CHAPTER XI

Enter time, as chorus
I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad; that make and unfold error,
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings Impute it not a crime
To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap.

         Winter’s Tale.

Our narration is now about to make a large stride, and omit a space of nearly seventeen years; during which nothing occurred of any particular consequence with respect to the story we have undertaken to tell.  The gap is a wide one; yet if the reader’s experience in life enables him to look back on so many years, the space will scarce appear longer in his recollection than the time consumed in turning these pages.

It was, then, in the month of November, about seventeen years after the catastrophe related in the last chapter, that, during a cold and stormy night, a social group had closed around the kitchen-fire of the Gordon Arms at Kippletringan, a small but comfortable inn kept by Mrs. Mac-Candlish in that village.  The conversation which passed among them will save me the trouble of telling the few events occurring during this chasm in our history, with which it is necessary that the reader should be acquainted.

Mrs. Mac-Candlish, throned in a comfortable easychair lined with black leather, was regaling herself and a neighbouring gossip or two with a cup of genuine tea, and at the same time keeping a sharp eye upon her domestics, as they went and came in prosecution of their various duties and commissions.  The clerk and precentor of the parish enjoyed at a little distance his Saturday night’s pipe, and aided its bland fumigation by an occasional sip of brandy and water.  Deacon Bearcliff, a man of great importance in the village, combined the indulgence of both parties:  he had his pipe and his tea-cup, the latter being laced with a little spirits.  One or two clowns sat at some distance, drinking their twopenny ale.

’Are ye sure the parlour’s ready for them, and the fire burning clear, and the chimney no smoking?’ said the hostess to a chambermaid.

She was answered in the affirmative.  ’Ane wadna be uncivil to them, especially in their distress,’ said she, turning to the Deacon.

’Assuredly not, Mrs. Mac-Candlish; assuredly not.  I am sure ony sma’ thing they might want frae my shop, under seven, or eight, or ten pounds, I would book them as readily for it as the first in the country.  Do they come in the auld chaise?’

‘I daresay no,’ said the precentor; ’for Miss Bertram comes on the white powny ilka day to the kirk—­and a constant kirk-keeper she is—­and it’s a pleasure to hear her singing the psalms, winsome young thing.’

‘Ay, and the young Laird of Hazlewood rides hame half the road wi’ her after sermon,’ said one of the gossips in company.  ’I wonder how auld Hazlewood likes that.’