Yet all the while I desired to tell her of my love for herself, and how the other was not even a heat of the blood, but only for the comforting of a dying girl.
Nevertheless I could not at that time. For it seemed a dishonourable word to speak of one who was so lately dead, and, in name and for an hour at least, had been my wife.
Then all too soon we heard the noise of Sandy her father upon the garret stair, trampling down with his great boots as if he would bring the whole wood-work of the building with him bodily.
Mary Gordon heard it, too, for she camehastily about to the end of the table where I had stood transfixed all the time she was speaking of Jean Gemmell.
She set a dish on the cloth, and as she brought her hand back she laid it on mine quickly, and, looking up with such a warm light of gracious wisdom and approval in her eyes that my heart was like water within me, she said: “Quintin, you are a truer man than I thought. I love your silences better than your speeches.”
And at her words my heart gave a great bound within me, for I thought that at last she understood. Then she passed away, and became even more cold and distant than before, not even bidding me farewell when I took my departure. But as I went down the loaning with her father she looked out of the turret window, and waved the hand that had lain for an instant upon mine.
Itwas toward the mellow end of August that there came a sough of things terrible wafted down the fair glen of the Kens, a sough which neither lost in volume nor in bitterness when it turned into the wider strath of the Dee.
It arrived in time at the Manse of Balmaghie, as all things are sure to turn manseward ere a day pass in the land of Galloway.
One evening in the quiet space between the end of hay and the first sickle-sweep of harvest, Hob came in with more than his ordinary solemn staidness.
But he said nothing till we were over with the taking of the Book and ready to go to bed. Then as he was winding the watch I had brought him from Edinburgh he glanced up once at me.
“When ye were last at Earlstoun,” he said, “heard ye any news?”
I thought he meant at first that Mary was to be married, and it may be that my face showed too clearly the anxiety of the heart.
“About Sandy himself?” he hastened to add.
“About Alexander Gordon?” cried I in astonishment. “What ill news would I hear about Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun?”
He nodded, finished the winding of his horologe, held it gravely to his ear to assure himself that it was going, and then nodded again. For that was Hob’s way.
“Well,” he said, “the Presbytery have had him complained of to them for drunkenness and worse. And they will excommunicate him with the greatest excommunication if he decline their authority.”
“But Earlstoun is not of their communion,” I cried, much astonished, the matter being none of the Presbytery’s business; “he is of the Hill-folk, an elder and mainstay among them for thirty years.”
“The Presbytery have made it their business because he is a well-wisher of yours,” said Hob. “Besides, the report of it has already gone abroad throughout the land, and they saythat the matter will be brought before the next general meeting of the societies.”
“And in the meantime?” I began.
“In the meantime,” said Hob, “those of the Hill-folk who form the Committee of the Seven Thousand have suspended him from his eldership!”
Hob paused, as he ever did when he had more to tell, and was considering how to begin.
“Go on, Hob,” cried I—testily enough, I fear.
“They say that his old seizure has come again upon him. He sits in an upper room like a beast, and will be approached by none. And some declare that, like King David, he feigns madness, others that he has been driven mad by the sin and the shame.”
Now this was sore and grievous tidings to me, not only because of Mary Gordon, but for the sake of the cause.
For Alexander Gordon had been during a generation the most noted Covenanter of the stalwart sort in Scotland. He had suffered almost unto death without wavering in the old ill times of Charles and James. He had languished long in prison, both in the Castle of Edinburgh and that of Blackness. He hadcome to the first frosting of the hair with a name clear and untainted. And now when he stood at the head of the Covenanting remnant it was like the downfall of a god that he should so decline from his place and pride.
Then the other part of the news that the Presbytery, as the representatives and custodians of morals, were to lay upon him the Greater Excommunication was also a thing hard and bitter. For if they did so it inferred the penalties of being shut off from communion with man in the market-place and with God in the closet. The man who spoke to the excommunicated partook of the crime. And though the power of the Presbytery to loose and to bind had somewhat declined of late, yet, nevertheless, the terror of the major anathema still pressed heavily upon the people.
Hob went soberly up to his bedroom. The boards creaked as he threw himself down, and I could hear him fall quiet in a minute. But sleep would not come to my eyelids. At last I arose from my naked bed and took my way down to the water-side by which I had walked oftentimes in dark days and darker nights.
Then as I was able I put before Him who is never absent the case of Alexander Gordon.And I wrestled long as to what I should do. Sometimes I thought of him as my friend, and again I knew that it was chiefly for the sake of Mary Gordon that I was thus greatly troubled.
But with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing clearness of purpose—such as always comes to the soul of man when, out of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up from the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
I would go to Earlstoun and have speech with Alexander Gordon. The Presbytery had condemned him unheard. His own folk of the Societies—at least, some of the elders of them—had been ready to believe an evil report and had suspended him from his office. He needed a minister’s dealing, or at least a friend’s advice. I was both, and there was all the more reason because I was neither of the Kirk that had condemned nor of the communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest and highest.
