WEARY FOOT SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1854. COMMON. BY LEITCH RITCHIE. CHAPTER I. HOW THE HERO FORCES HIMSELF INTO THE STORY. Ir is a still, mild, misty evening, and before us one of the most extensive commons in England presents the appearance of a sea of vapour. Already its boundaries are almost blotted out, and the only part of its surface visible is a knoll or mound rising here and there like an island out of the deep. We may still discover, however, that the expanse forms an irregular oval; with a long straggling village on one side, and on the other a few genteel houses at some distance apart, their enclosures thickly shaded with trees and shrubs, and a natural wood behind. A few minutes ago, the common might have been seen intersected with paths in all directions: each of the more aristocratic houses appearing to have its own route to the village, and a more beaten track, leading to the same point, affording a short cut for pedestrians from the main road, which sweeps round the end of the oval. But these topographical lines are now lost; and by and by, as the mist advances with the advance of evening, the oases of the common sink, the houses are swallowed up one by one, the trees melt away, and the village disappears. The villagers have taken the hint; and although it is not altogether night by the clock, they have closed their doors and windows, shut up their shops, and resolved unanimously that the day is at an end. The silence is like that of midnight; and a stranger might grope his way along the street, unconscious of the propinquity of human dwellings, but for a faintlyluminous spot here and there, shewing that there is a light struggling through the circular hole of a windowshutter, and vainly trying to see what it all means outside. But as we advance in our exploration, there is one part of the invisible village where there are sounds that give unmistakable token of a population. Now there is heard a hollow cheer, to which the mist gives the effect of distance, and now a phantom-laugh, like the chorus in Der Freischutz, as it is sung in Germanynot in England. Presently a door opens, and a momentary glare shews us a tall, angular man, wrapping himself well up to encounter the mist, and another, who has the configuration of a jolly host, rendering his assistance. 'Good-night, Mr Poringer,' says the latter; 'goodnight, good' But he is stopped by a cough as the mist tumbles down his throat; and his guest being now just across the threshold, he shuts the door softly VOL. I. PRICE 1d. behind him. Mr Poringer walks sedately out into the road, like a man well acquainted with the locality, but there stops and hesitates for a few seconds. His destination is one of the houses on the opposite side of the common. To go round by the road, the track of which is easy, or venture across the main sea of mist-that is the question. He decides in favour of the latter alternative, for his time is already up, and the governor's bell will very soon sound for the supper-tray. So Mr Poringer crosses the road, hits without difficulty upon the well-known and well-beaten path, and steers boldly out into the apparently shoreless deep. The result of the brief self-consultation shews what small matters may determine the most important affairs of the world: if Mr Poringer had gone round by the road, this history would never have had to be written! He had not much difficulty in keeping the path, the smoothness of which contrasted strongly with the rough weedy grass of the common; but his progress was necessarily slow-vexatiously slow; and as he receded further, and further, and further from the village, without ever appearing to approach his destination, and without meeting with anything that could enable him to ascertain his bearings, he began to reflect upon the position in which he found himself. Mr Poringer was a meditative serving-man, with a high sense of his personal and official dignity. His reflections were usually of a practical cast, connected with his ministerial functions, or with his own interest in the things of the world; but this was a new, and, in fact, altogether unpractical situation. He could not see more than a few inches round him, and the silence was still more profound than the darkness. There was a kind of unreality in the whole thing, which made him at last begin to consider vaguely whether this lonely traveller in the mist was indeed Mr Poringer-the same Mr P. who had ever since dinner-time been drinking excellent ale at the Plough, who was reckoned to be at least on a footing of equal gentility with the clerk of the parish church, and whose few words of good-night had been responded to by a cheer of approval from the company. While meditating in this way, he heard a sound behind him--a sound as of soft footfalls near his own. He stopped: the sound ceased. He walked on: it recommenced. Mr Poringer was perplexed. 'Is there anybody there?' said he, stopping again: no answer. He was almost frightened; he did not know at what, for he was no coward. Stooping down his long body, however, in the direction of the sound where it had ceased, he became aware that he was followed 'Boy!' said he, stopping again suddenly-'what are you after?' 'You,' replied the boy. 'Where are you come from?' 