by Andrew Lang
CHAPTER XXVII
HOW, BY KEEPING PAROLE, MR. KELLY BROKE PRISON
Every morning Mr. Kelly looked for the doctor to come to him with wordthat in the little house without the Tower Gate the blinds were drawn.But that message was not brought to him, and Colonel Montague, makinga visit to the prison, three weeks after Rose fell ill, found theParson sitting very quiet in his chair with a face strangelyillumined.
'Last night she slept,' said George, 'and waked only at midday. Thefever has left her, and she will live. It is wonderful.'
The Colonel said what was fitting to the occasion, and the Parsonreplied to him absently, with his eyes upon the river and the boatsswinging on the tide; and after a while Father Myles Macdonnell, whomthe Colonel had neither seen nor heard of, was ushered into the room.
The Reverend Father was a kinsman of Parson Kelly, and though theiracquaintance had been of the slightest, the Parson now turned to himwith a great welcome. For his thoughts were now entirely bent upon anescape from his captivity. He dared not survey the possibility thatsome time Rose might again fall ill, and that again he must sit behindthe bars and only hear news of how she fared.
The Reverend Myles, who was of the honest party, but not as yet blownupon by suspicion, seemed to him his only help and instrument. For along while, when the Colonel had gone, the pair debated the means ofescape, but found no issue; and Rose brought her white face back tothe Tower, and the Parson's spirits drooped, so that at last hishealth began to fail. He was therefore allowed to drive out in a coachto any place within ten miles of London in the custody of a warder,and on his parole to return before dark. Of this favour he madefrequent use, and no doubt the sight of the busy faces in the streetsurged him yet more to make a bid for his freedom.
Now these journeys of the Parson to take the air set Father MylesMacdonnell upon a pretty plan, which he imparted to Rose and toGeorge.
'You drive one afternoon up into Highgate Woods--d'ye follow that? Ihave half-a-dozen well-disposed persons hiding in a clump of trees whowill take care of your warder--d'ye see? There will be a stout horsetethered to a branch close by, and a lugger waiting off the coast ofEssex--'but the Parson would hear no more of the scheme.
'I have given my parole to come back to the Tower before dark,' saidhe, and glanced at Rose, who was looking away, to strengthen him inhis objection. 'I cannot break it, can I, Rose? I have given myparole. I am not one of the Butcher Cumberland's officers. We mustkeep troth.'
Rose made an effort and agreed.
'Yes,' said she, 'he has given his parole, and he cannot break it.'
'Not so long as he's a lost Protestant,' said the Reverend Father. Hetapped George on the knee, and continued in a wheedling voice: 'It isa matter of religion, d'ye see? Just let me convert you. I can do itin a twinkling, and so I shall save your body and your soul in oneglorious moment.'
'How so? 'asked the Parson with a laugh, for he was by this time wellused to his kinsman's efforts to convert him. 'How shall a Catholiccreep out of the Tower more easily than a Protestant?'
'Because a Catholic can break his parole. It's a great sin, to besure, but I can absolve him for it afterwards.'
To Mr. Kelly's thinking (and, indeed, to Mr. Wogan's) this was nosterling theology, and he would not be persuaded. Another device hadto be invented, and when at last a satisfactory plan was resolvedupon, the plotters must wait for the quick nightfalls of autumn.
It was on Guy Fawkes day, the fifth of November, 1736, that Mr. Kellymade his escape. On the morning of that day he drove out to Epsom inthe custody of his warder and upon his parole to return before dark.At four o'clock, when the light was just beginning to fall, FatherMyles Macdonnell came into the Tower by the Sally Port Stairs oppositethe Mint. He was told that the Parson was taking the air, and repliedthat he would go to the Parson's room and wait. Thereupon he crossedthe precincts of the Tower, and coming over the green and down thesteps of the main-guard, he inquired of the porter at Traitor's Gatewhether or no Mr. Kelly had returned.
The porter answered 'Not yet.'
'It is a great pity,' said the Reverend Myles, who seemed muchflustered. 'I am in a great hurry, and would you tell him, if youplease, the moment he comes, to run with all haste to his room?'
Upon that he turned off under the archway of the Bloody Tower, andagain mounted the steps of the main-guard.
About half-an-hour afterwards, in the deepening twilight, Mr. Kellywas set down within the Traitor's Gate; he had kept his parole. Theporter gave him Father Myles's message; and the warder, since itappeared that he could only proceed as usual to his lodging, took hisleave of him.
