We have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends any
of my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in
England. We have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and
Protestants, to say nothing of a few witches and wizards. We have
satirized Puritans, and we have dressed-up Guys. But, after all, I
do not think we have been so bad as our Continental friends. To be
sure, our insular position has kept us free, to a certain degree,
from the inroads of alien races; who, driven from one land of refuge,
steal into another equally unwilling to receive them; and where, for
long centuries, their presence is barely endured, and no pains is
taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of “pure blood”
experience towards them.

There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in
the valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and,
stretching up on the west side of France, their numbers become larger
in Lower Brittany. Even now, the origin of these families is a word
of shame to them among their neighbours; although they are protected
by the law, which confirmed them in the equal rights of citizens
about the end of the last century. Before then they had lived, for
hundreds of years, isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood,
and they had been, all this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts.
They were truly what they were popularly called, The Accursed Race.

All distinct traces of their origin are lost. Even at the close of
that period which we call the Middle Ages, this was a problem which
no one could solve; and as the traces, which even then were faint and
uncertain, have vanished away one by one, it is a complete mystery at
the present day. Why they were accursed in the first instance, why
isolated from their kind, no one knows. From the earliest accounts
of their state that are yet remaining to us, it seems that the names
which they gave each other were ignored by the population they lived
amongst, who spoke of them as Crestiaa, or Cagots, just as we speak
of animals by their generic names. Their houses or huts were always
placed at some distance out of the villages of the country-folk, who
unwillingly called in the services of the Cagots as carpenters, or
tilers, or slaters–trades which seemed appropriated by this
unfortunate race–who were forbidden to occupy land, or to bear arms,
the usual occupations of those times. They had some small right of
pasturage on the common lands, and in the forests: but the number of
their cattle and live-stock was strictly limited by the earliest laws
relating to the Cagots. They were forbidden by one act to have more
than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese. The pig was to be
fattened and killed for winter food; the fleece of the sheep was to
clothe them; but if the said sheep had lambs, they were forbidden to
eat them. Their only privilege arising from this increase was, that
they might choose out the strongest and finest in preference to
keeping the old sheep. At Martinmas the authorities of the commune
came round, and counted over the stock of each Cagot. If he had more
than his appointed number, they were forfeited; half went to the
commune, half to the baillie, or chief magistrate of the commune.
The poor beasts were limited as to the amount of common which they
might stray over in search of grass. While the cattle of the
inhabitants of the commune might wander hither and thither in search
of the sweetest herbage, the deepest shade, or the coolest pool in
which to stand on the hot days, and lazily switch their dappled
sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn imaginary bounds, beyond
which if they strayed, any one might snap them up, and kill them,
reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, but graciously
restoring the inferior parts to their original owner. Any damage
done by the sheep was, however, fairly appraised, and the Cagot paid
no more for it than any other man would have done.

Did a Cagot leave his poor cabin, and venture into the towns, even to
render services required of him in the way of his he was bidden, by
all the municipal laws, to stand by and remember his rude old state.
In all the towns and villages the large districts extending on both
sides of the Pyrenees–in all that part of Spain–they were forbidden
to buy or sell anything eatable, to walk in the middle (esteemed the
better) part of the streets, to come within the gates before sunrise,
or to be found after sunset within the walls of the town. But still,
as the Cagots were good-looking men, and (although they bore certain
natural marks of their caste, of which I shall speak by-and-by) were
not easily distinguished by casual passers-by from other men, they
were compelled to wear some distinctive peculiarity which should
arrest the eye; and, in the greater number of towns, it was decreed
that the outward sign of a Cagot should be a piece of red cloth sewed
conspicuously on the front of his dress. In other towns, the mark of
Cagoterie was the foot of a duck or a goose hung over their left
shoulder, so as to be seen by any one meeting them. After a time,
the more convenient badge of a piece of yellow cloth cut out in the
shape of a duck’s foot, was adopted. If any Cagot was found in any
town or village without his badge, he had to pay a fine of five sous,
and to lose his dress. He was expected to shrink away from any
passer-by, for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or
else to stand still in some corner or by-place. If the Cagots were
thirsty during the days which they passed in those towns where their
presence was barely suffered, they had no means of quenching their
thirst, for they were forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or
taverns. Even the water gushing out of the common fountain was
prohibited to them. Far away, in their own squalid village, there
was the Cagot fountain, and they were not allowed to drink of any
other water. A Cagot woman having to make purchases in the town, was
liable to be flogged out of it if she went to buy anything except on
a Monday–a day on which all other people who could, kept their
houses for fear of coming in contact with the accursed race.

In the Pays Basque, the prejudices–and for some time the laws–ran
stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned. The
Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep. He might keep a pig
for provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage. He might cut
and carry grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was
permitted to own; and this ass was permitted, because its existence
was rather an advantage to the oppressor, who constantly availed
himself of the Cagot’s mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and
his tools easily conveyed from one place to another.

The race was repulsed by the State. Under the small local
governments they could hold no post whatsoever. And they were barely
tolerated by the Church, although they were good Catholics, and
zealous frequenters of the mass. They might only enter the churches
by a small door set apart for them, through which no one of the pure
race ever passed. This door was low, so as to compel them to make an
obeisance. It was occasionally surrounded by sculpture, which
invariably represented an oak-branch with a dove above it. When they
were once in, they might not go to the holy water used by others.
They had a benitier of their own; nor were they allowed to share in
the consecrated bread when that was handed round to the believers of
the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the door. There were
certain boundaries–imaginary lines on the nave and in the isles
which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant of the
Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots, the
priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of
bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.

When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground
on the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions
as I have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor
to have much property for his children to inherit; but certain
descriptions of it were forfeited to the commune. The only
possession which all who were not of his own race refused to touch,
was his furniture. That was tainted, infectious, unclean–fit for
none but Cagots.

When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages
and opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising
that we read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their
part. In the Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a
hundred years since, that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against
the inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the
better of them, by their magical powers as it is said. The people of
Lourdes were conquered and slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads
served the triumphant Cagots for balls to play at ninepins with! The
local parliaments had begun, by this time, to perceive how oppressive
was the ban of public opinion under which the Cagots lay, and were
not inclined to enforce too severe a punishment. Accordingly, the
decree of the parliament of Toulouse condemned only the leading
Cagots concerned in this affray to be put to death, and that
henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to be permitted to enter the
town of Lourdes by any gate but that called Capdet-pourtet: they
were only to be allowed to walk under the rain-gutters, and neither
to sit, eat, nor drink in the town. If they failed in observing any
of these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock,
that the disobedient Cagots should have two strips of flesh, weighing
never more than two ounces a-piece, cut out from each side of their
spines.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it was
considered no more a crime to kill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious
vermin. A “nest of Cagots,” as the old accounts phrase it, had
assembled in a deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen
hundred; and, certainly, they made themselves not very agreeable
neighbours, as they seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians;
and, by some acoustic secrets which were known to them, all sorts of
moanings and groanings were heard in the neighbouring forests, very
much to the alarm of the good people of the pure race; who could not
cut off a withered branch for firewood, but some unearthly sound
seemed to fill the air, nor drink water which was not poisoned,
because the Cagots would persist in filling their pitchers at the
same running stream. Added to these grievances, the various
pilferings perpetually going on in the neighbourhood made the
inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a
very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the
Chateau de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded by a moat, and only
accessible by a drawbridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce and
vigilant. Some one, however, proposed to get into their confidence;
and for this purpose he pretended to fall ill close to their path, so
that on returning to their stronghold they perceived him, and took
him in, restored him to health, and made a friend of him. One day,
when they were all playing at ninepins in the woods, their
treacherous friend left the party on pretence of being thirsty, and
went back into the castle, drawing up the bridge after he had passed
over it, and so cutting off their means of escape into safety. Them,
going up to the highest part of the castle, he blew a horn, and the
pure race, who were lying in wait on the watch for some such signal,
fell upon the Cagots at their games, and slew them all. For this
murder I find no punishment decreed in the parliament of Toulouse, or
elsewhere.

As any intermarriage with the pure race was strictly forbidden, and
as there were books kept in every commune in which the names and
habitations of the reputed Cagots were written, these unfortunate
people had no hope of ever becoming blended with the rest of the
population. Did a Cagot marriage take place, the couple were
serenaded with satirical songs. They also had minstrels, and many of
their romances are still current in Brittany; but they did not
attempt to make any reprisals of satire or abuse. Their disposition
was amiable, and their intelligence great. Indeed, it required both
these qualities, and their great love of mechanical labour, to make
their lives tolerable.

