Miles Lawson;

OR,

THE YEWS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "HOW TO SEE THE ENGLISH LAKES," ETC.

"Therefore, although it be a history Homely and rude, I will relate the same, For the delight of a few natural hearts." WORDSWORTH.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY IRA BRADLEY & CO.

162 WASHINGTON STREET.

CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The Homestead

Chapter II. Conscience

Chapter III. The Snow Drift

Chapter IV. The Search

Chapter V. Home Again

Chapter VI. The Mountain Echoes

Chapter VII. Changing Seasons

MILES LAWSON;

OR,

THE YEWS.

CHAPTER I.

THE HOMESTEAD.

"The lonely cottage in the guardian nook, Hath stirred then deeply—with its own dear brook, Its own small pasture—almost its own sky." WORDSWORTH.

BENEATH the crags which overhang one of the deep mountain valleys of Westmoreland, there nestles an old farm-house, whose low, irregular roof, deep stone porch, and large round chimneys, make it a type of its class. Its windows are low, wide, and mullioned; and on the sunny side, next the small garden, they are quite embowered by an ancient jasmine, an old-fashioned cabbage rose, and a broad sheet of ivy, whose twisted stems are as large as those of a good-sized tree, and whose long, clinging arms clasp the walls nearly all round the building, festooning and fringing even the great round chimneys. Those chimneys are almost as large as little lime-kilns; but the smoke, which curls up in gentle volumes, is of that pure blue tint which betokens it to be the breath of a peat fire. The house is beautifully white—whitewashed afresh by loving hands at every Whitsuntide Scrow. *

* The great annual house-cleaning of the north.

But the glory of the homestead consists in its two enormous yew trees, a pair of sombre giants, which are so old that they never seem to grow older. They became stiff, twisted and furrowed with age, so many centuries ago, that a few generations time, a few odd scores of years here and there, are nothing to them now—a mere trifle that is not worth noticing. And so there they stretch their huge branches towards each other, across the flagged path which leads straight up from the garden wicket to the pointed porch, making a dim twilight of their own, even at mid-day.

There is a rustic seat encircling the trunk of one of the brother yew trees. Ah! That is Miles's work. Miles, the oldest son of the house, cut those billets and branches out of the little copse-wood at the entrance of the glen, and made them into a seat for his sister Alice to rest on, when she is sewing in the golden light of the summer evenings. There is a cluster of larches, as well as a spreading oak and a sycamore, grouped about the farm buildings; but the place borrows its name from none of these, and for three hundred years it has been known as "The Yews." A slab of stone, let into the wall of the house, just above the porch, bears the date 1559.

Pass through that deep stone porch, and you enter the farm kitchen, a long room, whose low, raftered ceiling is made lower still by the rack which is stretched across it, on which rest flitches of smoked bacon, and a large assortment of dried herbs and simples; for Mrs. Lawson is famed through the dales for her herb teas and febrifuges. She is known, too, for better things than these; for the perfume of her humble piety spreads like an atmosphere around her, though her daily cup has long been seasoned with the bitter herbs of affliction. She does not complain of these distasteful draughts, but declares that they are the best of medicines, the very things to strengthen and purify the soul's health.

"If they were not good for me, I shouldn't have them. My Saviour knows what a bitter cup is; and he wouldn't hand it to me unless he saw I wanted it."

Watch her as she sits in her rocking chair, which is softly cushioned with little diamonds of patchwork. That many-colored patchwork is a mosaic representing her whole life. She has often expounded the story from those little pictured memorials. This lilac spot ("pop," she calls it) is a relic of her first short frock: the pink square is the only survivor of the dress she wore on her first visit to Kendal—to her a wonderful metropolis, which she thought could be like nothing less than Jerusalem itself, "beautiful for situation, on the sides of the north." Ah! That "innocent" chintz was her wedding gown. Her Miles chose it himself, and he had been a good husband to her, "walking in his house with a perfect heart," and trying to bring up his children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

Whenever Mrs. Lawson spoke on serious subjects, she dropped unconsciously into the language of Scripture: for she had been a close student of only one book; and after Miles was taken from her, that book had been the household lamp which had lightened the darkness that had fallen upon The Yews. She has that old family Bible on her lap now, as she sits beside the large open hearth; and the look of settled repose on her brow is a fine commentary on the words which she is now reading: "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." Now her eye is following her daughter Alice's lively motions, as she sees her through the open door of the cottage parlor, where she is dusting the furniture.

