Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us--Oh!--and is all forgot?
Midsummer Night's Dream.
We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage at St.
Leonard's; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding narrative does
not exceed in length that which he actually spent on Salisbury Crags on the
morning which succeeded the execution done upon Porteous by the rioters. For
this delay he had his own motives. He wished to collect his thoughts, strangely
agitated as they were, first by the melancholy news of Effie Deans's situation,
and afterwards by the frightful scene which he had witnessed. In the situation
also in which he stood with respect to Jeanie and her father, some ceremony, at
least some choice of fitting time and season, was necessary to wait upon them.
Eight in the morning was then the ordinary hour for breakfast, and he resolved
that it should arrive before he made his appearance in their cottage.
Never did hours pass so heavily. Butler shifted his place and enlarged his circle
to while away the time, and heard the huge bell of St. Giles's toll each successive
hour in swelling tones, which were instantly attested by those of the other
steeples in succession. He had heard seven struck in this manner, when he
began to think he might venture to approach nearer to St. Leonard's, from which
he was still a mile distant. Accordingly he descended from his lofty station as low
as the bottom of the valley, which divides Salisbury Crags from those small rocks
which take their name from Saint Leonard. It is, as many of my readers may
know, a deep, wild, grassy valley, scattered with huge rocks and fragments which
have descended from the cliffs and steep ascent to the east.
This sequestered dell, as well as other places of the open pasturage of the King's
Park, was, about this time, often the resort of the gallants of the time who had
affairs of honour to discuss with the sword. Duels were then very common in
Scotland, for the gentry were at once idle, haughty, fierce, divided by faction, and
addicted to intemperance, so that there lacked neither provocation, nor
inclination to resent it when given; and the sword, which was part of every
gentleman's dress, was the only weapon used for the decision of such
differences. When, therefore, Butler observed a young man, skulking, apparently
to avoid observation, among the scattered rocks at some distance from the
footpath, he was naturally led to suppose that he had sought this lonely spot
upon that evil errand. He was so strongly impressed with this, that,
notwithstanding his own distress of mind, he could not, according to his sense of
duty as a clergyman, pass this person without speaking to him. There are times,
thought he to himself, when the slightest interference may avert a great calamity-
