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FROM AN ETCHING BY C. O. MURRAY

MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE—"guy mannering"

 TWO 

GUY MANNERING, a young Englishman traveling through Scotland, stopped one night at the home of the Laird of Ellangowan. When the Laird learned that the young man had studied astrology, he begged him to cast the horoscope of his son, who had been born that night. What was Mannering's dismay to find that two catastrophes overhung the lad, one at his fifth, and the other at his twenty-first year! He told the father, however, that he might be warned; and later went his way.

The fortunes of the Laird of Ellangowan, Godfrey Bertram, waned rapidly. In addition to this, his son, Harry, at the age of five, was kidnapped. It was impossible to learn whether the child was alive or dead. The boy's mother died from the shock; and some years later the Laird himself followed her, leaving his daughter Lucy penniless.

In the meanwhile, Guy Mannering had become Colonel Mannering. He had married and had a daughter, Julia. She had fallen in love with a young officer, named Vanbeest Brown, who had served in India under Colonel Mannering. The colonel objected to him as a suitor, because of the obscurity of his birth.

When things were at their worst for Lucy Bertram, Colonel Mannering returned to England. Accidentally hearing of the straits to which she had been reduced, he at once invited her and her guardian to make their home with him and his daughter Julia.

Captain Brown followed the Mannerings to England; and finally he proved to be the long lost Harry Bertram, brother of Lucy. He had been abducted with the help of Meg Merrilies, a gypsy, and some smugglers, at the instigation of a man named Glossin, once agent for the Laird of Ellangowan, who had hoped to get possession of the Laird's property. He finally succeeded in this; but, after his crime was discovered, he died a violent death in prison. Bertram had been kidnapped and taken to Holland, where the name of Vanbeest Brown had been given him.

Meg Merrilies is regarded as one of the great characters of fiction.

"The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit, probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the gestures of a form which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic. Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between 'an oak and a green holly,' than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan.

"'For God's sake,' said Julia, pulling her purse, 'give that dreadful woman something, and bid her go away,'

"'I cannot,' said Bertram: 'I must not offend her.'

"'What keeps you here?' said Meg, exalting the harsh and rough tones of her hollow voice. 'Why do you not follow? Must your hour call you twice? Do you remember your oath?—were it at kirk or market, wedding or burial,'—and she held high her skinny forefinger in a menacing attitude....

"Almost stupefied with surprise and fear, the young ladies watched with anxious looks the course of Bertram, his companion, and their extraordinary guide. Her tall figure moved across the wintry heath with steps so swift, so long, and so steady, that she appeared rather to glide than to walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall men, apparently scarce equaled her in height, owing to her longer dress and high headgear. She proceeded straight across the common, without turning aside to the winding path by which passengers avoided the inequalities and little rills that traversed it in different directions. Thus the diminishing figures often disappeared from the eye as they dived into such broken ground, and again ascended to sight when they were past the hollow. There was something frightful and unearthly, as it were, in the rapid and undeviating course which she pursued, undeterred by any of the impediments which usually incline a traveler from the direct path. Her way was as straight, and nearly as swift, as that of a bird through the air. At length they reached those thickets of natural wood which extended from the skirts of the common towards the glades and brook of Derneleugh, and were there lost to the view."

"Guy Mannering" was published in 1815, the second of the Waverley novels to appear. It is said to have been the result of six weeks' work. There are less than forty characters in the book, and the plot is not very complicated.

 THREE 

IN "Heart of Midlothian" Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. The real heroine of the book is Jeanie Deans, whose character was drawn from that of Helen Walker, the daughter of a farmer in Scotland. With a few variations Jeanie's story was hers.

Effie Deans, the sister of Jeanie, was doomed to death for child murder. Jeanie might have saved her on the witness stand by lying; but this she could not do even to save her sister. However, she showed the depth of her love by going on foot all the way to London and getting a pardon from the king.

Effie was released; but even before Jeanie reached home, she eloped with her betrayer, George Staunton, who married her and took her to London with him. There they lived as Lord and Lady Staunton, for George succeeded to the title of his father.

Jeanie married a Presbyterian minister, and by a combination of circumstances, learned that Effie's son had never really been killed, but had been given to the care of Meg Murdockson, whose daughter Madge had also been betrayed by Staunton, or Geordie Robertson, as he was known in Scotland.

When Sir George Staunton learned this, he was anxious to discover the whereabouts of his son. He traced him to a certain band of vagabonds, of which Black Donald was the chief. Staunton attempted to arrest the leader, but in the affray was shot by a young lad called the Whistler. This lad later proved to be his long lost son.

Effie, who was now Lady Staunton, overcome with grief, attempted to drown her sorrows in the gayeties of the fashionable world. But this was in vain. She could not forget her grief, and finally she retired to a convent in France, where she remained until her death.

Jeanie and her husband were given a good parish by the Duke of Argyle, and through Effie's influence the children of her sister were helped greatly.

"Heart of Midlothian" was first published anonymously in 1818. It takes its name from the Tolbooth, or old jail of Edinburgh, where Scott imagined Effie to have been in prison. This book has fewer characters than any other of Scott's novels. It has also a smaller variety of incidents, and less description of scenery. One of the most touching scenes in all fiction is that in which Jeanie visits her sister in the prison under the eyes of the jailor, Ratcliffe.

"Ratcliffe marshalled her the way to the apartment where