Kitabı oku: «Stories by English Authors: Scotland», sayfa 5
At last they parted, and my gudesire was to ride hame through the wood of Pitmurkie, that is a’ fou of black firs, as they say. I ken the wood, but the firs may be black or white for what I can tell. At the entry of the wood there is a wild common, and on the edge of the common a little lonely change-house, that was keepit then by an hostler wife, – they suld hae caa’d her Tibbie Faw, – and there puir Steenie cried for a mutchkin of brandy, for he had had no refreshment the haill day. Tibbie was earnest wi’ him to take a bite of meat, but he couldna think o’ ‘t, nor would he take his foot out of the stirrup, and took off the brandy, wholely at twa draughts, and named a toast at each. The first was, the memory of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, and may he never lie quiet in his grave till he had righted his poor bond-tenant; and the second was, a health to Man’s Enemy, if he would but get him back the pock of siller, or tell him what came o’ ‘t, for he saw the haill world was like to regard him as a thief and a cheat, and he took that waur than even the ruin of his house and hauld.
On he rode, little caring where. It was a dark night turned, and the trees made it yet darker, and he let the beast take its ain road through the wood; when all of a sudden, from tired and wearied that it was before, the nag began to spring and flee and stend, that my gudesire could hardly keep the saddle. Upon the whilk, a horseman, suddenly riding up beside him, said, “That’s a mettle beast of yours, freend; will you sell him?” So saying, he touched the horse’s neck with his riding-wand, and it fell into its auld heigh-ho of a stumbling trot. “But his spunk’s soon out of him, I think,” continued the stranger, “and that is like mony a man’s courage, that thinks he wad do great things.”
My gudesire scarce listened to this, but spurred his horse, with “Gude-e’en to you, freend.”
But it’s like the stranger was ane that doesna lightly yield his point; for, ride as Steenie liked, he was aye beside him at the selfsame pace. At last my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half angry, and, to say the truth, half feard.
“What is it that you want with me, freend?” he said. “If ye be a robber, I have nae money; if ye be a leal man, wanting company, I have nae heart to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the road, I scarce ken it mysell.”
“If you will tell me your grief,” said the stranger, “I am one that, though I have been sair miscaa’d in the world, am the only hand for helping my freends.”
So my gudesire, to ease his ain heart, mair than from any hope of help, told him the story from beginning to end.
“It’s a hard pinch,” said the stranger; “but I think I can help you.”
“If you could lend me the money, sir, and take a lang day – I ken nae other help on earth,” said my gudesire.
“But there may be some under the earth,” said the stranger. “Come, I’ll be frank wi’ you; I could lend you the money on bond, but you would maybe scruple my terms. Now I can tell you that your auld laird is disturbed in his grave by your curses and the wailing of your family, and if ye daur venture to go to see him, he will give you the receipt.”
My gudesire’s hair stood on end at this proposal, but he thought his companion might be some humoursome chield that was trying to frighten him, and might end with lending him the money. Besides, he was bauld wi’ brandy, and desperate wi’ distress; and he said he had courage to go to the gate of hell, and a step farther, for that receipt. The stranger laughed.
Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the wood, when, all of a sudden, the horse stopped at the door of a great house; and, but that he knew the place was ten miles off, my father would have thought he was at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard, through the muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis; and the whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be at Sir Robert’s house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, and my gudesire, as seemed to him, fastened his horse to the very ring he had tied him to that morning when he gaed to wait on the young Sir John.
“God!” said my gudesire, “if Sir Robert’s death be but a dream!”
He knocked at the ha’ door just as he was wont, and his auld acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum – just after his wont, too – came to open the door, and said, “Piper Steenie, are ye there lad? Sir Robert has been crying for you.”
My gudesire was like a man in a dream – he looked for the stranger, but he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, “Ha! Dougal Driveower, are you living? I thought ye had been dead.”
“Never fash yoursell wi’ me,” said Dougal, “but look to yoursell; and see ye tak’ naething frae onybody here, neither meat, drink, or siller, except the receipt that is your ain.”
So saying, he led the way out through the halls and trances that were weel kend to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour; and there was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and blasphemy and sculduddery, as had ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the blythest.
But Lord take us in keeping! What a set of ghastly revellers there were that sat around that table! My gudesire kend mony that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron’s blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr. Cargill’s limbs till the blude sprung; and Dumbarton Douglas, the twice turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bludy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and with his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed and sang and laughed, that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and their laughter passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire’s very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.