It was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, I set my hat on my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges to walk to Earlstoun. I heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the gall-bushesof the meadow. A blackbird turned up some notes of his morning song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and the rathe summer time. Suddenly the east brightened and rent. The day strode over the land.
I journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. It was very evidently to be a day of fervent heat. Soon I had to take off my coat, and as I carried it country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me good-day from the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over the hated park-dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
Mostly when I walked abroad I observed nothing, but to-day I saw everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or when stricken with fever.
I noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire to little pebbly islands. The lilies, yellow and white, basked and winked belated on the still and glowing water. The cattle, both nolt and kye, stood knee-deep in the shallows—to me the sweetest and most summersome of all rural sights.
As I drew near to New Galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks and squabbledlike shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water, or darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing “hide-and-seek” about the tree-trunks.
And through all pulsed the thought, “What shall I say to my friend? Shall I be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke? Shall I take part with Mary Gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and fall with him? Or are my message and my Master more to me than any earthly love?” I feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of hearts. Nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than myself.
I passedby the little Clachan of St. John’s Town of Dalry, leaving it stretching away up the braeface on my right hand. A little way beyond the kirk I struck into the fringing woods of Earlstoun which, like an army of train-bands in Lincoln green, beset the grey tower.
I was on the walk along which I had once before come with her. The water alternately gloomed and sparkled beneath. The fish sulked and waved lazy tails, anchored in the water-swirls below the falls, their heads steady to the stream as the needle to the pole.
The green of summer was yet untouched by autumn frosts, save for a russet hair or two on the outmost plumes of the birks that wept above the stream.
Suddenly something gay glanced through the wavering sunsprays of the woodland and the green scatter of the shadows. A whitesummer gown, a dainty hat white-plumed, but beneath the bright feather a bowed head, a girl with tears in her eyes—and lo! Mary Gordon standing alone and in sorrow by the water-pools of the Deuch.
I had never learned to do such things, and even now I cannot tell what it was that came over me. For without a moment’s hesitation I kneeled on one knee, and taking her hand, I kissed it with infinite love and respect.
She turned quickly from me, dashing the tears from her face with her hand.
“Quintin!” she cried—I think before she thought.
“Mary!” I said, for the first time in my life saying the word to my lady’s face.
She held her hand with the palm pressed against my breast, pushing me from her that she might examine my face.
“Why are you here?” she asked anxiously, “you have heard what they say of my father?”
“I have heard, and I come to know?” I said quietly.
She clasped her hands in front of her breast and then let them fall loosely down in a sort of slack despair.
“I will tell you,” she said, “it is partly true. But the worst is not true!”
She was silent for a while, as if she were mastering herself to speak.
Then she burst out suddenly, “But what right have you or any other to demand such things of me? Is not my father Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, and who has name or fame like him in all Scotland? They that accuse him are but jealous of him—even you would be glad like the others to see him humiliated—brought low!”
“You do me wrong,” said I, yet more quietly; “you know it. Mary, I came because I have no friends on earth like you and Alexander Gordon. And the thing troubled me.”
“I know—I know,” she said, distractedly. “I think it hath well-nigh driven me mad, as it hath my poor father.”
She put her hand to her forehead and pressed it, as if it had been full of a great throbbing pain.
I wished I could have held it for her.
Then we moved side by side a little along the path, both being silent. My thoughts were with hers. I saw her pain; I felt her pride, her reluctance to speak.
Presently we came to a retired place where there was an alcove cut out of the cliff, re-entrant, filled with all coolness and the stir of leaves.
Hither, as if moved by one instinct, we repaired. Mary sat her down upon the stone seat. I stood before her.
There was a long waiting without a word spoken, so that a magpie came and flicked his tail on a branch near by without seeing us. Then cocking his eye downward, he fled with loud screams of anger and protestation.
“I will tell you all!” she said, suddenly.
But all the same it seemed as if she could not find it in her heart to begin.
“You know my father—root and branch you know him,” she said, at last; “or else I could not tell you. He is a man. He has so great a repute, so full a record of bravery, that none dares to point the finger. Through all Scotland and the Low Countries it is sufficient for my father to say ‘I am Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun!’
“But as I need not tell you, a very strong man is a very weak man. And so they trapped him, William Boyd, who called himself his friend, being the traitor. For my father hadknown him in Holland and aided him with money and providing when he studied as one of the lads of the Hill-folk at the University of Groningen.
“Now this a man like William Boyd could not forgive—neither repay. But in silence he hated and bode his time. For, though I am but young, I see that nothing breeds hate and malice more readily than a helping hand extended to a bad man.
