He then began to question me cunningly, where I came from, whether I was rich, whether I could change a five-shilling piece for him (which he declared he had that moment in his sporran), and all the time he kept edging up to me and I avoiding him. We were now upon a sort of green cattle-track which crossed the hills towards Torosay, and we kept changing sides upon that like dancers in a reel. I had so plainly the upper hand that my spirits rose, and indeed I took a pleasure in this game of blindman’s-buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier, and at last began to swear in Gaelic and to strike for my legs with his staff.
Then I told him that, sure enough, I had a pistol in my pocket as well as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south I would even blow his brains out.
He became at once very polite; and after trying to soften me for some time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took himself off. I watched him striding along through bog and briar, tapping with his stick, until he turned the end of a hill and disappeared in the next hollow. Then I struck on again for Torosay, much betterpleased to be alone than to travel with that man of learning. This was an unlucky day; and these two, of whom I had just rid myself, one after the other, were the two worst men I met with in the Highlands.
At Torosay, on the Sound of Mull, and looking over to the mainland of Morven, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a Maclean, it appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more genteel in the Highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. He spoke good English, and, finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me first in French, where he easily beat me, and then in the Latin, in which I don’t know which of us did best. This pleasant rivalry put us at once upon friendly terms; and I sat up and drank punch with him (or, to be more correct, sat up and watched him drink it), until he was so tipsy that he wept upon my shoulder.
I tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of Alan’s button; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of it. Indeed, he bore some grudge against the family and friends of Ardshiel, and before he was drunk he read me a lampoon, in very good Latin, but with a very ill meaning, which he had made in elegiac verses upon a person of that house.
When I told him of my catechist, he shook his head, and said I was lucky to have got clear off. “That is a very dangerous man,” he said; “Duncan Mackiegh is his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and has been often accused of highway robberies, and once of murder.”
“The cream of it is,” says I, “that he called himself a catechist.”
“And why should he not?” says he, “when that is what he is. It was Maclean of Duart gave it to him because he was blind. But perhaps it was a peety,” says my host, “for he is always on the road, going from one place to another to hear the young folk say their religion, and doubtless that is a great temptation to the poor man.”
At last, when my landlord could drink no more, heshowed me to a bed, and I lay down in very good spirits; having travelled the greater part of that big and crooked Island of Mull, from Earraid to Torosay, fifty miles as the crow flies, and (with my wanderings) much nearer a hundred, in four days and with little fatigue. Indeed, I was by far in better heart and health of body at the end of that long tramp than I had been at the beginning.
Thereis a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland. Both shores of the sound are in the country of the strong clan of the Macleans, and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all of that clan. The skipper of the boat, on the other hand, was called Neil Roy Macrob; and since Macrob was one of the names of Alan’s clansmen, and Alan himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to come to private speech of Neil Roy.
In the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. There was no wind, and as the boat was wretchedly equipped, we could pull but two oars on one side, and one on the other. The men gave way, however, with a good will, the passengers taking spells to help them, and the whole company giving the time in Gaelic boat-songs. And what with the songs, and the sea-air, and the good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the passage was a pretty thing to have seen.
But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline we found a great sea-going ship at anchor; and this I supposed at first to be one of the King’s cruisers which were kept along that coast, both summer and winter, to prevent communication with the French. As we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; and, what still more puzzled me, not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. Yet nearer, and there began to come to our ears a great sound ofmourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart.
Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American colonies.
We put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. How long this might have gone on I do not know, for they seemed to have no sense of time: but at last the captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart.
Thereupon Neil sheered off; and the chief singer in our boat struck into a melancholy air, which was presently taken up both by the emigrants and their friends upon the beach, so that it sounded from all sides like a lament for the dying. I saw the tears run down the cheeks of the men and women in the boat, even as they bent at the oars; and the circumstances and the music of the song (which is one called “Lochaber no more”) were highly affecting even to myself.
At Kinlochaline I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach, and said I made sure he was one of Appin’s men.
“And what for no?” said he.
“I am seeking somebody,” said I; “and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. Alan Breck Stewart is his name.” And very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his hand.
At this he drew back. “I am very much affronted,” he said; “and this is not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all. The man you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran,” says he, “and your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body.”
I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and, without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.
