*****
It was almost at the way-going of the day. The sons of the mist crouched low among the heather and watched the Saxon soldiers struggling up through the dark and narrow glen. King William's men were weary and sore driven, for they had been there under the sun's fierce assault since noon that day.
So near were the clansmen to their foes that they could distinguish the uniform and accoutrement of each regiment as it straggled slowly out under the eyes of the general and formed on the little green shelf overhanging the deep cleft of the Garry.
Wat stood with Dundee upon the crest of the hill above. The general had fallen silent, but a look of eager expectancy lit his face.
"I have them," he said, low, to himself; "it is coming right. We shall balance accounts with the Dutchman ere it be dark."
To him came Keppoch, pale to the lips with rage.
"This is no war, my lord-general," he said, "they are through the pass and you hold us here in check! Why, with the rocks of the hill-side my single clan could have annihilated them—swept them in heaps into the black pools of the Garry."
My Lord Dundee smiled a tolerant smile, as a mother might at the ignorance of a wayward, fretful child.
"Bide ye, Keppoch," he said, kindly, "ye shall have your fill of that work—but we must not make two mouthfuls of this Orange. Our advantage is great enough. We shall meet them on plain field, and, ere we be done with them, ye shall walk across the Garry upon their dead bodies, bootless and in dry socks, if it please you."
Presently the Lowland army had dribbled itself completely out of the pass and stood ranked, regiment by regiment, awaiting the onset. Mackay had done all that skill and silence could do in such a desperate case, for the men of the mountains had all the choice of the ground and of the time for attack.
Clan by clan Dundee set his men on the hill crests, solidly phalanxed, but with wide gaps between the divisions—a noble array of great names and mighty chiefs—McLean, Clan Ranald, Clan Cameron, Glengarry, Stewarts of Athol and Appin, men of the king's name from east and west. Well might Dundee have forgotten his melancholy mood of the morning.
The sun touched the western hills, halved itself, and sank like a swiftly dying flame. The blue shadows strode eastward with a rush. The gray mist began to fill the deep glen of the Garry.
"Ready!" cried the general.
The war-pipes blared. The plaided men gave a shout that drowned the pibrochs, and the clans were ready for the charge.
From beneath arose a response, a faint, wavering cry, without faith or cohesion.
"Ah," cried Lochiell, "have at them now! That is not the cry of men who are going to conquer!"
Dundee raised his hand and the chiefs watched for it to fall. It fell.
"Claymore!" shouted Lochiell, who had been standing like a pillar at the head of his clan.
Keppoch, wild with the joy of battle, instantly fired his gun from where he stood, and throwing his brand into the air, he caught it by the hilt as he too gave the order to charge.
Slowly at first, but quickening their pace as they neared the foe, the clans came down. They held their fire till they were within a hundred yards of the enemy, grimly enduring without reply three separate volleys from the disciplined ranks of the Lowland army. They paused a moment and fired a wild, irregular volley. Then, with the unanimous flash of drawn swords in the air, the whole wild array charged down with a yell upon the triple line of the enemy.
Wat rode by the side of the general; for Dundee charged with the van, exposing himself in the very front of danger. Half way down the slope the old colonel of horse noticed that the Lowland cavalry were not following. He turned in his saddle, lifted his sword, and waved the squadrons on.
"For the king! Charge!" he cried, pointing with the blade to the serried line of Mackay's regiments below.
But at that moment there came another withering volley from the English line, threshing the hill-side like hail. A bullet struck Dundee under the uplifted arm. Instinctively he shifted his bridle hand, and set himself grimly to the charge again; but the quickly growing pallor of his face and the slackness of his grasp told the tale of a terrible wound.
Lochinvar had scarce time to dismount and receive his general in his arms before Dundee fainted and his head fell on Wat's shoulder. His charger galloped on, leading the regiment into action, as though he felt that his master's part had devolved on him.
In an instant the assault swept past them, and Wat and the wounded soldier were left as it had been alone on the field. Here and there a clansman, stricken by a bullet, strove to rise and follow the onset of his clan. He would stumble a few yards, and then throw up his hands and fall headlong. But up from the river edge there came a hell of fiercely mingled sounds. At the first glance at the wound Wat saw there was no hope. Looking over the pale set features of the general, as he lay reclined in his arms, he could see the thin English lines fairly swept away. One or two regiments seemed to have been missed, standing idly at their arms, like forgotten wheat in a corner of an ill-reaped field; but for the rest, clansmen and red soldiers alike had passed out of sight.
Presently the dying commander opened his eyes.
"My lord," said Wat, softly, "how is it with you?"
"Nay, rather, how goes the day?" said Dundee, with an eager look.
"Well for the king," answered Wat.
"Then," replied John Graham, "if it be well with him it is the less the matter for me."
