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Title: The Standard Bearer
Author: Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Language: English
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THE STANDARD BEARER
BOOKS BY S. R. CROCKETT.
Uniform edition. Each, 12 mo. Cloth, $1.50.
Lads’ Love.
_Illustrated._
In this fresh and charming story, which in some respects recalls “The
Lilac Sunbonnet,” Mr. Crockett returns to Galloway and pictures the
humor and pathos of the life which he knows so well.
[Illustration: text decoration]
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City.
His Progress and Adventures.
_Illustrated._
“A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled.... If ever
there was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic
ragamuffin.”--_London Daily Chronicle._
“In no one of his books does Mr. Crockett give us a brighter or more
graphic picture of contemporary Scotch life than in ‘Cleg Kelly.’ It is
one of the great books.”--_Boston Advertiser._
[Illustration: text decoration]
Bog-Myrtle and Peat.
“Here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life written in words that
thrill and burn.... All are set down in words that are fit, chaste, and
noble. Each is a poem that has the immortal flavor.”--_Boston Courier._
[Illustration: text decoration]
The Lilac Sunbonnet.
“A love story pure and simple--one of the old-fashioned, wholesome,
sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who
is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half
so sweet has been written this year it has escaped our notice.”--_New
York Times._
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
THE STANDARD BEARER
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
AUTHOR OF
THE LILAC SUNBONNET, BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT,
CLEG KELLY, LADS’ LOVE, THE RAIDERS, ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898
COPYRIGHT, 1897, 1898,
BY S. R. CROCKETT.
_GRATEFULLY AND RESPECTFULLY
I DEDICATE
TO THE GOOD AND KINDLY FOLK
OF MY NATIVE PARISH OF BALMAGHIE
THIS RENDERING OF
STRANGE HAPPENINGS AMONG THEIR FOREBEARS,
OF WHICH THEY HAVE
NOT YET QUITE LOST THE MEMORY._
THE FOREWORD.
A book iron-grey and chill is this that I have written, the tale of
times when the passions of men were still working like a yeasty sea
after the storms of the Great Killing. If these pages should chance to
be read when the leaves are greening, they may taste somewhat
unseasonably in the mouth. For in these days the things of the spirit
had lost their old authority without gaining a new graciousness, and
save for one man the ancient war-cry of “God and the Kirk” had become
degraded to “The Kirk and God.”
This is the story of the one man whose weak and uncertain hand held
aloft the Banner of Blue that I have striven to tell--his failures
mostly, his loves and hates, his few bright days and his many dark
nights. Yet withal I have found green vales of rest between wherein the
swallow swept and the cuckoo called to her mate the cry of love and
spring.
Who would know further and better of the certainty of these things must
procure and read A Cameronian Apostle, by my excellent friend, the
Reverend H. M. B. Reid, presently minister of the parish wherein these
things were done, in whose faithful and sympathetic narrative they will
find many things better told than I can tell them. The book may be had
of the Messrs. Gardiner, of Paisley, in Scotland.
Yet even in this imperfect narrative of strange events there may be
heard the beating of a man’s heart, weak or strong, now arrogant, and
now abased, not according to the fear of man or even of the glory of
God, but more according to the kindness which dwelt in woman’s eyes.
For there is but one thing stronger in the world than the love of woman.
And that is not of this world.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE YEAR TERRIBLE 1
II.--THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS 15
III.--THE LITTLE LADY OF EARLSTOUN 22
IV.--MY SISTER ANNA 30
V.--I CONSTRUCT A RAFT 42
VI.--ACROSS THE MOONLIGHT 52
VII.--MY BROTHER HOB 60
VIII.--THE MUSTER OF THE HILL FOLK 69
IX.--I MEET MARY GORDON FOR THE SECOND TIME 76
X.--THE BLUE BANNER IS UP 85
XI.--THE RED GRANT 93
XII.--THE LASS IN THE KIRKYARD 105
XIII.--MY LADY OF PRIDE 112
XIV.--THE TALE OF MESS HAIRRY 120
XV.--ALEXANDER-JONITA 129
XVI.--THE CORBIES AT THE FEAST 137
XVII.--THE BONNY LASS OF EARLSTOUN 144
XVIII.--ONE WAY OF LOVE 154
XIX.--ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE 169
XX.--MUTTERINGS OF STORM 185
XXI.--THE EYES OF A MAID 193
XXII.--THE ANGER OF ALEXANDER-JONITA 204
XXIII.--AT BAY 215
XXIV.--MARY GORDON’S LAST WORD 225
XXV.--BEHIND THE BROOM 233
XXVI.--JEAN GEMMELL’S BARGAIN WITH GOD 240
XXVII.--RUMOUR OF WAR 252
XXVIII.--ALEXANDER-JONITA’S VICTORY 262
XXIX.--THE ELDERS OF THE HILL FOLK 269
XXX.--SILENCE IS GOLDEN 275
XXXI.--THE FALL OF EARLSTOUN 286
XXXII.--LOVE OR DUTY 293
XXXIII.--THE DEMONIAC IN THE GARRET 304
XXXIV.--THE CURSING OF THE PRESBYTERY 310
XXXV.--LIKE THE SPIRIT OF A LITTLE CHILD 317
XXXVI.--THE STONE OF STUMBLING 325
XXXVII.--FARE YOU WELL! 331
XXXVIII.--“I LOVE YOU, QUINTIN!” 338
XXXIX.--THE LAST ROARING OF THE BULL 350
THE STANDARD BEARER.
CHAPTER I.
THE YEAR TERRIBLE.
This is what I, Quintin MacClellan, saw on the grassy summit of the
Bennan--a thing which, being seen and overpast in an hour, changed all
my life, and so in time by the grace of God and the chafe of
circumstances made me for good or evil the man I am.
I was a herd laddie at the time, like David, keeping my father’s flocks
and kicking up my heels among the collie tykes, with many another
shepherd-boy in the wide moorish parishes of Minnigaff, Dalry and the
Kells.
Now my father (and his father before him) had been all his life
“indweller” in the hill farm of Ardarroch which sits on the purple
braeface above the loch of Ken, with a little circumambient yard
enclosed by cattle-offices and a dozen red-stemmed fir trees, in which
the winds and the birds sing after their kind, winter and summer.
A sweet and grateful spot do I now remember that Ardarroch to be, and in
these later days when I have tried so mickle of bliss and teen, and
wearied my life out in so many wanderings and strivings, my heart still
goes out kindly to the well-beloved place of my bairn-play.
It was the high summer of the fatal year 1685, when I saw the sight
which put an end to my childhood. Well do I mind it that year, for
amongst others, my father had to go for a while into hiding--not that he
was any over-strenuous Covenant man, but solely because he had never in
his life refused bite and sup to any neighbour hard pressed, nor yet to
any decent chiel who might scarcely be able to give an account of the
quarrel he had with the Tyrant’s laws.
So, during his absence, my brothers and I had the work of the farm to
attend to. No dawn of day sifting from the east through the greenery of
the great sloughing beeches and firs about the door ever found any of
the three of us in our beds. For me, I was up and away to the
hills--where sometimes in the full lambing time I would spend all night
on the heathery fells or among the lirks and hidden dells of the
mountain fastnesses.
And oh, but it was pleasant work and I liked it well! The breathing
airs; the wide, starry arch I looked up into, when night had drawn her
night-cap low down over the girdling blue-black hills; the moon glinting
on the breast of Loch Ken; the moor-birds, whaup and snipe, plover and
wild duck cheeping and chummering in their nests, while the wood-doves’
moan rose plaintive from every copse and covert--it was a fit birthplace
for a young lad’s soul. Though indeed at that time none was farther from
guessing it than Quintin MacClellan. For as I went hither and thither I
pondered on nothing except the fine hunger the hills gave me, and the
glorious draughts of whey and buttermilk my mother would serve out to me
on my return, calling me meantime the greatest and silliest of her
calves, besides tweaking my ears at the milk-house door if she could
catch me ere I set my bare legs twinkling down the loaning.
For the time being I say nothing more of my father, “douce John of
Ardarroch,” as all the parish called him, save that he was a moderate
man and no high-flier as he would have described himself--yet out of
whom his wife (and my good mother) had, by the constant dropping of
argument, made a Covenant man, and even a fairly consistent follower of
the Hill Folk. Neither will I bide to speak of my brothers Hob and
David, for their names and characters will have occasion to appear as I
write down my own strange history. Nor yet can I pause to tell of the
sweetness and grace of my sister Anna, whose brown eyes held a charm
which even my boyish and brotherly insensibility acknowledged and
delighted in, being my elder by half-a-dozen years, and growing up
amongst us rough louts of the heather like a white rose in the stocky
corner of an herb-garden.
For I must tell of myself and what befell me on the Bennan top the
twenty-first day of June--high Midsummer Day of the Year Terrible, and
of all that it brought to me.
I had heard, indeed, often enough of chasings, of prisonments, of men
and women sent away over-seas to the cruel plantations, of the boot and
the thumbscrew, of the blood of slain men reddening the heather behind
dyke-backs. There was indeed little talk of anything else throughout all
the land of the South and West. But it so chanced that our House of
Ardarroch, being set high up on the side of Bennan, and with no
prominent Covenanters near by to be a mark for the fury of the
persecutor, we MacClellans had thus far escaped unquestioned and
scathless.
Once, indeed, Lidderdale of the Isle, with twenty men, had made us a
visitation and inquired somewhat curiously of us, and specially of my
mother, whom we had entertained on such a night and whom on such
another. After this occasion it was judged expedient that my father
should keep wide of his own house for a while, lest the strict laws
against intercommuning[1] should lay him by the heels in the gaol of
Kirkcudbright.
But to the young and healthy--so long at least as there is clothing for
the back, good filling for the hungry belly, and no startling and
personal evil befal--tales of ill, unseen and unproven, fall on the ear
like the clatter of ancient head-shaking beldames croaking to each
other by unswept ingle-nooks. At least, so it was with me.
But to my tale of Midsummer Day of the Terrible Year.
I had been out, since earliest morn, over the rough rigs of heather
looking tentily to my sheep, for I had been “hefting” (as the business
is called in our Galloway land) a double score of lambs which had just
been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty
upland pastures. Now it is the nature of sheep to return if they can to
their mother-hill, or, at least, to stray further and further seeking
some well-known landmark. So, till such new-comers grow satisfied and
“heft” (or attach) themselves to the soil, they must be watched
carefully both night and day.
I was at this time thirteen years of my age, well nourished and light of
foot as a mountain goat. Indeed, there was not a goat in the herd that I
could not run down and grip by the neck. And when Hob, my elder brother,
would take after me because of some mischief I had wrought, I warrant he
had a long chase and a sore sweat before he caught me, if I got but ten
yards’ start and the heather free before me.
This day I had a couple of fine muckle scones in my pocket, which my
mother had given me, besides one I had purloined for myself when she was
not looking, but which my sister Anna had seen me take and silently
shaken her head. That, however, I minded not a fly. Also I snatched up a
little square book from the window-sill, hoping that in it I might find
some entertainment to while away the hours in the bield of some granite
stone or behind some bush of heather. But I found it to be the collect
of Mr. Samuel Rutherford, his letters from Aberdeen and Anwoth, and at
first I counted the reading of it dull enough work. But afterwards,
because of the names of kenned places in our Galloway and also the fine
well-smacking Scottish words in it, I liked it none so ill.
Ashie and Gray, my dogs, sat on either side of me. Brother and sister
they were, of one year and litter, yet diverse as any human brother and
sister--Ashie being gay and frisky, ever full of freits and caperings;
his sister Gray, on the other hand, sober as a hill-preaching when
Clavers is out on the heather looking for it.
As for Ashie, he nipped himself in the flank and pursued after his own
tail as if he had taken some ill-will at it. But old-maidish Gray sat
erect, cocking her short ears and keeping a sharp eye on the “hefting”
lambs, which went aimlessly straying and cropping below, seeking in vain
for holms as kindly and pastures as succulent as those of the
valley-crofts from which my father had driven them a day or two before.
For myself, in the intervals of my reading, I had been singing a merry
stave, one you may be sure that I did not let my mother or my sister
Anna hear. I had learnt it from wild David, who had brought the broad
sheet back with him from Keltonhill Fair. Thus I had been carolling, gay
as the laverock which I watched flirting and pulsing upwards out of the
dun bents of the fell. But after a while the small print of my book and,
perhaps, also the high instructiveness of the matter inclined me towards
sleep.
The bleating of the sundered lambs desirous of lost motherly udders fell
more soothingly and plaintively upon my ear. It seemed to bring dreams
pleasant and delightful with it. I heard the note sink and change to
that heavenly murmuring that comes with drowsiness, or which, mayhap, is
but the sound of the porter opening the Poppy Gates of sleep--and which
may break yet more delightfully on our ears when the gates that open
for us are the gates of death.
I suppose that all the afternoon the whaups had piped and “willywhaaed,”
the snipes bleated and whinnied overhead, and that the peewits had
complained to each other of the question boy-beast below them, which ran
on two legs and waved other two so foolishly in the air. But I did not
hear them. My ears were dulled. The moorland sounds melted deliciously
into the very sough and murmur of reposefulness. I was already well on
my way to Drowsieland. I heard my mother sing me a lullaby somewhere
among the tranced fields. Suddenly the cradle-song ceased. Through shut
eyelids I grew conscious of a disturbing influence. Though my face
nestled deep down in the crook of my arm I knew that Ashie and Gray had
all suddenly sat up.
“_Ouf-f!_” quoth Ashie protestingly, deep in his stomach so that the
sound would carry no further than his master’s ear.
“_Gur-r-r!_” growled Gray, his sister, yet more softly, the black wicks
of her mouth pulled away from her wicked shining eye-teeth.
Thinking that the sheep were straying and that it might be as well by a
timely shout to save myself miles and miles of hot chase over the
heather, I sat up, ungraciously discontented to be thus aroused, and yet
more unreasonably angry with the dogs whose watchfulness had recalled me
to the realities of life. As I raised my head, the sounds of the hills
broke on my ear suddenly loud--indeed almost insolently insistant. The
suppressed far-away hush of Dreamland scattered itself like a broken
glass before the brisk clamour of the broad wind-stirred day.
I glanced at the flock beneath me. They were feeding and straying
quietly enough--rather widely perhaps, but nothing to make a fret about.
“Restless tykes!” I muttered irritably, striking right and left at the
dogs with my staff. “De’il take you, silly beasts that ye are!”
“_Ouf-f!_” said Ashie, warningly as before, but from a safer distance,
his nose pointing directly away from the hefting lambs. Gray said
nothing, but uncovered her shining teeth a little further and cocked her
ears more directly towards the summit of the Bennan behind me.
I looked about me high and low, but still I could see no cause for
alarm.
“Daft brutes! Silly beasts!” I cried again more crossly than ever. And
with that I was about to consign myself to sleep again, or at least to
seek the pleasant paths of the day-dreamland from which I had been so
abruptly recalled.
But the dogs with bristling hair, cocked ears and proudly-plumaged tails
were already ten yards up the slope towards the top of the fell,
sniffing belligerently as though they scented an intrusive stranger dog
at the entering in of the sacred enclosure of the farmyard of Ardarroch.
I was reaching for my stick to deal it liberally between them when a
waft of warm summer wind brought to my ear the sound of the distant
crying of men. Then came the clear, imperative “Crack! Crack!” of musket
shots--first two, and then half-a-dozen close together, sharp and
distinct as an eager schoolboy snapping his finger and thumb to call the
attention of the master to whom he has been forbidden to speak.
Then, again, on the back of this arrived silence, issuing presently in a
great disturbed clamour of peewit flocks on the table-lands above me,
clouds of them stooping and swooping, screaming and scolding at some
unlicensed and unprincipled intruders by me unseen.
I knew well what it meant in a moment. The man-hunt was afoot. The folk
of God were once more being pursued like the partridge upon the
mountain. It might be that the blood of my own father was even now
making another crimson blossom of martyr blood upon the moors of
Scotland.
“Down, down, Ashie!” I cried, but under my breath. “Come in to my foot,
Gray!” And, knowing by the voice that I was much in earnest, very
obediently the dogs slung behind with, however, many little protesting
“_gurrs_” and chest rumblings of muffled rage.
“It must be Lag himself from the Garry-horn,” I thought; “he will be at
his old work of pursuing the wanderers with bloodhound and troop-horse.”
Then, with the craft which had perhaps been born in me and which had
certainly been fostered by the years of watching and hiding, of open
hatred and secret suspicion, I crept cautiously up the side of the fell,
taking advantage of every tummock of heather and boss of tall bent
grass. Ashie and Gray crawled after me, stiff with intent hate, but
every whit as flatly prone and as infinitely cautious as their master.
For they, too, had been born in the Days of Fear, and the spirit of the
game had entered into them ere ever they emerged from the blindness of
puppydom.
As we ascended, nearer and nearer sounded the turmoil. I heard, as it
were, the sound of men’s voices encouraging each other, as the huntsmen
do on the hillsides when they drive the red fox from his lair. Then came
the baying of dogs and the clattering of irregular musketry.
Till now the collies and I had been sheltered by the grey clints and
lichened rocks of the Bennan, but now we had to come out into the open.
The last thirty yards of ascent were bare and shelterless, the short,
mossy scalp of turf upon them being clean shaven as if cut with a razor.
My heart beat fast, I can tell you who read this tale so comfortably by
the ingle-nook. I held it down with my hand as I crept upwards. Ashie
and Gray followed like four-footed guardian angels behind, now dragging
themselves painfully yard by yard upon their bellies, now lying
motionless as stone statues, their moist jowls pressed to the ground
and their dilated nostrils snuffing the air for the intelligence which
only my duller eyes could bring me.
Yet I knew the risks of the attempt. For as soon as I had left the
shelter of the boulders and scattered clumps of heather and bent, I was
plain to the sight as a fly crawling over the shell of an egg.
Nevertheless, with a quick rush I reached the top and set my head over.
CHAPTER II.
THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS.
The broad, flat table-top of the Bennan summit spread out before me like
an exercise ground for troops or a racecourse for horses.
Yet not all barren or desolate, for here and there among the grey
granite peeped forth the bloom of the young heather, making a livelier
purple amid the burnt brown of the short grass, which in its turn was
diversified by the vivid emerald green circling the “quacking-quaas” or
bottomless moss-holes of the bogs beneath.
Now this is what I saw, lying on my face, with no more than my chin set
over the edge--two men in tattered, peat-stained clothing running for
their lives towards the edge of the little plateau farthest from me.
Between me and them twenty or thirty dragoons were urging their horses
forward in pursuit, weaving this way and that among the soft lairy
places, and as many more whose steeds had stuck fast in the moss were
coursing the fugitives on foot as though the poor men had been beasts of
the field.
Every now and then one of the pursuers would stop, set his musket to his
shoulder and blaze away with a loud report and a drift of white smoke,
shouting joyously as at a rare jest whether he hit or missed. And I
thought that the poor lads would make good their escape with such sorry
marksmen. But even whilst I was putting up a prayer for them as I lay
panting upon the manifest edge, a chance shot struck the smaller and
more slender of the wanderers. He stumbled, poor wretch, and fell
forward upon his face. Then, mastering himself, and recognising his
grievous case and how much of mercy he had to look for if his enemies
came up with him, his strong spirit for an instant conquered his bodily
hurt.
He rose immediately, set his hands one over the other upon his side,
doubtless to stay the welling gap the bullet had riven there, and ran
yet more determinedly after his companion. But close to the further
verge his power went from him. His companion halted and would have come
back to aid him, or more likely to die with him. But the wounded man
threw out his hand in vehement protest.
“Run, Sandy,” he cried, so loudly and eagerly that I could easily hear
him through all the shouting and pother. “It will do no good. I am sped.
Save yourself--God have mercy--tell Margaret----!”
But what he would have told Margaret I know not, for even then he spread
out his arms and fell forward on his face in the spongy moss.
At this his companion turned sharply and ran on by himself, finally
disappearing among the granite boulders amid a brisk crackling of the
soldiers’ pieces.
But their marksmanship was poor, for though they were near to him, what
with the breathless race and the unevenness of the ground, not a shot
took effect. Nor showed he any sign of scathe when last I saw him,
leaping nimbly from clump to clump of bent, where the green slimy moss
wet with the peat-brew keeps all soft as a quicksand, so that neither
hoof of a charger nor heavy military boot dare venture upon it, though
the bare accustomed foot of one bred to the hills may carry him across
easily enough. So the fugitive, a tall, burly man, cumbered with little
besides a doublet and short hose, disappeared out of my sight, and the
plain was bare save for the disappointed dragoons in their red coats and
the poor man left fallen on his face in the morass.
I could never see him move hand or foot after he fell; and, indeed, it
was not long that he had the chance. For even as I continued to gaze
fascinated at the scene of blood which so suddenly had broken in upon
the pastoral peace of our Kells hills, I saw a tall, dark soldier, one
evidently of some authority among them, stride up to the fallen man. He
strove to turn him over with his foot, but the moss clung, and he could
not. So without a moment’s hesitation he took a musket from the nearest
dragoon, glanced coolly at the priming of the touch, set the butt to his
shoulder, and with the muzzle within a foot shot the full charge into
the back of the prostrate man.
At this I could command myself no longer. The pursuit and the shooting
at the fugitives, even the killing when at least they had a chance for
their lives, seemed nothing to this stony-hearted butchery. I gat me up
on my feet, and in a boyish frenzy shouted curses upon the murderer.
“God shall send thee to hell for this, wicked man, black murderer that
thou art!” I cried, shaking my clenched hand, like the angry impotent
child I was.
The soldiers who were searching here and there, as it were, for more
victims among the coverts turned their heads my way and gazed, hearing
the voice but seeing no man. Others who stood upon the verge, taking
shots as fast as they could load at the man who had escaped, also
turned. I yelled at them that they were to show themselves brave
soldiers, and shoot me also. The tall, dark buirdly man in the red coat
who had fired into the wounded man cried to them “to take a shot at the
damned young Whig.” But I think the men were all too much surprised at
my bold words to do it, for none moved, so that the speaker was obliged
to snatch a pistol from his own belt, and let fly at me himself.
The whistle of the pistol ball as it sped harmlessly by waked me as from
a dream. A quick horror took me by the throat. I seemed to see myself
laid face down on the turf and the murderer of the poor wanderer pouring
shot after shot into my back. I felt my knees tremble, and it seemed (as
it often does in a nightmare) that if he pursued I should be unable to
move. But even as I saw the man in red reach for his other pistol the
power came back to my limbs.
I turned and ran without knowing it, for the next thing I remember was
the scuff of the wind about my ears as I sped recklessly down the
steepest slope, with no feeling that my feet were touching the ground at
all. I saw Ashie and Gray scouring far before me, with their tails
clapped between their legs, for I suppose that their master’s fear had
communicated itself to them. Yet all the time I knew well that a single
false step, a stumble upon a twisted root of burnt heather, a
treacherous clump of grass amid the green slime of the morass, and the
fate of the fallen martyr would be mine.
But ere I passed quite out of range I heard the rattle of a dropping
fusillade from the edge of the hill above me, as a number of the
soldiers let off their pieces at me, firing, I think, half in sport and
half from a feeling of chagrin that they had let a more important victim
escape them. I heard the _whisk-whisk_ of the balls as they flew wide,
and one whizzed past my ear and buried itself with a vicious spit in the
moss a yard or two before me as I ran--but all harmless, and soon I was
out of range. For I think it was more in cruel jest and with raffish
laughter than with any intent to harm me that the soldiers fired.
Nevertheless, my boy’s heart was full of wild fear. I had seen murder
done. The wholesome green earth was spotted black with crime. Red motes
danced in the sunshine. The sun himself in the wide blue heavens seemed
turned to blood.
Then, all suddenly, I thought of my mother, and my heart stood still. It
would soon be the hour at which it was her custom to take out victual to
the little craggy linn where my father was in hiding. So with a new
access of terror I turned towards our house of Ardarroch, and ran to
warn her of what I had seen upon the Bennan top.
I felt as I sped along that life could never be the same to me again.
From a heedless boy I had grown into a man in one unutterable hour. I
had, of course, heard much of killings, and even as a child the relation
of the cruelties of the Highland Host had impressed me so that the red
glinting of a soldier’s coat would send me into the deepest thickets of
Ardarroch wood. But it was the musket shot poured into the back of the
poor helpless lad on the Bennan that made a lifelong Covenanter of
Quintin MacClellan.
CHAPTER III.
THE LITTLE LADY OF EARLSTOUN.
But it was not the will of God that I should warn my mother that day;
for even as I ran, threading my way among the scattered boulders and
whin bushes of the lower slopes, I came upon that which surprised me
almost as greatly as the shooting itself.
Right in my path a little girl was sitting on a green mound like a
deserted ant hillock: She had long yellow hair, and a red cloak was
about her, with a hood to it, which came over her head and partly shaded
her brow. A wooden pail had been placed carefully on the heather at her
feet. Now, what with the perturbation of my spirits and my head being
full of country tales of bogles and elves, at the first glance I took
the maid for one of these, and would have avoided and given her a wide
berth as something much less than canny.
But she wiped her eyes with her little white hand, and as I looked more
closely I saw that she had been crying, for her face was rubbed red, and
her cheeks all harrowed and begrutten with tears.
So at that I feared no more, but went nearer. She seemed about seven or
eight, and very well grown for her age.
“Why do you cry, little maid?” I said to her, standing before her in the
green path.
For a while she did not answer, but continued to sob. I went near to
comfort her, but she thrust her hand impatiently out at me.
“Do not touch me, ragged boy,” she said; “it is not for herd laddies to
touch little ladies.”
And she spoke the words with such mightily offended dignity that on
another occasion I would have laughed.
Then she commanded herself and dried her eyes on her red cloak.
“Carry the can and come with me to find my father,” she ordered,
pointing imperiously with her finger as if I had been no better than a
blackamoor slave in the plantations.
I lifted the wooden pail. It contained, as I think, cakes of oatmeal
with cheese and butter wrapped in green leaves. But the little girl
would not let me so much as look within.
“These are for my father,” she said; “my father is the greatest man in
the whole world!”
“But who may your father be, little one?” I asked her, standing stock
still on the green highway with the can in my hand. She was daintily
arranging the cloak about her like a fine lady. She paused, and looked
at me very grave and not a little indignant.
“That is not for you to know,” she said, with dignity; “follow me with
the pail.”
So saying she stalked away with dignified carriage in the direction of
the hill-top. A wild fear seized me. One of the two men I had seen
fleeing might be the little girl’s father. Perhaps he into whose
back--ah! at all hazards I must not let her go that way.
“Could we not rest awhile here,” I suggested, “here behind this bush?
There are wicked men upon the hill, and they might take away the pail
from us.”
“Then my father would kill them,” she said, shaking her head sagely, but
never stopping a moment on her upward way. “Besides, my mother told me
to take the pail to the hill-top and stand there in my red cloak till my
father should come. But it was so hot and the pail so heavy that----”
“That you cried?” I said as she stopped.
“Nay,” she answered with an offended look; “little ladies do not cry. I
was only sorry out loud that my father should be kept waiting so long.”
“And your mother sent you all this way by yourself; was not that cruel
of her?” I went on to try her.
“Little ragged boy,” she said, looking at me with a certain compassion,
“you do not know what you are saying. I cannot, indeed, tell you who my
father is, but I am Mary Gordon, and my mother is the Lady of
Earlstoun.”
So I was speaking to the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the
most famous Covenanter in Scotland, and, next to my Lord Viscount of
Kenmure, the chief landowner in our countryside.
“And have you come alone all the way from Earlstoun hither?” I asked in
astonishment, for the distance was at least four or five miles and the
road rough and ill-trodden.
“Nay,” she made answer, “not so. My mother set me so far upon the way,
and now she waits for me by the bushes yonder, so that I must make haste
and return. We came in a boat to your water-foot down there where the
little bay is and the pretty white sand.”
And she pointed with her hand to where the peaty water of the moorland
stream mingled with and stained the deep blue of the loch.
“Haste you, laddie,” she cried sharply a moment after; “my father is not
a one to be kept waiting. He will be impatient and angry. And because he
is so great a man his anger is hard to bide.”
“You must not go up to the hill-top,” I said, “for there are many bad
men on the Bennan to-day, and they would perhaps kill you.”
“But my father is there,” said she, stopping and looking at me
reproachfully. “I must go; my mother bade me.”
And haply at that moment I saw the entire company of soldiers, led by
the man in the red coat, stringing down the farther side of the mountain
in the line of flight by which the second fugitive had made good his
escape. So I judged it might be as well to satisfy the lass and let her
go on to the top. Indeed, short of laying hold of her by force, I knew
not well how to hinder so instant and imperious a dame.
Besides, I thought that by a little generalship I would be able to keep
her wide of the place where lay the poor body of the slain man.
So straight up the hill upon which I had seen such terrible things we
went, Ashie and Gray slinking unwillingly and shamefacedly behind. And
as I went I cast an eye to my flock. And it appeared strange to me that
the lambs should still be feeding quietly and peacefully down there,
cropping and straying on the green scattered pastures of Ardarroch. Yet
in the interval all the world had changed to me.
We reached the summit.
“Here is the place I was to wait for my father,” said Mary Gordon. “I
must arrange my hair, little boy, for my father loves to see me
well-ordered, though he is indeed himself most careless in his
attiring.”
She gave vent to a long sigh, as if her father’s delinquencies of
toilette had proved a matter of lifelong sorrow to her.
“But then, you see, my father is a great man and does as he pleases.”
She put her hand to her brow and looked under the sun this way and that
over the moor.
“There are so many evil men hereabout--your father may have gone down
the further side to escape them,” I said. For I desired to withdraw her
gaze from the northern verge of the tableland, where, as I well knew,
lay a poor riven body, which, for all I knew, might be that of the
little maid’s father, silent, shapeless, and for ever at rest.
“Let us go there, then, and wait,” she said, more placably and in more
docile fashion than she had yet shown.
So we crossed the short crisp heather, and I walked between her and that
which lay off upon our right hand, so that she should not see it.
But the dogs Ashie and Gray were almost too much for me. For they had
gone straight to the body of the slain man, and Ashie, ill-conditioned
brute, sat him down as a dog does when he bays the moon, and, stretching
out his neck and head towards the sky, he gave vent to his feelings in a
long howl of agony. Gray snuffed at the body, but contented herself with
a sharp occasional snarl of angry protest.
“What is that the dogs have found over there?” said the little maid,
looking round me.
“Some dead sheep or other; there are many of them about,” I answered,
with shameless mendacity.
“Have your Bennan sheep brown coats?” she asked, innocently enough.
I looked and saw that the homespun of the man’s attire was plain to be
seen. “My father has been here before me, and has cast his mantle over
the sheep to keep the body from the sun and the flies.”
For which lie the Lord will, I trust, pardon me, considering the
necessity and that I was but a lad.
At any rate the maid was satisfied, and we took our way to the northern
edge of the Bennan top.
CHAPTER IV.
MY SISTER ANNA.
Wending our way through the tangle of brown morass and grey boulder, we
arrived, the little maid and I, at the extremity of the spur which looks
towards the north. Immediately beneath us, already filling in with the
oozy peat, I saw the ploughing steps of the successful fugitive, where
he had leaped and slid down the soft mossy slopes. There to the right
was the harder path by which the dragoons had led their horses, jibbing
and stumbling as they went. But all were now passed away, and the
landscape from verge to verge was bare and empty save for a few scarlet
dots bobbing and weaving athwart one another down on the lake-shore, as
the soldiers drew near their camp. Even the clamorous peewits had
returned, and were already sweeping and complaining foolishly overhead,
doubtless telling each other the tale of how the noise and
white-blowing smoke had frightened them from their eggs among the
heather.
The little lass stood awhile and gazed about her.
“Certainly my father will see me now,” she said, cheerfully enough; “I
am sure he will be looking, and then he will know that all is well when
his little girl is here.”
And she looked as if she were ready to protect Alexander Gordon of
Earlstoun against Lag and all his troopers. But after a little I saw an
anxious look steal over her face.
“He is not coming. He does not see his little Mary!” she said,
wistfully.
Then she ran to the top of the highest knoll, and taking off her red
cloak she waved it, crying out, “Father, father, it is I--little Mary!
Do not be afraid!”
A pair of screeching wildfowl swooped indignantly nearer, but no other
voice replied. I feared that she might insist upon examining that which
lay under the brown coat, for that it covered either her father or one
of her kinsfolk I was well persuaded. The Bennan top had been without
doubt the hiding-place of many besides Alexander Gordon. But at this
time none were sought for in the Glenkens save the man upon whose head,
because of the late plot anent the King’s life, there was set so great a
price. And, moreover, had the lady of Earlstoun not sent her daughter to
that very place with provender, as being the more likely to win through
to her husband unharmed and unsuspected?
Suddenly Mary burst into tears.
“I can not find him!” she cried; “and he will be so hungry, and think
that his little girl dared not come to find him! Besides, all the oaten
cakes that were baked but this morning will be quite spoiled!”
I tried my best to comfort her, but she would not let me so much as
touch her. And, being an ignorant landward lad, I could not find the
fitting words wherewithal to speak to a maiden gently bred like the
little Mary Gordon.
At last, however, she dried her tears. “Let us leave the cakes here, and
take the basket and go our way back again. For the lady my mother will
be weary with waiting for me so long by the waterside.”
So we two went down the hill again very sadly, and as we passed by she
cast her eyes curiously over at the poor lad who lay so still on his
face in the soft lair of the peat moss.
“That is a strange sheep,” she said; “it looks more like a man lying
asleep.”
So, passing by, we went down both of us together, and as we pushed a way
through the bracken towards our own house of Ardarroch, I saw my sister
Anna come up the burn-side among the light flickering shadows of the
birch and alder bushes. And when we came nearer to her I saw that she,
too, had been weeping. Now this also went to my heart with a heavy sense
of the beginning of unknown troubles. Ever since, from my sweet sleep of
security on the hillside I had been suddenly flung into the midst of a
troublous sea, there seemed no end to the griefs, like waves that press
behind each other rank behind rank to the horizon.
“Has my father been taken?” I cried anxiously to Anna, as she came near.
For that was our chief household fear at that time.
“Nay,” she answered, standing still to look in astonishment at my little
companion; “but there are soldiers in the house, and they have turned
everything this way and that to seek for him, and have also dealt
roughly with my mother.”
Hearing which, I was for running down to help, but Anna bade me to bide
where I was. I would only do harm, she said. She had been sent to keep
Hob and David on the hill, my mother being well assured that the
soldiers would do her no harm for all the roughness of their talk.
“And who is this?” said Anna, looking kindly down at little Mary Gordon.
I expected the little maid to answer as high and quick as she had done
to me; but she stood fixed and intent awhile upon Anna, and then she
went directly up to her and put her hand into that of my sister. There
was ever, indeed, that about Anna which drew all children to her. And
now the proud daughter of the laird of Earlstoun went to her as readily
as a tottering cottar’s bairn.
“You will take me to my mother, will you not?” she said, nestling
contentedly with her cheek against Anna’s homespun kirtle.
“That will I, and blithely, lambie!” my sister answered, heartily, “if
ye will tell me who the mother o’ ye may be, and where she bides.”
But when I had told her, I saw Anna look suddenly blank, and the colour
fade from her face.
“By the waterside--your mother!” she said, with a kind of fluttering
uncertain apprehension in her voice. For my sister Anna’s voice was
like a stringed instrument, quavering and thrilling to the least thought
of her heart.
We three turned to go down the hill to the waterside. I caught Anna’s
eye, and, observing by its signalling that she wished to speak with me
apart, I allowed the little girl to precede us on the winding sheep
track, which was all the path leading up the Bennan side.
“The soldiers had taken her mother away with them in the boat to
question her. They suspected that she came to the water foot to meet her
husband,” whispered Anna. “You must take the little one back to her
folk--or else, if you are afraid to venture, Hob or David will go
instead of you.”
“Neither Hob nor yet David shall get the chance; I will go myself,”
cried I, firing at the notion that my two brothers could carry out such
a commission better than I. “If you, Anna, will look to the sheep, I
will leave Ashie and Gray behind to help you.”
“I will indeed gladly stay and see that all is kept in due order,” said
Anna, and I knew that she was as good a herd as any one, and that when
she undertook a thing she would surely perform it.
So I took leave of my sister, and she gave me some pieces of barley
bread and also a few savoury crumblings she had discovered in the pocket
which was swung on the outside of her short kirtle.
“I will not go with you; I want to stay with this nice great girl, or
else go home to my mother!” cried the imperious little maid, stamping
her foot and shaking her yellow curls vehemently as if she cherished a
spite against me.
“Your mother has been obliged to go home without you,” I said, “but she
has left word that you are to come with me, and I will take you home.”
“I do not believe it; you are nothing but a little, ragged, silly boy,”
she answered, shaking her finger contemptuously at me.
I appealed to Anna.
“Is it not so?” I said.
Anna turned gently to little Mary Gordon.
“Go with him, childie,” she said; “your mother was compelled to go away
and leave you. My brother will bring you safe. Quintin is a good lad and
will take great care of you. Let him take you home, will you not?”
And the child looked long up into the deep, untroubled brown eyes of
Anna, my sister, and was vanquished.
“I will go with the boy anywhere if _you_ bid me,” she said.
(NOTE AND ADDITION BY ME, HOB MACCLELLAN,
ELDER BROTHER OF THE WRITER.)
It chances that I, Hob MacClellan, have come into possession of the
papers of Quintin, my brother, and also of many interesting documents
that belonged to him. In time I shall leave them to his son Quintin, but
ere they pass out of my hands it is laid upon me that I insert sundry
observes upon them for the better understanding of what Quintin hath
written.
For this brother of mine, whom for love I served forty years as a
thirled labourer serves for his meat, whom I kept from a thousand
dangers, whom I guided as a mother doth a bairn that learns to walk,
holding it by the coaties behind--this Quintin whose fame is in all
Scotland was a man too wrapt and godly to be well able to take care of
the things of the moment, and all his life needed one to be in tendance
upon him, and to see that all went forward as it ought.
My mother and his, a shrewd woman of the borderside stock, Elliot her
name, used often to say, “Hob, keep a firm catch o’ Quintin. For though
he may stir up the world and have the care of all the churches, yet like
a bairn he needs one to draw tight the buckle of his trews, and see that
he goes not to preach in the habit in which he rose from bed!”
So it came about that I, having no clearness as to leaving him to
himself, abode mostly near him, keeping the door of his chamber, as it
were, on all the great occasions of his life. And Quintin my brother,
though we differed ofttimes, ever paid me in love and the bond of an
unbroken brotherhood. Also what he had I had, hand and siller, bite or
sup, poverty and riches. I tilled his glebe. I brought home his kye and
milked them. I stood at his back in the day of calamity. I was his groom
when first he married so strangely. Yet through all I abode plain dour
Hob MacClellan, to all the parish and wider far--the “minister’s
brother!”
And there are folk who have held me stupid because that ordinarily I
found little to say, or dull in that I mixed not with their pothouse
jollity, or proud because I could be better company to myself than a
score of clattering fools.
Not that I despised the friendly converse in the green loaning when a
man meets a man, or a man a bonny lass, nor yet the merry meeting about
the ingle in the heartsome forenights, for I own that at one time my
mind lay greatly that way.
I have loved good sound jocund mirth all my days; aye, and often learned
that which proved of great advantage at such times, just because folk
had no fear, but would speak freely before me. Whereas, so soon as
Quintin came in, there passed a hush over every face and a silence of
constraint fell upon them, as if he had fetched the two tables of stone
with all the Ten Commandments upon them in his coat-tail pocket.
Now, though I hold to it that there never was a man in the world like
our Quintin, at least, never since Richard Cameron was put down in
red-running blood on the Moss of Ayr, yet I am free to admit that
Quintin often saw things without that saving salt of humour which would
have given him so much easier a tramp through the whins and thickets of
life.
But this could not be. Quintin had by nature mother-wit enough, but he
ever took things too hardly, and let them press upon his spirit when he
had better have been on the ice at the channel-stanes than on his knees
in his closet. At least that is my thought of it.
For some men see the upper side of human affairs, and some the under.
But few there be who see both sides of things. And if any of the
doctrines for which our Quintin fought seemed to me as the thin
wind-clouds streaked like mare’s tails high in the lift, the heartsome
mirth and country _gif-gaf_,[2] which ofttimes made my heart cheerier,
appeared to him but as the crackling of thorns under a pot.
And so when it shall be that this wondrous narrative of my brother
Quintin’s life (for it is both wondrous and true) is finally set forth
for the edification of men and women, I recommend whoever has the
perusal of it to read over also my few chapters of observes, that he may
understand the true inwardness of the narrative and, as it were, the
ingates as well as the outgates of it.
Now, for instance, there is this matter of the killing of the man upon
the hill. Quintin hath written all his story, yet never said in three
words that the man was not Muckle Sandy Gordon, the father of the
little lass. He was, in fact, the son of one Edgar of Milnthird, and
reported a clever lad at his trade, which was that of a saddler in
Dumfries. He had in his time great fights with the devil, who beset him
roaring like a lion in the caves of Crichope and other wild glens. But
this John Edgar would always vanquish him till he put on the red coat of
Rob Grier of Lag, that noted persecutor. And so the poor lad got a
settling shot through the back even as Quintin has written.
And, again, when Quintin says that it was the memory of that day which
set him marching to Edinburgh with me at his elbow, to hold Clavers and
his troop of Lairds and Highlandmen in order--well, in my opinion we
both marched to Edinburgh because my father bade us. And at that time
even Quintin did not disobey his father, though I will say that, having
the soft side of my mother, he got more of his own way even from a bairn
than is good for any one.
CHAPTER V.
I CONSTRUCT A RAFT.
[_The Narrative is again from the MS. of Quintin MacClellan._]
It was growing dusk when Mary Gordon and I came to the edge of the lake.
Now, Loch Ken, though a narrow and winding piece of water, and more the
extension of the river than, as it were, a lake of set intent, has yet
many broad, still stretches and unexpected inlets, where it is a
paradise for children to play. And these I knew like the way to our well
at Ardarroch.
As Anna had foretold, we found upon the white sands neither the Lady of
Earlstoun, nor yet the boat in which Mary and she had come from the head
of the loch. We saw, however, the rut which the prow of the boat had
made in taking the pebbles, and the large stone to which it had been
fastened was there. The shingle also was displaced, and all about were
deeply marked footprints like those made by men who bear a heavy burden.
Then, when I had sat down on a boulder by the water’s edge, I drew the
little maid to my knee, and told her that I must take her home to find
her mother. And also that because the Earlstoun was a long way off, she
must let me carry her sometimes when she grew weary.