At last, they began to petition that they might receive some
protection from the laws; and, towards the end of the seventeenth
century, the judicial power took their side. But they gained little
by this. Law could not prevail against custom: and, in the ten or
twenty years just preceding the first French revolution, the
prejudice in France against the Cagots amounted to fierce and
positive abhorrence.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Cagots of Navarre
complained to the Pope, that they were excluded from the fellowship
of men, and accursed by the Church, because their ancestors had given
help to a certain Count Raymond of Toulouse in his revolt against the
Holy See. They entreated his holiness not to visit upon them the
sins of their fathers. The Pope issued a bull on the thirteenth of
May, fifteen hundred and fifteen–ordering them to be well-treated
and to be admitted to the same privileges as other men. He charged
Don Juan de Santa Maria of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this
bull. But Don Juan was slow to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots
grew impatient, and resolved to try the secular power. They
accordingly applied to the Cortes of Navarre, and were opposed on a
variety of grounds. First, it was stated that their ancestors had
had nothing to do with Raymond Count of Toulouse, or with any such
knightly personage; that they were in fact descendants of Gehazi,
servant of Elisha (second book of Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-
seventh verse), who had been accursed by his master for his fraud
upon Naaman, and doomed, he and his descendants, to be lepers for
evermore. Name, Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gehazites. What can be
more clear? And if that is not enough, and you tell us that the
Cagots are not lepers now; we reply that there are two kinds of
leprosy, one perceptible and the other imperceptible, even to the
person suffering from it. Besides, it is the country talk, that
where the Cagot treads, the grass withers, proving the unnatural heat
of his body. Many credible and trustworthy witnesses will also tell
you that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered apple in his hand, it
will shrivel and wither up in an hour’s time as much as if it had
been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are born with
tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them off
immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the
children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep’s tails to the
dress of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive
them? And their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it
shows that they must be heretics of some vile and pernicious
description, for do we not read of the incense of good workers, and
the fragrance of holiness?”

Such were literally the arguments by which the Cagots were thrown
back into a worse position than ever, as far as regarded their rights
as citizens. The Pope insisted that they should receive all their
ecclesiastical privileges. The Spanish priests said nothing; but
tacitly refused to allow the Cagots to mingle with the rest of the
faithful, either dead or alive. The accursed race obtained laws in
their favour from the Emperor Charles the Fifth; which, however,
there was no one to carry into effect. As a sort of revenge for
their want of submission, and for their impertinence in daring to
complain, their tools were all taken away from them by the local
authorities: an old man and all his family died of starvation, being
no longer allowed to fish.

They could not emigrate. Even to remove their poor mud habitations,
from one spot to another, excited anger and suspicion. To be sure,
in sixteen hundred and ninety-five, the Spanish government ordered
the alcaldes to search out all the Cagots, and to expel them before
two months had expired, under pain of having fifty ducats to pay for
every Cagot remaining in Spain at the expiration of that time. The
inhabitants of the villages rose up and flogged out any of the
miserable race who might be in their neighbourhood; but the French
were on their guard against this enforced irruption, and refused to
permit them to enter France. Numbers were hunted up into the
inhospitable Pyrenees, and there died of starvation, or became a prey
to wild beasts. They were obliged to wear both gloves and shoes when
they were thus put to flight, otherwise the stones and herbage they
trod upon and the balustrades of the bridges that they handled in
crossing, would, according to popular belief, have become poisonous.

And all this time, there was nothing remarkable or disgusting in the
outward appearance of this unfortunate people. There was nothing
about them to countenance the idea of their being lepers–the most
natural mode of accounting for the abhorrence in which they were
held. They were repeatedly examined by learned doctors, whose
experiments, although singular and rude, appear to have been made in
a spirit of humanity. For instance, the surgeons of the king of
Navarre, in sixteen hundred, bled twenty-two Cagots, in order to
examine and analyze their blood. They were young and healthy people
of both sexes; and the doctors seem to have expected that they should
have been able to extract some new kind of salt from their blood
which might account for the wonderful heat of their bodies. But
their blood was just like that of other people. Some of these
medical men have left us a description of the general appearance of
this unfortunate race, at a time when they were more numerous and
less intermixed than they are now. The families existing in the
south and west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at
this day, are, like their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful
in frame; fair and ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which
some observers see a pensive heaviness of look. Their lips are
thick, but well-formed. Some of the reports name their sad
expression of countenance with surprise and suspicion–”They are not
gay, like other folk.” The wonder would be if they were. Dr. Guyon,
the medical man of the last century who has left the clearest report
on the health of the Cagots, speaks of the vigorous old age they
attain to. In one family alone, he found a man of seventy-four years
of age; a woman as old, gathering cherries; and another woman, aged
eighty-three, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed by her
great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and other surgeons examined into the
subject of the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots were said
to leave behind them, and upon everything they touched; but they
could perceive nothing unusual on this head. They also examined
their ears, which according to common belief (a belief existing to
this day), were differently shaped from those of other people; being
round and gristly, without the lobe of flesh into which the ear-ring
is inserted. They decided that most of the Cagots whom they examined
had the ears of this round shape; but they gravely added, that they
saw no reason why this should exclude them from the good-will of men,
and from the power of holding office in Church and State. They
recorded the fact, that the children of the towns ran baaing after
any Cagot who had been compelled to come into the streets to make
purchases, in allusion to this peculiarity of the shape of the ear,
which bore some resemblance to the ears of the sheep as they are cut
by the shepherds in this district. Dr. Guyon names the case of a
beautiful Cagot girl, who sang most sweetly, and prayed to be allowed
to sing canticles in the organ-loft. The organist, more musician
than bigot, allowed her to come, but the indignant congregation,
finding out whence proceeded that clear, fresh voice, rushed up to
the organ-loft, and chased the girl out, bidding her “remember her
ears,” and not commit the sacrilege of singing praises to God along
with the pure race.

But this medical report of Dr. Guyon’s–bringing facts and arguments
to confirm his opinion, that there was no physical reason why the
Cagots should not be received on terms of social equality by the rest
of the world–did no more for his clients than the legal decrees
promulgated two centuries before had done. The French proved the
truth of the saying in Hudibras -

He that’s convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

And, indeed, the being convinced by Dr. Guyon that they ought to
receive Cagots as fellow-creatures, only made them more rabid in
declaring that they would not. One or two little occurrences which
are recorded, show that the bitterness of the repugnance to the
Cagots was in full force at the time just preceding the first French
revolution. There was a M. d’Abedos, the curate of Lourbes, and
brother to the seigneur of the neighbouring castle, who was living in
seventeen hundred and eighty; he was well-educated for the time, a
travelled man, and sensible and moderate in all respects but that of
his abhorrence of the Cagots: he would insult them from the very
altar, calling out to them, as they stood afar off, “Oh! ye Cagots,
damned for evermore!” One day, a half-blind Cagot stumbled and
touched the censer borne before this Abbe de Lourbes. He was
immediately turned out of the church, and forbidden ever to re-enter
it. One does not know how to account for the fact, that the very
brother of this bigoted abbe, the seigneur of the village, went and
married a Cagot girl; but so it was, and the abbe brought a legal
process against him, and had his estates taken from him, solely on
account of his marriage, which reduced him to the condition of a
Cagot, against whom the old law was still in force. The descendants
of this Seigneur de Lourbes are simple peasants at this very day,
working on the lands which belonged to their grandfather.

This prejudice against mixed marriages remained prevalent until very
lately. The tradition of the Cagot descent lingered among the
people, long after the laws against the accursed race were abolished.
A Breton girl, within the last few years, having two lovers each of
reputed Cagot descent, employed a notary to examine their pedigrees,
and see which of the two had least Cagot in him; and to that one she
gave her hand. In Brittany the prejudice seems to have been more
virulent than anywhere else. M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of
the hatred borne to them in Brittany so recently as in eighteen
hundred and thirty-five. Just lately a baker at Hennebon, having
married a girl of Cagot descent, lost all his custom. The godfather
and godmother of a Cagot child became Cagots themselves by the Breton
laws, unless, indeed, the poor little baby died before attaining a
certain number of days. They had to eat the butchers’ meat condemned
as unhealthy; but, for some unknown reason, they were considered to
have a right to every cut leaf turned upside down, with its cut side
towards the door, and might enter any house in which they saw a loaf
in this position, and carry it away with them. About thirty years
ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a
Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the
hand of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the
usual benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the
Sixteenth; which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the
next time the offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand,
and hung it up, dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron
saint of the church. The poor Cagots in Brittany petitioned against
their opprobrious name, and begged to be distinguished by the
appelation of Malandrins. To English ears one is much the same as
the other, as neither conveys any meaning; but, to this day, the
descendants of the Cagots do not like to have this name applied to
them, preferring that of Malandrin.

