wife, whom the gentle laird of the Ewes had relished when she went there last; too high-spirited, indeed, to lead an altogether tranquil nuptial career, with Harry's headstrong father. The blow which rendered her without control did not break her spirit, but it pressed out its buoyance. A grave, occupied, resigned woman, no longer a blythe one, very fond and proud of Harry, but grateful, not glad in her fondness and pride, was Mrs. Jardine. The frost had come early, strong, stern frost on those Highlands of the Lowlands, those moors of the south. The "lustre deep" at twilight and dawn, the imperial Tyrian dye at noon, the glorious "orange and purple and grey" at sunset and sunrise, which, once known and loved, man never forgets, nor woman either-all would soon be swept away this year, and Joanna regretted it. autumn so short as this year; and she had heard them tell, that in the Fall, when poor Mr. Jardine was killed, the heather remained bright till November. Thinking of that date caused Joanna, when she strolled out on the moor one morning, to go near the scene with its melancholy celebrity. Now it was quite early in the morning, and a hail shower lying all around, like the manna of the Israelites, though the sky was a deep sapphire blue, with the wan ghost of the moon lingering on the horizon, and the atmosphere bitter cold. The breakfast was late at the Ewes from Mr. Crawfurd's delicate health, and because Mrs. Crawfurd had her fancies like Mrs. Primrose. She did not care that she should carve for the whole company, indeed, but she was wretched if all the family did not sit down to table together. Thus Joanna was frequently abroad before breakfast, and, like most of healthy organization, was rather tempted to court the stinging air as it blew across the heather, when it braced her whole frame, nipped her fingers and toes, but sent blush-roses into her cheeks. Joanna was walking along at a great pace, feeling cheerful, although she was in that neighbourhood, and vaunting to herself their moor as infinitely superior to a park, when she was struck by a grey object, which caught her eye, lying beyond some whin bushes-a thing raised above the ground, but stretched still and motionless. Joanna stopped with a strange thrill. No! it was not on that piece of earth; but so must he have lain on that disastrous morning, so far removed from the abundance, and garnered goods, and heartiness of harvest. Joanna stood a moment, then reproaching herself with cowardice, egotism, inhumanity, she advanced, her heart fluttering wildly. Yes, it was a man in tweed-coat, trousers, and cap; and stay! was that a gun by his side? Joanna could not go a step further; she closed her eyes to hide the blood which she felt must be oozing and stealing along the ground, or else congealed among the heather; and it was only after she had told herself how far she was from home, and how long it would be ere she could run back for assistance, and reasoned that this might be some poor, human being perishing for lack of aid, and to whom a failure in presence of mind, a little selfish weakShe ness, might be fatal, that she opened them and apliked the flower-garden and the lawn, partciularly proached the figure. There was no blood that she when the old thorn, almost as fine as Mr. Jardine's could see; the man might not be dead, but stupithorns at Whitethorn, was in blossom, and she gar-fied or insensible. Oh, dear! it was Harry Jardine dened sometimes very industriously; but there of Whitethorn; the hail-drops among his black Lilias's bridle was on her arched neck, and although curls, the sprigs of the heather dinted into his she generally wore it meekly, it was true, as Mr. brown cheek. Crawfurd had said, that she could not resist bolting now and then, because the reins were not in a strong, authorized hand. But, after all, the garden was tame to the moor. The moor's seasons were, at best, short-short the golden flush of its June; short the red gleam of its September. Not that the Lowland moor has not its dead, frosted grace in its winter winding-sheet, and its tender spring charm, when curlews scream over it incessantly; these beauties, however, are reckoned in passing. The moor has its seasons, like smoky, whirling, I panting London. But Joanna had never seen the It darted into Joanna's mind like inspiration how the chance had occurred. She remembered that Susan had said, yesterday, that she had met Mr. Jardine going shooting across the moor in the afternoon, and he had stopped her and asked if she had seen a dog. He had taken out a new dog and lost it, and was vexed at wasting half the morning in the pursuit. She recalled, with a peculiar vividness of perception, that somebody had observed, one day lately, that Mr. Jardine was not so strong as he looked; that he had fever while abroad, just before he came home, and that his mother was annoyed because he would not take care of himself, and complained that he was constantly over-taxing his unrecovered powers, and subjecting himself to fresh attacks of illness. Joanna remembered, with a pang, that she had laughed at the remark, mentally conjuring up Harry Jardine's athletic, sunburnt comeliness. It flashed across Joanna's brain in a moment, while the terror that he was dead there before her threatened