The Parson accordingly ran up the steps of the main-guard on to thegreen, which was by this time very obscure. Three minutes afterwardsFather Myles Macdonnell hurried past the sentry at the Sally PortStairs opposite the Mint, grumbling that he would wait no longer, andso came out upon Tower Hill. Just at that time to a moment anotherFather Myles Macdonnell accosted the porter at Traitor's Gate andrequested him to let him out, seeing that he was, as he had alreadysaid, in a great hurry. The porter let him out with no more ado.
The second Father Myles was the real Father Myles; the first one whowent grumbling out by the Sally Port Stairs was Parson Kelly. He hadmet Father Myles in the dark corner by Beauchamp Tower, had slippedover his head a cassock which the Father had brought with him, and hadrun across to the entrance over against the Mint, and so into freedom.
The carriage which had driven him to Epsom, after putting him downagain at the Tower, had driven to Tower Hill, where it waited for theParson close by the Sally Port Stairs. It did not wait long: and theParson was hurried at a gallop out of London amidst the crackling offireworks and the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes. It seemed thetown was illuminated to celebrate his escape.
At the Tower his evasion was not discovered until half-past seven ofthe evening, when the two porters, being relieved from their separatestations at the Traitor's Gate and the Sally Port Stairs, each vowedthat he had let out Father Myles Macdonnell. This seemed so miraculousan occurrence that the warder ran to Mr. Kelly's chamber. It wasempty, and then the clamour began. The Parson had thus three hours'start, and, though a reward of 300_l_. was offered for his recapture,no more was heard of him for a week.
Then, however, two fishermen coming into an alehouse at Broadstairssaw the reward for Kelly proclaimed in print upon the wall, and fellinto a great fury and passion, saying that they had only received fivepounds when they might have had three hundred. For a fee of fivepounds they had put a man over from Broadstairs to Calais, who, whenonce he was landed in France, had said to them:
'If anyone inquires for George Kelly, you may say that he is safelylanded in France.'
And indeed at the very moment when the fishermen were lamenting theirmistake in the alehouse, George Kelly and Rose were taking theirdinner in Mr. Wogan's lodging at Paris. Rose had travelled into Francethe day before the Parson escaped, and so, after fourteen years, theywere united. It was a merry sort of a party, and no doubt Wogan made agreat deal of unnecessary noise. He drew the Parson aside into awindow before the evening was over.
'You are not very rich, I suppose?' said he.
'I want for nothing,' said the Parson with a foolish eye on Rose, likea boy of eighteen.
Wogan fumbled in his fob and brought out a packet which he unfolded.
'Diamonds!' cried Kelly.
'They are yours,' said Wogan. 'I picked them up off the floor of aroom in Soho on an occasion which you may remember. A miniature framehad come by a mischance.'
'Smilinda's?' asked Kelly with a frightened glance over his shoulderto Rose, who had the discretion not to meddle in this privateconversation.
'Yes,' says Wogan; 'Smilinda's. She gave the stones to you. Verylikely they are worth a trifle.'
'We'll slip out and sell them to-morrow,' answered the Parson in awhisper.
They slipped out, but they
did not sell them. The diamonds were paste,and Mr. Wogan at last understood why Lady Oxford, when she gave herminiature set with brilliants to the Parson, had been so anxious thathe should never part with it.
CHAPTER XXVIII
MR. WOGAN AGAIN INVADES ENGLAND, MEETS THE ELECT LADY, AND BEARS WITNESS TO HER PERFECTIONS
It seemed to Wogan that this particular story of the Parson'sfortunes, which began in Paris so long ago, had now ended in Paris.But he was wrong, and it was not till ten years after Mr. Kelly'sescape from the Tower that Wogan witnessed the last circumstance inEngland, and himself spoke the closing word.
Retiring soon from Paris, which ill suited a slender purse, Mr. Kellylived, with his fair wife, at Avignon, where he played secretary tothe Duke of Ormond. The Parson was a _gene_ on the amours of the agedDuke, who posted him off, in the year Forty-Five, to, escort thePrince of Wales to the Scottish islands. Wogan himself, earlier in thesame year of grace, lost an arm at the battle of Fontenoy, but got aleaf of the laurels, being dubbed Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis.