With that he laid his head back on Wat's breast contentedly. He seemed to wander somewhat in his thoughts, speaking fast and disorderly.
"Maybe I was in the wrong—in the wrong. Yet I did it for the king's good. But I was sore vexed for the wife and bairns. And yet the carrier suffered it very unconcernedly, and said he was glad to die—which I can well believe. Maybe he, too, had done well for his king."
His mind dwelt much upon far-off, unhappy things. Anon he seemed to see some terrible tragedy, for he put his hand before his face as if to shut out a painful sight.
"Enough of that, Westerha'," he said, in a grieved tone, "this serves no good end."
Then at the last there came a smile breaking over his face, and he lifted his hand lightly and gently like one who dandles something tender and easily broken.
"'Tis a fine bairn, Jean," he said, pleasantly, "ye may well be proud o' the babe. I wish I could bide wi' you. They might have left me alone this ae nicht. But I must mount and ride. Fare ye weel, Jean, my lass—braw lass and bonny wife ye ever were to me. I must e'en bit and saddle, for I hae a far gate and a gloomy road to travel this night!"
So with no more than this farewell to his wife and young bairn, the hope of the Stuarts, the scourge of the Covenant, the glory of the Grahams, lay dead on the clean-reaped field of victory.
The leaders of the Highland army knew not for a while whether most to rejoice in the victory which the clans had won for the king, or to grieve for the terrible price which had been paid for it. The army of General Mackay had indeed been swept out of existence. The succors from the distant clans were daily pouring in. Scarlett had arrived with four hundred more of Lochiell's claymores. Ardnamurchan and Morven sent stalwart levies. The way seemed clear to Edinburgh, from whence there came tidings of stricken dismay among the followers of Hamilton, that mighty prince, and where only the Wild Whigs of the West stood firm, patrolling the city and keeping ill-doers in such fear as they had not known since Cromwell encamped betwixt the braes of Canaan and the swamp of Little Egypt.
But Great Dundee was dead, and that balanced all.
For able as were many of the chiefs, and well exercised in their clan warfare, there was not one of them, save it might be Lochiell, who was not jealous of every other.
And Colonel Cannon of the Irish levies, who by virtue of the king's commission held the nominal command, was a man who possessed the confidence of none.
So Wat Gordon, going from clan to clan on the morning after the battle, found nothing but bickering and envies among the victors—how this one had obtained a greater share of the spoil than another, how Glengarrywas threatening to cut off Lochiell for the ancient soreness betwixt them, and also because of some supposed favor of position on the day of battle.
"Tut, man," said Lochiell to his vaporing adversary, good-naturedly clapping him on the shoulder, "if you lads of the Garryside are so fighting keen, and as full of hot blood as you say, I doubt not but that a day or two will give you another opportunity of letting out a little of it against the common enemy."
Wat, eager as ever to put the great controversy to the arbitrament of battle, raged impotently, while Major Cannon wheeled and manœuvred the Irishmen through their drills, and carried on his miserable squabblings with the chiefs—whom, in spite of their mutual dislikes and clan jealousies, Dundee had held in leash with such a firm yet delicate hand.
Oftentimes, as day after day was wasted, Lochinvar felt that if only he could throw himself on the enemy, in order, if it might be to cut a way single-handed towards his love—even though he should be slain in the first hundred yards—such an end would be better than this unceasing plundering among allies and bickering between friends.
Nevertheless, the numbers of the Highland army kept up, though the ranks were in a continual state of flux. As for Scarlett, the master-at-arms was driven to distraction by the hopelessness of teaching the clansmen anything.
Things were daily passed over which, had Dundee been above-ground, would in five minutes have brought out a firing party and ended a man's days against a stone dike.
Worst of all, while these precious days, when the whole force ought to have been advancing, were thus idly slipping by, the delay gave the government time to play its strongest card. The fury and enthusiasm of the clanswas now for the first time to be brought face to face with an enthusiasm fiercer, because stiller, than their own—with a courage equally great, but graver, sterner, and, best of all, disciplined by years of trial and persecution.
The Cameronians, known throughout Scotland as the "Seven Thousand," had garrisoned Edinburgh during the fierce, troublous months of the Convention. When there was no other force in the country, they had stood between the kingdom and anarchy. And now, when at last the government of William was becoming better established, twelve hundred men of the Blue Banner formed themselves into a regiment—all stern, determined, much-enduring veterans, who had brought from their Westland homes a hatred of the Highlanders sharpened by memories of the Great Raid, when for months the most barbarous and savage clans had been quartered on the West and South, till the poor folk of Galloway and Ayr were fairly eaten up, and most of their hard-won gear vanished clean away into the trackless deserts of the North.