That room has a delightful old-world look; it is panelled all round with black oak, cracked and worm-eaten, but still shining. The mantel-piece is of carved dark oak likewise; and faces, hideous as masks, there display their long-lived rage or changeless smiles. Opposite the fire-place is an ancient chest, with the name "MILES LAWESON, 1562," cut on it in high relief, and the motto, "FEARE GOD, AND WORKE RYTEOUSNESSE," runs along on a ribbon-like scroll, which binds together a pair of stiff trees, like gooseberry bushes, but which are evidently designed to represent the goodly Yews. This, then, is the muniment room of the Lawson family.

They were not of gentle birth; but they have been a race of sturdy, free-born yeomen, "statesmen" * of the dales, watching jealously over the integrity of their fell-side acres, and of their few green meadows beside the stream: and in every generation since 1562, has there been a young "Miles Lawson of the Yews" to transmit the memory of him of the old oak chest.

* "Estatesmen:" Small freeholders, whose little properties often remain in the same family, from generation to generation, for centuries.

This sombre-looking parlor is Alice's quiet world of romance; it is her "chamber of imagery." For here her young mind, stimulated by the antique features which surrounds her, loves to picture the scenes and people of former days.

The chief source whence she draws her genealogical groupings of Lawsons (of whom she firmly believes the hideous faces on the mantle-piece to be faithful portraits), is the fine historical memory of Mark Wilson, the itinerating schoolmaster of the dales. Mark is expected to-day at the Yews, to take up his residence there for the next month, in the course of his regular routine journey from homestead to homestead. * He is the orphan son of the old curate of one of the neighboring dales, who could leave him from his spare pittance little besides his moderate store of learning and his thinly furnished bookshelves. But with this important legacy Mark felt himself, and was universally acknowledged to be, the learned man of the district. Pardon him his little weaknesses, for Mark is a good, honest, true-hearted lad, though his gait is a shade too measured, and the fountain of his learning a little too apt to overflow. Pardon him these fertilizing inundations; for he considers the land around to be marvellously dry and thirsty, and he thinks he is

commissioned to do the bountiful work of the Nile when it overflows its banks and refreshes the waiting gardens and meadows of Egypt.

* This is the plan pursued in the more remote dales, where the population is very thinly scattered.

Before Alice had finished polishing her household motto, and rubbing up her ungainly family portraits, the latch of the wicket gate is heard, and she hastily looks out of the window. "Master Wilson is come, mother, books and all!"

The said books distend the old leather bag on the shoulders of the young man who enters, far more than do the few quaint articles of his slender wardrobe. If this be all he includes under the portentous name of "luggage," life is a tolerably simple thing, after all.

"Peace be unto this house," says Mark, solemnly, as he bends his tall thin figure under the low porch: and he looks like a true son of peace himself, as he pronounces his accustomed benediction, though his broad and high forehead is not without some lines which belong rather to the autumnal ploughing than to the spring-tide of life. But no one who ever saw the steady light of his fine clear eye could doubt that in him the words had been fulfilled, "They looked unto him [their Lord] and were lightened; and their faces were not ashamed."

Alice received him with great deference, and a certain distant timidity; for she herself has been Master Wilson's pupil, as well as Miles and her younger brother Mat. He gives her a grave nod, and passes on to the widow's easy chair.

"Winter has been here since I saw you, Mrs. Lawson. How did you bear up under the cold? Has the rheumatism been a little quieter?" This was spoken in a voice of such singular sweetness and power, that if one had caught its accents in the midst of the crush of one of the principal streets of London, one would have been impelled to look round and search out the speaker.

"Nae, nae, Mark," said the widow, "the rheumatism hasn't been quiet—far awa' from that. But God hasn't forgotten the old woman; and when he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?"

