The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-04
TALES OF TEN TRAVELLERS.
 TIVE E'EMING BRINGS 4 HAME.
nY EpaAn l.. MAKEMEN.


 BY EDGAR L. wAKEMES.
 Copyright 1894. All rights reserved.l
 The genius of the Morose traveller had always seemed to be entirely one of ob- servant and possibly critical apprecia- ton.
 He usually sat silent among us with his head resting in the palms of his hands upon his chair-back. His face thus partly turned to the oaken rafters Of the ceiling. betrayed little index to his emotions. Perhaps he had none. we sometimes thought and even remarked.
 We had noticed that one eye was of- ten cooked and squinted toward certain knots and their radiating seams in the beams overhead; and we had come to look upon him as the one nature among us ever alert for flaws.
 That any manner of romance had ever stirred his silent life was to us grotesque idea. even as an idle reflec- ton; and 1t was a strange experience and curious pleasure to have him at last look around upon us with little start of suspicious and prophetic temer- ity, which instantly effected solemn silence in the room. Observing this. the Morose Traveller resumed his fixed tna Nff he I,l olx tne and half apologetically began the fol- lowing singular narrative in low and measured tones.
 The inexplicable habit of marital bru- tality. which is often savagely intensi- fled with advancing age. and its possi- ble cure in the face of keen and appa- rently irrevocable human loss, were never so impressively revealed to me as on the occasion of a recent visit to the famous and infamous Scottish border village of Gretna Green.
 The journey was made partly in the interest of a client, one of the heirs to a considerable estate, and partly for re- taxation and pleasure.
 "Take your summersvacation in the North" suggested the senior member of our firm; land secure the proofs of marriage necessary in the Hexam es- tate case at the same time. You will see bit of historic border country; and I'll warrant you that you'll be able to dig up some as quaint and curious people and things at Gretna as are to be found in the United Kingdom
 It was a strange conceit for sum- mer vacation, but I fell in with it at once; took the night train from London for the North; breakfasted at old Car lisle and early the same day alighted from a Dumfnes-bound train at the pretty but lonely station of Gretna.
 It stands beside the once great coach- road from Carlisle to Glasgow. So far as human eyes could discern, not a # soul had housing within its half dozen |, ruinoust habitations. Not youthful nor wrinkled face pressed against tiny window pane as I passed. No dirty border children skulked like grouse in and out of the pleasant hedges. And not even the snarl of watchful cur contributed to the fact of arrival, or conveyed sense of welcome.
 knocked bravely at a few doors without even awakening an echo. Where echo is dead, reflected, it is dead and silent indeed. I finally strug- gled into the old kirkyard. The kirk door was locked fast. I prowled about the ivy covered manse behind. Here lived, knew, one of those remnants of a half-dead and altogether breathless ecclesiastic system, parish minister; but evidently he, too, was past awaken ing.
 Then I wandered among the graves. There was at least interest, if not life, here.
 That extraordinary priest of Hymen, the first Bishop of Gretna" immortal ized by the verse of Hood, he who had defied.bulls of popes, bullyings of Lord chancellors and edicts of kings fat, old, brandy-guzzling Joseph Paisley, lies in that Gretna kirk-yard; and the pdIu LO uiS uuIAOiC ACdOoIoAS 10 "OA II deeper than to the grave of him of purest life, or highest title, who is now commoner in the same last mold.
 His successors as priests" of the ir- regular Gretna marriages are buried near; and their headstones are also shrines for the curious. Could all the couples, or descendants of all the cou- pies, in England and Scotland that those three men joined together, unite in visiting the graves of those to whom they owe their connubial joys or mise ries, I unused, what wonderful pill grimage 1t would be! Why the old coach-road would be massed with folk, a score abreast, away back there over the rivers Sark and Esk to fortress-crowned Carlisle. And there would be lords and earls and real priests and even prelates among them, too! . I at last became conscious of pres ence. Turning, I saw a nose of won- drous proportions with man of no proportions at all behind 1t. The man stood motionless, but the | nose seemed possessed of life. It gent ly swayed pendulum-like in the au- tumn breeze, as if in compensation of all else dead and still at Gretna. The man was gnarled and knotty and l