Guy Mannering Or The Astrologer

CHAPTER XXII

My imagination

Carries no favour in it but Bertram's;

I am undone, there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away.

At the hour which he had appointed the preceding evening the indefatigable lawyer was seated by a good fire and a pair of wax candles, with a velvet cap on his head and a quilted silk nightgown on his person, busy arranging his memoranda of proofs and indications concerning the murder of Frank Ke

In a short time a gentle tap a

Miss Bertram was in the breakfast-parlour when Sampson shuffled in, his face all radiant with smiles - a circumstance so uncommon that Lucy's first idea was that somebody had been bantering him with an imposition, which had thrown him into this ecstasy. Having sate for some time rolling his eyes and gaping with his mouth like the great wooden head at Merlin's exhibition, he at length began - 'And what do you think of him, Miss Lucy?'

'Think of whom, Mr. Sampson?' asked the young lady.

'Of Har - no - of him that you know about?' again demanded the Dominie.

'That I know about?' replied Lucy, totally at a loss to comprehend his meaning.

'Yes, the stranger, you know, that came last evening, in the post vehicle; he who shot young Hazelwood, ha, ha, ha!' burst forth the Dominie, with a laugh that sounded like neighing.

'Indeed, Mr. Sampson,' said his pupil, 'you have chosen a strange subject for mirth; I think nothing about the man, only I hope the outrage was accidental, and that we need not fear a repetition of it.'

'Accidental! ha, ha, ha!' again whi

'Really, Mr. Sampson,' said Lucy, somewhat piqued, 'you are unusually gay this morning.'

'Yes, of a surety I am! ha, ha, ho! face-ti-ous, ho, ho, ha!'

'So unusually facetious, my dear sir,' pursued the young lady, 'that I would wish rather to know the meaning of your mirth than to be amused with its effects only.'

'You shall know it, Miss Lucy,' replied poor Abel. 'Do you remember your brother?'

'Good God, how can you ask me? No one knows better than you he was lost the very day I was born.'

'Very true, very true,' answered the Dominie, saddening at the recollection; 'I was strangely oblivious; ay, ay! too true. But you remember your worthy father?'

'How should you doubt it, Mr. Sampson? it is not so many weeks since - '

'True, true; ay, too true,' replied the Dominie, his Houyhnhnm laugh sinking into a hysterical giggle. 'I will be facetious no more under these remembrances; but look at that young man!'

Bertram at this instant entered the room. 'Yes, look at him well, he is your father's living image; and as God has deprived you of your dear parents - O, my children, love one another!'

'It is indeed my father's face and form,' said Lucy, turning very pale. Bertram ran to support her, the Dominie to fetch water to throw upon her face (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn), when fortunately her colour, returning rapidly, saved her from the application of this ill-judged remedy. 'I conjure you to tell me, Mr. Sampson,' she said, in an interrupted yet solemn voice, 'is this my brother?'

'It is, it is! Miss Lucy, it is little Harry Bertram, as sure as God's sun is in that heaven!'

'And this is my sister?' said Bertram, giving way to all that family affection which had so long slumbered in his bosom for want of an object to expand itself upon.

'It is, it is! - it is Miss Lucy Bertram,' ejaculated Sampson, 'whom by my poor aid you will find perfect in the tongues of France and Italy, and even of Spain, in reading and writing her vernacular tongue, and in arithmetic and book-keeping by double and single entry. I say nothing of her talents of shaping and hemming and governing a household, which, to give every one their due, she acquired not from me but from the housekeeper; nor do I take merit for her performance upon stringed instruments, whereunto the instructions of an honourable young lady of virtue and modesty, and very facetious withal - Miss Julia Ma

'You, then,' said Bertram to his sister, 'are all that remains to me! Last night, but more fully this morning, Colonel Ma

'That,' said Lucy, 'he left to this gentleman to tell you - one of the kindest and most faithful of friends, who soothed my father's long sickness, witnessed his dying moments, and amid the heaviest clouds of fortune would not desert his orphan.'

'God bless him for it!' said Bertram, shaking the Dominie's hand;' he deserves the love with which I have always regarded even that dim and imperfect shadow of his memory which my childhood retained.'

'And God bless you both, my dear children!' said Sampson; 'if it had not been for your sake I would have been contented - had Heaven's pleasure so been - to lay my head upon the turf beside my patron.'

'But I trust,' said Bertram - 'I am encouraged to hope, we shall all see better days. All our wrongs shall be redressed, since Heaven has sent me means and friends to assert my right.'

'Friends indeed!' echoed the Dominie, 'and sent, as you truly say, by HIM to whom I early taught you to look up as the source of all that is good. There is the great Colonel Ma

The reader may observe that upon this occasion Sampson was infinitely more profuse of words than he had hitherto exhibited himself. The reason was that, in recovering his pupil, his mind went instantly back to their original co