*****
Kate had gone below. The others still remained upon the deck. TheSea Unicornwas heading directly for the main-land.
Barra pointed to the blue hills which were slowlychanging into gray olive on the lower slopes as the ship neared the land.
"We are honored," he said, "with the company of so brave a lover and one so successful. But we would not keep him from other conquests. So, since I, Murdo of Barra, do not use the daggers of harlots, nor yet the crumbling walls of towers, to crush those who hate me, I give you, sir, your liberty, which I hope you will use wisely, in order that you may retrieve a portion of that honor which by birth is yours. I will set your companion and yourself on shore at the nearest point of land without any conditions whatsoever."
Wat bowed. He did not pay much attention. He was thinking rather of Kate's last words. Barra went over to the captain and entered into earnest talk with him.
It was the turn of the lady of Balmaghie. She came over to where Wat was standing by the side of the ship.
"You thought me beautiful once, or at least you told me so, Lochinvar," she said, laying her hand on his.
"I think you as beautiful to-day as ever I thought you," answered Wat, with a certain weary diplomacy. If the Mammon of Unrighteousness must have the care of the Beloved, it might be as well to make a friend of Mammon.
"Yet you have sought other and younger loves"—she purred her words softly at him—"you have been unfaithful to the old days when it was not less than heaven for you to kiss my hand or to carry my fan."
"Unfaithful!" said Wat, laughing a little hard laugh; "yet your ladyship hath twice been wedded to men of your own choice, whilst I remain lonely, a wanderer, companionless."
"You will ever be welcome at the House of Balmaghie," she said, laying her hand on his.
Wat looked up eagerly. It was not an invitation he had looked for from the duchess on this side the grave.
"Ever most welcome," repeated my lady, looking tenderly at him. "Indeed, gladly would I endeavor to comfort you if ever you come to us in sore trouble."
Wat turned away disappointed. He would certainly look for his consolation from another source, if ever he came within reach of the House of Balmaghie.
"I thank you, my lady," said Wat. "At present my heart is too heavy to permit me more fully to express my gratitude."
He spoke the words mechanically, without setting a meaning to them. He listened to his own lips speaking as if they had been another's, and wondered what they found to say.
It was the afternoon when at last the boat was lowered to put Wat and Scarlett ashore. They were already stepping across the deck to the ship's side when Kate appeared at the top of the ladder which led up from the cabin. She walked straight to where Wat was standing and held out both her hands.
"I am yours; remember, I shall ever be ready," she said, quite clearly.
"And I," he said, more softly, "will come to you were it across the world. Only in your hour of need send me once again the heart of gold for a sign."
And he took her token from his neck, touched it with his lips, and gave it back to her.
"Till you need me, keep it!" he said, and so stooped and kissed her on the forehead before them all.
Then, without looking back, he followed Scarlett down the ladder into the boat.
Wat and Scarlett found themselves landed in a country which to all intents was one both savage and hostile. It was not indeed Barra's country, but the danger was scarcely less on that account. They were strangers and Sassenach. Wat carried gold in his belt, more than many a Highland chief had ever seen at one time in his life—gold which at Perth or Inverness could be exchanged for a prince's wealth of swords and daggers, pistols and fighting-gear.
It was in a little land-locked bay that they were disembarked. Great slaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lower hills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, warded the bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked out on a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries, which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showed themselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering and arching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely and barren for miles on either side of them. They watched the boat return to the ship, as she lay with her sails backed, and shivering in the wind, waiting only for the crew to come on board before sailing for the south.
A slight figure could be seen immediately above the bulwark on the land side. Wat rose to his feet and waved his hand. The white speck signalled a reply, andKate McGhie, the maid of his love, carried the heart of gold away with her to the lands of the south, and the spaces of the sea widened every moment between the truest lovers the world held.
Scarlett and Wat sat a long time watching the ship dwindling into a mere tower of whiteness in the distance, the seas closing bluer and bluer about her, and the whole universe growing lonely behind her, wanting the Beloved.
At last Scarlett spoke.