"You have got hold of the true medicine, Mrs. Lawson; better than any herb tea which you can concoct."

"Nae!" said the widow, in a rather controversial tone. "They all help! It's the three P's that does it, say I—Prayer, Patience, and Pennyroyal."

"Well, well," replies the schoolmaster; "give me the first two and you may keep the third. But where's my scholar, Mat?"

"Mat was off to the Scar after the sheep, hours ago," said Alice.

"He had better get them to the lower fells before long, I'm thinking," said his mother, turning towards the window, and looking at the sky; "there's a snow-storm in yon clouds above Rowter Fell—though 'tis over late in the season for snow."

"If I read the signs aright," said the schoolmaster, "we shall have a quiet life hereaway, blocked in by a deep fall of snow. A fine time for Mat and his learning. Perhaps we shall get Miles, too, to go over some of the old ground and refresh his memory. Is Miles at home?"

"Miles has been a good deal out lately—more than I like," said his mother, as, a cloud of care gathered upon her calm forehead, just like that which was veiling the fine brow of Rowter Fell at the same moment.

"I think he must be taking to mining work, up on the 'Old Man,'" * said Alice; "he goes that way so very often."

* "Coniston Old Man," the name of a mountain.

"Does not he tell you what he is about, when he leaves you?" inquired Mark, anxiously.

"Nae, nae; not so very often now," was the mother's reply; "young men like to think they are their own masters. He says he doesn't like to be watched and followed about."

"He always used to like me to set him off as far as the top of Green Gap in all weathers," said Alice, mournfully; "but he thinks I can't keep up with him now, he says, and yet I can run all the way there and back faster than old Chance."

"Does Chance go with his master?"

"No; he will not let him go either, though the dear old fellow whines after him."

"There is some mystery here," thought the schoolmaster. "Heaven grant that the widow's son, the son of many prayers, may not be turning at last into the 'broad path.'"

"Perhaps it's only Bella Hartley, after all," exclaimed Alice, with a sudden flush of illumination.

"Nae, I fear not," the widow replied. "Bella is a good girl, and he needn't be ashamed to visit her; he knows he would have his mother's blessing upon the head of that any day," though her brimming eyes, as she looked round tenderly on the old place, showed how much it would cost her to leave the ancestral Yews, and abdicate her quiet throne in favor of a youthful successor.

At this moment came in Mat from the fells with a flushed face; and pulling down his open forehead by the front curl, by way of bow, he stood, cap in hand, evidently with something to say.

"Well, Mat, my man," said his teacher in his kindest tone, "what cheer from the fells?"

"We've brought the sheep all down to the lower fells, because there's snow in the cloud over Rowter."

"Did Miles help you?"

"Nae; 'twas Chance and I. But Chance did it all. I'm sure he saw the storm coming, he looked so all around, and sniffed, and began at the sheep before I set him. But there are two men yon, who want Miles."

"What like are the men?" asked the widow uneasily. "And what do they want of Miles?"

"They said he was bound to meet them in the Gap, and he didn't come, so they want to know if he is in the house."

"Did you bid them in, Mat? I would as lief know who my son's friends may be."

"They said they would bide without and speak with him there."

The widow shook her head and exchanged an anxious look with Mark Wilson, who left the room immediately.

The two strangers, sullen, ill-favored men, one of whom never looked you full in the face, but was always glancing anywhere rather than straight before him, did not appear to wish for a parley with the schoolmaster, the clear daylight of whose countenance was in perfect keeping with the uprightness of his character, and the unbending texture of his principles.

"What is your will, friends?"

"We only want Miles Lawson. Is he in or off?"

"I cannot say. May I ask your business with him?"

"No. 'Twas only for a talk with him. He wasn't in the Gap, where he should have met us, for we are naught but friends: as he wasn't there, we came on. That's all."

The speaker looked a miner, and his companion might have been a broom-maker; but they were ungainly, unhappy-looking men; the one, bold and defiant, the other sinister and cunning.

"Well!" said the miner, after a pause. "If you can't tell us anything, we are off again. Come along, Jack."