“Aweel, aweel,” said Neil; “and I think ye might have begun with that end of the stick, whatever! But if ye arethe lad with the silver button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly,” says he, “there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman.”
It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third day to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of James of the Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the country strong to hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious wild and dreadful prospects.
I had some other advice from Neil: to speak with no one by the way, to avoid Whigs, Campbells, and the “red-soldiers”; to leave the road and lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming, “for it was never chancy to meet in with them”; and, in brief, to conduct myself like a robber or a Jacobite agent, as perhaps Neil thought me.
The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders. I was not only discontented with my lodging, but with myself for my mismanagement of Neil, and thought I could hardly be worse off. But very wrongly, as I was soon to see; for I had not been half an hour at the inn (standing in the door most of the time, to ease my eyes from the peat-smoke) when a thunderstorm came close by, the springs broke in a little hill on which the inn stood, and oneend of the house became a running water. Places of public entertainment were bad enough all over Scotland in those days; yet it was a wonder to myself, when I had to go from the fireside to the bed in which I slept, wading over the shoes.
Early in my next day’s journey I overtook a little, stout, solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book, and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style.
This I found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the blind man of Mull: being indeed one of those sent out by the Edinburgh Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, to evangelise the more savage places of the Highlands. His name was Henderland; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue, which I was beginning to weary for the sound of; and, besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the minister of Essendean, had translated into the Gaelic in his by-time a number of hymns and pious books, which Henderland used in his work, and held in great esteem. Indeed, it was one of these he was carrying and reading when we met.
We fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to Kingairloch. As we went, he stopped and spoke with all the wayfarers and workers that we met or passed; and though of course I could not tell what they discoursed about, yet I judged Mr. Henderland must be well liked in the country-side, for I observed many of them to bring out their mulls and share a pinch of snuff with him.
I told him as far in my affairs as I judged wise; as far, that is, as they were none of Alan’s; and gave Balachulish as the place I was travelling to, to meet a friend; for I thought Aucharn, or even Duror, would be too particular, and might put him on the scent.
On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, the hiding priests and Jacobites, the DisarmingAct, the dress, and many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate; blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons.
This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country.
He said it was a bad business. “It’s wonderful,” said he, “where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. (Ye don’t carry such a thing as snuff, do ye, Mr. Balfour? No. Well, I’m better wanting it.) But these tenants (as I was saying) are doubtless partly driven to it. James Stewart in Duror (that’s him they call James of the Glens) is half-brother to Ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a man much looked up to, and drives very hard. And then there’s one they call Alan Breck——”
“Ah!” cried I, “what of him?”
“What of the wind that bloweth where it listeth?” said Henderland. “He’s here and awa’; here to-day and gone to-morrow: a fair heather-cat. He might be glowering at the two of us out of yon whin-bush, and I wouldna wonder! Ye’ll no’ carry such a thing as snuff, will ye?”
I told him no, and that he had asked the same thing more than once.
“It’s highly possible,” said he, sighing. “But it seems strange ye shouldna carry it. However, as I was saying, this Alan Breck is a bold, desperate customer, and well kennt to be James’s right hand. His life is forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame.”
“You make a poor story of it all, Mr. Henderland,” said I. “If it is all fear upon both sides, I care to hear no more of it.”
“Na,” said Mr. Henderland, “but there’s love too, and self-denial that should put the like of you and me to shame.There’s something fine about it; no’ perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. Even Alan Breck, by all that I hear, is a chield to be respected. There’s many a lying sneck-draw sits close in kirk in our own part of the country, and stands well in the world’s eye, and maybe is a far worse man, Mr. Balfour, than yon misguided shedder of man’s blood. Ay, ay, we might take a lesson by them.—Ye’ll perhaps think I’ve been too long in the Hielands?” he added, smiling to me.
I told him not at all; that I had seen much to admire among the Highlanders; and, if he came to that, Mr. Campbell himself was a Highlander.
“Ay,” said he, “that’s true. It’s a fine blood.”
“And what is the King’s agent about?” I asked.
“Colin Campbell?” says Henderland. “Putting his head in a bees’ byke!”
“He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear?” said I.
