"The Bothy was attacked and surrounded last night. We can hold out for at least a week!"Stair."
"The Bothy was attacked and surrounded last night. We can hold out for at least a week!
"Stair."
Then everything grew dazed about her—Hanover Lodge and the Princess, the empty phantasmagoria of courts, balls and routs, the disputes and reconciliations of royal Dukes, Louis and his half-cured amours with the Arlington. What did all these things matter? Perhaps at that very moment the Bothy had been taken by storm, and Patsy's quick mind saw Stair and her Uncle Julian lying dead out on the face of the moor, the soldiers who had done the work having no time for even a peat-hag burial.
But Kennedy McClure was a strong tower. If he were affected by the message he certainly did not show it.
"Hoots, lass," he said, patting her shoulder, "greetin' does no good. Come wi' me the morn in theGood Intent. That will be three tides before her regular sailing date, but I ken Captain Penman. He is under some obligations to me, and theGood Intent—weel, she's maistly my ain. But though ye canna speak to the Princess, ye had better tell Miss Aline. Being Gallowa-born and Gallowa-bred, she will understand and speak for ye to the Princess."
Patsy promised, though reluctantly, to do what was necessary in Miss Aline's case. It was monstrous and hateful to her that she should need to go back to Hanover Lodge at all. But she recognized that Kennedy McClure was likely to be right, and as she was only anticipating by a few weeks what she meant to do ever since she had begun to talk with the Laird of Supsorrow, she resolved to interview Miss Aline instantly.
Miss Aline also had her own reasons for being wearied of Hanover Lodge. It "wasna' her ain country" and the "fremit folk (especially the 'flonkies') vexed her sair!" Thus from the first there was no question of her letting Patsy go back alone.
"Fegs, no," she cried, "what do ye tak' me for? Lassie, do ye not ken that I am here for the purpose o' lookin' after you—little as I have been able to accomplish, with you as flichty as the Wemysses and as dour as the Ferrises. It is the Lord's ain peety that ye werena' born reasonable and wise like the Mintos—!"
"And your grandfather—" Patsy suggested, "him they call Hellfire Minto—what was it he did to the poor man at Falkirk Tryst?"
"He wasna' a poor man—he was the chief o' a neibour clan and the twa were at feud. It was that sent my granther doon to Galloway where there are no clans nor ony spites that last for twenty generations. But no matter for that. We are wasting time. Let us go and see the Princess. What for should we steal away like a thief in the night—after all her kindness, when we can get her God-speed by the asking?"
"She will try to stop us—tell her nothing!" cried Patsy, instantly fearful lest she should be locked up, or by some machination prevented from joining theGood Intent.
"And if ye please, Patsy Ferris, wha may it be that is in danger at the Bothy o' Blairmore?"
"Why, Stair Garland, of course!"
"And wha else?"
"I suppose my Uncle Julian is," said Patsy, seeing Miss Aline's point, "but he is not in real danger like Stair."
"Not perhaps if it comes to a trial, but suppose that the sodjers have orders not to let it come to a trial—!"
"Oh, Miss Aline, do you mean that they would kill them on the spot?"
"Weel, lass, Stair and Mr. Julian will doubtless be defending theirsel's, and what is to hinder a musket or so from going off behind their backs? There will be a reward oot and Brown Bess is tricky at the best of times. I am judgin' that the Princess will rather be for coming with us than for standing in our road!"
Miss Aline judged well. The Princess was anxious that they should take half-a-dozen of her retainers who had served in the wars, but Miss Aline pointed out that their ignorance of the country and language would make them only a danger. Finally, however, they agreed to take Heinrich Wolf, called the Silent, a lean, keen-profiled man of fifty, who had been a famous tracker of bear and boar in the Austrian Alps, and in his youth an expert in contraband of no mean fame, and of large experience both on mountain and on sea.
The thought of Julian's danger threw the Princess into a flurry of nervous fever, so that she could get no rest till she saw their boxes packed—each being allowed but one because of the difficulties of a secret landing. The others were to be sent to the care of Eelen Young at Ladykirk.
At first it was not clear to the Princess what they would do to help the besieged when they got there, but Miss Aline assured her that if any one could possibly raise the country and save the situation, that person was Patsy and no other.
Old Silent Wolf took with him a couple of great jaeger "ruk-sacks" full of sausages, together with much ammunition for rifle and pistol. These he nursed as he waited in the hall with a grim expression on his countenance, but as composedly as if he had only come in to report on the possible game for the day's shooting.
It was the gloaming of a late March day when the reefed top-sails of theGood Intentshowed up against the horizon of bleak slate-grey which was the Irish Sea. The North Channel foamed boisterously to the left, heaping many waters together, a perpetual cave of the winds, a play-ground for errant tides, or rather, as the folk on its shores say, the meeting-place of all the Seven Seas.
From early morning they had been standing off, not daring to approach nearer till assisted by the westward rush of the Solway tides and the darkness which would hide everything. Captain Penman was a man of few words, and these few he did not waste. Inwardly he was boiling over at the ill-luck of his first spring run. He cursed Stair Garland and Julian Wemyss for mixing private quarrels with so sacred a mission as that of hoodwinking his Majesty's Customs.
"As good a cargo as ever came past the Point of Ayre," he grumbled, "and if young Garland had been attending to his business, we might have run it at the Mays Water as easy as changing money from one trousers pocket to the other. But now I must put these people on shore with the whole countryside humming with Preventives, and as like as not a brig-o'-war hovering about. There always is, when soldiers take a hand. The authorities get into a flurry and order up everything that can carry a gun. I shall have to make for Balcary or that narrow shingly cur's hole of a Portowarren, where a ship can't turn between the Boreland heuchs and the reefs of Port Ling. Then there are never enough boats there, and three tides will not serve to clear her. Why could not Kennedy McClure mind his business, which is also my business? He has been witched, as if he were only twenty, by this lass of Adam Ferris's. And the more shame to him that has passed sixty without ever a chick or a child to hamper him, or a petticoat to drag him to church o' Sundays!"