“Is that what Anna would wish?” she asked, for from the first she had
called my sister nothing else.
I told her that it was, and immediately she put her hand in mine, yet
not willingly nor yet trustingly as she had done to Anna, but rather
with an air of protest and like one who does an irksome but necessary
duty.
At the point of the loch at which we had arrived the trees crept down
the hillside quite to the edge of the water, so that for the first
quarter of a mile Mary Gordon and I proceeded northwards without ever
needing to show ourselves out in the open.
Then there comes the narrow pass between the steepest crags of the
Bennan and the water’s edge. We had been moving cautiously through the
trees, and were indeed just about to emerge from the brushwood, when a
rotten stick cracked beneath my foot. Instantly a soldier’s challenge
rang sharply out in front of us.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
Though little better than bairns Mary Gordon and I cowered with the
instinctive craft born of years of persecution and concealment. Again
the man cried, “Show yourselves there, or I fire!”
But as we lay still as death behind the tree he did not think it
necessary to enter the wood--where, indeed, for all he knew a score of
armed and desperate Whigs might have been in hiding.
Then we could hear his neighbours hail him from the next post and ask
what the matter was.
“I heard a noise in the wood,” he returned, gruffly enough.
“A wandering pig or a goat from the hill!” cried his comrade higher up,
cheerily. “There are many of them about.” But the man in front of us was
sullen and did not reply.
“Sulky dog!” cried the man who had spoken--as it were, in order to close
the conversation pleasantly.
The sound of his voice caused me to stop and reflect.
The hail of the second soldier had come distinctly from the rocks of the
Bennan, therefore their commander had established a cordon of sentries
in order to prevent the escape of some noted fugitive. What chance was
there for a couple of children to pass the guarded line? By myself I
might, indeed, have managed. I could well enough have rushed across the
line when the sentry was at the extreme point of his beat, and risked a
bullet as I plunged into the next belt of woodland; but, cumbered with
the care of a maiden of tender years, this was impossible.
The night had drawn down into a cool, pleasant darkness. Softly Mary
Gordon and I withdrew, taking care that no more rotten sticks should
snap beneath our feet. For I knew that in the present state of the
sentry’s temper we would certainly not escape so easily.
Presently, at the southern verge of the straggling copse of hazel, and
therefore close to the edge of the lake, we came upon a couple of
sheepfolds. One of these belonged to our own farm of Ardarroch, and the
other to our kindly neighbour, John Fullerton of the Bennan.
“I am tired--take me home. You promised to take me home!”
The little maid’s voice was full of pitifulness and tears as she found
herself going further and further from the house of Earlstoun.
“We cannot pass that way--the soldier men would shoot us,” I answered
her with truth.
“Then take me to my Auntie Jean,” she persisted, catching at my hand
pettishly, and then throwing it from her, “and my mother will come for
me in the morning.”
“But where does your Auntie Jean live?”
“How can I tell--it is such a long way?” she answered. “It is in a house
in the middle of a loch!”
Now this could only mean in the old tower of Lochinvar. But that was a
yet longer and more difficult road than to the Earlstoun, and the line
of sentries up the Bennan side barred our progress as completely as
ever.
Nevertheless there was something attractive in the little maid’s idea.
For that ancient strength, alone among all the neighbouring houses,
sheltered no band of troopers. Kenmure, Earlstoun, Gordonston, and even
our own little farm town of Ardarroch were all manned and watched, but
the half-ruinous block-house of Lochinvar set in the midst of its
moorland loch had been left untenanted. Its owner, Walter Gordon, the
famous swordsman, was in exile abroad, so they said, and the place, save
for a room or two, totally disrupted and broken down.
There was, therefore, no safer refuge for little Mary, if indeed her
aunt dwelt there and we could find our way. Suddenly, as we looked
about, an idea came to me, and, what is not so common, the means of
carrying it out.
The sheepfolds (or “buchts”) in which we were hiding were walled in with
rough stones from the hill, piled so as to form dry dykes, high and
strong, and the entrances were defended by heavy wooden gates swung upon
posts driven deep into the ground. The gates lifted away easily from
their hinges. Two or three of these would make a secure enough raft if I
could only fasten them together. And even as I set about to find ways
and means, I was conscious of a change. A strange elation took me at the
heart, and ran through my veins like unaccustomed wine.
I was no longer the careless herd laddie. I had entered life. I knew the
penalty of failure. The man in the brown coat lying prone on his face
up there above me on the crest of the Bennan quite clearly and
sufficiently pointed that moral.
So, with the little girl close behind me, I searched both sets of
“buchts” from end to end. I found three gates which could be easily
detached from their posts. These I dismounted one after another.
How, then, was I to get them to the water’s edge, for they were far too
heavy for my puny strength? I could only break a limb from a tree and
draw them down to the loch shore on that, even as I had often helped my
father to bring home his faggots of firewood from the hill upon a
_carr_, or trail-cart of brushwood.
So we set off for the wood to break our branch. It was not long before I
had one of beech lying upon the ground, with all its wealth of rustling
leaves upon it. But the snap I made in breaking it off from the tree
would certainly have betrayed us, had I not been cautious to keep a
sufficient breadth of wood between us and our surly sentry.
Trailing this behind us we came again to the “ewe-buchts.”
It was now no difficult job to transport the raft of gates down to the
water. I gave Mary Gordon a branch to tug at, which made her happier
than anything I had done since Anna committed her to my care, for she
pleased herself with thinking that she did the whole work.
I was almost on the point of using a hay-rope to bind them together as
the best I could do, when I remembered that in the corner of our own
“buchts” my father kept some well-tarred hempen cord, which I had seen
him place there only the day before he had been compelled to go into
hiding. If it chanced not to be removed, without doubt it would prove
the very thing.
I found it where he had laid it, in the little shelf-press rudely
constructed in the wall of four blocks of stone split into faces. There
was little enough of it when I rove it out, but I thought I could make
shift with it. It was, at any rate, far better than miles of hay-rope.
With this I tied the bars closely together by the corners and
cross-bars, and presently had built up a very commodious raft indeed,
though one more than a trifle heavy. It was some time before I hit upon
a plan of launching my top-heavy craft. With the loose “stob” of a
gatepost I managed to lever the crank construction to the edge of a
sloping bank down which she slid so quickly that I had to set my heels
into the grass and hold back with all my might.
But a moment after, without a splash more than a wild duck might make,
the raft floated high above the water. With the end of the rope in my
hand I climbed on board, but soon found that with my weight the top
“liggate” of my craft was within an inch of the water. Clearly, then, it
could not keep both of us dry.
But this troubled me little. I had not lived all my life on the shores
of a loch to be afraid of swimming behind a raft on a midsummer night.
For among other ploys Hob and I would often play at a sort of tilting or
tournament, sitting astride of logs and trying to knock each other off
into the water in the warm summer shallows.
So I placed the little girl upon the raft, cautioning her that as she
hoped to see her mother again, she must in no circumstances make the
least noise nor yet move from the centre of the raft where I had placed
her. Soon she had begun to take an interest in the adventure, and had
forgotten her weariness. She did not, however, again speak of her
mother, but said that she was ready to “go for a sail” with me if I was
quite sure that on the other side she should see her aunt. And this,
speaking somewhat hastily, I promised without condition.
CHAPTER VI.
ACROSS THE MOONLIGHT.
For just then I became aware of a quickly growing light behind the
eastern hills. It was the moon rising. I had not thought of this, and
for a moment I was disconcerted. I knew that she would doubtless throw a
sharp light upon the water, and that from the shore the raft would be as
easily seen black against the broad and shining silver streak as if the
time had been midday instead of midnight.
Then I remembered the branch which I had brought with me from the wood.
I thrust the butt of it through the bars of the gates, and so disposed
the leaves that from the shore they made at once a perfect shelter and a
secure hiding-place for Mary, who sat there in state upon the raft,
proud of going such an adventurous voyage, and perhaps also not a little
elated to be up so late.
Being already stripped to the shirt and small clothes, I took off the
former also, and dropped silently into the water behind the raft. I
found the water warm, for the hot sun of June had beat upon it all the
long day. A chill wind had sprung up within the last hour, and the
wavelets broke on my back and upon the raft at my chin with a little
jabble of sound. But it blew upon the leaves of the branch which acted
as a sail and sent us so quickly northward that I had to swim sideways
in order to keep in the right line of our voyaging.
The moon rose as we left the shallows of the shore. She looked coldly
and blankly at us over the black Parton moors on the other side. But all
the same she did us a mighty ill turn. For I knew that in her light the
raft would be apparent to every one on the bank where the soldiers lay.
I dived instantly and came up on the side furthest from the land. There
I held the raft so that the branch would keep its thickest cover towards
the sentry.
I could see him now, pacing to and fro in the moonlight across the grey
turf and strip of white sand. He was plain to be seen against the
shining beach, and his helmet sometimes flashed momentarily against the
dark line of the woods behind. So that I knew how plainly he in his
turn must be able to see us, as we crossed the broad silver stream of
moonlight upon the water.
A camp fire glowed sullenly red among the trees, from which I gathered
that the commander of the soldiers was very much in earnest indeed, in
his resolve to catch his man. For it was but seldom that any of the red
soldiers would consent to lie out at night, preferring instead to
quarter themselves upon the people, to harry their houses and gear,
insult their women folk, and requiring to be called “your Honour” at
every other word.
Meanwhile, the wind was doing its work, if not swiftly, at least with
deliberate and unhalting steadiness. Mary sat like a statue under the
green bough, and smiled at the dancing ripples. She looked very
beautiful to see, aye, and winsome too, with my shirt-collar turned up
about her ears and the empty sleeves hanging down on either side.
But I had small time to observe such like, for soon we were crossing the
bright water in front of the soldier.
He had paced down to the water’s edge and now stood looking out towards
us, leaning upon his musket. I could see the tails of his military coat
blow back in the chill wind from the hills. He hugged himself as if he
had been a-cold. Yet he stood looking so long that I feared he might
suspect something. But after all it was only that he was a contemplative
man, and that the object on the water was as good as anything else to
fix his eyes upon. At any rate, all he did see was a floating branch
being driven northward with the wind.
Presently, to my immense relief, he shouldered his piece and tramped
away up towards the woods.
I drew a long breath, and swimming on my back I pushed the raft across
the lake with my head.
Yet it seemed an age before we took ground on the further side, and I
could carry the brave little maid ashore. She dropped almost instantly
asleep on my shoulder.
“Have you given Matt his supper?” was her last speech. I thought Matt
must be some pet dog of her’s. In time, however, I found that he was a
certain green caterpillar which she kept in a wooden box and fed upon
cabbage leaves.
After this there came a long and weary tramp with many rests, and the
infinite weariness of carrying the sleeping maid. She grew heavier and
heavier every moment as I stumbled over the rough moor, so that my back
was well nigh broken before I came to the verge of the little lake with
the tower of Lochinvar in the midst of it.
Here, in the dawning light, I laid her down under a bush of bog-myrtle,
and swimming to the castle hand over hand I clamoured at the door.
For a time none answered, and I got a sharp, chilling fear in my stomach
that I had brought the maid to a house uninhabited, but at long and last
a window shot up and a voice hailed me.
“Who knocks so early at the door of Lochinvar?
“Who are you that speers?” I returned, giving question for question in
the Scots manner.
A kindly mellow voice laughed.
“Surely only an honest country lad would have answered thus,” said the
voice; “but since the times are evil, tell me who’s bairn ye may be?”
So with that, somewhat reassured, I told very briefly for what cause I
had come.
The window shut down again, and in a few minutes I heard a foot within
coming slowly along a stone passage. Bolts withdrew, and the door was
opened, creaking and squealing upon unaccustomed hinges.
A pleasant-faced old lady, wrapped about in a travelling cloak of blue
frieze, stood there. She had a white nightcap on her head, frilled and
goffered much more elaborately than my mother’s at Ardarroch.
“Ye have brought Sandy Gordon’s daughter to me. Her faither and her
mother are taken, ye tell me. God help them!” she exclaimed.
So I told her that I knew not as to her father’s taking with any
certainty, for he might have been slain for aught I knew. I told her
also the terrible thing I had been witness to on the top of Bennan, and
the word of the lad in brown when he cried for Margaret. She set her
hand to her heart.
“Poor lads,” she said, and again, “poor misguided lads!”
I thought in my heart that that was a strange way to speak of the
martyrs, but it was not for a boy like me to make any objection.
The woman undid the boat which swung by a chain at the northern side of
the castle secure within a little breakwater of hewn stone. We rowed
across to the loch’s edge, and there, in the first ruddy glow of the
rising sun, with colour on her lips and her lashes lying long and dark
upon her cheek, was the little Mistress Mary, safe under her bush of
bog-myrtle, looking lovely as a fairy, aye, or the queen of the fairies
herself.
Then I know not what cantrip took me, for at most times, both then and
after, I was an awkward Scots boy, as rough and landward as Ashie or
Gray, my questing collies. But certain it is that I stooped and kissed
her on the cheek as she lay, and when I lifted her would have given her
to her aunt.
But she stirred a little as I took her in my arms, and with a little
petulant whimper she nestled her head deeper into my neck. My heart
stirred strangely within me at the touch of the light curls on her
forehead.
She opened her eyes of sleepy blue. “Has Matt had his breakfast?” she
said. And instantly fell to the sleeping again.
We laid her all comfortably in the stern of the boat. Her aunt stepped
in and took the oars. She did not invite me to follow.
“Good morrow, lad,” she said, not unkindly, “get you home speedily. I
will see to the child. You have done well by Sandy’s bairn. Come and see
her and me in happier times. I promise you neither she nor I will ever
forget it.”
And I watched these two as the boat went from me, leaving three long
wakes upon the water, one oily and broad where the keel stirred the
peaty water, and two smaller on either side winking with bubbles where
the oars had dipped.
And there in the stern I could just see the edge of the blue hood of
frieze, wherein lay the golden head of Mary Gordon.
She was but a bairn. What did a grown laddie care for bairns? Yet was my
heart heavy within me.
And that was the last I saw of Mary Gordon for many and many a year.
CHAPTER VII.
MY BROTHER HOB.
The years which took me, Quintin MacClellan, from the boyishness of
thirteen to eighteen and manhood were eventful ones for Scotland. The
second Charles had died just when the blast was strongest, and for a
while it looked as if his brother would be the worst of the two. But
because he wished well to the Papists, and could not ease them without
also somewhat benefiting us of the Covenant, the bitterness of the
shower slacked and we had some peace.
But, as for me, it mattered not greatly. My heart within me was
determined that which it should do. Come storm or peaceful years, come
life or death, I was determined to stand in the forefront and hold up
again the banner which had been dabbled in the blood of Richard Cameron
at Ayrsmoss, and trailed in the dust of victory by the haughty and the
cruel.
That very year I went to my father, and I asked of him a wage to be
spent in buying me books for my learning.
“You want to be a minister?” said my father, looking, as he well might,
no little astonished. “Have you gotten the grace of God in your heart?”
“Nay, father,” I answered him, “that I know not. But nevertheless I have
a desire to know and to learn----”
But another voice cut into the matter and gravity of our discourse.
“Bless the lad, and so you shall, Quintin!” cried my mother from the
door.
I heard my father sigh as though he would have said, “The fat is in the
fire now!” Yet he refrained him and said nothing, standing as was his
custom with his hands deep in the long side flaps of his waistcoat. Then
he showed how hard it was to become a minister, and ever my mother
countered his objections, telling how such-an-one’s son had gone forward
and been successful.
“And they had none such a comfortable down-sitting nor yet any such
blessing in flocks and herds as you, goodman!” she would say.
“Nor yet a mother so set and determined in her own way!” cried my father
a little sharply.
“Nay, now, John,” she made answer; “I did but mention those other lads,
because not one of them is to be compared with our Quintin!”
My father laughed a little.
“Well,” he said, “at all events there is time enough. The lad is but
fourteen, and muckle much good water will run under the brigs ere it be
time to send him to the college. But I will speak to Gilbert Semple, the
Edinburgh carrier, to ask his cousin, the goodly minister, what books
are best fitted for a lad who desires to seek learning and college
breeding. And in the meantime the laddie has aye his Bible. I mind what
good Master Rutherford said when he was in Anwoth: ‘If so be ye want
manners e’en read the Bible. For the Bible is no ill-bred book. It will
take you unashamed through an earthly court as well as through the
courts of the Master of Assemblies, through the Star Chamber as well as
through the chamber of the stars.’”
And though at the time I understood not well then what my father meant,
yet I read in my Bible as I had opportunity, keeping it with one or two
other books in the poke-nook of my plaid whenever I went to the hills.
After a while Gilbert Semple, the carrier, brought me from Edinburgh
certain other volumes--some of Latin and Greek grammar, with one or two
in the mathematics which were a sore puzzle and heartbreak to me, till
there came among us one of the Hill Folk, a well-learned man, who, being
in hiding in a Whig’s hole on the side of Cairn Edward, was glad for the
passing of the time to teach me to thread the stony desolation of verbs
irregular and the quags of the rules of syntax.
Nevertheless, at this time, I fear there was in me no very rooted or
living desire for the ministry. I longed, it is true, for a wider and
more ample career than the sheep-herding on the hills of Kells could
afford. And in this my mother supported me. Hob and David also, though
they desired not the like for themselves, yet took some credit in a
brother who had it in him to struggle through the narrow and thorn-beset
wicket gate of learning.
Many a time did our great, stupid, kindly, butter-hearted Hob come to
me, as I lay prone kicking my heels to some dyke-back with my Latin
grammar under my nose, and stand looking over with a kind of awe on his
honest face.
“Read us a bit,” he would say.
Whereat very gladly I would screed him off half a page of the rules of
the syntax in the Latin tongue, according to the Dutch pronunciation
which the preacher lad of the Cairn Edward cave had taught me.[3]
And as I rolled the weighty and sounding words glibly off, Hob would
listen with an air of infinite satisfaction, like one that rolls a sweet
morsel under his tongue.
“Read that leaf again! It’s a grand-soundin’ ane that! Like ‘And the
Lord said unto Moses’ in the Book of Exodus. Certes, what it is to have
learning!”
Then very gravely I would read to the foot of the page and stop.
Hob would stand a moment to digest his meal of the Humanities.
“Lie ye there, laddie,” he would say; “gather what lear ye can out of
your books. I will look to the hill sheep for you this day!”
I shall never forget his delight when, after great wrestlings, I taught
him the proper cases of _Penna_, “a pen,” which in time he attained so
great a mastery over that even in his sleep he could be heard muttering,
“_Penna_, a pen; _pennae_, of a pen.” And our David, slinking sulkily in
at a wolf-lope from his night-raking among the Glenkens lasses, would
sometimes bid him to be silent in no kindly tones, at which the burly
Hob, who could have broken slender David over his knee, would only grunt
and turn him over, recommencing monotonously under his breath, “_Penna_,
a pen!”
My father smiled at all this--but covertly, not believing, I think, that
there was any outgate for me into the ministry. And with the state of
things in Scotland, indeed, I myself saw none. Nevertheless, I had it in
me to try. And if Mr. Linning, Mr. Boyd, Mr. Shields, Mr. Renwick and
others had gotten their learning in Holland, why should not I?
In return for _Penna_, a pen (_pennae_, of a pen, _et cetera_), Hob
taught me the use of arms, the shooting to the dot of an “i” with a gun
and a pistol, the broad sword and the small sword, having no mercy on me
at all, but abusing me like a sheep-stealer if I failed or grew slack at
the practice.
“For,” he said, “if ever you are to be a right minister in Scotland, it
is as like that ye will need to lead a charge with Richard Cameron, as
that ye will spend all your time in the making of sermons and delivering
them.”
So he taught me also single-stick till I was black and blue all over. He
would keep on so long belabouring me that I could only stop him with
some verbal quib, which as soon as it pierced his thick skull would make
him laugh so long and so loudly that the lesson stopped of itself. Yet
for all that he had in after time the mighty assurance to say that it
was I who had no true appreciation of humour.
One day, when he had basted me most unmercifully, I said to him, “I also
would ask you one thing, Hob, and if you tell me without sleeping on it,
I will give you the silver buckle of my belt.”
“Say on,” said he, casting an eager eye at the waist-leather which Jean
Gordon had sent me.
“Wherein have I the advantage over the leopard?” I asked him.
He thought it over most profoundly.
“I give it up,” he said at last. “I do not know.”
“Why,” said I, as if it had been the simplest thing, “because when I
play back-sword with you I can change my spots and Scripture declares
that the leopard cannot.”
This he understood not at the time, but the next Sabbath morning it came
upon him in the time of worship in the kitchen, and in the midst of the
solemnity he laughed aloud, whereat my father, much incensed, asked him
what ailed him and if his wits had suddenly taken leave of him.
“It was our Quintin,” dithered Hob, tremulously trying to command his
midriff; “he told me that when I played back-sword with him he could
change his spots and that the leopard could not.”
“When said he that?” asked my father, with cold suspicion, for I had
been sitting demure as a gib cat at his own elbow.
“Last Monday in the gloaming, when we were playing at back-sword in the
barn,” said Hob.
“Thou great fool,” cried my father, “go to the hill breakfastless, and
come not in till ye have learned to behave yourself in the time of
worship.”
To which Hob responded nothing, but rose and went obediently,
smothering his belated laughter in his broad bonnet of blue.
He was waiting for me after by the sheep-buchts, when I went out with a
bicker of porridge under my coat.
“I am sore vexed to have made our father angry,” he said, “but the
answer came upon me suddenly, and in truth it was a proper jest--for, of
course, a leopard could not play back-sword.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MUSTER OF THE HILL FOLK.
Men who know the strange history of the later life of me, Quintin
MacClellan, may wonder that the present narrative discovers so little
concerning my changes of opinion and stresses of spiritual conflict. But
of these things I have written in extension elsewhere, and those who
desire more than a personal narrative know well where to find the
recital of my difficulties, covenantings, and combatings for the cause.
For myself, the memory of the day on the Bennan top was more than
enough, and made me a high Covenant man for life. So that when I heard
how King James was fled and his son-in-law, William of Orange, landed I
could not contain myself, but bade Hob and David to come with me and
light a beacon-fire on the top of the Millyea, that fair and shapely
mountain. This after severe labour we did, and they say that the light
was seen over a dozen parishes.
Then there came word to the Glenkens that there was to be a Convention
in Edinburgh of men chosen out of every shire and county, called and
presided over by Duke Hamilton. But it was the bruit of the countryside
that this parliament would turn out even as the others, and be ground
under the heel of the old kingsmen and malignants.[4]
So about this time there came to see my father two men grave and grey,
their beards blanched with dripping hill-caves and with sleeping out in
the snell winds and biting frosts of many a winter, without better
shelter than some cold moss-hag or the bieldy side of a snow wreath.
“There is to be a great rising of the Seven Thousand. The whole West is
marching to Edinburgh!” cried in at the door the elder of the two--one
Steel, a noted Covenanter from Lesmahago.
But the other, when his dark cloak blew back, showed a man of slender
figure, but with a face of calm resolve and indomitable courage--the
proven face of a soldier. He was in a fair uniform--that, as I
afterwards found, of one of the Prince of Orange’s Scots-Dutch
regiments.
“This,” said Steel to my father, “is Colonel William Gordon, brother of
Earlstoun, who is come directly from the Prince of Orange to represent
his cause in his own country of the West.”
In a moment a spark lighted in my heart, blazed up and leaped to my
tongue.
“What,” I cried, “William Gordon--who carried the banner at Sanquhar and
fought shoulder to shoulder with Cameron at Ayrsmoss.”
For it was my mother’s favourite tale.
The slender man with the calm soldier-like face smiled quietly and made
me a little bow, the like of which for grace I had never seen in our
land. It had so much of foreign habitude in it, mixed with a simple and
personal kindliness native to the man.
“Ah,” he said, “I am ten years older since then--I fear me not ten years
wiser.”
His voice sounded clear and pleasant, yet it was indubitably the voice
of a man to be obeyed.
“How many sons and limber house-carles can you spare, Ardarroch,” said
he, watching my father’s face, “to march with me to keep the Convention
out of the clutches of my Lord Dundee?”
“Of the devil’s hound, Clavers, mean ye?” corrected my father suddenly,
the fierce, rooted light of hatred gleaming keen and sharp, like the
blade of a dagger which is drawn just an inch from its sheath and then
returned. “There are three of us on the farm, besides the boy Quintin,
my youngest son. And every one of them shall ride to Edinburgh with you
on their own horses.”
“Four shall ride, father,” said I, stepping forward. “I am the youngest,
but let me also strike a blow. I am as fit of my body as either Hob or
David there, and have a better desire and goodwill than either of them.”
“But, lad,” said my father, not ill pleased, “there are your mother and
sister to look after. Bide you here and take care of the house.”
“There needs none to take care of the house while ye leave us here with
a musket or two and plenty of powder and lead,” cried my mother. “Anna
and I shall be safer, aye, and the fuller of gladness that ye are all in
Edinburgh doing the Lord’s work. Ride ye, therefore, all the four of
you!”
“Yes,” added Anna, with the sweet stillness of her eye on the ground,
“let Quintin go, father. None would harm us in all the countryside.”
“Indeed, I think so,” growled my father, “having John MacClellan to
reckon with on our return.”
Whereat for very thankfulness I took the two women’s hands, and Colonel
Gordon said, “Aye, Ardarroch, give the lad his will. In time past I had
my share of biding by the house while my elders rode to battle, and I
love the boy’s eagerness. He has in him the stuff of good soldiers.”
And for these words I could have kissed the feet of Colonel William
Gordon. The muster was appointed to be at Earlstoun on the morrow, and
immediately there befell at Ardarroch a great polishing of accoutrement
and grinding of swords, for during the late troubles the arms had been
searched for over and over again. So it befel that they were hidden in
the thatch of outhouse roofs, wrapped in cloths and carried to distant
sandhills to be buried, or laid away in the damp caves of the linns.
Yet by the time all was brought in we were armed none so ill. My father
had first choice, and then we three lads drew lots for the other
weapons. To me came the longest straw, and I took the musket and a
broad-bladed dagger, because I knew that our madcap David had set his
heart on the basket-hilted sword to swing by his side, and I saw Hob’s
eyes fixed on the pair of excellent horse-pistols which my father had
bought when the effects of Patrick Verner (called “the Traitor”) were
sold in Dumfries.
At Earlstoun, then, we assembled, but not immediately at the great
house--for that was presently under repair after its occupation by
troops in the troubles--but at a farmhouse near by, where at the time
were abiding Mistress Alexander Gordon and her children, waiting for the
final release of her husband from Blackness Castle.
When it came to the point of our setting out, there came word from
Colonel Gordon that no more than two of us were to go to Edinburgh on
horseback, owing to the scarcity of forage in the city and the
difficulty of stabling horses.
“Let us again draw lots!” said my father.
But we told him that there was no question of that, for that he and
David must ride while Hob and I would march afoot.
“And if I cannot keep up with the best that our David can ride on Kittle
Kate, I will drown myself in the first six-inch duck-pond upon the road
to Edinburgh!” cried Hob MacClellan.
So we went down the green loaning of Ardarroch with the women’s tears
yet wet upon our cheeks, and a great opening of larger hopes dominating
the little hollow qualms of parting in our hearts. Wider horizons
beckoned us on. Intents and resolves, new and strange, thrilled us. I
for one felt for the first time altogether a man, and I said within my
heart as I looked at the musket which my father carried for me across
his saddle-bow in order that I might run light, “Gladly will I die for
the sake of the lad whom I saw murdered on the Bennan top!”
CHAPTER IX.
I MEET MARY GORDON FOR THE SECOND TIME.
And when we arrived, lo! before the little white farm there was a great
muster. My Lord Kenmure himself rode over to review us. For the
Committee of Estates drawn together by the Duke Hamilton had named him
as responsible for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.
But that which was of greater interest to me than any commission or
enrollment was the appearing of two women upon the doorstep of the
cottage--the Lady of Earlstoun and her daughter Mary.
Now it is to be remembered that Alexander Gordon’s wife was a sister of
Sir Robert Hamilton, the commander at Bothwell Brig--a man whose
ungovernable temper, and genius for setting one man at variance with his
fellow, had lost us Bothwell Brig and the life of many a brave lad of
the hills. And Mary’s mother, Jean Hamilton, was like her brother in
that somewhat pretentious piety which is of all things the most souring
and embittering.
So that even my father said--good, honest man, that would speak ill of
none all the days of his life: “If I had a wife like yon woman, I
declare I would e’en turn Malignant and shoot her without warrant of law
or benefit of clergy.”
Jean Gordon came down off the doorstep and stood in front of us four
MacClellans, looking out upon us with her keen, black eyes, and seeming
as it had been, ready to peck at us with her long nose, which was hooked
like a parrot’s in the middle.
“Have any of you paid the King’s cess,[5] or had any dealings with the
malignants?” she said, speaking to us as to children taken in a fault.
“Not save along the barrel of a musket, my lady of Earlstoun!” quoth my
father, drily.
The stern-visaged woman smiled at the ready answer.
“E’en stick to that, goodman of Ardarroch--it is the safest commerce
with such ill-favoured cattle!” she said.
And with that she stepped further on to interrogate some newcomers who
had arrived after us in the yard of the farm.
But indeed I minded her nothing. For there was a sweeter and fairer
thing to see standing by the cheek of the door--even young Mary Gordon,
the very maid I had once carried so far in my arms, now grown a great
lass and a tall, albeit still slender as a year-old wand of willow by
the water’s edges. Her hair, which had been lint white when I brought
her down the side of Bennan after the shooting of the poor lad, was now
darkening into a golden brown, with thick streaks of a warmer hue, ruddy
as copper, running through it.
This girl leaned against the doorstep, her shapely head inclined a
little sideways, and her profile clear and cold as the graving on a seal
ring, turned away from me.
For my life I could not take my eyes off her.
“I, even I, Quintin MacClellan, have carried that girl in my arms and
thought nothing of it!” I said the words over and over to myself, and
somehow they were exceedingly pleasing to me.
I had ever sneered at love and love-making before, but (I own it) after
seeing that fair young lass stand by the low entering in of the
farmhouse door, I scoffed no more.
Yet she seemed all unconscious that I or any other was near her. But it
came to me with power I could not resist, that I should make myself
known to her. And though I expected nothing of remembrance, grace, or
favour, yet--such is the force of compelling love, the love that comes
at the first sight (and I believe in no other kind) that I put all my
pride under my feet, and went forward humbly to speak with her, holding
my bonnet of blue in my hand.
For as yet we of the Earlstoun levies had fallen into no sort of order,
neither had we been drilled according to the rules of war, but stood
about in scattering groups, waiting for the end of the conference
between my Lord of Kenmure and Colonel William Gordon.
As I approached, awkwardly enough, the maid turned her eyes upon me with
some surprise, and the light of them shone cold as winter moonlight
glinting upon new-fallen snow.
I made my best and most dutiful obedience, even as my mother had showed
me, for she was gentle of kin and breeding, far beyond my father.
“Mistress Mary,” I said, scarce daring to raise my eyes to hers, but
keeping them fixed upon the point of my own rough brogans. “You have
without doubt forgotten me. Yet have I never for an hour forgotten you.”
I knew all the while that her eyes were burning auger holes into me. But
I could not raise my awkward coltish face to hers. She stood a little
more erect, waiting for me to speak again. I could see so much without
looking. Whereat, after many trials, I mustered up courage to go on.
“Mind you not the lad who brought you down from the Bennan top so long
ago, and took you under cloud of night to the tower of Lochinvar on the
raft beneath the shelter of beech leaves?”
I knew there was a kindly interest growing now in her eyes. But, dolt
that I was, I could not meet them a whit the more readily because of
that.
“I scarcely remember aught of it,” she said, “yet I have been told a
hundred times the tale of your bringing me home to my aunt at Lochinvar.
It is somewhat belated, but I thank you, sir, for your courtesy.”
“Nay,” said I, “’tis all I have to be thankful for in my poor life,
that I took you safely past the cruel persecutors.”
She gave me a quick, strange look.
“Yet now do I not see you ready to ride and persecute in your turn?”
These words, from the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, who was
scarcely yet liberate from the prison of Blackness, astonished me so
much that I stood speechless.
“To persecute in my turn?” said I. “Nay, my dear mistress, I go to
uphold the banner of Christ’s Kingdom against those that hate Him.”
Very scornfully she smiled.
“In my short life,” she said, “I’ve heard overmuch of such talk. I know
to an ell how much it means. I have a mother, and she has friends and
gossips. To me the triumph of what you call ‘the Kingdom’ means but two
things--the Pharisee exalted and the bigot triumphant. Prince Jacob of
Orange may supplant his father and take the crown; every canting Jack
may fling away the white rose and shout for the Orange lily. But not
I--not I?”
She flaunted a little white hand suddenly palm upward, like an apple
blossom blown off the branch by the wind.
To say that I was astounded by this outbreak is to say little. It was
like an earthquake, the trembling and resolving of solid land under my
feet. Alexander Gordon’s child--“the Bull of Earlstoun’s”
daughter--standing openly and boldly for the cause of those who had
prisoned and, perhaps, tortured her father, and brought about the ruin
of her house!
At last I managed to speak.
“You are a young maiden,” I said, as quietly as I could, “and you know
nothing of the great occasions of state, the persecutions of twenty-five
years, the blood shed on lonely hillsides, the deaths by yet wearier
sickness, the burials under cloud of night of those who have
suffered----!”
I would have said more, but that she prevented me imperiously.
“I know all there is to know,” she cried, almost insolently. “Have I not
broken fast with it, dined with it, taken my Four-hours with it, supped
with it ever since I was of age to hear words spoken? But to my thinking
the root of the matter is that you, and those like you, will not obey
the rightful King, who alone is to be obeyed, whose least word ought to
be sufficient.”
“But not in religion--not in the things of conscience,” I stammered.
Again she waved her hand floutingly.
“’Tis not my idea of loyalty only to be loyal when it suits my whim,
only to obey when obedience is easy and pleasant. The man whom I shall
honour shall know nothing of such summer allegiance as that!”
She paused a moment and I listened intently.
“Nay,” she said, “he shall speak and I shall obey. He shall be my King,
even as King James is the sovereign of his people. His word shall be
sacred and his will law.”
There was a light of something like devout obedience in her eyes. A holy
vestal flame for a moment lighted up her face. I knew it was useless to
argue with her then.
“Nevertheless,” I answered very meekly, “at least you will not wholly
forget that I brought you to a place of safety, sheltering you in my
arms and venturing into dark waters for your sake!”
Now though I looked not directly at her, I could see the cold light in
her eyes grow more scornful.
“You do well to remind me of my obligation. But do not be afraid; you
shall be satisfied. I will speak of you to my father. Doubtless, when he
comes home he will be great with the Usurper and those that bear rule
under him. You shall be rewarded to the top of your desires.”
Then there rose a hot indignation in my heart that she should thus
wilfully misunderstand me.
“You do me great wrong, my Lady Mary,” I answered; “I desire no reward
from you or yours, saving only your kindly remembrance, nor yet any
advancement save, if it might be, into your favour.”
“That,” she said, turning petulantly away, “you will never get till I
see the white rose in your bonnet instead of those Whiggish and rebel
colours.”
CHAPTER X.
THE BLUE BANNER IS UP.
Now though at first I was grievously astonished that the daughter of
Alexander Gordon and his wife Janet Hamilton should so speak, yet when I
come to consider further of the matter it appears noways so wonderful.
For her father, when I came to know him, showed himself a great, strong,
kindly, hard-driving “nowt” of a man, with a spiritual conceit equal to
his knowledge of his bodily powers. But, for all his great pretensions,
Sandy Gordon was essentially a man carnal and of the world, ever more
ready to lay on lustily with the arm of the flesh than trust to the
sword of the Spirit.
The “Bull of Earlstoun” was he right fitly called.
And with his children his method of training would doubtless be “Believe
this! Receive that other!” Debate and appeal there would be none. So
there is nothing to wonder at in the revolt of a nature every whit as
imperious as that of her father, joined to a woman’s natural whimsies
and set within the periphery of a girl’s slender form.
And then her mother!
If Sandy Gordon had proved trying to such a mind as that of Mary Gordon,
what of Janet Hamilton, his wife?
She had been reared in the strictest sect of the Extremists. Every
breath of difference or opposition to her orthodoxies or those of her
brother Sir Robert was held rank treason to the cause. She had constant
visions, and these visions pointed ever to the cardinal truth that Janet
Hamilton was eternally right and every one else eternally wrong.
So Alexander Gordon, as often as he was at home, bullied back and forth
concerning Covenants and sufferings, while at other times his wife
worried and yammered, bitter as the east wind and irritant as a thorn in
the flesh, till the girl was driven, as it were, in self-defence into
other and as intolerant extremes.
Yet when her parents were most angered with her for this perversity,
some sudden pretty wile or quaint bairnliness would set them laughing in
spite of themselves, or a loving word of penitence bring the tears into
their eyes. And while she chose to be good Mary Gordon, the family
rebel, the disgrace of a godly home, would be again their own winsome
little May, with a smile as sweet as the Benediction after sermon on a
summer Sabbath morn, when the lilac and the hawthorn blossom scent all
the kirk.
But as for me, having had trial of none of these wiles and witchcrafts,
I was grieved indeed to hear one so fair take the part of the cruel
persecutors and murderers of our brethren, the torturers of her father,
the men to whose charge could be laid the pillage and spoiling of the
bonny house of Earlstoun, and the turning of her mother out upon the
inclement pitilessness of a stormy winter.
But with old and young alike the wearing iteration of a fretful woman’s
yammering tongue will oftentimes drive further and worse than all the
clattering horses and pricking bayonets of persecution.
Yet even then I thought within me, “Far be it from me that I should ever
dream of winning the heart of so fair and great a lady.” But if by the
wondrous grace of God, so I ever did, I should be none afraid but that
in a little blink of time she would think even as I did. And this was
the beginning of the feeling I had for Mary Gordon. Yet being but little
more than a shepherd lad from off the hills of heather she was to me
almost as one of the angels, and I thought of her not at all as a lad
thinks in his heart of a pretty lass, to whom one day if he prosper he
may even himself in the way of love.
After a day or two at Earlstoun, spent in drilling and mustering, in
which time I saw nothing more of Mary Gordon, we set off in ordered
companies towards Edinburgh. The word had been brought to us that the
Convention was in great need of support, for that Clavers (whom now they
called my Lord Dundee) was gathering his forces to disperse it, so that
every one of the true Covenant men went daily in fear of their lives.
Whereupon the whole Seven Thousand of the West and South were called up
by the Elders. And to those among us who had no arms four thousand
muskets and swords were served out, which were sent by the Convention to
the South and West under cover of a panic story that the wild Irishers
had landed and burnt Kirkcudbright.
Hob and I marched shoulder to shoulder, and our officer was of one name
with us, one Captain Clelland, a young soldier of a good stock who in
Holland had learnt the art of war. But Colonel William Gordon, the uncle
of the lass Mary, commanded all our forces.
So in time we reached the brow of the hill of Liberton and looked
northward towards the town of Edinburgh, reeling slantways down its
windy ridge, and crowned with the old Imperial coronet of St. Giles
where Knox had preached, while the castle towered in pride over all.
It was a great day for me when first I saw those grey towers against the
sky. But down in the howe of the Grassmarket there was a place that was
yet dearer--the black ugly gibbet whereon so many saints of God, dear
and precious, had counted their lives but dross that they might win the
crown of faithfulness. And when we marched through the West Port, and
passed it by, it was in our heart to cheer, for we knew that with the
tyrant’s fall all this was at an end.
But Colonel William Gordon checked us.
“Rather your bonnets off, lads,” he cried, “and put up a prayer!”
And so we did. And then we faced about and filed straight up into the
town. And as the sound of our marching echoed through the narrows of the
West Bow, the waiting faithful threw up their windows and blessed us,
hailing us as their saviours.
Company after company went by, regular and disciplined as soldiers; but
in the Lawmarket, where the great folk dwelt, there were many who peeped
in fear through their barred lattices.
“The wild Whigs of the West have risen and are marching into Edinburgh!”
so ran the cry.
We of Colonel Gordon’s Glenkens Foot were set to guard the Parliament
House, and as we waited there, though I carried a hungry belly, yet I
stood with my heart exulting proudly within me to see the downtrodden at
last set on high and those of low estate exalted.
For the sidewalks and causeways of the High-street were filled with
eager crowds, but the crown of it was kept as bare as for the passing of
a royal procession. And down it towards Holyrood tramped steadily and
ceaselessly, company by company, the soldiers of the Other Kingdom.
Stalwart men in grey homespun they were, each with his sword belted to
him, his musket over his shoulder, and his store of powder and lead by
his side. Then came squadrons of horses riding two and two, some well
mounted, and others on country nags, but all of them steady in their
saddles as King’s guards. And when these had passed, again company after
company of footmen.
Never a song or an oath from end to end, not so much as a cheer along
all the ranks as the Hill Men marched grimly in.
“Tramp! tramp! tramp!” So they passed, as if the line would never end.
And at the head of each company the blue banner of Christ’s
Covenant--the standard that had been trailed in the dust, but that could
never be wholly put down.
Then after a while among the new flags, bright with silk and blazening,
there came one tattered and stained, ragged at the edges, and pierced
with many holes. There ran a whisper. “It is the flag of Ayrsmoss!”
And at sight of its torn folds, and the writing of dulled and blistered
gold upon it, “For Christ’s Cause and Covenant,” I felt the tears well
from the heart up to my eyes, and something broke sharply with a little
audible cry in my throat.
Then an old Covenant man who had been both at Drumclog and the Brig of
Bothwell, turned quickly to me with kindly eyes.
“Nay, lad,” he said, “rather be glad! The standard that was sunken in a
sea of blood is cleansed and set up again. And now in this our day woe
be to the persecutors! The banner they trailed in the dust behind the
dripping head of Richard Cameron shall wave on the Nether Bow of
Edinburgh, where the corbies picked his eyes and his fair cheeks
blackened in the sun.”
And so it was, for they set it there betwixt the High-street and the
Canongate, and from that day forth, during all the weeks of the
Convention, the Covenant men held the city quiet as a frighted child
under their hand.
CHAPTER XI.
THE RED GRANT.
It was while we continued to sojourn in Edinburgh for the protection of
the Convention that first I began to turn my mind to the stated ministry
of the Kirk, for I saw well that this soldiering work must ere long come
to an end. And yet all my heart went out towards something better than
the hewing of peats upon the moor and the foddering of oxen in stall.
