скачать книгу бесплатно
Indeed, had it not been for the good liking which everywhere pursued my cousin Lochinvar, I cannot tell what might have come out of the dislike for us "Glenkens Whiggies," which was their mildest word for us. Yet my man Hugh never said a word, for he was a prudent lad and slow of speech; while I, being no man of war, also looked well to my words, and let a wary tongue keep my head. As for John Meiklewood, honest man, he took suddenly one morning what he termed a "sair income in his wame," and leave being scantily asked, he hied him home to his wife and weans at the Mains of Earlstoun.
Now this was the manner of our march. Claverhouse sent his horse scouring up on the tops of the hills and along the higher grounds, while his foot quartered the lower districts, bringing all such as were in any way suspicious to the kirkyards to be examined. Old and young, men and women alike, were taken; and often – chiefly, it is true, behind Claverhouse's back – the soldiers were most cruel at the business, making my blood boil, till I thought that I must fly out and strike some of them. I wondered not any longer that my father had taken to the hill, sick to death of the black terror which Charles's men caused daily to fall upon all around them, wherever in Scotland men cared enough about their religion to suffer for it.
How my cousin Lochinvar stood it I cannot tell. Indeed I think that but for the teaching of his mother, and the presence of John Scarlet, who at this time was a great King's man and of much influence with Wat Gordon, he had been as much incensed as I.
One morning in especial I mind well. It was a Tuesday, and our company was under the command of this Johnstone of Westerha', who of all the clan, being a turncoat, was the cruellest and the worst. For the man was in his own country, and among his own kenned faces, his holders and cottiers – so that the slaughter of them was as easy as killing chickens reared by hand.
And even Claverhouse rather suffered, and shut his eyes to it, than took part in the hard driving.
"Draw your reins here," the Johnstone would say, as we came to the loaning foot of some little white lime-washed house with a reeking lum. "There are some Bible folk here that wad be none the worse o' a bit ca'!"
So he rode up to the poor muirland housie sitting by itself all alone among the red heather. Mostly the folk had marked us come, and often there was no one to be seen, but, as it might be, a bairn or two playing about the green.
Then he would have these poor bits of things gathered up and begin to fear them, or contrariwise to offer them fair things if only they would tell where their parents were, and who were used to come about the house.
There is a place, Shieldhill by name, that sits blithely on the brae-face at the entering in of Annandale. The country thereabouts is not very wild, and there are many cotter houses set about the holms and dotted among the knowes. Westerha' enclosed the whole with a ring of his men, and came upon them as he thought unawares, for he said the place was like a conventicle, and rife with psalm-singers. But he was a wild man when he found the men and women all fled, and only the bairns, as before, feared mostly out of their lives, sitting cowering together by the ingle, or hiding about the byres.
"I'll fear them waur," said Westerha', as he came to the third house and found as before only two-three weans, "or my name is no James Johnstone."
So what did this ill-set Johnstone do, but gather them all up into a knot by a great thorn-tree that grows on the slope. This Tuesday morn was clear and sunny – not bright, but with a kind of diffused light, warm and without shadows, as if the whole arch of the lift were but one sun, yet not so bright as the sun we mostly have.
There were some thirty bairns by the tree, mostly of Westerha's own name, save those that were Jardines, Grahams, and Charterises, for those are the common names of that country-side. The children stood together, huddled in a cloud, too frightened to speak or even to cry aloud. And one thing I noticed, that the lassie bairns were stiller and grat not so much as the boys – all save one, who was a laddie of about ten years. He stood with his hands behind his back, and his face was very white; but he threw back his head and looked the dragoons and Annandale's wild riders fair in the face as one that has conquered fear.
Then Westerha' rode forward almost to the midst of the cloud of bairns, "gollering" and roaring at the bit things to frighten them, as was his custom with such. They were mostly from six to ten years of their age; and when I saw them thus with their feared white faces, I wished that I had been six foot of my inches, and with twenty good men of the Glen at my back. But I minded that I was but a boy – "stay-at-home John," as Sandy called me – and worth nothing with my hands. So I could only fret and be silent. I looked for my cousin Lochinvar, but he was riding at the Graham's bridle rein, and that day I saw nothing of him. But I wondered how this matter of the bairns liked him.
So Westerha' rode nearer to them, shouting like a shepherd crying down the wind tempestuously, when his dogs are working sourly.
"Hark ye," he cried, "ill bairns that ye are, ye are all to dee, and that quickly, unless ye answer me what I shall ask of you."
