LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1887, 11 March 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE LAST OBUISE. A STORY FOB THE WINTER FIRESIDE. "Illustrated London News." It was in the year 1838, on the 9th of January, that honest old Edward Davis, a prosperous City tradesman, left London to pass the remainder of his life in Conway, where he was born and educated. His father's ancient house was yet standing near the old Plas Mawr, or Great Mansion, in the market-place, and he wanted to be near that. . The graves of his mother and brothers were there, nnder the churchyard trees, where he could sit or walk in the summer evenings when he wanted to think about them. And last, not least, he wanted to know if one Jane Morgan, known in his youthful days aa 'the Beauty of Llandudno,' wbb still living. Most reluctantly, in obedience to the watchman's summons, he turned out of his warm and comfortable bed. Shivering he beat the flint and Bteel over his tinder-box, until a spreading spark of fire was caught by the flat sulphur-tipped match in his trembling hand. Hurriedly he made his toilette by the dim candlelight thus laboriously procured, and, with shoulders up to his ears, plunged shudderingly into the icy coldness and darkness of ihe frozen street, A sharp run brought him to the old inn close by, where the coach loomed dimly through the darkness of the spacious yard, and lanterns showed waiters bringing out luggage, hostlers bringing out horses whose hoofs slipped and clattered over the rounded Btonea, and the coachman, a little mountain of capes, coats, and wrappers, stamping his feet and beating his breast with his thicklygloved handa to keep them warm. The cracked inn bell soon began to jangle, the passengers took their pl.ices, and the guard's horn announced the time for starting. This quaint, kindly-hearted old bachelor's fellow passengers were not conversational, and so he sat baok, with his ears near his shoulders, his hands squeezed between arms and ribs, and his legs and feet as close together as he could press them, thinking. So they passed out of the streets Into a country road. He listened sleepily to the jingle and rattle of the harness, blending with the monotonous beat of the horses feet; he saw the lights of the coach lamps upon the wall of darkness outside, running a race with the vehiole like sportive will o'-the-wisps. There came baok to him the old church and its graveyard, the great castle, the hills and valleys, cornfields and meadowland, river, rooks, and mountains of hia old home, by the free, fresh, open sea, as many and many a time be had seen them in dreams when he had no thought of ever seeing them in reality again. But whatever the vision, one figure was always in it—a fisherman's only daughter, a fair, briehteyed, merry, spo'tive girl, who danced so lightly, sang so sweetly, that the neighbors one and all deolared with solemn headshakings and doubtful that she had fairyblood in her veins, which had never yet brought Igood to man or maid. The old Welshman, as he dreamed of her, thought as he had thought when he knew and loved her, when she was seventeen and he was two-and twenty—that no other girl in the world had such eyes, such hair, or such a figure aa Jane Morgan h»d. Birds singing in the sunshine had no such notes as her sweet voice had when she sang to them on winter nights beside her father's cottage fire.

' Hai-how 1' ejaculated the poor old bachelor, so suddenly and loudly that all the passengers opened their eyes and looked at him, whereupon in explanation, ' Isn't it cold ?' asked he, receiving in reply from under shawls and mufflers brief sounds, grumpy and unintelligible. In due time, stiff and benumbed, he reached Conway, heartily sick of hie long and wearisome journey, put up at The Castle, then the principal inn, and after finding out what relatives he still had, and visiting them, started one cold afternoon for LKndudno, a name which signifies the Dark V I agrj He drew his warm cloak around him, shiveringly passed over the bridge, hastened along the hard sand, reached tinasgonwy, crossed from there to Eglwy's Rhos, and _so came to the place he sought, numbed with cold and half frozen.

The Great Orme's Head is a gigantic rookypromontory jutting out into the sea, and Llandudno, perched upon its topmost height, was at that time a little cluster of rudely erected huts, and thatchfd white-washed cottages, with an old, almost ruinous church crouching from the sea winds in a dreary looking little graveyard. As he tolled along the barren path winding steeply up the precipitous side of the rock, he remembered himself a boy just as he was when he used to take off hi£boots, orawl to the very verge of the steep, and, holding his nose, because of the stench of putrid fish ascending from the nests of the sea fowl, look shudderingly down on the ghastly breakers raging and roaring about its jagged base. Far down beneath him, yet high up above the pigmy fishermen working amongst their toyjlike skiffs below, he saw the sea fowl sailing grandly about on their broad white wings ; and sometimes a daring fisher-boy, lowered by a rope to some narrow grassy ledge jutting out from the nearly perpendicular face of the rock, gathering samphire or the eggs of the sea fowls, while the distressed parent birds were wheeling and hovering about him with harsh discordant cries to scare him from their unfledged young. There was a small public-house in the hamlet, and to this he made his way, eager for rest and warmth. The parlor was a little room with a sanded brick floor and a low, whitewashed ceiling crossed by heavy beams so rudely put up that not even the ba*k had been removed from them, as you could easily see, despite the whitewash. It had a large open fireplace, and the wind waß making unearthly noises in its chimney as he drew a chair close to the blazing fire, and gave the landlord his simple order. Plunging into conversation with this landlord, he first learned that many of the fishsrmen he had known were Btill living close by, and then came tremulonsly and last question first and strongest in the old man's thoughts, ' Was Jane Morgan still alive ?' ' Well, there were some Morgan in Llandudno,'said mine host, 'but tney were all quite young people, and none bore the name of Jane.'