His arm amputated and the wound healed, Wogan must needs join thePrince of Wales, then residing in his palace of Holyrood, nearEdinburgh. Wogan came too late for that pretty onfall at Prestonpans,but he marched south with the Prince's forces, riding again the oldroads from Carlisle to Lancaster and Preston. The buxom maids of theinns were broad-blown landladies now; some of them remembered Wogan;and the ale was as good as ever.
It chanced that at Preston, where he tarried for a couple of days, Mr.Wogan was billeted on a cobbler, a worthy man, but besotted with a newreligion, which then caused many popular tumults. To England it hadbeen brought over from America by two brothers of Wogan's old friend,Sam Wesley, the usher at Westminster School, and familiar of BishopAtterbury.
Wogan's host could talk of nothing but this creed, whose devoteescried out (it seemed), laughed, fell down in fits, barked, and madeconfession in public.
'Ah, sir,' he said to Wogan, 'if you could but hear the BrothersWesley, Charles and John, in the pulpit or singing hymns! Charlessings like an angel, and to hear John exhort the unaroused might wakenthose who have lain for a score of years in the arms of the Devil.'
'John Wesley, little Jack Wesley?' cried Wogan. 'Why, I have saved himfrom many a beating at Westminster School!'
'Do you know that saint, sir? 'asked the cobbler, in an enthusiasm.
'Know him, I know nobody else, if he is the brother of honest SamWesley, that once let me into the Deanery on a night in May. AssuredlyI knew little Jack.'
The cobbler came near kneeling to Wogan. 'Here, indeed, is the fingerof Providence,' he exclaimed. 'Dear sir, you may yet cast off theswathings of the Scarlet Woman.'
'Easy, be easy, Mr. Crispin!' quoth Wogan. 'But tell me, is Jack topreach and is Charles to sing in this town of yours to-night?'
'Unhappily no, but we are promised the joy of hearing that fameddisciple, Mr. Bunton, discourse, and the Elect Lady, as the Brethrenstyle her, will also speak.'
'Do the women preach in your new Church?'
'No, but they are permitted to tell the story of their call, andto-night we shall hear the Elect Lady--'
'Confess before the congregation? 'Faith, the discourse may beimproving. Is the Elect Lady handsome?'
'She hath been one of the most renowned beauties of her age, and thereare some who say that she is little altered by time. Ah, sir, she willmake you embrace the truth.'
'My embraces were ever at the mercy of feminine persuasion,' saidWogan. 'Is this Elect Lady of these parts?'
'No, sir, she comes from the South, travelling with holy Mr. Bunton.You will oblige me infinitely, sir, if you will take pity on your ownpoor soul and join our love-feast. We meet in the warehouse of Mr.Brown, our most eminent grocer, in Scotch Lane, behind the "Jackdawand Bagpipes."'
'I thank you for your solicitude,' Wogan said; 'and as to thelove-feast, I'll think of it.'
Consequently he thought no more of it till the bottle had gone roundhalf-a-dozen times at the Prince's mess in the 'Bull Tavern.' LordElcho, who had certainly drunk his dose, began telling, as a goodthing, of his conversation with a _bourgeois_ of Preston.
'"What is your Prince's religion?" asked the _bourgeois_.
'"That is still to seek, my good man, still to seek," I answered him,'cried Elcho, laughing.
The Prince laughed also; the free-thinking philosophers had been athim already, first in Rome, then in Paris.
'Good for you, Elcho,' he cried; then, musing, ''Tis a very awkwardbusiness, this of religion. We have given three crowns for a mass, andthere's the difficulty, there it is, as black as ever. I wish some onewould invent a new creed, and the rest agree about it, d----n them,and then what is still to seek, my religion, would be found.'
A thought came into Wogan's head; the bottle had made rounds enough,and more; next morning they were to march early.
'Sir,' he said, 'there _is_ a new religion, and a handsome lady topreach it.' Then he repeated what his host, the cobbler, had chantedto him, 'The meeting is at night in the warehouse of Mr. Brown, theeminent grocer.'
