The Mystery of Cloomber | Page 2

Oriental and Sanskrit
scholar, and his name is still of weight with those who are interested in
such matters. He it was who first after Sir William Jones called
attention to the great value of early Persian literature, and his
translations from the Hafiz and from Ferideddin Atar have earned the
warmest commendations from the Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, of
Vienna, and other distinguished Continental critics.

In the issue of the _OrientalischesScienzblatt for January, 1861, he is
described as _"Der_beruhmte_und_sehr_gelhernte_Hunter_West_von
Edinburgh"_--a passage which I well remember that he cut out and
stowed away, with a pardonable vanity, among the most revered family
archives.
He had been brought up to be a solicitor, or Writer to the Signet, as it is
termed in Scotland, but his learned hobby absorbed so much of his time
that he had little to devote to the pursuit of his profession.
When his clients were seeking him at his chambers in George Street, he
was buried in the recesses of the Advocates' Library, or poring over
some mouldy manuscript at the Philosophical Institution, with his brain
more exercised over the code which Menu propounded six hundred
years before the birth of Christ than over the knotty problems of
Scottish law in the nineteenth century. Hence it can hardly be wondered
at that as his learning accumulated his practice dissolved, until at the
very moment when he had attained the zenith of his celebrity he had
also reached the nadir of his fortunes.
There being no chair of Sanscrit in any of his native universities, and
no demand anywhere for the only mental wares which he had to
dispose of, we should have been forced to retire into genteel poverty,
consoling ourselves with the aphorisms and precepts of Firdousi, Omar
Khayyam, and others of his Eastern favourites, had it not been for the
kindness and liberality of his half-brother William Farintosh, the Laird
of Branksome, in Wigtownshire.
This William Farintosh was the proprietor of a landed estate, the
acreage which bore, unfortunately, a most disproportional relation to its
value, for it formed the bleakest and most barren tract of land in the
whole of a bleak and barren shire. As a bachelor, however, his expenses
had been small, and he had contrived from the rents of his scattered
cottages, and the sale of the Galloway nags, which he bred upon the
moors, not only to live as a laird should, but to put by a considerable
sum in the bank.
We had heard little from our kinsman during the days of our

comparative prosperity, but just as we were at our wit's end, there came
a letter like a ministering angel, giving us assurance of sympathy and
succour. In it the Laird of Branksome told us that one of his lungs had
been growing weaker for some time, and that Dr. Easterling, of
Stranraer, had strongly advised him to spend the few years which were
left to him in some more genial climate. He had determined, therefore
to set out for the South of Italy, and he begged that we should take up
our residence at Branksome in his absence, and that my father should
act as his land steward and agent at a salary which placed us above all
fear of want.
Our mother had been dead for some years, so that there were only
myself, my father, and my sister Esther to consult, and it may be
readily imagined that it did not take us long to decide upon the
acceptance of the laird's generous offer. My father started for Wigtown
that very night, while Esther and I followed a few days afterwards,
bearing with us two potato-sacksful of learned books, and such other of
our household effects that were worth the trouble and expense of
transport.

Chapter II
OF THE STRANGE MANNER IN WHICH A TENANT CAME TO
CLOOMBER
Branksome might have appeared a poor dwelling-place when compared
with the house of an English squire, but to us, after our long residence
in stuffy apartments, it was of regal magnificence.
The building was broad-spread and low, with red-tiled roof,
diamond-paned windows, and a profusion of dwelling rooms with
smoke-blackened ceilings and oaken wainscots. In front was a small
lawn, girt round with a thin fringe of haggard and ill grown beeches, all
gnarled and withered from the effects of the sea-spray. Behind lay the
scattered hamlet of Branksome-Bere--a dozen cottages at most--
inhabited by rude fisher-folk who looked upon the laird as their natural

protector.
To the west was the broad, yellow beach and the Irish Sea, while in all
other directions the desolate moors, greyish-green in the foreground
and purple in the distance, stretched away in long, low curves to the
horizon.
Very bleak and lonely it was upon this Wigtown coast. A man might
walk