The French Cagots tried to destroy all the records of their pariah
descent, in the commotions of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine; but
if writings have disappeared, the tradition yet remains, and points
out such and such a family as Cagot, or Malandrin, or Oiselier,
according to the old terms of abhorrence.

There are various ways in which learned men have attempted to account
for the universal repugnance in which this well-made, powerful race
are held. Some say that the antipathy to them took its rise in the
days when leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disease; and that the
Cagots are more liable than any other men to a kind of skin disease,
not precisely leprosy, but resembling it in some of its symptoms;
such as dead whiteness of complexion, and swellings of the face and
extremities. There was also some resemblance to the ancient Jewish
custom in respect to lepers, in the habit of the people; who on
meeting a Cagot called out, “Cagote? Cagote?” to which they were
bound to reply, “Perlute! perlute!” Leprosy is not properly an
infectious complaint, in spite of the horror in which the Cagot
furniture, and the cloth woven by them, are held in some places; the
disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this body of wise men, who
have troubled themselves to account for the origin of Cagoterie) the
reasonableness and the justice of preventing any mixed marriages, by
which this terrible tendency to leprous complaints might be spread
far and wide. Another authority says, that though the Cagots are
fine-looking men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet they bear in
their faces, and show in their actions, reasons for the detestation
in which they are held: their glance, if you meet it, is the
jettatura, or evil-eye, and they are spiteful, and cruel, and
deceitful above all other men. All these qualities they derive from
their ancestor Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, together with their
tendency to leprosy.

Again, it is said that they are descended from the Arian Goths who
were permitted to live in certain places in Guienne and Languedoc,
after their defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured
their heresy, and kept themselves separate from all other men for
ever. The principal reason alleged in support of this supposition of
their Gothic descent, is the specious one of derivation,–Chiens
Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots, equivalent to Dogs of Goths.

Again, they were thought to be Saracens, coming from Syria. In
confirmation of this idea, was the belief that all Cagots were
possessed by a horrible smell. The Lombards, also, were an
unfragrant race, or so reputed among the Italians: witness Pope
Stephen’s letter to Charlemagne, dissuading him from marrying Bertha,
daughter of Didier, King of Lombardy. The Lombards boasted of
Eastern descent, and were noisome. The Cagots were noisome, and
therefore must be of Eastern descent. What could be clearer? In
addition, there was the proof to be derived from the name Cagot,
which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen descent held to
be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens chased the
Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally
Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence
the badge of the duck’s foot. A duck was a water-bird: Mahometans
bathed in the water. Proof upon proof!

In Brittany the common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their
unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was
well known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either
by bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt–which was a long way from
Brittany–or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian
child. Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday.
No wonder, if they were of Jewish descent. It was the only way of
accounting for so portentous a fact. Again; the Cagots were capital
carpenters, which gave the Bretons every reason to believe that their
ancestors were the very Jews who made the cross. When first the tide
of emigration set from Brittany to America, the oppressed Cagots
crowded to the ports, seeking to go to some new country, where their
race might be unknown. Here was another proof of their descent from
Abraham and his nomadic people: and, the forty years’ wandering in
the wilderness and the Wandering Jew himself, were pressed into the
service to prove that the Cagots derived their restlessness and love
of change from their ancestors, the Jews. The Jews, also, practised
arts-magic, and the Cagots sold bags of wind to the Breton sailors,
enchanted maidens to love them–maidens who never would have cared
for them, unless they had been previously enchanted–made hollow
rocks and trees give out strange and unearthly noises, and sold the
magical herb called bon-succes. It is true enough that, in all the
early acts of the fourteenth century, the same laws apply to Jews as
to Cagots, and the appellations seem used indiscriminately; but their
fair complexions, their remarkable devotion to all the ceremonies of
the Catholic Church, and many other circumstances, conspire to forbid
our believing them to be of Hebrew descent.

Another very plausible idea is, that they are the descendants of
unfortunate individuals afflicted with goitres, which is, even to
this day, not an uncommon disorder in the gorges and valleys of the
Pyrenees. Some have even derived the word goitre from Got, or Goth;
but their name, Crestia, is not unlike Cretin, and the same symptoms
of idiotism were not unusual among the Cagots; although sometimes, if
old tradition is to be credited, their malady of the brain took
rather the form of violent delirium, which attacked them at new and
full moons. Then the workmen laid down their tools, and rushed off
from their labour to play mad pranks up and down the country.
Perpetual motion was required to alleviate the agony of fury that
seized upon the Cagots at such times. In this desire for rapid
movement, the attack resembled the Neapolitan tarantella; while in
the mad deeds they performed during such attacks, they were not
unlike the northern Berserker. In Bearn especially, those suffering
from this madness were dreaded by the pure race; the Bearnais, going
to cut their wooden clogs in the great forests that lay around the
base of the Pyrenees, feared above all things to go too near the
periods when the Cagoutelle seized on the oppressed and accursed
people; from whom it was then the oppressors’ turn to fly. A man was
living within the memory of some, who married a Cagot wife; he used
to beat her right soundly when he saw the first symptoms of the
Cagoutelle, and, having reduced her to a wholesome state of
exhaustion and insensibility, he locked her up until the moon had
altered her shape in the heavens. If he had not taken such decided
steps, say the oldest inhabitants, there is no knowing what might
have happened.

From the thirteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, there are
facts enough to prove the universal abhorrence in which this
unfortunate race was held; whether called Cagots, or Gahets in
Pyrenean districts, Caqueaux in Brittany, or Yaqueros Asturias. The
great French revolution brought some good out of its fermentation of
the people: the more intelligent among them tried to overcome the
prejudice against the Cagots.

In seventeen hundred and eighteen, there was a famous cause tried at
Biarritz relating to Cagot rights and privileges. There was a
wealthy miller, Etienne Arnauld by name, of the race of Gotz,
Quagotz, Bisigotz, Astragotz, or Gahetz, as his people are described
in the legal document. He married an heiress, a Gotte (or Cagot) of
Biarritz; and the newly-married well-to-do couple saw no reason why
they should stand near the door in the church, nor why he should not
hold some civil office in the commune, of which he was the principal
inhabitant. Accordingly, he petitioned the law that he and his wife
might be allowed to sit in the gallery of the church, and that he
might be relieved from his civil disabilities. This wealthy white
miller, Etienne Arnauld, pursued his rights with some vigour against
the Baillie of Labourd, the dignitary of the neighbourhood.
Whereupon the inhabitants of Biarritz met in the open air, on the
eighth of May, to the number of one hundred and fifty; approved of
the conduct of the Baillie in rejecting Arnauld, made a subscription,
and gave all power to their lawyers to defend the cause of the pure
race against Etienne Arnauld–”that stranger,” who, having married a
girl of Cagot blood, ought also to be expelled from the holy places.
This lawsuit was carried through all the local courts, and ended by
an appeal to the highest court in Paris; where a decision was given
against Basque superstitions; and Etienne Arnauld was thenceforward
entitled to enter the gallery of the church.

Of course, the inhabitants of Biarritz were all the more ferocious
for having been conquered; and, four years later, a carpenter, named
Miguel Legaret, suspected of Cagot descent, having placed himself in
the church among other people, was dragged out by the abbe and two of
the jurets of the parish. Legaret defended himself with a sharp
knife at the time, and went to law afterwards; the end of which was,
that the abbe and his two accomplices were condemned to a public
confession of penitence, to be uttered while on their knees at the
church door, just after high-mass. They appealed to the parliament
of Bourdeaux against this decision, but met with no better success
than the opponents of the miller Arnauld. Legaret was confirmed in
his right of standing where he would in the parish church. That a
living Cagot had equal rights with other men in the town of Biarritz
seemed now ceded to them; but a dead Cagot was a different thing.
The inhabitants of pure blood struggled long and hard to be interred
apart from the abhorred race. The Cagots were equally persistent in
claiming to have a common burying-ground. Again the texts of the Old
Testament were referred to, and the pure blood quoted triumphantly
the precedent of Uzziah the leper (twenty-sixth chapter of the second
book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the Sepulchres of
the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots pleaded that
they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy near
them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be
refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds,
perceptible and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the
latter kind, who could tell whether they were free from it or not?
That decision must be left to the judgment of others.

One sturdy Cagot family alone, Belone by name, kept up a lawsuit,
claiming the privilege of common sepulture, for forty-two years;
although the cure of Biarritz had to pay one hundred livres for every
Cagot not interred in the right place. The inhabitants indemnified
the curate for all these fines.

M. de Romagne, Bishop of Tarbes, who died in seventeen hundred and
sixty-eight, was the first to allow a Cagot to fill any office in the
Church. To be sure, some were so spiritless as to reject office when
it was offered to them, because, by so claiming their equality, they
had to pay the same taxes as other men, instead of the Rancale or
pole-tax levied on the Cagots; the collector of which had also a
right to claim a piece of bread of a certain size for his dog at
every Cagot dwelling.