to paralyse her, but she freed herself more quickly from this phantom than from the last, and, while she did so, called out his name and stepped to his side, stooping down and even touching him. He was breathing, though he was very cold and stiff, and she did not rouse him. Oh, Joanna was very thankful! But what should she do next? Life must be very faint, and frozen in the muscular, active young man. He had loitered at his sport till the dusk; he had been bewildered on the moor-strange to him as to a foreigner; he had wandered here and there impatient and weary; but still more angry with himself than alarmed. He had sat down in the intense chill and dim darkness to recover himself; no way forewarned, "simply because he was on Corncockle Moor, so near home," on a September night. He had sunk down farther and farther, until the stealthy foe sprang upon him and held him fast-the sleep from which there is so tardy an awakening. For him had been prepared the bed matchless in its pathos and horror; and, compared with his pallet, the mightiest king's couch sunk into insignificance, for "Whiter his sheets and his canopy grander, And sounder his sleep where the hill-foxes wander." Joanna dared not leave the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only a stray traveller, or, what was more probable, the circumstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted absence giving rise to surmise and search, that could bring them companions. As a forlorn hope Joanna raised her voice and cried for assistance; fear and distress choked the sound, and the freezing air caused it to fall on the silence with a ringing quaver. She persevered, however, every now and then varying the appeal, 'Papa, Lilias, Sandy, do some of you come to me; I want you here, for God's sake! here." She took his big hands and chafed them between her own little ones; she lifted his head on her lap, her fingers getting entangled in his curly hair, she prayed for him that he might be restored to them. How singular it was to be thus situated with any man out of her household! How rarely in this conventional state of society are two slight acquaintances thus closely brought together, the one appealing to the other's profoundest humanity! Joanna secretly recognised this even at that mo ment. He continued to breathe dully and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the balls sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, almost effaced. He was not like Harry Jardine in life, or as if he could ever come to himself again in this world. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude of the moor! The son at the daughter's feet, as his father at her father's. How would his mother bear it? Her father would never survive this mournful re-writing of the old letters traced in blood. It should be she rather who should die, and Joanna in her piety, her goodness, her great love for her father, her exquisite kindness for Harry Jardine, her present misery, did ask God if He sought a life, in His justice and mercy, for his mother's contentment and her father's peace, to allow hers to pay for Harry's, to substitute her in some way for Harry; and Joanna well remembered that prayer afterwards. Joanna was beginning to cower and fail herself in her trial. Perhaps she was not of such high, unflinching faith as the Ayrshire covenanter's wife, who watched her husband's shattered corpse, tenderly screened by her plaid, faithfully guarded from raven and hooded crow, on such another moor during the whole long, dark night of woe; perhaps the strengthening fennel-leaf is only when the fruit of the wild gourd is shred into the cup, and there is neither beam nor ray of "the hope which keeps alive despair;" perhaps the burden was more unendurable, when he was not her nearest and dearest, and grief did not blunt her agony of fear, and yet he was linked with her in such a sorrowful, old association that she could bring herself to offer her life for his. Suddenly Joanna shook herself up, when she was lapsing into a heap nearly as passive as himself; a suggestion darted across her; she detected in the little pocket of her dress a bottle of a strong essence and perfume, which Polly Musgrave had forced upon her the day she left. Polly was fond of scents, Joanna disliked artificial odours, and she had taken up the toilette bottle this morning, intending to transfer it to Susan or Conny, or any one else who might appreciate it. Now, it was a godsend; it might prove an elixir vitæ. Joanna was quick and clear in following out a notion. She uncorked her cut, gilded, and despised appendage, and with trembling fingers she poured the hot, stimulating, subtle liquid into her hollow hands, and bathed his forehead. She unloosed his cravat, and sent the warm stream over his throat and chest, rubbing them with her free hand, while she supported his head on the other arm; and inspired with fresh courage and trust she called anew this time a shrill, echoing call, and Harry Jardine shivered and sobbed and stretched himself, and slowly opened his sealed eyes, and looked her first vaguely and then wonderingly in the face, and her father's and Lilias's voices rose from opposite sides of the heath, near and far in reply, after weary waiting. "What is it, Joanna? What has kept you? What has happened? We missed you; we were getting anxious; we are coming, coming!" CHAPTER IV.-MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE. ARRY JARDINE always avowed when he was compelled to confess this passage of his creed, that having recovered from that ominous leaden drowsiness after his night on the moor, and finding Joanna Crawfurd tending him as a mother her sick child, her fine, sensible eyes supplicating an answering look from him in a fever of desire; her warm hand moving unhesitatingly about his throat, or laid upon his vest to feel for his languid heart, while his head was leaning back, so near her heart that his ringing ears were almost immediately sensible of its throbbing and panting-he avowed that the image never quitted him again, he could not lose sight of it as if it had never been; she could not resume in his imagination the place of any ordinary woman; he could not forget the circumstance;-there, there was no use asking him, for he could not. Of course she acted from mere humanity, or from regret for his father's fate. Of course any other woman might have done him the same service-a married woman-a grandmother -a hind or bondager, as they are named in the | tive, if he did not cherish all friendly feelings to south of Scotland, and none of them required par- the Crawfurds; if he did not visit them openly and ticular gratitude. He was quite reasonable, but frankly. He did visit at the Ewes, but he found he absolutely declined to resign the picture which the plainest opportunities ready made for him dur. one moment had imprinted on his mind and heart. ing one fortnight at Hurlton, to come in contact He was taken to the Ewes for some hours before with Joanna Crawfurd. She had gone there to his mother, who had happily been deceived as to look after Conny, suborned by Mrs. Maxwell, his return on the previous night, was even ap- and laid up with a sore throat, and forlorn and prised of his narrow escape from sudden, untimely wretched if one of her sisters was not looking after death. He received the greatest kindness from her. Conny's sore throat was almost as famous in the Crawfurds, and his mother herself found it in- its effects as Jane Bennet's; and Mrs. Maxwell's cumbent on her to write a little note to the blundering and deficiency in refinement did nothing Ewes, thanking the family for their humanity to mar other influences, perhaps helped them to and benevolence towards her son. She apolo-"mingle, mingle, mingle as they might," just as the gized, under the plea of illness, for not stating her obligation in person-the Crawfurds understanding the whole transaction as a civil equivocation, and being convinced, without any settled inclination to resentment, that the obligation would be allowed to fall out of sight before Mrs. Jardine accomplished her recovery. It is possible, had Mrs. Jardine been awakened to her son's danger a little sooner, and before its traces were entirely blotted out, the expressions in the note might have been a few shades less general and cold. Mr. Crawfurd excused her fully. He would not have expected Harry to come back to the Ewes, though he rejoiced, from the bottom of his heart, that Joanna had served the young fellow. How much his poor father would have delighted in him! Mr. Crawfurd rejoiced, although he was too righteous and humble-minded to say to himself that God was appeased, or that He had permitted this atonement as a sign in answer to his life's long penance. The laird of the Ewes was too sound a theologian; he knew better-that he had an age ago accepted God's free mercy, and rested his repentance and his hope on a Divine atonement; but he was touched, thankful, glad as anything in the world could afford him gladness, that one of his children-that Joanna should be the instrument of this rescue and delivery. Harry Jardine represented a different theory; he would be a dolt, a brute, unpardonably vindic Miss Bingleys' exceeding disagreeableness produced no counter-balancing, but rather a strongly cementing agency to act on Bingley and Jane, Darcy and Elizabeth. All this intercourse could scarcely fail to have one grand climax. Joanna, the thoughtful, imaginative, true, tender woman-a fair woman besides, with that one little blot which appealed to him singularly with a harsh, sweet voice; Joanna, a sufficiently rare woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, active, ardent, honest heart with its vein of romance; Joanna became the one mistress in the world for Harry Jardine, coveted and craved by him as the best gift of God, without which the others were comparatively worthless, and for which he could have been willing to sacrifice them one and all. Joanna had not precisely the same experience. But one thing Joanna did try for: from the moment that, with the prescience of a woman where feelings are concerned, she saw the end, she avoided Harry Jardine with all her power. It was Harry's generous determination and daring, his fearlessness, confidence, and steadfastness that overpowered her. Mr. Crawfurd was dreadfully upset by Harry Jardine's application to him, his claim for forbearance, his entreaty for grace, and his candid confession that his mother was violently opposed to his suit. It was a case which could neither be con. |