LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 221, 23 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CICELY. (Concluded) ' You went back, I suppose.' ' Not a bit of it. 1 never went back all my life. We determined that I should go on first, leading the horse and carrying the wood shovels, and should shovel out a small clearing. Meantime Elizabeth was to open the boxes and prepare pakages of about half or three-quarters of a hundredweight, which we could carry. I got through with the horse, and completed my work. I cleared a space about twelve feet square under some large trees, throwing up a bank of snow all round it from within and without. Then I tied up my horse and went back. Elizabeth had worked nobly, and was ready with nearly forty packages. We were puzzled what to do with the child, but at length arranged that we should take alternate trips, with a couple of parcels hung by a strap over our shoulders. So my wife started next, and you can imagine my feelings when I saw the stout-hearted girl disappearing along the track the horse and I had made. Five miles out and five back, she was gone four hours and a half, but she came back laughing, She said I had provided a cold house for her. After a meal I set out, taking fodder and a tarpaulin for the beasts, and by the time I got back it was night. It took us three days to convey our goods and boxes, for we left nothing behind. I stripped the covering off the waggon, and drew it up for the winter as sheltered as possible. We piled up our casks and boxes in the square I had made. The horse lived at one end and we at the other. At the end of six weeks I had erected on that very spot a rough log hut, and that afterwards became the kitchen of my house. It was hard work I don't pretend to' deny, but it didn't kill us, and I sold that location twenty years after for 5000dols. Now there's a town on it and 50,000d01s wouldn't buy it.' ' But you were going to tell me about Cicely.' •Ah ! yes. I was forgetting her in talking about myself. Well, of course we and the Mashams became friends, that is we saw each other occasionally, and sometimes gave each other help. But the captain could never forget that he was a gentleman, and he was a very unhandy farmer ; and the poor lady she suffered dreadfully from cold, and at last I began to see from want too. He had mortgaged his pay and pretty well used it up, I suspect. At length he sold his horse and waggon, and at the beginning of the winter. He brought home a few things with the proceeds, and I saw him after he came back. He was completlybroken down; his wife would not see me at all, and I heard her sobbing behind the partition. So I came away. I felt a rough fellow like me couldn't give the consolation people of that sort would accept. That was about the first week of December. The snow was deep on the ground. But by this time I had cleared a pretty fair track through the underwood to my house. As I went away the captain's little girl ran out and took my hand.

' ' Give my love to Malcolm,' she said, ' and 0, mamma is so sorry she can't see you, Mr Kerr ; but she isn't well. Goodbye-' ' After I got home the look of those people haunted me day and night. At length both me and my wife grew uneasy. We would have done anything we could for the Mashams, but we did not know how to do it. They were proud and reserved, though always kind to us. So day by day we thought of little else, and day by day put off trying to do anything. On Christmas Eve, however, I said to my wife—- ' To-morrow I'll take you over to Captain Masham's. You put up some mince pies and a jar of honey—we daresent offer them any meat—and I'll take a bottle of that Scotch whisky I brought last year from Toronto, and we'll go and pay a Christmas visit . . . good God ! what's that ?' 'There was a pale face peeping through the uncurtained window opposite me. I dashed out, and under the window lay the poor lady without a groan or a motion. I carried her in. How light and thin she was. She had thrown an old cloak over her scanty clothing. I haven't the heart to tell you how lightly and poorly she was clad. But there, as I laid her down, her little feet slipped out from under the draggled dress, and I saw the torn boot had been put on over a naked foot, and the blood was oozing from the skin.' ' Next day I tracked that blood m the snow for a long way. We did all we could

for her. We wrapped her up tenderly in our softest blankets. We gave her brandy and rubbed her hands and feet (rough men like me don't stand upon ceremony in the back-woods, sir), but it was no use. Once she heaved a sigh and opened her eyes, and said, —

'Oh ! the capiain, go to him. Take care of Cicely.' 'We couldn't make out when it exactly happened that she died, but she never showed any other signs of life. ' I left as soon as I could for the captain's, taking a tinder-box and candle with me. The night was a cold, but clear one, and with a heavy heart I at length descried the house, It was dark and silent. A dreadful foreboding came over me and chilled me as I approached the door. I lifted the latch. Not a sound. The door opened right into the large room or ' parlour' as they used to call it. I shut it and struck a light. Well, I hope you'll never have the sensation I had. My head swam. I turned quite sick, and sank upon a chair. The captain's body was lying there before me, bleeding and almost headless, and in his hand the fatal gun with which he had done the deed. His brains were all over the place. In the bedroom, as soon as I recovered, I found Cicely asleep, with great tears on her cheeks.' The old man wiped his own cheeks at the remembrance, and I gave my toll of sympathy. ' She's lived with me ever since, sir, and I love her as my daughter. And by and by I hope she'll marry Malcolm, though she's as skittish as a thoroughbred, every bit.'

