60 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



It was a sad and terrible experience, which would have 

 blasted the life of most, of all but a strong man. To John 

 Duncan, it was a life-long grief, a secret sore that might 

 have drained out all vitality or driven him to questionable 

 relief. His home was despoiled, his dream of domestic 

 happiness cruelly dissipated. Better far, better a thousand 

 fold, had she died. But no, she lived, a blight and a 

 blame. For years, he removed from place to place, to 

 escape her presence and the curse of her connection ; and he 

 never again took a holding of his own till she had passed 

 away. The subject was ever present to him as a hidden 

 anguish, a thing to be proscribed in speech, and to be 

 breathed to no man, not even to his dearest friends. To 

 none of these did he speak of it, not even to Charles Black, 

 his second self, during their many'years of closest intimacy. 



But it is vain to think of hiding such secrets from the 

 world. They haunt even the most innocent, like crime, 

 and, at the best, become a source of misunderstanding with 

 the most kindly. His friends knew the tale, and rumours 

 of it floated amongst the people, the very indefiniteness of 

 their knowledge being a means of exaggeration and cruel 

 surmise. It was only his singular modesty and unim- 

 peachable uprightness that preserved him from being 

 condemned. With his friends, it was a forbidden topic, 

 restrained by their affection for the man and their respect 

 for his action in the unhappy circumstances. To one 

 alone who admired him have I ever heard that he volun- 

 tarily entered on the subject, and that was when it became 

 unavoidable by his wife seeking him out ; and even then 

 he spoke, without passion or hard words, of the miserable 

 cause of his woe, and only entered a mild defence of his 