Yet for all his abuse this close-lipped captain of theGood Intentallowed Patsy many favours. She was often beside him on the bridge, and the Captain would explain to her quite patiently why they were hanging off and on, when the cliffs of the Back Shore were clearly visible, and for a little while even she could make out through the glass the twin rifts of the Valleys of Abbey Burnfoot and the Mays Water.
"Ye see, bairn," Captain Penman would say, "we can see nothing at all of what is going on ashore, while to a Preventive man up on the heuchs yonder with a spy-glass, we are as plain to be seen as a fly on white paper. I changed her rigging about a bit in the winter months, but for all that there is something about the auldGood Intentthat makes her as easy to be told as the well-weathered brick-red of a sea-going face on shore!"
But of course Patsy was eager and impatient. She was hard to be held.
"If it is of your cargo you are thinking, why not go straight in and land us? Then you can take your tea and lace and brandy further on."
Captain Penman looked at the girl beside him, and was sorry for her disappointment.
"I would if I could, Mistress Patsy, but they would only grip the whole of you the moment you stepped on shore. Then that rough-haired rascal with the armoury in his belt would loose off half-a-dozen shots before they got him mastered, that would send you all straight to prison. And that's no place for them that want to help their friends in trouble. Besides, there are King's ships about, and who knows whether the wind may hold? If it dropped, we should be taken—all the lot of us, and theGood Intentwith her fine winter's cargo would be made a gauger's prize! No, bairn, we are better biding here till the dark of the night comes and then—we shall see where we can set you ashore!"
"Weel, Captain," interrupted Kennedy McClure, who had come up from below, "what think ye of the landing? Can we make the auld place within the bight of the Mays Water? That would be the nearest to the Bothy on the Wild o' Blairmore!"
"Maybe," said the Captain, grimly, "but being the nearest is not to say the safest. They will have a cordon o' marines and, what is far worse, maybe blue-jackets on the lookout. Sodjers and Preventives do not matter so muckle. For at night the sodjers canna see onything, and the Preventives are apt to be lookin' the ither road."
"Ye think, then, that we had better try the Burnfoot?"
"I think nothing," said Captain Penman, irritably. "I am here to sail my ship according to your orders. But I will take nothing to do with what may happen after you set your foot on shore."
"Na, then, wha was thinkin' itherwise?" said Kennedy McClure, soothingly, "but surely a word o' advice is worth having from siccan an auld hand as you!"
"If I were you, then," said the Captain, instantly mollified, "I should e'en keep the lower side o' the Abbey Water, away from the Wild. Even if the red-coats have caged the mice, they are sure to have reset the trap—and great fools would ye be to walk straight into it!"
As soon as it was dark enough, Captain Penman let his vessel drift landward with the tide, then running strong into the wide swallow of the Solway. The wind was light, and a jib was sufficient to give her steerage-way. It was intended that the passengers should be set on shore at a point nearly opposite to Julian Wemyss's house, where a spit of sand and the shoulder of cliff formed a neat little anchorage. The sailors of theGood Intent, accustomed to the work, were ordered to convey the little luggage they had brought with them from London to the nearest "hidie-hole" known to Kennedy McClure, where, if all went well, men from Supsorrow could easily dig them up and carry them to their owners.
Attempts were made to signal as theGood Intentglided along the coast, but all remained obstinately dark. Dark lay Glenanmays at the head of the wide Mays Water. The cliffs of the Wild sent back no answering flashes, and it was not till theGood Intentwas well-nigh abreast of the Partan Craig that a faint light glimmered out, low down by the edge of the water....Flash—flash—flash—(it went, and then darkness).Flash—flash—flash—each double the duration of the first. Then came the blackness of darkness again, and anon half-a-dozen swift needle-points of light chasing one another as quickly as the eye could register them.
"There is danger ... to the north—keep farther away!" Captain Penman read off the coded message. "That's one of our folk. At any rate they are not all hanged!"
When they reached the next bay to the south the whale-boat was manned, and Miss Aline first, and then Patsy, were carefully handed down. After them came Kennedy McClure, cursing his own weight and the rope which had scorched his hands, last of all old huntsman Wolf scrambled down, bags of ammunition and all, as alert as a monkey, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his jaeger's feather stuck rakishly in his green Tyrolean hat.
The men hardly dipped their oars into the water. The mate, Rob Blair from Garlieston, a dark, hook-nosed springald as strong as a horse, sat in the stern and steered, directing the men in whispers. Presently they entered into a purple gloom, and the stars were shut out over a full half of the heavens. On shore and quite near, the lantern flickered six times as swiftly as before.
"Still further to the south!" it said. "Hang the fellow, he will bring us up among the Port Patrick fishing-boats! Ah, there!"
Out of the loom of the land as the current swept them under the cliffs, came one long, steady flare—then a pause, which was followed by a second.
"Head in, men," said Rob Blair, laying his weight on the tiller, "the fellow on shore says that all is safe, which may be and again it may not! There is that devil of a nephew of yours, Spy McClure from Stonykirk. They say he is still at large. If he has sold us to the land-sharks, it is the last Judas-money he will touch. I know ten men in Garlieston who will see to that!"
"Attend to your own business, mate," growled Kennedy McClure. "I will be answerable for my nephew."
"That's more than I should care to undertake," said the black-browed, free-tongued Garliestonian. "'Tis no sort of a hearty welcome ye will get at the Last Day when ye face the Throne, if ye have such a wastrel's sins to answer for."
"Silence!" said Kennedy. "We are close in and we shall see in a minute. You, foreigner, if I tell you to shoot—shoot—but not before!"
Patsy could just see the jaeger's teeth bared in a permanent grin.
"Steady there, men! Back-water! Now, you with the lantern, let us have your name."