They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving-men and troopers that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped to take Argyle; and the bishop’s summoner, that they called the Deil’s Rattlebag; and the wicked guardsmen in their laced coats; and the savage Highland Amorites, that shed blood like water; and mony a proud serving-man, haughty of heart and bloody of hand, cringing to the rich, and making them wickeder than they would be; grinding the poor to powder when the rich had broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were coming and ganging, a’ as busy in their vocation as if they had been alive.
Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in the midst of a’ this fearful riot, cried, wi’ a voice like thunder, on Steenie Piper to come to the board-head where he was sitting, his legs stretched out before him, and swathed up with flannel, with his holster pistols aside him, while the great broadsword rested against his chair, just as my gudesire had seen him the last time upon earth; the very cushion for the jackanape was close to him, but the creature itsell was not there – it wasna its hour, it’s likely; for he heard them say, as he came forward, “Is not the major come yet?” And another answered, “The jackanape will be here betimes the morn.” And when my gudesire came forward, Sir Robert or his ghaist, or the deevil in his likeness, said, “Weel, piper, hae ye settled wi’ my son for the year’s rent?”
With much ado my father gat breath to say that Sir John would not settle without his honour’s receipt.
“Ye shall hae that for a tune of the pipes, Steenie,” said the appearance of Sir Robert – “play us up ‘Weel Hoddled, Luckie.’”
Now this was a tune my gudesire learned frae a warlock, that heard it when they were worshipping Satan at their meetings; and my gudesire had sometimes played it at the ranting suppers in Redgauntlet Castle, but never very willingly; and now he grew cauld at the very name of it, and said, for excuse, he hadna his pipes wi’ him.
“MacCallum, ye limb of Beelzebub,” said the fearfu’ Sir Robert, “bring Steenie the pipes that I am keeping for him!”
MacCallum brought a pair of pipes might have served the piper of Donald of the Isles. But he gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered them; and looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that the chanter was of steel, and heated to a white heat; so he had fair warning not to trust his fingers with it. So he excused himsell again, and said he was faint and frightened, and had not wind aneugh to fill the bag.
“Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie,” said the figure; “for we do little else here; and it’s ill speaking between a fou man and a fasting.” Now these were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to keep the king’s messenger in hand while he cut the head off MacLellan of Bombie, at the Threave Castle; and put Steenie mair and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came neither to eat nor drink, nor make minstrelsy; but simply for his ain – to ken what was come o’ the money he had paid, and to get a discharge for it; and he was so stout-hearted by this time that he charged Sir Robert for conscience’s sake (he had no power to say the holy name), and as he hoped for peace and rest, to spread no snares for him, but just to give him his ain.
The appearance gnashed its teeth and laughed, but it took from a large pocket-book the receipt, and handed it to Steenie. “There is your receipt, ye pitiful cur; and for the money, my dog-whelp of a son may go look for it in the Cat’s Cradle.”
My gudesire uttered mony thanks, and was about to retire, when Sir Robert roared aloud, “Stop, though, thou sack-doudling son of a – ! I am not done with thee. HERE we do nothing for nothing; and you must return on this very day twelvemonth to pay your master the homage that you owe me for my protection.”
My father’s tongue was loosed of a suddenty, and he said aloud, “I refer myself to God’s pleasure, and not to yours.”
He had no sooner uttered the word than all was dark around him; and he sank on the earth with such a sudden shock that he lost both breath and sense.
How lang Steenie lay there he could not tell; but when he came to himsell he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine, just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly beside the minister’s twa cows. Steenie would have thought the whole was a dream, but he had the receipt in his hand fairly written and signed by the auld laird; only the last letters of his name were a little disorderly, written like one seized with sudden pain.
Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary place, rode through the mist to Redgauntlet Castle, and with much ado he got speech of the laird.
“Well, you dyvour bankrupt,” was the first word, “have you brought me my rent?”
“No,” answered my gudesire, “I have not; but I have brought your honour Sir Robert’s receipt for it.”
“How, sirrah? Sir Robert’s receipt! You told me he had not given you one.”
“Will your honour please to see if that bit line is right?”
Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, with much attention; and at last at the date, which my gudesire had not observed – “From my appointed place,” he read, “this twenty-fifth of November.”
“What! That is yesterday! Villain, thou must have gone to hell for this!”
“I got it from your honour’s father; whether he be in heaven or hell, I know not,” said Steenie.
“I will debate you for a warlock to the Privy Council!” said Sir John. “I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a torch!”
“I intend to debate mysell to the Presbytery,” said Steenie, “and tell them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for them to judge of than a borrel man like me.”
Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full history; and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have told it you – neither more nor less.
Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very composedly: “Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honour of many a noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a red-hot iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as scaulding your fingers wi’ a red-hot chanter. But yet it may be true, Steenie; and if the money cast up, I shall not know what to think of it. But where shall we find the Cat’s Cradle? There are cats enough about the old house, but I think they kitten without the ceremony of bed or cradle.”
