Girlhood and Womanhood | Page 2

broad and offensive,
or perhaps very fine in their edge, his caricatures excited shouts of
laughter in the parish, and in the neighbouring town.
But he laughs best who laughs last. A brother laird, blind with fury, and
having more of the old border man in him than the Laird of the Ewes,
took to his natural arms, and dispatched Mr. Crawfurd a challenge to
fight him on the Corn-Cockle Moor. No refusal was possible then, none
except for a man of rare principle, nerve, and temper. The Laird of the

Ewes had no pretensions to mighty gifts; so he walked out with his
second one autumn morning when his reapers were flourishing their
sickles, met his foe, and though without the skill to defend himself, he
shot his man right through the head. He was tried and acquitted. He
was the challenged, not the challenger; he might have given the
provocation, but no blame was suffered to attach to him. His antagonist,
with a foreboding of his fate, or by way of clearing his conscience, as
the knights used to confess of a morning before combat, had exonerated
Mr. Crawfurd before he came upon the ground. The Court was strongly
in his favour, and he was sent back to his family and property without
anything more severe than commiseration; but that could never reach
his deep sore.
How was this gentle, nervous, humorous Laird to look out upon the
world, from which he had sent the soul of a companion who had never
even harmed him? The widow, whom he had admired as a gay young
matron, dwelt not a mile from him in her darkened dwelling; the
fatherless boy would constantly cross the path of his well-protected,
well-cared-for children. How bear the thousand little memories--the
trifling dates, acts, words, pricking him with anguish? They say the
man grew sick at the mere sight of the corn-cockle, which, though not
plentiful on other moors, chanced to abound on this uncultivated tract,
and bestowed on it its name; and he shivered as with an ague fit,
morning after morning, when the clock struck the hour at which he had
left his house. He did in some measure overcome this weakness, for he
was a man of ordinary courage and extraordinary reserve, but it is
possible that he endured the worst of his punishment when he made no
sign.
The Laird was a man of delicate organism, crushed by a blow from
which he could not recover. Had he lived a hundred years earlier, or
been a soldier on active service, or a student walking the hospitals, he
might have been more hardened to bloodshed. Had his fate been
different, he might have borne the brunt of the offence as well as his
betters; but the very crime which he was least calculated to commit and
survive encountered him in the colours he had worn before the eventful
day.

Yet there was nothing romantic about Crawfurd of the Ewes, or about
the details of his deed, with one singular exception, and this was
connected with his daughter Joanna. The rest of the family were
commonplace, prosperous young people, honest enough hearts, but too
shallow to be affected by the father's misfortune. The father's sour
grapes had not set these children's teeth on edge. Joanna--Jack, or Joe,
as they called her in sport--whom they all, without any idea of
selfishness or injustice, associated with the Laird, as one member of the
family is occasionally chosen to bear the burdens of the others,--Joanna
was papa's right hand, papa's secretary, steward, housekeeper, nurse. It
had always been so; Joanna had been set aside to the office, and no one
thought of depriving her of it, any more than she dreamt of resigning it.
Joanna was the child born immediately after the duel, and on the waxen
brow of the baby was a crimson stain, slight but significant, which two
fingers might have covered. Was this the token of retribution--the threat
of vengeance? The gossips' tongues wagged busily. Some said it was
Cain's brand, "the iniquity of the fathers visited on the children;" others
alleged more charitably that it ought to prove a sign in the Laird's
favour, to have the symbol of his guilt transferred to a scape-goat--the
brow of a child. However, the gossips need not have hidden the child's
face so sedulously for the first few days from the mother. Mrs.
Crawfurd took the matter quite peaceably, and was relieved that no
worse misfortune had befallen her or her offspring. "Poor little dear!" it
was sad that she should carry such a trace; but she daresayed she would
outgrow it, or she must wear flat curls--it was a pity that they had gone
quite out of fashion. It was the father who kissed the