“Yes,” says he, “but the business has gone back and forth, as folks say. First, James of the Glens rode to Edinburgh, and got some lawyer (a Stewart, nae doubt—they all hing together like bats in a steeple) and had the proceedings stayed. And then Colin Campbell cam’ in again, and had the upper hand before the Barons of Exchequer. And now they tell me the first of the tenants are to flit to-morrow. It’s to begin at Duror under James’s very windows, which doesna seem wise, by my humble way of it.”
“Do you think they’ll fight?” I asked.
“Well,” says Henderland, “they’re disarmed—or supposed to be—for there’s still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. And then Colin Campbell has the sogers coming. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldna be well pleased till I got him home again. They’re queer customers, the Appin Stewarts.”
I asked if they were worse than their neighbours.
“No’ they,” said he. “And that’s the worst part of it. For if Colin Roy can get his business done in Appin, he has it all to begin again in the next country, which they callMamore, and which is one of the countries of the Camerons. He’s King’s factor upon both, and from both he has to drive out the tenants; and indeed, Mr. Balfour (to be open with ye), it’s my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he’ll get his death by the other.”
So we continued talking and walking the great part of the day; until at last, Mr. Henderland, after expressing his delight in my company, and satisfaction at meeting with a friend of Mr. Campbell’s (“whom,” says he, “I will make bold to call that sweet singer of our covenanted Zion”), proposed that I should make a short stage, and lie the night in his house a little beyond Kingairloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed; for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore, and since my double misadventure, first with the guide and next with the gentleman skipper, I stood in some fear of any Highland stranger. Accordingly we shook hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house, standing alone by the shore of the Linnhe Loch. The sun was already gone from the desert mountains of Ardgour upon the hither side, but shone on those of Appin on the farther; the loch lay as still as a lake, only the gulls were crying round the sides of it; and the whole place seemed solemn and uncouth.
We had no sooner come to the door of Mr. Henderland’s dwelling, than to my great surprise (for I was now used to the politeness of Highlanders) he burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, caught up a jar and a small horn spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most excessive quantities. Then he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked round upon me with a rather silly smile.
“It’s a vow I took,” says he. “I took a vow upon me that I wouldna carry it. Doubtless it’s a great privation; but when I think upon the martyrs, not only to the Scottish Covenant but to other points of Christianity, I think shame to mind it.”
As soon as we had eaten (and porridge and whey was the best of the good man’s diet) he took a grave face and said hehad a duty to perform by Mr. Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him since the business of the snuff; but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures, and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there.
Before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, out of a scanty store he kept in the turf wall of his house; at which excess of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with me, that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself.
Thenext day Mr. Henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way I saved a long day’s travel and the price of the two public ferries I must otherwise have passed.
It was near noon before we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun shining upon little patches. The sea was here very deep and still, and had scarce a wave upon it: so that I must put the water to my lips before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side were high, rough, and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the clouds, but all silver-laced with little water-courses where the sun shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to care as much about as Alan did.
There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the waterside to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers’ coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel.
I asked my boatman what it should be; and he answered he supposed it was some of the red-soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second timeI had seen King George’s troops, I had no good will to them.
At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest fellow, and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the wood of Lettermore (or Lettervore, for I have heard it both ways) in Alan’s country of Appin.
This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung the loch. It had many openings and ferny howes; and a road or bridle-track ran north and south through the midst of it, by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some oat-bread of Mr. Henderland’s, and think upon my situation.
Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr. Campbell or even Mr. Henderland would think of me if they should ever learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to come in on me stronger than ever.
As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at the turning of the road, I saw four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single, and led their horses by the reins. The first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of aHighland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. This servant had a good-sized portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with luxurious travellers in that part of the country.
As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff’s officer.
I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to Aucharn.
He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, “Mungo,” said he, “there’s many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.”
“Glenure,” said the other, “this is an ill subject for jesting.”
These two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two followers had halted about a stonecast in the rear.
“And what seek ye in Aucharn?” said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure; him they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.
“The man that lives there,” said I.
“James of the Glens,” says Glenure musingly; and then to the lawyer: “Is he gathering his people, think ye?”
“Anyway,” says the lawyer, “we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us.”
“If you are concerned for me,” said I, “I am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no man.”
“Why, very well said,” replies the factor. “But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King’s factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve flies of soldiers at my back.”
