The Men of the Moss-Hags

In the evening it fell to me to make my first endeavours at waiting at table, for though women were safe enough anywhere on the estate, Balmaghie was not judged to be secure for me except within the house itself.

So my mother gave me a great many cautions about how I should demean myself, and how to be silent and mannerly when I handed the dishes.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE BLACK HORSE COMES TO BALMAGHIE

As Wat and I went towards the great house in the early gloaming, we became aware of a single horseman riding toward us and gaining on us from behind. At the first sound of the trampling of his horse, Wat dived at once over the turf dyke and vanished.

"Bide you!" he said. "He'll no ken you!"

A slender-like figure in a grey cavalry cloak and a plain hat without a feather, came, slowly riding alongside of me, in an attitude of the deepest thought.

I knew at a glance that it was John Graham of Claverhouse, whom all the land of the South knew as "the Persecutor."

"Are you one of Balmaghie's servants?" he asked.

I took off my bonnet, showing as I did so my shaven poll, and answered him that I was.

No other word he uttered, though he eyed me pretty closely and uncomfortably, as if he had a shrewd thought that he had seen me before elsewhere. But the shaven head and the absence of hair on my face were a complete disguise.

For, indeed, though Maisie Lennox made little of it, the fact was that I had at the time quite a strong crop of hair upon both my chin and upper lip.

Claverhouse waved me behind him with the graceful and haughty gesture, which they say he constantly used even to the Secretary in Council, when he was hot with him in the matter of the house and lands of Dudhope.

Meekly enough I trudged behind the great commander of horse, and looked with much curiosity and some awe both upon him and on his famous steed "Boscobel," which was supposed by the more ignorant of the peasantry to be the foul fiend in his proper person.

So in this manner we came to the house. The lights were just beginning to shine, for Alisoun Begbie, the maid of the table, was just arranging the candles. At the doorway the master of the house met his guest, having been drawn from his library by the feet of the charger clattering upon the pavement of the yard.

"Ah, John," he said, "this is right gracious of you, in the midst of your fighting and riding, to journey over to cheer an old hulk like me!"

And he reached him a hand to the saddle, which Claverhouse took without a word. But I saw a look of liking, which was almost tender, in the war-captain's eyes as I passed round by the further door into the kitchen.

Here I was roughly handled by the cook – who, of course, had not been informed of my personality, and who exercised upon me both the length of her tongue and the very considerable agility thereof.

But Alisoun Begbie, who was, as I say, principal waiting-maid, rescued me and in pity took me under her protection; though with no suspicion of my quality, but only from a maidish and natural liking for a young and unmarried man. She offered very kindly to show me all my duties, and, indeed, I had been in a sorry pass that night without her help.

So when it came to the hour of supper, it was with some show of grace that I was enabled to wait at table, and take my part in the management of the dishes thereupon. Alisoun kept me mostly in the back of her serving pantry, and gave me only the dishes which were easy to be served, looking kindly on me with her eyes all the while and shyly touching my hand when occasion served, which I thought it not politic to refuse. For all this I was mightily thankful, because I had very small desire to draw upon me the cold blue eyes of John Graham – to whom, in spite of my crop head and serving-man's attire, there might arrive a memory of the side of green Garryhorn and the interrupted fight which Wat of Lochinvar, my cousin, had fought for my sake with Cornet Peter Inglis.

The two gentlemen sat and supped their kail, in which a pullet had been boiled, with quite remarkable relish. But it was not till the wine had been uncorked and set at their elbows, that they began to have much converse.

Then they sat and gossiped together very pleasantly, like men that are easing their hearts and loosening their belts over trencher and stoup, after a hard day's darg.

It was John Graham who spoke first.

"Have you heard," he said, "the excellent new jest concerning Anne Keith, what she did with these vaguing blasties up at Methven, when the laird was absent in London?"

"Nay," replied Roger McGhie, "that have I not. I am not in the way at Balmaghie to hear other misdeeds than those of John Graham and his horse Boscobel, that is now filling his kyte in my stable, as his master is eke doing in hall."

"Well," said Claverhouse, "we shall have to give Anne the justiciar power and send her lord to the spence and the store chamber. She should have the jack and the riding breeks, and he the keys of the small ale casks. So it were better for his Majesty's service."