I still lingered on at Coney Place, and at every opportunity sought to inform Cicely's mind concerning the great English world. As I did so, and watched the eager interest with which her fine nature rose to the bait, hopes rose within me which were very bold and very daring, and I am bound to admit, very unconscientious. For I said I had a mission to Cicely. I was discharging that mission faithfully enough in one sense, but in direct ingratitude for the kindness I had received from the family. My object was to get Cicely away from those who loved her best in the world, and to transport her to another society, another life.

The time at length came when I must go, and after a consultation with Mr Kerr, I determined to broach the subject of my mission. I did it one evening—the evening before I left —when Malcolm and Cicely and the old couple were sitting with me, the windows and doors being all open, and the flush of dying sunshine coming softly over the trees into the house. Cicely had put on a white dress, and hi her dark hair was a single scarlet flower, and the glowing glory of that sunshine which pervaded the air shone divinely on her face. I never saw her look more beautiful. I never saw any one else look half so handsome. Malcolm was rather uneasy. He sat a little out of the group, and Cicely had coquettishly drawn her chair near where I was sitting, to catch the latest words of the civilized stranger. At last I said, —

'Cicely, and all present, I wish you to take notice of what lam going to say. lam a solicitor. My object is business, and I must put it in the shortest and most straightforward way. My business is with Cicely.' At that, Master Malcolm, who had been throwing about his mammoth legs in the most unaccountable state of excitement, half jumped from his chair, and made Cicely start.

•Do be quiet, Malcolm. You'll shake the house down!

The huge fellow sulkily subsided, and I went on.

' Cicely, I said, ' you have very strangely been asking me to tell you all about the great world of wealth and nobility and fashion in London and Paris and elsewhere. You are handsome and clever, and I doubt not would speedily adorn any society into which you were thrown. Well, I have come here expressly to offer you a splendid opening into that society which interests you so much.'

Here, again, Master Malcolm's action was vigorous and threatening. ' Sit thee still,' said the old man sternly, while his wife looked with a pale face straight at Cicely. Cicely's eyes were dancing in her head. ' Your name,' I continued, 'is not Kerr ; it is Masham. Is that so, Mr Kerr ?' Mr Kerr nodded his head. ' Your father was an officer, your mother was the daughter of wealthy parents, and ran away with him. They never forgave her. All their wealth went to a nephew, who knew your mother well enough ; and now, at sixty years of age, being childless, he has sent me here to find out k whether any child of Cecilia Masham was still living, and to offer to make her the heiress of all his riches, and they, I know, are enormous. Handsome, clever, rich, the world is before you; and on behalf of Mr Henry Crowther, your mother's cousin, I now make you this offer.' Malcolm no longer moved. The great creature had collapsed. His legs lay straight out before him. His lower jaw had dropped. His arms hung helpless by the side of his chair. Cicely's excitement was intense. The flush upon her face, the half open lips and quick breathing, showed how powerfully my appeal, winding up as it did the artful lessons of several weeks, had affected her. The old woman looked straight at her with a hard, steady stare. Mr Kerr was the first to speak. 'Cicely,' he said in a firm voice, and as it fell on her ear she clasped her hands on her bosom, and turned to him with a pained expression, ' this is an indication of Providence. I think it is your duty to accept it. There will be many temptations—many you might have avoided had you—had you stayed here,' said he, glancing at Malcolm; 'but God can give you grace to overcome them.' 1 Oh,' groaned Malcolm; and the old woman turned and looked at him with a tear in her eye, Cicely was as quick as lightning. She saw the tear, and then she looked at Malcolm, whose eyes were fixed on her. Her little hands went over her heart, and her bosom panted under the white dress. ' Are you going ?' said the giant in a cracked voice. She stood up and looked at him earnestly, half-coyly. He, too, rose, and, after a moment's hesitation, opened his great arms, and in an instant she sprang into them like a fawn, and, nestling on his breast, she cried in a little hysterical voice, — • Oh Malcolm, I'll stay with you.' And as the great giant's head went down towards her face, I heard him sob out, — * Oh Cicely, my darling, my darling !' Epward Jenkins.