Even in the present century, it has been necessary in some churches
for the archdeacon of the district, followed by all his clergy, to
pass out of the small door previously appropriated to the Cagots, in
order to mitigate the superstition which, even so lately, made the
people refuse to mingle with them in the house of God. A Cagot once
played the congregation at Larroque a trick suggested by what I have
just named. He slily locked the great parish-door of the church,
while the greater part of the inhabitants were assisting at mass
inside; put gravel into the lock itself, so as to prevent the use of
any duplicate key,–and had the pleasure of seeing the proud pure-
blooded people file out with bended head, through the small low door
used by the abhorred Cagots.

We are naturally shocked at discovering, from facts such as these,
the causeless rancour with which innocent and industrious people were
so recently persecuted. The moral of the history of the accursed
race may, perhaps, be best conveyed in the words of an epitaph on
Mrs. Mary Hand, who lies buried in the churchyard of Stratford-on-
Avon:-

What faults you saw in me,
Pray strive to shun;
And look at home; there’s
Something to be done.

My mother was twice married. She never spoke of her first husband,
and it is only from other people that I have learnt what little I
know about him. I believe she was scarcely seventeen when she was
married to him: and he was barely one-and-twenty. He rented a small
farm up in Cumberland, somewhere towards the sea-coast; but he was
perhaps too young and inexperienced to have the charge of land and
cattle: anyhow, his affairs did not prosper, and he fell into ill
health, and died of consumption before they had been three years man
and wife, leaving my mother a young widow of twenty, with a little
child only just able to walk, and the farm on her hands for four
years more by the lease, with half the stock on it dead, or sold off
one by one to pay the more pressing debts, and with no money to
purchase more, or even to buy the provisions needed for the small
consumption of every day. There was another child coming, too; and
sad and sorry, I believe, she was to think of it. A dreary winter
she must have had in her lonesome dwelling, with never another near
it for miles around; her sister came to bear her company, and they
two planned and plotted how to make every penny they could raise go
as far as possible. I can’t tell you how it happened that my little
sister, whom I never saw, came to sicken and die; but, as if my poor
mother’s cup was not full enough, only a fortnight before Gregory was
born the little girl took ill of scarlet fever, and in a week she lay
dead. My mother was, I believe, just stunned with this last blow.
My aunt has told me that she did not cry; aunt Fanny would have been
thankful if she had; but she sat holding the poor wee lassie’s hand
and looking in her pretty, pale, dead face, without so much as
shedding a tear. And it was all the same, when they had to take her
away to be buried. She just kissed the child, and sat her down in
the window-seat to watch the little black train of people
(neighbours–my aunt, and one far-off cousin, who were all the
friends they could muster) go winding away amongst the snow, which
had fallen thinly over the country the night before. When my aunt
came back from the funeral, she found my mother in the same place,
and as dry-eyed as ever. So she continued until after Gregory was
born; and, somehow, his coming seemed to loosen the tears, and she
cried day and night, till my aunt and the other watcher looked at
each other in dismay, and would fain have stopped her if they had but
known how. But she bade them let her alone, and not be over-anxious,
for every drop she shed eased her brain, which had been in a terrible
state before for want of the power to cry. She seemed after that to
think of nothing but her new little baby; she had hardly appeared to
remember either her husband or her little daughter that lay dead in
Brigham churchyard–at least so aunt Fanny said, but she was a great
talker, and my mother was very silent by nature, and I think aunt
Fanny may have been mistaken in believing that my mother never
thought of her husband and child just because she never spoke about
them. Aunt Fanny was older than my mother, and had a way of treating
her like a child; but, for all that, she was a kind, warm-hearted
creature, who thought more of her sister’s welfare than she did of
her own and it was on her bit of money that they principally lived,
and on what the two could earn by working for the great Glasgow
sewing-merchants. But by-and-by my mother’s eye-sight began to fail.
It was not that she was exactly blind, for she could see well enough
to guide herself about the house, and to do a good deal of domestic
work; but she could no longer do fine sewing and earn money. It must
have been with the heavy crying she had had in her day, for she was
but a young creature at this time, and as pretty a young woman, I
have heard people say, as any on the country side. She took it sadly
to heart that she could no longer gain anything towards the keep of
herself and her child. My aunt Fanny would fain have persuaded her
that she had enough to do in managing their cottage and minding
Gregory; but my mother knew that they were pinched, and that aunt
Fanny herself had not as much to eat, even of the commonest kind of
food, as she could have done with; and as for Gregory, he was not a
strong lad, and needed, not more food–for he always had enough,
whoever went short–but better nourishment, and more flesh-meat. One
day–it was aunt Fanny who told me all this about my poor mother,
long after her death–as the sisters were sitting together, aunt
Fanny working, and my mother hushing Gregory to sleep, William
Preston, who was afterwards my father, came in. He was reckoned an
old bachelor; I suppose he was long past forty, and he was one of the
wealthiest farmers thereabouts, and had known my grandfather well,
and my mother and my aunt in their more prosperous days. He sat
down, and began to twirl his hat by way of being agreeable; my aunt
Fanny talked, and he listened and looked at my mother. But he said
very little, either on that visit, or on many another that he paid
before he spoke out what had been the real purpose of his calling so
often all along, and from the very first time he came to their house.
One Sunday, however, my aunt Fanny stayed away from church, and took
care of the child, and my mother went alone. When she came back, she
ran straight upstairs, without going into the kitchen to look at
Gregory or speak any word to her sister, and aunt Fanny heard her cry
as if her heart was breaking; so she went up and scolded her right
well through the bolted door, till at last she got her to open it.
And then she threw herself on my aunt’s neck, and told her that
William Preston had asked her to marry him, and had promised to take
good charge of her boy, and to let him want for nothing, neither in
the way of keep nor of education, and that she had consented. Aunt
Fanny was a good deal shocked at this; for, as I have said, she had
often thought that my mother had forgotten her first husband very
quickly, and now here was proof positive of it, if she could so soon
think of marrying again. Besides as aunt Fanny used to say, she
herself would have been a far more suitable match for a man of
William Preston’s age than Helen, who, though she was a widow, had
not seen her four-and-twentieth summer. However, as aunt Fanny said,
they had not asked her advice; and there was much to be said on the
other side of the question. Helen’s eyesight would never be good for
much again, and as William Preston’s wife she would never need to do
anything, if she chose to sit with her hands before her; and a boy
was a great charge to a widowed mother; and now there would be a
decent steady man to see after him. So, by-and-by, aunt Fanny seemed
to take a brighter view of the marriage than did my mother herself,
who hardly ever looked up, and never smiled after the day when she
promised William Preston to be his wife. But much as she had loved
Gregory before, she seemed to love him more now. She was continually
talking to him when they were alone, though he was far too young to
understand her moaning words, or give her any comfort, except by his
caresses.

At last William Preston and she were wed; and she went to be mistress
of a well-stocked house, not above half-an-hour’s walk from where
aunt Fanny lived. I believe she did all that she could to please my
father; and a more dutiful wife, I have heard him himself say, could
never have been. But she did not love him, and he soon found it out.
She loved Gregory, and she did not love him. Perhaps, love would
have come in time, if he had been patient enough to wait; but it just
turned him sour to see how her eye brightened and her colour came at
the sight of that little child, while for him who had given her so
much, she had only gentle words as cold as ice. He got to taunt her
with the difference in her manner, as if that would bring love: and
he took a positive dislike to Gregory,–he was so jealous of the
ready love that always gushed out like a spring of fresh water when
he came near. He wanted her to love him more, and perhaps that was
all well and good; but he wanted her to love her child less, and that
was an evil wish. One day, he gave way to his temper, and cursed and
swore at Gregory, who had got into some mischief, as children will;
my mother made some excuse for him; my father said it was hard enough
to have to keep another man’s child, without having it perpetually
held up in its naughtiness by his wife, who ought to be always in the
same mind that he was; and so from little they got to more; and the
end of it was, that my mother took to her bed before her time, and I
was born that very day. My father was glad, and proud, and sorry,
all in a breath; glad and proud that a son was born to him; and sorry
for his poor wife’s state, and to think how his angry words had
brought it on. But he was a man who liked better to be angry than
sorry, so he soon found out that it was all Gregory’s fault, and owed
him an additional grudge for having hastened my birth. He had
another grudge against him before long. My mother began to sink the
day after I was born. My father sent to Carlisle for doctors, and
would have coined his heart’s blood into gold to save her, if that
could have been; but it could not. My aunt Fanny used to say
sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish to live, and so
just let herself die away without trying to take hold on life; but
when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors
bade her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience with which
she had acted through life. One of her last requests was to have
Gregory laid in her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold
of my little hand. Her husband came in while she was looking at us
so, and when he bent tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now,
and seemed to gaze on us two little half-brothers, with a grave sort
of kindness, she looked up in his face and smiled, almost her first
smile at him; and such a sweet smile! as more besides aunt Fanny have
said. In an hour she was dead. Aunt Fanny came to live with us. It
was the best thing that could be done. My father would have been
glad to return to his old mode of bachelor life, but what could he do
with two little children? He needed a woman to take care of him, and
who so fitting as his wife’s elder sister? So she had the charge of
me from my birth; and for a time I was weakly, as was but natural,
and she was always beside me, night and day watching over me, and my
father nearly as anxious as she. For his land had come down from
father to son for more than three hundred years, and he would have
cared for me merely as his flesh and blood that was to inherit the
land after him. But he needed something to love, for all that, to
most people, he was a stern, hard man, and he took to me as, I fancy,
he had taken to no human being before–as he might have taken to my
mother, if she had had no former life for him to be jealous of. I
loved him back again right heartily. I loved all around me, I
believe, for everybody was kind to me. After a time, I overcame my
original weakness of constitution, and was just a bonny, strong-
looking lad whom every passer-by noticed, when my father took me with
him to the nearest town.

