Chapter XXXVII: A Charmed Sail

In the middle of auld Tam’s perversity, he suddenly announced that he would take a holiday sail. He had never set up a yacht of his own, neither had young Tam adopted that refuge and glory of a maritime people, especially of the young swells of the mercantile world of the West of Scotland. But there were various friends’ yachts at auld Tam’s disposal the moment he signified his intention. Neither was company likely to fail him; but here he was as arbitrary as he had been lately in other matters. He would have nobody with him save the two Eppies. He would not allow the presence of young Tam, saying that he might be wanted at the office and works in his father’s absence. But neither would Tam have Clary with him, though she was an experienced and excellent yachtswoman; she should stay at home and keep house while her mother was away; and he actually scouted the suggestion of the attendance of Sir Hugo, who had nothing else to do, would have liked nothing in the world better, and made humble overtures to be allowed to join the party. The planner of the expedition desired a rest--complete, however short--from the toils of business, and, for that matter, of hospitality; and to procure this he must have none except the two members of his family whom he had chosen--his wife and his younger daughter--to sail with him.

The drawbacks were that neither of the Eppies were good sailors, that both had a most unaffected dislike to spending days and nights at sea, and that though the weather was remarkably fine for the season, the month of October had been reached, with its lengthening nights, shortening days, chill, frosty air, and sudden gales, striking terror into the hearts of landswomen.

But the two women on whom auld Tam had pitched to bear him company would never fail their lord and master. Had it been Styx and not Clyde he had fixed on for his watery highway, and had Charon and not an honest man from Largs been the steersman of the vessel, the two Eppies would have gone down as devotedly and almost as intrepidly, with a certain fond pride that auld Tam should have elected them for the partners of his voyage. It did not signify that their faces were pale--the elder Eppie’s from sheer quaking before an anticipated experience so foreign and unpalatable to her, and with the thought of the home and children she might never see again, if auld Tam, his company and crew, went to the bottom, in this unchancy autumn trip on which he had set his heart in a strange, almost an uncanny manner. As for the younger Eppie, her sweet colour was gone, because her tender heart was wrung by the injustice and injury done to her lover, while yet she did not dream of resisting her father--loyal still to auld Tam in the worst of his caprices.

The sail was not to be very prolonged or to involve further risk than could not be avoided in a change of weather with the squally gusts concentrated in the passes between the mountains, which sometimes lend a peculiar peril to such coast-sailing. For auld Tam meant merely to run up one or other of the arms of the sea with which all the dwellers in the region are familiar, to lie to in the shadow of the everlasting hills each night, and resume his course on the following morning.

There was no sign of any fall of the barometer or chopping of the wind, which was in fact too light, with no more than a harmless ripple on the water, when the little freight started from the pier at Greenock, to which the carriage and steamboat had transported them, leaving behind a disconsolate group of persons, who had insisted on accompanying their friends so far, looking wistfully after them. The least affected of the group were Claribel and Eneas Mackinnon, who had ventured unrebuked, unless by his own unaccounted-for success, to make himself one of the family. They were neither of them over-burdened with imagination, and they had enough of business of their own on their hands to occupy them. He contented himself with observing on the cut of the yacht and calculating the rate of her speed; and Clary’s moan was summed up in declaring that really her mother and Eppie had no excuse for being ill. Then the couple dropped the subject for others more interesting to them, as they moved away, he sauntering by her side, in the probable style of their progress through life.

But young Tam muttered discontentedly, ‘I cannot tell what has come over my father--a yacht trip in October, and my mother and Eppie frightened out of their wits if the sails fill or the deck inclines a quarter of an inch.’

Sir Hugo said nothing. He was haunted with the vision of an old picture he had seen abroad of the Virgin Mary, her mother St. Anne, and St. Joseph, sailing away on a shoreless sea, and with the echo of the refrain of one of young Eppie’s saddest songs--

‘Ochone! for fair Helen, ochone!
Ochone! for the flower of Strathco:
In the deep, deep sea,
In the saut, saut bree,
Lord Reoch, thy Helen lies low!’

Sir Hugo had to put the greatest force upon himself to resist rushing off, securing another yacht, and following in the wake of the Drysdales. He had just enough judgment left to recognise that no measure would so offend and outrage auld Tam as the invasion of his privacy to which the young man was tempted.