"Francis Airie," a voice called out of the darkness.
"Francis Airie—don't know him. Heads low, men—ready there to go about. I never heard of Francis Airie. He is none of ours. Hold on, not so fast, you Austrian, sight your man before you fire!"
"I see him very well in the dark—shall I let off so he dead be?"
"I am Francis Airie, called the Poor Scholar," said the voice; "Miss Patsy Ferris knows me, and Mr. Kennedy also!"
"Of course I do," said Patsy, recognizing the voice of the lad who had helped her with many a hard line of Virgil, and many a passage of Tacitus, in which the verbs were singularly thin-sown. "Is it safe to come in where you are, Francis?"
"Quite, Miss Ferris," said the voice. "They have got Stair and Mr. Wemyss cornered in the Bothy, but they are still holding out. Fergus and Agnew are away on the cliffs to the north, but they are too closely watched to venture a signal. So that is why I am here to meet you."
With a long, even glide the boat's keel touched soft sand.
"Steady now, men,—back her a little!" said the mate, who was afraid of being caught on an ebbing tide, "overboard with you, Lambert, and you McVane, and help the ladies ashore."
But a pair of strong arms came over the side and grasped Patsy.
"No need," said the Poor Scholar, "I know exactly where to land and—"
"Take Miss Aline first!" commanded Patsy; "think of the pious Æneas you used to preach to me about."
And she got herself carried ashore by the hirsute giant McVane.
"'Seniores priores' would have been a better quotation," said the Scholar, as he took up Miss Aline; "take hold of the lapels of my coat, Miss Aline—your arms not so close about my neck, if you please!"
"I doubt if you would have objected to the arms about your neck if they had been Patsy's, you and your 'Seniores'!" Miss Aline observed rather tartly as she was borne off. They were soon all safe in a tiny cove, their feet on the pleasant wet sand, and the dark undefined shapes of the crags overhanging them on every side. A moment more and the boat disappeared into the darkness. A lantern flashed and was answered. They were free to proceed on their quest. Francis the Scholar led them carefully above tide-mark, turned at right-angles into a still deeper darkness, bade them keep their heads low, and with Patsy's hand in his passed into a cave-shelter, in one corner of which the embers of his watch-fire still smouldered red. Francis threw a handful of pine-cones upon the fire. It blazed up instantly with a clear light and a fragrant odour, and the four night-voyagers looked at each other, wondering at the wild eyes and haggard faces which they saw.
One corner of the cavern had been roughly screened off with sacking, and within was a comfortable couch of broom and heather twigs, upon which Miss Aline was advised to lie down. But this she refused emphatically to do.
"And me as near to my ain decent house at Ladykirk," she said, "what for should I do such a thing?"
"Because," said the Poor Scholar, "I have much to tell you, much you must hear, and you will not see Ladykirk this night. In fact you could not, without betraying the secrets of those who have been depending upon your aid."
"Say on, then," quoth Miss Aline; "the Mintos are no tale-pyets, and that ye shall ken. Let us hear what ye hae to say, laddie! Ye will be Nicholas Airie's gyte—I kenned her when she was dairy lass up at the Folds and mony is the time I warned her—but there's nae use harkin' back on the things noo, and when a' is said and dune ye carried me nane so ill, though the deil flee awa' wi' you and your 'Seniores'!—I would have you know that the day has been when I was as young—I am no sayin' sae bonnie or sae flichertsome as Miss Patsy there—but still weel eneuch and young eneuch. 'Seniores,' indeed, and you thinkin' I wad not tak' your meaning! Faith, I hae wasted my time ower Ruddiman's Ruddiments as well as the best o' them."
The Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore was an entrenched camp, for Stair was too good a general not to see to the state of his defences, to his victualling and armament from the beginning. So, though the moment of the attack was a surprise, its manner had long been foreseen. As Stair had repeatedly said, "The sea is never shut!"
Landing parties from theBritomartandVandeleurhad marched up the Valleys, and the Preventive men of all the West of Galloway had quietly gathered at Stranryan in order to co-operate with them.
It was Stair who stumbled upon a picket of theBritomartmen hidden among the eastern sand-dunes. He was on his way to meet Joseph, Whitefoot as usual at his heels, when suddenly the dog sprang forward, eyes blazing, hackles stiff, his nose high in the air, and his teeth bared, ready to bound. Stair restrained him and crept to the lip of a little sandy cup where, from the midst of a clump of dry saw-edged sea-grass, he could look down on a group of men busied about their soup-kettle.
"Silly fools," he muttered to himself, "they do not know that the first handful of heather and dried bracken they throw on their fire, will send a skarrow to the sky that will warn every soul within twenty miles. If I had not been a blind idiot, and thinking of something else, I should have seen it long before I came so far."
And looking over his shoulder he saw to the right, to the left, and behind him towards the cliffs seaward, multitudinous pulsing ruddy camp-fire blooms, waking, waxing and falling, that told of a general investment of their fastness, so long secure. In spite of the surprise, however, Stair managed to meet Joseph and to warn him that nothing further must be attempted except by means of Whitefoot. He introduced the wise collie and made him give his two front paws to the confidential servant in token of amity, while he repeated his name over and over again—"Joseph! Joseph!"
"Ao-ouch!" whispered Whitefoot, as much as to say, "Of course I understand! Do you think that I, Whitefoot Garland, am some silly puppy gambolling through life?"
For Whitefoot was a grave dog and had had to do with many very serious things indeed—things which touched even the life of his master. So it is no wonder that at this time of day he rather resented pains being taken with his education. It was like setting a double-first to construe the first book of Cæsar.
Stair returned to the Bothy with his heart heavy and many thoughts churning within him. He reached the Wild safely with nothing worse to report than the fact that he was fired upon by a sentry, which warned him that he must not come that way too often. He did not enter directly into the Bothy, where, as he knew, Julian Wemyss would be doing an hour's reading before turning in. Instead he betook himself to the dam which his brothers and the band had constructed at the close of the autumnal peat-leading.
