30 LOVE, JEALOUSY, AND VENGEANCE: A HIGHLAND TALE. BY SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER, bart. WITH the exception of the Point of Stoir, to which the old red sandstone formation gives a comparatively level exterior, the district of Assynt, in Sutherland, exhibits a peculiarly wild surface. When looked at from the sea, it pre- | sents a strange assemblage of barren roundtopped hummocks of granite, resembling vast iron-looking blisters. Those on the very borders of the coast appear as if enormous waves had been for centuries heaving over their bald heads, till every earthy particle had been washed from them; and thus it is that the country behind them is hastily set down in the note-book of the voyager as of the same character. But a little more attentive observation shows that the rocks are sprinkled with irregularly formed patches of soil, yielding corn and rich grass, and producing a strange speckled appearance of green, mingled with reddish gray; and when the voyager lands and explores the country, which he must make up his mind to do with no little personal fatigue, he finds that these apparent hillocks are in reality small hills of rock, which are mostly isolated, and which have hollows of corresponding depth running around them, united to those in their vicinity by communicating ravines and glens of the wildest character, where lakes and ponds of surpassing beauty, enamelled with water lilies, are seen to unfold themselves like mirrors at every turning, in which the mimic reflexions are frequently dimpled and disturbed by the playful trouts with which they swarm. These lakes and pools, diversified by rocks and promontories, are generally strung together by the winding threads of small streams, many of which throw themselves over wild cascades. And as you climb laboriously over the rocky heights, stepping from one stone to another, or dive through the hollows by a continued process of active jumping over bog and rill, you find many a cottage perched on the sides of the eminences, each generally sheltered by some broadfaced cliff, that renders it, and its curiously shaped patches of oats, bear, or potatoes, safe from the blasts that sweep furiously over the country from the Western Ocean. Birch and oak copse, and even trees, are not wanting in certain parts; and they were probably much more abundant at the period we are going to treat of, that is, about a century and a half ago. And to add to those beauties that every where disclose themselves, Flora has been extremely generous in scattering her vegetable charms every where in great profusion. But that which gives the finish to all these varying scenes by which the traveller is successively bewitched, is the general background that is formed by the bold outlines and craggy steeps of the more inland mountains, the wider glens of which contain lakes of considerable extent. We have said enough to convince the stoutest and hardiest pedestrian that it must be no joke to have some twenty long Scottish miles or so, of such a country, between him and his resting-place. It is true that the noble Duke who owns the vast domain of which this is a part, and who, with his predecessors, has been so much lied against and maligned, apparently for no other reason than because their beneficence, and the selfsacrifices they have made, have been unbounded, and that any thing like them is rarely, if ever, met with in other Highland proprietors; it is true, we say, that his Grace has, at an enormous private expense, carried excellent roads through the country in all directions, entirely free from tolls, which make it as easy to travel, where they exist, as it is in any part of the kingdom, and consequently strangers use them in abundance. But at the period at which the circumstances we are about to relate took place, the country was a terra incognita to all but its own inhabitants. It is now, then, about a century and a half ago, when two young girls might well be said to flourish in Assynt; for they were the beauties of the district, and each had her host of admirers. The one, who was dark, with raven ringlets, elevated brow and nose, black piercing eyes, and with a full and prominent lip of haughty expression, was familiarly called Janet Dhu, or Black Janet. The other was denominated Morh Bane, or Fair Marion, from the exquisite fairness of her complexion, her golden hair, and her bright blue eyes. They were neighbours' children; and though of tempers and dispositions extremely opposite, they grew up in friendship together, until it happened that their path was crossed one morning, as they went with baskets and hooks to cut bent grass on a sandy part of the coast, by a tall handsome young fisherman and farmer, called Cathol Kerr. This is a name which tradition says was imported into Sutherland from Ireland, whence the ancestors of the young man had come some generations before. Cathol