"Lad, have ye had enough of adventures," he said, more sadly than was his wont, "or are ye as keen after them as ever? It seems that we have now put ourselves in every man's ill graces, so far as I can see. Whether James or William bear the gree to us signifies not a jot; for if James, then the first king's man that comes across us holds you for the old outlawry in the matter of wounding my Lord Wellwood, and me for taking your side when I brought you the king's letter to Brederode; and if William wear the crown, lo, for prison-breaking and manslaughter—aye, and for desertion of his army, both you and poor silly John Scarlett are alien and outlaw in all the realms of the Dutchman. I tell you we are doomed at either end of the stick, Wat, my man."
"And faith, I care not much," quoth Wat, watching with wistful eyes theSea Unicornvanishing with the one thing that was dear to him on earth.
"Care or no care," said Scarlett, "it is time for us to be on our feet!"
So Wat, rising obediently, kissed his hand behind his companion's back to the white tower which was now sinking in the utmost south.
As soon almost as the two adventurers had left the sand and shingle of the shore, they found themselves upon the short heather of certain rough, moorish foothills. No house pleasantly reeking was to be discerned—not so much as a deer nor even a wandering sheep in that wide, wild place.
So Wat and Scarlett fared forth straight to the east, keeping mostly parallel with the shores of a fine loch, which stretched inward in the direction of the notch in the hills which they had seen from their landing-place.
It was towards evening when the two friends came to the summit of a little knoll and stood looking down upon a curious scene. Beneath them, scattered among thedébrisof some prehistoric landslip, lay a small Highland village—if village it could be called—of which each house or hut was built against the side of a great bowlder or rock fallen from the hill-side. The cottages were no better than rude shelters of turf and stone, roofed with blackened heather and scattered at every conceivable angle, as if they had been dredged forcibly out of the bottom of a reluctant pepper-pot and had taken root where they fell.
In the centre, however, was a kind of open space—not levelled nor cleared of turf and stones, but with all its primeval rocks sticking through the scanty turf, blackened and smoothed by the rubbing they had received from the fundamental parts of innumerable generations of goats and children.
In this space a dozen men in rude kilts and plaids of ancient faded tartan were collected, arguing and threatening with as much apparent fierceness as though some one of them was to be killed during the next five minutes. A small army of women hovered on the outskirts and made independent forays into the affray, catching hold of this and that other valiant discourser, and, if she got the right hold and purchase, swinging him forthwith out of the turmoil—only, however, to return to it again as soon as her grasp relaxed.
There was, therefore, a centre of disturbance of which the elements were entirely male—while contemporary,and on the whole concentric, with it revolved a number of smaller cyclones, of which the elements were about equally male and female. Fists were shaken here and there in all of them, and voices rose loud and shrill. But from the heart of the darker and more permanent quarrel in the centre there came at intervals the threatening gleam of steel, as this one and that other stooped and flashed theskein dhu, plucked out of his garter, defiantly in the face of his opponent.
In the very midst Wat could see a thick-set man who carried over his shoulder a couple of ash-plants rudely tied together. This contrivance was of small dimensions, and the sharpened ends were burned black and further stained with blood and what looked like red wax.
The man who carried it had no other weapon—if this could be called a weapon—which appeared as harmless as a boy's sword of lath. Yet as the little man thrust it towards this one and that, the strong men of the circle shrank back instantly with the greatest alarm, shaking their heads and girning their teeth, as Scarlett said, "like so many wull-cats on a dike."
There seemed to be no end to this bloodless but threatening quarrel, which blackened and scattered for all the world like a swarm of bees whirling abroad on a July day, when the good-wives run beneath with iron pots and clattering skellets to settle the swarm ere it has time to leave the farm-town. But suddenly out of one of the largest and most distinguished of the houses—one not much, if anything, inferior to a Galloway "swine ree"—there issued a tall, dark man, who walked with an air, swinging his tartans and rattling the gold tassel on the basket hilt of his claymore.
He made straight for the thickest of the quarrel, and so soon as he arrived there he knocked this disputant one way and hurled another that, like a schoolmaster unexpectedly descending upon unruly boys. And it wasludicrous to see these stalwart Highlandmen sprawling on the ground, holding their ears, which had been smitten so suddenly and with such a mighty buffeting; for the fierceness on their faces when first they felt the blow faded into instant desire to get out of the way—even culminating in a kind of satisfied good-humor so soon as they set eyes on their chastiser, as though it were not less than an honor to be smitten by such a hand.
In ten seconds the quarrel was no more, and the very men who had warred and debated were to be seen most valiantly retiring behind their wives' petticoats out of reach of the chilling eye-glances and hard-buckled fists of the tall, dark peacemaker.