In reality no such tremendous calamity as the shipwreck or foundering of the yacht threatened auld Tam and his faithful womankind. The little vessel was as good and serviceable as any Clyde-built craft which has an honourable reputation. The skipper and crew were picked men of their class, to be depended upon in all circumstances. The weather continued uninterruptedly fine, so as to soothe the excitable feelings even of the two Eppies.

‘Oh, it is bonnie, mother; I never knew it would be so bonnie!’ said young Eppie, standing, without tottering, in her dark serge costume, with only her cheeks, rosy once more, to relieve it, as she watched the blue water over which the yacht rode lightly, and the autumn-tinted hills and woods of the shore. ‘If it is all like this, I don’t think we’ll be feared, and it will be a fine change for father from the Haugh and Glasgow.’

‘Bairn, I never saw sic weather in October,’ said her mother, still inclined to be awed, if not appalled. ‘It is just a ferlie [marvel]. Eh! how gude it will be for the petawties diggin’ and pittin’. If your father had only ta’en a thocht of driving ower to my auld hame--though it is in the hands of strangers now--and of bidin’ a day or twa, to watch the farm folk at their wark, or to fish in the burn, I could have baked scones sic as he was fond o’ lang syne to give him an appetite. But, as you say, if the water is nae waur than this, it will be a fine change, and it may do him a heap of gude; poor chield, he has been forfochten [over-worked], as he kens best, of late!’

Auld Tam did not seem to reap immediate advantage from the variety he had sought. He was still engrossed and oppressed, and paced up and down, taking little notice of his wife and daughter. But as the hours wore on, and the breeze--though it was no more than a summer breeze--blew fresher, the wavelets curled with a whiter crest, and the thickly-populated banks gave place to lonelier, wilder regions, where the woods of Finnart embowered the hamlet of Ardentinny, and higher and higher rose the heathery hills, showing nothing but sheep-tracks and the furrows worn by winter torrents, till the great mass of the Cobbler loomed dark against the early sunset, auld Tam shook himself up, as if the wind and the water were blowing away the cobwebs from his brain. He took note of each well-known landmark, and pointed it out carefully to his companions--not so familiar with the scene. He told them the stories he had heard in his boyhood--how the Danes had landed there; and here the clan Macfarlane had shouted their slogan ‘Lochsloy! Lochsloy!’ when they started to levy blackmail and plunder and murder whoever resisted them. He cheered the Eppies with prophecies of the settled nature of the weather--more to be depended on than in early summer--which would last their trip. He foretold how quietly the yacht would lie off Arrochar till morning broke. He incited the ladies to have an informal scrambling meal--a sort of tea, dinner, and supper in one--of roast fowl and cold round, ham and tongue, partridges, cheese, and oysters, with bitter beer, claret and Glenlivat, tea and coffee, toast and cake, grapes and melons, eaten and drunk on deck. Tam Drysdale waited on his wife and daughter in spite of their remonstrances, as if he were proud to be their servant; and he did not forget the shy, independent sailors who drew off from witnessing the feast, and could only be induced by an instantly established freemasonry of jokes and grins between auld Tam and the crew, and gentle solicitations from the two gentlewomen of whom the men were taking care, to accept a share of the good things lavishly provided for the occasion.

Auld Tam was himself again, and the two Eppies could not help being glad, though night was falling, and though they had still the fearful experience before them of descending to their cabin and going to bed rocked on the bosom of the deep. In the meantime the moon and star light shone white over Arrochar, causing the mountains to throw blacker shadows, and the twinkling lamps of the village to look red and yellow, and the water between to glisten with a trembling radiance. The stillness, now that the yacht had stopped sailing, acquired something of mystery, like everything else in the unwonted surroundings. It was a clear, cold night, frosty indeed, but there was no fog, and the air was so pure and rare that it was not unpleasant to meet it, enveloped in the multitude of ‘haps’--cloaks and plaids, hoods and clouds--with which Mrs. Drysdale had taken care to come provided. The women stayed on deck, impressed, as these simple souls had not expected to be, by the new world around them.

The elder Eppie kept close to her Tam, felt as if they were one again, and was wonderfully content to sit by him while he smoked in silence, or occasionally uttered a brief word of admiration, for auld Tam was a great admirer of nature in an old-fashioned, solemnized style.

