Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][merged small]

So the red Indian, by Ontario's side,
Nursed hardy on the brindled panther's hide,

As fades his swarthy race, with anguish sees
The white man's cottage rise beneath the trees;
He leaves the shelter of his native wood,
He leaves the murmur of Ohio's flood,
And forward rushing in indignant grief,
Where never foot has trode the fallen leaf,
He bends his course where twilight reigns sublime,
O'er forests silent since the birth of time.

SCENES OF INFANCY.

In tracing the rise and progress of the Scottish Maroon war, we must not omit to mention that years had now rolled on, and that little Harry Bertram, one of the hardiest and most lively children that ever made a sword and grenadier's cap of rushes, now approached his fifth revolving birthday. A hardihood of disposition, which early developed itself, made him already

a little wanderer; he was well acquainted with every patch of lea ground and dingle around Ellangowan, and could tell in his. broken language upon what baulks grew the bonniest flowers, and what copse had the ripest nuts. He repeatedly terrified his attendants by clambering about the ruins of the old castle, and had more than once made a stolen excursion as far as the gypsy hamlet.

Upon these occasions he was generally brought back by Meg Merrilies, who, though she could not be prevailed upon to enter the Place of Ellangowan after her nephew had been given up to the press gang, did not apparently extend her resentment to the child. On the contrary, she often contrived to way-lay him in his walks, sing him a gypsy song, give him a ride upon her jack-ass, and thrust into his pocket a piece of gingerbread or a red-cheeked apple. This woman's ancient attachment to the family, repelled and checked in every other direction, seemed to rejoice in ha

ving some object on which it could yet repose and expand itself. She prophesied an hundred times, "that young Mr Henry would be the pride o' the family, and there had nae been sick a sprout frae the auld aik, since the death of Arthur MacDingawaie, that was killed in the battle o' the Bloody Bay; as for the present stick, it was good for naething but firewood." Upon one occasion, when the child was ill, she lay all night below the window, chaunting a rhyme which she believed sovereign as a febrifuge, and could neither be prevailed upon to enter the house, nor to leave the station she had chosen, till she was informed that the crisis was over.

The affection of this woman became matter of suspicion, not indeed to the Laird, who was never hasty in suspecting evil, but to his wife, who had indifferent health and poor spirits. She was now far advanced in a second pregnancy, she Could not walk abroad herself, the wo

man who attended upon Harry was young and thoughtless, and she prayed Dominie Sampson to undertake the task of watching the boy in his rambles, when he should not be otherwise accompanied. The Dominie loved his young charge, and was enraptured with his own success, in having already brought him so far in his learning as to spell words of three sylla bles. The idea of this early prodigy of erudition being carried off by the gypsies, like a second Adam Smith, was not to be tolerated; and accordingly, though the charge was contrary to all his habits of life, he readily undertook it, and might be seen stalking about with a mathematical problem in his head, and his eye upon a child of five years old, whose rambles led him into an hundred awkward: situations. Twice was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow, once he fell into the brook crossing at the steppingstones, and another time was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend,

in attempting to gather a water-lily for the young Laird. It was the opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on the latter occasion, that the Laird might as well trust the care of his child to a " potatoe-bogle;" but the good Dominie bore all his disasters with gravity and serenity equally imperturbable. "Prodi-gi-ous !" was the only ejaculation they ever extorted from the much-enduring man.

[ocr errors]

The Laird had, by this time, determi ned to make root and branch-work with the Maroons of Derncleugh. The old. servants shook their heads at his proposal, and even Dominie Sampson ventured upon an indirect remonstrance. As, how

ever, it was couched in the oracular phrase, "Ne moveas Camerinam," neither the allusion, nor the language in which it was expressed, were calculated for Mr Bertram's edification, and matters proceeded against the gypsies in form of law. Every door in the hamlet was chalked by the ground officer, in token of a formal warning to

« PreviousContinue »