Poor old Davis got up with a sinking heart, but pausod with a merry laugh. •Why, what a fool I am,'said he; 'of course there's no Jane Morgan here in Llandudno. She must long ago have changed her name for a husband's. Is it Bratt ?' But still the landlord could give him no clue to Jane's whereabouts, and when he had questioned him, again as vainly, Davis went sadly away to the little churchyard, and pored about amongst the rudo wooden and simple Bti.ne memorials of the dead. He c->uld find no one on which the name of Jane Mo gan or Jan-j Bratt had been inscribed. He went into the village. Moot of the fishermen were out at sea, but he chatted with some brown faced ancient crones at their cottage doors, gave penes to their shy barefooted little grandchildren, and asked some of the fisher-wives if they remembered old Morgan and his daughter Jane. Two or three of the o'dest seemed to have vague remembrances of such persons, but beyond saying that, to the best of their belief, they both died many years ago, they gave no information So oid Mr Davis went back to the little Inn to dine

' When the fishermen come back and assemble—as io usual with them—in the 'ittle pub'ic room, from one or another I shall certaiuly obtain all the information I am secikiDg,' said he. So he informed the landlord that he intended to ) ass the night with him, whereat the worthy fellow was considerably dismayed. In the first place he had no spare be.l ; and in the next place, the best bed he h-vd was, he said, quite unfit forsuch a gentleman as his unexpected visitor waa to sleep on. Triowever, he at last consentedto make what arrangements he could contrive for his accommodation. As the evening approached it snowed heavily. The fishermen began to drop in, one by o e and in group 3 of two and three, and after ahaking the snowfiakes from their rough jickets, lit their pipes and gathered round the fire. Fresh blocks of wood were heaped on it, until the room and its inmates w< re soon all aglow in its ruddy, flickering glare A stranger's presence, at first, seemed to exercise a d- pressing iufluence, but it soon i wore off, and when Davis ordered tho ho9t [ to "upply the evening's consumption of spirits, beer, and tobacco at his expense

exclusively, the stranger became immensely popular, and was cheered and tcasted to his heart's content.

As the little deep-set window of coarse green glass in the room grew black, and the whirling noiseless gnowfi-.kes and dull leaden sky became invisible, women and children joined the group which soon formed a very merry Christmas like party; and although the pendant oil-lamp flared and flickered in the draughts, everybody became tolerably warm and snug.

The men were rough hardy fellows, inured to risk and danger, Ignorant and superstitious, but kindly to the women, and tender to the children. They sang quaint queer songs—boisterous old ballads with thundering choruses to rhymes and tunes full of a primeval vigour and simplicity, but such as would set a musician or poet's teeth on edge. They told anecdotes, stories of wild adventures at sea, of terrible wrecks, of bad fishing seasons and of the causes thereof, some of which were of a truly startling and singular character; of cottages blown down by the furious blast sweeping over the Great Orme's Head ; of mermen and mermaids, of sea serpents and other vast creatures horrible to look npon, rising up out of the depths in which they lived; and about other monsters of the deep, until presently their talk was of smuggling—evidently a favorite topic. Close by the post of honour, nearest the nook occupied by the visitor from London, sat a tall gaunt old fisherman, whi presently oast his pipe suddenly upon the floor, where it was shattered into pieces, and starting to bis feet, said with an oath and a husky voice full of deep emotion—

1 If on this night afore all others you're on that tack, mates, I sheer off !' Those present looked at each other, seeming to understand and respect his meaning. Some changed the subject, others prevented his departure, by promising not to return to it, thus inducing him to fill a fresh pipe and resume his seat. Then a song was called for, but while it was in progress the old man's brown and wrinkled faoe grew more and more melancholy, until, gradually becoming restless and anxious, he at last stole quietly and unobserved out of the room, (To be continued.)