“So devising evil to my father in secret, he met him at the Clachan of Saint John as he came home from the market at Kirkcudbright, where he had been dining with Kenmure and my Lord Maxwell. Quintin, you know how it is with my father when he comes home from market—he is kind, he is generous. The world is not large enough to hold his heart. Wine may be in, but wit is not out.
“So Alexander Gordon being in this mood, Boyd and two or three of his creatures met him in the highway.
“My father had oftentimes thwarted and opposed Boyd. But now his stomach was warm and generous within him. So he cried to them, ‘A fair good e’en to ye, gentlemen.’
“Whereat they glanced cunningly at oneanother, hearing the thick stammer in my father’s voice.
“‘And good e’en to you, Earlstoun!’ they answered, taking off their hats to him.
“The courtesy touched my father. It seemed that they wished to be friends, and nothing touches a big careless gentleman like Alexander Gordon more than the thought that others desire to make up a quarrel and he will not.
“So with that he cried, ‘Let us bury bygones and be friends.’
“‘Agreed,’ answered Boyd, waving his hand jovially; let us go to the change-house and toast the reconciliation in a tass of brandy,’
“This he said knowing that my father was on his way from market.”
“For this,” said I, not thinking of my place and dignity, “will I reckon with William Boyd.”
Mary Gordon went on without noticing my interruption.
“So though my father told them that he could not go, that his wife waited for him by the croft entrance and that his daughter was coming down the water-side to meet him, yet upon their crying out that he must not behen-pecked in the matter of the drowning of an ancient enmity, my father consented to go with them.”
Mary Gordon looked before her a long time without speaking, as though little liking to tell what followed. “They knew,” she said, “that he was to preside that night at a meeting of the eldership and commissioners of the Hill-folk. So they brought him as in the change-house they had made him to the meeting.”
There was a long silence.
“And this was all?” I asked. For the accusation which had come to me had been far graver than this.
“As I live and must die, that is all. The other things which they testify that he did that night are but the blackness and foulness of their own hearts.”
“I will go speak with him,” I said, moving as to pass on.
Mary Gordon had been seated upon a wall which jutted out over the water. She leaped to her feet in an instant and caught me by the wrist, looking with an eager and passionate regard into my eyes.
“You must not—you shall not!” she cried. “My father is not to be spoken to. He is nothimself. He has sworn that he will answer no man, speak to no man, have dealings with no man, till the shame be staunched and his innocency made to appear.”
“But I will bring him to himself,” I said, “I will reason with him, and that most tenderly.”
“Nay,” she said, taking me eagerly by the breast of my coat, “I tell you he will not listen to a word.”
“It is my duty,” I answered.
“Wherefore?” she cried, sharply. “You are not his minister.”
“No,” said I, “but I am more. I am both his friend and yours.”
“Do you mean to reprove him?” she asked.
“It is my duty—in part,” said I, for the thought of mine office had come upon me, and I feared that for this girl’s sake I might even be ready ignominiously to demit and decline my plain duty.
“For that wherein he has given the unrighteous cause to speak reproachfully, I will reprove him,” I said. “For the rest, I will aid, support, and succour him in all that one man may do to another. By confession of his fault,such as it has been, he may yet keep the Cause from being spoken against.”
“Ah, you do not know my father, to speak thus of him,” Mary Gordon cried, clasping her hands. “When he is in his fury he cares for neither man nor beast. He might do you a hurt, even to the touching of your life. Ah, do not go to him.” (Here she clasped her hands, and looked at me with such sweet, petitionary graciousness that my heart became as wax within me.) “Let him come to himself. What are reproof and hard words, besides the shame that comes when such a man as my father sits face to face with the sins of his own heart?”
Almost I had given way, but the thought of the dread excommunication, and the danger which his children must also incur, compelled me.
“Hear me, Mary,” I said, “I must speak to him. For all our sakes—yours as well—I must go instantly to Alexander Gordon.”
She waved her hand impatiently.
“Do not go,” she said. “Can you not trust me? I thought you—you once told me that you loved me. And if you had loved me, I do not know, I might——”
She paused. A wild hope—warm, tender, gloriously insurgent, rose-coloured—welled up triumphantly in my heart. My blood hummed in my ears.
“She would love me; she would give herself to me. I cannot offend her. This alone is my happiness. This only is life. What matters all else?”
And I was about to give way. If I had so much as looked in her face, or met her eyes, I must have fallen from my intent.
But I called to mind the path by which I had been led, the oath that had been laid upon me to speak faithfully. The lonely way of a man—a sinful man trying to do the right—gripped me like a vice, and compelled me against my will.
“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life—more, perchance, than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of my duty.”
She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting me out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes.
“You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!”
“Mary,” I said, turning to follow her.
All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot.
“I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “I thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine.Youlove! You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook. I doubt not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the farm by the water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me that you love me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it is for my own father, and I entreat you with tears!”
“Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell you——”
But she turned away down the path. I followed after, and at the parting of the ways to house and stable she turned on me again like a lioness. “Oh,go, I tell you!Go!” she cried. “Do your precious duty. But from this day forth never, never dare to utter word to Mary Gordon again!”
Asall may understand, it was with bowed head and crushed heart that I bent my steps towards the grey tower, sitting so stilly among the leafage of the wood above the water.
Duty is doubtless noble, and virtue its own reward. But when there is a lass in the case—why, it is somewhat harder to go against her will than to counter all the law and the prophets.
I went up the bank towards the tower of Earlstoun, and as I came near methought there was a strange and impressive silence over everything—like a Sabbath-day that was yet no common or canny Sabbath.
At the angle of the outer wall one Hugh Halliday, an old servant of the Gordons, came running toward me.
“Minister, minister,” he cried, “ye mauna come here. The maister has gotten the possessionby evil spirits. He swears that if ever a minister come near him he will brain him, and he has taken his sword and pistols up into the garret under the roof, and he cries out constantly that if any man stirs him, he shall surely die the death.”
“But,” I answered, “he will not kill me, who have had no hand in the matter—me who have also been persecuted by the Presbytery and by them deposed.”
“Ah, laddie,” said the old man, shaking his palsied hand warningly at me, “ye little ken the laird, if ye think that when the power o’ evil comes ower him, he bides to think. He lets drive richt and left, and a’ that remains to be done is but to sinder the dead frae the leevin’, or to gather up the fragments that remain in baskets and corn-bags and sic-like.
“For instance, in the auld persecutin’ days there was Gleg Toshie, the carrier, that was counted a great man o’ his hands, and at the Carlin’s Cairn Sandy—the laird I mean—cam’ on Toshie spyin’ on him, or so he thocht. And oor Maister near ended him when he laid hand on him.
“‘Haud aff,’ cried Peter Pearson the curate, ‘Wad ye kill the man, Earlstoun?’
“‘I would kill him and eat him too!’ cries the laird, as he gied him aye the ither drive wi’ his neive. O he’s far frae canny when he’s raised.”
“Nevertheless I will see him,” said I; “I have a message to deliver.”
“Then I hope and trust ye hae made your peace wi’ your Maker, for ye will come doon frae that laft a dead stiff corp and that ye’ll leeve to see.”
By the gate the Lady of Earlstoun was walking to and fro, wringing her hands and praying aloud.
“Wrath, wrath, and dismay hath fallen on this house!” she cried. “The five vials are poured out. And there yet remains the sixth vial. O Sandy, my ain man, that it should come to this! That ye should tak’ the roofs like a pelican in the desert and six charges o’ pooder in yon flask, forbye swords and pistols. And then the swearin’—nae minced oaths, but as braid as the back o’ Cairnsmuir. Waes me for Sandy, the man o’ my choice! A carnal man was Sandy a’ the days o’ him, a man no to be ruled nor yet spoken to, but rather like a lion to be withstood face to face. But then a little while and his spirit wouldcome to him like the spirit of a little child.”
We could hear as we walked and communed a growling somewhere far above like the baffled raging of a caged wild beast.
“It is the spirit of the demoniac that is come to rend him,” she said. “Hear to him, there he is; he is hard at it, cursing the Presbytery and a’ ministers. He is sorest upon them that he has liked best, as, indeed, the possessed ever are. He says that he knows not why he is restrained from braining me—me that have been his wife these many sorrowful years. But thus far he hath been kept from doing any great injury. Even the servant man that brought the message from his master, William Boyd, summoning Alexander to appear before the Presbytery, he cast by main force into the well, and if the man had not caught at the rope, and so gone more slowly to the bottom, he would surely have been dashed to pieces.”
“But how long has he been thus?” I said. For as we listened, quaking, the noise waxed and grew louder. Then anon it would diminish almost like the howling or whimpering of a beaten dog, most horrid and uncanny to hear.
“Ever since yesterday at the hour when hegat the summons from the Presbytery,” said the lady of Earlstoun.
“And have none been near him since that time?”
“Only Mary,” she said; “she took up to him a bowl of broth. For he never lifted his hand to her in his life. He bade her begone quickly, because he was no fit company for human kind any more. She asked him very gently to come to his own chamber and lie down in peace. But he cried out that the ministers were coming, and that she must not stand in the way. For he was about to shoot them all dead, like the black hoodie-craws that pyke the young lambs’ e’en!
“‘And a bonny bit lamb ye are, faither,’ said Mary, trying to jest with him to divert his mind; ‘a bonny lamb, indeed, with that great muckle heather besom of a beard,’
“But instead of laughing, as was his wont, he cursed her for an impudent wench, and told her to begone, that she was no daughter of his.”
“Has he been oftentimes taken with this seizure?” I asked.