Then I saw something that I had never seen but among the sheep, and it was a most pitiful and heart-wringing thing to see, though now in the telling it seems no great matter. There is a time of the year when it is fitting that the lambs should be separated from the ewes; and it ever touches me nearly to see the flock of poor lammies when first the dogs come near to them to begin the work, and wear them in the direction in which they are to depart. All their little lives the lambs had run to their mothers at the first hint of danger. Now they have no mothers to flee to, and you can see them huddle and pack in a frightened solid bunch, quivering with apprehension, all with their sweet little winsome faces turned one way. Then as the dogs run nearer to start them, there comes from them a little low broken-hearted bleating, as if terror were driving the cry out of them against their wills. Thus it is with the lambs on the hill, and so also it was with the bairns that clung together in a cluster on the brae-face.
A party of soldiers was now drawn out before them, and the young things were bid look into the black muzzles of the muskets. They were indeed loaded only with powder, but the children were not to know that.
"Now," cried Westerha', "tell me who comes to your houses at night, and who goes away early in the morning!"
The children crept closer to one another, but none of them answered. Whereupon Westerha' indicated one with his finger – the lad who stood up so straightly and held his head back.
"You, young Cock-of-the-heather, what might be your black Whig's name?"
"Juist the same as your honour's – James Johnstone!" replied the boy, in no way abashed.
Methought there ran a titter of laughter among the soldiers, for Westerha' was noways so well liked among the soldiers as Claverhouse or even roaring Grier of Lag.
"And what is your father's name?" continued Westerha', bending just one black look upon the lad.
"James Johnstone!" yet again replied the boy.
Back in the ranks some one laughed.
Westerhall flung an oath over his shoulder.
"Who was the man who laughed? I shall teach you to laugh at the Johnstone in his own country!"
"It was Jeems Johnstone of Wanphray that laughed, your honour," replied the calm voice of a troop-sergeant.
Then Westerha' set himself without another word to the work of examination, which suited him well.
"You will not answer, young rebels," he cried, "ken you what they get that will not speak when the King bids them?"
"Are you the King?" said the lad of ten who had called himself James Johnstone.
At this Westerhall waxed perfectly furious, with a pale and shaking fury that I liked not to see. But indeed the whole was so distasteful to me that sometimes I could but turn my head away.
"Now, ill bairns," said Westerha', "and you, my young rebel-namesake, hearken ye. The King's command is not to be made light of. And I tell you plainly that as you will not answer, I am resolved that you shall all be shot dead on the spot!"
With that he sent men to set them out in rows, and make them kneel down with kerchiefs over their eyes.
Now when the soldiers came near to the huddled cluster of bairns, that same little heart-broken bleating which I have heard the lambs make, broke again from them. It made my heart bleed and the nerves tingle in my palms. And this was King Charles Stuart making war! It had not been his father's way.
But the soldiers, though some few were smiling a little as at an excellent play, were mostly black ashamed. Nevertheless they took the bairns and made them kneel, for that was the order, and without mutiny they could not better it.
"Sodger-man, wull ye let me tak' my wee brither by the hand and dee that way? I think he wad thole it better!" said a little maid of eight, looking up.
And the soldier let go a great oath and looked at Westerha' as though he could have slain him.
"Bonny wark," he cried, "deil burn me gin I listed for this!"
But the little lass had already taken her brother by the hand.
"Bend doon bonny, Alec my man, doon on your knees!" said she.
The boy glanced up at her. He had long yellow hair like Jean Hamilton's little Alec.
"Wull it be sair?" he asked. "Think ye, Maggie? I houp it'll no be awfu' sair!"
"Na, Alec," his sister made answer, "it'll no be either lang or sair."
But the boy of ten, whose name was James Johnstone, neither bent nor knelt.
"I hae dune nae wrang. I'll juist dee this way," he said; and he stood up like one that straightens himself at drill.
Then Westerha' bid fire over the bairns' heads, which was cruel, cruel work, and only some of the soldiers did it. But even the few pieces that went off made a great noise in that lonely place. At the sound of the muskets some of the bairns fell forward on their faces as if they had been really shot. Some leapt in the air, but the most part knelt quietly and composedly.
The little boy Alec, whose sister had his hand clasped in hers, made as if he would rise.
"Bide ye doon, Alec," she said, very quietly, "it's no oor turn yet!"
At this the heart within me gave way, and I roared out in my helpless pain a perfect "gowl" of anger and grief.
"Bonny Whigs ye are," cried Westerha', "to dee withoot even a prayer. Put up a prayer this minute, for ye shall all dee, every one of you."
And the boy James Johnstone made answer to him:
"Sir, we cannot pray, for we be too young to pray."
"You are not too young to rebel, nor yet to die for it!" was the brute-beast's answer.
Then with that the little girl held up a hand as if she were answering a dominie in a class.
"An it please ye, sir," she said, "me an' Alec canna pray, but we can sing 'The Lord's my Shepherd,' gin that wull do! My mither learned it us afore she gaed awa'."