had been seen by neither of the young women previous to this accidental meeting; but he seemed to have known' them, for he addressed them courteously by their names, walked with them along the margin of the beach to the place where their task was to begin, gave them his assistance in selecting the spot where the bent grew longest, and where it could be most abundantly reaped; and then, after having, as is not uncommon in such rustic interviews, told them who he was, and expressed a hope that he might meet with them soon again, he parted with them in a tolerably advanced state of intimacy, and proceeded along the shore to follow out his vocation. "He is a beautiful man!" said Morh Bane in Gaelic, after both had stood gazing at his fine, tall, well-formed, athletic, and firmly-knit figure, until it had disappeared among the bent-covered sand hills. "A beautiful man!" exclaimed Janet Dhu, in the same language, but with a vehemence that startled her friend, who glanced with surprise at her flushed countenance. "A beautiful man, Mohr Bane! He is a god, if ever there was one on earth!" " "Nay," replied Morh Bane, "I should think it profane to call him that; but, in my judgment, he has as much beauty as ever God gave to man.' "Fie, girl!” cried Janet Dhu, with yet greater vehemence. "You have no heart in you, if you can say no more than that! I say he is a god; and he shall be my god for the rest of my life! I will worship him; and if I have any charms about me and such I have, If the lads be not false in what they tell me--I shall leave none of woman's arts untried, but I shall have him for my love, even if I should follow him barefoot over the world till I win him!" "Would such behaviour be maiden-like ?" said Morh Bane, with her eyes cast modestly down towards the sand. "What would the neighbours say of a lass who should woo so boldly?" "What are the neighbours to me?" cried Janet. "I care not for neighbours !-nay, I care not for kith nor kin! He shall be mine, I tell you, though I die for it. My heart has been suddenly so filled with love for him, that I feel there is now room in it for none else." "Say not so," replied Morh Bane, mildly. "Though you may love him so much, your mother must still be dear to you; and surely you would not put grief into her old heart, or make her ashamed of her daughter's forwardness, even to win the love of Cathol Kerr?" "I tell you," said Janet, with still greater excitement, "that much as I love my poor old mother, and I do love her very much,-my love for him is of another sort. For his love I would consent to part even with my mother, ay, and to tine all else of good both here and hereafter." "Janet!" exclaimed Morh Bane, with surprise and horror, "speak not at that wild rate. Think of your immortal soul." sand into the air, and leaving her basket forgotten on the ground, and waving her sickle to and fro, she strode away from Morh Bane, and was soon lost among the sandy hillocks. Morh Bane stood for some moments in silent astonishment and dismay. She was well aware of the violence of her companion's temper, but she had never seen it excited to so great an extent as this before. She sat down on the ground beside her basket, and wept bitterly, for a considerable time. She then roused herself to her task, at which she toiled with a heavy heart for some two or three hours. A very cursory consideration of her feelings told her, that, as far as they were concerned, Janet had no little cause for jealousy, seeing that she herself felt that she could not help loving Cathol Kerr. Then the distressing scene she had had with one who had been so long her friend, and who had now so strangely uttered threatenings and curses against her, returned so powerfully upon her, that she was unable to pursue her work, and she again sat down on the ground and wept. As she thought the matter over, she was disposed to believe that some sudden madness had attacked Janet. And madness, indeed, it certainly was; but it was a madness which had its origin in the excess of her sudden and intense love for Cathol Kerr, working on a mind unaccustomed to restrain its passions, and at once generating ungovernable jealousy and hate of a rival; and these were terrible ingredients to come, into contact with so fiery and untamable a spirit as that of Janet Dhu. As Morh Bane was still seated on the ground, with her head reclining on the bent grass that filled her basket, her blue eyes suffused in tears, and directed towards heaven, she was startled by an approaching footstep; and, looking round, she beheld Cathol Kerr, the unconscious cause of her present distress. "Morh Bane! and weeping! Why do I find you thus?" said he, in a soft soothing voice, and with much earnestness of manner. "What can have happened to have banished those smiles that gladdened that lovely face in the morning? Tell me the cause of this change. Has any one dared to offend