Yet for long I could not see how the matter was to be accomplished, for
the Cameronian hill-folk had never had a minister since James Renwick
bade his farewell to sun and moon and Desirable General Meetings down in
the Edinburgh Grassmarket. There was no authority in Scotland capable of
ordaining a Cameronian minister. I knew how impossible it was that I
could go to Holland, as Renwick and Linning and Shields had done, at the
expense of the societies--for the way of some of these men had even now
begun to sour and disgust the elders of the Hill Folk.
So since no better might be I turned my mind to the ministry of the
Reformed Kirk as it had been established by law, and resolved to spend
my needful seasons as a student of the theologies in the town of
Edinburgh. I spoke to my father of my decision, and he was willing that
I should try the work.
“I will gladly be at your college charges, Quintin,” he said; “but mind,
lad, it will depend how I sell my sheep, whether ye get muckle to put in
your belly. Yet, perchance, as the auld saw hath it, ‘hungry dogs hunt
best,’ So mayhap that may likewise hold true of the getting of
learning.”
So in the autumn of that year of the Convention, and some months after
our return, I made me ready to go to college, and to my infinite
surprise Hob, my brother, declared that he would come also.
“For,” said he, “my father does not need me now at home, at least, not
till the spring and the lambing time.”
My father demurred a little. But Hob got his way because he had, as I
well saw, my mother behind him. Now Hob was (and is) the best of
brothers--slow, placid, self-contained, with little humour in him, but
filled with a great, quiet faithfulness. And he has abode with me
through many tears and stern trials.
So in due time to Edinburgh we twain went, and while I trudged it back
and forth to the college Hob bought with his savings a pedlar’s pack,
and travelled town and country with swatches of cloth, taches for the
hair, pins for the dresses of women-folk, and for the men chap-books and
Testaments. But the strange thing is that, slow and silent as our Hob is
at most times, he could make his way with the good wives of the Lothians
as none of those bred to the trade could do. They tell me he was
mightily successful.
I only know that many a day we two might have gone hungry to bed had it
not been for what Hob brought home, instead of, as it was, having our
kites panged full with good meat, like Tod Lowrie when the lambs are
young on the hill.[6]
And often when my heart was done with the dull and dowie days, the
hardness of my heart, and the wryness of learning, Hob would come in
with a lightsome quirk on his queer face, or a jest on his tongue,
picked up in some of the outlying villages, so that I could not help but
smile at him, which made the learning all the easier afterward.
Yet the hardest part of my sore toil at college was the thought that the
more I travailed at the theologies, the less of living religion was in
my soul. Indeed, it was not till I had been back some time among the
common folk who sin and die and are buried, that I began again to taste
the savour of vital religion as of old. For to my thinking there is no
more godless class than just the young collegers in divinity. Nor is
this only a mock, as Hob would have made of it, saying with his queer
smile, “Quintin, what think ye o’ a mission to the heathen divinity
lads--to set the fire o’ hell to their tails, even as Peden the Prophet
bade Richie Cameron do to the border thieves o’ Annandale?”
_Connect and Addition to Chapter XI. made in after years by Me, Hob
MacClellan._
It is well seen from the foregoing that Quintin, my brother, had no easy
time of it while he was at the college, where they called him
“Separator,” “Hill Whig,” “Young Drumclog,” and other nicknames, some
of which grieved the lad sore.
Now they were mostly leather-jawed, slack-twisted Geordies from the
Hieland border that so troubled our Quintin--who, though he was not
averse to the sword or the pistol in a good cause, yet would not even be
persuaded to lift his fist to one of these rascals, lest it should cause
religion to be spoken against. But I was held by none of these scruples.
So it chanced that one night as we came out of the College Wynd in the
early falling winter gloaming, one of these bothy-men from the North
called out an ill name after us--“porridge-fed Galloway pigs,” or
something of the kind. Whereat very gladly I dealt him so sound a buffet
on the angle of his jaw that his head was not set on straight again all
the winter.
After this we adjourned to settle our differences at the corner of the
plainstones; but Quintin and the other theologians who had characters to
lose took their way home, grieved in spirit. Or so at least I think he
pretended to himself.
For when I came in to our lodging an hour after his first words were:
“Did ye give him his licks, Hob?” And that question, to which I
answered simply that I had and soundly, did not argue that the ancient
Adam had been fully exorcised from our Quintin.
All the same the Highlandman was none so easy to handle, being a
red-headed Grant from Speyside, and more inclined to come at you with
his thick skull, like a charging boar of Rothiemurchus, than decently to
stand up with the brave bare knuckles, as we are wont to do in the
South.
A turn or two at Kelton Hill fair would have done him no harm and taught
him that he must not fight with such an ungodly battering-ram as his
head. I know lads there who would have met him on the crown with the toe
of their brogans.
But this I scorned, judging it feater to deal him a round-arm blow
behind the ear and leap aside. The first of these discouraged the Grant;
the second dropped him on the causeway dumb and limp.
“Well done, Galloway!” cried a voice above; “but ye shall answer for
this the morn, every man o’ ye!”
“Run, lads, run! ’Tis the Regent!” came the answering cry from the
collegers.
And with that every remaining student lad ran his best in the direction
of his own lodging.
“Well, sir, have ye killed the Speyside Hielandman?” said the Doctor
from his window, when I remained alone by the fallen chieftain. The
Regent came from the West himself, and, they say, bore the Grants no
love, for all that he was so holy a man.
“I think not,” I answered doubtfully, “but I’ll take him round to the
infirmary and see!”
And with that I hoisted up the Red Grant on my shoulders, carried him
down the Infirmary Close, and hammered on the door till the young
chirurgeon who kept the place, thinking me to be drunk, came to threaten
me with the watch.
Then, the bolts being drawn, I backed the Highlandman into the crack of
the door and discharged him upon the floor.
“There’s a heap of good college divinity,” I said. “The Regent sent me
to bid ye find out if he be dead or alive.”
So with no more said we got him on a board, and at the first jag of the
lancet my Grant lad sat him up on end with a loup like a
Jack-in-the-box. But when he saw where he was, and the poor bits of dead
folk that the surgeon laddies had been learning on that day, he fetched
a yell up from the soles of his Highland shoon, and bounced off the
board, crying, “Ye’ll no cut me up as lang as Donald Grant’s a leeving
man, whatever ye may do when he’s dead!”
And so he took through the door as if the dogs had been after him.
Then the blood-letting man was for charging me with the cost of his
time, but I bade him apply to Regent Campbell over at the college,
telling him that it was he who had sent me. But whether ever he did so
or not I never heard.
Now the rarest jest of the whole matter was on the morrow, when Quintin
went to attend his prelection in Hall. The lesson, so he told me, was in
the Latin of Essenius, his Compend, and Quintin was called up. After he
had answered upon his portion, and well, as I presume, for Quintin was
no dullard at his books, Dr. Campbell looked down a little queerly at
him.
“Can you tell me which is the sixth commandment?” says he.
“Thou shalt not kill!” answers Quintin, as simple as supping brose.
“Then, are you a murderer or no--this morning?”
Quintin, thinking that, after the fashion of the time, the Regent meant
some divinity quirk or puzzle, laid his brains asteep, and answered
that as he had certainly “hated his brother,” in that sense he was
doubtless, like all the rest of the human race, technically and
theologically a murderer.
“But,” said the Professor, “what of the Highland Grant lad that ye
felled like a bullock yestreen under my window?”
Now it had never struck me that I was like my brother Quintin in outward
appearance, save in the way that all we black MacClellans are like one
another--long in the nose, bushy in the eyebrows, which mostly reach
over to meet one another. And I grant it that Quintin was ever better
mettle for a lass’s eye than I--though not worth a pail of calf’s feed
in the matter of making love as love ought to be made, which counts more
with women than all fine appearings.
But for the nonce let that fly stick to the wall; at any rate, sure it
is that the Professor loon had taken me for Quintin.
Now it will greatly help those who read this chronicle to remember what
Quintin did on this occasion. I would not have cared a doit if he had
said, in the plain hearing of the class, that it was his brother Hob the
Lothian packman who had felled the Red Grant.
But would the lad betray his brother? No! He rather hung his head, and
said no more than that he heard the Red Grant was not seriously hurt.
For as he said afterwards, “I did not know what such a tribe of angry,
dirked Highlandmen might have done to you, Hob, if they had so much as
guessed it was no colleger’s fist which had taken Donald an inch beneath
the ear.
“Then,” said the Regent to Quintin, “my warrior of Wild Whigdom, you may
set to the learning of thirty psalms by heart in the original Hebrew.
And after you have said them without the book I will consider of your
letters of certification from this class.”
To which task my brother owes that familiarity with the Psalms of David
which has often served him to such noble purpose--both when, like
Boanerges, he thundered in the open fields to the listening peoples, and
when at closer range he spoke with his enemies in the gate. For thirty
would not suit this hungrisome Quintin of ours. He must needs learn the
whole hundred and fifty (is it not?) by rote before he went back to the
Regent.
“Which thirty psalms are ye prepared to recite?” queried the Professor
under the bush of his eyebrows.
“Any thirty!” answered brave Quintin, unabashed, yet noways uplifted.
* * * * *
Now the rest of my brother’s college life may be told in a word. I know
that he had written many chapters upon his struggles and
heart-questionings as to duty and guidance at that time. But whether he
destroyed them himself, or whether they exist in some undiscovered
repository, certain it is that the next portion of his autobiography
which has come into my hands deals with the time of his settlement in
the parish of Balmaghie, where he was to endure so many strange things.
It is enough to say that year after year Quintin and I returned to the
college with the fall of the leaf, I with my pack upon my back, ever
gaining ready hospitality because of the songs and merry tales in my
wallet. When we journeyed to and fro Quintin abode mostly at the
road-ends and loaning-foots while I went up to chaffer with the
good-wives in the hallans and ben-rooms of the farmhouses. Then, in the
same manner as at first, we fought our way through the dull, iron-grey
months of winter in Auld Reekie. Each spring, as the willow buds furred
and yellowed, saw us returning to the hill-farm again with our books and
packs. And all the while I kept Quintin cheerful company, looking to his
clothes and mending at his stockings and body-gear as he sat over his
books. Mainly it was a happy time, for I knew that the lad would do us
credit. And as my mother said many and many a time, “Our Quintin has
wealth o’ lear and wealth o’ grace, but he hasna as muckle common-sense
as wad seriously blind a midge.”
So partly because my mother put me through a searching catechism on my
return, and also because I greatly loved the lad, I watched him night
and day, laid his clothes out, dried his rig-and-fur hose, greased his
shoon of home-tanned leather to keep out the searching snow-brew of the
Edinburgh streets. For, save when the frost grips it, sharp and snell,
’tis a terrible place to live in, that town of Edinburgh in the winter
season.
_Here begins again the narrative of Quintin my
brother._
CHAPTER XII.
THE LASS IN THE KIRKYARD.
I had been well-nigh a year about the great house of Girthon as family
chaplain to the laird, when there came a call to accept the ministry of
the Gospel among the people of Balmaghie. It was a parish greatly to my
mind. It lies, as all know, in the heart of Galloway, between the slow,
placid sylvan stretches of the Ken and the rapid, turbulent mill-race of
the Black Water of Dee.
From a worldly point of view the parish was most desirable. For though
the income in money and grain was not great, nevertheless the whole
amount was equal to the income of most of the smaller lairds in the
neighbourhood.
Yet for all these things, I trust that those in future times who may
read this my life record will acquit me of the sin of self-seeking.
I mind well the first time that I preached in the parish which was to be
mine own. I had walked with naught but my Bible in my pocket over the
long, lone hill-road from Girthon to Balmaghie. I had with me no
provender to comfort my stomach by the way, or to speed my feet over the
miles of black heather moors and green morass.
For the housekeeper, to whom (for reasons into which I need not enter)
everything in the laird’s house of Girthon was committed, was a
fair-faced, hard-natured, ill-hearted woman, who liked not the coming of
a chaplain into the house--as she said, “stirring up the servants to gad
about to preachings, and taking up their time with family worship and
the like foolishness.”
So she went out of her way to ensure that the chaplains would stay only
until they could obtain quittance of so bare and thankless a service.
When I arrived at the kirk of Balmaghie, having come all the long
journey from Girthon on foot and fasting, I sat me down on a flat stone
in the kirkyard, near by where the martyrs lie snug and bieldy at the
gable-end.
So exhausted was I that I know not what I should have done but for a
young lass, comely and well put on, who gave me the farle of oatcake
she had brought with her for her “morning.”
“You are the young minister who is to preach to us this day?” she said,
going over to the edge of the little wood which at that time bounded the
kirkyard.
I answered her that I was and that I had walked all the way from the
great house of Girthon that morning--whereat she held up her hands in
utter astonishment.
“It is just not possible,” she cried.
And after pitying me a long time with her eyes, and urging me to eat her
“piece” up quickly, she featly stooped down to the water and washed her
feet and ankles, before drawing upon them a pair of white hosen, fair
and thin, and fastening her shoes with the buckles of silver after a
pretty fashion which was just coming in.
It was yet a full hour and a half before the beginning of the morning
diet of worship, for I had risen betimes and travelled steadily. Now the
kirk of Balmaghie stands in a lonely place, and even the adjoining
little clachan of folk averts itself some distance from it.
Then being hungry I sat and munched at the lass’s piece, till, with
thinking on my sermon and looking at her by the waterside, I had
well-nigh eaten it every snatch. So when I awoke from my reverie, as
from a deep sleep, I sat with a little bit of bread, the size of my
thumb, in my hand, staring at it as if I had seen a fairlie.[7]
And what was worse, the lass seeing me thus speechless, and with my jaws
yet working on the last of the crust, went off into peal after peal of
laughter.
“What for do ye look at me like that, young lad?” she said, when she had
sufficiently commanded herself.
“I--I have eaten all your midday piece, whiles I was thinking upon my
sermon,” I said.
“More befitting is it that you should think upon your sermon than of
things lighter and less worthy,” said she, without looking up at me. I
was pleased with her solid answer and felt abashed.
“But you will go wanting,” I began.
She gartered one shapely stocking of silk ere she answered me, holding
the riband that was to cincture the other in her mouth, as appears to be
the curious fashion of women.
“What matter,” she said, presently, as she stroked down her kirtle over
her knee modestly, with an air that took me mightily, it was so full of
distance and respect. “I come not far, but only from the farm town of
Drumglass down there on the meadow’s edge. Ye are welcome to the bit
piece; I am as glad to see ye eat it as of a sunny morn in haytime. You
have come far, and a brave day’s wark we are expecting from you this
Sabbath day.”
Then, as was my duty, I rebuked her for looking to man for that which
could alone come from the Master and Maker of man.
She listened very demurely, with her eyes upon the silver buckles of her
shoon, which she had admiringly placed side by side on the grass, when
she set herself down on the low boundary wall of the kirkyard.
“I ken I am too young and light and foolish to be fit company even for a
young minister,” she said, and there was a blush upon her cheek which
vexed me, though it was bonny enough to look upon.
“Nay,” answered I quickly; “there you mistake me. I meant no such thing,
bonnie lass. We are all both fond and foolish, minister and maid.” (Well
might I say it, for--God forgive me!--at that very moment my mind ran
more on how the lass looked and on the way she had of tapping the grass
with her foot than on the solemn work of the day.)
“No, no,” she interrupted, hastily; “I am but a silly lass, poor and
ignorant, and you do well to fault me.”
Now this put me in a painful predicament, for I still held in my hand
the solitary scraplet left of the young lass’s “piece,” and I must
needs, like a dull, splenetic fool, go on fretting her for a harmless
word.
She turned away her head a little; nevertheless, I was not so
ill-learned in the ways of maids but that I could see she was crying.
“What is your name, sweet maid?” I asked, for my heart was wae that I
had grieved her.
She did not answer me till she had a little recovered herself.
“Jean Gemmell,” she said, at last, “and my father is the tenant of
Drumglass up by there. He is an elder, and will be here by kirk-time.
The session is holding a meeting at the Manse.”
I had pulled a Bible from my pocket and was thinking of my sermon by
this time.
Jean Gemmell rose and stood a moment picking at a flower by the wall.
“My father will be on your side,” she said, slowly.
“But,” cried I, in some astonishment, “your father has not yet heard me
preach.”
“No more have I,” she made answer, smiling on me with her eyes, “but,
nevertheless, my father will be on your side.”
And she moved away, looking still very kindly upon me.
I cannot tell whether or no I was helped by this rencounter in my
conduct of the worship that day in the parish kirk of Balmaghie. At any
rate, I went down and walked in the meadows by the side of Dee Water
till the folk gathered and the little cracked bell began to clank and
jow from the kirk on the hill.
CHAPTER XIII.
MY LADY OF PRIDE.
Within the kirk of Balmaghie there spread from gable to gable a dim sea
of faces, men standing in corners, men holding by windows, men peering
in at the low doorway, while the women cowered upon folded plaids, or
sat closely wedged together upon little creepie stools. So great a
multitude had assembled that day that the bairns who had no voice in the
ministerial call were in danger of being put without to run wild among
the gravestones. But this I forbade, though I doubt not many of the
youthful vagabondage would have preferred such an exodus to the hot and
crowded kirk that day of high summer.
I was well through my discourse, and entering upon my last “head,” when
I heard a stir at the door. I paused somewhat markedly lest there should
be some unseemly disturbance. But I saw only a great burly red-bearded
gentleman with his hair a little touched with grey. The men about the
porch made room for him with mighty deference.
Clinging to his arm was a young girl, with a face lily-pale, dark eyes
and wealth of hair. And instead of the bare head and modest snood of the
country maid, or the mutch of the douce matron, there was upon the
lady’s head a brave new-fashioned hat with a white feather.
I knew them in a moment--Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun and his daughter
Mary.
I cannot tell if my voice trembled, or whether I showed any signs of the
abounding agitation of my spirit. But certain it is that for a space,
which to me seemed ages, the course of my thought went from me. I spoke
words idle and empty, and it was only by the strongest effort of will
that I recalled myself to the solemn matters in hand. That this should
have happened in my trial sermon vexed me sore. For at that time I knew
not that these disturbances, so great-seeming to the speaker, are
little, if at all, observed by his hearers, who are ever willing to lay
the blame upon their own lack of comprehension rather than upon their
instructor’s want of clearness.
But the moment after, with a strong uprising of my spirit, I won above
the turmoil of my intellects, and ended with a great outgoing of my
heart, charging those before me to lay aside the evils of their life and
enter upon the better way with zeal and assured confidence.
And seeing that the people were much moved by my appeal I judged wise to
let them go with what fire of God they had gotten yet burning in their
hearts. I closed therefore quickly, and so dismissed the congregation.
Then, when I came down to go from the kirk, the people were already
dispersing. The great red-bearded man came forward and put his hand on
my shoulder.
“Young sir,” he said, “it is true that ye have left the hill-folk, and
with your feet have walked in devious ways. Notwithstanding, if what we
have heard to-day be your message, we shall yet have you on your knees
before the Eldership of the Societies. For the heart of the man who can
thus speak is with us of the wilderness, and not among the flesh-pots of
an Erastian Egypt.”
At which I shook my head, not seeing how true his words were to prove,
nor yet how soon the Kirk of Scotland was to bow the head, which
hitherto had only bent to her heavenly Lord, to the sceptre of clay and
the rule of a feckless earthly monarch.
But though I looked wistfully at Mary Gordon, and would have gone
forward to help her upon her horse where it stood tethered at the
kirk-liggate, she passed me by as though she had not seen me, which
surely was not well done of her. Instead she beckoned a young man from
the crowd in the kirkyard, who came forward with his hat in his hand and
convoyed her to her horse with a privileged and courtly air. Then the
three rode off together, Alexander Gordon turning about in his saddle
and crying back to me in his loud, hearty manner, “Haste ye and come
over to the Earlstoun, and we will yet show you the way across the Red
Sea out of the Land of Bondage.”
And I was left standing there sadly enough, yet for my life I cannot
tell why I should have been sad. For the folk came thronging about me,
shaking me by the hand, and saying that now they had found their
minister and would choose me in spite of laird or prince or presbytery.
For it seems that already some of my sayings had given offence in high
quarters.
Yet it was as if I heard not these good folk, for (God forgive me) even
at that solemn moment my thoughts were circling about that proud young
lass, who had not deigned me a look even in the hour of triumph, but had
ridden so proudly away with the man who was doubtless her lover.
Thus I stood awhile dumbly at gaze, without finding a word to say to
any. And the folk, thinking that the spirit of the spoken Word was yet
upon me, drew off a little.
Then there came a voice in mine ear, low and persuasive, that awoke me
from my dream.
“This is my father, who would bid ye welcome, and that kindly, to his
house of Drumglass.”
It was the young maid whose piece I had eaten in the morning.
The feeling in my heart that I had been shamed and slighted by Mary
Gordon made Mistress Jean Gemmell’s word sweet and agreeable to me. I
turned me about and found myself clasping the hands of a rugged old man
with a broad and honest face, who took snuff freely with one hand, while
he shook mine with the other.
“I’m prood to see ye, young sir,” he said, “prood to see ye! My dochter
Jean here, a feat and bonny bit lass, has telled me that I am to gie ye
my guid word. And my guid word ye shall hae. And mony o’ the elders and
kirk-members owes siller to auld Drummie; aye, aye, and they shall do as
I say or I shall ken the reason----”
“But, sir,” I said hastily, “I desire no undue influence to be used. Let
my summons, if it come, be the call of a people of one mind concerning
the fitting man to have the oversight of them in the things of the
spirit.”
“Of one mind!” exclaimed the old man, taking snuff more freely than
ever. “Ye are dootless a maist learned and college-bred young lad, with
rowth o’ lear and lashin’s o’ grace, but ye dinna ken this pairish o’
Balmaghie if ye think that ye can ever hae the folk o’ wan mind. Laddie,
the thing’s no possible. There’s as mony minds in Balmaghie as there’s
folk in it. And a mair unruly, camsteery pairish there’s no between
Kirkmaiden and the wild Hieland border. But auld Drummie can guide
them--ow, aye, auld Drummie can work them. He can turn them that owes
him siller round his finger, and they can leaven the congregation--hear
ye that, young man!”
“If the people of this parish desire me for their minister, they will
send me the call,” answered I, pointedly. For these things, as I have
ever believed, are in a Higher Hand.
“Doubtless, doubtless,” quoth auld Drummie; “but the Balmaghie folk are
none of the waur o’ a bit spur in their flank like a reesty[8] powny
that winna gang. They mind a minute’s jag frae the law mair nor the hale
grace o’ God for a month, and mind ye that! Gin ye come amang us, lad,
I’ll learn ye a trick or twa aboot the folk o’ Balmaghie that ye will be
the wiser o’. Mind, I hae been here a’ my life, and an elder o’ the kirk
for thirty year!”
“I am much indebted, sir, for your good intentions, but----”
“Nae buts,” cried auld Drummie. “I hae my dochter Jean’s word that ye
are a braw callan and deserve the pairish, and the pairish ye shall
hae.”
“I am much indebted to your daughter,” I made answer. “She succoured me
with bread to eat this morning, when in the kirkyard I was ready to
faint with hunger. Without her kindness I know not how I would have come
through the fatigues of this day’s exercises.”
“Ow, aye,” said the old man; “that’s just like my dochter Jean. And a
douce ceevil lassock she is. But ye should see my ither dochter afore ye
craw sae croose aboot Jean.”
“You have another daughter?” I said, politely.
“Aye,” he cried, with enthusiasm. “Man, where hae ye comed frae that ye
haena heard o’ Alexander-Jonita, the lass wha can tame a wild stallion
that horse-dealers winna tackle, and ride it stride-leg like a man.
There’s no’ a maiden in a’ the country can hand a cannle to
Alexander-Jonita, the dochter o’ Nathan Gemmell of Drumglass, in the
pairish o’ Balmaghie.”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TALE OF MESS HAIRRY.
So the service being ended for the day, I walked quietly over to
Drumglass with Jean and her father. There I found a house well
furnished, oxen and kine knee-deep in water, meadows, pastures, crofts
of oats and bear in the hollows about the door, and over all such an air
of bien and hospitable comfort that the place beckoned me to abide
there.
Nathan Gemmell went beside me, regaling me with tales of the ancient
days spoken in the broad and honourable sounding speech of the province.
“Hear ye, laddie,” he said, “gin ye come to the pairish o’ Balmaghie ye
will need the legs o’ a racer horse, and the airms o’ Brawny Kim, the
smith o’ Carlinwark. Never a chiel has been fit to be the minister o’
Balmaghie since Auld Mess Hairry died!
“He was a man--losh me, but he _was_ a man!
“I tell ye, sir, this pairish needs its releegion tightly threshed into
it wi’ a flail. Sax change-houses doon there hae I kenned oot o’ seven
cot-houses at the Kirk-clachan o’ Shandkfoot, and a swearin’, drinkin’
set in ilka yin o’ them.
“And siccan reamin swatrochs of Hollands an’ French brandy, lad! Every
man toomin’ his glass and cryin’ for mair, tossing it ower their
thrapples hand ower fist, as hard as the sweatin’ landlords could open
the barrels. And the ill words and the fechtin’--Lord, callant, ye never
heard the like! They tell me that ye come frae the Kells. A puir
feckless lot they are in the Kells! Nae spirit in their drink. Nae power
or variety in their oaths and cursings!
“But Balmaghie!---- That was a pairish in the old time, till Mess Hairry
came in the days after John Knox. He had been a Papish priest some-gate
till he had turned his cassock alang wi’ dour black Jock o’ the Hie Kirk
o’ Edinburgh. But Mess Hairry they aye caa’ed him, for a’ that. And
there were some that said he hadna turned that very far, but was a
Papish as great as ever under the black Geneva gown!
“For he wad whiles gie them swatches o’ the auld ill-tongued Laitin,
till the folk kenned na whether they werena bein’ made back again into
limbs o’ Rome, and their leave never so much as speered.
“But Pope or reform, mass or sacrament, the pairish cared no a bursten
chanter. Doon at the clachans the stark Hollands flowed like the water
in a running spate, and the holy day o’ the Sabbath was their head time
for the evil wark--that is, till Mess Hairry cam’, and oh, but he was
the maisterfu’ man, as my auld grandfaither used to say. What did
he?--man, I will tell ye. And let it be a lesson to ye, young man, gin
ye come to the pairish o’ Balmaghie. The folk here like a tairgin’
maisterfu’ man. Hark ye to that! They canna bide chiels that only peep
and mutter. The lads atween the waters o’ Dee and Ken tak’ a man maistly
at his ain valuation, and if a minister thinks na muckle o’
himself--haith, they will e’en jaloose that he kens best, and no think
muckle o’ him either!
“At ony rate, the drinking gaed on, as I was tellin’ ye, till yae day it
cam’ to a head. There had been a new cargo brought into the Briggus--it
was afore the days o’ the ill-set customs duties--foul fa’ them and the
officers that wad keep a man frae brewin’ his decent wormfu’, or at
least gar him tak’ the bother o’ doin’ it in the peat-stack or on some
gairy-face instead o’ openly on his kitchen floor.
“But be that as it may, it was when Mess Hairry was at his fencing
prayer in the kirk on a Sabbath, as it micht be on this day o’ June. He
was just leatherin’ aff the words that fast the folk couldna tell
whether he is giein’ them guid Scots or ill-contrived Laitin, when Mess
Hairry stops and cocks his lug doon the kirk like a collie that hears a
strange fit in the loanin’.
“The folk listens, too, and then they heard the ower word o’ a gye
coarse sang from the clachan doon by, and the Muckle Miller o’
Barnboard, Black Coskery, leadin’ it wi’ a voice like the thunder on
Knockcannon.
‘The deil cam up to oor loan en’
Smoored wi’ the reck o’ his black den,’
“There was nae mair sermon that day. Mess Hairry gied them but ae word.
I wasna there, for I wasna born; but the granddaddy o’ me was then a
limber loon, and followed after to see what wad befa’. ‘The sermon will
be applied in the clachan this day in the name o’ God and the blessed
saints,’ cried Mess Hairry.
“So the auld priest claught to him a great oak clickie stick he had
brocht frae some enchanted wood, and doon the kirk road he linkit wi’
strides that were near sax foot frae tae to heel. Lord, but he swankit
it that day.
“And ever as he gaed the nearer, louder and louder raise Barnboard’s
chorus, ‘The deil he cam’ to our loan en’’--till ye could hear the verra
window-frames dirl.
“But Mess Hairry he strode like the angel o’ destruction to the door o’
the first hoose. The bar was pushed, for it was sermon time, and they
had that muckle respect. But the noise within was fearsome. Mess Hairry
set the broad sole o’ his foot to the hasp, and, man, he drave her in as
if she had been paper. It was a low door as a’ Galloway doors are. The
minister dooked doon his heid, and in he gaed. Nane expected ever to see
him come oot in life again, and a’ the folk were thinking on the
disgrace that the pairish wad come under for killin’ the man that had
been set over them in the things o’ the Lord. For bravely they kenned
that Black Coskery wad never listen to a word o’ advice, but, bein’
drunk as Dauvid’s soo, wad strike wi’ sword, or shoot wi’ pistol as soon
as drink another gill.
“There was an awesome pause after Mess Hairry gaed ben.
“The folk they stood aboot the doors and they held up their hands in
peety. ‘Puir man,’ they said; ‘they are killin’ him the noo. There’s
Black Coskery yellin’ at the rest to keep him doon and finish him where
he lies. Puir man, puir man! What a death to dee, murdered in a
change-hoose on the Lord’s Day o’ Rest, when he micht hae been by
“Thirdly” in his sermon and clearin’ the points o’ doctrine wi’ neither
tinker nor miller fashin’ him! This comes o’ meddlin’ wi’ the cursed
drink.’
“Wilder and ever wilder grew the din. It was like baith Keltonhill Fair
and Tongland Sacrament on a wet day. They had shut the doors when the
priest gaed in to keep him close and do for him on the spot.
“My grand-daddy telled me that there was some ga’ed awa’ for the
bier-trams and the mort-claiths to carry the corpse to the manse to be
ready for his coffining!
“If they gang on like that there will no be enough left o’ him to hand
thegither till they row him in his shroud! Hear till the wild renegades!
“And ever the _thresh, thresh_ o’ terrible blows was heard, yells o’
pain an’ mortal fear.
“‘Mercy! Mercy! For the Lord’s dear sake, hae mercy!’
“The door burst frae its hinges and fell _blaff_ on the road!
“‘They are bringin’ him oot noo. Puir man, but he will be an awesome
sicht!’
“There cam’ a pour o’ men folk frae ’tween the lintels, some bareheaded,
wi’ the red bluid rinnin’ frae aboot their brows, some wi’ the coats
fair torn frae their backs--every man o’ them wild wi’ fear.
“‘They hae murdered him! Black Coskery has murdered him,’ cried the folk
withoot. ‘And the ither lads are feared o’ the judgment for the bluid o’
the man o’ God.’
“But it wasna that--indeed, far frae that. For on the back o’ the men
skailin’, there cam’ oot o’ the cot-hoose wha but Mess Hairry, and he
had Black Coskery by the feet trailin’ him heid doon oot o’ the door. He
flang him in the ditch like a wat dish-clout. Syne he gied his lang
black coat a bit hitch aboot his loins wi’ a cord, like a butcher that
has mair calves to kill. Then he makes for the next change-hoose. But
they had gotten the warnin’. They never waited to argue, but were oot o’
the window, carrying wi’ them sash and a’--so they say.
“And so even thus it was wi’ the lave. The grace o’ God was triumphant
in the Kirk Clachan o’ Ba’maghie that day.
“They took up a’ that was mortal o’ Black Coskery to the Barnboard on
the bier they had gotten ready for the minister. He got better, but he
was never the same man again; for whenever he let his voice be heard, or
got decently fechtin’ drunk, some callant wad be sure to get ahint a
tree and cry, ‘Rin, Coskery, here’s Mess Hairry.’ He couldna bide that,
but cowered like a weel-lickit messan tyke.
“When they gaed into the first change-hoose, they say that the floor was
a sicht to see. A’ thing driven to kindlin’ wood; for Mess Hairry had
never waited to gie a word o’ advice, but had keeled ower Black Coskery
wi’ ae stroke o’ his oak clickie on the haffets. Then, faith, he took
the fechtin’ miller by the feet and swung him aboot his head as if he
had been a flail.
“Never was there sic fechtin’ seen in the Stewartry. The men fell ower
like nine-pins, and were richt glad to crawl to the door. But for a
judgment on them it was close steekit, for they had shut it to be sure
o’ Mess Hairry.
“They were far ower sure o’ him, and they say that if the hinges had no’
given way it micht hae been the waur for some o’ them.
“And that was the way that Mess Hairry preached the Gospel in Ba’maghie.
Ow, it’s him that had the poo’er--at least, that’s what my granddaddy
telled me.
“Ow, aye’ Ba’maghie needs a maisterfu’ man. But we’ll never see the like
o’ Mess Hairry--rest his soul. He was indeed a miracle o’ grace.”
CHAPTER XV.
ALEXANDER-JONITA.
We had been steadily approaching the farm-steading of Drumglass, where
it sits pleasantly under the hill looking down over the water-meadows,
the while Nathan Gemmell told me his grandfather’s tale showing how a
man ought to rule the parish of Balmaghie.
We had gotten almost to the door of the farm when we saw a horse and
rider top the heathery fell to the left, and sweep down upon us at a
tearing gallop.
The old man, hearing the clatter of stones, turned quickly.
“Alexander-Jonita!” he exclaimed, shaking his head with fond blame
towards the daring rider, “I declare that lassie will break neck-bone
some o’ thae days. And that will be seen!”
With dark hair flying in the wind, eyes gleaming like stars, short
kirtle driven back from her knees by the rush of the horse’s stride,
came a girl of eighteen or twenty on the back of a haltered but
saddle-free mare.
Whether, as her father had boasted, the girl was riding astride, or
whether she sat in the new-fangled way of the city ladies, I cannot
venture to decide. For with a sharp turn of the hempen bridle she reined
her beast within a few yards of us, and so had leaped nimbly to the
ground before the startled senses could take in all the picture.
“Lassie,” cried the elder, with a not intolerant reproof in his tones,
“where hae ye been that the kirk and the service of God saw ye not this
day?”
The girl came fearlessly forward, looking me directly in the eyes. The
reins were yet in her hand.
“Father,” she said, gently enough, but without looking at him, “I had
the marches to ride, the ‘aval’ sheep to turn, the bitten ewes to dress
with tar, the oxen to keep in bound, the horses to water; besides which,
Jean wanted my stockings and Sunday gear to be braw the day at the kirk.
So I had e’en to bide at hame!”
“Thing shame o’ yoursel’, Alexander-Jonita!” cried her father, “ye are
your mither’s dochter. Ye tak’ not after the douce ways o’ your faither.
Spite o’ a’ excuses, ye should hae been at the kirk.”
“Is this the young minister lad?” said Alexander-Jonita, looking at me
more with the assured direct gaze of a man than with the customary
bashfulness of a maid. Singularly fearless and forthlooking was her
every glance.
“Even so,” said her father, “the lad has spoken weel this day!”
She looked me through and through, till I felt the manhood in me stir to
vexation, not with shyness alone, but for very shame to be thus outfaced
and made into a bairn.
She spoke again, still, however, keeping her eyes on me.
“I am no kirk-goer--no, nor yet great kirk-lover. But I ken a man when I
see him,” said the strange maid, holding out her hand frankly. And,
curiously enough, I took it with an odd sense of gratitude and
comradeship.
“The kirk,” said I, “is not indeed all that it might be, but the kirk
and conventicle alike are the gathering places of those that love the
good way. We are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.”
“Even so, minister!” she said, with some sudden access of gravity, “and
this day I have been preaching the Gospel to the sheep and the oxen, the
kye and the horse-beasts within the bounds of my parish, while ye spake
your good word to human creatures that were maybe somewhat less
grateful.”
“The folk to whom I spake had immortal souls,” said I, a little
indignant to be thus bearded by a lassie.
“And how,” she retorted, turning on me quick as a fire-flash, “ken ye
that the beasts have none, or that their spirit goeth downward into the
earth? Have they not bodies also and gratitude? There was a sore
distressed sheep this morning at Tornorrach that looked at me first with
eyes that spake a prayer. But after I had cleansed and dressed the hurt,
it breathed a benediction, sweet as any said in the Kirk of Balmaghie
this day!”
“Nevertheless it was for men and women, perishing in sin, that Christ
died!” I persisted, not willing to be silenced.
“How ken ye that?” she said; “did not the same Lord make the sheep on
the hills and the kye in the byres? Will He that watches the sparrow
fall think it wrong to lift a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath? The
Pharisees are surely not all dead to this day!”
“E’en let her alane, ye will be as wise,” said her father; “she has
three words to every one that are given to men o’ sense. But she is
withal a good lass and true of speech. Alexander-Jonita, stable your
beast and come ben to wait on the minister in the ben room.”[9]
The girl moved away, leading her steed, and her father and I went on to
the house of Drumglass.
When we entered the table was not yet set, and there were no
preparations for a meal. Nathan Gemmell looked about him with a certain
severe darkening expression, which told of a temper not yet altogether
brought into obedience to the spirit.
“Jean--Jean Gemmell!” he cried, “come hither, lass!” He went and knocked
loudly at the chamber door, which opened at one side of the kitchen.
“Wherefore have ye not set the table for the meal of meat?” he asked,
frowning upon the maiden whom I had first seen. She stood with meek and
smiling face looking at us from the lintel. Her face was shining and
her hair very becomingly attired, though (as I observed) in a different
fashion from what it had been in the morning by the kirk-gate when she
gave me her piece to stay my hunger.
“I have been praying upon my knees for a blessing upon the work of this
day in the kirk,” said Jean Gemmell, looking modestly down, “and I
waited for Alexander-Jonita to help me to lay the table.”
“Were ye not vainly adoring your frail tabernacle? It seems more
likely!” said her father, somewhat cruelly as I thought.
Then she looked once across at me, and her eyes filled with tears, so
that I was vividly sorry for the maid. But she turned away from her
father’s reproof without a word.
“We can well afford to wait. There is no haste,” I said, to ease her
hurt if so I could; “this good kind maiden gave me all she had this
morning in the kirk-yard, or I know not how I should have sped at the
preaching work this day!”
Jean Gemmell paused half-way across the floor, as her father was
employed looking out of the little window to catch a glimpse of
Alexander-Jonita. She lifted her eyes again to mine with a look of
sweet and tender gratitude and understanding which more than thanked me
for the words I had spoken.
At that moment in came Alexander-Jonita with a free swing like some
stripling gallant of high degree. I own that even at that time I liked
to see her walk. She, at least, was no proud dame like--well, like one
whose eyes abode with me, and the thought of whose averted gaze (God
pardon me!) lay heavy about my heart when I ought to have been thinking
of other and higher things.
Alexander-Jonita waited for no bidding, but after a glance which took in
at once the empty board and Jean’s smooth dress and well-ordered hair,
she hasted to spread a white cloth on the table, a coverture bleached
and fine as it had been laundered for a prince’s repast. Then to
cupboard and aumrie she went, bringing down and setting in order oaten
bread, sour-milk scones of honest crispness, dried ham-of-mutton which
she sliced very thin before serving--the rarest dainty of Galloway, and
enough to make a hungry man’s mouth water only to think upon.
Then came in Jean Gemmell, who made shift to help daintily as she found
occasion. But, listening over-closely to the converse of her father and
myself, it chanced that she let fall a platter, which breaking, set her
sister in a quick high mood. So that she ordered the lass to go and sit
down while folk with hands did the work.
Now this somewhat vexed me, for I could see by the modest, covert way
the girl glanced up at me as she set herself obediently down in the low
window seat that her heart was full to the overflowing. Also something
in the wild girl’s tone mettled me.
So I said to Jean across the kitchen, “Be of good cheer, maiden. There
was one at Bethany who waited not, but yet chose the better part.”
“Aye,” cried Alexander-Jonita as she turned from the cupboard with a
plate of butter, “say ye so? I ever kenned that you young ministers
thought excellent things of yourselves, but I dreamed not that ye went
as far as that.”
Whereat I blushed hotly, to think that I had unwittingly compared myself
to One who sat with Martha and Mary in the house. And after that I was
dumb before the sharp-tongued lass all the time of eating. But under the
table Jean Gemmell put her hand a moment on mine, seeing me fallen
silent and downcast.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CORBIES AT THE FEAST.
Now when after all the call came for me to be placed minister of the
parish, and I was placed there with the solemn laying on of the hands of
the Presbytery, I thought in my folly as every young minister does, that
the strivings of my life had come to an end. Whereas, had I known it,
they were but beginning. For the soil was being fattened for the crop of
troubles I was to harvest into a bitter garner ere many years had come
and gone.
Strait and onerous were the charges the reverend brethren laid upon me.
I had been of the Hill-folk in my youth. So more than once I was
reminded. It might be that I was not yet purged of that evil taint.
Earnestness in labour, sanctity of life, would not avail alone. I must
keep me in subjection to the powers that be. I must purge myself of
partial counsel and preach the Gospel in moderation--with various other
charges which I pass over in silence.
Yet all the while I had the conceit within me that I knew better than
these men could tell me what I had come to Balmaghie to perform. I
minded me every day of the Bennan top and of the men that had been slain
on the heather--specially on the poor lad in the brown coat. And I was
noways inclined to be over-lenient with those who had wrought the
damage, nor yet with those who had stood by with their hands in their
pockets and whistled while the deed was being done.
After the ordination, as was the custom, there was a great dinner spread
in a long tent set up by the Kirk Clachan of Shankfoot.
Here the Presbytery, the elders and such of the leading men of the
parish as were free of scandal (few enough there were of these!) were
entertained at the expense of the session.
One there was among the brethren who had watched me keenly all the
day--Cameron, the minister of Kirkcudbright, an unctuously smiling man,
but with a sidelong and dubious eye that could not meet yours. He had
the repute of great learning, and was, besides, of highest consideration
among the members, because he was reckoned to be the blood brother of
the famous Richard Cameron, who died at Ayrsmoss in the year of 1680,
and whether that were so or no, at least he did not deny it.
As for me, I talked mostly to a little wizened, hump-shouldered man,
with a hassock of black hair which came down over his forehead, and
great eyes that looked out on either side of a sharp hawk’s nose. A
peeping, peering, birdlike man I found him to be--one Telfair of
Rerrick, the great authority in the South Country on ghosts and all
manifestations of the devil.