“It has come to him once or twice since he was threatened with torture before the lords of the Privy Council, and brake out upon themall as has often been told—but never before like this.”
“I will go to him,” I said, “and adjure him to return to himself. And I will exorcise the demon, if power be granted me of the Lord.”
“I pray you do not!” she cried, catching me and looking at me even more earnestly than her daughter had done, though, perhaps, somewhat less movingly. “Let not your blood also be upon this doomed house of Earlstoun.”
Asgently as I could I withdrew from her grasp, and with a pocket Bible in my hand (that little one in red leather of the King’s printers which I always carried about with me), I climbed the stair.
The word I had come so far to speak should not remain unspoken through my weakness, neither must I allow truth to be brought to shame because of the fears of the messenger.
So I mounted the turret stairs slowly, the great voice sounding out more and more clearly as I advanced. It came in soughs and bursts, alternating with lown intervals filled with indistinct mutterings. Then again a great volley of cursing would shake the house, and in the afterclap of silence I could hear the waesome yammer of my lady’s supplication beneath me outside the tower.
But within, save for the raging of thestormy voice, there was an uncanny silence. The dust lay thick where it had been left untouched for days by any hand of domestic. I glanced within the great oaken chamber where formerly I had spoken to Mary Gordon. It was void and empty. A broken glass of carven Venetian workmanship and various colours lay in fragments by the window. A stone jar with the great bung of Spanish cork stood on the floor. There was a crimson sop of spilled wine on the table of white scoured wood. The table-cloth of rich Spanish stuff wrought with arabesques had been tossed into the corner. A window was broken, and there were stains on the jagged edges, as if some one had thrust his hand through the glass to his own hurt.
Nothing moved in the room, but in the thwart sunbeams the motes danced, and the unstable shadows of the trees without flecked the floor.
All the more because of this unwholesome quiet in the great house of Earlstoun, it was very dismaying to listen to the roll and thunder of the voice up there, speaking on and on to itself in the regions above.
But I had come at much cost to do my duty,and this I could not depart from. So I began to mount the last stairs, which were of wood, and exceedingly narrow and precipitous.
Then for the first time I could hear clearly the words of the possessed:
“Cast into deepest hell, Lord, if any power is left in Thee, the whole Presbytery of Kirkcudbright! Set thy dogs upon them, O Satan, Prince of Evil, for they have worked ill-will and mischief upon earth. Specially and particularly gie Andrew Cameron his paiks! Rub the fiery brimstone flame onto his bones, like salt into a new-killed swine. Scowder him with irons heated white hot. Tear his inward parts with twice-barbed fishing hooks. Gie William Boyd his bellyful of curses. Turn him as often on thy roasting-spit as he has turned his coat on the earth. Frighten wee Telfair wi’ the uncanniest o’ a’ thy deils’ imps. And as for the rest of them may they burn back and front, ingate and outgate, hide, hair, and harrigals, till there is nocht left o’ them but a wee pluff o’ ash, that I could hold like snuff between my fingers and thumb and blaw away like the white head o’ the dandelion.”
He came to an end for lack of breath, and I could hear him stir restlessly, thinking, perhaps,that he had omitted some of the Presbytery who were needful of a yet fuller and more decorated cursing.
I called up to him.
“Alexander Gordon, I have come to speak with you.”
“Who are you that daresgiff-gaffwith Alexander Gordon this day?”
“I am Quintin MacClellan, minister of the Gospel in Balmaghie, a friend to Alexander Gordon and all his house.”
“Get you gone, Quintin MacClellan, while ye may. I have no desire for fellowship with you. You are also of the crew of hell—the black corbies that cry ‘Glonk! Glonk!’ over the carcase of puir perishing Scotland.”
“Hearken, Alexander Gordon,” said I, from the ladder’s foot, “I have been your friend. I have sat at your table. A word is given me to speak to you, and speak it I will.”
“And I also have a gun here that has a message rammed down its thrapple. I warn ye clear and fair, if ye trouble me at all with any of your clavers, ye shall get that message frae the black jaws of Bell-mouthed Mirren.”
And as I looked up the wooden ladder which led into the dim garret above me, I saw peepingthrough the angle of the square trap-door above me the wicked snout of the musket—while behind, narrowed to a slit, glinted, through a red mist of beard and hair, the eye of Sandy Gordon.
“Ye may shoot me if ye will, Alexander,” said I; “I am a man unarmed, defenceless, and so stand fully within your danger. But listen first to that which I have to say.
“You are a great man, laird of Earlstoun. Ye have come through much and seen many peoples and heard many tongues. Ye have been harried by the Malignants, prisoned by the King’s men, and now the Presbytery have taken a turn at you, even as they did at me, and for the same reason.
