‘Julia Mannering.’

CHAPTER XXXI

    Here’s a good world! 
     Knew you of this fair work?

          King John.

JULIA MANNERING to MATILDA MARCHMONT

’I must take up the thread of my story, my dearest Matilda, where I broke off yesterday.

’For two or three days we talked of nothing but our siege and its probable consequences, and dinned into my father’s unwilling ears a proposal to go to Edinburgh, or at least to Dumfries, where there is remarkably good society, until the resentment of these outlaws should blow over.  He answered with great composure that he had no mind to have his landlord’s house and his own property at Woodbourne destroyed; that, with our good leave, he had usually been esteemed competent to taking measures for the safety or protection of his family; that, if he remained quiet at home, he conceived the welcome the villains had received was not of a nature to invite a second visit, but should he show any signs of alarm, it would be the sure way to incur the very risk which we were afraid of.  Heartened by his arguments, and by the extreme indifference with which he treated the supposed danger, we began to grow a little bolder, and to walk about as usual.  Only the gentlemen were sometimes invited to take their guns when they attended us, and I observed that my father for several nights paid particular attention to having the house properly secured, and required his domestics to keep their arms in readiness in case of necessity.

’But three days ago chanced an occurrence of a nature which alarmed me more by far than the attack of the smugglers.

’I told you there was a small lake at some distance from Woodbourne, where the gentlemen sometimes go to shoot wild-fowl.  I happened at breakfast to say I should like to see this place in its present frozen state, occupied by skaters and curlers, as they call those who play a particular sort of game upon the ice.  There is snow on the ground, but frozen so hard that I thought Lucy and I might venture to that distance, as the footpath leading there was well beaten by the repair of those who frequented it for pastime.  Hazlewood instantly offered to attend us, and we stipulated that he should take his fowling-piece.  He laughed a good deal at the idea of going a-shooting in the snow; but, to relieve our tremors, desired that a groom, who acts as gamekeeper occasionally, should follow us with his gun.  As for Colonel Mannering, he does not like crowds or sights of any kind where human figures make up the show, unless indeed it were a military review, so he declined the party.

’We set out unusually early, on a fine, frosty, exhilarating morning, and we felt our minds, as well as our nerves, braced by the elasticity of the pure air.  Our walk to the lake was delightful, or at least the difficulties were only such as diverted us,—­a slippery descent, for instance, or a frozen ditch to cross, which made Hazlewood’s assistance absolutely necessary.  I don’t think Lucy liked her walk the less for these occasional embarrassments.