The younger Eppie drew away by herself. She sat a little behind the mast, and looked up with great innocent eyes at the lustrous moon, asking herself if _he_ were looking at it as she was, and knowing that he must, for she was sure that he was watching every turn of the weathercock and every cloud in the sky till she was safe on land again. She wished he were there, but she felt they would not be long apart, for her father must relent, and then Sir Hugo would not grudge her for these few days to him. And oh! she would try to be good to her man, as she tried to be good to her father and mother, and God would bless them and take care of them for evermore. As little Eppie gazed across the moonlit waters, a strange transformation took place. She ceased to see the dim mountains looming around her, the dark loch at her feet, the planks and ropes of the yacht close at hand. She beheld, what her bodily eyes had never rested upon, but what she had heard often described with love’s eloquence. She saw the rich foliage of a double row of spreading lime trees in a green park, the low square tower of a Norman church rising above the mossy park-wall on one side, and a red house, all mullioned windows and peaked gables, with flower-beds and an ancient fountain and sundial on a terrace. And she knew it was his English home on which the same moon was shining as it might shine when the home was hers also, when she had quitted Scotland and the west, and he was teaching her to be such a lady as his mother was. Lady Willoughby was grander in her soft unconscious dignity than stately Clary or restless Lady Semple. Yet Lady Willoughby had taken Eppie’s flowers and stooped and kissed her, and, Eppie knew, had received her, for Lady Willoughby’s son’s sake, into a second mother’s heart, true and tender as Eppie’s own mother’s. Had the girl not reason to be grateful?

The morning rose with a more silvery haze than if the season had been summer, though during the night that had passed the frost had laid fiery fingers on what was left of the heather, on the leaves of the sapling oaks and the light tresses of the birk-trees--only the dark-green firs, like the hills above them, defied cold, heat, storm, sunshine.

The hours of sleep might have been dreamful and restless, spent so far from home, where everything was so out of gear, as even the most luxurious yacht’s cabin appeared to the dwellers in Drysdale Hall; but nothing save refreshment could come from the caller air, the sparkling water, the mist like curdled milk, or flakes of wool drawn back and up into the highest recesses of the hills. Mrs. Eppie had another and a lower source of happiness by which maiden Eppie was not altogether unmoved--not only were they miraculously escaping the pandemonium of sea-sickness which they had braved like two heroines for the love of auld Tam, half a day and a night of the pilgrimage were gone, and they were so much nearer to home and Sir Hugo.

The opening into another loch with an island and a ruined castle was passed, and the Kyles between Bute and Cowal were entered. The October sun streamed down mellow, not wan as yet, on crags and knolls, grey pinnacles, ferny dells and bickering burns, on Colintraive and Tighnabruaich, deserted by their summer visitors, left to hardy fishers and herdsmen. Ardlamont Point was turned and Kilbrandon Sound reached, leaving Tarbet with its tower, and Ardrishaig with its early steamboat behind. Lochfyne presented a noble landlocked water, bearing in the season fleets of brown herring-boats swaying with the tide. On its shores, glens, valleys, and mountains succeeded each other. Here was the glen of the Leakan; yonder flashed the waters of the Uray and the Shira; that peaked hill was Dunaquoich, and in its shelter rose the castle of M‘Callummore.

Auld Tam was peaceful as the weather, pleased as his companions. He coaxed the two Eppies into a small boat, to undergo the penance of being rowed up a minor water to the shore where the channel was narrowest; and the bank he chose offered nothing but shelving rock, rough grass, bracken and blackberries, curlews and plovers with their shrill, ear-piercing cries. Perhaps the place was seen more in character when autumn was beginning to add to the natural desolation of the scenery, than in spring or summer.

Tam Drysdale rewarded his companions for their submission to his fancies by letting them sit down and look at sea and sky, all bright and glad in contrast to the earth, and at the yacht reflected in the blue water; or to scramble till even the youngest scrambler’s light feet were tired.

The solitude and the stillness sank into minds unaccustomed but not irresponsive to such influences, and first thrilled the guileless hearts through and through, and then calmed their throbbing pulses.