'Nowhere.' by a boy a little ragged boy, as well as he could lecture was quite a scene. How they did admire the judge. Mr Poringer was indignant with the boy for spirit of the heroine-how they did criticise her dress having made him afraid, and turning away without a-how they did abhor the villain-and how uproariously word, pursued his journey as rapidly as the darkness they did triumph in the detection of his treachery; Mrs allowed. While walking on, however, he began to Margery, all the while, disclosing the evolution of the think it strange that he should be dogged in this mystery beforehand! As for Molly in her person, she manner by such footsteps. There was no little ragged was of that uncertain age when one does not know boy on his side of the common, he was sure; and this what the girl will grow into. In the meantime, her one, if he belonged to the village, was old enough to only noticeable features were an extremely broad and know his way home. flat nose-though not at all an unamiable nose-and a pair of great, prominent, well-opened eyes, as round as a shilling, that made her look as if she was always astonished at something. The readings, which were the great solace of her existence, usually began in the evening, when Mr Poringer had betaken himself to the Plough. It was then the cook and her protégée rioted in their intellectual liberty; it was then that Mrs Margery triumphed in the necromantic art she had acquired to absolute perfection, of reading the decrees of destiny; and it was then that Molly fixed her astonished eyes upon her face, now sitting in calm enjoyment, now struggling between a giggle and a sob, and now, heart-brokenly, wiping away her tears with her bare arms. When Mr Poringer returned, they were still in the midst of it, but, being a meditative man, his presence was but little interruption. Mrs Margery sometimes thought, from his steady silence, that he must be listening; but if so, he somehow never succeeded in acquiring the faintest notion of what the story was about. 'Where are you going to?' 'Anywhere.' "Who do you belong to?' 'Nobody. Mr Poringer was more perplexed than ever; but not knowing what to say, he walked on again more slowly. For a boy who belonged to nobody, who had come from nowhere, and was going anywhere, to plump down in the dark and give himself to him-was a wild idea. He questioned whether the like had ever happened to a respectable man before. But the thing was a very awkward thing, and must be put a stop to. 'Boy,' said he at length, 'do you see this path to the left? if not, you can feel it with your feet. That's your way; it is the shortest cut out of the common. Come, trot!' and having so spoken in a commanding tone, he pursued his walk more confidently than ever, for the landmark he had discovered shewed that he was now not far from the road. But the little footfalls still followed close at his heels. Mr Poringer would not care. He ignored them. What were they to him? He thought of the parlour at the Plough-of the ale-of the cheers of the captain and the supper-tray-of Mrs Margery the cook; and as he at length emerged from the common, crossed the road, and mounted the steps of the house he sought, he thought faster and faster, and in the confusion escaped into the interior by means of the latch-key, and shut the door upon the mist and its gifts. But he could not shut them entirely out of his reflections, for, as we have said, he was a meditative person. He was often seen that evening by the denizens of the kitchen to sink into a brown study; and sometimes he got up, paced softly to the kitchen-door, and stood for some time in an attitude of listening. Mrs Margery, a round jolly-looking woman, did not know what to make of it. She would have set it down at once as a mystery, a thing she was particularly fond of; but Mr Poringer, she knew, was the most matter-of-fact of serving-men, and she calculated, therefore, that he was somewhat bemused in beer; for, indeed, there was no other way of telling when this was the case, than by his more than usual gravity and taciturnity, and his soft, reflective, and steady step. Mrs Margery was greatly annoyed by the prosaic character of Mr Poringer; for she herself delighted in everything romantic, more especially if there was a mystery in it. Her passion for novel-reading was so great, that long before this time she would have got to the end of the village circulating library, and so have been obliged to change her situation, that she might remove to fresh fields and pastures new; but, luckily, she was a slow and reflective, as well as a determined reader. She was accustomed to read aloud to Molly, and explain the narrative as she went on. Frequently she laid the book down upon the table; and the two would tax their ingenuity to find out how the adventure would terminate, and whether She was to be married at last, and to whom. Molly was no great hand at reading herself, but she did love to listen; many a hearty laugh, and many a shower of tears, did she join her patroness in; and, indeed, having a natural bent towards hysterics, the When Mr Poringer was summoned to the parlour, he paused again to listen as he crossed the hall; and then, as if obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he crept stealthily to the hall-door, opened it, and looked out. The mist was as thick as ever-thicker if possible; yet he stood for some time, looking down upon the landing; and then closing the door softly, he walked with a slow and meditative pace to answer a second summons of the bell. Captain Semple and his sister, Miss Semple, were seated, one on each side of the fireplace; and if a stranger had witnessed the steady manner in which Mr Poringer faced his master, he would have thought our words true indeed, when we said that the former was no coward. Captain Semple had as formidable a look as any captain of banditti in Mrs Margery's novels. His face was almost covered with long bushy hair, of an iron-gray colour; and such shaggy and threatening brows overhung his eyes, that one dreaded to look what kind of eyes they were. In fine, his voice was harsh, and his manner sudden; and there was a mobility in the muscles of his face which, communicating the agitation as he spoke to the iron-gray hair, imparted a character of ferocity to the whole head. 