He, on his part, strode directly to where stood the little man with the blackened cross of ash-plants, and, taking this article unceremoniously out of his hand, he thrust it into those of the nearest bystander, and pointed with his hand in the direction of the knoll on which Wat and Scarlett had their station.
As he did so it was evident that he observed their presence for the first time, and his hand dropped quickly to his side.
Then, almost before Wat and Scarlett had time to draw their swords and stand on the defensive, they in their turn became the centre of all the noise in the village. Steel flashed in plenty all about, and half a score of wild men crouched and "hunkered" round them waiting for the chance to spring. But with Walter Gordon and Jack Scarlett standing back to back, each with a long sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, it was not easy for the most alert to find an unprotected opening.
Meanwhile the tall, dark man, who had the manifest air of a chief, walked leisurely towards them and stood looking on at the affray.
"Sir!" cried Wat, "call off your men, and permit us to explain our presence."
But the man vouchsafed not a word in reply, only stood and looked over the heads of his men at Scarlett's legs.
"Why, man!" he cried, at length, "ye should be for the Good Cause; ye have gotten the King of France's boots on!"
"Aye," said Scarlett, instantly dropping his point; "certainly we are for the Good Cause. Truly, also, I have the King of France's boots on, and that with good reason, for when I left France I was officer in His Majesty's Luxembourg regiment."
Which, indeed, was very true, but certain other things had happened in between.
The tall man seemed pleased at his own acute observation. He called off his men with a single stern word, which sounded almost like a bidding given to a dog to lie down.
"But what seek you in my country?" he asked them.
Now Scarlett would have given something to know in what country he was, and still more to know who was the owner of it; but not knowing either, he had to do the best he could with the limited information at his disposal.
"We are here," he said, laying his finger meaningly on his lip, "on the part of his Majesty the King of France, for the furtherance of the Good Cause."
And he added, under his breath, "And a precious deal would I give to know for certain what in this instance the Good Cause is!"
For indeed it seemed not likely that Louis was fomenting any rebellion against the arms of King James, who, when Wat and Scarlett left the harbor of Lis-op-Zee, ruled unquestioned at Whitehall.
But Scarlett's diplomatic answer was accepted without reserve.
"Friends of the true king and officers of his Christian Majesty of France are ever friends of Keppoch's," he cried, striding forward frankly and giving a hand to each.
Scarlett felt a strong desire to whistle as the chief revealed himself.
"Coll o' the Cows!" he muttered, softly; "we are indeed in the gled's claws this day."
For Coll o' the Cows was the wildest chief as well as the most noted cattle-lifter beyond the Highland line, and though now apparently standing for "the Good Cause" (whatever that might be), he had all his life hitherto stood entirely for the very excellent cause of his own vested right to drive other folks' cattle and eat other folks' beef.
"Doubtless you will have seen my Lord Dundee?" said Keppoch to Scarlett, whom, very evidently, he considered the leading spirit of the two.
Wat pricked up his ears.
"Is Colonel Graham here?" he said, looking inquiringly at the chief.
Keppoch frowned, and for the first time looked a little suspicious.
"Ye must have come over the line but lately," he said, "if ye know not that my Lord Dundee hath broken with Duke Hamilton's Cat Convention, and is now raking the highlands for levies as a servant lass rakes the night-coals to light her morning fires."
"Indeed ye may say so, for we have within the hour been landed from the ship which gave us passage from France—landed upon the shore at the mouth of your fine loch there," replied Scarlett, pointing westward with his hand.
The brow of Coll o' the Cows instantly cleared.
"It is true; I see by your boots ye have been in the salt-water coming ashore." For his pursuit of cattle seemed manifestly to have sharpened his faculty of observation.
"We have to be careful these ill days," he said, "when one cannot tell whether a man is for the Good Cause or for the Dutch thief that cocks his dirty orange plumes so bravely on the road 'twixt Torbay and London."
Observing their evident interest, he went on with his information. It is good in a wild country to be the first bearer of great tidings.
"STRIDING FORWARD FRANKLY AND GIVING A HAND TO EACH"
"STRIDING FORWARD FRANKLY AND GIVING A HAND TO EACH"
"We have e'en just sent the fiery cross on to the country o' the Camerons. Some o' my lads were no that carin' aboot carrying it, for there has been a bit nimble-going feud betwixt us, and it is the Camerons' turn to make the score even."