'A handsome woman!--a new belief! By St. Andrew, I'll go,' criedCharles. 'You'll come, Nick, you and--' he looked at the faces loomingthrough the tobacco smoke round the wine-stained table. The blue reekof pipes clouded and clung to men's faces; to the red rough beard ofLochgarry, the smart, clean-shaven Ker of Graden and Maxwell ofKirkconnell, the hardy gaze of brave Balmerino, the fated Duke ofPerth. Wogan thought of the Highland belief in the shroud of mist thatis seen swathing men doomed soon to die, as were so many of them. ThePrince stood and stared, his pipe in his hand. 'Nick, you will come,you and Ker of Graden; he's sober! _Allons!_'
'Sir,' whispered Mr. Murray of Broughton, 'think of the danger! TheElector has his assassins everywhere; they are taken; your RoyalHighness laughs and lets them go, and the troops murmur.'
'Danger! Will they look for me at a tub-thumping match?'
The Prince picked up a cork from the floor; he set it to the flame ofa candle; he touched with it his eyebrows and upper lip; he tucked hisbrown hair under his wig, standing before the mirror on thechimneypiece. Then he flung a horseman's cloak over his shoulders,stooped, and limped a little in his walk.
'A miracle,' everyone called out, for scarce a man of them could haveknown him.
He tossed his hand in the air; '_Allons, en avant!_' he cried, with alaugh; and Wogan, with Ker of Graden, did what all might have betterdone at Derby--followed their leader.
The night was wintry, and a cold north wind blew about the rareflickering oil lamps in the street. All three men buttoned themselvesup in their cloaks. The Prince, still stooping and limping, took anarm of each of his aides-de-camp; indeed, he somewhat needed theirsupport.
'I am like that Sultan in Monsieur Galland's Eastern tales,' he said,'visiting my subjects incognito. Nick, you are Mesrour, the Chief ofthe--no, you're Giaffar. Graden is--I forget the Eastern minister'sname. I am the Caliph. But what are the rabble about?'
The three pilgrims had entered the lane that led to the warehouse ofthe devout grocer. There was a mob around the door waving torches andshouting insults at a few decent tradesmen and their wives who werebent on the same pious errand as Wogan and his friends.
'Away, swaddlers!' 'Down with the Methodists!' they cried; and a burlyfellow brushed against Wogan's shoulder in the least gentlemanlystyle. He reeled off and fell flat in the lane, while the otherragamuffins laughed at him.
The three devotees stepped briskly through the grinning crowd thatcried to Graden, 'Come to buy brimstone, Scotch Sandy?'
'Come to escape it, my dear friend,' quoth Wogan's host, the cobbler,who stood at the door, and kept it, too, against the mob with a greatshow of spirit.
'You _have_ thought of us, sir?' asked the cobbler.
'Ay, and brought two other inquiring spirits,' said Wogan.
They were conducted into a long half-empty warehouse, smelling ofcheese
and festooned with cobwebs. A light or two burned dimly in hornlanterns; a low platform of new planks had been set up at the top ofthe room; a table with seven candles made an illumination there; a bigblack Bible, and a jug of water with a glass flanked the Bible. Thepreacher sat on a chair (most of the congregation stood, or reposed onbarrels and benches), and on another chair, beside the preacher, was alady, veiled, her fine figure obscured by widow's weeds.
'Is that your beauty?' whispered the Prince.
'The Elect Lady, sir,' murmured the cobbler devoutly.
'_Mon Dieu!_ she has a very pretty foot!'
And Wogan, too, noticed the blaze of a diamond buckle that nearlycovered the little arched instep. Tap, tap! went the Elect Lady'sfoot, thrust out in front of her heavy petticoat of crape.
'The lady is travelling everywhere, for the good of souls, gentlemen,with Mr. Wesley's friend and choice disciple, the preacher, Mr.Bunton.'
'L'heureux Monsieur Bunton! Quelle chance!' quoth his Highness.
Mr. Bunton, the preacher, was indeed a fine, handsome young fellow asany widow could wish to look upon. He wore lay dress, not being apriest ordained of the Church of England. As for the congregation,they were small trading people, not rabble; indeed, the mob outsidebroke most of the windows during the sermon, that was interrupted, notonly by the pebbles of the ragamuffins, but by the antics of thecongregation.
Mr. Bunton, after a hymn had been sung without any music, began hispreaching. He assured the audience that none of them could be a gayerdog than he had been, that was now a shining light. He obliged thecongregation with a history of his early life and adventures, whichWogan now tells in few words, that people may know what manner of menwere certain of these saints, or had been. Mr. Bunton was reared insin, he said, as a land-surveyor. A broth of a boy he was, and ninetimes his parents sent him from Reading to London to bind him to atrade. Nine times his masters returned him on their hands.