“We were best ask Hutcheon,” said my gudesire; “he kens a’ the odd corners about as weel as – another serving-man that is now gane, and that I wad not like to name.”
Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them that a ruinous turret lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder, for the opening was on the outside, above the battlements, was called of old the Cat’s Cradle.
“There will I go immediately,” said Sir John; and he took – with what purpose Heaven kens – one of his father’s pistols from the hall table, where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened to the battlements.
It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail, and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered at the turret door, where his body stopped the only little light that was in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi’ a vengeance, maist dang him back ower – bang! gaed the knight’s pistol, and Hutcheon, that held the ladder, and my gudesire, that stood beside him, hears a loud skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape down to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should come up and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneaugh, and mony orra thing besides, that had been missing for mony a day. And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into the dining-parlour, and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him, and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he would hereafter be a good master to him, to make amends.
“And now, Steenie,” said Sir John, “although this vision of yours tends, on the whole, to my father’s credit as an honest man, that he should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad constructions upon it concerning his soul’s health. So, I think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taen ower-muckle brandy to be very certain about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt” – his hand shook while he held it out – “it’s but a queer kind of document, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly in the fire.”
“Od, but for as queer as it is, it’s a’ the voucher I have for my rent,” said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of Sir Robert’s discharge.
“I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give you a discharge under my own hand,” said Sir John, “and that on the spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you shall sit, from this time downward, at an easier rent.”
“Mony thanks to your honour,” said Steenie, who saw easily in what corner the wind was; “doubtless I will be conformable to all your honour’s commands; only I would willingly speak wi’ some powerful minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of soumons of appointment whilk your honour’s father – ”
“Do not call the phantom my father!” said Sir John, interrupting him.
“Well then, the thing that was so like him,” said my gudesire; “he spoke of my coming back to see him this time twelvemonth, and it’s a weight on my conscience.”
“Aweel then,” said Sir John, “if you be so much distressed in mind, you may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the honour of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage from me.”
Wi’ that, my father readily agreed that the receipt should be burnt; and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi’ a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.
My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the minister, when he had heard the story, said it was his real opinion that, though my gudesire had gane very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet as he had refused the devil’s arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink), and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped that, if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang forswore baith the pipes and the brandy – it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle or drink usquebaugh or tippenny.
Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell; and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye ‘ll no hinder some to thread that it was nane o’ the auld Enemy that Dougal and Hutcheon saw in the laird’s room, but only that wanchancie creature the major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the laird’s whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister’s wife, after Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the moulds. And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgment or memory, – at least nothing to speak of, – was obliged to tell the real narrative to his freends, for the credit of his good name. He might else have been charged for a warlock.
The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor finished his long narrative with this moral: “You see, birkie, it is nae chancy thing to tak’ a stranger traveller for a guide when you are in an uncouth land.”
“I should not have made that inference,” said I. “Your grandfather’s adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saves from ruin and distress; and fortunate for his landlord.”
“Ay, but they had baith to sup the sauce o’ ‘t sooner or later,” said Wandering Willie; “what was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died before he was much over threescore; and it was just like a moment’s illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fulness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his plough, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir, sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at first; for Sir Regwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the oye of auld Sir Robert, and, wae’s me! the last of the honourable house, took the farm aff our hands, and brought me into his household to have care of me. My head never settled since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will I have the heart to play the night. Look out, my gentle chap,” he resumed, in a different tone; “ye should see the lights at Brokenburn Glen by this time.”
THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY, By Professor Aytoun
[The following tale appeared in “Blackwood’s Magazine” for October, 1845. It was intended by the writer as a sketch of some of the more striking features of the railway mania (then in full progress throughout Great Britain), as exhibited in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although bearing the appearance of a burlesque, it was in truth an accurate delineation (as will be acknowledged by many a gentleman who had the misfortune to be “out in the Forty-five”); and subsequent disclosures have shown that it was in no way exaggerated.
Although the “Glenmutchkin line” was purely imaginary, and was not intended by the writer to apply to any particular scheme then before the public, it was identified in Scotland with more than one reckless and impracticable project; and even the characters introduced were supposed to be typical of personages who had attained some notoriety in the throng of speculation. Any such resemblances must be considered as fortuitous; for the writer cannot charge himself with the discourtesy of individual satire or allusion.]