All the winter theSunkof Blairmore had been full of black moss water. For the greater part of the cold weather it had been frozen and snow-bound. But now, swollen with spring rains, the ditches of theSunkwere lipping to the overflow. Stair took the great iron gelleck and with a blow or two knocked back the clutches of the flood-barriers. Then flinging down the huge crow-bar, he fled for his life, the ink-black water hissing and spurting at his heels. It was not noisy, that water. It ran silently, almost oilily, but all the same it followed after, and it was swirling black about Stair Garland's knees as he scrambled up the high platform of the Bothy, at the place where you could dig out the sand and sea-shells of a past age from among the roots of the heather.
"That will put out one or two of their fires for them!" he exclaimed triumphantly, and even as he spoke he heard cries announcing danger, hasty preparations for flight, while the red "skarrows" in the sky winked only once or twice more and were then wiped out clean all along the east and west borders of the Wild. Only on the high southern cliffs the fires still shone. And Stair knew that it was thither that the drowned-out investing parties would be compelled to retreat.
From the north there came no sign, for there alone no fires had been lighted. But the Wild spread the farthest and was most dangerous and inaccessible in that direction. Only morning would reveal the solitary tiny zigzag of path which connected them with their fellows, a path which Stair believed to be quite impossible—unless—and here a suspicion went flashing through his mind which sent him indoors with a bound. No, Eben the Spy was lying on his bed apparently sound asleep.
Stair gazed at him with a bitter smile.
"That's what comes of having a bad record against you," he murmured, "the man may be quite innocent. He may be really asleep. Yet as things are I dare not treat him as if he were either. To-morrow he must do a little scouting for us. He shall feel for the enemy, and if they fire upon him—well and good, then he has not brought the enemy down upon us. But because of his past, he must undergo the ordeal by fire and water.
"Well, we will let him sleep, but all the same I shall keep an eye upon him to see that he does not take French leave during the night!"
Stair called Mr. Wemyss from his reading. The ex-ambassador thought that a new parcel of books had arrived, and made haste to obey. He saw the door of the Bothy open and Stair, a large, dark shape vaguely outlined against a rosy illumination, the cause of which he did not understand, leaning easily with his shoulder against the lintel-post, blocking all exit.
"Well, Stair," said Julian, "did you find Joseph? Had he any word of theGood Intent?"
"I did find Joseph," said Stair curtly, "and it will be a long time before I find him again. Do you see that?"
"That" referred to the numerous fires which were now being lighted on the heights of the sand-hills, by the fugitives from the camps in the hollows of the Wild, who had been driven out by the invading waters of the dam constructed by the Garland brothers and their followers.
Julian Wemyss gazed a little stupidly. His eyes were unaccustomed to the dark, and he blinked like one who finds a difficulty in believing the evidence of his senses.
"Are these really fires?" he asked, covering his eyes with his hand.
Stair softly shut the door behind the two of them. It would not now matter whether the spy were asleep or awake.
"Now do you understand?" he said softly.
"They are fires, and we are surrounded by water. You have let out the dam!"
Stair sketched his night's adventure, with his hand on Whitefoot's head, who sat staring out at the winking fires gravely and wisely, as one who knew all about it and would have a great deal to say to the matter before all was done.
"Ah," said Julian Wemyss, "this is no chance business. They have been preparing it with the long hand. But why did they not charge from all sides at once and so rush the Bothy?"
"They could not," said Stair simply, "of course there were three easy paths then where there is only one very difficult one now. But, you see, they did not know that. They did not know and they do not know the strength of our garrison, or how soon we hope to be reinforced."
"I suppose," Julian whispered, "you have every confidence—?" And he indicated the ulterior of the Bothy where the ex-spy was sleeping.
"No," murmured Stair, "but I shall be sure to-morrow as soon as the sun is up. Possible treachery within the camp is not the sort of thing one can afford to let drag!"
"Provisions?" queried Julian.
"For a year!" said Stair.
"Water?"
"As you see!" And he swept his arm largely round the circle of the Wild. "We shall make a filter with a little granite sand (silver sand they call it). After passing it two or three times through this, the peat water will be fairly palatable. At least we shall need to put up with it!" And then Stair communicated to his fellow-prisoner his idea of the defence of the Bothy.
"We do not want to kill any of these men who have been ordered to come and starve us out," he said. "You have your house and your position. It is true that you have killed Lord Wargrove, but if he had not been a friend of the Regent and a confidant of Lyonesse, you might have walked the streets of London after a month or so, and no man would have dreamed of disquieting you. I am in a wholly different case. They are eager to see me hanged, and would not hesitate to make it high treason—"
"High treason only affects the person of the King," said Julian Wemyss; "not that that will help matters much, the Regent's judges being what they are."
"At any rate," said Stair, "killing a blue-jacket or an exciseman will do us no good, and I am for firing blanks except in the very last extremity—of course, if it is our life or that of another man, I think we owe it to ourselves to see that the funeral is the other fellow's!"
Stair Garland slept that night outside, wrapped in his plaid, with Whitefoot crouched in the corner of it. The watcher's back was against the door of the Bothy, the key of which was in his pocket. He was taking care that his ex-spy did not take it into his head to escape the ordeal of the morning.
At daybreak Stair rose to his feet and shook himself comprehensively. His limbs were stiff with the cold and damp. Whitefoot had been alert most of the night. He was unquiet and whined occasionally to himself, but very softly. The fires on the sand-dunes agitated him—perhaps also the unrest of his master, who with his own comfortable bed within a dozen yards, had chosen so incommodious a way of spending the night. Every few minutes Whitefoot aroused himself and paced stealthily round the little hut, his head in the air, sniffing the four winds for information. He tried the black lipping water with his paw and shook it dry again. That also he did not understand. However, he believed that Stair Garland did. The knowledge comforted him and sent him back to the nook of his master's plaid, where he nestled down without turning round, which was perhaps the most wonderful accomplishment of this wonderful dog.
Whether Eben McClure, ex-superintendent of recruitment and common informer, slept well or not during the first night of the investing of the Bothy of the Wild, is known only to himself. He at least pretended to pass an excellent night. The pretence was forced upon him by Stair Garland camping outside, his rifle ready to his hand, and the ceaseless patter of Whitefoot's alert sentry-go going round and round the hut.
By half-past five the day was beginning to come. Stair entered the Bothy, shook Eben by the shoulder and bade him prepare breakfast. Meals must now be taken as occasion served, and the whole business of their daily life would have to be reorganized. For they were now a city in a state of siege.
Eben knew too well the conditions of his life's tenure, to refuse to do anything Stair Garland bade him. He believed that while in the company of any of the band, he existed only by sufferance and had reason to be grateful for each hour of life vouchsafed to him.
So he made the porridge without demur, just as he had gone to bed fully dressed so as to be ready for any demand that the night might bring.
The meal being properly stirred, the porridge was poured into three wooden platters. Then Stair took a lump of fine Glenanmays salt butter from the firkin and dabbed it into the centre of each dish, the same amount for each. After which he went and knocked on the thin partition of Julian Wemyss's cubicle. Mr. Wemyss was already on foot, and had, in fact, almost finished the elaborate toilette which was habitual to him.
He saluted Stair and the spy with his usual calm civility, and with one glance at the stained, "up-all-night" look of Stair's dress, he gathered the truth. Stair Garland had been watching while he slept. He blushed a little at the thought, and resolved that for the future he would do his full share of night duty. Nay, even to-day he would see to it that Stair got his proper hours of repose. In the meantime, however, Stair's mind was full of quite another matter.
The loyalty of Eben McClure must be tested, and Stair was only waiting for the end of the meal in order to instruct the victim how he was to prove it. The door was open and Eben sat on the inner side of the table facing it. Between him and the light were Stair Garland and Stair Garland's gun. As usual Mr. Wemyss sat at the end of the table nearest to the fire.
"Eben," said Stair Garland, setting his elbows squarely on the table and leaning forward, "you are an intelligent man and you will understand that since the Bothy has been surrounded by an armed force and we may expect an assault any hour, your position has very much changed. We took you, to a very great extent, on your own statement. Now I do not think that you have sold us, or that you have brought these people down upon us. But we need to be sure. It will be obvious to you that if we are to depend on a third man in our midst, that third man must have all our confidence. Now, this is what I intend that you shall do. You and I shall follow the path as far as the big peat knoll. There we shall be in full view of the posts of the Preventive men. Having arrived there, you will appear to break from me after a struggle, and run as hard as you can towards the north in the direction of the excisemen. They will know you very well, having been your old cronies. You will have a white handkerchief in your hand which you will wave to them. If they take that signal to mean that you are escaping, we on our side will understand that you have been at your old tricks. If they fire—then you are cleared and can turn and come back to us. I will protect your retreat. Now do you quite understand?"
Frequently in the exercise of his profession, Eben had need of indomitable courage, but now perhaps more than ever. Yet he was steadfast.
"I see no reason why you should trust me," he said. "I am willing to take the risk. When shall we start?"
"Now," said Stair, and in a minute more he was marching his man along the narrowing pathway between the dark pools of peat water. "There is only one thing I have to say. Do not pass the dwarf thorn-tree at the big elbow. If you run past that, I shall know you have it in your mind to desert, and it will be my duty to shoot. You know I do not miss."
It was a grey day with a gentle wind, the sky of a teased pearl woolliness with curious warm tints in it here and there. The face of the moorland was generally black, sometimes broken by borders of vivid green about the pools, and along the path edges by the little rosy rootlets of the plant called Venus's Flytrap.
They came to the outlying peat knoll, where an extra supply of fuel had been left under shelter during the previous autumn. Quite half of it still remained, and the "fause-hoose," or cavernous pit left from the digging out of the peats, afforded the best of cover. From it Stair would be able to follow the spy with his rifle all the way to the posts of the Preventive men which had been established on the rising ground above the edge of the Wild. A portable semaphore stiffly flapped its arms as they looked, no doubt signalling their coming to other and more distant posts.
"There," said Stair, "they are all ready for you. Come outside and let us get our bit of a trial over. There is your handkerchief. As soon as you hear the bullets whistle, you can drop. Then turn about and crawl back to me."
"It does not seem to you somewhat cruel—this test?" said Eben McClure, looking wistfully at Stair. It was his only sign of weakness, and there are few who would have shown so little.
"No," said Stair, sternly, "when I think of those lads beaten insensible in the military prisons of yourdépôtsor bleeding at the triangles—they gave Craig Easton a thousand lashes and he had had eight hundred of them before he died—I think I am letting you off easy. I ought to shoot you myself where you stand. And don't let me think too much about it or I may do it even yet. I am giving you your chance to be an honest man!"
They went together out into the open. Before them a little zigzag of pathway angled intricately among the sullen floods of the morass. The sky was pleasantly shell-tinted overhead. There was the way he must go. Never had life appeared so sweet to the spy.
But he went through his part like a man in a dream. He struggled with Stair Garland, and though he did not hear himself he shouted fiercely as if for life. It was very real indeed. Then suddenly he broke loose and ran down the narrow towpath of dry land between the ink-black pools. He was still shouting. He had forgotten to wave the handkerchief. Then suddenly before him he saw the thorn at the angle of the big elbow.
He longed for the rattle of muskets—either from before or behind. It did not seem to matter much to him now which it was to be. He felt desperate and forlorn, hating everybody—Stair Garland most of all.