“Methinks the spirit of evil is once more abroad,” I heard Telfair say
in a shrill falsetto to his next neighbour as they sat at meat. “Rerrick
hath seen nothing like it since the famous affair of the Ringcroft
visitation, so fully recounted in my little pamphlet--which, as you are
aware, has run through several editions, not alone in Scotland, but also
among the wise and learned folk of London. The late King even ordered a
copy for himself, and was pleased to say that he had never read anything
like it in all his life before; and by the grace of God he never would
again. Was not that a compliment from so great a prince?”
“A compliment indeed,” cried Cameron of Kirkcudbright, nodding his head
ironically, yet watching me all the time as I talked with Nathan Gemmell
of Drumglass; “but what is this new portent?”
“’Tis but the matter of a bairn-child near the village of Orraland,
which, as all the world knows, is the heart of my parish. A bairn, the
son of very respectable folk, looking out upon the moon, had a vision of
a man in red apparel cutting the moon in two with a sword of flame,
whereat the child screamed and ran in to its mother to tell the marvel.
And as soon as they came to me, I said: ‘There is that to be done to-day
which shall cut the Kirk of God in twain within the bounds of this
Presbytery.’”
“Truly a marvellous child, and of insight justly prophetic!” said
Cameron, again nodding as he went about the ordering of his dinner and
calling the waiting folk to be quick and set clean platters before the
hungry Presbyters.
“Now,” said Telfair, looking straight at me, “there hath nothing
happened this week in the Presbytery save the ordaining of this young
man. Think ye that through him there will come this breaking asunder of
the Kirk?”
Cameron smiled sardonically.
“How can ye suppose it for a moment? Mr. MacClellan is a youth of
remarkable promise and rumour. We have, indeed, yet to learn whether
there be aught behind this sound and show of religion and respect for
the authority of the Kirk.”
All this time Drumglass was pouring forth without stint his joy at my
settlement among them.
“Be never feared for the face o’ man, young sir,” he cried. “Be bold to
declare what ye think and believe, and gif ye ken what ye want and
earnestly pursue it, tak’ auld Drumglass’ word for it, there are few
things that ye may not attain in this world.”
At long and last the day came to an end. The ministers of the Presbytery
one by one took horse or ferry and so departed. I alone returned with
Nathan Gemmell over to the house of Drumglass. For I was deadly wearied,
and the voice of Nathan uplifted by the way to tell of old things was
like the pleasant lappering of water on the sides of a boat in which one
rocks and dreams. Indeed, I was scarce conscious of a word he said, till
in the gloom of the trees and the creamy evening light, we met the two
lasses, Jean and Alexander-Jonita walking arm in arm.
As we came within the shadow, they two divided the one from the other,
the wild lass going to her father’s side, Jean being left to come to
mine.
“I saw you not at the ordination, Alexander-Jonita!” said her father.
“No,” she answered sharply, “it was a brave day for the nowt to stray
broadcast over the fell, and there was never a man, woman, or bairn
about the house. Well might I remain to keep the evil-doers from the
doors.”
I felt a soft hand touch mine as if by accident, and a low voice
whispered close to my ear.
“But I was there. I watched it all, and when I saw you were kneeling
before them all with the hands of the ministers upon your head, I had
almost swooned away!”
The soft hand was fully in mine now. I was not conscious of having taken
it, but nevertheless it lay trembling a little and yet nestling
contentedly in my palm. And because I was tired and the day had been a
labour and a burden to me, I was comforted that thus Jean’s hand abode
in mine.
I pressed it and said, perhaps more gently than I ought, “Little one, I
am glad you were there. But the work is a great one for so young and
unworthy as I. It presses hard upon me!”
“But you have good friends,” said Jean, “friends that--that think of you
always and wish you well.”
We had fallen a little way behind, and I could hear Alexander-Jonita in
her high clear voice telling her father how she had found a sick sheep
on the Duchrae Craigs and carried it all the way home on her back.
“What,” cried her father, “ower the heather and the moss-hags?”
“Aye,” she answered, as if the thing were nothing, “and what is more the
poor beast is like to live and thrive.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BONNY LASS OF EARLSTOUN.
So I was settled in my parish, which was a good one as times went. The
manse had recently been put in order. It was a pleasant stone house
which sat in the bieldy hollow beneath the Kirk Knowe of Balmaghie. Snug
and sheltered it lay, an encampment of great beeches sheltering it from
the blasts, and the green-bosomed hills looking down upon it with kindly
tolerant silence.
The broad Dee Water floated silently by, murmuring a little after the
rains; mostly silent however--the water lapping against the reeds and
fretting the low cavernous banks when the wind blew hard, but on the
whole slipping past with a certain large peace and attentive
stateliness.
My brother Hob abode with me in the manse of Balmaghie to be my man. It
was great good fortune thus to keep him; and in the coming troublous
days I ken not what I should have done without his good counsel and
strongly willing right hand. My father and mother came over to see me on
the old pony from Ardarroch, my mother riding on a pillion behind my
father, and both of them ready on the sign of the least brae to get off
and walk most of the way, with the bridle over my father’s arm, while my
mother discoursed of the terrible thing it was to have two of your sons
so far from home, strangers, as it were, in a strange land.
It had not seemed so terrible to her when we went to Edinburgh, both
because she had never been to the city herself, and never intended to
go. On these occasions Hob and I had passed out of sight along the green
road to Balmaclellan on the way to Minnyhive, and there was an end of us
till the spring, save for the little presents which came by the carrier,
and the letters I had to write every fortnight.
But this parish of Balmaghie! It was a far cry and a coarse road, said
my mother, and she was sure that we both took our lives in our hands
each time that we went across its uncanny pastures.
Nevertheless, once there, she did not halt nor slacken till she had
taken in hand the furniture and plenishing of the manse, and brought
some kind of order out of the piled and tortured confusion, which had
been the best that Hob and I could attain.
“Keep us, laddies!” she cried, after the first hopeless look at our
handiwork. “I canna think on either o’ ye takin’ a wife. Yet I’m feared
that a wife ye maun get atween ye. For I canna thole to let ye gang on
this wild gate, wi’ the minister’s meal o’ meat to ready, and only
gomeril Hob to do it.”
“Then ye’ll let Anna come to bide with us for a while, if ye are so
vexed for us,” I said, to try her.
“Na, indeed, I canna do that. Anna is needed at hame where she is.
There’s your faither now--he’s grown that bairnly he thinks there can be
nae guid grass in the meadow that Anna’s foot treads not on. The hens
wouldna lay, the kye wouldna let doon their milk withoot Anna. Ardarroch
stands on the braeface because ’tis anchored doon wi’ Anna. Saw ye ever
sic a fyke made aboot a lass?”
“Quintin has!” said Hob with intention, for which I did not thank him.
“What!” cried my mother, instantly taking fire, “hae some o’ the
impudent queans o’ Balmaghie been settin’ their caps at him already?”
“There ye are, mither,” said Hob, “ye speak bravely aboot Quintin
gettin’ married. But as soon as we speak aboot ony lass--_plaff_, ye
gang up like a waft o’ tow thrown in the fire.”
“I wad like to see the besom that wad make up to my Quintin!” said my
mother, her indignation beginning to simmer down.
“Then come over to the Drum----” he was beginning.
“Hob,” said I, sternly, “that is enough.”
And when I spoke to him thus Hob was amenable enough.
“Aweel, mither!” continued Hob in an injured tone, “ye speak aboot
mairrying. Quintin there, ye say, is to get mairried. But how can he get
mairried withoot a lass that is fond o’ him? It juist canna be done, at
least no in the parish o’ Balmaghie.”
It was my intent to accompany my father and mother back to Ardarroch in
name of an escort, but, in truth, chiefly that I might accept the
invitation of the laird of Earlstoun and once more see Mary Gordon, the
lass whose image I had carried so long on my heart.
For, strange as it may appear, when she went forth from the kirk that
day she left a look behind her which went straight to my heart. It was
like a dart thrown at random which sticks and is lost, yet inly rankles
and will not let itself be forgotten.
I tried to shut the desire of seeing her again out of my heart. But do
what I could this was not to be. It would rise, coming between me and
the very paper on which I wrote my sermon, before I began to learn to
mandate. When the sun looked over the water in the morning and shone on
the globed pearls of dew in the hollow palms of the broad dockleaves on
the gracious clover blooms, and on the bending heads of the spiked
grasses, I rejoiced to think that he shone also on Earlstoun and the
sunny head of a fairer and more graceful flower.
God forgive a sinful man! At these times I ought to have been thinking
of something else. But when a man carries such an earthly passion in his
heart, all the panoply of heavenly love is impotent to restrain thoughts
that fly swift as the light from hilltop to hilltop at the sun-rising.
So I went home for a day or two to Ardarroch, where with a kind of
gratitude I stripped my coat and fell to the building of dykes about the
home park, and the mending of mangers and corn-chests with hammer and
nail, till my mother remonstrated. “Quintin, are ye not ashamed, you
with a parish of hungry souls to be knockin’ at hinges and liftin’
muckle stanes on the hillsides o’ Ardarroch?”
But Anna kept close to me all these days, understanding my mood. We had
always loved one another, she and I. I had used to say that it was Anna
who ought to have been the minister; for her eyes were full of a fair
and gracious light, the gentle outshining of a true spirit within. And
as for me, after I had been with her awhile, in that silence of
sympathy, I was a better and a stronger man--at least, one less unfit
for holy office.
Right gladly would I have taken Anna back with me to the manse of
Balmaghie, but I knew well that she would not go.
“Quintin,” she was wont to say, “our faither and mither are not so young
as they once were. My faither forgets things whiles, and the herd lads
are not to trust to. David there is for ever on the trot to this
farm-town and that other--to the clachan o’ St. John, to the New Town
of Galloway, or to Balmaclellan--’tis all one to him. He cannot bide at
home after the horses are out of the collar and the chain drops from the
swingle-tree into the furrow.”
“But some day ye will find a lad for yourself, Anna, and then you will
also be leaving Ardarroch and the auld folk behind ye.”
My sister smiled a quiet smile and her eyes were far away.
“Maybe--maybe,” she said, temperately, “but that day is not yet.”
“Has never a lad come wooin’ ye, Anna? Was there not Johnny of
Ironmacanny, Peter Tait frae the Bogue, or----”
“Aye,” said Anna, “they cam’ and they gaed away to ither lasses that
were readier to loe them. For I never saw a lad yet that I could like as
well as my great silly brother who should be thinking more concerning
his sermon-making than about putting daft thoughts into the heads of
maidens.”
After this there was silence between us for a while. We had been sitting
in the barn with both doors open. The wide arch to the front, opening
out into the quadrangle of the courtyard, let in a cool drawing sough
of air, and the smaller door at the back let it out again, and gave us
at the same time a sweet eye-blink into the orchard, where the apples
were hanging mellow and pleasant on the branches, and the leaves hardly
yet loosening themselves for their fall. The light sifted through the
leaves from the westering sun, dappling the grass and wavering upon the
hard-beaten earthen floor of the barn.
“I am going over by to Earlstoun!” I said to Anna, without looking up.
Anna and I spoke but half our talks out loud. We had been such close
comrades all our lives that we understood much without needing to clothe
our thoughts in words.
Apparently Anna did not hear what I said, so I repeated it.
“Dinna,” was all she answered.
“And wherefore should I not?” I persisted, argumentatively. “The laird
most kindly invited me, indeed laid it on me like an obligation that I
should come.”
“Ye are going over to Earlstoun to see the laird?”
“Why, yes,” I said; “that is, he has a desire to see me. He is the
greatest of all the Covenant men, and we have much in common to speak
about.”
“To-morrow he will be riding by to the market at Kirkcudbright, where he
has business. Ye can ride with him to the cross roads of Clachan Pluck
and talk all that your heart desires of Kirk and State.”
“Anna,” said I, seriously, “I tell you again I am going to the house of
Earlstoun to-morrow.”
In a moment she dropped her pretence of banter.
“Quintin, ye will only make your heart the sorer, laddie.”
“And wherefore?” said I.
“See the sparkle on the water out there,” she said, pointing to the
bosom of Loch Ken far below us, seen through the open door of the barn;
“it’s bonny. But can ye gather it in your hand, or wear it in your
bosom? Dear and delightsome is this good smell of apples and of orchard
freshness, but can ye fold these and carry them with you to the bare
manse of Balmaghie for comfort to your heart? No more can ye take the
haughtiness of the great man’s daughter, the glance of proud eyes, the
heart of one accustomed to obedience, and bring them into subjection to
a poor man’s necessities.”
“Love can do all,” said I, sententiously.
“Aye,” she said, “where love is, it can indeed work all things. But I
bid ye remember that love dwells not yet in Mary Gordon’s breast for any
man. Hers is not a heart to bend. For rank or fame she may give herself,
but not for love.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “I will go to the house of Earlstoun to-morrow
at ten o’ the clock.”
Anna rose and laid her hand on mine.
“I kenned it,” she said, “and little would I think of you, brother of
mine, if ye had ta’en my excellent advice.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
ONE WAY OF LOVE.
It was the prime of the morning when I set out for Earlstoun. My mother
called after me to mind my manners, as if I had still been but a herdboy
summoned into the presence of the great. My father asked me when I would
be back. Only Anna said nothing, but her eyes were sad. Well she knew
that I went to give myself an aching heart.
Now the Ken is a pleasant water, and the road up the Glenkens a fine
road to travel. But I went it that morning heavily--rather, indeed, like
one who goes to the burying of a friend than like a lover setting out to
see his mistress.
I turned me down through the woods to Earlstoun. There were signs of the
still recent return of the family. Here on the gate of the lodge was the
effaced escutcheon of Colonel Theophilus Oglethorpe, which Alexander
Gordon had not yet had time to replace with the ancient arms of his
family. For indeed it was to Colonel William, Sandy Gordon’s brother, he
who had led us to Edinburgh in the Convention year, that the recovery of
the family estates was due.
I had not expected any especially kind welcome. The laird of Earlstoun
had been a mighty Covenanter, and now wore his prisonments and
sufferings somewhat ostentatiously, like so many orders of merit. He
would think little of one who was a minister of the uncovenanted Kirk,
and who, though holding the freedom of that Kirk as his heart’s belief,
yet, nevertheless, demeaned him to take the pay of the State. To be
faithful and devoted in service were not enough for Alexander Gordon. To
please him one must do altogether as he had done, think entirely as he
thought.
Yet I was to be more kindly received than I anticipated.
It was in the midst of the road where the wood, turning sharp along the
waterside, a narrow path twines and twists through sparkling birches and
trembling alders. The pools slept black beneath as I looked down upon
them from some craggy pinnacle to which the grey hill lichen clung. The
salmon poised themselves motionless, save for a waving fin, below the
fish-leaps, ready for their rush upstream when the floods should come
down brown with peat water from Cairnsmore and the range of Kells.
All at once, as I stood dreaming, I heard a gay voice lilting at a song.
I wavered a moment in act to flee, my heart almost standing still to
listen.
For I knew among a thousand the voice of Mary Gordon. But I had no time
to conceal myself. A gleam of white and lilac through the bushes, a
bright reflection as of sunshine on the pool--then the whole day
brightened and she stood before me.
The song instantly stilled itself on her lips.
We stood face to face. It seemed to me that she paled a little. But
perhaps it was only that I, who desired so greatly to see any evidence
of emotion, saw part of that which I desired.
The next moment she came forward with her hand frankly outstretched.
“I bid you welcome to Earlstoun,” she said. “Alas! that my father should
this day be from home. He is gone to Kirkcudbright. But my mother and I
will show you hospitality till he return. My father hears a great word
of you, he tells us. The country tongue speaks well of your labours.”
Now it seemed to me that in thus speaking she smiled to herself, and
that put me from answering. I could do naught but be stiffly silent.
“I thank you, Mistress Mary, for your kind courtesy!” was all that I
found within me to say. For I felt that she must despise me for a
country lout of no manners and ungentle birth. So at least I thought at
the time.
We passed without speech through the scattering shadows of the birches,
and I saw that her hair (on which she wore no covering) had changed from
its ancient yellow as of ripened corn into a sunny brown. Yet as I
looked furtively, here and there the gentle crispen wavelets seemed to
be touched and flecked with threads of its ancient sheen, a thing which
filled me strangely with a desire to caress with my hand its desirable
beauty--so carnal and wicked are the thoughts of the heart of man.
But when I saw her so lightsome and dainty, so full of delight and the
admirable joy of living, a sullen sort of anger came over me that I
should chance to love one who could in no wise love me again, nor yet
render me the return which I so greatly desired.
“You have travelled all the long way from the Manse of Balmaghie?” she
said, suddenly falling back to my side where the path was wider, as if
she, too, felt the pause of constraint.
“Nay,” I answered, “I have been at Ardarroch with my father and mother
for two days. And to-morrow I must return to the people among whom I
labour.”
She stole a quick glance at me from beneath her long dark lashes. There
was infinite teasing mischief in the flashing of her eyes.
“You have an empty manse by the waterside of Dee. Ye will doubtless be
looking for some douce country lass to fill it.”
The words were kindly enough spoken, yet in the very frankness of the
speech I recognised the distance she was putting between us. But I had
not been trained in the school of quick retorts nor of the light debate
of maidens. For all that I had a will of mine own, and would not permit
that any woman born of woman should play cat’s-cradle with Quintin
MacClellan.
“Lady,” said I, “there is, indeed, an empty manse down yonder by the
Dee, and I am looking for one to fill it. But I will have none who
cannot love me for myself, and also who will not love the work to which
I have set my hand.”
She held up her hand in quick merriment.
“Do not be afraid,” she cried, gaily. “I was not thinking of making you
an offer!”
And then she laughed so mirthsome a peal that all against my will I was
forced to join her.
And this mended matters wonderfully. For after that, though I had my own
troubles with her and my heart-breaks as all shall hear, yet never was
she again the haughty maiden of the first sermon and the midsummer kirk
door.
“They tell me that once ye brought me all the way from the Bennan-top to
the tower of Lochinvar, where our Auntie Jean was biding?”
“I found no claims to your good-will on that,” said I, mindful of the
day of my first way going to Edinburgh; “but I would fain have you think
well of me now.”
“Ye are still over great a Whig. Mind that I stand for the White Rose,”
she said, stamping her foot merrily.
“’Tis a matter ye ken nothing about,” said I, roughly. “Maidens had
better let the affairs of State alone. Methinks the White Rose has
brought little good to you and yours.”
“I tell you what, Sir Minister,” she cried, mocking me, “there are two
great tubs in the pool below the falls. Do you get into one and I will
take the other. I will fly the white pennon and you the blue. Then let
us each take a staff and tilt at one another. If you upset me, ’pon
honour, I will turn Whig, but if you are ducked in the pond, you must
wear henceforth the colours of the true King. ’Tis an equal bargain. You
agree?”
But before I could reply we were near by the gate of Earlstoun, and
there came out a lady wrapped in a shawl, and this though the day was
hot and the autumnal air had never an edge upon it.
“Mother,” cried Mary Gordon, running eagerly to meet her. The lady in
the plaid seemed not to hear, but turned aside by the path which led
along the water to the north.
The girl ran after her and caught her mother by the arm.
“Here is Mr. MacClellan, the minister from Balmaghie, come to see my
father,” said she. “Bide, mother, and make him welcome.”
The lady stopped stiffly till I had come immediately in front of her.
“You are a minister of the Established and Uncovenanted Kirk?” she
asked me, eyeing me sternly enough.
I told her that I had been ordained a week before.
“Then you have indeed broken your faith with the Persecuted Remnant, as
they tell me?” she went on, keeping her eyes blankly upon my face.
“Nay,” said I; “I have the old ways still at heart and will stand till
death by the faith delivered to the martyrs.”
“What do ye, then, clad in the rags of the State?”
Whereat I told the Lady of Earlstoun how that I was with all my heart
resolved to fight the Kirk’s battle for her ancient liberties and for
the power to rule within her own borders. But that if those in authority
gave us not the hearing and liberty we desired, I, for one, would shake
off the dust of the unworthy Kirk of Scotland from my feet--as, indeed,
I was well resolved to do.
But Mary Gordon broke in on my eager explanation.
“Mother, mother,” she cried, “come your ways in and entertain the guest.
Let your questionings keep till our father comes from Kirkcudbright.
Assuredly they will have a stormy fortnight of it then. Let the lad now
break bread and cheese.”
The lady sighed and clasped her hands.
“I suppose,” she said, “it must even be so; for men are carnal and their
bodies must be fed. Alas, there are but few who care for the health of
their souls! As for me, I was about to retire to the wood that I might
for the hundred three score and ninth time renew my covenanting
engagements.”
“You must break them very often, mother, that they are ever needing
mending,” said her daughter, not so unkindly as the words look when
written down, but rather carelessly, like one who has been oftentimes
over the same ground and knows the landmarks by heart.
“Mary, Mary,” answered her mother, “I fear there is no serious or
spiritual interest in you. Your father spoils and humours you. And so
you have grown up--not like that godly lad Alexander Gordon the younger,
who when he was but three years of his age had read the Bible through
nineteen times, and could rattle off the books of the Old and New
Testaments whiles I was counting ten.”
“Aye, mother,” replied the lass, “and in addition could make faces
behind your back all the time he was doing it!”
But the lady appeared not to hear her daughter. She continued to clasp
her hands convulsively before her, and to repeat over and over again the
words, “Eh, the blessed laddie--the blessed, blessed laddie!”
How long we might have stood thus in the glaring sun I know not; but,
without waiting for her mother to take the lead or to go in of her own
accord, Mary Gordon wheeled her round by the arm and led her unresisting
towards the courtyard gate. She accompanied her daughter with the same
weary unconcern and passionless preoccupation she had shown from the
first, twisting and pulling the fringes of the shawl between her
fingers, while her thin lips moved, either in covenant-making or in the
murmured praises of her favourite child.
The room to which we were brought was a large one with panels of oak
carven at the cornices into quaint and formal ornaments.
Mary went to the stairhead and cried down as to one in the kitchen:
“Thomas Allen! Thomas Allen!”
A thin, querulous voice arose from the depths: “Sic a fash! Wha’s come
stravagin’ at this time o’ day? He will be wantin’ victual dootless. I
never saw the like----”
“Thomas Allen! Haste ye fast, Thomas!”
“Comin’, mem, comin’! What’s your fret? There’s naebody in the
deid-thraws,[10] is there?”
As the last words were uttered, an old serving-man, in a blue side-coat
of thirty years before, with threadbare lace falling low at the neck and
hands in a forgotten fashion, appeared at the doorway. His bald and
shining head had still a few lyart locks clinging like white fringes
about the sides. These, however, were not allowed to grow downward in
the natural manner, but were trained as gardeners train fruit trees
against walls that look to the south. They climbed directly upward so
that the head of Thomas Allen was criss-crossed in both directions by
streaks of hair, interlaced like the fingers of one’s hands netted
together. But owing to the natural haste with which Thomas did his work,
these were never all seen in place at one time. Invariably they had
fallen to one side or the other, and being stiffened with candle grease
or other greyish unguent, they stood out at all angles like goose
quills from a scrivener’s inkpot.
During the perfunctory repast which was finally brought forward and
placed on the table by the reluctant Thomas, Mistress Mary sat directly
opposite to me with her chin resting on her fingers and her elbows on
the table. Her mother, at the upper end of the chamber, occupied herself
in looking out of the window, occasionally clasping her hands in the
urgency of her supplications or giving vent to a pitiful moan which
indicated her sense of the hopeless iniquity of mankind.
Then with more kindliness than she had ever yet shown me, Mary Gordon
asked of my people of Balmaghie, whether the call had been unanimous,
who abode with me in the manse, and many other questions, to all of
which I answered as well as I could. For the truth is, that the nearness
of so admirable a maid and the directness of her gaze wrought in me a
kind of desperation, so that it was all I could do to keep from telling
her then that I had come to the house of Earlstoun to ask her to be my
wife.
Not that I had the wildest hope of a favourable answer, but simply from
inexperience at the business of making love to a young lass I blundered
blindly on. Plain ram-stam Hob could have bested me fairly at that. For
he had not talked so long to the good-wives of the Lothians without
getting a well-hung tongue in the head of him.
I looked sideways at the Lady of Earlstoun. She was mumbling at her
devotions, or perhaps meditating other and more personal covenantings.
Mary Gordon and I were in a manner alone.
“Mistress Mary,” I said, suddenly leaning towards her, my desperation
getting the better of my natural prudence, “I know that I speak wholly
without hope. But I came to-day to tell you that I love you. I am but a
cotter’s lad, but I have loved you ever since I ferried you, a little
maid, past the muskets of the troopers.”
I looked straight enough at her now. I could see the colour rise a
little in her cheek, while a strange expression of wonder and pride,
with something that was neither, overspread her face. Up to this point I
might have been warned, but I was not to be holden now.
“Before I had no right, nor, indeed, any opportunity to tell you this.
But now, as minister of a parish, I have an income that will compare
not unfavourably with that of most of the smaller gentry of the county.”
The girl nodded, with a swift hardening of the nostril.
“It will doubtless be a fine income,” she said, with a touch of scorn.
“Did I understand you to offer me your manse and income?”
“I offer you that which neither dishonours an honest girl to hear or yet
an honest man to speak. I am offering you my best service, the faith and
devotion of a man who truly loves you.”
“I thank you, sir,” she said, lifting up her head and letting her eyes
dwell on me with some of their former haughtiness; “I am honoured
indeed. Your position, your manse, your glebe! How many acres did you
say it was? Your income, good as that of a laird. And you come offering
all these to Mary Gordon? Sir, I bid you carry your business
transactions to the county market-place. Mary Gordon is not to be bought
and sold. When she loves, she will give herself for love and love alone.
Aye, were it to a poke-laden houseless cadger by the roadside, or a
ploughman staggering between the furrows!”
And with that she rose and walked swiftly to the door. I could hear her
foot die away through the courtyard; and going blankly to the window, I
watched her slim figure glance between the clumps of trees, now in the
light, now in the shadow, and anon lost in the yellowing depths of the
forest.
Nor, though I watched all through the long hot afternoon, did she return
till she came home riding upon her father’s horse, with Sandy Gordon
himself walking bareheaded beside his daughter, as if he had been
escorting a queen on her coronation day.
CHAPTER XIX.
ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE.
(_Comment and Addition by Hob MacClellan._)
Lord! Lord! Was there ever a more bungled affair--a more humiliating
confession. Our poor Quintin--great as he was at the preaching, an
apostle indeed, none in broad Scotland to come within miles of him in
the pulpit--with a lass was simply fair useless. I must e’en tell in a
word how mine own wooing sped, that I may prove there was some airt and
spunk left among the MacClellans.
For by Quintin’s own showing the girl had no loop-hole left, being wooed
as if she had been so many sacks of corn. She was fairly tied up to
refuse so hopeless and fushionless a suitor.
But of all this there was no suspicion at the time, neither in the
parish of Balmaghie, or yet even among ourselves at Ardarroch. For
though nothing gets wind so quickly in a parish as the news that the
minister is “seekin”--that is, going from home courting, yet such was my
brother’s repute for piety “within the bounds of the Presbytery,” such
the reverence in which he was held, that the popular voice considered
him altogether trysted to no maiden, but to the ancient and honourable
Kirk of Scotland as she had been in the high days of her pride and
purity.
“Na,” they would say, “our minister will never taingle himsel’ wi’
marriage engagements while there is a battle to be fought for the Auld
Banner o’ Blue.” So whereas another might not so much as look over the
wall, my brother might have stolen all the horses before their eyes.
And I think it was this great popular repute of him which first set his
fellow-ministers against him, far more than any so-called “defections”
and differences either ecclesiastical or political.
I have seen him at a sacrament at Dalry hold the listening thousands so
that they swayed this way and that like barley shaken by the winds.
Never beheld I the like--the multitude of the folk all bending their
faces to one point--careless young lads from distant farms,
light-headed limmers of lasses, bairns that had been skipping about the
kirk-yard and playing “I spy” among the tombstones while other ministers
were preaching--all now fixed and spellbound when my brother rose to
speak, and his full bell-like voice sounded out from the preaching-tent
over their heads.
I think that if at any time he had held up his hand and called them to
follow him to battle, every man would have gone forth as unquestionably
as did Cameron’s folk on that fatal day of the Moss of Ayr.
But I who sat there, with eyes sharpened and made jealous by exceeding
love for my brother, could see clearly the looks of dark suspicion, the
sneers that dwelt on sanctimonious lips, the frowns of envy and ill-will
as Quintin stood up, and the folk poured anxiously inward towards the
preaching-tent to hear him. I noted also the yet deeper anger of those
who succeeded him, when multitudes rose and forsook the meeting because
there was to be no more of the young minister o’ Balmaghie that day.
Now though it was rather on the point of politics and of the standing of
the kirk, her right to rule herself without interference of the State,
her ancient independence and submission to Christ the only head of the
church, that Quintin was finally persecuted and called in question, yet,
as all men know in Galloway, it was really on account of the popular
acclaim, the bruit of great talents and godliness which he held among
all men, beyond any that ever came into the countryside, and of his
quietness and persistence also in holding his own and keeping a straight
unvarying course amid all threatenings and defections, which brought the
final wrath upon him and constituted the true head and front of his
offending.
Aye, and men saw that the storm was brewing over him long before it
burst.
For several of the Galloway ministers had deliberately left the folk of
the mountains for the sake of a comfortable down-sitting in bein and
sheltered parishes. Some of them even owed their learning at the Dutch
Universities to the poor purses of these covenanting societies.
And so when papers came down from the Privy Council or from the men who,
like Carstairs, posed as little gods and popes infallible, the
Presbytery men greedily signed them, swallowing titles, oaths and
obligations with shut eye and indiscriminate appetite lest unhappily
they would be obliged to consult their consciences.
Such men as constituted the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright had but one
motto--a clear and useful one indeed at such a time, “Those in power can
do no wrong!”
So three years went uneasily by, and meantime the parish of Balmaghie
had grown to know and love our Quintin. There was hardly a rascal
drover, a common villain pig-dealer who was not ready to crack a skull
at an ill word said of him even in jest. Men who in time past had
sneered at religion, and had never any good report of ministers, dull
clods with ideals tethered to the midden and the byre, waked up at sight
of him, and would travel miles to hear him preach.
And thus three happy unstirred years went by. I abode in the manse with
Quintin, and every morning when I arose at break of day to take the
cattle afield, or to set the plough in the glebe, I would see that his
window-blind was withdrawn, his candle alight if it were winter, and
that he had already set him down with his book. Or sometimes when the
summer evening darkened to dusk I would meet him wandering, his hands
clasped behind his back, and his whole soul steeped in meditation by the
whispering rushes of the waterside.
Yet what a simpleton in worldly things he was; and, mayhap, that was
what made me love him the more.
For about this time there began a stir and a bruit of the matter of
little Jean Gemmell, a soft-voiced, die-away lass that I would not have
troubled my head about for a moment. She had, truth to tell, set herself
to catch our foolish Quintin, whose heart was in good sooth fully given
to another. And how she did it, let himself tell. But I, that thought
nothing of a lass without spirit, would often warn him to beware. But he
minded me not, smiling and giving the subject the go-by in a certain
sober and serious way he had which somehow silenced me against my will.
But in between my brother’s ill-starred wooing of the bonny lass of
Earlstoun, and Jean Gemmell’s meek-eyed courtship of him, I also had
been doing somewhat on mine own account.
At the house of Drumglass there abode one who to my mind was worth all
the haughty damsels of great houses and all the sleek and kittenish
eyes-makers in broad Scotland.
When first I saw Alexander-Jonita come over the hill, riding a Galloway
sheltie barebacked, her dark hair streaming in the wind, and the pony
speeding over the heather like the black charger of Clavers on the side
of Cairn Edward, I knew that there was no hope for my heart. I had
indeed fancied myself in love before. So much was expected of a lad in
our parts. But Alexander-Jonita was a quest worth some enterprising to
obtain.
The neighbours, at least the rigidly righteous of them, were inclined to
look somewhat askance upon a lass that went so little to the Kirk, and
companioned more with the dumb things of the field than with her own
kith and kin. But Quintin would ask such whether their own vineyard was
so well kept, their own duty so faultlessly done, that they could afford
to keep a stone ready to cast at Alexander-Jonita.
I remember the first time that ever I spoke to her words beyond the
common greetings and salutations of lad and lass.
It was a clear night in early June. I had been over at Ardarroch seeing
my mother, and now having passed high up the Black Water of Dee, I was
making my way across the rugged fells and dark heathery fastnesses to
the manse of Balmaghie.
The mist was rising about the waterside. It lingered in pools and drifts
in every meadowy hollow, but the purpling hilltops were clear and bare
in the long soft June twilight.
Suddenly a gun went off, as it seemed in my very ear. I sprang a foot
into the air, for who on honourable business would discharge a musket in
that wild place at such a time.
But ere I had time to think, above me on the ridge a figure stood black
against the sky--a girl’s shape it was, slim, tall, erect. She carried
something in one hand which trailed on the heather, and a musket was
under her arm, muzzle down.
I had not yet recovered my breath when a voice came to me.
“Ah, Hob MacClellan, the ill deil tak’ your courting-jaunts this nicht!
For had ye bidden at hame I would have gotten baith o’ the red foxes
that have been killing our weakly lambs. As it is, I gat but this.”
And she held up a great dog fox by the brush before throwing the body
into a convenient moss-hole.
It was Alexander-Jonita, the lass whom our college-bred Quintin had once
called the Diana of Balmaghie. I care not what he called her. Without
question she was the finest lass in the countryside. And that I will
maintain to this day.
“Are you going home, Jonita?” cried I, for the direction in which she
was proceeding led directly away from the house of Drumglass.
“No,” she answered carelessly, “I am biding all night in the upper
‘buchts.’ The foxes have been very troublesome of late, and I am
thinning them with the gun. I have the feck of the lambs penned up
there.”
“And who is with you to help you?” I asked her in astonishment.
“Only the dogs,” she made answer, shifting the gun from one shoulder to
the other.
“But, lassie,” I cried, “ye surely do not sleep out on the hills all
your lone like this?”
“And what for no?” she answered sharply. “What sweeter bed than a truss
of heather? What safer than with two rough tykes of dogs and a good gun
at one’s elbow, with the clear airs blowing over and the sheep lying
snugly about the folds?”
“But when it rains,” I went on, still doubtfully.
“Come and see,” she laughed; “we are near the upper ‘buchts’ now!”
Great stone walls of rough hill boulders, uncut and unquarried, rose
before me. I saw a couple of rough collies sit guardian one at either
side of the little lintelled gate that led within. The warm smell of
gathered sheep, ever kindly and welcome to a hill man, saluted my
nostrils as I came near. A lamb bleated, and in the quiet I could hear
it run pattering to nose its mother.
Alexander-Jonita led me about the great “bucht” to a niche formed by a
kind of cairn built into the side of a wall of natural rock. Here a sort
of rude shelter had been made with posts driven into the crevices of the
rock and roughly covered with turves of heather round the sides of a
ten-foot enclosure. The floor was of bare dry rock, but along one side
there was arranged a couch of heather tops recently pulled, very soft
and elastic. At first I could not see all this quite clearly in the
increasing darkness, but after a little, bit by bit the plan of the
shelter dawned upon me, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.
“When it rains,” she said, going back to my question, “I set a post in
the middle for a tent pole, spread my plaid over it and fasten it down
at the sides with stones.”
“Jonita,” said I, “does your sister never come up hither with you?”
“Who--our Jean!” she cried, astonished, “faith, no! Jean takes better
with the inside of a box-bed and the warmth of the _peat-grieshoch_[11]
on the hearth! And, indeed, the lass is not over-strong. But as for me,
more than the cheeping of the house-mice, I love the chunnering of the
wild fowl in their nests and the bleat of the sheep. These are honey and
sweetness to me.”
“But, Jonita,” I went on, “surely no girl is strong enough to take
shower and wind-buffet night and day on the wild moors like this. Why,
you make me ashamed, me that am born and bred to the trade.”
“And what am I?” she asked sharply, “I am over twenty, and yet nothing
but an ignorant lass and careless of seeming otherwise. I am not even
like my sister Jean that can look and nod as if she understood
everything your brother is talking about, knowing all the while naught
of the matter. But, at least, I ken the ways of the hills. Feel that!”
She thrust her arm suddenly out to me.
I clasped it in my hands, sitting meantime on a great stone in the
angle, while she stood beside me with the dogs on either side of her. It
was a smooth, well-rounded arm, cool and delicate of skin, that she gave
into my fingers. Her loose sleeve fell back, and if I had dared to
follow my desire, I should have set my lips to it, so delightful did the
touch of it seem to me. But I refrained me, and presently underneath the
satin skin I felt the muscles rise nobly, tense yet easy, clean of curve
and spare flesh, moulded alike for strength and suppleness.
“I would not like to pull at the swingle-tree with you, my lass,” said
I, “and if it came to a Keltonhill collieshangie I would rather have you
on my side than against me.”
And I think she was more pleased at that than if I had told her she was
to be a great heiress.
As I waited there on the rough stones of the sheepfold, and looked at
the slight figure sitting frankly and easily beside me, thinking, as I
knew, no more of the things of love than if she had been a neighbour lad
of the hills, a kind of jealous anger came over me.
“Jonita,” said I, “had ye never a sweetheart?”
“A what?” cried Jonita in a tone of as much surprise as if I had asked
her if she had ever possessed an elephant.
“A lad that loved you as other maids are loved.”
“I have heard silly boys speak nonsense,” she said, “but I am no
byre-lass to be touselled in corners by every night-raker that would
come visiting at the Drumglass.”
“Jonita,” I went on, “hath none ever helped you with your sheep on the
hill, run when you wanted him, stopped when you told him, come like a
collie to your foot when he was called?”
“None, I tell you, has ever sat where you are sitting, Hob MacClellan!
And hear ye this, had I thought you a silly ‘cuif’ like the rest, it
would have been the short day of December and the long again before I
had asked you to view my bower under the rock.”
“I was only asking, Jonita,” said I; “ye ken that ye are the bonniest
lass in ten parishes, and to me it seemed a strange thing that ye
shouldna hae a lad.”
“Bah,” said she, “lads are like the pebbles in the brook. They are run
smooth with many experiences, courting here and flattering there. What
care I whether or no this one or that comes chapping at my door? There
are plenty more in the brook. Besides, are there not the hills and the
winds and the clear stars over all, better and more enduring than a
thousand sweethearts?”
“But,” said I, “the day will come, Jonita, when you may be glad of the
friend’s voice, the kindly eye, the helping hand, the arm beneath the
head----”
“I did not say that I desired to have no friends,” she said, as it
seemed in the darkness, a little shyly.
“Will you let me be your friend?” I said, impulsively, taking her hand.
“I do not know,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I will tell you in the morning.
It is over-dark to-night to see your eyes.”
“Can you not believe?” said I. “Have you ever heard that I thus offered
friendship to any other maid in all the parish?”
“You might have offered it to twenty and they taken it every one for
aught I care. But Alexander-Jonita Gemmell accepts no man’s friendship
till she has tried him as a fighter tries a sword.”
“Then try me, Jonita!” I cried, eagerly.
“I will,” said she, promptly; “rise this instant from the place where ye
sit, look not upon me, touch me not, say neither good e’en nor yet
good-day, but take the straight road and the ready to the manse of
Balmaghie.”
The words were scarce out of her mouth when with a leap so quick that
the collies had not even time to rise, I was over the dyke and striding
across the moss and whinstone-crag towards the house by the waterside,
where my brother’s light had long been burning over his books.
I did not so much as look about me till I was on the crest of the hill.
Then for a single moment I stood looking back into the clear grey bath
of night behind me, where the lass I loved was keeping her watch in the
lonely sheepfold.
Yet I was pleased with myself too. For though my dismissal had been so
swift and unexpected, I felt that I had not done by any means badly for
myself.
At least I could call Alexander-Jonita my friend. And there was never a
lad upon all the hills of heather that could do so much.
CHAPTER XX.
MUTTERINGS OF STORM.
(_The Narrative of Quintin MacClellan resumed._)
It was a day of high summer when the anger of mine enemies drew finally
to a head, and that within mine own land of Balmaghie. The Presbytery
were in the habit of meeting at a place a little way from the centre of
the parish, called Cullenoch--or, as one would say in English, “The
Woodlands.”
In twos or threes they came, riding side by side on their ponies, or
appearing singly out of some pass among the hills. So, as I say, the
Presbytery assembled at Cullenoch, and the master of it, Andrew Cameron
of Kirkcudbright, was there, with his orders from wily Carstaires, the
pope of the restored Kirk of Scotland.
To this day I can see his aspect as he rose up among the brethren with a
great roll in his hand--solemn, portentous, full of suave, easy words
and empty, sonorous utterances.
“Fathers and brethren,” he said, looking on us with a comprehending pity
for our feebleness of capacity, “there hath come that from Her Most
Noble and Christian Majesty the Queen Anna, which it behooves us to
treat with all the respect due to one who is at once the Anointed of
God, and also as the fountain of all authority, in some sense also the
Head of the Church!”
As he finished he laid upon the table a great parchment, and tapped it
impressively with his finger.
“It is, if I may be permitted the words, the message of God’s vicegerent
upon earth; whom His own finger has especially designed to rule over us.
And I am well assured that no one among the brethren of the Presbytery
will be so ill-advised as not at once to sign this declaration of our
submission and dutiful obedience to our Liege lady in all things.”
This he uttered soundingly, with much more to the same purpose, standing
up all the time, and glowering about him on the look-out for
contradiction.
Then, though I was the youngest member of the Presbytery, save one, I
felt that for the ancient liberty of the Kirk and for the sake of the
blood shed on the moors, I could not permit so great a scandal as this
to pass. I rose in my place, whilst Cameron looked steadily upon me,
endeavouring to browbeat me into silence.
Somewhat thus I spoke:
“The most learned and reverend brother brings us a paper to sign--a
paper which we have neither seen nor yet heard read. It comes (he tells
us) from the Church’s head, from God’s vicegerent. It is to be received
with hushed breath and bowed knee. ‘The Head of the Church!’ says Mr.
Cameron--ah, brethren, the men who have so lately entered into rest
through warring stress, sealed with their blood the testimony that the
Kirk of God has no head upon earth. The Kirk of Scotland is the Kirk of
Jesus Christ, the alone King and Head of the Church. The Kirk of
Scotland is more noble, high and honourable in herself than any human
government. She alone is God’s vicegerent. She alone has power within
her own borders to rule her own affairs. The Kirk has many faults, but
at least she will surely never permit herself to be ruled again by
Privy Councils and self-seeking state-craft. Is she not the Bride, the
Lamb’s wife? And for me, and for any that may adhere to me, we will sign
no test nor declaration which shall put our free necks beneath the yoke
of any temporal power, nor yet for fear of this or that Queen’s Majesty
deny the Name that is above every name.”