"And how was the matter settled?" asked Wat, with curious interest.
"Och!" said Keppoch, "I just gied the fiery cross to Duncan o' Taliskier. He is no to say a very right son of Ian at any rate. Ye see, his mother was a woman from the north—from the country of the Grants. And as for the father o' him, faith, there was nane kenned to rights wha he was—even hersel'. But for a' that, Duncan o' Taliskier is wonderful handy to keep about a house for jobs o' this kind."
"It is indeed excellently invented," said Scarlett, approvingly, "for I learned long ago that 'always sacrifice your worst troops—your allies if you can'—is an ancient and well-considered military maxim."
The chief went on: "You will be wondering what Keppoch does here on the edge of this country o' Camerons? Faith, ye may well wonder! But there's a bit plantation of McDonald's over the hill there, and though they have taken Lochiell's name they find it for the good of their healths to pay a bit cess to Keppoch—just as the peetifu' burgher bodies of Inverness do; for money a loon is feared o' Colin—Guid kens what for."
Wat and Scarlett nodded. They were too completely ignorant of the niceties of the state of society into the midst of which they were cast to venture on any reply.
"But ye shall not bide here," said Keppoch; "ye are instantly to come your ways with me to Keppoch, my head place, where my castle is. This bit townie here is well enough, but it is not fit for the like of gentlemen that have been in France even to set their feet within."
So in a little while Wat and Scarlett found themselves following Coll o' the Cows and his ragged regiment towards "Keppoch, my head place, where my castle is."
First there went a dozen or so of small, black-felled,large-horned cattle, mostly young, which constantly put their heads over their shoulders and looked back towards the pastures they had left, routing and roaring most excruciatingly. Then came a round dozen of Keppoch's men urging them on, sometimes with the flat of the scabbard and sometimes pricking them with the naked points of their claymores.
On the hills above skirmished an irregular force of small light men and half-naked lads. Keppoch pointed them out to his companions.
"Yonder goes my flying column," he said, cunningly, "for so it is designated in the books of war. Keppoch is not an ignorant man—far from it, as ye shall know ere ye win clear of him. He did not go to the schools of Edinburgh for the best part of three winters for nothing. That was where he learned the English so well—frae the 'prentice lads o' the Lawnmarket—fair good drinkers they are, too, and as ready wi' their nieves as the prettiest gentleman with his blade."
He considered a little, as if measuring his own qualifications.
"Maybe ye wunda juist say that I am what ye might call a learned man, nor do I set myself up for an authority on law and doctrine, like Black Ewan owerby at Lochiell. But at least, for every good milch cow in his byres there are ten in mine, and never a Sassenach bonnet-laird comes to Keppoch to claim them. So ye see, so muckle education has not been thrown away on me."
At this moment three hungry-looking loons came down the side of a glen, wading waist-deep among the heather, and driving a small, shaggy Highland cow before them, little bigger than a lowland sheep.
"Ah, good lads," he cried, "plaided men, carriers of the buckler, where gat ye that ane?"
The nearest man cried something that sounded like
"Deil-a-mony-mae!" whereat Keppoch laughed and nodded his head.
The small cow joined the herd, and was soon racing up the long glen towards the north. But the incident was not ended, for before they had gone far over the heather a woman came tearing down the hill-side, and flinging herself down at Keppoch's feet, she clasped him by the legs and kissed the hem of his tartan in an agony of supplication.
"Some blood-feud," thought Wat, as he listened to the frenzied outpouring of appeal. Keppoch stood awkwardly enough, listening at first frowningly, and then with some signs of yielding in his brow, the sight of which made the woman yet more earnest.
After a moment's thought he looked up and cried some direction to the clansmen who followed the cattle ahead of them. The little red cow was turned and came uncertainly along the glen, sometimes roaring back to the herd and at other times casting up her head to look for her own well-noted landmarks. As soon, however, as she saw the woman, the cow ran to her like a dog and nuzzled a wet foam-flecked mouth into her mistress's bosom.
The woman again clasped Keppoch's hand, kissing it over and over and calling down blessings upon him. Then right briskly she took the heather, skipping along the side of the hill with a light well-accustomed foot, the little red cow following her as closely as a dog, leaping runnels of water and skirting perilous screes on the way to her native pastures.