you? for if he be man I will make him rue it. Speak! answer me, I entreat you. You seem faint-some sudden illness-water perhaps ah, the well yonder-" and he ran off immediately and brought water from the spring in a little cuach; and, seating himself beside her, he put it to her lips. "And who are you, thus to preach to me?" cried Janet, violently enraged, "and what is it to you how I love him? I see it," cried she, after a pause, "I see it all. You love him yourself, and you would fain put me off him, that you may the inore easily work out your own wiles to catch him. But mark my words!" continued she, with all the fury of jealousy upon her, and with all the air and action of a prophetess, as she poured forth her denunciation, "My heaviest curse shall fall upon you, if you but look at him. And here," continued she, stooping down and scooping up a large handful of the minute dry sand at her feet, "here, I swear by all the spirits of hell, that these millions of grains which I now scatter to the winds, are but few compared to the number of those torments which my hourly curses shall bring upon you, if you should ever win him from "I am so well, thank you," said Morh Bane, me!" And having uttered these terrible words," that I may now rise and hasten home." with the fury of an enraged demon, her whole "Nay," said Cathol, in a tender voice," rest frame straining convulsively, her dark eyes flash- yet a while you have not yet recovered strength ing lightnings, her bosom heaving, and her hair for so long a walk, with so heavy a burden as breaking loose from its binding, and streaming that; and when you do move, you shall have the from her head wildly in the breeze, she threw the help of my arm, and I shall bear your basket on "A sudden faintness came over me," said she, with some confusion, after having drank a little of the water. "I thank you kindly, Cathol, for your charitable attention." "Charitable!" exclaimed Cathol. you better?" "But are my back. But I would speak with you, lovely Morh Bane! This is too blessed an opportunity to be allowed to slip by. I know I must appear as a stranger to you, seeing that I never was known to you till this morning. But your angel face has never left this heart of mine since the first day I accidentally beheld you in the church you go to, where I one day went as a stranger. I have sat in none other since. Take then the truth from me. My love for you is such, that if you cannot return it, my life is doomed to be forlorn, since I never could love another. I must learn my fate, then, whether it be for happiness such as few men may know, or whether it be for despair. But I do not ask you to answer me now. I would not take you thus by surprise. I would have you know me, so that you may judge whether you could love me, or be happy with me as your husband; and if I should be so blessed that you could bring your mind to think so, I can promise you an honest heart, and a strong working arm for your support, together with a snug, well-plenished cottage for your abode, and some bonny rigs of a well-stocked farm." thus connected two hillocks with each other; when, as they were again about to descend into the next hollow, they came at once on the cottage where Janet Dhu lived with her aged mother. It was perched on the brow of the hillock to the right, and connected with it was the irregular drystone fence of a small patch of garden-ground. These simple objects would, of themselves, have brought back to the mind of Morh Bane all that had passed in the morning, had they not been recalled to her in a manner much more striking. The sound of the footsteps of the two lovers, for lovers they now most certainly were, struck upon the ear of Janet Dhu, who was at that moment, whether accidentally or otherwise, engaged within the little garden. She raised her tall form halfway over the fence, and, violent as was her spirit, and high-charged as it then was with combustible passions, she was so utterly confounded by beholding Cathol Kerr linked arm in arm with Morh Bane, and both walking together in a manner that left her without a shadow of doubt as to the terms that subsisted between them, that she stood fixed and silent, like a figure of stone. Cathol Kerr was So suddenly had this declaration come upon too much occupied with his present happiness, to Morh Bane, that the whole tide of her blood for- notice even the cottage or the garden. His eyes, sook her heart for a moment, and rushed into her indeed, never wandered up the bank, or any where face; and she fell back, like a drooping lily, upon else, away from the object of their undivided atCathol's bosom. Speedily recovering herself, and traction. But it was not so with Morh Bane. rising with blushing cheeks and downcast eyes, The bust and the terrible countenance of Janet she stammered out a few confused and half-intel-Dhu appeared to her like the sculptured image of ligible