set herself on fire, and skipped out of the casement in an explosion of
crackers! And when the drama approached its /denouement/, when the
Baron's men, and the royal officers of justice, had, despite all her
arts, tracked the Bandit to the cave, in which, after various retreats,
he lay hidden, wounded by shots, and bruised by a fall from a precipice,
--with what admirable byplay she hovered around the spot, with what
pathos she sought to decoy away the pursuers! it was the skylark playing
round the nest. And when all was vain,--when, no longer to be deceived,
the enemies sought to seize her, how mockingly she eluded them, bounded
up the rock, and shook her slight finger at them in scorn! Surely she
will save that estimable Bandit still! Now, hitherto, though the Bandit
was the nominal hero of the piece, though you were always hearing of
him,--his wrongs, virtues, hairbreadth escapes,--he had never been seen.
Not Mrs. Harris, in the immortal narrative, was more quoted and more
mythical. But in the last scene there was the Bandit, there in his
cavern, helpless with bruises and wounds, lying on a rock. In rushed the
enemies, Baron, High Sheriff, and all, to seize him. Not a word spoke
the Bandit, but his attitude was sublime,--even Vance cried "bravo;" and
just as he is seized, halter round his neck, and about to be hanged, down
from the chasm above leaps his child, holding the title-deeds, filched
from the Baron, and by her side the King's Lieutenant, who proclaims the
Bandit's pardon, with due restoration to his honours and estates, and
consigns to the astounded Sheriff the august person of the Remorseless
Baron. Then the affecting scene, father and child in each other's arms;
and then an exclamation, which had been long hovering about the lips of
many of the audience, broke out, "Waife, Waife!" Yes, the Bandit, who
appeared but in the last scene, and even then uttered not a word, was the
once great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known through many a
fair for his exuberant humour, his impromptu jokes, his arch eye, his
redundant life of drollery, and the strange pathos or dignity with which