"What might all this be?" asked Scarlett.
Keppoch looked rather shamefaced, like a man expecting to do a good deed by stealth who suddenly finds it fame.
"Och," said he, "it was just a widow woman that had a bit coo, and some o' my lads met the coo. And thecoo it cam' after them, and the widow woman she cam' after the coo; and then, puir body, she asked me if I was a Christian man, and I said, 'No; I was a McDonald.' And she said that so was she. So because she was a McDonald, I gied the puir woman back her coo. It wasna a guid coo, ony way. But she was very gratefu'. She said she was gaun to be mairried again, and that the man—an Appin Stewart, greedy hound!—wadna hae her without the coo."
At Keppoch the months passed slowly enough for our two exiles. They heard no news from the south—of Barra nothing, no word of Kate McGhie. The country about them was in a constant ferment—gatherings here and there on behalf of King James; false reports about the doings of the Hamiltonians and Conventiclers in Edinburgh; reports that the Westland Whigs were marching to exterminate the lads of the glens, in revenge for the doings of the Highland Host. They had sworn (so the tale ran) to take back to Ayrshire and Galloway the booty of the "Seventy-nine," which still constituted the best part of the plenishings of most Highland cottages to the north of the lands of Breadalbane and McCallum More.
It was hard to wait in blank ignorance; but Wat knew that his best hope of coming to his own again, and so to the winning of his love, was to abide the chances of war, and by good service to the king to deserve the restoration of his fiefs and heritages.
Luckily for the two outlaws, no French officers came to Keppoch, nor any, indeed, who knew either Scarlett or Wat, otherwise their lives had not been worth an hour's purchase. But as week after week went by, they became great favorites with McDonald, and were taken on several occasions to see Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiell—a wise, silent, benignant man, who at first said little, but contented himself with watching them silently and subtly from under his eyebrows.
"I remember your father," he said, suddenly flashing a look on Wat.
"You remember my father?" repeated Wat, eagerly; "I did not know he had ever been in the Highlands."
"Nor was he," said Lochiell; "it was in Edinburgh, when his head was cocked up on the Nether Bow, that I mind him—and a fine, wiselike; honest-seeming head it was."
The young man straightened himself fiercely, suspecting an intention to insult him.
"Na, na," said Lochiell, smilingly; "that's where every honest man's head ought to land at the last. James Graham's was there afore your father's, and mine, I doubt not, will follow one day. But they will send Keppoch's black puddock-stool tied up in a poke to fricht the bairns of Inverness."
"Ye are acquaint with my Lord Dundee, they tell me?" was Lochiell's next question.
"Aye," said Wat, "and well acquaint—though I know not how he would receive me now. Yet many a time have I ridden blithely enough at his side when I was a lad, until I had the misfortune to be outlawed and attainted by the Privy Council—"
"What was that for—not ony maitter o' religion and godliness, I hope? Nae sic Whiggery about a brisk lad like you, surely?" said Keppoch.
"It was for the small matter of sticking a sword into a man or two belonging to my Lord Duke of Wellwood," interrupted Scarlett, "and maybe for helping his Grace himself to an ounce of lead—"
"Hoot!" cried Keppoch, "John Graham will never steer ye for ony sic cause. He is great on the drill and discipline, but as to the richtin' o' a bit private misunderstanding, that surely is every gentleman's ain business."
"That was not the view the Council took of the matter," said Wat, smiling.
"Oh, they wad doubtless be o' the ither man's clan, or his connections and well-wishers in some shape—ye couldna blame them. They wad do the best they could for their side, nae doot," answered Keppoch.
And Lochiell listened to all with a gravely smiling face, like a man well pleased.
At Keppoch there was one day a muster and a show of weapons, after which came sword-play and fighting with the Lochaber axe, assault with targe and without targe—all of which Wat and Scarlett watched with infinite zest and unwearied amusement.
When it was well over, and all the champions from the glens had performed before the chief and Lochiell (who were then in great amity), Keppoch invited Wat to try a bout with him. Wat professed his inexperience with the heavier blade of the claymore, but asked to be permitted to retain his own lighter and finer "Andrea"—which, indeed, had scarcely ever left his side since he recovered it in the locker of the boat from which he had been cast ashore on the isle of Fiara.