'Well, sir,' said the captain, bending his ominous brows upon Mr Poringer-'you are come at last! Where have you been?' 'I have been in for some time, sir,' replied Mr Poringer undauntedly. Before then I was a-giving orders in the village.' 'You should take less time to your orders,' said the captain, with one of his terrible looks. 'Don't you know that when Molly is compelled to come into the parlour, and is desired to do anything, she says nothing but "Yes, sir," and then goes off hysterically to the kitchen without doing it?' 'I could not get through the mist quicker, sir,' explained Mr Poringer-without I had a pickaxe. It was as thick as a stone-wall.' 'That's very extraordinary!' said the formidable captain. I remember just such a circumstance when I was in the Peninsula. Elizabeth, the thing is worth hearing.' Elizabeth, who was a tall lank maiden well on to forty, moved her chair a little, as she always did in such circumstances, turned her light-gray eyes upon her brother, and sat in the attitude, though without the expression, of expectancy. 'Well,' continued he, you must know that in those days there were hard knocks going, and severe marches and countermarches. So, you see, we were one day in the thick of it, pressing on to join Lord Wellington, who was threatened on all sides. There was not a drop of wine or water to be had, and we could not eat their musty bread dry; and as we were pushing along the road, as it might be across-no, not across a common, for there were vineyards-the grapes all gathered-on both sides of the way, we felt-no, not a mist-but the sun so confoundedly hot-true, there was not a mist that day, but — Well, Poringer, what now? What do you want? You are impatient to tell me who that was at the door just now on such a night?' Miss Semple moved her chair back again, as she always did on such occasions, and dropped her light-gray eyes placidly upon her work. A boy, sir,' answered Mr Poringer with gravity. 'I don't know, sir; he found me on the common, sir, and is come from nowhere, going anywhere, and don't belong to nobody.' 'That's very extraordinary! What is he doing at the door?' 'Tossing up a half-penny with his-self, sir; and it is not a half-penny at all, but only a bit of round slate, with a head cut on it.' the intimacy, therefore, which ensued between them was without the familiarity of near relationship. The captain had a great respect for his sister. He had never, it is true, learned anything from her letters; there was never anything in them he could grasp; and even her last, written in reply to his proposal that they should live together, left him in profound puzzlement as to what her wishes or intentions were. But still they resembled so much the sort of thing that is found in books, that he considered his sister quite a prodigious woman; and her conversation, when they met, proving to be absolute fragmentary essays, the opinion was completely confirmed. It must be said, likewise, that the same judgment was formed of Miss Semple by the captain's confidential friend Lieutenant Mollison, who had never seen her, but to whom, for a series of years, her letters were shewn from time to time, as they were received, under the seal of inviolable secrecy. This was, indeed, the one secret of the poor lieutenant's life, and the two friends had many consultations on the subject; till at length the captain got so far as to send his sister Mr Mollison's compliments in a postscript, and the fair Elizabeth replied, that although the compliments of a man to a woman were generally designed to flatter at the expense of truth, yet this character was subject to 'modification, and when an individual chose the fraternal channel for the sentiment, 'Elizabeth,' said the captain, turning to his sister it might be assumed that he was entitled to favourable with a frown, what do you think of that?' 6 'The conditions of mankind,' replied Miss Semple, 'are infinitely modified. Some are born in a palace, some in a hut; some are surrounded with friends, some alone in the world. Life itself is nothing else than a great common, wrapped in mist, and traversed by boys, donkeys, and men.' 'Very true, Elizabeth,' said the captain-very true. I have half a mind to go to the door and look at the boy and the mist. I will go! Will you come?' Miss Semple, who rarely suffered anything to interrupt her work, got up, still knitting away, and followed her brother, Mr Poringer leading the procession with the air of a beadle. When the door was opened, a little ragged boy was seen, half swallowed up in the mist, and half disclosed by the strong light of the hall; he was sitting on the landing, busily engaged in gambling with himself, by means of the ingenious imitation of a half-penny described by Mr Poringer. 