words, in which her very desire to conceal the love which she so deeply felt, made her unwittingly the more betray it. Cathol Kerr was a happy man; and he became still more so, when Morh Bane, after having somewhat recovered herself, opened her guileless heart to him; and, whilst she thanked him for that delay which he had allowed her, and which she accepted, that she might know more of him before she should be called on to give him her virgin pledge, she yet, in her innocence, made so many soft admissions, that he felt in his heart that the foundation of his future happiness was surely laid. How sweet was their converse as they walked together homewards to her father's cottage; he carrying her laden basket! The distance was considerable, and the way such as our readers may imagine, from the general description of the country which we have already given. The path ran winding through hollows, among rough hillocks, where Cathol's arm and hand were essential to aid and support his companion, and to help her over the bad steps, though, strange to say, many was the time that Morh Bane had travelled it alone, and in the dark too. She, poor girl! was all this time in a kind of waking dream: but it was a dream that partook of Elysium. All thoughts of Janet Dhu, and the dreadful scene of the morning, were now banished by the ecstatic conviction which entirely possessed her, that she was beloved by Cathol Kerr. They had gone about two-thirds of the way towards her father's cottage, and had gained the summit of a narrow neck of ground that came sloping down from the knolls on either side, and one of the Norwegian Furies. Her complexion was pale as marble; and her long dark locks, which she had so recently seen her, in her rage, toss loose to the winds, were now thrown into the wildest confusion by that volcanic agitation which her soul had been undergoing. Her eyeballs were stretched, and they were fixed on her rival, and they followed her as she went, and darted murderous lightnings after her from the fiery brain within. They reached the very heart of Morh Bane, and if she had not been supported by the strong arm of Cathol Kerr, she must have fallen to the ground. As it was, she was quite unable to remove her eyes from the basilisk gaze that followed her, until the downward path that she and Cathol took, winding round the hillock, shut out the terrific figure from her view. Meanwhile, Cathol Kerr's happiness was augmented, by perceiving that the beloved form of her he was supporting leaned more heavily upon him as he led her onwards, from which he secretly congratulated himself on her increasing confidence in him. But few were the words that fell from the poor girl, and little were they to the purpose of the conversation he addressed to her. At length they reached her father's cottage. He was an old fisherman who could now do little for himself. His darling Morh Bane was the sole object of his solicitude, and many an anxious thought he had regarding her. Cathol Kerr soon made the old man thoroughly acquainted with the object of his visit, and of all that had passed between him and his daughter. Morh Bane's silence, and confusion, and paleness of countenance, were all very naturally attributed, both by father and lover, to maiden modesty. The father personally knew Kerr and his excellent and amiable character; and these, with his comfortable circumstances, were so notoriously in the mouths of all the neighbourhood, that the certain prospect which was thus so suddenly opened to the father of seeing his only child placed in the arms of such a protector, before he should go to his long home, appeared to him like a miraculous and kind dispensation from the hand of Providence. He rejoiced with gratitude and trembling, to see those anxieties regarding his daughter, that had so long haunted his imagination like spectres, and which had often robbed him of his necessary sleep, now at once put to flight. He gave way to his joy in floods of tears, whilst he embraced his future sonin-law over and over. Cathol was at once made, as it were, free of the house. He was told, not by Morh Bane, but by her father, that the oftener he came there the more welcome he should be. At length, after a greatly prolonged visit, during which he had risen more than a dozen times to go away, and had again seated himself, now seduced by his own wishes, and now by the entreaties of the old man, he finally departed from the house of his future father in-law. Cathol Kerr had spent so much time so happily in this manner, that the shades of evening were beginning to descend before he took his way towards his own home. His path was not the same that he had come with the girl of his heart, but it was altogether of the same description. One portion of it led him by the edge of one of those small pond-like lakes which we have already noticed as being common in Assynt. The little hollow