“You were ever my friend, Earlstoun, and William Boyd mine enemy. Therefore he was glad to take up a lying report against you that are my comrade; for such is his nature. Can the sow help her foulness, the crow his colour? Forbye, ye have given some room to the enemy to speak reproachfully. You, an elder of the Hill-folk, have collogued in the place of drinking with the enemies of our cause. They laid a snare for your feet, and like a simple fool ye fell therein. So much I know. But the darkersin that they witness against you—what say ye to that?”
“It is false as the lies that are spewed up from the vent of Hell!” cried the voice from the trap-door above, now hoarse and trembling. I had touched him to the quick.
“Who are they that witness this thing against you?”
He was silent for a little, and then he burst out upon me afresh.
“Who are you that have entered into mine own house of Earlstoun to threat and catechise me? Is Alexander Gordon a bairn to be harried by bairns that were kicking in swaddling clouts and buttock-hippens when he was at the head of the Seven Thousand? And who may you be? A deposed minister, a college jackdaw whom the other daws have warned from off the steeple. I will not kill you, Quintin MacClellan, but I bid you instantly evade and depart, for the spirit has bidden me fire a shot at the place where ye stand!”
“Ye may fire your piece and slay your friend on the threshold of your house, an’ it please you, laird of Earlstoun,” cried I, “but ye shall never say that he was a man unfaithful, a man afraid of the face of men!”
“Stand from under, I say!”
Nevertheless I did not move, for there had grown up a stubbornness within me as there had done when the Presbytery set themselves to vex me.
Then there befell what seemed to be a mighty clap of thunder. A blast of windy heat spat in my face; something tore at the roots of my hair; fire singed my brow, and the reek of sulphur rose stifling in my nostrils.
The demon-possessed had fired upon me. For a moment I knew not whether I was stricken or no, for there grew a pain hot as fire at my head. But I stood where I was till in a little the smoke began to lazily clear through the trap-door into the garret.
I put my hand to my head and felt that my brow was wet and gluey. Then I thought that I was surely sped, for I knew that men stricken in the brain by musket shot ofttimes for a moment scarce feel their wound. I understood not till later the reason of my escape, which was that the balls of Earlstoun’s fusil had no time to spread, but passed as one through my thick hair, snatching at it and tearing the scalp as they passed.
Thesmoke of the gun curled slowly and reluctantly out of the narrow windows, and through the garret opening I heard a hurried rush of feet beneath me on the stairs, light and quick—a woman’s footsteps when she is young. My head span round, and had it not been for Mary Gordon, whose arm caught and steadied me, I should doubtless have fallen from top to bottom.
“Quintin, Quintin,” she cried, passionately, “are you hurt? Oh, my father has slain him. Wherefore did I let him go?”
I held by the wall and steadied myself on her shoulder, scarce knowing what I did.
Suddenly she cried aloud, a little frightened cry, and, drawing her kerchief from her bosom, she reached up and wiped my brow, down which red drops were trickling.
“You are hurt! You are sort hurt!” she cried. “And it is all my fault!”
Then I said, “Nay, Mary, I am not hurt. It was but a faintish turn that came and passed.”
“Oh, come away,” she cried; “he will surely slay you if you bide here, and your blood will be upon my hands.”
“Nay, Mary,” I answered; “the demon, and not your father, did this thing, and such can do nothing without permission. I will yet meet and expel the devil in the name of the Lord!”
She put her netted fingers about my arm to draw me away; nevertheless, even then, I withstood her.
“Alexander Gordon,” I cried aloud, “the evil spirit hath done its worst. He will now depart from you. I am coming up the ladder.”
I drew my arm free and mounted. As my head rose through the trap-door I own that my heart quaked, but there had come with the danger and the excitement a sort of angry exaltation which, more than aught else, carried me onward. Also I knew within me that if, as I judged, God had other work yet for me todo in Scotland, He would clothe me in secret armour of proof against all assault.
Also the eyes of Mary Gordon were upon me. I had passed my word to her; I could not go back.
As I looked about the garret between the cobwebs, the strings of onions, and the bunches of dried herbs, I could see Sandy Gordon crouching at the far end, all drawn together like a tailor sitting cross-legged on his bench. He had his musket between his knees, and his great sword was cocked threateningly over his shoulder.
“What, Corbie! Are ye there again?” cried he, fleeringly. “Then ye are neither dead nor feared.”
“No,” said I; “the devil that possesses you has been restrained from doing me serious hurt. I will call on the Lord to expel what He hath already rendered powerless.”
“Man, Quintin,” he cried, “ye should have fetched Telfair and the Presbytery with you. Ye are not fit for the job by yourself. Mind you, this is no hotchin’ wee de’il, sitting cross-legged on the hearth in the gloaming like Andrew Mackie’s in Ringcroft. It takes the black Father of Spirits himself, ripe from hell, to gripthe Bull of Earlstoun, and set him to roaring like this in the blank middle of the day.”