And before any one could stop her, she stood up like one that leads the singing in a kirk. "Stan' up, Alec, my wee mannie," she said.
Then all the bairns stood up. I declare it minded me of Bethlehem and the night when Herod's troopers rode down to look for Mary's bonny Bairn.
Then from the lips of the babes and sucklings arose the quavering strains:
"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by."
As they sang I gripped out my pistols and began to sort and prime them, hardly knowing what I did. For I was resolved to make a break for it, and, at the least, to blow a hole in James Johnstone of Westerha' that would mar him for life before I suffered any more of it.
But as they sang I saw trooper after trooper turn away his head, for, being Scots bairns, they had all learned that psalm. The ranks shook. Man after man fell out, and I saw the tears happing down their cheeks. But it was Douglas of Morton, that stark persecutor, who first broke down.
"Curse it, Westerha'," he cried, "I canna thole this langer. I'll war nae mair wi' bairns for a' the earldom i' the North."
And at last even Westerha' turned his bridle rein, and rode away from off the bonny holms of Shieldhill, for the victory was to the bairns. I wonder what his thoughts were, for he too had learned that psalm at the knees of his mother. And as the troopers rode loosely up hill and down brae, broken and ashamed, the sound of these bairns' singing followed after them, and soughing across the fells came the words:
"Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill:
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still."
Then Westerha' swore a great oath and put the spurs in his horse to get clear of the sweet singing.
CHAPTER X.
THE GRAVE IN THE WILDERNESS
But on the morrow I, who desired to see the ways of the Compellers, learned a lesson that ended my scholarship days with them. James Johnstone seemed somewhat moved by the matter of the bairns, but by the morning light he had again hardened his heart, like Pharaoh, more bitterly than before. For he was now on his own land, and because his thought was that the King would hold him answerable for the behaviour and repute of his people, he became more than ordinarily severe. This he did, being a runnagate from the wholesome ways of the Covenant; and, therefore, the more bitter against all who remained of that way.
He drove into the yards of the farm-towns, raging like a tiger of the Indies, now calling on the names of the goodman of the house, and now upon other suspected persons. And if they did not run out to him at the first cry, he would strike them on the face with the basket hilt of his shable till the blood gushed out. It was a sick and sorry thing to see, and I think his Majesty's troopers were ashamed; all saving the Johnstone's own following, who laughed as at rare sport.
But I come now to tell what I saw with my own eyes of the famous matter of Andrew Herries, which was the cause of my cousin of Lochinvar leaving their company and riding with me and Hugh Kerr all the way to Edinburgh. As, indeed, you shall presently hear. And the manner of its happening was as follows. We were riding full slowly along the edge of a boggy loch in the parish of Hutton, and, as usual, quartering the ground for Whig refugees, of whom it was suspected that there were many lurking in the neighbourhood. We had obtained no success in our sport, and Westerhall was a wild man. He ran about crying "Blood and wounds!" which was a favourite oath of his, and telling what he would do to those who dared to rebel, and harbour preachers and preachers' brats on his estate. For we had heard that the lass who had bearded us on the brae-face by the school, with her little brother Alec in her hand, was the daughter of Roger Allison, a great preacher of the hill-folk who had come to them over from Holland, to draw them together into some of their ancient unity and power.
Westerhall, then, knew not as yet in whose house she was dwelling, but only that she had been received by one of his people. But this, if it should come to Claverhouse's ears, was enough to cause him to set a fine upon the Johnstone – so strict as against landlords were the laws concerning intercommuning with rebels or rebels' children on their estates. This was indeed the cause of so many of the lairds, who at first were all on the side of the Covenant, turning out Malignants and persecutors. And more so in the shire of Dumfries than in Galloway, where the muirs are broader, the King's arm not so long, and men more desperately dour to drive.
All of a sudden, as we went along the edge of a morass, we came upon something that stayed us. It was, as I say, in Hutton parish, a very pleasant place, where there is the crying of many muir-fowl, and the tinkle of running water everywhere. All at once a questing dragoon held up his arm, and cried aloud. It was the signal that he had found something worthy of note. We all rode thither – I, for one, praying that it might not be a poor wanderer, too wearied to run from before the face of the troopers' wide-spreading advance.
However, it was but a newly-made grave in the wilderness, hastily dug, and most pitifully covered with green fresh-cut turves, in order to give it the look of the surrounding morass. It had very evidently been made during the darkness of the night, and it might have passed without notice then. But now, in the broad equal glare of the noon-tide, it lay confessed for what it was – a poor wandering hill-man's grave in the wild.
"Who made this?" cried Westerhall. "Burn me on the deil's brander, but I'll find him out!"