As young Eppie sought to pluck the last red ling, singed by the nightly pinches of frost, over which the bees, safe in their binks until the summer returned, had ceased to hover, with the lingering tufts of thrift or sea-pink whitening under the salt spray by the water’s edge, she kept humming--

‘Lowland lassie, will you go
Whaur the hills are clad wi’ snow;
Whaur, beyond yon icy steep,
The Highland shepherd tends his sheep?’

and pointed exultingly to the farthest-away mountain which had white streaks across its bald front. But if she had known it, these signs which she took to be the harbingers of approaching winter had survived all the summer sunshine, and were no more like the glorious but ghastly livery of the death of the year than the little streamlet issuing from the well-eye is like the great river hurrying to the edge of the precipice and leaping fiercely to destruction before it loses itself in the islandless sea.

‘Everything looks auld, auld, and yet as fresh as on the day of creation,’ said the elder Eppie, while the three figures, like the three corbies to which auld Tarn compared them, perched themselves on some stones and appeared the only moving, breathing objects in the landscape. ‘Tam, it’s like being alane in the presence of ane’s Maker.’

‘Yet the boat is in sicht and fishing-cobles forbye, and the next minute a steamer full of the world’s racket may come tearing through the water, leaving a long wreath of black smoke filing [defiling] the blue lift [air]. There are far loner spots than this within a day’s sail, if it had been fit to venture there with timorous women so far on in the year. But this may serve,’ said Tam, half-absently and with a sigh--‘this taste of the world as God made it. What do you think, Eppie, woman? It’s grand in its very nakedness, and on few lines, like a’ His wark--nothing weak or ower saft and fine and dilittanty about it. It mak’s us ashamed of the feck [most] of our wark. What do you think? We could strip ourselves of our warks, as the preachers call them, in His sicht, and lay them down and leave them without breaking our hearts. What do you think?’ he kept repeating eagerly.

‘You’re richt, Tam, no doubt,’ said his wife gently, bat with only the most superficial guess at his meaning. ‘We brocht naething into the world, and we’ll tak’ naething out--that’s plain. And all our bravery that we set sic store on is no more than bairns’ toys that the bairns are brodent [keen] on for a day and forget the next.’

‘Men’s praise amang the lave,’ chimed in Tam.

‘Ay, men’s praise or blame will fa’ dead where there are nae lugs [ears] greedy to kep it. But are you no weel, Tam, my man,’ asked Eppie anxiously, ‘that you speak in so serious a strain?’

‘Oh, I’m weel enough,’ said Tam, stretching the arms which were still brawny. ‘But I was wondering, Eppie, my joe, how you would like if we had to go back to the beginning and commence afresh, as we did sax-and-twenty years syne, with a room or twa, and no so muckle as a servant lass; only me to earn our daily bread, and only you to keep the house richt, and spend my wages.’

‘Fine, Tam, I would like it--real fine!’ exclaimed Eppie, with honest readiness and gladness. ‘I dinna pretend that I’m as soople as when I was young, or that I would not miss mony a thing, for ane soon learns ill lessons; but to have you all to mysel’ again--to cook for you, to mend for you, and to keep all richt and ticht for you without any help--I could do it as well as ever, and prood to do it, my lad! It would make up for a gude wheen losses.’

And the husband and wife looked into each other’s faithful eyes, grasped each other’s honest hands, and he knew that she spoke no more than the truth. Each was dear as ever to the other, and so long as the one treasure was left, all else might go, without too bitter lamentation.

Young Eppie had been listening in respectful silence to what she, like her mother, judged too grave talk to be lightly dealt with. But now she spoke up with something like a pout:

‘And what is to become of me when you two are going to set up house again by your two selves, wanting nobody else to interfere and upset you? Father, mother, I’m here. You seem to have forgotten my very existence. I must say it is not very kind of you.’

The girl spoke more than half in jest, and yet there was a little soreness in her merry tones. The old ties which had been strong as death were loosening from her; but it smote her that they should drop from her in this fashion--that her father and mother should speak of the future even in the lightest imagination, and leave her out of count. She had not expected it from them. It was not what _he_ would have done--he who was above her in rank, and had been used to grand ladies; he could never draw a picture of his coming life in which she was not in the foreground.

‘Never fear, bairn,’ said auld Tam tenderly; ‘where there are father and mother the bairns can never be forgotten--never--even when they’ve grown to men and women’s estate, are heads of houses of their ain, and have flown far from the parent nest. But I’ve a question to speer of you, too, young Eppie;’ and he drew her nearer to him, and made her look into his face. ‘What if all this speak of a grand lad and a title, and a Coort and what not, come to nothing some fine morning, after all? Will you blame your father? Will you never smile in his face again? Will you and he never more be happy together, as you were before?’