Whilst these words were put into my heart and spoken by my voice, I
seemed, as it were, taken possession of. A voice prompted me what I was
to speak. I heard the sound of rushing wings, and though I was but
lately a herd-lad on the hills of sheep I knew that the time had come,
which on the day of the Killing on the Bennan Top I had seen afar off.
Whilst I was speaking, Cameron stood impatiently bending the tips of his
politic fingers upon the document on the table. A dark frown had been
gathering on his brow.
“This is treason, black treason! It is blank defiance of the Queen’s
authority!” he cried; “I will not listen to such words. It is the voice
of a man who would raise the standard of rebellion, and disturb the
peace of all the parishes of our Kirk, recently and adequately settled
according to the laws of the land.”
But I had yet a word to say.
“I am neither rebel nor heretic,” said I; “I am, it is true, the
youngest and the least among you. But even I am old enough to have seen
men shot like running deer for the liberties of the Kirk of God. I have
heard the whistle of the deadly bullet flying at the command of kings
and queens called in their day Heads of the Church. I have seen the
martyr fall, and his blood redden the ooze of the moss hag. We have
heard much of tests and papers to sign, of allegiances to other divine
vicegerents upon earth, even to such Lord’s anointeds as James and
Charles, the father and the uncle of her in whose name the Privy Council
of Scotland now demands this most abject submission. But for myself I
will sign no such undertaking, give countenance to no bond which might
the second time deliver us who have fought for our ancient liberties
with weapons in our hands, bound hand and foot to the powers
temporal--yea, that we might wrest the powers of the spiritual arm from
the Son of God and deliver them to the daughter of James Stuart.”
“And who are you,” cried Cameron, “thus to teach and instruct men who
were ministers when you were but a bairn, to reprove those who have
wrought in sun and shine, and in gloom and darkness alike, to make the
Kirk of Scotland what she is this day?”
There was a noise of some approval among the Presbytery. I knew,
however, that I had small sympathy among those present, men fearful of
losing their pleasant livings and fat stipends. Nevertheless, very
humbly I made answer. “It is not Quintin MacClellan, but the word he
speaks that cannot be gainsaid. There is also an old saying that out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings God expects the perfection of praise.”
“Fool!” cried Cameron, “ye would endanger and cast down the fair fabric
of this Kirk of Scotland, ignorantly pulling down what wiser and better
men have laboriously built up. Ye are but a child throwing stones at
windows and ready to run when the glass splinters. You stand alone among
us, sir--alone in Scotland!”
“I stand no more alone,” I replied, “than your brother Richard Cameron
did at Ayrsmoss when he rode into the broil and tumult of battle for the
honour of the Covenant. The Banner of Christ’s cause that was trampled
in the peat-brew of the moss of Ayr, is a worthier standard than the
rag of submission which lies upon the table under your hand.”
Cameron was silent. He liked not the memory of his great brother. I went
on, for the man’s pliable pitifulness angered me.
“Think you that Richard Cameron would have signed words like these? Aye,
I think he would. But it would have been with his sword, cutting the
vile bond into fragments, giving them to the winds, and strewing them
upon the waters.”
Then the Presbytery would hear no more, but by instant vote and voice
they put me forth. Yet ere I went from their midst, I cried, “If there
be any that think more of the freedom of God’s Kirk in this land of
Scotland than of their stipends and glebes, let them come forth with
me.”
And two there were who rose and followed--Reid of Carsphairn, a man
zealous and far-seeing, and one other, a young minister lately come
within the bounds.
So the door was shut upon us, and they that hated us were left to
concert their measures without let or hindrance.
And for a moment we three clasped hands without the door.
“Let us stand by each other and the word of truth,” I said, “and the
truth shall never make us ashamed.”
CHAPTER XXI.
THE EYES OF A MAID.
Now throughout all the parish, aye, and throughout all Galloway there
arose infinite noise and bruit of this thing. Specially was there the
buzz of anger in the hill parishes, where the men who had lain in the
moss-hags and fought for the ancient liberties dwelt thickest--in
Carsphairn, in the Glenkens, and in mine own Balmaghie.
As I went over the hill from farm-town to farm-town the herds would cry
down “Well done!” from among the sheep. Old men who had seen the high
days of the Kirk before the fatal home-coming of King Charles; rough,
buirdly men who had done their share of hiding and fighting in the
troubles; young men who, like myself, had heard in their cradles but the
murmur of the fray, came to shake my hand and bid me strengthen my knees
and stick to my testimony.
“For,” said a venerable elder, one Anthony Lennox of the Duchrae, who
had been a famous man in the sufferings, “this is the very truth for
which we bled. We asked for the kernel, and lo! they have given us the
dry and barren husk. We fought for ‘Christ’s Crown and Covenant,’ and
they have sent us a banner with the device--‘Queen Anne’s Crown and the
Test!’”
But I think that the women were even more warmly on our side, for the
canker of persecution had eaten deeper into their hearts, that had only
waited and mourned while their men folk were out suffering and fighting.
“Be ye none feared, laddie,” said Millicent Hannay, an ancient dame who
had stood the thumbikins thrice in the gaol of Kirkcudbright; “the most
part of the ministers may stick like burrs to their manses and glebes,
their tiends and tithings. But if so be, ye are thrust forth into the
wilderness, ye will find manna there--aye, and water from the rock and a
pillar of fire going before to lead you out again.”
But nowhere was I more warmly welcomed than in the good house of
Drumglass. The herd lads and ploughmen were gathered at the house-end
when I came up the loaning, and even as I passed one of them came
forward with his blue bonnet in his hand.
“Fear not, sir,” he said, with a kind of bold, self-respecting
diffidence common among our Galloway hinds. “I speak for all our lads
with hearts and hands. We will fight for you. Keep the word of your
testimony, and we will sustain you and stand behind you. If we will
unfurl the blue banner again, we will plant right deep the staff.”
And from the little group of stalwart men at the barn-end there came a
low murmur of corroboration, “We will uphold you!”
Strange as it is to-day to think on these things when most men are so
lukewarm for principle. But in those days the embers of the fires of
persecution were yet warm and glowing, and men knew not when they might
again be blown up and fresh fuel added thereto.
“Come awa’,” cried Nathan Gemmell heartily, from where he sat on the
outer bench of moss-oak by the door-cheek, worn smooth by generations of
sitters, “come awa’, minister, and tell us the news. Faith, it makes me
young-like again to hear there is still a man that thinks on the
Covenants and the blue banner wi’ the denty white cross. And though
they forget the auld flag noo, I hae seen it gang stacherin’ doon the
streets o’ the toon o’ Edinburg wi’ a’ the folk cryin’ ‘Up wi’ the Kirk
an’ doon wi’ the King!’ till there wasna a sodjer-body dare show his
face, nor a King’s man to be found between the Castle and the Holyrood
House. _Hech-how-aye!_ auld Drumglass has seen that.
“And eke he saw the lads that were pitten doon on the green Pentland
slopes in the saxty-sax start frae the Clachan o’ Saint John wi’ hopes
that were high, sharpening their bits o’ swords and scythes to withstand
the guns o’ Dalzyell. And but few o’ them ever wan back. But what o’
that? It’s a brave thrang there wad be about heaven’s gates that
day--the souls o’ the righteous thranging and pressing to win through,
the rejoicing of a multitude that had washed their robes and made them
white in the blood o’ the Lamb.
“Ow, aye, ye wonder at me, that am a carnal man, speakin’ that gate. But
it is juist because I am a man wha’ has been a sore sinner, that I wear
thae things sae near my heart. My time is at hand. Soon, soon will auld
Drumglass, wastrel loon that he is, be thrown oot like a useless root
ower the wa’ and carried feet foremost from out his chamber door. But
if it’s the Lord’s will” (he rose to his feet and shook his oaken staff)
“if it’s the Lord’s will, auld Drumglass wad like to draw the blade frae
the scabbard yince mair, and find the wecht o’ the steel in his hand
while yet his auld numb fingers can meet aboot the basket hilt.
“Oh, I ken, I ken; ye think the weapons of our warfare are not to be
swords and staves, minister--truth will fight for us, ye say.
“I daresay ye are right. But gin the hoodie-craws o’ the Presbytery come
wi’ swords and staves to put ye forth from your parish and your kindly
down-sitting, ye will be none the worse of the parcel o’ braw lads ye
saw at the barn-end, every man o’ them wi’ a basket-hilted blade in his
richt hand and a willing Galloway heart thump-thumpin’ high wi’ itching
desire to be at the red coaties o’ the malignants.”
Then we went in, and there by the fireside, looking very wistfully out
of her meek eyes at me, stood the young lass, Jean Gemmell. She came
forward holding out her hand, saying no word, but the tears still wet on
her lashes--why, I know not. And she listened as her father asked of the
doings at the Presbytery, and looked eager and anxious while I was
answering. Presently Auld Drumglass went forth on some errand about the
work of the ploughlads, and the lass and I were left alone together in
the wide kitchen.
“And they will indeed put you forth out of house and home?” she asked,
looking at me with sweet, reluctant eyes, the eyes of a mourning dove.
She stood by the angle of the hearth where the broad ingle-seat begins.
I sat on her father’s chair where he had placed me and looked over at
her. A comely lass she was, with her pale cheeks and a blush on them
that went and came responsive to the beating of her heart.
I had not answered, being busy with looking at her and thinking how I
wished Mistress Mary Gordon had been as gentle and biddable as this
lass. So she asked again, “They will not put you forth from your kirk
and parish, will they?”
“Nay, that I know not,” I said, smiling; “doubtless they will try.”
“Oh, I could not listen to another minister after----”
She stopped and sighed.
It was in my mind to rebuke her, and to bid her remember that the Word
of God is not confined to any one vessel of clay, but just then she put
her hand to her side, and went withal so pale that I could not find it
in my heart to speak harshly to the young lass.
Then I told her, being stirred within me by her emotion, of the two who
had stood by me in the Presbytery, and how little hope I had that they
would manfully see it out to the end.
“’Tis a fight that I must fight alone,” I said.
For I knew well that it would come to that, and that so soon as the
affair went past mere empty words those two who had stood at my shoulder
would fall behind or be content to bide snugly at home.
“_Not alone!_” said the young lass, quickly, and moved a step towards me
with her hand held out. Then, with a deep and burning blush, her maiden
modesty checked her, and she stood red like a July rose in the clear
morning.
She swayed as if she would have fallen, and, leaping up quickly, I
caught her in my arms ere she had time to fall.
Her eyes were closed. The blood had ebbed from her face and left her
pale to the very lips. I stood with her light weight in my arms,
thrilling strangely, for, God be my judge, never woman had lain there
before.
Presently she gave a long snatching breath and opened her eyes. I saw
the tears gather in them as her head lay still and lax in the hollow of
my arm. The drops did not fall, but rather gathered slowly like wells
that are fed from beneath.
“You will not go away?” she said, and at last lifted her lashes, with a
little pearl shining wet on each, like a swallow that has dipped her
wings in a pool.
Then, because I could not help it, I did that which I had never done to
any woman born of woman: I stooped and kissed the wet sweet eyes. And
then, ere I knew it, with a little cry of frightened joy, the girl’s
arms were about me. She lifted up her face, and kissed me again and
again and yet again.
* * * * *
When I came to myself I was conscious of another presence in the
kitchen. I looked up quickly, and there before me, standing with an ash
switch swaying in her hand, was Alexander-Jonita. I had not supposed
that she could have looked so stern.
“Well?” she said, as if waiting for my explanation.
“I love your sister,” I replied; for indeed, though I had not thought
thus of the matter before, there seemed nothing else to be said.
But the face of Alexander-Jonita did not relax. She stood gazing at her
sister, whose head rested quiet and content on my shoulder.
“Jean,” she said at last, “knowing that which you know, why have you
done this?”
The girl lifted her head, and looked at Jonita with a kind of glad
defiance.
“Sister,” she said, “you do not understand love. How should you know
what one would do for love?”
“You love my sister Jean?” Jonita began again, turning to me with a
sharpness in her words like the pricking of a needle’s point.
“Yes!” I answered, but perhaps a little uncertainly.
“Did you know as much when you came into the kitchen?”
“No,” said I.
For indeed I knew not what to answer, never having been thus tangled up
with women’s affairs in my life before.
“I thought not,” said Jonita, curtly. Then to Jean, “How did this come
about?” she said.
Jean lifted her head, her face being lily-pale and her body swaying a
little to me.
“I thought he would go away and that I should never see him again!” she
replied, a little pitifully, with the quavering thrill of unshed tears
in her voice.
“And you did this knowing--what you know!” said Jonita again, sternly.
“I saw him first,” said Jean, a little obstinately, looking down the
while.
Her sister flushed crimson.
“Oh, lassie,” she cried, “ye will drive me mad with your whims and
foolish speeches; what matters who saw him first? Ye ken well that ye
are not fit to be----”
“She is fit to be my wife,” I said, for I thought that this had gone far
enough; “she is fit to be my wife, and my wife she shall surely be if
she will have me!”
With a little joyful cry Jean Gemmell’s arms went about my neck, and her
wet face was hidden in my breast. It lay there quiet a moment; then she
lifted it and looked with a proud, still defiance at her sister.
Alexander-Jonita lifted up her hands in hopeless protest.
She seemed about to say more, but all suddenly she changed her mind.
“So be it,” she said. “After all, ’tis none of my business!”
And with that she turned and went out through the door of the kitchen.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ANGER OF ALEXANDER-JONITA.
(_Comment and Addition by Hob MacClellan._)
I met my lass Jonita that night by the sheep-fold on the hill. It was
not yet sundown, but the spaces of the heavens had slowly grown large
and vague. The wind also had gradually died away to a breathing
stillness. The scent of the bog-myrtle was in our nostrils, as if the
plant itself leaned against our faces.
I had been waiting a long time ere I heard her come, lissomly springing
from tuft to tuft of grass and whistling that bonny dance tune, “The
Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes.” But even before I looked up I caught the
trouble in her tones. She whistled more shrilly than usual, and the
liquid fluting of her notes, mellow mostly like those of the blackbird,
had now an angry ring.
“What is the matter, Alexander-Jonita?” I cried, e’er I had so much as
set eyes on her.
The whistling ceased at my question. She came near, and leaning her
elbows on the dyke, she regarded me sternly.
“Then you know something about it?” she said, looking at me between the
eyes, her own narrowed till they glinted wintry and keen as the
gimlet-tool wherewith the joiner bores his holes.
“Has your father married the dairymaid, or Meg the pony cast a shoe?” I
asked of her, with a lightness I did not feel.
“Tut,” she cried, “’tis the matter of your brother, as well you know.”
“What of my brother?”
“Why, our silly Jean has made eyes at him, and let the salt water fall
on the breast of his black minister’s coat. And now the calf declares
that he loves her!”
I stood up in sharp surprise.
“He no more loves her than--than----”
“Than you love me,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I know--drive on!”
I did not notice her evil-conditioned jibe.
“Why, Jonita, he has all his life been in love with the Lady Mary--the
Bull of Earlstoun’s daughter.”
Alexander-Jonita nodded pensively.
“Even so I thought,” she said, “but, as I guess, Mary Gordon has sent
him about his business, and so he has been taken with our poor Jean’s
puling pussydom. God forgive me that I should say so much of a dying
woman.”
“A dying woman!” cried I, “there is nothing the matter with Jean.”
Alexander-Jonita shook her head.
“Jean is not long for this world,” she said, “I bid you remember. Saw
you ever the red leap through the white like yon, save when the life
burns fast to the ashes and the pulse beats ever more light and weak?”
“And how long hath this thing been afoot?”
“Since the day of your brother’s first preaching, when to save her shoon
Jean must needs go barefoot and wash her feet in the burn that slips
down by the kirkyard wall.”
“That was the day Quintin first spoke with her, when she gave him her
nooning piece of bread to stay his hunger.”
“Aye,” said Alexander-Jonita; “better had he gone hungry all
sermon-time than eaten of our Jean’s piece.”
“For shame, Alexander-Jonita!” I cried, “and a double shame to speak
thus of a lassie that is, by your own tale, dying on her feet--and your
sister forbye. I believe that ye are but jealous!”
She flamed up in sudden anger. If she had had a knife or a pistol in her
hand, I believe she would have killed me.
“Get out of our ewe-buchts before I twist your impudent neck, Hob
MacClellan!” she cried. “I care not a docken for any man alive--least of
all for you and your brother. Yet I thought, from what I heard of his
doings at the Presbytery, that he was more of a man than any of you. But
now I see that he is feckless and feeble like the rest.”
“Ah, Jonita, you snooded folk tame us all. From David the King to Hob
MacClellan there is no man so wise but a woman may tie him in knots
about her little finger.”
“I thought better of your brother!” she said more mildly, her anger
dying away as suddenly as it had risen, and I think she sighed.
“But not better of me!” I said.
She looked at me with contempt, but yet a contempt mightily pleasant.
“Good e’en to ye, Hob,” she cried. “I was not so far left to myself as
to think about you at all!”
And with that she took her light plaid over her arm with a saucyish
swirl, and whistling on her dogs, she swung down the hill, carrying, if
you please, her shoulders squared and her head in the air like a young
conceited birkie going to see his sweetheart.
And then, when the thing became public, what a din there was in the
parish of Balmaghie! Only those who know the position of a young
minister and the interest in his doings can imagine. It was somewhat
thus that the good wives wagged their tongues.
“To marry Jean Gemmell! Aye, juist poor Jean, the shilpit, pewlin’ brat
that never did a hand’s turn in her life, indoor or oot! Fegs, a bonny
wife she will mak’ to him. Apothecaries’ drugs and red claret wine she
maun hae to leeve on. A bonnie penny it will cost him, gin ever she wins
to the threshold o’ his manse!
“But she’s no there yet, kimmer! Na--certes no! I mind o’ her mither
weel. Jean was her name, too, juist sich anither ‘_cloyt_’--a feckless,
white-faced bury-me-decent, withoot as muckle spirit as wad gar her turn
a sow oot o’ the kail-yard. And a’ the kin o’ her were like her--no yin
to better anither. There was her uncle Jacob Ahanny a’ the Risk; he
keepit in wi’ the Government in the auld Persecution, and when Clavers
cam’ to the door and asked him what religion he was o’, he said that the
estate had changed hands lately, and that he hadna had time to speer at
the new laird. And at that Clavers laughed and laughed, and it wasna
often that Jockie Graham did the like. Fegs no, kimmers! But he clappit
Jacob on the shooder. ‘Puir craitur,’ quo’ he; ‘ye are no the stuff that
rebels are made o’. Na, there’s nocht o’ Richie Cameron aboot you.’”
“Aye, faith, do ye tell me, and Jean is to mairry the minister, and him
sae bauld and croose before the Presbytery. What deil’s cantrip can hae
ta’en him?”
“Hoot, Mary McKeand, I wonder to hear ye. Do ye no ken that the baulder
and greater a man the easier a woman can get round him?”
“Aweel, even sae I hae heard. I wish oor Jock was a great man, then; I
could maybe, keep him awa’ frae the change-hoose in the clachan. But
the minister, he had far better hae ta’en yon wild sister----”
“Her? I’se warrant she wadna look at him. She doesna even gang to
Balmaghie Kirk to hear him preach.”
“Mary McKeand, hae ye come to your age withoot kennin, that the woman
that wad refuse the minister o’ a parish when he speers her, hasna been
born?”
“Aweel, maybe no! But kimmer harken to me, there’s mony an egg laid in
the nest that never leeved to craw in the morn. Him and her are no
married yet. Hoot na, woman!”
* * * * *
And so without further eavesdropping I took my way out of the clachan of
Pluckamin, and left the good wives to arrange my brother’s future. I had
not yet spoken to him on the subject, but I resolved to do so that very
night.
It was already well upon the grey selvage of the dark when I strode up
the manse-loaning, intent to have the matter out with my brother
forthwith. It was not often that I took it on me to question him; for
after all I was but a landward lout by comparison with him. I understood
little of the high aims and purposes that inspired him, being at best
but a plain country lad with my wits a little sharpened by the
_giff-gaff_ of the pedlar’s trade. But when it came to the push I think
that Quintin had some respect for my opinion--all the more that I so
seldom troubled him with it.
I found my brother in the little gable-room where he studied, with the
window open that he might hear the sough of the soft-flowing river
beneath, and perhaps also that the drowsy hum of the bees and the
sweet-sour smell of the hives might drift in to him upon the balmy air
of night.
The minister had a great black-lettered book propped up before him,
which from its upright thick and thin letters (like pea-sticks dibbled
in the ground) I knew to be Hebrew. But I do not think he read in it,
nor gathered much lear for his Sabbath’s sermon.
He looked up as I came in.
“Quintin,” said I, directly, lest by waiting I should lose courage, “are
you to marry Jean Gemmell?”
He kept his eyes straight upon me, as indeed he did ever with whomsoever
he spake.
“Aye, Hob,” he said, quietly; “have ye any word to say against that?”
“I do not know that I have,” I answered, “but what will Mary Gordon
say?”
I could see him wince like one that is touched on an unhealed wound.
But he recovered himself at once, and said calmly, “She will say
nothing, feel nothing, care nothing.”
“I am none so sure of that,” said I, looking as straightly at him as
ever he did at me.
He started up, one hand on the table, his long hair thrown back with a
certain jerk he had when he was touched, which made him look like a
roused lion that stands at bay. “By what right do ye speak thus, Hob
MacClellan?”
“By the right of that which I know,” said I; “but a man who will pull up
the seed which he has just planted, and cast it away because he finds
not ripened ears, deserves to starve all his life on sprouted and musty
corn.”
“Riddle me no riddles,” said my brother, knocking on the table with his
palm till the great Hebrew book slid from its prop and fell heavily to
the floor; “this is too terrible a venture. Speak plainly and tell me
all you mean.”
“Well,” said I, “the matter is not all mine to tell. But you are well
aware that Hob MacClellan can hold his peace, and is no gossip-monger.
I tell you that when you went from Earlstoun the last time the Lady Mary
went to the battlement tower to watch you go, and came down with her
kerchief wringing with her tears.”
“It is a thing impossible, mad, incredible!” said he, putting his elbow
on the table and his hand to his eyes as if he had been looking into the
glare of an overpowering sun. Yet there was hardly enough light in the
little room for us to see one another by. After a long silence Quintin
turned to me and said, “Tell me how ye came to ken this.”
“That,” said I, bluntly, “is not a matter that can concern you. But know
it I do, or I should not have troubled you with the matter.”
At this he gave a wild kind of throat cry that I never heard before. It
was the driven, throttled cry of a man’s agony, once heard, never
forgotten. Would that Mary Gordon had hearkened to it! It is the one
thing no woman can stand. It either melts or terrifies her. But with
another man it is different.
“Ah, you _have_ troubled me--you have troubled me sore!” he cried. And
with no more than that he left me abruptly and went out into the night.
I looked through the window and saw him marching up and down by the
kirk, on a strip of greensward for which he had ever a liking. It was
pitiful to watch him. He walked fast like one that would have run away
from melancholy thoughts, turning ever when he came opposite the low
tomb-stone of the two martyr Hallidays. He was bareheaded, and I feared
the chilling night dews. So I lifted down his minister’s hat from the
deer’s horn by the hallan door and took it out to him.
At first he did not see me, being enwrapped in his own meditations, and
it was only when a couple of blackbirds flew scolding out of the lilac
bushes that he heard my foot and turned.
“Man Hob,” he said, speaking just the plain country speech he used to do
at Ardarroch, before ever he went to the college of Edinburgh, “it’s an
awfu’ thing that a man should care mair for the guid word of a lass than
about the grace o’ God and the Covenanted Kirk of Scotland!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
AT BAY.
(_The Narrative of Quintin MacClellan is resumed._)
Dark was the day, darker the night. The matters which had sundered me
from the Presbytery mended not--nor, indeed, was it possible to mend
them, seeing that they and I served different gods, followed other
purposes.
It was bleak December when the brethren of the Presbytery arrived to
make an end of me and my work in the parish of Balmaghie. They came with
their minds made up. They alone were my accusers. They were also my sole
judges. As for me, I was as set and determined as they were. I refused
their jurisdiction. I utterly contemned their authority. To me they were
but mites in the cheese, pottle-bellied batteners on the heritage and
patrimony of the Kirk of Scotland. Siller and acres spelled all their
desires, chalders and tiends contained all the rounded tale of their
ambitions.
But for all that, now that I am older, I can scarce blame them--at
least, not so sorely as once I did.
For to them I was the youngest of them all, the least in years and
learning, the smallest in influence--save, perhaps, among the Remnant
who still thought about the things of the Kirk and her spiritual
independence.
I was to the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright but the troubler of Israel, the
disturber of a quiet Zion. Save for poor Quintin MacClellan, the
watchman might have gone from tower to tower along ramparts covered and
defended, and his challenge of “What of the night?” have received its
fitting answer from this point and that about the city, “The morning
cometh! All is well!”
Yet because of the Lad in the Brown Coat with his dead face sunk in the
Bennan flowe I could not consent to putting the Kirk of Scotland, once
free and independent, under the control, real or nominal, the authority,
overt or latent, of any monarch in Christendom.
More than to my fathers, more than to my elders it seemed to me that the
old ways were the true ways, and that kings and governments had never
meddled with religion save to lay waste the vineyard and mar the bridal
portion of the Kirk of God.
But all men know the cause of the struggle and what were the issues. I
will choose to tell rather the tale of a man’s shame and sorrow--his,
indeed, who had taken the Banner of the Covenant into unworthy hands,
yet time after time had let it fall in the dust. Nevertheless, at the
hinder end, I lived to see it set again in a strong base of unhewn
stone, fixed as the foundations of the earth. Nor shall the golden
scroll of it ever be defaced nor the covenant of the King of kings be
broken.
* * * * *
So on the day of trial, from all the parishes of the Presbytery east and
west, gathered the men who had constituted themselves my judges--nay,
the men who were already my condemnators. For Cameron had my sentence in
his pocket before ever one of the brethren set a foot over his doorstep,
or threw a leg across the back of his ambling sheltie.
I had judged it best to be quiet and staid in demeanour, and had gone
about to quiet and persuade the folk of Balmaghie, who were eager to
hold back the hunters from their prey.
The Presbytery had sent to bid me preach before them, even as the
soldiers of the guard had bidden Christ prophesy unto them, that they
might have occasion to smite Him the oftener on the mouth. So when I
came before them they posed me with interrogatories, threatened me with
penalties, and finally set me to conduct service before them, that they
might either condemn me if I refused, alleging contumacy; or, on the
other hand, if I did as they bade me, they would easily find occasion to
condemn the words of my mouth.
Then I saw that though there was no way to escape their malice, yet
there was a way to serve the cause.
So I went up into the pulpit after the folk had been assembled, and
addressed myself to them just as if it had been an ordinary Sabbath day
and the company met only for the worship of God.
For I minded the word which my good Regent, Dr. Campbell, had spoken to
me in Edinburgh ere I was licensed to preach, or thought that one day I
myself should be the carcase about which the ravens should gather.
“When ye preach,” said Professor Campbell, “be sure that ye heed not the
five wise men!”
So I minded that word, and seeing the folk gathered together, I cast my
heavy burden from me, and called them earnestly to the worship of Him
who is above all courts and assemblies.
Then in came Cameron, the leader of their faction, jowled with
determination and rosy-gilled with good cheer and the claret wine of St.
Mary’s Isle. With him was Boyd, also a renegade from the Society Hill
Folk. For with their scanty funds the men of the moss-hags had sent
these two as students to Holland to gather lear that they might
thereafter be their ministers. But now, when they had gotten them
comfortable down-sittings in plenteous parishes, they turned with the
bitter zest of the turncoat to the hunting of one who adhered to their
own ancient way.
But though I could have reproached them with this and with much else, I
judged that because they were met in the Kirk of God no tumult should be
made, at least till they had shown the length and breadth and depth of
their malice.
Then, when at the last I stood single and alone at their bar and was
ready to answer their questions, they could bring nothing against me,
save that I had refused their jurisdiction. Their suborned witnesses
failed them. For there was none in all the parish who wished me ill, and
certainly none that dared testify a word in the midst of the angry
people that day in the Kirk of Balmaghie.
“Have ye naught to allege against my life and conduct?” I asked of them
at last. “Ye have set false witnesses to follow me from place to place
and wrest my words. Ye have spied here and there in the houses of my
people. Ye have tried to entrap my elders. Is there no least thing that
ye can allege? For three years I have come and gone in and out among
this folk of Balmaghie. I have companioned with you. I have sat in your
meetings. I have not been silent. Ye have watched me with the eyes of
the greedy gled. Ye have harkened and waited and sharpened claws for me
as a cat does at a mouse-hole----”
“Will ye submit and sign the submission here and now?” interrupted
Cameron, who liked not the threatening murmur of approbation which began
to run like wild-fire among the folk.
“There is One,” answered I, the words being as it had been given to me,
“whose praise is perfected out of the mouths of babes. It is true that
among you I am like a young child without power or wisdom. Ye are great
and learned, old in years and full of reverence. But this one thing a
young man can do. He can stand by the truth ye have deserted, and lift
again the banner staff ye have cast in the mire. As great Rutherford
hath said, ‘Christ may ride upon a windle straw and not stumble.’”
Then I turned about to the people, when the Presbytery would have
restrained me from further speech.
“Ye folk of this parish,” I said, “what think ye of this matter? Shall
your minister be thrust out from among you? Shall he bow the head and
bend the knee? Must he let principle and truth go by the board and
whistle down the wind? I think ye know him better. Aye, truly, this
parish and people would have a bonny bird of him, a brave minister,
indeed--if he submitted before being cleared of that whereof, all
unjustly, his enemies have accused him, setting him up in the presence
of his people like a felon in the dock of judgment!”
Then indeed there was confusion among the black-coated ravens who had
come to gloat over the feast. I had insulted (so they cried) their
honourable and reverend court. I had refused a too lenient and
condescending accommodation. Thus they prated, as if long words would
balance the beam of an unjust cause.
But at that moment there came a stir among the folk. I saw the elders of
the congregation appear at the door of the kirk. And as they marched up
the aisle, behind them thronged all the men of the parish, in still,
stern, and compact mass.
Then a ruling elder read the protest of the common people. It was simple
and clear. The parish was wholly with me, and not with mine enemies.
Almost every man within the bounds had signed the paper whereon was
written the people’s protest. The Presbytery might depose the minister,
but the people would uphold him. Every man in Balmaghie knew well that
their pastor suffered because he had steadfastly preferred truth to
compromise, honour to pelf, conscience to stipend. That the Presbytery
themselves had sworn to uphold that which now they condemned.
“Are ye who present this paper ordained elders of the Kirk?” asked
Cameron of the leaders, glowering angrily at them.
“We are,” responded Nathan Gemmell, stoutly.
“And ye dare to bring a railing accusation against the ministers of your
Presbytery?”
“We are free men--ruling elders every one. You, on your part, are but
teaching elders, and, save for the usurpation of the State, ye are
noways in authority over us,” was the answer.
“And who are they for whom ye profess to speak?” continued Cameron,
looking frowningly upon Drumglass and his fellows.
“They are here to speak for themselves!” cried Nathan Gemmell, and as he
waved his hand, the kirk was filled from end to end with stalwart men,
who stood up rank behind rank, all very grave and quiet.
I saw the ministers cower together. This was not at all what they had
bargained for.
“We are plainly to be deforced and overawed,” said Cameron. “Let us
disperse to-day and meet to-morrow in the Kirk of Crossmichael over the
water.”
And lo! it was done--even as their leader said. They summoned me to
stand at their bar on the morrow in the Kirk of Crossmichael, that I
might receive my doom.
But quietly, as before, I told them that I refused their court, that I
would in no wise submit to their sentence, but would abide among my
people both to-morrow and all the to-morrows, to do the duty which had
been laid upon me, in spite of anathema, deposition, excommunication.
“For,” said I, “I have a warrant that is higher than yours. So far as I
may, in a man’s weakness and sin, I will be faithful to that mandate, to
my conscience, and to my God.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
MARY GORDON’S LAST WORD.
The next day was the 30th of December, a day of bitter frost, so that
the Dee froze over, and the way which had been broken for the boats to
ferry the Presbytery across from the dangerous bounds of Balmaghie was
again filled with floating ice.
The Kirk of Crossmichael sits, like that of Balmaghie, on a little green
hill above Dee Water. One House of Prayer fronts the other, and the
white kirkyard stones greet each other across the river, telling the one
story of earth to earth. And every Sabbath day across the sluggish
stream two songs of praise go up to heaven in united aspiration towards
one Eternal father.
But this 30th of December there was for Quintin MacClellan small
community of lofty fellowship across the water in Crossmichael. It was
to me of all days the day bitterest and blackest. I have indeed good
cause to remember it.
Right well was I advised that, so far as the ministers of the Presbytery
were concerned, there was no hope of any outcome favourable to me. They
had only been scared from their prey for a moment by the stern
threatening of the folk of the parish. The People’s Paper in particular
had frightened them like a sentence of death. But now they were free to
make an end.
My brother Hob was keen to head a band pledged to keep them out of
Crossmichael Kirk also. But I forbade him to cross the water.
“Keep your own kirk and your own parish bounds if ye like, but meddle
not with those of your neighbours!” I told him. “Besides ye would only
drive them to another place, where yet more bitterly they would finish
their appointed work!”
But though the former stress of trial was over, this day of quiet was
far harder to bear than the day before. For, then, with the excitation
of battle, the plaudits of the people, the quick necessities of verbal
defence against many adversaries, my spirits were kept up. But now there
was none in the manse beside myself, and I took to wandering up and
down the little sequestered kirk-loaning, thinking how that by this time
the Presbytery was met to speed my doom, and that the pleasant place
which knew me now would soon know me no more for ever.
As I lingered at the road-end, thinking how much I would have given for
a heartening word, and vaguely resolving to betake me over to the house
of Drumglass, where at the least I was sure of companionship and
consolation, I chanced to cast my eyes to the southward, and there along
the light grey riverside track I beheld a lady riding.
As she came nearer, I saw that it was none other than Mistress Mary
Gordon. I thought I had never seen her look winsomer--a rounded lissom
form, a perfect seat, a dainty and well-ordered carriage.
I stood still where I was and waited for her to pass me. I had my hat in
my hand, and in my heart I counted on nothing but that she should ride
by me as though she saw me not.
But on the contrary, she reined her horse and sat waiting for me to
speak to her.
So I went to her bridle-rein and looked up at the face, and lo! it was
kindlier than ever I had seen it before, with a sort of loving pity on
it which I found it very hard to bear.
“Will you let me walk by your side a little way?” I asked of her. For as
we had parted without a farewell, so on this bitterest day we met again
without greeting.
“My Lady Mary,” I said at last, “I have gone through much since I went
out from your house at Earlstoun. I have yet much to win through. We
parted in anger but let us meet in peace. I am a man outcast and
friendless, save for these foolish few in this parish who to their cost
have made my quarrel theirs.”
At this she looked right kindly down upon me and paused a little before
she answered.
“Quintin,” she said, “there is no anger in my heart anywhere. There is
only a great wae. I have come from the place of Balmaghie where my
cousin Kate of Lochinvar waits her good father’s passing.”
“And ride you home to the Earlstoun alone?” I asked.
“Aye,” she said, a little wistfully. And the saying cheered me. For this
river way was not the girl’s straight road homeward, and it came to me
that mayhap Mary Gordon had wished to meet and comfort me in my sorrow.
“My father is abroad, we know not well where,” she said, “or doubtless
he would gladly support you in the way that you have chosen. Perhaps
your way is not my way, but it must be a good way of its kind, the way
of a man’s conscience.”
She reached down a hand to me, which I took and pressed gratefully
enough.
It was then that we came in sight of the white house of Drumglass
sitting above the water-meadows. At the first glimpse of it the Lady
Mary drew away her hand from mine.
“Is it true,” she said, looking at the blue ridges of Cairnsmore in the
distance, “that which I have been told, that you are to wed a daughter
of that house?”
I inclined my head without speech. I knew that the bitterest part of my
punishment was now come upon me.
“And did you come straight from the Earlstoun to offer her also your
position, your well-roofed manse, your income good as that of any
laird?”
We had stopped in a sheltered place by the river where the hazel bushes
are many and the gorse grows long and rank, mingling with the bloom and
the fringing bog-myrtle.
“My Lady Mary,” said I, after a pause, “I offered her not anything. I
had nothing to offer. But in time of need she let me see the warmth of
her heart and--I had none other comfort!”
“Then upon this day of days why are you not by her side, that her love
may ease the smart of your bitter outcasting?”
“In yonder kirk mine enemies work my doom,” said I, pointing over the
water, “and ere another sun rise I shall be no more minister of
Balmaghie, but a homeless man, without either a rooftree or a reeking
ingle. I have nothing to offer any woman. Why should I claim this day
any woman’s love?”
“Ah,” she said, giving me the strangest look, “it is her hour. For if
she loves you, she would fly to-day to share your dry crust, your
sapless bite. See,” she cried, stretching out her hand with a large
action, “if Mary Gordon loved a man, she would follow him in her sark to
the world’s end. If so be his eyes had looked the deathless love into
hers, his tongue told of love, love, only of love. Ah, that alone is
worth calling love which feeds full on the scorns of life and grows
lusty on black misfortune!”
“Lady Mary----” I began.
But she interrupted me, dashing her hand furtively to her face.
She pointed up towards the house of Drumglass.
“Yonder lies your way, Quintin MacClellan! Go to the woman you love--who
loves you.”
She lifted the reins from the horse’s neck and would have started
forward, but again I had gotten her hand. Yet I only bent and kissed it
without word, reverently and sadly as one kisses the brow of the dead.
She moved away without anger and with her eyes downcast. But on the
summit of a little hill she half turned about in her saddle and spoke a
strange word.
“Quintin,” she said, “wherefore could ye not have waited? Wherefore
kenned ye no better than to take a woman at her first word?”
And with that she set the spurs to her beast and went up the road toward
the ford at the gallop, till almost I feared to watch her.
For a long time I stood sadly enough looking after her. And I grant that
my heart was like lead within me. My spirit had no power in it. I cried
out to God to let me die. For it was scarce a fair thing that she should
have spoken that word now when it was too late.
CHAPTER XXV.
BEHIND THE BROOM.
But this 30th of December had yet more in store for me. The minting die
was yet to be dinted deeper into my heart.
For, as I turned me about to go back the way I came, there by the copse
side, where the broom grew highest, stood Jean Gemmell, with a face
suddenly drawn thin, grey-white and wan like the melting snow.
“Jean!” I cried, “what do ye there?”
She tried to smile, but her eyes had a fixed and glassy look, and she
seemed to be mastering herself so that she might speak.
I think that she had a speech prepared in her heart, for several times
she strove to begin, and the words were always the same. But at last all
that she could say was no more than this, “You love her?”
And with a little hand she pointed to where the Lady Mary had
disappeared. I could see it shaking like a willow leaf as she held it
out.
“Jean,” said I, kindly as I could, “what brought you so far from home on
such a bitter day? It is not fit. You will get your death of cold.”
“I have gotten my death,” she said, with a little gasping laugh, “I have
gotten my sentence. Do not I take it well?”
And she tried to smile again.
Then I went quickly to her, and caught her by the hand, and put my arm
about her. For I feared that she would fall prostrate where she stood.
Notwithstanding, she kept on smiling through unshed tears, and never for
a moment took her eyes off my face.
“I heard what you and she said. Yes, I listened. A great lady would not
have listened. But I am no better than a little cot-house lass, and I
spied upon you. Yes, I hid among the broom. You will never forgive me.”
I tried to hush her with kind words, but somehow they seemed to pass her
by. I think she did not even hear them.
“You love her,” she said; “yes, I know it. Jonita told me that from the
first--that I could never be your wife, though I had led you on. Yes, I
own it. I tried to win you. A great lady would not. But I did. I threw
myself in your way. Shamelessly I cast myself--Jonita says it--into your
arms!----
“Ah, God!” she broke off with a little frantic cry, sinking her head
between her palms quickly, and then flinging her arms down. “And would I
not have cast myself under your feet as readily, that you might trample
me? I know I am not long for this world. I ken that I have bartered away
eternity for naught. I have lied to God. And why not? You that are a
minister, tell me why not? Would not I gladly barter all heaven for one
hour of your love on earth? You may despise me, but I loved you. Yes,
she is great, fair, full of length of days and pride of life--the Lord
of Earlstoun’s daughter. Yet--and yet--and yet, she could not love you
better than I. In that I defy her!
“And she shall have you--yes, I will give you up to her. For that is the
one way an ignorant lass can love. They tell me that by to-morrow you
will be no longer minister. You will be put out of the manse like a bird
out of a harried nest. And at first I was glad when I heard it. For
(thought I) he will come and tell me. We will be poor together. She
said the truth, for indeed she knoweth somewhat, this Lady Mary--‘Love
is not possessions!’ No, but it is possessing. And I had but one--but
one! And that she has taken away from me.”
She lifted her kerchief to her lips, for all suddenly a fit of coughing
had taken her.
In a moment she drew it away, glanced at it quickly, and lo! it was
stained with a clear and brilliant red.
Then she laughed abruptly, a strange, hollow-sounding little laugh.
“I am glad--glad,” she said. “Ah! this is my warrant for departure. Well
do I ken the sign, for I mind when my brother Andrew saw it first.
Quintin, dear lad, you will get her yet, and with honour.”
“Come, Jean,” said I, gently as I could, “the air is shrewd. You are ill
and weak. Lean on my arm, and I will take you home.”
She looked up at me with dry, brilliant eyes. There was nothing strange
about them save that the lids seemed swollen and unnaturally white.
“Quintin,” she made answer, smiling, “it was foolish from the first, was
it not, lad o’ my love? Did you ever say a sweet thing to me, like one
that comes courting a lass in the gloaming? _Say it now to me, will you
not?_ I would like to hear how it would have sounded.”
I was silent. I seemed to have no words to answer her with.
She laughed a little.
“I forgot. Pardon me, Quintin. You are in trouble to-day--deep trouble.
I should not add to it. It is I who should say loving things to you. But
then--then--you would care more for flouts and anger from her than for
all the naked sweetness of poor Jean Gemmell’s heart.”
