CHAPTER II. DARSIE LATIMER'S JOUNAL, IN CONTINUATION. THERE is at length a halt--at length I have gained so much privacy as to enable me to continue my Journal. It has become a sort of task of duty to me, without the discharge of which I do not feel that the business of the day is performed. True, no friendly eye may ever look upon these labours, which have amused the solitary hours of an unhappy prisoner. Yet, in the meanwhile, the exercise of the pen seems to act as a sedative upon my own agitated thoughts and tumultuous passions. I never lay it down but I rise stronger in resolution, more ardent in hope. A thousand vague fears, wild expectations, and indigested schemes, hurry through one's thoughts in seasons of doubt and of danger. But by arresting them as they flit across the mind, by throwing them on paper, and even by that mechanical act compelling ourselves to consider them with scrupulous and minute attention, we may perhaps escape becoming the dupes of our own excited imagination; just as a young horse is cured of the vice of starting, by being made to stand still and look for some time without any interruption at the cause of its terror. There remains but one risk, which is that of discovery. But, besides the small characters in which my residence in Mr. Fairford's house enabled me to excel, for the purpose of transferring as many scroll sheets as possible to a huge sheet of stamped paper, I have, as I have elsewhere intimated, had hitherto the comfortable reflection, that if the record of my misfortunes should fall into the hands of him by whom they are caused, they would, with out harming any one, show him the real character and disposition of the person who has become his prisonerperhaps his victim. Now, however, that other names, and other characters are mingled with the register of my own sentiments, I must take additional care of these papers, and keep them in such a manner, that, in case of the least hazard of detection, I may be able to destroy them at a moment's notice. I shall not soon or easily forget the lesson I have been taught, by the prying disposition which Cristal Nixon, this man's agent and confederate manifested at Brokenburn, and which proved the original cause of my sufferings. My laying aside the last sheet of my journal hastily; was occasioned by the unwonted sound of a violin, in the farm-yard beneath my windows. It will not appear surprising to those who have made music their study, that, after listening to a few notes, I became at once assured that the musician was no other than the itinerant, formerly mentioned as present at the destruction of Joshua Geddes's stake-nets, the superior delicacy and force of whose execution would enable me to swear to his bow among a whole orchestra. I had the less reason to doubt his identity, because he played twice over the beautiful Scottish. air called Wandering Willie; and I could not help concluding that he did so for the purpose of intimating his own presence, since that was what the French call the nom de guerre of the performer. Hope will catch at the most feeble twig for support in extremity. I knew this man, though deprived of sight, to be bold, ingenious, and perfectly capable of acting as a guide. I believed I had won his good will, by having, in a frolic, assumed the character of his partner; and I remembered that, in a wild, wandering, and disorderly course of life, men, as they become loosened from the ordinary bonds of civil society, hold those of comradeship more closely sacred; so that honour is sometimes found among thieves, and faith and attachment in such as the law has terned vagrants. The history of Richard Cœur de Lion and his minstrel, Blondel, rushed, at the same time, on my mind, though I could not even then suppress a smile at the dignity of the examination, when applied to a blind fiddler and myself. Still there was something in all this to awaken a hope, that, if I could open a correspondence with this poor violer, he might be useful in extricating me from my present situation. His profession furnished me with some hope that this desired communication might be attained; since it is well known that, in Scotland, where there is so much national music, the words and airs of which are generally known, there is a kind of free-masonry among performers, by which they can, by the mere choice of a tune, express a great deal to the hearers. Personal allasions are often made in this manner, with much point and pleasantry; anấ nothing is more usual at public festivals, than that the air played to accompany a particular health or toast, is made the vehicle of compliment, of wit, and sometimes of satire. While these things passed through my mind rapidly, I heard my friend beneath recommence, for the third time, the air from which his own name had been probably adopted, when he was interrupted by his rustic auditors. "If thou canst play no other spring but that, mon, ho hadst best put up ho's poipes and be jogging. Squoire will be back anon, or Master Nixon, and we'll see who will pay poiper then." Oho, thought I, if I have no sharper ears than those of my friends Jan and Dorcas to encounter, I may venture an experiment upon them; and, as most expressive of my state of captivity, I sung two or three lines of the 137th psalm "By Babel's streams we sat and wept." The country people listened with attention, and, when I ceased, I heard them to whisper together in tones of com miseration, "Lack-a-day, poor soul! so pretty a man to be beside his wits!" "An he be that gate," said Wandering Willie, in a tone calculated to reach my ears, "I ken naething will raise his spirits like a spring." And he struck up, with great vigour and spirit, the lively and Scotch air, the words of which instantly occurred to me, "Oh whistle and I'll come t'ye, my lad, Though father and mother and a' should gae mad, I soon heard a clattering noise of feet in the court-yard, which I concluded to be Jan and Dorcas dancing a jigg in their Cumberland wooden clogs. Under cover of this din, I endeavoured to answer Willie's signal by whistling, as loud as I could, "Come back again and lo'e me He instantly threw the dancers out, by changing his air to "There's my thumb, I'll ne'er beguile thee." I no longer doubted that a communication betwixt us was happily established, and that, if I had an opportunity of speaking to the poor musician, I should find him willing to take my letter to the post, to invoke the assistance of some active magistrate, or of the commanding officer of Carlisle Castle, or, in short, to do whatever else I could point out, in the compass of his power, to contribute to my liberation. But to obtain speech of him, I must have run the risk of alarming the suspicions of Dorcas, if not of her yet more stupid Corydon. My ally's blindness prevented his receiving any communication by signs from the window-even if I could have ventured to make them, consistently with prudence-so that, notwithstanding the mode of intercourse we had adopted, was both circuitous and peculiarly liable to misapprehension, I saw nothing I could do better than to continue it, trusting my own and my correspondent's acuteness, in applying to the airs the meaning they were intended to convey. I thought of singing the words themselves of some significant song, but feared, I might, by doing so, attract suspicion. I endeavoured, therefore, to intimate my speedy departure from my present place of residence, by whistling the well known air with which festive parties in Scotrand usually conclude the dance. "Good night and joy be wi' ye a' It appeared that Willie's powers of intelligence were much more active than mine, and that, like a deaf person, accustomed to be spoken to by signs, he comprehended, from the very first notes, the whole meaning I intended to convey; and he accompanied me in the air with his violin, in such a manner as at once to show he understood my meaning, and to prevent my whistling from being attended to. His reply was almost immediate, and was conveyed in the old martial air of "Hey, Johnie lad, cock up your beaver." I run over the words, and fixed on the following stanza, as most applicable to my circumstances : "Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush, If these sounds alluded, as I hope they do, to the chance of assistance from my Scottish friends, I may indeed consider that a door is open to hope and freedom. I immediately replied with, "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; Farewell to the Highlands! farewell to the North! The bills of the Highlands for ever I love." Willie instantly played with a degree of spirit which night have awakened hope in Despair herself, if Despair could be supposed to understand Scotch music, the fine old Jacobite air, "For a' that, and a' that, And twice as much as a' that." I next endeavoured to intimate my wish to send notice of any condition to my friends; and despairing to find an air sufficiently expressive of my purpose, I ventured to sing a verse, which, in various forms, occurs so frequently in old ballads "Whare will I get a bonny boy He drowned the latter part of the verse by playing, with much emphasis, "Kind Robin lo'es me." Of this, though I ran over the verses of the song in my nind, I could make nothing; and before I could contrive any mode of intimating my uncertainty, a cry arose in the court-yard that Cristal Nixon was coming. My faithful |