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Longfellow once spoke of certain old love-letters which dropped down on the basement stairs from some place overhead; and there was the fable or the fact of a subterranean passage under the street from Craigie House to the old Batchelder House, which I relate to these letters with no authority I can allege.
I had made up my mind to keep the packet, being fully persuaded in my heart that Aunt Frances meant me to do so; but when Sir John Crawford came to Aberdeenshire, and visited Craigie Muir, and spent a night with us in the little gray house preparatory to bringing us to Haddo Court, he mentioned that he had received, amongst different papers of my aunt's, a document or letter I forget which alluding to this packet.
But in Craigie House dwelt the proud fair lady who was buried in the Cambridge church-yard with a slave at her head and a slave at her feet. "Dust is in her beautiful eyes," and whether it was they that smiled or wept in their time over those love-letters, I will leave the reader to say.
"No more you should, if you are a lad of mettle," said Craigengelt, the matter now taking a turn in which he could sympathise; "and if you carry this wench from him, it will break his heart." "That it will not," said Bucklaw; "his heart is all steeled over with reason and philosophy, things that you, Craigie, know nothing about more than myself, God help me.
You will please to pick up such things on board as you think will be acceptable to her, and send them as soon as possible; he does not mean to receive anything without payment." Lodged at head-quarters, then the Craigie house in Cambridge, the discomforts of war were reduced to a minimum, but none the less it was a trying time to Mrs.
"If it's a wee bit of a laddie, as we are led to expect," he said to the Shepherd, "he'll have no judgment of his own, and be dependent on them as has him in charge. Mr. Craigie will not be loosening his hold, and with only a weak woman and a sickly boy to deal with, he'll wind 'em around his finger like a wisp o' wool. It's my opinion we'll have Mr. Craigie to deal with more than ever."
He had for some time been a famous man and was subjected to much persecution from sight-seers which he bore good-naturedly. Standing one day at the Craigie House gate he was accosted by a lank backwoodsman: "Say, stranger, I have come from way back; kin you tell me how I kin git to see the great North American poet?"
"She is by no means the only one," continued Hester. "If she were, I could be happy here." "You are right, Het; you are quite a wise, small girl," said Betty. "Oh, dear," she added, "how I hate those monstrous houses! What would not I give to be back in the little, white stone house at Craigie Muir!" "And with darling Jean and dearest old Donald!" exclaimed Sylvia.
"My lord, the carriage waits," may be, in its right place, a highly dramatic speech, even though it be uttered with no emotion, and arouse no emotion in the person addressed. What Mrs. Craigie meant, I take it, was that, to be really dramatic, every speech must have some bearing, direct or indirect, prospective, present, or retrospective, upon individual human destinies.
"What has that to do with the Auld Laird?" asked Jock, much mystified. "Nothing at all, maybe," answered the Shepherd, "but it's a wise word to remember against our own time." "I wish Angus Niel would remember it," exclaimed Jean. "And Mr. Craigie no less," added Jock. "Well, well," said the Shepherd, "heard ye anything more in the village?"
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