"But I thought him a good loyal man," said Roger McGhie.

"One that goes as easy as an old shoe – like yourself, Roger. Not so my lady. Heard ye what our Anne did? The conventiclers came to set up a preaching in a tent on the laird's ground, and they told it to Anne. Whereupon she rose, donned her lord's buff coat and slung his basket hilt at her pretty side. And so to the woodside rode she. There were with her none but Methven's young brother, a lad like a fathom of pump water. Yet with Anne Keith to captain him, he e'en drew sword and bent pistol like a brave one. I had not thought that there was so much good stuff in David."

Roger McGhie sipped at his wine and nodded, drawing up one eyebrow and down the other, as his habit was when he was amused – which indeed was not seldom, for he was merry within him much more often than he told any.

"Then who but Anne was the pretty fighter," Clavers went on lightly, "with a horseman's piece on her left arm, and a drawn tuck in her right hand? Also was she not the fine general? For she kept the enemy's forces sindry, marching her servants to and fro, all armed to the teeth – to and fro all day between them, and threatening the tent in which was the preacher to the rabble. She cried to them that if they did not leave the parish of Methven speedily, it would be a bloody day for them. And that if they did not come to the kirk decently and hear the curate, she would ware her life upon teaching them how to worship God properly, for that they were an ignorant, wicked pack! A pirlicue9 which pleased them but little, so that some rode off that they might not be known, and some dourly remained, but were impotent for evil.

"I never knew that Anne Keith was such a spirity lass. I would all such lasses were as sound in the faith as she."

This was the word of Roger McGhie, uttered like a meditation. I felt sure he thought of his daughter Kate.

"Then," continued John Graham, "after that, Anne took her warlike folk to the kirk. And lo! the poor curate was so wandered and feared, that he could make no suitable discourse that day, but only stood and bleated like a calf, till the Lady Anne said to him, 'Sir, if you can neither fight nor preach, ye had better go back to the Hielands and herd kye, for by the Lord, I, Anne Keith, can fight and preach too!'"

"As they do say the Laird of Methven right well knoweth," said Roger McGhie, in the very dry and covert way in which he said many things.

"Ah!" said Clavers, and smiled a little as if he also had his own thoughts. But he went on.

"So on the very next day Anne held a court in the hall, and all the old canting wives of the parish were there. She set the Test to all their throats, and caused them to forswear conventicling at the peril of their lives – all but one old beldame that would in no wise give way, or be answerable for her children, who were well kenned and notour rebels.

"Then Anne took from the hag her apron, that was a fine braw one with pockets, and said to her, 'This I shall retain till you have paid your son's fines. If ye cannot keep your other brats out of the dirt, at least I shall keep this one clean for you.'"

"Ha, very well said, Anne!" cried Roger McGhie, clapping the table. For "brat" is but the Scots word for apron, and such a brisk conceity saying was like that very spirited lady, Anne Keith.

"But with yourself, how goes it?" asked the Laird of Balmaghie.

Claverhouse turned a silver spoon over and over, and looked at the polish upon it thoughtfully.

"Ill, ill, I fear. I ride night and day through all the country of Galloway, and it is like so much pudding in mud. That which you clear out before you, closes up behind. And at headquarters there is the Duke Hamilton, who desires no better than to load me to the chancellor. I have many enemies."

"But surely also many friends," said Balmaghie.

"Not many so true as thou art, Roger," said Claverhouse, stretching out a white hand across the table, which his friend took for a moment.

"And I am plagued on the one side by the Council to make the folk keep to the kirk, and on the other sore vexed with weary-winded preachers like Andrew Symson over on Creeside, who this very day writes me to say that ever since muckle Davie Dunbar of Baldoon hath broken his neck, he gets no congregation at all. And be sure the poor wretch wishes me to gather him one."

He threw a bit of paper across the table to Balmaghie.

"Read ye that," he said. "It is about swearing Baldoon."

The laird looked at it all over and then began to smile.

"This is indeed like Andrew Symson, doddering fool body that he is – aye scribing verses, and sic-like verse. Heaven forfend us!"

And he began to read.

