The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-11-21

characteristic of SCOTS work. When he
began to create characters some one or
two of them were almost sure to take
charge of the story and run away with it
without the authors consent, and almost
without his knowledge. In "Waverly,"
who cares much about the nominal hero
or his lady-love, Rose Bradwardine? 1t
is Bonnie Prince Charlie and ergus Nc
Ivor and his sister Flora whom people
remember.
TT HE Bertrams were such an old fam
lily that 1t would be waste of
= time to talk about their antiquity.
in the days of Galweigan independence
they had been the stormy chiefs of a
desert but extensive domain, the head of
numerous clan and held almost royal
sway along the rugged coast. The extern
siye ruins of their great feudal castle
still frowned from its bold cliffs above
the waters of the wild Irish Sea and was
known as Ellangowan Old Place.
Near it stood a modern structure of re-
spectacle size, but not in respectable re-
pair, which was known as Ellangowan
New Place and inhabited by Mr.. Godfrey
Bertram, Laird of Ellangowan, the pres
ent head of the family. Small enough his
estates were now, compared with the an
Client possessions of the family, but prop
erly managed might still heve enabled
their possessor to have made respecte-
BILE figure among the country gentry.
But Ellangowan, as his neighbors called
him, was a good, easy man, one of those
helpless creatures which, owing 1t may be
10 some curious law of heredity compen-
sation, one not infrequently finds bring
ing up the rear of line of superstren-
uous ancestors.
For about 200 years before Godfrey's
time the Bertrams had systematically
reduced their possessions by the devel-
opment of a remarkable faculty for get
ting on the losing side in every civil dis
turbance. Then there was the wicked
Laird Godfrey's grandfather, with his
extravagances, and his father with his
speculations and his lawsuits; thus it was
that the reigning Laird of Ellangowan
sat among fortunes ancient and as
ruinous as his moldering ancestral castle
when he entertained at a most interesting
time of his domestic history, viz: the
birth of son and heir. one Guy Manner
ing. a wandering young Englishman, who
had become overtaken by night amid the
boys and pitfalls of the Galweigan wilds
and sought the shelter of the New Place,
whose doors were always open to the
stranger.
Mr.. Mannering had just left that re-
spectacle seat of learning called Oxford
and was taking a ramble through Scot
land. preparatory to fixing upon a career
in life. He was an orphan, with two
uncles, who asserted their right to direct
his future. One was worthy bishop
who demanded that his nephew take or
ders, and the other was a wealthy mer-
chant, who ordered young Guy to betake
himself to the counting room. Guy him
self had made up his mind to become a
soldier. It may be said here that his res
olution he carried out, and that both I'M
cles became reconciled to his course: the
bishop upon dying bequeathed to him his
large library and his portfolio of pictures
OF English dyines. while the merchant
left him his great fortune.
when he sat and drank wine with the
hospitable Ellangowan, listening to the
Laird ramble on from subject to subject
in his wonted manner-for Ellangowan
was never able to get TO the end of one
subject before he struck cross-lots to an
other. Mr.. Bertram interested Mannering
and so did a singular person present
named Sampson, commonly called Domi-
ME Sampson. who taught school nearby
aud housed himself at Ellangowan, where
z acted as sort of secretary and chap
bin. His peasant ancestors had stinted
And starved and he had stinted and
starved in order that he might be or
dained to Holy Orders. But the tall,
gaunt, ungainly man with face like a
comic mask, with a soul simple, faithful
and honest, an intellect limited, stored
his sluggish mind with vast assortment
of odds and ends of erudition until It was
like a slovenly pawnbroker's shop,
crammed with a collection of articles,
some worthless, some of great value, but
upon none of which could the possessor
place his hand at the moment he wanted
It, Upon his first attempt to preach a
sermon he was so embarrassed that after
n series of hideous grimaces, he fed
church. Then he began to exc out a
scanty subsistence as a pedagogue and
finally found a refuge in the house of
Ellangowan. A man of few words was
Sampson, and what words he used, such