‘Tam, Tam! ye’re tryin’ the bairn; she’s ower young to answer such questions--though maybe you’ve a richt to judge for her, since she’s under age, if so be you can show a reasonable warrant for your judgment, and she’ll submit to your lawful authority when she can; for she’s not dour [obstinate] or contermacious [refractory]. She’s your ain loving, obedient little lass. But how can you, man? Would you plague her as gin she were a patient Grizel and you were a ragin’ tyrant? You’ve no richt--I will not have it, though I am your wife--it’s fair cruelty, Tam.’

In truth, little Eppie had grown white and cold, and was trembling in every limb. At last she said in a low choked voice, looking down and plucking nervously at the bent grass:

‘Why are you so thrawn [cross] to him, father? He never harmed you. He has a great liking and respect for you, though you’re not like his people. Is it just because he likes me that you are so unkind?’

‘Bairn--it will not rest with me,’ said Tam, with something like a smothered groan. ‘It is supposing Sir Hugie draws back, and will have no more to say to you.’

‘He will not draw back,’ broke in young Eppie, holding her head high, and with a rush of colour back into her white cheeks. ‘He’ll never be forsworn, whatever happens. You may make me give him up, but Sir Hugo will never give me up.’

‘Not with his will, I daur say,’ granted Tam, ‘or the loon [fellow], though he were a lord, would not be worth a hoast [cough]. But my gentleman may be overborne, high-hearted as he is--I’ll not deny it. Bools may row so that he cannot control them. He has his mither and his factor to answer to: a young laird is aften sair hadden down by his factor, and no doubt so is an English squire, though he has a “Sir” before his name, by his agent, who stands for his factor. The young man has his credit with his billies [contemporaries] and the inheritance he has to hand down to the next generation to hamper him. Oh, there are mony things to consider that young folk dinna tak’ in at a glance and winna believe can weigh against love itsel’.’

‘I dinna believe it!’ exclaimed auld Eppie indignantly. ‘Dinna heed him, my lamb!’ she said rebelliously. ‘He’s no in earnest, though why he should tak’ to sic ill joking in this wild pairt, I canna tell. He’s no himsel’. This sail in the cauld has been ower hard upon him, that sits so long in a hot office--that’s what it is. Come back to the boat, Tam, like a man; and let’s hoist sail and hurry hame, and see the doctor in the bygaun.’

But he paid no attention to his wife. He went on like a man in earnest, and a hale man still, determined to ply his daughter with an imaginary case:

‘Sir Hugie is no a reckless callant of a ne’er-do-weel to care only for his ain will and pleasure, and he is not just free to make his choice like a common man. He’s like a young prince, bound to think on the interests of others. He may be brocht to see--to fancy he sees that it will be best for you and him to pairt.’

Little Eppie sat motionless with her hands locked together in her lap, while the contention between these two who loved her, and whom she loved so well, passed over her head. The eerie October wind and the sad sea-waves seemed to sigh and sob an accompaniment to the strange incomprehensible argument.

‘Then, father,’ she said, with a break in her soft voice, and a far-away look of misery in her gentle eyes, ‘we _will_ part. If you and he agree that we ought, what have I to say? What am I, that I should stand up against him and you? We’ll do what is right, and God help us all!’

‘Haud your tongue this minute, Eppie!’ cried her mother. ‘There’s no call for you to say such words. Make no rash promises. Oh! it is no fair to bring the bairn here to a place so lonesome that one might commit a murder and it would never be found out till the day of doom, where there’s nane but me to interfere between you, and speak her round and break her heart, and get her to give up her lad--a grand lad and a gude lad. You that were so fond o’ little Eppie, Tam. You maun have taken leave of your senses--you maun be fey, if ever man was.’