So before long, weapon in hand, the huge black chieftain faced Lochinvar, towering over him like a son of Anak, his very sword casting a shadow like a weaver's beam.
They saluted in form and fell-to.
Clash! The blades met, and almost immediately Keppoch swept his sword in a full cut at Wat's shoulder. The young man measured his distance, stepped aside, and the next moment his Andrea pricked Keppoch's side below the arm. It was a mere touch with the point, but had the blade stood a handbreadth in the giant's body, as it might have done, the sons of Ian would have needed another chief.
Coll o' the Cows was more than a little astonished; but thinking the matter some accidental chance which could not be repeated, he professed his readiness to proceed.
"Man," cried Lochiell, who had been attentively watching the combat, "not Coll o' the Cows, but Coll o' the Corbies ye would have been if that laddie had liked. For oh, man, ye would hae been deid as Dugald More, and the clan looking for a tree to hang the young man on by this time."
With this most disabling thought in his mind to warn him from a too complete victory, Wat once more guarded, and for a long time contented himself with keeping off the furious strokes of the chief's assault, as easily, to all appearance, as a roof turns aside the pelting of a summer shower. Then, as Keppoch took breath a moment, his first fury having worn itself out, Wat attacked in his turn, and, puzzling his opponent, as was his wont, with the lightning swiftness of his thrust and recovery, caught his claymore deftly near the hilt, and in a moment it was flying out of his fingers.
Keppoch gazed after his weapon with as much surprise as if a hand had been reached out of the blue sky to snatch it from his grasp.
"God!" he cried, "but ye are a most mighty sworder—ne'er a one like ye within the Highland line. Who was your master at the play?"
Wat pointed to where old Jack Scarlett sat smiling complacently beside Lochiell.
"There is my teacher," he said, "and at my best I am but a bairn with a windlestraw in my master's hands."
Scarlett wagged his beard at Keppoch's evident consternation.
"No, no," he said, "I am old and stiff. Do not believe him. Why, lad, ye beat me the last time I tried ye with that same trick, though indeed I myself had taught it ye at the first."
"But I was vexed for the lad," he added under his breath, "and maybe I did not just try my best."
Of course after this nothing would serve the chiefs but that Wat and Scarlett must fight a long bout with the blunted point, which presently they did amid tremendous excitement.
"Oich! Oich!" shouted the clansmen, jumping in the air and yelling at every good stroke and lightning parry.
"Bone o' Dugald More—what heevenly fechtin'!" cried Keppoch. "I declare I am like to greet—me that hasna grat since the year sixty, when Ian Mackintosh of Auchnacarra died afore I could kill him. Oh, for the like o' you twa to lead a foray intil the country of the Lochiell Camerons—I mean the Appin Stewarts, foul fa' them!We wad gang in the daytime. For oh! it wad be a peety that sic bonny sword-play should be wasted in killing folk in the nicht season."
And the tears actually streamed from the eye of Black Colin as he watched the swords clash and click, meeting each other sweetly and willingly like trysted lovers.
"This is worth a' the kye frae Achnasheen to Glen Urquhart," he cried. "Ah, that was a stroke! 'Tis better than ganging to a kirk!"
More than once Wat nearly got home. But old Jack, standing a little stiffly on his legs and biting at a bit of sour-grass, always turned the point an inch aside at the critical moment. At last came the opening, and the master's return flew like lightning. Wat's blade was forced upward in spite of his lowered wrist, and lo! Scarlett's point stood against the third button of his coat as steadily as a master in a school points at the blackboard with his ferule.
A great shout went up from the throng. The hands of both combatants were shaken. Keppoch's defeat was avenged. Such swordsmanship had never before been seen by any son of Ian. The reputation of both master and pupil was made on the spot. Lochiell and Keppochvied with each other in civilities, and the event became a daily one—but after this with a pair of foils, which the master-at-arms deftly manufactured.
In many such ways the months passed, and the spring came again with delicate green kindling along the watercourses, as the birch began to cast her tresses to the winds, and the grass tufts fought hard with the conquering heather.