“But,” said I, “there is One stronger than any devil or devilkin—your father’s and your mother’s God! You are but a great bairn, Sandy. Do ye mind where ye first learned the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm?”
At my words the great mountain of a man threw his head back and dropped his sword.
“Aye, I mind,” he said, sullenly.
“Where was it?” said I.
“It was at my mother’s knee in the turret chamber that looks to the woods, if ye want to ken.”
“What did your mother when ye had ended the lesson?”
“What is that to you, Quintin MacClellan?” he thundered, fiercely. “I tell you, torment me not!”
He snarled this out at me suddenly like the roar of a beast in a cage, thrusting forth his head at me and showing his teeth in the midst of his red beard.
“What did your mother when ye had learned your psalm?”
“She put her hands upon my head.”
“And then what did she?”
“She prayed.”
“Do ye mind the words of that prayer?”
“I mind them.”
“Then say them.”
“I will not!” he shouted loud and fierce, clattering his gun on the floor and leaping to his feet. His sword was in his hand, and he pointed it threateningly at me.
“You will not say your mother’s prayer,” I answered; “then I will say it for you.”
“No, you shall not, Quintin MacClellan,” he growled. “If it comes to that, I will say it myself. What ken you about my mother’s prayer?”
“I have a mother of mine own, and not once nor twice she hath said a prayer for me.”
The point of the sword dropped. He stood silent.
“Her hands were on your head,” I suggested, “you had finished your prayers. It was in the turret chamber that looks to the north.”
“I ken—I ken!” he cried, turning his head this way and that like a beast tied and tormented.
But in his eyes there grew a far-away look. The convulsive fingers loosened on the sword-hilt. The blade fell unheeded to the ground and lay beside the empty musket.
“O Lord!” he gasped, hardly above his breath, “from all the dangers of this night keep my laddie. From powers of evil guard him with thy good angels. The Lord Christ be his yoke-bearer. Deliver him from sin and from himself. When I am under green kirkyard sward, be Thou to him both father and mother. O God, Father in Heaven, bless the lad!”
It was his mother’s prayer.
And as the words came softer Alexander Gordon fell on his knees, and moaned aloud in the dim smoky garret.
Then, judging that my work was done, I, too, kneeled on my knees, and for the space of an hour or thereby the wind of the summer blew through the chamber, the shadows crawled up the walls, and Alexander Gordon moved not nor spoke.
Then I arose, took him by the hand, and bade him follow me. We went down both of us together. And in the room below we found Mary, who had sat listening with her head on her hand.
“Here is your father,” I said; “take him tohis chamber, and when he is ready bring him again into the great room.”
So very obediently he went with her as a little child might.
Presently she brought him in again, clean washed and with the black look gone from his brow.
I bade her set him by the window. She looked at me to see if she should leave us alone. But I desired her to stay.
Then very gently I set the right way before him.
“Alexander,” said I, “ye have done that which has worked great scandal. Ye shall confess that publicly. Ye are innocent of the greater iniquity laid to your charge. Ye shall clear yourself of that by a solemn oath taken both in the presence of God and before men.”
“That I cannot,” said he, speaking for the first time; “the Presbytery have refused me the privilege.”
“There is a door open for you,” I said, “in a place where the Presbytery and your enemies have no power. It may not be long mine to offer you. But for one day it shall be yours, and after the service on Sabbath in the Kirk of Balmaghie ye shall stand up and clear yourselfby oath of the greater sin—after having made confession of the more venial fault.”
“I will do it!” he said, and put his hand in mine.
So I left him sitting there with his daughter, with the knowledge that my soul had power over his. And in the eventide, greatly comforted, I took my way homewards, knowing that he would not fail me.
Butwhilst I had been going about my work the enemies had not been idle. They had deposed me from the ministry. They could not depose me from the hearts of a willing and loyal people. They had invoked the secular arm, and that had been turned back.
Now, by hasty process, they had also appointed one, McKie, to succeed me—a young man that had been a helper to one of them, harmless enough, indeed, in himself, a good and quiet lad. Him, for the sake of the stipend, they had persuaded to be their cat’s-paw.
But the folk of Balmaghie were clear against giving him any foothold, so that he made little more of it than he had done at first.
But it chanced that on the day on which I had gone to Earlstoun to speak with Alexander Gordon, the more active of the Presbytery had gathered together many of the wild and riotousout of their parishes, and had sent them to take possession of the manse and glebe of Balmaghie.
Hob, my brother, was over by at the house of Drumglass, helping them with the last of their meadow hay, being a lad ever kind and helpful to all, saying little but doing much.
So that the house, being left defenceless in fancied security, the young lad McKie and his party had been in and about the manse for a full hour before any brought word of their approach.