I was confoundedly hard up. My patrimony, never of the largest, had been for the last year on the decrease, – a herald would have emblazoned it, “ARGENT, a money-bag improper, in detriment,” – and though the attenuating process was not excessively rapid, it was, nevertheless, proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers, I knew none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. “Augustus,” said my poor mother to me, while stroking my hyacinthine tresses, one fine morning, in the very dawn and budding-time of my existence – “Augustus, my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that you are a gentleman.” The maternal maxim sank deeply into my heart, and I never for a moment have forgotten it.
Notwithstanding this aristocratic resolution, the great practical question, “How am I to live?” began to thrust itself unpleasantly before me. I am one of that unfortunate class who have neither uncles nor aunts. For me, no yellow liverless individual, with characteristic bamboo and pigtail, – emblems of half a million, – returned to his native shores from Ceylon or remote Penang. For me, no venerable spinster hoarded in the Trongate, permitting herself few luxuries during a long protracted life, save a lass and a lanthorn, a parrot, and the invariable baudrons of antiquity. No such luck was mine. Had all Glasgow perished by some vast epidemic, I should not have found myself one farthing the richer. There would have been no golden balsam for me in the accumulated woes of Tradestown, Shettleston, and Camlachie. The time has been when – according to Washington Irving and other veracious historians – a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream, with the information that at such and such a bridge, or under such and such a tree, he might find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomans; or, in the extremity of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and straightway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amid the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by – at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either wofully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly confess I should have liked some better security for its result than the precedent of the “Heir of Lynn.”
It is a great consolation, amid all the evils of life, to know that, however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally, Bob M’Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man – that is, in a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies of the “Wealth of Nations.” The result was a crude farrago of notions regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring audience at “The Crow”; for Bob was by no means – in the literal acceptation of the word – a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery, and was understood to be the compiler of a statistical work entitled “A Tour through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland.” It had very early occurred to me, who knew as much of political economy as of the bagpipes, that a gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating national wealth must have some remote ideas of applying his principles profitably on a smaller scale. Accordingly I gave M’Corkindale an unlimited invitation to my lodgings; and, like a good hearty fellow as he was, he availed himself every evening of the license; for I had laid in a fourteen-gallon cask of Oban whisky, and the quality of the malt was undeniable.
These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful stimulus to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain that all the populous towns would be united, and the rich agricultural districts intersected, by the magical bands of iron. The columns of the newspapers teemed every week with the parturition of novel schemes; and the shares were no sooner announced than they were rapidly subscribed for. But what is the use of my saying anything more about the history of last year? Every one of us remembers it perfectly well. It was a capital year on the whole, and put money into many a pocket. About that time, Bob and I commenced operations. Our available capital, or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise unemployed, while every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we never, in a single instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and though we did now and then make a bit by purchase, we more frequently bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the end of six months we were not twenty pounds richer than before.
“This will never do,” said Bob, as he sat one evening in my rooms compounding his second tumbler. “I thought we were living in an enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles of free trade are utterly forgotten, or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in the Westermidden Junction, while your application and mine, for a thousand each were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be tolerated? Why should he, with his fifty thousand pounds, receive a slapping premium, while our three hundred of available capital remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous, and demands the immediate and serious interference of the legislature.”
“It is a burning shame,” said I, fully alive to the manifold advantages of a premium.
“I’ll tell you what, Dunshunner,” rejoined M’Corkindale, “it’s no use going on in this way. We haven’t shown half pluck enough. These fellows consider us as snobs because we don’t take the bull by the horns. Now’s the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to subscribe for anything – and we’ll start a railway for ourselves.”
“Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!”
“Pshaw, man! you don’t know what you’re talking about – we’ve a great deal more capital than that. Have not I told you, seventy times over, that everything a man has – his coat, his hat, the tumblers he drinks from, nay, his very corporeal existence – is absolute marketable capital? What do you call that fourteen-gallon cask, I should like to know?”
“A compound of hoops and staves, containing about a quart and a half of spirits – you have effectually accounted for the rest.”
“Then it has gone to the fund of profit and loss, that’s all. Never let me hear you sport those old theories again. Capital is indestructible, as I am ready to prove to you any day, in half an hour. But let us sit down seriously to business. We are rich enough to pay for the advertisements, and that is all we need care for in the meantime. The public is sure to step in, and bear us out handsomely with the rest.”
“But where in the face of the habitable globe shall the railway be? England is out of the question, and I hardly know a spot in the Lowlands that is not occupied already.”
“What do you say to a Spanish scheme – the Alcantara Union? Hang me if I know whether Alcantara is in Spain or Portugal; but nobody else does, and the one is quite as good as the other. Or what would you think of the Palermo Railway, with a branch to the sulphur-mines? – that would be popular in the north – or the Pyrenees Direct? They would all go to a premium.”