"Stop!" cried Mark, hastily. "Is there no message for Miles Lawson? Nothing about the business which brings you here?"

"No," said the man, rudely; "catch us telling you."

And laughing loudly, they walked off at a quick pace.

Mark was still standing under the yew trees, thinking over this suspicious affair, when he heard a step and a whistle, and Miles himself appeared, lounging along with his hands in his pockets. He started, and flushed crimson, when he recognized the old friend and master who had not only taught him all that he knew of book-learning in his many migratory visits, but who had earnestly endeavored to counteract the faults of his character by instilling good, sound Bible principles. The younger man's face was a strikingly fine one as to outline and feature; but there was a look of uncertainty and hesitation, a wandering, restless expression about the eye, which gave the impression that principles were beginning to give way to mere impulses, healthy feeling to heartless selfishness; a critical moment in a young man's history.

"Well Miles, dear old fellow, I'm glad you are come home. There's a storm abroad, and we shall have a rare time for the books. I have brought a history of England, and a book about the stars."

Miles held out his hand; but it was not with his old eager cordiality: no hearty welcome to the old Yews was given or felt; and after an awkward silence, he turned round and said in a constrained voice, "I am sorry I shall not be at home for awhile. I have business that takes me away."

Mark Wilson turned the full power of his piercing eye upon his face, and was grieved to see that his friend's eye fell under the searching survey. "I am sorry too, I am sure. I thought we should have had some capital times of reading and talk in the long evenings, when the mother has got her knitting and her Bible, and Mat is learning to write, and Alice is listening with her eyes as much as her ears. I confess I am very sorry, Miles, unless you have some object in hand on which you can ask God's blessing, and your mother's prayers, just as freely as if you were sitting in your father's own seat in his own old place."

The young man winced painfully at this, and then, recovering himself with a bluster, (the usual recourse of a bad cause), exclaimed, "I declare, I am treated like a child. I am watched and questioned, and doubted, as if I was not old enough to take care of myself: and mind, I am not a little fool of a schoolboy any longer, Mark Wilson, I say."

Mark's powerful eyes were still fastened on his old friend, so that the voice, which began boldly enough, died off into a pitiful shake before the sentence was finished. He saw his advantage and quietly said, "You know he is the fool who says in his heart, 'There is no God:' and it is really and practically to say this, if we act as if we had not his all-seeing eye constantly upon us. You never need tell me what you are about, if you go to God and tell him. You know I don't want your confidence, Miles, if you can give it to God in prayer, and to your widowed mother in grateful love. But a man is known by the company he keeps." This was said in so significant a tone that it was Miles' turn now a look of searching inquiry; and he read something in Mark's face which evidently startled and troubled him.

"What do you know about my friends? What do you mean by the company I keep?"

Mark lifted up his heart in silent prayer and then replied, "I will just leave this little word with you, my brother, 'If sinners entice thee, consent thou not.'"

"Well," said Miles, after musing for a long season, in which, strong symptoms of the inward conflict between the two principles of good and of evil were visible on his changing countenance; "well, I do believe you are my true friend, Mark, after all; and I wish I had never sought others."

The poor fellow wrung the hand of his old master, while a rushing tide of feeling rose within him until it left a moisture even in his softened eyes. Mark pressed his hand in return, in wise silence; and the two reconciled friends entered the farm kitchen together. Neither knew that during this painful conversation, one, feeble in body but strong in faith, had been earnestly wrestling for a blessing; and that even young Alice had stolen into the old oak parlor, and slipping down on her knees, in a dark corner, had offered up the clear, pure gems of a sister's tears. The mother looked up through her misty spectacles, and saw, as the young men crossed the threshold, that the prayer of faith had gained the victory, at least for this time.

"Mother, we'll have a regular jolly evening, as Mark is come. He shall not say a word about his old books; we're going to have a holiday. Where's Alice? Alice give us your best riddle-cakes, and Mat shall bring out some of his whitest honey. Let us have some broiled ham, too; and then we'll crack * to heart's content."

* "Crack" signifies chat in Westmoreland parlance, as well as in Scotland.