And the very pitifulness of her voice drew a cry of anger out of my
breast. At the first sound of it she stopped and leaned back in my arms
to look into my face. Then she put up her hand very gently and patted me
tenderly on the cheek like one that comforts a fretful fractious child.
“I vex you,” she said, “you that have overmuch to vex you. But I shall
not vex you long. See,” she said, “there is the door. Yonder is my
father standing by it. He is looking at us under his hand. There is
Jonita, too, and your brother Hob. Shall we go and tell them that this
is all a mistake, that there is to be no more between us?--that we are
free--free, both of us--you to wed the Lady Mary, I to keep my tryst--to
keep my tryst--with Death!”
At the last words her voice sank to a whisper.
Something broke in her throat and seemed to choke her. She fell back in
my arms with her kerchief again to her mouth.
They saw us from the door, and Alexander-Jonita came flying towards us
like the wind over the short grass of the meadow.
Jean took her kerchief away, without looking at it this time. She lifted
her eyes to mine and smiled very sweetly.
“I am glad--glad,” she whispered; “do not be sorry, Quintin. But do just
this one thing for me, will you, lad--but only this one thing. Do not
tell them. Let us pretend. Would it be wrong, think you, to pretend a
little that you love me? You are a minister, and should know. But, if
you could--why, it would be so sweet. And then it would not be for long,
Quintin.”
She spoke coaxingly, and withal most tenderly.
“Jean, I do love you!” I cried.
And for the first time in my life I meant it. She seemed to be like my
sister Anna to me.
By this time, seeing Jonita coming, she had recovered herself somewhat
and taken my arm. At my words she pressed it a little, and smiled.
“Oh,” she said, “you need not begin yet. Only before them. I want them
to think that you love me a little, you see. Is it not small and foolish
of me?”
“But I do--I do truly love you, Jean,” I cried. “Did you ever know me to
tell a lie?”
She smiled again and nodded, like one who smiles at a child who has well
learned his lesson.
Alexander-Jonita came rushing up.
“Jean, Jean, where have you been? What is the matter?”
“I have been meeting Quintin,” she said, with a bright and heavenly
look; “he has been telling me how he loves me.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
JEAN GEMMELL’S BARGAIN WITH GOD.
Yet more grimly bitter than the day of December the thirtieth fell the
night. I wandered by the bank of the river, where the sedges rustled
lonely and dry by the marge, whispering and chuckling to each other that
a forlorn, broken man was passing by. A “smurr” of rain had begun to
fall at the hour of dusk, and the slight ice of the morning had long
since broken up. The water lisped and sobbed as the wind of winter
lapped at the ripples, and the peat-brew of the hills took its sluggish
way to the sea.
Over against me, set on its hill, I saw the lighted windows of the kirk
of Crossmichael. Well I knew what that meant. Mine enemies were sitting
there in conclave. They would not rise till I was no more minister of
the Kirk of Scotland. They would thrust me out, and whither should I go?
To what folk could I minister--an it were not, like Alexander-Jonita,
to the wild beasts of the hills? A day before I should have been elated
at the thought. But now, for the first time, I saw myself unworthy.
Who was I, that thought so highly of myself, that I should appoint me
Standard Bearer of the noble banner of the Covenants. A man weak as
other men! Nay, infinitely weaker and worse. The meanest hind who worked
in the fields to bring home four silver shillings a week to his wife and
bairns was better than I.
A Standard Bearer! I laughed now at the thought, and the rushes by the
water’s edges chuckled and sneered in answering derision.
A Standard Bearer, God wot! Renegade and traitor, rather; a man who
could not keep his plain vows, whose erring and wandering heart went
after vanities; one that had broken a maiden’s heart--unwitting and
unintending, did he pretend? Faugh! that was what every Lovelace alleged
as his excuse.
I had thought myself worthy to do battle for the purity of the Kirk of
my fathers. I had pretended that her independence, her position and her
power were dearer than life to me. I saw it all now. It was mine own
place and position I had been warring for.
Also had I not set myself above my brethren? Had I not said, “Get far
from me, for am I not holier than thou?”
And God, who does not pay His wages on Saturday night, had waited. So
now He came to me and said, “Who art thou, Quintin MacClellan, that thou
shouldst dare to touch the ark of God?”
And as I looked across the dark waters I saw the light burn clearer and
clearer in the kirk of Crossmichael. They were lighting more candles
that they might see the better to make an end.
“God speed them,” cried I, in the darkness; “they are doing God’s work.
For they could do nothing except it were permitted of Him. Shall I step
into the boat that rocks and clatters with the little wavelets leaping
against its side? Shall I call John the ferryman and go over and make my
submission before them all?”
I could tell them what an unworthy, forsworn, ill-hearted man I am.
Thus I stood by the riverside. Almost I had lifted up my voice to cry
aloud that I would make this acknowledgment and reparation, when through
the darkness I saw a shape approach.
A voice said in my ear, “Come--Jean Gemmell is taken suddenly ill. She
would see you at once.”
Then I was aware that this 30th of December was to be my great day of
judgment and wrath, when the six vials were to be loosed upon me. I knew
that the Lord whose name I had taken in vain was that day to smite me
with a great smiting, because, being unworthy, I had put out my hand to
stay the ark of the covenant of God.
“Hob,” said I, for it was my brother who had come to summon me, “is she
yet alive?”
“Alive!” said he, abruptly. “Why, bless the man, she wants you to marry
her.”
“Marry----” said I, “I am a minister of the kirk. I have ever spoken
against irregular marriages. How can I marry without another minister?”
Hob laughed a short laugh. He never thought much of my love-making.
“Better marry than burn!” quoth he, abruptly. “Mr. Hepburn, of Buittle
Kirk, is here. He came over to hearten you in the day of your
adversity.”
Then I recognised the hand of God in the thing and bowed my head.
So in an aching expectant silence, hearing only a poor divided heart
pulse within me, I followed Hob over the moor, and up by the sides of
the frozen mosses to the house of Drumglass. He knew the way blindfold,
which shows what a wonderful gift he had among the hills. For I myself
had gone that way ten times for his once. Yet that night, save for my
brother, I had stumbled to my hurt among the crags.
Presently we came to the entering in of the farmyard. Lights were
gleaming here and there, and I saw some of the servant men clustered at
the stable door.
There was a hush of expectation about the place, as if they were waiting
for some notable thing which was about to happen.
Nathan Gemmell met me in the outer hall, and shook me by the hand
silently, like a chief mourner at a funeral. Then he led the way into
the inner room. Hepburn came forward also, and took my hand. He was a
man of dark and determined countenance, yet with singularly lovable eyes
which now and then unexpectedly beaconed kindliness.
Jean sat on a great chair, and beside her stood Alexander-Jonita.
When I came in Jean rose firmly to her feet. She looked about her with a
proud look like one that would say, “See, all ye people, this is he!”
“Quintin!” she said, and laying her thin fingers on my shoulders, she
looked deep into my eyes.
Never did I meet such a look. It seemed to be compound of life and
death, of the love earthly and the love eternal.
“Good friends,” she said, calmly turning to them as though she had been
the minister and accustomed to speak in the hearing of men, “I have
summoned my love hastily. I have somewhat to say to him. Will you leave
us alone for ten minutes? I have a word to say in his ear alone. It is
not strange, is it, at such a time?”
And she smiled brightly upon them, while I stood dumb and astonished.
For I knew not whence the lass, ordinarily so still and fond, had gotten
her language. She spoke as one who has long made up his mind, and to
whom fit and prepared words come without effort.
When they were gone she sat down on the chair again, and, taking my
hand, motioned me to kneel down beside her.
Then she laid her hand to my hair and touched it lightly.
“Quintin,” she said, “you and I have not long to sit sweethearting
together. I must say quickly that which I have to say. I am, you will
peradventure think, a bold, immodest lass. You remember it was I who
courted you, compelled you, followed you, spied on you. _But then, you
see, I loved you._ Now I want to ask you to marry me!”
“Nay,” she said, interrupting my words more with her hand than her
voice, “misjudge me not. I am to die--to die soon. It has been revealed
to me that I have bartered the life eternal for this. And, since so it
is, I desire to drink the sweetness of it to the cup’s bottom. I have
made a bargain with God. I have prayed, and I have promised that if He
will put it in your heart to wed with me for an hour, I will take with
gratitude and thankfulness all that lies waiting over there, beyond the
Black River.”
She waved her hand down toward the Dee water.
I smiled and nodded hopefully and comfortingly to her. At that moment I
felt that nothing was too great for me to do. And it mattered little
when I married her. I had ever meant to be true to her--save in that
which I could not help, the love of my heart of hearts, which, having
been another’s from the beginning was not mine to give.
Jean Gemmell smiled.
“I thank you, Quintin,” she said, “this is like you, and better than I
deserve. Had it been a matter of days or weeks I would never have
troubled you. But ’tis only the matter of an hour or two!”
She paused a little, stroking my head fondly.
“And afterwards you will say, remembering me, ‘Poor young thing, she
loved me, loved me truly!’ Ah, Quintin, I think I should have made you a
good wife. Love helps all things, they say. Put your hand below my head,
Quintin. Tell me again that you love me. Sweetheart” (now she was
whispering), “do you know I have to tell you all that you should say to
me? Is that fair--that I should make love to you and to myself too?”
I groaned aloud.
“God help us, Jean,” I said, “we shall yet be happy together.” And at
the moment I meant it. I felt that a lifetime of sacrifice would not
make up for such love.
She patted me on the head pacifyingly as if I had been a fractious bairn
that needed humouring.
“Yes, yes, then,” she said, soothingly, “we shall be happy, you and I.
What was it you said the other Sabbath day? I knew not what it meant
then. But methinks I begin to understand now--‘passing the love of
woman!’”
The cough shook her, but she strove to hide it, going on quickly with
her words like one who has no time to lose.
“That is the way I love you, Quintin, ‘passing the love of women,’ Why,
I do not even grudge you to her.”
She smiled again, and said cheerfully, “Now we will call them in.”
I was going to the door to do it according to her word, for that night
we all obeyed her as though she had been the Queen. I was almost at the
door when she rose all trembling to her feet and held out her arms
entreatingly.
“Quintin, Quintin, kiss me once,” she said, “once before they come.”
I ran to her and kissed her on the brow. “Oh, not there! On the mouth.
It is my right. I have paid for it!” she cried. And so I did.
Then she drew down my head and set her lips to my ear. “I lied to you,
laddie--yes, I lied. I _do_ grudge you to her. Oh, I _do_, I _do_!”
And for the first time one mighty sob caught her by the throat and rent
her.
Nevertheless she straightened herself with her hand to her breast, like
a wounded soldier who salutes his general ere he dies, and commanded her
emotion. “Yes,” she said, looking upwards and speaking as if to one
unseen, “I will play the game fairly; I have promised and I will not
repine, nor go back on my word!”
She turned to me, “It is not a time for bairn’s greeting. We are to be
married, you and I, are we not? Call them in.”
And she laughed a little bashfully and fitly as the folk came in and
smiled to one and the other as they entered.
Then to me she beckoned.
“Come and hold my hand all the time. Clasp my fingers firmly. Do not let
them go lest I slip away too soon, Quintin. I need your hand in
mine--for to-night, Quintin, just only for this one night!”
Even thus Jean Gemmell and I were married.
* * * * *
And after all was done I laid her on her bed, and she rested there till
near the dawning with my hand firmly held in hers. Mostly her eyes were
shut, but every now and then she would smile up at me like one that
encourages another in a weary wait.
Once she said, “Isn’t it sweet?”
And then again, and near to the gloaming of the morn, she whispered, “It
will not be long now, laddie mine?”
Nor was it, for within an hour the soul of Jean Gemmell went out in one
long loving look, and with the faintest murmur of her lips which only my
ear could catch--“Passing the love of women,” she said, and
again--“passing the love of women!”
And it was my hand alone that spread the fair white cloth over her dead
face which still had the smile upon it, and over the pale lips that she
had asked me to kiss.
Then, as I stumbled blindly down the hill, I looked beyond the dark and
sluggish river rolling beneath over to the Kirk of Crossmichael. And
even as I stood looking, the lights in the windows went out. It was
done. I was a man in one day widowed, forsaken, outcast.
But more than kirk or ministry or even Christ’s own covenant, I thought
upon Jean Gemmell.
CHAPTER XXVII.
RUMOUR OF WAR.
(_Connect and Addition by Hob MacClellan._)
The crown had indeed been set upon the work. The business, as said the
Right Reverend Presbytery, was finished, and with well-satisfied hearts
the brethren went back to their manses.
It was long ere in his private capacity my brother could lift up his
head or speak to us that were about him. The dark day and darker night
of the 30th of December had sorely changed him. He was like one standing
alone, the world ranged against him. Then I that was his brother
according to the flesh watched him carefully. Never did he pace by the
rivers of waters nor yet climb the heathery steeps of the Dornal without
a companion. There were times when almost we feared for his reason. But
Quintin MacClellan, the deposed minister of Balmaghie, was not the
stuff of which self-slayers are made.
When it chanced that I could not accompany him, I had nothing to do but
arrange with Alexander-Jonita, and she would take the hill or the
water-edge, silent as a shadow, tireless as a young deer. And with her
to guard I knew that my brother was safe.
Never did he know that any watched him, for during these days he was a
man walking with shadows. I think he never ceased blaming himself for
poor Jean’s death. At any rate Quintin MacClellan was a changed man for
long after that night.
My mother came down from Ardarroch to bide a while with him, and at orra
times he aroused himself somewhat to talk with her. But when she began
to speak of the ill-set Presbytery, or even of the more familiar things
at home--the nowt, the horse, and the kindly kye--I, who watched every
shade on Quintin’s face as keenly as if he had been my sweetheart, knew
well that his mind was wandering. And sometimes I thought it was set on
the dead lass, and sometimes I thought that he mourned for the public
misfortune which had befallen him.
To the outer world, the world of the parish and the countryside, he
kept ever a brave face. He preached with yet more mighty power and
acceptance. The little kirk was crowded Sabbath after Sabbath. Those who
had once spoken against him did it no more openly in the parish of
Balmaghie.
With calm front and assured carriage he went about his duties, as though
there were no Presbyteries nor forces military to carry out his sentence
of removal and deposition.
Only the chief landowners wished him away. For mostly they were men of
evil life, rough-spoken and darkly tarred with scandal. My brother had
been over-faithful with them in reproof. For it was of Quintin that an
old wife had said, “God gie thee the fear o’ Himsel’, laddie! For faith,
ye haena the fear o’ man aboot ye!”
But there were others who could take steps as well as Presbyteries and
officers of the law.
Alexander-Jonita rode like a storm-cloud up and down the glen and listed
the lads to do her will, as indeed they were ever all too ready to do.
Her father, with several of the elders, men grave and reverend, met to
concert measures for defending the bounds, lest the enemy should try to
oust their minister out of his “warm nest,” as they called the manse
which cowered down under lee of the kirk.
So it came about that there was scarce a man in Balmaghie who was not
enrolled to protect the passage perilous of kirk and manse. The parish
became almost like a defended city or an entrenched camp. There were
watchers upon the hilltops everywhere. Week-day and Sabbath-day they
abode there. All the fords were guarded, the river-fronts patrolled, for
save on the wild and mountainous side our parish is surrounded by waters
deep and broad or else rapid and dangerous.
Did a couple of ministers approach from Crossmichael to “preach the kirk
vacant” their boat was pushed back again into the stream, and a hundred
men stood in line to prevent a landing. Yet all was carried out with
decency and order, as men do who have taken a great matter in hand and
are prepared to stand within their danger.
The elders also held mysterious colloquies with men from a distance, who
went and came to their houses under cloud of night. There was discipline
and drill by Gideon Henderson and other former officers of the Scotch
Dutch regiments. I remember a muster on the meadows of the Duchrae at
which a stern-faced man, with his face half muffled, came and put us
through our duty. I knew by the tones of his voice that this was none
other than the Colonel Sir William Gordon who had marched with us to
Edinburgh in the great convention year.
But the climax was yet to come.
It was in July that the Sheriff had first tried in vain to land at the
Kirk-Knowe in order to expel my brother from his manse. But a hundred
men had started up out of the bushes, and with levelled pistols turned
the boat back again to the further shore.
Next there was a gathering of the Presbytery at Cullenoch, under the
wing of the Laird of Balmaghie, to concert measures with the other
landowners, who in time past had often smarted under Quintin’s rebuke.
It was to be held at the inn, and the debate was to settle many things.
But alas! when the day came every room in the hostel was filled with
armed men, so that there was no place for the reverend fathers and their
terrified hosts.
So without in the wide spaces where four roads meet, the Presbyters one
by one addressed the people, if addresses they could be called, which
were interrupted at every other sentence.
It was Warner, the father of the Presbytery, who was speaking when I
arrived. He was one of those who had sat safe and snug under the King’s
indulgences and agreements in the days of persecution.
“People of Balmaghie,” he cried, “hearken to me. Ye are supporting a man
that is no minister, a man outed and deposed. Your children will be
unbaptized, your marriages unblessed, yourselves excommunicated, because
of this man!”
“Maister Warner,” cried a voice from the crowd, which I knew for that of
Drumglass, “I am auld eneuch to mind how ye were a member in the
Presbytery at Sunday-wall that sat on Richard Cameron in order to depose
him. Now ye wad spend your persecuting breath on our young minister.
Gang hame, man, and think on your latter end!”
But, indeed, as half-a-dozen bare swords were within a yard of his nose,
Mr. Warner might quite as well have thought on his latter end where he
was.
Then it was Cameron’s turn. But him the people would not listen to on
any protest, because he had been accounted chief agent and mover in the
process of law against their minister.
“Better ye had died at Ayrsmoss wi’ you twa brithers,” they cried to
him; “man, ye’ll never win nearer to them than Kirkcudbright town. And
Guid kens that’s an awesome lang road frae heeven!”
To Telfair the Ghost-seer of Rerrick, they cried, when he strove to say
a word, “What for did ye no bring the deil wi’ ye in a bag? Man, ye are
ower great wi’ him. But there’s neither witch nor warlock can look at
MacClellan’s cup nor come near our minister. It’s easy seen Quintin
MacClellan wasna in the Presbytery when the deil played sic pliskies
doon aboot the Rerrick shores.”
Then came Boyd, who in his day had proclaimed King William at Glasgow
Cross. But he found that an easier task than to shout down the cause of
righteousness at the Four Roads of Pluckemin.
“You pay overmuch attention to the words of a man without honour!” This
was his beginning, heard over all the crowd to the very midst of the
street, for he had a great voice, which in a better cause would have
been listened to like the voice of an apostle.
“Have ye paid back the siller the poor hill-folk spent on your
colleging?” they asked him. “Our minister paid for his ain schooling.”
The question was a feathered arrow in the white, but Boyd avoided it.
“Your minister is a man that should be ashamed to enter a kirk and
preach the Gospel. Who would associate with the like of Quintin
MacClellan?”
“Of a certainty not traitors and turncoats!” cried a deep voice in the
background, toward which all turned in amazement.
It was that of Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the reputed head of
the Societies, whose boast it had been that he could call seven thousand
men to arms in the day of trouble.
I saw Boyd pale to the lips at sight of him.
“I do not argue with sectaries!” he stammered, turning on his heel.
“Nor I with knavish deceivers,” cried Alexander Gordon, “of whom there
are two here--Andrew Cameron and William Boyd. With this right hand I
paid them the golden money for their education, wrung from the instant
needs of poor hill folk who had lost their all, and who depended
oftentime on charity for their bite of bread. From men attainted, from
men earning in foreign lands the bitter bread of exile, from men and
women imprisoned, shilling by shilling, penny by penny, that money came.
It was ill-spent on men like these. William Boyd and Andrew Cameron
swore solemn oaths. They took upon them the unbreakable and immutable
Covenants. In time they became ministers, and we looked for words of
light and wisdom and guidance from them. But we of the Faithful Remnant
looked in vain. For lo! Cæsar sat upon his throne, and right gladly they
bowed the knee. They licked the gold from his garments like honey. They
mumbled his shoe-string that he might graciously permit them to sit at
ease in his high places.
“Bah!” he cried, so that his voice was heard miles off on the hill-tops,
“out upon all such cowards and traitors! And now, folk of this parish,
will ye let such scurril loons persuade you to give up your true and
faithful minister, on whose tongue is the word of truth, and in whose
heart is no fear of the face of any man?”
The frightened Presbyters melted before him, some of them swarming off
with the men of evil life--the lairds and heritors of the parish.
Others mounted their horses and rode homeward as if the devil of Rerrick
himself had been after them.
Thus was ended the Disputation of Cullenoch near to Clachanpluck, in the
shaming of those that withstood us.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ALEXANDER-JONITA’S VICTORY.
But as for my brother, concerning whom was all this pother, he took no
hand at all in the matter. If the people wished him to abide with them,
they must maintain him there. Contrariwise, if the Master he served had
other fields of labour, he would break down dykes and make plain his
path before him.
But as it was, he went about as usual with his pilgrim staff in his hand
visiting the sick, succouring the poor, lifting up the head of weakness
and pain.
On the day when the Sheriff came with his men to the water-edge, Quintin
saw from the manse window a little cloud of men running hither and
thither upon the river-bank.
“There is surely some great ploy of fishing afoot!” he said, quietly,
and so let his eyes fall again contentedly upon his book.
“Faith, ’tis easy to hoodwink a learned man,” cried Alexander-Jonita
when I told her.
It was at this time that I grew to love the lass yet more and more. For
she flashed hither and thither, and whereas she had been no great one
for housework hitherto, now since her sister’s death she would be much
more indoors. Also, with the old man her father, she was exceedingly
patient in his oftentime garrulity. But specially in the defence of the
parish on Quintin’s behalf against the civil arm, she was indefatigable.
Often she would go dressed as a heartsome young callant, with clothes
that her own needle had made, her own deft fingers fashioned. And in
cavalier attire, I tell you, Alexander-Jonita took the eyes of lass and
lady. Once, when we rode by Dee-bridge, a haughty dame sent back her
servant to ask of me, whom she took to be a man-in-waiting, the name of
the handsome young gentleman I served.
I replied with dignity, “’Tis the young Lord Alexander Johnstone,” which
was as near the truth as I could come at a quick venture.
In that crowning ploy of which I have still to tell, it was
Alexander-Jonita who played the leading part.
The Sheriff, being admonished for his slackness by his legal superiors,
and complained of by the reverend court of the Presbytery, resolved to
make a bold push for it, and at one blow to take final possession of
kirk and manse.
So he summoned the yeomanry of the province to meet him under arms at
the village of Causewayend, which stands near the famous and beautiful
loch of Carlinwark, on a certain day, under penalties of fine and
imprisonment. And about a hundred men on horseback, all well armed and
mounted, drew together on the day appointed. A fine breezy day in
August, it was--when many of them doubtless came with small good-will
from their corn-fields, where a winnowing wind searched the stooks till
the ripe grain rustled with the parched well-won sound that is music to
the farmer’s ear.
But if the news of gathering of the yeomanry had been spread by summons,
far more wide and impressive had been the counter call sent throughout
the parish of Balmaghie.
For farmer and cotter alike knew that matters had come to the perilous
pinch with us, and if it should be that the civil powers were not turned
aside now, all the past watching and sacrifice would prove in vain.
It was about noon when the sentinels reported that the Sheriff and his
hundred horsemen had crossed Dee water, and were advancing by rapid
stages.
Now it was Jonita’s plan to draw together the women also--for what
purpose we did not see. But since she had summoned them herself it was
not for any of us young men to say her nay.
So by the green roadside, a mile from the manse and kirk, Jonita had her
hundred and fifty or more women assembled, old and young, mothers of
families and wrinkled grandmothers thereof, young maidens with the
blushes on their cheeks and the snood yet unloosed about their hair.
Faith, spite of the grandmothers, many a lad of us would have desired to
be of that company that day! But Alexander-Jonita would have none of us.
We were to keep the castle, so she commanded, with gun and sword. We
were to sit in our trenches about the kirk, and let the women be our
advance guard.
So when the trampling of horses was heard from the southward, and the
cavalcade came to the narrows of the way, “Halt!” cried Alexander-Jonita
suddenly. And leaping out of the thicket like a young roe of the
mountains, she seized the Sheriff’s bridle rein. At the same moment her
hundred and fifty women trooped out and stood ranked and silent right
across the path of the horsemen.
“What do ye here? Let go, besom!” cried the Sheriff.
“Go back to those that sent ye, Sheriff,” commanded Alexander-Jonita,
“for an’ ye will put out our minister, ye must ride over us and wet the
feet of your horses in our women’s blood.”
“Out upon you, lass! Let men do their work!” cried the Sheriff, who was
a jolly, rollicking man, and, moreover, as all knew, like most sheriffs,
not unkindly disposed to the sex.
“Leave you our minister alone to do his work. I warrant he will not
meddle with you,” answered Alexander-Jonita.
“Faith, but you are a well-plucked one!” cried the Sheriff, looking down
with admiration on her, “but now out of the way with you, for I must
forward with my work.”
“Sir,” said the lass, “ye may turn where ye are, and ride back whence ye
came, for we will by no means let you proceed one step nearer to the
kirk of Balmaghie this day!”
“Forward!” cried the Sheriff, loudly, to his men, thinking to intimidate
the women.
“Stand firm, lasses!” cried Alexander-Jonita, clinging to the Sheriff’s
bridle-rein.
And the company of yeomanry stood still, for, being mostly householders
and fathers of families, they could not bring themselves to charge a
company of women, as it might be their own wives and daughters.
“Forward!” cried the Sheriff again.
“Aye, forward, gallant cavaliers!” cried Alexander-Jonita, “forward, and
ye shall have great honour, Sheriff! More famous than my Lord
Marlborough shall be ye. Ride us down. Put your horses to their speed.
Be assured we will not flinch!”
Time and again the Sheriff tried, now threatening and now cajoling; but
equally to no purpose.
At last he grew tired.
“This is a thankless job,” he said, turning him about; “let them send
their soldiers. I am not obliged to fight for it.”
And so with a “right about” and a wave of the hand he took his valiant
horsemen off by the way they came.
And as they went they say that many a youth turned him on his saddle to
cast a longing look upon Alexander-Jonita, who stood there tall and
straight in the place where she had so boldly confronted the Sheriff.
Then the women sang a psalm, while Alexander-Jonita, leaping on a horse,
rode a musket-shot behind the retiring force, till she had seen them
safely across the river at the fords of Glenlochar, and so finally out
of the parish bounds.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ELDERS OF THE HILL FOLK.
(_The Narrative taken up again by Quintin MacClellan._)
It was long before I could see clearly the way I should go, after that
dismal day and night of which I have told the tale.
It seemed as if there was no goodness on the earth, no use in my work,
no right or excellency in the battle I had fought and the sacrifice I
had made. Ought I not even now to give way? Surely God had not meant a
man so poor in spirit, so easily cast down to hold aloft the standard of
his ancient kirk.
But nevertheless, here before me and around me, a present duty, were my
parish and my poor folk, so brave and loyal and steadfast. Could I
forsake them? Daily I heard tidings of their struggling with the arm of
flesh, though I now judge that Hob, in some fear of my disapproval,
would not venture to tell me all.
Yet I misdoubted that I had brought my folk into a trouble which might
in the event prove a grievous enough one for them.
But a kind Providence watched over them and me. For even when it came to
the stormiest, the wind ceased and there was a blissful breathing time
of quietness and peace.
Also there was that happened about this time which brought us at least
for a time assurance and security within our borders.
It was, as I remember it, a gurly night in late September, the wind
coming in gusts and swirling flaws from every quarter, very evidently
blowing up for a storm.
Hob had come in silently and set him down by the fire. He was peeling a
willow wand for his basket-weaving and looking into the embers. I could
hear Martha Little, our sharp-tongued servant lass, clattering among her
pots and pans in the kitchen. As for me I was among my books, deep in
Greek, which to my shame I had been somewhat neglecting of late.
Suddenly there came a loud knocking at the outer door.
I looked at my plaid hung up to dry, and bethought me who might be ill
and in want of my ministrations upon such a threatening night.
I could hear Martha go to the door, and the low murmur of voices
without.
Then the door of the chamber opened and I saw the faces and forms of
half-a-dozen men in the passage.
“It has come at last,” thought I, for I expected that it might be the
Sheriff and his men come to expel me from the kindly shelter of the
manse. And though I should have submitted, I knew well that there would
be bloodshed on the morrow among my poor folk.
But it turned out far otherwise.
The first who entered into the house-place was a tall, thin, darkish
man, with a white pallor of face and rigid fallen-in temples. His eyes
were fiery as burning coals, deep set under his bushy eyebrows.
Following him came Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun and in the lee of
his mighty form three or four others--douce, grave, hodden-grey men
every one of them, earnest of eye and quiet of carriage.
Hob went out, unobserved as was his modest wont, and I motioned them
with courtesy and observance to such seats as my little study afforded.
As usual there were stools everywhere, with books upon them, and I
observed with what careful scrupulosity the men laid these upon the
table before sitting down. A Hebrew Bible lay open on the desk, and one
after another stooped over it with an eager look of reverence.
I waited for them to speak.
It was the tall dark man who first broke silence.
“Reverend sir,” he said, “what my name is, it skills me not to tell.
Enough that I am a man that has suffered much from the strivings of
fleshly thorns, from the persecutions of ungodly man. But now I am
charged with a mission and a message.
“You have been cast out of the Kirk for adherence to the ancient way.
Yet you have upheld in weakness and the frailty of mortal man the banner
of the older Covenant. You are not ignorant that there are still
societies and general meetings of the Suffering Remnant of men who have
never declined, as you yourself have done, from the plain way of
conscience and righteousness.
“Yet the man doth not live who doeth good and sinneth not. So because we
desire a minister, we would offer you the strong sustaining hand.
Though you be not able at once to unite with us, nor for the present to
take upon you our strait and heavy testimony, yet because you have been
faithful to your lights we will stand by you and see that no man hinder
or molest you.”
And the others, beginning with Sir Alexander Gordon, said likewise, “We
will support you!”
Then I knew that these men were the leaders and elders among the Hill
Folk, and the ancient reverence to which I was born took hold on me. For
I had been brought up among them as a lad, and my mother had spoken to
me constantly of their great piety and abounding steadfastness in the
day of trouble. These were they who had never tangled themselves with
any entrapping engagements. They alone were no seceders, for they had
never entered any State Church.
With a great price had I obtained this freedom, but these men were
free-born.
“I thank you, sirs,” I answered, bowing my head. “I have indeed sought
to keep the Way, but I have erred so greatly in the past that I cannot
hope to guide my path aright for the future. But one thing I shall at
least seek after, and that is the glory of the great King, and the
honour and independence of the Kirk of God in Scotland, Covenanted and
Suffering!”
The dark stern-faced man spoke again.
“You are not yet one of us. You have yet a far road to travel. But I,
that am old, see a vision. And one day you, Quintin MacClellan, shall
serve tables among us of the Covenant. I shall not see it with the eyes
of flesh. For even now my days are numbered, and the tale of them is
brief. Farewell! Be not afraid. The Seven Thousand will stand behind
you. No evil shall befall you here or otherwhere. The Seven Thousand
have sworn it--they have sworn it on the Holy Book, in the place of
Martyrs and in the House of Tears!”
And with that the six men went out through the door and were lost in the
darkness of the night. And the wind from the waste swept in and the lowe
of the candle flickered eerily as if they had been visitants from
another world.
CHAPTER XXX.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN.
It was not long after this that I found myself, almost against my will,
skirting the side of the long Loch of Ken, on the road to the Great
House of Earlstoun.
The lady of the Castle met me by the outer gate. When I came near her
she lifted up her hands like a prophetess.
“Three times have ye been warned! The Lord will not deal always gently
with you. It is ill to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds!”
“Mistress Gordon,” said I, “wherein have I now offended?” For indeed
there was no saying what cantrip she had taken into her head.
“How was it then,” she said, “that the talk went through the countryside
that ye were married to that lassie Jean Gemmell on her dying bed?”
“It is true,” said I, “but wherein was the sin?”
“Oh,” said she, “the sin was not in the marrying (though that was
doubtless a silly caper and the lass so near Dead’s door), but in being
married by a minister of the Kirk Established and uncovenanted.”
“But what else could I have done?” I hasted to make answer; “there are
none other in all Scotland. For the Hill Folk have never had an ordained
minister, since they took down James Renwick’s body from the gallows
tree, and wrapped him gently in swaddling clothes for his burial.”
“It is even true,” she said, “but I would have gone unmarried till my
dying day before I would have let an Erastian servant of Belial couple
me. But I forgat--’tis not long since you yourself escaped from that
fold!”
So there she stood so long on the step of the door and argued concerning
the points of faith and doctrine without ever asking me in, that at last
I grew weary, and begged that she would permit me to sit and refresh me
on the step of the well-house, which was close at hand, even under the
arch of the gateway.
“Aye, surely, ye may that!” she made me answer, and again took up her
parable without further offer of hospitality.
And even thus they found us, when Mary Gordon and her father returned
from the hill, walking hand in hand as was their wont.
“Wi’ Janet, woman!” cried hearty Alexander, “what ails you at the
minister that ye have set him down there by the waters o’ Babylon like a
pelican in the wilderness? Could ye no hae asked the laddie ben and gied
him bite and sup? Come, lad,” cried he, reaching me a hand, “step up wi’
me--there’s brandy in the cupboard as auld as yoursel’!”
But as for me I had thought of nothing but the look in Mary Gordon’s
eyes.
“Brandy!” cried Jean Hamilton. “Alexander, think shame--you that are an
elder and have likewise been privileged to be a sufferer for the cause
of truth, to be speaking about French brandy at this hour o’ the day. Do
ye not see that I have been refreshing the soul of this poor, weak,
downcast brother with appropriate meditations from my own spiritual
diary and covenantings?”
She took again a little closely-written book from her swinging
side-pocket.
“Let me see, we were, I think, at the third section, and the----”
“_Lord help us--I’m awa!_” cried Sandy Gordon suddenly, and vanished up
the turnpike stair. Mary Gordon held out her hand to me in silence,
permitted her eyes to rest a moment on mine in calm and friendly
fashion, all without anger or embarrassment, and then softly withdrawing
her hand she followed her father up the stairs.
I was again left alone with the Lady of Earlstoun.
“‘Tis a terrible cross that I must bear,” said that lugubrious
professor, shaking her head, “in that my man hath not the inborn grace
of my brother--ah--that proven testifier, that most savoury professor,
Sir Robert Hamilton. For our Sandy is a man that cannot stand prosperity
and the quiet of the bieldy bush. In time of peace he becomes like a
rusty horologe. He needs affliction and the evil day, that his wheels
may be taken to pieces, oiled with the oil of mourning, washed with
tears of bitterness, and then set up anew. Then for a while he goes on
not that ill.”
“Your husband has come through great trials!” I said. For indeed I
scarce knew what to say to such a woman.
“Sandy--O aye!” cried his wife. “But what are his trials to the ills
which I have endured with none to pity? Have not I suffered his carnal
doings well-nigh thirty years and held my peace? Have I not wandered by
the burn-side and mourned for his sin? And now, worse than all, my
children seek after their father’s ways.”
“Janet Hamilton,” cried a great voice from a window of the tower, “is
there no dinner to be gotten this day in the house of Earlstoun?”
The lady lifted up her hands in holy horror.
“Dinner, dinner--is this a time to be thinking aboot eating and
drinking, when the land is full of ravening and wickedness, and when
iniquity sits unashamed in high places?”
“Never ye heed fash your thumb about the high places, Janet my woman,”
cried her husband from the window, out of which his burly, jovial head
protruded. “E’en come your ways in, my denty, and turn the weelgaun
mill-happer o’ your tongue on yon lazy, guid-for-nae-thing besoms in the
kitchen. Then the high places will never steer ye, and ye will hae a
stronger stomach to wrestle wi’ the rest o’ the sins o’ the times!”
“Sandy, Sandy, ye were ever by nature a mocker! I fear ye have been
looking upon the strong drink!”
“Faith, lass,” replied her husband, with the utmost good humour, “I was
e’en looking for it--but the plague o’ muckle o’t there is to be seen.”
The Lady of Earlstoun arose forthwith and went into the tall tower, from
the lower stories of which her voice, raised in flyting and contumelious
discourse, could be distinctly heard.
“Ungrateful madams,” so she addressed her subordinates, “get about your
business! Hear ye not that the Laird is quarrelling for his dinner,
which ought to have been served half-an-hour ago by the clock!
“Nay, tell me not that I keeped you so long at the taking of the Book
that there was no time left for the kirning of the butter. Never ought
is lost by the service of the Lord.”
Thus I sat on the well kerb, listening to the poor wenches getting, as
the saw hath it, their kail through the reek. But at that moment I
observed Sandy Gordon’s head look through the open window. He beckoned
me to him with his finger in a cunning manner. I went up the stairs
with intent to find the room where he was, but by a curious mischance I
alighted instead on the long oaken chamber where I had been entertained
of yore by Mistress Mary.
I found her there again, busy with the ordering of the table, setting
out platters and silver of price, the like of which I had never seen,
save as it might be in the house of the Laird of Girthon.
“Come your ways in, sir,” she said, briskly, “and help me with my work.”
This I had been very glad to do, but that I knew her father was waiting
for me above.
“Right willingly,” said I, “but Earlstoun himself desires my presence
aloft in his chamber.”
She gave her shoulders a dainty little shrug in the foreign manner she
had learned from her cousin Kate of Lochinvar.
“I think,” she said, “that the job at which ye would find my father can
be managed without your assistance.”
So in the great chamber I abode very gratefully. And with the best will
in the world I set myself to the fetching and carrying of dishes, the
spreading of table-cloths fine as the driven snow. And all the time my
heart beat fast within me. For I had never before been so near this maid
of the great folk, nor so much as touched the robe that rustled about
her, sweet and dainty.
And I do not deny (surely I may write it here) that the doing of these
things afforded me many thrills of heart, the like of which I have not
experienced ofttimes even on other and higher occasions.
And as I helped the Lady Mary, or pretended to help her rather, she
continued to converse sweetly and comfortably to me. But all as it had
been my sister Anna speaking--a thousand miles from any thought of love.
Her eyes beneath the long dark lashes remained cool and quiet.
“I am glad,” she said, “that ye have played the man, and withstood your
enemies even to the last extremity.”
“I could do no other,” I made answer.
“There are very many who could very well have ‘done other’ without
stressing themselves,” she said.
And I well knew that she meant Mr. Boyd, who was the neighbouring
minister and a recreant from the Societies.
Then she looked very carefully to the ordering of certain wild flowers,
which like a bairn she had been out gathering, and had now set forth in
sundry flat dishes in the table-midst, in a fashion I had never seen
before. More than once she spilled a little of the water upon the cloth,
and cried out upon herself for her stupidity in the doing of it,
discovering ever fresh delights in the delicate grace of her movements,
the swinging of her dress, and in especial a pretty quick way she had of
jerking back her head to see if she had gotten the colour and ordering
of the flowers to her mind.
This I minded for long after, and even now it comes so fresh before me
that I can see her at it now.
“I heard of the young lass of Drumglass and her love for you,” she said
presently, very softly, and without looking at me, fingering at the
flowers in the shallow basins and pulling them this way and that.
I did not answer, but stood looking at her with my head hanging down,
and a mighty weight about my heart.
“You must have loved her greatly?” she said, still more softly.
“I married her,” said I, curtly. But in a moment was ashamed of the
answer. Yet what more could I say with truth? But I had the grace to
add, “Almost I was heartbroken for her death.”
“She was happy when she died, they said,” she went on, tentatively.
“She died with her hand in mine,” I answered, steadily, “and when she
could not speak any longer she still pressed it.”
“Ah! that is the true love which can make even death sweet,” she said.
“I should like to plant Lads’ Love and None-so-pretty upon her grave.”
Yet all the while I desired to tell her of my love for herself, and how
the other was not even a heat of the blood, but only for the comforting
of a dying girl.
Nevertheless I could not at that time. For it seemed a dishonourable
word to speak of one who was so lately dead, and, in name and for an
hour at least, had been my wife.
Then all too soon we heard the noise of Sandy her father upon the garret
stair, trampling down with his great boots as if he would bring the
whole wood-work of the building with him bodily.
Mary Gordon heard it, too, for she came hastily about to the end of the
table where I had stood transfixed all the time she was speaking of Jean
Gemmell.
She set a dish on the cloth, and as she brought her hand back she laid
it on mine quickly, and, looking up with such a warm light of gracious
wisdom and approval in her eyes that my heart was like water within me,
she said: “Quintin, you are a truer man than I thought. I love your
silences better than your speeches.”
And at her words my heart gave a great bound within me, for I thought
that at last she understood. Then she passed away, and became even more
cold and distant than before, not even bidding me farewell when I took
my departure. But as I went down the loaning with her father she looked
out of the turret window, and waved the hand that had lain for an
instant upon mine.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE FALL OF EARLSTOUN.
It was toward the mellow end of August that there came a sough of things
terrible wafted down the fair glen of the Kens, a sough which neither
lost in volume nor in bitterness when it turned into the wider strath of
the Dee.
It arrived in time at the Manse of Balmaghie, as all things are sure to
turn manseward ere a day pass in the land of Galloway.
One evening in the quiet space between the end of hay and the first
sickle-sweep of harvest, Hob came in with more than his ordinary solemn
staidness.
But he said nothing till we were over with the taking of the Book and
ready to go to bed. Then as he was winding the watch I had brought him
from Edinburgh he glanced up once at me.
“When ye were last at Earlstoun,” he said, “heard ye any news?”
I thought he meant at first that Mary was to be married, and it may be
that my face showed too clearly the anxiety of the heart.
“About Sandy himself?” he hastened to add.
“About Alexander Gordon?” cried I in astonishment. “What ill news would
I hear about Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun?”
He nodded, finished the winding of his horologe, held it gravely to his
ear to assure himself that it was going, and then nodded again. For that
was Hob’s way.
“Well,” he said, “the Presbytery have had him complained of to them for
drunkenness and worse. And they will excommunicate him with the greatest
excommunication if he decline their authority.”
“But Earlstoun is not of their communion,” I cried, much astonished, the
matter being none of the Presbytery’s business; “he is of the Hill-folk,
an elder and mainstay among them for thirty years.”
“The Presbytery have made it their business because he is a well-wisher
of yours,” said Hob. “Besides, the report of it has already gone abroad
throughout the land, and they say that the matter will be brought
before the next general meeting of the societies.”
“And in the meantime?” I began.
“In the meantime,” said Hob, “those of the Hill-folk who form the
Committee of the Seven Thousand have suspended him from his eldership!”