UPON BALDOON"He was no schismatick. He ne'er withdrewHimself from the house of God. He with a few,Some two or three, came constantly to prayFor such as had withdrawn themselves away.Nor did he come by fits. Foul day or fair,I being in the kirk, was sure to see him there.Had he withdrawn, 'tis like, these two or threeBeing thus discouraged, had deserted me:So that my muse 'gainst Priscian avers,He, he alone, was my parishioners!"

"Aye," said Balmaghie, "I warrant the puir hill-folk werna muckle the better o' Baldoon's supplications."

Then Claverhouse, receiving back the paper, looked up with great alertness.

"But I have chanced in that very country to fall on a nest of the fanatics."

He looked cautiously about, and I had no more than time to step back into the little pantry where Alisoun Begbie was already washing the dishes. She put her arm about me to keep me within, and before she let me go, she kissed me. Which I suffered without great concern – for, being a lass from Borgue, she was not uncomely, though, like all these shore lassies, a little forritsome.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A CAVALIER'S WOOING

John Graham assured himself that none of the servants were in the room, and then he said:

"I have sure informations from one Birsay Smith, a cobbler, by which I have my hand as good as upon the throat of that arch-fanatic, Anthony Lennox of the Duchrae, and also upon Sandy Gordon of Earlstoun, his younger brother William, Maclellan of Barscobe, and some others. It will be a great taking, for there is a long price on every head of them."

"Think you, John," said Balmaghie, shrewdly, "that you will add Earlstoun and Barscobe to your new lands of Freuch?"

"Nay," said Clavers, "that is past hoping. They will give them to their English colonels, Oglethorpe and the like. Aye, even though, at my own request, I had the promise from the Council of the estates of any that I should find cause of forfeiture against, a thing which is only my due. But as by this time you may know, a plain soldier hath small chance among the wiles of the courtiers."

"I question, John, if thou hadst all Galloway and Nidsdale to boot, thou wouldst be happy, even with the fairest maid therein, for one short week. Thou wouldst be longing to have Boscobel out, saddled and bridled, and be off to the Whig-hunting with a 'Ho-Tally-Ho!' For that is thy way, John!"

Claverhouse laughed a little stern laugh like a man that is forced to laugh at himself, yet is somedeal proud of what he hears.

"It is true," he said. "There is no hunting like this hunting of men, which the King's service sees in these days. It makes it worth living to keep the crown of the moorland with one's company of dragoons, like a man hefting lambs on a sheep farm; and know that no den, no knowe, no moss, no hill has been left unsearched for the King's rebels."

"And how speeds the wooing, John?" I heard Balmaghie say after a little pause, and the opening of another bottle.

For I thought it no shame to listen, since the lives of all that were dear to me, as well as my own, were in this man's power. And, besides, I knew very well that Kate McGhie had put me in this place, that I might gain good intelligence of the intentions of the great captain of the man-hunters.

Clavers sat awhile silent. He looked long and scrupulously at his fine white hand and fingered the lace ruffle upon his sleeve.

"It was of that mainly that I came to speak to you, Roger. Truth to tell, it does not prosper to my mind."

"Hath the fair Jean proved unkind?" said Roger McGhie, looking over at Claverhouse, with a quiet smile in his eye.

John Graham leaned back in his chair with a quick amused look and threw back his clustering love locks.

"No," he said; "there is, I think, little fear of that."

"What then is the difficulty – her mother?"

"Aye," said Claverhouse, "that is more like it. Yet though the Lady Dundonald drills me and flytes me and preaches at me, I care not so much. For like the hardships of life, that will come to an end. Nevertheless, I own that at times I am tempted to take the lady at my saddle-bow, and ride out from Paisley to return no more."

"You will not do that, John!" said Balmaghie quietly, with a certain light of irony in his eye.

Claverhouse looked up quickly.

"How so, Balmaghie?" he said, and I saw through my little slant wicket the pride grow in his eye.

"The forty thousand marks, John."

Claverhouse struck his hand on the table.

"Thank you – " he said coldly, and then for a moment was silent.

"There is no man that dare say that to me but yourself, Roger McGhie," he added.

"No," said the Laird of Balmaghie, sipping at his canary, "and that is why you rode over to see me to-night, John – a silly old man in a dull house, instead of guzzling at Kirkcudbright with Winram and the burgesses and bailies thereof. You are a four-square, truth-telling man, and yet hear little of it, save at the house of Balmaghie."