“I have heard a waif word in the country,” said I, a little nettled, “that you were a hard man to drive.”
He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.
“Well,” said he, at last, “your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God-speed. But to-day—eh, Mungo?” And he turned again to look at the lawyer.
But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.
“O, I am dead!” he cried, several times over.
The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice that went to the heart.
“Take care of yourselves,” says he. “I am dead.”
He tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his fingers slipped on the buttons. With that he gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.
The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man’s; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. The sheriff’s officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.
At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road, and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger.
I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, “The murderer! the murderer!”
So little a time had elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.
“Here!” I cried. “I see him!”
At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then he came out again on the upper side, where I could see him climbing like a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped behind a shoulder, and I saw him no more.
All this time I had been running on my side, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand.
I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when I halted and looked back, I saw all the open part of the hill below me.
The lawyer and the sheriff’s officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.
“Why should I come back?” I cried. “Come you on!”
“Ten pounds if ye take that lad!” cried the lawyer. “He’s an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.”
At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.
The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.
“Jouk18in here among the trees,” said a voice close by.
Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so I heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.
Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed, it was no time for civilities; only “Come!” says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards Balachulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.
Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the mountain side; now crawling on all-fours among the heather. The pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so there came a great far-away cheering and crying of the soldiers.
Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me.
“Now,” said he, “it’s earnest. Do as I do, for your life.”
At the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.
My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.
18Duck.
18Duck.
Alanwas the first to come round. He rose, went to the border of the wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down.
“Well,” said he, “yon was a hot burst, David.”
I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was Alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.
“Are ye still wearied?” he asked again.
“No,” said I, still with my face in the bracken; “no, I am not wearied now, and I can speak. You and me must twine,”19I said. “I liked you very well, Alan, but your ways are not mine, and they’re not God’s: and the short and the long of it is just that we must twine.”
“I will hardly twine from ye, David, without some kind of reason for the same,” said Alan, mighty gravely. “If ye ken anything against my reputation, it’s the least thing that ye should do, for old acquaintance’ sake, to let me hear the name of it: and if ye have only taken a distasteto my society, it will be proper for me to judge if I’m insulted.”
“Alan,” said I, “what is the sense of this? Ye ken very well yon Campbell man lies in his blood upon the road.”
He was silent for a little; then says he, “Did ever ye hear tell of the story of the Man and the Good People?”—by which he meant the fairies.
“No,” said I, “nor do I want to hear it.”
“With your permission, Mr. Balfour, I will tell it you, whatever,” says Alan. “The man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it appears the Good People were in use to come and rest as they went through to Ireland. The name of this rock is called the Skerryvore, and it’s not far from where we suffered shipwreck. Well, it seems the man cried so sore, if he could just see his little bairn before he died! that at last the king of the Good People took peety upon him, and sent one flying that brought back the bairn in a poke20and laid it down beside the man where he lay sleeping. So when the man woke, there was a poke beside him, and something into the inside of it that moved. Well, it seemed he was one of these gentry that think aye the worst of things; and for greater security he stuck his dirk throughout that poke before he opened it, and there was his bairn dead. I am thinking to myself, Mr. Balfour, that you and the man are very much alike.”
“Do you mean you had no hand in it?” cried I, sitting up.
“I will tell you first of all, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, as one friend to another,” said Alan, “that if I were going to kill a gentleman, it would not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and I would not go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back.”
“Well,” said I, “that’s true!”
“And now,” continued Alan, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon it in a certain manner, “I swear uponthe Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it.”
“I thank God for that!” cried I, and offered him my hand.
He did not appear to see it.
“And here is a great deal of work about a Campbell!” said he. “They are not so scarce, that I ken!”
“At least,” said I, “you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well what you told me in the brig. But the temptation and the act are different, I thank God again for that. We may all be tempted; but to take a life in cold blood, Alan!” And I could say no more for the moment. “And do you know who did it?” I added. “Do you know that man in the black coat?”
“I have nae clear mind about his coat,” said Alan cunningly; “but it sticks in my head that it was blue.”
“Blue or black, did ye know him?” said I.
“I couldna just conscientiously swear to him,” says Alan. “He gaed very close by me, to be sure, but it’s a strange thing that I should just have been tying my brogues.”
“Can you swear that you don’t know him, Alan?” I cried, half angered, half in a mind to laugh at his evasions.