McKie, acting doubtless under the advice of those that were more cunning than he, had intruded into the kitchen, extinguished the fire on the hearth and relighted it in his own name.
Also the folk who were with him, men from other parishes, wholly ignorant of the matter, had brought a pair of ploughs with them. To these they now harnessed horses and would have set to the ploughing up of the glebe, which was of ancient pasture, the grass clean and old, a paradise of verdure, smooth as a well-mown lawn.
But by this time the noise and report of the invasion had spread abroad, and from farm-towns far and near swarmed down the angryfolk of Balmaghie, like bees from a byke upon a company of harrying boys.
The mowers took their scythes over their shoulders and set off all coatless and bonnetless from the water-meadows. The herds left their sheep to stray masterless upon the hill, and came with nothing but their crooks in their hands. The farmers hastily ran in for Brown Bess and a horn of powder. So that ere the first furrow was turned from end to end the glebe was black with people, swarming like an angry hive whose defences have been stormed.
So the invaders could not stand, either in numbers or anger, against the honest folk who had sworn to keep sacred the home of the man of their choice.
Even as I came to the entering in of the Kirk loaning, I saw the ending of the fray. The invaders were fleeing down the water-side; the poor lad McKie, who in his anger had stricken a woman to the ground and stamped upon her, had a wound in his hand made by a reaping-hook. The ploughs had been thrown into the Dee, and the folk of Balmaghie were pursuing and beating stray fugitives, like school laddies threshing at a wasps’ nest.
Then I, who had striven so lately with thepowers of evil in high places, was stricken to the heart at this unseemly riot, and resolved within me that there should be a quick end to this.
Who was I that I should thus be a troubler of Israel, and make the hot anger rise in these quiet hearts? Could I stand against all Scotland? Nay, could I alone be in the right and all the others in the wrong? There was surely work for me to do outside the bounds of one small parish—at least, in all broad Scotland, a few godly folk of the ancient way to whom I could minister.
So I resolved then and there, that after the Sabbath service at which I had bidden Earlstoun to purge himself by oath and public confession, I would no longer remain in Balmaghie to stir up wrath, but depart over Jordan with no more than my pilgrim-staff in my hand.
So, when at last the people had vanquished the last invader and come back to the kirk, I called them together and spoke quietly to them.
“This thing,” said I, “becomes a scandal and a shaming. This is surely not the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace. True, not we, but those who have come against us, began the fray.But when men stumble over a stone in the path, it is time that the stone be removed.
“Now I, Quintin MacClellan, your minister, am the stone of stumbling—I, and none other, the rock of offence. I will therefore remove myself. I will cease to trouble Israel.”
“No, no,” they cried; “surely after this they will leave us alone. They will never return. Bide with us, for you are our minister, and we your faithful and willing folk.”
And this saying of theirs, in which all joined, moved me much; nevertheless I was fixed in my heart, and could make no more of it than that I must depart.
Which, when they heard, they were grieved at very sorely, and appointed certain of them, men of weight and sincerity, to combat my resolution.
But it was not to be, for I made up my mind.
I saw that there might be an open door elsewhere, and though I would not abandon my work in Balmaghie, yet neither would I any more confine my ministrations. I would go out to the Hill-folk, who before had called me, and if they accepted of me, well! And if not—why, there were heathen folk enough in Scotlandwith none to minister to them; and it would be strange if He who sent out his disciples two by two, bidding them take neither purse nor script, would not find bread and water for a poor wandering teacher throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.
Thefateful Sabbath came—a day of infinite stillness, so that from beside the tombs of the martyr Hallidays in the kirkyard of Balmaghie you could hear the sheep bleating on the hills of Crossmichael a mile away, the sound breaking mellow and thin upon the ear over the still and azure river.
To me it was like the calm of the New Jerusalem. And, indeed, no place that ever I have seen can be so blessedly quiet as the bonnie kirk-knowe of Balmaghie, mirrored on a windless day in the encircling stillness of the Water of Dee.
The folk gathered early, clouds upon clouds of them, so that I think every man, woman, and child in the parish must have save the children that could not walk, and the aged who dwelt too far away to be carried.
Alexander Gordon sat at my right hand, immediately beneath the pulpit.
There seemed an extraordinary graciousness in the singing that day, a special fervour in the upward swell of the voices, a more excellent, sober sweetness in the Sabbath air. And of that I must not think, for I was to leave all this—to leave for ever the vale of blessing wherein I had hoped to spend my days.
Yes, I would adventure forth alone rather than that a loyal folk should suffer any more because of me. But first, so far as in me lay, I would set right the matter of Alexander Gordon and his trouble.
It was the forty-sixth Psalm that they were singing, and as they sang the people tell that herds on the hill stood still to listen to the chorus of that mighty singing, and, without knowing why, the water stood in their eyes that day. There seemed to be something by-ordinarily moving in all that was done. Thuswise it went: