The press-gang and its ugly work, Castle Raincy and its feudal associations, stern Cairn Ferris, the Abbey Burn and the bright new house of Julian Wemyss—Patsy going from one to the other, and the patriarchal simplicity of the farm of Glenanmays, with its girls and boys, its cave-riddled shore and its interests in the Free Traffic—these are what the district of the Back Shore meant in later Napoleonic times.
Most of this was on the surface, to be seen of all men, but the traffic and the "press" are only spoken of in whispers. As to them it is dangerous to appear too knowing.
Even great people were mysteriously tongue-tied. Silence was particularly golden in these days, and in the stillness of the night the little click of a sheep's trotters descending a mountain pathway was often mistaken for the clank of a scabbard point, or the clink of a gun-butt striking a loose stone.
Girls in moorland farms lay awake, half-fearing, half-hoping to hear the saddle-chains of the laden horses, each led by a lover or a brother.
King George might (and did) multiply officials and send what could be spared in the way of landing parties to support the executive, but the claims on the ministry were too many. They could only say, "Wait for a time of peace and then we will regulate the matter of the Solway free trade once for all."
But the most ignorant lad on the shore of Galloway from Loch Ryan to Annan Waterfoot knew that so long as the government waged war against Napoleon and America, it had no time to attend to them. The press-gang was all they had to avoid, and for that they trusted to their clear eyes and nimble feet.
They were also well informed. So soon as a patrol cleared the Irishman's Port in Stranryan, or a boat's crew was seen making for the beach of any of the Back Shore coves, messengers, ragged and brown, sped inland to warn the farms and villages engaged in the business, or even those merely acting as recipients and depots. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, all men under forty-five disappeared from the fields. The teams found their own way homewards or stood still till they were loosed by girls hurrying out from the steadings.
"Patriotism," said Stair Garland, bitterly, "that is a fine word. But the fine patriots tie the lads they catch to rings in the wall of the Stranryan gaol. They lash them till the blood runs just to learn them not to complain. Don't tell me about glory. There was Rob Blair, who came back from Spain after his brother Maxwell had been flogged to death. He shot a general near Corunna—him they make a fuss about—he and half a dozen of his mates, and he told me the reason that Allingham keeps so far ahead of his own soldiers is that they are better shots than the French, who do not fire at him nearly so often."
True or not, this was the Galloway idea of soldiering during the later Napoleonic wars, and it was only after a bout of drunkenness at some fair that recruits could be looked for. Suicide was not uncommon after a few weeks of discipline, and many were drowned from the transport ships which took them to Vigo or the Tagus mouth.
Galloway has always been cut off from the rest of Scotland. In spite of the invasion of its fertile valleys by Ayrshire dairy farmers it has remained the old Free Province, a little anti-Scottish, a good deal anti-Irish, excessively anti-English, self-centred, self-satisfied, quarrel-some andfrondeur, yet in the main politically conservative.
In 1811 the Ayrshire invasion had not yet begun, and there was nothing to mitigate the determination of the people not to send a single man to fight in a war about which they cared nothing. No regiment in the service bore its name. It was looked upon as the haunt of an evil breed who would smuggle and fight, but against, and not among, the soldiers of the King.
A landing party had been attacked and cut up on the Corse of Slakes. Soldiers had to take and hold the old camp of the Levellers in the Duchrae wood, near the Black Water. Bitter hatred prevailed between the Lord Lieutenant's party, formed to aid the government in obtaining recruits, and the commonalty, which was equally determined that no one of theirs should be carried off to endure the shame of the cat-o'-nine-tails.
Earl Raincy made a tour of his estates, and the farmers promised wonderful things, but carefully and immediately sent their lads to the heather and the hill-caves for change of air. The girls took to the plough and threshed the grain on the beaten earth of the barn floor—emerging tired, but bright-eyed and happy. This, at least, they could do to keep Alec or John from the dread triangle and the lacerating whip. The Frenchman's bullet they were willing to risk, but not these. Galloway furnished its full tale of officers to both services, but as a recruiting-ground, even in milder times, it has given poor results.
In 1812 there was a good deal of writing about patriotism in struggling local journals. The big farmers were often loud-voiced, and the publicans hung out colours when the recruiting-officers made temporary headquarters of their houses, but the mass of the people stood silent, sullen and determined. They would not be taken, and if any were seized they would put up such a fight that the "press" would pay three or four lives for one. The chiefs would stay their hand, they argued, if they had to pay the price of three or four formed and disciplined men for a single unwilling recruit who would certainly desert at the first opportunity.
In the old outlaws' cave on Isle Ryan, towards the Mull out beyond Orraland, thirty or forty young men were gathered. They were not afraid of any attack by land or water. The stony bulk of the isle did not even fear cannon, and the passage, open only at low water, was exceedingly easily defended. Provisions they had in plenty, and for more they had only to cross to the mainland, where every farmer would willingly supply them.
Lads from all Galloway were there, shock-headed Vikings, with far-looking blue eyes, from Kirkmaiden to Leswalt, black, hook-nosed Blairs and McCallums from Garlieston sat beside Rerrick and Colvend men with deep-set eyes, the fine flower of the Free Trade, men whose forefathers had run cargoes for a hundred and thirty years into the same ports, and refused King's service for many thousand, though perfectly obedient to their own lords and war committees. There were always a plenty of fighting men along Solway shore, as the published rolls of 1638 attest.[1]Willing were they to fight, only they would fight when and against whom they chose, under such and such officers, appointed by themselves, and under no others. Kings, whether Highland Stuarts or German Guelphs, they would not obey—no, not though military parties made examples of them at every dyke back. The iron of the Killing Time was branded deep into the folk of Galloway. They would not go soldiering, and they would smuggle. In the last resort, if matters got too hot, the young men would silently betake themselves to Canada, where they rose to be factors and chief traders under the Hudson Bay Company, or, like Paul Jones, took service under another flag, and fought with the lust of battle ever in their heart, against all that was English or smelt of the service of King George.
"Are we to stay here for ever?" demanded Stair Garland, lying on the sand of the upper cavern and looking out at the blue curtain of sky, which was all he could see. Outside was a kind of balcony on which they stretched their legs at night, but, as there were preventive officers on the cliffs with telescopes under their arms, it was forbidden to go out there in daylight.
"We must stay here till the ships of war have gone out of the channel. You can see the top-sails of theBritomartat this moment, hanging about the Mull, and a sloop-of-war lies off Logan House, waiting for Captain Laurence's orders."
It was a Stewartry man who spoke, keen of eye and crisply black-haired, his voice soft and easy, not hectoring and overbearing like that of most of his fellows—his name, Godfrey McCulloch, the younger son of a younger son, but of the best and oldest blood in Scotland, which is to say of the Ardwalls.
Godfrey and Stair were in a manner rivals for leadership. The Stewartry man was the elder by many years, and among his own enjoyed an unrivalled reputation, but three-fourths of the Isle Ryan refugees were Wigtonshire men and faithful to Stair Garland.
But Stair Garland was often reckless and headstrong, so brave himself that he hardly thought of danger to those whom he led. Godfrey McCulloch, on the other hand, was cautious and long-sighted. He argued out every possibility, and arranged what was to be done if things fell out so and so. Sometimes he even hesitated too long, balancing between two wise courses, while Stair, leading his men with a rush, would thresh his way through to victory. On the whole, Godfrey was the safer, Stair far the more popular leader.
"We cannot lie up in this hole much longer," said Stair, digging his heels into the sand.
"I do not see that you do much lying up," retorted Godfrey McCulloch, his eyes dark and beady in the semi-dark; "you are off ashore more than half the time—"
"After that little slip of a Ferris girl, Patsy," said an Irishman from Antrim. "I saw the pair of you go down the glen together, and may I never see Cushendal more if you had not your arm about her waist behind the dyke—"
Stair's clenched fist shut in the remainder of the sentence. The Rathlain man choked as he swallowed a couple of teeth, and felt his raw lip acrid upon the gap.
"Tell them you lie—tell them before you spit—or I will send the rest of your teeth after those two!"
The man gasped out that "Sure it was only a joke—"
"A joke, was it?" said Stair fiercely; "then I hope you will consider the teeth you have swallowed as the cream of it!"
The men were silent—not from fear at all, but because any two of them had a right to settle such differences in their own way.
"Will the Irishman not sell us because of Stair Garland's fist closing his mouth so awkward like?" inquired a second Rerrick man, lying at the shoulder of Godfrey McCulloch.
"Not by a great deal," said Godfrey, "perhaps he will kill Stair if he can, though Stair is more likely to kill him. But he will not lay information as to the lads of the Free Trade. He will remember what happened to Luke Finney and James Tynan when they thought to lift the hundred pound reward out for Captain Maxwell of the Scaur."
"What was that?" said the youth at his elbow.
"Have you not heard? It is a Colvend story, too," said McCulloch. "We took them out into mid-channel and tied each man to an old anchor with his fifty pounds in jingling gold about his neck. For which cause Luke Finney and James Tynan, two rusty anchors and a hundred guineas of unrusted gold lie in the gut of the North Channel to this day."
"Is the water deep?" the young man asked.
"Deeper than any diver will reach till the judgment day," quoth Godfrey. "This Rathlin man will think twice before he plays Judas to the lads of the Trade."
"It must have been worst when they were over the side before the anchors went plunk!" The young fellow shuddered. A clean death in a fair fight he did not mind more than another, but dangling there tied to an anchor—"Ugh!" said the lad.
That night a cargo was to be run into the Abbey Burnfoot Bay, close by the house of Julian Wemyss. The King's ships had settled themselves, one in Belfast Lough, and the sloop-of-war well round the point into Loch Ryan. TheGood Intentmight therefore discharge her cargo in peace, and the boats were ready on the beach of the Water Cave to put the Inch Ryan refugees in charge of the pack horses which were to carry the stuff inland, distributing as they went.
The lads were riotous to be off, and Stair had to exercise his authority, backed by Godfrey McCulloch's experience and influence over the eastern men, to keep them quiet in the cove till the time should come for theGood Intentto cast anchor in the bay.
The chastisement of the Rathlin man had cowed the wildest spirits, and, still more than the fear of Stair, the acquiescence of the company in the justice of the punishment. Nevertheless, those in the cave were restless and uneasy, setting their heads out to sniff the salt of the sea beneath, and craning their necks through the spy-hole to watch the sand-pipers wheeling as if dancing new-fangled waltzes, or probing the sands after little shellfish and sea worms, never getting in each other's way, but each working quietly along, like a minister in his own parish.
Stair Garland was lost in admiration of the glory of the sea and sand at sunset. The crying of the island curlews coming down each in long plane flight eased his mind.Willy-wha—willy-wha!they called in long diminuendo, before they settled.
Presently the mist began to rise out of the hollows and hung out over the sea from Inch Ryan to the mainland crags like the stretched awning of a tent. Stair gave the lads leave to go on the balcony while he himself started on a tour of inspection. He would have liked to take Godfrey McCulloch with him. But he knew that his own following would be jealous and resent his passing them over, so he contented himself with saying, "Attend to what Godfrey says, boys. He has seen more than all of us put together. Fergus" (this to his elder brother), "knock the heads of any men who make a noise. No one shall come with us to-night who does not obey now!"
Stair went out by the little passage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their softly wistful cries everywhere.
And as the mist shifted and flowed everywhere more and more were revealed, doing sentry duty each on his tussock of bent-grass, while behind his mate effaced herself upon her four eggs or led her little flock into the deepest of the growing heather and among the white meadows of cotton-grass which blew about them, more downy than even the youngest nestling.
Stair made his way to the most easterly point of the isle—that nearest to the Burnfoot Bay. Already the fog was bunching and billowing uneasily. He noted that it was losing its steady, even pour over the island. "It will lift," he muttered.
And from far away there came the sound of a schooner's mainsail being brought down as her head came to the wind, the plunge of an anchor, and then, through a gap in the gloom, the tall, bare mast of a ship in the direction of the new house of Abbey Burnfoot.
"TheGood Intent!" he muttered. "She must be very sure of herself to come to anchor like that. Still that is Captain Penman's business. If he can discharge his cargo, I can put it out of harm's way. We shall have two hundred lads on the beach by midnight, and whatever force they may bring against us, we can go through them with the strong hand!"
Patsy had said nothing at home about her race over the moors to save the Glenanmays lads from the press-gang, and when her Uncle Julian, having talked to Captain Laurence, approached her on the subject, my lady replied that she was at the Bothy of Blairmore to help her friend Jean Garland.
"And where was Jean when the 'press' found you there alone?" said Julian Wemyss, smiling.
"She was outside, keeping watch for her brothers," said Patsy, looking at him with bright, clear eyes that could not be other than truthful.
But Uncle Julian had had much experience, and he only smiled more knowingly than ever.
"And the famous costume which so witched the men of war?" he asked.
"Oh, that," said Patsy, "I had to run, and you can't run fast in a frieze coat with many capes!"
"No." Uncle Julian nodded his head; "sandals cross-gartered, a bathing dress and a sash! I would that I had been one of His Majesty's officers to see you."
"I shall dress up for you some time," affirmed Patsy soothingly, "if you will give me the yellow sandals for my very own."
"Ah," said Uncle Julian, "of that I am not sure. They recall something which makes them precious to me."
The girl clasped her hands delightedly.
"Oh, a story at last," she cried, nestling against him. "I shall not tell a soul. You shall see how I can keep a secret."
"But I shall see still better if I do not tell it you!"
"Oh, how abominable of you, Uncle Julian! And I thought you loved me."
"The yellow sandals remind me of a time when I was young—young as you, and a great deal more foolish!"
"But they are a girl's sandals, Uncle Julian—you said so yourself when you lent them to me."
"Indeed, both of them would hardly cover a man's foot!"
"Who was she? Oh, where did you meet her? Did you love her very much?"
"I met her on a little coasting boat belonging to her father, on which I had taken passage from Chios to Smyrna. She knew no English. I knew only one sentence of modern Greek, and I was not sure of the meaning even of that. So I had to be careful. I had it from a poem which was making a noise at the time."
"Oh,Iknow," cried Patsy, "Louis is always saying it over to me:Zoë mou, sas agapo!What does it mean?"
"That I did not know at the time, but I know what I meant the words to mean."
"Was sheverylovely?"
"Very," said Uncle Julian. "I see you want a description, but I can only indicate. She had great dark eyes into which every sort of languid delight seemed to have been melted and concentrated, and eyelashes like the fringed awnings of a tent. When she lowered them they swept the ground, and when she lifted them it was slowly, as if their very weight fought against her will!"
"Oh-o-o-h!" said Patsy, feeling with her fingers, "I have regular scrubs. You won't ever love me when you think of her, Uncle Julian."
"I might," he answered, "if you had only the yellow sandals—"
"No, no, tell me about her! What did you say to her?"
"I said 'Zoë mou' half a dozen times, sitting closer to her every time. I spoke lower and lower, till the last 'Zoë mou' was whispered into her ear.
"Then I risked the other part, 'sas agapo'—and expected a box on the ear, or perhaps an appeal to her father, but instead she turned and kissed me!"
"Hurrah, Uncle Julian, I'm sure so should I—if any one had the sense to talk to me like that, low and in my ear (that tickles anyway) and in an unknown tongue."
"But you see the point was that the tongue was not unknown to her. She was a Greek girl and—"
"But what, after all,didit mean? She told you afterwards, of course."
"Well," said Uncle Julian, meditating, "not exactly. I found out. I had said, 'Zoëmine, I love you!"
"But what does 'Zoë' mean?"
"My life!"
"Life of mine, I love you!" Patsy repeated, trying various tones. "Uncle Julian, you must have made love like an archangel. Without knowing it, you had said about all that there was to say, and changing your voice like that—oh, I do wish I had been that girl. I don't wonder you don't want to give me the yellow sandals. I should not even have lent them for five minutes. You must not. I shall bring them back to you. It would be a sacrilege!"
"No," said Uncle Julian, "you are the brightest thing in my world, the likest the Greek girl and all the young things I once loved. It is your turn now, you small, black-headed Pictish woman!"
"I am not 'small.' I am taller than you, Uncle Julian!"
"I daresay, but you are slim as a willow branch. I could take you up between my finger and thumb."
"If you could catch me, Uncle Julian; but, see—you could not!"
With a swift spring she threw herself out of the low French window and stood on the lawn, ready poised for flight.
A brightness came into her uncle's eyes.
"I have known many and learned much," he thought, "but I have missed the best."
"Come, Uncle," she said, tapping the grass with her shoe, "I can't run as well as in kilt and sandals, or like the girl who played ball on the sands, but I can beat you—yes, I could run in circles about you!"
"I know, I know, you swallow!" proclaimed an admiring uncle. "But the day is past when I ran after agreeable young women. Generally they have to pocket their pride and come to see me—you do every day, you know!"
"Yes," said Patsy, "but do not think it is to see you, even if you are my mother's brother—"
"Half-brother—"
"My mother's brother, I say," persisted Patsy. "It is because you teach me to speak French and to read Latin books, and the mathematic (though that I love not so well), and also chiefly because you lend me many books to read up in dull old Cairn Ferris."
"Do not blaspheme the habitation of your fathers," said Julian Wemyss. "Here is a house all ready for you when you marry. If it were not for the table of affinities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!"
"Oh," said Patsy, "that would be splendid. You are far the nicest man and the most interesting I ever talked to. Don't ask me, for I should say 'yes' in a minute."
Usually Patsy Ferris and her father had not much to say to one another.
"Good morning, daughter!" quoth Adam, coming in from his early inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow and black like a wasp?"
"I have done my work, father," Patsy would answer. "I promised to go help Jean at Glenanmays. The lads are all in the heather and the maids have to do the heavy work of the field."
"But not you—I cannot have you handling the hoe and rake like a field worker!"
"No, no, father; Jean is always indoors or at the dairy."
Adam Ferris looked thoughtful and his dark brows drew together. He detested the press-gang and all it meant to the young men of the parish.
"I could send over a man or two, but my grieve or I myself would require to accompany them for protection against seizure."
"No need," said his daughter, hastily. "Diarmid would not wish to draw you into his sons' quarrels and, I think, Stair's band ran a big cargo last night from the Burnfoot Bay. There were twenty preventive men there, they say. Yet they stood aside and let the pack horses go by like men in a dream!"
Adam grew a little paler. He did not like this open defiance of the forces of law and order.
"How was that?" he demanded, "where was the military?"
"There were two hundred lads, all masked and all armed, a hundred pack horses and another hundred to ride upon. What could twenty customs men do with the like of these? Stair Garland left enough good lads to herd them close under the cliff till theGood Intenthad her anchor up and the caravan was out of all reach of danger."
This was by far the most serious news Adam Ferris had received for a long time, but there was worse still to come.
"Uncle Julian says I ought to tell you, father," Patsy began with quite unusual gravity, "that when the press-gang went to the Bothy of Blairmore to take the lads of Glenanmays, they found me. I could run much faster than Jean, so I got there first."
Her father grew grey under the olive of his skin. "The men were not insolent?" he asked, for he knew the manners and customs of his Majesty's press in lonely shielings.
"I only saw the officers—Captain Laurence and a naval lieutenant—besides that smooth rascal McClure from Stonykirk!"
Even then Patsy hardly dared tell her father how unconventionally she had been clad, but she plucked up heart and went through with it.
"I ran from the Maidens' Cove at the foot of the Mays glen along the sands, and through the heather. I had Uncle Julian's yellow sandals on my feet and I got there in time for the lads to scatter, though I had started after the boat had passed out of sight round the Black Point."
"They knew who you were?" her father asked.
"Certainly, I told them," said Patsy, eagerly. "I said also that they had no right on my father's land. We had no sailors or fisher folk on Cairn Ferris."
"Right enough," said her father, "but I hope you were not hasty with the men. Laurence is an honest enough fellow, doing an unpleasant duty, and the others—well, they are apt to find ways of revenging themselves."
"Oh," said Patsy, suddenly radiant, poising her small black head, "I think they rather liked talking to me. I had Jean's dress kilted below the knee. It was blue, and went well with the yellow cross leathers of the sandals. I had a broad sash about my waist, too."
"What difference did that make?" her father asked.
"Oh, none to you, father," Patsy answered saucily, "but to them it seemed to make quite a lot of difference."
Adam Ferris shook his head in reproof.
"You grow reckless, Patsy," he said, "either I must send you away where you will have ladies of your own position to look after you, or we must marry you out of hand and let your husband be responsible for you!"
"If you want me to run away, dad, just keep on talking to me like that. I won't have any old 'camel' women to rule over me. I am not going to leave home, but when I want to get married I shall make my own arrangements and then—tell you afterwards."
"Surely you will ask my permission?"
"The same sort of permission you asked when you ran away with my mother from the door of the Edinburgh Assembly rooms!"
Adam Ferris smiled grimly.
"What is allowable for a man does not always become a woman," he said.
"But what holds for one Ferris becomes another," his daughter retorted.
"Jeddart justice," said her father, still smiling; "then you will marry first, and ask permission afterwards."
"Exactly," said Patsy, cheerfully. "I knew I could make you understand."
In spite of her black, close-clustering hair Patsy had the dark blue eyes of her Uncle Julian. Young men and older ones also (who ought to have known better) were in the habit of calling them violet when they walked with Patsy in the twilight, when many unforeseen things happen.
Then Patsy knew exactly what to think. For her Uncle Julian had told her that when a man is in love, he becomes colour blind. When asked how he knew, Julian said that once on a time he had friends who used to confide their love affairs to him. But he smiled as he said it—the believe-as-much-of-that-as-you-like smile which was Patsy's own, and was her heritage from a less grave race than the Ferrises of Cairn Ferris.
Julian had the same smile when he condemned the Free Trade as an interference with the financial policy of King George, and at the same time drew a jug from a jar of "special" Hollands, or from such an anker of cognac as could not be found elsewhere in Scotland. He had found both, as it were dropped from heaven, in a corner of his stable, but Tam Eident, whom he had carefully catechized, knew nothing about the matter. He had, he averred, been asleep at the time in his bed in the stable-loft.
Doubtless the Free Traders thought they were paying for some complaisance on the part of the master of Abbey Burnfoot. But his light burned steadily up in his study window. He had never looked down on the flitting torches, the turmoil of the loading, the black figures crossing and recrossing the glimmering strips of sand, the clinking of shod feet on the banks of pebble, the jingling of the chains of the pack saddles. He had been wisely deaf and had carried his lamp upstairs to the little turret chamber, where he chose to sleep on wild nights, that he might the better hear the wind swirl about him, the wind thresh and the sea roar and churn on the beaches and snore in the spouting-crags of the Burnfoot.
So on nights when strange noises came from without, and the wild birds keckled with a sound that might be mistaken for the neighing of horses, Julian Wemyss betook himself to his strong tower, and, locking the door at the top of the stone staircase, went peacefully to sleep, till the morrow showed up wide wet sands, whipped by the wind, many tracks of horses among the dunes, and, dipping far down the channel towards St. Bees, the top-sails of a schooner, which might be the much-sought-forGood Intent, or, again, might not.
Julian Wemyss was not so old as you might expect from a man so learned and so apart from the world. Various reasons had been given for his retirement to this lonely spot when, during the truce, an appointment as ambassador extraordinary to Paris was within his grasp. He had acquitted himself highly on several "missions" already, and there was no doubt that Vienna was only a step to a permanency in Paris, so soon as the war should cease. But suddenly Julian Wemyss resigned all his appointments into the King's hands, and it was whispered that he had done so on account of a lady so highly placed that even to name her was something like high treason. This was already years ago and even the memory of it had grown dim.
Now, Julian Wemyss might be somewhere near fifty years of age, but did not look a day more than forty, and with certain lights on his face and that kindly smile of his, wise and tolerant, he looked younger still.
He was erect and slender, not very tall beside Adam, his brother-in-law, but moving with a light, easy carriage something between that of an athlete and a favourite of drawing-rooms.
He had the noticeable dark blue eyes that twinkled merrily, yet with something gloomy in their darkness, as of hyacinths in a woodland glade, drifting and smoky, like the kind of smoke that comes from weed-burning or a peat-fire lit on a still day.
His niece, who had heard from Jean Garland some of the talk of the country, for long dared not ask her uncle point-blank if it were true about the princess, but she showed such continual curiosity about his love affairs, that he would keep her waiting while he made an entry in his diary, or other book of written notes, and then declare solemnly that the only girl he had ever loved was named Patsy, and was a thankless brat, unworthy of the care and affection of the best of uncles.
"Nonsense," his niece would cry, happy, however, all the same to have him say so.
"A girl named Patsy," he would continue, "who was put into my arms an hour old to take what care I could of, her father being ill-suited for the task! I am the only relative she has on her mother's side, and Adam Ferris is equally solitary on the other. So we must take good care of the minx, Adam and I. She is all we have, little as she deserves that we should waste a thought on her—though she threatens to run away with the first gipsy that comes to the yett, as did the Countess of Cassillis in the ballad."
"My father has been telling tales—oh, shame of him!" cried Patsy, reddening. "I said that I would run away with you, if you were not my uncle, but then I did not know about—"
She stopped suddenly. Her tongue had betrayed her.
"About what? Out with it," said Julian.
"About the princess!" Patsy answered, her eyes in his.
"Who has been listening to gossip now?" said Julian Wemyss.
"I—I," cried Patsy, "and I would give all I have to know what is true and what is clatter of the country."
"There is little to hide," said Julian quietly, looking past his niece out of the windows giving on the sea; "but that little is not my own to tell. If some day I am at liberty to speak, I promise that little Patsy Ferris shall be the first to hear."
Then he patted her head reproachfully. "Little Curiosity," he said with tenderness, "it is not good for girls to be told everything. Old fellows like me ought to know, so as to keep their wards out of mischief. The world is a strange and dangerous place, full of traps and quicksands, and for this reason see that you always come to me with your troubles. Do not bother Adam Ferris with them. He has never ventured beyond the Plainstones of Dumfries on a cattle-fair day. Besides many women have told me their sorrows."
"Yes," promised Patsy. "I don't know about princesses, but I do know that many girls must have loved you, Uncle Julian, for that is the reason you are so sweet to me now!"
Julian's chief ally in the county was Miss Aline Minto of Balmacminto, who lived at Ladykirk. She was wealthy, but had been so shy of men that she had escaped numberless wooers, sorely enamoured of the Balmacminto estates, and now at the age of forty-five showed the prettiest fringes of white curls in the world, a complexion of seventeen, and something so trustful and rare in the way of brown eyes that Raeburn, at the height of his fame, had painted her for the mere love of winsomeness in growing old.
She knew Julian's reputation and at first had kept out of his way. But when once she met him, the two had become comrades on the spot. Miss Aline saw that this man had no designs either upon her or upon the estates. A kindly aloofness from all such mean projects, an ease and grace that spoke of worlds quite unrealized by Miss Aline, somehow urged her to confide in him. In a month he had become indispensable. Miss Aline asked his advice and called upon Julian Wemyss for aid in all circumstances.
He found her a new factor, carrying on the duties till the new young man (from his own solicitor's office) was installed. He waited with Miss Aline the portentous visit of Sir Bunny Bunny, Bart., of Crawhall. He came to demand the honour of her hand for his clodhopping son, George Bunny Bunny, who hitherto had only distinguished himself by shooting a keeper in the leg, by frightening village children gathering violets and daisies, and by going to the wars with a troop of horse raised in the neighbourhood, only to be sent back again for incompetence. He had, since then, been the chief support of the press-gang in the neighbourhood, and, if he had not been so much despised, might have been hated. But he had enough sense to restrain from active interference with the Free Traders, for, owing to a personal dislike for violence in any form which might endanger his skin, he kept clear of press-gang scrimmages, confining himself to assisting Superintendent McClure with such information as the Easterhall coast-line afforded.
The baronet himself was a keen-eyed, long-nosed old gentleman, with many times the spirit of his son. He had been accustomed all his life to getting his own way, except with his wife. Even at Castle Raincy he had known how to cow the gentle mother of Louis Raincy, though something dangerous in the boy's eye had led him to let Louis alone.
"The spark of mad Raincy blood is in the whelp," he confided to his friends; "the same his grandfather has. They can look positively murderous sometimes."
Sir Bunny was taken aback to find Julian waiting for him in Miss Aline's white and gold drawing-room at Ladykirk.
"Am I, then, to congratulate you?" he said to Julian Wemyss, with false good nature.
"You are," said Julian calmly, "upon the friendship and trust of the best woman in the world. Anything else I should consider impertinence and know how to resent as such!"
"I desire to see Miss Aline," said Sir Bunny, to cut short a conversation which might easily become unpleasant.
"Certainly," said Julian carelessly, as if he were saying the lightest of nothings; "but I think you will find that I could have answered you quite as well."
"How so?" said the baronet, glowering at him, his fingers twitching to take this courtly, easy-spoken man by the throat.
"Because you come to propose your son, Mr. George, for the honour of the hand of Miss Aline Minto. Miss Aline can say 'No' for herself. But I think you had better not trouble her and content yourself with the indication I give you."
"And what is that?"
"That Miss Aline prefers to remain as she is!"
The baronet, however, insisted on a personal answer. Miss Aline came in and stood shyly while Sir Bunny pointed out the advantages of his proposal—the estates joined, the parish under control, and the family name changed by poll deed to Minto-Bunny-Bunny.
"I am obliged for your thinking of me," said Miss Aline sweetly, "but for the present I have no intention of marrying."
"I warn you," said Sir Bunny Bunny, "that by continuing to act as you are doing, you are exposing yourself to misconstruction—"
Julian Wemyss, who had been looking out of the window, turned suddenly and caught his eye.
Old Sir Bunny was no coward, but he shrank from the look of Julian Wemyss as if it had been a knife at his breast.
"I mean," he said, "that Miss Aline, gracious and youthful as she is, ought to remember that youth does not last for ever!"
He thought he had turned the matter off rather neatly, and was surprised when Julian merely shrugged his shoulders and turned again to the window. Presently Sir Bunny Bunny made his bow and departed, cursing the interference of Julian Wemyss in what had long been the desire of his heart, the union of the Bunny Bunny properties with those of Balmacminto. He had thought about it so long that it had become to his mind an accomplished fact. Indeed, he had only been waiting for his loutish son George to finish his wild-oat sowing before communicating the news of her good fortune to Miss Aline.
He was still more astonished on the way home from Ladykirk. An officer, riding, checked at his approach, and, with a sketched salute, reined his steed long enough to ask, "Do you know where Mr. Julian Wemyss is to be found? He is to go home immediately. His Royal Highness the Duke is at Abbey Burnfoot!"
"What duke?" the baronet fairly gasped.
"The Duke of Lyonesse, of course, on his way from Ireland," said the officer, "he was juniorattachéto Mr. Wemyss at Vienna!"
"Good God!" said the baronet, "I wonder if Wemyss will bring him to Bunny House."
And he offered to ride with the officer to where Julian might be found. The adjutant took one look at the plethoric proportions of the baronet's mount, and answered that he was in a hurry. A simple indication would be enough for him. Whereupon, with some reluctance, Sir Bunny pointed to the chimneys of Ladykirk quietly reeking through the trees, and with a hasty lift of his reins the officer rode on, leaving the baronet staring after him, wondering whether he ought to tell his wife, or if he should leave her to find out for herself.
His brain wheeled. For Julian Wemyss, whom none of them, except Miss Aline, had chosen to know, was receiving at his house, hitherto the eyesore and scandal of the neighbourhood, a Prince of the blood Royal. After all, there must have been something in that talk of great ladies heartbroken because of this Julian Wemyss, in whom the county saw nothing, and in whose ambassadorship they had refused to believe, even though his resignation of it so unexpectedly had been commented upon in theEdinburgh Magazine, which was taken in by Sir Bunny and passed round afterwards from house to house.
What could so great a man find to do there? In a distant and disdainful fashion Sir Bunny knew Abbey Burnfoot. It was not even a mansion—merely a new-fangled sort of cottage at the best—built in Italian fashion, they said, but after all, only two score yards of garden, with a narrow rim of links overgrown with sea pink and ground holly. It was stuck ridiculously in between the white sands and the pour of the Abbey Burn—no drives or pleasances, no cropped hedges and trim parterres—nothing, in short, which Royalty had a right to expect when visiting a real gentleman's country seat, such as he flattered himself could be found at Bunny House in the shire of Wigton.
It did not occur to Sir Bunny Bunny, with his poor little squireen's point of view, that His Royal Highness might possibly come to see, not long avenues and close cropped hedges, but his old kind chief of Constantinople and Vienna.
So he was forced to content himself with many shakings of his head, and muttering that the country was going to the dogs when princes consorted with beggars or little better, as he rode off home to Bunny House in desperate fear of what his wife Lady Bunny would say when he got there.
Patsy came into her uncle Julian's drawing-room in her most tempestuous manner. She had been for a gallop along the sands on Stair Garland's pony and had beaten Louis de Raincy's Honeypot by a length. She was in high feather, and as she tramped along the cool parqueted hall she kept calling out, "Uncle Ju—where are you, Uncle Ju?"
When she opened the door and dashed in she disturbed the conference of three men by the window, one of whom was in uniform, and the other two dressed in the latest fashion, of which Patsy had as yet only seen prints at the end of her uncle'sTown and Country Magazine—a review which, curiously enough, always lacked some of its pages by the time Patsy was allowed to see it.
"Oh," said Patsy, no ways abashed, "you have come to see my uncle—will you be seated?"
Patsy noticed that the tallest of the young men made a slight sign to his companions, and that they sat down as if in answer to that signal instead of accepting her invitation at once.
"We have indeed come a long distance in order to call on Mr. Julian Wemyss," said the young man of the signal. "I knew him at Vienna, and as I was passing through from Ireland, I took this opportunity of paying my respects to him. But it is better still to find such a charming young lady installed in his house to do the honours!"
"Oh," said Patsy, "I do not live here, but with my father at the other end of the glen. I only come every day to cheer him up—Uncle Ju is so apt to get the 'pokes'!"
"The 'pokes'—what are they?" exclaimed the tall and ruddy young man, who continued to stare at her in a manner which would have discountenanced any other than Patsy.
"The 'pokes' are what you get if you are left too long alone with all these shelves, especially if you stop indoors to read them. Then I come and take Uncle Julian out, and he feels better before I have gone a mile with him!"
"So you are a remedy for the 'pokes,'" said the young man, drawing his chair nearer to that of Patsy, as if to show his interest. "I often have the disease, though with me it does not come from reading too many books. But I should gladly take the malady that I might taste of the antidote!"
And Patsy felt her face flush with the intensity of his regard. She cast down her eyes, and the young man took advantage of the fact to signal slightly to his friends. One after the other they rose and, with an excuse, left the room.
The tall young man came gradually closer to Patsy till she started to her feet, merely to break the nervous tension. An instinctive repulsion sent her to the window, and, then, though he followed her, she somehow felt safe. There were the familiar sands, and in a moment she could be outside where none could touch her. After all, she thought, as she looked at the white line of the breakers and heard the familiar clatter of the servants in the kitchen below, she was a fool to be so idiotically nervous, like a fine smelling-salts lady. What could happen to her? What if she did not like this very forward young man? He was a guest of her Uncle Julian's—he might even be his friend. Very likely he meant no harm, and she would treat him just like anybody else. Yes, that would be best.
"Ah," said the young man, leaning over her as she stood looking out, "if only I had been at that cottage on the hills with the officers the other day! I would have given a thousand guineas for their luck. But now that I am fortunate enough to have you to myself for a moment, let me say how much I admire you, Miss Patsy—that is your name, I think?"
Patsy did not answer. She had one hand on the sill and was wondering if the young man were mad or only drunk—also how long it would take for her to be safe among the heather.
"You are far too fine and beautiful," he continued, "too bewitching and original to remain here. You must come to London and take your place among our reigning beauties. Ah, if only you would trust to one who adores you, one who would do anything in the world for you—"
"If you mean yourself, will you help me to wind wool?" said Patsy. "I have a pair of heather-mixture stockings to make for uncle. I promised to make them for him last Christmas and I only began them yesterday."
"Certainly," said the young man, visibly discountenanced, "but can your uncle not wait a little longer? I wish to talk to you. It was solely for that purpose I came here, believe me. I had heard of you from Captain Laurence, and young Everard, one of the officers of theBritomart, in which I came from Ireland. I was over there governing the island for my father!"
"Ah, were you?" said Patsy, "well, here is the wool. Can you wind it? No! Then you had better hold it. That, at least, you can do.—Well, there you are, remember I shall find you out if you are boasting."
"But I have got much to say to you!" the young man objected.
"I can listen better on my feet. I must be doing something. There—sit down on that three-legged 'creepie,' and, whatever you do, do not tangle the wool."
Patsy was resolved that, whatever she might do in the future, she would now take the matter lightly, and not insult her uncle's guest in the drawing-room of Abbey Burnfoot.
When Julian Wemyss returned in haste from Miss Aline's, he found no less a person than H.R.H. the Duke of Lyonesse seated on a stool holding wool for Patsy, who wound a ball with rapid, nimble fingers while she scolded a delighted Great Personage for his mismanagement. Two gentlemen, of whom one was Captain Laurence, stood outside and waited gravely, as indeed became them. But the Duke of Lyonesse was in the highest spirits and really gave himself to his task, knitting his brows and striving to follow Patsy's instructions to the letter.
"It is a long time since I heard so much truth about myself," said the Duke. "I own I am both stupid and awkward, but then, by gad, I am willing to learn!"
"People who are stupid and awkward ought not to offer," said Patsy. "I am sure that Captain Laurence, whom you sent away, could do it a great deal better."
"I can't give up the honour even to my friend Laurence," said the Prince. "In for a penny, in for a pound. I must conquer this art or be for ever disgraced in this lady's eyes, and, therefore, in my own!"
"You should practise before boasting of what you can do," said Patsy. "Make Captain Laurence wind for you an hour each morning, and in a little while you will be able to knit your own stockings."
"By gad," said his Highness, "that is a good idea. Will you teach me? Often when I was at Constantinople and also at sea I wished I had something to help the time to pass besides stupid books!"
He glanced about him at the crowded shelves. "Though I know your uncle does not think them stupid," he added, with some sense of an apology due; "but then we cannot all be so clever as he!"
"I should think not, indeed," said Patsy sharply, "nor half so handsome!"
The two gentlemen at the door glanced at one another, but the Duke of Lyonesse did not wince. He went on carefully slanting his hands time about to let the wool slip round, bending his thumbs to act as a drag and obeying his task-mistress to the best of his ability.
"That has always been the opinion of your sex all the world over," he said gravely, "if Julian Wemyss entered for a race, what was left for the others but the Consolation Stakes? But you, at least, are a stake for which he cannot enter!"
A quick, light footstep passed through the hall and the door opened.
"Ah, Wemyss," cried the Duke, "don't interrupt, like a good fellow. I am on my promotion. Your niece has been dressing me down. I hope to do better after a while. Besides, we have just been saying how perfectly irresistible you are, and how the ladies love you. You ought to be grateful for that at any rate."
The last threads ran swiftly over the opened fingers, and Patsy deftly slid the end into the ball, said "Thank you," and, with a curtsey, went out by the way of the French window leading to the garden, leaving the men to themselves.
"Jove," said the Duke, looking after her through the window, "where and how did you find such a treasure? No wonder you gave up Paris for this. Like Henry of Navarre, I should give up both Paris and France for such a mass—a real exile's consolation, good faith. Wemyss, you used to make me read about Ovid starving for years in the Danube swamps, but this would be consolation for an exile if he had to roof in the pole to make himself a house."
"I am sorry," said Julian, somewhat formally, "that I was not in time to introduce you to my only sister's only daughter, my niece and heiress, Miss Patricia Wemyss Ferris of Cairn Ferris."
"I beg your pardon," said his Highness. "Captain Laurence made us laugh so much at a tale he was telling, that I fear the introductions were a little slipshod. I shall make my apologies to the young lady when I have the opportunity of bettering the acquaintance."
Julian Wemyss knew very well what was the story which Laurence had been retailing—that of the disappointed man-hunters at the bothy in the Wild of Blairmore. But he said nothing, and proceeded to make his young friend at home in his house of Abbey Burnfoot. He made no apologies. There was need of none. At Varna and in the little towns along the Illyrian coast his pupil and he had often had to share far humbler accommodation.
For though Julian Wemyss lived apart from the world, he kept a small yacht to keep him in comfortable touch with the outside markets. The passage to Glasgow was an easy one. Dumfries and the Cumberland ports were open to him, and so, with the foreign articles which were found in his outer cellars after a trip of theGood Intent(master and owner, Captain Penman), no house in the county could produce at short notice so excellent and various a bill of fare.
A place had been set at dinner for Patsy, but it remained empty. Patsy had simply disappeared. No one had seen her about the shore, nor had she been met with along the dusky alders and dimpling birches of the path by the burnside. Neither had it pleased her to reappear at Cairn Ferris, whither Julian had been careful to send an inquiry.
Such conduct, however, did not seriously disquiet anybody, for Patsy's ways were too erratic and the country too safe (so long, at least, as she kept to the Ferris properties) for any one to harbour serious fears about her.
And, indeed, there was no cause. Patsy had no idea of going off her father's lands. She had simply taken a scamper over the Rig of Blairmore, keeping to the deeper cover of the hollows till she came to the nook that sheltered the bothy. Here she glanced within, but all was empty, swept and garnished. There was no sign about the place of any recent occupation.
All was trim and well-kept as she had left it—dust being unknown on the Wild of Blairmore. But in the little hiding-place which ordinarily held the key, a small rock-cupboard beneath a couple of great boulders, fallen thwart-wise across one another like drunken men embracing, she found a strip of twisted paper. Patsy thought that it contained a message from Jean, but in a moment she recognized the aggressive penmanship of Stair Garland.
"If you want me, stand five minutes on Peden's Stone!"
That was all, but Patsy knew that Stair had all the time been watching over her in some wild, sudden-swooping, peregrine falcon-fashion of his own. He had left the warning if she should happen to visit the Bothy while it was being watched for the return of the young men whom the "press" had missed on the day of Patsy's wild race in the yellow sandals.
Now, save that it might pleasure the boy, Patsy had no special reason for wishing to see Stair Garland. But it would certainly be well for her to talk with his sister Jean. She wished to do this without going to the farm itself. Her absence from her uncle would soon be noticed, and as she had not appeared at her father's house of Cairn Ferris, it was to Glenanmays that any searchers would go first. She was therefore wishful to speak to Jean and ask her opinion of the visitors who had taken possession of her uncle's house at the Burnfoot.
So with circumspection she crossed the pebbly bed of the Mays Water and climbed up into a crater-like amphitheatre from the edge of which a flat block of stone jutted out. It was told in the "persecuting" lore of the parish that the great "Peden the Prophet" had often used it as a pulpit, his congregation being seated round the semi-circle and the Mays Water birling and singing handily below in case of children to be baptized.
Patsy stood on the stone, all trodden smooth by the restless feet of the hill lambs which in spring came from the most distant parts of the moor to gambol there. She could look both up and down the water, but for a while she saw nothing of Stair.
But the five minutes were not up, when, from a thick tuft of broom, she heard the call of the whin-chat, like a tiny hammer ringing on hard stone. The sound came from up the water and Patsy moved towards it, stepping deftly from stone to stone in the bed of the stream.
"Stair," she said softly, "where are you, Stair?" A full swathe of broom moved itself aside, and she could see Stair Garland lying in a rocky niche which he had prepared long before, in case of such a very probable emergency as the officers of the excise coming after him.
The barrel of his long gun looked over his shoulder.
"Go on, Patsy," he said, "walk on up the burn as if you had seen nothing and I shall be with you in a moment."
She had reached a little knoll, crowned with alder bushes, when she found him entering from the opposite side. Sitting down, she told him of the Duke's coming to Abbey Burnfoot, and of the two gentlemen who were with him, Captain Laurence and Lord Wargrove.
"Ah," said Stair, "so it is for that we have a full squadron of dragoons camped in our barns at Glenanmays, the stable emptied of our own horses to make room for those of the dragoons, and the whole house turned upside down. I thought it was too big a force to be sent after the three of us."
"Fergus and Agnew are still away, then?" queried Patsy, sure that they were.
Stair grinned.
"They are in the heather, like myself," he chuckled, "but neither of them has such a choice of hidie-holes as I have. I can hide better and lie closer, besides keeping a watch on the farm and on you, Miss Patsy, with the soldiers all about within the shot of a gun."
"Can you bring Jean to me, Stair?" said Patsy, "it will be hard, I know, with all those men on the watch at Glenanmays."
Stair flushed a little with the joy of a difficult commission. He whistled shrilly three times, and then sat quite still listening. Then he whistled thrice more and the echoes had hardly died away before the wise, towsy head of a rough collie with the big, brown eyes of the genuine Galloway sheep-dog peered out of the bracken and long grass of the burnside. He came silently and expectantly to his master, as if he enjoyed the game as much as any one.
"Here, Whitefoot," said Stair, and the dog came obediently to his side. He wore on his neck a plain leather collar, which his master undid. In one place the inside leather was doubled but held tight when worn by Whitefoot, owing to the roughness of the dog's mane of hair. Stair pushed back the understrap, and taking a piece of paper from his waistcoat wrote upon it the figure "2" very large and clear. Then he shook a forefinger before Whitefoot's moist nose, and said with emphasis the single word "Jean."
The dog lifted his forepaws a little clear of the ground, and, as it were, barked without noise, making an eager, half-strangled noise in his throat to show he understood.
"Jean!" Stair repeated.
"A-owch!" whispered the dog, his tail wagging violently and his eyes fairly blazing.
"Go!" said Stair, and the next moment the tall bracken had closed on Whitefoot. Not the tremor of a leaf, not the swaying of a rag-weed told Patsy which way he had gone. In these days the very dogs had been trained to run invisibly and to bark under their breaths. The Traffic and the "press," but especially the latter, had silenced much of the immemorial mirth of the farm-towns. The shadow of the war cloud rested on the ancient Free Province. The lads might 'list, but they would not be "pressed." "A lad gaen to the wars" or "a lassie fa'en wrang" were the utmost shame that could fall upon any Galloway household, and of the two the lassie was more readily forgiven than the lad with the colours.
"I shall wait till Jean comes," said Stair, a little shame-facedly, because he understood that the girls would naturally wish to talk of their own affairs. "I must see how the spurred gentry are behaving themselves up at the farm."
But to assure Patsy of his complete disinterestedness, he went to the edge of alder-clump and stood there leaning on his gun. He watched keenly the twisting links of the Mays Water, a silver chain flung carelessly in the sun, cut with gun-metal coloured patches where it sulked a while in shadowy pools. Whitefoot would do his duty. Of that there was no doubt whatever. He would find Jean. He would attract her attention. Jean would go out to the dairy, whither Whitefoot would follow. There the collar would be opened, the paper taken out, and she would soon be on her way for that one of Stair's trysting-places which bore the number "2" on the list he had given her.
Presently out of the tall grass of the lower meadow the head and shoulders of Jean Garland appeared. He could see her wading breast-deep along the rag-weed and the meadow-sweet. The faint wind-furrow which preceded her showed where Whitefoot, still invisible, guided the girl to the exact clump of undergrowth where Patsy and Stair were waiting.
After a little they could see, emerging likewise, the cocked ears, the shaggy head and eager brown eyes of Whitefoot as he turned at every other yard to make sure that Jean was following, and appreciating all his cleverness. At the edge of the clump of dull green alders he drew back to let her pass, as much as to say, "There now—you can do the rest—go on and see for yourself if I have not guided you aright."
Jean came upon her brother first. He was still leaning with one hand on his gun and the opposite elbow crooked about the hole of a tree.
"All right up there?" he demanded in a low tone, indicating the farm with a jerk of his head.
Jean nodded without speaking. She was sure it was not merely to ask this that he had sent Whitefoot to bring her to him.
"No insolence?"
"No," said Jean, "they are all as little troublesome as they can help. There is some general or great person over at the Abbey Burn House—"
"A Royal Prince," said Stair bitterly, "go on, Jean. I think it is about him that Patsy wishes to speak to you! Keep Whitefoot by you, and if you want me he will know where to find me."
Jean disappeared, and in another moment had found her friend. In the snuggest nook of the shelter afforded by the alder undergrowth the two sat down.
Then Patsy revealed to Jean her invincible fear and dislike of the royal visitor whom she had seen at her uncle's. She had seen something glitter for a moment in his eyes which had frightened her, and though she had played her part out to the end, she had fled the moment after to consult with Jean, a wise maid for her years and the only soul in the world fully in Patsy's confidence.
"Uncle Julian cannot help me this time," she said, "he is the man's friend. He would believe no ill of him. And, indeed, I have nothing really to put before him. Men want evidence, not impressions. If I were to say to my Uncle Julian that I was afraid of the man's eyes, he would only call me a little fool and tell me to look the other way!"
Patsy found Jean exceedingly comforting. Jean understood without having to have things explained, without asking questions. She shelved the doubt as to whether Patsy was under a misapprehension. Patsy was afraid. Patsy had seen, therefore, the thing was so. That is the reason why girls reveal themselves one to the other and why their friendships are often durable. They may quarrel like two little spitfires, and mostly do, but—they respect each other's intuitions.
So that as soon as Jean was in possession of Patsy's fear of an unknown hovering danger, she called out to Stair, "Don't go far away—we may need you!"
To understand Patsy's feeling it must be remembered that she had been accustomed from her earliest infancy to hear of the wild deeds of the King's sons—how this one had carried off an actress, another made prize of a young lady of fashion—the Regent, the Dukes of York and Cumberland had set the fashion. The younger princes had out-princed their elders, and there was not a gossip in the countryside but could retail their latest enormities with loud outcries of horror, yet with an undercurrent of the curious popular feeling that, after all, it rather became young princes so to misconduct themselves.
If the Duke of Lyonesse had been less talked about than his brothers, it was only because his long residence abroad had blunted the edge of calumny. For in his case the women were French or Austrians, and it seemed quite natural that such things should befall "foreigners."
All this made a background to Patsy's fear of the Prince, but there remained something else as well. Patsy had never been afraid before—and she was not quite sure whether she liked it or not.