Hob paused, as he ever did when he had more to tell, and was considering
how to begin.
“Go on, Hob,” cried I--testily enough, I fear.
“They say that his old seizure has come again upon him. He sits in an
upper room like a beast, and will be approached by none. And some
declare that, like King David, he feigns madness, others that he has
been driven mad by the sin and the shame.”
Now this was sore and grievous tidings to me, not only because of Mary
Gordon, but for the sake of the cause.
For Alexander Gordon had been during a generation the most noted
Covenanter of the stalwart sort in Scotland. He had suffered almost unto
death without wavering in the old ill times of Charles and James. He had
languished long in prison, both in the Castle of Edinburgh and that of
Blackness. He had come to the first frosting of the hair with a name
clear and untainted. And now when he stood at the head of the
Covenanting remnant it was like the downfall of a god that he should so
decline from his place and pride.
Then the other part of the news that the Presbytery, as the
representatives and custodians of morals, were to lay upon him the
Greater Excommunication was also a thing hard and bitter. For if they
did so it inferred the penalties of being shut off from communion with
man in the market-place and with God in the closet. The man who spoke to
the excommunicated partook of the crime. And though the power of the
Presbytery to loose and to bind had somewhat declined of late, yet,
nevertheless, the terror of the major anathema still pressed heavily
upon the people.
Hob went soberly up to his bedroom. The boards creaked as he threw
himself down, and I could hear him fall quiet in a minute. But sleep
would not come to my eyelids. At last I arose from my naked bed and took
my way down to the water-side by which I had walked oftentimes in dark
days and darker nights.
Then as I was able I put before Him who is never absent the case of
Alexander Gordon. And I wrestled long as to what I should do. Sometimes
I thought of him as my friend, and again I knew that it was chiefly for
the sake of Mary Gordon that I was thus greatly troubled.
But with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing
clearness of purpose--such as always comes to the soul of man when, out
of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up
from the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
I would go to Earlstoun and have speech with Alexander Gordon. The
Presbytery had condemned him unheard. His own folk of the Societies--at
least, some of the elders of them--had been ready to believe an evil
report and had suspended him from his office. He needed a minister’s
dealing, or at least a friend’s advice. I was both, and there was all
the more reason because I was neither of the Kirk that had condemned nor
of the communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest
and highest.
It was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, I set my hat
on my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges
to walk to Earlstoun. I heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the
gall-bushes of the meadow. A blackbird turned up some notes of his
morning song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and
the rathe summer time. Suddenly the east brightened and rent. The day
strode over the land.
I journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. It was very evidently to
be a day of fervent heat. Soon I had to take off my coat, and as I
carried it country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me
good-day from the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over
the hated park-dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
Mostly when I walked abroad I observed nothing, but to-day I saw
everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or
when stricken with fever.
I noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire
to little pebbly islands. The lilies, yellow and white, basked and
winked belated on the still and glowing water. The cattle, both nolt and
kye, stood knee-deep in the shallows--to me the sweetest and most
summersome of all rural sights.
As I drew near to New Galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks
and squabbled like shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water,
or darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing
“hide-and-seek” about the tree-trunks.
And through all pulsed the thought, “What shall I say to my friend?
Shall I be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke?
Shall I take part with Mary Gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and
fall with him? Or are my message and my Master more to me than any
earthly love?” I feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of
hearts. Nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than
myself.
CHAPTER XXXII.
LOVE OR DUTY.
I passed by the little Clachan of St. John’s Town of Dalry, leaving it
stretching away up the braeface on my right hand. A little way beyond
the kirk I struck into the fringing woods of Earlstoun which, like an
army of train-bands in Lincoln green, beset the grey tower.
I was on the walk along which I had once before come with her. The water
alternately gloomed and sparkled beneath. The fish sulked and waved lazy
tails, anchored in the water-swirls below the falls, their heads steady
to the stream as the needle to the pole.
The green of summer was yet untouched by autumn frosts, save for a
russet hair or two on the outmost plumes of the birks that wept above
the stream.
Suddenly something gay glanced through the wavering sunsprays of the
woodland and the green scatter of the shadows. A white summer gown, a
dainty hat white-plumed, but beneath the bright feather a bowed head, a
girl with tears in her eyes--and lo! Mary Gordon standing alone and in
sorrow by the water-pools of the Deuch.
I had never learned to do such things, and even now I cannot tell what
it was that came over me. For without a moment’s hesitation I kneeled on
one knee, and taking her hand, I kissed it with infinite love and
respect.
She turned quickly from me, dashing the tears from her face with her
hand.
“Quintin!” she cried--I think before she thought.
“Mary!” I said, for the first time in my life saying the word to my
lady’s face.
She held her hand with the palm pressed against my breast, pushing me
from her that she might examine my face.
“Why are you here?” she asked anxiously, “you have heard what they say
of my father?”
“I have heard, and I come to know?” I said quietly.
She clasped her hands in front of her breast and then let them fall
loosely down in a sort of slack despair.
“I will tell you,” she said, “it is partly true. But the worst is not
true!”
She was silent for a while, as if she were mastering herself to speak.
Then she burst out suddenly, “But what right have you or any other to
demand such things of me? Is not my father Sir Alexander Gordon of
Earlstoun, and who has name or fame like him in all Scotland? They that
accuse him are but jealous of him--even you would be glad like the
others to see him humiliated--brought low!”
“You do me wrong,” said I, yet more quietly; “you know it. Mary, I came
because I have no friends on earth like you and Alexander Gordon. And
the thing troubled me.”
“I know--I know,” she said, distractedly. “I think it hath well-nigh
driven me mad, as it hath my poor father.”
She put her hand to her forehead and pressed it, as if it had been full
of a great throbbing pain.
I wished I could have held it for her.
Then we moved side by side a little along the path, both being silent.
My thoughts were with hers. I saw her pain; I felt her pride, her
reluctance to speak.
Presently we came to a retired place where there was an alcove cut out
of the cliff, re-entrant, filled with all coolness and the stir of
leaves.
Hither, as if moved by one instinct, we repaired. Mary sat her down upon
the stone seat. I stood before her.
There was a long waiting without a word spoken, so that a magpie came
and flicked his tail on a branch near by without seeing us. Then cocking
his eye downward, he fled with loud screams of anger and protestation.
“I will tell you all!” she said, suddenly.
But all the same it seemed as if she could not find it in her heart to
begin.
“You know my father--root and branch you know him,” she said, at last;
“or else I could not tell you. He is a man. He has so great a repute, so
full a record of bravery, that none dares to point the finger. Through
all Scotland and the Low Countries it is sufficient for my father to say
‘I am Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun!’
“But as I need not tell you, a very strong man is a very weak man. And
so they trapped him, William Boyd, who called himself his friend, being
the traitor. For my father had known him in Holland and aided him with
money and providing when he studied as one of the lads of the Hill-folk
at the University of Groningen.
“Now this a man like William Boyd could not forgive--neither repay. But
in silence he hated and bode his time. For, though I am but young, I see
that nothing breeds hate and malice more readily than a helping hand
extended to a bad man.
“So devising evil to my father in secret, he met him at the Clachan of
Saint John as he came home from the market at Kirkcudbright, where he
had been dining with Kenmure and my Lord Maxwell. Quintin, you know how
it is with my father when he comes home from market--he is kind, he is
generous. The world is not large enough to hold his heart. Wine may be
in, but wit is not out.
“So Alexander Gordon being in this mood, Boyd and two or three of his
creatures met him in the highway.
“My father had oftentimes thwarted and opposed Boyd. But now his stomach
was warm and generous within him. So he cried to them, ‘A fair good e’en
to ye, gentlemen.’
“Whereat they glanced cunningly at one another, hearing the thick
stammer in my father’s voice.
“‘And good e’en to you, Earlstoun!’ they answered, taking off their hats
to him.
“The courtesy touched my father. It seemed that they wished to be
friends, and nothing touches a big careless gentleman like Alexander
Gordon more than the thought that others desire to make up a quarrel and
he will not.
“So with that he cried, ‘Let us bury bygones and be friends.’
“‘Agreed,’ answered Boyd, waving his hand jovially; let us go to the
change-house and toast the reconciliation in a tass of brandy,’
“This he said knowing that my father was on his way from market.”
“For this,” said I, not thinking of my place and dignity, “will I reckon
with William Boyd.”
Mary Gordon went on without noticing my interruption.
“So though my father told them that he could not go, that his wife
waited for him by the croft entrance and that his daughter was coming
down the water-side to meet him, yet upon their crying out that he must
not be hen-pecked in the matter of the drowning of an ancient enmity,
my father consented to go with them.”
Mary Gordon looked before her a long time without speaking, as though
little liking to tell what followed. “They knew,” she said, “that he was
to preside that night at a meeting of the eldership and commissioners of
the Hill-folk. So they brought him as in the change-house they had made
him to the meeting.”
There was a long silence.
“And this was all?” I asked. For the accusation which had come to me had
been far graver than this.
“As I live and must die, that is all. The other things which they
testify that he did that night are but the blackness and foulness of
their own hearts.”
“I will go speak with him,” I said, moving as to pass on.
Mary Gordon had been seated upon a wall which jutted out over the water.
She leaped to her feet in an instant and caught me by the wrist, looking
with an eager and passionate regard into my eyes.
“You must not--you shall not!” she cried. “My father is not to be spoken
to. He is not himself. He has sworn that he will answer no man, speak
to no man, have dealings with no man, till the shame be staunched and
his innocency made to appear.”
“But I will bring him to himself,” I said, “I will reason with him, and
that most tenderly.”
“Nay,” she said, taking me eagerly by the breast of my coat, “I tell you
he will not listen to a word.”
“It is my duty,” I answered.
“Wherefore?” she cried, sharply. “You are not his minister.”
“No,” said I, “but I am more. I am both his friend and yours.”
“Do you mean to reprove him?” she asked.
“It is my duty--in part,” said I, for the thought of mine office had
come upon me, and I feared that for this girl’s sake I might even be
ready ignominiously to demit and decline my plain duty.
“For that wherein he has given the unrighteous cause to speak
reproachfully, I will reprove him,” I said. “For the rest, I will aid,
support, and succour him in all that one man may do to another. By
confession of his fault, such as it has been, he may yet keep the Cause
from being spoken against.”
“Ah, you do not know my father, to speak thus of him,” Mary Gordon
cried, clasping her hands. “When he is in his fury he cares for neither
man nor beast. He might do you a hurt, even to the touching of your
life. Ah, do not go to him.” (Here she clasped her hands, and looked at
me with such sweet, petitionary graciousness that my heart became as wax
within me.) “Let him come to himself. What are reproof and hard words,
besides the shame that comes when such a man as my father sits face to
face with the sins of his own heart?”
Almost I had given way, but the thought of the dread excommunication,
and the danger which his children must also incur, compelled me.
“Hear me, Mary,” I said, “I must speak to him. For all our sakes--yours
as well--I must go instantly to Alexander Gordon.”
She waved her hand impatiently.
“Do not go,” she said. “Can you not trust me? I thought you--you once
told me that you loved me. And if you had loved me, I do not know, I
might----”
She paused. A wild hope--warm, tender, gloriously insurgent,
rose-coloured--welled up triumphantly in my heart. My blood hummed in my
ears.
“She would love me; she would give herself to me. I cannot offend her.
This alone is my happiness. This only is life. What matters all else?”
And I was about to give way. If I had so much as looked in her face, or
met her eyes, I must have fallen from my intent.
But I called to mind the path by which I had been led, the oath that had
been laid upon me to speak faithfully. The lonely way of a man--a sinful
man trying to do the right--gripped me like a vice, and compelled me
against my will.
“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life--more, perchance,
than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of
my duty.”
She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting
me out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes.
“You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!”
“Mary,” I said, turning to follow her.
All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot.
“I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger.
“I thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine. _You_
love! You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook.
I doubt not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the
farm by the water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me
that you love me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it
is for my own father, and I entreat you with tears!”
“Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell
you----”
But she turned away down the path. I followed after, and at the parting
of the ways to house and stable she turned on me again like a lioness.
“Oh, _go_, I tell you! _Go!_” she cried. “Do your precious duty. But
from this day forth never, never dare to utter word to Mary Gordon
again!”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE DEMONIAC IN THE GARRET.
As all may understand, it was with bowed head and crushed heart that I
bent my steps towards the grey tower, sitting so stilly among the
leafage of the wood above the water.
Duty is doubtless noble, and virtue its own reward. But when there is a
lass in the case--why, it is somewhat harder to go against her will than
to counter all the law and the prophets.
I went up the bank towards the tower of Earlstoun, and as I came near
methought there was a strange and impressive silence over
everything--like a Sabbath-day that was yet no common or canny Sabbath.
At the angle of the outer wall one Hugh Halliday, an old servant of the
Gordons, came running toward me.
“Minister, minister,” he cried, “ye mauna come here. The maister has
gotten the possession by evil spirits. He swears that if ever a
minister come near him he will brain him, and he has taken his sword and
pistols up into the garret under the roof, and he cries out constantly
that if any man stirs him, he shall surely die the death.”
“But,” I answered, “he will not kill me, who have had no hand in the
matter--me who have also been persecuted by the Presbytery and by them
deposed.”
“Ah, laddie,” said the old man, shaking his palsied hand warningly at
me, “ye little ken the laird, if ye think that when the power o’ evil
comes ower him, he bides to think. He lets drive richt and left, and a’
that remains to be done is but to sinder the dead frae the leevin’, or
to gather up the fragments that remain in baskets and corn-bags and
sic-like.
“For instance, in the auld persecutin’ days there was Gleg Toshie, the
carrier, that was counted a great man o’ his hands, and at the Carlin’s
Cairn Sandy--the laird I mean--cam’ on Toshie spyin’ on him, or so he
thocht. And oor Maister near ended him when he laid hand on him.
“‘Haud aff,’ cried Peter Pearson the curate, ‘Wad ye kill the man,
Earlstoun?’
“‘I would kill him and eat him too!’ cries the laird, as he gied him aye
the ither drive wi’ his neive. O he’s far frae canny when he’s raised.”
“Nevertheless I will see him,” said I; “I have a message to deliver.”
“Then I hope and trust ye hae made your peace wi’ your Maker, for ye
will come doon frae that laft a dead stiff corp and that ye’ll leeve to
see.”
By the gate the Lady of Earlstoun was walking to and fro, wringing her
hands and praying aloud.
“Wrath, wrath, and dismay hath fallen on this house!” she cried. “The
five vials are poured out. And there yet remains the sixth vial. O
Sandy, my ain man, that it should come to this! That ye should tak’ the
roofs like a pelican in the desert and six charges o’ pooder in yon
flask, forbye swords and pistols. And then the swearin’--nae minced
oaths, but as braid as the back o’ Cairnsmuir. Waes me for Sandy, the
man o’ my choice! A carnal man was Sandy a’ the days o’ him, a man no to
be ruled nor yet spoken to, but rather like a lion to be withstood face
to face. But then a little while and his spirit would come to him like
the spirit of a little child.”
We could hear as we walked and communed a growling somewhere far above
like the baffled raging of a caged wild beast.
“It is the spirit of the demoniac that is come to rend him,” she said.
“Hear to him, there he is; he is hard at it, cursing the Presbytery and
a’ ministers. He is sorest upon them that he has liked best, as, indeed,
the possessed ever are. He says that he knows not why he is restrained
from braining me--me that have been his wife these many sorrowful years.
But thus far he hath been kept from doing any great injury. Even the
servant man that brought the message from his master, William Boyd,
summoning Alexander to appear before the Presbytery, he cast by main
force into the well, and if the man had not caught at the rope, and so
gone more slowly to the bottom, he would surely have been dashed to
pieces.”
“But how long has he been thus?” I said. For as we listened, quaking,
the noise waxed and grew louder. Then anon it would diminish almost like
the howling or whimpering of a beaten dog, most horrid and uncanny to
hear.
“Ever since yesterday at the hour when he gat the summons from the
Presbytery,” said the lady of Earlstoun.
“And have none been near him since that time?”
“Only Mary,” she said; “she took up to him a bowl of broth. For he never
lifted his hand to her in his life. He bade her begone quickly, because
he was no fit company for human kind any more. She asked him very gently
to come to his own chamber and lie down in peace. But he cried out that
the ministers were coming, and that she must not stand in the way. For
he was about to shoot them all dead, like the black hoodie-craws that
pyke the young lambs’ e’en!
“‘And a bonny bit lamb ye are, faither,’ said Mary, trying to jest with
him to divert his mind; ‘a bonny lamb, indeed, with that great muckle
heather besom of a beard,’
“But instead of laughing, as was his wont, he cursed her for an impudent
wench, and told her to begone, that she was no daughter of his.”
“Has he been oftentimes taken with this seizure?” I asked.
“It has come to him once or twice since he was threatened with torture
before the lords of the Privy Council, and brake out upon them all as
has often been told--but never before like this.”
“I will go to him,” I said, “and adjure him to return to himself. And I
will exorcise the demon, if power be granted me of the Lord.”
“I pray you do not!” she cried, catching me and looking at me even more
earnestly than her daughter had done, though, perhaps, somewhat less
movingly. “Let not your blood also be upon this doomed house of
Earlstoun.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CURSING OF THE PRESBYTERY.
As gently as I could I withdrew from her grasp, and with a pocket Bible
in my hand (that little one in red leather of the King’s printers which
I always carried about with me), I climbed the stair.
The word I had come so far to speak should not remain unspoken through
my weakness, neither must I allow truth to be brought to shame because
of the fears of the messenger.
So I mounted the turret stairs slowly, the great voice sounding out more
and more clearly as I advanced. It came in soughs and bursts,
alternating with lown intervals filled with indistinct mutterings. Then
again a great volley of cursing would shake the house, and in the
afterclap of silence I could hear the waesome yammer of my lady’s
supplication beneath me outside the tower.
But within, save for the raging of the stormy voice, there was an
uncanny silence. The dust lay thick where it had been left untouched for
days by any hand of domestic. I glanced within the great oaken chamber
where formerly I had spoken to Mary Gordon. It was void and empty. A
broken glass of carven Venetian workmanship and various colours lay in
fragments by the window. A stone jar with the great bung of Spanish cork
stood on the floor. There was a crimson sop of spilled wine on the table
of white scoured wood. The table-cloth of rich Spanish stuff wrought
with arabesques had been tossed into the corner. A window was broken,
and there were stains on the jagged edges, as if some one had thrust his
hand through the glass to his own hurt.
Nothing moved in the room, but in the thwart sunbeams the motes danced,
and the unstable shadows of the trees without flecked the floor.
All the more because of this unwholesome quiet in the great house of
Earlstoun, it was very dismaying to listen to the roll and thunder of
the voice up there, speaking on and on to itself in the regions above.
But I had come at much cost to do my duty, and this I could not depart
from. So I began to mount the last stairs, which were of wood, and
exceedingly narrow and precipitous.
Then for the first time I could hear clearly the words of the possessed:
“Cast into deepest hell, Lord, if any power is left in Thee, the whole
Presbytery of Kirkcudbright! Set thy dogs upon them, O Satan, Prince of
Evil, for they have worked ill-will and mischief upon earth. Specially
and particularly gie Andrew Cameron his paiks! Rub the fiery brimstone
flame onto his bones, like salt into a new-killed swine. Scowder him
with irons heated white hot. Tear his inward parts with twice-barbed
fishing hooks. Gie William Boyd his bellyful of curses. Turn him as
often on thy roasting-spit as he has turned his coat on the earth.
Frighten wee Telfair wi’ the uncanniest o’ a’ thy deils’ imps. And as
for the rest of them may they burn back and front, ingate and outgate,
hide, hair, and harrigals, till there is nocht left o’ them but a wee
pluff o’ ash, that I could hold like snuff between my fingers and thumb
and blaw away like the white head o’ the dandelion.”
He came to an end for lack of breath, and I could hear him stir
restlessly, thinking, perhaps, that he had omitted some of the
Presbytery who were needful of a yet fuller and more decorated cursing.
I called up to him.
“Alexander Gordon, I have come to speak with you.”
“Who are you that dares _giff-gaff_ with Alexander Gordon this day?”
“I am Quintin MacClellan, minister of the Gospel in Balmaghie, a friend
to Alexander Gordon and all his house.”
“Get you gone, Quintin MacClellan, while ye may. I have no desire for
fellowship with you. You are also of the crew of hell--the black corbies
that cry ‘_Glonk! Glonk!_’ over the carcase of puir perishing Scotland.”
“Hearken, Alexander Gordon,” said I, from the ladder’s foot, “I have
been your friend. I have sat at your table. A word is given me to speak
to you, and speak it I will.”
“And I also have a gun here that has a message rammed down its thrapple.
I warn ye clear and fair, if ye trouble me at all with any of your
clavers, ye shall get that message frae the black jaws of Bell-mouthed
Mirren.”
And as I looked up the wooden ladder which led into the dim garret above
me, I saw peeping through the angle of the square trap-door above me
the wicked snout of the musket--while behind, narrowed to a slit,
glinted, through a red mist of beard and hair, the eye of Sandy Gordon.
“Ye may shoot me if ye will, Alexander,” said I; “I am a man unarmed,
defenceless, and so stand fully within your danger. But listen first to
that which I have to say.
“You are a great man, laird of Earlstoun. Ye have come through much and
seen many peoples and heard many tongues. Ye have been harried by the
Malignants, prisoned by the King’s men, and now the Presbytery have
taken a turn at you, even as they did at me, and for the same reason.
“You were ever my friend, Earlstoun, and William Boyd mine enemy.
Therefore he was glad to take up a lying report against you that are my
comrade; for such is his nature. Can the sow help her foulness, the crow
his colour? Forbye, ye have given some room to the enemy to speak
reproachfully. You, an elder of the Hill-folk, have collogued in the
place of drinking with the enemies of our cause. They laid a snare for
your feet, and like a simple fool ye fell therein. So much I know. But
the darker sin that they witness against you--what say ye to that?”
“It is false as the lies that are spewed up from the vent of Hell!”
cried the voice from the trap-door above, now hoarse and trembling. I
had touched him to the quick.
“Who are they that witness this thing against you?”
He was silent for a little, and then he burst out upon me afresh.
“Who are you that have entered into mine own house of Earlstoun to
threat and catechise me? Is Alexander Gordon a bairn to be harried by
bairns that were kicking in swaddling clouts and buttock-hippens when he
was at the head of the Seven Thousand? And who may you be? A deposed
minister, a college jackdaw whom the other daws have warned from off the
steeple. I will not kill you, Quintin MacClellan, but I bid you
instantly evade and depart, for the spirit has bidden me fire a shot at
the place where ye stand!”
“Ye may fire your piece and slay your friend on the threshold of your
house, an’ it please you, laird of Earlstoun,” cried I, “but ye shall
never say that he was a man unfaithful, a man afraid of the face of
men!”
“Stand from under, I say!”
Nevertheless I did not move, for there had grown up a stubbornness
within me as there had done when the Presbytery set themselves to vex
me.
Then there befell what seemed to be a mighty clap of thunder. A blast of
windy heat spat in my face; something tore at the roots of my hair; fire
singed my brow, and the reek of sulphur rose stifling in my nostrils.
The demon-possessed had fired upon me. For a moment I knew not whether I
was stricken or no, for there grew a pain hot as fire at my head. But I
stood where I was till in a little the smoke began to lazily clear
through the trap-door into the garret.
I put my hand to my head and felt that my brow was wet and gluey. Then I
thought that I was surely sped, for I knew that men stricken in the
brain by musket shot ofttimes for a moment scarce feel their wound. I
understood not till later the reason of my escape, which was that the
balls of Earlstoun’s fusil had no time to spread, but passed as one
through my thick hair, snatching at it and tearing the scalp as they
passed.
CHAPTER XXXV.
LIKE THE SPIRIT OF A LITTLE CHILD.
The smoke of the gun curled slowly and reluctantly out of the narrow
windows, and through the garret opening I heard a hurried rush of feet
beneath me on the stairs, light and quick--a woman’s footsteps when she
is young. My head span round, and had it not been for Mary Gordon, whose
arm caught and steadied me, I should doubtless have fallen from top to
bottom.
“Quintin, Quintin,” she cried, passionately, “are you hurt? Oh, my
father has slain him. Wherefore did I let him go?”
I held by the wall and steadied myself on her shoulder, scarce knowing
what I did.
Suddenly she cried aloud, a little frightened cry, and, drawing her
kerchief from her bosom, she reached up and wiped my brow, down which
red drops were trickling.
“You are hurt! You are sort hurt!” she cried. “And it is all my fault!”
Then I said, “Nay, Mary, I am not hurt. It was but a faintish turn that
came and passed.”
“Oh, come away,” she cried; “he will surely slay you if you bide here,
and your blood will be upon my hands.”
“Nay, Mary,” I answered; “the demon, and not your father, did this
thing, and such can do nothing without permission. I will yet meet and
expel the devil in the name of the Lord!”
She put her netted fingers about my arm to draw me away; nevertheless,
even then, I withstood her.
“Alexander Gordon,” I cried aloud, “the evil spirit hath done its worst.
He will now depart from you. I am coming up the ladder.”
I drew my arm free and mounted. As my head rose through the trap-door I
own that my heart quaked, but there had come with the danger and the
excitement a sort of angry exaltation which, more than aught else,
carried me onward. Also I knew within me that if, as I judged, God had
other work yet for me to do in Scotland, He would clothe me in secret
armour of proof against all assault.
Also the eyes of Mary Gordon were upon me. I had passed my word to her;
I could not go back.
As I looked about the garret between the cobwebs, the strings of onions,
and the bunches of dried herbs, I could see Sandy Gordon crouching at
the far end, all drawn together like a tailor sitting cross-legged on
his bench. He had his musket between his knees, and his great sword was
cocked threateningly over his shoulder.
“What, Corbie! Are ye there again?” cried he, fleeringly. “Then ye are
neither dead nor feared.”
“No,” said I; “the devil that possesses you has been restrained from
doing me serious hurt. I will call on the Lord to expel what He hath
already rendered powerless.”
“Man, Quintin,” he cried, “ye should have fetched Telfair and the
Presbytery with you. Ye are not fit for the job by yourself. Mind you,
this is no hotchin’ wee de’il, sitting cross-legged on the hearth in the
gloaming like Andrew Mackie’s in Ringcroft. It takes the black Father of
Spirits himself, ripe from hell, to grip the Bull of Earlstoun, and set
him to roaring like this in the blank middle of the day.”
“But,” said I, “there is One stronger than any devil or devilkin--your
father’s and your mother’s God! You are but a great bairn, Sandy. Do ye
mind where ye first learned the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third
Psalm?”
At my words the great mountain of a man threw his head back and dropped
his sword.
“Aye, I mind,” he said, sullenly.
“Where was it?” said I.
“It was at my mother’s knee in the turret chamber that looks to the
woods, if ye want to ken.”
“What did your mother when ye had ended the lesson?”
“What is that to you, Quintin MacClellan?” he thundered, fiercely. “I
tell you, torment me not!”
He snarled this out at me suddenly like the roar of a beast in a cage,
thrusting forth his head at me and showing his teeth in the midst of his
red beard.
“What did your mother when ye had learned your psalm?”
“She put her hands upon my head.”
“And then what did she?”
“She prayed.”
“Do ye mind the words of that prayer?”
“I mind them.”
“Then say them.”
“I will not!” he shouted loud and fierce, clattering his gun on the
floor and leaping to his feet. His sword was in his hand, and he pointed
it threateningly at me.
“You will not say your mother’s prayer,” I answered; “then I will say it
for you.”
“No, you shall not, Quintin MacClellan,” he growled. “If it comes to
that, I will say it myself. What ken you about my mother’s prayer?”
“I have a mother of mine own, and not once nor twice she hath said a
prayer for me.”
The point of the sword dropped. He stood silent.
“Her hands were on your head,” I suggested, “you had finished your
prayers. It was in the turret chamber that looks to the north.”
“I ken--I ken!” he cried, turning his head this way and that like a
beast tied and tormented.
But in his eyes there grew a far-away look. The convulsive fingers
loosened on the sword-hilt. The blade fell unheeded to the ground and
lay beside the empty musket.
“O Lord!” he gasped, hardly above his breath, “from all the dangers of
this night keep my laddie. From powers of evil guard him with thy good
angels. The Lord Christ be his yoke-bearer. Deliver him from sin and
from himself. When I am under green kirkyard sward, be Thou to him both
father and mother. O God, Father in Heaven, bless the lad!”
It was his mother’s prayer.
And as the words came softer Alexander Gordon fell on his knees, and
moaned aloud in the dim smoky garret.
Then, judging that my work was done, I, too, kneeled on my knees, and
for the space of an hour or thereby the wind of the summer blew through
the chamber, the shadows crawled up the walls, and Alexander Gordon
moved not nor spoke.
Then I arose, took him by the hand, and bade him follow me. We went down
both of us together. And in the room below we found Mary, who had sat
listening with her head on her hand.
“Here is your father,” I said; “take him to his chamber, and when he is
ready bring him again into the great room.”
So very obediently he went with her as a little child might.
Presently she brought him in again, clean washed and with the black look
gone from his brow.
I bade her set him by the window. She looked at me to see if she should
leave us alone. But I desired her to stay.
Then very gently I set the right way before him.
“Alexander,” said I, “ye have done that which has worked great scandal.
Ye shall confess that publicly. Ye are innocent of the greater iniquity
laid to your charge. Ye shall clear yourself of that by a solemn oath
taken both in the presence of God and before men.”
“That I cannot,” said he, speaking for the first time; “the Presbytery
have refused me the privilege.”
“There is a door open for you,” I said, “in a place where the Presbytery
and your enemies have no power. It may not be long mine to offer you.
But for one day it shall be yours, and after the service on Sabbath in
the Kirk of Balmaghie ye shall stand up and clear yourself by oath of
the greater sin--after having made confession of the more venial fault.”
“I will do it!” he said, and put his hand in mine.
So I left him sitting there with his daughter, with the knowledge that
my soul had power over his. And in the eventide, greatly comforted, I
took my way homewards, knowing that he would not fail me.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE STONE OF STUMBLING.
But whilst I had been going about my work the enemies had not been idle.
They had deposed me from the ministry. They could not depose me from the
hearts of a willing and loyal people. They had invoked the secular arm,
and that had been turned back.
Now, by hasty process, they had also appointed one, McKie, to succeed
me--a young man that had been a helper to one of them, harmless enough,
indeed, in himself, a good and quiet lad. Him, for the sake of the
stipend, they had persuaded to be their cat’s-paw.
But the folk of Balmaghie were clear against giving him any foothold, so
that he made little more of it than he had done at first.
But it chanced that on the day on which I had gone to Earlstoun to speak
with Alexander Gordon, the more active of the Presbytery had gathered
together many of the wild and riotous out of their parishes, and had
sent them to take possession of the manse and glebe of Balmaghie.
Hob, my brother, was over by at the house of Drumglass, helping them
with the last of their meadow hay, being a lad ever kind and helpful to
all, saying little but doing much.
So that the house, being left defenceless in fancied security, the young
lad McKie and his party had been in and about the manse for a full hour
before any brought word of their approach.
McKie, acting doubtless under the advice of those that were more cunning
than he, had intruded into the kitchen, extinguished the fire on the
hearth and relighted it in his own name.
Also the folk who were with him, men from other parishes, wholly
ignorant of the matter, had brought a pair of ploughs with them. To
these they now harnessed horses and would have set to the ploughing up
of the glebe, which was of ancient pasture, the grass clean and old, a
paradise of verdure, smooth as a well-mown lawn.
But by this time the noise and report of the invasion had spread abroad,
and from farm-towns far and near swarmed down the angry folk of
Balmaghie, like bees from a byke upon a company of harrying boys.
The mowers took their scythes over their shoulders and set off all
coatless and bonnetless from the water-meadows. The herds left their
sheep to stray masterless upon the hill, and came with nothing but their
crooks in their hands. The farmers hastily ran in for Brown Bess and a
horn of powder. So that ere the first furrow was turned from end to end
the glebe was black with people, swarming like an angry hive whose
defences have been stormed.
So the invaders could not stand, either in numbers or anger, against the
honest folk who had sworn to keep sacred the home of the man of their
choice.
Even as I came to the entering in of the Kirk loaning, I saw the ending
of the fray. The invaders were fleeing down the water-side; the poor lad
McKie, who in his anger had stricken a woman to the ground and stamped
upon her, had a wound in his hand made by a reaping-hook. The ploughs
had been thrown into the Dee, and the folk of Balmaghie were pursuing
and beating stray fugitives, like school laddies threshing at a wasps’
nest.
Then I, who had striven so lately with the powers of evil in high
places, was stricken to the heart at this unseemly riot, and resolved
within me that there should be a quick end to this.
Who was I that I should thus be a troubler of Israel, and make the hot
anger rise in these quiet hearts? Could I stand against all Scotland?
Nay, could I alone be in the right and all the others in the wrong?
There was surely work for me to do outside the bounds of one small
parish--at least, in all broad Scotland, a few godly folk of the ancient
way to whom I could minister.
So I resolved then and there, that after the Sabbath service at which I
had bidden Earlstoun to purge himself by oath and public confession, I
would no longer remain in Balmaghie to stir up wrath, but depart over
Jordan with no more than my pilgrim-staff in my hand.
So, when at last the people had vanquished the last invader and come
back to the kirk, I called them together and spoke quietly to them.
“This thing,” said I, “becomes a scandal and a shaming. This is surely
not the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace. True, not we, but those who have
come against us, began the fray. But when men stumble over a stone in
the path, it is time that the stone be removed.
“Now I, Quintin MacClellan, your minister, am the stone of stumbling--I,
and none other, the rock of offence. I will therefore remove myself. I
will cease to trouble Israel.”
“No, no,” they cried; “surely after this they will leave us alone. They
will never return. Bide with us, for you are our minister, and we your
faithful and willing folk.”
And this saying of theirs, in which all joined, moved me much;
nevertheless I was fixed in my heart, and could make no more of it than
that I must depart.
Which, when they heard, they were grieved at very sorely, and appointed
certain of them, men of weight and sincerity, to combat my resolution.
But it was not to be, for I made up my mind.
I saw that there might be an open door elsewhere, and though I would not
abandon my work in Balmaghie, yet neither would I any more confine my
ministrations. I would go out to the Hill-folk, who before had called
me, and if they accepted of me, well! And if not--why, there were
heathen folk enough in Scotland with none to minister to them; and it
would be strange if He who sent out his disciples two by two, bidding
them take neither purse nor script, would not find bread and water for a
poor wandering teacher throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
FARE YOU WELL!
The fateful Sabbath came--a day of infinite stillness, so that from
beside the tombs of the martyr Hallidays in the kirkyard of Balmaghie
you could hear the sheep bleating on the hills of Crossmichael a mile
away, the sound breaking mellow and thin upon the ear over the still and
azure river.
To me it was like the calm of the New Jerusalem. And, indeed, no place
that ever I have seen can be so blessedly quiet as the bonnie kirk-knowe
of Balmaghie, mirrored on a windless day in the encircling stillness of
the Water of Dee.
The folk gathered early, clouds upon clouds of them, so that I think
every man, woman, and child in the parish must have save the children
that could not walk, and the aged who dwelt too far away to be carried.
Alexander Gordon sat at my right hand, immediately beneath the pulpit.
There seemed an extraordinary graciousness in the singing that day, a
special fervour in the upward swell of the voices, a more excellent,
sober sweetness in the Sabbath air. And of that I must not think, for I
was to leave all this--to leave for ever the vale of blessing wherein I
had hoped to spend my days.
Yes, I would adventure forth alone rather than that a loyal folk should
suffer any more because of me. But first, so far as in me lay, I would
set right the matter of Alexander Gordon and his trouble.
It was the forty-sixth Psalm that they were singing, and as they sang
the people tell that herds on the hill stood still to listen to the
chorus of that mighty singing, and, without knowing why, the water stood
in their eyes that day. There seemed to be something by-ordinarily
moving in all that was done. Thuswise it went:
God is our refuge and our strength,
In straits a present aid,
Therefore although the earth remove,
We will not be afraid.
And as she sang I saw Mary Gordon looking past me with the glory of the
New Song in her eyes. And I knew that her heart, too, was touched.
By the pillar in the arched nook at the door stood Hob my brother, and
by him Alexander-Jonita. They looked sedately down upon one psalm-book.
And in that day I was glad to think that one man was happy.
Poor lad! That which it was laid upon me to do came as a sad surprise to
him. Out of the window, as I stood up to the sermon, I could see the
river slowly take its way. It glinted back more blue and sparkling than
ever I had seen it, and my heart gave a great stound that never more was
I to abide by the side of that quiet water, and in the sheltered nook
where I had known such strange providences. Once I had thought it would
be gladsome for me to leave it, but now, when the time came, I thought
so no more.
Even the little glimpses I had of that fair landscape through the narrow
kirk windows brought back a thousand memories. Yonder, by the thorn, I
had seen a weak one made nobler than I by the mighty power of love.
Down there beside the dark still waters I had watched the lights glimmer
in the Kirk of Crossmichael, where sat my foes, angry-eager to make an
end. But the psalm again seized my heart and held it.
A river is, whose streams do glad
The city of our God,
The Holy Place wherein the Lord
Most High hath His abode.
And in a moment the Dee Water and its memories of malice were blotted
out. The ripples played instead over the River that flows from about the
Throne of God. I saw all the warrings of earth, the heart-burnings, the
strifes, the little days and evil nights washed away in a broad flood of
grace and mercy.
I was ready to go I knew not whither. It might be that there was a work
greater and more enduring for me to do, my pilgrim staff in my hand,
among the flowe-mosses and peaty wildernesses of the South-west than
here in the well-sheltered strath of Dee.
Now, at all events, I must face the blast, the bluster and the bite of
it. But though I was to look no more on these well-kenned, kindly faces
as their minister, I knew that their hearts would hold by me, and their
lips breathe a prayer for me each day at eventide.
And so I bade them farewell. What I said to them is no man’s business
but theirs and mine, and shall not be written here. But the tears flowed
down and the voice of mourning was heard.
Then, ere I pronounced the benediction, I told them how that one dear to
me and well known to them had a certain matter to set before them.
With that uprose Alexander Gordon in the midst, looming great like a
hero seen in the morning mist.
I put him to the solemn oath, and then and there he declared before them
his innocence of the greater evil, purging himself, as the manner was,
by solemn and binding oath, which purgation had been refused him by the
Presbytery.
“By the grace and kindness of your minister, I, Alexander Gordon of
Earlstoun, being known to you all, declare myself wholly innocent of the
crime laid to my charge by the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. May the Lord
in whom I believe have no mercy on my soul if I speak not the truth.
“But as for the lesser shame,” so he continued, “that I brought on
myself and on the cause for which I have been in time past privileged to
suffer, in that I was overcome with wine in the change-house of St.
John’s, Clachan--that much is true. With contrition do I confess it. And
I confess also to the unholy and hellish anger that descended on my
spirit, from which blackness of darkness I was brought by your
minister. For which I, unworthy, shall ever continue to praise the Lord
of mercies, who did not cut me off with my sin unconfessed or my
innocence unproclaimed.”
Alexander Gordon sat down, and there went a sigh and a murmur over all
the folk like the wind over ripe wheat in a large field.
Then I told them how that my resolve was taken, and that it was
necessary that I should depart from the midst of them in order that
there might be peace.
But one and another throughout the kirk cried, “Nay, we will not let you
go! We have fought for you; desert us not now. The bitterness of the
blast is surely over; now they will let us alone!”
Thus one and another cried out there in the kirk, but the most part only
groaned in spirit and were troubled.
“Ye shall not be less my people that another is set in my place. I go
indeed to seek a wider ministry. I have been called by the remnant of
the Hill-folk that have so long been without a pastor. Whether I am
fitted to be their minister I do not know, but in weakness and the
acknowledgment of it there is ever the beginning of strength. I have
loved your parish and you. Dear dust lies in that kirkyard out there,
and when for me the Angel of the Presence comes who calls not twice,
that is where I should like to lie, under the blossoming hawthorn trees
near by where the waters of Dee flow largely and quietly about the bonny
kirk-knowe of Balmaghie.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“I LOVE YOU, QUINTIN!”
There was little more to do. The scanty stock of the glebe was, by Hob’s
intervention, sold in part to Nathan Gemmell, of Drumglass, and the
remainder driven along the Kenside by the fords of the Black Water to
Ardarroch, where my mother received it with uplifted, querulous hands,
and my father calmly as if he had never expected anything else.
“To think,” cried my mother, “that the laddie we sent so proudly to the
college should shut himself out of manse and kirk, and tak’ to the moors
and mosses as if the auld persecuting days were back again.”
“It is in a guid cause,” said my father, quieting her as best he could.
“I daresay,” said my mother, “but the lad will get mony a wet fit and
weary mile if he ministers to the Hill-folk. Aye, and mony a sair heart
to please them.”
“Fear ye not for Quintin,” said my father, to soothe her, “for if it
comes to dourness the Lord pity them that try to overcrow our Quintin.”
I made no farewell round of the kindly, faithful folk of Balmaghie. My
heart would have had too many breakings. Besides, I promised myself
that, when I took up the pilgrim’s staff and ministered to the remnant
scattered abroad, seeking no reward, I should often be glad of a night’s
shelter at Drumglass or Cullenoch.
Nevertheless, for all my brave resolves, it was with an overweighted
heart that I passed the Black Water at the Tornorrach fords with my
staff in my hand. I had as it were come over in two bands, with Hob
driving the beasts for the glebe, and I the house furniture upon a car
or trail cart.
Now I left the parish poorer than I entered it. I knew not so much as
where I would sleep that night. I had ten pounds in my pocket, and when
that was done--well, I would surely not be worse off than the King’s
Blue Gown. I was to minister to a scattered people, mostly of the
poorest. But at the worst I was sure of an inglenook, a bed in the
stable-loft, and a porringer of brose at morn and e’en anywhere in
Scotland. And I am sure that ofttimes the Galilean fishermen had not so
much.
My mother threw her arms about my neck.
“O laddie, laddie, ye are ganging far awa on a rough road and a lonely.
Guid kens if your auld mither will ever look on your face again.
Quintin, this is a sair heartbreak. But I ken I hae mysel’ to thank for
it. I bred ye to the Hill-folks’ ways mysel’. It was your ain mither
that took ye in her arms to the sweet conventicles on the green bosom of
Cairnsmuir, that delectable mountain. I, even I, had ye baptized at the
Holy Linn by guid Maister Semple, and never a whinge or a greet did ye
gae when he stappit ye into the thickest o’ the jaw.”