"Hoot," said Clavers, who was not sharp set that day, perhaps having had enough of Westerhall's dealing with the bairns yesterday, "come away, Johnstone; 'tis but another of your Eskdale saints. Ye have no lack of them on your properties, as the King will no doubt remember. What signifies a Whig Johnstone the less? There's more behind every dyke, and then their chief is aye here, able and willing to pay for them!"
This taunt, uttered by the insolent scorning mouth of Claverhouse, made Westerhall neither to hold nor bind. Indeed the fear of mulet and fine rode him like the hag of dreams.
"Truth of God!" cried he; for he was a wild and blasphemous man, very reckless in his words; "do so to me, and more also, if I rack not their limbs, that gied the clouts to wrap him in. I'se burn the bed he lay in, bring doon the rafter and roof-tree that sheltered him – aye, though it were the bonny hoose o' St. Johnstone itsel', an' lay the harbourer of the dead Whig cauld i' the clay, gin it were the mither that bore me! Deil reestle me gin I keep not this vow."
Now, the most of the men there were upon occasion bonny swearers, not taking lessons in the art from any man; but to the Johnstone they were as children. For, being a runnagate Covenanter, and not accustomed in his youth to swear, he had been at some pains to learn the habit with care, thinking it a necessary accomplishment and ornament to such as did the King's business, especially to a captain of horse. Which, indeed, it hath ever been held, but in moderation and with discretion. Westerhall had neither, being the man he was.
"Fetch the Whig dog up!" he commanded.
The men hesitated, for it was a job not at all to their stomachs, as well it might not be that hot day, with the sun fierce upon them overhead.
"Tut, man," said Clavers, "let him lie. What more can ye do but smell him? Is he not where you and I would gladly see all his clan? Let the ill-favoured Whig be, I say!"
"I shall find out who sheltered him on my land. Howk him up!" cried Westerhall, more than ever set in his mad cruelty at Colonel Graham's words. So to the light of the merciless day they opened out the loose and shallow grave, and came on one wrapped in a new plaid, with winding sheets of pure linen underneath. These were all stained and soaked with the black brew of the moss, for the man had been buried, as was usual at the time, hastily and without a coffin. But the sleuthhound instinct of the Johnstone held good. "Annandale for the hunt, Nithsdale for the market, and Gallowa' for the fecht!" is ever a true proverb.
"Let me see wha's aucht the sheet?" he said.
So with that, Westerhall unwound the corner and held it up to the light.
"Isobel Allison!" he exclaimed, holding the fine linen up to the light, and reading the name inwoven, as was then the custom when a bride did her providing. "The widow Herries, the verra woman – ain dam's sister to the Whig preacher – sant amang the hill-folk. Weel ken I the kind o' her. To the hill, lads, and we will burn the randy oot, even as I said. I'll learn the Hutton folk to play wi' the beard o' St. Johnstone."
"Foul Annandale thief!" said I, but stilly to myself, for who was I to stand against all of them? Yet I could see that, save and except the chief's own ragged tail, there were none of the soldiers that thought this kind of work becoming.
Ere he mounted, Westerhall took the poor, pitiful body, and with his foot despitefully tumbled it into a moss-hole.
"I'll show them what it is to streek dead Whigs like honest men, and row them dainty in seventeen hunder linen on my land!" cried Westerhall.
And indeed it seemed a strange and marvellous Providence to me, that young Isobel Allison, when she wove in that name with many hopes and prayers, the blood of her body flushing her cheek with a maiden's shy expectation, should have been weaving in the ruin of her house and the breaking of her heart.
Now the cot of the widow Herries was a bonny place. So I believe, but of its beauty I will not speak. For I never was back that way again – and what is more, I never mean to be.
We came to the gavel end of the house. Westerhall struck it with his sword.
"We'll sune hae this doon!" he said to us that followed. Then louder he cried, "Mistress, are ye within?" as the custom of the country is.
A decent woman with a white widow's cap on her head was scraping out a dish of hen's meat as we rode to the door. When she saw us on our horses about the close, the wooden bowl fell from her hands and played clash on the floor.
"Aye, my bonny woman," quoth Westerhall, "this comes o' keeping Whigs aboot your farm-toon. Whatna Whig rebel was it ye harboured? Oot wi't, Bell Allison! Was it the brither o' ye, that cursed spawn o' the low country? Doon on your knees an' tell me, else it is your last hour on the earth."
The poor woman fell on her knees and clasped her hands.
"O Westerha'!" she stammered, "I'll no lee till ye. It was but a puir Westland man that we kenned not the name o'. We fand him i' the fields, and for very God's pity brocht him hame to our door and laid him on the bed. He never spak' 'yea' or 'nay' to us all the time he abode in our hoose-place, and so passed without a word late yestreen."