spot, the bottom of which was almost entirely filled by its sheet of mirror, was set in a frame of cliffs of no very great height, which were clothed here and there with patches of scrambling brushwood. The moon had just risen over these; and if an artist had desired to have painted Diana admiring herself in her own especial looking-glass, he might have here studied his subject from the life. But there were circumstances here also which the poet alone could have described. All nature was motionless, and perfect stillness reigned every where, except only when the drowsy hum of beetles, or of other insects brought abroad by the warm air, was faintly heard. Cathol Kerr, though a rustic, was a lover of the beauties of the works of God, and his spirit was at that moment well attuned to harmony with such a scene. There was one feature in it, however, which, although it might have added greatly to its sentiment, both with the poet and the painter, was yet, as regarded the present feelings of Cathol Kerr, rather like one of those touching discords which are now and then thrown into musical composition, for the purpose of increasing the general effect. A small, green point, washed on all sides by the waters of the lake, was nearly covered over by the graves of an old burial ground, where reposed the ashes of many an individual who had been the hero of his brief day, and where the recumbent and mailed effigies of some, rudely carved in stone, lay scat tered about among the rank herbage. One or two of these were raised about a foot or so above the earth by pillars roughly hewn; and on one of them, to the surprise, and, as will not be wondered at when the period is considered, in some small degree to the alarm of Kerr, was seated a woman's figure, which appeared as still as the stone on which it rested. Cathol stopped abruptly when it first caught his eye; but it was only for a moment, for he had a stout heart; and although he firmly believed it to be some supernatural appearance, he immediately resolved to ascertain what it was. He advanced boldly towards it therefore, until he was within a few feet of it, and instantly addressed it. "Who or what may you be?" said he, in the Gaelic language; from which, as we must again once for all warn our readers, all the dialogues of our present narrative are translated. "Who may you be who have chosen such a place as this to rest in ?" The figure turned its head towards him, the moonlight fell upon its face, which had been shaded by a plaid thrown loosely over the head and person, and Kerr beheld the features of Janet Dhu. But there now remained in them none of that storm by which, as we have seen, they had been so fearfully agitated in the morning. They were calm, tranquil, and placid as the unruffled surface of the little sheet of water on the margin of which she was seated. Janet could be a deep dissembler, and she could always, with due time for preparation, seem to be what she pleased, when it suited her purpose to appear different from what she really was. "Cathol Kerr! is it you?" said she, mildly, as she arose and saluted the young man, with great modesty of mien and grace of manner. "What, Janet!" exclaimed Cathol; you so far from home at this hour! Where have you been?" "I have been some miles over there to see a friend," replied Janet. "The way was bad, and I felt weary and almost faint from a slight sprain, and so I sat down here to rest me a little, thinking that may be some one might come by, for truly I shall have ill making out to our house unless some kind person gives me the convoy." "You ""Tis lucky I came, then," said Cathol. shall have my arm, long as the way may be. Your mother must be wearying for you by this time." "That she will, indeed," said Janet meekly; "but for all that, I cannot think of trailing you so long a travel out of your way; and I am rested now.' " "Tut! speak not of that," said Cathol. "Here take my arm, if you be but ready, and let us be moving." Janet took his arm accordingly, and she took it moreover with the full intention of taking her own use thoroughly out of it; for on the pretence of feebleness and fatigue, she made it the fulcrum by which she drew herself towards him so as to bring her person into very close union with that of the young man who supported her. In reply to the simply expressed apologies with which she accompanied this manœuvre, the unsuspicious Cathol bid her make her mind easy, for that her weight was nothing to him; and he told her to lean well on him, and, as he said so, he drew her, if possible, yet closer to him. But thus united, their onward progress was so very much impeded, that they made but slow way through paths which were in themselves so difficult, and they were frequently compelled to stop ere they could pass over the bad steps. "I know not how to thank you, dear Cathol," said Janet, on one of these occasions, and after much commonplace conversation had passed between them; "and yet, silly girl that I am, what am I saying? for I have no right to call you dear." "Nay, then," said Cathol jocularly," you need not study your words so particularly, in order to thank me for what I would do for any woman under the sun, and much more for so pretty a girl as you are, Janet, under that moon.' "Do you think me pretty?" said Janet, with great apparent simplicity, and, at the same time, laying an especial emphasis on both the pronouns. "Who can see you, even for a moment, and not think you so, Janet?" replied Cathol. "Ah!" replied she, "it's little I care what others may think of me, if I thought that you could but think so." "Well, then," replied Cathol, "I do think, and I do say, that you are very beautiful.” "Friend! - brother!" cried Janet, rising more and more into her true character, and throwing off alike all that bodily weakness, and simplicity of mind, which she had assumed. "What are such fruitless affections to me? But stay; you say you think me beautiful-very beautiful; and yet you can only love me as a sister, or as a friend merely? Then you must love another!" She paused for his reply, with her head bent eagerly forward, as if, by the light of that moon, she would have read his very heart. "Nay, now you press me too hard, Janet," replied Cathol; "but, as you have been so open with me, I must e'en tell you; and, perhaps, all circumstances considered, it is but fair that you should know, that I do love another." "Morh Bane!" cried Janet, in a deep sepulchral voice. 66 Nay, I cannot, and I ought not to name names," said Cathol, somewhat surprised at her knowledge. "In telling you that my love is already another's, I have told you all that in any way concerns you, and I can tell you no more." "You have, indeed, told me enough," said Janet bitterly. "And do you think that, out of what you have told me, I cannot gather the whole truth? You love Morh Bane! You love her, and yet what is your love to her, compared to the madness with which I love you? But, in loving Morh Bane, you love, as you think, maidenly modesty, and virtue, and a woman with an angel's temper! Ha! ha! ha! - Poor blind man! poor blind Cathol! Little do you know that in wedding Morh Bane you will wed yourself to lightness, and looseness, and the temper of a devil, all covered by unmatched deceit." "Hold, base woman!" cried Cathol Kerr, unable, for a moment, to restrain his rage. “I have seen and heard enough of Morh Bane to know what she really is. It is yourself you have been describing in these wicked words. It is you who are the light one, as your behaviour towards me this night has but too well proved. It is you who are full of deceit, and well have you tried it on me this night; but your affected simplicity has been thrown away on me. As to your devil's temper "Do you truly say so?" exclaimed she, with a wild expression of rapture, which she could not restrain. "Then may I tell you my whole mind, like an honest girl. I love you, dearest Cathol, more than tongue can tell! I so love you that I am prepared to die for you. Nay, I must die if I cannot be thine. So, take pity on me, dearest Cathol! and if you think that I have beauty, as you say I have, oh, tell me that you will love me! Oh, Cathol!" continued she, throwing off, altogether, that mask of simplicity which she had hitherto worn, “tell me! — tell me, that you love me! I know that, in thus opening my inmost soul to you, I am breaking down the bounds that mankind say should confine a modest maiden's speech; but never woman loved before as I now love you, dearest Cathol! You are all this world-you are Heaven itself to me! and, if I cannot gain you, neither earth, with all its wealth, nor Heaven, with all its promised joys, could make up to me for the loss of you. Crush me not with despair, then! but take me-take me, if not for your wife, "Now you shall not want proof of that too," oh, take me for your slave! I will work for you- said Janet, at once giving full way to her fury. I will follow you, barefoot, throughout the world," Accursed be your loves! may no union ever adoring you as I go! Take me take me, dearest Cathol; all that I ask of you is to make me your own!" And, before Kerr, in the utter astonishment and confusion into which he was thrown by this maniac address, could prevent her, she threw herself into his arms, and clasped him to her breast, weeping and sobbing convulsively. "Janet!" said Cathol, after recovering himself from his astonishment, and speaking in a compassionate tone, whilst he gently relieved himself from take place between you! Or, if it does, may it But union between you there Morh Bane shall never marry Cathol Kerr, unless she will wed his corpse!" and suddenly drawing a dirk from her bosom, she sprang upon him, ere he was aware, and buried its blade in his breast. She tarried only to see that he fell backwards; and |