Here the audience groaned aloud, and one went off in a fit. Mr. Buntonthen told how he was awakened to sin as he walked in Cheapside. Atthis many, and the cobbler among them, cried 'Hallelujah!' but somewent off into uncontrollable fits of laughter, which did not disturbthe gravity of the rest of the assembly.
The preacher's confession was, indeed, of such a nature that Wogan leta laugh out of himself, while Graden and the Prince rolled in extremeconvulsions.
'Go on, gentlemen; you are in the right path,' said the cobbler. 'Ourconverts are generally taken in this way first. It is reckoned a veryfavourable sign of grace. Some laugh for a week without stopping tosleep, eat, or drink.'
'I'll try to stop to drink,' hooted his Highness, his face as red as alobster; and then off he went again, the bench shaking beneath him,while Wogan and Graden laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks intheir dark corner. The sympathetic cobbler murmured texts of anappropriate character. Indeed, now he thinks of it all, and sees Mr.Bunton sawing the air while he tells the story of his early wickeddays, Mr. Wogan laughs as he writes. The man was greasy and radiantwith satisfied vanity. His narrative of what he did and thought afterhe awoke to sin in Cheapside was a marvel.
'I felt that beef and mutton were sinful things.'
Here came a groan from an inquiring butcher.
'I wished to put away all that was of the flesh fleshy. My desire wasto dwell alone, in a cave, far from the sight of woman.'
The Elect Lady groaned, and all the wenches in the congregationfollowed suit.
'Abstaining from feasts of fat things, my mind was set on a simplediet of acorns, grass, and crabs.'
'Les glands, les ecrevisses, et l'herbe des champs!' hooted thePrince. 'Mon Dieu, quel souper, et quelle digestion il doit avoir, cethomme-la!'
'But, sisters and brethren,' Mr. Bunton went on, 'did I yield to thesepopish temptations? Did I live, like one of their self-righteousso-called saints, on crabs, acorns, and grass? Did I retire to a cave?No, dear sisters and brethren. My motive for abstaining was bad; itwas a suggestion of the Old Man--'
'Qui donc est-il, ce vieillard bien pensant?' whispered the Prince.
'The devil, sir,' answered Graden, who knew the doctrine of the Scotchministers.
'My motive for not living on crabs in a cave was bad, I confess, butit was over-ruled for the best. Dear friends, I kept myself far fromthese temptations, because, indeed, I was afraid of ghosts that hauntcaves and such places.'
'Il ne mangeait pas les ecrevisses, parce qu'il avait peur desrevenants! O c'est trop!' said the Prince, in a voice choked withemotion, while more advanced disciples cried 'Glory!' and'Hallelujah!'
'But next,' the preacher went on, much gratified and encouraged bythese demonstrations, 'I was happily brought acquainted with thatprecious sister, that incomparable disciple of Mr. Wesley, whom wecall the Elect Lady. Then I awoke to light, and saw that it was laidupon me to preach, continually and unceasingly, making in every townconfession of my offences. That dear lady, friends, promises for thisonce (she is as modest as she is generous and good) to tell us themoving story of her own early dangers, while she was a dweller in thetents of--of Shem, I think.'
The congregation cheered and stamped with their feet, all but a fewwho were rolling on the floor in fits and foaming at the mouth. Mr.Bunton sat down very warm, and applied himself to the mug of water.
The Elect Lady rose up to her full height, and tossed back her veilover her shoulders.
'Ah, nous sommes trompes,' said the Prince. 'C'est une femme dequarante ans, bien sonnes!'
But Wogan, between the shoulders of the congregation, stared from hisdim corner as he had never stared at mortal woman before. The delicatefeatures were thickened, alas, the lips had fallen in, the goldthreads had been unwoven out of the dark brown hair. There were twodabs of red on a powdered face, where in time past the natural rosesand lilies had bloomed; but the voice and the little Andalusian footthat beat the time with the Elect Lady's periods were the voice andthe foot of the once incomparable Smilinda! Nay, when she turned andlooked at the converted land-surveyor beside her, Mr. Wogan knew in hergaze the ghost of the glance that had bewitched Scrope, and Kelly, andColonel Montague, and Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and who knows how manyother gallants? In that odd place Wogan felt a black fit of thespleen. A woman's loss of beauty,--Wogan can never think of itunmoved. What tragedy that we men endure or enact is like this?