"Hist—Skip! Crackle!" came a volley from far away to the north, and Eben cast himself down behind a heather bush to draw breath. They had fired, and he was a proven man. He had faced death to certify his truth to the salt he was eating, and now nothing remained but to withdraw as carefully as might be. He crawled backward, now scuttling from one little rickle of peats left forlornly out on the moor to the next sodden whin bush, the prickles of which yirked him as he threw himself down. Stair kept his word, and from his peatstack delivered a lively fire upon the men in the shelters on the northern hillsides.
Eben was very white when he came back and dropped limp among the peat. Stair said nothing, but for the first time he held out his hand. The spy had become a clean man again, and the same would be known from among all the folk from Nith Brig to the heuchs of the Back Shore of Leswalt. His kin would own him openly. Stonykirk parish was again free to him. Eben knew that he had not paid too dearly for his rehabilitation, for whatever the dangers he had faced or might be called upon to face, they were as nothing to the hate and opprobrium of the whole body of one's own people.
With three Galloway ponies and the contagion of her own enthusiasm Patsy undertook to arouse the country. She would save Stair and Julian by raising the siege of the Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore. She called upon her father at the gloomy house of Cairn Ferris and explained to him what she meant to do. She would not remain there in the meanwhile, but if he would lend her a pony or two, either from his stable or from among those running wild on the moors, she would not compromise him in any way.
"Whom, then, did she mean to compromise?" Her father put the question patiently.
Oh, Kennedy McClure was helping her, and Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar, and the Glenanmays lads—all the Stair Garland band, in fact. Yes, Miss Aline and the Austrian hunter were safe at Ladykirk. She could not have her mixed up in such a business, and Heinrich Wolf would look after her. Adam Ferris listened and nodded his head.
"I am a barn-door fowl that has hatched out a sparrow-hawk," he said meekly. "Do not pyke your father's eyes out, chicken!"
And with this paternal benediction Patsy went forth on her errand. Stair's Honeypot was at the door. Fergus Garland had brought him, offering at the same time to steal Derry Down from the Castle Raincy meadows. But this Patsy refused. She was not feeling particularly well affected towards Louis Raincy at that moment. Louis, as it were, had outlived his popularity.
Then began a great time. As flame after flame of lambent fire plays over the southern sky some eve of summer lightning, so Patsy came, and flashed, and passed. Hearts waited expectant before her, grew angry and determined as they listened (not the young men only) to the tale of her wrongs, also of Stair Garland's courage and Julian Wemyss's duel. She passed and left armed men with a definite rendezvous in her wake. Still keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend. Here she turned, for she was frightened at what might be going on during her absence in the dim region of the flowes and flooded marshes called the Wild of Blairmore.
Behind her lads were marching. The countryside was moving. They had sworn to save Stair Garland and Julian Wemyss, and, if need be, they were ready to push the invaders of their Free Province into the sea. Rebellion, not such a thing! Merely the affirmation of ancient privileges.
Even the Lord-Lieutenant and the old hereditary sheriffs at Lochnaw were displeased by any display of military force. They resented it, as the intervention of troops has always been resented in Galloway. What could the Government be thinking of? Why not let them settle matters in their own way? They were bound officially, of course, to give the business their countenance. Really, they liked it no better than did any member of Stair Garland's band. Earl Raincy, the Stairs of Castle Kennedy, the Monreith Maxwells, the Garthlands, and my Lord Garlies felt themselves perfectly well able to maintain order in their own lands. They could have removed Julian Wemyss to a quiet place over-seas, there to abide till the Wargrove affair had blown over. Who thought the worse of him for putting ten inches of steel through the pandar of a royal Duke, who had treated Adam Ferris's daughter as if she walked the pavement of Piccadilly or the Palais Royal? And as for Stair Garland—well, their lads would smuggle. They always had smuggled. But he was a good and a safe leader, who took his young men into no mischief and allowed no ribaldry or contempt for local authority. What more could be hoped for or expected, as long as young blood ran in young veins? And as to the little matter of the slugs in the royal haunches—well, the man was more frighted than hurt, and the twinges when the wind blew from the east would remind even a royal duke to leave their maids alone.
If belted earls and honourable baronets, the men of ancientest lineage, thought thus—consider what was the fierceness of public opinion among the farmers and their folk—the herds on the hills, the ploughmen and cattlemen, the crowds that gathered at kirk and market.
The provisions for the investing forces had actually to be brought from Ireland, for the country wives suddenly discovered that they had nothing to sell. Shops in town received known clients at the back door and served them behind closed shutters in the murky gleam of a halfpenny "dip." Had it not been for half-a-dozen sappers who had been busy with the new naval base on Loch Swilly, his Majesty's forces would have been starved out of the country, and Galloway would have added one more to its long tale of the triumphs of passive resistance.
But the six Loch Swilly men had served in the Peninsula, and they were under a Chatham sergeant, who was a perfect Gallio, in that he cared nothing about all the things which were distracting the westernmost end of Galloway which gives on the Atlantic. He looked at the Wild of Blairmore from several sides. He swore that such a set of asses he had never seen, and then he settled himself, with his five soldiers and a couple of score of impressed men, to make a cutting through the sand-dunes on the seaward side. This ditch or drain, now smooth and greyish-green with bent and self-sown saplings, is still known as the Sapper's Cut.
On the morning of the second day after Sergeant Robinson had started his digging team, Stair looked out of the door of the Bothy and, instead of the black spread of water he had left there over-night, the Wild of Blairmore was dry. From the zigzag causeway on either side, stretched away an array of empty moss-hags still glistening with moisture. Only in the very deepest cuts a little water still lurked.
Stair Garland's lips tightened as he turned to the interior of the Bothy.
"It is all up, Mr. Julian," he said, "I am sorry I have led you into this—I knew the thing could be done, but they had been so long in thinking of it that I had come to believe they would never hit on it at all!"
"I am sorry, McClure!" he said to the spy, "you will have to give up the money and jewels, but that I always meant you to do in any case. For the rest—"
He paused a minute, not daring to trust himself to speak more words. Then he continued—
"I have led you into all this. I thought there would have been a rescue-party long before now. There would have been if Patsy Ferris had been here. Now there is nothing for it but to give ourselves up. What is the use of making things worse by shooting two or three poor enlisted men who never did us any harm?"
And so it came to pass that Stair Garland and Eben the Spy were marched under strong escort to the gaol of Stranryan, while Julian Wemyss was shut up in his own house with a guard quartered on him. Thus had it been ordered from London, for there the Princess Elsa had been busy, and the local commanders knew that even when the Government is that of a Regent George, it cannot treat an ex-ambassador like a common felon.
Stranryan is a largish town, historical and ancient, as its narrow and crooked streets sufficiently attest. At that period of the year it was exceedingly malodorous, and in the gutters tangle-headed children fished for spoil, or with noise and clangour dragged the damaged dead cat and the too-long-drowned puppy from the green ooze of one midden hole to another.
But to make some amends for this, one was never far away from the salt waters of the loch. And a breath straight from the great sea came every now and then all day long, to air out the packed houses and crooked alleys. Down on the sea front were many boats. For at the season when the Bothy was captured and Stair and the spy led to the "Auld Castle," the herring boats were getting ready for the Loch Fyne catch—a good three hundred of them, and their brown and red sails brightened everything.
Fish-scales glistened on the cobbled quays of the little port. Salesmen and buyers moved piles of fish contumeliously, saying, "It is naught! It is naught!" after the manner of their kind since the days of Solomon—who had experience in such matters, for he was undoubtedly scandalously "had" in his traffic with the spice merchants.
The gaol of Stranryan was also on the water front, and especially when the Irish harvesters landed among the products of the herring catch, it was the witness of complex and accumulated villainies. There were faction fights among the Irishry themselves. There were fights between all the Irish united and the douce burghers and tradesmen of Stranryan—fights about eggs and chickens, fights about water and other privileges, fights which ended in sleepers being ousted from barns and stables, or triumphantly retaining possession thereof. There were also religious quarrels, in which the true "Protestants" of the two countries broke the heads of the true "Kyatholics," and had their heads broken in turn, all to the greater glory of God.
All these things were normal, and the participants seldom ended their shillelah practice within the walls of "MacJannet's Hotel"—MacJannet being the name of the chief gaoler of the town prison.
"The Castle" itself was a tall old hump of a building set in a courtyard with high-spiked walls. It had once been a town house of the reigning family of the Kennedys of Cassillis. They used to spend some time there by the waterside during the summer after the long winter months at Maybole, and, indeed, their doing so counted for much in the early history of the compact little town at the head of the loch.
The lower part of the "Castle" had been fitted up as a guard-room, and here, at all hours of the day, were to be found groups of soldiers, making the time pass in various games of chance and skill, from plain odd-and-even tobouchonlearned from certain captive Frenchmen who were permitted to mingle with them under no very strict supervision. The square tower of the original Cassillis house had been cut down and roofed in, which gave it a very uneven and squat appearance, and all about the walls little sheds had been erected, to shelter this detachment and that on its way through to Ireland. Some of these were as old as Claverhouse and his King's Life Guards in the bad days of the covenant. But, one and all, they were insufficient, out of repair, drippy, smelling of stale bad tobacco and wet wood ashes.
Tony MacJannet, chief keeper of the prison of Stranryan, installed Stair Garland on the second story, immediately over the gate where the guard was on duty. Stair had no view to the front, but two small windows looked out on the courtyard, from which, through thick bars, he could see the comings and goings of the French prisoners, and even watch the ebb and flow of the games. Stair's chamber was spacious—the largest and best in the gaol, but the roof had not been plastered, and he could see the light through the slates, though some attempt had been made at scantling, and even in one corner a quantity of plasterers' laths had been piled. But there the matter had rested and was likely to rest.
As usual, the Town Council objected to spending money. The Government sent down every year lists of "immediate requirements," which the council as promptly filed owing to the lack of any accompanying draft. To spend good siller "oot o' the Common Guid" and then look to a far-off Government to reimburse them, was an affair in which the shrewd burgesses of Stranryan very naturally declined to engage.
Julian Wemyss's case threatened to be a curious one. He had been captured in Scotland at the request of the English Government for an offence committed in France—in which country his crime was no offence at all. Some loss of time and a great deal of employment for the lawyers seemed the worst that could befall him.
It was quite otherwise with Eben McClure. He was a fugitive from justice, and had been guilty of carrying off a large sum of money and various jewels, the property of His Royal Highness the Duke of Lyonesse. He was also suspected of having led the Prince and his party into an ambuscade, where the son of the King had been wounded to the effusion of blood and the danger of his life.
For the theft alone there was one sure penalty—death.
However, as things stood the spy's unpopularity made his fate of little moment to anybody. The thoughts of all were centred on Stair Garland. He was handsome, young and interesting. The maidens of the town of Stranryan trigged themselves out in their best hats and dresses—they donned their most becoming ribbons in order to promenade in front of the "Castle."
"Three months he and the ither twa held the sodjers at bay, till they had them clean wearied oot!" May Girmory explained to her bosom friend, Lizzie McCreath, as they promenaded together; "but to my thinkin' there is little that either of the ither two could do. It would be himsel', Lizzie, that did the thinkin' and the fechtin'. He's the head o' a' the Free Bands, ye ken, Lizzie!"
"Then, to my thinkin', it's but little that the 'bands' have done for him, the poor lad—and the more shame to them," said Lizzie. "Now, over yonder, in Ulster, if a quiet lad had been as long caged up by them divils of red-coats—it's the good dustin' their jackets would be gettin'. 'Tis Elizabeth McCreath and the daughter of a law-abiding Orangeman that will be tellin' ye so!"