But upon a day late in the month of May the party at Keppoch was broken by a sudden definite call. Three horsemen rode up to the door one blazing noontide. Scarlett and Keppoch were playing cards, the chief eagerly and noisily, Scarlett with the dogged use-and-wont of a hundred camps. Wat Gordon was cleaning his arms and accoutrements in the hall; for though they two had landed with little save the swords by their sides—now, thanks to their quality as swordsmen, and also somewhat to the weight of the gold in Wat's belt (which had so nearly been the death of him in the Suck of Suliscanna), they had been equipped with all the necessities of war.
The first of the three riders who entered into the hall of Keppoch was no other than my Lord Dundee. He looked thirty years older than when Wat had seen him last riding by in the gloaming to the house of Balmaghie—grayer, more wearied, sadder, too, with his face drawn and pale in spite of the sun and the wind.
He greeted Keppoch courteously but without great cordiality, glanced his eye once over Jack Scarlett, and seemed to take his quality in a moment—gravely saluting the good soldier of any rank and all ranks. Then he looked about him slowly.
"Why, Lochinvar!" he cried, astonished, "what wind hath blown you here—not recruiting for the Prince of Orange, I hope, nor yet trying to cut my favor with Keppoch?"
"Nay," said Wat, "but, if an outlaw and an exile may, ready as ever to fight to the death for King James."
"Why, well said," answered my Lord Dundee, smiling, "yet, if I remember rightly, I think you owed his Majesty not so much favor."
"In the matter of the Privy Council and my Lord Wellwood?" said Wat, shrugging his shoulders. "As to that, I took my risks like another. And if I had to pay the piper—why, it was at least no one but myself who called the tune."
"Not my lady—my late Lady Wellwood, I mean?" said Dundee, glancing at him with the pale ghost of mirthfulness on his face.
Wat shook his head.
"Of my own choice I took the barred road, and wherefore should I complain that I had to settle the lawing when I came to the toll-gates? But at least I am glad that you bear me no grudge, my lord," said Wat, "for doubtless, after all, it was a matter of the king's justice."
"Grudge!" cried one of those who were with the viscount, "it had been a God's blessing if you had stood your weapon a hand-breadth out on the other side of his Grace of Wellwood when you were about it."
Whereupon, with no further word, Dundee and Keppoch retired to confer apart; and that night, when the viscount rode away from the house, his three followers had become four. For Wat Gordon rode by his side as in old days on the braes of Garryhorn before any of these things befell. But Jack Scarlett abode still with Keppoch and Lochiell to help them to bring their clansmen into the field.
The July morning wakened broad and fair. The swifts circled in widening sweeps about the castle of Blair. Wat Gordon slept in the hall, wrapped in his plaid—a gift from Keppoch. The McDonald lay that night with his own men out on the lea, but many of the younger chiefs of Dundee's levy, McLean of Duart and Donald of Sleat, were also encamped round the hall.
It was after four of the clock when a hand touched Wat's shoulder. He looked up alert on the instant with the trained wakefulness of the soldier. His eyes met those of the Lord Dundee, who, without a word, strode slowly up the stairs.
Wat rose and followed his general, making his toilet with a single shake of the plaid over his shoulder. Presently they stood together on the battlements, where Dundee leaned his elbow on the highest part of the wall and looked to the east. The sun was just rising between Ben-y-Gloe and Ben-y-Vrackie.
Dundee stood a long time looking round him before he spoke. Wat kept in the background, standing modestly by the edge of the tiles, where they went crow-stepping up to the rigging. He dared not intrude upon the thoughts or plans of his commander.
At last Dundee pointed with his hand, sweeping it over the sward beneath, which was black with Highlanders, all squadded according to their clans. Most of them still lay in their plaids, scattered broadcast as if theyhad been slain on the field of battle, with their claymores held in their arms as a mother holds a favorite child. But here and there a few early foragers were already busy gathering birch and dwarf oak to build the morning camp-fires, while down by the river, where the lowland cavalry were picketed, many blue columns of smoke arose.
"A bonny sight!" said the general, slowly. "Aye, a bonny sight! Three thousand men that are men, and not a feared heart nor an unwilling blade among them. And yet," he added, a little sadly, "if I were away, all that would break and vanish like yon white cloud crawling on the shoulder of Ben Vrackie."
He pointed to where the morning mist was trailing itself in quickly dissolving wreaths and vanishing wisps over the mountain.