And the remembrance seemed in part to reconcile my mother to the stern
Cameronian ministry I was about to take up.
“And what stipend are they promising ye?” she said, presently, after she
had thought the matter over.
“Nothing!” I answered, calmly.
“Nocht ava’--no a bawbee--and a’ that siller spent on your colleging.”
Then my mother’s mind took a new tack.
“And what will puir Hob be gaun to do, puir fellow? He has had nae
ither thocht than you since ever he was a laddie.”
“Faith,” said I, smiling back at her, “I am thinking that now at last he
has some other thought in his mind.”
My mother fell back a step.
“No a lassie!” she cried, “a laddie like him.”
“Hob is no week-old bairn chicken, mother,” said I; “he will be
five-and-thirty if he is a day.”
“But our Hob--to be thinking o’ a lassie!”
“At what age might ye have been married, mother?” I asked, knowing that
I could turn her from thinking of Hob’s presumption and my own waygoing.
“Me? I was married at seventeen, and your father scant a score. Faith,
there was spunk in the countryside then. Noo a lass will be
four-and-twenty before she gets an offer; aye, and not think hersel’
ayont the mark for the wedding-ring, when I had sons and dochters man
and woman-muckle!”
“Then,” said I, “that being so, ye will not be hard on Hob if he marries
and settles himself down at Drumglass.”
* * * * *
My father clapped me on the shoulder.
“God speed ye,” he said; “I need not tell ye to be noways feared. And if
ye come to the bottom of your purse--well, your faither is no rich man.
But there will be aye a bit of yellow siller for ye in the cupboard of
Ardarroch.”
I had meant to take my way past Earlstoun without calling. And with that
intent it was in my mind to hold directly over the moor past Lochinvar.
But when it came to the pinch I simply could not do it.
So to the dear grey tower chin-deep among the woodlands I betook me once
more. My eyes had been looking for the first glint of it over the tree
tops for miles ere I came within sight of it. “There,” and “there,” so I
said to myself, “under that white cloud, by the nick of that hill, where
the woodland curls down, that is the place.”
At last I arrived.
“Quintin MacClellan, come your ways in. Welcome are ye as the smell o’
the supper brose,” cried Alexander Gordon, coming heartily across from
the far angle of the courtyard at sight of me. “Whither away so
travel-harnessed?”
“To the Upper Ward,” said I, “to make a beginning on the widest
minister’s charge in Scotland.”
“You are, then, truly bent on leaving all and taking upon you the blue
bonnet and the plaid of the minister of the Remnant?”
“I have already done it,” said I, “burned my boats, emptied my house,
sold my plenishing and bestial. And now with my scrip and staff I go
forth, whither I know not--perchance to a hole in the hedge-root and the
death of a dog.”
“Tut, man,” cried Alexander Gordon, “‘tis not thus that the apostle of
the Hill-folk, the bearer of their banner, should go forth. Bide at
least this night with me, and I will set you up the waterside, aye, and
fit you with a beast to ride on forbye.”
“I thank you from my heart, Earlstoun. This is spoken like a true man
and from the full heart. Only Alexander Gordon would offer as much. But
I would begin as I must end if I am to be the poor man’s minister. I
must not set out on my pilgrimage riding on the back of Earlstoun’s
charger. I must tramp it--moss and mountain, dub and mire. Yet, friend
of mine, I could not go without bidding you a kindly adieu.”
“At least bide till the mistress and Mary can shake ye by the hand,”
cried Alexander Gordon.
And with that he betook him to the nearest window, and without ceremony
pushed it open, for the readiest way was ever Sandy Gordon’s way. Then
he roared for his wife and daughter till the noise shook the tower like
an earthquake.
In a moment Mary Gordon came out and stood on the doorstep with her
fingers in her ears, pretending a pretty anger.
“What an unwholesome uproar, father! Well do they call you the Bull of
Earlstoun, and say that they hear you over the hill at Ardoch bidding
the herd lads to be quiet!”
Then seeing me (as it appeared) for the first time, she came forward and
took my hand simply, and with a pleasant open frankness.
“You will come in and rest, will you not?” she said. “Are you here on
business with my father?”
“Nay,” said I, smiling at her; “I have no business save that of bidding
you farewell.”
“Farewell!” cried she, dropping the needle-work she held in her hand,
“why farewell?”
“I go far away to a new and untried work. I know not when nor how I
shall return.”
She gave a little quick shivering gasp, as if she had been about to
speak.
“At the least, come in and see my mother,” she said, and led the way
within.
But when we had gone into the long oaken chamber naught of the Lady of
Earlstoun was to be seen. And the laird himself cried up to Mary to
entertain me till he should speak to his grieve over at the cottage.
In the living room of Earlstoun was peace and the abiding pleasant sense
of on ordered home. As soon as she had shut the door the lass turned
upon me.
“You have truly given up your parish?” she said, holding her hands
before her with the fingers clasped firmly together.
I nodded.
“And you are journeying to the west to join the Hill-folk?”
I smiled as I looked into her deep and anxious eyes.
“Again you have rightly divined,” I said.
“And what stipend are ye to get from them?”
“I am to have no stipend. It has not been mentioned between us.”
“O Quintin!” she cried suddenly, her eyes growing ever larger and
darker, till the pupil seemed to invade the iris and swallow it up.
But though I waited for her to speak further she said nothing more.
So I went on to tell her how I was going to the west to spend my life
among the poor folk there who had been so long without a shepherd.
“And would you”--she paused--“would you leave us all?”
“Nay,” said I, “for this Earlstoun shall ever be a kindly and a beloved
spot to me. Often when the ways are long and dreary, the folk
unfriendly, will my heart turn in hither. And, whenever I am in
Galloway, be sure that I will not pass you by. Your father hath been a
good and loving friend to me.”
“My father!” she cried, with a little disdainful outward pout of the
lip.
“Aye, and you also, Mistress Mary. You have been all too kind to a
broken man--a man who, when the few coins he carries in his purse are
expended, knows not whence he will get his next golden guinea.”
I was silent for a while and only looked steadily at her. She moved her
feet this way and that on the floor uncertainly. Her grace and favour
cried out to me anew.
“As for me, Mary,” I said, “I need not tell you that I love you. I have
loved you ever since I met you on the Bennan brae-face. But now more
greatly--more terribly that I love altogether without hope. I had not
meant to speak again, but only to take your hand once thus--and get me
gone!”
Impulsively she held her fingers out to me and I clasped them in mine.
I thought she was ready to bid me farewell, and that she desired not to
prolong the pain of the interview.
“Fare thee well then, Mary,” said I. “I have loved the cause because it
is the Cause of the Weak. I have striven to raise again the Banner of
Blue. I have loved my people. But none of these hath this aching, weary
heart loved as it has loved Mary Gordon. I have neither heart nor right
to speak of my love, nor house nor home to offer. I can but go!”
“Speak on,” she said, a little breathlessly, but never once taking her
eyes from my face.
“There is no other word to tell, Mary,” said I. “I have spoken the
word, and now there remains but to turn about and set face forward as
bravely as may be, to shut out the pleasant vision, seen for a moment,
to leave behind for ever the heart’s desire----”
“No! No! No!” she interrupted, jerking her clasped hands quickly
downward.
“To lay aside the deep, unspoken hopes of a man who has never loved
woman before----”
She came a little nearer to me, still exploring my face with her eyes,
as I spoke the last words.
“Did you not, Quintin? Are you sure?”
“I have never loved before,” said I, “because I have loved Mary Gordon
from the beginning, yea, every day and every hour since I was a herd boy
on the hills. Once I was filled with pride and the security of position.
But of these the Lord hath stripped me. I am well-nigh as poor as when I
came into the world. I have nothing now to offer you or any woman.”
“Nay,” she cried, speaking very quickly and suddenly, laying her clasped
hands on my arm, “you are rich--rich, Quintin! Listen, lad! There is one
that loves you now--who has loved you long. Do you not understand? Must
I, that am a maid, speak for myself? Must I say, _I love you, Quintin?_”
And then she smiled suddenly, gloriously, like the sun bursting through
black and leaden clouds.
Oh, sweet and perilously sweet was her smile!
“Mary,” I cried, suddenly, “you are not playing with me? Ah, for God’s
dear sake, do not that! It would break my heart. You _cannot_ love a man
broken, penniless, outcast, one of a down-trodden and despised folk. You
must not give yourself to one whose future path is lone and desolate!”
“_I love you, Quintin!_”
“One who has nothing to offer, nothing to give, not even the shelter of
a roof-tree--a wanderer, a beggar!”
“_I love you, Quintin!_”
And the hands that had been clasped on my arm of their own sweet accord
stole upward and rested lovingly about my neck. The eyes that had looked
so keenly into mine were satisfied at last, and with a long sobbing sigh
of content Mary Gordon’s head pillowed itself on my breast.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE LAST ROARING OF THE BULL.
“Come,” she said, after a while, “let us go to my father!”
And now, the rubicon being passed, there shone a quick and alert
gladness upon her face. Her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground.
The mood of sedateness had passed away, and she hummed a gay tune as we
went down the stairs.
Alexander Gordon was coming across the yard to speak with his wife as
Mary and I appeared hand in hand at the stair foot.
He stopped as it had been suddenly aghast when he caught sight of us.
“Mary!” he cried.
She nodded and made him a little prim curtesy.
“What means this?” he said, sternly.
“Just that Quintin and I love one another!”
And as she spoke I saw the frown gather ominously on Alexander Gordon’s
face. His wife came near and looked at him. I saw him flash a glance at
her so quick, so stern, and full of meaning that the ready river of her
speech froze on her lips.
“This is rank foolishness, Mary!” he cried; “go indoors this instant and
get to your broidering. Let me hear no more of this!”
But the spirit of the Gordons was in the daughter as well as in the
sire.
“I will not,” she said; “I am of age, and though in all else I have
obeyed you, in this I will not.”
Glance for glance their eyes encountered, nor could I see that either
pair quailed.
The Laird of Earlstoun turned to me.
“And you, sir, whom I trusted as my friend, how came you here under
pretext of amity, thus to lead away my daughter?”
The question was fiercely spoken, the tone sullenly angry. Yet somehow
both rang hollow.
I was about to answer when Mary interrupted.
“Nay, father,” she cried, looking him fearlessly in the face; “it was I
that proffered my love. He _would_ not ask me, though I tried to make
him. I had to tell him that I loved him, and make him ask me to marry
him!”
Was it fancy that the flicker of a smile passed at that moment over the
grim countenance of the Bull?
His wife was again about to speak, but he turned fiercely on her and
bade her be silent.
“And now,” he said, turning to his daughter, “what do you propose to do
with your man when ye have ‘speered’ him?”
He used the local country expression for a proposal of marriage. “I will
marry him here and now,” she said; adding hastily, “that is, if he will
have me.”
“Ye had better speer him that too!” said her father, grimly.
“I will do better,” cried Mary Gordon. “I will acknowledge him!”
And holding up my hand in hers she cried aloud: “I take you for my
husband, Quintin MacClellan!” She looked up at me with a challenge in
her eye.
“_My wife!_” was all that I could utter.
“Well,” said Sandy, “that is your bed made, my lassie. You have both
said it before witnesses. You must take him now, whether ye will or
not!
“Hugh,” he cried, with a sudden roar towards the servants’ quarters. And
from the haymow in the barn where he had been making a pretence of work
a retainer appeared with a scared expression on his face.
“Run over to the cot-house at the road-end and tell the minister lad
that the Dumfries Presbytery deposed to come to the Earlstoun and that
smartly, else I will come down and fetch him myself!”
The man was already on his way ere the sentence was ended, and when the
Laird roared the last words after him he fairly seemed to jump.
He was out of sight among the trees a moment after.
“Now,” said Alexander Gordon, “Mary and you have proclaimed yourselves
man and wife. Ye shall be soundly married by a minister, and then ye
shall go your ways forth. Think not that I will give you the worth of a
boddle either in gear or land. Ye have asked me no permission. Ye have
defied me. I say not that I will disown ye. But, at least, I owe you
nothing.”
“Father,” said Mary, “did I ask you for aught, or did Quintin?”
“Nay,” said he, grimly, “not even for my daughter.”
“Then,” said she, “do not refuse that for which you have not been
asked!”
“And how may you propose to live?” her father went on triumphantly. “Ye
would not look at him when he had kirk and glebe, manse and stipend. And
now ye take him by force when he is no better than a beggar at the
dykeback. That it is to be a woman!”
She kindled at the words.
“And what a thing to be a man! Ye think that a woman’s love consists in
goods and gear, comfortable beds and fine apparelling!”
“Comfortable beds are not to be lightlied,” said her father; “as ye will
find, my lass, or a’ be done.”
She did not heed him, but flashed on with her defiance.
“You, and those like you, think that the way to win a woman is to bide
till ye have made all smooth, so that there be not a curl on the
rose-leaves, nor yet a bitter drop in the cup. Even Quintin there
thought thus, till he learned better.”
She did not so much as pause to smile, though I think her father
did--but covertly.
“No!” she cried, “I love, and because I love I will (as you say
floutingly) be ready to lie at a dykeback like a tinkler’s wench. I will
follow my man through the world because he is my man--yes, all the more
because he is injured, despised, one who has had little happiness and no
satisfaction in life. And now I will give him these things. I--I only
will make it all up to him. With my love I can do it, and I will!”
Her father nodded menacingly.
“Ye shall try the dykebacks this very nicht, my lass! And ye shall e’en
see how ye like them, after the fine linen sheets and panelled chambers
of the Earlstoun.”
But her mother broke out at last.
“No, my bairn!” she cried. “Married or single ye shall not go forth from
us thus!”
“Hold your tongue, woman!” roared the Bull, shaking the very firmament
with his voice.
“Be not feared, my lass; ye shall have your mother’s countenance, though
your father cast you off,” said Janet Gordon, nodding at us with
unexpected graciousness.
“Hold your peace, I tell you!”
“Aye, Sandy, when I have done!”
“Though he turn you to the doorstep I will pray for you,” she went on;
“and for company on the way I will give you a copy of my meditations,
which are most meet and precious.”
Her husband laughed a quick, mocking laugh.
“A bundle of clean sarks wad fit them better--but here comes the
minister.”
I turned about somewhat shamefacedly, and there, bowing to the Laird of
Earlstoun, was young Gilchrist of Dunscore, whom the Presbytery of
Dumfries had lately deposed. He was about to begin a speech of
congratulation, but the Bull broke through.
“Marry these two!” he commanded.
And with his finger he pointed at Mary and myself, as if he had been
ordering us for immediate execution.
“But----” began the minister.
Instantly an astonishing volume of sound filled the house.
“BUT me no _buts_! Tie them up this moment! Or, by the Lord, I will
eviscerate you with my sword!”
And with that he snatched his great basket-hilted blade from the
scabbard, where it swung on a pin by the side of the door.
So, with a quaking minister, my own head dazed and uncertain with the
whirl of events, and Mary Gordon giving her father back defiant glance
for glance, we were married decently and in order.
“Now,” said Alexander Gordon, so soon as the “Amen” was out, “go to your
chamber with your mother, Mistress Mary! Take whatever ye can carry, but
no more, and get you gone out of this house with the man you have
chosen. I will teach you to be fond of dykebacks and of throwing
yourself away upon beggarly, broken men!”
And he frowned down upon her, as with head erect and scornful carriage
she swept past him--her mother trotting behind like a frightened child.
I think Alexander Gordon greatly desired to say something to me while he
and I stood waiting for her return. For he kept shifting his weight from
one foot to the other, now turning to the window, anon humming half a
tune and breaking off short in the midst. But ever as he came towards me
with obvious intent to speak, he checked himself, shaking his head
sagely, and so resumed again his restless marching to and fro.
Presently my lass came down with a proud high look on her face, her
mother following after, all beblubbered with tears and wringing her
hands silently.
“I bid you farewell, father!” Mary said; “till now you have ever been a
kind father to me. And some day you will forgive this seeming
disobedience!”
Then it was that her father made a strange speech.
“Quintin MacClellan has muckle to thank me for. For had it not been for
the roaring of the Bull, he had not so easily gotten away the dainty
quey!”
So side by side, and presently when we got to the wood’s edge hand in
hand, Mary Gordon and I went out into the world together.
* * * * *
_Final Addition and Conclusion by Hob MacClellan._
Thus my brother left the writing which has fallen into my hand. In a
word I must finish what I cannot alter or amend.
His marriage with Mary Gordon was most happy and gracious, though I have
ever heard that she retained throughout her life her high proud nature
and hasty speech.
Her father relented his anger after the great renovation of the
Covenants at Auchensaugh. Indeed, I question whether in driving them
forth from Earlstoun, as hath been told, Alexander Gordon was not acting
a part. For when he came to see my wife, Alexander-Jonita, after our
little Quintin was born, he said, “Heard ye aught of your brother and
his wife?”
I told him that they were well and hearty, full of honour, work, and the
happiness of children.
“Aye,” said he, after a pause of reflection, “Quintin has indeed muckle
to thank me for. I took the only way with our Mary, to make her ten
times fonder o’ him than she was.”
And he chuckled a little deep laugh in his throat.
“But,” he said, “I wad gie a year’s rent to ken how she liked the
dykeback the night she left the Earlstoun.”
THE END.
* * * * *
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HAMLIN GARLAND’S BOOKS.
Uniform edition. Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.25.
_WAYSIDE COURTSHIPS._
“A faithful and an entertaining portrayal of village and rural life
in the West.... No one can read this collection of short stories
without feeling that he is master of the subject.”--_Chicago
Journal._
“One of the most delightful books of short stories which have come
to our notice in a long time.”--_Boston Times._
“The historian of the plains has done nothing better than this
group of Western stories. Wayside courtships they are, but full of
tender feeling and breathing a fine, strong
sentiment.”--_Louisville Times._
_JASON EDWARDS. An Average Man._
“The average man in the industrial ranks is presented in this story
in as lifelike a manner as Mr. Bret Harte presented the men in the
California mining camps thirty years ago.... A story which will be
read with absorbing interest by hundreds of workingmen.”--_Boston
Herald._
_A MEMBER OF THE THIRD HOUSE. A Story of Political Warfare._
“The work is, in brief, a keen and searching study of lobbies and
lobbyists. At least, it is the lobbies that furnish its motive. For
the rest, the story is narrated with much power, and the characters
of Brennan the smart wire-puller, the millionaire Davis, the
reformer Turtle, and Evelyn Ward are skillfully individualized....
Mr. Garland’s people have this peculiar characteristic, that they
have not had a literary world made for them to live in. They seem
to move and act in the cold gray light of reality, and in that
trying light they are evidently human.”--_Chicago Record._
_A SPOIL OF OFFICE. A Story of the Modern West._
“It awakens in the mind a tremendous admiration for an artist who
could so find his way through the mists of familiarity to an
artistic haven.... In reading ‘A Spoil of Office’ one feels a
continuation of interest extending from the fictional into the
actual, with no break or divergence. And it seems to be only a
question of waiting a day or two ere one will run up against the
characters in real life.”
ALSO,
_A LITTLE NORSK; or, Ol’ Pap’s Flaxen._ 16mo. Boards, 50 cents.
“True feeling, the modesty of Nature, and the sure touch of art are
the marks of this pure and graphic story, which has added a bright
leaf to the author’s laurels.”--_Chicago Tribune._
“A delightful story, full of humor of the finest kind, genuine
pathos, and enthralling in its vivid human interest.”--_London
Academy._
_THE BROOM OF THE WAR GOD._ A Story of the Recent War between the Greeks
and Turks. By HENRY NOEL BRAILSFORD. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
This remarkable picture of the actual conditions in the Greek army
during the recent war is drawn by a new author of exceptional
promise who served in the Foreign Legion. There are glimpses of
Lamia, Pharsala, Larissa, Volo, Velestino, and Domoko. The author
was one of the disorganized and leaderless assemblage which
constituted the Greek army, and his wonderfully graphic sketches of
the conditions in the ranks, the incompetence of officers, and the
attitude of the King and Crown Prince toward the war shed a new
light upon the disasters of the campaign. The hero, an Englishman,
embodies the characters and the feelings of his strangely assorted
cosmopolitan comrades, and illustrates the psychology of war as
displayed in a hopeless campaign.
_THE DISASTER._ A Romance of the Franco-Prussian War. By PAUL and VICTOR
MARGUERITTE. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
Like Zola’s _La Debâcle_, with which it naturally challenges
comparison, _Le Désastre_ has for its theme the Franco-Prussian
War. The authors have the advantage of being well equipped for
writing of army scenes, being descendants of a line of soldiers;
their father was the cavalry general, Auguste Margueritte, who fell
at the battle of Sedan; and the youngest son, Victor, was himself
an officer in the French army, but recently abandoned the military
career in order to associate himself with his brother in literary
work.
“This powerful picture of the fate of the Army of the Rhine, by the
sons of one of the generals who did their duty, is among the finest
descriptions of war that have been penned.”--_London Athenæum._
“A strong, a remarkable book. ‘The Disaster’ is even more
overwhelming than Zola’s _Le Débâcle_. Zola’s soldiers possessed,
after all, the untold advantage of their ignorance. But the
officers in ‘The Disaster’ saw everything, understood from the very
beginning the immensity of the blunder. Like the spectators of some
grim tragedy, they waited and watched for the curtain to
fall.”--_London Speaker._
* * * * *
Miss F. F. MONTRÉSOR’S BOOKS.
UNIFORM EDITION. EACH, 16MO, CLOTH.
_AT THE CROSS-ROADS._ $1.50.
“Miss Montrésor has the skill in writing of Olive Schreiner and
Miss Harraden, added to the fullness of knowledge of life which is
a chief factor in the success of George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry
Ward.... There is as much strength in this book as in a dozen
ordinary successful novels.”--_London Literary World._
“I commend it to all my readers who like a strong, cheerful,
beautiful story. It is one of the truly notable books of the
season.”--_Cincinnati Commercial Tribune._
_FALSE COIN OR TRUE?_ $1.25.
“One of the few true novels of the day.... It is powerful, and
touched with a delicate insight and strong impressions of life and
character.... The author’s theme is original, her treatment
artistic, and the book is remarkable for its unflagging
interest.”--_Philadelphia Record._
“The tale never flags in interest, and once taken up will not be
laid down until the last page is finished.”--_Boston Budget._
“A well-written novel, with well-depicted characters and
well-chosen scenes.”--_Chicago News._
“A sweet, tender, pure, and lovely story.”--_Buffalo Commercial._
_THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON._ $1.25.
“A tale quite unusual, entirely unlike any other, full of a strange
power and realism, and touched with a fine humor.”--_London World._
“One of the most remarkable and powerful of the year’s
contributions, worthy to stand with Ian Maclaren’s.”--_British
Weekly._
“One of the rare books which can be read with great pleasure and
recommended without reservation. It is fresh, pure, sweet, and
pathetic, with a pathos which is perfectly wholesome.”--_St. Paul
Globe._
“The story is an intensely human one, and it is delightfully
told.... The author shows a marvelous keenness in character
analysis, and a marked ingenuity in the development of her
story.”--_Boston Advertiser._
_INTO THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES._ $1.50.
“A touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled
with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most
notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of
such qualities. With all its elevation of utterance and
spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from
overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor.
Most of the characters are vivid, yet there are restraint and
sobriety in their treatment, and almost all are carefully and
consistently evolved.”--_London Athenæum._
“‘Into the Highways and Hedges’ is a book not of promise only, but
of high achievement. It is original, powerful, artistic, humorous.
It places the author at a bound in the rank of those artists to
whom we look for the skillful presentation of strong personal
impressions of life and character.”--_London Daily News._
“The pure idealism of ‘Into the Highways and Hedges’ does much to
redeem modern fiction from the reproach it has brought upon
itself.... The story is original, and told with great
refinement.”--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
* * * * *
NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.
_THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author
of “God’s Fool,” “Joost Avelingh,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“Until the Appletons discovered the merits of Maarten Maartens, the
foremost of Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American
readers knew that there were Dutch novelists. His ‘God’s Fool’ and
‘Joost Avelingh’ made for him an American reputation. To our mind
this just published work of his is his best.... He is a master of
epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight.”--_Boston
Advertiser._
“It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the
superb way in which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and
wrought out one of the most impressive stories of the period.... It
belongs to the small class of novels which one can not afford to
neglect.”--_San Francisco Chronicle._
“Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average
novelist of the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative
power.”--_Boston Beacon._
_GOD’S FOOL._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make
palatable a less interesting story of human lives or one less
deftly told.”--_London Saturday Review._
“Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous.... The author’s skill in
character-drawing is undeniable.”--_London Chronicle._
“A remarkable work.”--_New York Times._
“Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of
current literature.... Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling
story of ‘God’s Fool.’”--_Philadelphia Ledger._
“Its preface alone stamps the author as one of the leading English
novelists of to-day.”--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
“The story is wonderfully brilliant.... The interest never lags;
the style is realistic and intense; and there is a constantly
underlying current of subtle humor.... It is, in short, a book
which no student of modern literature should fail to
read.”--_Boston Times._
“A story of remarkable interest and point.”--_New York Observer._
_JOOST AVELINGH._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“So unmistakably good as to induce the hone that an acquaintance
with the Dutch literature of fiction may soon become more general
among us.”--_London Morning Post._
“In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the
reader find more nature or more human nature.”--_London Standard._
“A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and
powerfully idealistic.”--_London Literary World._
“Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and
suggestion.”--_London Telegraph._
“Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller.”--_Pall Mall Gazette._
“Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their
laurels.”--_Birmingham Daily Post._
* * * * *
BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES (SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN).
_A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
Mrs. Cotes returns to the field which she developed with such
success in “A Social Departure” and “An American Girl in London.”
_HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
_THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
_VERNON’S AUNT._ With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
_A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY._ A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“This novel is a strong and serious piece of work, one of a kind
that is getting too rare in these days of universal
crankiness.”--_Boston Courier._
_A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by
Ourselves._ With 111 Illustrations by F. H. Townsend. 12mo. Paper, 75
cents; cloth, $1.75.
“A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed,
difficult to find.”--_St. Louis Republic._
_AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON._ With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND.
12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.50.
“So sprightly a book as this, on life in London, as observed by an
American, has never before been written.”--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
_THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB._ With 37 Illustrations by F. H.
TOWNSEND. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“It is like traveling without leaving one’s armchair to read it.
Miss Duncan has the descriptive and narrative gift in large
measure, and she brings vividly before us the street scenes, the
interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the
English colony.”--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
* * * * *
SOME LEADING FICTION.
EACH, 12MO, CLOTH, $1.00.
_YEKL._ A Tale of the New York Ghetto. By A. CAHAN.
“A new and striking tale; the charm, the verity, the literary quality of
the book depend upon its study of character, its ‘local color,’ its
revelation to Americans of a social state at their very doors of which
they have known nothing.”--_New York Times._
“The story is a revelation to us. It is written in a spirited, breezy
way, with an originality in the telling which is quite unexpected. The
dialect is striking in its truth to Nature.”--_Boston Courier._
_THE SENTIMENTAL SEX._ By GERTRUDE WARDEN.
“The cleverest book by a woman that has been published for months....
Such books as ‘The Sentimental Sex’ are exemplars of a modern cult that
will not be ignored.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
“The story forms an admirable study. The style is graphic, the plot
original, and cleverly wrought out.”--_Philadelphia Evening Bulletin._
_MAJESTY._ By LOUIS COUPERUS. Translated by A. Teixeira and Ernest
Dowson.
“No novelist whom we can call to mind has ever given the world such
a masterpiece of royal portraiture as Louis Couperus’s striking
romance entitled ‘Majesty.’”--_Philadelphia Record._
“There is not an uninteresting page in the book, and it ought to be
read by all who desire to keep in line with the best that is
published in modern fiction.”--_Buffalo Commercial._
_A STREET IN SUBURBIA._ By EDWIN PUGH.
“Thoroughly entertaining, and more: it shows traces of a creative genius
something akin to Dickens.”--_Boston Traveler._
“Simplicity of style, strength, and delicacy of character study will
mark this book as one of the most significant of the year.”--_New York
Press._
_THE WISH._ By HERMANN SUDERMANN. With a Biographical Introduction by
Elizabeth Lee.
“A powerful story, very simple, very direct.”--_Chicago Evening
Post._
“Contains some superb specimens of original thought.”--_New York
World._
THE NEW MOON. By C. E. RAIMOND, author of “George Mandeville’s Husband,”
etc.
“One of the most impressive of recent works of fiction, both for
its matter and especially for its presentation.”--_Milwaukee
Journal._
* * * * *
SOME CHOICE FICTION.
EACH, 16MO, CLOTH, SPECIAL BINDING, $1.25.
_THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE._ By R. W. CHAMBERS, author of “The Moon-Maker,”
“The Red Republic,” etc.
“Probably Mr. Robert W. Chambers is to-day the most promising
American writer of fiction of his age.... ‘The Mystery of Choice’
reveals his most delightful qualities at their best.... Imagination
he has first of all, and it is of a fine quality; constant action
he achieves without apparent effort; naturalness, vividness, the
power of description, and especially local color, come to him like
delight in one of those glorious mornings when distance seems
annihilated.”--_Boston Herald._
_MARCH HARES._ By HAROLD FREDERIC, author of “The Damnation of Theron
Ware,” “In the Valley,” etc.
“One of the most cheerful novels we have chanced upon for many a
day. It has much of the rapidity and vigor of a smartly written
farce, with a pervading freshness a smartly written farce rarely
possesses.... A book decidedly worth reading.”--_London Saturday
Review._
“A striking and original story, ... effective, pleasing, and very
capable.”--_London Literary World._
“Mr. Frederic has found fairyland where few of us would dream of
looking for it.... ‘March Hares’ has a joyous impetus which carries
everything before it; and it enriches a class of fiction which
unfortunately is not copious.”--_London Daily Chronicle._
_GREEN GATES. An Analysis of Foolishness._ By Mrs. K. M. C.
MEREDITH (Johanna Staats), author of “Drumsticks,” etc.
“Crisp and delightful.... Fascinating, not so much for what it suggests
as for its manner, and the cleverly outlined people who walk through its
pages.”--_Chicago Times-Herald._
“An original strain, bright and vivacious, and strong enough in its
foolishness and its unexpected tragedy to prove its sterling
worth.”--_Boston Herald._
_THE STATEMENT OF STELLA MABERLY._ By F. ANSTEY, author of “Vice Versa,”
“The Giant’s Robe,” etc.
“Most admirably done.... We read fascinated, and fully believing
every word we read.... The book has deeply interested us, and even
thrilled us more than once.”--_London Daily Chronicle._
“A wildly fantastic story, thrilling and impressive.... Has an air
of vivid reality, ... of bold conception and vigorous treatment....
A very noteworthy novelette.”--_London Times._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
STEPHEN CRANE’S BOOKS.
_THE THIRD VIOLET._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
“By this latest product of his genius our impression of Mr. Crane
is confirmed that, for psychological insight, for dramatic
intensity, and for potency of phrase, he is already in the front
rank of English and American writers of fiction, and that he
possesses a certain separate quality which places him
apart.”--_London Academy._
“The whole book, from beginning to end, fairly bristles with
fun.... It is adapted for pure entertainment, yet it is not easily
put down or forgotten.”--_Boston Herald._
_THE LITTLE REGIMENT, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War_.
12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
“In ‘The Little Regiment’ we have again studies of the volunteers
waiting impatiently to fight and fighting, and the impression of
the contest as a private soldier hears, sees, and feels it, is
really wonderful. The reader has no privileges. He must, it seems,
take his place in the ranks, and stand in the mud, wade in the
river, fight, yell, swear, and sweat with the men. He has some sort
of feeling, when it is all over, that he has been doing just these
things. This sort of writing needs no praise. It will make its way
to the hearts of men without praise.”--_New York Times._
“Told with a verve that brings a whiff of burning powder to one’s
nostrils.... In some way he blazons the scene before our eyes, and
makes us feel the very impetus of bloody war.”--_Chicago Evening
Post._
_MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS._ 12mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“By writing ‘Maggie’ Mr. Crane has made for himself a permanent
place in literature.... Zola himself scarcely has surpassed its
tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life.”--_New
York Mail and Express._
“Mr. Crane’s story should be read for the fidelity with which it
portrays a life that is potent on this island, along with the best
of us. It is a powerful portrayal, and, if somber and repellent,
none the less true, none the less freighted with appeal to those
who are able to assist in righting wrongs.”--_New York Times._
_THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. An Episode of the American Civil War._ 12mo.
Cloth, $1.00.
“Never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well
depicted.... The action of the story throughout is splendid, and
all aglow with color, movement, and vim. The style is as keen and
bright as a sword-blade, and a Kipling has done nothing better in
this line.”--_Chicago Evening Post._
“There is nothing in American fiction to compare with it.... Mr.
Crane has added to American literature something that has never
been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way,
inimitable.”--_Boston Beacon._
“A truer and completer picture of war than either Tolstoy or
Zola.”--_London New Review._
* * * * *
By A. CONAN DOYLE.
_Uniform edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 per volume._
_UNCLE BERNAC. A Romance of the Empire._ Illustrated.
“‘Uncle Bernac’ is for a truth Dr. Doyle’s Napoleon. Viewed as a
picture of the little man in the gray coat, it must rank before
anything he has written. The fascination of it is
extraordinary.”--_London Daily Chronicle._
“From the opening pages the clear and energetic telling of the
story never falters and our attention never flags.”--_London
Observer._
_RODNEY STONE._ Illustrated.
“A remarkable book, worthy of the pen that gave us ‘The White
Company,’ ‘Micah Clarke,’ and other notable romances.”--_London
Daily News._
“A notable and very brilliant work of genius.”--_London Speaker._
“‘Rodney Stone’ is, in our judgment, distinctly the best of Dr.
Conan Doyle’s novels.... There are few descriptions in fiction that
can vie with that race upon the Brighton road.”--_London Times._
_THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD. A Romance of the Life of a Typical
Napoleonic Soldier._ Illustrated.
“The brigadier is brave, resolute, amorous, loyal, chivalrous;
never was a foe more ardent in battle, more clement in victory, or
more ready at need.... Gallantry, humor, martial gayety, moving
incident, make up a really delightful book.”--_London Times._
“May be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly
enjoyable book that Dr. Doyle has ever published.”--_Boston
Beacon._
_THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS._ Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by
STARK MUNRO, M. B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert
Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884.
Illustrated.
“Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock
Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him.”--_Richard le
Gallienne, in the London Star._
“‘The Stark Munro Letters’ is a bit of real literature.... Its
reading will be an epoch-making event in many a
life.”--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
_ROUND THE RED LAMP. Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life._
“Too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions,
that to read, keep one’s heart leaping to the throat, and the mind
in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... No series of short
stories in modern literature can approach them.”--_Hartford Times._
“If Dr. A. Conan Doyle had not already placed himself in the front
rank of living English writers by ‘The Refugees,’ and other of his
larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short
tales.”--_New York Mail and Express._
* * * * *
BY ANTHONY HOPE.
_THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO._ With Photogravure Frontispiece by S.
W. Van Schaick. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of
Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all
those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high
courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the
emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely
written.”--_London Daily News._
“It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather
deep order.... In point of execution ‘The Chronicles of Count
Antonio’ is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is
clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more
colored.”--_Westminster Gazette._
“A romance worthy of all the expectations raised by the brilliancy
of his former books, and likely to be read with a keen enjoyment
and a healthy exaltation of the spirits by every one who takes it
up.”--_The Scotsman._
“A gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and
spirit.”--_London Daily Telegraph._
“One of the most fascinating romances written in English within
many days. The quaint simplicity of its style is delightful, and
the adventures recorded in these ‘Chronicles of Count Antonio’ are
as stirring and ingenious as any conceived even by Weyman at his
best.”--_New York World._
“No adventures were ever better worth telling than those of Count
Antonio.... The author knows full well how to make every pulse
thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his
magic.”--_Boston Herald._
_THE GOD IN THE CAR._ New edition. Uniform with “The Chronicles of Count
Antonio.” 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“‘The God in the Car’ is just as clever, just as distinguished in
style, just as full of wit, and of what nowadays some persons like
better than wit--allusiveness--as any of his stories. It is
saturated with the modern atmosphere; is not only a very clever but
a very strong story; in some respects, we think, the strongest Mr.
Hope has yet written.”--_London Speaker._
“A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible
within our limit; brilliant, but not superficial; well considered,
but not elaborated; constructed with the proverbial art that
conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom
fine literary method is a keen pleasure.”--_London World._
“The book is a brilliant one.... ‘The God in the Car’ is one of the
most remarkable works in a year that has given us the handiwork of
nearly all our best living novelists.”--_London Standard._
* * * * *
SOME LEADING FICTION.
_THE GODS, SOME MORTALS, AND LORD WICKENHAM._ By JOHN OLIVER
HOBBES. With Portrait. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“One of the most refreshing novels of the period, full of grace, spirit,
force, feeling, and literary charm.”--_Chicago Evening Post._
“Here is the sweetness of a live love story.... It is to be reckoned
among the brilliants as a novel.”--_Boston Courier._
“Mrs. Craigie has taken her place among the novelists of the day. It is
a high place and a place apart. Her method is her own, and she stands
not exactly on the threshold of a great career, but already within the
temple of fame.”--_G. W. Smalley, in the Tribune._
_MAELCHO._ By the Hon. EMILY LAWLESS, author of “Grania,”
“Hurrish,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“A paradox of literary genius. It is not a history, and yet it has more
of the stuff of history in it, more of the true national character and
fate, than any historical monograph we know. It is not a novel, and yet
it fascinates us more than any novel.”--_London Spectator._
“Abounds in thrilling incidents.... Above and beyond all, the book
charms by reason of the breadth of view, the magnanimity, and the
tenderness which animate the author.”--_London Athenæum._
_AN IMAGINATIVE MAN._ By ROBERT S. HICHENS, author of “The Folly of
Eustace,” “The Green Carnation,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“A study in character.... Just as entertaining as though it were the
conventional story of love and marriage. The clever hand of the author
of ‘The Green Carnation’ is easily detected in the caustic wit and
pointed epigram.”--_Jeannette L. Gilder, in the New York World._
_CORRUPTION._ By PERCY WHITE, author of “Mr. Bailey-Martin,” etc.
12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“A drama of biting intensity. A tragedy of inflexible purpose and
relentless result.”--_Pall Mall Gazette._
“There is intrigue enough in it for those who love a story of the
ordinary kind, and the political part is perhaps more attractive in its
sparkle and variety of incident than the real thing itself.”--_London
Daily News._
_A HARD WOMAN. A Story in Scenes._ By VIOLET HUNT. 12mo. Cloth,
$1.25.
“A good story, bright, keen, and dramatic.... It is out of the ordinary,
and will give you a new sensation.”--_New York Herald._
“A creation that does Mrs. Hunt infinite credit, and places her in the
front rank of the younger novelists.... Brilliantly drawn, quivering
with life, adroit, quiet-witted, unfalteringly insolent, and withal
strangely magnetic.”--_London Standard._
* * * * *
GILBERT PARKER’S BEST BOOKS.
Uniform Edition.
_THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY._ Being the Memoirs of Captain ROBERT MORAY,
sometime an Officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterwards of
Amherst’s Regiment. Illustrated, $1.50.
“Another historical romance of the vividness and intensity of ‘The
Seats of the Mighty’ has never come from the pen of an American.
Mr. Parker’s latest work may without hesitation be set down as the
best he has done. From the first chapter to the last word interest
in the book never wanes; one finds it difficult to interrupt the
narrative with breathing space. It whirls with excitement and
strange adventure.... All of the scenes do homage to the genius of
Mr. Parker, and make ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ one of the books of
the year.”--_Chicago Record._
“Mr. Gilbert Parker is to be congratulated on the excellence of his
latest story, ‘The Seats of the Mighty,’ and his readers are to be
congratulated on the direction which his talents have taken
therein.... It is so good that we do not stop to think of its
literature, and the personality of Doltaire is a masterpiece of
creative art.”--_New York Mail and Express._
_THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD._ A Novel. $1.25.
“Mr. Parker here adds to a reputation already wide, and anew
demonstrates his power of pictorial portrayal and of strong
dramatic situation and climax.”--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
“The tale holds the reader’s interest from first to last, for it is
full of fire and spirit, abounding in incident, and marked by good
character drawing.”--_Pittsburg Times._
_THE TRESPASSER._ $1.25.
“Interest, pith, force, and charm--Mr. Parker’s new story possesses
all these qualities.... Almost bare of synthetical decoration, his
paragraphs are stirring because they are real. We read at times--as
we have read the great masters of romance--breathlessly.”--_The
Critic._
“Gilbert Parker writes a strong novel, but thus far this is his
masterpiece.... It is one of the great novels of the
year.”--_Boston Advertiser._
_THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE._ $1.25.
“A book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end
has been matter of certainty and assurance.”--_The Nation._
“A story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of
construction.”--_Boston Home Journal._
_MRS. FALCHION._ $1.25.
“A well-knit story, told in an exceedingly interesting way, and
holding the reader’s attention to the end.”
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Intercommuning--_i. e._, entertaining, assisting, or sheltering
any who were counted unfriendly to the Government, or had been
reported by the curates for not attending church. Even the smallest
converse with proscribed persons was thought deserving of the pains of
death.
[2] Gif-gaf, _i. e._, give and take, the interchange of pleasantry,
parry of wit, the cut-and-thrust encounter of tongues, innocent enough
but often rough.
[3] This was really the sweet and gentle youth James Renwick, though
I knew not his name, till I saw them hang him in the Grassmarket of
Edinburgh in the first year of my college-going.
[4] _I.e._, those who by the Covenanters were supposed to have
_malignantly_ pursued and opposed their cause in the council or in the
field.
[5] _I. e._, the taxes for the support of the military establishments.
[6] Like a fox in lambing-time.
[7] _I. e._, a marvel.
[8] Restive.
[9] Ben room--_i. e._, the inner or guest chamber.
[10] The death grips.
[11] Red ashes.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
I proceeded nothwards=> I proceeded nothwards {pg 43}
far beter than miles=> far better than miles {pg 49}
within a litle breakwater=> within a little breakwater {pg 58}
it apppears noways=> it appears noways {pg 85}
Bull of Earlestoun=> Bull of Earlstoun {pg 85}
looking me directly in the yes=> looking me directly in the eyes {pg
130}
who died at Arysmoss=> who died at Ayrsmoss {pg 139}
and the leters I had to write=> and the letters I had to write {pg 145}
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