'Heads it is!' said he, making use of the new illumination to determine the fact; and then he turned up a thin precocious-looking face to the spectators. His attention was specially attracted by the most noticeable figure in the group. He looked long at the captain, and the captain looked long at him; till at length the latter burst out furiously: 'He is hungry-that's what it is! Take him down to the kitchen, Poringer, and feed that boy! Give him as much as ever he can eat and drink; do you hear?that's what you have got to do!' And so saying, he turned savagely away, coughing violently at the mist, and escorted his sister back to their chimney-corners, with the air of an officer charging at the head of his company. Mr Poringer looked very sour at the order he had received; but knowing that the captain would brook no refusal in a case of this kind, he stooped his long body towards the boy, took the collar of his little ragged coat between his thumb and two fingers, and lifted him over the threshold. Captain Semple had been in active service a great part of his life, and at the peace had been reduced to half-pay and turned adrift, knowing, like many others, very little of society beyond the precincts of the barracks. Fortunately for him, however, he possessed a moderate independence besides his half-pay, and instead of giving his only sister a fixed allowance as formerly, he took her to live with him. Till then they had never met on intimate terms since they were children, and construction.' So discreet and touching a reply affected the lieutenant profoundly; and there is no saying what termination the love-passage might have had, if his career had not been suddenly cut short by a musketball. Miss Semple was never known to have been before or since the object of the tender passion; and to this episode in her life was attributed by herself and her brother-and perhaps with great truth-the remarkable fact that she was still a spinster. Elizabeth, on her part, returned heartily her brother's admiration. Even his hirsute appearance interested after it had ceased to awe her; and having rarely heard from or of him, except when he was in the midst of military adventures, she supposed that his whole life must have been a chain of romantic episodes. The captain's conversation flattered the idea, for he had a story à propos of every possible occasion; although somehow or other the details did not turn out to be exactly germain to the matter in hand, and an opportune interruption always cut the thread in the middle. As for his personal adventures, the only really memorable one, excepting the ordinary hard knocks and marchings and counter-marchings, was the shearing of his facial ornaments by order of the doctor when he lay ill of a brain fever. While he was in this denuded state, the whole world would seem to have rushed into an insane conspiracy for taking liberties with him; for before the hair grew again, he found himself compelled to fight no fewer than seven duels-the captain being in reality as bold as a lion-in defence of his crown and dignity. On the second evening after the occurrences we have related, the captain and his sister were sitting as usual near the fireplace, Elizabeth at work with her knitting, and he with his sole materials of amusement or study lying before him on the table-his Sunday newspaper, which lasted him the entire week, and the Army List, the only book he ever read. The captain was wiping his spectacles, and looking dreamily before him, when on a sudden he fancied that the door opened slowly, and some light-coloured object shewed itself for a moment. The veteran started and rubbed his eyes, and Elizabeth looked up mechanically. The noiseless appearance returned, and a pale thin face was seen gradually thrusting itself forward, till its large eyes obtained a full view of the room. Every item of the material scene did these eyes dwell upon for a moment, and then they fixed upon the living figures; resting slightly upon Elizabeth, but gazing long and earnestly upon the captain, as if measuring every hair of his beard. Satisfied at length with the survey, the face was withdrawn, and the door closed as noiselessly as it had opened. The captain rung the bell with a jerk, exclaiming: 'Bless my soul, Elizabeth! there's that boy again. Poringer must have been on the common and another jerk of the bell testified his impatience, and brought Molly like an apparition. 'Where's Poringer?' snapped the captain ferociously. 'O yes, sir!' replied Molly, fixing her astonished eyes helplessly upon him, as she kept clutching the handle of the door-'O please, sir, Mr Poringer's giving orders at the Plough!' would recollect it from the curiousness of the thing. When he ought by rights to have been a baby, he was only a small boy, sir. He had never a father, he says; but he thinks he must have belonged in some way or other to a woman called Sall, for she sometimes gave him victuals when he asked her, but oftener a slap, telling him to go and forage for his-self.' 'Well, there,' cried the captain, we have a clue at once-the name of the boy's mother or other relation--Sall.' 'Excuse me, sir,' said Mr Poringer, shaking his head gravely-all the women of the lower classes is called Sall, and there is no telling one from another. There is nothing known, or can be known, of that boy but this: a troop of vagrants was seen by the constable crossing the common just as the mist was thickening; 'O yes, sir! O please, sir, Mrs Margery's not they passed through the village without stopping; and dressed!' soon after this boy lighted on me in the dark.' 'Send the cook!' 'Not dressed?