"Aye, like the mist they came, and like the mist they will go—if I be not here the morrow's morn to lead them. Lochiell is wise indeed. He would command us all with skill and fortitude. But then, how Glen Garry and Keppoch would cock their bonnets at that! Sandy McLean there might hold the clansmen and take them to Edinburgh, yet Sandy is not chief even of his own clan, but an apple-cheeked lad, who thinks only of taking the eyes of maidens. Grown babes all of them—yet men whom I have welded into a weapon of strength to fight the king's warfare."
"Think you the enemy will attack us this day?" said Wat, with the deference of a young soldier to an elder, whose favor, though great, may not be presumed upon.
"They will come, indeed," said the general, "but it is we that shall attack. I would it had been a day or two later. For the Western men are not come in, and Lochiell hath not yet half his tail behind him. Nevertheless, 'twill serve. Mackay I mind of old—in the Dutch provinces—a good drill-sergeant that fights by the book; but a brave man—yes, a very brave man."
For as an unquestioned beauty is the first to acknowledge beauty in others, so John Graham could readily allow courage to his opponents.
Yet this morning a constant melancholy seemed to overspread the beautiful countenance that had been the desire of women, the fear or adoration of men. In his converse with Lochinvar not a trace remained of that haughtiness which had so often distinguished his dealings with other men, nor yet of that relentlessness which he himself had so often mistaken for the firmness of military necessity.
Wat's bosom swelled within him as he looked on that host of plaided men. He seemed to see Scotland swept to the Solway, and the king coming home in triumph to his own again. The old tower of Lochinvar rose up before him. He thought proudly of building up again the broken-down walls, and for his love's sake setting the lordship of Lochinvar once more among its peers. It would be passing sweet to walk with her by the hill-side and look down upon their home, with the banner once again floating at the staff, and the hum of serving-men about it.
"It is indeed a most noble sight!" he cried, in rapture.
Dundee glanced at him, and marked the heightened color of the lad with kindly, tolerant favor. He thought he spoke of the mustered clans.
"Aye, glorious—truly," said he. "But build not on sand. Ere ten days be past, if these lads of the mist find not plunder, Clan Ronald will be off to spoil Clan Cameron, and Keppoch, the Wild Cat, will be at the throat of Clan Mackintosh. I have welded me a weapon which, tempered to the turning of a steel blade this morning, may be but a handful of sand when the wind blows off the sea by to-morrow at this time."
He stood silent a while, and his face grew fixed and stern as when he gave orders in battle.
"To-day I draw sword for a king that dared not draw sword for himself—for a house that has ever used its mistresses well and its soldiers ill. Let us make no mistake. You and I, Wat, go out this day on a great venture, and on our heads it is. We have a true soldier to fight. For you and I have seen William of Orange, and in this the day of our distress we shall have no help from our friends, save these three hundred Irish kerns with their bent pikes and their bows and arrows, no better than bairns that shoot crows among the corn."
He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his graceful body erect.
"So be it! After all, it is not my business. Enough for me that I do the king's will and walk straightly among so many that go crookedly. To-night I will end it if I can, and drive the Dutchman to his own place. But if not—why, then, it shall end me. I know, I know," he went on, quickly, as if Walter had reminded him of something, "I have a wife and a bairn down there. I am a man as other men. I would fain see Jean Cochrane, clad in white, passing here and there among the walks of the garden, gathering flowers, and the youngling toddling about her feet—were it but for once, before this night I bid the war-pipes blow at the setting of the sun."
He turned towards the lands of the south where he had earned much hatred and deadly fear.
"It may be, as they say, that I have ridden overharshly on the king's service, and trodden on some whom I might have lifted with my hand. But, God wot, it was ever the king's service and not mine own! I ever judged it better that there should be a little timeous bloodletting than that a whole people should perish. But now I see that the king and I were not wise. For a war that stirs up folk's religion never comes to an end. And, for all the good I did, I might just as well never have set foot in Galloway or the south. But enough; 'tis over now, andthere remains—three thousand claymores and an empty title! Well, we shall find out to-day whether kings are indeed anointed, as they say. Ah, Wat, the sun is high, the light broad and fair on Athol braes. But ere it fades, you and I may find out many things that priest and presbyter could not unriddle to us."
He made as if to descend from the castle wall, but took a second thought.
"Bid the bugle sound!" he ordered, quickly changing his tone. "Invite the chiefs to a council. Send Dunfermline to me—and go yourself and get some breakfast."