"Hoots, lassie," said her friend, "you Stranryan Irish or half-Irish are all for doing a thing like the banging off of a peeoye. But what matters a day or twa for a fine, strong lad in the best chamber of the Castle? Stair Garland is not tried yet and, what is more, he is not sentenced. And if he is sentenced, where will he serve his time? Will he be going ayont seas to be sold in the tobacco plantations or off in a ship to Botany Bay? I tell you the keel is not laid, and the mast is not out of the acorn that will carry away Stair Garland. And as to hanging him—faith, they will need all their forces back from the wars before they could do siccan a thing in Galloway!"
She lowered her voice and spoke in the ear of the Irish girl, the Orangeman's daughter.
"Lizzie McCreath," she whispered, "can you keep a secret?"
"What else, noo?" said Lizzie, with avidity, "did you ever hear tell where you were with Sandy O'Neil on the night of the Saint John?"
"That's nothing," retorted May Girmory, "for where I was on the Beltane eve, there in that very place ye were yourself—you and my brither Jo. It is like that ye would keepthatsecret? But this is different."
"I will keep it, 'by the hand and fut of Mary,'" said Lizzie McCreath, quite forgetting that she was the daughter of the Grand Master of an Orange Lodge.
"Well, then," said May, "there is a Princess riding about the country, here and there and away. She has all Stair Garland's band ready, and hundreds more, too—aye, thousands if need be, pledged to rescue the lads laid up there. Jo is in it."
"Oh," said Liz McCreath, with a curious alteration of tone, "Jo is in it, is he? And he never said a word to me."
"Neither did he to me, but somebody else telled me—"
"Sandy O'Neil, it would be, maybe then, like as not!"
"And what for no?" demanded the revealer of secrets, and so proceeded unblushingly with her tale. She skipped some parts, to which she had been sworn to particular secrecy. But Miss Liz McCreath, while noting these, let the blanks pass, comfortably sure in her mind that so soon as she got Jo Girmory by himself, she knew a way of making him tell her all about it—the same, indeed, as that by which May Girmory had brought Sandy O'Neil to full auricular confession.
"But what like is your Princess? Does she wear a goold crown now?" said the Irish girl.
"Not her," said May Girmory, "she has a riding skirt, the way folk has them made in London, and gangs by at a hand-gallop, a different powny every time, and Lord, she doesna spare them!"
"That," said Liz McCreath with cold contempt, "is no Princess at all. 'Tis only little Patsy Ferris from Cairn Ferris, and I saw her faither yesterday at the Apothecaries' Hall at the Vennel Head!"
"And what wad he be wantin' there, now?"
"He asked for 'something soothin'' and he appeared most terribly glad to get it. He did be takin' a good drink on the spot."
"Puir man, I am sure he had need o't. He will maybe no be so very anxious aboot this lad Garland as his dochter!"
"So I was thinking, but what garred ye be whistling in my lug that she was a Princess? A laird's lass is no a Princess, that ever I heard of over yonder!"
"There's a heap of things ye have not heard 'over yonder,' and this may be one of them. But Patsy Ferris is a Princess because she could be a Princess the very minute she made up her mind to marry a Prince that has been askin' her and double asking her. Eelen Young, my cousin, that is with Miss Aline at Ladykirk, was telling me all about it, and it appears that up there in London our Miss Patsy could have had the pick of princes and dukes—"
"And with all said an' done she runs away (Glory be to her brave sowl!) just to raise the country and get Stair Garland safe over the sea!"
"Do not be foolish, Liz McCreath," said her comrade, "without doubt it was to save her uncle that was trapped in the Bothy of Blairmore at the same time!"
"Her uncle!—her uncle!" cried Liz McCreath; "the back o' me hand to all your uncles. How much would you be doing now for all the half-score of uncles that ye have in this parish? Not as much as would fatten a fly. No, nor Elizabeth McCreath either. 'Tis her lad she is fightin' for—and well do you know it, May Girmory. She will have sat out the Beltane fires wid him, darlin', and certain that'll be the raison why!"
The nights were fast waxing shorter. It was necessary that no time should be wasted. Patsy waited till there was a change of garrison at Stranryan. Long spoken of, it came at last. The relief had been signalled from afar—at Carlisle, at Dumfries, and now crossing the hills by the military road from New Galloway.
On the night before its arrival the storm burst upon the little fishing town scattered so carelessly along the shores of the Loch of Ryan. The two companies of the light cavalry division had marched out that afternoon leaving their barracks empty, swept and wholly ungarnished for the troops which were to arrive to replace them.
Stranryan will long remember that twenty-fourth of May. In the evening there was a wind off the Loch, a little irregular but pleasantly fanning to cheeks heated with the good-night bumper. So the burgesses stayed out a little longer than usual on the quay in the fading light, standing about in groups or marching up and down in pairs solemnly talking business or of the "Common Guid" of the town. How, for instance, they thought of electing the Earl Raincy to be their provost, honorary as to duties, but exceedingly decorative and possibly useful. The ninety-nine-year leases of the Out Parks would fall in during his time of office, and the feu duties would have to be rearranged. It would be a very suitable thing indeed—in all respects—that is, if the Earl could see his way—and so on and so forth.
He had certainly been more approachable lately, ever since Miss Patsy had gone to stay at Castle Raincy. A year or two before he would have damned them up and down all the hills if they had ventured to mention such a thing to him. They looked forward with hope to a more amicable reception now.
One by one they began to draw out turnip-shaped watches from their fobs, and having first held the case to their ears to make sure that there was no deception, the dial was examined, and with a casual, "Guid nicht to ye—the goodwife will be waitin'," the members of the town council and other municipal dignitaries strolled off each to his own house.
It did not strike any of them that they had not seen the town's night watchman, old Jock McAdam, in the performance of his duties. If it had occurred to any of the burghal authorities, it had only provoked the reflection that Jock would most likely be discussing a pint or two at Lucky Forgan's down by the Brigend, and that presently he would be perambulating the streets of the royal borough, his halbert over his shoulder, and intoning his song—