-the improper woman! Get away with you-don't let her come here, mind you. Send Poringer when he returns,' and Molly instantly disappeared, shutting the door nervously, that made it bang, and giggling away hysterically to the kitchen. Captain Semple assured his sister, that in time of war he had known men shot for desertion of a lighter kind than Poringer's, and he had begun a story which would illustrate the point completely, when the unabashed criminal walked into the room. 'So!' said his master-late as usual; although you knew very well that there was nobody to answer the parlour but an astonished idiot and an undressed cook!' 'I was giving orders in the village, sir.' 'And finding the boy again on the common?' 'No, sir; the boy has never left the house.' Upon my word!' 'My orders, sir, were to feed the boy, not to turn him out; and Mrs Margery said that no man with any bowels would use a human boy worse than the enemy's dog. Mrs Margery has took wonderful to him, sir.' "Then, perhaps she knows something about him?' 'Yes, sir; she has a way of telling what will turn up in the Denowment, wherever that may be; and she says she knows perfectly well he will prove to be, at the very least, an Heir-at-Law. Molly has took to him also, sir: she is always a-giving him pieces of bread, that he can't eat, and puts in his pocket with the other things.' 'What other things?' 'I say, Poringer, could you not lose him as easily as you found him?" 'If you please, sir, I did not find him-he found me. If there had been fifty boys on the common, I would not have found one of 'em. But anyways, as for losing him, I did try it on this morning. I took him to the Gravel Pits, sir, beyond the village, where there are paths in all directions, and a view from nowhere: a cat, sir, could not find its way home from there. Well, sir, I walked him round and round, and then dropped him into a pit, telling him to be a-gathering some chickweed for our canary till I came back, and then I pegged home as fast as I could. I was standing in the kitchen telling Mrs Margery what I had done, when I heard a low voice behind me saying: Heads it is!" and when I turned round, I declare, sir, I was almost skeered to see the boy sitting on the floor in a corner, tossing up with his-self for a piece of bread Molly had just given him.' At this conclusion the captain emitted a sardonic laugh, for he seemed tickled at the idea of Mr Poringer's defeat. 'Playing with his-self!' snarled he with a sneer-and which of them won-hey?' 'I believe it was the Other, sir,' said Mr Poringer, for the Boy left the piece of bread on the floor. But perhaps his pocket was full.' And what do you think of it all, Elizabeth?' "When a boy,' replied the spinster, almost warmly, for her gentle nature had been revolted by Mr Porin'Pebbles, sir, string, cobbler's wax, buttons, a saw-ger's narrative-'when a boy escapes marvellously from dust ball with a hole in it, and bits that are neither a gravel-pit, we may be sure the finger of Providence them nor anything else.' was in it.' "That's very extraordinary,' said the captain. "Elizabeth, that boy puts me in mind of a boy we had in our regiment who was the very moral of him-as you shall hear.' Miss Semple moved her chair, and raised her light-gray eyes to her brother's face. My attention was first drawn to the boy,' continued the captain, by -I don't wish to distress you, Elizabeth—by Lieutenant Mollison-poor Mollison!' A faint colour rose for a moment into the waxen face of the virgin, and she dropped her eyes upon her work. 'Well-well-that boy, Elizabeth, was a drummerboy, and he was-no, not a thin boy he was, in fact, a fat-an uncommon fat boy; and-no, there was nothing in his pocket, nothing at all in his pocket; Well, sir, what more do you want?' but I was only a-waiting, sir, till you had finished,' said Mr Poringer, to ask what was to be done with this boy.' "Finished! How can I ever finish with these constant interruptions? But let us see'-- The captain drooped his shaggy brows over his eyes, and sank into a deep cogitation. He at length suggested that the boy must belong to somebody: somebody, for instance, must have taken care of him when he was a baby. 'He never was a baby,' replied Mr Poringer with decision: he is quite positive of that; he is sure he 'That's very true, Elizabeth-that's very true: we will think over the matter, and see about it to-morrow." STEAM AMONG THE FARMERS. Those who visit Christmas cattle-shows simply in a grazing frame of mind, do justice neither to themselves nor to the show. There is something more to do than to admire fat pigs which cannot see out of their eyes, and fat sheep which look more silly even than lean sheep, and fat bullocks which measure an unlimited number of yards round the body. Unless a man roams also among the agricultural implements, he cannot rightly judge a matter which is well worthy of attention-the wonderful energy and activity of the farmers since the repeal of the corn-laws. It is no part of our business to dilate upon political combats, but it is unquestionably a part of every Englishman's business to know that the agriculturists are bravely putting their shoulders to the wheel,' and applying all modern improvements in furtherance of their labours. The gradual spread in the use of steam-power is not among the least remarkable of these appliances. A year or two ago, we happened to meet with a Song of Steam' in an American newspaper; the name of the writer does not appear; but we feel inclined to reprint here three of the |