At home I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my
father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the “young
master” of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly
antic, assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt
not, on such a baby as I was.

Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to
him in deed and in action, but she did not often think about him, she
had fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me,
from the fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby.
My father never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson, who had
so innocently wrestled with him for the possession of my mother’s
heart. I mistrust me, too, that my father always considered him as
the cause of my mother’s death and my early delicacy; and utterly
unreasonable as this may seem, I believe my father rather cherished
his feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to
repress it. Yet not for the world would my father have grudged him
anything that money could purchase. That was, as it were, in the
bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was lumpish and loutish,
awkward and ungainly, marring whatever he meddled in, and many a hard
word and sharp scolding did he get from the people about the farm,
who hardly waited till my father’s back was turned before they rated
the stepson. I am ashamed–my heart is sore to think how I fell into
the fashion of the family, and slighted my poor orphan step-brother.
I don’t think I ever scouted him, or was wilfully ill-natured to him;
but the habit of being considered in all things, and being treated as
something uncommon and superior, made me insolent in my prosperity,
and I exacted more than Gregory was always willing to grant, and
then, irritated, I sometimes repeated the disparaging words I had
heard others use with regard to him, without fully understanding
their meaning. Whether he did or not I cannot tell. I am afraid he
did. He used to turn silent and quiet–sullen and sulky, my father
thought it: stupid, aunt Fanny used to call it. But every one said
he was stupid and dull, and this stupidity and dullness grew upon
him. He would sit without speaking a word, sometimes, for hours;
then my father would bid him rise and do some piece of work, maybe,
about the farm. And he would take three or four tellings before he
would go. When we were sent to school, it was all the same. He
could never be made to remember his lessons; the school-master grew
weary of scolding and flogging, and at last advised my father just to
take him away, and set him to some farm-work that might not be above
his comprehension. I think he was more gloomy and stupid than ever
after this, yet he was not a cross lad; he was patient and good-
natured, and would try to do a kind turn for any one, even if they
had been scolding or cuffing him not a minute before. But very often
his attempts at kindness ended in some mischief to the very people he
was trying to serve, owing to his awkward, ungainly ways. I suppose
I was a clever lad; at any rate, I always got plenty of praise; and
was, as we called it, the cock of the school. The schoolmaster said
I could learn anything I chose, but my father, who had no great
learning himself, saw little use in much for me, and took me away
betimes, and kept me with him about the farm. Gregory was made into
a kind of shepherd, receiving his training under old Adam, who was
nearly past his work. I think old Adam was almost the first person
who had a good opinion of Gregory. He stood to it that my brother
had good parts, though he did not rightly know how to bring them out;
and, for knowing the bearings of the Fells, he said he had never seen
a lad like him. My father would try to bring Adam round to speak of
Gregory’s faults and shortcomings; but, instead of that, he would
praise him twice as much, as soon as he found out what was my
father’s object.

One winter-time, when I was about sixteen, and Gregory nineteen, I
was sent by my father on an errand to a place about seven miles
distant by the road, but only about four by the Fells. He bade me
return by the road, whichever way I took in going, for the evenings
closed in early, and were often thick and misty; besides which, old
Adam, now paralytic and bedridden, foretold a downfall of snow before
long. I soon got to my journey’s end, and soon had done my business;
earlier by an hour, I thought, than my father had expected, so I took
the decision of the way by which I would return into my own hands,
and set off back again over the Fells, just as the first shades of
evening began to fall. It looked dark and gloomy enough; but
everything was so still that I thought I should have plenty of time
to get home before the snow came down. Off I set at a pretty quick
pace. But night came on quicker. The right path was clear enough in
the day-time, although at several points two or three exactly similar
diverged from the same place; but when there was a good light, the
traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects,–a piece of
rock,–a fall in the ground–which were quite invisible to me now. I
plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the
right road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me whither I knew
not, but to some wild boggy moor where the solitude seemed painful,
intense, as if never footfall of man had come thither to break the
silence. I tried to shout–with the dimmest possible hope of being
heard–rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice; but my
voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so
weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness.
Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and
hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge
of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I
had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps; it hemmed me in,
thicker, thicker, with a darkness that might be felt. The boggy soil
on which I stood quaked under me if I remained long in one place, and
yet I dared not move far. All my youthful hardiness seemed to leave
me at once. I was on the point of crying, and only very shame seemed
to keep it down. To save myself from shedding tears, I shouted–
terrible, wild shouts for bare life they were. I turned sick as I
paused to listen; no answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes.
Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker–
faster, faster! I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move
about, but I dared not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I
knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood
still and shouted again; but my voice was getting choked with tears,
as I thought of the desolate helpless death I was to die, and how
little they at home, sitting round the warm, red, bright fire, wotted
what was become of me,–and how my poor father would grieve for me–
it would surely kill him–it would break his heart, poor old man!
Aunt Fanny too–was this to be the end of all her cares for me? I
began to review my life in a strange kind of vivid dream, in which
the various scenes of my few boyish years passed before me like
visions. In a pang of agony, caused by such remembrance of my short
life, I gathered up my strength and called out once more, a long,
despairing, wailing cry, to which I had no hope of obtaining any
answer, save from the echoes around, dulled as the sound might be by
the thickened air. To my surprise I heard a cry–almost as long, as
wild as mine–so wild that it seemed unearthly, and I almost thought
it must be the voice of some of the mocking spirits of the Fells,
about whom I had heard so many tales. My heart suddenly began to
beat fast and loud. I could not reply for a minute or two. I nearly
fancied I had lost the power of utterance. Just at this moment a dog
barked. Was it Lassie’s bark–my brother’s collie?–an ugly enough
brute, with a white, ill-looking face, that my father always kicked
whenever he saw it, partly for its own demerits, partly because it
belonged to my brother. On such occasions, Gregory would whistle
Lassie away, and go off and sit with her in some outhouse. My father
had once or twice been ashamed of himself, when the poor collie had
yowled out with the suddenness of the pain, and had relieved himself
of his self-reproach by blaming my brother, who, he said, had no
notion of training a dog, and was enough to ruin any collie in
Christendom with his stupid way of allowing them to lie by the
kitchen fire. To all which Gregory would answer nothing, nor even
seem to hear, but go on looking absent and moody.

Yes! there again! It was Lassie’s bark! Now or never! I lifted up
my voice and shouted “Lassie! Lassie! for God’s sake, Lassie!”
Another moment, and the great white-faced Lassie was curving and
gambolling with delight round my feet and legs, looking, however, up
in my face with her intelligent, apprehensive eyes, as if fearing
lest I might greet her with a blow, as I had done oftentimes before.
But I cried with gladness, as I stooped down and patted her. My mind
was sharing in my body’s weakness, and I could not reason, but I knew
that help was at hand. A gray figure came more and more distinctly
out of the thick, close-pressing darkness. It was Gregory wrapped in
his maud.

“Oh, Gregory!” said I, and I fell upon his neck, unable to speak
another word. He never spoke much, and made me no answer for some
little time. Then he told me we must move, we must walk for the dear
life–we must find our road home, if possible; but we must move, or
we should be frozen to death.

“Don’t you know the way home?” asked I.

“I thought I did when I set out, but I am doubtful now. The snow
blinds me, and I am feared that in moving about just now, I have lost
the right gait homewards.”

He had his shepherd’s staff with him, and by dint of plunging it
before us at every step we took–clinging close to each other, we
went on safely enough, as far as not falling down any of the steep
rocks, but it was slow, dreary work. My brother, I saw, was more
guided by Lassie and the way she took than anything else, trusting to
her instinct. It was too dark to see far before us; but he called
her back continually, and noted from what quarter she returned, and
shaped our slow steps accordingly. But the tedious motion scarcely
kept my very blood from freezing. Every bone, every fibre in my body
seemed first to ache, and then to swell, and then to turn numb with
the intense cold. My brother bore it better than I, from having been
more out upon the hills. He did not speak, except to call Lassie. I
strove to be brave, and not complain; but now I felt the deadly fatal
sleep stealing over me.

“I can go no farther,” I said, in a drowsy tone. I remember I
suddenly became dogged and resolved. Sleep I would, were it only for
five minutes. If death were to be the consequence, sleep I would.
Gregory stood still. I suppose, he recognized the peculiar phase of
suffering to which I had been brought by the cold.

“It is of no use,” said he, as if to himself. “We are no nearer home
than we were when we started, as far as I can tell. Our only chance
is in Lassie. Here! roll thee in my maud, lad, and lay thee down on
this sheltered side of this bit of rock. Creep close under it, lad,
and I’ll lie by thee, and strive to keep the warmth in us. Stay!
hast gotten aught about thee they’ll know at home?”

I felt him unkind thus to keep me from slumber, but on his repeating
the question, I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief, of some showy
pattern, which Aunt Fanny had hemmed for me–Gregory took it, and
tied it round Lassie’s neck.

“Hie thee, Lassie, hie thee home!” And the white-faced ill-favoured
brute was off like a shot in the darkness. Now I might lie down–now
I might sleep. In my drowsy stupor I felt that I was being tenderly
covered up by my brother; but what with I neither knew nor cared–I
was too dull, too selfish, too numb to think and reason, or I might
have known that in that bleak bare place there was nought to wrap me
in, save what was taken off another. I was glad enough when he
ceased his cares and lay down by me. I took his hand.

“Thou canst not remember, lad, how we lay together thus by our dying
mother. She put thy small, wee hand in mine–I reckon she sees us
now; and belike we shall soon be with her. Anyhow, God’s will be
done.”

“Dear Gregory,” I muttered, and crept nearer to him for warmth. He
was talking still, and again about our mother, when I fell asleep.
In an instant–or so it seemed–there were many voices about me–many
faces hovering round me–the sweet luxury of warmth was stealing into
every part of me. I was in my own little bed at home. I am thankful
to say, my first word was “Gregory?”

A look passed from one to another–my father’s stern old face strove
in vain to keep its sternness; his mouth quivered, his eyes filled
slowly with unwonted tears.

“I would have given him half my land–I would have blessed him as my
son,–oh God! I would have knelt at his feet, and asked him to
forgive my hardness of heart.”

I heard no more. A whirl came through my brain, catching me back to
death.

I came slowly to my consciousness, weeks afterwards. My father’s
hair was white when I recovered, and his hands shook as he looked
into my face.

We spoke no more of Gregory. We could not speak of him; but he was
strangely in our thoughts. Lassie came and went with never a word of
blame; nay, my father would try to stroke her, but she shrank away;
and he, as if reproved by the poor dumb beast, would sigh, and be
silent and abstracted for a time.

Aunt Fanny–always a talker–told me all. How, on that fatal night,
my father,–irritated by my prolonged absence, and probably more
anxious than he cared to show, had been fierce and imperious, even
beyond his wont, to Gregory; had upbraided him with his father’s
poverty, his own stupidity which made his services good for nothing–
for so, in spite of the old shepherd, my father always chose to
consider them. At last, Gregory had risen up, and whistled Lassie
out with him–poor Lassie, crouching underneath his chair for fear of
a kick or a blow. Some time before, there had been some talk between
my father and my aunt respecting my return; and when aunt Fanny told
me all this, she said she fancied that Gregory might have noticed the
coming storm, and gone out silently to meet me. Three hours
afterwards, when all were running about in wild alarm, not knowing
whither to go in search of me–not even missing Gregory, or heeding
his absence, poor fellow–poor, poor fellow!–Lassie came home, with
my handkerchief tied round her neck. They knew and understood, and
the whole strength of the farm was turned out to follow her, with
wraps, and blankets, and brandy, and every thing that could be
thought of. I lay in chilly sleep, but still alive, beneath the rock
that Lassie guided them to. I was covered over with my brother’s
plaid, and his thick shepherd’s coat was carefully wrapped round my
feet. He was in his shirt-sleeves–his arm thrown over me–a quiet
smile (he had hardly ever smiled in life) upon his still, cold face.

My father’s last words were, “God forgive me my hardness of heart
towards the fatherless child!”

And what marked the depth of his feeling of repentance, perhaps more
than all, considering the passionate love he bore my mother, was
this: we found a paper of directions after his death, in which he
desired that he might lie at the foot of the grave, in which, by his
desire, poor Gregory had been laid with our mother.

My mother was twice married. She never spoke of her first husband,
and it is only from other people that I have learnt what little I
know about him. I believe she was scarcely seventeen when she was
married to him: and he was barely one-and-twenty. He rented a small
farm up in Cumberland, somewhere towards the sea-coast; but he was
perhaps too young and inexperienced to have the charge of land and
cattle: anyhow, his affairs did not prosper, and he fell into ill
health, and died of consumption before they had been three years man
and wife, leaving my mother a young widow of twenty, with a little
child only just able to walk, and the farm on her hands for four
years more by the lease, with half the stock on it dead, or sold off
one by one to pay the more pressing debts, and with no money to
purchase more, or even to buy the provisions needed for the small
consumption of every day. There was another child coming, too; and
sad and sorry, I believe, she was to think of it. A dreary winter
she must have had in her lonesome dwelling, with never another near
it for miles around; her sister came to bear her company, and they
two planned and plotted how to make every penny they could raise go
as far as possible. I can’t tell you how it happened that my little
sister, whom I never saw, came to sicken and die; but, as if my poor
mother’s cup was not full enough, only a fortnight before Gregory was
born the little girl took ill of scarlet fever, and in a week she lay
dead. My mother was, I believe, just stunned with this last blow.
My aunt has told me that she did not cry; aunt Fanny would have been
thankful if she had; but she sat holding the poor wee lassie’s hand
and looking in her pretty, pale, dead face, without so much as
shedding a tear. And it was all the same, when they had to take her
away to be buried. She just kissed the child, and sat her down in
the window-seat to watch the little black train of people
(neighbours–my aunt, and one far-off cousin, who were all the
friends they could muster) go winding away amongst the snow, which
had fallen thinly over the country the night before. When my aunt
came back from the funeral, she found my mother in the same place,
and as dry-eyed as ever. So she continued until after Gregory was
born; and, somehow, his coming seemed to loosen the tears, and she
cried day and night, till my aunt and the other watcher looked at
each other in dismay, and would fain have stopped her if they had but
known how. But she bade them let her alone, and not be over-anxious,
for every drop she shed eased her brain, which had been in a terrible
state before for want of the power to cry. She seemed after that to
think of nothing but her new little baby; she had hardly appeared to
remember either her husband or her little daughter that lay dead in
Brigham churchyard–at least so aunt Fanny said, but she was a great
talker, and my mother was very silent by nature, and I think aunt
Fanny may have been mistaken in believing that my mother never
thought of her husband and child just because she never spoke about
them. Aunt Fanny was older than my mother, and had a way of treating
her like a child; but, for all that, she was a kind, warm-hearted
creature, who thought more of her sister’s welfare than she did of
her own and it was on her bit of money that they principally lived,
and on what the two could earn by working for the great Glasgow
sewing-merchants. But by-and-by my mother’s eye-sight began to fail.
It was not that she was exactly blind, for she could see well enough
to guide herself about the house, and to do a good deal of domestic
work; but she could no longer do fine sewing and earn money. It must
have been with the heavy crying she had had in her day, for she was
but a young creature at this time, and as pretty a young woman, I
have heard people say, as any on the country side. She took it sadly
to heart that she could no longer gain anything towards the keep of
herself and her child. My aunt Fanny would fain have persuaded her
that she had enough to do in managing their cottage and minding
Gregory; but my mother knew that they were pinched, and that aunt
Fanny herself had not as much to eat, even of the commonest kind of
food, as she could have done with; and as for Gregory, he was not a
strong lad, and needed, not more food–for he always had enough,
whoever went short–but better nourishment, and more flesh-meat. One
day–it was aunt Fanny who told me all this about my poor mother,
long after her death–as the sisters were sitting together, aunt
Fanny working, and my mother hushing Gregory to sleep, William
Preston, who was afterwards my father, came in. He was reckoned an
old bachelor; I suppose he was long past forty, and he was one of the
wealthiest farmers thereabouts, and had known my grandfather well,
and my mother and my aunt in their more prosperous days. He sat
down, and began to twirl his hat by way of being agreeable; my aunt
Fanny talked, and he listened and looked at my mother. But he said
very little, either on that visit, or on many another that he paid
before he spoke out what had been the real purpose of his calling so
often all along, and from the very first time he came to their house.
One Sunday, however, my aunt Fanny stayed away from church, and took
care of the child, and my mother went alone. When she came back, she
ran straight upstairs, without going into the kitchen to look at
Gregory or speak any word to her sister, and aunt Fanny heard her cry
as if her heart was breaking; so she went up and scolded her right
well through the bolted door, till at last she got her to open it.
And then she threw herself on my aunt’s neck, and told her that
William Preston had asked her to marry him, and had promised to take
good charge of her boy, and to let him want for nothing, neither in
the way of keep nor of education, and that she had consented. Aunt
Fanny was a good deal shocked at this; for, as I have said, she had
often thought that my mother had forgotten her first husband very
quickly, and now here was proof positive of it, if she could so soon
think of marrying again. Besides as aunt Fanny used to say, she
herself would have been a far more suitable match for a man of
William Preston’s age than Helen, who, though she was a widow, had
not seen her four-and-twentieth summer. However, as aunt Fanny said,
they had not asked her advice; and there was much to be said on the
other side of the question. Helen’s eyesight would never be good for
much again, and as William Preston’s wife she would never need to do
anything, if she chose to sit with her hands before her; and a boy
was a great charge to a widowed mother; and now there would be a
decent steady man to see after him. So, by-and-by, aunt Fanny seemed
to take a brighter view of the marriage than did my mother herself,
who hardly ever looked up, and never smiled after the day when she
promised William Preston to be his wife. But much as she had loved
Gregory before, she seemed to love him more now. She was continually
talking to him when they were alone, though he was far too young to
understand her moaning words, or give her any comfort, except by his
caresses.