Now, in the anxious days that succeeded Killiekrankie, eight hundred of this Cameronian regiment had been ordered to Dunkeld, which was rightly supposed to be the post of danger. The other four hundred of the regiment had been sent to garrison Badenoch and to keep the West quiet; so that the young Covenanting commander, Cleland—a youth not yet in his twenty-eighth year—had but two-thirds of his regiment with him.
But such men as they were!—none like them had been seen under arms since, the Ironsides of Cromwell went back to their farm-steadings and forges.
It was no desirable stronghold which they were set to keep. Indeed, after a small experience of Dunkeld the other regiments which had been sent under Lord Cardross to assist in driving back the enemy gladly departedfor Perth. The town, they said, was completely indefensible. It was commanded on all sides by heights, even as Killiekrankie had been. The streets could readily be forced at a dozen points, and then every man would die miserably, like rats in a hole.
"Even so," said Cleland, calmly, to my Lord Cardross, "but I was bidden to hold this town and no other, and here I and those with me will bide until we die."
And, as is not the case with many a valiant commander's boast, he made his words good.
It was a very considerable army which gathered about the devoted Cameronians—not less than five thousand victorious clansmen—under a leader of experience, if not of well-proven parts.
Wat was still with Lochiell, and Scarlett, in deep disgust at Keppoch's miscellaneous plunderings, drew his sword also with the same chief.
By early morning the town was completely surrounded and the attack began. But the brave band of Wild Whigs of the West stuck dourly to their outposts, and for an hour or more their little handfuls defied behind the walls of town-yards and ruinous petty enclosures, all the assaults of the clansmen. At last these inconsiderable outer defences were driven in, the whole regiment was shut up in the cathedral and in an adjoining house of many unglazed windows, which was standing roofed but unfinished close at hand.
Here the grim men of the South, doggedly saying their prayers behind their clinched teeth, met and turned every assault, taking aim at their assailants with the utmost composure and certainty.
"HE FELL INWARD AMONG THE WOUNDED"
"HE FELL INWARD AMONG THE WOUNDED"
Clan after clan charged down upon those crumbling walls. Rush after rush of plaided men melted before that deadly storm of bullets. Thrice Wat, in the thick of Lochiell's men, dashed at the defences. Thrice washe carried back by the wave of tartan which recoiled from the reeking muskets of the men of the Covenant.
Glengarry fell wounded. The McDonalds broke. Then, in the nick of time, the McLeans dashed into the thick of the fight and had almost won the wall when young Cleland, rushing across the court to meet them in person, was struck by two bullets—one through his head, the other in his side. In spite of his agony, he set his hand to his brow and staggered towards the interior of the church, crying, "Have at them, lads! all is well with me!" This he said in order to conceal his wound from his men. But he fell dead or ever he reached the door.
The lead for the muskets began to give out. But in a moment there were men on the roof of the new building stripping off the metal, while others beneath were melting it and thrusting the bullets, yet warm from the "cams," into their hotter barrels, or cutting the sheets of lead into rough slugs to fire at the enemy.
So, relentlessly, hour by hour the struggle went on. Ever, as the attacks failed, fresh clans tried their fierce courage in emulous assault, firing once, throwing away their guns, and then charging home with the claymore.
But these Cameronians were no levies roughly disciplined and driven in chains to the battlefield. Men of the moors and the moss-hags were they—good at the prayer, better at the musket, best of all with the steady eye which directed the unshaken hand, and the quiet heart within dourly certain of victory and of the righteousness of its cause.
Clan by clan, the very men who had swept Mackay's troops into the Garry fell back shattered and dismayed from the broken defences of the Hill Folk. In vain the war-pipes brayed; in vain a thousand throats cried "Claymore!" In vain Lochiell's men drove for the fourth time desperately at the wall. From within cameno noise, save the clatter of the musket-shots running the circuit of the defences, or the dull thud as a man fell over in the ranks or collapsed like a shut telescope in his place—not a groan from the wounded, as men stricken to death drew themselves desperately up to get a last shot at the enemies of Christ's Cause and Covenant, that they might face God contentedly with their duty done and all their powder spent.
Left almost alone in the fierce ebb of the fourth assault, Wat had gained the top of the wall when a sudden blow on the head stunned him. He fell inward among the wounded and dying men of the defenders and there lay motionless, while outside the last charge of the baffled clansmen broke on the stubborn hodden gray of the Cameronian regiment, vainly as the water of the ninth wave breaks on the cliffs that look out to the Atlantic.
The chiefs still tried to rally their men. Cannon offered to lead them again to the assault in person. But it might not be.
"We can fight men," they said, as they fell back, sullenly, "but these are devils incarnate."
When Wat Gordon opened his eyes, he looked into a face he knew right well.