“No’ yet,” says he; “but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.”
“And yet there was one thing I saw clearly,” said I, “and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers.”
“It’s very likely,” said Alan; “and so would any gentleman. You and me were innocent of that transaction.”
“The better reason, since we were falsely suspected, that we should get clear,” I cried. “The innocent should surely come before the guilty.”
“Why, David,” said he, “the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. Them that havena dipped their hands in any little difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that have. Andthat is the good Christianity. For if it was the other way round about, and the lad whom I couldna just clearly see had been in our shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), I think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel’s if he would draw the soldiers.”
When it came to this, I gave Alan up. But he looked so innocent all the time, and was in such clear good faith in what he said, and so ready to sacrifice himself for what he deemed his duty, that my mouth was closed. Mr. Henderland’s words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a lesson by these wild Highlanders. Well, here I had taken mine. Alan’s morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were.
“Alan,” said I, “I’ll not say it’s the good Christianity as I understand it, but it’s good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second time.”
Whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely I had cast a spell upon him, for he could forgive me anything. Then he grew very grave, and said we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country; he, because he was a deserter, and the whole of Appin would now be searched like a chamber, and every one obliged to give a good account of himself; and I, because I was certainly involved in the murder.
“O!” says I, willing to give him a little lesson, “I have no fear of the justice of my country.”
“As if this was your country!” said he. “Or as if ye would be tried here, in a country of Stewarts!”
“It’s all Scotland,” said I.
“Man, I whiles wonder at ye,” said Alan. “This is a Campbell that’s been killed. Well, it’ll be tried in Inverara, the Campbells’ head place; with fifteen Campbells in the jury-box, and the biggest Campbell of all (and that’s the Duke) sitting cocking on the bench. Justice, David? The same justice, by all the world, as Glenure found a while ago at the road-side.”
This frighted me a little, I confess, and would havefrighted me more if I had known how nearly exact were Alan’s predictions; indeed, it was but in one point that he exaggerated, there being but eleven Campbells on the jury; though as the other four were equally in the Duke’s dependence, it mattered less than might appear. Still, I cried out that he was unjust to the Duke of Argyle, who (for all he was a Whig) was yet a wise and honest nobleman.
“Hoot!” said Alan, “the man’s a Whig, nae doubt; but I would never deny he was a good chieftain to his clan. And what would the clan think if there was a Campbell shot, and naebody hanged, and their own chief the Justice-General? But I have often observed,” says Alan, “that you Low-country bodies have no clear idea of what’s right and wrong.”
At this I did at last laugh out aloud; when to my surprise, Alan joined in, and laughed as merrily as myself.
“Na, na,” said he, “we’re in the Hielands, David; and when I tell ye to run, take my word and run. Nae doubt it’s a hard thing to skulk and starve in the heather, but it’s harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat prison.”
I asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me “to the Lowlands,” I was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, I was growing impatient to get back and have the upper hand of my uncle. Besides, Alan made so sure there would be no question of justice in the matter, that I began to be afraid he might be right. Of all deaths, I would truly like least to die by the gallows; and the picture of that uncanny instrument came into my head with extraordinary clearness (as I had once seen it engraved at the top of a pedlar’s ballad) and took away my appetite for courts of justice.
“I’ll chance it, Alan,” said I. “I’ll go with you.”
“But mind you,” said Alan, “it’s no small thing. Ye maun lie bare and hard, and brook many an empty belly. Your bed shall be the muircock’s, and your life shall be like the hunted deer’s, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. Ay, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot,or we get clear! I tell ye this at the start, for it’s a life that I ken well. But if ye ask what other chance ye have, I answer: Nane. Either take to the heather with me, or else hang.”
“And that’s a choice very easily made,” said I; and we shook hands upon it.
“And now let’s take another keek at the red-coats,” says Alan, and he led me to the north-eastern fringe of the wood.
Looking out between the trees we could see a great side of mountain, running down exceeding steep into the waters of the loch. It was a rough part, all hanging stone, and heather, and bit scrogs of birchwood; and away at the far end towards Balachulish, little wee red soldiers were dipping up and down over hill and howe, and growing smaller every minute. There was no cheering now, for I think they had other uses for what breath was left them; but they still stuck to the trail, and doubtless thought that we were close in front of them.
Alan watched them, smiling to himself.
“Ay,” said he, “they’ll be gey weary before they’ve got to the end of that employ! And so you and me, David, can sit down and eat a bite, and breathe a bit longer, and take a dram from my bottle. Then we’ll strike for Aucharn, the house of my kinsman, James of the Glens, where I must get my clothes, and my arms, and money to carry us along; and then, David, we’ll cry, ‘Forth, Fortune!’ and take a cast among the heather.”
So we sat again and ate and drank, in a place whence we could see the sun going down into a field of great, wild, and houseless mountains, such as I was now condemned to wander in with my companion. Partly as we so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to Aucharn, each of us narrated his adventures; and I shall here set down so much of Alan’s as seems either curious or needful.
It appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the wave was passed; saw me and lost me, and saw me again, as Itumbled in the roost; and at last had one glimpse of me clinging on the yard. It was this that put him in some hope I would maybe get to land after all, and made him leave those clues and messages which had brought me (for my sins) to that unlucky country of Appin.
In the meantime, those still on the brig had got the skiff launched, and one or two were on board of her already, when there came a second wave greater than the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck and caught on some projection of the reef. When she had struck first, it had been bows-on, so that the stern had hitherto been lowest. But now her stern was thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea; and with that, the water began to pour into the fore-scuttle like the pouring of a mill-dam.
It took the colour out of Alan’s face even to tell what followed. For there were still two men lying impotent in their bunks; and these, seeing the water pour in, and thinking the ship had foundered, began to cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that all who were on deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars. They were not two hundred yards away, when there came a third great sea; and at that the brig lifted clean over the reef; her canvas filled for a moment, and she seemed to sail in chase of them, but settling all the while; and presently she drew down and down, as if a hand was drawing her; and the sea closed over theCovenantof Dysart.
Never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore, being stunned with the horror of that screaming; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach when Hoseason woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon Alan. They hung back indeed, having little taste for the employment; but Hoseason was like a fiend, crying that Alan was alone, that he had a great sum about him, that he had been the means of losing the brig and drowning all their comrades, and that here was both revenge and wealth upon a single cast. It was seven against one; in that part of the shorethere was no rock that Alan could set his back to; and the sailors began to spread out and come behind him.
“And then,” said Alan, “the little man with the red head—I havena mind of the name that he is called.”
“Riach,” said I.
“Ay,” said Alan, “Riach! Well, it was him that took up the clubs for me, asked the men if they werena feared of a judgment, and, says he, ‘Dod, I’ll put my back to the Hielandman’s mysel’.’ That’s none such an entirely bad little man, yon little man with the red head,” said Alan. “He has some spunks of decency.”
“Well,” said I, “he was kind to me in his way.”
“And so he was to Alan,” said he; “and by my troth, I found his way a very good one! But ye see, David, the loss of the ship and the cries of these poor lads sat very ill upon the man; and I’m thinking that would be the cause of it.”
“Well, I would think so,” says I; “for he was as keen as any of the rest at the beginning. But how did Hoseason take it?”
“It sticks in my mind that he would take it very ill,” says Alan. “But the little man cried to me to run, and indeed I thought it was a good observe, and ran. The last that I saw they were all in a knot upon the beach, like folk that were not agreeing very well together.”
“What do you mean by that?” said I.
“Well, the fists were going,” said Alan; “and I saw one man go down like a pair of breeks. But I thought it would be better no’ to wait. Ye see there’s a strip of Campbells in that end of Mull, which is no good company for a gentleman like me. If it hadna been for that I would have waited and looked for ye mysel’, let alone giving a hand to the little man.” (It was droll how Alan dwelt on Mr. Riach’s stature for, to say the truth, the one was not much smaller than the other.) “So,” says he, continuing, “I set my best foot forward, and whenever I met in with anyone I cried out there was a wreck ashore. Man, they didna stop to fash with me!Ye should have seen them linking for the beach! And when they got there they found they had had the pleasure of a run, which is aye good for a Campbell. I’m thinking it was a judgment on the clan that the brig went down in the lump and didna break. But it was a very unlucky thing for you, that same; for if any wreck had come ashore they would have hunted high and low, and would soon have found ye.”