At last William Preston and she were wed; and she went to be mistress
of a well-stocked house, not above half-an-hour’s walk from where
aunt Fanny lived. I believe she did all that she could to please my
father; and a more dutiful wife, I have heard him himself say, could
never have been. But she did not love him, and he soon found it out.
She loved Gregory, and she did not love him. Perhaps, love would
have come in time, if he had been patient enough to wait; but it just
turned him sour to see how her eye brightened and her colour came at
the sight of that little child, while for him who had given her so
much, she had only gentle words as cold as ice. He got to taunt her
with the difference in her manner, as if that would bring love: and
he took a positive dislike to Gregory,–he was so jealous of the
ready love that always gushed out like a spring of fresh water when
he came near. He wanted her to love him more, and perhaps that was
all well and good; but he wanted her to love her child less, and that
was an evil wish. One day, he gave way to his temper, and cursed and
swore at Gregory, who had got into some mischief, as children will;
my mother made some excuse for him; my father said it was hard enough
to have to keep another man’s child, without having it perpetually
held up in its naughtiness by his wife, who ought to be always in the
same mind that he was; and so from little they got to more; and the
end of it was, that my mother took to her bed before her time, and I
was born that very day. My father was glad, and proud, and sorry,
all in a breath; glad and proud that a son was born to him; and sorry
for his poor wife’s state, and to think how his angry words had
brought it on. But he was a man who liked better to be angry than
sorry, so he soon found out that it was all Gregory’s fault, and owed
him an additional grudge for having hastened my birth. He had
another grudge against him before long. My mother began to sink the
day after I was born. My father sent to Carlisle for doctors, and
would have coined his heart’s blood into gold to save her, if that
could have been; but it could not. My aunt Fanny used to say
sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish to live, and so
just let herself die away without trying to take hold on life; but
when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors
bade her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience with which
she had acted through life. One of her last requests was to have
Gregory laid in her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold
of my little hand. Her husband came in while she was looking at us
so, and when he bent tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now,
and seemed to gaze on us two little half-brothers, with a grave sort
of kindness, she looked up in his face and smiled, almost her first
smile at him; and such a sweet smile! as more besides aunt Fanny have
said. In an hour she was dead. Aunt Fanny came to live with us. It
was the best thing that could be done. My father would have been
glad to return to his old mode of bachelor life, but what could he do
with two little children? He needed a woman to take care of him, and
who so fitting as his wife’s elder sister? So she had the charge of
me from my birth; and for a time I was weakly, as was but natural,
and she was always beside me, night and day watching over me, and my
father nearly as anxious as she. For his land had come down from
father to son for more than three hundred years, and he would have
cared for me merely as his flesh and blood that was to inherit the
land after him. But he needed something to love, for all that, to
most people, he was a stern, hard man, and he took to me as, I fancy,
he had taken to no human being before–as he might have taken to my
mother, if she had had no former life for him to be jealous of. I
loved him back again right heartily. I loved all around me, I
believe, for everybody was kind to me. After a time, I overcame my
original weakness of constitution, and was just a bonny, strong-
looking lad whom every passer-by noticed, when my father took me with
him to the nearest town.

At home I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my
father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the “young
master” of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly
antic, assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt
not, on such a baby as I was.

Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to
him in deed and in action, but she did not often think about him, she
had fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me,
from the fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby.
My father never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson, who had
so innocently wrestled with him for the possession of my mother’s
heart. I mistrust me, too, that my father always considered him as
the cause of my mother’s death and my early delicacy; and utterly
unreasonable as this may seem, I believe my father rather cherished
his feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to
repress it. Yet not for the world would my father have grudged him
anything that money could purchase. That was, as it were, in the
bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was lumpish and loutish,
awkward and ungainly, marring whatever he meddled in, and many a hard
word and sharp scolding did he get from the people about the farm,
who hardly waited till my father’s back was turned before they rated
the stepson. I am ashamed–my heart is sore to think how I fell into
the fashion of the family, and slighted my poor orphan step-brother.
I don’t think I ever scouted him, or was wilfully ill-natured to him;
but the habit of being considered in all things, and being treated as
something uncommon and superior, made me insolent in my prosperity,
and I exacted more than Gregory was always willing to grant, and
then, irritated, I sometimes repeated the disparaging words I had
heard others use with regard to him, without fully understanding
their meaning. Whether he did or not I cannot tell. I am afraid he
did. He used to turn silent and quiet–sullen and sulky, my father
thought it: stupid, aunt Fanny used to call it. But every one said
he was stupid and dull, and this stupidity and dullness grew upon
him. He would sit without speaking a word, sometimes, for hours;
then my father would bid him rise and do some piece of work, maybe,
about the farm. And he would take three or four tellings before he
would go. When we were sent to school, it was all the same. He
could never be made to remember his lessons; the school-master grew
weary of scolding and flogging, and at last advised my father just to
take him away, and set him to some farm-work that might not be above
his comprehension. I think he was more gloomy and stupid than ever
after this, yet he was not a cross lad; he was patient and good-
natured, and would try to do a kind turn for any one, even if they
had been scolding or cuffing him not a minute before. But very often
his attempts at kindness ended in some mischief to the very people he
was trying to serve, owing to his awkward, ungainly ways. I suppose
I was a clever lad; at any rate, I always got plenty of praise; and
was, as we called it, the cock of the school. The schoolmaster said
I could learn anything I chose, but my father, who had no great
learning himself, saw little use in much for me, and took me away
betimes, and kept me with him about the farm. Gregory was made into
a kind of shepherd, receiving his training under old Adam, who was
nearly past his work. I think old Adam was almost the first person
who had a good opinion of Gregory. He stood to it that my brother
had good parts, though he did not rightly know how to bring them out;
and, for knowing the bearings of the Fells, he said he had never seen
a lad like him. My father would try to bring Adam round to speak of
Gregory’s faults and shortcomings; but, instead of that, he would
praise him twice as much, as soon as he found out what was my
father’s object.