"Faith, Will, is it time to get up already?" he said, thinking his cousin and he were off together on some ploy of ancient days—for a morning's fishing on the hills above Knockman, mayhap.
For his cousin Will it was indeed who stood before him, clad in the worn and smoke-begrimed uniform of the Regiment of the Covenant.
"Wat, Wat, how came you here, lad?" cried Will Gordon.
A gleam of his ancient wilfulness beaconed a moment in Wat's eye.
"Why—over the wall there," he said. "I was in somewhat of a hurry and I had not time to go round by the gate and tirl at the pin."
And with that something buzzed drowsily in his ears like a prisoned blue-bottle, and he fainted again.
Lucky it was for Wat Gordon that Sir Robert Hamilton did not command the regiment, and that the dead Cleland had instilled his humane principles into those under him. For the officers merely ordered their prisoner to be carried along with their own wounded to a convenient house in the town, and there to be warded till he should be well enough to be remitted to Edinburgh.
To this hospital Will Gordon came to see him often,and give him what heartening he might; but it was not till the seventh day, when Wat showed some promise of early recovery, that Will, with a mighty serious face, showed him a trinket in the palm of his hand.
"Ken ye that?" he asked.
"'Tis Kate's token that she was to send me if she needed me. Where got ye it, Will?"
And even as he spoke these words Wat was half out of bed in his eagerness; but Will took him in his arms with gentle firmness and pressed him back upon the pillow.
"Bide a wee," he said; "ye will do no good that way. Ye are far too weak to travel, and there is a strong guard at the door. Listen! I got the gold heart from Kate herself, and she bade me tell you that if ye could not come to her by the tenth day of September, ye would never need to come at all."
"What means that message, Will? Tell me truly," said Wat, white to the lips, yet sitting up calmly in spite of his deadly weakness and the curious singing drone in his ears.
"They have worked upon her to weariness, I think," said Will, a little sadly; "worked upon her with tales of your unfaithfulness, which, to do her justice, she would scorn to believe—told her that her father's very life depends upon the marriage, because of the old friendship and succor he had from Claverhouse; wearied her out, till the lass knows not which way to turn. And so she has consented to be wedded to my Lord Barra on the tenth of September. But, as Maisie judges, our Kate will die rather than marry any man she hates."
Wat leaped out of bed and began to dress himself.
"Let me go, Will—let me alone! Hands off! Do not touch me, or I will strike you on the face. Only ten days—and so far to go! But I will fight my way through. I am strong and well, I tell you—"
And with that Will Gordon laid him back again upon the bed like a child.
"Wat," he said, "I am with you in this, since Kate loves you and Maisie bids me. (You have never asked of her welfare, but no matter.) I have gotten Jack Scarlett here by me in the town. We will arrange your escape and get you horses. But you must be a deal stronger than you are ere you are ready to travel, and at least you must abide here yet three days."
"Three days, Will; 'tis plainly impossible! I should die stark raving mad of the waiting and anxiety. Better let me go, Will, this very night."
And almost for very weariness and the sense of powerlessness in the grip of fate, Wat could have wept; but a thought and a resolve steadied him.
From that moment he began, as it were obediently, to talk of indifferent things; and Will humored him, well pleased that it should be so. Ere he departed, Will said, "I will bring Scarlett to your window to-night. Do you speak with him for a moment and let him go."
Wat smilingly promised, and went on to tell of his winter adventures among the clans, as if they were all he thought about.
"Good-night, and a sweet sleep to you, Wat, lad!" said Will Gordon. "In three days, I promise you, you shall ride forth, well mounted and equipped."
And so, smiling once more on his cousin, he went down the stair.
Then Wat Gordon laid his head on the pillow as obediently as a child.
But he only kept it there till his cousin was out of the room and he heard his footsteps die down the street. In a trice he was out of bed and trying all the fastenings of the windows of his room. He was alone in his dormitory, but on either side of him were rooms containingwounded men of the Cameronians, to whom night nurses came and went, so that it behooved him to be wary.
One of the windows was barred with iron outside, while the sash of the other was fixed and would not open at all.
Wat threw open the barred window as far as he could and shook the iron lattice. It held firm against his feeble strength, but upon a more minute examination the stanchions seemed only to be set in plaster.
"That's better; but I wish Jack Scarlett would come!" murmured Wat, as he staggered back to his bed. He kissed his hand towards the South with something of his old air of gallant recklessness.
"On the tenth I shall be with you, dear love, to redeem my pledge, or else—"
But before his lips could frame the alternative he had fainted on the floor.
Scarlett came to Lochinvar's window when the night was darkest, a little before midnight.
"Wat," he cried, softly; "Wat Gordon!"
Wat was already at the lattice and promptly reached his hand out to his ancient comrade.
"Jack," he whispered, hoarsely, "for God's sake get me out of this hole! They would shut me up here for three days, till she is married to the devil Barra. And she has sent me the token—the heart of gold. I have it here. You mind it was to be the fiery cross betwixt us two? She is needing me and I must go. Break down the window bars, good Jack, and let me out."
"But your cousin says that you are not fit to travel, that you will never reach Galloway unless you have some rest before you go. Besides, it will take some time to purchase horses for the long journey—"
"I cannot wait, Jack," interrupted Wat, fiercely; "I shall die here in three days if I stay. How can I wait with the greedy talons of the monster drawing nearer tomy lass? See, Jack, I have thirty guineas in my belt. I will leave twenty of them in any horse's stall in the stables. And, God knows! it is not the officers of the Cameronian regiment who have horses worth half so much. Try the bars, good Jack, and let me out."
Scarlett endeavored to reason with him, to dissuade him from the venture for that night at least.
"To-morrow, Lochinvar; only one night—we shall wait but to see what to-morrow brings."
"Scarlett, look you here," Wat said, earnestly, his face gleaming ghastly through the lattice in the steely glint of stars. "You know whether or not I am a man of my word. I have a dagger here—hid in the leather of my boot. Now if you do not help me to escape to-night, 'fore the Lord, Jack, I will let out my soul or the morning—and my blood will be on your head."
He leaned out till his agony-wet brow touched the bars. His fingers clutched and shook them in his desperation.
"Well," said Scarlett, half to himself, "I will e'en do it, since it must be so. But it will prove a sorry job for us all. 'Tis but taking the poor laddie's life in another way."
So, vanishing for a tale of minutes, which seemed hours to the pale, wounded, half-frenzied figure at the window, he returned with a "geleck" or iron crow-bar, with which he promptly started work on the lime and plaster of the stanchions. It was not long before he loosened one and then another. Once or twice he had to cower down in order to escape the lanterns of the patrol—for, unlike the clans, the Cameronians kept excellent watch; but in half an hour his task was completed.
"The Lord forgie me, laddie, for this!" he said, as he helped Wat out, and felt the palms of his hands burning hot, while his body was shaking with feverish cold.
"Now help me to get a horse!" said Wat, as soon as they stood in safety under the ruined walls of the cathedral. "There are the stables of the officers' horses. Come, let us go over yonder."
"It's a rope's end at ony rate," said Scarlett; "old Jack has been at mony ploys, but he never was a horse-thief before!"
"How did we get away from the city of Amersfort, tell me, Jack?" said Wat, with a touch of his ancient humor, being pleased at getting his will.
"Ah, but then a woman did the stealing for love, as you do now. It is different with me, that have no love to steal for—or to die for, either," he added, sadly.
Wat put his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the old free-lance.
"Even so do you steal, old bear," he said, gently patting him; "you do it for love of me."
"I declare," quoth Scarlett, with relief in his voice, "I believe I do. Guid kens what there is aboot ye, laddie, that makes both lassies and auld grizzle-pates run their heads into holes and their necks into tow-ropes for the love o' ye!"
The stables had been left completely unguarded, for it was the officers' boast that they desired not any greater safety than their men. Cleland, indeed, had once ordered all the officers' horses to be brought out and shot, just because some of the soldiers complained that the officers had a greater chance of escape than they.
Since that time the horses had been permitted to remain in the not too zealous care of the grooms, who fulfilled their duty by sleeping in the town at a distance from their charges.
Even the very stable door was unlocked, and as they opened it the horses were heard restlessly moving within.
"Any of Keppoch's gay lads might make a haul very easily this nicht," said Scarlett, as they entered.
"I saw Keppoch and many another pretty fighter get his bellyful over there by the walls the other day," said Wat, grimly, as he proceeded coolly to make his selection by the sense of touch alone.
When he had done this, Scarlett and he saddled the chosen beast and led him out, having previously tied stable rags over his iron-shod feet to keep them from clanking on the pavement. Making a detour, they soon gained the river, which they skirted cautiously till they were a mile from the town. Then Wat mounted without the assistance of his companion.
"God help ye, laddie; ye will never win near your lass, I fear me. But ye can try. And that is aye the best o't in this world. That it is for us mortals to do the trying, and for God to finish ilka job to His ain liking."
With which sage reflection he gave Wat his sword, his pistols and ammunition, together with some bread for the journey—looking at which last, Wat felt that he could as soon eat his horse's tail.
"Hae!" said the master-at-arms, "ye will be the better o' that or ye come to the end o' the Lang Wood. I have plenty more by me."
Wat laughed.
"You cannot deceive a desperate man," he said, "nor yet lie to him. Well do I know that this is every bite you have in the world."
"Listen, Wat," said the free-lance. "I have found me a decent woman that has ta'en a liking to me, and she has ta'en me in. I'm weel provided for. Tak' them, laddie, tak' them. Ye will need them mair nor me."
Saying which Scarlett started promptly on the back track to the town, crying as he went: "God speed ye, laddie; I'll never set een on ye mair!"
So with a sob in his throat and a feeling as if he were riding on empty air, Wat Gordon turned the head of the officer's charger (by a strange and fitting chance it washis cousin Will's), and set his chest to the current of the river, at the place where the tracks on the shoaling gravel and the chuckling of the shallow river over its pebbles indicated a ford.
So our true hero, ill, fevered, desperate, in the stark grip with death, started on his almost impossible quest—without an idea or a plan save that he must ride into the blank midnight to save his love, or die for her.
And what in all the annals of romantic adventure could be found more utterly hopeless than Wat Gordon's quest? He was doubly outlawed. For not only had James Stuart proclaimed him outlaw, but he had been out with the enemies of the Prince of Orange, now King William the Third of Great Britain and Ireland. He had fought at Killiekrankie and Dunkeld. He had ridden through all the north country at Dundee's bridle-rein. He was a fugitive from a military prison in the prince's own province of the Netherlands. He possessed but ten golden guineas in the world. His ancestral tower of Lochinvar was little better than a dismantled fortalice. And then as to his quest, he went to seek his love in her home, to rescue her from among her friends, and from the midst of the retainers of her father's estate, and those more numerous and reckless riders who had come with my lady the duchess from the Grenoch. Doubtless, also, my Lord of Barra would bring with him a great attendance of his friends. The chances against Lochinvar's success were infinite. Another man would have given up in despair, but in the mind of Wat Gordon there was only one thought: "She called me and I will go to her. Though I am traitor and outlaw alike to the king-over-the-water and the prince at Whitehall, proscribed alike by white rose and orange lily, I am yet all true to Kate and to love."
The desperate, unutterable details of that great madjourney can never be written down. For even Wat himself, in after-days, scarce remembered how, when one horse was wearied, he managed to exchange it for another and ride on—sometimes salving his conscience by leaving to the owner one of his dwindling golden guineas; or how he was attacked by footpads and escaped, having cut down one and frightened the other into delivering over (in trust, as it were, for King James) every stiver of his ill-gotten gains—poor crazed Wat meanwhile tossing his fevered head and wavering a pistol before the knave's astonished eyes as he bade him stand and deliver.
"'Tis a lesson to you," said Wat, didactically; "ye will thank me for it one day when ye lie down to die a clean-straw death instead of dancing your last on a gallows, with the lads crying your dying speech beneath your very feet as ye dangle over the Grass-market."
How he won through with bare life Wat never knew; nor yet with what decent householders he had negotiated exchange of horses without their consent. For long years afterwards, whenever Wat was a little feverish, scraps of conversations used to return to him, and forgotten incidents flashed clear upon him, which he knew must have happened during these terrible last days ere, with the homing instinct of a wounded animal chased desperately by the hunters, he reached the little gray tower of Lochinvar set lonely in the midst of its moorland loch. Sometimes on the Edinburgh street in after-years he stumbled unexpectedly on a face he recognized. A countryman newly come into market would set his hands on his hips and stare earnestly up at him. Then Wat would say to himself, "There goes a creditor of mine; I wonder if I gave him a better horse than I took, or if he wants to claim the balance now."
But who in the great lord of Parliament could spy out the white-faced, desperate lad—half-hero, half-highwayman—whose supple sword flashed like the waving of awillow wand, and whose cocked pistol was in his fingers at the faintest hint of opposition?
It was evening of a great, solemn, serene September day when Wat reached the edges of the loch, upon the little island in the midst of which stood the ancestral tower of his forebears. There was no smoke going up from its chimneys. The water slept black from the very margin, deeply stained with peat. The midges danced and balanced; the moor-birds cried; the old owl hooted from the gables; the retired stars twinkled reticently above, just as they had done in Wat's youth. A strange fancy came over him. He had come home from market at Dumfries. Presently his father would cry down to him from his chamber what was the price of sheep on the Plainstones that day, and if that behindhand rascal, Andrew Sim of Gordieston, had paid his rent yet. Hismother—
Ah! but wait; he had no father! He had seen his father's head over the port of Edinburgh, and something, he could not remember what, happened after that. Had he not buried his mother in the green kirkyard of Dalry? What, then, had he come home for? There was some one he loved in danger—some one with eyes deep as the depths of the still and gloomy waters that encircled Lochinvar.
Ah, now he remembered—the heart, Kate's heart of gold! It was safe in his bosom. Ten days' grace when he left his cousin Will! But had he ridden five days or fifty? Sometimes it seemed but one day, and sometimes an eternity, since he rode away from Jack Scarlett at the ford above Dunkeld.
What was that noise? An enemy? Wat clutched his sword instinctively. No, nothing more than his poor horse, the last incarnation of his cousin Will's charger, with which he had left the stables of Dunkeld.
The poor beast had tried to drink of the peaty brew ofthe loch, but what with the fatigue and the rough riding, it had fallen forward, with its nose in the shallows, and now lay breathing out its last in rattling gasps.
Wat stooped and patted the flaccid neck as the spasms relaxed and it rolled to the side.
"Poor thing—poor thing—ye are well away. Maybe there is a heaven for horses also, where the spirit of the beast may find the green eternal pastures, where the rein does not curb and the saddle leather never galls."
So saying Wat divested himself of his arms and upper clothing. He rolled them up, and put them with the saddle and equipment of his dead horse in the safe shelter of a moss-hag. Then, with a last kiss to the gold heart, he dropped silently into the water and swam out towards the island on which the old block-house stood.
Five minutes later Walter Gordon, Lord of Lochinvar, white as death, dripping from head to foot as if the sea had indeed given up its dead, stood on the threshold of the house of his fathers. The master had come home.
The little gray keep on its lonely islet towering above him seemed not so high as of old. It was strangely shrunken. The isle, too, had grown smaller to his travelled eye—probably was so, indeed, for the water had for many years been encroaching on the narrow insulated policies of the tower of Lochinvar.
There to his right was the granite "snibbing-post," to which the boat was usually tied. The pillar had, he remembered, a hole bored through the head of it with a chip knocked out of the side—for making which with a hammer he had been soundly cuffed by his father. And there was the anchored household boat itself, nodding and rocking a little under the northern castle wall, where it descended abruptly into the deeps of the loch.
Wat stood under the carved archway and clattered on the door with a stone picked from the water-side. For the great brass knocker which he remembered had beentorn off, no doubt during the troubles which had arisen after Wat himself had been attainted for the wounding of his Grace the Duke of Wellwood.
It was long indeed ere any one came to answer the summons, and meanwhile Wat stood, dripping and shaking, consumed with a deadly weakness, yet conscious of a still more deadly strength. If God would only help him ever so little, he thought—grant him but one night's quiet rest, he could yet do all that which he had come so fast and so far to accomplish.
At last he heard a stir in the tower above. A footstep came steadily and lightly along the stone passages. The thin gleam of a rushlight penetrated beneath the door, and shed a solid ray through the great worn key-hole. The bolts growled and screeched rustily, as if complaining at being so untimely disturbed. The door opened, and there before Wat stood a sweet, placid-browed old lady in the laced cap and stomacher of the ancient days.
"Jean!" he cried, "Jean Gordon, here is your laddie come hame." He spoke just as he had done more than twenty years ago, when many a time he had fallen out with his mother, and betaken himself to the sanctuary of Jean's Wa's by the side of the Garpel Glen.
For Jean Gordon it was, the recluse of the Holy Linn, his cousin Will's ancient nurse and kinswoman, and to them both the kindliest and most lovely old maid in the world.
"Wi' laddie, laddie, what has gotten ye? Ye are a' white and shakin', dripping wet, too; come ben and get a change and let me put ye to your bed."
"What day of the month is this?" cried Wat, eagerly, even before he had crossed the threshold.
"Laddie, what should auld Jean Gordon ken aboot times and seasons? Nocht ava—ye couldna expect it. But there is a decent man in the kitchen that mayhap can tell ye—Peter McCaskill, the Curate o' Dalry, puirbody. He was sorely in fear of being rabbled by the Hill Folk, so he cam' his ways here, silly body. There's no' a man in the country-side wad hae laid hand on him—if he would just say his prayer withoot the book, gie his bit sermon, and stop havering aboot King Jamie—at least, till he comes to his ain again."
Thus gossiping to keep up Wat Gordon's spirits, the ancient dame led the way down the passages, with a foot that was yet light upon the heather, though seventy years scarcely counted up all her mortal span.
"Clerk McCaskill," cried Jean, "ye'll mind Maister Walter? Rise up and welcome him! For it is in his hoose that ye are sheltered, and, indeed, his very ale that ye are drinkin' at this moment."
Peter McCaskill rose to his feet and held out his hand to Wat. He was dressed apparently in the same ancient green surtout he had worn in the year of Bothwell—a garment which seemed never to get any worse, nor yet to drop piecemeal from his shoulders with age, but to renew itself from decade to decade in a decrepit but evergreen youth.
"I am rejoiced to see you in your ain castle, my lord," said the curate, ceremoniously. Then, catching sight of the pale, desperate face, he exclaimed, in a different tone, "Preserve us, laddie, what has ta'en ye? Hae ye slain a man to his wounding—a young man to his hurt? Are the dead-runners on your track?"
For, indeed, Wat stood like a wild thing, hard beset by the hunters, which at the last has turned to bay in its lair.
But Wat put aside all questionings with a wave of his hand, a movement which had something of his old, swift recklessness in it, as of the days when they named him the Wildcat of Lochinvar.
"Tell me the day of the month," he gasped, as he stood there in the midst of the floor before the fire oflogs which burned on the irons of the house-place, swaying a little on his feet, and ever checking himself like a man drunken with wine.
The curate took a little calendar from his pocket—a record of saints' days and services, but interspersed with the reckonings of ale-houses and the scores of cock-fightings.
"'Tis the eve of the eighth day of September," he said, moistening his plump thumb to turn over the leaf that he might not be mistaken in the month.
"Thank God, I have yet two days!" cried Wat, and fell forward upon the shoulder of the curate.
Peter McCaskill received the weight deftly, as though he had been accustomed all his life to be charged down upon without a moment's notice by unconscious men.
"Easy does it, my lord," he said; "ye will soon be better. He's been owertaken, ye see—a wee drappie does it on an empty stomach," he explained to Jean Gordon. "Often hae I warned my folk—aye, even frae the pulpit, the very horns o' the altar, as it were—no' to tak' drink on an empty stomach!"
"Empty fiddlestick! Lay the laddie here!" cried Jean Gordon; "do ye no' see that the lad is deein' on his feet? He hasna seen drink for weeks, I'll wager—no, nor Christian meat either, by a' appearances."
She stopped to take off his boots. The soaked remnants of the sole came away in her hand.
"Mercy!" she cried, "the poor lad maun hae been in sore want. Tak' haud o' him soothly and tentily, Peter."
And so the kindly old lady, peering closely with her dim, short-sighted eyes, and the burly, red-gilled curate undressed Wat Gordon gently, and laid him in the bed on which his mother had died—the flanking pillars of which were hacked with the swords of the troopers from Carsphairn who had come to seek him after the sentence of outlawry.
"Peety me!" said Jean Gordon, "what will we dowi' the puir laddie? I'll get him some broth gin he can tak' them."
So, in a trice, Wat, having come a little to himself, was sitting up and taking "guid broth o' the very best, wi' a beef-bane boiled to ribbons intil't," as Jean Gordon nominated the savory stew, while she sat on the bed and fed him in mouthfuls with the only silver spoon Grier of Lag had left in the once well-plenished house of Lochinvar.
Wat sat fingering his gold heart and looking about him. He seemed like a man who has risen to the surface and finds himself unexpectedly in a boat after a nightmare experience of death in perilous deeps of the sea.
"Is there a horse about the house?" queried Wat, presently, looking at Jean Gordon out of his hollow, purple-rimmed eyes.
She thought that he still dreamed or doted.
"A horse, my laddie!" she cried. "How should there be a horse aboot the house of Lochinvar? The stables were never so extensive that I heard o'; and, troth, Rob Grier o' Lag, deil's lick-pot that he is, has no' left mony aboot the estates. There's a plough-horse ower by Gordiestoun, if that's what ye want."
And in her heart she said, "It's a lee, Guid forgie me. But onything to pacify the lad and get him asleep."
"I ken the best horse in a' this country-side," said the curate, going back to his ale as if nothing had happened, "and that's muckle Sandy Gordon's chairger ower at the Earlstoun. He's roarin' at the Convention in Edinburgh, I'se warrant, and he'll no' need 'Drumclog.' Gin ye hae a notion of the beast, I can borrow him for ye."
Wat started up with eager eyes.
"On the morning of the tenth have the horse at the loch-side, and I shall be forever bound and obligated to ye."
The curate nodded his head like one that grants the smallest and easiest favor.
"It shall be done; by six o' the clock Drumclog will be there, or my name is not Peter Mac—Eh! what is't, woman?" he exclaimed, turning a little testily to Jean Gordon, who for the last minute had been nudging him vehemently with her elbow to be quiet. "I'll no' haud my tongue for a bletherin' auld wretch. I hae held my tongue ower often in this pairish. Gin the lad wants a horse, e'en let him hae a horse. It is ane o' the best symptoms that I ken o'. I mind weel, yince, when I was a laddie like him and in love—"
But the reminiscence of Peter McCaskill's early love was not destined to be recorded, at least in this place, for Jean Gordon took the matter into her own hands and pushed the indignant curate out of the room. But even as he went he turned in the doorway and said, "Bide ye still in your bed the day, laddie. Ye shall find muckle Sandy Gordon's horse, Drumclog, at the west landing on the mornin' o' the tenth."
"Deil a fear o' ye," muttered Jean Gordon; "ye'll lie doucely and quietly in your bed till Jean gies ye leave to rise—tenth or no tenth!"