Claverhouse still said nothing, but stared at the table, from which the cloth had been removed.

The elder man reached over and put his hand on the sleeve of the younger.

"Why, John," he said softly, "pluck up heart and do nothing hastily – as I know thou wilt not. Forty thousand marks is not to be despised. It will help thee mightily with Freuch and Dudhope. It is worth having thy ears soundly boxed once or twice for a persecutor, by a covenanting mother-in-law."

"But that is not the worst of it, Roger," said Claverhouse, who had gotten over his pique; "my enemies lay it against me to York and the King, that I frequent a suspected and disloyal house. They will put me down as they put down Aberdeen – "

At this moment I felt a hand upon my arm. It was that of Kate McGhie. She drew me out of the closet where Alisoun had bestowed me, intending, as she intimated, to come cosily in beside me when she had washed the dishes. But Kate took me by the hand, and together we passed out into the cool night. Wat met us by the outer gate. He was standing in the shadow. There was then no time for me to tell Kate what I had heard Claverhouse reveal to the laird of his intentions regarding Anton Lennox and my brother Sandy. To which there was added a further great uncertainty, lest Birsay had been able to add to his other informations an account of my mother's hiding-place and our own disguises. Nay, even though he had not already done so, there was no saying how soon this might come about.

However, as we stood conferring a moment together, there was one came running hastily from the house to the stables, carrying a lantern.

Then in a little, out of the stable door came clattering the war-horse of the commander of dragoons.

William McCutcheon, the serving-man and chief groom of the stables, led Boscobel with a certain awe, as if he might actually be leading the Accuser of the Brethren, haltered and accoutred.

He had not been at the door a minute, when Claverhouse come out and went down the steps, drawing on his riding gauntlets as he came. Roger McGhie walked behind him carrying burning candles in a great silver triple candlestick. He held the light aloft in his hand while the cavalier mounted with a free, easy swing into the saddle; and, gathering the reins in his hand, turned to bid his host adieu. "Be a wee canny with the next Whig ye catch, for the sake of your ain bonny Whiggie, Jean Cochrane!" cried Roger McGhie of Balmaghie, holding the cresset high above his head.

"Deil a fear!" laughed Clavers, gaily waving his hand. "Tis not in the power of love or any other folly to alter my loyalty."

"Pshaw!" said the laird; "then, John, be assured ye ken nothing about the matter."

But Claverhouse was already clattering across the cobble stones of the yard. We drew back into the deep shadow of the bushes and he passed us, a noble figure of a man sitting slenderly erect on his black horse Boscobel, and so riding out into the night, like a prince of darkness going forth to war.

That night, down in the little holding of Waterside, upon the broad meadows of the Dee, we held a council. My mother was for setting out forthwith to look after her son Sandy.

But I gently dissuaded her, telling her that Sandy was far better left to his own resources, than with her safety also to provide for.

"I daresay," said she, a little shortly; "but have you thought how I am like to sleep when you are all away – when in every foot that comes by the door, I hear the messenger who comes to tell me of my sons streeked stiff in their winding sheets?"

But, after all, we managed to persuade her to bide on at the Boatcroft, where little Margaret of Glen Vernock was to stay with her for company. As for the rest of us, we had information brought us by sure hands, of the hiding-places of Anton Lennox and the rest of the wanderers.

The maids were set upon accompanying us – Maisie Lennox to see her father, and Kate McGhie because Maisie Lennox was going. But after a long controversy we also prevailed on them to abide at home and wait for our return. Yet it came to me afterwards that I saw a look pass between them, such as I had seen before, when it is in the heart of the women folk to play some trick upon the duller wits of mankind. It is as though they said, "After all, what gulls these men be!"

So that night I slept with Wat in the gardener's hut, and early in the morning we went down to the great house to bid the maids good-bye. But there we found only Alisoun Begbie. The nest was empty and the birds flown. Only Roger McGhie was walking up and down the beech avenue of the old house, deep in thought. He had his hands behind his back, and sometimes the corners of his mouth seemed to smile through his gloom with a curious pleasantry. Wat and I kept well out of his sight, and I could not help wondering how much, after all, he understood of our ongoings. More than any of us thought at that time, I warrant, for it was the man's humour to know much and say little.