One winter-time, when I was about sixteen, and Gregory nineteen, I
was sent by my father on an errand to a place about seven miles
distant by the road, but only about four by the Fells. He bade me
return by the road, whichever way I took in going, for the evenings
closed in early, and were often thick and misty; besides which, old
Adam, now paralytic and bedridden, foretold a downfall of snow before
long. I soon got to my journey’s end, and soon had done my business;
earlier by an hour, I thought, than my father had expected, so I took
the decision of the way by which I would return into my own hands,
and set off back again over the Fells, just as the first shades of
evening began to fall. It looked dark and gloomy enough; but
everything was so still that I thought I should have plenty of time
to get home before the snow came down. Off I set at a pretty quick
pace. But night came on quicker. The right path was clear enough in
the day-time, although at several points two or three exactly similar
diverged from the same place; but when there was a good light, the
traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects,–a piece of
rock,–a fall in the ground–which were quite invisible to me now. I
plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the
right road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me whither I knew
not, but to some wild boggy moor where the solitude seemed painful,
intense, as if never footfall of man had come thither to break the
silence. I tried to shout–with the dimmest possible hope of being
heard–rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice; but my
voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so
weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness.
Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and
hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge
of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I
had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps; it hemmed me in,
thicker, thicker, with a darkness that might be felt. The boggy soil
on which I stood quaked under me if I remained long in one place, and
yet I dared not move far. All my youthful hardiness seemed to leave
me at once. I was on the point of crying, and only very shame seemed
to keep it down. To save myself from shedding tears, I shouted–
terrible, wild shouts for bare life they were. I turned sick as I
paused to listen; no answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes.
Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker–
faster, faster! I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move
about, but I dared not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I
knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood
still and shouted again; but my voice was getting choked with tears,
as I thought of the desolate helpless death I was to die, and how
little they at home, sitting round the warm, red, bright fire, wotted
what was become of me,–and how my poor father would grieve for me–
it would surely kill him–it would break his heart, poor old man!
Aunt Fanny too–was this to be the end of all her cares for me? I
began to review my life in a strange kind of vivid dream, in which
the various scenes of my few boyish years passed before me like
visions. In a pang of agony, caused by such remembrance of my short
life, I gathered up my strength and called out once more, a long,
despairing, wailing cry, to which I had no hope of obtaining any
answer, save from the echoes around, dulled as the sound might be by
the thickened air. To my surprise I heard a cry–almost as long, as
wild as mine–so wild that it seemed unearthly, and I almost thought
it must be the voice of some of the mocking spirits of the Fells,
about whom I had heard so many tales. My heart suddenly began to
beat fast and loud. I could not reply for a minute or two. I nearly
fancied I had lost the power of utterance. Just at this moment a dog
barked. Was it Lassie’s bark–my brother’s collie?–an ugly enough
brute, with a white, ill-looking face, that my father always kicked
whenever he saw it, partly for its own demerits, partly because it
belonged to my brother. On such occasions, Gregory would whistle
Lassie away, and go off and sit with her in some outhouse. My father
had once or twice been ashamed of himself, when the poor collie had
yowled out with the suddenness of the pain, and had relieved himself
of his self-reproach by blaming my brother, who, he said, had no
notion of training a dog, and was enough to ruin any collie in
Christendom with his stupid way of allowing them to lie by the
kitchen fire. To all which Gregory would answer nothing, nor even
seem to hear, but go on looking absent and moody.

Yes! there again! It was Lassie’s bark! Now or never! I lifted up
my voice and shouted “Lassie! Lassie! for God’s sake, Lassie!”
Another moment, and the great white-faced Lassie was curving and
gambolling with delight round my feet and legs, looking, however, up
in my face with her intelligent, apprehensive eyes, as if fearing
lest I might greet her with a blow, as I had done oftentimes before.
But I cried with gladness, as I stooped down and patted her. My mind
was sharing in my body’s weakness, and I could not reason, but I knew
that help was at hand. A gray figure came more and more distinctly
out of the thick, close-pressing darkness. It was Gregory wrapped in
his maud.

“Oh, Gregory!” said I, and I fell upon his neck, unable to speak
another word. He never spoke much, and made me no answer for some
little time. Then he told me we must move, we must walk for the dear
life–we must find our road home, if possible; but we must move, or
we should be frozen to death.

“Don’t you know the way home?” asked I.

“I thought I did when I set out, but I am doubtful now. The snow
blinds me, and I am feared that in moving about just now, I have lost
the right gait homewards.”

He had his shepherd’s staff with him, and by dint of plunging it
before us at every step we took–clinging close to each other, we
went on safely enough, as far as not falling down any of the steep
rocks, but it was slow, dreary work. My brother, I saw, was more
guided by Lassie and the way she took than anything else, trusting to
her instinct. It was too dark to see far before us; but he called
her back continually, and noted from what quarter she returned, and
shaped our slow steps accordingly. But the tedious motion scarcely
kept my very blood from freezing. Every bone, every fibre in my body
seemed first to ache, and then to swell, and then to turn numb with
the intense cold. My brother bore it better than I, from having been
more out upon the hills. He did not speak, except to call Lassie. I
strove to be brave, and not complain; but now I felt the deadly fatal
sleep stealing over me.

“I can go no farther,” I said, in a drowsy tone. I remember I
suddenly became dogged and resolved. Sleep I would, were it only for
five minutes. If death were to be the consequence, sleep I would.
Gregory stood still. I suppose, he recognized the peculiar phase of
suffering to which I had been brought by the cold.

“It is of no use,” said he, as if to himself. “We are no nearer home
than we were when we started, as far as I can tell. Our only chance
is in Lassie. Here! roll thee in my maud, lad, and lay thee down on
this sheltered side of this bit of rock. Creep close under it, lad,
and I’ll lie by thee, and strive to keep the warmth in us. Stay!
hast gotten aught about thee they’ll know at home?”

I felt him unkind thus to keep me from slumber, but on his repeating
the question, I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief, of some showy
pattern, which Aunt Fanny had hemmed for me–Gregory took it, and
tied it round Lassie’s neck.

“Hie thee, Lassie, hie thee home!” And the white-faced ill-favoured
brute was off like a shot in the darkness. Now I might lie down–now
I might sleep. In my drowsy stupor I felt that I was being tenderly
covered up by my brother; but what with I neither knew nor cared–I
was too dull, too selfish, too numb to think and reason, or I might
have known that in that bleak bare place there was nought to wrap me
in, save what was taken off another. I was glad enough when he
ceased his cares and lay down by me. I took his hand.

“Thou canst not remember, lad, how we lay together thus by our dying
mother. She put thy small, wee hand in mine–I reckon she sees us
now; and belike we shall soon be with her. Anyhow, God’s will be
done.”

“Dear Gregory,” I muttered, and crept nearer to him for warmth. He
was talking still, and again about our mother, when I fell asleep.
In an instant–or so it seemed–there were many voices about me–many
faces hovering round me–the sweet luxury of warmth was stealing into
every part of me. I was in my own little bed at home. I am thankful
to say, my first word was “Gregory?”

A look passed from one to another–my father’s stern old face strove
in vain to keep its sternness; his mouth quivered, his eyes filled
slowly with unwonted tears.

“I would have given him half my land–I would have blessed him as my
son,–oh God! I would have knelt at his feet, and asked him to
forgive my hardness of heart.”

I heard no more. A whirl came through my brain, catching me back to
death.

I came slowly to my consciousness, weeks afterwards. My father’s
hair was white when I recovered, and his hands shook as he looked
into my face.

We spoke no more of Gregory. We could not speak of him; but he was
strangely in our thoughts. Lassie came and went with never a word of
blame; nay, my father would try to stroke her, but she shrank away;
and he, as if reproved by the poor dumb beast, would sigh, and be
silent and abstracted for a time.

Aunt Fanny–always a talker–told me all. How, on that fatal night,
my father,–irritated by my prolonged absence, and probably more
anxious than he cared to show, had been fierce and imperious, even
beyond his wont, to Gregory; had upbraided him with his father’s
poverty, his own stupidity which made his services good for nothing–
for so, in spite of the old shepherd, my father always chose to
consider them. At last, Gregory had risen up, and whistled Lassie
out with him–poor Lassie, crouching underneath his chair for fear of
a kick or a blow. Some time before, there had been some talk between
my father and my aunt respecting my return; and when aunt Fanny told
me all this, she said she fancied that Gregory might have noticed the
coming storm, and gone out silently to meet me. Three hours
afterwards, when all were running about in wild alarm, not knowing
whither to go in search of me–not even missing Gregory, or heeding
his absence, poor fellow–poor, poor fellow!–Lassie came home, with
my handkerchief tied round her neck. They knew and understood, and
the whole strength of the farm was turned out to follow her, with
wraps, and blankets, and brandy, and every thing that could be
thought of. I lay in chilly sleep, but still alive, beneath the rock
that Lassie guided them to. I was covered over with my brother’s
plaid, and his thick shepherd’s coat was carefully wrapped round my
feet. He was in his shirt-sleeves–his arm thrown over me–a quiet
smile (he had hardly ever smiled in life) upon his still, cold face.

My father’s last words were, “God forgive me my hardness of heart
towards the fatherless child!”

And what marked the depth of his feeling of repentance, perhaps more
than all, considering the passionate love he bore my mother, was
this: we found a paper of directions after his death, in which he
desired that he might lie at the foot of the grave, in which, by his
desire, poor Gregory had been laid with OUR MOTHER.