‘Never, gudewife,’ said auld Tam gruffly, in order to hide a little tremulousness in his own accents. ‘You micht trust me, woman, at this time of the day. It’s all fair, and will soon be aboon-board. As for you, my bairn, that last word was spoken like my gude little lass, and is a help to her father, as she will like to hear and to think long after he’s laid in the mools. It’s God’s truth as weel. We’ll do what’s richt an’ shame the deevil, and trust to the Pooers aboon, who made baith the city and the solitary places, for the rest. There, think nae mair of what I’ve been saying. I’ve been trying you baith, as mother says, and thank God you’ve neither of you been found wanting, which is nae mair than I looked for, though it’s far mair than a sinfu’ man deserves. Let’s be happy when we can,’ cried auld Tam, a little incoherently. ‘What would you say, little Eppie, to a race ower the stanes or among the bent? No? Then we’ll just take our time--it’s all our ain the day--and daunder down to the sma’-boat and row back to the yacht with a gude appetite for the next meal. What will you wager that I’ve not forgotten in this ploy of idle-set [idleness] whether it’s luncheon, dinner, or supper? Never mind; it will be welcome, whatever.’

The women were not so easily set at rest. They were disturbed and dumfoundered; but auld Tam recovered so entirely from the agitation he had shown, he was so much more at his ease from that minute, so resolutely calm and cheerful, that the two Eppies could not help regaining their spirits--though they did not forget--and being as happy once more as the sea and the dread of storms would let them.

The next day was the last day of the trip, and as it was also Sunday, auld Tam, like a reverent Scotchman of the old school, the member of a kirk and a regular attender at the same, caused his vessel to lie-to in a safe anchorage, went ashore in the morning with his party, and walked to the most primitive of parish churches, where he worshipped with his fellow-men. The afternoon was grey, but still calm and quiet. The family group gathered on the deck once more.

Auld Tam made little Eppie read ‘a lesson’ out of her Testament, as she had done every Sunday when she first began to read, to her father and mother, who had listened with pleased attention and secret admiration that did not prevent their being ready with a homely correction whenever she mispronounced a word. The childish voice had sounded as if it came from a cherub oracle, uttering, without comprehension, in a clear, unfaltering treble, awful words of everlasting moment. The girlish tones were deeper, and had more rising and falling meaning in them; but they were almost as unconscious, with no subtle undercurrent of reflection, as the reader, on this October afternoon, chose for a lesson the history of Jonah, the secret sinner who concealed his superior knowledge, kept back his heaven-sent tidings, and imperilled by his guilty presence an innocent ship’s crew.

‘He came to his senses, and spoke out like a man at last,’ was auld Tam’s single comment on the reading, uttered as if the final atonement afforded him great satisfaction.

Then he made young Eppie sing two of the old Scotch psalms. One of them was ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd,’ with its broad distinctions and wide stretches--from death’s dark vale, where the Almighty’s rod and staff are the sole stay for the forlorn wayfarer, to the sumptuous earthly table furnished in the presence of his human foes, with the kingly oil and the overflowing cup anointing and confirming him as a prince and ruler over his fellows.

Tam, like most Scotchmen of his generation, had said that psalm when a child at his mother’s knee.

The other psalm he and his wife had sung together in the congregation on many a peaceful Sunday, but never with such vivid realization as now, when they heard it in the amphitheatre of mountains:

‘I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid.’

As young Eppie sang ‘with grave, sweet melody’ the solemn, familiar words, the skipper and his men in their Sunday clothes hanging about the deck, and putting a touch now and then to the tackle, which, like a living creature, must be seen to Sunday and Saturday, paused to listen, and took their pipes out of their mouths as if to hear better, though they were too blate [bashful] to draw nearer, or make any other sign of appreciation:

‘Behold He that keeps Israel,
He slumbers not nor sleeps.’

No more than these giant sentries, hemming in and protecting the great loch, with nothing hidden there that should not be revealed, and nothing really to fear from a brave revelation.

‘Ay, the hills are grand,’ said Tam emphatically. ‘Grand, like truth itsel’. No mortal lee, or pridefu’ conceit, or blind self-deception, will lift up its head before them. I verily believe they’re the tabernacle of the Almichty.’

Certainly there was, while he spoke, a light as from a divine sanctuary on Tam Drysdale’s face, which had grown so grey and lined of late. The light still lingered upon it when he landed in common day with his womankind at Greenock on the morrow, and was met by the same friends who had escorted him on board, with congratulations on his prosperous trip, to which he responded cordially.

Nevertheless auld Tam continued to hold off Sir Hugo--not angrily or sternly, rather with a half-authoritative, half-deprecating manner, that seemed to say, ‘Not yet, Sir Hugie; wait a little longer, my fine young gentleman, till you see and hear everything.’