Alisoun Begbie, who seemed not unwilling that we should stop and converse with her, told us that after Clavers had departed, Mistress Kate had gone in to her father to tell him that she was going away for a space of days.

"Mind, ye are not to rise before your ordinary in the morning, father," she said; "I shall be gone by the dawn."

"Very well, Kate," he replied, continuing to draw off his coat and prepare for bed; "I shall sell the Boreland to pay the fine."

This was all he said; and having kissed his daughter good-night, calmly and pleasantly as was his wont, he set a silken skull-cap on his crown and fell asleep.

Truly a remarkable man was Roger McGhie of Balmaghie.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

IN COVE MACATERICK

Wat and I took our way immediately towards those wilds where, as we had been advised, Auld Anton Lennox was hidden. He was (so we were informed) stricken with great sickness and needed our ministrations. But in the wild country into which we were going was no provision for the up-putting of young and delicate maids, specially such as were accustomed to the luxuries of the house of Balmaghie.

The days, however, were fine and dry, and a fanning wind from the north blew in our faces as we went. It was near to the road-end of the Duchrae, up which I had so often helped the cars (or sledges of wood with birch twigs for wheels) to drag the hay crop, that we met Roderick MacPherson, a Highland man-servant of the Laird of Balmaghie, riding one pony and leading other two. We knew them at once as those which for common were ridden by Kate McGhie and Maisie Lennox.

"Hey, where away, Roderick?" cried Wat, as soon as he set eyes on the cavalcade.

The fellow looked through his lowering thatch of eyebrows and grunted, but whether with stupidity or cunning it had been hard to say.

"Speak!" said Wat, threateningly; "you can understand well enough, when they cry from the kitchen door that it is porridge time."

"The leddies was tak' a ride," MacPherson answered, with a cock in his eye that angered Wat, whose temper, indeed, in these days was not of the most enduring.

"Where did you leave them?" cried he of Lochinvar.

"It was on a muir, no far frae a burnside; I was fair forget where!" said Roderick, with a look of the most dense stupidity.

Then I saw the fellow had been commanded not to tell, so I said to Wat,

"Come on, Wat. Kate has ordered him not to tell us."

"This is a bonny like thing," said Wat, angrily, "that I canna truss him up and make him tell, only because I am riding with the hill-folk. Oh, that I were a King's man of any sort for half an hour."

For, indeed, it is the glory of the field-folk, who have been blamed for many extremes and wild opinions, that though tortured and tormented themselves by the King's party, they used not torture upon their enemies – as in later times even the Whigs did, when after the Eighty-eight it came to be their time to govern.

So we permitted the Highland tyke to go on his way. There is no need to go into the place and manner of our journeyings, in such a pleasant and well-kenned country as the strath of the Kells. But, suffice it to say, after a time we betook ourselves to the broad of the moors, and so held directly for the fastnesses of the central hills, where the poor hunted folk kept sanctuary.

We kept wide of the rough and tumbled country about the lochs of Neldricken and Enoch; because, to our cost and detriment, we knew that place was already much frequented by the ill-contriving gipsy people thereabouts – rascals who thought no more of taking the life of a godly person, than of killing one of the long-woolled mountain sheep which are the staple of these parts. So there was no need to run into more danger. We were in plenty already without that.

After a long while we found ourselves under the front of the Dungeon Hill, which is the wildest and most precipitous in all that country. They say that when it thunders there, all the lightnings of heaven join together to play upon the rocks of the Dungeon. And, indeed, it looks like it; for most of the rocks there are rent and shattered, as though a giant had broken them and thrown them about in his play.

Beneath this wild and rocky place we kept our way, till, across the rounded head of the Hill of the Star, we caught a glimpse of the dim country of hag and heather that lay beyond.

Then we held up the brae that is called the Gadlach, where is the best road over the burn of Palscaig, and so up into the great wide valley through which runs the Eglin Lane.

Wat and I had our precise information as to the cave in which lay the Covenanter, Anton Lennox. So that, guiding ourselves by our marks, we held a straight course for the corner of the Back Hill of the Star in which the hiding place was.