But her ladyship spoke, and she spoke very well. The congregation, allof them that were not in fits or in laughing hysterics, listened as ifto an angel. Heavens! what a story she told of her youth! What dangersencountered! What plots prepared against her virtue, ay, by splendidsoldiers, beautiful young lords, and even clergymen; above all, by onemonster whom she had discovered to be, not only a monster, but atraitor to the King, and an agent of the Pretender. She was a youngthing then, married to an old lord, all unprotected, on every sidebeset by flattery.
The congregation groaned and swayed at the picture of man's depravity,but Wogan, his spleen quite forgotten, was chuckling with delight.
Yet, all unawakened as she was, said this penitent, an unknowninfluence had ever shielded her. She remembered how one of these evilones, the clergyman, after kneeling vainly at her feet, had cried,'Sure, some invisible power protects your ladyship.'
Here the groans gave place to cries of praise, arms were lifted, thesimple, good people wept. Wogan listened with a less devotional air,bending forward on his bench, and rubbing his hands for joy. In truthit had just come upon him that it was his duty to stand up when theElect Lady sat down, and bear his witness to the truth of hernarrative.
'Not to her be the triumph,' she went on, 'all unawakened as she thenwas, and remained, till she heard Mr. Wesley preach,' and thereafterwent through the world with Brother Bunton, converting land-surveyors,colliers, and others.
Wogan does not care to remember or quote any more of this lady'spieties. They had a kind of warmth and ease of familiarity which, insacred things, are not to his liking. However, when she ceased, Mr.Wogan stood up, a tall figure of a
French officer with an empty sleevein his dim corner.
'Good people,' he said; 'in my heedless youth I had the honour to beof the acquaintance of this lady who has just spoken to you.'
The Elect Lady glanced at Wogan; she gave a strange, short cry, andthe black veil swept over her face again.
'I was,' Wogan went on, 'the eye-witness of these trials to which herLadyship's virtue was exposed by the wicked ones of whose company Iwas a careless partaker. I have heard that wicked minister say thatsome invisible power protected her Ladyship. If any testimony to thetruth of her ladyship's moving tale were needed I could bear thatevidence, as could my friend the Rev. Mr. Kelly, now in France withdespatches, and also General Montague, at present serving withField-Marshal Wade, in the neighbourhood of Newcastle.'
Wogan sat down.
'That was providential indeed,' said the cobbler; and all thecongregation bawled 'Miracle.' But the Elect Lady sat still, her facein her hands, like a Niobe in black bombazine.
In the confusion, the three inquirers from the Prince's army slippedmodestly out. A heavy shower of snow had swept the rabble out of thelane. All was dark and cold, after the reek of the crowded warehouse.
'Nick,' said the Prince, 'was that story all true? Was the Elect Ladya prude?'
'It is Mr. Kelly's story, sir,' said Wogan. Your Royal Highness canask him.'
'George was her adorer? Then George shall tell me the tale over abottle. How the cold strikes! Hey, for a bowl of punch!' cried thePrince.
'I am at your commands, sir, but may I say that it is one of themorning, and the pipes play the reveille at four?'
'To quarters, then! What is the word, damme? What is the word?'
'_Slaint an Righ_, sir.'
'Slaint an Righ? I never can get my tongue about it. Oh, if oursubjects had but one language and one religion! But it shall not bethe religion of Mr. Bunton. _Bon soir!_'
'You have taken every trick, Wogan!' said Graden, as the Princeentered his inn. 'A sober night, for once, before a long day's march.'
* * * * *
Next morning the army went south, to Derby, and then (by no fault ofthe Irish officers or of their Prince) came back again. Wogan was atFalkirk, Culloden, and Ruthven, woe worth the day! How he reachedFrance when all was over, is between him and a very beautiful younglady of Badenoch; she said she bore a king's name--Miss HelenMacwilliam. Of King Macwilliam Wogan hath never heard, but the younglady (whose brothers had taken to the heather) protected Wogan in hisdistress, tended his wound, hid him from the red-coat soldiers, and atlast secured for him a passage in a vessel from Montrose.
And for all souvenir, she kept the kerchief with which she had firstbound up the bayonet-stab that Wogan came by, when he, with theStewarts, broke through Barrel's regiment at Culloden. He writes thisat Avignon, where George and his wife also dwell, in the old housewith the garden, the roses, and the noisy, pretty children thathaunted Mr. Kelly's dreams when he was young.
